“How very French.” Miss Gwen conspicuously held a handkerchief to her nose.

“It’s not all like this, is it, my lord?” Jane asked Richard in tones of such polite distress that Richard laughed.

“Your cousin’s house is in a far nicer neighborhood, I assure you, but, yes, much of Paris is in a sorry state. Bonaparte has grand plans to rebuild, but he hasn’t had the time to put his schemes into practice.”

“Too busy conquering the world?”

“I’m sure he would be flattered by your summation, Miss Balcourt.”

Amy flushed irritably and returned to her window.

Making a sharp turn that nearly sent Miss Gwen’s parasol into Richard’s ribs, the carriage clattered into the stone courtyard of the Hotel de Balcourt—and stopped abruptly. The drive was blocked by a shabby black carriage; mud splattered its sides, and a shattered lamp hung drunkenly on the side nearer Amy. Several men were occupied in unloading large, brown paper packages tied up with string.

“Why have we stopped?” demanded Miss Gwen.

“A coach is blocking the door,” Amy explained. She poked her head back out. “Mr. Robbins, could you please ask them to let us pass? Tell them the vicomte’s sister has arrived.”

Robbins puffed out his chest. With great enthusiasm, he shouted out in his ungrammatical French that they were all to clear out as the lady of the house had arrived.

One of the workers paused to shout back that there was no lady of the house.

“There is now!” declared Robbins. “Just who do you think that there lady is if she ain’t the lady of the ’ouse?”

The worker made an extremely rude suggestion in French. Amy, abruptly remembering that she wasn’t supposed to understand the language, opened her eyes wide at Richard and inquired, “What did he say?”

“He voiced his disbelief as to your identity,” Richard translated blandly.

Robbins, red-faced with fury, retorted with an inventive blend of French and English invective.

“Really!” exclaimed Miss Gwen, who had caught the English half.

“Really, indeed,” echoed Richard, looking quite impressed. That one comment about the reproductive habits of camels had been quite original.

“This is ridiculous!” Amy exclaimed.

“I quite agree.” Thump! “To refer to an innocent camel in that salacious way—”

“No! Not that! This!” Amy’s arm gesture encompassed the stalled carriage, the courtyard, and almost decked Richard on the chin. Richard eyed Amy speculatively but concluded that bodily harm to him had been a by-product, not a goal. “Don’t you see? It’s ridiculous to remain mewed up in the carriage when we’re here already. Why on earth can’t we just walk to the door? That’s why we have legs, for heaven’s sake! I’m going to find Edouard.” And with that, Amy unlatched her carriage door and prepared to hop out.

Only to be unceremoniously hauled back into the carriage by the scruff of her skirt.

“Oh no, you don’t,” said Richard, making up in firmness what he lacked in originality. “You are not going out there.”

It was hard to glare at someone when he still had his fist wound in the back of one’s skirt. Amy yanked irritably away and twisted to face Richard. Much better. Able to glare at him full on, she demanded, “Why not?”

Richard raised a sardonic eyebrow and indicated the courtyard where two other men in varying states of dirt and undress had joined the first in exchanging less than witty repartee with Robbins. Amy hated to admit it, but he had a point.

“But we can’t just sit here!”

“I agree. I’ll go.”

“You’ll go?” Amy echoed idiotically. Wait—had Lord Richard just agreed with her?

“I’m the only one who knows what your brother looks like.”

“I suppose I can recognize my own brother,” Amy muttered, but since she wasn’t awfully sure on that point, she muttered it very softly.

It was at that point that the door to the house opened and a portly man with too much lace on his cuffs emerged and began chastising the workers in the courtyard in rapid French, demanding to know the cause of the delay.

Richard swung out of the carriage.

“Ho! Balcourt!”

The man raised his head. Like Richard, his hair had been cut short in the classical style made popular by the Revolution, but this man had a pair of fuzzy sideburns crawling down his face towards his chin. They stretched so far down his face that they touched the absurdly high points of his shirt collar. It was a wonder that he was able to turn his head to look at Richard at all; his shirt points stretched up to his cheeks, and his chin was entirely buried by an exuberant cravat.

A voice emerged from the folds of the cravat. “Selwick? What are you doing here?”

Oh dear, that couldn’t be Edouard, could it?

Amy’s suspicions were confirmed by Richard’s next words. “I’m delivering your sister, Balcourt. You seem to have misplaced her.”

