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the best. Even Wellington’s said so, hasn’t he, Highet?” Highet’s mouth was now hanging open, so Arthur got no support there. “It’s just that, well, he’s got a name with the ladies. I mean, I’d trust Claibourne with my life, Uncle George, ma’am, but I wouldn’t leave him alone with my sister, and you know she’s up to snuff. As for some unschooled country chit—”
    “Claibourne?” Clothilda Ponsonby screamed, along with horrified gasps and exclamations from Priscilla and Miss Chadwick, a chorus of doom that would have done Macbeth’s three witches proud. “You left a young woman alone for four hours with Rake Claibourne? George, how could you?”
    Mrs. Bottwick dropped the teapot.
    *
    By the time Jacelyn heard the dog’s woofs and whines, and then frantic scrapings on the door, she was beginning to doubt her wisdom. Not in the matter of Squire and his hounds, of course. Not even in the absurdity of capturing the wrong man, a natural error under the circumstances. No, Miss Trevaine was wondering if her own good sense could ever win over the new sensations shuddering through her. Perhaps Squire was right after all, that she did need some Town Bronze before facing such a nonpareil. Maybe then, when a tall, handsome gentleman gazed at her so warmly she would know where to look, instead of staring dreamily back into his blue eyes, mesmerised like some poor terrified mousekin waiting for the cat to pounce. Of course she wasn’t precisely frightened, only trembly and breathless and, oh dear, what did one do with one’s hands? Ah, she realised with a shock of clarity, that must be why ladies carry fans!
    It was with a great deal of relief that Miss Trevaine opened the door and welcomed her pet, hiding her uncertainties in a fierce hug and having her burning face slobbered on.
    “My lord, this is Penelope. Pen, meet your…your benefactor.”
    “Yes, hardly a rescuer,” said Claibourne, coming forward with the heel of the bread loaf, which he offered to the big dog, making an instant friend. “She certainly is large,” he said, looking for something good to say about an animal that stood as tall as his waist, with a miscellaneous assemblage of gangly parts covered with grizzled whiskers going every which way. The bread gone in a gulp, Pen looked up at him mournfully from under an overhanging shag-rug brow. “And marvelously expressive eyes. You are certainly worth a king’s ransom, old girl. Sorry you had to make do with a mere earl.”
    Blushing, Jacelyn began gathering things into her hamper. “We’d best be going, my lord. Squire will be looking for you, I’m sure, and I’d rather he not find me at all! Besides, if you keep petting Pen behind the ears like that, her tail will destroy Shoop’s cottage, as if I weren’t in bad enough straits with him already.” She carefully wrapped the pistols in linen napkins before placing them in the hamper. Opening the door, she remembered to tell the earl, “Your direction is just to the rear of the cottage. You cannot miss the break in the hedge. The path there leads straight back to the main road, and Squire’s gatehouse is only minutes ahead. I brought you ’round Robin’s barn lest you—Arthur, that is—recognise Shoop’s cottage too soon. My way cuts right across this clearing, my lord, so…so I wish to…to thank you and—”
    “Not so fast, sweetings,” drawled the earl, still looking perfectly at ease in Shoop’s high-backed chair. He slipped his knife back into the boot, then slowly rose and came toward her. Jacelyn backed away until she was half in, half out of the doorway, feeling the cool night’s breeze on her cheek. Then she was stopped by his hand at her neck, his thumb caressing that same cheek.
    “No, I don’t think I can let you go so easily.” Leigh spoke almost regretfully. When Jacelyn glanced down to where her pistols lay on the top of the basket she held in her hand, he smiled, teeth white in the moonlight. “No