LITMIR.BIZ

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and don’t ye know!” Peaches shot back at her. “I’ll tell you true. It was just leadin’ him on, I was, hopin’ ta gets a chance to see ye again, my dear darlin’ girl. Never believed his fairy tale fer a minute, I didn’t. Callin’ ye the lady Caroline and sayin’ ye was the daughter of an earl. Flippin’ batty, that’s what he is!”

      “But he tells a plausible story,” Caroline said, tilting her head to one side and watching while the marquis appeared to listen intently as Miss Twittingdon told him of her plans for “Dulcinea’s Come-out.”

      Peaches pushed a faintly disgusting sound through her pursed lips. “Plausibibble, is it now? And what sort of highfalutin word is that, Caro, I’m wantin’ ye ta tell me? I hardly know ye anymore, girl, and that’s a fact. Where did all m’good teachin’ take ye, if yer gonna be spoutin’ jawbreaker words no one can figure out?”

      Caroline dipped her head forward slightly, then turned to wink at Peaches. “Ah, and it’s a glory to hear ye in a snit, don’t ye know,” she said, easily falling back into the lilting Irish brogue. “But it’s not ta go puttin’ yer hair in a twist ye should be, Peaches, m’love—yer Caro can still curse a fuckin’ hole in a copper pot at ten paces.”

      “Ah, isn’t that lovely? Utterly charming.”

      Caroline’s head snapped up. The marquis was now standing directly in front of her—and she hadn’t even heard the scrape of the chair as he stood. “Your veneer of civilized speech, as touted to me by Miss Twittingdon, slips with alacrity, Miss Monday, when you are confronted with the equally articulate—in her own way, of course—Miss O’Hanlan.”

      “How did you do that?” Caroline demanded of him, not caring that the marquis had overheard her. “How did you get across the room without my hearing you?”

      Morgan looked at her curiously for a moment, then smiled. “A veritable sponge, aren’t you, little girl? Sopping up the vernacular of the gutter, and the clipped accents of the gentry—and now planning to enlarge your education by requesting lessons in silent, economical movement from me. What new thievery are you planning, Miss Monday? Or am I incorrect in suspecting that our young miss of the pilfered oranges and stolen yard goods is at this very moment considering the benefits to be derived from being able to sneak up on unwary persons and filch their purses?”

      Caroline pushed aside his words and his accusations with a wave of her hand as she concentrated on examining his feet—feet clad in high-top, hard-soled Hessians that certainly should have made some noise as he walked toward the window seat. “No, no,” she said dismissingly. “I was only thinking how wonderful it would be if I could learn to move so silently as I pass by the Leopard Man’s cell each morning. He always hears me coming, you understand, no matter how hard I try to be quiet, and it’s a considerable feat trying to race past before he can…um, before he can…”

      “Yes? Please continue, as you have piqued my interest. Just what does this Leopard Man—is he spotty, to have earned such a name?—do as you pass by his cell each morning?”

      “Dulcinea! You are not to speak of such things,” Miss Twittingdon warned her direly, although she did not rise from her chair, seemingly preferring to continue sipping her “tea.”

      “Ah, go ahead, dearie,” Peaches prodded, giving Caroline a short poke in the ribs. “About time his worship got hisself a peek at the world most of us live in, and no mistake.”

      Caroline looked past the marquis to see Ferdie Haswit, who was sitting cross-legged on Miss Twittingdon’s bed, his mouth stuffed with sugar comfits, nodding his agreement with Peaches.

      “Very well,” she said at last, lifting her chin and glaring straight into Morgan’s bottomless-pit black eyes. She’d tell him the truth, and watch for him to flinch, to turn away in disgust. That would give her a true measure of the man. “His name is really George Ustings, but we call him the Leopard Man because he refuses to wear clothing, either summer or winter, and decorates himself by drawing circles on his bare body with his own excrement. Not that it matters, for everyone knows—or so they say—that lunatics can’t feel the cold or the heat. But to answer your question, in the mornings, when I am passing down the corridor in order to get through to the women’s side, George waits for me, then grabs hold of his—” She hesitated only momentarily, then swallowed hard, and continued, “He grabs hold of his cock, my lord, and speeds me on my way past his cell by chasing me with a spray of hot urine. I know it is hot, my lord, because George has very good aim.”

      Her “party piece”—as Miss Twittingdon had once dubbed any public recital—completed, Caroline suddenly realized that she was embarrassed, not by what she had said but because she had used an innocent person, George Ustings, to her own purposes. No longer wishing to observe the marquis’s reaction, she lowered her eyes to stare at the ruby stickpin and asked, “Do you still wish to believe that I am the long lost daughter of these people, the earl and countess of Witham? Or perhaps you’ve changed your mind.”

      She watched as Morgan lifted one well-manicured hand and removed the stickpin, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger as if the shiny bauble were some small treat he was about to offer her. “I do not recall putting forth the theory that I believe you to be Lady Caroline Wilburton, young lady. I’ve only said that Lady Caroline—an innocent child orphaned by the brutal murder of her parents fifteen years ago, to then disappear from the face of the earth and be presumed dead after an extensive search that undoubtedly included the countryside around Glynde proved fruitless—should be returned to the bosom of her still grieving family if at all possible. And, for my sins, I’ve decided that you should be that innocent child.”

      Peaches pushed against Caroline’s shoulder and whispered none too softly, “Mad, his bloody worship is, Caro. Mad and bad. He don’t care a flip who ye are. It’s usin’ ye he’s after, and no mistake. Listen ta me, darlin’. Tell him it’ll cost him—tell him it’ll cost him dear.”

      Caroline looked at Morgan Blakely’s clean well-shaped nails and at his strong hands that were free of chilblains.

      He was so clean. And he smelled good. She felt certain he had never gone to bed hungry or been forced to tie down a screaming inmate while other, beefier servants administered emetics and purgatives to cleanse her system of ill humors.

      Caroline’s gaze traveled from Morgan’s hands, past the glittering ruby stickpin, to his handsome, expressionless face. No, it was not completely without expression. She was certain that there was a hint of disappointment deep in his eyes. “You say you don’t care whether or not you have discovered the real Caroline Wilburton. But that’s a lie. You do wish to find her. I can see the longing in your face. So why are you still here, since you are already convinced that I am not she?”

      The marquis lifted one expressive eyebrow, a movement that fascinated Caroline against her better judgement. He spoke quietly, so that only she and Peaches could hear him. “Why? That is a very good question. Perhaps I am terminally afflicted with an undeniable affection for happy endings. Perhaps I am no more than a bored English dandy out to enliven his life by stirring up a fifteen-year-old hornet’s nest. Or, just perhaps, my reasons are my own. If you wish to ask questions, Miss Monday, ask them of yourself. Which would you rather do—live as a rich heiress with the world at your feet, or continue to spend your mornings dancing out of the way of George Ustings’s squirting cock?”

      

      MORGAN SAT ALONE in the private dining parlor he had ordered for himself at the Spread Eagle, the inn where he had decreed he and his odd party would spend the night before continuing on to Clayhill. As he sat nursing the snifter of warmed brandy he had requested of his host, he remembered Peaches’s declaration at Woodwere.

      “Mad. Mad and bad,” she had said, and maybe the crusty Irishwoman was right. It was mad, what he was about to do, and he must be bad clear through to the marrow of his bones to be contemplating doing it. He felt dirty, soiled with a filth ten times fouler than anything to be found in the sweepings of the cells at Woodwere. But then, he had been to the depths before….

      What he really could

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