"No." A troubled thought shadowed Edith's soft features. "The gentleman asked to see you alone for a few minutes. He said he had news regarding your future.

"I'm thinking--that is, I'm hoping--he might be a lawyer sent from London with word of a lost entailment. Perhaps a little forgotten keepsake from your dear mother to act as a dowry. I only wish I had something more to give you myself, but it's all long since bespoke."

Rhiannon took Edith's hands. "You've already given me more than I can ever repay."

Flustered, Edith twitched Rhiannon's jacket shoulders into alignment. "Go on, now! I'll be here waiting when you come out." She opened the door and pushed Rhiannon inside.

A man sprawled in Squire Fraiser's favorite chair, one foot stretched out before him, the other bent at the knee, his fingers laced over his flat stomach. He gazed out the window, his face averted. All she could see of his head was a carelessly pulled back tail of coal black hair tied with a limp ribbon.

He wore a coat of deep burgundy velvet, a white linen shirt beneath it. Brussels lace fell gracefully over the first knuckles of his long, lean fingers, and more lace cascaded beneath his chin. His breeches were tight and made of tawny doeskin. His dark leather boots climbed past his knees and were folded in cuffs over his muscular thighs. The tip of his sword, sheathed in a leather scabbard and hanging from his belt, touched the floor beside him.

He would have been exquisite had he not been so disheveled. The burgundy coat was dusty and the faded linen shirt went wide of being pristine. The lace of one sleeve, delicate as gossamer, was ripped and soiled. His boots werestained and scarred and the scabbard containing his sword was likewise ill-used.

He did not look like any lawyer Rhiannon's imagination would have conjured.

A bit of pique flavored Rhiannon's curiosity. A gentleman-- particularly a London gentleman--visiting the Fraiser's home should have stopped at The Ploughman's Inn to repair the damage travel had caused. But then, honesty goaded her generous mouth into a smile; a lady receiving a gentleman should have paused to repair the damage a hunt had caused.

He turned his head carefully, as if he were concerned to startle her and she thus knew that he'd been allowing her time to assess him. He looked tired, worn too thin and used too roughly. His eyes were jetty dark, the brows above slanting like black wings, but the skin beneath them looked bruised. He sported an old-fashioned clipped beard amidst the shadows of lean, unshaven cheeks, and his skin was very pale and very fine and somehow fragile.

Fleeting emotion, subtle and reserved, flickered over his aquiline features.

"Rhiannon Russell, I presume?" His voice was baritone and suave. He didn't bother to rise and his pose remained preternaturally still, like a cat at a mouse hole, watchful but not hungry--not yet.

"Yes." She became unaccountably aware of the hair streaming down her back, the sweat and grime from her leather gloves embedded beneath her short nails, and the mud splattering her bottle green skirt.

He rose. He was tallish and slender and his shoulders were very straight and broad. His mouth was kind but his eyes were not. His throat looked strong. The torn lace ending his shirtsleeves tangled in the carved gold setting of a great blue stone ring on his little finger. He flicked it away.

Even without the cachet of being a Londoner, the ladies of Fair Badden would have found him attractive, Rhiannon thought. Since he was from that great fabled city, they'd find him irresistible. Indeed, she herself could have found much to recommend in his black and white good looks . . . if she hadn't already succumbed to a golden- haired youth.

"You're not English."

"I am. A quarter," she said. "On my father's side."

"I wouldn't have guessed." Having spoken, he fell silent, studying her further.

She struggled to remember the lessons in courtesy Edith had instilled but none of them applied to meeting strange, elegantly shabby young men alone in her foster father's library.

"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, sir," she finally ventured.

"Could I only be so fortunate as to claim as much with all my acquaintances," he said and then, "but didn't Mrs. Fraiser inform you of my name?"

"No," Rhiannon said. "Mrs. Fraiser has no head for names, unless they're the names of unscrupulous tradesmen. She only said that you'd come from London to see me and that you had news regarding my future."

"I am Ash Merrick." He sketched an elegant bow, his watchfulness becoming pronounced now, as if his name should mean something to her, and when he saw that it did not, he went on. "The name Merrick is not familiar to you?"

She cast about cautiously in her mind and found nothing there to trigger a memory. "No," she said. "Should it?"

His mouth stretched into a wide grin. It was a beautiful smile, easy and charming, but it never quite reached his eyes. "Perhaps," he said, "since it's the name of your guardian."