The Marquess Who Loved Me

THE MARQUESS WHO LOVED ME is the third book in the Muses of Mayfair series. It is out now on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Apple, Google Play, and paperback - check the purchase page for buy links. CHAPTER ONE

Surrey, 11 February 1813

Nicholas Claiborne was not a sentimental man. And yet even he thought it would be pleasant to feel something better than anger upon seeing his ancestral estate for the first time.

“Damn her,” he muttered. “She would be hosting a party tonight.”

Did Ellie remember this date, this night, as he did? Or was her party a grating coincidence?

When Nick’s will had failed him over the last decade — more often than he cared to admit — he dreamed of seeing her again. Sometimes, his fantasy Ellie ran into his arms. Sometimes, she was so caught up in someone else that she didn’t notice him. But in every vision of his homecoming, he had forgotten an important point.

He couldn’t find his own house.

It was embarrassing, that. The pub owner in the last village, only a mile from Folkestone’s entrance gates, had assured him that he couldn’t possibly miss the estate. He might have done so more smugly had he known Nick was the long-absent owner rather than one of an endless stream of guests. But Nick hadn’t shared his real name — not in the village, not upon arrival at the East India Docks, and not at the London hotel he’d used for the past five days. If the attempts on his life in Madras had been ordered from London — or Folkestone — he wouldn’t make it easy for his assailants by announcing his return.

The date of his return was a coincidence. If he weren’t tracking a would-be murderer, he might never have returned. But on the eve of Ellie’s birthday, he couldn’t resist her. When his will finally, inevitably failed him and his compulsion for Ellie had overruled his common sense, he only had a vague sense of where to find his Surrey estate — hardly an auspicious homecoming.

Luckily, the pub owner’s directions were sound. The grand wrought iron gates stood open, more inviting than Nick had pictured them when his father had described them to Nick and his brothers. Beyond, some fifty carriages lined the drive. He heard the whinnying of horses and the stamping of hooves, muted masculine laughter and at least one protracted snore. Never mind that it was February — the drivers were accustomed to waiting hours for their employers.

Surely it was the cold that made him shiver, not the gates that waited for him. The colorful coat of arms at their peak was grey in the darkness, but the golden bits glimmered faintly in the moonlight. He had been forced to learn the arms at Eton — lions, unicorns, and roses, remnants of the ancient lines from which his father’s side descended.

His lip curled. What would his own arms be? Looms and rifles and tea leaves?

He urged his horse through the gates. If anyone in the house wanted a warning when he arrived, there was no one at the gatehouse to send it. He’d passed no carriages on the road — they likely thought all guests were accounted for and had gone off for a drink. If he were inclined, Nick could seize the gatehouse without firing a single shot.

As an invasion force, he was grossly outnumbered. But then, he held the deed to the property. Ellie’s opinions on the matter, like the rest of her, could go to the devil.

The long drive was lined with towering elms, their branches a naked winter canopy. Moonlight filtered through, casting light and shadow on the gravel as he rode. In summer the leaves would be impenetrable. His father, in one of his nostalgic moods, had said the tunnel was a bit of magic, cutting off the view of the main house until the last moment, the better to stun visitors with its grandeur.

The marquesses of Folkestone were supposed to be grand. As the latest in that accursed line, Nick didn’t care for appearances. He only cared for what helped him to achieve his ends. If grand hauteur helped, he would use every bit of it he possessed. He had hired a private room at the pub and trussed himself up in the evening suit he’d paid double to have tailored in London that morning. It wouldn’t do to show up like a travel-stained beggar, not for what he had planned. He’d left his batman in the village, too — under protest, since Trower thought Nick needed an ally at his back.

Perhaps he did. But this wasn’t a Madras back alley, and he’d found no evidence of a threat to his life in London. If Nick faced an attack at Folkestone, it would be more subtle — a cut direct with the eyes, not a saber.

He reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a wide semicircular carriageway that cut across the acres of lawns and gardens in front of the vast house. Nick reined in. His breath left him in a gust of frozen mist. The stories his father told had made Folkestone into a prison — Newgate, with fewer inmates and better ventilation.

