They could be friends. He truly wished for that. A friend would enter into her obvious distress with real sympathy, the way she had instantly come to his aid with his mother. He tried to summon words of kind ness for her father's death, but they were not there. The only sort of words that came to him were sarcastic comments on just how pleased the old man would doubtless be to see her walking with him now.

Finally he said, "I'm sure you miss your father." It came out more stiff ly than he wished, but he had said it.

"Yes," she said. "Very much."

"He cared a great deal about your welfare."

"Oh yes," she said.

Trev hoped that was sufficient. He bewildered himself with the fresh rage that overcame him. He had no right to it, as he had no real right to tease and f lirt with Callie when he could go no further. Her father had rejected him as a penniless nobody of unsteady character, and that was in Trev's respect able days. Now he was one step ahead of the hang man's noose.

"He was very disappointed when I didn't marry," she said, so softly that he could barely hear. "He wished very much for that."

"Ah," Trev said. His rage found a new object: these three silly sods who had jilted her. He walked along for a few moments, all tame in his gentleman guise, gazing at wildf lowers and trying to think of a kindly and understanding response. With sudden ferocity, he uttered, "I'd like to kill them all for you."

She gave him a startled glance. Then she laughed, causing the trace of a tear to tumble down her cheek. The sound made his heart rise amazingly.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed. "I've been so vexed that I can't do it myself!"

He took deep pleasure in the happy crinkle that appeared at the corner of her eyes. "Only tell me who they are," he said, giving her a little bow. "I'm wholly at your service."

She sniffed and smiled. "Perhaps it wouldn't be quite the thing," she said. "It would cause a vast increase in the number of widows and orphans in the country."

"Reproducing themselves rapidly, are they? Just what the world needs, more bloody fools. I'd best set about eliminating them without delay."

She giggled, with a little hiccup of a sob. "Trev," she said, holding his arm with her gloved hand.

No more than that. Just his name. She looked up sideways at him under her hat, that shy, half-laughing look that had always made him want to pull her down in a rick of new hay and tumble her under him and do lustful and luxurious things amid that sweep of loosened coppery hair.

"We'll start with Number One," he said. "He should be skewered first, for setting a bad example to the rest."

"Major Sturgeon," she said readily.

"Sturgeon," he repeated. "Sturgeon, as in the fish?"