About the Author

SOPHIA JAMES lives in a big old house in Chelsea Bay on Auckland’s North Shore with her husband, who is an artist, three kids, two cats, a turtle, and a guide dog puppy. Life is busy because, as well as teaching adults English at the local Migrant School, she helps her husband take art tours to Italy and France each September. Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and she believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer, with her twin sister, on the porch of her grandmother’s house, overlooking the sandhills of Raglan.

Regency Scandals

High Seas to High Society

Masquerading Mistress

Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Pete, my pirate!

High Seas to High Society

Sophia James

Chapter One

London, May 1822

Asher Wellingham, the ninth Duke of Carisbrook, stood in a corner with his host Lord Henshaw, and watched a woman sitting alone near the dais.

‘Who is she, Jack?’ he asked with feigned casualness. In truth he had noticed her as soon as he had walked into the salon, for it was seldom a beautiful woman wore such a plain gown to a ball and then sat alone looking for all the world as if she was actually enjoying her own company.

‘Lady Emma Seaton, the Countess of Haversham’s niece. She arrived in London six weeks ago and every young blood has tried to strike up some sort of relationship with her since.’

‘Arrived … from where?’

‘Somewhere in the country, I would presume. Obviously she has not seen a London stylist—I’ve never seen hair quite like it.’

Asher’s gaze travelled across a thatch of blonde curls barely restrained by hairpins. A home-fashioned coiffure, he surmised, and executed badly, yet the whole effect of sun-bleached curls threaded with gold and corn was unsettling.

People seldom surprised him. Or intrigued him.

But this girl with her lack of self-consciousness and her fashion faux pas had succeeded. What woman, after all, ate her supper whilst wearing her gloves and licked the end of a silk-covered finger when the jam of a sweet biscuit stained it.

This one did.

Aye, this one did not nibble on the food as every other female in the room was wont to do, but piled the plate before her from the tray of a passing waiter as though her very life depended on it. As though it might indeed be a good deal of time until the next course showed itself, or as if, perhaps in her old life, in some country village, she had not had as much food as she had needed and could barely believe that she was being offered such bounty here.

He saw others looking her way and felt vaguely irritated. The buzz of whisper had grown as she stood, tall and thin, the hem of her gown reaching a good inch above the line that would have been decent and at least three inches above the length that was now in vogue.

He could hear the conjecture and the whispers all around, even if she did not seem to, and he wondered why the hell it should concern him anyway, but there was something about her. Some hint of familiarity. Some elusive memory of fellowship that could not quite be shaken. How could he know her? He tried to determine the colour of her eyes, but from this distance he could not. Turning, he cursed the Countess of Haversham for being remiss in seeing to her niece’s wardrobe and hairstyle, and left Lady Emma Seaton to the circling society wolves.

The room was crowded with men and women chatting at great speed and without pause, the music from a stringed quartet hardly discernible across the din.

Emerald frowned and sat, closing her eyes in order to listen better. People here did not seem to appreciate music, did not seem to understand that, when silence threaded the undertones, sound could be better heard, melody enhanced.

The music was unfamiliar, an English tune and lightly woven. She could almost feel her harmonica at her lips, notes soft across whisper-swelling seas. Jamaica crowded in like an ache.

Nay, she mustn’t think of this, she admonished herself, drawing her body more upright in the chair and forcing herself to observe the pressing crowd around her.

This was her life for a time.

England.

Her hands fingered the silk gown that swathed her from head to foot and, raising the third glass of fine champagne to her lips, she swallowed quickly. Good drink dulled her anxiety and heightened other senses. Sound. Smell. Feel. Every pore in her body longed for sun or wind or rain upon it, to break free of her high-waisted frilled bodice. To lie on summer-warm sand or in the wild grasses on the rise above Montego Bay or to dive deep into an azure sea, down and down until the bubbles tickled greenness and the other world was lost.

Letting out an audible sigh, she schooled her thoughts. ‘No more memories,’ she whispered beneath her breath and was pleased when her aunt sat down on the spare seat opposite. The paleness in her face, however, was alarming.

‘Are you quite well, Aunt?’

‘He is here, Emmie …’ Miriam could barely enunciate the sentence.

‘Who is here?’ She knew which name she would hear even before her aunt spoke.

‘Asher Wellingham.’

Panic raced across fear and anger.

Finally, he had come.

Weeks of waiting had strained her nerves almost to breaking point and the advances of the men here had become increasingly more difficult to discourage. But had he seen her? Would he remember?

Placing her glass upon the table, she refused more from a circulating waiter and her hand strayed to her hair to tuck in an errant curl. Please God, let it be enough, for, if he recognised her, everything would be lost.

‘Where is he?’ She hated the tight nervousness she was consumed with.

‘Over in the corner by the door. He was watching you before. Watching closely.’

Resisting a strong urge to turn around, Emerald summoned up every reserve she had. ‘Do you think he suspects?’

‘No, for if he did he would have you dragged out of this place immediately, and hanged in the gallows of Tyburn as the daughter of a traitor.’

‘He could do that?’

‘Oh, you would be surprised what he can do, Emmie, and do with the impunity of a lord who thinks himself so utterly and morally right.’

‘Then we must hurry to complete that which we came here to do. Now, look across at him. Slowly,’ she added as her aunt’s head jolted around. ‘Is he carrying a cane of any sort?’

Emerald held her breath as her aunt looked. Could it really be this easy?

‘No. He has a drink in his hand. Wine, I think and white.’

She tried not to let her frustration show.

‘At least it will not mark this gown.’ She had three dresses, procured from the second-hand markets in Monmouth Street, and with a dire lack of funds for any more, did not want this one ruined by a stain that she could never remove.

‘Oh, my dear. Surely you do not intend to just bump into him? He would know a sham when he saw one, I am certain of it.’

‘Do not worry, Aunt Miriam. I have done this before in Kingston and in Port Antonio when Beau wished for an introduction to some well-heeled stranger. Here it will be easy. Just a small push. Enough at least to allow me the beginnings of a conversation and the chance to be included for a while within his circle of friends.’

‘This is the Duke of Carisbrook. Do not underestimate him as your father did.’

Emerald drew in a breath. Beau had become careless but she would not be. Standing, she bent to loosen the silver buckle on her left shoe. The little details needed to be right. She remembered Beau telling her this over and over again.

Asher Wellingham was still speaking with the host when she came in from behind, falling deftly against him. Her small shriek was inspired, she was to think later, for the Duke’s reflexes were quick and he had turned to reach for her as she began to lose balance. If the material of her skirt had not caught at the heel of her shoe, she would have been all right. And if the small man beside him had been stronger and kept his feet, all three of them would have stayed upright. But with the highly polished floor and her soft leather soles she could not gain traction and so she simply let herself fall, the splash of wine cold against her skin.

She heard the gasps all around her as the strong arms of the Duke of Carisbrook came under her waist and knees, the black of his superfine jacket soft against her cheek. He was lifting her up against him. Easily.

She felt her own intake of breath at exactly the same moment as she registered the steady beat of his heart, and when his fingers brushed against her bodice, her whole world tilted. Dressed in these ridiculous clothes, the soft swell of her breasts was highly visible and she was taken aback with what she saw in Asher Wellingham’s eyes as he carried her from the ballroom. This close, the light brown was webbed with a fine and clear gold and an undeniable masculine interest. For just a second shock disorientated her and everything became immeasurably more difficult.

‘You fainted,’ he said as he placed her on a sofa in a room away from the dancing. His voice was deep, the finely tuned vowels of privilege easily heard on the edges and his glance held more than a sting of question. With his dark hair slicked back at his nape and his brandy-coloured eyes, the Duke of Carisbrook was unforgettable. A man with legendary confidence and enough gall to pursue her father across three oceans.

And kill him!

Bitter anger congealed with an age-old hurt and, raising the pitch of her voice into something that she hoped resembled embarrassment, she brought her fingers to her mouth.

‘I’m utterly and dreadfully sorry,’ she gushed, pleased when her sentiment sounded so genuine. ‘I think it must have been the heat in the ballroom or perhaps the crush of people. Or the noise, mayhap …’ Uncertainly she stopped. Was she overdoing the feminine penchant for histrionics with three excuses all rolled into one? Exaggeration was dangerous, but, dressed in this bone-tight gown and these flimsy, useless shoes, it was also surprisingly easy.

With a quick movement of her fan she hid her eyes and regrouped her defences, every pore in her body aware of the Duke of Carisbrook, and every problem she now had a direct result of his actions. Swallowing a snaking thread of guilt, she was pleased when he stepped back.

‘Was it you who caught me, your Grace?’

‘It was more a case of you bouncing off the frail old Earl of Derrick and landing in my arms.’

She tried to look mortified while thinking what hard work it was to be so perpetually sorry, or eternally grateful, and of a sudden the whole charade of being here seemed impossibly more difficult. She didn’t belong, couldn’t understand the rules or nuances and every instinct told her to be wary. It was anonymity she needed to maintain—if questions were to be asked, they would need answers and she could not give those without endangering everyone she loved. Even the thought made her tremble. ‘Where is my aunt?’

‘The Countess has gone to find you a shawl for your dress.’

Swinging her legs down off the sofa, Emerald tried to rise. ‘If I could stand …’

‘I think that it may be wiser to stay still.’ His words were husky and her pulse spiked sharply as he placed his finger across the veins of her left wrist. Listening for the beat, she thought weakly, and wondered what he would be making of the pace.

When he smiled she knew. Not a man to incite an insipid reaction from any woman, she determined, not even one as badly turned out as she was. Pulling away her hand, she fanned her face in an exact impersonation of the girls she had watched in many a crowded salon across the past month. ‘I am seldom so very clumsy and I cannot think what it was that made me trip …’ Lifting the hem of her gown, the loosened silver buckle caught the light. ‘It must have been this, I wager …’ She let him absorb this and was pleased to see Miriam return, a shawl across her arm and her expression drawn. Lord Henshaw accompanied her.

‘Are you feeling better, my dear? You could so easily have knocked your head in the fall and the wine has quite ruined your gown. Here, lean forward and I will wrap this about you.’ A bright flame of red-gold material was fastened quickly, although Emerald had had enough of being the wilting centre of attention and stood.

‘I will be more careful in future and I thank you for your assistance.’ She had to look up at Asher Wellingham as she spoke and, at five foot ten inches in her bare feet, this was not an occurrence that she was often used to. When his eyes caught her own she wished suddenly that her hair was longer and that her gown was of a better quality.

No. No. No.

She shook her head. None of this made sense. Asher Wellingham was her enemy and she would be gone from England as soon as she found what it was she sought. It was the heat in this room that was making her flush and the shock of the fall that had set her heart to pounding. If only she could escape outside and take a breath of fresh air or feel the wind as it made its path along London’s river, a hint of freedom on its edge.

Raising her voice to the discordant and high whining tone she had perfected under the tutelage of Miriam, she pushed into her cause.

‘I suspect that it was the soles of my shoes that made me falter and the floor itself is highly polished. I do hope that the gossip will not be too unkind.’

‘I am certain that it shall not be.’ His tone was flat.

‘Oh, how very good of you to say so, your Grace,’ and although the flare of darkness in his eyes was intimidating she made herself continue. ‘Whenever things went wrong at home, Mama always said the strength of a woman’s character was not in her successes, but in her failures.’

The tilt of his lips was not encouraging. ‘Your mother sounds like a wise woman, Lady Emma.’ The sentiment lacked any vestige of interest and she knew that he was fast approaching the end of his patience.

‘Oh, she was, your Grace.’

‘Was?’

‘She died when I was quite young and I was brought up by my father.’

‘I see.’ He looked for all the world like a man who’d had enough of this discourse, though innate good manners held him still. ‘Rumour has it that you are from the country. Which part exactly do you hail from?’

‘Knutsford in Cheshire.’ She had been there as a child once. It had been summertime and the memory of the flowers of England had never left her. Her mother had pressed one in the locket she now wore. A delphinium, the sky blue dimmed under the onslaught of many years.

‘And your accent. I can’t quite place it?’

The question startled her and a vase balanced on a plinth near her right hand toppled. A thousand splinters of porcelain fell around her feet. Bending to pick some up, the china pierced through her glove and drew blood.

‘Do leave it alone, Emma. This is hardly proper.’ Miriam’s reprimand was sharp and Emerald froze. Of course, a servant would tidy up after a lady. She must not forget again.

‘Is it expensive?’ More to the point would she have to pay for it?

Henshaw stepped forward. ‘The plinth was shaky and I have never been overly fond of ornate things.’

Wellingham’s bark of laughter behind him worried Emerald; looking around, she could also see that this last statement was patently false. Everything in this room was overly embellished and elaborately decorated. Still, given the fact that eighty pounds and a few pieces of jewellery were all that stood between her and bankruptcy, she could hardly afford to be magnanimous.

‘I am so terribly sorry.’ Desperation stripped her voice to its more familiar and husky tone. She wanted to be away from here. She wanted the wide-open spaces of Jamaica and enough room to move in. She wanted to be safe with Ruby and her aunt and far, far away from a man who could ruin her completely.

But she needed the cane first.

Without the cane, nothing would be possible. Squeezing her eyes together, she was pleased to feel moisture. These Englishmen loved women who were fragile and needy. She had seen this to be true ever since she had arrived here. In the ballrooms. In the drawing rooms. Even in the park where women sat beside their men and watched them tool horses Emerald thought so docile that a child in Jamaica might have managed them. It was just the way of things in England.

She was surprised, therefore, by the Duke of Carisbrook’s withdrawal. She had done something wrong, she was sure of it, for his amusement now fled and awkwardness hung between them. Re-evaluating her options, she bit at her lower lip. He was not as the others were here. In looks. In temperament. In size.

Damn it.

Another month and her funds would be spent. Another month and the servants they had hired would be demanding payment and all of London would despise them.

For herself the prospect was not as daunting as the effect such hatred might have on her aunt, for Miriam was old and deserved some comfort in her last years, and her title, although venerable, carried little in the way of income.

Money.

How she hated the fact that it always came back to that. If it had been just her she would have managed, but it wasn’t just her anymore. She shivered and pulled the shawl more firmly around her saturated bodice. ‘It’s cold.’ She needed to think, needed to mull over the reaction that the enigmatic Duke seemed to inspire in her, needed to get away and rethink her strategies in this endlessly grey and complex land.

‘I will have a footman call up my carriage.’ Asher Wellingham was turning even as Miriam stopped him.

‘It will not be necessary, your Grace. We are quite able to procure a hackney.’

Emerald, however, having suddenly devised a plan, jumped in.

‘We shall be delighted to accept your most generous offer, your Grace, and I trust that the time taken should not inconvenience you.’ She glanced at the ornate clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Twenty past one, sir. You should have your conveyance back easily before the clock strikes two.’

His shadow dark gaze ran across her. Taking in everything she suspected, and finding her lacking. Face. Manners. Dress. Hair.

‘Then I will bid you both good evening.’ As she watched him go, she noticed for the first time that he walked with a limp.

The cane, she thought. The cane with the hidden treasure map that Beau swore concealed a fortune. The cane she had come to London for in a last bid to shake off the debtors from her heels and reclaim at least a little of life as it had been.

Doubt passed across her, but she dismissed it. She had to believe in the story Azziz had heard twelve weeks ago in the taverns of Kingston Town. The story that the Duke of Carisbrook had been seen in London using a distinctive carved ebony cane.

Her father’s cane, encrusted with emeralds and rubies, the secret catch hidden beneath an overhanging rim of ivory.

Lord, it was all so nebulous, but she had to have faith that it was here, because if it wasn’t …? She shook her head. Hard. The alternative didn’t bear thinking of and with the covering of darkness the night was still long.

