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didn’t seem happy about it, which made no sense. How amazing to own such a spectacular house. And for his family to have inherited it from a king, too!
    “If you don’t mind my asking,” she ventured, “how many rooms are there?”
    “A few hundred or so.”
    “Or so?” she squeaked.
    “No one’s ever counted beyond three hundred. We take it on faith. By the fifth courtyard and the tenth building, you get a little muddled. It’s fairly large.”
    Fairly large? It was a palace! She’d never imagined that anyone other than royalty lived in something so magnificent.
    “Must cost you a fortune to keep it up,” Freddy said.
    “You have no idea,” Lord Stoneville ground out. “This is the first time since my parents’ death that I’ve seen it so well lit. The candles alone . . .” He frowned. “Now that Gran is visiting, someone is clearly doing it up brown for her, blast it.”
    Why on earth would that make him angry? This conversation grew more and more curious. “There’s the answer to your financial woes,” Maria said. “You just sell that , and your family will have enough to live on for another three centuries.”
    “I only wish that were an option,” he said bitterly. “In England we have something called entailment. It means the property can’t be sold by any of its heirs, including me. Even the contents are entailed.”
    “You could rent it out to a king or something,” Freddy said.
    “Only a king could afford it, I’m afraid. No one leases a pile like that unless they’ve got a serious fortune. And it’s not the current fashion for the newly rich—it’s too old, and the furnishings are ancient. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
    The way he spoke, as if his estate were nothing but a burden, surprised her. “I’m sure it’s very difficult for you,” she said dryly, “owning a palace and all.”
    He arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black, Miss Butterfield? If you can be believed, you’re not exactly destitute. Your father owned a ship company, yet here you are without funds.”
    “True, but we never lived in a palace.”
    “Neither do I, most of the time.” He gazed pensively out the window. “I rarely come here. It’s been closed up until recently.”
    “Why?”
    Silence followed, and she wasn’t sure he’d heard her, until he said, “Some places are better left to rot.”
    The words shocked her. “What do you mean, my lord?”
    He stiffened. “Nothing. And don’t call me ‘my lord.’ That’s what servants do. You’re my fiancée, remember?” He sounded irritated. “I’ll call you Maria, and you should probably call me by my Christian name—Oliver.”
    An unusual name for an English lord. “Were you named after the playwright, Oliver Goldsmith?”
    “Alas, no. I was named after the Puritan, Oliver Cromwell.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “Afraid not. My father thought it amusing, considering his own . . . er . . . tendency toward debauchery.”
    Lord help her, the man’s very name was a jab at respectability. Meanwhile, his estate could probably hold the entire town of Dartmouth!
    A sudden panic seized her. How could she pretend to be the fiancée of a man who owned a house like that ?
    “ I was named after King Frederick,” Freddy put in.
    “Which one?” asked Lord Stoneville. Oliver.
    “There’s more than one?” Freddy asked.
    “There’s at least ten,” the marquess said dryly.
    Freddy knit his brow. “I’m not sure which one.”
    When humor glinted in Oliver’s eyes, Maria said, “I think Aunt Rose was aiming for a generally royal-sounding name.”
    “That’s it,” Freddy put in. “Just a King Frederick in general.”
    “I see,” Oliver said solemnly, though his lips had a decided twitch. His gaze flicked to her. “What about you? Which Maria are you named after?”
    “The Virgin Mary, of course,” Freddy said.
    “Of course,” Oliver said, eyes gleaming. “I should have known.”
    “We’re