But tonight, lit up outside with torches and inside with lamps and chandeliers, Folkestone was a shimmering invitation, a mansion seductive in its glory. Perhaps his father had dimmed his descriptions of Folkestone’s grandeur for Nick’s mother’s sake — as though to say that marrying her and being disowned for it had rescued him rather than ruined him.

Nick set his jaw. Folkestone could go to the devil too. He hadn’t needed it when he’d unexpectedly inherited it ten years earlier, and he didn’t need it now. Besides, he was accustomed to such displays of wealth. The Claibornes had snubbed Nick’s mother for no reason other than that she was the daughter of a garrulous Welsh miner-turned-merchant, but the business his maternal grandfather had started could buy Folkestone twenty times over. There was no point in ogling Folkestone like a street urchin.

And he would rather carve out his own eyes than be caught staring at it by someone who was either his servant or his guest.

Or Ellie.

His teeth ground together. He forced his jaw open. It was pointless to order himself not to think of her. He had given himself that order ten thousand times. It was the only place where his discipline failed him. But surely he could be disciplined tonight — if not for his pride, then for the effectiveness of his revenge upon her.

He rode around the courtyard’s central fountain. The statues, replicas of Grecian water-bearers, were silent in winter, the water drained to keep from freezing and cracking the stone. At the foot of the house, a wide, shallow staircase beckoned, leading up half a story to the open double doors. He heard hundreds of voices, but no music — the party had not yet begun. But Ellie would have no trouble filling the house with guests. No one would refuse an invitation to such a lavish display, even with the two-hour drive from London.

A handful of grooms watched his approach. The Folkestone grooms typically wore green with gold trim — or at least they had twenty years earlier, when Charles Claiborne, his cousin and unlamented predecessor to the Folkestone title, had stolen all of Nick’s clothes and left only a suit of Folkestone livery in Nick’s chest at Eton. The hot, furious shame of that moment had faded, but the vivid memory of that green coat where his Eton robes should have been would never leave him.

But the grooms wore sumptuous red and blue tunics with puffed sleeves and hose — livery that would have been more at home at the Tudor court, not a modern country seat. They were all improbably young and impossibly smooth as they bowed to him.

“Welcome to Folkestone, sir,” one of them said as Nick slid from his horse. He had the diction of a posh Londoner, not the broad accents of Surrey. Nick slid off his horse and tossed a guinea to the groom. “Stable him. I’m staying.”

That should have startled a look of surprise out of the servant. His face stayed unconcerned, though. He took the reins and led the horse away without a word.

How many other men had said the same thing, to make Ellie’s servants so accustomed to his boldness?

One groom ushered him politely toward the steps. The others ignored him. No questions about luggage. No demand to see an invitation. No curiosity about why he had arrived on horseback rather than driving a smart curricle or carriage. Nick wanted to know why they were so lax. He wanted to know why they were dressed as Tudors. He wanted to know why they didn’t recognize their master — surely Ellie kept at least one painting of him somewhere in his house? She’d painted him enough times to fill a room — unless she’d painted over him, removing his face from her life as ruthlessly as she’d cut out his heart.

He kept his questions to himself and strode up the steps. But his anger rose. He let it come, preferring rage to thoughts of what might have been — what his life would have been, if he had claimed this house the day he had inherited it. It would have been easy enough to do — take his damned cousin’s title and the estate his father had never been allowed to return to. And his cousin’s bride — the woman who should have been his.

His thoughts were consumed by Ellie tonight. But he still had space to examine the house’s defenses. If his would-be murderer had followed him from India, it would be absurdly easy to slip onto the estate. In fact, it seemed no slipping was required — Napoleon himself could likely walk into this party unmolested, and perhaps be offered refreshments and a bath before he started hacking away at people.

The tide of his anger swept him up the stairs and warmed his blood. An answering blast of body heat met him at the door. A crush of people milled in the grand foyer, spilling into the public drawing rooms and salons beyond the entryway.

It was a masquerade party — that much was clear immediately. The guests wore even more elaborate Elizabethan garb than the servants. Beneath the perfume of hothouse flowers, he smelled musty cedar. Some of the guests wore costumes that had been stored for decades, if not centuries. The gold and silver threaded clothes and bushels of jewels would do a maharaja proud.

Ellie’s birth, as the daughter of a duke absolutely obsessed with bloodlines, had always been high enough to attract a better class than Nick. Her current milieu said she’d found it.

