Callie gave a stif led giggle behind her gloves. 'Yes, I was, ma'am,' she admitted, lowering her hands. 'But no one noticed me, I assure you.'
His mother looked at her with interest. 'And what… became of the baboon?'
'Oh, Trevelyan made sure he was all right,' Callie said. 'They had been going to make the creature fight with a poor little monkey, but they both got away.'
Trev chuckled. 'A fine chase those two led us!'
'Oh yes. If not for that peculiar old gentleman you knew, no one would ever have caught them. But he was a marvelous handler of monkeys! It was quite astonishing, ma'am. He coaxed the baboon right down from a cottage roof!'
His mother nodded wisely. 'How fortunate that my son… acquaints himself with marvelous… handlers of monkeys.'
'Indeed it was, ma'am,' Callie agreed. 'But Trev was used to know all sorts of…' She trailed off suddenly, looking conscious.
'Riffraff?' his maman supplied in a helpful tone.
'The old fellow was perfectly respectable, I promise you.' Trev gave Callie a wink. 'For a gypsy, at any rate. I daresay they're dancing for coins to this day with him.'
Callie smiled up at him warmly. He cleared his throat, having provided his maman with far more fodder for her impossible hopes than was prudent, and added regretfully, 'But it's true, my lady-I suppose you could not consider such an unseemly trick now.'
'Seigneur!' his mother chided. She leaned on the arm of her chair, looking less vigorous than she had a few moments earlier. But she said with staunch effort, 'Lady Callista… is not… so poor-hearted… as that, I am sure.'
Callie observed his mother with a worried expression. 'But I am poor-hearted. Oh my. But I suppose…'
'It's in a humanitarian cause,' Trev offered when she hesitated.
She glanced askance at him. 'What humanitarian cause?'
'To save my skin.'
'Ah,' his mother said, breathing with difficulty. She was clearly losing strength. 'I do hope you will… rescue his… shameless skin, my lady. As a particular favor… to me.'
Callie sat still, an array of emotions passing in f leet succession across her face. Then she stood up. 'Yes, ma'am. I'll do what I can. But will you give me permission to ring for the nurse and lie down now?'
The duchesse smiled feebly. 'Yes, I think that might be… wise.'
'I don't see how this can possibly succeed,' Callie said, tossing more hay into Hubert's pile. She put down the pitchfork and dusted her gloves. 'How is a drover to walk him to Hereford, out and about on the public roads where everyone can see?'
'You say he'll do anything for Bath buns?' Trev's voice came to her hollowly through the spaces between the boards in the loft.
She looked up, squinting against a little fall of straw. 'I believe he would,' she admitted. 'Particularly if they're stuffed with white currants.'
'Then I'll get him there.'
She wished to argue, but now that she had agreed to this outlandish scheme he seemed to be exceptionally reticent about the particulars, a circumstance which only heightened her anxiety. 'And when he arrives?' she asked. 'What then?'
'That puts me in mind of something,' he said, his disembodied voice still muff led. 'Do you have a chamber bespoke in Hereford?'
'Yes. We always stay at the Green Dragon.'
'Where is it?'
'It's just in the middle of Broad Street, where the show is held.'
'Good. How many nights do you stay?' he asked.
'I'd intended to stay all three.'
'And who goes with you?'
Callie hesitated and shrugged. 'No one.'
'No one?' He sounded surprised.
'My father and I used to go together every year.' She ran her gloved hand over Hubert's poll, stroking him. 'But no one else has very much interest in a cattle show. Lady Shelford doesn't like it, but she didn't forbid me. So… this is the first year I'll go alone.'
The boards creaked. He came to the edge of the loft and knelt down. 'You won't be alone,' he said with a slight smile.
She lifted her lashes. In the dusky light of the stable, his rumpled neck cloth and open shirt points made him appear carelessly dashing, like a dark poet or some hero from a novel. She always felt as if she were living inside a story when she was with Trev, swept along on the excitement of some plot outside her own making.
'You'll bring an abigail, won't you?' he asked.
'Oh yes, of course.' She awoke from the brief reverie that he had meant she wouldn't be alone, because he would be there. 'Though-' She remem bered that she hadn't yet lit upon on a substitute for the lady's maid that she and Hermione shared. She stopped gazing up like a moonling into his face and busied herself with arranging the pitchfork on a hook. 'Well, I must have someone, at any rate. Hermey needs Anne at home for the next fortnight, what with all the callers and visitations. Sir Thomas is taking her on a number of outings, and Lady Shelford has invited a great crowd of people for the hunting and a masquerade ball or some such.' She sighed. 'It's so difficult now to keep staff. I don't require anyone with experience. I might even borrow Lilly now that your mother has a nurse, if Mrs. Adam will spare her to me.'
