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talk never made Daisy comfortable, especially Lady Caroline’s seeming obsession with her monthly flux. “Is it so very painful?”
    “Only in that it has not yet arrived,” Lady Caroline said as Daisy lifted a small silver bell and rang for Davinia, who was doubtless already listening at the keyhole.
    Daisy didn’t care for Davinia, a sour-faced old woman who may be her ladyship’s maid, but clearly knew her quarterly wages emanated from his lordship’s purse.
    “She tells him, you know,” Caroline whispered quickly, as if able to read Daisy’s thoughts. “I can’t lie, because she tells him. Shh, here she comes. You go back up to the nursery now, Daisy, and don’t bother to think you need must be here when I return.” She raised her voice slightly. “Davinia takes very good care of me—don’t you, Davinia?”
    The older woman said nothing, but merely waved Daisy away and began twisting Caroline’s hair back into its original topknot, ready to be strung through with paste pearls.
    Daisy curtsied, wished her mistress a good evening and gratefully escaped the dressing room, stepping into the hallway without first checking to see if it was empty, and rolled her shoulders a time or two to relax them as she straightened her posture. Not a mistake she would have made if her mind weren’t so otherwise occupied.
    “Well, hello there, Daisy. And where would you be rushing off to?”
    Redgrave.
    She dropped into a quick, shoulders-front curtsy, keeping her eyes down. “I’m needed in the nursery, sir,” she mumbled quietly as she rose once more.
    “To teach them sums while they sleep, I suppose. But only after leaving her ladyship. Got your fingers in more than one pie, do you? Clever.”
    Daisy nearly raised her head, but managed to remain quite still in her subservient pose. “I’m confident you know what you mean, sir, but I do not. If you’ll excuse me...?”
    He stepped in front of her. “Curiosity compels the question. So, what is it? Impecunious orphaned child of some village vicar? Well-schooled but penniless daughter of a teacher? Or perhaps neither of those, but something more? The possibilities are nearly endless. Your mother married beneath her, your father was disowned, you were disowned, naughty puss? Please, must I go on?”
    He wasn’t the sort to give up easily. His smile told her that; he wasn’t going to let her pass until she answered his question. If she moved to her left, he would move to his right; if she moved to her right, he would step to his left. The last thing she wished was to be caught up in some awkward dance of moves and countermoves, one he seemed eager to engage in with her.
    “Impoverished daughter of the late Reverend James Marchant, Hampshire,” she said, raising her chin. “He also taught Latin to the village boys, if that doesn’t confuse the issue. In any case, fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. ”
    “‘Men willingly believe what they wish.’ Julius Caesar. So you’re a bluestocking, as well. No wonder he steers clear. Very well, you may go.”
    Mailer; he meant Lord Mailer. Daisy, not about to pretend she didn’t understand who he was, was instead about to point out that Mr. Redgrave did not have charge of either her comings or her goings. She quickly thought better of it. The man was already too interested by half, not that she could understand why. None of Mailer’s other guests these past months had ever paid her the least attention.
    “Thank you, sir,” she said, curtsying yet again, hoping there was no sarcastic edge to her voice.
    But as she moved to make good her exit he grabbed at her elbow, eased closer. She looked up into his odd amber eyes, and nearly flinched. She could see flecks of gold in them, and the intelligence, the humor. “You’re more than welcome, Daisy. It’s too late now, but in hindsight, considering the man doesn’t have a discerning hair on his solid-as-a-plank head, do you ever think those hideous spectacles