Neil left London just as most of England was arriving in it. Coaches and carriages trundled daily into the metropolis, carrying bundled-up and bored parties of wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, maidens, and maids. Silk-slippered toes surface from between the folds of fur-trimmed gowns and fish for the iron grilles of coach steps. Slender white hands slip out from brobdingnagian muffs to lay two delicate fingers on a footman's guiding palm. The silk-slippered toes land in London mud and track it up the white-washed doorsteps of London houses. The slender white hands hang idle as housemaids unwrap shawls and untie cloaks and unbutton spencers. The silk-slippered toes patter softly up silk-carpeted stairs into silk-curtained drawing rooms. The slender white hands drop brobdingnagian muffs to couches and their owners drop down after them. A husband, a son, a father, a brother, a master, or a bachelor is fetched from his study and steps into the room. Greetings are uttered. And then a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a maiden, or a maid drawls:

"Now, dear, do explain to me what on earth Lord Albroke is doing with that woman."

That woman herself could not have explained. Laura did not know. So far it seemed that Richard was doing nothing with her. Five days had passed since he had agreed to make her his mistress, three since Neil's brooding presence had ceased to shadow the air, and still Richard had not so much as hinted she perform the duties for which he had engaged her. Indeed, they were spending less time together than ever. With Neil gone, Richard had to take up the business responsibilities Neil had been performing for him while he was ill, and he was often in his study for hours on end, talking with his men of business. At the end of those discussions, he was often in no mood to do more than lie on a couch with his arm over his eyes while Laura played the piano. It almost made Laura wish Neil was still there.

At least now he was coming down to every meal with her. Hobbling down the stairs, one step at a time, leaning heavily on the banister and having to rest and catch his breath on every landing. It hurt her to watch him, hovering uselessly by his side while he insisted he did not need her help.

"I have to start getting stronger again," he said.

"Not by overtaxing yourself!"

"I know I'm a cripple, Laura, but I can walk."

"But you don't even have your stick."

"I am capable of managing without it."

But he wasn't, not really. And the stick itself lay in two pieces in the bottom cupboard of a bookshelf in his study. She'd found it one day, when frankly snooping. He had been upstairs with Doctor Cavendish, and she, returning from a shopping expedition, had wandered curiously through the open door of his study, which had always previously been closed.

It was a long, narrow room, but well lit, with two tall windows overlooking the square. Bookcases lined the long wall, while a fireplace took up most of the narrow one, with a portrait of Richard, Neil, and their sister Elizabeth as children hanging above it. Laura crossed the room to examine it and laughed to see the identically surly expression on all three faces. None of them seemed happy to have to pose.

Laura moved away from the fireplace, dodging between a shabby footstool and two comfortable-looking armchairs, and went over to the bookcase. A large number of books were bound in pale green calf-skin and embossed in gold. These were all the sort of typical books you could expect to find in a nobleman's library: Latin and Greek classics and histories, and English religious poems and sermons. Laura knew instantly that it was Richard's father who had bought them. The other books, with miss-matched bindings, with threadbare spines, had to be Richard's. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dante, Montaigne, and, both more esoterically and closer to home, Laurence Sterne, Maria Edgeworth, Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, and a number of more recently published sentimental novels, whose presence surprised her. She noticed with pleasure that she and Richard shared similar tastes.

There were closed cupboards beneath the bookshelves, and she opened one curiously. It was full of perfectly normal things: a broken globe, some rolled up maps and charts, a quilled embroidery box, a stack of candles... and Richard's stick. In two parts, with matching splintered ends where it had been snapped.

She had picked it up, both parts, and run her fingers over the boar's head handle. She could see the imprint of Richard's hand on it where the brass shone bright. He must have been using it for years. Casting her mind back, she couldn't remember a time, until now, when it hadn't been at his side. It seemed almost a part of him.

There had come a sound at the door, and Laura had turned to see Richard standing in the hall with Doctor Cavendish. She flushed with guilt, feeling like a child caught with its fingers in the jam jar. Richard only looked placidly at the stick.

"Oh yes. It broke."

