The sound of her brother's voice caused Miss Catherine Wheatly to pause a moment before she gently eased another hen from its nest to remove one small, warm egg, and then another. Her glorious chestnut hair, tied back from her face, appeared merely brown in the gloom of the barn. Dressed as she was in a plain but tidy gown, she presented a business-like appearance going about her task. Not even the plainness of her dress, however, would cause one to mistake Catherine Wheatly for a servant in any light. Taller than average by half, Catherine was not a young lady who worried herself about the fine differences between "stately" and "lanky." Height, she found, lent one an air of authority, and in Catherine's position such an air was frequently useful. Catherine herself was unaware of her other assets. The hair that was a plain brown in the shadows was more likely to glow as though lit by inner fires when the sun caught it as she supervised workers, or walked purposefully across the meadow.

Nor was she aware that her eyes sparkled when, as they did now, wit and good humor lit up her face. "Two in one day! You are a wonder." Catherine hummed to herself and began calculating the day's harvest of eggs and its impact on their meager income as the hen fluttered off in a flurry of offended feathers.

"Faster, Randy!" The voice was frantic now. "We're going to drop her!"

The panicked bleating of a goat somewhere over her head penetrated Catherine's concentration this time, sending a spasm of alarm through her. She hurriedly put down the precious egg basket, leaving it to wobble on the crude wooden nesting shelf and burst through the barn door with the sound of command in her voice. "Randolph, Frederick, stop tormenting Rosalinda this instant."

In a single moment, a number of facts registered in Catherine's consciousness: Master Frederick Wheatly in front of her gazing with concern toward the roof of the barn, Rosalinda the goat dangling precariously from a homemade harness far above her head, Rosalinda's foot kicking desperately against the barn, Master Randolph Wheatly clinging to the peak of the roof, using all his strength to pull the rope, and the look of pure relief on Master Randolph's face as he heard her command and prepared to obey.

"Randy, no, don't, I didn't mean..." Her warning was too late as Randy released his grip on the rope. One last good kick sent the goat careening sideways in its descent, missing Catherine, and plunging backside first into the large watering trough to the right of the barn door. The trough effectively broke Rosalinda's fall and Rosalinda, largest of the Wheatly's milk goats, effectively demolished the watering trough. Gallons of water projected to every corner of the barnyard. Rosalinda scrambled to her feet, shaking her head in confusion.

Randy's shrieks distracted Catherine. Thrown backward when he released the goat, he began to slide down the slope of the roof. "Roll over!" Frederick shouted, "Roll to your stomach." Randy obeyed and, if he couldn't stop his fall, he was able to control it somewhat as he slipped off the edge of the roof, plunged into the midst of eight squealing piglets, rolled three times and got to his feet grinning with relief through a thick coat of mud. His grin was short-lived however when he realized that the pen into which he had fallen also contained an irate mother sow. The sow made for Randolph, and Randy made for the gate, tripping over rioting piglets.

The surprisingly nimble sow pursued him with great speed through the middle of the barn, but the piglets possessed very little sense of direction as they ran circles about Catherine's skirts defying her efforts to catch them. They overturned flowerpots, and irritated the geese, until they began nibbling at the family's vegetable garden.

Rosalinda, having recovered from her confusion, began to eye Frederick in a suspiciously threatening fashion. When she lowered her head and prepared to charge, that gentleman made a hasty decision to look after his brother's safety. Running through a barn full of nervously clucking chickens, overturned nesting boxes, gaping stall doors and disheveled hay bales, he shouted, "Randy, Randy, are you all right?"

A rough hand reached out to capture the piglet attempting to elude Catherine's grasp on its hind foot. With a piglet under each arm, MacLeish, the farm manager, firmly secured the gate, giving it an angry shake, and began placing the piglets in the pen. Putting yet another piglet over the fence Catherine looked up at him ruefully.

"Beg pardon, Miss Catherine, but them boys is no gentlemen." MacLeish reddened at the irony he gave that last word and added, his voice gruff, "We best clean up this mess."

The two of them set about putting the barnyard to rights. By the time they were finished Catherine's sleeve had torn loose at the shoulder in the effort to subdue an angry Rosalinda, her skirts were mud-caked, and her hair was decorated with hay collected in the effort to restore precious feed to its storage place in the barn.