Long enough to waylay a duke?

Her first real chance?

Dressed as a lad, she might be able to shake some clue from Wellingham as to the whereabouts of the map, and if Azziz accompanied her …? Excitement flushed her cheeks as she threaded her hand through her aunt’s and helped her from the room. All they needed to know was the location of the cane. With this in hand they could find it and be gone from England on the next outgoing tide. Disappearing was easy when you had the promise of enough money to cover your tracks.

Chapter Two

Two hours later the carriage she had been waiting for thundered out of the Derrick town house, the heavy velour curtains on each side drawn. Signalling to Azziz to urge the team forward and follow, Emerald searched for a place to cut the conveyance off, though as it turned into the docks on the south side of the river, she bade him to hang back.

‘What is the Duke doing here at this time of night?’

She asked the question of Toro, who sat beside her, and when he shook his head the ring in his left ear gleamed in the moonlight.

‘The tide will be up before morning. Perhaps he means to take ship somewhere.’

Puzzlement was replaced by surprise as a woman she had not seen before climbed down from the now-stationary coach.

No, not a woman, but a girl, she amended, and hardly happy at that. The older man who met with her had his fingers tightly about her forearm and he wasn’t looking pleased as they walked to the porch of a shabby doss-house and stopped. Or at least the girl stopped. Emerald could quite plainly hear her speaking.

‘I do not think this is the place we want, Stephen. You cannot mean to have brought me here.’

‘It is just for tonight, Lucy. Just until I can find ship on the morrow.’

‘Nay. You promised we would be wed first.’ Her distress was increasing. ‘If my brother found out I have come to this place …’ He did not let her finish.

‘I did not force you into the carriage, Lucinda. You came, I thought, of your own free will. An adventure, you said, to spice up the boring routine of your existence. Now come along, for we do not have all night.’ His words were slightly slurred.

‘Are you drunk?’ The young woman’s consternation was becoming more obvious as the driver of the Wellingham coach joined them.

‘The master would be most displeased, my lady. My instructions were to take you straight home.’

‘I shall be with you in a moment, Burton. Please, could you wait in the carriage?’

The servant wavered, plainly uncertain as to what he should do next and his hesitancy fired the younger man into an angry response. Without any warning, his fist shot out and the driver fell dazed onto the pathway.

‘Come, my love, no servant should question a lady’s motives and we have waited long enough for this chance.’

Emerald grimaced. She had heard that tone before and knew what was to come next. A young and inexperienced girl would have no idea how to counter such overt masculine pressure. And would suffer for it.

Breathing out, she pushed forward, signalling to Toro and Azziz to stay behind.

‘Let her go.’ Her voice was as low and rough as she could make it, the glint of her sharpened blade in the moonlight underlining the message.

‘Who the hell are you?’

Ignoring his question, she addressed the girl. ‘Think hard and long before you accompany this gentleman, miss, for I think he is not as reputable as you might hope. If I were you, I would take the safer option and return home.’

Emerald tensed as the one named Stephen came towards her and, slipping her blade into the intricate folds of cravat at his neck, she held him still. ‘I would advise you, sir, to keep very quiet as to the purpose of this night’s excursion. Put it down to folly if you like or to the effects of strong drink, but know that even a small whisper of what has transpired here could be dangerous to your well-being.’

‘You would threaten me?’

‘Most assuredly I would.’

He moved suddenly, the heel of his hand striking Emerald’s cheekbone before she brought the hilt of her knife up hard against the soft part of his temple. He crumpled quite gracefully, she thought, for a tall man and did nothing to cushion his fall. The startled eyes of the girl came upon her and unexpectedly Emerald felt the need to explain away her actions.

‘I’d had enough of his questions.’

‘So you have killed him?’

‘No. Simply wounded his pride. In much the same way as he has wounded yours, I suspect.’

‘He was not the person I thought him to be and I can’t imagine what may have happened if you had not come along, Mr …?’

‘Kingston.’ Emerald’s heart sank as small, cold fingers entwined around hers.

‘Mr Kingston.’ The young voice sounded breathless and when Emerald tried to disengage her hand the girl began to cry, tiny sobs at first and then huge loud wrenching ones until the patrons spilled out from a nearby tavern. Emerald was now in a quandary. She was hard-pressed for time and the dawn was not far off and yet she could not just abandon such innocence either.

‘How old are you?’ she said roughly as she hailed Azziz and waited as he turned the hackney.

‘Seventeen. I shall be eighteen, though, in three months and I am indebted to you for your help. If you had not come when you did, I …’ Tears rolled down her cheeks and splattered on the yellow silk of her gown.

Oh, dear God, Emerald thought, her own twenty-one years seeming infinitely more worldly. By seventeen she had sailed the world from the Caribbean to the Dutch East Indies, the promise of death dogging her at each and every mile. By seventeen her innocence had long been robbed by circumstance. The thought made her head ache. England was like a hothouse, she suddenly decided, its people so sheltered from reality and difficulty that they were easily hurt. And broken. Like this girl. By small contretemps and silly mistakes.

‘If you had not been here …’ Lucy began again. ‘My brother warned me to have nothing to do with the Earl of Westleigh … said I should stay away from him … insisted that I did not even talk with him.’ Her sobs were lessening now and her voice levelled out from panic to anger. ‘It was the forbiddenness I think that made him interesting.’ She looked down at the man prostrate at her feet. ‘Certainly here I can see no redeeming quality, save for the waistcoat, I think.’ She finished on a teary giggle. ‘I always liked the way he wore his clothes. By the way, I am Lady Lucinda Wellingham. The Duke of Carisbrook’s youngest sister.’

Emerald stilled a sharp jolt of surprise. Carisbrook’s sister? Lord, what was she to do now? The thought that perhaps she could use Asher Wellingham’s sibling as a hostage did cross her mind, but she dismissed this in a moment. For one, she doubted she could stand the company of such a watering pot for any great length of time; for two, she reminded her of a golden retriever they’d had once at St Clair. All gratitude and shining devotion.

No, the girl must be returned post-haste to her brother; if luck held, he might as yet still be at Lord Henshaw’s soirée. She could be in and out of the Carisbrook town house without having to speak to a soul, for, damn it, she did not dare to chance any encounter with the Duke. Not dressed like this in the full light of his home.

‘Do you know my brother, Mr Kingston? He will be most eager to see that you are compensated for the time and trouble you have taken and I think really that you would like him for he is as practised at the art of fighting as you appear to be and … .’

Emerald held up her hand and was glad when the inconsequential chatter finally ground to a halt. She had to think. What was the way of things here? Would it be suspicious to merely drop the girl off at her door? She shook her head and determined that it most probably would be. She would have to play the damn charade out and escort Lady Lucinda home. If Toro drove the coach, he could leave it for the Carisbrook servants to deal with and then rejoin Azziz and her in the hackney.

A compromised solution, but it would have to do. Turning away from the gathering crowd of interested onlookers, Emerald helped the injured driver gain his footing on the carriage steps and was thankful to close the door behind the Wellingham party.

The twelve-hour candle on the library mantelpiece was almost gutted. Another night gone. Relieved, Asher unwound his cravat and threw it on the table. His jacket followed.

Shaking his head, he caught the movement of it in the mirror above his oaken armoire. His eyes were rimmed with darkness.

Darkness.

Frowning, he reached for the brandy, rolling the glass in his hand before swallowing the lot. A quick shot of guilt snaked through him, for he had promised himself yesterday that he would stop drinking alone.

Just another broken vow.

He laughed at the absurdity, though the sound held no humour, and as he settled to what brandy was left in the bottle the image of Lady Emma Seaton in his arms came to mind.

She had smelled nice. Neither perfumed nor powdered. Just clean. Strong. And she had particularly fine eyes. Turquoise, he determined, frowning as the same vague shift of memory he had felt on first seeing her returned.

She was familiar.

But how did he know her? An unusual face. And different. The mark that went through her right eyebrow and up under her fringe was strange. If he were to guess at its origin, he would have placed it as a knife wound. But how could that be? No, far more likely she had been whipped by a branch while riding or tripped perhaps in her youth and caught a sharp edge of stone. He liked the fact that she made no effort to conceal it.

The ring of the doorbell startled him and he checked his watch. Five o’clock in the morning! Surely no acquaintance of his would turn up here at this time and uninvited? Lifting a candle, he strode into the front portico to hear the quiet weeping of his sister.

‘My God. Lucy?’ He could barely believe it was her as she threw herself into his arms.

‘What the hell has happened? Why were you not in the bed you were bound for when you left the Derricks’ two hours ago?’

‘I … Stephen … met me … in a place … by the port. He said we would be married and instead …’

‘Stephen Eaton?’

‘He said that he loved me and that if I came to him after the ball tonight he would speak of his feelings. But the place he expected me to accompany him to was hardly proper and then he almost killed Burton …’

‘He what …?’ Asher made himself simmer down. Redress could come later and calmness would gain him quicker access to answers than rage. ‘How did you manage to get home?’ He was pleased when his sister did not seem to notice the pure strain of fury that threaded his words.

‘A man came with a knife and knocked Eaton out. He put us all in the coach and his driver brought us straight home. A Mr Kingston. He did not know you, for I asked, and his accent was strange.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Just gone. He followed us back in a rented hackney and said he would not stay, even though I tried to persuade him differently. He said something of another engagement and promised to send word as to how he could be contacted.’

Asher caught the eyes of his butler and indicated that someone follow the hackney. Blackmail was often a lucrative business and he did not want to be without the facts. Everybody in this world wanted something of him and he could not contemplate this Mr Kingston to be the exception. Still, at least he had brought Lucinda home. And safe. For that alone he would always be grateful.

Gesturing to a maid hovering by the staircase, he bid her take his sister up to bed. He was glad when Lucy went quietly and the sounds of her crying subsided.

It took twenty minutes for Peters to return and the news was surprising.

‘The gentleman went to the Countess of Haversham’s town lodgings, your Grace. Got out of the hackney and sent it on before disappearing into the house. He had a key, for I tarried to see how he gained entrance. I left Gibbon there to trace his steps further should he surface again.’

‘Very good.’ Dismissing the messenger, Asher went back into his own study. Emma Seaton and the Countess of Haversham. What did he know of them?

Both niece and aunt were newcomers to London. Miriam had been here for a year and Emma merely a matter of weeks. Both had gowns that had seen better days and the look of women who dealt daily with the worry of dwindling funds, and Miriam kept neither carriage nor horses.

Would they have a boarder living with them as a way of bolstering finances? Or could Emma Seaton have a husband?

And now a further mystery. A young man who would rescue the sister of a very wealthy man and wait for neither recompense nor thanks. A mysterious Samaritan who scurried away from what certainly would have been an honourable deed. In anyone’s eyes.

Something wasn’t right and in the shadows of wrongness he could feel the vague pull of danger, for nothing made sense. Instinctively his fingers closed hard against the narrow stem of his glass and he sucked in his breath. Harnessing fury. Calculating options.

Emerald pulled the curtain back from her bedroom window on the third floor and cursed. The man was still there and she knew where he had come from.

The Duke of Carisbrook.

He had sent someone after her and she had not bothered to check. Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake, she thought, banging her hand against her sore head and roundly swearing.

She should have sent the conveyance on to some other street and then made her way home undetected. She would have done so in Jamaica, so why not here? With real chagrin she stripped off the boy’s clothes and rearranged her blankets beside the bed, glad to lay her head down, glad to close her eyes and think.

What a day. Nothing had gone easily and she did not know the next time she might be in contact with Asher Wellingham.

Close contact.

She remembered the feel of his finger across her pulse. A small touch of skin that fired her blood. The trick of memory and circumstance, she decided. After all, she had gone to sleep every night for the past five years with those velvet-brown eyes and hard-planed face etched in dream.

The same dream.

The same moment.

The same beginning.

So known now that she could recall each minute detail, even in wakefulness. The sounds, the smell, the sun in her eyes and the wind off the Middle Passage of Turks Island at her back. And a thousand yards of calico luffing in the breeze.

She shook her head hard and made herself concentrate on the sounds of London and on the way the lamp on her side table threw shadows across the ceiling. She would not think of Asher Wellingham. She would not. But desire crept in under her resolution and she flushed as a thin pain entwined itself around her stomach and delved lower.

Lower.

She thought of the bordellos that had dotted the port streets of Kingston Town and wondered. Wondered what it would be like to draw her hands through night-black hair and beneath the fine linen of his shirt. Imaginary sinew and muscle made her pulse quicken and she turned restlessly within the bedclothes, any pressure unwelcome on heated skin.

Her eyes flew open. Lord, what was she thinking? Dread and the cold rush of reality made her shiver.

Asher Wellingham.

Her enemy.

Her father’s enemy.

Anger and hurt surfaced and she reached for her wrapper. She would never sleep tonight. Adding another log to the fire, she took a book from the pile beside the chair, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ in Latin, from Juvenal’s satires.

She remembered Beau teaching her the conjugations of complicated verbs from books bound in heavy velvet. Books he had been taught from when he was a child.

A half-smile formed.

Once he had been a patient man. And a good father.

And while she knew he was no angel, he had not deserved the revenge the Duke of Carisbrook had exacted upon him. A calculated retribution timed when the Mariposa limped home from a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Asher Wellingham had come in quickly with three times the manpower and demolished the smaller boat with military precision. Boom-boom, and the masts had gone. Boom-boom, and the front of the brigantine had been holed with a volley of cannon fire.

Azziz had told her the story later when he had been returned to Jamaica on the Baltimore clipper that had picked them out of the sea. The English duke had not given her father the chance to jump, but had demanded a duel on the foredeck of the sinking ship.

And a minute was all it had taken. One minute to run her father through the stomach.

Emerald felt tears prick at the back of her eyes. Her father had lived by the sword and died by it, but there had been a time when literature and classics and music were more important.

When her mother had been with them! When the family had still been whole. When St Clair had been their home and the Mariposa was another man’s ship.

Gone. Long gone.

In the depths of longing and promise. And false, false hope.

And it had been a struggle ever since.

With care she replaced the book on the shelf and stood back, distancing herself from the pain of memory, regathering strategies and garnering strength.

Retrieve the cane and return to Jamaica.

Simple plans and the revival of a proper life. Ruby and Miriam and St Clair. Home. The word filled her with longing, even as the amber-fired eyes of Asher Wellingham danced before her. Beguiling. Intriguing. Forbidden.

Shaking her head, she sat down in the chair by the fire and watched the shadows of flame fill the room.

Chapter Three

Asher Wellingham came to Haversham House early the next morning and hard on the heels of a note he had sent. And he came alone.

The drawing room where Miriam and Emerald sat to receive him had been hastily tidied and what little furniture they had in the house had been brought down to fill out the spaces left from an auction they had held almost two months prior in York. Quietly. Secretly. The recompense they had gathered from the exercise had reflected the clandestine nature of the adventure. Still, money could be translated into food and beggars could not be choosers. At least they still had the silver tea service, placed now on a side table.

This morning Emerald wore her second-best gown of light blue velvet with lace trimming around the neckline and an extra petticoat sewn into the base of the wide double skirt for length. On her head she wore a matching mobcap, the scratchy lace making a red rash on the soft underside of her throat. If she had had her potions from home, she might have been able to ease the itchiness. The names on the bottles in the London apothecaries were indecipherable.

Indecipherable!

Everything here seemed that way. Medicines. Places. The weather. People. The Duke of Carisbrook.

