The Fortune’s Folly Social Bulletin for January 1810

Issued by Mr Argyle, Master of Ceremonies, The Pump Rooms, Granby Hotel, Fortune’s Folly, Yorkshire.

The winter season has seen relatively few new visitors come to town, a relief for those ladies who have complained that Sir Montague Fortune’s revival of the Dames Tax has turned Fortune’s Folly into the marriage mart of England and attracted all manner of penniless rakes and adventurers. Perhaps the ardour of these gentlemen has been dampened by the harsh weather in the north of England. If so, they are evidently too feeble to be worthy of our ladies anyway.

Amongst those who have returned after Christmas are Stephen, Lord Armitage, who is to wed Miss Mary Wheeler in a few weeks’ time, and Miles, Lord Vickery, who has unexpectedly inherited the title of Marquis of Drummond on the untimely death of his cousin. We wish his lordship every felicitation in his new role despite the family curse that is said to afflict all the Marquises of Drummond and lead them to an early grave.

We hear that Mr and Mrs Dexter Anstruther are already anticipating an addition to their family and extend our congratulations to them. Mr and Mrs Anstruther have been wed a very short time indeed, but the clear air of Fortune’s Folly is said to be most intoxicating and can go to the head with marvellous effects. Sir Montague Fortune has departed Fortune’s Folly for a few months’ sojourn in London. He will not be missed. There will be a ball every second Tuesday at the Granby Hotel.

I look forward to welcoming you there.

Scandals of an Innocent
Nicola Cornick

www.mirabooks.co.uk

NICOLA CORNICK first became fascinated by history when she was young. She studied history at university and wrote her Master’s thesis on heroes. Nicola also works as a historian for the National Trust in a seventeenth-century manor house. She can be contacted via her website at www.nicolacornick.co.uk

Titles in the Brides of Fortune series

CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS

SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT

UNDOING OF A LADY

Browse www.nicolacornick.co.uk for Nicola’s full backlist

To the memory of William Craven, man of action, soldier of great fortune

Chapter One

“Love, like other arts, requires experience…”

—Lady Caroline Lamb

The Village of Fortune’s Folly Yorkshire, February 1810

ALICE LISTER WAS NOT CUT OUT for a life of crime.

She had not even committed the robbery yet and already her palms were damp with anxiety and her heart was beating light and fast.

This, Alice thought, as she tried to calm her breath, is a very big mistake.

There was no going back. That was the coward’s way. Bravely she raised her lantern to illuminate the interior of the darkened gown shop. She had broken into the workroom at the back of the premises. There was a long table with piles of fabric heaped up on one end. A half-finished gown was draped across a stool, the pale silk glimmering in the light. Paper patterns rustled and fluttered in the draft from the open window. Ribbons uncurled on the floor. Sprays of artificial flowers wilted in a corner. Lace trimmings wafted their ghostly fingers against Alice’s cheek, making her jump. The whole place with its unnatural silence and its darkness made her think of a sinister fairy story in which the gowns would come to life and dance in front of her—and she would run screaming from the shop straight into the arms of the night watch. Yes indeed, burgling Madame Claudine’s gown shop was not for the fainthearted.

Not that this was theft, precisely. Alice reminded herself that the wedding gown she was hunting had been bought and paid for. It would have been delivered in the normal manner had Madame Claudine not gone out of business so abruptly and shut up her shop in the face of all inquiries from her anxious clientele. The modiste had disappeared one night, leaving nothing but a pile of debts and bitter words for those of her aristocratic customers who lived on credit. The contents of Madame Claudine’s gown shop had been declared the property of the moneylenders, and all the stock impounded. This was particularly unfair to Alice’s friend Mary Wheeler, for Mary’s father had paid the bill already with the same promptness he had paid a gentleman to marry Mary. Sir James Wheeler had been one of many to take advantage of the Dames’ Tax, the wholly outrageous edict leveled the previous year by the squire of Fortune’s Folly, Sir Montague Fortune. Sir Monty had discovered an ancient tax that had entitled him to half the dowry of every unmarried woman who lived in the village of Fortune’s Folly—unless they wed within a twelvemonth. Sir James Wheeler had been only one of many fathers who had seen this as an opportunity to get his daughter off the shelf and off his hands, parceled away to the first fortune hunter who asked.

Mary Wheeler had been distraught to hear of the gown shop’s closure. In the months of her betrothal she had managed to persuade herself that hers was a love match despite the fact that her ghastly fiancé, Lord Armitage, had returned to London and was carousing in much the same way as he had before their betrothal. With the wedding date only a matter of weeks away, Mary had taken the whole thing as a bad omen. And to be fair, Alice thought, marrying Lord Armitage was a poor enough proposition without getting off on the wrong foot.…

“Alice? Have you found it yet?” The urgent whisper brought Alice back to the present and she raised the lantern again, scanning the piles of clothing hopelessly, for there were so many gowns and they were as tumbled as though a wintry gale had blown through the shop.

“Not yet, Lizzie.” Alice tiptoed across to the open window where her coconspirator, Lady Elizabeth Scarlet, was keeping watch in the passage at the side of the shop. This whole venture had been Elizabeth’s idea, of course. It was she who had thought it the most marvelous scheme to go to Madame Claudine’s shop and simply take Mary’s wedding gown. After all, Lizzie had reasoned, the gown belonged to Mary and she had set her heart on wearing it at the wedding, and even if they had to break in to take it, no one would know and right was on their side.

It had been another of Lady Elizabeth’s astoundingly bad ideas. Alice shook her head to have been so easily led. Naturally, once they had reached the shop it became apparent that Lizzie was too tall to squeeze through the window and it was Alice who was the one who had to break in.

“What is keeping you?” Lizzie sounded decidedly testy, and Alice felt her temper prick in response.

“I’m doing my best,” she whispered crossly. “There is a mountain of gowns in here.”

“You are looking for one in white silk with silver lace and silver ribbons,” Lizzie reminded her. “Surely it cannot be so hard to find? How many gowns are there, anyway?”

“Only about two hundred. This is a gown shop, Lizzie. The clue is in the name.…”

Sighing, Alice grabbed the next pile of dresses and hurriedly sorted through them. Silver with pink trimmings. White with green embroidery…golden gauze…that was pretty…white and silver with silver ribbons—Alice snatched up the wedding gown even as Lizzie’s agonized whisper floated up to her.

“Alice! Quick! Someone is coming!”

With a muttered and very unladylike curse, Alice ran for the window, squeezed through the gap at the bottom of the sash and struggled to climb out and down into the street. It was only a drop of about four feet, and she was wearing boy’s britches, borrowed from the wardrobe of her brother, Lowell, which made movement a great deal freer and easier. But as she tried to ease her leg over the sill the britches caught on something and stuck fast.

“Alice!” Lizzie’s hissing held a note of panic now. “Come on! Someone is almost upon us!” She caught Alice’s arms and tugged hard. Alice heard the material of the britches rip. She wriggled free for a few painful inches and then stuck fast again. She was not a slender girl and every one of her curves currently felt as though it was squashed into too small a space. The edge of the windowsill dug painfully into her hip. She dangled there helplessly, one leg out of the window, the other on the sill. She could hear footsteps coming ever closer, their measured tread loud on the cobbles of the road.

“He will see us,” Lizzie groaned.

“He will certainly hear you,” Alice said crossly. Lizzie’s idea of being quiet seemed to equate to behaving like a bull in a china shop. “If you will cease that pulling and pushing and keep still and quiet for a moment, he will pass by the end of the alley. And put the lantern out!” she added fiercely.

It was too late.

She heard the footsteps stop. There was quiet for a moment; quiet in which Alice’s breathing seemed loud in her own ears and the window ledge creaked in protest beneath her weight. She lay still like a hunted animal. Instinct told her that the man, too, was watching and waiting.…

“Run, Lizzie!” Alice gasped. “I am right behind you!” She gave her friend a shove that sent Lady Elizabeth stumbling off down the passage even as everything seemed to explode into noise and movement around her. A man came running out of the darkness, and Alice wrenched herself free of the ledge and tumbled headlong on top of him, wrapping them both in the silky, voluminous folds of the wedding gown as they fell to the ground. As an ambush it could scarcely have been more effective had she tried.

Alice scrambled up, lost her footing on the slippery folds of material and fell to her knees. The man was quicker. His arms went about her, scooping her up and then holding her fast against him, so that all her kicking and pummeling was quite in vain. His grip was too tight to break, as taut as steel bands about her waist and back. Her struggles were embarrassingly puny against such quiet, almost casual, strength.

“Hold still, urchin,” he said. His voice was mellow and deep, and he sounded carelessly amused, but there was nothing careless in the way that he held her. Alice could tell she was not going to be able to break his grip. She also sensed by instinct that this was no drunken lord returning home after a night’s entertainment at the Morris Clown Inn. There was something too powerful and purposeful about him—something too dangerous to dismiss easily.

She was in deep trouble.

Fear clawed at her chest as she frantically tried to think of a way to escape him. Her whole body was shaking with fear and panic and a desperate need to flee. She stopped struggling and went limp in his arms in an attempt to trick him into loosening his grip, but he was evidently too old a hand to fall for the ruse, for he simply laughed.

“So docile all of a sudden? Listen, boy—” He stopped.

Held so close to him, Alice could feel the hard muscles of his body tense against her own and she recognized the precise moment that he realized, despite the evidence of her attire, that she was not a boy at all.

“Well, well…” The amusement was still in his voice, but it had a different quality to it now. He shifted, his chest unyielding against the betraying softness of her breasts, his hand moving intimately over the curve of her bottom where the rip in her britches exposed rather more bare skin than she would have wanted. His grip on her slackened, not much, but enough for Alice to wrench herself from his arms and turn to run.

It was the treacherous wedding dress that foiled her again. Wrapping itself about her ankles, it tripped her so that she staggered and almost fell. The man caught her arm in a savage grip, spinning her around so that her back was against the rough brick wall of the alley. Alice gasped as the pain jolted through her, and gasped again as he deliberately brought his body into closer contact with hers, holding her pinned against the wall with his hips, his hands braced on either side of her head. She was trapped, caged. A long shiver went down her spine that was neither fear nor cold.

The man took her chin in his hand and turned her toward the pale light of the lantern. His face was only inches away from hers, the harsh lines and planes shadowed in the darkness. She could feel the beat of his heart against her breast, feel his breath against her skin and the press of his lower body, lean and hard, against hers. It filled her with a strange, unfamiliar kind of ache and a weakness she did not much care for. Alice hated to feel out of control. She had never experienced such waywardness from her body before.

The man pushed the hat roughly back from her brow, and her hair escaped its confinement and fell down about her shoulders. He brushed the tangles away from her face. Then his fingers stilled. She felt the shock rip through his body.

“Miss Lister?” There was flat disbelief in his tone.

Oh, dear. So much for her desperate hope that whoever he was, he would not be able to identify her. And she recognized him, too. Miles Vickery. She knew his voice now. She had loved his voice. It was so smooth and mellow Alice had sometimes thought that he could have seduced her with his words alone. He almost had.

She had been such a fool to believe even for a moment that his attentions to her had been sincere.…

Even as her treacherous body responded to the touch of his hand against her cheek, the knife twisted within her as she remembered that she did not like Miles Vickery very much at all. In fact, she absolutely detested him.

Nevertheless, they stood staring at each other for what felt like a very long moment while Alice’s heart beat in her throat and the heat washed through her body and left her trembling. She could not move. She could not even tear her gaze from his. She was captured in the moment by the fierce, intent look in his eyes and in the strange, aching demand of her body where it touched his.

Then a carriage rumbled across the cobbled road at the end of the passageway, and the sudden noise made them both jump. Alice took advantage of the moment to raise her elbow in a sharp and persuasive jab into Miles’s ribs, and as he doubled up in pain she ducked away and ran, leaving him standing staring after her, the wedding dress still in his hand.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, tucked up in her bed, Alice lay and watched the patterns made by the moon on the ceiling as her curtains shifted a little in the cold night breeze from the open sash window.

Lizzie had been waiting for her, full of questions. In typical melodramatic fashion she had told Alice that she had run all the way back to Alice’s home, Spring House, without pausing even to draw breath and then had fretted and fidgeted for a full ten minutes before Alice had appeared for fear that her friend was lying in the street, raped, murdered or worse, whatever worse might be.

“I thought you were behind me!” Lizzie had said, nursing the cup of hot chocolate that Alice had rustled up for both of them on the kitchen hob. “You said you were! And then when I realized you were nowhere to be seen I did not know whether to wait or go back for you, or what to do!”

Alice had made some excuse about twisting her ankle and having to hop home, and that had satisfied Lizzie, who had spotted that Alice no longer had the wedding dress and was berating her for dropping it in the street. The girls had taken their cups of chocolate upstairs, tiptoeing through the quiet house so as not to wake its sleeping occupants, and Lizzie had completely failed to notice that Alice no longer appeared to be limping.

And now, lying in her bed, Alice could not really understand why she had not told her friend about Miles Vickery catching her. Perhaps it was because she did not wish to think about Miles, let alone speak about him. She had never told anyone what had happened between her and Miles the previous autumn, probably, she thought, rolling over in bed in a vain attempt to relax, because nothing had happened. There was nothing to think about and nothing to remember. Miles was a penniless adventurer who had set out with calculated intent to seduce her. He had failed. That was all there was to it.

Actually, that was not all that there was to it. Alice winced as she felt pain like an echo in the recesses of her body. She had fallen in love with Miles Vickery, with a naive, hopeless and very innocent passion. She had admired him for the honorable man that she had believed him to be, the army hero who had become a warrior for justice, working for the Home Secretary to keep the country safe. She had thought him all that was courageous and principled and daring. She had been a complete fool, for, after a couple of months of courtship, he had shown his true colors when he’d abandoned her to pursue a richer heiress.

Now that she was so thoroughly disillusioned with him, Alice could see that she had imagined Miles to be the man she wanted him to be. She had invented a hero, who was very different from the reality. For in reality Miles Vickery had been a callous philanderer who had only been interested in her money. She still felt physically sick when she thought about the wager he had made. Thirty guineas against her virtue.

