Unlike Rebecca with her dark braid and eyes, both younger girls looked very much like their brother, with sandy hair and blue eyes. A little bit like Alex himself, he mused as he fielded their inevitable questions. They started their inquisition as soon as he appeared in the breakfast room and Rebecca introduced him. The breakfast was over an hour ago, but they still refused to stop. They refused to have their lessons either. They all converged in the library; Rebecca at her desk, pretending to work, Alex in his armchair, not pretending to do anything, and the younger sisters fussing over him.

"We celebrate today," six-year-old Emily, the baby of the family, announced exuberantly and climbed into Alex's lap. "Our brother came home." She hugged him tightly for the tenth time that morning and kissed his cheek. "I'll brush your hair, Alex. You're all tangled. Your leg doesn't hurt, does it?" She made it sound as if it would be a great imposition if his leg dared to hurt.

The only possible answer was, "No." While Emily beautified him, Alex glanced at Rebecca. She watched him with such entreaty in her brown eyes that he smiled and nodded faintly in reassurance. He felt a cad for impersonating the girls' brother, but to back off now would be even worse.

"I haven't had a girl brushing my hair since forever," he said. "Such a weird feeling. Hey, pumpkin," he addressed Emily. "Who does your hair? Your braids are almost as long as Rebecca's."

"Becky does," she said absently, absorbed in her task. "Sometimes, Mary. But I want red ribbons, and Becky said red is not my color."

Her little fingers tickled his scalp, and he couldn't erase his smile. This warm feeling in his chest didn't belong to him; it rightly belonged to Alexander Carlyle. Why hadn't the stupid man ever visited home, if such a welcome awaited him?

"Rubbish," Alex said loyally. "Red is definitely your color. Any color is your color. Next time, send Rebecca to me about the ribbon colors."

Emily beamed, while Mary, the middle sister, held back, gazing at Alex in quiet adoration.

"Do you remember when you last came to see us?" Mary murmured. "You brought me paints."

"Mmm," Alex said. He had found long ago that silence served in most situations, letting people assume what they wanted. He should've stayed silent during his conversation with Rebecca last night. Or maybe not.

He liked it here, liked the girls' flurry around him. He knew his soldiers liked him too, but that had been professional. He had been a good officer, he cared about his men, and they respected him for that and for his personal courage. It was give and take. Here, he didn't have to give anything. They seemed to like him just because he played the role of their brother, that lucky bastard Carlyle. Even Rebecca liked him because of that.

Last night, Alex had thought her passably pretty, but he had been wrong. Today, the weak autumn sunlight peeking into the library window surrounded her with a golden glow. He wanted to touch her, to discover how soft her skin was. Something stirred in his breeches too, a decidedly unbrotherly fascination. He checked the younger sisters. Did they notice? No, they didn't seem to. Good. Emily was babbling again, and he tuned her out. He should find a solution to their masquerade soon, or someone was bound to notice his interest in Rebecca.

Did Rebecca think of him as a brother? The thought wiped a goofy grin from his lips. That was not how he wanted her to look at him. He ruthlessly blocked his improper thoughts and concentrated on Emily's words.

"Mary's drawing and painting all the time," the girl confided, disregarding her sister's frantic hand waving. "Show him your paintings, Mary."

"Yes." Alex perked up. Anything was better than thinking lewd thoughts about Rebecca. She was supposed to be his sister, at least for a while. "Please, Mary," he said.

"You really want to see?" Mary murmured and blushed. "I'm nothing special."

"Show me," Alex said firmly. "All my sisters are special."

"Even me?" Emily piped.

"Definitely!"

Mary blushed even deeper, her fair skin between the freckles dark-pink and pretty. "It's all upstairs. I'll be right back." She dashed out. A few moments later, she brought a thick portfolio for Alex's perusal. "Watercolors," she said almost inaudibly.

He liked her paintings, mostly flowers and landscapes in soft pastel hues. "Wonderful," he said honestly.

"Not as good as that." She nodded at the painting behind Rebecca's desk.

Alex laughed. "Give it time, Mary. I bet that artist wasn't thirteen when he painted it."

She smiled shyly.

