But he didn't have time now to pursue this train of thought. He was playing host to Henry of France. He looped the sheath of his dagger over his belt, settled it on his hip, and went downstairs, composing his expression to one of genial hospitality.

Imogen was in the dining room with their guests, looking much restored, and playing the attentive hostess to perfection.

"I give you good day, Lord Harcourt." Henry waved a mutton chop in greeting. "Did you promise me a stag hunt in Richmond forest today?"

"Most certainly, if you wish it, my lord duke." Gareth bowed before helping himself to the covered dishes on the sideboard. He was ravenous. Lovemaking did much to stimulate the appetite. He brought his filled platter to the table. "When do you wish to ride out, sir?"

"Oh, at your command, Harcourt," Henry said affably, gnawing contentedly on his chop. "Does your ward hunt?"

"Maude is not a comfortable horsewoman." Gareth filled his tankard from the ale pitcher.

"And she does not partake of breakfast, either?" "She should be here," Imogen said. "Perhaps she overslept. If you'll excuse me, my lord, I'll go and summon her."

Miranda was dressing in her borrowed plumage because she couldn't think what else to do. Her mind whirled in confusion. She thought she had accepted the earl's assurances that she could trust him, that all would be well. But now she knew she hadn't… or did she mean, couldn’t. She needed to know where her family had gone. She needed to know that she could find them again. Gareth hadn't seemed to understand that. Maybe it was expecting too much to think he would understand it. After all, they came from such very different spheres, and family feeling wasn't too obvious around the Harcourt mansion.

It should be easy enough to track down the troupe while their trail was still fresh. They would be making for one of the Channel ports: if not Dover, then Folkestone. Once she discovered their destination, then she would send a messenger, asking them to wait for her. She would be bringing fifty rose nobles with her so any expenses incurred in a prolonged wait could be settled when she arrived.

When Imogen entered the green bedchamber, as usual without knocking, Miranda looked at her as if she didn't recognize her for a minute, she was so absorbed in her planning.

"You must come down to breakfast," Imogen announced. " The duke is asking for you."

"Very well." Miranda adjusted the kerchief in the neck of her gown and tucked her hair into the jeweled cap. She was a performer and the show must go on regardless of personal dilemmas. "Let us go, madam."

She descended the stairs, crossed the hall, and entered the dining room. Her smile was gracious, her voice soft as she greeted the gentlemen. She had no appetite and toyed with a piece of bread and butter, trying to make it look as if she were eating it.

"No appetite, Lady Maude?" Henry boomed. His dark eyes were shrewdly assessing as he helped himself liberally to a dish of stewed eels. "Your guardian keeps a splendid table."

Miranda smiled faintly. The duke's mouth was glistening with mutton fat. Oddly enough, it wasn't repellent. It seemed in keeping with the powerful physicality of his presence. His doublet was tight over his shoulders, seemed to strain across his chest, as if his clothes couldn't contain him. He was not a man with the nice habits of a courtier; he was, as he'd said, a rough-hewn soldier, happier on a battlefield than making pleasant conversation in an elegant dining hall.

"I have little appetite in the morning, my lord duke," she said.

"We're riding out to Richmond to hunt stag. Will you not accompany us?"

Miranda shook her head. "I do not care to hunt, sir."

Henry frowned and his gentlemen read the flash of displeasure in his eyes. The king couldn't endure to pass a day idly in and around the house, but he had come to woo the Lady Maude, and riding to hounds in Richmond forest without her wouldn't advance that cause.

"We shall return well before dinner, sir," Gareth said.

"But we're bidden to the queen's table," Henry muttered, stabbing at a heel of bread with his knife, bringing it to his mouth.

"I had it in mind to request the Queen's Majesty to accept an invitation to my house instead," Gareth said.

"And Her Majesty will accept?" Henry looked rather less put out.

"I believe so," Gareth said with one of his sardonic smiles. The queen was never loath to accept invitations that would save her the expense of entertaining her own guests. "I will send my herald with the invitation straightaway." He rose, bowed, and strode from the hall.

