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other, she caught her reflection in the mildew-spotted mirror. Wild color stained her cheeks, and a strange light glimmered in her eyes. Startled, she looked away.
    Jessalyn turned to find Lady Letty peering at her through her quizzing glass. "Now tell me about this explosion that seems to have occurred this afternoon?" the old woman said. "Was that when you met the Trelawny boy?"
    Jessalyn's mouth fell open. "How—?"
    "Simple deduction, m' dear. You've a look about you as if you've just seen your runner beat the pack to the post by a furlough and you'd a hundred pounds extra laid by on the winner. Only one thing besides a fat purse will put that look into a Letty's eyes. I ask myself who's young and male and new to the countryside, and only one candidate leaps to mind."
    "But when did he—why is he— He's a Trelawny!" Jessalyn found her chair with the backs of her knees and subsided into it. "Not the earl surely?"
    Lady Letty tapped her snuffbox with a blunt-nailed finger. "The late earl had three boys, but I reckon this one would be the youngest. I remember they went and named him after a horse at his christening, some Irish nag the earl had backed in the Newmarket Whip the day he was born. Mc-something. He was only a little tacker when last I saw him. That would be at his father's funeral in '01. Fell down some stairs in a drunken stupor and broke his neck, the late earl did. He'd be in his twenties now—the younger son, not the dead earl, of course—and doubtless up to his hocks in debt and well on the path to perdition. There's bad blood in that family, bad blood. Dangerous to know are the mad earls of Caerhays... They all die young, violently, and in disgrace."
    Jessalyn had heard the stories. How Charles Trelawny, the tenth earl of Caerhays, had died fifteen years ago of a broken neck after falling down a flight of stairs. In his cups as usual, some said. Though others insisted it wasn't too much port that had murdered the earl but the jealous husband of one of his many mistresses. He was succeeded by his eldest son, another Charles, who had died of a ruptured spleen after falling from his horse during a wild midnight ride. In his cups, they said again. Though others said his soul had been fetched to hell by the ghost of a man he had killed in a duel.
    Now the second son, and current earl, was living a life of dissipation in London and not likely to see his next birthday. The mad earls of Caerhays... Jessalyn tried to remember what the gossips said about the third son. That he had bought himself a cheap commission in a line regiment and nearly gotten himself killed last year at Waterloo.
    "Gram? Do you know what..." She tried to remember if she'd ever heard a particular rank mentioned in connection with the youngest Caerhays heir. She settled on captain. "Do you know what Captain Trelawny is doing in Cornwall? Has he left his regiment? Is he here to stay, to manage the estate?"
    "What's to manage? Caerhays was bled dry years ago. The Trelawnys have never cared tuppence for their Cornish lands. Would have sold em off long ago were they not so heavily entailed. Nay, he's here on recuperative leave, so they say, but he's spent most of his time working at the foundry in Penzance, pursuing some cork-brained, addlepated experiment having to do with steam locomotion. Disgraceful behavior it is, such that even a Trelawny cannot hope to live down. Just like a common blacksmith, no better than a tutworker really." Lady Letty shuddered. "Getting calluses on his palms and dirt beneath his nails. 'Tain't the done thing at all."
    Into Jessalyn's mind flashed an image of long, dark fingers thrust through wet hair. There hadn't been any dirt beneath his nails. But the hand that grabbed her ankle had been rough and had held on to her with a hard, taut strength....
    The parlor door flew open, and Becka Poole pranced in, bearing a tray of seedcake in one hand. She put the back of her wrist to her head like a tragedienne traipsing the