Since she had come downstairs dressed in riding garb, planning a brisk, early gallop, she was obliged to accept with a show of good grace. “Do you always rise so early?” she asked, pulling on her gloves of York tan. Justin was about to answer in the affirmative, when he caught himself. He smiled cautiously. “I think I must, for it feels natural to be doing so. I should imagine, however, that I rarely venture forth in such charming company.” He watched in some satisfaction as a delicate flush swept over her cheeks. Was the lady so unused to even the mildest of compliments? Once mounted, they cantered sedately past the environs of the house. During his solitary excursion the day before, Justin had been struck by the beauty of Winter’s Keep. Palladian in style, it lay in a fold of hills, an exercise in symmetry, its two main wings spread on either side of a graceful portico. “The house was built early in the seventeen hundreds,” explained Catherine, “by the Earl of Stanchin, and it was owned by the family until about fifty years ago, when it was purchased by the Duke of Berkshire for a younger son.
