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looks of Thorndyke, she wouldn’t be.
    “Mrs. Linden to see his lordship, who already knows I’m here,
so that we’d all three of us be wasting our time pretending he doesn’t,” she
announced before Waters, who had quickly divested himself of her belongings and
was hurrying up the stairs after her, could open his mouth. “Just point me in
the right direction and you can go back to polishing the silver, or stealing it,
whichever pleases you.”
    The butler opened and closed his mouth a time or two before
drawing himself up even straighter than before and motioning to the pair of
closed doors to the left of the wide hallway.
    “Good. At least we’re done with foolishness,” Jessica declared,
her head positively spinning, and knowing she was being ridiculous. But as
ridiculousness seemed to be the order of the day, why should she attempt to put
a stop to it now?
    Of course, that left her with either throwing open the double
doors in some dramatic gesture of defiance or knocking on one of them and
waiting to be admitted. She probably should have thought of that. She probably
should give some thought to the embarrassing realization that she hadn’t been
thinking at all since first encountering the Earl of Saltwood, devil take his
hide.

CHAPTER THREE
    “A LLOW ME , MA ’ AM ,” Thorndyke said, stepping ahead of Jessica. He opened a single
door and stepped inside. “My lord? I’m happy to say, sir, Waters caught her for
you.” He then stepped back out and bowed her in, his smile and rather knowing
wink nearly causing her to trip over her own feet as she entered the drawing
room, only to be stopped again, this time by a pair of sniffing, tumbling
dogs.
    “Brutus! Cleo! Withdraw!”
    The dogs, large puppies, really, and of some indeterminate
breed, immediately turned their backs on her, to take up positions on either
side of the Earl of Saltwood, who was standing in the very center of the
enormous room, looking for all the world as if he’d only lately crawled out of
bed.
    Gone was the impeccable attire of the previous evening; this
was a gentleman at home, and making himself very much at home, indeed. Clad only
in buckskins and a white lawn shirt, and minus waistcoat, jacket and cravat, his
hair a tumble of dark curls, he held a glass of wine in one hand and something
rather limp and filthy in the other.
    “I was led to believe I was expected,” Jessica said, staring at
the limp and filthy thing. “Is that dead?”
    Gideon held up the object in question, which proved to be a
crude cloth replica of a rabbit, half its stuffing gone. Both dogs, still
sitting up smartly, began to whimper piteously, one of them wagging its tail so
violently its entire back end shook. “This? I’m merely training these two young
miscreants to avoid temptation.”
    Jessica eyed the back-end-wriggling dog. “I see. It’s always
good to avoid temptation. And how is that going?”
    “It could be better.” He tossed the rabbit in the general
direction of the windows as two canine heads whipped about to follow its arc of
flight. The whimpering increased. The dog on the left, the back-end wriggler,
began to inch across the carpet on its rump. “Brutus! Stay!”
    The dog looked to its master, its brown eyes eloquent with
pleading, before scooting sideways another inch.
    “St-ay,” Gideon warned again, dragging out the word.
    “It’s late for a wager, I know, but a fiver the male gives in
and the bitch stays put.”
    “Your blunt really just on Cleo, as that idiot Brutus probably
won’t last more than another ten seconds,” Gideon said, nodding.
    “Less. Ten seconds is an eternity. And the bitch resists.
That’s the wager.”
    The earl nodded. “All right. Done.”
    Brutus tried, he really did. His agony was palpable, his need
immense. He actually made it for another four seconds (Jessica counted them off
aloud), before he gave in to temptation and pounced on the rabbit.
    Cleo watched, yawned widely and then turned in a