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dead Mandevilles were burning daggers into her back. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the far end and the light, little though it was, from the other pair of sconces. The double doors that led to the balcony were directly in front of her, and she stopped, her hand on the silver-plated doorknob, to glance across at the picture of her great-grandmother, the tragic Dalby heiress, Theresa....
    In the dancing shadows, it seemed to Tess that Theresa was staring directly at her. The portrait was full length and had been painted the spring of the year Theresa had disappeared with Benedict Talmage, the seventh earl of Sherbourne. Theresa had been twenty-one at the time and in the full bloom of her breathtaking beauty. She had been painted standing near a lily pond, her gown in the style of the times, yards and yards of boldly striped Spitalfields silk, her hooped skirt falling gracefully in a bell shape, her lovely flame red hair built up with plaiting and festooned with ribbons and flowers. Tess had frequently stood in front of this particular portrait, wondering what had gone on behind those sad eyes, and again she felt the link, the inexplicable link she often felt with Theresa. The power of it this night was suddenly so strong, she nearly gasped aloud.
    The wide violet eyes seemed to beseech her, to beg her, to plead with her, not to tarry, to hurry, to run as far and as fast as she could. Tess stared, mesmerized, at the portrait; her blood seemed to pump in rhythm with the message in Theresa’s eyes—run, run, run ! And she did.

Chapter Three

    N icolas Talmage, the tenth earl of Sherbourne, tried to convince himself that he was not running away. But try as he might, the unpleasant suspicion that there was a strong odor of a decidedly hasty retreat about his impending departure did not sit easy with him.
    Idly watching his lantern-jawed valet, Lovejoy, pack his belongings, Nicolas told himself firmly—and for perhaps the fifth time that evening—that he was merely returning to his estate in Kent to spend the winter as so many of his friends had done. With the City so thin of company, there was no reason for him to stay. He would just have to renew his quest for a bride in the spring, when a new and hopefully more appealing crop of marriage-minded females would be put forth.
    Only partially satisfied with his own explanation of why he was departing so unexpectedly tomorrow afternoon for his ancestral estates, when it was well known that he had planned to stay at the Sherbourne House in Grosvenor Square until January, Nicolas picked up his goblet of port and took another sip. As his fine black eyes continued to monitor Lovejoy’s deft movements around the room, he told himself again that it was just time to leave. There was no reason to stay.
    The fact that he had just learned that the lovely, widowed Lady Halliwell was remaining in town through the winter did not have any bearing on his change of plans. Nor did the fact, he thought stubbornly, that she had hinted, oh so delicately, not three hours ago at Lady Grover’s ball that she would not object to forming a closer alliance with him have anything to do with his sudden desire to return to Sherbourne Court....
    The truth of the matter was that he found the young woman extremely tempting—he found her so tempting, in fact, that three years previously he had taken one look at her beautiful face and had, for the first time in his life, fallen head over heels in love. He had been home, on leave, while he recuperated from a wound he had received at the Battle of Vimeiro in Portugal and had come to London with his brother, Randal, to spend a few weeks before returning to the war on the continent. It had been in the fall of 1808 at the start of the “little” season in London, and Maryanne Blanchard, as she was called then, had been only seventeen years old and already a great beauty and an