‘Ladies.’ This morning his voice was underlaid with both tiredness and purpose. ‘I have come to you this morning on a rather delicate manner.’ He cleared his throat and Emerald caught a hint in his eyes of what she could only determine as uncertainty, though the impression was fleeting before the more familiar and implacable urbanity returned. ‘I was wondering whether it would be possible to speak with the young man who resides here with you.’

‘Young man?’ Miriam’s response wavered slightly.

‘The young man who helped my sister yesterday evening. My servant followed him when he did not stay to be thanked, and it was to this house that he returned. This morning at around the hour of five after sending his carriage on.’

Miriam looked so flabbergasted that Emerald felt bound to break across her silence. ‘Perhaps he means Liam, Aunt Miriam?’ she prompted and hoped that her aunt might take the hint, though as blankness and silence lengthened she realised she would have to brazen this out by herself. ‘Yes, it must be Liam that you speak of. My cousin. He was here for two days only and left this morning for the country, but I shall tell him that you came to relay your thanks. Now,’ she added as if the whole subject was decidedly passé and she wanted no more discussion, ‘would you like tea?’

The Duke’s returning glance was so cold that Emerald felt her heart tremble, and his voice when he spoke was fine edged with anger.

‘My sister said Mr Kingston had an unusual accent, Lady Emma. Would this accent be the same one as your own?’

‘It is, your Grace.’ She did not elaborate, but as he swiped his hair back off his face she saw that the two last fingers on his right hand were missing and the stumps where they once had been were criss-crossed in scar tissue.

He has become a ruthless warrior because of the actions of my family.

She made herself stop. She could not feel sorry for a man who had stalked her father and run him through with the sharp edge of his sword. More than once, it was said. And more than what was warranted.

Warranted?

Therein lay the rub. She had heard the story of Asher Wellingham’s hatred for her father from every camp except his own. And if life had taught her anything it was the fact that things were seldom black and white. Aye, grey came in many shades. Her father’s dreams. Her mother’s disappearance. Her own childhood lost between the scramble for easy gold and the rum-soaked taverns of Kingston Town.

Lord, she had to be careful. She had to appear exactly who it was she purported to be or else he would know her. Expose her. Consign Ruby to the care of the nuns in the Hill Street Convent for ever. Ruby. Her heart twisted as she remembered the last sight of her little half-sister being bundled away by the dour and formidable Sister Margaret. How long had it been now? Over a hundred days. The time of passage to England and the weeks waiting for Carisbrook to appear. Without the map she could provide neither home nor sustenance, the squalor of the Kingston Town port streets no place for a fey and frightened child of eight.

Accordingly she schooled impatience and, catching the rough gist of her aunt’s conversation, observed the man opposite carefully.

This morning he was dressed in fawn trousers and a brown jacket, the cravat matching his white shirt loosely tied in a casual style she had not seen before. With one long leg crossed over the other, he gave the impression of a man well used to power and unquestioned authority and his confidence was contagious after years of living with a father who had little of either.

Damn it, but she must not think like this either. Beau’s choices had been foisted on him by his own self-doubt and excessive introspection. If at times he had made decisions that were suspect, he had still tried through it all to provide a home for her and Ruby. A home Asher Wellingham had shattered when he returned to the Caribbean bent on revenge.

Revenge.

His revenge and now her revenge? And what difference lay between them as the thin veneer of right and wrong tumbled under the greater pressure of need? She shook her head and poured the tea. When he stood to take the cup from her, their fingers accidentally met, and everything slowed.

Time.

Breath.

Fear.

The beat of her heart narrowed as she felt the warmth of his skin. Reaching out, she grabbed the arm of the sofa. To stop herself falling. Into him. For ever.

Whatever was wrong with her? She was acting like the simpering misses so prevalent in London and she did not even recognise these constant, damning blushes that seemed to consume her from head to toe. Her resolve firmed.

‘Excuse me,’ she said when she saw his pupils widen. ‘The accident at the ball yesterday has left me rather poorly …’ Leaving the explanation in mid-air she noticed that he had placed his cup on the side table as if making ready to catch her again.

Poorly?

When in her life had she ever used such a word? In the fading light of day she suddenly saw herself as he would see her. Vulnerable. Delicate. Feminine. She almost had to repress a smile. So easy to make men believe exactly what you would want them to. So simple to become a person of such little account. Lifting a fan from the table next to her, she was pleased for the cooling breeze it engendered and used the moment to take stock.

Asher Wellingham was older and harder now and the icy brittleness that coated his eyes was disconcerting. Here, in the blandness of a London drawing room, she could feel a barely concealed danger, a thread of the warrior only lightly clothed beneath his well-pressed jacket and pantaloons. Untamed. Ready to pounce should she put a foot wrong. Oh, God, she blanched, she had already put a foot wrong, last night in her haste to get home, and she was worried by the way he watched her now.

How could he not know me?

She almost smiled at the whisper of the words as she took a sip of sugary tea, the quick infusion of sweetness bolstering her confidence further. With the practice of one well used to schooling her expression into the shape of something she wasn’t, she placed her hand across her mouth and stifled a yawn. Effortlessly.

Asher watched Emma Seaton with an ever-growing feeling of speculation. He could not understand this woman at all. Nothing about her quite made sense. She still wore the same gloves she had had on last night, which was odd given that they were stained. And this morning, although the scar above her eyebrow was still unhidden, a nasty bruise on her cheekbone had been smothered in thick beige face paint in an attempt to conceal it. From whom?

‘You have hurt yourself?’

‘I fell against the side of a door. Miriam treated it for me just an hour ago and I hoped it was not too … too noticeable.’ Her hand hovered across the mark and he was touched by the movement. She wore the oldest clothes he had ever seen a woman dare to at any social occasion and her hair today was as badly tended as it had been yesterday. Yet she was embarrassed by the bruise upon her face? Nothing about Emma Seaton made sense.

Nothing.

She always wore gloves. She had the same accent as the mysterious and absent Mr Kingston. And she was frightened and decidedly delicate.

Looking around him, other things jarred. The furniture was as badly down at heel as her clothing, yet in the shelf by the window sat well over a hundred books, leather bound and expensive. Kingslake. Wordsworth. Byron and Plato. English was the predominant translation, though many were embellished with the script of the Arabian world. Who the hell here would read those? Defoe stood in company with John Locke, non-conformist authors who chided the establishment with an underlying hint of something darker.

Could the books be Liam Kingston’s? He was about to question the Countess on the matter when the doorbell rang and his sister and her maid swept in.

‘I am so awfully sorry to just drop in on you like this, Lady Haversham, but I had to come. I am Lady Lucinda Wellingham, and I was informed that Mr Kingston returned home here last night. After he helped me?’ The final enquiry was murmured somewhat breathlessly. ‘It’s just that I would so like to thank him, you see?’

Asher crossed the room to stand by his sister. ‘Liam Kingston has departed, Lucinda. Back to …?’ His voice was filled with question.

‘His home.’ Miriam’s hesitation shrieked volumes.

‘But he will return?’ Lucy could barely contain her interest.

‘I do not think so. No.’ Emerald had regained her wits now that Lucy Wellingham’s face held not even the slightest hint of recognition. ‘He is married, you see, and his wife is from America. From Boston. She wants to move back there as soon as she has had her fourth child.’

Lucinda paled noticeably. ‘Married with four children?’

She gawped. ‘But he hardly looked old enough.’

‘Oh, people are always saying that to him. Are they not, Aunt?’ Desperation lent her voice credence and she was pleased to see Miriam nod vigorously. ‘Perhaps in the dark you did not see him properly.’

The Duke of Carisbrook’s face was inscrutable, though his sister insisted on some recompense. ‘We are going to Falder next week, Asher. Could we not invite the Countess and her niece? As a means of saying thank you.’

Emerald’s heartbeat accelerated at the question.

‘Indeed.’ His reply could hardly have held less of a welcome, but, seeing the glimmer of opportunity, she seized upon it.

‘We would be delighted to visit your home, Lady Lucinda. Why, I could hardly think of anywhere I should rather go.’

A way into Falder. A first unexpected providence. And although Emerald wished that he could have shown more enthusiasm for the promise of their company, she was not daunted. One night. That was all it would take.

‘And your cousin, Liam Kingston, would be most welcome,’ Lucinda added, ‘for I should deem it an honour to thank him for his assistance in person.’ She gripped her brother’s arm in entreaty and Asher Wellingham inclined his head in response.

‘Bring him along by all means, Lady Emma, for a man who can dispose so summarily of the Earl of Westleigh and deliver my sister home without recompense is to be much admired.’

The thought did cross Emerald’s mind that his voice had an odd edge of question to it but she couldn’t be certain, for he did not look at her again before gathering his sister’s hand into his own and politely bidding them goodbye.

As they heard his carriage pull away, Miriam began to smile. ‘I would say that went very well, would you not, my dear? Aye, very well indeed.’

Emerald crossed to the window and looked out.

Very well?

She wondered if her aunt needed new glasses and smiled at the thought before gingerly touching her own throbbing cheekbone.

‘What do you know about the Countess of Haversham, Jack?’ Asher leaned back in a chair in his library and drew on his cigar. He’d barely managed an hour of sleep last night but, with his body mellow with brandy, the peace here was pleasant. For just a moment the familiar anger that haunted him was quieter.

‘Her husband, Matthew, died from heart failure five years back and it was said that his gambling debts were substantial.’

‘So the Countess sold off the furniture to pay her creditors?’

‘She what?’

‘Sold off the furniture. I was at the Haversham town house in Park Street this morning and there were three chairs and a table in one room and little else in any of the others.’

Jack leant forward, intrigued. ‘That explains the gowns they wear then. And the niece’s hairstyle. Home-done, I would wager, and by her very own hand, though there was something Tony Formison told me yesterday that did not ring true. He said that Lady Emma had not come down from the country at all, but had arrived a few months ago aboard one of his father’s ships with two black servants and a number of very heavy-looking chests.’

Asher began to laugh. The books he had seen in the drawing room? They were hers? ‘Formison was on the docks when she arrived?’

‘Aye, and he said that he could have sworn her hair was longer.’

‘Longer?’

‘To her waist according to Tony, and looking nothing like it appears to now.’ He stood and retrieved his hat from the table beside him, bending to look at the label on the bottle as he did so. ‘It’s late and long past the time that I should have been home, but you always have such fine brandy, Asher. Where’s this one from?’

‘From the Charente in France.’

‘A boon from your last trip?’

Asher nodded. ‘I’ll have some sent to you, but in return I want you to find out from Formison exactly where the boat that brought Emma Seaton to London came in from. Which port and which month.’

Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Ask discreetly and in the name of precaution, for I don’t want problems resulting from this information.’

‘Problems for Emma Seaton or problems for yourself? I thought you seemed rather taken by her at my ball.’

‘You misinterpret things, Jack. I put my arms out and caught her as she threw herself against me. Hard, I might add, and with none of the wiles that I am more used to. Before she had even hit the floor she had her eyes open; there was a calculation there that might be construed as unnerving.’

Jack began to laugh. ‘You’re saying she may have done it on purpose?’

‘I doubt I’ll ever know, though a betting man would have to say that the odds were more than even.’ The humour faded quickly from his eyes as he continued. ‘Besides, I am too old to fall for the tricks of a green and simpering country miss.’

‘You’re thirty-one and hardly over the hill and Lady Emma is … different from the others … less readable. If you are not interested in her, then I sure as hell am.’

‘No!’ Asher was as surprised by the emotion in the word as Jack was, and to hide it he collected the remains of the brandy and corked the top. ‘For the road,’ he muttered as he handed the bottle to him, swearing quietly as the door shut behind his departing friend.

Emma Seaton.

Who exactly was she? For the first time in a very long while a sense of interest welled to banish the ennui that had overcome him after Melanie’s death.

Melanie.

His wife.

He fingered the ring that he wore on his little finger, the sapphires wrought in gold the exact shade of eyes he would never see again. Her wedding ring. His glance automatically went to the missing digits of his other hand. With good came bad.

He frowned and remembered his return to England after a good fourteen months of captivity. Any innocence he might have been left with had been easily stripped away. He was different. Harder. He could see it reflected in the face of his brother and in the eyes of his mother and aunt. Even his impetuous sister was afraid, sometimes, of him.

Running his hand through his hair, he frowned. Brandy made him introspective. And Emma Seaton touched him in places that he had long thought of as dead.

It was the look in her eyes, he decided, and the husky timbre of her voice when she forgot the higher whine. She gave the impression of a frail and fragile woman, yet when she had fallen against him at the ball he had felt an athletic and toned strength. The sort of strength that only came with exercise or hard work.

He was certain that the mishap had been deliberate and he tried to remember who else had been standing beside him. Lance Armitage and Jack’s father John Derrick, older men with years of responsibility and solid morality behind them. Nay, it was him she had targeted and now he had asked her to Falder.

On cue?

No, that could not possibly be. He was seeing problems where none existed. The woman was scared of her own shadow, for God’s sake, and unusually clumsy. She was also threadbare poor. A wilder thought surfaced. Was she after the Carisbrook fortune? A gold digger with a new and novel way of bagging her quarry? He remembered the countless women who had tried to snare him since Melanie’s death.

Lord, he thought and lifted a candlestick from the mantelpiece before opening the door and striking out for the music room. Melanie’s piano stood in a raft of moonlight, the black and white keys strangely juxtaposed between shadows. Leaning against the mahogany, he pressed a single note and it sounded out against the silence, a mellow echo of vibration lost in darkness.

Like he was lost, he thought suddenly, before dismissing the notion altogether. He was the head of the Carisbrook family and everybody depended on him. If he faltered …? No, he could not even think of the notion of faltering. Carefully he replaced the lid of the piano across the keys. Dust had collected upon the hinges and had bedded into the intricate inlaid walnut that spelled out his wife’s initials.

Ash unto ash, dust unto dust.

Tomorrow he would inform his housekeeper to instruct the staff to clean the music room again. It had been too long since he had forbidden its use to anyone save himself. And his wife would have abhorred the fact that her prized piano had sat unplayed for all these years.

Still, he could not quite leave the room, an essence of something elusive on the very edges of his logic.

Something to do with Emma Seaton. Her turquoise eyes. The scar. The sound of laughter against the sea.

The sea?

Was he going mad? He crossed to the window. Outside the night was still. Dark. Cold. And the cloud that covered the moon made his leg ache, shattered bone healed badly into fragments.

Fragments.

They were all that was left of him sometimes, a shaky mosaic of loss and regret.

‘God,’ he whispered into the night. ‘I am becoming as maudlin as my mother.’ Blowing out the candle, he resolved to find some solace in his library. At least till the dawn when he could sleep.

Azziz returned to the house in Park Street just before midnight, and Emerald hoped that this time he had been careful to scour the neighbouring roads to make certain he was unobserved.

‘I have heard word on the docks that McIlverray is on his way to London, Emmie.’

‘Then he knows about the cane—why else would he come?’ She frowned; this news put a whole different perspective on everything. Karl McIlverray, her father’s first mate, was as corrupt as he was clever and had a band of loyal men who followed him blindly. Any intelligence circulating the docks of Kingston Town usually ended up in his ears and Karl McIlverray had been with her father long enough to put two and two together. He would know exactly what was inside the cane.

Damn, it was getting more and more complicated and she wished for the thousandth time that her father had kept the treasure in the vault of a bank or in a safe where it could have been more easily accessed.

Time. It was slipping away from her.

How long before he arrives?’

‘A week or even ten days—the storms out in the Atlantic might slow them down, if we are lucky. I’ll leave a man in place to make certain we see them before they see us.’

‘And you?’

‘Toro and I will come to Falder. We can camp somewhere close and keep an eye on things.’

