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hauteur.
    “Colonel,” Miss Morris said, her expression hard-eyed and tight-lipped, “will you permit me to present my cousin, Mr. Cecil Morris.”
    “This is a great honor indeed, my lord,” the man said, bowing and scraping and simpering. “And if I might also present my mama? Where is she?” He turned his head to look among the groups of people gathered in the churchyard. “Now where did she go? Ah, there she is, conversing with Mrs. Philpot and Miss Drabble.” He waved the handkerchief from one uplifted arm.
    Aidan looked at him with considerably more attention.
This
was the man who was to inherit Ringwood? He was small and plump with a puffed-out chest and an important, bustling air. And obsequious to a fault. Miss Morris's cousin. He did not, Aidan noticed, speak with even a trace of a Welsh accent. Quite the contrary. His accent would make even Bewcastle sound provincial.
    “Colonel Bedwyn can meet my aunt at Ringwood, Cecil,” Miss Morris said. “He is coming for tea. At least, I believe he is.” She looked inquiringly at Aidan.
    “Oh, you simply must come, my lord,” Cecil Morris added, abandoning his attempt to summon his mother. “I urge you to honor us with your company, as humble an abode as Ringwood Manor is compared to the ducal seat, I do not doubt. Lindsey Hall, I believe? Mama will be gratified beyond words.”
    “Thank you, ma'am.” Aidan bowed to Miss Morris and ignored her cousin. “I will be there.”
    He strode off in the direction of the inn. He would have his horse saddled and ride over. Lord help the poor woman if she was going to have to live out her life in company with her cousin and his mother once the anniversary of her father's death had passed.
    Was
this
what had so concerned Captain Morris?
             
    E VE HAD BEEN FEELING KINDLY DISPOSED TOWARD Colonel Lord Aidan Bedwyn after church. By the time he left Ringwood after tea she despised him and was heartily glad she would never see him again.
    Her neighbors were attentive. Almost all came back to the house and all spoke to her with kindly sensibility about the service and about Percy. Serena Robson, James's wife, sat beside Eve for almost an hour, holding her hand much of the time, chafing it, assuring her that this day was a dreadful ordeal for her but a necessary one, that once it was over she would feel better again.
    “And you know,” she said earnestly when there was no one else with them, “you are perfectly welcome to come and make your home with us, Eve. James agrees with me that nothing would suit us more.”
    Eve glanced across the room at James. Poor man, it was something he would surely hate. But she was touched by Serena's kindness. The two of them had been friends since Serena's marriage to James five years before. But friendship had its limits.
    “I do not even want to think beyond today, Serena,” Eve told her. “But thank you. You are most kind.”
    Truth to tell, she had been finding it hard all day to think rationally at all. Even the memorial service had been hard to concentrate on, much as she had tried. Only the colonel's eulogy had captured her undivided attention.
    Time was running out.
    She might have saved herself and everyone else under her care from this predicament if only she had married sometime during the past year. She had had several offers. But she had not considered any of them seriously. She had been waiting for John. Oh, foolish, foolish—she was no longer convinced that John was coming back at all. Even if he did, he would come too late to save her servants and friends.
    She could scarcely believe that she was doubting John. Against all reason, perhaps, she had loved and trusted him through fifteen long, silent months.
    No one knew about John, not even Aunt Mari. John, Viscount Denson, whose father, the Earl of Luff, had strictly forbidden the match when her father had proposed it to him, was with the diplomatic service and currently at the embassy in Russia—or perhaps