Lady Hermione giggled. She dropped her voice confidingly, though it still came through clear enough as she moved closer to the dressing room. "Major Sturgeon is going to come as a sultan; he told me so. And here, I've just the thing to make you into a veiled sultana from a harem! See this blue and green gauze? Even Dolly agreed it would be perfect. Will wonders never cease?"

Trev moved back quickly, seeing the dressing room knob turn. He was just contemplating how fast he could open the window and leap out when Callie said in a hurried voice, "Yes, of course, that's lovely! Is Anne in your room? Let's go there and measure. It's half dusk with this weather, and the light is so much better on your side."

"You'll wear it, then?" Lady Hermione let go of the door knob with a gay laugh. "Come, it won't take a moment, and then you may go back to dreaming of how you'll arrange the cattle sheds on your new home farm. I vow, I can't think for wonder at it all. Sir Thomas has said I may fit up his town house just as I please. We'll have our own homes, and I can bring the children to visit you in the country, and…" Her

naïvely happy voice faded as the outer door closed behind them.

Callie didn't speak to him or acknowledge his presence when she returned from her sister's bedchamber. Trev stayed discreetly out of sight in the dressing room, brushing up on animal husbandry in the unlikely event he should ever have reason to deliver a calf or cure the gripes, and wondering how he had allowed his life to sink to this point. He did not care for the idea of costumes of veiled harem girls and Callie playing sultana to Sturgeon's sultan. For one thing, it made him imagine her wrapped in sparkling blue gauze that grew more and more transparent the more he thought about it, until he was strongly in the mood to visit a harem himself. For another, he was going to strangle Sturgeon with his own turban.

And now Sidmouth of all people would be in the house, along with some army of undersecretaries, any one of whom might have seen Trev at his trial. Not that he wouldn't mind having a few pointed words with the Lord Secretary. He'd understood the deal to be that he'd receive a full pardon in return for putting up no defense—but when the royal pardon came down from the king's council, signed by Sidmouth, it was conditional and made an explicit point that he'd leave the country or hang. Trev had never met the Home Secretary, but he wondered if the fellow had something in for him. A bad bet, perhaps, or a fixed match that he blamed on Trev or the Rooster. Or perhaps he simply believed Trev was guilty.