"Pack these," Mary directed. "Leave the wool."

Clutching the pile of scarves, Mary's maid looked anxiously at her mistress. "It's past midnight, miss. His lordship—"

"Will wait. He does it so well." Bending over her dressing table, Mary opened the lid of her jewel box and contemplated the contents. Closing it with a decisive click, she thrust the box out to the maid. "I won't be needing these anymore. See that Miss Letty gets this. With my love, of course."

There was only one possible reason for Mary to bequeath her bagatelles. And it wasn't love.

Taking care not to let the poker scrape against the floor, Letty tiptoed back into her own room, leaning the unwanted weapon carefully against the wall. She wouldn't be needing it. At least, she didn't think she would. In the course of her long career as de facto keeper of the Alsworthy mйnage, Letty had confronted all manner of domestic disruption, from exploding Christmas puddings to indignant tradesmen, and even, on one memorable occasion, escaped livestock. Letty had bandaged burns, coaxed her little brother's budgie out of a tree, and stage-managed her family's yearly remove to a rented town house in London.

An attempted elopement was something new.

The whole situation was straight out of the comic stage: the daughter of the house hastily packing in the middle of the night with the help of her trusty (and soon to be unemployed) maid, the faithful lover waiting downstairs with a speedy carriage, ready to whisk them away to Gretna Green. All that was needed was a rope ladder and an irate guardian in hot pursuit.

That role, Letty realized, fell to her. It didn't seem quite fair, but there it was. She had to stop Mary.

But how? Remonstrating with Mary wouldn't be any use. Over the past few years, Mary had made it quite clear that she didn't care to take advice from a sister, and a younger sister, at that. She responded to Letty's well-meaning suggestions with the unblinking disdain perfected by cats in their dealings with their humans. Letty knew just how Mary would react. She would hear Letty out without saying a word, and then calmly go on to do whatever it was she had intended to do in the first place.