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jumped to their feet as if to confront an enemy. Fiona followed more slowly. She knew exactly what they would see, and she wanted to know their reactions. It should not have been important to her, but it was. More than anything, she needed to know how the men would behave in the next few minutes. Particularly Alex.
    “Can you believe it?” the whirlwind demanded, unwinding a hunter-green muffler from around her neck and pulling off her bonnet to reveal a mass of fire-red hair just a bit lighter than Fiona’s and the sharpest blue eyes in Britain. “He refuses. Simply refuses to allow me to apply to be an assistant. Me, who helped him calculate the fluctuations in Eta Aquilae, and the Astronomer Royal doesn’t believe I have the intelligence to handle his telescope. Well, I am more than his computer, and so I told him. Fee, you have to do something.” Abruptly, she froze, finally catching sight of the visitors. “What have you done?”
    The men were on their feet, jaws dropped.
    “ This ,” Alex demanded, “is ‘poor Mairead’?”

Chapter 5
    A lex knew he was gaping. He couldn’t help it. Fiona should have warned them.
    The newcomer was staring at him, her hands fluttering oddly in the air, as if pushing the visitors away. “I don’t know them,” she protested, brow pursed. “Why are they in my house?”
    “We have visitors, sweetings,” Fiona said, hurrying up to capture her sister’s hands and quietly murmur to her as her sister stared at the interlopers as if they had dirtied her floors.
    He wasn’t certain what he had been expecting of Fiona’s sister. But the way everybody talked, he’d thought…well, he’d thought he would meet a short, misshapen girl of limited intelligence, who had to be protected from a harsh, mistrustful world. He supposed he had expected an overgrown child.
    He hadn’t expected a goddess.
    Fiona had said she had a twin, of course. But somehow Alex hadn’t expected an identical twin. No , he thought, almost shaking his head. Not identical, exactly. Fiona was compelling, with high, broad cheekbones, startling blue eyes, and hair the color of fire. She stood at almost five feet ten inches and moved with the grace of a natural horsewoman. Ever since he’d met her four years earlier, he had known she would mature into a rare beauty, and she had. Her sister had the same features, from square face to tumbling red-gold hair. She stood as tall and walked with the same fluid power. But she wasn’t the same. She was more .
    Fiona was beautiful. Her sister was luminous. Otherworldly. Breathtaking. Her hair wasn’t just thick and curly. It was alive, dancing around her shoulders like one of the seven veils. Her eyes had enough of a violet tinge that they compelled comparison to flowers and evening skies. Her skin had the hue and texture of unearthly fine porcelain, and her hands, now in flight, were as graceful as soaring birds. Even her figure, only hinted at beneath a hideous mustard dress and rumpled apron with overfull pockets, was the stuff of fantasies.
    There was no one thing Alex could put it down to, this stunning otherworldliness that set her so far apart. But it existed, and it made him question every assumption he’d made about the intelligence of anyone who’d met her.
    And yet, amazingly, he had no reaction to her. No accelerated heart. No tightening in his groin or urge to possess. Those, he realized, he reserved for Fiona.
    “Mairead,” Fiona said, standing so she filled her sister’s view. “You remember my talking about Ian’s friend Alex.”
    The sister blinked as if being woken suddenly from sleep. “No.”
    Capturing her sister’s hands midflight, Fiona turned toward Alex, continuing as if the answer had been affirmative. “Well, this is Alex Knight, Viscount Whitmore. You have never met him, but he is the gentleman who brought me home from school to Hawesworth Castle four years ago. The one who brought us the news about Ian.” Swinging around, she