Emerald was not certain as to the merits of the plan for they would be easily seen in the English countryside around the house. But if McIlverray came, she would need to be able to summon help, and quickly. She imagined the aristocratic Carisbrook family coming face to face with any of them and her heart pounded. And if someone innocent got hurt because of her …! She could not finish.

She had to be in and out of Falder quickly and on a boat back to Jamaica, making sure in the interim that Karl McIlverray had word of her movements. Another more worrying thought occurred to her.

‘What if the cane is back here in London?’

Azziz frowned. ‘It wasn’t in the house a month ago when Toro and I searched it.’

‘But he may have brought it with him this time. The limp still troubles him.’

‘Have you seen him use a cane at all in public?’

‘No.’ She began to smile. ‘And I do not think that he would. Each time I have been in his company he is careful that others may not notice the ailment. A cane would only draw their attention to what he seeks to hide.’

Privacy. Sanctuary. She sensed these things were important to the enigmatic Duke of Carisbrook and her spirits lifted.

‘Miriam and I are due to leave for Falder soon and I can search the house easily under the cover of night.’

‘The Duke of Carisbrook does not strike me as a man who could be easily fooled.’

‘How does he strike you then?’

‘Tough. Dangerous. Ruthless. A man who would have little time for lies.’

‘Then I must be out of Falder before he knows them as such.’

‘Do not underestimate him, Emmie.’

‘You are beginning to sound like Miriam.’ She smiled and laid her hand on his arm, her fingers tightening as she remembered all the other times in her life she had depended on Azziz. If she lost him too …? If anything went terribly wrong …? As she tried to banish fear she was consumed by sadness. When was the last time that she had taken a breath in joy and let all of it out again?

She could barely remember.

Her father’s death, Miriam’s agedness, and a debt that was increasing with each and every passing day. She could go neither backwards nor forwards and the options of anything else were fast shrinking. What happened to people who ran out of money in London? She shook her head in fright.

The poorhouse took them.

The place of liars and cheats.

A liar. It was who she had become. If she could find the map, she could fashion a home. Not a grand one, but a for-ever place. A place to stay and grow and be. A place like St Clair. She closed her eyes against the pure thread of desperation that snaked itself around her heart, because she knew that the old house was gone, up in flames, the living embodiment of the McIlverray hatred for her father. And grounded perhaps on a sense of justice, for Beau had promised Karl McIlverray far more than he had ever delivered.

She let out her breath. Beau had promised everyone more than he had ever delivered and she needed to make it right.

Right?

If she hadn’t been so worried, she might have smiled at the thought. Right? Wrong? Good? Bad? She remembered Beau’s interpretation of law and doubted that Asher Wellingham’s would be even remotely similar. Enormous wealth and righteous morals were easy when you were not staring down the barrel of a gun and saying what you thought the bearer would most like to hear.

Lies and deception.

It was all that she was left with as truth withered under the harsher face of reality.

Azziz pulled his blade from the leather sheath at his shin and wiped it with an oiled rag from his pocket. The movement caught her attention.

The sheer danger of it all was no longer as exhilarating as it had once been. Now, instead of seeing the adventure in everything she saw the pitfalls, and an encounter with McIlverray worried her a lot more than she allowed Azziz to see that it did.

Was she growing old?

Twenty-one … twenty-two in six months. Sometimes now she caught herself looking across at other women her age as they walked the streets with husbands and children at their side.

She tried to remember what her own mother had looked like, tried to remember the touch of her hand or the cadence of her voice and came up with nothing.

Nothing. The emptiness of memory caught at her with a surprising melancholy. To distract herself, she began to speak of the entertainment for the following night.

‘There is a party at the Bishop of Kingseat’s that I am indebted to attend. Lady Flora has been generous in her friendship …’ She faltered.

‘Will Carisbrook be there?’

‘I think so.’

‘Miriam said he seemed interested in you. If he should find out even a little—’

‘I know,’ she interrupted Azziz before he went further and was glad when he left the room for the kitchens on the ground floor to find his supper.

Chapter Four

At a gathering at the home of the Bishop of Kingseat the following evening, Asher again met Emma Seaton. The result, he suspected, of their encounter at Jack’s ball and the host’s wife’s penchant for matchmaking. If he had liked the Learys less he might have left on some simple pretence, but George had been a good friend to his father and Flora was a woman of uncommon sensitivity.

Today, as Flora Leary turned to attend to a question another guest had asked of her, Emma Seaton looked rather nervous. Asher saw that the lace on the top of one of her gloves had been badly mended and that the gown she wore was at least a size too big. The colour was odd too. Off-brown and faded in patches. None of this seemed to faze her, though, and her confidence in a room full of well-dressed ladies was endearing. The bruise on her cheek was barely visible today.

‘Lady Emma. You look well.’

‘Thank you, your Grace.’ Folding down the sleeve of her gown to cover the torn lace, she took a sip of the orgeat she was drinking. ‘I was certain that Lady Flora had mentioned just a small gathering?’

He looked up. Only forty or fifty people milled around the salon.

‘At Falder a little supper would constitute thrice this number,’ he remarked and she coloured. But it was not embarrassment that he saw in her eyes when she met his glance, but irritation.

Sea blue.

Her eyes were turquoise and outlined with a clear sea blue. Here in the light it was easy to see today that which he had missed yesterday.

‘My family was a quiet and modest one. My father was religious, you see. Very religious. And time spent in the company of others was time that he could not spend in prayer.’

‘A devout man, then?’

She nodded and fiddled with the fan she held. ‘With an equally devout family.’

‘You are Catholic?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Catholic? The persuasion of your beliefs?’

‘Oh, indeed.’

‘And which church do you attend in London?’

The fan dropped out of her hands and onto the floor, surprising them both. As he leaned down to fetch it for her, she did the same and her bodice dipped in the middle.

She wore nothing beneath. No stays. No chemise. No bindings. Two beautifully formed breasts topped with rosy nipples fell into his sight and were gone again as she righted herself.

He felt his body jolt in a way he had not felt for years and shifted his position to better accommodate the hardening between his thighs. God, he was at the house of a bishop and the woman next to him was completely naked under her ill-fitting dress. He could barely believe it. Heat and lust made the cravat he wore feel tight and he was annoyed when Charlotte Withers, a woman whose company he had once enjoyed, came over to him.

‘It has been an age, your Grace, since I have seen you in London. I had heard that you were here and I suppose on reflection you were down for Henshaws’ ball. The evening before last, was it not, and all the gossip of how the Duke of Carisbrook was cajoled into falling for the wiles of a green and fainting country miss.’

‘Not a faint, but a fall,’ he returned and moved forward, pleased to see a blush mark Charlotte’s cheeks when she saw who stood next to him.

‘Lady Emma! I did not realise you were here and I apologise for any hurt you may have suffered from my careless remarks. Are you quite recovered from your mishap?’

‘I am and I thank you for your concern.’ Emma Seaton’s reply contained no little amount of irony.

‘Your accent eludes me,’ Charlotte remarked as she recovered her equilibrium. ‘Where exactly are you from?’

‘My mother was French.’

Asher frowned. She had answered another question without telling anyone anything.

‘So it is your father who is related to the Countess of Haversham?

‘Was. He died last year from the influenza. A wicked case it was, too, according to the doctor; it took him a long time to succumb to the effects of the infection. One moment hot and the next cold. Why, I pray nightly to the Lord above that I should not see another soul die in such a way.’

‘Yes. Quite.’ Charlotte looked away to the riper pickings of Percy Davies who had come to her other side and Asher, while silently applauding Emma Seaton’s skilful evasion, decided to up the stakes a little.

‘Charlotte Withers is a notorious gossip and an inveterate meddler. If you were to entrust any secrets to her I am certain that they should be all over town by the morning.’

As the colour drained out of Emerald’s cheeks, the smile he gave her was guarded.

Could he be warning her? For just a second she wanted to fold her fingers around his and pretend that he offered protection. Here. In London, where each battle was carried out with words and sly innuendos. Where the people said one thing and meant another. She didn’t understand them. That was the trouble. She had come to England woefully unprepared and desperately different. It showed in her accent, in her clothes, in the way she walked and moved and sat.

Pity.

She had seen it written all over his handsome face as his glance had brushed over the torn lace on her glove and the generous fitting of her gown. Pity for a woman who, when compared with the other refined beauties, personified by the likes of Lady Charlotte, fared very badly. Gathering her scattered wits, she tried to regroup.

‘Secrets?’

‘My sources say you arrived in England not from the country, but from Jamaica?’

She laughed, congratulating herself on the inconsequential and tinkling sound. ‘And they would be right. I came back to England after sorting out my father’s possessions when he died, and setting his affairs into order.’

‘Your father was a scholar?’

A scholar? Oh God, what was he referring to now? And just who were his sources? She was pleased when Lord Henshaw caught her attention.

‘Lady Emma. Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes. Very much better, thank you.’ Such a polite society, Emerald thought, as she gave him her answer. Such a lot unsaid beneath every question. She pulled her fingers away and laid her hands against the voluminous skirt of her gown.

‘Did you hear of Stephen Eaton’s problem the other night, Asher? He met with footpads by the dockside and has a wicked lump on his head. The local constabulary are out in force to try to find the culprits. Word is that it’s a shocking state of affairs when a gentleman cannot even ride around London without being robbed and beaten.’

‘He is saying he was robbed?’

‘Yes, though I cannot work out for the life of me what he was doing at that time and in that part of London, given he had left my ball only an hour or so earlier. His watch and pistol were taken and a ring he wore upon his hand that was a family heirloom. Diamonds, I think. He plans to spend the next few months abroad to recover from the assault, his mother says. I saw her this morning.’

‘A fine scheme. I hope he takes his time to make a full recuperation. If you see his parents, do acquaint them with my sentiments, and say that I was asking after him.’ Pure steel coated his words.

‘I will do just that. Does your sister know of his mishap?’

‘My sister?’

‘Lucinda. She has danced with him at several parties and I thought perhaps there was a special friendship …’

Jack’s voice tailed off. Emerald was certain that he had just put it all together and also deduced that this was neither the time nor the place to discuss such things. She saw him chance a quick look at Charlotte Withers behind him before he changed the subject entirely.

‘My oldest sister was hoping to visit Annabelle Graveson next month, Asher. How is she keeping.’

‘Very well.’ His tone was amused as he finished off his drink. ‘You will meet the Gravesons this weekend at Falder, Lady Emma.’

‘Are they relatives, your Grace?’

‘No. Annabelle Graveson was married to my father’s friend. When he died, he asked me to watch over the affairs of his wife and son.’

Jack Henshaw joined in the conversation. ‘The old Duke was a philanthropist and Asher has inherited his own bevy of needy folk.’

Asher said nothing, but Emerald could tell that he was not happy at his friend’s summation of duty. Interesting, she thought, for a man who professed to caring for little as he held the world at bay.

Looking around, she noticed an attractive dark-haired woman whose eyes were fastened on the Duke of Carisbrook, but if he felt her regard he gave no indication of it as he leant towards her as if to shelter his words from the others around them.

‘Eaton is using the ploy of a robbery to ease his guilt, I would suspect. Though there is another explanation. How honest is your cousin?’

‘As honest as I am, for the ten commandments were the bread and butter of our childhood.’ She felt the distinct turn of guilt in her stomach.

‘You never lie?’

‘My father taught us the importance of truth and honesty.’

She forced back conscience and stiffened when he reached for the locket dangling on a long chain about her neck.

‘Is this some family crest?’

‘My mother’s,’ she replied softly and deposited the golden trinket down again between her breasts, glad when he did not pursue the topic.

‘Who was French?’

She looked at him blankly. ‘Pardon.’

‘You said that your mother was from France.’ He was so close she could have reached out a finger to run along the hard cut of his jaw.

‘I did? Yes, of course I did. Because she was.’ Lord, this lying was eating at her composure and she felt sweat in the palms of her hands.

‘Êtes-vous originaire du sud ou bien du nord de la France?’

What was it he had said? Something of north and south. This much she had translated, though the other was lost to her.

‘Oui.’ She chanced one of the ten or so French words she actually knew and was disconcerted by the amusement scrawled on his face.

‘And honesty was as important to your mother as it is to you?’

‘Yes, your Grace.’

‘Admirable,’ he returned and as his eyes glanced across the loose material of her gown she felt the skin on her nipples pucker and folded her arms. She should have worn her underclothing, but it felt so much better without it.

‘It is seldom one meets a woman of such high moral fibre.’

The blood rushed into her face. ‘I will take that as a compliment, your Grace,’ she said simply.

His laughter brought the conversation around them to a noticeable quietening and as she looked up the hostess, Lady Flora, caught her eye and smiled broadly. Emerald observed that the green-eyed beauty standing next to their host didn’t look anywhere near as friendly as she posed a question.

‘I hear that your newest ship is ready for a launch here in London, your Grace. What is it to be called?’

‘The Melanie.’

An inexplicable tension filled the room.

Who was Melanie, she wondered, and what was she to Asher Wellingham? Someone important, no doubt. Someone he loved?

But where was she now?

The Bishop of Kingseat raised his glass.

‘To the Melanie, then. May she ride the waves long and true and be as beautiful as her namesake.’

There it was again. Her namesake? Interest flared as Asher acknowledged the toast and drank and Emerald was struck by the difference five years had made in the lines of his face.

Hardness and distance.

For some reason the thought made her unfathomably sad and when the topic turned to dancing she was pleased, for it gave her time to compose herself.

Half an hour Emerald stood alone near a pillar that led off to a balcony. Asher Wellingham was across the other side of the room with the beautiful green-eyed woman draped across his arm. From this distance the darkness of her carefully coiffed hair was exactly the same shade as his. The memory of her own hair was sharp and she raised her hand to pat down the short errant curls.

Two ladies behind her were talking about the Duke and she turned so that she could overhear them more easily.

‘If only he would look our way, Claire. Just once. Would it be considered rude, do you think, to raise one’s glass and smile at him?’

The other girl began to laugh. ‘Oh, you would never do that, surely. Imagine what he might think of us.’

‘It is rumoured that he will go to India next month. Let us hope that he does not meet the ghost of the pirate Beau Sandford on his travels.’

A loud squawk of titillation brought the Duke’s glance their way, and Emerald tensed. Hearing the name of her father here disorientated her because it was so very unexpected. Her heartbeat accelerated when she saw the subject of the girl’s conversation start towards her.

‘Lady Emma? Would you walk with me for a moment?’

‘Walk with you?’ Her astonishment was such that she forgot to use her carefully perfected girly voice.

‘There is a balcony just here overlooking a garden. I thought it a good place to talk and I have something for you.’

More of an order than a request. She ignored the arm he held out and hoped that he had not seen the imprinted adulation on the faces of the young women around her. His arrogance was already legendary enough.

The balcony was open at one end and she welcomed the quietness of it. A group of other people stood near the French doors that led in from the main room; pausing by the railing she waited for him to speak.

‘Lucy gave me something to give to you and I had my man return home for the letter when I saw that you were here tonight.’ He dragged a sealed envelope out of his pocket. ‘It is for your cousin, Liam Kingston. A letter of thanks, I should imagine but Lucinda is young and impressionable, so if the correspondence seems exaggerated in places—’ He stopped as she held out her hand and his fingers inadvertently touched her own. She shivered. Even here in the most public of places and with the simplest of contacts she was vulnerable. Hoping that her face did not hold the same expression as the vacuous women inside, she tucked the letter unread into her reticule.

‘If Mr Kingston could find it in him to send a reply and state his circumstances, I would be grateful. Seventeen-year-old girls have a propensity for imagination, you understand, and I would like the matter resolved.’

