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other woman?”
    “No, sir. Shall I tell her you are indisposed?”
    Will opened his mouth to heartily endorse that suggestion, but then he changed his mind. For Beatrix to come unchaperoned, she must want to see him pretty badly, and that made him curious.
    “No, Gudgeon,” he answered. “Show her in by all means, but bring me that whisky first.”
    The housekeeper obeyed, crossing the room to place the tray on the table beside his chair. She poured two fingers of whisky into the glass, added a much less generous measure of soda water, gave the contents a quick stir, and stepped back.
    “Thank you, Gudgeon,” he said, and picked up the glass. “If my earlier encounter with Lady Beatrix is any indication,” he added with a wry grin as he gestured to his knee, “I’ll need all the fortification I can get.”
    Gudgeon did not smile back or betray any other emotion, for it was not her place. She merely bobbed a curtsy and started for the door. But she’d barely taken two steps before she stopped. “Your Grace?”
    “Hmm?”
    When the housekeeper turned to look at him, Will caught an unmistakable flush of warmth in her cheeks. She glanced at her surroundings, then shifted her weight from one foot to the other and looked at him again. “It’s good to have you home again, young master. This house was a sadder place after you’d gone.”
    That took him back, rather. Gudgeon had been the housekeeper at Sunderland in his father’s time, and the old tyrant had never tolerated any personal expression or opinion from herself or any of the other servants. Before he could recover enough to answer, the housekeeper gave him another curtsy and vanished out the door.
    So the house had been a sadder place without him? Given his father’s sour temperament, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. He glanced around the study—his father’s favorite room, a room of dark blue paint and walnut paneling that he’d always found particularly depressing. Perhaps that was because here he’d always been called on the carpet for not living up to the Sunderland family image and his father’s expectations, something that had occurred with tiresome regularity, especially the fortnight before he’d gone to Egypt. His father had practically shouted the house down after learning his intent to accompany Sir Edmund, and the news of his broken engagement had nearly given the old man apoplexy.
    “I wish I could say it was good to be home, Gudgeon,” he murmured, and took a hefty swallow of whisky. “But the sooner I’m gone from this place, the happier I’ll be.”

Chapter Three

    B y the time Mrs. Gudgeon announced her name, Will was prepared for Beatrix’s arrival. He’d shifted the footstool a bit so that she could clearly see his outstretched leg from the doorway. If she hadn’t left him in the road, he wouldn’t have had to walk on his injured knee, and the swelling would have been minimal. Because of her and that automobile of hers, he was laid low in this manner, and she deserved to have a clear view of her handiwork.
    “Forgive me for not standing up,” he told her with mock cheer. “But that’s rather difficult to manage at present, thanks to you.”
    If he’d hoped for a display of conscience on her part, he was disappointed. “I don’t see a splint, so your leg isn’t broken.” She gave his knee a skeptical glance. “That is, if it’s injured at all.”
    She no longer wore her motoring coat and goggles, he noted as she came further into the study, though she still had on those Turkish trousers, making him remember the time he’d told her she should wear trousers and ride her horse astride so she could go faster, and she’d looked at him as if he’d suggested she go naked. Did she even ride horses anymore? he wondered. If she did, no doubt it was with Trathen. That thought impelled him to take another swallow from his glass of whisky.
    “I like the trousers,” he told her. “Rather daring of you to wear