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took long, angry strides toward him until she was close enough to point a finger at him and jab it against his chest, like a blunt dagger, as she spoke. Her voice shook with fury.
    “If you so much as attempt to lay one lascivious finger on me,” she told him, “you may be surprised to discover that your sexual appetites will die an ignominious death and remain dead for all time. Be warned. I am no man's mistress. I am no man's abject victim, to be threatened and coerced into whimpering submission. I am my own mistress,
my lord
, and I am mistress of Pinewood. I will remain here tonight and every night for the rest of my life. If you truly believe you have a claim to the house, then I daresay you will stay here too. But I can guarantee that soon you will be glad enough to leave. You are a rake and a town fop and would be quite incapable of living more than a week in the country without expiring of boredom. I will endure you for that week. But I will not be bullied or threatened sexually without retaliating in ways youwould not enjoy. And I will not be removed from my rightful home.” She stabbed at his chest one more time-it was a remarkably solid chest. “And now, if you please, I wish to leave the room in order to resume my interrupted plan of walking out and taking the air.”
    He stared at her with the same angry expression—with perhaps also a suggestion of shock?—for several moments before standing aside, whisking open the drawing room door, and gesturing with a flourish toward the landing beyond it, while sketching her a mocking bow.
    “Far be it from me to hold you against your will,” he said. “But I in my turn can guarantee that within a week, or two at the most, you will be forced to abandon your rash determination to share a bachelor establishment with a rake. I will send for that damned will.”
    Viola ignored the blasphemy with cold civility and swept from the room. He had the deed of Pinewood, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her room. Something was terribly wrong. She had no written proof, only the word of a man long dead. But strangely, foolishly, the thought that crowded all else from her mind was that he—Lord Ferdinand Dudley, that is—had not known she lived here. He had made no attempt to discover who she was. He had not cared enough. Yesterday had meant nothing to him.
    Well, it had not meant anything to her either!

4

    V iola did not, after all, go out walking. She sat for a long time on the window seat in her bed-chamber. Hers was fortunately not the master bedchamber—at least they were not to fight over that and perhaps insist upon sharing the same bed. She had always preferred her present room, with its cheerful Chinese wallpaper and draperies and screens and its view over the back of the house rather than the front, over the kitchen garden and greenhouses, over the long avenue beyond them, culminating in the tree-dotted hill half a mile away.
    Pinewood was hers. No one else had even been interested in it until it had become the subject of a card game. Lord Ferdinand Dudley would not be interested either once he recovered from the novelty of having won it. He was a city man, a dandy, a fop, a gamer, a rake—and probably many more nasty things. Once he went back to London, he would forget all about Pinewood again.
    Once he went back to London…
    Viola got to her feet, smoothed out her dress,straightened her shoulders, and left her room, bound for the kitchen.
    “Yes, it is true,” she said in answer to all the anxious, inquiring looks turned her way as soon as she walked in. They were all there—Mr. Jarvey; Mr. Paxton, the steward; Jeb Hardinge, the head groom; Samuel Dey, the footman; Hannah; Mrs. Walsh, the cook; Rose, the parlormaid; Tom Abbott, the head gardener. They must have been holding a meeting. “Though I do not believe it for a minute. Lord Ferdinand Dudley claims to be the new owner of Pinewood. But I have no intention of leaving. Indeed, I have every