The last time she had seen Edouard, he had been a gawky youth of thirteen, preening in front of the mirror in the gold salon and tripping over his court sword. He had worn his hair in a queue tied with a blue ribbon and dusted over his adolescent spots with powder filched from Mama’s boudoir. To her five-year-old eyes, he had seemed impossibly tall. Of course, that might also have owed something to the heels then in fashion. Edouard had been so infuriated when she had sneaked into his room and paraded about in his heels. . . . This man, his puce waistcoat straining across his stomach, his puffy cheeks pinched behind his starched collar—he was a stranger.

But then he looked towards the carriage.

“My sister, you say?”

And all of a sudden, his face took on that exact same look it had worn all those years ago when he had caught Amy with his favorite heels.

“Edouard! It is you!”

Amy flung herself from the carriage. She stumbled a bit on the uneven cobblestones as she landed, but by dint of waving her arms about managed to keep herself upright. She heard a quickly muffled chuckle from Richard. Amy ignored it, the same way she ignored the bold stares of the French servants and the nasty smell rising from the cobblestones. Grabbing her skirts in both hands, she dashed at her brother. “Edouard! It’s me! Amy! I’ve finally come home!”

Edouard’s face—or what one could see of it—wavered between bewilderment and horror.

“Amy? You weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow!”

Chapter Ten

“Oh, that explains why your coach wasn’t there! I knew there had to be a good reason! I was so sure we’d told you we would arrive today—”

“We did,” inserted Miss Gwen coldly.

“—but we’re here and that’s all that matters! Oh, Edouard, I am so glad to see you again!” Amy threw her arms impulsively around her brother.

Edouard patted her rather awkwardly on the back. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

“And this is our cousin Jane, who is one of the cleverest, most wonderful people you will ever meet.” Amy tugged Edouard across the courtyard towards the carriage. A great deal of tugging was required; Edouard eyed the filth on the cobbles with extreme distaste, mincing in Amy’s wake with all the care of a young lady in new white slippers on a rainy day. Richard grinned at the sight. Everyone knew that Edouard de Balcourt had servants run ahead of him to lay wooden planks across the streets so he wouldn’t get his fine shoes and stockings dirty. But Amy was a force not to be gainsaid.

“Jane! Jane, this is Edouard!”

Edouard murmured his greetings through the lace-edged handkerchief he had pressed to his nose.

“Are we to sit here all day?” demanded an imperious voice from the carriage.

“Oh, and that’s Miss Gwendolyn Meadows, our chaperone and our neighbor in Shropshire. Miss Gwen, do come down and meet my brother, Edouard!”

“I am waiting,” pronounced Miss Gwen, “for the carriage to deliver us to the house.” Her disembodied voice emerged from the carriage with all the solemnity and terror of the Delphic Oracle.

“Of course, of course!” Recovering from his shock, Edouard scurried across the courtyard and muttered something to the waiting servants. The last brown packages made their way hurriedly into the house and the carriage clattered off through the gates.

Edouard intercepted Richard’s curious stare and hastily explained, “I’ve been redecorating the west wing—finally time to get rid of all that musty stuff my parents left, don’t you think? Anyway, it requires a lot of draperies. That’s what those were, you know. Draperies.” Edouard rubbed his lace handkerchief across his perspiring forehead.

“You haven’t changed everything, have you?” Amy asked anxiously, as Richard’s carriage pulled up to the door.

“No, no. Redecorating takes some time, you know. Mama’s room hasn’t changed a bit. You can use it as your own if you like.”

“May I? Really?”

“Well, yes, if you like.” Edouard’s tone made quite clear that he couldn’t understand why she would, but as older brother would humor younger sister. He tried to exchange one of those male looks of complicity with Richard but Richard was busy watching Amy.

Amy’s eyes were shining as though she had been promised an extra Christmas in July.

Richard’s stomach turned over on itself in a sickening lurch. He hadn’t experienced anything like this since that time Miles had gotten carried away and whapped him full force in the gut at Gentleman Jackson’s. For one brief, insane moment, he wondered what it would be like to have her look at him like that.

Abruptly, Richard turned away and went to hand Jane and Miss Gwen down from the carriage. It seemed safer. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to put a safe distance between himself and the Balcourts and all of their connections. They were far, far too distracting. Who the devil did he think he was fooling? There was no they about it. It certainly wasn’t Edouard de Balcourt who had kept him awake, pounding his pillow, or imperious Miss Gwen, or even levelheaded Jane. Amy was far, far too distracting.