Whirling, Miles grabbed the cane, and struck out with one booted foot. He heard something crack, and a high-pitched yelp of pain. His opponent abruptly released his grip on the cane, sending Miles sprawling back into Vaughn's armoire. By the time Miles had shaken his head clear and sprung back to his feet, his assailant had wrenched open the connecting door to the countess's chambers and disappeared into the darkness beyond.

Miles cursed fluently. Grabbing up the abandoned cane, he started in pursuit, until a new noise made him still in his tracks.

Make that lots of noises.

The broken window had done its work; the household had been awakened, and were after the intruder in full cry. Miles could hear masculine shouts of alarm, the shrill squeals of housemaids, and, far more ominous, the pounding of feet thudding down the hall to the earl's chambers.

Miles whirled grimly from the connecting door to the countess's chambers, through which his assailant had disappeared, to the doorknob of Vaughn's bedchamber, which was already beginning to rattle. The lock would only hold his unwitting pursuers for so long. There was, unfortunately, only one path to take.

Praying that his old skills had not entirely deserted him, Miles put one hand on the sill and vaulted out of the window — into a decidedly prickly hedge.

Some things never changed.

Assaulted by a hundred tiny stings, Miles crawled through the underbrush, yanking off mask and bandana as he went. A few more yards and he would emerge from the shrubbery into the square, brush himself off, and stroll calmly out again in his guise of inebriated man about town. The servants would be looking for a footpad, not a bon vivant. Miles was just bracing himself to spring forth from the shrubbery, when, with all the perversity of memory, the answer hit him.

He knew where he had heard that name before.

Despite a bruised knee, a twisted wrist, and scratches on parts of his anatomy he didn't even want to think of, a cocky grin spread across Miles's unmasked face.

Tomorrow, he was going to the opera.

Chapter Thirteen

"It's locked," said Colin.

Feeling like a heroine from a gothic novel caught out in some mischief, I pulled away from the padlock I had been examining. The padlock was attached to a very thick oak door, which in its turn was attached to a large stone tower.

After a morning spent in the library poring over the Selwick archives, even my dedication had begun momentarily to flag. Henrietta's handwriting was perfectly legible, and Jane's a historian's dream, but Miles's was all but indecipherable. Besides, outside the library window, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the larks were on the thorn.

Or was it the snails who were supposed to be on the thorn while the larks were on the wing? Either way, it didn't much matter. I wanted to be out there with them. Good weather in England in November is too rare not to take advantage of it.

Packing everything neady away into their little acid-proof cases, I'd returned to my room to don my multipurpose Barbour jacket and the most sensible of my shoes. Unfortunately, given the nature of my shoe collection, they weren't terribly sensible, a pair of Coach stacked loafers with improbably narrow heels. They worked very well on the streets of London, and looked excellent extending under the hem of a pair of pants, which had been my primary consideration to date. I didn't think they'd fare all that well in crossing a patch of lawn.

I looked longingly at the spare pairs of Wellies lying about next to the kitchen door as I let myself out — there were some that didn't look too far from my size — but having already invaded Colin's home, it seemed like pushing it a bit too far to appropriate his sister's boots. At least, I assumed they were his sister's boots. Goodness only knew how many women flitted in and out of Colin's kitchen. I'd only been there three hours when the first one appeared. That could explain the large number of boots in the entry way.

Scolding myself for being silly, I made my way out of the kitchen and along a little stone path that someone had conveniently laid out once upon a time. The irregular stones were separated by broad swathes of creeping thyme and other greenery I couldn't recognize; the effect was too charmingly natural not to be deliberate. I picked my way from stone to stone, my heels and I giving sincere thanks to whomever had had the bright idea of putting something between their feet and the turf.

The path led around the side of the house, into tne gardens. They were, for a modest gentleman's residence, fairly extensive gardens. I was lost within five minutes. Mind you, I have managed to get lost two blocks away from my own apartmept, so that isn't saying much. In my meager and not very convincing defense, the gardens were laid out, not in the formal French mode, where you can see for miles and even I have trouble losing my way, but in an English wilderness style, designed to lead the hapless wanderer down meandering paths into unexpected cul de sacs. Excellent for assignations among the shrubbery. I wondered idly if that was one of the reasons they had caught on in the eighteenth century. It was very hard to sneak out for a surreptitious smooch among flat parterres.

