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felt the hot hurt balloon in her heart and told herself she was being a ninny. Many lords dallied with servants. It was not unusual. Why had she felt such a rush of tears? She turned away, to look back out the window. To her shock, she saw an army of gardeners, a dozen of them in their baggy knickers with shovels and spades—and they were patching the vast runnel he had made with pieces of sod right before her very eyes. Jane gasped.
    “He never comes back this way,” Molly explained. “He’ll be gone until dinner. When he returns, it’ll be as good as new.”
    It was unbelievable. “Where do they get the sod?”
    “They buy it every week, keep tons of it out back. He does this every day.”
    The amusement faded. The man was insane, she decided, and it was incredibly arrogant of him to treat his home with such disdain.
    “Thomas was here when it happened,” Molly confided, low.
    Jane whirled. “The butler?”
    “Yes’m. You know, she died in the fire.”
    “No, I didn’t know.”
    Molly nodded toward the south wing, just visible through the window, the walls black and crumbling, the windows gaping, jagged holes, like toothless open mouths. “They think he set the fire —to kill her?”
    Molly nodded. “He almost killed her lover. You know about that? Crippled him, he did. The Earl—”
    “Molly! That’s enough. You have duties upstairs.”
    Both girls whirled, Molly curtsying, Jane flushing. Thomas stood, arms folded, watching as Molly ran off. Jane managed a good morning, her ears pink. Thomas replied politely, but his eyes were all-seeing, his expression reproving.

7

    By two in the afternoon Jane knew what she was doing. She was hanging about the downstairs foyer, waiting for him to appear, as if she were some smitten schoolgirl. She wasn’t smitten, oh, no, not in the least. She was just … fascinated.
    She had gleaned all sorts of information from Molly as the plump maid had done her chores upstairs. The earl took coffee, not tea, and eggs, steak, and potatoes, all fried, at six in the morning. He did not eat kippers or smoked salmon and he hated kidney pie. He read the papers while he ate, then rode his stallion out to oversee his vast acreage. Almost invariably destroying the lawns. He returned between two and two-thirty for dinner, then spent the afternoon in his library taking care of the business of the estate and his own private affairs. Supper was at eight. He often took whiskey, not brandy, before. Some evenings he retired and some he went out.
    Molly had been a gold mine of gossip. Jane learned that the earl was American, not English. His mother had been the old earl’s daughter, and she had married a rancher in Texas. The earl had been raised there. He had come to England upon his majority to take over Dragmore and had dutifully married Patricia Weston. Patricia had been the duke’s eldest son’s only issue; her father had been killed in a hunting accident before the duke himself died of natural causes and old age. She was Jane’s cousin although they had never met. Patricia was the last of the Westons; Chad would inherit the duke’s title and estates. Patricia had been a blond, green-eyed beauty who could have had any peer in the land. Yet, Jane thought, she had chosen the Earl of Dragmore. Apparently it had been a love match.
    Yet a year after Chad’s birth Patricia had left her husband, running away with a lover. Molly told her that Patricia had been afraid of the earl, afraid he would kill her for her infidelity. He had chased them down and challenged her lover, the Earl of Boltham, to a duel. Boltham had been crippled—to this day he walked with a limp.
    “After that he hated his wife,” Molly told her eagerly. “Hated her. Locked her up. Wouldn’t let her leave Dragmore. Hit her, he did. Raped her.”
    “Molly!” Jane protested. “This is all gossip—and it’s terrible of you to be saying such unkind things about his lordship!”
    “It’s true,” Molly cried.