Alice punched her pillow rather violently. Miles had deserved that jab in the ribs. She wished she had stabbed him all the harder. There were several tricks she had learned when she was a housemaid to enable her to deter amorous gentlemen. Miles deserved to experience every one of them, especially the knee in the groin.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the shadowy canopy of the bed.

Fortune hunter, rake, unscrupulous deceiver…Miles’s strength and apparent sincerity had almost been her undoing the previous year. Alice had had to fend for herself from an early age, and to have someone strong and steadfast to rely on had felt ridiculously seductive. But that had been the point of Miles’s actions, of course. He had been set on seducing her into marriage for her fortune and she, silly girl that she was, had almost fallen for it. Strange that in some ways she could be so wise in the ways of the world—what servant girl could fail to see the less salubrious side of life—and yet when it had come to her own heart she had been so utterly naive.

She turned her cheek against the cool linen of the pillow. She could not sleep. Her mind was too full of Miles—of the sensation of his hands on her and his body hard against hers and the heat and the power and the strength in him. It did not seem to help that she told herself Miles was an experienced man who had deliberately used his amatory skill to lead her astray. Her wanton body responded to him regardless. It betrayed her at every turn. It did not care that Miles was a scoundrel. Her body wanted him even as she told herself that she hated him.

Alice knew all about physical passion even though she had never experienced it herself. She had been brought up on a farm and had gone into service early. She had not been a cosseted, protected debutante, and as a servant she had seen enough licentious behavior to leave her with few illusions about lust. She understood her own nature and knew full well that it was within her to behave with absolute passionate abandonment if she chose to give herself to a man. There would be no shame in it—not with the right man. But that man would be honest, truthful, respectful and trustworthy. All of which ruled out Miles Vickery. In fact, any one of those ruled out Miles Vickery.

Alice rolled over again, seeking to quell the flame that burned in the deepest part of her. Miles had proved himself dishonest and untrustworthy, and she would do well to remember that fact. She must ignore her physical response to him. It meant nothing and it was dangerous.

Alice shivered a little beneath the covers. She had not expected to see Miles again. Although she had heard a rumor that he was back in Yorkshire on some business connected with his work for the government, she had imagined it would be a fleeting visit and that he would soon return to London. Evidently it was the place that suited him best. After he had failed to secure Miss Bell, the nabob’s heiress, in marriage, he had cut a swathe through the bawdy houses of the capital and had set up one of the most famous courtesans in the city as his inamorata. Lizzie Scarlet had told her all about it, and Alice had pretended that she had not cared. But she had cared. She had cared dreadfully. It had hurt her so much to think of Miles’s profligate ways when once she had naively imagined he had some feelings for her. It had been a salutary lesson in the pitfalls of imagining herself in love. She was never going to make that mistake again.

Alice thumped her pillow into final submission and rolled over onto her side in a vain attempt to sleep. It was a great pity that Miles had recognized her tonight. She wondered what he would do. When she had heard the gossip about his despicable wager, she had written to him to demand that he never approach her again. Her pride had prompted her to tell him what she thought of him and she had confidently expected never to hear from him again. Now, though, she had a suspicion that he might seek her out to ask her what on earth she had been doing robbing a gown shop in the middle of the night. He was, despite his shameful behavior, still an officer of the Crown, with certain responsibilities. And she was, indubitably, a criminal.

Alice wriggled uncomfortably. She was well aware that she was now in Miles’s power, and the ways in which he might choose to exert that power made her shiver. Yes indeed, robbing the gown shop had been a dangerous mistake and now she knew she was going to have to pay.

Chapter Two

“WHERE ON EARTH did you get to?” Dexter Anstruther and Nat Waterhouse looked up curiously as Miles Vickery reentered the salon of the Granby, the most respectable hotel in Fortune’s Folly. Miles and his colleagues had been talking business late into the night and had chosen the Granby over the rather more dubious pleasures of the Morris Clown Inn because, as Nat said, if they had met at the Morris Clown then every criminal in Yorkshire would have known their business within the hour. In contrast, the staff at the Granby were discreet, even if they were glancing ostentatiously at the clock and barely stifling their yawns. The other guests, a couple of half-pay officers and a respectable, gentrified couple, had retired to bed long since. Fortune’s Folly out of the spa season was as inhospitable as the grave. Not even hardened fortune hunters had chosen to spend the winter in the snowbound Yorkshire dales, though no doubt they would flock back in spring when the weather improved in order to take advantage of Sir Montague Fortune’s Dames’ Tax and find a local heiress to wed.

By then, Miles thought, he would have stolen a march on all the others and carried off the richest prize in the Fortune’s Folly marriage mart. His recent, unexpected and wholly unwelcome inheritance of the Marquisate of Drum had left him with a monstrous pile of debt—twice his original commitment—and so once again he intended to pay court to Miss Alice Lister, a former housemaid whose eccentric employer had left her the magnificent sum of eighty thousand pounds when she had died the previous year.

Alice’s inheritance had caused a sensation among Yorkshire society who could not decide whether to cut her dead for her humble birth or embrace her for her money. Miles had not suffered from any such dilemma. A fortune like Alice’s was there for the taking, and since Alice herself was so pretty, taking her into the bargain would be a positive pleasure. He had set out to seduce her with a single-minded intent and had very nearly succeeded. But then he had made a strategic error—he had heard of an even greater prize, a London heiress with one hundred thousand pounds to her name, and he had abandoned Alice’s conquest for the greater reward. He had thought about it for all of five minutes, ruthlessly weighing his lust for Alice and the work he had already done to win her against the prospect of claiming Miss Bell’s one hundred thousand pounds. Miss Bell’s money had won, of course. And he had quenched his lust elsewhere.

Except that holding Alice in his arms tonight had reminded him of just how much he had wanted her. There was something about her that aroused some very basic instincts in him, instincts other than greed for her money, of course. Tonight she had smelled heavenly, of roses and honey, rather than the heavy, manufactured perfumes preferred by the courtesans he had known. The scent had clung to her hair, which, once he had dispensed with her hat, had glowed a glorious pale silver color in the moonlight. Alice was small in terms of height, but she was rounded rather than slender, and her body had been curved, soft and yielding against the hardness of his. Some people might consider Alice plump—in fact some society matrons, looking for things to disparage about the housemaid-turned-heiress, had criticized Alice’s robust peasant build and commented on how useful such sturdiness must have been when she was turning mattresses and beating carpets. Miles had no criticisms to make at all when it came to Alice’s figure. She might not be conventionally beautiful but she was strikingly pretty with the promise of something sensual within. The fact that her sensuality was deliciously unawakened only made her more of a temptation to him. He had a primitive urge to be the one to waken all that promise.

He shifted in his chair as he remembered the gentle curves of Alice’s body molding themselves so confidingly to his. He had been instantly aroused, trapped by a sensuality so hot and fierce he had wanted to strip those boy’s clothes off her there and then, and take her against the wall.

His ribs gave a painful twinge, dampening his ardor most effectively. In order to get away from him, the little minx had pulled a trick that would not have disgraced a pickpocket from the stews of London. He supposed that as a servant, Alice would need to know such ruses to defend her virtue. He would do well to remember that in future before he was felled with a painful knee in the groin.

“I was merely taking the air,” he said, to looks of patent disbelief from his friends. “Too much claret.”

“You were so long we thought you had been taking the maidservant at the Morris Crown, never mind the air,” Dexter observed.

“And what is that?” Nat followed up on Dexter’s comment, pointing at the rather grubby wedding gown in Miles’s hands. “Miles, old fellow, I think the inheritance of another fifty thousand of debt along with the Drum title is turning your mind.”

“I found it in the street,” Miles said, looking at the dress and deliberately neglecting to add that he had found one of the Fortune’s Folly heiresses attached to it. “It is a wedding gown,” he added. He cast it over the arm of the chair and reached for the brandy bottle. He would reunite Alice with the gown in the morning, and ask her what the devil she had been doing. She had given him the perfect excuse to call—and the perfect weapon to use against her in his negotiations to persuade her into marriage. His previous abandonment of her was a rather large stumbling block to his plans, for he doubted that she would be very susceptible to his suit as a result, and her recent discovery of the wager he had made against her virtue was even more unfortunate. The letter she had sent him had spelled out her feelings most precisely:

I never had the remotest inclination to fall prey to your somewhat tarnished charm, Lord Vickery, and when I heard about your sordid wager I could only congratulate myself on seeing you from the first as nothing more than a squalid fortune hunter with no saving graces whatsoever.

Miss Lister, Miles thought, had quite a way with words, far more so than any other servant girl he had ever come across. Not that talking had been what he was interested in when he had dallied with maidservants in the past.…

At least he had leverage now. He would stoop to blackmail if he had to do so. Alice’s fortune would be sufficient to wipe out the majority of his debt and stave off the most pressing of his creditors for a little while. And if it meant that a former housemaid became Marchioness of Drummond, well, her money for his title was a fair bargain.

“I’m surprised you recognize such a thing as a wedding gown,” Dexter said with a grin. “Marriage isn’t exactly your forte, is it, old fellow?”

Miles shot him an unfriendly look. Dexter was so hopelessly in love with Miles’s cousin Laura that he never ceased to extol the virtues of wedlock in what Miles considered to be a deeply boring manner. To Miles’s mind it was ridiculous even to consider that Dexter and Laura had something valuable. When he wed he fully intended to spend as little time as possible with his wife. That was his idea of a happy marriage. Love for a woman was a weakness in his opinion, the most pointless emotion that existed. It made a man too vulnerable. He had no use for or interest in love at all and had cut it out of his life when he had quarreled with his father and walked away from his family at the age of eighteen to join the army. If once he had had a heart, it was long gone.

“Just because you cannot help but preach the merits of a happy alliance, Dexter—” he began.

“Gentlemen,” Nat intervened, “we are here to discuss what we are to do about Tom Fortune’s escape from Newcastle jail, not to argue the toss about the benefits of marriage. We need to recapture Fortune as quickly as possible, and since you were both instrumental in arresting him in the first place, we also need to consider the possibility that he may bear a grudge against you and come seeking revenge.”

“Thank you for the warning, Nathaniel,” Miles said, downing a glass of brandy and savoring the taste. “I imagine there are any number of men who would not mourn if something terminal happened to me.”

“Cuckolded husbands,” Dexter murmured, “outraged fathers. Does not your inheritance of the Marquisate of Drum bring with it a family curse, Miles? I seem to remember hearing some stories. This could be the moment it carries you off—”

“I don’t believe in family curses,” Miles said.

“Your mother does,” Nat pointed out. “I remember thinking it most unusual for a bishop’s wife to be so superstitious. I am surprised that she has not yet arrived in Yorkshire to warn you of the dangers of the Curse of Drum.”

“God forbid,” Miles said. He had been virtually estranged from his family since he had left eleven years before, and he had no intention of letting his mother interfere in his life now. “She is safely in Kent,” he added. “I doubt she will ever venture this far north. She considers Yorkshire to be a foreign country.”

“Strange about the Curse of Drum, though,” Dexter said. “So many of the previous marquises died young and in horrible circumstances.”

“Coincidence,” Miles said shortly.

“The twelfth marquis was struck down by the sweating sickness,” Nat mused.

“There was a lot of it about that year.”

“The thirteenth marquis was run over by a carriage.…” Dexter murmured.

“He was always very careless when crossing the street,” Miles countered.

“And your predecessor, Freddie, burned to death in that brothel.”

“Freddie was such a roué that he was destined to die in bed one way or another,” Miles snapped. He had no time for superstition, but a rehearsal of the deaths of all sixteen previous marquises of Drum was not a happy event. “Can we please get back to business?”

“Very well.” Dexter settled back in his chair and accepted the change of subject Miles so clearly wanted. “Extraordinary that we all thought it was Warren Sampson who pulled the strings around here when all indications now seem to point to the fact that it was Tom Fortune who was the master criminal. And now that Fortune is free, it will be the devil of a job to capture him again.”

“He bribed the prison guard, I suppose?” Miles said. When he and Dexter had arrested Tom Fortune for murder the previous autumn it had been on the grounds that he had killed Warren Sampson, a local industrialist with a very murky reputation whom the Home Secretary had suspected of being involved in all sorts of criminal dealings. Further investigation had suggested, however, that it was Tom Fortune who had been the leader of Sampson’s men, and that he had used Sampson as a decoy.

“Either bribed him or threatened him,” Nat agreed. “And since then there has been no word of him. He has gone to ground.”

“He will be biding his time,” Miles said. “Is there anyone who might have heard from him?”

“Sir Montague certainly wouldn’t give his brother the time of day,” Dexter said, “so I doubt Tom will have looked to him for help.” He looked at Nat. “I doubt that Lady Elizabeth would have any sympathy for him, either—not after his treatment of her friend Miss Cole.”

“Certainly not,” Nat agreed.

“Miss Cole…” Miles said thoughtfully. “Since Tom Fortune seduced her and she carries his child, he might try to get in touch with her. Where is she now?”

A frown settled on Dexter’s brow. “The Duke and Duchess of Cole threw her from the house when it became apparent that she was increasing. They wanted her to go abroad and have the child in secret but Lydia refused. There was the most appalling scandal. You missed most of this, Miles, being in London, but it was the on dit of Fortune’s Folly all winter.”

Miles grimaced. He could well imagine the outrage and horror with which the ghastly Duchess of Cole would have greeted the news of her daughter’s disgrace. There would have been no kindness or sympathy for Lydia at Cole Court. Her fall from virtue would have been roundly condemned.

“Laura offered her a home with us,” Dexter continued, “but she has found her own pregnancy difficult this time, and Lydia did not wish to be an added burden, nor to add to our financial problems.”

He looked at Nat. “I believe that Lady Elizabeth also offered Miss Cole a home at Fortune Hall, did she not?”

