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situation.
    Madeline shifted restlessly, casting nervous glances at her cousin from beneath her lashes.
    “Call me Gabriel,” he said, his tone cool and bored. But he watched her with a peculiar interest. Not lust. She was familiar enough with that to recognize it. No, it was something else, a puzzled intensity, as though he wanted to study the parts that made up the whole. One side of his mouth lifted in the hint of a smile. “Or St. Aubyn, if you prefer.”
    She would prefer that he leave her alone with Madeline and take his masculine presence elsewhere. He made her uncomfortable. But she said none of that. Instead, she said in an equally cool, even tone, “I shall take that response as an affirmative.”
    She left off the address altogether and grasped the handle of the pot before he could make his preference known one way or the other. She had neither the patience for nor the interest in whatever game he played.
    “By all means, do.” St. Aubyn’s straight brows rose and his smile edged a little tighter.
    She lifted the tea strainer to hold it atop the china cup, then poured and passed out the tea. Madeline’s hand trembled as she accepted the saucer, but Catherine was glad to see that she managed to steady it and even raise the cup to her lips for a sip.
    “Raspberry tart?” she offered.
    St. Aubyn stared at the plate of small cakes and tarts, revulsion crossing his features so fleetingly that she thought she must have imagined it.
    “No, thank you,” both he and Madeline murmured, their replies so well timed as to overlap in perfect synchrony.
    In the silence that followed, a dull thud sounded against the window, a blow from without, hard enough to rattle the pane. Catherine’s head jerked toward the sound.
    “Oh, no. Not another,” she exclaimed, setting her cup on the table.
    “Another?” St. Aubyn inquired, his attention snared.
    “There was a blackbird on the drive, its wings spread wide as though frozen in flight,” Catherine replied as she rose and crossed to the window to draw the heavy draperies aside and peer down to the drive below. Of course, she could see nothing from this distance. “It must have flown hard against the window and fallen. I wonder if the blow we just heard was another such unfortunate creature.”
    “No! A bird? A blackbird? Posed in flight?” Madeline’s cup rattled in its saucer. Catherine hastened to return to the bedside and take it from her. “Was it dead?”
    “Yes. I mentioned it to Mrs. Bell.” Catherine could not imagine why a bird would cause such anxiety. Her gaze flashed to St. Aubyn. He sat in his stiff-backed chair exactly as he had a moment past, his teacup held in an easy grasp. There was nothing to make her think he regarded them with anything but meager interest. Yet, something…He was too posed, too controlled, his topaz eyes veiled by thick lashes, betraying nothing. It was the very lack of expression that made her wary.
    Madeline was breathing hard, her shoulders and chest moving with each inhalation. She stared straight ahead and then her head jerked to the side and she looked to her cousin with wide, horrified eyes.
    “Gabriel, why?” she cried, her skin paler than the bleached sheets, her eyes shimmering. “It has been so long. Do not deny—”
    “Do you make a formal accusation, cousin?” St. Aubyn cut her off with soft-voiced menace and she fell into abrupt silence, dropping her gaze, panting now in shallow little gasps.
    Baffled and dismayed, Catherine watched the interplay, wanting to intervene, uncertain what she could possibly say. She had no understanding of the history and undercurrents between these two, could not be certain precisely what Madeline’s implication was.
    Did she think St. Aubyn had killed the bird? And what if he had? Though it was not an activity she herself preferred, people hunted all the time. But why leave the thing on the drive?
    The air hummed with tension.
    “More tea?” Catherine asked as she resumed