Dara stared mindlessly at the embroidery frame in her lap, her long fingers still, her heart as dark and bleak as the sky beyond the open curtains at the drawing-room windows. For three days and nights, Jiyong had been a stranger to her, a cold, forbidding man who looked at her with icy blatant disinterest or contempt, on those rare occasions when he looked at her at all. It was as if someone else now inhabited his body someone she did not know, someone she sometimes saw watching her with a expression in his eyes that was so malign it made her shiver.

Not even Uncle Monty's unexpected arrival and bluff presence had any effect on lightening the heavy atmosphere at Hawthorne. He had come to Dara's rescue he explained to her privately after settling into his rooms yesterday and critically surveying the plump bottom of the upstairs maid who was turning down his bed because he'd heard belatedly in Seoul that "Hawthorne had looked like the wrath of God," when he discovered her wager in the book at White's.

But all of Uncle Monty's dogged, transparently obvious attempts to engage Jiyong in friendly conversation yielded nothing but scrupulously courteous, extremely brief responses. And Dara's attempts to pretend that was normal and natural fooled no one, including the servants, into believing they were a happily married couple. The entire household, from Higgins the butler to Gaho the dog, were vibrantly, nervously aware of the strained atmosphere.

In the oppressive silence of the drawing room, Uncle Monty's hearty voice boomed out like a thunderclap, making Dara jump: "I say, Hawthorne, capital weather we're having!" Lifting his white brows in an inquiring expression, hoping for an answer that might lead to further conversation, Uncle Monty waited.

Jiyong raised his eyes from the book he was reading and replied, "Indeed."

"Not a bit wet," Uncle Monty persevered, his cheeks rosy from the wine he'd imbibed. "Not wet at all," agreed Jiyong, his face and voice devoid of expression.

Unnerved but undaunted, Uncle Monty said, "Warm, too. Good weather for crops."

"Is it?" Jiyong replied in a tone that positively discouraged any additional attempt at conversation.

"Er quite," Uncle Monty replied, retreating farther back in his chair and shooting Dara desperate look.

"Do you have the time?" Dara asked, longing to retire.

Jiyong looked up at her and said with deliberate cruelty, "No."

"Ought to have a watch, Hawthorne," Uncle Monty suggested, as if he thought the idea a wonderfully original one. "They're the very thing to keep abreast of the time!"

Dara quickly averted her face to hide her hurt that Jiyong had for the second time accepted her grandfather's watch and then cast it aside. "It's eleven o'clock," Uncle Monty provided helpfully, pointing to his own watch and chain. " I always wear a watch," he boasted. "Never need to wonder about the hour. Wondrous things, watches," he rhapsodized. "One can't help conjecturing about how they work, can one?"

Jiyong slammed his book shut. "Yes," he said bluntly, "one can." Having failed utterly in his attempt to draw Jiyong into an animated discussion about watchmaking, Uncle Monty sent another pleading look to Dara, but it was Gaho who responded. The huge English sheepdog, while utterly nonchalant about his duty to protect people, was deeply cognizant of his duty to console them, lavish them with affection, and generally be underfoot in case they had need of his attention. Seeing the unhappy expression on Sir Montague's face, he roused himself from the hearth and trotted towards him, whereupon he delivered two extremely wet to his hand. "Ye gods!" burst out Uncle Monty, leaping to his feet with more energy than he'd displayed in a quarter century and vigorously wiping the back of his hand against his trousers. "That animal has a tongue like a wet mop!"

Offended, Gaho cast a mournful look upon his disgruntled victim, then turned and flopped down on the hearth.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll retire," Dara said, unable to bear the atmosphere another moment.

"Is everything in readiness at the grove, Filbert?" Dara asked the next afternoon, when her faithful old servant answered her summons and appeared in her bedchamber.

