“What do you mean, man, you’re not sure where they went? Either you know or you don’t. If you don’t, say so clearly.”

“What I meant,” Treble said humbly, “was that his lordship expressed the intention to travel to Bath—and of course your brother, my lord, was accompanying him. But the party may well have stopped at Singleton Manor, that would be the Earl of Slaslow’s other estate.”

“The party” Alex barked, “what is this, a summer parade? Are there women traveling with them?”

Treble cast his eyes on the marble floor at his feet, looking vainly for support. He looked up only to say, “I used the word loosely, my lord. The group consisted of the Earl of Slaslow and your brother. And—” he half mumbled, “there is also an acquaintance of your brother’s, a young female, my lord.”

It was Alex’s turn to lapse into silence. “Female” could mean only one thing: Patrick was transporting a ladybird with him. Nothing new there. Except that it meant Patrick had left a pregnant Charlotte alone in order to disport himself with a mistress. Treble shook with terror, seeing how the earl’s face seemed, impossibly, to grow even darker and more menacing.

“Did this—female— arrive with my brother?”

“Yes, my lord.” And when Alex stared at him, his eyes boring into his skull, Treble added uncomfortably, “The young woman arrived shortly after your brother and the master came from London; that is, I believe that the assignation was made in London and the young, uh, lady simply took a few days to pack. She is traveling with a good deal of clothing,” Treble said with feeling. It had taken his staff almost five hours to unload the trunks from the roof of the carriage; it was worse than receiving a duchess, in his opinion. The girl didn’t travel with her own sheets the way nobility did, but she had brought forty-eight hats, each in its own hatbox!

Alex turned his back with a curt thank you and walked back down the marble steps. Before him the sky was streaked a bitter orange color, layers of clouds stained by the setting sun. Alex stared at it blindly. He was beginning to have a very curious sense of uneasiness. Would Patrick have tired of Charlotte’s body so soon? He himself had had her, Alex thought savagely, for some three months and he knew with a deep inner certainty that he would have happily taken her body to bed with him for the next three—hell, the next thirty—years.

Perhaps Charlotte had cut off the affair. Perhaps Charlotte did love him, and she succumbed to Patrick only because she had lost her virginity to him. Alex scoffed at himself. What was he thinking? She slept with his brother for old times’ sake? Out of nostalgia?