The sight of MacLeish grimly examining the pieces of his broken watering trough put a catch in her best business-like voice, "It needs to be fixed but we've no time for it now. It will have to wait til the harvest is in and the stock prepared for winter. I will set Master Randolph and Master Frederick to carrying water for the animals every day." A barely concealed snort revealed MacLeish's thoughts about the chances of that plan succeeding but he kept his own counsel out of respect for his mistress. "Yes, Miss. I'll see to it." It was the voice of a man used to taking this young woman's orders, and one who knew she was right.

If in his heart he believed the master of the house would interfere as he always did with any effort to make those two "young devils" participate in real work, he didn't say. If he had an opinion about the master's apparent inability to notice the amount of real work done by the oldest daughter of the house, he kept that from his face also, and went back to the fields.

Catherine put a hand to her aching head, adding just a faint smear of mud to her cheek, and returned to her original mission. A quick search of the barn yielded an overturned egg basket, much of its contents broken. Her nerves snapped.

Trailing wisps of hay and leaving muddy footprints, she marched to through door of Songbird Cottage, and past Mrs. MacLeish who was elbow deep in bread dough. Her anger wasn't dampened by her servant's outraged objections. "Miss Catherine! A lady wouldn't..."

Catherine barely heard and didn't care what a lady would or would not do. A lady would not have to worry what the loss of one day's egg harvest meant to her family. A lady wouldn't have to deal with incorrigible young gentlemen whose irresponsible actions caused damage others would have to repair, nor weigh the cost of the work lost by those who did the repairing. No, and a young woman of twenty shouldn't have the care of raising those young rascals and the worry of what was to become of them. But Catherine did.

Enough, she thought, is enough. This time Papa would do something about those two. If they hadn't the skill to fix what they had broken they could fetch water from the pond every day until MacLeish could make the repairs. She could anticipate their father's reaction when the boys pleaded that manual labor was not the work for gentlemen. Gentlemen? Ha! Only if it suited their purposes to avoid punishment. Papa would never notice if they didn't complain to him about Catherine's attempts to make them contribute to the running of the home farm. He certainly never noticed what Catherine herself did. "Miss Catherine, wait!"

The voice trailed behind her down the hall past the pantry. Catherine's anger distilled to one white-hot thought: Papa must understand how wild the boys had become. It is not, she would explain, that she didn't want them to be gentlemen. On the contrary, that is exactly what she did want. It is past time they understood the responsibility of home and family.

Mrs. MacLeish's round little form scurried through the cottage after her. "Miss Catherine, you mustn't."

Songbird Cottage, while far from a grand country home, was somewhat larger than its name implied. Broad of roof, low of ceiling, it sprawled out from a central core at odd angles where previous tenants had enlarged it. Possessed of numerous passages and small rooms, it was an altogether comfortable place, with an atmosphere of family warmth Catherine herself had done much to create, an atmosphere that was not enhanced by her ominous trek through its narrow hall.

"Miss Catherine, please!"

If the warning tone in Mrs. MacLeish's voice hadn't been enough to make Catherine cautious, the white card gleaming on the table by the door should have done it. Bounding with determination past the dining room, turning sharply to the left, she marched straight on for her father's study. "Study" was what he pronounced it to be, having appropriated the morning room years before, because, he said, "The light is right for my purposes and the garden! The garden outside the windows is the perfect laboratory for my science."

The slamming of the door reverberated through the house; Catherine's voice was shrill with anger.

"They've gone too far. This time you have to do something." She didn't pause for breath. "Repairing the trough will cost MacLeish three days work. I've lost an entire basket of eggs." Her voice continued to rise. "Rosalinda is so nervous she won't give milk for a week and the pigs have made a disaster of the yard. They must be made to see..."

Silence abrupt and total. Catherine saw, too late, that she and her father were not alone. Leaning against the mantle, the sun through lace curtains behind him shooting rays of gold through the blond of his impeccably arranged hair, was a vision of male elegance of the first order. Even one who lived as far from the salons of London as Catherine knew his dress was all that is fashionable, from the tassels on his gleaming hessians to wondrous folds of his snowy neckcloth, to the fit of the of the jacket molded carefully around his shoulders. One more experienced may have noted that the fine points of the newest fashion was missing, or that his gloriously blond head owed more to wind and sun than a valet's attention, or even that the long and graceful fingers of those elegant hands were rougher than hands that knew only fashionable drawing rooms. Even a young woman as inexperienced as she, however, knew his masculine attraction was well beyond the ordinary and owed little to fashion. Even one as angry as she knew her manner of speech was not at all the thing in the presence of such a vision.

