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marriage, and of going to the theater, and of traveling to France. But all of that had stopped when her father died and her new responsibilities made it obvious that her secret thoughts were mere pipe dreams, destined never to come true. "I'm terribly sorry, my lady," she said.

    Lady Danbury's lips twisted in such a way that Elizabeth knew she wasn't truly annoyed. "Just fetch him," Lady D said.

    "At once," Elizabeth said with a nod.

    "He has brown hair and brown eyes and is quite tall. Just so you know of whom I'm speaking."

    "Oh, I met Mr. Siddons yesterday. I bumped into him while I was leaving for home."

    "Did you?" Lady Danbury looked perplexed. "He didn't mention anything."

    Elizabeth cocked her head in puzzlement. "Was there any reason he should have done? I'm not likely to have any effect upon his employment here."

    "No. No, I suppose not." Lady Danbury wrinkled her mouth again, as if she were considering some great, unsolved philosophical problem. "Off with you, then. I shall require your company once I'm through with J-er, Mr. Siddons. Oh, and while I am consulting with him, you may bring me my embroidery."

    Elizabeth fought back a groan. Lady Danbury's idea of embroidering consisted of watching
    Elizabeth embroider and giving her copious instruction and supervision as she did so. And
    Elizabeth hated to embroider. She did more than enough sewing at home, what with all the
    clothing that needed mending.

    "The green pillowcase, I think, not the yellow one," Lady Danbury added.

    Elizabeth nodded distractedly and backed out the door. "Be unique," she whispered to herself,
    "but not too unique." She gave her head a shake. The day she figured out what that meant would be the day a man walked on the moon.

    In other words, never.

    By the time she reached the stable area, she had repeated the rules to herself at least ten times each and was so bleary-headed with it all that she would have gladly pushed Mrs. Seeton off of a bridge had the lady in question been in the region.

    Of course there were no bridges in the region, either, but Elizabeth preferred to overlook that point.

    The estate manager's office was housed in a small building directly to the left of the stables. It was a three-room cottage with a heavy stone chimney and thatched roof. The front door opened to a small sitting room, with a bedroom and office to the back.

    The building had a neat and tidy appearance to it, which Elizabeth supposed made sense, since estate managers tended to be concerned with good upkeep of buildings. She stood outside the
    door for about a minute, taking a few deep breaths and reminding herself that she was a
    reasonably attractive and personable young woman. There was no reason that this man-whom
    she really wasn't that interested in, when it came right down to it- should scorn her.

    Funny, Elizabeth thought wryly, how she'd never been nervous about meeting new people
    before. It was all the fault of this blasted husband hunt and that double-blasted book.

    "I could strangle Mrs. Seeton," she muttered to herself as she raised her hand to knock. "In fact,
    I could do so quite cheerfully."

    The door wasn't properly latched, and it swung open a few inches as Elizabeth knocked. She
    called out, "Mr. Siddons? Are you present? Mr. Siddons?'

    No answer.

    She pushed the door open a few more inches and stuck her head in. "Mr. Siddons?"

    Now what was she to do? He clearly was not at home. She sighed, letting her left shoulder lean against the doorframe as her head slid forward into the room. She supposed she was going to
    have to go hunt him down, and heaven knew where he might be. It was a large estate, and she
    wasn't particularly excited about the prospect of hiking the length of it looking for the errant Mr.
    Siddons, even if she needed him desperately to practice Mrs. Seeton's edicts.

    While she was standing there procrastinating, she let her eyes skim over the contents of the room. She'd been inside the small cottage