There it was again. Responsibility and control. Important to a man like Asher Wellingham and something he rarely let go of.

What would happen if he did let go of it? a small voice questioned. As the blood hammered in her temples she turned away to give herself a moment to recover and his next words came through a haze.

‘Would it be possible for you to give me his direction? When I am next in his part of the world I could call in on him and give my thanks.’

Lord!

What address could she tell him? She knew no one in the Americas. A happier thought surfaced. Perhaps Azziz had contacts …

‘I will write it down for you and have it delivered.’

He shook his head. ‘You will be in Falder in two days. I can wait until then.’

The strain of the supper waltz rent the air.

‘How is it that I know you, Lady Emma? Have we met before?’

‘Are you familiar with Cheshire, your Grace?’ She was relieved when he smiled at her question and shook his head.

‘No, but I do not think the memory of you lingers from England somehow …’

Desperate to take his mind from recollection, she locked her hand on his and asked him to dance, completely ignoring the look of astonishment on his face.

His body melded against her own and found the rhythm of the music with much more finesse than she did. Leaning into him for just a moment she closed her eyes.

Wishing.

Wishing that she was a well-born lady and that he might like her just a little. Wishing that things could have been different between them and that all he believed of her was true.

Asher felt her relax against him and pulled her closer. He had not asked anyone to dance with him since Melanie.

In truth, he had not asked Emma Seaton to dance with him either and yet here she was, the warm whisper of her breath tantalising in the folds of his neck. Close. Unexpected. Had she not listened to gossip?

A quick glance at the interest on the faces of others made him wary and he pulled back, the distance between them wider now.

‘You are new to town, Lady Emma. If you want your reputation to stay intact, it might be as well to avoid me as your supper partner.’

‘And why would that be, your Grace? The girls who stood behind me inside would have liked an introduction and they looked innocuous enough.’

He began to laugh. ‘Where were you schooled?’

She was taken aback. ‘In a convent. Why?’

‘Because your vocabulary is … surprising.’ Emerald sensed a new emotion in him that was difficult to interpret. ‘Have you had any offers yet?’

‘Offers?’

‘Of marriage. Isn’t that why you have come to London?’

The blood drained out of her face.

‘You did not know this to be the Season? The time for men to choose from the year’s débutantes.’

‘Men like you?’ she countered and tried to sound indifferent.

‘If you had been listening to the gossip, you would know that the state of holy matrimony is something that I have become adept at avoiding.’

‘Oh. I see.’ The uneasy sensation of being played for a fool suddenly overcame her. ‘Then you will be pleased to know that I am not on the look out for a husband either, your Grace.’

‘Really.’ His brows raised. ‘What are you here for then, Lady Emma?’

Two things hit Emerald simultaneously. The lazy devastation of his smile and the husky timbre of his voice. Her spine tingled with an odd and lonely pain as she remembered a younger Asher Wellingham standing on the transom of his ship, eyes blazing under the emotion of a high-seas’ battle and releasing her from the sharp tip of his sword only when he determined her not to be the lad he thought she was, but a girl. And now here in the ballroom of a beautiful English house she understood what she had only half-known then.

The Duke of Carisbrook was an honourable man and one who respected the codes of England’s aristocracy. Gentlemen did not hurt women. Even ones who could wield a weapon with as much finesse as any man aboard the Mariposa.

‘I am here to see to the welfare of my aunt. She is old and lonely and I am the very last of her family.’

‘And very deaf?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Deaf. Hard of hearing. A woman who would sleep through the night no matter what might happen in her house.’ A glint in his eyes softened the insult. ‘Your cousin, Liam Kingston, for instance, keeps hours that a poor sleeper might find tiring.’

Despite everything she laughed. ‘And for your sister’s sake it is just as well that he does.’

‘Indeed,’ he returned. ‘A lucky coincidence that.

What was your cousin doing following the Carisbrook coach in the first place?’

‘Pardon?’

‘My driver noticed a carriage dogging his heels through the city streets. On memory he would say it to be a hired hack and I know that your aunt does not keep a conveyance.’

She was silent. Lord, he had worked it all out with little more than a passing clue.

‘Perhaps he was mistaken. Liam has only recently come to London and I can think of no reason for him to be following your sister.’

‘Can you not? Then perhaps it was me he wanted.’

‘And what would my cousin want with you?’

‘That’s the same question I have been asking myself these past few days.’ His voice was laconic.

‘And did you find an answer, your Grace?’

‘I did not, Lady Emma.’

Leaning back, the lights glinted off his timepiece and threw refracted rainbows across the floor at his feet. Danger and stealth. And manners. Was there ever a combination quite so appealing?

‘My cousin is a wealthy and respectable married man.’

‘So you say.’

‘Who makes his money from cotton,’ she continued, not liking the disbelief she could so plainly hear in his voice. ‘He would have no need for blackmail, if that is what you are suggesting.’

‘I suggested nothing.’

‘Or kidnapping,’ she continued and then bit down on her lip. Lord, she was being drawn into showing her cards by a master. The thought had her temper rising. Dredging up every skill she had ever shown in acting, she plastered a smile on her face.

‘Why, your Grace, it is really too bad of you to jest me, for surely that is what all this is.’

‘Assuredly,’ he returned, bowing as the music stopped, implacable politeness replacing the humour. ‘Although sometimes I greatly doubt that you are quite as vapid as you make out to be.’

Emerald’s heartbeat faltered at the tone and without even trying she could see the lonely mantle of distance that lay between him and everyone, keeping them back and away.

Cross this line and be damned.

The missing fingers and his limp underplayed the jeopardy, but she could not afford to let her guard down.

Supper had been set up on a long table to one end of the salon, and Asher led her over to join the Learys and Jack Henshaw and Charlotte Withers at one of the smaller tables around it. After finding them each a plate of food, he sat down beside her and the topic turned to music.

‘Do you have a speciality, Lady Emma? An instrument that you play.’ Flora Leary’s eyes were full of interest.

‘No. I am afraid not.’ She did not imagine that the harmonica was the sort of instrument the Bishop’s wife would be thinking about.

‘Can you sing?’

‘No.’ God forbid that she should have to stand in front of this crowd and croon a bawdy number learnt at the knees of sailors who had never so much as graced a salon even a quarter as reputable as this one. ‘My father was a man who believed music to be a facet of the Devil’s mind. A religious man, you understand, of strong beliefs and an utter conviction in the rightness of them.’

‘Not an easy man to live with, then.’ Asher joined in the conversation and an undercurrent threaded his words. ‘What is it that you are well versed in?’

Emerald struggled to think up accomplishments that would be acceptable to this company. ‘I am a proficient rider and excellent in the preparation of meals.’

The heavy silence around the table lengthened as she realised the extent of her mistake.

‘Surely you mean the planning of menus, Lady Emma? A most salutatory undertaking. Why, I remember my mother enjoyed the art of putting together meat and wine. It quite took up much of her time before a grand meal. Was it that sort of thing you meant, my dear?’ The kind and gracious Lady Flora gave her an easy way out and she gladly took it.

‘Yes. Just exactly that.’

Lady Charlotte leaned forward and laid her fingers along the line of Asher Wellingham’s arm. ‘Your brother Taris was always a connoisseur of fine wines, your Grace. How is he? Has his sight improved?’

‘Markedly.’

‘Well, that is the most pleasing news I have heard in a while. Tell him I was asking after him, and if he is down in London in the near future …’

‘I will.’

Emerald felt that something was not quite as it should be. She knew that Taris was Asher’s brother, for Miriam had given her a vague outline of his immediate family. But the fact that he had some problem with his sight had not been mentioned at all and the mask that shuttered any trace of emotion on the Duke of Carisbrook’s face was intriguing.

A brother with a sight problem and a woman named Melanie who, apart from being beautiful, was also absent from his life. He had many secrets and held every emotion beneath a rigid self-control.

Discipline and governance had etched a hard line between his eyes, puncturing a face of pure masculine beauty into something less easy—whenever she was near him she felt a pull of sadness, the world stretched out of shape. Even here in the bland world of London society he did not relax as the others did, but looked around.

A constant check on safety.

She was certain that if someone had come up unexpectedly behind him he would have used the small knife hidden in the folds of his jacket. And used it well. She smiled. It was intriguing, this mix of mannerisms. The crest of ducal importance counterpoised by a dangerous fighting ability.

She had seen it, after all, and knew what he was capable of. Knew too that these people who fawned over his title and wealth had absolutely no idea: the wash of blood and guts across the deck on the high seas and the wailing agony of hurt.

Her life.

His life for a time.

For the time it had taken her to extinguish honour and send him hurtling downwards into the boiling anger of the ocean.

Asher instructed his driver to go fast through the dark London streets and, opening a window, enjoyed the breeze on his face and the sky above his head. Dotted with stars tonight, he mused. A small respite in a month of rain. His brother would be pleased, for watching the heavens through the telescope he had had shipped over especially from China was a passion he could still enjoy. He grimaced. But for how long?

Taris’s sight was worse. He admitted it to himself and cursed Charlotte Withers for asking. Emma Seaton would be at Falder the day after tomorrow and he did not want her to know the extent of the problem.

He wanted no one to know.

He wanted to keep the world away from his brother until he could fashion a solution. Until he knew for certain what it was they were facing. Total loss of sight? Partial vision?

If only Taris had not come out to the Caribbean to find him after the ransom note had been sent. If only he had stayed here in England and left the danger of rescue to others. No, he could not think like that. Taris had come and he had been saved. The high price of his brother’s sacrifice paid ever since with his own crippling guilt over his brother’s blindness.

‘God, help me,’ he whispered to a deity that tonight felt close, though the vision of Emma Seaton’s lack of underclothing juxtaposed strangely against his request, and for a second amusement filled the more familiar void of loneliness.

Her soft skin on her right breast had been marked with an indigo tattoo. A butterfly. Tiny. Delicate. Unexpected.

Curiosity welled. An emotion he had not felt in years. It was a relief to laugh. Even to himself out here in the night.

Emma Seaton.

Her hair was curly when it was loosened from the pins that tightly bound it. Stray tendrils had worked themselves free at her nape and the ringlets that hung only to her collar were tightly coiled. Red-blonde hair and turquoise eyes. And a body well endowed with the curves of womanhood.

He shook his head and rubbed at the stiff muscles on the back of his neck. He had enjoyed tonight. Enjoyed her humour and her candidness. Enjoyed the view of sun-warmed skin that lay beneath her loose bodice and the feel of her in his arms as they had danced.

What would she look like in silks and satins and with her hair dressed by the best of London’s hair salons?

He swore roundly. He had seldom kept a mistress in the way other men of the ton did. Oh, granted he had occasionally used the services of select women who could be relied on for their discretion, yet tonight, with the dull ache of sexual frustration seeping through his bones, he wanted more.

The image of two rosy-tipped breasts came to mind as the bells of Westminster rang out the hour of one across the slumbering city, and he smiled into the darkness as his horses slowed at the corner between Pall Mall and St James’s Square.

Opening Lucy’s letter on her return home, Emerald found the missive to be full of the adolescent adulation Asher Wellingham had spoken of. After memorising the note for future reference and consigning it to the fire, she walked across to the window to watch the sky.

Tonight the heavens were clear, a half-formed moon low in the eastern horizon and climbing. It would rain tomorrow, she suspected, for a cloud of mist encircled the glowing crescent and the air had a tang of moisture in it.

She wondered where the Duke of Carisbrook was now. Entwined in the arms of the green-eyed woman, she guessed, and wondered why she found the thought so irritating.

Asher Wellingham was nothing to her.

She would be in and out of Falder in a matter of days, hours even, if her searching went to plan. And then she would be gone. Away from here. Away from him.

Her mind wandered to the feel of his arms around her waist as they had danced tonight, the soft music between them. She had leant her head against the superfine of his jacket and breathed in.

‘Lord,’ she said aloud and swore roundly. Is this what England was making her? Soft? Needy? Dependent?

She was her father’s daughter with years of fighting imbued in her blood and drawn upon her skin. Her finger went to the mark that intersected her right eyebrow and travelled beneath her fringe into her scalp. Black Jack Porrit and his men off the coast of Barranquilla in the winter of 1819. She would never fit in here and before the first whisper of her parentage surfaced in London town she would need to be gone.

With resolve she stripped off the gown and arranged her blankets beside the window overlooking the street.

Across the city the bells peeled in the night. Two o’clock. Burrowing down, she whispered the name of her sister into the darkness.

‘Soon, Ruby. I will be home soon. I promise.’

Chapter Five

Miriam and Emerald arrived at Falder just as a rain shower departed and the sun tinged the clouds off the wild coast of Fleetness Point.

Falder.

To Emerald it was the most beautiful land she had ever seen, soft green hills with glades of trees colouring the lay of the fields. Everything about it was appealing. The isolation. The strength. The way the valleys dipped to a sea that was cold and free and deep. She could smell the sharp taste of salt on the wind and hear the lonely voices of the gulls.

Home. Home. Home.

Falder beckoned to her in a doleful wailing chant. Breathing in, she caught her reflection in the window of the coach and screwed up her nose. Would she ever get used to the shortness of her hair?

‘If the master of Falder discovers any more about us we will be tossed out in a minute.’ Miriam fidgeted with the thin silk strap of the little reticule she carried. ‘And if you think to dress in your lad’s clothes and scour the house at night, I should warn you of the dangers in it.’

Taking a deep breath, Emerald rubbed her palms against the rough wool of her cape. ‘Would you rather I took a knife to his throat, Aunt?’ Today, in the light of what she had to pretend, she could not find it in herself to be kind.

‘You would kill him?’

‘No, of course not,’ she answered back and swallowed down chagrin. Lord, did Miriam truly think that she was capable of slitting the jugular of an unarmed man?

‘Beau made some stupid mistakes, Emerald. And I would say his biggest one was not dispatching you to England the moment your mother left.’

‘I think sometimes you are too hard on my father—’ she began, but Miriam would have none of it.

‘You were six and he was away as often as he was not.’

‘I had Azziz and St Clair.’

‘Pah! That huge house and a boy who barely spoke the English language. You think that was a suitable home?’

‘It was my home.’ How often before had they had this very same conversation?

‘Your home? With a bevy of Beau’s good-time girls and barely a night without some drunken orgy?’

‘He missed my mother.’

‘Missed her money more like.’

Emerald frowned. This was a tangent she had not heard before. ‘Money. My mother had money?’

Miriam paled. ‘I promised my brother that I would never talk of that time. He wanted you to be free of the restraints and vagaries of society and I promised him my silence.’ Shifting in her seat, she crossed herself and Emerald saw the glimpse of a tear. ‘He was a man who demanded too much sometimes. Even of me.’

‘I do not even have a name to remember her by, Miriam. Can you not give me just that?’

‘Evangeline.’

When the dark eyes of her aunt met her own she felt a heady dizzy sense of shock.

‘Evangeline.’ She whispered it, turning the word on her tongue. Savouring it. At last a name. ‘Like an angel?’

Miriam’s deep frown was not quite what she had expected. ‘Your mother found life away from England difficult, and my brother would not have been the easiest of husbands. But he was your father and my brother and one should never speak ill of the dead, God bless them all.’

As the silence lengthened Emerald knew that she would hear no more.

Falder was a revelation. An uninhibited and magnificent hotchpotch of architectural styles, it sat above a river on a hillock completely surrounded by grassland. Part-Scottish baronial, part-Gothic and part-English manor, its many turrets and gables dominated the landscape around it and proclaimed not only great wealth, but a long lineage of generations of Carisbrooks who had all added their mark to it.

As the carriage clattered in across a pebbled drive, she looked up and hoped that there were not too many other guests here this weekend, for she was beginning to feel that she could not brave another round of social niceties.

