It would keep other thoughts at bay too. Thoughts about how he'd deserted her after he'd made love to her and about killing Sturgeon for any excuse he could come up with. The sort of thoughts that had kept him drinking in a gin house until he'd missed his ship sailing. He surprised himself. Usually he was more successful at such things as leaving his past and all its strings behind him.

The same old argument began to play in his mind. What was best for her against what he wanted, which was to be with her, even if it was just hiding out in her dressing room while she was engaged to another man. When he got to the part about smuggling her aboard a ship with him while they left the country for France, where he would show her conclusively that he'd lied about everything from the evil Buzot to the coach and six and the restored château—at that point, when he was wishing heartily for another bottle of gin, his unpleasant ref lections were interrupted by a soft rap on the closet door and Callie's hissed warning to him to stay concealed.

He grew still, listening to the sounds of a girlish voice begging entry to Callie's bedroom. Trev laid his ear to the door. After the thumps and creaks of entry—she did have an inconveniently creaky f loor, he noted with exasperation—he heard Lady Hermione say, "Are you feeling better? Can you let Anne make her measures? Because she'll be sewing half the night as it is, you know, to have a costume ready for you by tomorrow."

"Oh dear," Callie said, her voice muff led, "I'd forgot about the masquerade. Really, I—"

"Don't say you won't appear!" her sister said plead ingly. "Please. It will be great fun, you'll see. And Sir Thomas has had the greatest news! Lord Sidmouth himself is to come! Right here to Shelford Hall to attend the masquerade."

"Lord Sidmouth?" Callie asked in a blank voice. "Why is he to come?"

"Callie." Hermione took on the tone of a patient but prodded teacher. "He's the Lord Secretary of the Home Office," she explained, as if speaking to a dull but beloved child. "And it's the greatest honor, because he's frightfully busy with convicts and laws and the king and all that, so he almost never leaves London. I daresay he'll bring a hundred undersecre taries with him. Sir Thomas is in alt!"

"Oh," Callie said. Then she seemed to catch on to the matter. "Oh, these are his colleagues from the Home Office?"

"Yes, so you see what an honor it is. He says that it almost certainly means he'll be advanced in the next election."

"That's excellent news," Callie said. "A hundred undersecretaries."