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grudge over that five hundred I won from you?”
    “I wouldn’t if you’d won it fairly.”
    “I won it,” she countered. “That’s what counts. If I cheated and you didn’t catch me, then it follows that I cheated well enough for it to be legal.”
    “You always had a crooked sense of logic.” He rose as well and came close. She had to admire the way he moved. It wasn’t quite a swagger because he didn’t put the effort into it. But it was very close. “If we play again, whatever we play, you won’t cheat me.”
    Confident, she smiled at him. “Michael, we’ve known each other too long for you to intimidate me.” She reached a hand up to pat his cheek and found her wrist captured a second time.And a second time she saw and felt that same dangerous something she’d experienced upstairs.
    There was no Uncle Jolley as a buffer between them now. Perhaps they’d both just begun to realize it. Whatever was between them that made them snarl and snap would have a long, cold winter to surface.
    Perhaps neither one of them wanted to face it, but both were too stubborn to back down.
    “Perhaps we’re just beginning to know each other,” Michael murmured.
    She believed it. And didn’t like it. He wasn’t a posturing fool like Biff nor a harmless hulk like Hank. He might be a cousin by marriage only, but the blood between them had always run hot. There was violence in him. It showed sometimes in a look in his eyes, in the way he held himself. As though he wouldn’t ward off a blow but counter it. Pandora recognized it because there was violence in her, as well. Perhaps that was why she always felt compelled to shoot darts at him, just to see how many he could boomerang back at her.
    They stood as they were a moment, gauging each other, reassessing. The wise thing to do was for each to acknowledge a hit and step aside. Pandora threw up her chin. Michael set for the volley. “We’ll go to the mat another time, Michael. At the moment, I’m a bit tired from the drive. If you’ll excuse me?”
    “Rule number five,” he said without releasing her. “If one of us takes potshots at the other, they’ll damn well pay the consequences.” When he freed her arm, he went back for his cup. “See you at dinner, cousin.”
     
    Pandora awoke just past dawn fully awake, rested and bursting with energy. Whether it had been the air in the mountains or the six hours of deep sleep, she was ready and eager to work. Breakfast could wait, she decided as she showered and dressed. She was going out to the garden shed, organizing her equipment and diving in.
    The house was perfectly quiet and still dim as she made her way downstairs. The servants would sleep another hour or two, she thought as she stuck her head in the pantry and chose a muffin. As she recalled, Michael might sleep until noon.
    They had made it through dinner without incident. Perhaps they’d been polite to each other because of Charles and Sweeney or perhaps because both of them had been too tired to snipe. Pandora wasn’t sure herself.
    They’d dined under the cheerful lights of the big chandelier and had talked, when they’d talked, about the weather and the food.
    By nine they’d gone their separate ways. Pandora to read until her eyes closed and Michael to work. Or so he’d said.
    Outside the air was chill enough to cause Pandora’s skin to prickle. She hunched up the collar of her jacket and started across the lawn. It crunched underfoot with the early thin frost. She liked it—the absolute solitude, the lightness of the air, the incredible smell of mountain and river.
    In Tibet she’d once come close to frostbite because she hadn’t been able to resist the snow and the swoop of rock. She didn’t find this slice of the Catskills any less fascinating. The winterwas best, she’d always thought, when the snow skimmed the top of your boots and your voice came out in puffs of smoke.
    Winter in the mountains was a time for the basics. Heat, food, work.