A bevy of servants were at the front entrance to meet them, their faces stiff with the rigours of servitude; she refrained from meeting their glances, reasoning that such folk might be better at recognising a faux lady should they come across one. The thought made her frown. Circumstance had robbed her of being gently reared, but her birth was hardly dubious. Beau had been a lord before he had become a pirate and the title of Lady was hers to rightly use. She took the arm of her aunt and started up the staircase.

Asher Wellingham was waiting in a small blue salon directly off the portico. Beside him another tall man stood.

‘Was your journey here pleasant?’ The Duke asked the question in a voice that was measured.

‘Thank you, yes, it was.’ Emerald helped Miriam to a chair on one side of the fireplace and arranged a woollen blanket across her lap. Her aunt looked pale and tired and old, a woman whose secrets had leached the lifeblood from her soul. Her father’s sister, her only relative left save for Ruby. In the unfamiliarity of Falder she was suddenly dear. Standing, she draped one arm protectively across Miriam’s frail shoulders as Asher Wellingham apologized for his mother’s absence—she was indisposed—and introduced his brother.

Taris Wellingham wore thick glasses and stood with his hand against the end of a large armoire. The identical sense of danger that cloaked his brother cloaked him and he had exactly the same shade of hair: midnight black. She waited for him to give his greeting, but he did not.

‘Taris had an accident off the coast of the Caribbean. You may need to come closer.’ The Duke’s sentence was offered so flatly that Emerald’s mouth widened at the rudeness.

‘I am sorry—’ she stammered loudly and was cut off.

‘My brother is not deaf.’ A sense of challenge filled the room, unspoken and sharp. Miriam pushed back in her chair, but Emerald took two steps forward and waited as opaque eyes ran across her. She had a feeling he saw more than she wanted him to.

‘Your voice holds the accent of a place very far from here, Lady Emma?’

She stayed silent, loath to lie to a man who had been so badly hurt, the scar across his forehead dissecting his left eye and running down the line of his cheek. The mark of a bullet! No small accident this one. Could he have been another casualty of her father’s? The thought worried her unduly and she was relieved when a maid offered them a drink.

Miriam preferred lemonade, but Emerald chose white wine; taking a sip to calm her nerves, she made herself stand straighter, caring little for her added height.

‘Asher tells us that your cousin Liam saved our sister from ruination.’ The line of Taris’s eyes did not quite meet her own.

‘Well, I would hardly say ruination.’

‘Would you not?’ Asher Wellingham’s question was underlaid with anger. ‘Your cousin is a hero, albeit a reluctant one. What ship did you say he took to the Americas?’

‘The Cristobel,’ she returned without pause, glad that she had taken the time before coming up to Falder to check the shipping schedules, though as she gave the name another thought surfaced. What if he checked the passenger list and found no mention of Liam Kingston and his family? Or worse—what if he discovered that she had been into the shipping office making enquiry as to the departures?

Complicity and subterfuge.

She had a feeling that the Duke of Carisbrook would take badly to them both and she was being increasingly drawn into a web of deceit.

A sennight, she mused. Seven days to find the map and leave. If she were quick, everything would be feasible, but if she were not …?

‘Your house is beautiful,’ she said as her eyes scoured this room and the next one for any sign of what she was after. ‘How many rooms does it have?’

‘One hundred and twenty-seven,’ Lucinda supplied the information. ‘We have two libraries and a ballroom and Asher has just had a new fencing room added to the eastern wing that was built three years ago.’

Filing away the information, Emerald thought she should perhaps start looking over the new wing, although the salons radiating out from this room looked promising. She would start here tonight and then plan a general widening of her search as a grid, so that no room would be forgotten.

Two hours later she was ensconced in a bedchamber overlooking the front drive of the house. Miriam was in the room next to her and had used a headache as an excuse to take herself to bed. Emerald hoped that she was not sickening with a cold, or worse; wandering over to wide doors curtained with billowing yards of soft fabric, she opened the latch. Sunlight streamed in unbroken across a balcony draped in ivy. Walking outside, she was perfectly still. The sound of long beaching waves rolling in from the northern seas could be heard and, if she stood on her tiptoes, there in the distance, between the crease of two green hillocks, she saw the ocean, dancing and sparkling in the sun. The ocean. Her ocean, the warm blue of the Caribbean mixed with the wilder grey of Fleetness Point.

A noise had her looking down as Asher Wellingham rounded the corner on a large horse. Moving back into the room, she watched him until he was out of sight, the fluid muscle of his racing stallion reflected in the surface of the lake as he passed it, a dark shadow against a darker line of the trees.

He was a man who did not seem to fit into the strict regimens of London’s manners or its rules, a duke who seemed more dangerous than he had any right to be, and more menacing. She smiled. Now there was a word that described Asher Wellingham exactly.

Menacing.

And she would need to be very, very careful.

He was dressed in black at dinner and his hair was wet. The length of it was intriguing. Too short to be easily tied into a queue, but far longer than most other men of the ton wore theirs.

As they filed in to the dining room, Emerald found herself seated to Asher’s left, his sister acting as hostess, in his mother’s continued absence, at the foot of the table with Taris to her left. An older couple made up the numbers, near neighbours invited for the evening, for Miriam had decided not to come down and had asked to have a tray delivered to her.

‘Is your room satisfactory, Lady Emma?’ Lucy asked as the steaming plates of food were brought to the table. Beef, pork and chicken. When her stomach rumbled she pushed down on it hard and hoped that nobody had heard.

‘It’s very beautiful and I can see the ocean from the balcony,’ she added, frowning as Asher looked up sharply. Tonight he looked tired. She saw that he was drinking heavily, saw too the gesture Lucy made to the servant behind to bring her brother a carafe of water. He didn’t touch it.

‘Emma hails from Jamaica,’ he said as the silence grew.

The man named William Bennett nodded. ‘I was there once, a long time ago. Did you know a family by the name of de la Varis?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. My father was an invalid, so we were quite insular.’ For a second she wondered how it would be best to keep track of all the lies and decided that later she would write out her fabrications in a diary. Relaxing into the role, she picked up her confidence and continued. ‘My aunt and uncle lived close by and I had Liam, of course. My cousin,’ she qualified as the man looked puzzled.

‘And your own mother?’

‘Oh, she was a beautiful woman. Evangeline.’ Emerald enunciated the newness of the name lovingly and just the saying of it conjured up a golden-haired beauty to stand alongside her sick but handsome father. She smiled. She had always filled her world with dream people. When her mother had gone. When her father had returned with yet another woman whom he insisted she call mama.

Dreams had saved them all and made them whole and good and true. It was not so hard here to imagine cousins or a beautiful mother who had not deserted her.

‘Liam is about your age, then?’ Lucy’s query was strongly voiced. Of all the Carisbrooks she was the most inquisitive.

‘No, he is a little older,’ she replied evasively, trying to remember the exact number of offspring she had invented for her fictitious cousin. Would ‘a little older’ render such children possible? Had she said four?

‘And did he like to read, Lady Emma?’ Lucy continued.

‘Like to read?’ Danger spiralled.

‘I think my sister is referring to the books in your aunt’s drawing room.’ When Lucy smiled and nodded, interest sharpened in his eyes. ‘Miriam does not strike me as a scholar of Arabic philosophy.’

‘And you think that I would be?’ She forced a laugh and was rewarded with a frisson of uncertainty. ‘Indeed, your Grace, the books were my father’s.’

‘Ahh, yes of course. The devout and invalided scholar?’

Emerald wondered at the edge of disbelief she could plainly hear and was relieved when Lucinda again garnered her attention.

‘I should like to sketch you while you are here, if I may, Lady Emma.’

Emerald looked up sharply. Was she jesting? Dangerous ground this. She didn’t know quite how to answer. How easy would it be for Lucy to fathom the memory of Liam Kingston in her face? ‘Are there many of your works here at Falder?’

‘That one is mine.’ Her hand pointed to a large watercolour above the fireplace depicting the castle and Emerald caught her breath.

‘You have a considerable talent. Do you sell them?’

‘No, but I gave Jack Henshaw one once as a gift and Saul Beauchamp. Asher’s friends,’ she clarified as Emerald looked puzzled. ‘I have not mustered up the courage to show them further, but if you would like a look at some other portraits I have done I would be more than pleased to show you.’

Portraits? Of her brother, perhaps? Emerald felt a rising interest until she saw the dark anger that coated Asher Wellingham’s eyes.

She was pleased when the servants began to clear away the plates and the women were able to repair to the smaller salon.

Taris sat against the window and placed his hand on the cold hard surface of the glass. From where he stood, Asher could see the outline of mist that surrounded his print. He wondered just how much of it Taris could also see. Today he had tripped over a stool in the study. A year ago he would have walked straight around it.

‘Emma Seaton is not as she seems.’

Asher stiffened and waited for clarification.

‘No, she is stronger than she pretends to be. Much stronger.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Describe her for me, Asher. What does she look like?’

‘Her eyes are the colour of the sea, she has the shortest hair I have ever seen on a woman and she never removes her gloves.’

‘Why not?’

‘God knows why, for I certainly don’t.’

Taris began to smile. ‘And her face?’

‘You could see nothing of her?’

‘I could hear that she is beautiful.’

‘That she is.’

Taris’s sudden laughter unnerved him. ‘And when was the last time you thought a woman beautiful?’

As Asher walked away from a discussion he did not want, he fingered the sapphire ring he wore on his little finger and cursed his brother.

Chapter Six

Emerald dressed in black trousers and a jacket, stuffing a candle and tinder box into its deep pockets. It was already after three and the last sounds of people moving had been well over an hour ago.

She had memorised the layout of the rooms that she had been in, but was glad for a full moon. The light slanted against her as the curtain opened and she stepped out on to the balcony.

Night time.

She had always loved the darkness, even as a child, and here the sounds of the countryside after the stuffiness of London were welcomed. Shimmying down the ivy that hung from the latticed balcony, she crept around the edges of the lawn, careful to walk where the vegetation overlaid the grass so her footprints would not show. At the wide door that accessed the library from the garden she paused and drew out a piece of wire. Slotting it into the lock, she was glad to hear the mechanism turn and the portal spring open.

One minute at most.

Letting herself into the room, she stood against the velvet curtain and waited until her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness before lighting the candle.

Bookcase upon bookcase greeted her, the leather-bound copies of a thousand volumes lending the musky scent of learning to the air. Her fingers ran across the embossed titles closest to her: Milton, Shakespeare, Webster, Donne and Johnson. A library that embraced great authors and their ideas. She wondered which of the Carisbrooks was the reader and guessed it to be Asher, the thought making her smile.

A low shelf to one side of the room caught her attention. Rolls of paper were stacked against a cupboard and behind them there was an alcove containing other things. Umbrellas, parasols and walking sticks.

Her heart began to hammer. Could it be this easy? She held her breath as she sorted through the objects. A stick of ebony, another of some fragrant wood and a third handmade, using the shiny limbs of birch. Her father’s cane with the map inside it was not among them. Neither was it in the next room nor the next one.

Some time later she knew that she would be pressing her luck to keep searching. Already she had heard the stirrings of the servants in the kitchens and knew very soon other maids would come to set the fires or draw the curtains. Creeping out of the room she was in, she found herself in a smaller salon with a row of windows gracing one wall—it was then that she saw it.

The first light of pale dawn slanted across a portrait. A portrait of the Duke of Carisbrook and a woman. Her Grace, Melanie, the Duchess of Carisbrook, the title written beneath it said, and she was beautiful.

Melanie. As in the ship that was ready to launch in London? Asher’s wife? A red-haired beauty with eyes the colour of midnight. Emerald could not keep from studying the face.

What had happened to her? Where was she? The date on the painting was from ten years ago and she would have been merely the age that Emerald was now. Who could she ask? Lucinda, perhaps. Quietly, of course. She ran her fingers across the thick swirl of paint that made up a brocade skirt and looked again at the painting. Asher Wellingham’s hair was short and he was young. As young as his wife and in love. She could see it in the light of his eyes and in the way his hand curled around hers, holding them together in an eternal embrace.

And the ring that Melanie Wellingham sported on her marriage finger was the same ring that Asher Wellingham now wore on his little finger.

An unexpected noise to one end of the room had her turning and she left the house with only the slightest of whispers.

Asher stood against the door to the small salon and watched Emma Seaton blow out her candle and slide through the opened window with all the expertise and finesse of a consummate thief. Hardly a noise, barely a footprint. He had thought her an intruder at first until the light from the flame had thrown her high cheekbones into relief.

What the hell was she doing here? He walked across to stand where she had just been, in front of the picture above the mantel, and his heart wrenched with sadness.

The wedding portrait painted just after they had returned from their honeymoon in Scotland. God. It had been so many years ago now he could barely recognise the man he was then. Cursing, he turned away and went to the window, watching as a shadow, black against the pearly dawn, flitted around the edge of the house leaving no trace of its presence. No sign of what he could not believe that he had seen.

Who was she?

A thief? A robber? Something more sinister?

Another wilder thought surfaced. What had Lucinda said of Liam Kingston? Tall. Accented. Thin.

Emma Seaton.

Hell! There was no Liam Kingston. It had always been her. The Countess of Haversham had certainly appeared bemused by Emma’s insistence on a cousin. And now he knew why.

He almost laughed at the ruse and would have marched to her room then and there and confronted her had not another thought stopped him.

She had saved his sister.

She had risked her own life for the well-being of a stranger. The bruise on her cheek. Her embarrassment. Her ridiculous story as to how it had happened.

She had saved Lucinda from certain damnation and ruination and she had demanded nothing in return.

Why?

He would find out.

But first he had to determine whether Lady Emma Seaton posed a danger to his family. Starting from today.

The Duke of Carisbrook was still at the table when Emerald went down to breakfast later that morning. Folding his paper, he waited as she gave the hovering servant her preference of beverage.

‘I trust you slept well last night.’

She smiled at his query and helped herself to a slice of toast from the rack in the centre of the table. ‘Oh, indeed I did, your Grace. It must be the country air.’ She yawned widely.

‘And your bed was comfortable?’

‘Very.’

‘You were not disturbed by any noises in the night?’

She gave him a sideways look to determine where this line of questioning might be leading. ‘No, I certainly was not. Why, as soon as my head hits the pillow I am generally asleep and stay so until the morning.’

‘You are most fortunate, then.’

‘You do not sleep well?’

‘I don’t.’ He raised his cup of coffee to his lips and peered at her over the rim. When his eyes locked on to hers, it was she who looked away, making much of buttering her toast. He might suspect her, but that was all. And tonight, forewarned of his lightness of sleep, she would be far more careful in her searching.

‘I was planning a ride across the fields of Falder. Would you like to accompany me? Lucy has a spare riding skirt and jacket and you will find anything else you need in the room off the stables.’

‘I’m not certain. It has been a long time since I was on a horse.’

‘We will go slowly, Lady Emma.’

Emerald frowned, for beneath the outward affinity there was a look that held a hint of something much darker. A rage kept only in check by a steel-strong will. She tried to keep the conversation light.

‘Lucinda said your mother resides here in Falder but I have yet to meet her. She also said that the Dowager Duchess enjoys keeping bad health.’

He smiled at that, the white of his teeth startling against the tan on his face.

‘That she does. Lucinda surprises me sometimes with her insights into others. Take your cousin for instance.’ A gleam of something she could not quite interpret danced in his eyes. ‘Liam Kingston. She saw him as an honourable man. A man who would not lie. A trait of character to be commended in a person, would you not say?’

‘Indeed, I would.’ She hoped he did not hear the waver in her voice.

