The bangle seller had already faded away.

"You're missin' the bargain of a lifetime, guv," the hawker said, and he turned and made his way to a group of three ladies who had stopped nearby.

The marquess removed his hand from Judith's neck.

"That was one reason why you needed a male escort," he said.

"They were harmlessly trying to sell their wares," she said stiffly. "I did not need your interference, my lord."

"You would have been easy prey," he said. "They would not even have had to draw attention to themselves by racing off with your reticule. The bangle seller was lifting it so skillfully off your arm that you probably would not even have missed it until they had disappeared among the crowds."

She looked down at the reticule she now held against her side. "That is ridiculous," she said. "They were merely selling their wares."

"They were merely thieving," he said. "However, since no harm has been done, I suppose it does not matter if you do not believe me. But do be careful. This type of scene is a pickpocket's heaven."

"He was really about to steal my reticule?" she asked, frowning.

“As surely as the clasp on that pearl necklace was glass,'' he said.

She was looking directly into his eyes. He had never quite been able to put a name to the color of her eyes. They were notexacdy green, not exactly gray. They were certainly not blue-not altogether so, anyway. But they were bright and beautiful eyes, the colored circle outlined by a dark line, almost as if it had been drawn in with a fine pen. He had once fancied it possible to drown in her eyes.

"Thank you," she said. She did not smile. He knew that it had taken her a great effort to acknowledge her gratitude. She turned abruptly to the portrait painter's booth.

The portrait was finished and Kate was holding it in her hands and gazing at it wide-eyed. Her aunt was exclaiming in delight over it while Rupert regarded it critically, head to one side.

“Look, Mama.'' Kate held out the portrait for her mother's inspection. Judith took it and the marquess looked at it over her shoulder. A little girl sat stiffly on a chair, her feet dangling in space, her hands in her lap. Two large dark eyes

peeped from beneath the poke of a bonnet. It could have been any child anywhere.

"Oh, lovely," Judith said. "I will have to find a frame for it at home and hang it in my bedchamber. How clever of you to sit still all that time, Kate."

The marquess paid the assistant one shilling and sixpence. Kate was pulling on the tassel of one of his Hessian boots as he put his purse away in a safe inside pocket.

"Yes, ma'am?" he said, looking down at her.

She pointed upward and smiled at him. He stooped down closer to her.

"Ride up there," she said.

She weighed no more than a feather. He swung her up onto one shoulder and wrapper* an arm firmly about her. She put one arm about his head beneath his beaver hat and spread her palm over his ear. And she sat very still and quiet.

It was his one regret. No, perhaps not the Only one. But it was one regret of his life that he had not had children of his own. He had dreamed of it once, of course. When he was twenty-six years old he had been very eager to marry and begin his family. He had hoped that Judith would want several children. He had suffered too much loneliness himself from being an only child.

He should, he supposed, have shaken off his disappointment and his heartache more firmly and chosen again. He might still have found contentment with another woman and he might certainly have had his family.

But it seemed too late now at the age of thirty-four to begin the process of finding a woman with whom he might be compatible. He had loved once, and the experience seemed to have sapped all his desire to search for love again.

Rupert was holding his free hand, he realized suddenly, and telling him in his piping voice how he would skate like the wind if he only had skates with him. Faster than the wind. He would skate so fast that no one would even see him.

Judith walked to his side, her eyes on her children, almost as if she believed that he would disappear with them if she relaxed her vigil for one moment. Amy walked at his other side, still gazing about her with bright interest.

"I'm cold," Kate announced suddenly.

They were strolling back toward the bridge where the carriage was to meet them, and the slight movement of air was against their faces.

"It is chilly," Amy agreed, "though you were quite right in what you said earlier, my lord. The excitement of the occasion makes one almost forget that it is a cold winter's day."

"We will warm ourselves at the roasting fire," the marquess said, leading the way there.