There was no hermit's cave complete with hermit and tortoise, a la Arcadia, but I did stumble across a faux Roman ruin, featuring larger-than-life-sized heads of miscellaneous emperors, and artistically arranged fallen columns. At least, I assumed it was faux. Had the Romans ever made it to Sussex? They might have; they tended to pop up in the most unexpected places (to fall back on the standard academic disclaimer, it's not my field), but I rather doubted they'd traveled with their favorite statues. Besides, Marcus Aurelius had a decidedly French look about the nose. I abandoned the classical folly for a pretty summer house entwined with vines, whose glossy dark leaves suggested they might become roses at some more promising point in the year.

I kept an eye out for a familiar blond head as I made my way along the pathways. I hadn't seen Colin at all since the previous evening, when I had left him doing the washing up. When I had gone down to the kitchen that morning, there had been a note propped against the sugar bowl, saying, "Out. Help yourself. C."

One had to admire the economy of language. Hemingway would approve. Dr. Johnson wouldn't.

Wherever "out" was, it wasn't in the gardens. The closest I came to a human form was a very smug Apollo playing his lyre above a fountain flanked by fawning naiads, like Elvis surrounded by swooning teeny-boppers. I had a nice little chat with Apollo, much to the distress of the naiads, and clambered up on the rim of his fountain to try to get a better vantage point. These ramblings were all very amusing, but I did have a goal, of sorts, and if I was going to get there before the weather changed its mind about not raining, I needed to start being a bit more purposeful about it.

Ever since the car had pulled up the drive last night, I had been hankering to explore that hunk of stone in the distance. The library window provided an exceptionally fine view; the eye was drawn over the gardens, and straight to the noble monument on the hill, with its jagged outline of crumbling stone. It might merely be another folly, like the charming faux Roman fountain — there had been an eighteenth-century vogue for Gothic ruins as well as classical ones — but it seemed a bit massive and unadorned to be a mere garden decoration. Whatever it was, I wanted to explore.

An open expanse of field separated the gardens from the little tower mound. It was a longer walk than it looked, mostly uphill. I left a little trail of heel-shaped holes in my wake. More effective than bread crumbs for finding one's way home, I reassured myself.

The tower stood at the top of its own little summit. It was larger than it appeared from the house, constructed of massive stones that gave me the same dwarfed feeling I had the first time I'd been taken to the Temple of Dendur in the Met as a small child. Slowly, I paced the circumference of the structure, running a hand along the rough stone

Relieved. Definitely relieved.

To hide my momentary confusion, I asked a question that had been idly floating about in my head. "If this isn't the principal seat of the Selwick family" — that was Uppington Hall in Kent, home to the current Marquis of Uppington, and favorite destination of tourist buses — "why is the original tower here?"

"Shouldn't it be the other way around?" Colin asked, with an amused sideways glance.

I threw him an exasperated look. "You know what I mean."

"There's nothing mysterious about it," said Colin, walking easily, hands in his pockets, as I braced myself against the downwards slope of the hill. I was beginning to be a little sorry I had shaken off his steadying hand. "The family wasn't elevated to the peerage until 1485. We backed the right side on Bosworth Field, against old Crouchback — "

"You mean when Henry Tudor stole the throne from poor, good King Richard? Richard had a much better claim to the throne than Henry." I sent him an arch glance that was only somewhat spoiled by my tripping over a malevolent rock. The rock was obviously a Tudor supporter.

Colin grabbed my arm to steady me, and let go again as soon as it became clear I wasn't in imminent danger of tumbling down the hill. "I wouldn't go repeating that if I were you. We're quite fond of good King Henry. He gave Sir William Selwick an estate confiscated from one of Richard's supporters near a little town called Uppington."