"You've a good eye." Darcy beamed approval and added to it by giving Jude a quick one-armed hug. "Now, Brenna, you finish that with a really short excuse for a skirt and men'll be falling all over you."

"I don't want them falling all over me. You just have to boot them out of the way again."

"When enough of them fall, you just climb over their prone bodies and go on to the next." Darcy found a suit in slate blue and wiggled into the skirt. "You are going to give Aidan a tumble, aren't you, Jude?"

"A tumble?"

"Skirt needs to be lifted here, too. A tumble," she continued. "You haven't slept with him yet, have you?"

"I-" She stepped back to pick up her wine again. "No. No, I haven't."

"Didn't think so." Darcy swiveled to check the line of the jacket from the back. "Figured you'd have more a gleam in your eye if you'd wrestled with him." Experimenting, she scooped her hair up, turning this way and that, and imagined borrowing those pretty silver dangles she'd seen Jude wear on her ears. "You're going to sleep with him, aren't you?"

"Darcy, you twit, you're embarrassing her."

"Why?'' Darcy let her hair fall so she could choose from two pairs of bone-colored heels. "We're all of us female and none of us virgins. Nothing wrong with sex, is there, Jude?"

Don't blush, Jude ordered herself. You will not blush. "No, of course not."

"Aidan's supposed to be damn good at it, too." She laughed when Jude gulped down more wine. "So, when you do the deed with him, Brenna and I would appreciate some of the details as, at the moment, neither of us has a particular man we're after tumbling with ourselves."

"Talking about sex is the next best thing to having it." Brenna spotted a striped shirt in the armoir and pulled it out. "Of the three of us, you look most likely to be having it in the foreseeable future. The closest I've come in nearly a year is when I had to punch Jack Brennan for copping a feel last New Year's Eve-and I'm still not sure he wasn't just reaching for another pint as he claimed to be."

Discarding the shirt, she sat down in her underwear and poured more wine.

"I, for one, know when a man's reaching for me or for his beer." Darcy cocked her head in the mirror. She looked rather elegant, she thought. Like a lady who had lovely places to go and wonderful things to do. "What do you wear a suit like this for, Jude?"

"Oh, for meetings, lectures, luncheons."

"Luncheons." Darcy sighed and did a slow turn. "In some fancy restaurant or ballroom, with waiters in white jackets."

"And this week's miserable chicken surprise," Jude answered with a smile. "Along with the most tedious luncheon speaker the committee could dig up."

"That's just because you're used to them."

"So used to them, I'd live happily with the knowledge I never have to attend another. I was a poor academic."

"Were you now?" Brenna topped off Jude's wine before reclaiming her own sweater.

"Terrible. I hated planning courses, having to know the answers, and judging papers. On top of that, the politics and the protocol."

"Then why did you do it?"

Distracted, Jude glanced back at Darcy. The woman was so confident, Jude thought, so completely comfortable with herself even as she stood there in a cotton bra and another woman's skirt. How could anyone so sure of who and what she was understand what it was not to know. Just not to know.

"It was expected," Jude said at length.

"And did you always do what was expected?"

Jude let out a long breath and picked up her wine again. "I'm afraid so."

"Well, now." Swept along by affection, Darcy grabbed Jude's face in her hand and kissed her. "We'll fix that."

By the time the second bottle of wine was emptied, the bedroom was a disaster. Brenna had the wit to start a fire, then to hunt up cheese and biscuits. She sat on the floor, vaguely disappointed that Jude's shoes were too big for her. Not that she had any place to wear them, but they were awfully smart.

Jude lay sprawled on the bed, her head propped on her fists as she watched Darcy try on endless variations of outfits. The goofy expression on her own face made Jude wonder if she were drunk or just soft in the head.

Every now and then she gave a quiet hiccough.

"The first time," Darcy was saying, "was with Declan O'Malley and we swore we would love each other ever and a day. We were sixteen and fumbling at it. We did it on a blanket on the beach one night when we both snuck out of the house. And let me tell you, there's nothing a bit romantic about rolling around on the sand, even when you are sixteen and stupid as a turnip."

"I think it's sweet," Jude said dreamily, imagining the moonlight and the crash of waves and two young bodies gleaming with love and discovery. "What happened to Declan O'Malley?"