And indeed the heat from the flames was very welcome. While Rupert dashed forward, his hands outheld, Lord Denbigh lifted Kate down carefully from his shoulder, stooped down behind her and unbuttoned his greatcoat to wrap about her, and held her little hands up to the blaze.

"Better?" he asked.

She nodded. He took her hands and rubbed them firmly together and then held them to the blaze again. He looked up at Amy.

"It feels good, does it not?" he said.

"Wonderful," she agreed.

He looked up at Judith. "Warm again?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you," she said.

"Only those wot's buyin' meat is welcome to warm their 'ands, guv," the man who was tending the cooking said, and he stretched out a hand to catch the shilling that the marquess tossed to him.

"Is that better?" the marquess asked Kate after a couple of minutes, rubbing her hands together again.

She nodded once more to him, turned, and raised her arms to him. He wrapped his coat more firmly about her and lifted her.

"I think the carriage will be waiting by the time we have strolled back to the bridge," he said. "Has everyone seen enough?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," Amy said. "This has been very wonderful, my lord."

"This has been the best day of my life," Rupert said.

"May I take Kate, my lord?" Judith asked. "She must be getting heavy."

"As light as a feather," he said, glancing down and realizing that the child had fallen asleep against his chest.

He had a strange feeling, almost as if butterflies were fluttering through his stomach. She was warm and relaxed inside his coat. He could hear her deep breathing when he bent his head closer. No, it was more than butterflies. He felt almost like crying.

She might have been his, he thought, if only things had turned out differently. She might have had his dark hair or her mother's fair coloring. He swallowed and shook off the thought.

Judith Easton had seen to it that that had never happened.

He allowed his coachman to help the ladies into the carriage and climbed in carefully himself in order not to waken the child. He shifted her in his arms so that she lay on his lap, her head on his arm. Her mouth fell open as her head tipped back.

"Poor Kate," Amy said. "She has tired herself out. But she has had such a very happy afternoon, my lord. I am sure she will not stop talking about this for days."

Judith Easton, the marquess saw as he looked steadily across the carriage at her, had her eyes on her daughter. She was biting at her lower lip.

"But there is so much in London to delight children," he said. "And adults too. You have not yet been to the Tower, Miss Easton?"

Judith's eyes lifted to his and held. He did not look away from her.

"No," Amy replied. "But we have been meaning to do so ever since we came to town, have we not, Judith? I am longing to see the Crown Jewels."

"The menagerie there is not as impressive as it used to be, I believe," he said. "But it is still worth a visit and is the delight of all children who see it."

"Yes!" Rupert said. "Is there a lion, sir?"

"There is," the marquess said. "And also an elephant."

"A lion!" Rupert said. "I wonder if it has ever eaten anyone."

"Oh, I don't believe so, dear," Amy said. "It must be in a safe cage.''

Judith lifted her chin slightly. She knew very well what was coming, the marquess thought, his eyes still on hers. And she knew that she was powerless to avert it.

"There are all sorts of armor and torture instruments on display too," he said, "including the block and ax with which people's heads used to be chopped off. Children inevitably enjoy seeing them even more than they enjoy the lion."

Rupert made a chopping motion at his own neck with the side of one hand.

"Perhaps you would allow me to escort you all there one afternoon, ma'am," he said. "It would be my pleasure."

He watched her mouth lift in a half smile, though there was no amusement in her eyes. She said nothing.

"Yes!" Rupert said. "May we, Mama?"

"How extraordinarily civil of you, my lord," Amy said, delight in her voice.

"Thank you," Judith said softly, that half smile still on her lips. "It would be our pleasure, my lord."

"Then it is settled," he said as his carriage jolted slightly to a halt outside their home. "Shall we say three afternoons from now?"

She inclined her head.

Five minutes later he drove away alone, having laid the child in her mother's arms inside the hallway of the house and declined an invitation to go upstairs for tea.

So Judith Easton was divining his game, was she? He wondered if she had even a glimmering of an understanding of the whole of it. And he wondered if she would be able to guard against it even if she did.