"He broke it."

Richard gave a one-shouldered shrug and turned to Cavendish. "I'll see you next week then."

"Next week." Cavendish took his hat from the footman and bowed to Laura. "My lady."

She curtsied back, and then he was gone. Richard limped into the study and looked thoughtfully at her.

"Something wrong?"

"You kept it," she blurted.

"I suppose one of the servants put it there. I thought it had been thrown out. I'll have to get a new one, I suppose." He gave her a puzzled look. "What were you looking for?"

"Looking for?"

"In the cupboards. I don't think there's anything in them but maps."

"No..." Laura carefully put the two bits of stick back where they had been and shut the door. "I don't know. I thought maybe..."

She racked her brain for an acceptable excuse. Richard raised his eyebrows in amusement.

"I have no secrets except you, my dear, and all of London knows that one."

"I wasn't looking for secrets," she flashed.

The amusement died on Richard's face. "You're welcome to use the study, you know. You're welcome to use anything in the house. This is your home. You are not a guest. You are my..."

But he hadn't finished the sentence, and Laura, going back to her own room a little later, had no idea what she was to him.

It was a difficult position for her to be in. She already felt obligated to Richard for supporting her. It was double the obligation now she was being given forty pounds a month and asked to do nothing for it. She chafed against her own guilt, her own sense of inutility. And Richard went to bed every night alone.

One night, when they were lingering at the supper table, she nibbling at walnuts and he sipping claret, he surprised her by mentioning he would be returning to the House of Lords the next week.

"Are you well enough?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's mostly just sitting and listening to old men cough and mumble. I'll be alright. It's you I'm worried — thinking about. You'll be alone a lot."

"I'll amuse myself."

"You could invite friends to tea or luncheon or..." He frowned. "Cards?"

"What do you normally do when you're alone?" she asked curiously.

"This and that," he said vaguely.

"Then I suppose I'll do the same thing." She smiled at him. "Don't worry about me."

"I don't worry. I just don't want you to be lonely."

"I've never been lonely in my life," she lied, and got up from the table.

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, leaning rather heavily on the table. He never remained in the dining room to drink port after Laura had left it. Maidstone had always insisted on the privilege, even when they were alone for the evening. At first it had offended Laura, but gradually she'd come to savour the peace of those lonely hours.

Richard held the door for her and they started up the stairs. He stood back to let her go first, but on the third step she stopped and turned back. He was leaning heavily on the stair rail, a pained frown on his brow.

She stepped back down and put a hand on his elbow."Let me help you."

He shook her off. "Laura. I can't walk around on your arm the rest of my life."

"I know. It's only to get you upstairs." She touched his hand. "Until you get another stick, Richard. Please."

For a moment, he seemed about to relent.

"I can't bear seeing you in pain," she added.

"I've been in pain every day of my life," he said gruffly. "I'm used to it."

He dropped her hand and leaned again on the stair rail. Laura sighed and gave it up. They did not talk much that night, but later, Laura lay awake in her bed wondering where this was going. Since the day she Richard had agreed to take her as a mistress, there had been a barrier between them. She didn't know if she had done it or if had. Probably they both had. But now he was refusing even her help up the stairs, which previously had never been a point of contention. And still he was paying her forty pounds a month, while accepting nothing from her. She had to do something to lessen the obligation.

The next morning, she did it, creeping out before breakfast and heading directly to Bond Street. It took longer than she expected, because the first two shops were not equipped to do what she asked, and the clerk in the third refused to serve a woman at all.

"We are an establishment for gentlemen," he hissed, practically sweeping her out with his broom.

In the fourth shop, however, she found a man who not only could help her, but would. That also took longer than she expected, and by the time she paid for Richard's present with money he'd given her, it was well past ten o'clock. She hurried back to Grosvenor Square only to find that Richard was locked up in his study with a visitor.

Nervous and impatient, she hovered on the second floor landing, peering down through the banisters at the study door. When it opened at last, she saw Richard come out into the hall with another man. Their backs were to her, but she recognized instantly the other man's voice and walk.