"Why do you sign your paintings Sophronia? Is it your artistic pseudonym?"

She looked at him in surprise. "That's my middle name. Don't you remember? Mary is so boring."

Alex felt stupid. He slapped his forehead with his palm. "Silly me. Of course." He needed Rebecca to brief him, but they didn't have time this morning, before the girls accosted him. This conversation was as studded with ambushes as the Spanish countryside had ever been. He should tread carefully.

"You have to remind me all the details," he said. "It's been so long, and I was never interested in the family history as a boy. Why Sophronia? Did your..." He gulped and corrected himself hurriedly. "Did our parents name you for the Torquato Tasso's heroine?"

"You really don't remember," Mary said accusingly.

"Boys are rotten with family stories," Alex said, condemning his sex indiscriminately. "Tell me. There is a story, right? It's an uncommon name."

"It wasn't because of any literary heroine. We had an ancestress Sophronia. She was a beautiful maiden." Mary's voice assumed dreamy storytelling cadenzas. "She lived hundreds of years ago. One day, a noble knight was passing her castle. He was wounded by an evil baron. Sophronia took him in and nursed him. When the baron stormed the castle and demanded to see the wounded knight, to kill him, she lied. She said there was no wounded knight there, just her sick brother. She saved the knight's life, and the baron left. Afterwards, the knight married her. That's why, in every generation of our family, one girl is always named Sophronia."

"Right," Alex said, trying to maintain a serious expression, although his lips twitched in his need to guffaw. "Such fibs are a family tradition, I see. A beautiful legend, no question about it. Sophronia was such a heroic girl. Are you sure her middle name wasn't Rebecca?"

"No!" both Mary and Emily cried indignantly.

Rebecca stayed mum. She was biting her lip and staring at the desk, fiddling with a letter opener. Two dull red spots bloomed on her cheeks.

"I'm sorry I didn't remember that legend before," Alex pursued. "I love it. I'll always remember it now."

Of course, after such a sweeping statement, the younger girls happily enlightened Alex about several other Sophronias dangling from the family tree. Each one of the Sophronias had a decided propensity for creative embellishments.

"Such marvelous tales," Alex squeezed out between bouts of laughter. His eyes danced. "I positively love all the Sophronias. I have a definitive preference for noble liars."

"But I don't lie," Mary announced primly.

"Ah," Alex said. "Maybe your other sisters picked up the trait."

Rebecca stayed silent, until a big man appeared at the open door of the library and cleared his throat diffidently. "How do you do, Miss. Master. Welcome home." He inclined his head in a respectful greeting.

"Oh, hello, Mister Crumpel." Rebecca jumped to her feet, as if grateful for any excuse to stop the painful conversation. She introduced the man, their bailiff, to Alex and at last banished the girls to the nursery upstairs to have at least a half-day of lessons.

"I wanted to talk to you, Mister Carlyle," said the bailiff. "About the second field."

"But, Mister Crumpel," Rebecca interrupted. "We have already decided."

"Miss," he said gravely. "I know, but with the master home, your power of attorney no longer holds. He is here, so respectfully, it's his decision now."

Rebecca lifted her eyebrows and glanced at Alex.

He shrugged apologetically. The law never treated women fairly; they were wrestling with this problem right now. "Mister Crumpel," he said. "I'm not up to speed yet. I'll learn, but for now, please follow my sister's instructions. She knows what's what, and I only came home last night. Give me a couple of months at least."

"Of course," the man said and launched into a detailed explanation of what was happening with the estate.

Alex listened with half an ear, nodded occasionally, and produced appropriate noises, but mostly let the bailiff and Rebecca polish out the particulars. Both knew what they talked about, and Alex didn't think he needed to learn. Land management never interested him. He had never owned any land, and it was highly improbable he would acquire any. Money management, on the other hand, was of utmost importance, and Rebecca was ready to authorize a huge expenditure on something utterly unnecessary.

"I don't think," he broke in, "that we should spend so much on those fences. We'll need the money for some other stuff, now that I'm home. The fences can wait till next year."

