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The pianoforte was at the opposite end of a very large room. She had prepared herself for this, dreaded it. But now there was no postponing it. Already the earl’s face was showing signs of growing impatience. She stood up and began to cross the room.
    "Have you sprained your ankle, Miss Dacey?” he asked sharply from behind her.
    She turned to face his frowning stare. “No, my lord,” she answered coolly. “My limp is a permanent disability.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Explain, please,” he ordered.
    “I fell from a horse when I was five years old and broke my leg,” she explained. “The physician who attended me set it poorly. When I recovered, it was to find that the injured leg was shorter than the other.”
    He stared at her blankly. “The doctor must have been drunk,” he said.
    “I have been told that he was,” she replied calmly.
    “Sit down, ma’am,” Raymore said, the pianoforte forgotten. The only thought in his head was that he had been cheated. No one had ever hinted to him that one of his wards was a cripple. How was he ever to find her a husband? He would be forced to support her for the rest of his life, a permanent millstone around his neck. To say that the girl limped was to put the matter kindly.
    The earl did not seat himself again. He made his excuses, bowed with stiff formality, and left the room.
    Sylvia followed Rosalind upstairs a short while later. “Is my cousin not quite gorgeous, Ros?” she bubbled as they climbed the staircase together, Rosalind holding on to the rail.
    “Quite devastatingly handsome,” she agreed dryly.
    Sylvia giggled. “Is it permitted to marry one’s guardian, I wonder?” she said, opening the door into her cousin’s room and following her inside.
    “I imagine there is no law against it,” Rosalind replied, “but he is your cousin, Sylvie.”
    Sylvia clasped her hands and smiled broadly. “But he is not yours,” she pointed out. “You must set your cap at him, Ros. The Countess of Raymore!”
    Rosalind smiled and sat on the bed. “If I had your looks, I might be tempted,” she said with a lightness she did not feel, “but I think I shall settle for being an old maid. She held up a hand when her cousin made a face and would have spoken. “Besides,” she added, “I don’t like him, Sylvie.”
    “Why ever not?” that young lady replied. “I thought him excessively polite, Ros, and he did not insult you when he saw you limp. I thought him quite kind when he told you to sit down instead of making you walk quite across the room to the pianoforte.”
    “Did you not notice his eyes, Sylvie?” Rosalind asked. “They are cold and unfeeling. And his mouth sneers. I felt that the man holds us in the utmost contempt. The less we see of him, the happier I shall be.”
    “Pooh,” Sylvia protested, “you are imagining things just because you were embarrassed to have him see you walk.”
    Rosalind shook her head. “You must go and dress,” she said, changing the subject. “I somehow feel sure that his lordship would not take kindly to our being late for dinner—if he deigns to give us his company, of course.”
    Rosalind did not follow her own advice well. She changed rapidly enough into a blue silk gown that fit as loosely as her day dresses. But her hair gave her trouble. She pinned and unpinned, coaxed and teased, but to no avail. She was not concentrating, she concluded. Finally she threw the brush with a clatter onto the dressing table and stared despairingly at her image in the mirror. She felt terribly betrayed. She had accepted her own ugliness; she had accepted the fact that no man would ever look at her with anything but revulsion. She had not become bitter, had not allowed herself to become jealous of Sylvia or of any of the other young ladies of her acquaintance. All she had was her dream. And she had felt safe with Alistair. Because he was unreal, a creation of her own imagination, he would remain with her through life, soothing her