He stepped up to the door and rattled the knocker against it.

"I shall see you later, then," he said. "Think of those who have been kind to you today. Forget those who have not."

She held on to her smile. She added a sparkle to her eyes.

"I shall be too busy thinking of just one person," she said. "I shall think of no one but you."

The door opened and Mary looked out. Belinda was clinging to her skirt and peeping out from behind it. Roger came padding past them, bobbing down the steps on his three legs. He rubbed against her, his tongue lolling. He looked at the Earl of Merton and let out a token woof, which would not have scared a mouse within two feet of him.

Lord Merton looked from one to another of them, rubbed Roger's head briefly, touched the brim of his hat, and strode around his curricle to climb into the seat again. Cassandra watched him drive along the street.

"Is that /him/, my lady?" Mary asked rather stiffly.

Cassandra looked at her in some surprise. But there was no keeping anything from servants, even when there was a houseful of them.

"The Earl of Merton?" she said. "Yes."

Mary said no more and Cassandra swept past her into the house. It was a relief not to see Alice waiting there for her. She hurried upstairs to her room, Roger bobbing along beside her.

/9/

ALICE arrived home soon after Cassandra.

She had trudged about London for four hours in the heat of the afternoon, going from one employment agency to another without any success. Her age was against her in almost any form of employment that was available. The fact that she had had only one employer and two forms of employment – as governess and lady's companion – in all her working life for the past twenty-two years was against her, despite her effort to explain that the very longevity of her employment proved that she must be both steady and trustworthy. She could not expect to be employed as a housekeeper, one of the few forms of employment for which her age might qualify her, since she had no experience in the tasks involved, and she could not expect to be anyone's chef for the very simple reason that she did not know how to cook anything more complex than a boiled egg.

The best she had been able to do was leave her name and letters of introduction and recommendation at the two agencies that were willing to take them, in the faint hope that something would turn up.

Alice was well aware that it was a very faint hope.

The only really good thing that /had/ happened to her during the afternoon was that she had encountered an old friend while she was sitting on a bench beneath the shade of a tree on the outer edges of a churchyard to rest her aching feet. She was amazed that she had recognized him after so many years. She was even more amazed that /he/ had recognized /her/. But they both had, and he had stopped to talk with her and even sit beside her for a few minutes. Did Cassie remember Mr.

Golding?

"Wesley's tutor?" Cassandra said after thinking for a moment.

"You /do/ remember," Alice said, beaming.

Cassandra remembered him. He had been a whole head shorter than her father, a thin, dark-haired, earnest young man with wire-framed spectacles. He had been hired when Wesley was eight and their father had just won one of his rare windfalls. Less than a month later the inevitable crash had come and Mr. Golding had been forced to leave, unable to stay when his employer could not pay him – though Alice had stayed, as always.

Cassandra remembered him only because she had been thirteen at the time, just the age when girls began to develop an awareness of men. She had fallen secretly and passionately in love with him after he had smiled at her one day and called her Miss Young and inclined his head to her with flattering deference as though she were an adult. She had mourned his departure for a whole week after he left, convinced that she would never /ever/ either forget him or love another.

"How is he?" she asked.

"Very well indeed," Alice said. "He is secretary to a /cabinet/ minister, Cassie, and is looking very prosperous and very smart indeed.

His hair has turned gray at the temples. He looks very distinguished."

It struck Cassandra then that perhaps she had not been the only one in love with him fifteen years ago. He and Alice had probably been close in age, and for a whole month they had worked in near proximity to each other.

"He asked after you," Alice said, "and was surprised to hear that I am still with you. He called you /Miss Young/. Perhaps he did not hear of your marriage."

And Alice did not tell him? Cassandra did not blame her.

"I told him you were now Lady Paget and a widow," Alice said. "He sent his regards."

Ah.

And that was the last they would ever hear of Mr. Allan Golding, Cassandra thought, smiling at an unusually flushed Alice. She felt sorry for Alice's sake. She could not recall a time when Alice had had a close friend of her own.

They had dinner together and sat in the small sitting room afterward.

Cassandra glanced wistfully more than once at the fireplace, in which kindling and coal had been set ready to be lit. But there was so very little coal left in the bin outside the kitchen door and, though she had some money now, there was not enough to allow for extravagances. She must save every penny she was able. Summer was coming, and all the /ton/ would leave town then, including, no doubt, the Earl of Merton. She dared not think far enough ahead to decide what she would do then. But in preparation for the time when she must consider it, she must save as much as she could.

It was not a cold evening, only slightly chilly.

"He is coming tonight, I suppose," Alice said abruptly at last, her head bent over some mending she was doing. She had not made any reference until now to the way Cassandra had spent the afternoon.

"Yes," Cassandra said. "He is."

Alice stitched on, as if she had not heard.

"What I ought to do," she said after five minutes or so had elapsed, "is rob a stagecoach – with smoking pistols and a black mask."

She raised her head when Cassandra said nothing, and they stared at each other until neither could control her facial muscles any longer and they bellowed with laughter, doubled over with it. They mopped their eyes, glanced at each other, and went off into whoops again – all far in excess of the humor of the joke.

And then they sat back in their chairs and looked at each other again.

"Allie," Cassandra said fondly, "he is a decent man. I did not choose him for that reason, or even for his looks. I chose him because I knew he must be as rich as Croesus and because I knew I could attract him.

But some good fairy – or perhaps some good angel – was watching over me. He is kind and decent."

And uncomfortable to be with. And the possessor of two blue eyes that could draw her in deep enough to drown.

"He is /not/ decent," Alice said, the laughter of a minute ago forgotten, "if he is prepared to pay money for – No man is decent if he will do /that/, Cassie."

"But he is a /man/," Cassandra said. "And I can be very alluring when I want to be. Last evening I wanted to be. He did not stand a chance, Allie. You must not blame him. Blame me if you must."

Alice was not to be mollified, however, even though Cassandra smiled beguilingly at her.

"Besides," Cassandra said, her smile fading as she sat back farther in her chair and gazed into the unlit coals, "I think he has engaged my services as much out of kindness as out of lust. He is not stupid, Allie, and I am not much of a liar. He knows why I sought him out. I was really quite open about it this morning. There was no point in /not/ being. He knows that my interest in him is strictly monetary, and I think he agreed to my terms because he felt sorry for me."

It was a humiliating admission. If she had been the irresistible courtesan she had thought to be, he would have accepted her terms for no other reason than that they would give him unlimited access to her bed and body. It would have been so much better that way.

Alice was looking steadily at her, her needle suspended above her work.

"It is getting too late for you to be sewing," Cassandra said. "It is quite dark, yet I hate to light a candle before it is absolutely necessary."

She had squandered candles last night. She must not continue to do that.

"You are tired," she said. "You have had a long, busy day. Why don't you go to the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea and take it up to bed?"

"You do not want me here when he comes," Alice said, threading her needle through the fabric, setting her work aside, and getting to her feet. "And I do not want to be here either. I could not be civil to him.

Good night, Cassie. I wish you did not have to do this for my sake, at least."

"You have not been paid for almost a year," Cassandra reminded her. "You have done a great deal for my sake, Allie. You did not get paid through most of my childhood either, did you? But you stayed even though at that time you would have been able to find other employment without any trouble at all."

"I loved you," Alice said.

"I know."

Cassandra went into the kitchen with her. Mary was cleaning the old grate on which she did the cooking. Roger was lying on the hearth. He thumped his tail in greeting without lifting his head.

"Mary," Cassandra said, "will you /never/ stop working? That grate has probably not gleamed as brightly in all its long lifetime. Go to bed."