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India than the question of a protector was the question of protection. The viscount's parting words returned to her now.
    You cannot expect that I will always save you, Miss Parr.
    If not Lord Southerton, India wondered, then who? The next wave crashed against her rib cage. Heart racing, she hurried toward the theatre's rear exit and the sanctuary and anonymity of the black hansom cab.
    Lords Berwin and Grissom proved themselves reliable in repeating what they had witnessedor almost witnessed in Miss India Parr's dressing room. The first tidbit was dropped with even offhandedness that very night. The bored accents played well to the crowd gathered around the card table at Simon's. The story spread quickly in the gaming hell, and when members were moved the following the morning to face sunshine and hangover remedies, the tale became a delicious on dit to placate the stone-faced valets and disapproving mamas.
    Southerton learned the scope of his success from his sister the following afternoon. Emma, he discovered, was also paying a call on their parents, and in South's estimation she was rather too cheerful in her greeting to be lightly dismissed. The mirth in her eyes spelled his certain doom. He kissed her cheek when she raised it to him.
    "Emma." In her ear he whispered, "No one likes a tattle."
    She beamed at him. "Oh, yes, they do." Without moving her head, she indicated the Earl and Countess of Redding with a playful slant of her eyes. She chuckled when South did not risk a glance and took his nephew from her arms instead. "He'll ruin your coat," she warned him. "He's been fussing all day."
    South immediately held the baby at arm's length and considered him gravely. "Slobber, d'you mean?" Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a smile edge his father's mouth. His mother, though, was made of sterner stuff. Her back was up. "Plump and pretty," he said as his nephew stared back at him. "Ears are still in the right place. Not at all like that doll you had, Emma. Remember? The one that"
    She took her child back. "There will be no talk of what happened to Cassandra, South. It's not for Niles to know." She pursed her lips and added significantly, "Or anyone else, for that matter."
    South smiled coolly, one brow lifting the merest fraction. "Remember that when your tongue starts wagging again."
    "Beast."
    "Scylla."
    "Ogre."
    He touched a lock of his sister's hair that had fallen past her temple, and pushed it gently back. "You are looking well," he said sincerely. "Motherhood agrees with you, I think."
    "Indeed it does."
    South turned to his parents. "Mother." He kissed his mother's proffered cheek and found it warm in spite of the cool mien she affected. South looked to the earl to see if there would be assistance from that quarter and saw immediately he had covert sympathy. Outright support in the face of his mother's displeasure would have been folly. It was not the sort of breach a man as circumspect as the earl committed often. "Father. You look well."
    It was just the opening the Countess of Redding had been waiting for. She pounced. "Of course he is well. And why wouldn't he be? He has me to assure that he remains so. You could claim the same if you did not choose to live on your own, travel about with friends of a certain reputation, frequent places that no woman wants to acknowledge exist, least of all a mother, and behave in a most ramshackle manner, making a complete cake of yourself in the theatre, and later with an" Here, her voice dropped to a pitched whisper. Southerton supposed it was all in aid of preventing his four-month-old nephew from comprehending this last, most salient point. " with an opera dancer ."
    South glanced at Niles. The infant was most definitely attentive. Emma, he noted, did not have the grace to look sheepish. Her features were almost as rapt as her son's. South rounded a nearby chair and served himself tea from the silver service. "Miss India Parr is an actress, Mother. Not an opera