"Lady Callista?" he asked in a voice of low surprise.

She thought desperately of pretending she had not heard him over the music. But she remembered his voice. It was the same timbre, full of warmth. Evidently it still had the same dire effect on her senses.

"Come, I know it's you," he said gently. He sat down beside her. "I can see a stray lock peeking out from under that prodigious lovely turban."

She drew a deep breath. "No, can you? And I was so hoping to be taken for a Saracen." She tucked at the nape of her neck without looking at him.

"You've mislaid your camel, it would appear. How do you do, Callie? I must say, I didn't expect to find you here in Shelford, of anyone."

She found enough courage to lift her head. "You've come to see your mother," she said. "I am so glad."

He returned a sober man's look, a stranger, no longer the wild boy who had been careless of any burden. His dark eyes did not smile at her. She saw in a short look that he had a scar on his left cheekbone, and a little crooked bump to his nose that she did not remember. The marks only served to make him appear more an untamed gypsy than ever, even severe and stiff in his formal clothes.

"I've come to her, yes," he said. He paused, tilting his head a fraction. "But you—I thought you must have left Shelford long ago."

"Oh no, I have clung here like a limpet." She opened her fan and closed it again.

There was a little silence between them, filled with the violins and the dancers' noise and prattle.

"You have not married?" he asked quietly.

Somehow, Callie had supposed the news that she had been jilted three times must have reached the farthest corners of the earth. It was certainly common knowledge everywhere she had ever set foot. But it seemed that France had been spared the intelligence.

"Indeed no," she said, looking up at him fully for the first time. "I don't propose to marry."

He would find out the truth soon enough. She could not bring herself to mention it. But at the way his eyebrows lifted, she suddenly feared he might think it was because she still bore some strong feeling for him—and that was worse.

"I've become quite celebrated, you see," she said, f luttering her fan. "I have driven no less than three terrified gentlemen from the altar, not counting yourself. I don't tally you in my record keeping, but if you would like to do me the honor and then break it off, it would add immeasurably to my eminence. Four would be a nice round number."

He seemed slow to comprehend her. "Four?" he asked blankly.

"That is the sum of one and three," Callie said, beating her fan with a nervous velocity. "Unless there has been some recent alteration in events."