“She did,” Nat confirmed, “but Sir Monty refused to countenance it. He said that since Miss Cole had not seen fit to give herself and her dowry in respectable wedlock, she must live with the consequences of her immoral actions.”

“Monty is a narrow-minded fool,” Miles said dispassionately. “It was his brother who seduced an innocent girl in the first place.”

“True,” Nat said, “but there are always plenty of hypocrites in situations like this.”

“Poor girl,” Dexter said. “It is hardly as though she flaunts herself! No one has seen or heard a word from her since she went to stay with Miss Lister.”

“Miss Lister?” Miles said, startled. He put his glass down with a jerk. “Lydia Cole is staying with Alice Lister?”

“Both Miss Cole and Lady Elizabeth are staying with Miss Lister at Spring House,” Nat said. “Monty is up in London at present, so Mrs. Lister chaperones both the girls around.”

“It was brave of Miss Lister to give Miss Cole shelter when there are people who already cut her dead because of her own background,” Miles said. He had noticed the previous autumn the way in which snobs like Faye Cole had drawn aside to avoid speaking to Alice because of her humble origins. No doubt her daily life was full of these little pinpricks of spite and disapproval. “We should speak to Miss Cole,” he added. “She may be the only one who can lead us to Tom Fortune.”

Nat shook his head. “I doubt she would agree to see any of us. She refuses all company.”

“Then we need to speak with Miss Lister instead,” Miles said. “Apart from anything else, Miss Cole might be in danger.”

Dexter gave him a searching look. “Does that trouble you, Miles?” he said dryly. “You are not known for your sympathetic qualities.”

“No, it doesn’t trouble me personally,” Miles said, “but it is likely to be influential in persuading Miss Lister to convince her friend to speak with us. If we impress upon her that Tom might be a threat to Lydia—”

“We can frighten both girls and use them to get to Tom Fortune,” Nat finished. “Nice work, Miles.”

“We cannot afford to be scrupulous,” Miles pointed out.

“Miles is right,” Dexter said, “much as I deplore his methods, he is, as usual, correct.”

“Thank you, Dexter,” Miles said acerbically. “Nat, will you prepare the ground with Lady Elizabeth? I will speak to Miss Lister. I think we need to make a few discreet enquiries first before we tell them that Fortune has escaped.”

“Agreed,” Nat said. “The perfect opportunity for you, Miles.”

Miles raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Construe?”

“To renew your attentions to Miss Lister,” Nat said, with a mocking smile. “Now that you are so utterly sunk in debt, you will be needing a rich heiress more than ever.”

“That,” Miles said, “is exactly what I thought, too.”

Dexter almost choked on his brandy. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he had recovered his breath, “but which part of Miss Lister’s scathing rejection of your suit did you not understand, Miles?”

Miles shrugged. “It is unfortunate that I was obliged to abandon my previous pursuit of Miss Lister—”

“Unfortunate?” Dexter’s brows almost disappeared into his fair hair. “You dropped her for a richer heiress!”

“And even more inopportune that my courtship of Miss Bell did not come to fruition—”

“She threw you over for an earl.”

“And likewise extremely annoying that Sir Montague chose to tell Miss Lister of my ill-advised wager on her virtue,” Miles continued smoothly, “but I am certain that I can persuade her to accept me all the same.”

“If I were a betting man,” Nat said, lips twitching, “which I am not, as I have seen the predicament it has got you into, Miles, I would make a wager that you have not a hope in hell of pulling this off. Miss Lister is no fool and she knows now that she cannot trust you an inch.”

Miles shrugged again. He drained his glass and picked up the wedding dress. It felt cool and silky soft against his fingers. The perfume of honey and roses seemed to cling to it, reminding him of Alice and the softness of her hair against his fingers and the scent of her skin. It raised an echo of primitive arousal in him. He wanted Alice Lister. It was a simple matter of physical attraction. And he wanted her money. That was a simple matter of economics.

“We shall see,” he said. “I have an ace or two up my sleeve.”

Chapter Three

“THERE IS A GENTLEMAN to see you, ma’am.” Marigold, the youthful housemaid, dropped Alice a respectful curtsy. “Shall I show him in, ma’am?”

“Who is it, Marigold?” Alice asked. Having once been a servant herself, she absolutely hated employing other people to wait on her and would frequently do their work herself. If she was near the front door when a caller arrived, she would answer it. If she saw dust on the mantelpiece, she would clean it. Her mother was forever chiding her that she did not behave as a lady should.

“I don’t know, ma’am.” Marigold looked suddenly apprehensive, caught out failing in the execution of her duty. “He did not say.”

“Always ask a caller to give their name,” Alice said, smiling reassuringly at the girl at the same time so that Marigold would know she was not angry with her. “You may show him in anyway, but please remember for next time.”

“I do wish you would permit me to change that girl’s name,” Mrs. Lister said as the maid sped away. “Marigold is a wildly unsuitable appellation for a housemaid. It is far too pretty and will give the girl ideas above her station. Mary would be more acceptable.”

“Mama!” Alice said sharply. “We have had this discussion before. Marigold’s name is Marigold and that is how it stays. It is not our place to change someone’s given name and call them something entirely different.”

“Why not?” Mrs. Lister countered. “Lady Membury called you Rose when you were in service.”

“Precisely,” Alice said. “I hated it. My name is Alice.”

“Rose is a delightful name,” Mrs. Lister said.

Her mama was missing the point as usual, Alice thought. It seemed strange to her that the unexpected inheritance of a large fortune had changed her character not at all—at least, she thought it had not—but that it had changed her mother almost out of recognition. Margaret Lister had once been a tenant farmer’s widow who struggled to make ends meet and feed her family. Alice’s legacy from her employer Lady Membury had changed all that. Alice’s younger brother, Lowell, now ran the tenant farm whilst Mrs. Lister lived in this smart villa in Fortune’s Folly. There had been elocution lessons that had almost succeeded in smoothing out Mrs. Lister’s broad Yorkshire vowels; there had been visits to the dressmaker and the purchase of gowns with copious frills and furbelows, so different from the plain, serviceable work clothes Mrs. Lister had worn before. Most of all there had been the endless nagging of Alice to ensure that she made a marriage to a titled gentleman. Mrs. Lister had been cock-a-hoop that so many aristocratic fortune hunters had courted her daughter and furious when Alice had rejected each and every one of them. And then she had been desolated that the stream of aristocratic callers had ceased. Very few people came to call now, demonstrating to Alice more effectively than any cruel words that she had only been welcomed in Fortune’s Folly society because of her money, and now that it was clear she was not going to bestow it on some greedy, penurious nobleman she was not welcome at all.

“I expect that this will be another marriage proposal,” Mrs. Lister said now. “Oh, Alice, you must take this one, no matter who it is! Please! Sir Montague will take half your fortune under the Dames’ Tax in six months’ time if you do not wed! Besides, unless you marry a lord no one in Fortune’s Folly will ever speak to us again! As it is, no one calls on us—”

“Mrs. Anstruther calls,” Alice pointed out. “She used to be a duchess. And Lady Elizabeth is living here with us. She is an earl’s daughter and half sister to a baronet.” She sighed at her mother’s obstinate expression. “We cannot force people to accept us, Mama,” she said. “You should know by now that money cannot buy everything.”

“But why not?” Mrs. Lister wailed. She patted the enormous diamond necklace that she was wearing like an armored chest plate. “I have all this! I am at least as rich as the Duchess of Cole, so why does she not acknowledge me?”

Alice shook her head gently. Mrs. Lister seemed incapable of accepting that she could buy as many diamonds as she liked, she could order a dozen sets of china, she could paint the ceiling of the dining room with gold leaf—which she had done—she could even have her bedroom decorated with Chinese wallpaper featuring painted dragons, and still no one would see her as anything other than a nouveau riche arriviste to be looked down upon by old money and old titles.

“Mama,” Alice said gently, “you are worth more than ten of the Duchess of Cole, and I do not mean in monetary terms—” She broke off, for Mrs. Lister was not listening. She was wearing the same puzzled and hurt expression that Alice had seen on her face before. She had lost the society of her own friends when she had gone up in the world, but now she had nothing to replace it. All the invitations from high society that she had anticipated had never materialized. Alice’s heart ached for her because, for all her snobbery, Mrs. Lister was lonely and unhappy.

Mrs. Lister grabbed Alice’s teacup. “Now, let me see…”

“Oh, Mama,” Alice said. Her mother had read tea leaves all her life, a skill she learned from her mother who had learned it from her mother before her and so on back into the mists of family history. Mrs. Lister took the cup in her left hand and swirled the dregs around three times in a clockwise direction before overturning the cup in the saucer. She held it down for a few seconds before righting it again and setting the handle toward herself as she peered into the depths.

“Aparasol!” she declared triumphantly. “A new lover.”

“It looks like a mushroom to me,” Alice said, peering at the splodge of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. “An upside-down mushroom, signifying frustration—at yet another man courting me for my money.” She had fended off nineteen marriage proposals in the past six months, all from the fortune hunters who had flocked to Fortune’s Folly after Sir Montague Fortune had revived the ancient Dames’ Tax, requiring that all the village spinsters should marry within a twelvemonth or forfeit half their fortune to him.

“The Marquis of Drummond, ma’am,” Marigold said, from the doorway.

Alice heard her mother give a little hiss of satisfaction at the news that the visitor was no less than a marquis. No one of a rank higher than an earl had previously come to pay court.

“It is Lord Vickery,” Mrs. Lister whispered loudly in Alice’s ear, “come to renew his addresses to you. I had heard that he had inherited the Drummond title. I knew he would not be able to keep away from you, now he has returned to Yorkshire.”

Alice turned to see Miles Vickery enter the room. Her heart was racing in a most unfamiliar fashion, her breathing was constricted and butterflies fluttered frantically in her stomach. She fought a desperate urge to run away. This, she told herself sternly, was entirely due to the uncomfortable mixture of guilt and anxiety that her escapade at the gown shop had roused in her. It certainly had nothing to do with Miles himself.

For a moment she found herself wondering if Miles did indeed possess the audacity to renew his attentions to her, for rumor had it that his finances were now in an even more parlous state than they had been in the autumn. In fact, he probably needed to marry at least two heiresses, let alone one, since he had inherited the Drummond debts to add to his own. She thought that he would need to have the hide of a bull elephant even to consider making his addresses to her, but perhaps he was impertinent enough to think that having almost succumbed to his charm once, she would be an easy mark. She drew herself up a little straighter. She would soon remind him that she despised him for his utter lack of respect for her.

Miles came forward and bowed first to Mrs. Lister and then to Alice. He was impeccably dressed with a casual elegance that Alice knew could only be achieved with a great deal of time, and with money he did not have. His coat of blue superfine fitted his broad shoulders to perfection. His brown hair was faultlessly disordered in the windswept style. His linen was an immaculate white, a striking contrast to the golden tan of his skin. His boots had a high polish. And in his hazel eyes was the same wicked, devil-may-care spark that had almost stolen her foolish, susceptible heart back in the autumn.

He smiled at her and Alice felt that traitorous heart skip a beat. She quickly averted her gaze from Miles’s face, and her eye fell on the rather grubby wedding gown he was carrying. It was folded neatly but looked rather the worse for wear. Alice hastily averted her gaze again, desperately searching for somewhere safe to look. She could not look at Miles—he was too disturbing—and she did not wish to display any interest whatsoever in the wedding gown. She fixed her eyes very firmly on the clock on the mantelpiece.

“My lord!” Mrs. Lister was making up in effusiveness for everything that Alice was failing to say. “What a very great pleasure to see you again! You will take refreshment? A pot of tea?”

“Lord Vickery will not be staying, Mama,” Alice said quickly, forestalling any answer that Miles might otherwise have given. She turned back to Miles with a quick swish of her skirts and met the look of quizzical amusement on his face. Many men of rank would have been horribly affronted by her ungracious words, she knew. It was one of the disconcerting things about Miles that it seemed almost impossible to offend him.

“You did not receive my letter, Lord Vickery?” she said coldly.

A delicious smile crept into Miles’s hazel eyes. Alice could feel the color rising in her cheeks. It sprang from sheer annoyance, or so she assured herself. Annoyance was a very heated emotion.

“I did,” he said, his lazy, masculine drawl very much in evidence.

“Then it seems unaccountable bad manners that you would approach me again when I had expressly asked you not to!” Alice snapped. “I never wanted to set eyes on you again.”

“Oh, but you were angry with Lord Vickery when he was only a baron,” Mrs. Lister interposed helpfully. “Now that he is a marquis all is forgiven.”

“Now he is a marquis I daresay he is no more a gentleman than he was before,” Alice said crossly. “Please, Mama, leave this to me. Lord Vickery—”

“I came to bring you this,” Miles said, holding out the wedding gown, “and to beg a few words in private, if I may.”

“That is out of the question,” Alice began, but in the same moment her mother, that most compliant of chaperones, beamed and hurried toward the door.

“Of course!” Mrs. Lister said. “I am sure you have something very particular to say to Alice. I shall be in the parlor if you wish to speak with me afterward, Lord Vickery. A marchioness!” Alice heard her add, as she whisked out of the room. “Eight strawberry leaves in the coronet!”

“It is four strawberry leaves for a marquis, Mama!” Alice called after her. “Eight for a duke.”

She saw Miles laughing and despite herself could not prevent a small, embarrassed smile in return. “Oh, dear. I do apologize. Mama seems to exist on a different plane where every titled gentleman is embraced as the perfect prospective son-in-law.”

“She is very anxious to see you wed,” Miles said. “Why would that be?”

Alice moved away, avoiding his surprisingly perspicacious gaze. “She imagines that marriage into the aristocracy would provide security for all of us,” she said carefully. Some of Mrs. Lister’s aspirations were based on snobbery, but at their core was an unshakable fear that she and Alice might once again be plunged into penury.

“I suppose she wants you to have the type of security that your family has never had before,” Miles hazarded. “Based on inherited rights and privileges—”

“Rather than the endless need to work one’s fingers to the bone for a pittance on a farm, or in domestic service,” Alice finished for him. “Precisely. Poor Mama, she so longs to be accepted in society and cannot understand why we are not. She thinks that marriage to a man of rank will solve all problems.”

