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performing party tricks for attention and an apple tart. It was not a happy picture. “Prue is your kin?”
    “My aunt.” Polly drained her glass, holding it out to him. Her eyes closed, and she swayed a little. “I seem to be falling asleep.” She slid down the bed, drawing the covers up to her chin. “I was born in Newgate. They were going to hang my mother, but she pleaded her belly, so she was sentenced to transportation instead. Prue took me as soon as I was born, and my mother was sent to the colonies.”
    There was silence, broken only by the hiss and pop of the fire. Kincaid replaced the Venetian glasses on the tray. It seemed an eon since he had walked into the Dog tavern for his rendezvous with Richard De Winter. It would be dawn in another hour; before then he had to concoct an explanationfor the presence in his chamber of this ravishing Newgate brat—an explanation that would satisfy Margaret, who ruled her household with a now unfashionable Puritan’s severity.
    The Lady Margaret first heard of the night’s strange doings from her maid, when she brought her mistress her morning draft of chocolate. “A wench?” she demanded, sitting up in bed and straightening her nightcap. “Lord Kincaid brought a wench to the house?”
    “So young Tom says, m’lady.” Susan bobbed a curtsy, her demure expression hiding the inner excitement. There would be a mighty explosion over this, and the entire household was waiting with bated breath. The master did not share his sister-in-law’s Puritan inclinations, and indeed, was known to mind his lust and his pleasure with the best at the court at Whitehall Palace. But he had some consideration for the Lady Margaret and, in general, kept those activities of which she would disapprove out of the house. Although undisputed master of the house and all within it, he had been hitherto content to leave the management entirely in his sister-in-law’s hands, as long as a fair table was kept and matters ran in decent order so that he need never be afraid for the hospitality he would offer his guests.
    Margaret sipped her chocolate, torn between the desire to hear all that the maid had to tell her and the knowledge that listening to servants’ gossip was bad for household discipline. “And where is the girl now?” she asked, with an assumption of casualness.
    There was an instant’s silence as Susan bent to poke the fire. “No one’s seen her, m’lady.” She hesitated, then continued boldly, “But Tom says that his lordship carried her into his bedchamber.” Susan kept her back to the bed, afraid that if there was an explosion of wrath, she might receive the overspill. Her statement could be considered insolent in its forwardness, and Lady Margaret corrected insolence with a supple hazel stick.
    “I will rise,” announced her ladyship, sending Susan bustling to the armoire.
    Since it would never occur to Lady Margaret to show herself outside her chamber in even the most respectable undress, it was an hour later before she deemed herself ready. Her graying hair, free of curl, was confined beneath a lace coif. A wide lace collar adorned the kirtle of black saye that she wore beneath a sober gray silk day gown. Not a touch of color lightened the Puritan severity; the unimpeachable lace was her only decoration.
    Eyes followed her measured progress down the corridor to her brother-in-law’s chamber, but the owners kept themselves well hidden in doorways, or apparently busy with some domestic task that had brought them into the upper regions of the house. The house itself seemed to hold its breath as her ladyship rapped sharply on the oaken door.
    This imperative demand for entrance brought Polly awake in the same instant that Nicholas pushed aside the bed curtains, irritably bidding the knocker enter. As his sister-in-law rustled in, his eyes fell on the occupant of the truckle bed; memory returned. He groaned inwardly. Margaret’s eyes held the fanatical light of