‘Indeed, you would,’ he repeated and lifted a silver knife to take jam from the pot before him. He used his left hand for almost everything, she noted. Writing. Smoking. Eating. The hand that was not ruined.

Her mind went back to the day they had boarded his ship and she took in a short breath. He had once been right-handed. She was certain of it. The enormity of the realisation made her stiffen. When had the accident happened? Lord, not straight after she had toppled him overboard? Surely not right then.

‘My family is extremely important to me, Lady Emma, and as the head of the house it is my duty to see that they remain safe.’

‘I see.’ The beat of her heart was twice its normal speed and rising.

‘I’m glad that you do.’ The smile that he gave her did not reach his eyes.

‘Good morning.’

Lucinda’s voice had Emerald turning in relief. Asher’s questions had an edge to them that she didn’t understand—it was as if he was furious at her. An awful thought surfaced. Could he have seen her last night? She had heard a noise as she had left the small room off the library, though she was certain that if he had seen her she would hardly be sitting here and being served a very substantial breakfast. With growing unease she looked across at Lucy.

Today Asher’s sister was dressed in a deep-blue riding habit and had a wide smile on her face. A complete and utter contrast to her own, she supposed, and was unreasonably tired by such innocence and openness.

Petty, she knew, and belittling to honour. Taking a breath, she tried to rally.

‘Are you joining us for breakfast, Lucy?’ Asher asked as he pushed out a chair for his sister.

‘No, I have already eaten. Taris said you would be going into the village this morning and I thought to ride with you, for I am spending the day with Rodney and Annabelle Graveson. Will you be leaving soon?’

‘As soon as we have breakfasted.’

The cold lash of his eyes gave Emerald the feeling that he was ordering her to go with him for this had nothing to do with choice. Swallowing her gall, she squared her shoulders and faced Lucy. If the Duke of Carisbrook meant to confront her, she would rather the scene take place away from Falder. ‘Your brother mentioned a riding habit of yours that I might use?’

‘Of course. Come with me now and we can find it—I have just the colour to go with your hair. Dark green—have you ever worn that colour? You tend more to the pastels, you see, and I thought really the deeper shades might just suit you better. The tone of your hair is unusual. Not quite blonde, but not red either. Do you take after your mother?’

Shaking her head at all the questions, Emerald followed Lucy from the room, glad to have a genuine reason to leave.

An hour later they were wending their way into Thornfield. After a shaky start Emerald had picked up her old skills in riding and was enjoying the freedom of being on horseback. Lucinda beside her chatted about her childhood; in front of them Taris rode a little further back from his brother. She could see how he concentrated on the path before him and on the sounds of the horse’s hooves upon the road. Lucy sometimes called out to him, warning him of an incline or of a particularly deep ditch.

Asher gave him nothing. No help. No leeway. She wondered what it was Taris had been doing off the coast of the Caribbean when he had lost his sight.

Thornfield was beautiful. A village set beside the sea with a main road sporting a number of shops and many well-built houses, round a deep harbour where a ship was moored.

As Asher dismounted and helped his sister down, Emerald was already fastening the reins of her horse and looking towards the ship.

‘It is yours?’

‘Ours,’ he amended. ‘She’s the Nautilus, built for the Eastern Line and due out to India at the end of the month to fill a silk contract we have in Calcutta.’

‘She’s beautiful. What does she draw?’

‘You know something about ships?’

Cursing her slip, she lied easily. ‘Liam was always interested in ships, so I suppose some of his knowledge must have rubbed off on to me.’ Deliberately she turned away from the harbour and perused the inn, glad that the brim on the hat she wore was wide, for she doubted she could have hidden the longing she was consumed with.

To set foot on a ship again. To ride in the winds of a wide-open sea with the smell of salt and adventure close to the bone. To climb up the rigging of an eighty-foot mast and hang suspended against the blueness of a horizon that stretched for ever.

A voice calling to them brought her from her thoughts and she looked around to see a man hurrying forward.

‘I had hoped to see you here today, your Grace,’ he said when he was upon them. ‘There was a break-in on the Nautilus last night, though from what I can gather nothing was taken. But the lock on the main cabin door was forced and a few papers shifted.’

‘Did anyone see anything untoward?’

‘No, nothing. Davis heard noises after midnight and thought it was me checking on the ropes.’

‘Set a double shift tonight, then,’ Asher ordered, ‘and have Silas bring his dog back on board.’

Emerald stiffened as his eyes raked across her and again she felt some sense of complicity and an uncertainty that was hard to pin down. Had Azziz and Toro frisked the ship already? It could well be possible. She had determined to contact them tonight and let them know of the new plans Asher Wellingham had set in place to guard his ship when the arrival of a beautifully dressed woman in her forties made her turn. At her side there walked a boy, his eyes firmly fixed on Lucinda.

‘I didn’t realise that you would be up for the week, Asher.’ The woman smiled, looking at Emerald and waiting for an introduction.

‘Lady Emma Seaton, meet Lady Annabelle Graveson and her son, Rodney. Emma is newly come to London to stay with her aunt, the Countess of Haversham.’

‘Miriam of Haversham?’ Her glance sharpened on the locket around Emerald’s neck; if she had been pale before, now she was even more so.

‘You are her niece?’ Her fingers pulled at the lace around her collar before her eyes rolled up and she fell into the arms of Asher Wellingham.

Again, Emerald thought.

How tiring it must be to for ever have collapsing women swoon around you. This faint, however, hardly looked like the one she had pretended in the Henshaw ballroom. It was obvious that Annabelle Graveson was truly ill for her face had taken on a greenish-grey pallor and sweat covered her brow.

Asher Wellingham hardly seemed fazed as he lifted the woman up effortlessly and led the small contingent into the inn, where a space was cleared on a cushioned seat.

‘Fetch some water and give us some room,’ he ordered and the innkeeper wasted no time in doing as he was bid.

Rodney stood at the foot of his mother’s makeshift bed. ‘She said that she felt ill this morning, but I didn’t think she meant this ill.’ Emerald noticed Lucy’s hand resting on his shoulder, trying to give him comfort and almost laughed.

This ill?

The woman was probably just hot or the stays binding her stick-thin waist were too tight. Already she was coming to. She thought back to the aftermath of battles aboard the Mariposa when sailors had sat in silence against the bulwarks and nursed broken bones. Or worse.

But this was England, she reminded herself, where a faint still retained an important place in the whole scheme of things. A vivid reminder of the place of fragile women.

She watched as the woman sat herself up and wiped her brow and upper lip with a delicate hanky she had extracted from the sleeve at her wrist.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, repeating it over again as she looked around the group. ‘I said to Rodney this morning that I was not feeling up to a jaunt into the village. My stomach, you understand. It is rather unpredictable and yesterday the cook served a strong soup that I can only surmise was badly made. Old meat, if I were to hazard a guess, or fungi plucked from a place it should not have been. Rodney, where are you?’

‘I am here, Mama.’ He did not move and Emerald looked away when she perceived that both Annabelle Graveson and her son were watching her, their blue eyes a mirror copy of each other’s.

Asher, as usual, had taken charge, ordering large platters of food and wine and making certain that Taris was aware of the fare that was placed before him. Glancing across the room, she saw a group of young men looking her way, but the scorching glance of the Duke of Carisbrook discouraged them.

She almost smiled. How easy it must be to slip into the role of a protected woman.

How simply easy.

Lucinda. Annabelle Graveson. They let him take charge without even noticing what they had given up.

‘Are you at Falder for long, Lady Emma?’ Rodney Graveson was sitting on her left side, next to Lucinda.

‘For a week. My aunt, the Countess of Haversham, is here, too, but she has been laid low by a cough and has taken to her bed. Perhaps you know of her—your mother seems to.’

‘Mama seldom travels outside of Thornfield these days, but I have heard her mention that name.’

He blushed, his fair hair standing out against the colour, but he did not look away and Emerald liked him for it. Once, years ago, she too had been cursed with such shyness and Rodney Graveson seemed like a kindred spirit and in desperate need of friendship. Looking up, she caught Annabelle Graveson watching her.

‘What is it you are speaking of with Lady Emma, Rodney?’ Her voice was high and the colour in her cheeks was better.

‘He was just asking me how long I planned to be here for, Lady Annabelle.’

‘Oh, I see. And your answer?’

‘Seven days, I think.’

‘Then we shall have you over to Longacres for dinner next Sunday. Asher will bring you. About six.’

She did not ask the others at the table, which struck Emerald as both odd and rather impolite, and the Duke of Carisbrook’s perfunctory nod was such that she wondered if he meant to honour the invitation at all, but as she felt the squeeze of Rodney Graveson’s hand against her own beneath the table she was touched by his gesture and hoped that it would be possible to go.

Two hours later, after saying goodbye to the others Emerald sat on Hercules and picked her way down the incline behind Asher Wellingham on his tall black stallion. Lucy had stayed in Thornfield with the Gravesons and Taris had met a friend at the tavern and had decided to embark on a game of chess. Emerald wondered whether the whole thing had been a set-up, for Asher Wellingham seemed very keen on riding back with her and left as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. She also wondered as to the propriety of being alone with him, but dismissed that notion with indifference. Her reputation here was unimportant—she would be gone from England as soon as she found the cane.

The sea lay before them and, licking her lips, she could taste the salt. Here the sand was not fine and white, but grey and coarse, the pebbles mulched by the movement of this lonely, lovely coast. The sea. Her heart sang at the joy of being beside it again. If this was my home, she thought, I should never leave it.

After the warning at breakfast Asher Wellingham had seemed withdrawn and quiet. He did not tarry or offer her any explanation of beaches, cliffs or field.

His land, she thought.

If he loved Falder, it was not obvious.

‘What is the peninsula in the distance?’ she asked as the sun lit up a long low tongue of land to their left.

‘The Eddington Finger,’ he said promptly. ‘Though my great-great-grandfather always called it “Return Home Bay.” The last sight of Falder lands as he left the coast, I suppose. He was a sailor with a love for adventure.’

He stopped as they cantered down on to the sand and dismounted and the image of an old duke naming the place made Emerald laugh.

‘What was his name? Your great-great-grandfather’s name,’ she qualified when he looked puzzled.

‘Ashland. My father was Ashborne and his father Ashton, all derivatives of the original family name of Ashalan. It is tradition.’

‘Tradition.’ Longing welled on her face. She was certain he must have seen it and was surprised when he smiled. It made him look younger, as young as he had looked on his ship off Turks Island with the sea winds at his back. As young as the man staring out from the portrait in the small salon with a loving wife on his arm.

Desire snaked through caution and she was shocked by the heavy hammering of her heart. She, who had been around men all her life. Handsome men. Dangerous men. But none like this one. None who had haunted her dreams for five long years with his velvet eyes and night-black hair. None who spoke of a family name that they could trace back through the generations and whose ancestral seat rivalled that of any lord of the realm.

Responsibility and place.

A combination that became all the more appealing with the land of his birth at his back and the full blue day upon his face. Her own shifting lifestyle completed the equation. What must it be like to have your children run in the same fields as their children and their children’s children? Oh, tradition was sweet when you had never had it.

The silence between them stretched in an endless vacuum as he helped her dismount and she felt a breathless shiver of wonder. Did he feel it too? How could he not? She was shocked at her thoughts, shocked at the sheer bald desire for his touch. Schooling herself to wait as he tethered the horses to a branch, she was surprised at his first question.

‘What were you doing in the blue salon last night, Lady Emma?’

‘Last night?’ She hoped the slight catch in her voice would be interpreted as chagrin rather than the bone-deep fear she was suddenly consumed with.

‘Last night when you slipped through the rooms of my house in the guise of one suspiciously similar to the description my sister gave of Liam Kingston.’ He was very still.

‘I am not certain what you mean.’ With her back against the wall she couldn’t afford to give an inch.

He changed tack, easily. Distrust coated his words and was seen in the hard planes of his face. ‘What is it you want from me?’

‘Want from you? Nothing, your Grace. And there is a simple explanation for last night. I have never slept well since my father’s passing. Sometimes in the dead of night I wander …’

‘Dressed as a boy and moving in and out of the house like a shadow. I think not.’

One hand encircled her wrist and she felt the same bolt of awareness that she was almost becoming used to in his company.

‘Are you a thief?’ he asked quietly, his thumb caressing the sensitive skin at her wrist.

‘No.’ The touch of his breath across the sensitive folds of her neck nearly undid her.

‘A spy, then? Who sent you here?’ His fingers tightened. Not a harsh hold, but a tempered one. She knew he must feel the hammering pulse beneath his fingers.

‘No one.’ She could barely get the words out.

‘I do not believe you, but if you are in trouble I could help.’

It was the last thing she had expected him to say.

He hardly knew her and yet here he was offering his assistance. Another responsibility. Another needy supplicant. Another duty on top of all his other duties. Pride made her shake her head and she saw a distinct flicker of relief.

‘You are a guest here at Falder and my sister would be disappointed, no doubt, if I packed you off before your due date of departure. But if you sleepwalk again, Lady Emma, take warning, for I shall not be as lenient as I have been this time. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I’m glad of it.’ Again, his thumb traced the blue veins on the thin skin of her wrist and she felt her world throb. When she looked up, there was muted calculation in his eyes and a worm of worry niggled.

Had he used the caress as a means to an end by underlining his threat with a promise? Admiration surfaced in equal proportions with ire. Such cunning would not be out of place on board the Mariposa, for with it he had gained exactly what he wanted.

And all without raising a finger. She was too much her father’s daughter not to applaud his craftiness.

Taking her reins when he offered them back, she walked her horse down towards the water, the mist of salt enveloping the beach with an opaque whiteness. A wilder bay than she was used to, and colder. Shivering, she bent to pick up a shell and the sound inside as she raised it to her ear was exactly the same as it was at home.

For a second she felt displaced, uncertain, lost in the pull of what had been taken from her, and drawn to the man who now came to stand beside her, his cheeks lightly spattered with the mist of ocean. If she had been braver, she might have leant forward and touched the wetness, felt the swell of cheek beneath her fingers, and understood what it was that she could now only guess at. But she was not brave. Not like that. Not here with the wide brim of her hat tugging in the wind and the fullness of her riding skirt unfamiliar around her legs.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

She recited the word over again and again beneath her breath, trying to incite some sort of sense in her actions. Trying to make herself step back from him, out of reach, out of harm, out of temptation. But when his thumb came up to caress the sensitive skin on her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and just felt.

For once.

For this once.

For the time it took to run her tongue across the length of skin and bring his flesh into her mouth.

‘Lord, what you do to me.’ The darkness in his eyes was bottomless as his lips slanted down across her own, the hunger in them easily definable in the afternoon grey. Just the two of them with the damp rivulets of water running beneath her feet, and the green lands of England all around. Just the two of them coming together along the full lines of their bodies and pressing hard.

And then there was nothing.

No today or yesterday, or tomorrow with its sharp uncertainty.

Just him. Just the warmth of skin against the cool of the rain and the burning fiery want that consumed her. She did not notice when he cast aside her hat, loosening the curls to his touch. All she knew was urgency and want and need.

A man’s touch. On her woman’s body. The living reality of her countless dreams. She felt the puckering of her nipples and the clench of an almost-pain between her legs.

More. More.

Everything, she longed to whisper, everything, and when he drew away she tried to hold on, tried to take his mouth in the same way that he had taken hers, but he stopped her simply by pulling her against him, head firm beneath his chin, fitting well into the spaces of his body.

‘Emma.’ Whispered. Barely there.

The frantic beat of his heart against his throat told her that he was as affected as she was. Not all onesided, then, not all her fault. She could not find it in herself to raise her eyes to his.

