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made the girl giggle and blush. This Pauley merited her close attention if he sought to jolly every serving maid in sight. A mistress must set the rules early and keep to them.
    When he returned to the carriage, Frances noticed that he moved with a slight stiffness, different from the one caused by her father’s swollen joints. Pauley swung his right leg so that it bent but little at the knee. He stopped at the manor entrance and picked up a bundle. The object was wrapped in an old doublet, which fell away to reveal an ivory-inlaid Italian-style guitar with a slightly curved head. Pauley hesitated outside the carriage.
    Surely the man did not presume to ride inside with her.
    With a flourish, Pauley bowed to Frances, assisting her into the carriage first, and with similar courtesy handing Jennet inside and waiting as she took the far seat beside her niece. “Lady Sidney, if itplease you, may I leave my instrument in the carriage, since I think a westerly rain is coming on?”
    He carried his bundle as if it were a newborn babe. Truly, it would be ungracious to refuse him so small a request. She nodded.
    He laid the guitar flat on the unoccupied seat facing her, his doublet fastened around the instrument. For a moment he kept a loving, protective hand on the fretboard before bowing to Frances and climbing up on the wheel to sit above. The driver called to the horses, the whip cracked, and the carriage lurched forward toward the London Road.
    For a moment, Frances wondered how a commoner had come to own an instrument of such quality. So, who was he? Intelligencers had secrets to sell, but if Pauley could not be trusted, surely her father would not keep him. She would discover Pauley’s secret by careful questioning.
    They were scarcely out of sight of Barn Elms when the rain began, not an on-and-off misty summer shower, but a downpour that quickly turned the dusty road into a bog.
    Pauley’s guitar bounced toward the edge of the seat, and she reached for it.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Aunt Jennet asked.
    â€œI would not have such a beautiful instrument damaged.”
    â€œThen the man should take it with him.”
    â€œIn this rain? Jennet, I could not countenance such destruction.”
    Frances pounded on the ceiling and the coach stopped. “Master Pauley, please come inside.” At Jennet’s look of disapproval, Frances added, “You’ll be of little use to me if you contract consumption.”
    â€œI thank you, my lady,” Pauley said, opening the door and bowing, rain running from his large-brimmed hat and sealskin cloak. He grasped the top of the door and swung inside.
    She handed him his guitar.
    â€œThank you for your care of it, my lady. It was my father’s.” He began to shiver, but clenched his shoulders to control it.
    She could see the resolve in his eyes and on his unyielding face. Where did a servant get such strength and assurance, and how did he have a father who could give such a rare gift? Her curiosity was aroused. Pauley’s fine features, his educated speech, and now this show of family pride marked him as from a good family of some consequence. He could be the by-blow of a shire knight or even of some higher lineage. But that stiff leg? She hardly realized that she was staring at him.
    He answered her unspoken curiosity with no timidity. “Lady Frances, my leg was broken and badly set. When I was an apprenticed lad a loaded ale wagon rolled over me and a barber-surgeon was not called. I set it myself.” He smiled. “And discovered I had no skill for the work.”
    She flushed at being caught out in her impolite and personal curiosity.
He set it himself!
She could not imagine it. “I am sorry for your pain, sir.”
    Jennet pinched her, and Frances realized that she had given him a courtesy his station did not merit. But his bearing, his temperate, correct speech did. They no longer seemed bold, as she had first