"I can't thank you enough for giving me the opportunity," Jonathan Percival said, reaching out to shake Richard's hand.

What was Mr Percival doing in London? Laura drew back, her pulse quickening as she remembered the last time she'd seen him, at the reading of Maidstone's will. And before that — but Percival was harmless, she reminded herself. Any other one of Maidstone's friends might have borne her ill-will, but Mr Percival had always been kind to her.

Nevertheless, she did not wish to go down and greet him, so she waited, stepping back from sight, while they finished talking below. Richard seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of him, and Mr Percival seemed to be trying to make excuses to linger.

"...Dreadfully kind of you," he said. "When we've hardly a passing acquaintance before, too."

"Yes, well, commerce knows no strangers," Richard said, rather impatiently. "But I'll reserve my decision until I've seen the papers."

"Of course! I'll be sure to send them to you immediately. But it's dreadfully kind of you, even to speak to me."

"Think nothing of it."

"Well." There was a silence. Percival seemed to have run out of ways to say thank you. "I'll send those papers immediately."

"Good day now," Richard said firmly.

A moment later, the front door opened and shut. Laura waited a moment before going downstairs and leaning through the doorway of the study. Richard was now standing in front of the fire, holding a visiting card in his hand.

"Don't burn it," Laura said. "Not if it's Mr Percival's card."

"I wasn't going to." He dropped it on the mantelpiece. "You know him?"

"He was... a friend of my husband's. He can be gauche, but he means well."

"I had that impression." Richard tilted his head at her. "What's that you're holding behind your back?"

"Oh. Um." Feeling almost shy, Laura came forward and brought his present out from behind her back. She held it out to him. "I, um, I had them take the handle of your old stick. And put it on a new one, so you can use it again."

He stared at the cane in her hands. It was as similar to the old one as she could find, thick brown walnut, smooth and tapering. The boar's head fitted seamlessly on top of it, winking under the light. It was almost like his stick had never been broken.

A strange, almost horrified expression fell over Richard's face. Then, before Laura could start to defend herself, his lips quivered and he broke out into laughter.

Laura's doubt crystallized into humiliation.

"I'm sorry," he said, catching his breath. "It's just that — oh, Laura, I'm so sorry, but I always hated that thing."

"Oh."

"I thought at last I'd seen the back of it and then you unearth it from a cupboard, patch it up..." He took it from her, testing it on the ground. "It feels the same — it's the right length."

"I had them measure it from the broken one," she mumbled.

"But really." He held it up by the shaft between them, squinting at the handle. "A boar's head — my father's sense of humour. A reminder for me to be persistent, for my fifteenth birthday. I feel like a stupid little coward boy again, just seeing it — I should have bought a new one years ago."

"I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for."

"But I thought... well it doesn't matter. I was wrong."

He rested the stick on the ground, his weight upon it, just like in the old days, and frowned at her, perplexed.

"I think it's very kind of you," he said.

Kind, and useless. She bit her lip.

"Laura." He touched her hand. "I really appreciate it."

"But you don't even like it."

"And yet somehow I like you better for it."

She didn't know what to say. She thought if she did speak, she would snap at him. So she said nothing and looked bleakly at him. His eyes softened. He touched her cheek and moved closer. Like an entranced bird, she watched as he closed the distance between them and kissed her.

An awkward kiss, landing on the corner of her mouth. A strange kiss, for like Galatea she came to life beneath it and found herself able to lean her head back for a better angle.

He kissed her again and dropped the stick so he could take her shoulders in his hands. Under his touch, she felt her blood quiet and her heart slow. When it ended, he kept his arms around her.

"I want you to choose me a new one," he said. "Not a boar. Your own taste."

"What if you don't like it?"

"I promise I'll love it. We'll go together if you want."

She touched her cheek to his."Very much."

He didn't kiss her again, but that night, after the servants had gone to sleep, Laura crept downstairs and slipped into his room. He turned over in the bed as she approached. Raised an arm and with it the blanket. She slipped beneath and curled up against him. Then blanket and arm closed around her.

And for the moment, Laura knew exactly what Richard was doing with her.