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Ella.”
    “My God!” Sweat broke upon his brow again. “Get rid of her! Do as I tell you, at once.”
    “She is lovely. Lovely. Young. Serious, I believe.”
    “Serious, yes,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Serious, determined, willful, outrageous—trusting, gentle—and wasting
     her time on me.”
    “You could spare her a few minutes.”
    “No. How did she get here?”
    “By carriage.”
    “And alone?”
    Bigun sighed. “Alone.”
    “Send her home. Instruct her coachman to protect her at all costs. She should not be abroad at such an hour. What can Struan
     and Justine be about? First she appears at Sibley’s to torment me … now this. She should be in the safety of her parents’
     home, not wandering in the night.”
    “Hmm. She insists she must talk to you.”
    Saber threw wide his arms. “Look at me. Look, Bigun. Soaked with my own sweat. Wild. A sick man.”
    “You, my lord,” Bigun said very solemnly, “are a very strong, fit man.”
    “Not in my mind! I can never be free of the sickness in my mind. How could I ever subject a sweet female to such horror as
     living with me would represent?”
    “You would like to live with her?”
    “I—” Saber turned facedown on his bed. He let the note drift from his fingers. “I would like not to discuss this matter.”
    “Perhaps she would help. Mend you, my lord. Heal you.”
    “I am sick of soul,” Saber said into the pillow. “A man with a sick soul can never have anything to offer—and he can never
     be healed.”
    “My lord—”
    Tapping at the door silenced Bigun.
    Saber turned his face in the direction of the tapping. “Saber? Are you in there?”
    “I cannot bear it,” he muttered. “Saber, it’s me, Ella. Can you hear me?”
    He shook his head, unable to trust his voice. “I know you are there,” she said, emotion trembling in every word. “Please could
     we talk? Please would you tell me what I’ve done wrong?”
    He buried his face. To want. To want and to be able to have, yet to know the having would be utterly wrong…Torment.
    “My lord?” Bigun said beside Saber’s ear. “It grows almost morning.”
    “Go away,” Saber muttered into the pillow. He raised his face and shouted, “Go away, Ella. Forget the past. Go.”
    “Saber, please—”
    “Leave this house at once. Cease your persecution of me. I never wish to see you again.”
    He heard her cry out, a strangled, wounded sound that faded to rasping sobs. Then her retreating footsteps followed.
    “You lied to me, Saber,” she gasped through her tears. “You said you loved me. I was too young. I am not too young now, but
     you do not love me now.”
    Her feet hit the stairs in quick succession.
    Saber looked up at Bigun. “See to it that she gains her coach safely.”
    Bigun’s face took on the haughty expression he saved for moments of extreme disapproval. “I wash my hands of this.”
    “Do as I request,” Saber roared. “Saber!” Ella’s voice reached him from the vestibule. “Today Papa is to see a man who wishes
     to ask for my hand. A stranger. I do not want this man.”
    He rose and approached the door, then remembered his nakedness. Blindly, he sought around for something to cover himself with.
     “Give me a robe,” he said, yanking the door open. “I must speak to her. She must see that what she remembers was only a childish
     infatuation that could not last.”
    Bigun rummaged in a huge ebony wardrobe and brought forth a black silk robe.
    “Hurry,” Saber urged. A draft rose from the floor below. She had opened the door.
    “I will die rather than be given to a stranger I do not love,” Ella called to him in her broken voice.
    He struggled into the robe and tied the sash. Without bothering with shoes, he threw the door wide and started for the stairs.
    “I love you, Saber. I’ll never love another.”
    The front door slammed shut.
    He ran downstairs and outside into the stinging early-morning air.
    Her coach drew away from the