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a baleful eye. Then, to Polly’s heartfelt relief, she turned back to her brother. “Where are her clothes?”
    Nicholas scratched his head; he had been expecting this question, but no satisfactory answer had yet come to mind. “There is the difficulty, sister. She has none but her smock.”
    Margaret looked astounded. “How should that be?”
    “It is a little difficult to explain, and I do not care to do so at present.” Kincaid opted for the assumption of authority—the master of the house who chose not to be troubled by certain matters. “Send one of the girls to the Exchange to purchase necessities for her. I will bear the cost myself; it need not come out of your household purse. In payment for her services as kitchen maid, she will receive three pounds a year and her keep.” A hard look at Polly ensured her continued silence.
    Margaret was not happy, but she could not gainsay the orders of her brother-in-law. Her own authority was dependentupon his, for a man was master in his own house. It was a sore shame that Nicholas, unlike his late-lamented older brother, seemed to care little for the sober and devout regime that she and her late husband had fashioned for their household during the days of the Lord Protector. But Nicholas, his brother’s heir, had been Baron Kincaid for the last three years, and his widowed sister-in-law was dependent upon him for house and home. Not that he was ever ungenerous in spirit or fact, but Margaret wished for the past, when he was still leading the life of a younger son, seeking what advancement he could at the court, where he was so manifestly at home. Now, with such a one at its head, what had been
her
household was becoming infused with the dangerous ways of that same loose and licentious court.
    Such thoughts were acid and wormwood, as usual. She turned to the cause of all this trouble. “Come,” she said shortly to Polly. “It is not decent for you to be in here.” She went to the door, calling for Susan, who appeared, wide-eyed, almost before her name had been spoken. “Take her down to the kitchen.” Margaret pushed Polly through the door with a grimace of distaste. “I will come down and see what is to be done with her in a minute.”
    “Sister!” Nicholas spoke with sudden briskness as he got out of bed, drawing a furred nightgown over his shirt. “One thing more.” He walked to the window and drew back the heavy curtains, examining the gray day with a slight frown. “I know you do not believe in sparing the rod, Margaret, and while I would not in general interfere in your running of this household, which you do impeccably, in this instance you will stay your arm. If you find fault in her, bring it to my attention. Is it clear?”
    Margaret’s lips tightened. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner. “And is she not to be subject to my authority, then, brother? I cannot have, in my household, one who is excused faults for which others are punished.”
    “You will bring such faults as there may be to
my
attention,” he repeated with gentle emphasis. “I do not imaginesuch a slight diversion from the usual will disturb the immaculate order of the house. Your hand on the reins is too secure, my dear sister.”
    “And do you find fault in that?” She spoke stiffly through compressed lips, her backbone rigid as a steel rod.
    “I think you are on occasion a little severe,” he said with a sigh. His head was worsening by the minute, and he could not find the energy to speak with his usual circumspection. Margaret had been left to his charge by his brother’s last wish, and he would honor that commitment in more than letter, for all that he despised the narrow rigidity of the Puritan. He had discoursed endlessly with Edward on the possibility of a happy medium between a life governed to the last degree by the rules of divinity and sobriety and one where there were no rules except those of excess. But Edward had been a learned Puritan,