He was tall enough to see over most of them. It had been a consolation years earlier, when they would have had him scraping at their feet. Now, it was merely a convenience. His eyes were already scanning the crowd, looking for red in a sea of blondes and browns and silvers, when someone tapped his elbow.

A servant stood at his side, frowning imperiously. Too young to be a butler — but then, the grooms were young as well. The servants weren’t just young, though. They were perfectly formed and immaculately dressed, as though Ellie had hired staff better suited to standing for her paintings than for menial labor.

Nick raised an eyebrow.

“My lady was most specific in the invitation about the preferred costume for this evening. Sir,” he added, with just enough doubt to set Nick’s teeth on edge.

“My lord,” Nick supplied.

The man colored slightly. “My lord,” he repeated. “My apologies. But still, the marchioness...”

Nick handed him his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, stripping them off with a predatory efficiency that made the servant flinch. The man almost refused, starting to gesture toward a cloak room. But Nick didn’t stop. “Send someone to air out my room. And tell me where to find the marchioness.”

“May I have your card, my lord?”

“No.”

He’d been in London five days and hadn’t ordered calling cards. It was likely an offense grave enough to have him tossed out of the House of Lords — but they would have half a dozen other reasons not to welcome him before they even reached matters of etiquette.

The servant swallowed. “If you would be so good as to wait just a moment, my lord, her ladyship will welcome all of her guests soon.”

He had stayed away from her for ten years. Part of him wished for another ten. Another part of him didn’t want to wait ten seconds. But he shrugged, let just enough displeasure show in his eyes to make the servant wince again, and waved a magnanimous hand. “Very well. I will find her myself after she’s greeted the guests.”

“Would you care for a mask, my lord? Not that you must take one, of course,” he added hastily, when Nick’s eyebrow slowly rose again.

He looked out over the crowd. Nearly all of the others wore costumes, not masks. Few would recognize him — few had known him, other than his fellows at Eton, and he’d seen none of them in over a decade. But if the servants were too dense to realize who he was, he would save the surprise for Ellie herself.

Maybe he would see something on her face to repay him for everything she’d done.

He turned back to the servant and took the mask he offered. He pulled on his formal gloves, obeying that social rule even if he cared for none of the others. And then he strode through the crowd, ignoring muttered huffs of protest as he elbowed toward the closed double doors on one side of the foyer.

If the house map his father had once drawn for him wasn’t an exaggeration built on years of exile, a massive ballroom lay beyond those doors. He had just reached a prime vantage point when the doors were flung open. Everyone turned en masse, chattering excitedly.

“Do you think she’s topped her Roman bacchanal?” a woman near him whispered to her companion.

“I do hope she’s brought back the opera dancers,” a man said, laughing at his wife’s mock censure.

“Of course her costume will be splendid. But I came for her chef’s efforts…”

Nick stopped hearing the people around him. They were drowned out by a sudden crashing in his ears, a roar that came from somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. Through the doors, he saw a throne. And on the throne, a queen.

Ellie.

Not a queen. An angel.

A devil.

His eyes blurred.

The servant who had greeted him before — perhaps the butler after all, despite his youth — cleared his throat. “The Marchioness of Folkestone welcomes you,” he announced, in a voice that wasn’t a shout but still somehow carried through the crowd.

Nick looked across the distance between them, over the heads of those who already moved down the carpet to greet her. The last time he’d seen her, she had worn orange blossoms in her red hair, his bloody cousin’s ring on her finger, and a smile that would have driven him to gut her if he hadn’t noticed, from where he lurked uninvited in the cathedral’s shadows, her downcast eyes and the uncertain tilt to her chin.

There was no smile now, but no uncertainty either. She wore a crown instead of orange blossoms and a golden velvet gown instead of sweet, innocent muslin. She looked regal, serene, just a little bored — a perfect match to her costume.

She hadn’t seen him yet, just as she hadn’t seen him at her wedding.

He smiled under his mask.

Tonight, she had no choice but to see him. And then…

And then he didn’t know, exactly, what would happen.

But this time, he would win.