Catherine swallowed hard and wondered silently if his eyes could truly be as blue as they appeared. His eyes! While she stood spellbound, those eyes were leisurely following a trail from her muddy half boots, up her sodden skirts across her bosom. She colored as those ice blue eyes flicked impatiently across her face and came to rest on one wisp of straw that stood out at a particularly odd angle over her right ear.

"This, I presume, is Lady Mary's daughter?"

"Lady Mary's daughter." Even four hundred years of fine breeding couldn't disguise the ironic twist he gave to "lady." The tone brought Catherine solidly to the present and stiffened her backbone. Her chin went up, and Catherine's manners asserted themselves.

"Father," her voice gave the word an emphasis of her own, "I beg your pardon; I had no idea I was interrupting."

"I say, Catherine, this is not at all the thing. Pigs? It won't do, won't do. Young ladies nattering about such things. Not at all the thing. I say, what is that in your hair." Arthur Wheatly sputtered to a stop at the full horror of his daughter's appearance. Catherine's color reached an alarming state of red and amusement glinted in the watching blue eyes.

"I'm sorry. It's just that Freddy and Randy dropped Rosalinda from the barn roof, and, left such a disaster behind." Disaster indeed, she thought, her eyes never leaving the gentleman at the window. A lady would drop her eyes modestly, she thought distantly. His eyes continued to hold hers.

"Rosalinda? Who the devil is Rosalinda? Barn, Catherine, really, not at all the thing. The boys..."

"Perhaps you might make the lady known to me." His voice was firm but his eyes released hers.

"Yes, of course. Miss Catherine Wheatly, m'daughter, don't you know. My oldest gel, that is. May I present His Lordship, er, I say Catherine what have you been about?"

"Chadbourne." The voice that cut in this time held authority, and perhaps more arrogance than proper manners allowed.

"Yes, Chadbourne. Earl, y'know. Charlie's uncle."

"I have the honor. His Grace is my sister's son." The courtesy form of address was punctuated with a raised eyebrow.

William Landrum, Viscount Danforth, Earl of Chadbourne. The maternal uncle of her cousin Charles. Catherine's mind was racing.

How can this person be Chadbourne? Surely Chadbourne was a man of Father's years and this man couldn't be more than thirty. Those eyes bore amusement and something else that brought Catherine sharply to her senses.

"Welcome to Songbird Cottage, my lord. I am honored to make your acquaintance." Honored? Puzzled. What, dear God, what was he doing here. They never came here. Not one of them, ever.

"And I yours, Miss Wheatly," he said dryly. "Your unexpected arrival was a timely confirmation of the very point I was attempting to make with Lord Arthur. You do see my point don't you, Wheatly? This will not do."

"I say, Chadbourne, Catherine is a fine gel. Grace any salon. This ain't her regular line. I... Rosalinda, Catherine? The goat? Not the thing for fine company. Not at all the thing. 'Course salons ain't her regular line either. Not that she couldn't. Has grace. Made sure she had all the training. Piano. Watercolor. French teacher. Dances, too. Don't dare say she's not up to snuff. Not at all the way to go on."

"Really, Wheatly, Lady Mary's daughter would be more comfortable here in the country. You must see that."

"'Course she would. We all are. The country is the best place. Has been fine for us all, Allison, Randolph, Frederick, Catherine. Songbird Cottage is all we need. Don't need your help. No. I won't hear about it."

"About what, Father?"

"Chadbourne here has some cork-brained scheme about hauling us off to London. Give the youngsters finishing or polish or whatnot. Fire off Allison in style."

But not me. That was it. Allison but not me. Not Lady Mary's daughter.

"What exactly do you have in mind, my lord?" Those who knew her well might have taken warning from the sweetness in her voice. Her mind continued to race, assessing what this might mean to her brothers and sister and their precarious existence. And what it might mean to her.

"Don't matter!" Catherine jumped at her father's voice. "Don't matter. Catherine you best go off and make yourself presentable. Let His Lordship and I finish our business."

The tone was one Catherine had heard only once or twice before. She opened her mouth to object but a sagging strand of hair reminded her of her appearance. The chin went up again.

"Yes, Father. Straight-away. I will be sure Mrs. MacLeish remembers tea." She turned gracefully to the door. The Earl's eyes followed her thoughtfully. She has the manners of the barnyard, he thought, but, by God, she has the bearing of a duchess. Well done, he thought, well done, Miss Wheatly. A goat on the roof indeed!