“You must have had many offers,” Miles said. “Why have you not taken one?”

“I do not care to be wed for my money by a man who otherwise deplores having a one-time housemaid as a wife,” Alice said coldly. She took a seat, realizing a second too late, as Miles sat down, as well, that by her actions she had tacitly encouraged him to stay. “But that cannot be of any interest to you, Lord Vickery,” she said. She looked at the wedding gown, which was now drooping rather forlornly over the arm of Miles’s chair. “I thank you for returning the gown to me. Now you may go.”

Miles sat back in the chair and stretched out his legs, showing every sign of settling in for a long chat in direct contradiction of her words. “Not so fast, Miss Lister,” he murmured. A rather disquieting smile curved his lips. “I am not at all sure that as an officer of the law I should be returning stolen property to you.”

Alice felt ruffled. It was not a sensation she was accustomed to feeling. As the elder child, she had always been the sensible one. She never got into trouble.

“The gown was bought and paid for,” she said defiantly. She knew she was blushing.

“It may well have been,” Miles said, “but then it was removed from the shop by theft.”

“The shop had gone out of business without honoring its customers’ purchases! Madame Claudine is the one who has cheated her customers!”

“Your case would not hold water for a moment in a court of law, I fear,” Miles drawled. “Would you like me to be a character witness for you, Miss Lister, and protest that you were suffering from a moment of madness?”

“No, thank you,” Alice said crossly. “All I require is for you to hand it over, promise to keep quiet and go away.”

“You ask a great deal,” Miles said. “The very least you owe me is an explanation. Is the wedding gown for Miss Cole?”

Alice was startled. “For Lydia? No, of course not! How could it be when Tom Fortune is in prison?” She sighed. “It is Mary Wheeler’s wedding gown. If you must know, Mary was inconsolable when Madame Claudine’s business closed, and she took it as an omen that her marriage was doomed from the start.”

“It probably is,” Miles murmured. “Stephen Armitage is a scoundrel.”

“Well,” Alice said, “Lizzie and I tried to make her see that he is a blackguard but it did no good, for the foolish girl is in love with him. So what could we do—” She stopped, realizing that she had somehow managed to implicate Lady Elizabeth Scarlet in the conspiracy as well now.

“It’s all right,” Miles said reassuringly. “I know Lady Elizabeth was party to your housebreaking last night. I heard you address her. I hope that you both arrived home safely?”

“Perfectly, I thank you.” Alice shifted in her seat. This conversation was not going in the direction she had intended and she appeared to have no control over it at all. The clock chimed the quarter hour, reminding her of the fact that Miles had been there quite a while already. She really had to be rid of him soon. Even her mother, with her rather idiosyncratic views on chaperonage, would not tolerate a prolonged private interview. Everyone would be imagining that they were consummating a marriage in here, never mind arranging one.

“I wish you would not call it housebreaking and…and theft!” she said, knowing she sounded guilty. “We were merely trying to help Mary.”

“And very laudable, too,” Miles approved. “But still illegal.”

“Then pray give the gown back,” Alice said, “and I will undertake never to come up with such a foolish plan ever again.”

“I don’t suppose you did come up with it,” Miles said, once again showing a flash of perception that disturbed Alice. “This has all the hallmarks of Lady Elizabeth’s rather wayward planning. She never was one to think matters through. Where is she this morning? I understand that she is staying here at Spring House with you?”

“She has gone riding with Lord Waterhouse,” Alice said. “Now that Tom is imprisoned and she has fallen out with Sir Montague, Lizzie says the earl is the closest thing to a brother that she has.”

She saw Miles’s firm mouth twitch into a cynical smile. “One hopes that she will wake up to the falseness of that notion before too long,” he said. “It is plain to everyone that she is in love with him.”

There was an awkward pause. The sun had crept around the room now and was falling directly on Alice’s chair. The fire crackled and hissed in the grate. Alice felt very hot and bothered. She could not for the life of her see why Miles’s casual reference to Lizzie being in love with Nat Waterhouse should make her feel so uncomfortable. Nor could she see why it should remind her of Miles holding her fast against the wall the previous night with the shocking, intimate press of his lower body against hers. A sensation that was sweet and warm pooled deep inside her, making her want to squirm in her chair. The sweat prickled at her hair. She knew her face would be all red and shiny. It really should not be this hot in February. There was something quite disturbingly unseasonable about it.

“I believe that Miss Cole is living here with you, too?” Miles asked, breaking the silence. He looked very cool and unrumpled, lounging in his chair. The sunlight struck along the clean, hard line of his jaw and lit his hazel eyes. It was strange, Alice thought, that for all his elegance he still looked virile and tough; the perfection of his tailoring seemed to emphasize rather than detract from that dangerous masculinity. For some reason, looking at him made Alice feel hotter still. She, in contrast to his coolness, felt like a crumpled rag and thought that she might spontaneously combust at any moment.

“Yes, yes, she is.” Alice jumped to her feet. “It is very warm in here, isn’t it?”

“I had not noticed it,” Miles said. “Miss Cole is well?”

“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” Alice said. “She prefers not to go into company.”

“So she never sees anyone?”

Alice shook her head. “Never.”

She was always extremely careful of discussing Lydia’s situation. When Lydia had first come to live with her at Spring House the place had been besieged by scandal seekers come to gawk and gossip. Poor Lydia had hidden away in terror and Alice had been appalled by the visitors’ capacity for cruelty. It had been like a freak show with people lining up in the hope of seeing the disgraced, pregnant daughter of the Duke of Cole. These days Lydia seldom went beyond the garden and would sit reading for hours on end, or gazing raptly into space in a way that made Alice feel worried for her sanity. She and Lizzie tried to draw her friend out but sometimes it was as though Lydia inhabited a different world.

Alice threw up the sash on the window and a blast of cold air, directly from the moors, whistled into the room and almost extinguished the fire. “That is much better,” she said with relief, shivering.

Miles raised his brows. “Perhaps you require a drink, Miss Lister. A restorative cup of tea? You will not feel so mortified over your criminal activities once you have had a cup, of that I am sure.”

“I am not a criminal,” Alice said. She slammed the sash closed and spun around. “The only thing that pains me is your presence, Lord Vickery, but if we have resolved the situation with regard to the wedding gown you may be on your way.”

“Of course,” Miles said. He stood up, too, but rather than moving toward the door he walked purposefully toward her instead. Alice’s throat dried. How was it possible to dislike Miles so intensely and yet find his physical presence so overwhelmingly attractive? she wondered desperately. Whatever the reason, it was most uncomfortable.

“There was one other thing,” Miles said softly, when he was close enough to her to revive all the hot shivery feelings that Alice had just banished with a blast of cold winter air. “It concerns my proposal of marriage to you.”

Alice’s heart did another breathless little flip. She felt shocked and dizzy. Then she felt furious, more incensed than she could remember feeling in a very long time. She looked at him. He met her gaze with complete equanimity. So it was true, Alice thought. Miles Vickery did possess the extraordinary arrogance to think he could simply walk in here and resume his courtship where he had left off. He thought he could consign the wager on her virtue, his pursuit of a richer heiress and his affaire with a notorious courtesan to the past, and simply make her an offer.

“You are deluded, my lord,” she said politely, “and your conceit knows no bounds. There is no proposal, nor ever will be. Our previous relationship makes a mockery of such an idea.”

“You concede that we had a relationship, then?” Miles said, brows raised.

Alice made an irritable gesture. She did not understand why he was persisting with this unless it was out of a desire to provoke her. In that he was succeeding admirably.

“We knew each other,” she snapped. “Our…acquaintance…was at an end when you left Yorkshire last time, and I have no desire to revive it.” The anger she had tried so hard to suppress suddenly jetted up. Be damned to restraint and good manners. She was a servant girl not a lady and he deserved a piece of her mind.

“Truly, Lord Vickery,” she said, “do you think I am so poor a creature with so little self-respect as to give myself and my fortune to a man who courted me for my money alone, who made a wager to seduce me into marriage and who subsequently departed for London without so much as a word in order to woo a richer prize? I would rather wed a…a snake than marry you! There is not one honest bone in your body. You will be telling me next that your time in London in the arms of some harlot made you realize just how much you had come to esteem me, and so you hurried back here hotfoot to profess your undying love.”

She stopped, wishing she had not mentioned the episode with the courtesan. She would hate Miles to think that she actually cared about his rakish ways when in fact she detested him.

“I would have told you that,” Miles said, “if I thought for a moment that you would believe me.”

Alice’s feelings felt surprisingly raw to hear him admit it. “I know you would!” she said. “You are ruthlessly manipulative.” She glared at him. “You will say or do whatever is necessary to get you what you want.”

“That is pragmatism,” Miles said.

“It is dishonesty,” Alice said. “You could not tell the truth to save your life!”

There was a brief silence.

“Miss Lister,” Miles said, “you have my measure exactly. So in the spirit of saying—or doing—whatever I have to, in order to get what I want, I am telling you unless you agree to marry me I will tell everyone about your career as a thief.”

Alice’s gaze locked with his. His expression was completely serious. There was a cool, intent look in his eyes, as though he were measuring the odds on a wager. Alice felt her heart start to race. In the early days of their acquaintance she had observed that Miles’s detachment, his air of withdrawal, was part of his attraction. He seemed so cool and aloof. To be able to reach him, to kindle something in him that was more than physical passion, would be the dream of some woman with less common sense than she had now.

“You are seeking to blackmail me into marriage,” she said, trying to match his calmness while her blood thundered in her veins and a part of her mind protested that he simply could not mean to do it, while another part was damned sure that he did.

Miles shrugged easily. “Blackmail is such an ugly word, Miss Lister. I desire to marry you. In fact, it is essential to me that I do marry you. So let us call it a bargain.”

“Why prettify something that is fundamentally unpleasant?” Alice asked steadily. She pressed her hands together. “You propose. I refuse.” Her voice lit with anger. “You are despicable, Lord Vickery.” She examined her feelings and added with some surprise, “In fact, you are even more ruthless and less likable than I had thought you were.”

Miles’s dark brows lifted in mocking amusement. He seemed unmoved by her disapproval, which, Alice thought, was surely further proof of his detestability. “Do you want me to tell everyone that you are a thief?” he asked gently.

“Of course I do not want that,” Alice said. She held his gaze and tried to hold her nerve. “I know you would not really do it.”

Miles laughed. “My dear, you underestimate me. If that is what it takes to gain your hand in marriage—”

“But it will not gain you that.” Alice turned away from him and took a few agitated steps across the room then turned to meet his gaze with unflinching directness. “No one would believe you, my lord. You must be able to see the weaknesses of your position. I could conjure up half a dozen people to say that I was blamelessly at home in bed last night and that you must have made a mistake.”

She saw the flash of calculation in his eyes as he realized that she was not going to surrender easily. The conflict between them tightened a notch, sending the blood buzzing through her veins.

“You would add perjury to your offenses?” Miles asked softly.

“Yes,” Alice said. “If I had to.”

“Even though I have the gown as proof of your theft?”

Alice made a grab for the wedding dress but Miles was too quick for her, holding it up out of her reach.

“I will tell the authorities that I caught you redhanded with this,” Miles said. “You know that the penalty for theft on this scale is death? Even if the courts showed you leniency you would be transported or imprisoned. Are you really prepared to take the risk of being found guilty, Miss Lister? How do you think your mother would feel about that?”

For a moment the black shadows threatened to close in on Alice’s mind and she was afraid she would faint.

Death. Transportation. Imprisonment.

She grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.

“And then there is Miss Cole,” Miles continued. “What would happen to her if you were sent to jail? Her lover betrayed her, her family has cast her out and she is pregnant and destitute.” His gaze, cool and mocking, rested on Alice’s face. “She would be utterly without protection.”

Alice pressed a hand to her forehead. “You are despicable!”

Miles laughed. “So you have already told me. It is not in dispute.”

Alice tried to rally herself. Surely he would not, could not, do such a thing. These were only empty threats. All she had to do was to hold her nerve.

“My lord, there is not the remotest chance that I will wed you,” she said, raising her chin stubbornly. “Do not seek to frighten me. The only way in which you are like to succeed in your aim would be for you to abduct me.”

Miles grinned. “My dear Miss Lister, do you know, I had not even thought of that? But now that you have suggested it I think it is an excellent plan.”

Alice chewed her lush lower lip hard. She was furious with herself for making the suggestion. She could feel her temper almost getting the better of her. “Even you would not stoop to that,” she bit out.

Miles laughed. “You know that I would,” he said. “In fact, you seem to understand my character very well. That could be an excellent basis for marriage.”

Alice made a sound like an enraged kitten and flounced away. “If you kidnapped me I would still refuse you,” she said. “You would need to pay a crooked clergyman to ignore my protestations.”

“Another excellent idea,” Miles said. “I will if I must.” He sighed. “But to be quite honest with you, Miss Lister, it is a vast amount of trouble to go to when blackmail is available as an option instead.” He moved a little closer to her. “Think about it,” he said. “Transportation…imprisonment…These are harsh options, Miss Lister. They really would not suit you. You have already scrambled out of poverty once. I am sure that you do not wish to return. And being married to me has its benefits. Your situation in life would improve immeasurably. You would have the title of marchioness—and four strawberry leaves in the coronet, for a start.”

“If you are looking for a woman who wishes for nothing more than to marry a marquis then you should wed my mama rather than me,” Alice snapped. “You are lower than a louse to seek to force me like this.” She gritted her teeth. “You are a worm and a weasel—”

Miles laughed again. “Is a weasel lower than a louse?” He spread his hands wide in a gesture of appeal. “Shall we take your poor opinion of me as read, Miss Lister, and get down to business? Think of your mother. She will be delighted if you accept my proposal. Remember that she wishes you to marry into the aristocracy—not be clapped in Fortune’s Folly jail or dispatched to Australia.”

