His face was still narrow, angular, harsh, his lips thin, his eyes a steely gray, the eyelids drooped over them so that they might have looked sleepy had they not looked hawkish instead. His dark hair had the suggestion of gray at the temples. That was new. But he was only-what? Thirty-four? Thirty-five years old?

The sight of him and his proximity could still fill her with a quite unreasonable terror and revulsion. Unreasonable because he had never treated her harshly or with anything less than a perfectly correct courtesy. But then, there had never been any suggestion of warmth either.

She had always wanted to run a million miles whenever he came into a room. She wanted to run now. She wanted to run somewhere where there would be air to draw into her lungs.

"Mrs. Easton," he said in that unexpectedly soft voice she had forgotten until now. And he bowed stiffly to her.

"My lord." She curtsied.

"But of course they know each other," a gentleman in the group said with a booming laugh. "I do believe they were betrothed once upon a time. Is that not so, Max?"

"Yes," the Marquess of Denbigh said, those steely eyes boring through he not the faintest hint of a smile on his face-but then she had never ever seen him smile. "A long time ago."


***

"I think not, Nora," the Marquess of Denbigh had said three evenings before the night of the soirйe. He had called to pay his respects to the Clancys between acts at the theater.

"We scarcely see you in town, Max," Lady Clancy protested. "It must be two years at the very least since you were here last. And yet even when you are here, you refuse to go about. It is most provoking. I am considering disowning you as my cousin."

"Second cousin," he corrected, putting his quizzing glass to his eye and gazing lazily about the theater at all the boxes. "And I am here tonight, so I can hardly be accused of being a total recluse."

"But alone in your box," she said. "It is inhuman, Max.

One word and you might have come with us. Are you sure you cannot be persuaded to come to my soiree? It would be a great coup for me. Word that you are in town has caused a considerable stir, you know. If you are intending to remain for the Season, you will be having a whole host of mamas sharpening their matchmaking skills again."

"They would be well advised to spend their energies on projects more likely to bring them success," he said, still perusing the other boxes through his glass.

"One wonders why you have come to town at all," she said rather crossly, "if not to mingle with society."

"I have to call on Weston among others," he said. "I have fears that after two years I may no longer be fashionable, Nora."

She made a sound that was perilously close to a snort. "What utter nonsense," she said. "You would look elegant dressed in a sack, Max. It is that presence you have. Are you looking for someone in particular?"

He dropped his quizzing glass unhurriedly and clasped his hands behind his back. "No," he said. "I was only marveling at how few faces I know."

“They would begin to look far more familiar if you would just do more with your invitations than en op them in a waste basket," she said. "That is what you do with them, I presume?"

"Ah, not quite," he said. "But I do believe that is what my secretary does with them."

"It is most irritating," she said. "December is not a month when society abounds in London, Max. But it seems that there is no reasoning with you. There never was. And there-you have made me thoroughly cross when I am normally of quite sanguine disposition. You had better return to your box and be alone with yourself as you seem to wish to be. The next act must be due to begin."

Lord Clancy had turned from his conversation with a lady guest who shared his box. He laughed. "Nora has been quite determined to be the first and only hostess to lure you out this side of Christmas, Max," he said. "She has forgotten that since this morning there has been good reason for you not to come."

"Quite right. I had forgotten," Lady Clancy said, "though it all happened such a long time ago that I daresay it makes no difference to anyone now. Mrs. Easton sent an acceptance of her invitation this morning. Judith Easton, Max. Lord Blakeford's daughter."

"Yes," the marquess said, looking down into the pit of the theater, his hands still at his back, "I know who Mrs. Easton is."

"I thought she would have gone to Scotland with Blakeford and his wife," Lord Clancy said "They have gone for Christmas apparently. But she has stayed here. Nora sent her an invitation to her soiree. It is an unfortunate coincidence that she should be in town at the same time as you, Max. She has not been here for more years than you, I believe. In fact, I do not recall seeing her here since she ran off with Easton."