"Well, forever and a day lasted about three months for the pair of us, and we went on to other things. Two years back he got Jenny Duffy in trouble, so they married and have a second daughter to go with the first. And seem happy enough."

"I'd like to have children." Jude rolled over to find her wine. It had begun to taste like ambrosia. "When William and I discussed it-"

"Discussed it, did you?" Brenna put in, and as guardian of the bottle, took Jude's glass to refill it.

"Oh, yes, in a very logical, practical, and civilized manner. William was always civilized."

"I think William needed a boot in the arse." Brenna handed the glass back, ducking so the wine that slopped as Jude laughed missed splashing on her hair.

"His students call him Dour Powers. That's his name, William Powers. Of course, being a modern professional woman, I kept my own name, so I didn't have all that fuss with the divorce. Anyway- what was I saying?"

"How civilized Dour Powers is."

"Oh, yes. William decided that we'd wait five to seven years. Then, if circumstances were acceptable, we would discuss having a child again. If we decided to go ahead with it, we would research and choose the proper day care, preschool facilities, and once we knew the sex of the child, we'd determine which educational plan to put into action straight up to college."

"College?" Darcy turned. "Before the baby's born?"

"William was very forward-thinking."

"For a man with his head up his bum."

"He's probably not as bad as I'm making him out to be." Jude frowned into her wine. "Probably. He's much happier with Allyson." To her shock, tears sprang to her eyes. "He just wasn't happy married to me."

"The bastard." Swamped with sympathy, Darcy abandoned the closet and sat on the bed to wrap an arm around Jude's shoulders. "He didn't deserve you."

"Not for a bloody minute," Brenna agreed, patting Jude's knee. "Stuffy, stub-nosed, philandering bastard. You're a hundred times better than any Allyson."

"She's blond," Jude said with a sniffle. "And has legs up to her ears."

"Blond from a bottle, I'll wager," Darcy said staunchly. "And you have wonderful legs. Gorgeous legs. I can't keep me eyes off them."

"Really?" Jude swiped a hand under her nose.

"They're fabulous." Brenna gave Jude's calf a bolstering stroke. "He's probably going to bed each night steeped in regret for losing you."

"Oh, hell." Jude exploded. "He was a boring son of a bitch. Allyson's welcome to him."

"He probably can't even get her off," said Darcy, and Jude snorted with glee.

"Well, I certainly never heard the angels sing. This is great." She rubbed the heels of her hands over her face to dry it. "I never had friends to come over and get drunk and toss my clothes around before."

"You can count on us." Darcy gave her a hard squeeze.

Sometime during the third bottle of wine, Jude told them about what she'd seen-thought she'd seen-in the old cemetery.

"It comes down through the blood," Darcy said with a knowing nod. "Old Maude had the sight, and it's often she talked to the Good People."

"Oh, come on."

Darcy only lifted one elegant brow at Jude's comment. "And this from the woman who's just described two meetings with a faerie prince."

"I never said that. I said I met this odd man twice. Or thought I did. I'm afraid I have a brain tumor."

Brenna grimaced at the very idea. "Nonsense. You're healthy as a horse."

"If not that, if there's no physical cause, then I'm just crazy. I'm a psychologist," she reminded them. "Well, I was one, a mediocre one, but still, I have enough training to recognize the symptoms of a serious mental disfunction."

"Why should that be?" Brenna demanded. "As far as I can tell, you're the most sensible of women. My ma thinks because of that, and your ladylike manner, you'll be good for me." Cheerfully, Brenna gave Jude a light punch on the shoulder. "And despite that I like you anyway."

"You really do, don't you?"

"Of course I do, and so does Darcy, and not just for your fine clothes."

"Of course I don't just like our Jude for her clothes." Darcy's tone radiated insult at the very idea. "I like her for her baubles, too." With that, she collapsed in laughter. "I'm joking. Sure we like you, Jude. You're fun to be with and a wonderful puzzle to listen to half the time."

"That's so nice." Her eyes welled up again. "It's so nice to have friends, especially when you're either dying of brain cancer or acting like a raving lunatic."

"You're neither. You saw Carrick of the faeries," Brenna announced. "Wandering the hills above his raft until Lady Gwen joins him."

"Do you really believe that?" It seemed possible now, in a way it hadn't-a way she hadn't let it-only a few hours before. "Believe in faerie forts and ghosts and spells that last centuries? You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"