Alice could feel a headache building behind her eyes. She rubbed her forehead. Think of your mother, Miles had said. She thought of her family and the fragile security that they had achieved since her inheritance. Could she risk losing all that? Her brother, Lowell, had the modern machinery he needed to make the farm profitable now. He was working hard to secure his future but it was not easy for him. Her mother felt safe if not happy as a wealthy matron in country society, but her confidence was so brittle. Any scandal involving Alice would devastate her. Then there was Lydia, pregnant, abandoned and alone, who would lose the roof over her head if anything happened to Alice. She could turn to her cousin, Laura Anstruther, but Laura and Dexter were poor as church mice themselves.

Miles was threatening to take everything away that Alice had worked to build. He was an officer of the Crown, working for Richard Ryder, the Home Secretary, and as such, one word from him could ruin her forever. It would break her mother’s heart, and leave Lydia defenceless. As for a court actually convicting her…her mind reeled in horror at the prospect. For she was guilty as charged. She was totally in his power.

She pressed her fingers to her temples. If only she could negotiate with Miles, make some sort of compromise. That might suffice.

“I will make a bargain with you, my lord,” she said. “I understand that you are deeply in debt and that you must want my fortune, and so, if you do not speak of what happened last night, I will consent to the pretence of a betrothal between us to help you stave off your creditors for a little while—” She stopped, shocked. For a moment there was such a bleak and desolate look in Miles’s eyes that it took her breath away. She had never, ever thought to see an expression like that on his face. And then it was gone, as swiftly as it had come, and she wondered if she had imagined it.

“It is far too late for half measures, Miss Lister,” he said. “The sale of the Drum estate and all the castle contents starts in a couple of weeks.” He smiled faintly. “I am in far deeper debt than you can ever imagine. I have already sold everything I can, and if I do not wed an heiress, and soon, I will be thrown in the Fleet—or be forced to flee the country.” He shifted a little. “That is why I am prepared to do anything to oblige you to marry me, Miss Lister. There will be no compromises. You wed me or you go to jail.”

Chapter Four

MILES WATCHED as Alice wrestled with his not in the least romantic proposal. Every expression was written clearly on her face. He could read that she wanted to tell him to go to hell. It was in every defiant line of her body and in the jut of her chin as she stood, hands on hips, staring him down. Miles was accustomed to calculating each cynical risk he took in his life and this was one he knew was a racing certainty. No matter how much she hated him, Alice had too much to lose to refuse him. She would succumb to his blackmail, wed him, and he would have the fortune he craved.

He would have Alice in his bed, as well, and that was beginning to matter as much as the money. Well, not quite. But their sparring had only sharpened his hunger for her. For a moment Miles allowed himself to imagine Alice naked in his arms, the curves and hollows of her skin exposed to his questing hands, the scent of her wrapped about him as it had been the night before.

The arousal ripped through him, startling him in its intensity.

Miles clamped down on his excessive lust. This was not going to help him think straight and he was too calculating to be led astray by his desire. He looked at Alice again and almost forgot the resolution he had just made. She looked slightly flustered, completely defiant and totally irresistible. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted it very much.

Something flickered in Alice’s blue eyes—fury and despair in equal mixture. She was trapped and she knew it but she was not going to break down. Miles felt a sudden admiration for her. Most women would have given in to the vapors by now, or have withdrawn into a strategic swoon. Alice, it seemed, had nerves of steel and a fundamental strength of character he had seldom encountered in a female before, the only other exception being his cousin Laura Anstruther. Miles was not conventional enough to believe that women were the weaker sex—he had seen enough of their strength and courage under duress to know that they had a hardiness that many of his peers would deplore as unfeminine and unbecoming. But Alice had something in addition. She had enormous resolution.

He watched her narrowly as she paced the room. He was accustomed to weighing up his adversaries, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Before he had gone to work for the Home Secretary he had been in the army and his work had taken him into dark places where he bartered for the lives of prisoners or hostages held by the other side, where he made bargains with men’s lives and futures as though they were no more than pieces on a chessboard, where he had always to consider the greater good and be prepared to sacrifice the individual. Over the years he had abandoned people whose only hope was that he could secure their safety. Always he reminded himself that a few had to suffer for the benefit of the majority. And gradually the choices had become less painful, more calculated, and with each decision another piece of his soul had been lost. He knew this was why he could look at Alice now and feel nothing but a tightening hunger for her and for her money, and a triumph that the game was almost won. He doubted that there was a man alive who was more unfeeling or cynical than he was now, so he felt no compunction about forcing Alice into marriage. She had something that he wanted. He had the means to compel her to his point of view. It was as simple as that.

“Even if I agreed—” Alice began and Miles’s heart leaped to know that what he desired was so close to being within his grasp “—and I have not said that I will—there is a difficulty.”

“I am sure,” Miles said, “that it is nothing we cannot overcome.”

Alice’s eyes flashed with disdain. “I think it most unlikely you will be able to overcome this particular problem, my lord.” She turned on her heel sharply and walked away from him, the lemon silk skirts of her gown making a soft swishing sound.

“Try me,” Miles said. Now that he was within an ace of winning Alice’s consent he was absolutely determined that nothing would stand in his way. He was aware of tension rippling through all the muscles in his body, and the hairs of the back of his neck standing on end. He only just managed to suppress a shiver.

Alice gestured him to a seat and sat down opposite him. All her movements were very precise, as though she had herself under tight control. She was remarkably self-contained but he could see how much it was costing her in the tense way that she held herself together. Her strain showed in the tight grip of her hands in her lap and in the taut line of her shoulders as she sat up very straight.

“The inheritance of my fortune is not without conditions,” Alice said, breaking the silence between them. She looked at him, her blue eyes fierce, as though she were daring him to challenge her. “My lawyer, Mr. Gaines, will confirm what I am about to tell you, my lord, lest you think this no more than an excuse on my part.” She swallowed hard and took a deliberate breath, meeting his gaze directly.

“The fact is that when she left me her fortune, Lady Membury also laid down a stipulation relating to the man I would marry,” Alice said. “It has to be fulfilled or all my remaining fortune reverts to the charity for the welfare and upkeep of the stray animals of the parish. Lady Membury,” she added sweetly, “was very fond of animals.”

“I can imagine,” Miles said. He had heard a little of the elderly widow who had left her housemaid a vast fortune. It was said she had been completely mad.

Alice’s blue gaze flickered over Miles again. “When she made this stipulation, Lady Membury was seeking to protect me from fortune hunters and to ensure that I chose to marry a man who loved and respected me for myself alone,” she said. Her tone was ironic.

“That was very laudable of her,” Miles said, “but probably a little optimistic.”

“So it seems,” Alice said coldly, “given the nature of your marriage proposal. Lady Membury’s wishes are quite clear, however. She stated that as she would not be present to scrutinize my suitors herself, she requires that the man I marry fulfill certain criteria. Specifically he has to be proven to be an upright and worthy gentleman.” She let the words drop into the silence of the room. “Perhaps if she had required that I should marry an out-and-out scoundrel, you would have a better chance, my lord.”

Miles laughed. “You do not feel that I meet her conditions, Miss Lister?”

“In no particular,” Alice said. “More to the point, my lord, Mr. Gaines, and my other trustee, Mr. Churchward, who was Lady Membury’s London lawyer, both surely know of your poor character and know that whatever else you may be, you are neither upright nor worthy. So I fear that your suit is doomed, my lord, blackmail notwithstanding.”

It was a setback, Miles allowed, but he could not accept that it was insuperable. He had not come this far in order to give up now.

“Churchward is my family lawyer, too,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps he could be…persuaded…to my cause.”

“I have met Mr. Churchward and I doubt that he is corruptible,” Alice said sharply, “family lawyer or not.”

“I am afraid you are probably right,” Miles conceded wryly. “Which is how it should be, I suppose. I do not really want a dishonest solicitor working for me.”

“Only when it suits you,” Alice said. “There is more, my lord.”

“Of course there is,” Miles said ironically.

“In order to prove his worthiness to Lady Membury’s satisfaction—and to that of my trustees,” Alice said, “my future husband has to fulfill a certain requirement.”

Miles sighed. He was starting to dislike the deceased Lady Membury quite intensely. He had no doubt that Alice was telling him the truth about the codicil to her inheritance—and that she was taking great pleasure in doing so. He supposed that it was the least he deserved for forcing her hand.

He sat forward. “Name Lady Membury’s stipulations,” he said.

“Her terms are that for three months you must be proven to be utterly and completely honest in your dealings, not only with me, your future wife, but with everyone else, too,” Alice said very clearly. “You must speak the truth on all occasions. You must be honest in all your transactions.” Her gaze held a hint of mockery as it rested on him. “You are a ruthless, deceitful manipulator, my lord. Never in a thousand years could you achieve such a thing as total honesty, though I do believe it would be the most painful punishment for you to try. I feel sure you would fall at the first hurdle.”

Miles stared at her. For a moment he thought—hoped—he had misheard her.

Utter and total honesty in his words and his dealings?

What had that mad old fool Lady Membury been thinking?

Utter and total honesty for three whole months?

He was not sure what was showing on his face. Alice was watching him with interest and a certain degree of amusement.

“I knew you could not do it,” she said with satisfaction.

“Miss Lister,” Miles said, “there are very good social reasons for not being honest all the time.”

Alice smiled slightly. “You need not tell me that,” she said. “I was not the one who set the condition. And I would not be expecting you to be honest if I ask you whether I look plump in a particular gown,” she added. “We are talking here about fundamental honesty of character, Lord Vickery. We are talking about you being at heart a sincere and worthy man.” Her smile grew. “Oh dear, you look appalled. I do realize that the concept of honor is completely foreign to you.” She raised a brow. “I take it, then, that you are withdrawing your attempt at blackmail and that we need not trouble Mr. Churchward and Mr. Gaines? I know you would not be able to meet the terms, anyway.”

“Oh, I can meet the terms,” Miles said. He got to his feet and turned away from Alice for a moment so that she could not see his expression and know he lied. It was impossible to open his heart and reveal the unvarnished truth about his thoughts, feelings and behavior. He had not done such a thing since he was a youth, in the last, appalling, disillusioning interview he’d had with his father before he’d left to join the army. Telling the absolute truth was to reveal one’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It was to lay oneself open to pain and hurt. Being honest never paid. It was not a course of action that he would ever take voluntarily.

And yet that did not mean he could not meet Lady Membury’s ridiculous conditions and win Alice’s fortune. Over the past ten years Miles had become so accomplished at disguising the truth, bending it, using it, molding it to his will that he was completely sure he could do the same now. Alice and her trustees would never know the difference between his carefully constructed pretence and total honesty.

He turned back to her. She was waiting with nothing but the most polite interest showing on her face. Miles took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb gently over the back of it. Her skin felt warm and deliciously soft. He felt a tiny tremble rack her. Her lips parted and he heard her catch her breath. The hunger for her that was within him sharpened like a knife. He had to have Alice Lister. One way or another he would achieve it.

“I will do it,” he said.

“Money is a truly remarkable inspiration,” Alice said, “if it can persuade even you to reform.” Her voice was slightly husky. Miles felt his body stir. Once again he had a sudden, shocking urge to kiss her, to take that soft red mouth with his and dip deep within her. He pulled her to her feet, drawing her closer to him until her hands were resting against the smooth blue superfine of his jacket.

“It is only for three months,” he whispered against the golden curls that had escaped from her neat little yellow bandeau and were tickling his lips. “I do not intend to reform for good. Only until I have you—and your money.”

He watched the color spill up under her skin, pink as an opening rose. “Of course,” Alice said. “How foolish of me. You cannot change.”

“Why would you seek to change me?” Miles asked. “I am far more amusing unreformed.”

He saw a flash of something in her eyes that looked almost like pain. “You are dangerous and ruthless and arrogant unreformed,” Alice said. Her voice was husky.

“Precisely,” Miles agreed. He leaned closer until his lips were barely an inch from hers, tantalizingly close. “Much more amusing.”

Alice shook her head a little. He saw the deep blue of her eyes darken to the color of twilight. He could sense the resistance in her, but it was overwhelmed by the attraction she had to him. He doubted that she even understood what was happening between them. She was so transparently innocent that it felt unfair to be taking advantage. Except that Miles never let such scruples weigh with him.

“Do we have a deal, Miss Lister?” he murmured. His lips brushed hers. “I will contact Churchward and Gaines to confirm that I will fulfill Lady Membury’s requirements as your affianced husband. By good fortune I am expecting Mr. Churchward to arrive from London any day to discuss my inheritance of Drum.…”

He saw Alice blink and pull herself back from the brink of sensual awareness. A shade of disquiet touched her face. She took a step back from him as though she had belatedly become aware of how far she had let him take control and how far he had affected her senses.

“You go too fast, my lord,” she said. “I have not given my consent yet.”

“But you will,” Miles said. “Think of your mother. Think of Miss Cole. You have no choice.”

A flicker of temper flashed in Alice’s eyes. “I understand that there is a family curse associated with your inheritance of Drum, my lord,” she said. “Can I rely upon it to carry you off before the knot is tied?”

Miles laughed. “It certainly won’t happen before our wedding night, sweetheart.”

Alice pulled a face. “A pity. But perhaps I could hasten it along.” She swished away from him. “Let us be clear, Lord Vickery. I detest you. You are the last man on earth I would wish to wed and if I am forced into this then—” she paused and then met his eyes defiantly “—ours will never be more than a marriage in name only.”

Miles burst out laughing. “You are in no position to be negotiating terms, Miss Lister. A marriage in name only? I don’t think so.” He crooked a finger under her chin and brushed his lips to hers again. They were soft and yielding and he wanted to deepen the kiss and taste her and take her. Desire twisted in him.

“Surrender to me now,” he said, against her mouth. “Accept my proposal. You know you have no choice.”

“No!” Alice jerked back from him, pressing her fingers against her lips. “I need time to think,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” Miles said. “There is nothing to think about.” He did not want to give her even a second to think of a way out—not that there was one for her.