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CHAPTER TWO

Elinor Claiborne, the widowed Marchioness of Folkestone, didn’t see her doom when the ballroom doors opened. She didn’t even suspect that someone might thwart her plans. This night, for reasons that were a mystery to everyone else, was hers to command. Her guests saw it as a lively entertainment. But for her, it was a living painting, one in which all the players bowed to her artistic vision.

She was still confident in the spectacle she had created, even if her heart wasn’t entirely satisfied. The Folkestone ballroom was freshly decorated, redone for the fifth time in her tenure as marchioness. The walls were a light blue this time, with plaster half-columns and elaborate scrollwork to mirror the shape of the French doors on the wall behind her. The Tudor era guards were her addition — actors hired from the West End to look as perfect as possible with their pikes and helmets. And the guests who entered, two hundred lords and ladies from the highest reaches of the ton, were a river of jewel-toned velvet unleashed at her command.

Ellie sat perfectly still on her throne, slipping into her role — cool, unaffected, with a hint of steel. She usually enjoyed parties — and was grateful that she did, since there was precious little else to engage her time — but tonight she was on edge.

Her annual masquerade ball, coming at the start of a large, weeklong house party, would be Ellie’s last public display as the Marchioness of Folkestone. If she were cursed to bear the title and couldn’t bring herself to marry anyone else just to be rid of it, then surely it would be easier to bear it on some distant shore — somewhere with no memories left to torment her.

Her father’s sister Sophronia, the Dowager Duchess of Harwich, was at the head of the line, moving across the ballroom to greet Ellie with a speed that neither her age nor her extravagant gown could slow. “I trust you aren’t seeking a husband with this sudden display of respectability?” Sophronia demanded as she approached the throne.

Those who came to Folkestone this year expecting scarcely-clothed opera dancers or venues for tacitly approved rendezvouses would be disappointed — not due to some sudden change in Ellie’s morals, but to the presence of her less debauched siblings. Ellie drummed her fingers on the arm of her throne. “Did the Virgin Queen ever seek a husband?”

“Good,” Sophronia said. “I’ll grant you, I would be pleased to see you behave yourself after all this time. But I knew you had more sense than to relinquish the advantages of widowhood.”

She slid away before Ellie could answer. Ellie’s brother Ferguson, the Duke of Rothwell, and his wife stepped up to take Sophronia’s place. “Are there to be monkeys released into the crowd this year?” he asked. “Or have you hired some company to play Francis Drake and his band of pirates?”

She sighed as he kissed her hand. “I do not repeat myself, so no monkeys. They made a dreadful mess anyway.”

“A shame — when I heard of them in Scotland years ago, I almost begged Father’s forgiveness just so I could return to England and attend your parties. Tell me there shall be pirates, at least.”

“No pirates. Be glad, brother — at my usual parties, you might have seen your wife stolen away for the evening.”

Madeleine, his new duchess, grinned beneath her elaborate Elizabethan hairstyle. “I am quite happy with my lot, wretched as Ferguson is. But if there were to be pirates…”

She trailed off with a laugh as Ferguson whispered in her ear and dragged her away. Ellie resolutely turned back to the receiving line. But Madeleine’s laughter was a distracting hum under her perfect show of calm.

Ellie had always thought she wanted a carefree, unencumbered life — one she lived on her own terms, not her father’s or husband’s or anyone else’s. She hadn’t felt grief when her husband had died.

She’d felt relief.

But there was freedom…and then there was solitude. She liked to be alone. She didn’t need to surround herself with admirers to stay entertained, even if she did enjoy the social amusements London offered. The walls she’d thrown up had preserved her freedom perfectly, keeping her detached and untouched even when her house and calendar were full.

The cost, though...

Her eyes found Ferguson and Madeleine again. They stood a bit apart, sipping champagne — an island around which the crowd broke. There was no mistaking how united they were, even from this distance.

Ferguson’s hand slipped possessively to his wife’s waist. Madeleine smiled up at him, then leaned in to whisper in his ear. He laughed. Heads turned toward them, but he was too busy whispering back to care what others thought. He brushed a hand over Madeleine’s headdress and she swatted at him. They were complete together, somehow more than just the simple sum of two people.

She wanted that, with a harsh, bitter jealousy that poisoned her every time she saw Ferguson and Madeleine together. Her fingers curled on her throne. Something ugly seethed inside her, clawing at her, reminding her.

