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glanced ruefully around her comfortable room, with its cozy fire in the grate and its clutter of scripts and costumes. “I suppose our days in this warm little nest are numbered.”
    “What?”
    “Well, now that his lordship is here, I am sure he will not want a ragtag group of players cluttering up his corridors. We will have to leave.”
    “The doctor said you are not to be moved until your foot heals!”
    “Nevertheless . . .”
    Julia shook her head. “You needn’t worry about that, Agnes, at least for a while. I have a scheme.”
    Agnes’s dark eyes glowed. “Oh, I do adore a
scheme
! Tell me what it is.”
    “It all began when Thompson gave his notice.”
    “That rabbity butler?”
    “Yes. So we need a butler, and you all need a place to stay. Abelard will be the butler, and everyone else will be various members of the staff.”
    Agnes clapped her hands in delight. “Our greatest theatrical challenge yet! Superb. What is my role to be?”
    “You can be my cousin, unfortunately taken ill.”
    “Oh, excellent! Then I can see that you are properly chaperoned.” Agnes pursed her lips sternly.
    Julia laughed at her unconvincing prim-and-proper air. “I must go meet his lordship now. I cannot delay the inevitable forever. I only wanted to tell you what the scheme is.”
    “I am very glad you did. I vow I have not been so diverted in weeks!”
    ***
    Marcus sipped at his brandy and studied the portrait displayed over the fireplace in the vast rose-and-gold drawing room. It was of an extraordinarily beautiful woman, with long golden hair falling over the shoulders of her blue velvet, Italian Renaissance–style gown. One slender hand rested on an iron box. Hazel eyes seemed to laugh down at him, dancing with gold and green lights. The brass plate affixed to the frame read, MRS. ANNA BARCLAY, AS PORTIA IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE .
    Shakespeare again.
    “Lord Ellston?” a soft voice said behind him.
    Marcus turned and found a pair of hazel eyes exactly like the ones in the portrait regarding him steadily. Yet this time they came from the face of his angel of the lane.
    She had changed her ugly gray frock for one of dusky lavender muslin with a small standing ruff of silvery lace that framed her face prettily. Her wild curls were now neatly brushed and pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. But it was undoubtedly her. What the deuce was she doing
here
, in his very own house?
    He could not say a word. Indeed, he could only look at her with what he feared was a rather stupid expression on his face.
    Her chin trembled just a bit, but she smiled bravely and stepped closer to him, her hand outstretched. “I fear we had not the chance for proper introductions earlier,” she said quietly. “I am Julia Barclay.”
    Marcus was stunned.
She
was Julia Barclay? Anna Barclay’s daughter? How could that be? Julia Barclay was a child, and his angel was . . .
    Obviously not a child.
    All of his foolish assumptions crumpled into dust, and he knew that now he would be forced to reevaluate his plans. Drastically. A grown woman was an entirely different kettle of fish than a child. Far more complicated.
    An attractive grown woman was even worse.
    However, he could not solve those difficulties at that very moment. Julia Barclay—the
real
Julia Barclay—was standing before him with her hand held out to him.
    He took that hand and bowed over it politely. Her skin was rather chilled, and her hand shook slightly in his grasp, as if she were a bit nervous. But her faint, polite smile was still in place.
    “Things
were
rather chaotic at the time of our meeting,” he answered. “It was rather too bad of you not to tell me who you were, though, Miss Barclay.”
    Her smiled wavered. She withdrew her hand from his grasp and settled herself on a small chair drawn up beside the fire. “If you will recall, Lord Ellston, things were quite confusing. What with the mud, and your horse, and my thinking you had been killed,