"It is," the servant announced bitterly. "Not that yer husband deserves a birthday party. After the way 'e's been treatin' ye, 'e deserves a kick in the arse!" Dara tucked a wayward curl beneath the brim of her sky-blue bonnet and did not argue the issue. She'd conceived the idea for a surprise party in honor of Jiyong's birthday the day they'd strolled out to the pavilion the happiest day of what was apparently a short-lived period of bliss.

After days of enduring Jiyong's frigid, unexplainable disdain, her face was pale, and she was forever on the verge of tears. Her chest ached from holding them back, and her heart ached because she couldn't find a reason for Jiyong's behavior. But as the hour for her surprise approached, she couldn't quell the burgeoning hope that perhaps when Jiyong saw what she had planned with Youngbae and Bom's help, he might either become the man he had been when they were together at the stream, or at least tell her what was bothering him.

"The whole staffs talkin' bout the way he's actin' t' ye," Filbert continued angrily. "Hardly speakin' t' ye and lockin' himself away in his study night and day, never doin' his husbandl"

"Filbert, please!" Dara cried. "Don't spoil today for me with all that."

ontrite, but still determined to vent his spleen against the man who was causing the dark shadows beneath Dara's eyes, Filbert said, "Don't need to spoil it fer ye, he'll do that if'n he can. Surprised he even agreed to go wit ye to the grove when you tolt him you had somethin' to show 'im."

"So was I," Dara said with an attempt at a smile that immediately became a puzzled little frown. She had confronted Jiyong his study this morning when he was meeting with Psy, the new assistant bailiff, and she had fully expected to have to plead with him to accompany her for a ride. At first, Jiyong started to refuse her request, but then he hesitated, glanced at the bailiff, and then abruptly agreed.

"Everything is in readiness," Psy was assuring Jiyong in the master bedchamber. "My men are stationed in the trees along the route to the grove and around the grove itself. They've been there for three hours since twenty minutes after your wife suggested your little jaunt. I instructed my men to remain there, out of sight, until the assassin or assassins reveal themselves. Since they can't leave their positions without being seen, they can't report back to me, and I don't know what they're seeing. God knows why your cousin chose the grove instead of a cottage or somewhere more private."

"I do not believe this is happening," Jiyong bit out, shrugging into a fresh shirt. He stopped, momentarily struck by the absurdity of putting on a fresh shirt so that he would look nice when his wife led him into a trap meant to kill him.

"It's happening," Psy said with the deadly calm of a seasoned soldier. "And it's a trap. I could tell it from the sound of your wife's voice and the look in her eyes when she asked you to ride out with her this afternoon. She was nervous and she was lying. I watched her eyes. Eyes don't lie."

Jiyong regarded the investigator with bitter derision, remembering how deceptively, radiantly innocent Dara's eyes had once seemed to him. "That's a myth," he said contemptuously. "A myth I used to believe."

"The note we intercepted from Youngbae an hour ago is no myth," Psy reminded Jiyong with quiet conviction. "They're so confident we're ignorant of their plans that they're becoming careless." At the mention of Youngbae's note, Jiyong's face became as expressionless as a stone mask. As instructed, Higgins had brought Youngbae's note to Jiyong before carrying it up to Dara, and the words seared into Jiyong's brain:

Everything is ready at the grove. All you have to do is get him there. An hour ago, the pain of reading that had nearly sent him to his knees, but now he felt nothing. He was past the point of feeling anything, even a sense of betrayal or fear as he prepared to face his own beloved assassins. Now all he wanted was to have the thing over with, so he could somehow begin blotting Dara out of his heart and mind.

Last night he had lain awake in his bed, fighting the stupid urge to go to her and hold her, to give her money and warn her to flee for whether or not she and Youngbae succeeded in killing him today, Psy already had enough evidence to ensure that she and Youngbae would spend the rest of their lives in prison. The image of Dara living out her life in a dark, rat-infested cell, was almost more than Jiyong could bear, even now when he was about to become her target in open country.