For an instant she looked away again calmly, seeing only another smartly dressed gentleman who paused to watch the dancers. It was as if recognition struck her heart a moment late—a sudden rush of heat to her face, a squeezing of her throat. She found she could not catch her breath.

It was him.

She threw a panicked look toward him, knew it certainly, and then had nowhere at all to look or to run. She was alone on the wall of chairs. Mrs. Adam was vanished to the refreshment room, and everyone else danced. She stared down at her toes with desperate concentration, hoping and hoping and hoping that he would not recognize her.

He might not know her. She had not instantly recognized him. He was older. Of course he was older—one could hardly suppose that she herself had reached the advanced age of twenty-seven without him doing the same. In the first blink of a look, she had seen a dark-haired, handsome gentleman; it was only with her second panicked glance that she knew his face: sun-darkened and harder, all the smiling promise of youth matured to a striking man.

He stood with a quiet confidence, as if it did not concern him to arrive late and alone, or to receive no welcome. Any number of people here knew him, but no one had seen him yet, save Callie—none who acknowledged him, at least. He had been gone from the vicinity for nine years.

Callie fanned herself, staring at her lap. This was Mrs. Adam's news, of course. The carriage arrived for Madame de Monceaux. Her prodigal son had come home.

It was glad tidings. Callie was pleased for his mother. The poor duchesse had so longed for this, failing as she had been over the past year. She had clung to those infrequent letters from France, read them aloud over and over to Callie, and made them both laugh until Madame's cough overcame her and Callie took her leave.

For herself, Callie was terrified. Laugh she might over his written words—but she could hardly even breathe for the strange and sick feeling that she felt at the sight of him.

He might not even remember her. He had never mentioned her in his letters to his mother. Never asked after her, though he demanded to know how everyone else in Shelford fared in a long list of names and reminiscences, which showed that he had not forgot their small country lives while he consorted with kings and great people in Paris.

A pair of black evening shoes appeared in the limited range of her vision. She kept her face hidden down in her feathery fan and worked frantically with the catch on her bracelet, but the black shoes did not take the hint and move on. Closely fitted white trousers, the tail of a fine blue coat—she was so dizzy that she feared she might faint.