"They experienced all the terrors of rejection and insecurity after their parents died," he explained after Joshua had supervised the boy on his pony while Aidan gave the little girl a riding lesson one morning. "Even when they had been with Eve for a while and after I married her, someone tried to snatch them away as revenge against Eve for marrying me. It took a court case and the ruling of a magistrate to establish the fact that we are their legal guardians. If I have to spend the next twenty years of my life helping them believe that they belong somewhere, that they are loved unconditionally, that their world is a predominantly benign place, that they can dare to be happy, productive adults when they grow up, then I will consider those years well spent."

"They are fortunate children," Joshua said, remembering the bleakness of his own childhood.

"They have every right to be," Aidan told him. "Of course, we face the possibility of their insecurities surfacing again when Eve bears a child of our own, but that time is not yet, and we will deal with it when it does happen."

Alleyne reminded Joshua of himself. Cheerful and always active, he nevertheless exuded a certain air of restlessness and aimlessness.

"I envy you," he said when the two of them were alone together at breakfast after seeing Rannulf and Judith on their way. "You have your home and your estate to go to now that you have the title and your services in France are no longer required. And a marriage with someone you love to help you send down roots. I think you must love Free." He grinned. "I cannot imagine any other reason a man would want to marry her unless it was her fortune, and you obviously don't need her money."

"I do not," Joshua agreed. "You probably are not lacking in funds yourself, though, or any of the other attributes necessary to attract a prospective bride, if that is what you want."

"The trouble is," Alleyne said, "that I do not know what I want. If I were poor, I would have no choice but to take employment, would I? I suppose I would have found my niche long ago and been reasonably happy in it. And if I were poor, there would not be so many females setting their caps at me. Perhaps I would have pursued and won someone who loved me for myself, someone for whom I would happily give up my freedom. Rank and fortune are not without their problems."

"Once upon a time," Joshua said, "I had neither, and on the whole I would have to admit you have a point."

"Having said which," Alleyne said ruefully, rising from his place to help himself to more food from the sideboard, "I am not sure I would give up either even if I could. I have been thinking-with a little prodding from Wulf-of running for a seat in Parliament or taking some government appointment. As for marriage, I am in no hurry. Bedwyns are expected to be monogamous once they do marry. More than that, they are expected to love their spouses. I am not sure I am ready for that sort of commitment yet, if I ever will be. I hope you are. Freyja will demand it of you-with her fists if necessary."

"Now that is a threat to put the fear of God into me," Joshua said. "I have been at the receiving end of one of those fists-at least my nose has-on two separate occasions."

Alleyne threw back his head and laughed.

"Good old Free," he said.

Morgan was young and beautiful and on the verge of making her come-out in society. She would be presented to the queen next spring and remain in London to participate in all the frenzied social activities of the Season. With all her advantages of birth and fortune and looks, she could not fail to take the ton by storm and to be courted by every gentleman in search of a wife and a good number who would think of matrimony only after setting eyes on her.

But she was not living for that day. She was not a giddy young girl with nothing in her head but beaux and parties.

"It is all remarkably foolish," she said at dinner one evening, "all this faradiddle of a come-out and a Season. And the whole idea of a marriage mart is distasteful and remarkably lowering."

"You are not afraid no one will bid for you, are you, Morg?" Alleyne asked.

"I am afraid of no such thing," she said disdainfully, "so you may wipe that grin off your face, Alleyne. I am afraid of just the opposite. I expect to be mobbed by silly fops and ancient roués and earnest, dull men of all ages. All because of who I am. Not a one of them will know me or even wish to know me. All they will want is marriage with the wealthy younger sister of the Duke of Bewcastle."

"Fortunately, Morgan," Aidan said, "you have the power to say no to any or all of them. Wulf is no tyrant and could not force you into a marriage against your will even if he were."

"You will meet someone next spring," Eve said, "or the year after or the year after that, and there will be something about him that is different, Morgan. Something that stirs you here." She touched her heart. "And before you know it, even if you never intended to love or even to like him, you will know that there is no one else in the world for you but him."