'Perfect,' he said with a grin. He rose and vanished again, keeping watch from some hole in the loft in case Major Sturgeon should return.
Callie looked down at her toes. It really was quite all right. They would have one last lark and save his skin, and then… the rest of her life, she supposed.
She pulled her gloves on tightly. 'I should go,' she said, taking up a notch in her horse's girth. 'He'll be quiet now until this hay is gone. But be sure to keep a full manger and a bucket of water in front of him.'
'We will. The lane's empty if you make haste. Wait-do you still have that medicine box in your cattle barn?'
She paused, holding the reins in her hand as she looked up at the loft. They'd used to use the medicine box as their secret place to exchange messages. 'Yes, it's there.'
He made a satisfied sound. 'Check it every morning.'
'What of the key?'
For a long moment there was silence. Then he said quietly, 'I still have it.'
Callie stood looking up at the bits of straw and cobwebs that dangled from the boards. She swallowed a slight, strange ache in her throat, anticipation and pleasure and pain all mixed, and turned away.
'Can you use the mounting block?' he asked, his voice oddly gruff.
'Yes, of course.' She didn't look back, though she heard his boots hit the dirt of the stable f loor as she led her horse outside.
'You'll have a message from me,' he murmured. The door closed behind her with a wooden growl and thump.
Being cordially disliked by Lady Shelford did not afford Callie any relief from attending the teas, dinners, and house parties that the countess-once released from the punctilious obligations of mourning-had begun to host at Shelford Hall. This unaccustomed invasion of county society was only slightly less daunting, in Callie's view, than the full round of gaiety in London during the season, but somehow she was a little less reticent than usual. When she found herself feeling intimidated amid a group of strangers, she thought of Trev feeding Hubert a tomato and grinning at her in the demolished kitchen of Dove House, and her lips would curl upward in a smile that seemed to make some guest smile back at her, and they would exchange a word or two, which was more pleasant than she would have expected in the circumstances.
She had never been obliged to suffer such a bustle of social doings at her home before. After harvest time, autumn and winter at Shelford had always been quiet. Though the Heythrop country was near enough for convenience, her father had held mixed opinions regarding foxhunting. He was by no means averse to the destruction of foxes, but he had the inborn objection of a true farmer to seeing his fences and cattle overrun by cavalcades of youngbloods on their bang-up high-bred hunters. So there had never been any proper hunting parties held at Shelford, only a few of her father's close friends who stabled their extra mounts there when the stalls were full at Badminton, and stayed over a day or two from time to time when they came to retrieve their second string.
Now, though, with the end of cub hunting and the true season about to begin, Lady Shelford seemed to have enticed half the nobility to what she fondly referred to as her family's ancestral seat. Callie tried not to feel offended by this description of Shelford Hall. It was true of course that the property now belonged to Cousin Jasper, and thus to his wife, and eventually to their eldest son, though an heir had not yet been produced. Indeed, the Taillefaires did not seem prolific of sons in their recent generations. Callie's own father had outlived three wives without procuring a boy for his trouble-and trouble it had been, from what Callie recalled. Once he had even said to her, with some anguish, that he would have been glad to leave her the whole if he might, for she was as fine a successor as any man could hope for, and then he could have done without these plaguey women upsetting everything with their vapors.
Callie had smiled at that but never allowed herself to lose sight of the fact that she would be leaving Shelford Hall. If there had been more fond ness between them, she might have remained as a companion to Lady Shelford, one of those maiden aunts who made conversation over the needlework and doted on the children, but no one had ever contemplated that notion for more than an instant. In truth, if Callie must dote on someone else's offspring, she preferred her sister's, or even Major Sturgeon's, for that matter. The changed atmosphere at Shelford was already painful enough.
This evening it was a formal dinner party large enough to fill the entire long table in the dining room. Callie partook of the extravagant meal with stiff care, dreading to make some faux pas that would draw Dolly's attention to her. She impressed her dinner partner-some viscount or other-only with her silence. Amid the murmur of conversation, the candles and glitter of silver and diamonds, she indulged herself in imagining a dining
'Lady Callista?' Her dinner partner was standing, waiting to pull out her chair. Perforce, she took his arm and joined the guests in the drawing room.
Hermey had taken a place near the door with Sir Thomas, enjoying her time in the sun, accepting felic itations from some of the new arrivals who had been invited for the music after dinner. Callie had found her own brief betrothals and the attendant ceremonies to be excruciating, but clearly Hermey loved it. She readily offered
