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worm her way into his acquaintance.
    She was taken aback, but again, her recovery was quick. “I also have a case of Château Lafite claret, from the forty-six vintage.”
    This was an offer more difficult to resist. He had acquired a taste for fine wines in his younger years. And '46 was an extraordinary vintage for Château Lafite. He had gone through his last bottle three years ago.
    Two things immediately became clear about her. She was much wealthier than he'd guessed from her modest cottage. And this scheme to rope him in for her daughter was no lark. She was prepared to go if not to hell then at least to Jakarta and back.
    “Or do you not care for that either, sir?” She played it coy, having already perceived his temptation.
    He gave in. “I live at Ludlow Court.”
    Her right hand detached itself from the kitten, arced in the air, and returned— smack!— to her bosom, fingers spread in a gesture that traditionally heralded delighted incoherence. “Surely—oh, dear! You do not— but—goodness gracious me!”
    As she was made from sterner, cat-exploiting stuff, she sank not into a faint but into a gorgeous curtsy. “Your Grace. I shall have the case delivered to Ludlow Court before dinner.”
    As she straightened herself, he suddenly had the feeling that he had seen her before, back when the world was young—or at least when he was. He dismissed the thought and nodded curtly. “Good afternoon.”
    “Mrs. Rowland,” she supplied, though he still hadn't asked for her identity, even implicitly. “Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
    Mrs. Rowland. The name triggered a new stirring in his mind but nothing strong enough to yield a remembrance. She had the good sense to let him go without further ado—or any mention of her daughter—leaving him mystified and rather too curious for his liking.
     
    Chapter Six

    December 1882
    M iss Rowland did not skip rocks. She tossed them. Shelves of thin, brownish ice hugged the stream's two banks, but a narrow band of water still flowed free at its center. Into this part of the brook she flung the rocks, plop, plop, plop. There was no particular rhythm to it. Sometimes she threw a dozen pebbles in quick succession, sometimes a minute or more would pass between two plops. It was as if she underscored her own state of mind, restiveness followed by a stretch of contemplation, only to be overtaken by yet another fit of agitation.
    When there were no more stones to be had, she sat down on a tree stump, her chin on her knee, her long, lugubrious blue cape flapping about her ankles in the unrelenting gust. From where Camden stood at the top of the opposite bank, he couldn't see her face beneath the rim of her hat. But he felt the loneliness that emanated from her, a loneliness that echoed somewhere deep within him.
    He'd been able to think of nothing else except her.
    Years ago, he'd come to accept that courting Theodora—a woman who couldn't make up her mind about him, whom he hadn't seen in a year and a half—opened him up to temptations in the here and now.
    Somehow, a young man of reasonable looks and sexual restraint posed an irresistible challenge to a certain subset of women, across class strata, in every capital of Europe. If he had a franc, a mark, or a ruble for every time he had been propositioned from the age of sixteen onward, he could retire to the country and live the life of a prosperous squire.
    He'd turned down every last one of those offers, with tact and dignity when possible and ingenuity otherwise. A man of honor did not profess love for one woman while welcoming a host of others into his bed.
    It wasn't easy, but it was doable. Being busy helped. Having no moral or philosophical opposition to solitary releases helped. Immersing himself in his chosen field helped—thermodynamic equations and advanced calculus tended to keep one's mind off breasts and buttocks.
    But nothing helped now. He was busy all day long, seeing to the beast of an estate that was Twelve