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“It’s delightful,” Tom barked, embarrassed. Meggin had inched forward and was stretching one dirty finger toward the white fuzzy stuff that edged Lina’s jacket. “I came to request your assistance.”

Lina raised an eyebrow. “You’d better come in, then. These shoes are the very devil to stand in, and ’tis against the nature of my sex to stand, anyway.”

Tom followed her, trying to sort that out. Why not stand? Could she possibly have meant a joke on a man standing? Or rather, parts of a man, standing? Surely not. He must have misheard. Perhaps she was simply referring to her shoes.

Meggin followed Lina into the room as closely as she could, still touching her jacket. “It’s swansdown,” Lina told her briskly. “You may touch it as long as you don’t soil it.”

“May I borrow your lady’s maid until Leke hires a temporary nursemaid?”

“I don’t have a maid,” she said, slipping into a seat next to the fireplace.

“You don’t?” His mother had employed two personal maids.

“I had one when I first arrived, but I decided I could do without her. She didn’t really approve of my situation.” She wrinkled her nose. Her eyes were merry, and not at all bitter. “I always managed to dress myself at home, after all.”

“Where is home?” Tom asked. “Do you mind if I seat myself as well?”

“A long way away, alas,” she said, and it was as if a curtain fell over her face. “Now how can I possibly help you, Mr. Holland?”

“Meggin needs a wash, and I don’t think she’ll feel comfortable with me.”

“Probably not,” Lina murmured. She looked down at the little girl. “I suppose I could supervise a bath.”

Tom was looking around the chamber. If he hadn’t known it was his mother’s bedchamber, he’d have never recognized it, hung with rosy silk as if it were the inside of a sea shell. It didn’t look like a strumpet’s boudoir, not that he had personal acquaintance with such a room. There weren’t any portraits of naked gods and goddesses, or anything else to signal that Lina was a kept woman. Damn his brother, anyway.

Lina stood up, unbuttoning her jacket and tossing it on the bed. She wore a shirt of thin muslin, which made it obvious that she was graced with one of the most glorious bosoms Tom had ever seen, with a sweet little waist that curved in and then out. He had to take a deep breath. He hadn’t had a woman since he became a vicar. It wasn’t for want of desire, either, for all his father used to call him a molly. But a vicar who happened to be the younger son of an earl, and possessor of a large private income inherited from his mother, learns very quickly to avoid conversation with unmarried women unless he can countenance marrying them. He had a deep-down, abiding respect for the vows of marriage, and the vows he had made when he entered the churchhood, which prevented him from frivolous flirtations—or worse. I’m not in tune with the age, he thought ruefully. Lina’s breasts strained in the thin muslin of her shirt as she bent toward Meggin and said something into the little girl’s ear.

“Perhaps I will leave,” he suggested. He had to get out of the room. One glance at his breeches and the oh-so-experienced Lina would know exactly how he was reacting to her presence. “I’ll send a footman with a tub of hot water,” he said, hand on the door.

He turned to watch, just for a second.

Lina had managed to coax Meggin’s dirty pinafore over her head by giving her a swansdown tippet to hold. Meggin was stroking the tippet with an expression of utter bliss, and rubbing it against her face. Lina didn’t seem to mind. She had got out a brush and was making a determined assault on Meggin’s tangled curls. And all the time she talked, a low stream of chattering, joking conversation that continued even though Meggin didn’t reply.

Her accent was unmistakable. Rees’s little songbird, as he called her, was indeed from a long way away: Scotland. Tom stored away that scrap of information, and went to order a tub and buckets of hot water.

It was to be a council of war, if held in Helene’s mother’s elegant drawing room. Something along the lines of the Council of Vienna, Helene thought to herself, and Rees was their renegade Napoleon. If only Rees would go live on an island somewhere…Elba would be perfect.

She moved a plate of gingerbread cakes away from the edge of the table and fussed with the linens for a moment. At least she didn’t have to tell her mother. Of course, she didn’t have to tell anyone. She could change her mind.

Too late. Esme rustled into the room. She was supremely elegant, wearing a morning frock of Italian crepe with a painted border of shells. An exquisite little reticule decorated with the same shells dangled from her wrist.

“Darling, you just caught me!” she said. “I am on my way to Madame Rocque’s establishment. And I mustn’t miss my appointment; I have nothing to wear, and from what I hear, Madame Rocque is being barraged with requests, entirely due to your successes! I have no doubt but that half the women in London are hopeful that a gown fashioned by Madame Rocque will ensure them attention from the Earl of Mayne.”

“That’s a lovely gown,” Helene said.

“I had to dress to impress,” Esme explained. “I’m afraid that if I don’t appear a veritable blaze of fashion, Madame Rocque will fulfill other requests before mine.”

At that moment Gina rushed in. She looked the opposite of Esme; her hair was rather more disarranged than fashionable, and she was wearing a Pomeranian mantle that was supposed to be worn over a ballgown, rather than a walking costume. “I’m here!” she called. Then she collapsed into a chair. “Barely. I’m afraid that I find child-rearing a detriment to the normal business of paying morning calls.”

Helene poured her a cup of tea. “I do apologize for summoning you both to my house at such short notice,” she said apologetically.

“Never mind that,” Esme said. “Tell us all!”

“Rees arrived after you left yesterday morning. He frightened away all my callers—”

Esme’s deep chuckle punctuated the sentence.

“And told me that he wants me to move back into the house.”