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or on the dueling field.
    “ Attention ! Parez ... riposte! ”
    He steadied himself for the moves. A sudden lunge. His parry en tierce . The master’s riposte and his parry again.
    With a quickness that surprised even him, he followed his parry with a lunge. But a start from his opponent made him check himself, even as Monsieur Andolini drew away. At the safe distance of a few paces, the Frenchman touched the point of his small-sword to the floor and regarded his pupil with a cold eye.
    “Monsieur le vicomte grows tired of Andolini, oui? He wishes to dispatch him to the l’enfer? ”
    “No, of course not. Forgive me. I would never be so careless. When I see an opening, though, I find myself eager to take it.”
    “If monsieur had taken that particular opening, I am not certain that Andolini would have parried it in time. In that case, monsieur would have found himself accused of murder in France as well as England.”
    This last was said so wryly that Gideon knew no offense had been meant. Still, he found it hard to laugh at a jest, even a sympathetic one, about his unhappy situation. Perhaps in time he would be able to find a certain irony in it, but not so recently after his father’s death. Only two weeks ago, he had come to the Chateau of St. Mars, his French estate, hoping to find some manner of relief—here, where he was not an outlaw and had the freedom to go anywhere he pleased.
    But the relief he had prayed for had not come. Certainly he had welcomed that first day when he could ride out in the sunlight without the fear of being caught. He had been able to breathe with the all freedom of the innocent man he was. But soon, his malaise had returned—not from any fear of being captured, but from a combination of guilt and loneliness that refused to go away. Guilt, because even though he had not murdered his father, he knew that his own foolishness had made it easier for his father’s murderer to kill.
    And loneliness, because, no matter how welcome he was here on his own estate, his heart belonged to his home in Kent.
    “I have offended my lord.” Andolini bowed, with the serenity of a man who knew the superiority of his fighting skills.
    “It is nothing.” Gideon shook off his gloom. “You must not regard my ill-humours. They come upon me with no warning, but they have nothing to do with you.”
    Andolini’s face betrayed a concern that surprised Gideon, for they were not of long acquaintance. The master had only come to St. Mars this week. Gideon had stumbled upon him on the road to Chateaubriant, where Andolini had gone to give lessons to its lord. Restless and eager for distraction—though not for the company he had found at Versailles—Gideon had invited Andolini to instruct him at St. Mars before returning to Paris. Their sessions, numbering two per day and each lasting for an hour or two, had restored the strength Gideon had lost when the wound from a sword had festered, rendering him as weak as a posset with no ale.
    Gideon had taken to the Frenchman, who offered him this counsel now, “Monsieur must always resist the temptation to make the lunge, especially when dueling with a poor student of the art. It is the unexpected that gets one killed. The épée is not the English back-sword, my lord. It is not even the French rapier.”
    “That is understood. At least—” Gideon laughed— “I say I understand, but it is not in my nature to think before I act. My impulsiveness has landed me in trouble on more than one occasion.”
    “Then it is good that monsieur has the grace of a cat. For only a cat will always land on its feet.”
    “I cannot always do that, Maître Andolini.”
    The master’s expression, which had retained a trace of the pedagogue, underwent a significant change. He spoke with genuine sympathy. “ Mais non, bien sûr. There is no one who can always land on his feet, monsieur, but you have the grace and the heart to endure more misfortune than your enemies. Your quickness