Alice stared at him for a long moment and then she nodded slightly, and Miles’s heart leaped with relief and triumph.

“Very well,” she said, very low. “You have my consent to an engagement. I realize that if I do not accept, others will suffer, and that I cannot allow.” She swallowed hard. “But I do not believe that it will ever come to marriage between us. You will fail to meet the terms of the will. You will fall at the first hurdle.”

“You mean that you hope I will,” Miles corrected gently.

Alice glared at him. “We cannot announce our betrothal immediately,” she said. “I need time—a few days—to explain to my family and friends.” She made a slight gesture. “They will be…puzzled…that I have changed my mind and that I am willing to accept you when they know I hold you in such strong dislike.”

“I am sure that your mama will be delighted and will ask no questions,” Miles said. “I foresee no problems there.”

“No,” Alice said. She turned away from him slightly so that he could see her face only in profile. “But my brother, Lowell, will be a different matter. He hates you and would very likely call you out if he guessed the truth, and then you would probably kill him, which will make matters a great deal worse. So I have to come up with a reason that will convince him…And then there is Lizzie.” Miles saw her lips curve into a faint smile. “I imagine she, too, might do you some physical damage if she ever discovers that you are blackmailing me.”

“I do not intend to bring Lady Elizabeth into this at all,” Miles said. “And I expect you to keep her out of it, as well.”

“Of course.” Alice’s tone was scornful. “I appreciate that you do not wish to risk Lord Waterhouse’s wrath by dragging Lizzie into this mess.” She sighed. “And Lizzie is my friend and I love her and I do not want her involved, so for that reason I will not tell her the truth, but—” she shrugged “—as I said, I need time to think of a convincing reason why I might wish to wed you.” She looked disdainful. “The benefits are not obvious to anyone who knows me.”

“I will give you two days,” Miles said. “You may tell your family whatever you please, as long as it is not the truth. That will also give me time to speak to your lawyers. Then we will make the formal announcement of our betrothal.” He saw a shiver rack her, but then she squared her shoulders and met his gaze.

“No,” she said, “I consent to the betrothal being known within my family and friends but not to a formal announcement. Not until the three months’ courtship is up—and you have fulfilled the conditions of Lady Membury’s will. I absolutely will not compromise on that, my lord. I do not wish to emerge from this with my reputation any more tarnished than it will be already.”

Once again the frustration gripped Miles. Devil take it but she was strong, and he did not know whether he admired her for it or wanted to shake the resistance out of her. “Forgive me, Miss Lister,” he said, “but once again I must remind you that you are in no position to negotiate.”

She held his gaze fearlessly. “And I would advise you not to push me too far, my lord, or I will call off the entire deal and tell you to go to hell, blackmail or no blackmail.”

They faced each other like fencers and then Miles nodded. “Very well,” he said.

He heard her give a tiny sigh of relief. “I should also warn you, my lord,” she said, “that should you miraculously manage to convince the lawyers of your upright character and respectability—” she made an exasperated gesture “—then I will do my utmost to make you the devil of a wife.”

Miles smiled. “And I shall be the devil of a husband, so we shall deal extremely well together.” He bowed to her. “I will see you at the Granby Ball tomorrow night, Miss Lister. You will save a dance for me.”

He saw Alice’s eyes narrow at the fact that his words were a statement not a request. “Dance with you?” she said. She quoted his own words back to him. “I don’t think so.”

“Yes, you will.” Miles smiled. “It is the beginning of our three-month courtship during which I shall prove myself the most honorable, worthy and upstanding of suitors.” He held her eyes, and she dropped her gaze first, the rose color deepening in her cheeks. “I assure you, Miss Lister,” he added, “that we shall be in each other’s company a great deal from now onward.”

“That is ridiculous,” Alice snapped. “There is no need for us to spend more than the minimal amount of time together. No one is suggesting that this is a love match. It is a business arrangement!”

“That may be so,” Miles said smoothly, “but I am not giving the lawyers any opportunity to suspect me. You will find me the devoted suitor, I assure you.”

“I do not want you paying court to me,” Alice said. She was flushed with indignation now. “I loathe the idea. It…it makes a mockery of the whole concept of love and marriage.”

Miles laughed. “Miss Lister, you are so charmingly naive. Accept it.”

Once again he watched her struggle with her temper. “I suppose I have no choice,” she said angrily. She took a deep breath, recovered herself. “Mama will, of course, be present on all occasions to chaperone me, so that will at least ensure that you cannot try to circumvent the conditions and seduce me into marriage.”

“Excellent,” Miles said cheerfully. “I cannot help but feel that Mrs. Lister will support my suit.”

“Pray do not take that as personal approval,” Alice said sweetly. “If a duke comes along Mama will no doubt change her allegiance.”

Miles laughed. “I have no illusions, Miss Lister.”

“Nor indeed any principles,” Alice said.

“Naturally not,” Miles said. “But I can adopt some on a temporary basis.” He bowed again. “Good day, Miss Lister. Until tomorrow night.” He kissed the back of Alice’s hand and let her go, noting with satisfaction that she clasped one hand in the other, unconsciously running her fingers over the place his lips had touched her skin. She might detest him, he thought, but she was far from indifferent to his touch. This was going to be the perfect arrangement. He would have Alice in his bed, and her money would save him from the debtor’s prison. Everything was within his grasp.

Three months.

Total honesty.

The words echoed ominously in Miles’s head as he went out, down the steps of the house and onto the gravel sweep, but he told himself that he could do it to save himself from ruin. It would be easy.

Chapter Five

ALICE STOOD BY THE WINDOW and watched as Miles walked away up the drive. There was a casual assurance in his gait that spoke of utter confidence. He turned to look back and raised a hand in farewell, and she chided herself fiercely at having been caught watching him. Miles Vickery was the sort of man that women watched all the time and he knew it. She wished she had not been the one to confirm it.

With a sigh she dropped into the armchair that she had only recently vacated. She felt exhausted from the pressure of withstanding Miles’s blackmail and drained by an anger so deep and intense that she had thought it would consume her alive.

Miles Vickery. He was despicable.

He was just like all the rest. Men like Miles took what they wanted with a coldhearted disregard for the feelings of others.

She thought of Miles, and of Tom Fortune, who had ruined Lydia and callously abandoned her, and of all those nameless, faceless, careless sons of the nobility who saw any woman as fair game and who believed that a servant girl in particular was placed on earth to clean their boots and tend to their pleasure, to be picked up, used and discarded at whim, and she felt the fury well up in her again. She remembered Jenny, the sixteen-year-old scullery maid at the house next to Lady Membury’s in Skipton, whom she had found crying on the area steps, having been turned out for being pregnant.

Jenny had sworn the master of the house had forced himself on her and that the mistress had turned her out in a jealous fury. Alice often wondered what had happened to Jenny. She had tried to find her when she had come into her money, but like so many other disgraced servant girls, Jenny had vanished without a trace. Then there was Jane, who had worked for the Cole family. Alice’s brother, Lowell, had found Jane lying in a ditch near Cole Court, raped, bleeding and bruised. He had taken her to the farm at High Top and Alice had sent for the doctor, but it had been too late to save Jane. No charges had even been brought against anyone for Jane’s assault. Alice had known the constable did not really care. It was as though because Jane had served others she did not count as a person. She did not matter. She had died and no one had paid any heed.…

Restless with anger, Alice got to her feet and walked across to the window again, where she stood tapping her fingers on the sill. It was blindingly obvious, she thought bitterly, staring blankly out at the bright, sunny day, that had she still been a maidservant, Miles would only ever have looked at her with seduction in mind if he had noticed her at all.

Seduction, conquest, desertion…

The man was beyond despicable. He was unforgivably selfish and callous. Now that she was rich, he wanted both her money and her body, but his lack of respect for her was exactly the same as if she were still the housemaid she had been two years before. He wanted her only for what she could give him.

She was in the devil of a coil now, blackmailed into an engagement to a man she detested in order to protect those she loved. She could only hope that Miles would fail utterly to meet the requirements of Lady Membury’s will. He ought to fail, since he was congenitally incapable of honesty. He had proved it time and again. And yet…She shivered. There was something utterly single-minded about Miles and she had the dreadful conviction he was going to succeed.

He wanted her money.

He wanted her.

Alice wrapped her arms about her, cold now even with the fire burning hot in the grate. She didn’t understand the way Miles made her feel but she didn’t like it. How could she be so drawn to a man she despised, how could she tremble when he kissed her, how could she feel his touch echo through her whole body, when she hated him? Miles’s behavior only served to prove the arrogant disregard with which he went about taking whatever it was that he wanted. She was not going to succumb to this insidious desire, fall into his arms and give herself to him when he deserved nothing from her other than that she should tell him to go to hell.

For a moment she considered going to the authorities and telling them the truth about the theft and begging for clemency, but before the thought was even formed she realized that it would not serve. She could never take the risk of leaving her family ruined, and of leaving Lydia unprotected and alone for a second time.

Her skin flushed with heat as she thought about her encounter with Miles. He was so dangerous, predatory and utterly merciless in taking what he wanted, and she was so ridiculously naive and inexperienced. It was richly ironic that she was such an innocent, for she was no pampered heiress who had grown up cosseted and protected by wealth and privilege. She had gone out into the world and worked until her bones ached and her head had spun with tiredness. She had seen much of life, but she had never before had to deal with a man like Miles Vickery and she knew now that she was far, far out of her depth.

The door opened and Lydia Cole stuck her head around. “Has Lord Vickery left? Your mama tells me that you are going to marry him.”

“Mama is imagining things, as usual,” Alice said quickly. She did not want to have to tell anyone about the agreement between herself and Miles yet. They all knew her so well that none of them would believe she had agreed to marry him voluntarily. She had to think of a convincing excuse. Madness sprang to mind.

“You know that Mama wants me to marry a lord,” she said. “Which one is immaterial—and so she imagines that every man who calls is a potential husband.”

“Well, to be fair, most of them have called to press their suit,” Lydia said, “and you know how desperately she wishes you to be settled.” She came into the room and eased herself into the other armchair, sighing heavily as she sat down. “Oh, I am so tired these days! I swear I could sleep the whole day away.”

“At least you have a better color today,” Alice said approvingly. “I was very worried about you yesterday. Has your sickness improved?”

“No,” Lydia said. “I feel wretchedly ill morning, noon and night!”

Alice privately thought that a part of Lydia’s suffering might well be caused by the mental anguish of having loved Tom Fortune so dearly and having been so horribly disillusioned in him. He was another reckless gambler like Miles Vickery, an out-and-out rake and philanderer who had taken Lydia’s love and smashed it to pieces. He had seduced her, made her pregnant, abandoned her and wound up in prison for his criminal activities. Lydia never spoke of her feelings for Tom, and Alice did not push her into it. She knew that Lizzie sometimes tried to get Lydia to open up, but Lydia remained adamantly silent.

The other matter they never discussed was what would happen when the baby was born. Alice had every intention of making over to Lydia the house in Skipton that Lady Membury had left her, so that Lydia and the baby could have a secure future. She had already instructed her lawyer to draw up the papers and she hoped desperately that her betrothal to Miles could not alter the arrangement. Lydia had once been an heiress herself but it seemed unlikely that her parents, the current Duke and Duchess of Cole, would settle any money on their disgraced daughter now, so Alice thought it imperative that she should protect her friend.

Lydia lay back in her chair with a heartfelt sigh and closed her eyes. She was now well advanced into her fourth month of pregnancy, and her slight body looked swollen and a little ungainly already. Mrs. Lister had commented that Lydia was increasing at so great a rate that she might be carrying twins.

“I will go and make you some dry toast,” Alice said, getting up. “Lady Membury told me that when she was increasing she found it was the only thing she could manage to eat.”

Lydia waved a hand to stop her. “That would be kind—in a moment. I did not realize that Lady Membury had had any children,” she added. She looked at Alice, hesitation reflected in her eyes. “If she had children of her own, why did she leave her fortune to you, Alice?”

“Her daughter died and she had no other relatives,” Alice said. Her former employer’s eccentric decision to leave her vast fortune to her housemaid had caused uproar in the tight-knit local society. It had been a shock to Alice, too, but it was also understandable and deeply poignant for her. “You know that she had been a recluse for many years,” she said. “She had no family or friends and she had turned against the local vicar years ago, so there was no way in which she would choose to leave her money to the church.”

“I can see myself ending like that,” Lydia said, with a flash of bitterness. “Alone and with no one in the world…”

“No, you will not,” Alice said fiercely, grabbing her hand. “You have friends about you, and anyway, this baby of yours thrives and is strong. Perhaps when he or she is born your parents will relent—”

“God forbid,” Lydia said involuntarily, and they both burst out laughing. “Lady Membury must have loved you,” Lydia added. “You would have been a great comfort to her, Alice. I imagine she was very lonely and saw you as the daughter she had lost.”

“Perhaps she did,” Alice said. There was a lump in her throat. “We used to talk about all manner of things,” she said, thinking back, “and go driving together, and drink bohea tea and gin, and play cards together.”

“And I suppose you let her win,” Lydia said.

“Well, of course,” Alice said. “She was my employer—and she had a fortune of eighty thousand pounds!”

They both burst out laughing again but then Alice sobered. “All the same, Lydia,” she said, “I sometimes wish that she had never left me her money. It can be a curse as well as a blessing.” She stopped, finding that she was on the verge of blurting out the truth of Miles’s blackmail to her friend. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a little constraint. “That sounds most appallingly ungrateful when my life is materially so much easier now than it was a few years ago.”

“Being an heiress is not always a fortunate thing,” Lydia said bitterly. “Look at the depths of greed it has driven Sir Montague to, with his ghastly plans to fleece us all with the Dames’ Tax and all his other medieval laws! And then there is Tom…” Her voice faltered a little, and Alice saw her knuckles whiten as she pressed her hands together in her lap. “I do not think he would have paid me the slightest attention had I been penniless. I think he knew that as he is a rackety younger son, Mama and Papa would never countenance his attentions to me. He deliberately sought to get me pregnant so that I would be obliged to marry him. The plan only went wrong when his criminal actions were exposed and he was arrested.”

