He had never looked at her like that.

"Must find Papa!" said Mary brightly, sweeping up her skirts in one hand. "Until supper, then."

For a man who had once haunted her steps and doted on her smiles, he barely seemed to realize she had gone.

Knowing the importance of a good exit, Mary kept her head high and her back straight as she moved deliberately towards the heavily carved door that led out to the gallery that overlooked the Great Hall. She let a slight smile tease the edges of her lips, the sort of smile that always made gentlemen wild to know what she was smiling about. It drove women equally wild for entirely different reasons.

Pausing in her leisurely progress, she stopped to examine a particularly busy portion of tapestry with every sign of antiquarian absorption. Two paces away, she couldn't remember a single thread of it. All she could see was Geoff's dark eyes drifting away over her shoulder towards her sister.

A woman scorned had a certain grandeur to it; a woman forgotten was merely pathetic.

Only when she had achieved the empty space beyond the door did she allow herself the luxury of defeat. Letting her seductive smile melt into blankness, Mary trailed one pale hand along the worn wood of the balustrade that ran along the upper gallery of the hall below. According to Geoffrey, a Pinchingdale bride had flung herself from that balcony rather than submit to a loveless marriage. More fool she, thought Mary. What was it about idiocy that attained veneration through sheer age? Mary had never understood why Juliet refused to marry Count Paris. He was a far better match than that silly young Romeo. And then to drink poison…well, there was just no accounting for some people. Mary would have taken Count Paris and his Veronese palazzo in a heartbeat.

The walls of the upper gallery had been paneled in dark wood, each square carved with a portrait head in profile.