"Alex!" Rebecca exclaimed. "What are you saying? We must..." Then, remembering their situation, she deflated. "Yes, sure," she said in a subdued voice. "The fences will have to wait. He's right, Mister Crumpel."

Afterwards, while Rebecca was occupied in the kitchen and the girls studied upstairs, Alex trekked through the house. He had already met the two female servants, the maid and the cook, and they both curtsied to him, wreathed in smiles, and accepted him without questions. Mister Crumpel also didn't display any doubts, but the old butler Henry, the one who had opened the door yesterday, eyed him with suspicion, when Alex stepped into the dining room.

Disregarding the old servitor's palpable mistrust, Alex looked around with interest. The furniture was sturdy oak, without any adornments but clean and polished to a shine, like everywhere else in the house. The only item of decor was a painting above the cupboard. It was a landscape, like the one in the library. Of a similar size and in a similarly plain frame, it showed a waterfall beside a ruined temple. It seemed to belong to the same master as the one in the library, with similar deft brushstrokes and almost identical play of light on shadows, although this one depicted a sunny day.

Alex hobbled closer to look at the signature in the corner. He stifled his gasp of amazement at the familiar name: Palonico. A couple years ago, he had seen some of this artist's other works in a mansion where his brigade bivouacked. The owner, an art lover and ardent collector, had told him that Palonico was a famous Italian Renaissance painter. Very few of his large landscapes survived. Yet here, in an obscure British manor, Alex had already found two. They would cost a fortune, if offered to the right collectors. He had to tell Rebecca. She could sell one and live with the girls on the proceeds for several years, unless the paintings were documented as belonging to the estate. He had to ask Rebecca.

Elated by the discovery, he wanted to talk to her immediately, but she wasn't home.

"She went to the village with the girls," Henry, the butler, said grudgingly, when Alex applied to him for information.

"That's why the house is so silent," Alex said with a grin, but Henry only grunted and turned away, scrubbing pointedly at a piece of silverware with his polishing rag. Alex shrugged and didn't press. The man seemed to creak with every move. Maybe it was his rheumatism that made him crabby and not his dislike of Alex. If that was so, Alex sympathized. His leg ached too. It would probably rain tomorrow, but for today, the weather was fine, and the pale autumn sunlight beckoned him outside as well. Perhaps he would embark on some exploring. He grabbed his coat, hat, and cane and sauntered out the door. He would see if he could find the ruins he had noticed on the way here.

The harvest was already in, so the fields lay empty and relaxed between their rock borders. Everything breathed tranquility: the wavy line of hills, sheep grazing in a meadow, a cart trundling along a lane, and a brook tinkling under a low wooden bridge. The war hadn't touched this island for a long time, even though her men fought and died on the continent.

When Alex entered the woods, almost transparent this late in the fall, fallen leaves rustled under his feet. He tightened his hold on the cane. The leafy carpet was pretty but slippery, just like his precarious position in the Carlyle household—the family of three sisters and many imaginative Sophronias. He didn't wish to fall down and break his one good leg. He needed both legs to outrun the magistrate, if anyone got a whiff of Rebecca's and his fake brother stratagem.

A vague outline of broken walls rose between the bare branches long before the woods opened up and he could see the ruins clearly. They stood on a small hillock, circled on the other side by the same brook he had crossed earlier. The brook was almost a river here, wider and muddier. The shore rose over the gurgling water in a grassy bluff. There must be a good fishing here, Alex thought absently, watching an old man nodding over his rod behind a screen of shrubbery.

Inside the ruined walls, huge chunks of broken masonry scattered haphazardly over the ground, the remains of columns and pillars, but small rocks were all gone, probably to make those symbolic borders between the fields. Most of the roof had caved in long ago, and weeds stole out of every crevice, catching the late autumn sun.

In a gap between the far walls, a pond blanketed by fallen leaves glistened below a grassy incline, peppered by multi-sized boulders. On the opposite side of the pond, a thicket of young firs spread across the steep rise of the rocky ground, their boughs dense with bright green needles. He thought he caught a glimpse of a moss-covered roof amidst the firs but he wasn't sure. Reeds grew around the shore of the pond, and a team of ducks paddled happily among the leaves, diving and quacking.