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the brim. A single glass of spirits each night: That was all he allowed himself. Any more, and he might never stop.
    The first sip slid down his throat in a satisfying burn. His nose and mouth glowed with the familiar taste, the taste of relief. Ashland closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the diamond pattern of the bowl, giving it time, letting the sherry spread through his body to fill all his parched and aching cracks. The stiffness on the right side of his face began to ease, the throb of his phantom hand to fade.
    How Grimsby had stared at first. Ashland had almost forgotten the effect of his ruined face on the untrained eye. How long had it been since he had encountered, unmasked, a genuine stranger, one who hadn’t been prepared in advance for this abomination? But Grimsby had recovered in a flash and composed himself politely. Well-bred, that fellow. Outside the carriage, he hadn’t shifted his eyes away, hadn’t looked at the ground or his hands or Ashland’s hat. Another point in the young man’s column. He might very likely do. Only a few months, after all. Only a few more months until Freddie’s Oxford examinations, and then Ashland need no longer bother with this business of bringing tutors into the house, into his well-ordered routine, only to have them pack their valises and leave after a week or two. Freddie would be off, would likely only return to the howling moors for the odd dutiful week or two, and that would be that.
    The Duke of Ashland would be alone at last. No tutors; no Freddie spreading about his profligate charm, so like his mother’s; no lingering reminders of the days before he had shipped off to India, plain old Lieutenant the Honorable Anthony Russell, leaving behind a beautiful wife and infant son, and two perfectly healthy cousins between himself and the dukedom.
    Ashland took another drink, longer this time, and lifted aside the heavy velvet curtain. The window faced north; in full daylight, the view was bleak beyond description. Tonight, however, all was black. The clouds had moved in completely, propelled by the incessant wind, and there was no further moonlight to illuminate the spinning grasses, the rocks, the few scrubby bushes that had once formed a sort of garden along this side of the house. In her last year, Isabelle had worked obsessively on that garden, employing a raft of men from the village to eke out some sort of civilized order to the landscape. She had ordered plantings and statuary, tried for shade and windbreaks, and all for nothing. Only the statues remained, like the ruins of some lost Roman town, limbs cut off abruptly where the wind had toppled the poor fellows off their pedestals.
    Rather fitting, that.
    Another drink. Nearly finished now. How had that happened? Must ration out the rest, one tiny sip at a time.
    What would Isabelle have thought of young Grimsby? She would have liked him, Ashland thought. She liked young people, clever people, and there was no doubt that Grimsby was clever. It radiated from those large eyes of his, covered by his spectacles. What had Olympia written? That he knew no scholar more perfectly grounded in the subtleties of Latin and Greek than Mr. Tobias Grimsby, and that his mathematics were without flaw. Isabelle, who had been well-educated by an exacting governess, would have had Mr. Grimsby to the drawing room for tea every afternoon. She would have taken pleasure in teasing him out, in discovering his opinions and tastes and family history.
    Isabelle. If Isabelle were here, Ashland would even now be climbing the stairs to his bedroom. He would even now be changing into his nightshirt and dressing robe, dismissing his valet, knocking politely on the door between their bedchambers.
    Ashland tilted his glass and let the last golden drops slide down his throat. A very slight vibration now caressed his brain, the edge of intoxication just perceptible at the rim of his senses. It was all he allowed himself, to head off the lust