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away, she’d known she’d have to leave home immediately.
    She’d taken her tiny store of coins, packed quickly, and left her home, not knowing if or when she could ever come back. With no references, she’d been grateful to find the position as the Rosewood seamstress a few days later. She’d given her surname as Black, which had been her mother’s maiden name and was her own middle name and would, she hoped, be easy for her to remember to use.
    She had no way of knowing how many people had seen that book or whether the marquess had still not told anyone the name of the model. Doubtless she’d angered him by leaving, and he might retaliate in some way. And, of course, one other person knew her identity: the horrible Mr. Rawlins.
    She was anxious to return to the school, where no one paid any attention to the lowly seamstress. Once she’d saved enough money there, she would be able to go north to her Aunt May in Yorkshire, far away from trouble.
    She was, however, very concerned about Miss Tarryton. Miss Brickle had charged Anna to see the girl safely to her guardian and to assist him if necessary. Could she really in good conscience abandon Miss Tarryton to the care of the master of Stillwell Hall?
    * * *
    He didn’t want her there, Lizzie thought, fighting the pressure of tears that wanted to come as she sat with her head in her hands at the gold-finished vanity in the room she’d been shown. With its soft blue carpet and curtains in pale salmon, the well-appointed bedchamber looked like it belonged to a different house from the oddly bare drawing room.
    Being unwelcome at Stillwell had always been a possibility, even if, when she’d dreamed of leaving Rosewood, she’d discounted its likelihood. She hadn’t dwelled on Grandville’s not writing to her because she knew he must be busy and because her father had chosen him as her guardian, so he would have to be a good and responsible man.
    What was more, Grandville had been her Aunt Ginger’s husband. Although Lizzie never saw her aunt after moving to Malta, Aunt Ginger had written her, always saying how much she looked forward to seeing her again.
    The dream that the man who was her uncle as well as her father’s closest friend would one day come and take her to live with him had been what sustained her over the last year. But the man she’d just met was nothing like the man she’d remembered hazily as a kind fellow with nice blue eyes. And now she knew why he hadn’t come.
    She’d hated Rosewood from the minute she’d arrived there from Malta eighteen months earlier. The other girls had snickered at her rough ways and her unfashionable clothes, and each day that passed had only increased her disgust for the stupid “finishing” instruction that didn’t seem to be finishing her for anything but more time at Rosewood. How she’d hated her stepmother for sending her there.
    The only good thing she’d discovered at Rosewood, during the times she’d slipped away unnoticed, was that gentlemen quite liked her. Men, she’d found, were exciting .
    A knock sounded on the door. Probably that manservant. Lizzie said nothing. She didn’t trust her voice anyway—she had a huge lump in her throat.
    â€œMiss Tarryton?” came a female voice. The seamstress. Doubtless she didn’t care about Lizzie either, but considering what she’d seen of the woman so far, Lizzie trusted her at least to be forthright.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œMay I come in?”
    â€œPlease yourself.”
    The door opened and she entered. The woman really would be gorgeous, Lizzie observed out of reflex, if she would just do a bit of grooming. Her black hair had been pulled back with a careless firmness that left lumpy parts where the curls had not been tamed, and her ugly blue bonnet, its ribbons still tied in a clump, was hanging from her neck carelessly, as if she’d just