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was ashamed of what she was. She was inordinately proud of it. And yet she was weary of thinking about it.
    Absently, she picked at the pleated silk of her gold and turquoise skirts, her thin gold bracelets faintly tinkling as she did so. It was true some might have called their father a nabob, for like so many of his ilk, he’d gone off to India merely comfortable and come back shockingly rich. Half diplomat and all business, Anisha’s father had left his children very well provided for indeed. But that did not give Lucan cause to live like a wastrel.
    Unlike Anisha and Raju, Lucan was the product of her father’s second marriage; a marriage made out of love, not politics, as his first had been. Pamela had been as pure as an English rose. She had been kind, too, and doting. Too much so, perhaps, for she had spoiled Lucan beyond reason. And yet Anisha loved Lucan; loved him as much as, and in some ways more than, she loved Raju, for Pamela had died too young, leaving Lucan to need his sister in a way that her elder never had.
    Just as he needed her now.
    And she would help him, of course. But she was not about to make it easy on him. Anisha bit her lip, trying to think what was best done.
    “Nish,” Lucan’s wary tone cut into her thoughts. “Nish, you’re chewing your lip again. Now promise me you aren’t thinking of speaking to Ned Quartermaine. I should simply die of embarrassment.”
    Her mind suddenly made up, Anisha pushed back her chair with a harsh scrape. “I cannot loan you money again, Luc,” she said firmly. “I cannot, for you never learn anything from it. Nor will I speak with Mr. Quartermaine on your behalf. I can, however, be persuaded to bargain—and bargain like a good Scot, be warned.”
    “Aye, hard and relentless, you mean.” Lucan sighed and dragged a hand through a shock of what had been, until that moment, flawlessly pomaded gold curls. “But please, Nish, I beg you. Don’t make me play nanny again! Tom and Teddy—they are—good God! They are beyond me! If they aren’t jumping half-naked into the Serpentine or darting through traffic in Piccadilly Circus, then the day holds no challenge for them.”
    “Oh no, I don’t want you buying yourself out of indentured servitude again.” Anisha eyed him assessingly across the mahogany table, then slid her bracelets pensively back up her arm. “So I think neither a loan nor a bargain will do this time.”
    Lucan exhaled and fell back against his chair.
    “No, this time,” she said, ignoring his sigh of relief, “we shall have a clean, outright transaction.”
    “A transaction?” Lucan jerked upright again, eyes narrowing warily. “Of what sort?”
    Anisha’s wide, amiable mouth curled slowly into a smile. “Your new curricle,” she murmured. “The high-perch phaeton, I mean, with the pretty red wheels? I confess, it does catch one’s eye.”
    “My phaeton ?” His eyes widened in horror. “Surely you cannot mean it! Whatever would you do with—”
    “And the horses,” Anisha continued, undeterred. “Those lovely, prancing blacks? Yes, I think I should like to have them, too.”
    But Lucan had begun to sputter. “My matched blacks? You must be mad. Why, I spent two days straight at hazard to win those off Frankie Fitzwater! Besides, no lady of fashion would dare drive such a team.”
    “Do you suggest I cannot?” Anisha arched one eyebrow.
    “Well, no, you’re a fine whip—for a woman—but . . .”
    “And do you suddenly take me for a lady of fashion?”
    “I—well, what I meant was—”
    “Come now, Lucan.” Anisha stood, drawing herself up to her full height—which was something less than five feet. “I think we both know that London’s fashionable set scarcely spares me a second glance.”
    Lucan’s eyes glittered. “But Lord Bessett’s mother does,” he warned.
    But Anisha would not be cowed. “Lady Madeleine is neither here nor there,” she replied, tossing down her napkin. “She’s a good