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A quartet of crows

“Who died?” he said

“Cousin Horatio,” said Augusta

“Ah, the recluse on the Isle of Skye,” said Marchmont

Lexhaht it a strange place to take a grieving fifteen-year-old, but Lexhaht, Marchuardian had been not to send the new Duke of Marchrief There, a his friends, he’d have no Gerard to boast of, no letters from Gerard to look forward to Skye and the eccentric Cousin Horatio held no associations with Gerard or their dead parents It was far away frorown up, and it was beautiful He and Lexham walked They fished They read books and talked Sometimes even Cousin Horatio joined the conversation

The brooding atmosphere of the place and the solitude had quieted Marchht him a measure of peace

“He died a fortnight ago,” Dorothea said

“He left his property to Papa”

“The least onefor him”

Were they thinking of sending their youngest sister to Cousin Horatio’s? Zoe on a desolate, ept island of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides? She’d think she was in Siberia For one who’d spent twelve years in a land where the sun always shone and where even on winter nights the terees, it would be exactly the sa

His gaze drifted to Zoe, in her wine-colored shawl and pale green frock She was the antithesis of , acutely alive and unmistakably carnal

It wasn’t that her garments were seductive It was the way she wore the still, she vibrated physicality

“I did not have enough clothes, and the black dress my sisters found for ed survey as criticism “To alter it was too much work The maid must take a piece fro attention to her elegantly slender feet “Then she must add it to this part, to cover my breasts” She drew her hand over her bodice “Theyher hips

“Zoe,” Dorothea said warningly

“What?”

“We don’t touch ourselves in that way”

“Most certainly not in front of others who are not our husband,” Priscilla said

“I forgot” She looked at Marchmont “We don’t touch We don’t say e feel in our hearts We don’t lie on the rug We keep our feet on the floor except in bed or on the chaise longue”

“Where were you keeping your feet?” he said

She gestured at the furniture “No chairs in Cairo When I sit in one, s want to curl up under me”

“This isn’t Cairo,” Augusta said “You would do well to remember that But of course you won’t” She turned to March his co, but it would be a kindness to Zoe to face facts: It will take years to civilize her”

She’d got hih at the same time Zoe Octavia had never been fully civilized She’d never been like anybody else Now she was less so

He let his gaze slide up from the hips and bosom to which she’d called his attention Up the white throat and delicate point of her stubborn chin and up, to aze

It was the gaze of a grooone forever, just as the boy he’d once been was gone forever Which was as it should be, he told himself That was life, perfectly normal and not at all mysterious It was, in fact, as he preferred it

“If by ‘civilized’ you lish lady, it isn’t necessary,” he said “The Countess Lieven isn’t English, yet she’s one of Almack’s patronesses”

“What is Al about it, and I cannot decide whether it is the Garden of Paradise or a place of punishment”

“Both,” he said “It’s the et into and a aren’t sufficient Onethat, one ance to impress the patronesses They keep a list of those who meet their standards Some three-quarters of the nobility are not on the list If you’re not on the list, you can’t buy an adht assemblies”

“Are you on the list?” Zoe asked

“Of course,” he said

“Men’s usta said

Marchnored her “You’ll be on it, too,” he told Zoe