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of London, Brighton, and Bath and the Kate of Watersham. Even allowed her not to feel that Thomas found her lacking compared to his other sister, who was bright and bubbly.
    Not that she spent much time dwelling upon ridiculous thoughts such as those. Not when there was so much to be done. Of course, Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, had been preparing everything to the specifications Henrietta had laid out by post. But even so, there were so many details to attend to.
    After tea, when Thomas was sent back to the schoolroom, she spent the rest of the day with Henrietta and the housekeeper. While they had both now attended a good many house parties, neither had hosted one before. Kate was, as usual, determined that if she was to do a thing, she must do it well. Perfection was the only possibility.

 

C HAPTER F OUR
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    T he next day, she woke early, despite a yearlong regimen of late evenings and late mornings. The scent of the country air changed her back into the girl who had loved to escape the house and wander the grounds, to find the most magical places, where solitude amongst nature would let her imagination take flight.
    She followed her favorite path, down to the bend of the stream where the big oak trees and the sound of the rushing water had often hidden her. Often, but not always. When she was a little girl, she had on occasion taken Bianca here and then, later, while it had only been twice, those accidental meetings with Peter Colburn had been monumental.
    Monumentally insignificant. That was better.
    She stepped onto the damp, grassy embankment, looked to the left and the right. And then looked to the right again. To the figure perched on the lowest limb of his tree.
    He was leaning back against the trunk, one knee up, foot flat on the branch, and one leg hanging down. This was not the man she had last scene in Brighton, stately and ducal despite his mismatched garments and unfortunate sense of humor.
    One that seemed to depend on aggravating her.
    Here he was relaxed, and simply dressed. Simply enough that there was nothing to offend.
    “Your Grace,” Kate said, somehow unsurprised to see him. It was almost inevitable that they would meet here. As if fate conspired again and again for them to see each other in the most embarrassing of circumstances.
    “I’d heard you’d returned. I’d planned to call upon you this afternoon.” That news, however, was a surprise.
    “How kind of you?”
    “What? Never say you don’t care for my company, Kate.”
    That mocking tone that he’d so perfected irritated her. What had she ever admired about him?
    “I don’t.”
    “But I received this charming invitation—”
    “From Henrietta. Because you and Lord Reginald are our neighbors and we would never think of being unneighborly.”
    But he had. He had been very unneighborly. Or perhaps a little too neighborly. She couldn’t quite say, just as she had never been able to fully make sense of the incident from four years earlier other than to ascribe it to the fact that spirits made a man ridiculous. She’d very carefully turned down the marriage offers of three men whom she knew to be more often in their cups than not.
    Of course, that was half the men of the ton. They all seemed to carry their flasks with them and drink liquor like they were trying to coat a second skin. At balls, sometimes the men smelled of perspiration, cologne, whisky, or port. As much as she adored the crush of a well-attended event, she’d had to escape to the gardens to catch a breath more than a few times when those scent mixtures threatened a faint.
    He stood, brushed the leaves and other bits of plant off of his clothes.
    “Come, Kate, let us call a truce.”
    She stared at him in disbelief. It was the first time he had ever referred to the antagonism between them. They had settled into covering the real source of displeasure up with witty insults, some subtle and some not as much. But a truce . . .
    “A truce?”
    “You know,