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where once a rich Turkey carpet would have kept the chill from Merrie’s feet. The Jacobean oak table beneath the mullioned windows had escaped the auctioneer’s hammer because of its somewhat battered condition, not so the heavy silver tray and the Chinese urns that once had graced its surface. Meredith was now inured to these reminders of her late husband’s profligacy, however, and ran soundlessly up the broad, curving staircase, along the minstrel’s gallery overlooking the hall, and into a large, front-facing bedchamber.
    â€œNan!” she exclaimed softly. “What are you thinking of?”
    The elderly woman asleep on a chintz-covered chaise longue started up, blinking in the light from Merrie’s lantern. “There you are at last, child,” she grumbled. “ ’Tis most inconsiderate in you to be this late. You know full well I cannot go to my rest until I know you are safe and in your bed.”
    â€œThat is such nonsense, Nan.” Meredith yanked off the knitted cap and sat on the bed to pull off her stockings. “What could possibly happen to me?”
    Nan raised eyes and hands heavenward. “Why, nothing at all, to be sure.” She poured water from a ewer into a matching porcelain basin. “ ’Tis but a bit o’ smuggling you’re about, after all, and the revenue’s only desperate to lay hands on you, after all. Why, of course there’s nothing to worry about, and I’m a foolish old woman who’s only nursed you from your cradle, which gives me no right nor cause for concern . . .”
    Meredith made no attempt to interrupt the flow, knowing that only thus would Nan manage to relieve her anxiety. The scolding continued unabated as the elderly maid helped her out of her clothes and into her nightgown, released the dark auburn hair from the tight knot that held the mass confined beneath the cap, and gave it the requisite hundred strokes despite Meredith’s pleading that the hour was too advanced for such niceties.
    â€œYou’ll not go to bed with your hair unbrushed, not while I have anything to say about it,” Nan declared. Eventually she released her and turned to pull back the covers on the four-poster bed.
    â€œI cannot imagine the day when you will not have something to say about it,” Lady Blake murmured, climbing meekly into bed. It was one thing to command a band of Cornish smugglers or to outwit a troop of revenue men, quite another to stand against Nan Tregaron when she was determined to have her way.

Chapter Two
    Lord Rutherford awoke to the rattle of curtain rings being drawn across brass rods. He opened his eyes onto sunlight and onto the wonderful image of Walter.
    â€œGad, but I’m glad to see you, man.” He hitched himself up against the carved headboard with a grimace. Walter regarded his lordship with wary concern, noting the countenance that was, as usual these days, somber, bearing none of its past humor or the signs of pleasurable anticipation in the new day. He also saw the sudden flash of pain in the gray eyes and drew his own conclusions. After yesterday’s overlong ride, followed by the damp discomforts of this house, it was no wonder the colonel’s shoulder was playing up.
    â€œIt was the devil’s own work to find this place, m’lord,” he said. “We’ll be moving on again, I suppose?” It was both question and statement, a technique of his batman’s with which Lord Rutherford was well acquainted. It allowed for the expression of Walter’s opinion, couched in the discreet language of servant to master.
    â€œYou don’t care for Mallory House then, Walter?” Damian swung his legs to the floor and looked around the chamber where thick dust coated every surface. “I’m given to understand Cousin Matthew died in this bed,” he remarked casually, thumping the pillows. A cloud of feathers rose in the mote-thickened