“Thank you, Dottie. I appear to be holding a levee,” she remarked pointedly.

“I’ll put the flowers in water, Miss Petra. Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I’m getting up in a minute. Would you run me a bath?”

Dottie curtsied and left with the freesias. Her mistress was more than adequately chaperoned by her brother, not to mention her two friends.

“So, how is Charlie?” Petra asked directly.

“In pain, too much to be moved just yet, much to his sister’s annoyance. But the doctor set the arm this morning and there’s no infection in the wound so far. He’s sedated and I hope sleep and quiet will work its healing magic,” Guy told her. “How are your bruises and scrapes, dear girl?”

“Tiresome,” she responded. “But I intend to get up.” The statement sounded more like a challenge, she thought, as if she was expecting Guy to object. Which was silly, she told herself. He had no right to object, no say at all in any decisions she made for herself. Still she caught herself waiting for an objection.

“I’m sure you know best,” he said easily. “I’ll leave you to your toilette, then.” He moved away to the door. Joth said quickly, “I have to be somewhere too, Petra, but I can come back later if you need company.”

“No, I won’t need company,” she reassured him, waving him away with a smile.

The door closed on the two men and Petra had the oddest sensation of an absence in the air, a void left by Guy’s departure. Perhaps she’d hit her head last night without noticing and now she was hallucinating.

“Guy seems quite at home in your bedroom,” Diana observed with a wicked smile. “You certainly seem remarkably at ease with each other now.”

Petra grimaced. “He just seems to take over,” she said. “I don’t think it ever occurs to him that he might be unwelcome, or that perhaps it’s not a good time. . . .” She sighed. “I don’t quite know how to explain it. Guy Granville is a force in his own right.”

Fenella gave her a shrewd look. “Maybe it’s my imagination but you don’t seem to be fighting against that force with much conviction, dearest.”

“It doesn’t seem to do any good,” Petra said flatly, still keeping her own counsel on the subject of her own physical responses to the force that was Lord Ashton.

“Was it like that ten years ago?” Diana asked.

“I was too young to realize what was going on,” Petra answered. “I thought he was wonderful, God’s gift specially to me. Of course I followed his lead, hanging on his every word. And he seems to think nothing’s changed and I’m supposed to be still like that.”