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hesitate. “This side of the river, I should say. Everything is so much more at hand here.”
    “I shall make inquiries today. Perhaps tomorrow we can look at some houses.” He stopped abruptly. “That is. . .I shouldn't want anyone in Bath to get the wrong idea about us. Perhaps you would prefer to go without me.”
    For the second time that day, she tossed her head back and laughed. Then, as quickly as she had erupted into laughter, she stopped, and a melancholy look crossed her face. “I'm hardly a maiden, my lord. Having no husband, it's only natural I should ask a gentlemen to help me in matters of tenancy.”
    “Yes, of course.” How helpless poor Carlotta was. James vowed to expend all his resources to relieve her of worries.
    Few words were exchanged during their walk to Crescent Fields, and it occurred to James that not once since he had been in Bath had Carlotta spoken to a friend. Not that first day at the Pump Room, nor the night at the theatre, nor today—though they had passed dozens of people. Did she have no friends? Being of good birth and being the widow of an earl's son, she quite naturally should have easily slid into an exalted position in Bath society. That she had not must be a testament to her sadly reduced circumstances. Circumstances he took sole blame for.
    * * *
    The following day they went house hunting. The first one they looked at, on Camden Crescent, Carlotta dismissed as being too shabbily furnished. The townhouse on Avon Street faced a fish shop, which would not do at all for Carlotta. “I dare say I'd never sleep a wink for smelling three-day old fish,” she declared. The third one, a beautifully furnished townhouse on Monmouth Place, met with her approval.
    “Lord Rutledge,” she said in front of the agent, “you'll simply have to make all the arrangements for me. I'm hopeless with anything financial.” Though she no longer possessed a good name she needed to protect, Carlotta wished to prevent James from discovering that fact. She looked at the agent. “Lord Rutledge served with my late husband and is a dear friend of the family. I declare, I don't know what I'd do without him.”
    After making arrangements to meet with the agent later that afternoon, James escorted Carlotta back to Queensbury. Her step was lighter than it had been in an age. In her deepest gloom, she had always held hope. “ Oh, wind, ” she said wistfully to the skies above, “ if winter comes, can spring be far behind ?”
    James was silent for a moment. “May I hope your recitation of Shelley is fraught with symbolism?”
    She met his gaze and nodded, then slipped her arm through his. “I can see that we shall get along beautifully, my lord. I love a man who knows his poetry.”
    When they turned onto her street, he cleared his throat. “There's one other thing I want to discuss about when the lad . . . your son comes.”
    “Yes?”
    “I've been thinking. Everything will be so new, so unfamiliar, to him. I shouldn't like to throw too many new people, too many new experiences, at him at once. We should give him time to adjust to us.”
    What was he trying to get at? She looked quizzically at Lord Rutledge. “Yes?”
    “I think we should allow him to become used to me and to being with you before we thrust a new nurse on him.”
    Good grief, would she have to have sole responsibility for the boy? “But, my lord, I'm hardly experienced with lads.”
    “Peggy can help you, and it's not as if I won't be around—every minute you'll allow me. I like to think I'm good with children.”
    “I'm sure you're wonderful,” she said. If only he could take complete responsibility for the lad. “How . . . how long before we can . . . before the little darling adjusts to his new home? Before we can procure his nurse?”
    There was no hesitation in his voice when he answered. “When I'm assured he's comfortable with you, if you must know.”
    So he's aware of what an unnatural mother I've been. No matter