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time to go down for dinner. Skinner, thin and wiry, her steel gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, stood behind her, brushing and twisting her hair into a knot atop her head.
    Hands busy, Skinner nodded to the jeweled comb Phoebehad been fiddling with. “You’d best give that here before you break it—you’ve been scowling at the thing ever since you sat down.”
    Phoebe grimaced and raised the comb; Skinner reached over her shoulder, took it, then set it into her hair. Skinner had been her maid for years. Phoebe had no closer confidante. “A gentleman arrived this afternoon—Deverell, Viscount Paignton. He’s Audrey’s nephew, has recently unexpectedly inherited the title, and thus is now in need of a wife.”
    “Aha.” Skinner slipped in a last hairpin and threw her a shrewd glance. “Got his eye on you, has he?”
    “So it seems, but he’ll have to take his intentions elsewhere. I’ve far too much to do with this rescue we’ve arranged to have a man of his ilk dogging my heels, wanting to monopolize my attention.”
    “Hmm.” Skinner busied herself with Phoebe’s jewel box. “From what I heard in the servants’ hall, he sounded like a swell.” She handed a pair of pearl earrings to Phoebe.
    Swiveling to look directly at Skinner, Phoebe took them. “How do you know? Did he bring a gentleman’s gentleman?”
    She wouldn’t have classed Deverell as the sort to have a valet.
    Skinner snorted. “No. He brought a groom-cum-tiger, a young lad from the west country who can’t say a bad word about his new lord. Seems he’s top of the trees, and our Fergus and the other coachmen were saying his lordship has a great eye for cattle—seems his pair are prime ’uns. But the lad’s a nice boy. He’s minding his p ’s and q ’s and tripping over his feet to be helpful. If his master’s got half as good a heart, he won’t be a bad ’un.”
    “Regardless”—turning back to the mirror, Phoebe attached one earring—“we can’t have him watching me, attaching himself to my skirts and dogging my footsteps, particularlynot here, not now.” She picked up the second pearl drop. “Speaking of which, have you heard when Lady Moffat is expected?”
    “Tomorrow morning. She’s been staying just over at Leatherhead with her sister, so she’s liable to arrive not long after breakfast.”
    “Excellent. That should give us plenty of time to get everything in place to make our move after the ball on the third night.”
    Skinner fastened Phoebe’s single strand of pearls about her throat. “I’d have thought you’d want to wait ’til the last night.”
    Phoebe shook her head. “No, the small hours of the morning after the ball will be perfect. Everyone will be guaranteed to be snoring, and with any luck Lady Moffat won’t miss her maid until noon or later the next day. That way, even if something untoward occurs, the others will have plenty of time to overcome any hurdle and disappear into London.”
    “Aye, well—there is that.”
    “Indeed. But the first thing I must do is convince Deverell that when it comes to marriage, he has no chance whatever of changing my mind—that’s the only thing that will make him stop looking my way.”
    Skinner snorted.
    Interpreting that as a comment on the temerity of the man, Phoebe patted her pearls into place and considered her reflection.
    The amber silk of her gown deepened the dark red of her hair and lent a subtle glow to her complexion, underscored by the sheen of the pearls about her throat. Her eyes appeared more violet in candlelight, her lips a deeper red.
    She looked well enough, she supposed, although if looks were all, then he should have fastened on Deidre or Leonora.Regardless, his comment that introducing him to the best of the eligible ladies had only confirmed him in his pursuit of her, while doubtless complimentary in its way, suggested that any further attempts in that direction would be doomed to continuing failure.
    She narrowed her eyes.