She had once had what they had. She could have kept it, if she’d been strong enough — if she had recognized the truth of what she felt for Nick rather than the illusion of approval her father had offered.

Ellie turned back to the next guest, her jaw firm. It all felt wrong, somehow. Not the dire wrong of an omen — she still didn’t know what waited in her foyer. But she had to find a way to silence all that regret. She had to stop.

Stop. Stop throwing parties like the noise could drown out her memories.

Stop throwing this party, every single bloody year without ever giving herself peace, on an anniversary no one remembered but her. The night that had once, long ago, seemed like a pure beginning, full of promise and light — but ultimately was the beginning of the end.

Did Nick remember tonight as she did, in whatever ancient bazaar or Mughal palace he was striding through right now? Or had he forgotten her so thoroughly that he didn’t even remember her enough to curse her name?

The receiving line stopped before her thoughts did, of course. Wasn’t that how it always happened? The musicians in the hidden gallery above the ballroom started the closing flourish of the processional they’d played during her guests’ entrances. She took a deep breath. No one had ever guessed that, beneath her reputation as the merriest widow in England, she hid a heart of ice. She wouldn’t let them see it tonight either.

She would dance like she was made of fire. She would indulge in her annual cry at the end of the party, a harsh jag of emotion that, once a year, she couldn’t contain.

And then she would wake up, play the perfect hostess for the forty or so friends and family she already regretted inviting, and then shut up Folkestone and leave for the Continent. If she couldn’t stop the memories, she could at least change the pattern of them.

The ballroom doors began to close. This wasn’t Almack’s, but Ellie demanded punctuality at this party and was formidable enough to receive it. But just before the door shut, a man shouldered it open.

Her eyes narrowed. He wore a plain mask that her servants kept for rulebreakers. His impeccably tailored evening suit was stark black and white — a shocking declaration in a crowd of people wearing the velvet and brocade she’d prescribed. He strode down her carpet like he owned it — not a penitent apologizing for tardiness, or even a green youth too exuberant to see the danger he was in, but a man who simply didn’t give a damn what her invitation said.

If there was purpose in his stride, though, his speed was almost leisurely. William the Conqueror might have walked to his coronation like that, already king by destiny if not by law. Ellie leaned back in her throne, feigning indolence even though her stomach flipped and her heart sped up. Later she wondered if she’d known, then, that her doom was upon her…

But she didn’t. She was a woman, not an oracle. All she felt was irritation that someone might dare to ruin her perfectly-planned display — and the tiniest, unacknowledged interest in finding someone who didn’t yet toe her line.

When he reached her throne, she extended her hand. “You’re late,” she said.

“Later than you know.” He crossed his arms. Her hand became an embarrassing relic between them. “The Virgin Queen suits you, Lady Folkestone. Even if we both know the adjective doesn’t apply.”

She dropped her hand. Dressing as Queen Elizabeth was her own private joke; there were always suitors in the wings, but she never intended to marry again. But her voice still turned to ice. “There’s no place for you at this party if you’ve only come to give insults.”

His lips were savage under his mask, so sharply defined that she might have cut them there with a palette knife. “Oh, there will be a place for me. You should have trained your staff better, Ellie my love. Once the Trojan horse is inside the gates, there’s no stopping it.”

Her mind fired wildly when she heard the old endearment, the one she’d never thought to hear again. The caress, the dark promise in his voice sounded like something she’d heard a decade earlier from a mouth not yet reforged by hate. She leaned forward, her control breaking under the onslaught of memory.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He pulled off his mask and flung it at her feet.

The last time he’d flung something there, it had been a bouquet of flowers.

She looked down, expecting to see roses where the mask was — dead, brittle roses, the ones she’d kept until they’d crumbled to dust.

“Don’t say you still can’t bear to look at me,” he said.

“Nick,” she whispered.

Ellie never whispered.

She cleared her throat and forced herself to look at his face. He’d put on at least a stone of muscle in the last decade. It was little wonder she hadn’t seen the lean boy he’d been when he walked down her — his — carpet. But his face was taut and sculpted, with the same cheekbones and stubborn chin she’d painted any number of times. And his eyes were still a vivid, startling blue under the inky slash of his eyebrows — eyes that held darkness lurking within them now, even though he smiled.

