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drizzle. Inside, Claire and Beth chattered excitedly, watched over by Twindle, the now elderly governess who had joined the family with the advent of Claire's mother and stayed on in the face of that lady's demise. Sitting beside Claire on the worn plush seat that, despite all their efforts to freshen it, still smelled faintly musty, Gabby smiled when necessary and looked out the window at the boggy moor they were leaving behind. The soaked heath, gray sky, and unceasing rain were as familiar to her as the confines of Hawthorne Hall, she realized, and as surprisingly dear. She had known no other home, and it cost her a pang to realize that, however this game played out, her future, and that of her sisters, in all likelihood lay elsewhere.
    Having made up her mind to seize the day while she could, she had suffered sleepless nights and many qualms of conscience ever since. The wrongness of what she was doing unsettled her; but to allow her sisters to suffer for want of a little resolution was, in her estimation, more wrong still. She quieted her conscience by reminding herself that, even if something did not happen to bring the whole scheme tumbling down around her ears, she did not mean to keep up the pretense forever; as soon as Claire was safely married she meant to "receive word" of Marcus's death, and then the sham would come to an end. How wrong could what was actually no more than buying a little time to get themselves creditably established be?
    "Is your leg paining you, Gabby?" Claire asked, turning her attention to her older sister as Beth was now engaged in a spirited discussion with Twindle over the sights that it might be proper for a very young lady to visit while in London. Astley's Ampitheatre and the beasts at the Royal Exchange were, in Twindle's judgment, just passably acceptable. Covent Garden— "…and how you came to be knowing of that place, Miss Beth, I can't begin to think…" was definitely not. Having grown accustomed over the years to Gabby's infirmity— indeed, she and Beth never even thought of it as such; Gabby's damaged leg was as much an accepted part of her as her straight-as-a-horse's-tail hair— Claire didn't sound overly concerned.
    "Was I frowning, to make you think so?" Gabby asked lightly, summoning a smile. "My leg is fine. I was just running over a list of all I have to do when we reach London."
    "Do you think Aunt Salcombe will consent to sponsor Claire, Gabby?" Beth broke off her conversation with Twindle to ask with a worried frown. Although too young herself to partake of the pleasures of balls and routs and evenings spent at such fabled bastions of the haute ton as Almack's, she had entered into the preparations for Claire's come-out with gusto.
    "I can't say for certain, of course, but I am hopeful that she will. After all, she did invite me to make my come-out under her aegis when I turned eighteen, saying that, as she had no children of her own, she would adore to present her niece to the ton. And you are as much her niece as I am, and a far better prospect to make a splash." This last Gabby, with a twinkle, directed to Claire. What she forebore to add was that, when the invitation had arrived all those years ago, she had been over the moon at the prospect of a London season, until her father had laughed and said that obviously his sister Augusta did not realize that her eldest niece was now a cripple and would disgrace her in any ballroom which was unfortunate enough to suffer her presence. Gabby had not been privileged to see what the earl had replied to his sister, but the invitation had been turned down and never repeated. Crushed at first, Gabby had come to realize, in retrospect, that it was probably for the best. She could not have left Claire and Beth, then eleven and eight, with no one but Twindle and Jem to buffer them from their father's excesses even for the few months of a single season, and to have abandoned them forever via marriage, which was, after all, the