"Eve met Aidan," Freyja said, sounding exasperated, though there was a certain fond gleam in her eye as she looked at her sister-in-law, "and has become a hopeless romantic."

"Yes, I have," Eve agreed, and laughed and blushed.

"Well, I certainly do not expect to meet my future husband at the London marriage mart," Morgan said with a contemptuous toss of her head. "I will wait until I am five and twenty if I must, just like Freyja. She waited until she met just the right man." She looked at Joshua, approval in her eyes.

"Even if there were a few hiccups along the way," Alleyne added.

Joshua found that he did not dislike even Bewcastle. The man was cold, austere, distant. He took his meals with his family and joined them in the drawing room during the evenings. But apart from that he kept very much to himself. He did invite Joshua into his library after luncheon the day Rannulf and Judith left. Joshua guessed that such invitations were rare. He sank into the leather chair Bewcastle indicated before taking the one at the other side of the hearth himself.

"You have been presented to most of the members of our family," he said, setting his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepling his fingers, "and to almost all our neighbors while we were at Alvesley for the christening. It was my intention when I came home from Bath to host an evening party or even a ball here in honor of your betrothal. But you may consider such an event undesirable. The betrothal is still of a temporary nature, I assume?"

Joshua hesitated and found himself staring into the pale, inscrutable eyes of the duke. It seemed for a moment that he could almost read in those eyes a knowledge of what had happened during the evening at Alvesley.

"As you pointed out in Bath," Joshua said, "and as I explained to Freyja before that, my betrothal is very real to me. Only she can end it. She has not yet spoken the final word on that."

He had noticed before that Bewcastle did not seem disconcerted by lengthy silences. There was one now.

"If you wish her to speak that final word," Bewcastle said at last, "then I trust you will make it desirable to her to do so. Freyja may be the last woman one would expect to be susceptible to a broken heart, but that fate is not unknown to her."

"I know," Joshua said.

"Ah." The ducal eyebrows went up.

"I will see what Freyja thinks about a party or ball," Joshua said, feeling that he had had a brief glimpse into a side of Bewcastle that he kept very carefully hidden even from his own family. He cared about Freyja-not just about her good name and therefore the good name of the Bedwyns, but about her. He was afraid she was going to be hurt again.

The library door clicked open behind him at that moment, and the ducal eyebrows arched even higher while his fingers curled about the handle of his quizzing glass. Joshua looked over his shoulder and saw that the intruder was young Becky, who peered around the door for a moment before stepping inside and shutting it carefully behind her.

"I just woke up from my nap," she said very precisely in her piping little voice, "and Davy was gone and Nanny Johnson said I could come down. But Mama and Papa and everyone else have gone outside and I do not want to go to join them there because it is cold today."

Bewcastle half raised his glass to his eye. "It would seem, then," he said, "that the only alternative is to remain indoors."

"Yes," she agreed. But she did not respond to the implied suggestion that she was free to make herself at home in any part of the indoors except the library.

"Hello, Uncle Joshua," she said as she passed him on her way to examine the object that had taken her attention-Bewcastle's quizzing glass. She took it from his surprised fingers, examined it closely, turned it over in her hands, and raised it to her eye. She looked up at him. "You look funny, Uncle Wulf."

"I daresay I do," he said. "So does your eye."

She went off into peals of giggles before turning and wriggling her way up onto his lap, leaning against his chest, and resuming her game with his glass.

The thing was, Joshua thought as Bewcastle began a determined conversation about Penhallow, he looked both slightly uncomfortable and slightly pleased. He also sat very still as if he feared frightening the child away. It was Joshua's guess that nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

Freyja was adamantly opposed to any public celebration of their betrothal at Lindsey Hall, as Joshua had expected.

"Gracious heavens," she said when he asked her about it as they played a game of billiards later in the afternoon, "whatever next? A mock wedding? Enough is enough. I am going to quarrel with you very soon, Josh, and very publicly, whether you like it or not. This whole business is becoming tedious and ridiculous."