"That is all old news," Lady Clancy said briskly. "You had better take yourself off, Max. I am planning not to talk to you for a whole month if you will not come to my soiree- not that I am likely to see you in that time to display my displeasure to you, of course."

The Marquess of Denbigh sighed. "If it is so important to you, Nora," he said, "then I shall look in for half an hour or so. Will that satisfy you?"

She smiled and opened her fan. "It is amazing what a little coercion can accomplish," she said. "Yes, I am satisfied. Now, will you take a seat here, or are you planning to insist on returning to your own box?"

"I shall return to my own," he said, bowing to the occupants of the box.

But he did not return to his box. He left the theater and walked home, his carriage not having been directed tc return for him until the end of the performance.

So she was coming out of hiding at last. She was going to be at Nora's. Well, then, he would see her there.

Eight years was a long time-or seven and a half to be more accurate. He supposed she would have changed. She

had been eighteen then, fresh from the schoolroom, fresh from the country, shy, sweet, pretty-he never had been able to find the words to describe her as she ahd been then. Words made her sound uninteresting, no different from dozens of other young girls making their come-out. Judith Farrington had been different.

Or to him she had been different.

She would be twenty-six years old now. A woman. A widow. The mother of two young children. And her marriage could not have been a happy one-unless she had not known, of course. But how could a wife not know, even if she spent all of her married life in the country, that her husband lived a life of dissipation and debauchery?

She would be different now. She was bound to be.

He wanted to see the difference. He had waited for it a long time, especially since the death of her husband in a barroom brawl-that was what it had been despite the official story that he had died in a skirmish with thieves.

He had waited. And come to London as soon as he knew that she was there. And waited again for her to begin to appear in public. And finally, it seemed, she was to appear at Nora's soiree.

He would be there too. He had a score to settle with Judith Easton. Revenge to take. He had a great deal of leftover hatred to work out of his heart and his soul.

He had waited a long time for this.

His eyes found her immediately when he entered Lord Clancy's drawing room three evenings later. Indeed, he hardly needed the evidence of his eyes that she was there. There had always been something about her that appealed very strongly to a sixth sense in him.

"Come," Lady Clancy said, linking her arm through his and noting the direction of his gaze. "You do not need to be embarrassed by her presence, Max. I shall take you over to Lord Davenport's group. Caroline Reave is there, too. Conversation is never dull when she is part of it.''

"Thank you, Nora," he said, resisting the pressure of her arm, "but I can find my own way about. I have not forgotten how to do it in two years away from town."

She shrugged and smiled. "I might have known that you would confront the situation head to head," she said. "Perhaps I should have warned Mrs. Easton as I warned you."

Ah, so she had not been warned, he thought as he strolled across the room toward the group of which she was a part.

Yes, she was different. She was slender still, but with a woman's figure, not a girl's. Her hair was more elegantly dressed, with ringlets only at the back, not clustered all over her head as they had used to be. She carried herself proudly. He had not yet seen her face.

And then Dorothy Hopkins saw him and stood aside to admit him to the group, and he was able to stand right beside her and turn and make his bow to her, since Dorothy seemed to have forgotten the old connection and mentioned her particularly by name.

"Mrs. Easton," he said.

It was impossible to know her reaction. She spoke to him and curtsied to him, but her expression was calm and unfathomable-as it had always been. He had not known at that time that she hid herself behind that calmness. Her flight with Easton had taken him totally by surprise, had shattered him utterly.

Yes, her face had changed too. She had been pretty as a girl, with all the freshness of youth and eagerness for an approaching womanhood. She was beautiful now, with some of the knowledge of life etching character into her face.

"A long time ago," he said in reply to a remark made by someone in the group.

He did not take his eyes off Judith Easton or particularly note the embarrassment of the other members of the group, who had just been reminded of their former connection. He hardly noticed that their embarrassment drew them a little away from the two of them, so that soon they were almost isolated.