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uneasily, was a man with whom it was going to be difficult—perhaps impossible—to argue, merely because he heard only what he wished to hear and made assumptions to which he held fast as unassailable truths. It seemed that she was to make an afternoon call with him at Dunbarton. She dreaded to think of what awaited them there. She could onlyhope, she supposed, that the Earl of Haverford would be from home or that he would refuse to receive them.
    But Sir Edwin Baillie, she thought, was not a man to be put off easily once he had set his mind upon a certain course of action. If the visit was not successfully made today, then it would be made tomorrow or the next day. On the whole, it would be better to get it over with today so that perhaps she could sleep tonight, having known the worst humiliation of her life. Surely it would be the worst.
    She had not set eyes on the Earl of Haverford for over a week. She had hoped that she might never do so again. But it was a forlorn hope, of course. She had the uneasy suspicion that he had returned to Dunbarton to stay, and it appeared that Sir Edwin Baillie intended to make his permanent home at Penwith. Even if the families remained estranged, she and Kenneth were bound to meet again.
    She wished he had not come back. She even found herself wishing for one rash moment that it were he, and not Sean, who . . . but no. She shook off the horrifying thought. No, she could never wish such a thing even in exchange for Sean’s life. She never could, no matter who he was or what he had done—or what further embarrassment he was now unwittingly to cause her. She remembered how through the years she had waited for every scrap of news that had filtered through to Dunbarton—how she had waited with dread, how she had despised herself for both the waiting and the dread. She remembered how she had felt when news had come six years ago that the severity of wounds sustained in Portugal had sent him back to England—but not to Dunbarton. Surely a soldier was sent back to England only when he waspermanently maimed or not expected to survive, she had thought. She had waited in agony for more news, all the time telling herself that really she did not care at all.
    She remembered the letter that had come from the War Office about Sean. Oh, no, she could never wish what she had just almost wished. Never.
    She just wished he had not come back. And that Sir Edwin Baillie had not come to Penwith. She wished she could simply return to the rather dull spinster’s life she had been living until a few weeks before.
    *   *   *
    KENNETH had just returned from a few hours spent with his steward riding about some of the outlying farms of his estate. He was changing from slightly muddy clothes—the previous two days had been wet—and was just starting to warm up when his valet answered a knock on his dressing room door. Two visitors were awaiting his lordship in the downstairs salon.
    His lordship sighed inwardly. In the nine days since his return to Dunbarton it seemed that he had done little else but visit and be visited. It had been pleasant to become reacquainted with old friends and neighbors, to meet a few new neighbors, but sometimes he wished he could have more time to himself. The situation could only worsen during the coming week as his mother and sister and his other houseguests began to arrive. Still, he looked forward to having the house full, to learning the new role of host.
    He tried to think as he descended the staircase a few minutes later of someone in the neighborhood who had not yet called uponhim. He could think of no one. But he had already returned most of those calls. The second round must be starting, then. He sighed. Whoever it was might at least have waited until after his mother’s arrival.
    He did not recognize the man who stood in the middle of the salon, one hand behind his back, the other fingering the fob on his watch chain. The man’s shirt points, stiffly starched,