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recognize it. It’s a quality I encourage in myself.”
    “Yes, you would,” she retorted in dry disapproval.
    He cocked his head at her. “By the tone of that remark, ma’am, I conclude that you’ve made a quick assessment of my whole character. A negative one.”
    “Well, impudence can scarcely be considered a positive characteristic, can it?”
    “It certainly can,” he insisted, “if one is disposed to be positive.”
    “How, my lord, can impudence be looked at as a good?”
    “Think about it, ma’am.” He leaned toward her, speaking with earnest persuasiveness. “To be impudent, one must have courage, right?”
    “The courage to be rude, perhaps,” she said, dismissing his point with a wave.
    “But courage, nevertheless, to be able to speak out,” he persisted, smiling at her. “And if one is talented at being impudent, honesty is essential. To that must be added a sense of humor—wit, if you will. Wit can give impudence a veneer of charm.”
    “That is frivolous nonsense, my lord,” she said, refusing to smile back. “Pure self-justification, nothing more. Impudence is neither courage nor honesty nor wit. It is simply rudeness, defiance, disrespect, and, at its worst, unkindness.”
    His expression darkened, the earlier fury he’d felt toward her rising up in him again. “And in your quick assessment of my character is that how you see me— rude and unkind?” He threw her an ironic sneer. “You, ma’am, if I may be blunt, have a decided streak of... of the judgmental in you.”
    “Judgmental?” She did not miss the irony in his expression. “That, my lord, is not being blunt. It is being tactful. I think you really mean contemptuous.”
    “That is being blunt.” He studied her for a long moment. Never before had he believed that anyone could hold him in contempt. “It seems,” he said at last, “that you have little liking for me.”
    Her eyes dropped from his face. “It seems we have little liking for each other.”
    George heard those words with a sudden feeling that they might not be as true for him as they were for her. But there was no time now to analyze the feeling. After what she’d just said, he could not remain sitting there. “Then I suppose I’d best turn this seat back to Mr. Thomsett,” he muttered, rising. “He’s standing just behind you, waiting for his opportunity.”
    He walked swiftly away, but when he’d crossed the room he found himself looking back at her. She was apparently listening to Horace, but her eyes looked absent. Her face was motionless, expressionless. But he had to admit the intelligence of her eyes and her high forehead, the sculptured spareness of her cheekbones, the proud chin, and slender neck all combined to give her a look of admirable dignity. Strange, he thought, how different she appears now from the way she looked only last night. She was no Venus, certainly, but she was not a spindly old maid either.
     
     

 
    EIGHT
     
     
    As her abigail arranged a row of small curls along the sides of her face, Felicia smiled at her own reflection in the dressing-table mirror. “Oh, Katie, that’s perfect—just as I wanted it,” she exclaimed.
    “Thank ye, ma’am,” the maid said, dousing the coals that had heated the curling iron. “Shall ye be wearin’ the dark green crepe tonight?”
    “No. The amber Florentine, I think.” She rose from the dressing table and whirled round in pleasure, spinning easily on the soles of her new dancing slippers. “I want to look as cheerful as I feel.”
    Everything pleased her this evening—her hair, her new slippers, and the prospect of appearing before her guests in a gown of glowing yellow. She was at last beginning to enjoy the party she’d so carefully arranged. In spite of the sleet that had spoiled their morning, her guests had begun to warm to each other. The late breakfast had produced some animated moments, the afternoon games (they’d played penny loo and had haggled like children)