“Oh, Lydia!” Alice was appalled at the heartless tale her friend was outlining. The same thoughts had occurred to her but she had hoped that Lydia had kept at least a few of her illusions. “I am sure that Tom cared for you—” she began, knowing that she did not believe it but wanting only to give comfort.

“Oh, pish!” Lydia said. “Tom cared for no one but himself. Which is why you should be careful of Miles Vickery, Alice.” Her gaze sought Alice’s and there was anxiety in the depths. “I know he is different in that he is a marquis, even if an impoverished one, and so has a title to trade for your money, but in terms of character I think him even more of a rake than Tom, more ruthless, more dangerous.”

“How right you are,” Alice said with feeling.

Both girls looked around as there was a clatter in the hall outside. Lizzie had evidently arrived back from her ride with Nat Waterhouse, for she could be heard chattering and laughing with Marigold, and then Alice heard her mother’s voice rising with excitement as she gave Lizzie the news.

“And the Marquis of Drummond called and I have every expectation of an engagement being announced shortly between him and Alice…”

The drawing room door crashed open. “Your mama tells me that you are going to marry Miles Vickery, Alice,” Lizzie announced as she rushed in. She pulled off her riding gloves and dropped them carelessly on the table. “Am I to congratulate you?”

“That would be premature,” Alice said.

“Ha! I thought so!” Lizzie said, flinging herself down on the window seat. “I told her you should be clapped in Bedlam if you were even considering it!”

“Well,” Alice began weakly, thinking that perhaps she should take the opportunity to start preparing the ground, but then she realized that Lizzie was not attending, anyway.

“You will not believe what has happened!” Lizzie said, sitting bolt upright and fixing her friends with a furious glare. “Nat Waterhouse is to marry that pea brain Flora Minchin!”

“Good gracious!” Alice said, startled. She remembered Miles’s lazy observation that Lizzie was in love with Nat even though she had known him forever and treated him like a brother. Miles had not, she realized now, said that Nat felt the same way. And everyone knew that Lord Waterhouse was yet another impecunious fortune hunter out to snap up a rich prize.

“How do you feel about that, Lizzie?” she asked.

“Oh, it is none of my affair if Nat chooses to throw himself away on a featherbrained heiress who will bore him silly within a se’nnight!” Lizzie said crossly. “I could not care one iota!”

Alice exchanged a look with Lydia. “I expect you told him that, too,” Lydia said.

“Of course!” Lizzie wriggled impatiently. “But I need not concern myself because it will never happen. Nat could not be so stupid as to marry that henwit. He will see sense before the knot is tied.”

Once again Alice’s eyes met Lydia’s. Lydia raised her brows slightly and Alice shook her head. Both of them knew that Nat Waterhouse was eminently capable of going through with such a marriage for money and that if he had already made Miss Minchin an offer he could not now, in honor, back out. There was no point in telling Lizzie that, of course, for she was in no mood to listen.

“Flora Minchin is a sweet-natured girl,” Alice said.

“Only because she is too stupid to be anything other than agreeable,” Lizzie snapped.

“I don’t think she is anywhere near as stupid as you think, Lizzie,” Lydia said surprisingly. “I think you misjudge her.”

“I don’t care about Flora,” Lizzie said impatiently. “The problem is that now I do not even have Nat’s escort to the ball at the Granby tomorrow, for he is to accompany Flora and her family!”

“How thoughtless of him,” Alice murmured. “Well, we shall both have to make do with my brother, Lowell. He has promised to escort me and I am sure he will be happy to do the same for you, Lizzie. Besides, you are seldom short of admirers.”

“I like Lowell,” Lizzie said, brightening. “That will be delightful.”

“He likes you, too,” Alice said dryly, “but he is wasting his time. You would make a terrible farmer’s wife.”

Lizzie laughed, her good humor restored. “With my fortune he could be a gentleman of leisure. It is worth a thought.…”

“No, it is not,” Alice said quickly. The idea of Lizzie and Lowell making a runaway match was, she thought, the worst scheme since Lizzie’s last bad idea about robbing the gown shop. Lizzie would run rings around Lowell. She needed a firm hand and Lowell was far too easygoing. “Lowell likes working for a living,” she said. “I know that may seem strange but some of us require occupation.”

“Oh, do not worry.” Lizzie yawned. “I know Lowell prefers to work morning, noon and night. We would see a great deal more of him here at Spring House if it were not so. Last time we met I told him how very tedious and bourgeois it was of him!” She slewed around in her seat so she could look at Alice properly. “And do not think that I have not noticed how restless you become when you feel you have little to do, Alice. You are the same.”

“Bourgeois,” Alice said. “I know.”

Lizzie had the grace to look a little ashamed. “I did not mean that. It is merely that you prefer to keep occupied.”

This, Alice thought, was true and well observed of Lizzie, who could sometimes surprise with her insights. “Leading the life of an heiress bores me dreadfully,” she admitted. “I need to be active. It is a pity that Mama does not feel the same. She sits here each day waiting for genteel callers who never arrive and then she feels most dreadfully snubbed.”

“Now that you plan to start a charity for destitute servants, you will be very busy indeed,” Lizzie said. “I am surprised that Mr. Churchward agreed to advance you the money for it. I hear he is very proper and some of those girls are fallen women.”

“Most of them have done nothing more than make a mistake,” Alice said carefully, wishing that Lizzie were not quite so tactless with Lydia sitting there, pregnant and unmarried, in front of her. “It is wrong to judge. Besides,” she added, to turn the subject, “I can only use my interest, not my capital, so neither of my trustees need worry that I am spending profligate sums.”

Mrs. Lister entered the room followed by Marigold with the luncheon tray. This was set out on a cloth with the Lister coat of arms embroidered on it. In vain had Alice explained to her mother that they were not entitled to use the arms because they had never been awarded to their branch of the family. Mrs. Lister had tossed her head and claimed that since the Duchess of Cole had a coat of arms, she would have one, too. She had then proceeded to embroider or net them onto anything and everything: chair backs, tablecloths and even the knitted coat worn by her pet dog.

“Oh, delicious!” Lizzie exclaimed as she saw the luncheon. “Jellied chicken and ham pies!”

Lydia had paled at the sight of the chicken and now she got hastily to her feet. “I think I will take a rest in my room,” she murmured. “No, dear ma’am—” She fended off Mrs. Lister’s inquiry as to whether she would take any food, “I have no appetite today.”

“Oh, dear,” Alice said as the door closed behind her, “she seemed so much better today. I’m afraid she will starve herself into a sickness at this rate.”

“Nat was asking after Lydia’s health,” Lizzie said, munching through one of the little pork pies.

“So was Lord Vickery,” Alice said, accepting the cup of tea that Marigold proffered.

“Nat asked if she ever received any letters,” Lizzie added. “I thought it an odd question, for why should he be interested? And who would write to her? Her cousin Laura is close by so need not send letters, and the rest of her family have cut her off and it is not as though she will ever hear from Tom.…”

Alice paused, remembering that Miles had asked if the wedding dress had been for Lydia. She had been startled, because the only person Lydia was likely to marry was Tom Fortune and he was locked up in jail. And then Miles had also asked if Lydia ever saw anyone, and Nat had asked if she received any letters…A nasty suspicion formed in Alice’s mind and she looked sharply at Lizzie to see if the same doubts had also occurred to her, but Lizzie was digging her spoon into the dish of jellied chicken and chattering to Mrs. Lister about what she could see in the tea leaves.

“The raven,” Mrs. Lister said, peering into the depths of her cup. “That means bad news or a reversal of fortune.”

“That will be for Lord Vickery then,” Lizzie said. “Nat told me that he was planning to auction off the contents of Drum Castle next week because he is so debt-ridden that he will be clapped in the Fleet before long.”

Alice remembered the bleak look in Miles’s eyes when he had told her he stood to lose everything. No wonder he had pressed her so hard to accept him. He had not lied when he said that he would be ruined by debt. She struggled against a sudden and treacherous feeling of sympathy for Miles having to endure the humiliation of losing his entire birthright in so public a manner. Then she felt angry at her own weakness. Miles deserved no pity from her.

“Truly?” she said. “Lord Vickery’s situation is genuinely that bad?”

“Worse than bad,” Lizzie said cheerfully. “That is why the sale is happening so soon. The lawyers pressed Lord Vickery to it as soon as he inherited as the only way to save himself. They are to sell off the farmland and other parts of the estate, and the entire contents of the castle. The only thing that cannot be sold is the castle itself, for it is entailed.” She turned back to Mrs. Lister. “I thought that we might take the carriage out to Drum next week, ma’am, and see how the sale goes? We could buy ourselves a few souvenirs—”

“Lizzie, no!” Alice said, revolted. “That is like vultures picking over a carcass!”

“Well someone has to buy the goods,” Lizzie said, unmoved, “and it might as well be us! I hear that the late marquis had some delightful porcelain figures—though not all of them are quite respectable—but I know that your mama would like to increase her collection by buying some of the more tasteful ones.”

This decided the matter. Mrs. Lister was most enthusiastic, and Alice found herself overruled. “For, my dear,” Mrs. Lister said reasonably, “our money is as good as anyone else’s and I think we should make a show.”

It went much against the grain with Alice, but then she thought of Miles’s ruthless attempt to blackmail her into marriage and she felt cold and sick. Why was she wasting her sympathy on a man who did not understand the meaning of the word compassion? He deserved nothing from her other than her absolute disdain. Her money was her own to do with as she chose until she wed, provided that her trustees approved. If she embarrassed Miles by making a vulgar show of her fortune only a week after being blackmailed into accepting his hand in marriage, then he had no one to blame but himself.

“By all means let us go to Drum,” she said, “and buy up the marquis’s entire estate if we wish. The more I think about it, the more the idea appeals to me.”

Chapter Six

“OH, DARLING, I cannot believe that such an appalling thing could have happened!” Dorothea, the Dowager Lady Vickery, rushed into the drawing room of Drum Castle, enfolded her elder son in a scented embrace, then released him to stand back and dab artistically at her eyes with her inadequate and lacy handkerchief. “I am so sorry for you, Miles, darling! To have inherited the Marquisate of Drum is…Well, it is quite…” Words seemed to fail her and she took refuge once more in wiping the tears from her eyes.

“It’s a damned disaster,” Miles finished for her, “begging your pardon, Mama.” He had been working on the estate finances in preparation for Churchward’s visit, and the grim columns of figures had not improved his mood. Drum had been badly run for years and had brought in very little income. His cousins had suffered from a congenital failure to understand that they had no money to spend. The combination of the two was disastrous and meant that he was more deeply in debt than he had realized. Alice’s eighty thousand pounds would clear most of the debt, and selling off those parts of the estate that were not entailed would ease the situation a little, but once he and Alice were married and her money spent the two of them would have nothing other than his Home Office salary—which was barely enough for one to live on, not two—and this ruined monstrosity of a castle. They would be surviving on credit for the rest of their lives unless he could think of a way to make a fortune.

Under the circumstances the arrival of his mother was about as welcome as one of the plagues of Egypt. He looked at her with ill-concealed impatience. “Might I ask what you are doing here, ma’am?” he said. “I really did not expect this.”

The dowager opened her hazel eyes plaintively wide. “We came to support you in your hour of need, darling,” she said. She gestured airily toward the door. “Celia is here, and Philip, too. When I realized that dear Mr. Churchward was coming to consult with you on matters of business—” she waved a hand at the lawyer, who was struggling into the room weighed down with what looked like a monstrous amount of the dowager’s luggage “—I prevailed upon him to allow us to accompany him. We knew that you would need us by your side at this difficult time.”

“How perceptive of you, Mama,” Miles said grimly. He nodded to the lawyer. “Churchward, you have my sympathies. I wish you had not bothered to come, Mama,” he added brutally, turning back to his mother. “This place is utterly uninhabitable, there are no servants and I will be selling off all the contents next week. There is nowhere for you to stay and you know you hate the north of England.”

The dowager’s expression set into lines that were surprisingly mulish. “Well, we shall all manage somehow,” she said briskly. “And you need not fear that we will have to stay in this ghastly ruin—” she cast the baronial room a look of profound dislike “—for we have arranged to visit your cousin Laura Anstruther at the Old Palace in Fortune’s Folly. I only had the luggage brought in because the carriage is so ancient that it leaks and the weather in the North is so appalling.”

“You are staying with Laura?” Miles asked. That was bad news, he thought, for it meant that Lady Vickery would be established in Fortune’s Folly for at least a month, possibly longer. He groaned inwardly. That would give her ample time to interfere in his courtship of Alice and cause all sorts of problems.

“I am so looking forward to getting to know Laura’s new husband better,” his mother was saying. “The Home Secretary speaks most highly of him. I hear he is one of the Hertfordshire Anstruthers. He is vastly handsome, is he not?”

“Dexter isn’t my type,” Miles said grimly, making a mental note to ask his friend what the hell he was playing at to allow Laura to invite his entire family to stay.

Celia Vickery came up to him and offered a cool cheek for him to kiss. “How are you, Miles?” she said, appraising him with her sharp hazel gaze. “Still alive, I see. The Curse of Drum has not yet carried you off.”

“Give it time,” Miles said. “Could you not have dissuaded Mama from coming, Celia?” he added, scarcely bothering to lower his voice. “You know I don’t want any of you here.”

His sister, the eldest of the family and unmarried at thirty-three, gave him an old-fashioned look. In appearance Celia was like their mother, with the same oval face, dark brown hair and winged eyebrows that had once proclaimed Lady Vickery a beauty. Yet it was odd, Miles thought, that the looks that had made Dorothea Vickery a diamond of the first water were somehow muted in her daughter. Celia could probably be described as well to a pass but she was no incomparable. Nor was she remotely like their mother in temperament but more like Miles himself, cool, cynical and direct.

