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worry.
    Then Burke turned about. "Again, sorry to have kept you waiting, Delane," he said, as he led the way to the door.
    But as they were starting out into the entrance hall, words evolved out of that soft humming. "If you see your father on the road, Burke, please send him to me. Tell him that Caroline needs him. Tell him that she is alone—"
    From where Delane stood it looked as though weight had just been lowered against Burke's neck. Without a word and as though eager to put distance between himself and the house in Mayfair, he led the way down to the pavement, hoisted his valise up to Delane's coachman and crawled inside the carriage.
    Delane followed, his heart going out to the young man, wondering briefly about the limits of servitude that a father could legitimately place on a son. The last letter that Delane had received from Jack Stanhope had been well over a year ago. It had come from a hotel in Mobile and had stated that it would be best for Burke and Caroline to remain in London. Indefinitely. Of course they were well provided for. Sensing the coming hostilities a decade ago, Jack Stanhope had transferred a large portion of his fortune into foreign investments, a valuable portfolio that Burke had increased with skill and cunning.
    As the carriage pulled away from the curb, Delane watched his friend in the seat opposite him, his eyes closed. It was too long a silence. Yet Delane reproached himself about speaking first. He had planned to take advantage of the journey to Eden to inform Burke of specifics regarding John Murrey Eden and the relationships of the people he would meet at the Eden Festivities. But there would be time enough for talk later. For now, let the silence persist as long as Burke saw fit. Let him deal with his private grief in his own way.
    Delane was certain of one thing. It would be an invigorating fortnight, filled with good food, good wine, beautiful women and elegant surroundings. And at the end of those two weeks, it was his considered opinion that Burke Stanhope and John Murrey Eden would either be fast friends or the bitterest of enemies.
    Either way, Delane and the Times would serve to benefit.
    Still disturbed by the memory of his mother, Burke glanced out the carriage window at Windsor in the distance.
    Across from him, he was aware of Delane maintaining an unu-

    sually long silence. But Burke was not yet ready for words, his mind and heart still occupied with the last image he'd had of his mother. He knew that she disliked his prolonged absences.
    And the overriding question in his mind was how long would his imprisonment persist? And worse than that was his ever-growing suspicion that his father would never send for them, would never release him to a life of his own. Jack Stanhope's letters were coming few and far between now, and when one did arrive, it presented a grim picture of corruption, rising prices in construction, scorched fields which seemed to refuse new crops, and primitive living conditions which would surely kill his mother. "But soon," the letters always concluded.
    Soon, Burke brooded with rising anger. Each letter was scrawled on the elegant stationery of the Imperial Hotel in Mobile where, Burke suspected, his father was living in irresponsible luxury.
    Without warning, Burke felt a mild discomfort in his right hand and looked down, surprised to see his hand a fist and that fist pressing with undue strength into the seat cushion. He tried to relax and examined the bruised flesh of his right hand and recalled the beautiful little Maria of the Mask to whose aid he had rushed last night.
    The thought that he would never see her again was a deprivation that he was ill-equipped to meet, and he pressed his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes.
    "Are you well, Burke?" Delane inquired, the first words of this infant journey, but significant in that they spelled the end of the silence.
    "Not well, Delane," Burke told him honestly, "but functioning."
    He took