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can not talk to. But all the same, there was something about Mr Windham I very much disliked.’
    His eyes were shrewd, and there was an unmistakeably glimmer of respect in them. ‘Your instincts are good. You told me, at our first meeting, that I was anything but a gentleman – and no, don’t tell me again,’ he said with a wicked smile, ‘because I am not about to disagree. You are right. I am not a gentleman. I was born a gentleman and have been raised as one, but the blood of  the first Earl runs strongly in my veins and he was a wolf of a man. Earldoms are won by predators: men with ambition, men who take what they want. And so yes, Miss Travis, you were right: I am anything but a gentleman. But Windham . . . Windham is something much worse.’
    She nodded. ‘I sensed something devious about him,’ she said. ‘Underhand.’
    ‘Windham is a vicious man.’
    A vicious man. Yes, there was something about him that had seemed vicious, in a cold and calculating way. And the questions he had asked her had been about Kit. Marianne sat down suddenly, as vague yet alarming possibilities forced their way into her mind. ‘He is after my brother.’
    He looked at her penetratingly. ‘What makes you say that?’ Then, as the sound of a distant door opening and closing reminded him they were alone in an out-of-the-way corner of the house, he said, ‘No, don’t tell me here. We must not stay or our absence may be remarked.’ He gave an ironic smile. ‘I am enough of a gentleman, you see, to protect your reputation: education has done something to civilise my instincts.’
    She smiled, if a trifle anxiously, and stood up. ‘You’re right. We can’t stay here.’
    ‘I think it would be best if we returned to the supper room. There is a chance we will be able to talk there undisturbed.’
    The supper room was fortunately almost empty. The only person there was Mrs Dalrymple, an elderly lady whose head was nodding on her breast.
    Lord Ravensford helped himself to a dish of boiled fowl and, taking Marianne a dish of fruit, joined her at one side of the room. ‘You said that Windham is after Kit?’
    ‘Yes. I’m sure of it. The questions they asked, they were so very particular.’
    ‘What did he want to know?’
    ‘To begin with, whether I had any brothers and sisters, but then he started asking about Kit in a pointed way; whether he was here tonight, or if he was in London. It could have been polite conversation, but somehow it felt all wrong. And so I told him a lie. I told him that Kit was in London. But now I’m worried I’ve done the wrong thing.’
    ‘How so?’
    She shook her head with a worried frown. She did not want to speak ill of her brother, but she was concerned that she might have unwittingly caused him problems and she needed someone to talk to. Someone who would understand the world of gambling and debtor’s prisons, and someone who would not be shocked when she - a young lady - asked about them. But where to begin? She opened her fan and shut it again, then said, ‘You know something of my brother . . . ’
    ‘I do?’ he asked.
    ‘When I said that Windham was after my brother, you responded by saying that he was after Kit.’
    Luke cursed himself for the mistake, at the same time respecting Marianne’s intelligence for noticing it. ‘I have met him once or twice in town, I believe,’ he said cautiously.
    ‘Then you must have heard of his disgrace.’
    She spoke flatly, hiding her emotion.
    ‘I . . . have heard something of it.’
    ‘It’s funny. I never thought I would be worried about Kit. It was always Kit who looked after me. There were only two years between us, and he taught me how to do so many things. He taught me how to climb trees, and he taught me how to swim.’
    She smiled as she told him about her happy childhood.
    Lord Ravensford smiled, too. It was a charming picture she painted, and he himself felt younger than he had done in years. As he listened to her talking about