“Of course I could not put her off,” Celia said. “You know mother is as persuadable as a Nile crocodile! Do you think I wanted to traipse all the way up here to see you, Miles?” she added. “It is the most damnable nuisance.” Her expression softened slightly as she looked at Philip, who was admiring a huge, dusty suit of armor that stood in a dark corner. “Actually I think Philip wanted to come. He enjoyed the travel and the new scenes, and he wanted to see you, Miles—”

Miles turned away from the appeal in her eyes. Philip, a late child and the apple of his mother’s eye, had been five years old when Miles had quarreled so dreadfully with their father and had left home to join the army. The boy was a stranger to him and that was the way Miles intended to leave it. It was far, far too late for him to establish a relationship with his family and he did not even want to try.

“There are no servants to make any refreshments, I fear,” he said pointedly as his mother sat down on an ancient chaise longue and raised a cloud of dust that almost choked them. “Why do you not repair to Fortune’s Folly now whilst Mr. Churchward and I conduct our business, Mama? I could join you all later for dinner.”

The dowager turned her expressive hazel eyes on him. “But, Miles, darling, we have only just arrived,” she protested. She settled back more comfortably, gestured Philip to sit beside her, and it was clear that she was going absolutely nowhere.

Miles sighed. He drove his hands into the pockets of his well-cut jacket of green superfine—fourteen pounds from Mr. Welbeck, the premier men’s outfitter in York, who was never likely to see the cash for it—and strolled over to the window. Outside, the early February day was already closing in; a gray mist hung over the Yorkshire fells, and the sleet spattered the window. The wind whistled in the chimneys and sent the cobwebs scurrying across the floor. The last thing that Miles wanted was his family with him in Yorkshire at such a time. They had already been obliged to sit by when he had sold Vickery House out from under them two years before, and before that Vickery Place, the sprawling country house in Berkshire where Miles and his brother and sisters had grown up. Now he would be selling Drum, as well, or at least the bits of the estate that were not entailed, plus all furnishings, fixtures and fittings. The Ton would soon be calling him the Merchant Marquis, or some such cutting sobriquet, for he was the man who had put his entire birthright on the market. He did not care, but he knew his mother would. The financial ruin of the Vickery barony and her consequent loss of status had hit her hard.

“I appreciate your concern for me, Mama,” Miles said carefully, without turning back to look at his mother, “and I realize that it is distressing for you to know that I am even more deeply in debt now than I was before I inherited Drum—”

“Oh, I am not worried about the debt!” Lady Vickery declared. She had always had a rather tenuous grasp of finance. “You can always find an heiress to wed, Miles! No, I am here because of the Curse of Drum! It is the most lamentable piece of bad luck to befall our family in years! You are doomed, Miles, positively doomed!”

Miles remembered Nat Waterhouse commenting on his mother’s superstitious nature and tried to smother his annoyance. “The only doom that is waiting for me, Mama,” he said, “is a sojourn in the Fleet if I cannot find myself an heiress in short order. You know I don’t believe in all that superstitious twaddle about the Curse of Drum.”

“You should do,” the dowager said crossly. “Look at your cousin Freddie! Dead in a bawdy house fire and he had only been Marquis of Drummond for a twelvemonth!”

“Miles is more likely to die worn out by one of his mistresses, like Cousin William,” Celia put in waspishly.

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as Lady Vickery covered Philip’s ears. “I am duly warned and can only hope that I have more stamina or perhaps more discrimination in my amorous adventures than Cousin Billy had.” He sighed irritably. The family curse was something that he treated with absolute contempt. He had not been a soldier for eleven years in order to develop a superstitious fear of death. As far as he was concerned the Curse of Drum only related to the fact that his cousins had been profligate to a man and had left thousands of pounds owing to the moneylenders.

“Miles, you are a disgrace,” his mother said reproachfully. “I am sure that your poor papa would be turning in his grave to hear you speak thus.”

“Papa did not have to be dead to disapprove of me,” Miles said evenly. “He would probably feel that the inheritance of Drum was my just deserts for a misspent life. No doubt he would say it was a judgment on me.”

Lady Celia stifled a laugh. “Papa was very keen on hellfire and damnation,” she said.

“As was appropriate for so eminent a man of the cloth,” Lady Vickery pointed out, smoothing the widow’s weeds she had worn for the past five years, since her husband had died. In the pale winter light she looked delicate and artfully pale, the epitome of the grieving widow. Miles’s father had been a younger son who had gone into the church, had unexpectedly inherited his brother’s barony and had risen to become Bishop of Rochester. The presence of the beautiful, high-born, gracious Dorothea at his side had done much to ensure his preferment and it was frequently said that His Grace would have reached the dizzy heights of the See of York or even Canterbury if only he had not died relatively young.

“Oh, we all know that Papa was all that was appropriate for a bishop,” Lady Celia said, with an edge to her voice that made Miles look at her closely. She did not meet his eyes but fidgeted with the stitching on her cuff. “He was an example to us all.”

“Celia, a little respect, if you please,” Lady Vickery said in a fading voice. “I know that you and your father had your differences, but Aloysius is dead.”

Celia made a small sound of disgust. Looking at her, Miles could see pity as well as impatience in her eyes as they dwelled on their mother’s tragic, piquant face.

“Mama,” Celia said, “it is Papa’s fault that Miles is in such desperate financial straits. Had he not been so extravagant, Miles would not have two cursed inheritances to contend with rather than one—”

Lady Vickery gave a little cry of distress and her daughter fell silent as the lacy handkerchief was applied again.

“Your papa was a good man.” Lady Vickery sniffed. “I will not hear another word against him, Celia! Do you hear me? He did his best for us all.”

There was an awkward little silence in the room. It was generally known within the Ton as well as within the Vickery family that the late bishop had been a deplorable spendthrift, just as Celia had said. He had entertained on a lavish scale and had not understood the meaning of the word retrench even when the bailiffs were at his door. Lady Vickery, Miles knew, tried to forget this regrettable aspect of her late husband’s character and had unofficially canonized him. As for the rest of the late Lord Vickery’s sins, they had been hidden so deep that no one would ever uncover them. Miles was aware that he was the only person who knew of his father’s transgressions.

He knew because he was the one who had taken the blame.

The anger stirred in him again, dark, painful and poisonous. He had worked so hard to lay those memories to rest along with his father. He would not allow them to be exposed now. It was ancient history, dead and buried. There was nothing that could be done to right old wrongs.

Mr. Churchward cleared his throat very loudly. The tips of his ears glowed bright red, a sign of his extreme discomfort on hearing family squabbles rehearsed before him.

“Returning to the Curse of Drum, my lord,” he said. “I do believe that you should treat the tales with a little more circumspection.”

Miles raised his brows. “I would not have expected you to indulge a belief in superstition, Churchward,” he drawled. “You are a man of the law, a believer in evidence and reason.”

Churchward blushed rather endearingly. He removed his spectacles and polished them agitatedly. “The empirical proof is too strong to ignore, my lord,” he said. “Sixteen marquises dead in less than one hundred years—”

“All dying in violent and horrible ways.” Lady Vickery shuddered, whilst Philip looked rather excited, as though he wanted the details.

“The result of no more than excessive carelessness,” Miles said. “You know our cousins were the most reckless, foolish and generally decadent of men.”

“But once the curse has taken you…” Churchward said unhappily.

“Philip will be next in line for the marquisate,” Celia Vickery finished, her words dropping into the room like pebbles down a well.

This aspect of the situation had already occurred to Miles although he wished that his sister had not made it quite so explicit. The Dowager Lady Vickery was looking stricken now, and Miles felt impatient to see his mama’s distress. She cared too much, that was the problem. She cared about their father’s reputation, she cared desperately about Philip’s future, she cared about the loss of Drum, and she even cared about him with a fondness Miles found inexplicable and utterly unwelcome. Looking at Philip’s youthful, clear-cut profile, Miles felt some emotion stir within him and dismissed it abruptly. It was too late for him to have any feelings of love or affection or even obligation toward his family. Old memories and emotions rose in him and he slammed the door on them, trapping them in the dark recesses of his mind. He wanted no love from his family now. He had lost them all when he had been eighteen, and it was too late to heal the breach. He would pack his mother and siblings off back to the South as soon as he could. They had, at least, been offered the sanctuary of a grace-and-favor cottage on a cousin’s estate in Kent so he need not worry that they would starve. They lived in vastly reduced circumstances, they were poor relations, but at least they were not begging on the streets.

“Mr. Appleby,” Philip said importantly, “is of the opinion that a belief in superstition is no more than a demonstration of an ill-educated mind.”

“Your tutor is a man of great wisdom,” Miles said. “I am glad to think that you are not in the care of a superstitious fool.”

“But we must make sure,” Lady Vickery protested. “We cannot afford to take any risks!” She sat forward in her seat and grabbed hold of Philip’s hand in what she clearly thought was a reassuring grip. “The only solution is for you to marry at once, Miles. I know that you have always been most resistant to the idea of matrimony, but it is your duty to provide an heir immediately in order to save your brother!”

“A charming thought, Mama,” Lady Celia murmured. “Miles can ensure the succession of another hapless sacrifice to the Curse of Drum.”

Miles smiled at her. “On past experience I do not think that one son will be enough, Mama,” he said. “Drummond needs an heir and several spares before Philip is safe. Look how many of our cousins have been cut down in the past.”

“Pray do not joke about it, Miles,” his mother said, her lip quivering piteously. “You always had a most lamentably odd sense of humor.”

“Your mama does have a point, my lord,” Mr. Churchward said. “It would be extremely advantageous for you to marry, and preferably to an heiress. Leaving aside the so-called curse, that would at least buy you time and stave off the most pressing of the moneylenders—”

He broke off as there was a loud ping from one of the springs in his wing chair. “I do beg your pardon,” he added. “This chair is particularly uncomfortable.”

“The furnishings here are all ghastly,” Lady Celia agreed, looking around the high-ceilinged room with deep disapproval. “The first thing that Miles should do is to have a bonfire.”

“Can’t do that,” Miles said. “When I say we have to sell everything, Celia, I mean everything, down to the last stick of firewood and the last chamber pot.”

Once again there was a silence. Lady Vickery fidgeted with her gloves. She looked pained, as though she had swallowed a fish bone. Celia’s firm expression softened slightly.

“I am sorry, Miles,” she said. “First Vickery Place, then Vickery House and now this! You must feel dreadful—”

“It can’t be helped,” Miles said briskly. Celia’s sympathy was the last thing he wanted. He did not need her pity. He looked at his mother’s pinched, white face. She was aware that he would forever be remembered as the man who had sold Vickery and sold Drum, too, the reckless, extravagant marquis who had brought the family fortunes so low that they were in the dust. It was unfair that he would take the blame for the extravagance of others but Miles was blisteringly aware that life was never fair. He had learned that lesson at eighteen when he was banished by his father for bringing the family honor low. Since then he had taught himself to care for nothing.

A knock resounded through the castle, the sound echoing off the stone of the walls and bouncing back to assault the eardrums. Lady Vickery winced.

“I believe that will be Frank Gaines, of Gaines and Partridge, the Skipton law firm,” Miles said. He looked at Mr. Churchward. “I asked him to join us to discuss the very matter you touched upon, Churchward—the business of my marriage.”

Lady Vickery gave a squeak of excitement. “Oh, Miles, you good, good boy! I knew you would not stand by and see your brother taken by the family curse!”

“This has nothing to do with the curse, Mama,” Miles said harshly, “and everything to do with my need to marry money very quickly indeed.”

“I will answer the door,” Lady Celia said practically, rising to her feet, as the knocker thudded again.

“Celia, no.” Lady Vickery was appalled. “That is what the servants are for.”

“Miles has no servants, Mama,” Celia said. “Have you not been attending? He is ruined, in Queer Street.” The knocker sounded a third time and she frowned. “Good gracious but Mr. Gaines is an impatient man.”

“Thank you, Celia,” Miles said as she headed for the door.

His sister dropped him a curtsy laced with irony and left the room. Whilst she was gone, Miles leaned an arm along the top of the stone mantelpiece—which needed a good clean and left a line of dust on the sleeve of his jacket—and reflected how uncomfortable the other occupants of the room looked. Philip was fidgeting and looked thoroughly bored to be so confined. Miles wished his mother had left Philip in London with his tutor. The boy should really be at school, but Miles could no longer afford to pay for his brother’s education and had only been able to afford the services of Mr. Appleby because he was a distant connection of the dowager and had grudgingly offered to reduce his fees out of family feeling. It was something, Miles thought, when even the tutor was patronizing his poor relations.

Lady Vickery, meanwhile, looked as though she was sitting on a bed of nettles. Clearly the news of Miles’s imminent betrothal had excited her considerably and she could not wait to hear the details. She huddled on the sofa in her winter pelisse, holding her hands out toward the fireplace in a vain attempt to get warm. In this drafty medieval castle it seemed almost impossible to build up any heat at all. The stone fireplaces were all broad enough to house an army, and the fire that Miles had coaxed into life in the red drawing room today could not be felt beyond a radius of three feet.

Mr. Churchward shuffled his papers again for no particular reason and cleared his throat simply to break the silence. He looked as though he would be happier taking refuge behind a desk and preferably one a long way away from this shabby castle with its uneasy atmosphere. He, too, was a man who preferred the bustle of city life, and Miles knew that the isolation and harsh beauty of these Yorkshire hills was not to everyone’s taste, particularly in winter. And then there was Drum Castle itself, which seemed so different from Miles’s childhood memories. He had spent a great deal of time here in his holidays from Eton, for his cousin Anthony had been an almost exact contemporary of his and the castle had rung with sounds of their martial games. Miles was not remotely superstitious, but even he was forced to admit that there was something strangely oppressive about these dark rooms now, crisscrossed as they were with spiders’ webs and trails of dust. Drum Castle seemed positively Gothic now, weighed down by its heavy furnishings and by the dark curtains that closed off the dusty windows. Today, with the wind lifting the hangings from the old stone of the walls and making the building creak and groan, it felt like a castle in a nightmare. Really, Miles thought, one would hardly need a family curse to send one demented in a very short space of time.

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