Henry looked rather more cheerful. He considered the Lady Maude. She could be taught the arts of a horsewoman, she didn't strike him as a fainthearted maiden. She looked up as if aware of his gaze and her eyes stunned him with their beauty. Her long hands rested on the table, the serpentine bracelet glistening around her wrist. With a faint smile, she turned her head to answer a question from Lord Magret, and the pure white column of her swan's neck stirred Henry with the urge to kiss her nape, to plant his lips against the pulse at her throat.

Lord Harcourt's ward was everything her portrait promised. And an impeccable alliance for the king of France. He remembered hearing her laughter through the door the previous night. A lusty, joyful sound. And one filled with promise for a hungry man.

He took up his tankard of honeyed mead, a smile now flitting across his glistening lips. "I have a better idea, my lady, than hunting at Richmond. We shall go on the river, you and I. The sun's shining, the river is sparkling. And we shall have time to get to know each other a little better. What say you, Harcourt?" He waved expansively at the earl, who had just returned to the chamber. "A river excursion with your ward. Do we have your permission?"

"Willingly, my lord duke," Gareth replied.

Chapter Twenty

"Take your place?" Maude was stunned. "Why? What's the matter with you?"

"I have something else to do." Miranda paced Maude's bedchamber. "I went into the city this morning to see my family and the cobbler said they had had to leave in a hurry. I'm afraid they're in some kind of trouble and I have to find out where they've gone." She turned back to Maude. "You understand that, don't you?

"Well, yes," Maude agreed. "But I can't take your place with the duke."

"It's just a river trip. If I say I'm ill, everyone will ask questions and…" Her voice trailed off as she looked at Maude. "You could do it, Maude."

The intensity in her voice startled Maude into considering the question. " Take your place, pretend to be… Pretend to be me!" She fell back on the bed with a whoop of laughter. "You want me to pretend to be me."

Miranda managed a responding smile. "Put like that it sounds ridiculous, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work." She came over and sat on the bed. "You mustn't speak French, though, not unless you speak it flawlessly, as if it's your native tongue. Do you?"

Maude shook her head. "I speak it well enough, but anyone would know I'm not French."

"Then you mustn't speak anything but English." Miranda frowned. "We'll have to make sure your hair is piled on top of your head so there's not the slightest chance of its falling down."

Maude looked doubtful. She didn't think she'd agreed to anything and yet Miranda was talking as if it was all settled. "What will he talk about?" She was sobering rapidly.

"Oh, this and that. Nothing that you won't be able to manage. Just be yourself and don't say much. I was very quiet at breakfast, so he won't expect you to be dancing a jig or anything."

"But I've never been alone with a man." Maude realized that somewhere along the line she had implicitly agreed to this mad substitution.

"You won't be alone. There'll be the watermen and a maidservant as chaperon." Miranda took Maude's hands. "You know you could do it, Maude. And you can satisfy your curiosity about the duke at the same time."

Maude chewed her lip. The idea terrified her, but it also excited her. She looked around her chamber and suddenly it seemed confining instead of comfortingly familiar, boring instead of reassuring. She wouldn't be exposing herself to any risks. She wouldn't be compromising her position in any way. She was just doing Miranda a favor… and satisfying her curiosity. One might as well take a look at what one was rejecting.

"I don't know how good I'll be at deception," she murmured..

"But it's not a deception," Miranda pointed out. "I'm the deception, you're the real one."

Maude stared down at her feet swinging clear of the floor as she still sat on the bed, then suddenly she looked up with an air of resolution. "All right, I'll do it. I've never done anything truly daring in my life, and if it will help you, then I'll do it." She jumped off the bed and went to the linen press. "What should I wear? What would be suitable for a morning upon the river? What do you think of cherry stripes?"

"Perfect," Miranda said, trying to enter into Maude's enthusiasm. But she felt as if a great leaden weight was in her chest, a weight of unhappiness, a whole ocean of unshed tears, and keeping that from Maude was one of the hardest acts she'd ever had to perform.

Maude, arrayed in the cherry-striped silk gown, her hair concealed beneath a jeweled coif, examined her wavery image in the beaten-steel looking glass. "Come here and stand beside me. Let's see just how alike we are… Oh, it's uncanny." She put her hand to her mouth, staring at her twinned images. "No one could ever tell us apart if we were wearing identical gowns."