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of the de Couriacs immediately popped up. "What sort of guest?"

"A lady, milady, traveling to Nottinghamshire."

Again? Was he mad? "Who?"

"Well, milady, the strange thing is that she goes by just one name, and an unusual one at that." Before he said it, Diana knew. "Sappho."

Breath caught. A planned meeting after so many days apart? Even if it was chance, clearly it provided an opportunity for the marquess to distract himself from any minor effect she, Diana, might be having on him.

Damn him. Damn them both.

What she should do was dress in her finest, go downstairs, and find someone to flirt with. Instead, a sick hollow feeling pinned her in her chair. One thing was sure. She would not barge into the dining room tonight, and she did not wish for a hole in the wall.

She didn't want to know.

She made Clara play cards with her, and lost. So she drank a couple of glasses of the inn's adequate port, and went early to bed.

Rothgar poured port for Sappho. "I'm sorry Lady Arradale didn't come to dinner. You would like her."

"You like her?" Sappho asked.

"Very much." It was a shame Sappho was heading north. He suspected he was going to need a friend he could talk to. He hadn't been aware until he'd seen her arrive here how tense he'd been all day.

"Why?" she asked.

Ah, the trouble with old friends. They saw too much. "Why do I like her? For the usual things. Courage, honor, spirit, intelligence."

"For most men it would be breasts, hips, lips, and generosity."

He smiled. "I am not most men. She has the requisite parts in pleasing form, but those are not the things that matter."

She leaned back in her chair, sipping her wine, the candlelight playing on her unusual, beautiful face. Her skin had the soft duskiness of well-creamed coffee. Her cheekbones were high and her eyes the large, dark almonds of Byzantine art. She had all the other usual parts and in magnificent form, but it wasn't what had made a relationship which had lasted over ten years.

It might be useful to let her probe. She knew him as well as anyone, and as a surgeon of the soul she had some skill.

"It is an attraction of the spirit?" she asked.

"I didn't say that."

She studied him. "Does your resolve crumble at last, Bey?"

"Not at all."

"Pity."

They had spoken of it before, of course, and with her, he did not react with sharpness. "Self-indulgence is a virtue now?"

"Flexibility is. Sometimes, even, to retreat is wise."

"Only in order to fight another day."

"Sometimes peace is made."

"After a retreat? A peace with great concessions and losses."

She drained her glass. "Who is your enemy?"

"In this, madness."

"You fight a phantom."

"No."

She looked at him steadily. Though they came together physically when it suited them, their deepest connection was of the mind. For her, because few men loved her sensuality and her intelligence equally. For him, because with her he did not need to accommodate, pretend, or compete. And of course, she could be assumed to be barren after twenty sexual years without conception.

She placed her hands, loosely linked, on the table. "Many years ago, you decided that the enemy was dire and the battles minor. Now, that balance has changed."

He felt the scalpel's sting, and an instinct to flinch away. But he said, "Why do you think anything has changed?"

"Not because of this Lady Arradale, Bey. Over the past few years things have changed around you."

"A plague of marriages and births? She noted the same thing."

Her eyes sharpened. "Ah, then I do wish I had met her. What happened today to cause her headache?"

"Travel," he said, but then realized that he'd looked down. He picked up his neglected glass and drank from it to cover the act, but knew she would not be deceived.

"You have been cruel to her?" she asked.

"Only to be kind."

She made a tsk of disapproval.

"Yes, there is something," he said sharply. "But my resolve has not weakened, so it were better it died now."

"Died young. Like your sister."

He hissed in a breath. "That was crude."

"Sometimes crudeness is necessary. As in amputation."

"What bit of me should I lose?"

"Your iron-clad will."

"Never."

"Then, Bey, I fear you will die."

"We all die in the end."

"And yet life doesn't have to be a tragedy."

He stood then, moved away from the table and from her. "My life is not a tragedy."

"Not yet."

He turned. "Enough, Sappho." He meant it to be a warning, but could hear for himself that it sounded like a plea.

Like a good surgeon, she