"Yes," she said, her voice catching.

"I'll be taking you back to your chambers tonight."

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him. "Yes," she whispered. "Oh—yes."

Rafe stared unseeing at the stage. He had the night to convince her that they were suited in the most important of ways. Then, after she was his in all the ways that counted, he could tell her who he was. A slow smile spread across his face. Rafe may not have had much practice in the last few years, but if there was one thing in his life that he had no doubt about, it was his ability to make a woman happy. Thinking about it, he reached out and pulled Imogen closer, as close as those red velvet chairs would allow.

Meanwhile, the panto continued unabated. Widow Trankey had most of her pies back now. She'd decided that since she no longer had enough to sell—and to her lamentation, they didn't look quite as fresh as they used to—she would use the rest to dispense with the wicked stepmother and her daughters. Because, as she announced, the prince was a bit on the slow side. The glass slipper had been sitting around the palace for a day or two, and the lummox didn't seem to have a plan. He should be out trundling around in a glass coach and finding Cinderella but—just like a man—he was slow. Slow!

Doesn't know what side his bed is buttered on, she said.

"Yes!" roared the crowd.

"Now if he were a man with a nobler… flame," Widow Trankey shouted.

"Yes!" roared the crowd. Rafe didn't even hear it. Imogen's mouth was so sweet, so soft, and so delicious that he could have stayed there all night.

"If he were a man who felt no shame," the Widow declared.

"Yes!" roared the crowd.

"He wouldn't need me to help him out, would he?"

"No!" cried the lady in the purple bonnet, and all her immediate neighbors.

And then, though neither Rafe or Imogen saw it, Widow Trankey's eye was caught by a pair in his audience: by a sailor and his moll, so taken up with each other that they really ought to be charging a peeper's fee.

Widow Trankey's real name was Tom, and he was a clown from a clowning family: a man whose clowning was part and parcel of his makeup and his inheritance. Mischief had been his middle name since he was a scrap of a lad and, besides, he knew a crowd pleaser when he saw it.

Indicating with the tiniest waggle of his eyebrows to his friend Cam (playing the evil stepmother for the evening) that he'd found a wonderful diversion, he changed the rhythm of the song a bit to suit the present circumstances.

"These days modesty has scarcely room to breathe," he bellowed.

The crowd happily followed along.

"Young girls are skilled in all sorts of debauches."

"Debauches!" roared the crowd.

"Even when they're supposed to be sitting in their Glass-Coaches."

The crowd affirmed his thought.

Slowly, slowly, he spun a finger around the room. "And the Widow must delouse the debauches wherever they may be…"

"Yes!" howled the crowd.

And that was when Tom let fly a very nice cream pie, one of the very best he had left. He gave it a little spin, so that it wouldn't hurt anyone. Up, up, up it arched.

The crowd gasped and screamed (depending on their proximity to the pie).

Only Rafe and Imogen said nothing, noticed nothing, heard nothing.

The pie spun lazily, and then (Tom sighed in relief: he had had a moment's fear that the pie would land on a nasty-faced matron a row too short—she was the type to get him keelhauled)… it came to rest, almost gently, on top of the two embracing lovers.

In fact, on the very top of their heads, as if the pan were a special sort of roof.

Tom wasn't a man without mercy. Before the couple could recover their wits, he had three other pies spinning into the audience, enlivening the shrieking, delighted crowd.

Chapter 26

Loving Fools are Created Every Day

Gabriel Spenser was in a restless frame of mind. He had gone up to the nursery to check on Mary and all was as it should be. She was lying facedown in her crib, with her round little bottom humped in the air.

"Won't that injure her neck?" he asked Mary's new nursemaid, as he tried to rearrange his daughter into a better sleeping position.

"Never has," Mrs. Blessams said, her knitting needles clicking in the quiet. She was everything that a nursemaid ought to be: cheerful, efficient, and all-knowing. "I've raised babies that slept on their faces, and those that slept on their little bums."

Gabe felt useless. He had enjoyed carrying Mary around in the crook of his arm, and she seemed to like it.

But today he'd come up twice to find her playing quietly on the floor, and although she instantly brightened and crawled over to him, he hardly felt that she needed him.

So he didn't bring her down to lunch, because likely Mrs. Blessams would think it was an odd thing to do. Everyone knew that fathers didn't belong in a nursery. Nor did they carry their daughters around the house. Children stayed in the nursery and made occasional, formal visits to the drawing room.

Of course, his mother had been different. He could only suppose it was because her position kept her isolated from society. She used to come to the nursery and read him books. He did remember a nurse, but what he mostly remembered was his mother.

He couldn't seem to pull himself away from Mary's crib. "Mrs. Blessams, you may fetch a cup of tea from the kitchen," he said, over his shoulder. "I'll wait here with Mary."

Mrs. Blessams blinked up at him. "That's very kind of you, Mr. Spenser, but that nice girl Bess will bring me a cup on the dot of ten, so there's no need to worry yourself."

The image of himself snatching Mary out of her crib and holding her faded from Gabe's mind.

She was damnably efficient, this Mrs. Blessams.

"Of course," Mrs. Blessams said, coming to her feet, "if you really wouldn't mind watching the babe for a matter of a few minutes, I would be grateful for a small respite."

"I'd be happy to," Gabe said.

The moment the door was closed, he picked up Mary as carefully as he could, making sure that all her little blankets came with her. Then he sat down before the fire and arranged her in the crook of his arm. She stirred a little and threw a tiny arm over her head. She was so beautiful that she made his heart ache.

Mrs. Blessams came back long before he wished to put Mary back in her bed.

"She'll be waking up for a bit of a feed soon," Mrs. Blessams said. She didn't flicker an eyelash at seeing him there with Mary, and Gabe was grateful for that. "I'll just wake her night nurse. That young woman sleeps as soundly as a log."

So he handed Mary over, still sleeping, and closed the door behind him. He didn't feel like sleeping. Rafe was out somewhere, festooned in a mustache and pretending to be him. One could suppose that therefore he, Gabe, should pretend to be the duke. In reality, he had retired to his room directly after the evening meal.

He wandered down the great staircase, wondering what it would have been like to have been born legitimately into the house of Holbrook. Gabriel Jourdain rather than Gabriel Spenser.

The great entryway was shadowy and empty, but for a dozing footman who jerked himself upright, and said, "Good evening, sir."