"No, wait before you shake your head. Listen to what I have to say. Let me arrange a proper celebration of our engagement at Merton House. Let us stay betrothed for what remains of the Season. And then you can break it off quietly during the summer, when the /ton/ will be dispersed all over England. We will decide together then how best you can be supported for the rest of your life. But at least we – "

"I will not need your support, Stephen," she said. "And I will even be able to pay back what you have given me. I called on a lawyer with Wesley this morning, and he is quite confident that he can recover my jewels and get the money that was settled on me in my marriage contract and in Nigel's will. And use of the town house here too, and even of the dower house, which of course I do not want. Bruce frightened me into believing I had to make a choice between my freedom and my widow's settlement, but he would not have given me the choice if he had believed I could be convicted of murder, would he? I have realized that during the past few days, and I have decided to fight rather than cower. I am going to be comfortably well off after all. I am going to be independent."

He felt a rush of gladness for her. He wished he had thought of it for himself, for of course she was quite right. The present Paget had relied upon his ability to browbeat the woman who had been terrorized for nine years by his father.

It was as well he had not thought of it first, though. It was good that she had, that quite unassisted she had found a way to set her life and her future to rights and also, more important, a way to heal herself.

"And what will you do with your independence?" he asked her.

"I'll buy a cottage somewhere in the country and live obscurely and happily ever after there," she said. She smiled at him, a genuine smile this time. "Wish me well, Stephen?"

"And that will be preferable to marriage with me," he said. It was not really a question. The answer was obvious, and it both saddened and gladdened him.

"Yes," she said softly. "But I /will/ accept your compromise, Stephen.

You must be allowed to be chivalrous. I will not humiliate you before the whole /ton/ when you have been so kind to me. Announce our betrothal, then, and I will celebrate it with you and with whomever you choose to invite to Merton House. I will play the part of happy, enamored fiancГ©e for the rest of the Season. And then I will set you free."

Perhaps.

He did not say it aloud. He just looked at her and nodded. And she looked back and smiled.

"Now that it seems I will be able to pay back everything you have paid me," she said, "may I count myself already free of the obligation of being your mistress?"

"Of course," he said, inexplicably hurt. "But I never did demand much of you in that capacity, Cass. If I have pressed my company on you, it has not been because you are my mistress but because I have wanted to help you."

"I know that," she said, "and I am grateful. I am also free – or will be as soon as my money and property have been safely restored to me. Since I /am/ essentially free, then, let me issue a free invitation. Stay with me tonight?"

He felt an instant stabbing of desire and longing. But he considered his answer. Was this wise? Did she know how to prevent conception? Should he endanger her for a third time? And it was a fine time to think of /that/ now, when there had been those two previous encounters.

"How humiliating," she said, smiling, "if you say no."

Her companion was in the house, sleeping upstairs. So were Mary and young Belinda. He wished – "It ought to be the easiest thing in the world," she said, "instead of the most difficult."

"What should?" he asked, getting to his feet and closing the short distance between them in order to set his hands on the arms of her chair and lean over her.

"Seducing an angel," she said.

He kissed her.

It would not be sordid. He was going to marry her. He did not know how it was going to be done, but it would be.

She was going to be his wife.

He drew her to her feet, and they wrapped their arms about each other and kissed more deeply and with growing desire.

"I think," she said at last, drawing back her head, "this ought to be continued upstairs, Stephen."

"Because we might be interrupted here?" he asked, grinning at her.

"As we were on the ballroom balcony earlier?" she said. "No, but – "

At which interesting juncture there was a soft knock on the sitting room door. /What on earth/?

It must be at least midnight.

Someone must be ill, Cassandra thought, breaking away from Stephen and hurrying across the room to open the door. Alice? /Belinda/?

Mary was standing just beyond the door, and beside her – "/William/!" Cassandra cried, stepping forward to catch up her stepson in her arms – though he was only a little more than a year younger than she. "You have come back. And you have found us."

