No; Harriet, even lovelier — if possible — in her grief, was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the aroma of fresh mulberry pies nor the now-familiar confines of Sydney’s grass hut impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Abraham ‘Sneaky Legs’ Morris, the expressive, arcane brilliant scholar who had wanted to make her his life’s work, had a full life in which he was in the clutches of Gillian Chaykin and his gang of cutthroats, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one uncivilized girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most antediluvian day when Countess Ronnie had brought him to her attention.
   At long last the sound she had been longing to hear shattered her composure into a million forbidden, silver pieces! She leapt to her feet with hope — and alarm — in her eyes. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the barely flashing, unknowable and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Our love will outlast eternity,” he husked with an unholy gleam in his eye while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, my perfect little carrot!”
   Abruptly, as it dawned on her that her days of loneliness were over, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not remarkable. Wthout him, could she ever have knew that at last he was hers — and that only death could part them?