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development drawings; blueprints come a little later."
    "Oh, I see."
    "And then we usually call them construction documents. That's when we convert the design concept into feet and inches, door swings, window frames, things like that. We're not quite to that point yet with your house."
    "How long will it take to build it?"
    "A lot depends on the weather. If we can get started in early June, it should be up by early autumn."
    "So soon?"
    "That's just the exterior. You couldn't move in before Christmas."
    She could tell from his expression and the careful way he spoke that he was privately amazed that she didn't already know the answers to these questions. She could understand his confusion; it was her house—ostensibly—and she was the one who had been elected to supervise its construction. How could he know that Ben wanted her advice and opinions on his new architectural toy about as much as he wanted Michael's?
    "Would you care to see the drawings?"
    She hesitated. In a way, she was curious—about the house, and even more about this man's skill as an architect. But the ultimate pointlessness of it dissuaded her. "Let's wait for Ben," she suggested. "Fine."
    She thought he sounded faintly disappointed. The clock struck the quarter hour. "I'm sure he'll be here soon, but would you like to have some tea now?"
    "No, that's all right, I'll wait."
    "A drink, then."
    "No, thanks."
    She relaxed her hands on the arms of her chair and returned his disconcertingly direct gaze with studied casualness. His manners were perfect; he had never been anything but gentlemanly in their brief acquaintance. Nevertheless, the edginess she'd felt alone in his company last week returned now, and she wondered why.
    "Have you lived in this house long?" he asked.
    "Eight years."
    "You didn't buy it together, then, you and Ben?"
    "No, he bought it about a year before I met him." As he crossed his long legs and glanced around the drawing room, she found herself trying to guess what he was thinking. He kept his handsome face pleasantly bland and accepting, but she suspected it was a mask. She suspected he was a diplomat. What did he really think of her home—and of her?
    Alex hardly knew what he thought. Mrs. Cochrane and her house presented a powerful paradox he wasn't yet able to reconcile. There she sat, cool and elegant, her bright gold hair upswept in that loose, effortless-looking, two-tiered affair so many women tried nowadays but few achieved. He liked her black silk suit and the humorously masculine waistcoat and tie she wore with it. Her skirt was the fashionable new "instep" length, so called because it revealed three-quarters of the shoes. Composed, genteel, unaffected, lovely—and she was sitting on an ugly chair in a pretentious room, surrounded by furnishings of surpassing stupidity. He'd thought of her often since their last meeting, and not only for the obvious reason—because she attracted him. The puzzle of her marriage intrigued him as well, keeping him pondering what life with a man like Bennet Cochrane might he like for such a woman. Now to that mystery he could add the baffling incongruity of this wretched house. He stroked his mustache and asked innocently, "Would you mind giving me a tour? While we wait for your husband." He thought she hesitated, but then she said, "Yes, of course," rose to her feet graciously, and led him out to the hall.
    They walked across its pinched, dark, uninviting width, past a sunken palm garden and into another drawing room, this one uglier and more grandiose than the other—something he would not have thought possible. Mrs. Cochrane pointed out, without enthusiasm, the most noticeable features—the English bog oak dadoes and wainscoting, the crimson stamped-leather wall coverings, the Spanish altar cloths of gold and garnet plush used as portieres to separate this room from the music room. On his own he took note of a Chinese ceramic pug dog standing knee-high beside the fireplace and a hideous