Could it be called a smile, when all she saw was malice? The lips were in the right position and his teeth gleamed behind them — but more like a wolf about to take its prey than an old friend greeting her again. Ellie wished that the only reason he fascinated her was because capturing his feral appeal in paint would be a challenge. But her sudden flush, and all the heat building in her belly, had nothing to do with art.

She forced herself to take a breath. The musicians had, quite awkwardly, started another round of the processional. She was still aware enough of the crowd to notice the murmurs rippling across the ballroom as everyone turned toward her unknown guest. She smiled coolly, searching for the grace that had seemed unassailable moments earlier.

“I am sorry it took so long to recognize you, my lord.” Her voice was strong again. She would do anything before she showed how much it cost her to stay on that throne. “I had so nearly forgotten you, after all.”

“‘My lord,’” he repeated. “I heard in London that your father died a year ago. Pity. I would have liked to watch him as I took my place in the Lords.”

In another world, she might have liked it too.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “You vowed not to return until you had forgotten me, and yet you still seem to remember my name.”

“It would have been better if we had both forgotten.”

“You can forget me just as well here as anywhere else. Welcome to your home, Lord Folkestone,” she said, calling him by his title for the first time. She was gratified to see him flinch. “I’ll remove myself to London in the morning. If you’ve anything to say, please direct it to my solicitors.”

She stood, ready to descend to the dancing floor. She saw Lord Norbury hovering nearby — the escort she’d requested for the first dance, since he was attending without his wife and needed a partner. But Nick took her elbow before she could walk away.

“We have unfinished business between us, Ellie. Whatever else you may have forgotten, I assume you remember why I left. You owe me a conversation.”

He hadn’t come all the way from India to converse with her. The very idea was preposterous. And if anything, he owed her a conversation — or at least a chance to explain herself.

She couldn’t do it here, not in the middle of her — his — ballroom. He wanted something from her — something she would not like, if she correctly read the menace in his tone. But whatever he wanted, she couldn’t consider it when her heart still raced from his return. Changing the battlefield and giving herself time to regroup would at least put her on better footing.

She nodded, pretending that she was entirely unaffected by his touch on her arm. “The servants will see to it that you have a room and whatever accoutrements you require. Shall we adjourn until morning, my lord?”

He stepped closer, destroying the distance her words had attempted to create. For a dizzy moment she thought he would kiss her. His eyes looked the same as they had before past kisses — suddenly warm, intent, focused on her and only her. He leaned in, his lips almost touching hers. Hers parted of their own accord, ready physically even though she knew it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to her.

He wouldn’t — he couldn’t — kiss her in front of half the ton.

As it turned out, he didn’t kiss her. Her lips were impertinent enough to be disappointed. Instead, he turned and whispered in her ear. “I don’t wait for you — not anymore. Entertain your guests, but we will be having our conversation tonight.”

He was gone before she could protest, striding back up the carpet to the double doors. He didn’t leave, though. He leaned against a pillar beside them, as though guarding the room — or preventing her escape.

Norbury was at her side an instant later. “Is that man bothering you?” he asked. “I will ask the guards to see him out.”

Ellie shook her head. The final notes of the processional sounded again. She stepped over the mask that lay at her feet and gave her hand to Norbury. “It’s Folkestone,” she said briefly. “We’ve no cause to remove him, and even if he could be gotten rid of, I doubt those ornamental guards are up to the task. Shall we begin?”

Norbury was startled. It was evident from the sudden tightening of his grip on her hand and the chill in his voice as he said, “I thought he planned to remain in India.”

Ellie shrugged. “Didn’t we all?”

She feigned boredom, so well that Norbury didn’t press. He never pressed, at least not with her. They had never been lovers, but they had been friends for half a decade — and anyone who remained her friend knew when to leave well enough alone.

As the music started, she felt Nick watching, and frowning, from the opposite side of the room. She let her mind go blank. Her thoughts flowed away like water, as she had trained herself to do in those awful months after her wedding and sudden widowhood. She would dance the country dance, then a waltz, then a reel — every dance she had the stamina for, if it kept Nick away.

He would come, though. And when he did, she would find a way to be so calm, so remote, that he couldn’t possibly affect her again.

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