"And not before time," he said when they stepped apart. He set one arm loosely about Mary's shoulders. "I dashed off without pausing to think, and I discovered a ship about to sail for Canada and was on it and surrounded by nothing but ocean before it struck me that I had done entirely the wrong thing. My first thought, though, was that if I disappeared for a while, everything would simmer down. I just went too far, that was all – literally. It takes an infernally long time to go to Canada and come back. Especially since I took nothing with me and had to work to pay my passage out and then earn enough to pay my passage home.

I was fortunate not to have to wait until next year."

"Come inside the room, where there is more light," Cassandra said. "And yes, Mary, you must come too. Of course you must."

Good heavens, William was Belinda's /father/.

"You cannot /imagine/ how I felt, Cassie," William said, stepping inside the room, "when I got to Carmel a week ago to find Mary and Belinda gone, and to hear that /you/ had been – "

He broke off abruptly when he saw there was someone else in the room.

"Stephen," she said, "this is William Belmont, Nigel's second son. The Earl of Merton, William."

The two men bowed to each other.

"I have not had the pleasure before now," Stephen said.

"That is because I have rarely been in London," William explained. "I have always hated the place. I spent several years in America, and then a couple in Canada. I have just returned from a second stay there. The wide open spaces have always called to me, though I must confess that for the past year there has been a far more insistent call."

He looked behind him to where Mary was still lurking in the doorway, and he reached out one arm toward her.

"Have you met my wife, Merton?" he asked. "Did you know Mary was my wife, Cassie? She says not, but I find it hard to believe. That was what the whole infernal row was all about."

The row? /That night/?

Cassandra looked from William to Mary in wonder.

"You are William's /wife/, Mary?" she said.

"I am sorry, my lady," Mary said, staying where she was in the doorway.

"When Billy come home from across the sea and learned about Belinda, he went off and got a special license, and we was married twenty miles away from Carmel the day before… The day before he went off again. He told me he would come back when he could, and he did."

She gazed at William with wide eyes and desperate tenderness.

"Come closer, love," he said, beckoning with his fingers until she came near enough that he could take her hand in his. She remained several steps behind him, though. "Mary would make a sturdy fron-tierswoman, would she not, Cassie? She only looks frail. I will not be putting the matter to the test, though. I am going to settle down here in this country instead, heaven help me, and look after her and Belinda. /After/ I have set everything right for you, that is. Though how Bruce could be such a knucklehead as to believe – "

He stopped again and eyed Stephen, who was standing before the fireplace as before, his hands clasped behind him.

"I had better come back tomorrow and talk to you," William said. "Not that I am leaving tonight, if you have no objection. I am staying with my wife and daughter."

Cassandra looked consideringly at Stephen. She was not really betrothed to him. She would never marry him. But he had been extraordinarily kind to her. She owed him something – honesty. Although he had asked her about her life and her marriage, and although he had asked her if she had killed Nigel – to which she had said yes – he had not asked for any details.

He must wonder, though. And, of course, she had lied to him.

"Talk now," she said. "The Earl of Merton is my betrothed, William. He made the announcement just this evening."

Mary spread one hand over her bosom and then the other when William went striding across the room to shake Stephen by the hand.

"And glad I am to hear it," he said, "if you are a decent man, Merton.

Cassie deserves some happiness. /You/ do not believe all that claptrap about her, then? Axe murderer, indeed! Even on the frontier there are not many women who can heft an axe. Not enough to do serious damage with, anyway."

"I do not believe it," Stephen said quietly, and he looked at Cassandra with serious eyes. "And even if it were true, I would guess it to have been self-defense rather than murder."

"My father could be a brute," William said. "It was the old demon bottle, not him. Though the contents of the old demon bottle could not have got inside him to make him a brute if he had not lifted a hand to drink it, could they? It was him, then. When he drank, which was not often, though it was too often even at that, he became someone else. It sounds as if Cassie must have given you some details."