Midsummer Moon

Chapter 1

For the fourth time, His Grace the Duke of Damerell lifted the knocker with his free hand and brought the tarnished brass crashing down on its mottled-green base. For the fourth time, the sound echoed on the other side of the oaken door, unanswered. Ransom Falconer's mouth drew back in the faintest hint of a grimace.

He and his horse appeared to be the only civilized creatures within five square miles. Had he thought otherwise, he would never have allowed himself such a show of emotion. The overgrown Tudor walls rose above him, gray stone and neglect, an affront to the values of ten generations of Falconers. Admittedly, from where he stood on the threshold Ransom could see the romantic possibilities of the place: shaped gables and tall oriel windows and dark spreading trees, but at the very thought of such sentimentality those Falconer ghosts seemed to stare in haughty disapproval at his back. Without conscious intention, his own aristocratic features hardened into that hereditary expression of disdain.

Princes had been known to quail before such a look. There had been a few kings, too, and innumerable queens and duchesses and courtly ladies, all struck dumb and uneasy beneath the Falconer stare. Four centuries of power and politics had evolved and improved the expression, until by Ransom's time it was a weapon of chilling efficiency. He himself had learned it early?at his grandfather's elegant knee.

As it was, when at last the rusty lock creaked and crashed and the door opened on a complaining groan, the figure peering out from the gloom received the full force of His Grace's pitiless mien. The young maid would have been forgiven by a host of knowledgeable Whigs if she'd turned tail and run in the instant before Ransom recalled himself and softened his expression. But she did not. She merely wiped her hands on a grimy white apron and lifted a pair of vaguely frowning gray eyes. "Yes?" she asked, in a voice which might have been testy had it not been so preoccupied. "What is it?"

Ransom held out his card in one immaculately gloved hand.

She took the card. Without even glancing at it, she stuck the engraved identification into one bulging pocket of her apron.

Ransom watched his calling card disappear, shocked to the core of his pedigreed soul at such poorly trained service. "Mr. Lambourne is at home?" he prompted, keeping his voice quietly modulated. She might be a country mouse of a maid, a shade too softly rounded to be in vogue, but she was a pretty chit with those misty-gray eyes and elegant cheekbones, made more striking by the stark simplicity of her coiled chestnut hair. Not that His Grace the Duke of Damerell was in the habit of dallying with housemaids?she was not at all in his usual style in any case?but he found no advantage in needlessly frightening her. Ransom even allowed himself a moment's human pleasure, his glance resting briefly on her full lower lip before he looked up and lifted one eyebrow in expectant question.

She blinked at him. He found himself experiencing a peculiar sensation. Her eyes held his, but it was as if she did not even see him standing there, but looked past him at some distant horizon. Her mouth puckered. She lifted her hand, resting one delicate forefinger on that sweetly shaped lower lip.

"Square the coefficient of the diameter of the number three strut," she murmured.

"I beg your pardon?"

She blinked again and dropped her hand. Her eyes came into soft focus. "Can you remember that?"

"I'm afraid I don't?"

His voice trailed off as she rummaged in her huge pocket and drew out his calling card. After another moment's search, she located a pencil lead and scribbled something on the back of his card. "There," she said, with husky satisfaction. She dropped the card into her pocket and looked up at him with an absent smile. "Who are you?"

His earlier affront at her excruciatingly bad training returned, cooling his momentary startlement back to full reason. "I believe I delivered my card," he said pointedly.

"Oh." A becoming blush spread up from her modest collar, but he forced himself to ignore it. Well, not to concentrate on it, at any event. She had skin like an August peach, soft and golden and touched with pink.

She was rummaging again in her apron. The Pocket, as he termed it to himself, seemed to be burgeoning with peculiar paraphernalia. A jay's feather, a tiny telescope, a tangled length of wire, and a flat-toothed metal disk with a hole in the center?all appeared from the depths into which his card had vanished. She looked down, poking out the tip of her tongue in a child's gesture of concentration.

It was not The Pocket so much as the sleepy hedgehog she produced that left him nonplussed. She held the creature out to him, still fussing in her pocket with the other hand. He accepted the animal in dumbfounded silence. She located the card at last and glanced at the engraving, frowning. Then she flipped the creamy rectangle over.

"Oh, yes." She heaved a sigh of relief. "Square the coefficient of the diameter of the?what does that say? Three? Yes, the number three strut." She looked up at him with a small, accusing frown. "I thought you were to remember that."

"Forgive me," he said icily, "but I wish to see Mr. Lambourne, if it won't tax you too much to announce me."

She looked completely blank. He was beginning to think that she was unbalanced in her mind when she repeated, "Who did you say you were?"

He fixed his Falconer gaze with ferocious intent upon the card in her hand. After a moment she said, "Oh," in a satisfactorily flustered way, which assured him that his Doomsday look had not completely lost effect after all. It also had the result of producing another pleasing blush.

She bit her tongue and glanced quickly at the engraving, then back at him. "Um?Mr. Duke, I think you are mistaken in your direction."

He felt himself going pale, all those generations of Falconers gasping in absolute and utter stupefaction. "Falconer.'' His voice came out with strained gentleness. "My name is Falconer. The other is?my title."

"Oh." She frowned at the card. "Oh, yes. I see that. But?"

"I wish to speak to Mr. Lambourne," he interrupted, still with that disciplined softness that was compounded of exasperation and restrained impatience. The hedgehog rolled up and presented its spines to his palm. Her full breasts rose and fell lightly beneath the plain blouse. He could just see the aureoles, faint smudges against the stiff fabric.

Abruptly, he added, "Am I mistaken in believing that this is the home of Mr. Merlin Lambourne?"

"Well," she said with round-eyed apology. "Yes."

His sources were not so ill-informed as to allow him to fall for that sad little attempt at dissembling. Ransom treated her to the full extent of the Falconer stare. She seemed to have the way of it now, for her breasts rose and fell a little faster in agitation, and she ran her tongue over her upper lip.

"There is no Mr. Merlin Lambourne," she said quickly.