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who passed like ghosts around him to the coroner’s jurymen who descended on the house the next morning. His uncle Frederick soon arrived to take up residence as his guardian, bringing with him tender, sad-eyed Aunt Celeste. I trust you will not disgrace us both by crying , his uncle had said somberly as they stood waiting to join his father’s funeral cortege. You must be a man now .
    David’s father was no sooner in his grave than everyone seemed determined to forget the shameful circumstances of his death—indeed, to forget that he had ever existed at all. David was moved from his cheerful bedroom overlooking the deer park to his father’s large, gloomy apartments, rooms of dark corners and unsettling shadows. Where before he’d been styled Lord Comstock, everyone addressed him as Deal—his father’s title, or so he’d still considered it at the time. Adults, embarrassed by his loss and everything it implied about his father’s character, avoided looking him in the eye. Only his aunt had made any effort to speak to him as if he were not somehow tainted.
    Now Miss Whitwell was experiencing that same hell—the shock, the grief, the bewildering sense of lost security, the stilted manners of the people around her. True, her father had died peacefully in his berth rather than scattering his gray matter about the room, but there was still something nightmarish about losing a loved one in the midst of an ocean crossing. There was something nightmarish, too, about seeing the body dumped into the sea, consigned to the deep like so much kitchen rubbish.
    “What about you, Lord Deal?” Captain Raney called down the length of the table.
    David shook off his abstraction. “Hmm? I fear I wasn’t attending, Captain. Would you repeat the question?”
    “The other passengers were discussing their reasons for undertaking this voyage. I wondered if you might tell us yours.”
    David gave a self-deprecating smile. “I regret it doesn’t make for a very interesting tale. I’m merely returning to England after a brief stay in New York.” He went back to eating his dinner.
    After a moment, Captain Raney cleared his throat. “Yes, my lord, but might I ask what brought you to New York to begin with?”
    Every eye in the room was on him. Uncomfortable, David turned slightly in his seat to face the rest of the company. “A relative to whom I’d lent financial backing died, leaving me in possession of a newspaper there. I was feeling restless, and I took it into my head to see the enterprise for myself.”
    “Why were you feeling restless?” Miss Whitwell asked, her slim brows drawing into a pucker.
    He shrugged. “No particular reason.” In fact, his dog had just died, but it seemed a nonsensical explanation. Besides, it would sound trivial, complaining of a spaniel’s death when Miss Whitwell had lost her father.
    Poor old Burr. David still hadn’t grown used to walking into a room without having Burr jump up to greet him, wagging his stub of a tail.
    “And how did you find America, Deal?” Mrs. Howard leaned over the table, wearing a smile that seemed half challenge, half superior smirk. “Did you charm the locals with your gracious address?”
    “Charm them?” David set down his fork. No doubt Mrs. Howard considered herself entitled to be condescending just because she flirted with Captain Raney and had toadied to Lord Whitwell before his death. But attaching herself to such men added to her consequence, while she treated poor Miss Whitwell like a lackey. “I would certainly never make such a claim for myself.”
    Her smile thinned to a superior look. “But what did you think of America? New Yorkers can be every bit as genteel as you English, wouldn’t you say?”
    “The land was beautiful.” Goaded by the challenge in her eyes, David couldn’t resist adding, “As for the people of New York...I find some more genteel than others.”
    He’d meant the remark to sound light, offhand, but something of his