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suddenly the coach came to a halt.
    Middleton paused in his attention to her breast and glanced at the d oor. He sighed, calmly put her breast back into her gown as best he could, and kissed the hollow of her throat.
    He moved up, nipped at her
    lips once more as he pulled her to an upright position and draped her cloak around her shoulders, before lazily fadin g into the squabs of his bench across from her.
    Ava was sitting in the same spot he’d left her, still leaning toward him, still feeling his lips on hers. As the
    door of the coach swung open, she looked out into the snowy night, then at Middleton.
    He smiled, grabbed her hand, brought it to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles, then let her go. “Have a care when you refuse a man’s offer to dance, Lady Ava,” he said with a wink.
    Her mind had obviously deserted her, for all Ava could mutter in return was, “Thank you.” And then she concentrated on making her jelly legs move. With the considerable help of Middleton’s coachman, who caught her when she landed awkwardly, having forgotten her blasted shoe, she managed to exit the
    carriage without making a fool of herself. Once she was firmly on the ground, she pulled her cloak over her head and glanced back at the coach.
    The marquis leaned forward and smiled through the open carriage door. “Good night, Lady Ava. It has indeed been a pleasure.” He glan ced at the coachman. “See her safely to the door, Phillip,” he said, and then leaned back, all but his long legs disappearing from her sight.
    The coachman shut the door and held out his arm to her. “If you please, milady.”
    She pleased. Ava put her hand o n the man’s arm and walked forward, bouncing unevenly to her right,
    her mind a million miles away from her shoe.
    And when she was safely inside, and his carriage had gone on into the night, Ava removed the offending shoe and smiled softly. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother what had happened. Well, almost everything that had happened —she was not as foolish as that.
    But that dreamy smile would be her last for some time, however, for her stepfather rushed into the foyer before she could divest herself of her cloak, his expression unusually serious. For a moment, Ava thought
    he somehow knew of her ride in Middleton’s carriage and meant to take her to task for it.
    But he uncharacteristically reached out his hand to her.
    “Ava,” he said.
    “Yes, sir?” she asked, surprised and a little frightened by the gesture.
    “Your dear mother suffered a seizure of some sort just after supper. I regret to tell you that the physician
    is not hopeful.”

Three
    C assandra Reemes Fairchild Pennebacker, Lady Downey, died suddenly at the age of five and forty years.
    While it may have seemed to some that scarcely had the last clump of dirt bee n shoveled onto her grave when her husband, Egbert Pennebacker, Viscount Downey, left for France, in truth a month had passed. One long, interminable month during which Egbert suffered the tears of Cassandra’s daughters and niece while he fretted that his longtime mistress, Violet, had perhaps found another benefactor. He could not possibly know, for she was in France.
    Frankly, Cassandra could not have picked a more inopportune time to die. Egbert, who had never been one to partake in the whirl of the soci al season, had been set to sail for France the very morning they
    buried his wife. Naturally, he’d sent a letter to Violet straightaway relaying the sad news and sending
    along sufficient funds for her safe voyage to England so that she might help him throug h a very trying time. He’d yet to hear a word, not a solitary word. Not a note, not even a whisper of condolence in a month.
    The uncertainty of what was happening drove him quite mad, and he paced his study more often than not,
    his stout legs and small feet taking him round and round the room while he nervously soothed the few strands of hair remaining on the crown of his head. In