‘I’m sorry. That should not have happened.’ His voice was husky. ‘There is no excuse at all. I should not have—’ He stopped and the shrill cry of a gull could be heard over the silence.

He was sorry? She stiffened. An apology. For this?

Every man she had ever known in her life would have taken what it was she had just offered and be damned with what happened next. But not Asher Wellingham. No, not him. Confusion ripped through guilt and sheer embarrassment chased hard on the heels of that.

Lord. What now? When she felt his hands slacken she stepped back and reached for the bridle, angry at the help she needed to mount and pleased when he did not speak again as he handed her her hat. Did not explain. Did not even try to draw level with her as they cantered along the beach and up into the valley that led to Falder Castle.

Gaining her room she laid her head back against the solidness of the portal and tried to catch her breath, lost in the run up from the stables. Her breathing was closer to normal when she opened the connecting door to see Miriam sitting in a chair by her window, reading a book.

‘Whatever has happened? You look like you have come across a ghost.’

Emerald’s smile was laboured. Hardly a ghost. Asher’s lips still burnt into the recesses of her memory and raised the temperature of everything.

Hot. Scorching. Torrid.

She poured herself some water, watching the drips run jagged against the side of the glass before drinking it all.

‘You seem better, Aunt.’

‘If you could find the cane, Emerald, I’d be better still.’ The sentence was finished on a bout of coughing and Emerald’s worry grew. After her behaviour today, she was uncertain whether the Duke of Carisbrook would even want her to stay till the end of the week and here was her aunt plagued with illness.

Lord, could things get any worse? She shook her head and made herself concentrate on what Miriam was saying.

‘Carisbrook has a map room at the back of the eastern wing. I saw it today when I attempted a walk round the rose garden. Perhaps he has already found the map, and keeps it there.’

Emerald’s interest was piqued. ‘Near the rose garden you say?’

‘Yes. The Wellingham family mausoleum sits further over to one side. The footman I walked with said that the garden has been laid out in memory of the Duchess of Carisbrook.’

‘Melanie Wellingham is dead and buried at Falder?’

‘She is indeed. The tomb of their son is there too.’

‘A son?’

‘Stillborn at full term three years before she died.’

Death and loss and waste.

The enormity of Miriam’s revelations changed everything. The Duke of Carisbrook had loved his wife. He still loved his wife. The sapphire ring on his finger, the picture in the library and the flower garden, and his self-confessed resistance to being plunged again into the state of holy matrimony—suddenly everything added up, made sense.

She was a small detour in the course of his life. That was all. He was a duke with lands stretching hundreds of miles in every direction and a shipping fleet that plied the world.

He was not for her.

Would never be for her.

She reached into her pocket for the shell she had collected and wished that she could find the map and just go home.

Chapter Seven

He was drunk.

He knew he was by the way the portrait of Melanie that he sat in front of swam in and out of focus. He hated this painting. Hated the sheer memory of it. A brutal reminder of all that he had lost.

He should not have kissed Emma Seaton. Not like that. Not with the raging want in his blood and the sure damned knowledge of duplicity in his head. She was not as she said she was. She was a liar and a would-be thief. She was dangerous to his family. To him. To the world he had spun around himself ever since he had returned home, a slim wedge against chaos. He should kick her out, right now, before the calmer shifts of reason took hold and her turquoise eyes reeled him in like the sirens of Circe, haunting, familiar and undeniably false.

And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He sighed and leant his head back against the wall wondering just why it was that he couldn’t. Not just the warm willingness of her body or the sharp raw hit of lust that had floored him when her lips had met his. No, there was something else too. Something he had felt unexpectedly as he had held her on the beach against him. Something close and safe and right. Something that took away the cold for ever etched into his very bones and left a question of possibility.

‘I thought that I might find you here. And drinking.’ The heavy censure in Taris’s words jarred his thoughts and Asher closed his eyes against it. Tonight his more usual reserve was lost under the fiery belly of too much whisky.

‘When I was with Emma Seaton today … I forgot Melanie. For just one moment … I forgot her.’

He felt the stillness of his brother rather than saw it, but he was strangely relieved by the confession. Saying the words lessened the strength of them. Tonight he needed absolution.

‘She is a beautiful woman, Asher, and Melanie has been dead for over three years. Why should you not admire her?’

‘Because she’s a liar. Because she was here the other night. Right here. Dressed as a boy. And because I think she and Liam Kingston are one and the same.’

‘Lucinda’s knight in shining armour? The one who bested Stephen Eaton? Lady Emma?’

‘She has a tattoo on the soft skin of her right breast.’

‘A tattoo?’ Intrigue was plain in his brother’s question.

‘Of a butterfly. Done in blue.’

Taris began to laugh.

‘I want her to stay here. At Falder. I want to protect her …’

The laughter abruptly stopped.

‘Someone has hurt her,’ Asher continued and stood, tripping over a low stool in front of him as he did so and veering towards the wall. Leaning against it, he was pleased to regain his balance. ‘And she’s frightened. I can see it in her eyes … sometimes … often … and I can hear it in her voice.’

A clock chimed in the next room and Asher counted the hours. Three o’clock. Two more hours till the dawn and the promise of sleep. Tonight it was all he could do to keep from closing his eyes and let slumber overtake him.

But he mustn’t.

He knew he mustn’t. Not until the dawn when the voices were softer and memory did not cut his equilibrium to the quick.

He slid down the wall, his knees drawn up before him. In defeat. The stubs of his severed fingers rested against his knee and he brought them up into his vision as if seeing them for the first time.

‘Sometimes I can feel these fingers … ghost fingers touching things, feeling things. I used to think they’d gone to the place where Melanie was, a little part of me waiting with her till the rest could follow … and now … I don’t want to follow them.’ As he leant his head back, his eyes went to the uncurtained window, where he could see only an unbroken darkness and he hated the lack of control he could hear in his voice.

‘Melanie would have wanted you to be happy again. Laugh again. Feel again.’

‘Would she?’ He stroked his finger down the thin crystal stem of his glass and almost laughed. ‘I remember once in Scotland when she nearly fell into a raging river and I caught her and pulled her back. She said that if anything ever happened to me, she would be sad for ever. For ever. Such a long time … for ever.’

Taris was quiet. Asher noticed he had removed his glasses and put them into his pocket. Seeing with memory. All that his brother was left with now. Sometimes he hated Beau Sandford with such a passion that it worried him. The smarting scars across his back. Taris’s loss of sight. Even in death the pirate haunted him.

‘Go to sleep, Taris. I will be all right.’

‘I could stay …’

‘No.’

He was pleased when his brother left him to his familiar demons.

Emerald strolled back towards Falder after an early morning walk, and caught sight of a light burning low in the little salon off the library as she mounted the front steps. If Asher Wellingham was already up, she would speak with him about yesterday. She should not have kissed him, should not have been alone with him, could not believe what she had done. She, who had always been so circumspect in dealing with the opposite sex. Well, it needed to stop before she did something she knew she would regret and she meant to tell him so right now.

The Duke of Carisbrook was slumped on the floor when she pushed open the door, his back against the wall and an empty bottle beside him. Taris sat asleep in an armchair. Like a sentinel.

Turning back to Asher, she saw that he watched her, the intensity of his gaze startling. He made no move to stand up; with his cravat askew and with the stubble of a twelve-hour beard upon his face, he looked like some dark and dissolute angel.

‘I am sorry,’ she managed. ‘I saw the light from outside and thought I might speak with you. About yesterday.’

‘Perhaps another time would be better,’ he returned softly, and she was relieved to hear a hint of something akin to humour in his voice.

‘You are well?’ She could barely just leave it here.

His eyes flicked to the window where the beams of a new day flooded in.

‘Very well. Now,’ he replied and pushed himself up. Emerald resisted an impulse to help him as he bent over, his hands clamped tightly about his head and holding everything together. She had seen enough hangovers to recognise that this was a bad one.

‘Did you sleep at all last night?’

He shook his head, squinting against the light that caught him squarely from this angle.

A new thought struck her. He never slept. Her mind ran over the times she had found him up, fully dressed, in the small hours just before the dawn.

After the ball. The first night she had searched Falder. This morning. Each time with a glass in his hand and the look of the damned in his eyes.

‘My father had a remedy for too much drink.’ Her resolve to confront him faltered under his vulnerability this morning and his eyebrows arched.

‘A man of many varied talents, then,’ he chided and crossed the room to replace a blanket across his brother that had fallen on to the floor. Taris barely moved as he did so, well wrapped in the arms of Morpheus.

What had they spoken of, Emerald wondered, in the dead of night? What kept them from warmer beds and a more comfortable slumber? Memories? Secrets? Her?

‘Could you concoct this remedy for me?’

She was more than surprised by his request. ‘I’d need herbs and sugar and milk.’

‘We could find those in the kitchen. It’s this way.’

He edged his way around her, careful not to touch, and opened the door. She saw he used the solidness of it to retain his balance.

The kitchen was enormous and extremely well appointed. Ten or so people of all genders, sizes and ages scraped, cleaned, cooked and chopped, the smell of a fine luncheon permeating the air. A woman extracted herself from the others, wiping her hands on her apron as she came forward.

‘Your Grace?’ There was question in her voice. ‘I hope all is well with the food …’

‘Indeed it is, Mrs Tonner. But Lady Emma would like a few ingredients to make a drink.’ He did not say what sort of drink.

‘A drink?’ Amazement overcame the cook’s reserve. ‘You wish to cook, my lady?’

‘I wish to make a potion with eggs, milk and hyssop. And mandrake root, if you have it.’

A smile lit up Mrs Tonner’s face. The secret recipe of Beau’s was not just confined to the wilds of Jamaica, Emerald determined, and followed her to a well-stocked pantry where she quickly found what was needed. A smaller maid produced a bowl and whisk and another a large tumbler embossed with Asher Carisbrook’s initials.

A.W. Not just his initials, either, but the sum of generations before him. Ashton Wellingham. Ashland Wellingham. Ashborne Wellingham.

Thanking the cook, she set to work, flustered when she saw that he meant to stay and watch her. The kitchen was as quiet as the dead, though ten sets of ears were fastened on their every movement and word.

‘Did you make this often?’ he asked as she worked.

Often and often and often.

‘No. Only a very few times when a parishioner was in his cups at church. Apart from that …’ She let the sentence peter out as a vision of Beau downing the concoction in ever-increasing quantities overcame her.

Her father had been a mean drunk and a series of harlots had taken the brunt of his temper.

Mostly.

She was pleased that Asher was not of that ilk. Indeed, drink seemed to mellow him, make him easier to talk with, more vulnerable.

‘Yet you can remember the recipe by heart?’

‘It is a simple one, which you have to drink all at once.’ She handed the tumbler to him as she finished.

He sniffed it and looked up. ‘Is it supposed to smell this way?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to stop laughter as she registered his incredulity but could not quite. ‘Strong liquor requires a strong antidote.’

When he made no move to swallow it she leant across and removed the cup from his hands to take a sip.

‘See. Not poisonous. In fact, quite palatable.’ She repressed a shiver as the aftertaste hit her and hoped that he had not seen it.

‘Palatable?’ He questioned when he had finished. ‘You call that palatable?’ A film of froth coated his upper lip before he licked it away. ‘Come, Emma, and I will show you palatable.’

Once outside, he took a turning that she had not seen before that led to a conservatory almost entirely formed by glass, opening out to a wide and formal garden.

‘My mother’s contribution to the place,’ he remarked as he saw her astonishment. ‘It is a tradition that the Wellingham wives are always good at something. My grandmother was a horsewoman of great repute and my great-grandmother a musician. It is said at night through the corridors of the west wing that you can still hear the haunting tunes of her pianoforte.’ He smiled. ‘Ghosts are mandatory in a place like this, though I have never seen one.’

‘What was Melanie good at?’ The thought became a voiced question and she cursed as she saw his withdrawal.

‘My wife was also good at music and good at being a wife,’ he said simply and took the head off an orange chrysanthemum at his feet.

‘She was beautiful.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she the reason you do not sleep?’

He stood perfectly still. God, he seldom spoke of Melanie. And never to anyone save Taris. But here in the light of day, after a night when he hadn’t had a moment’s sleep, it was suddenly easy. Emma Seaton made it so.

‘I was not at home when she died. I was not at home for her funeral. I should have been home.’ He was astonished at the well of information he had given her and the depth of his anguish. If he had been by himself, he would have slammed his fist into something hard and finished off another bottle. But he wasn’t alone.

‘My brother also died when I was not with him. He was three.’

Asher looked up and focused. For the first time since he had met her, he felt as if he was actually hearing about someone in her family who had been real.

‘I used to carry him everywhere, you see. I was six when he … went and acted his mother, I suppose. My name was the first one he ever spoke and I taught him songs in the dusk and rocked his hammock. He had a lisp. I remember that more now than his face.’

‘How did he die?’ She did not answer, though her paleness told him it had not been an easy death. He was trying to work out what lesson he could take from her confidence when she began to speak again.

‘How long ago was it that your wife died?’

‘Three years.’

‘People used to say to me “time softens pain.” And I used to think nothing will ever soften this ache. Nothing. But time did. It flattened out the rawness and left only memories. Good memories. Now when I think of James—that was his name—I think of his lisp and his curly blond hair and the thoughts make me smile.’

‘I rarely speak of Melanie to anyone.’

‘But you should, for it helps. A worry shared is a worry halved. Have you not heard the old adage?’

‘Your father again?’

She smiled and in the light of the new day her dimples were as easy to see as the faint holes in her ears. For earrings, he determined, and not just one, either. A whole row of tiny marks pierced both lobes. He imagined jewels sparkling there and was still as a memory shifted and was lost.

Reaching out, he touched the slight indentations and she didn’t stop him. Rather she leaned into his embrace.

She was so damnably responsive, he thought. Any slight caress had her heart beating faster and the flush well upon her cheeks. What would it be like to part the moist lips of her womanhood and slip inside? The thought had him stiffening and he pulled away.

Hell. After yesterday’s débâcle he was back to acting like some green boy straight out of school. He wondered if she would notice the thickening bulge at the front of his trousers. His much-too-tight trousers, he amended, and readjusted them for the second time in two days.

The sound of his mother’s voice made him groan. To be caught in the gardens by a parent with his trousers metaphorically down was something he had not contemplated. It hadn’t happened at seventeen, so he had certainly not expected it to happen at thirty-one. Pulling the front of his long jacket closed he watched as Alice Wellingham, the Dowager Duchess of Carisbrook, was wheeled into the gardens by her maid. A quick look at Emma Seaton disorientated him. She was staring straight at him and trying not to smile. Lord, he thought. He was being given the run around by a Catholic chit, who had fed him a potion of ingredients that were causing his eyes to blur with tiredness.

His mother’s smile was not helping either. He recognised that look, had seen it before every time some eligible woman had come into the sphere of his notice since the death of his wife, but today for the first time he was unreasonably irritated by it.

‘You look terrible, Asher.’

‘Good morning, Mother.’

‘You look terrible and your servants let it slip that you have not slept at all in a week. And you have finished as many bottles of brandy as you do usually in a month.’ Her voice broke. ‘You will kill yourself with this behaviour and I hate to think what might happen to Falder and the dukedom.’

‘Taris would undoubtedly assume the mantle of responsibility were such an unlikely event to occur.’ He was cruel in his response, but he had had this talk before and did not want it in front of Emma Seaton now.

‘Unlikely?’ His mother was about to say more when her eyes rested on the face of Emerald and he introduced her.

‘You are the Countess of Haversham’s niece, are you not?’

‘I am.’

‘Many years ago I had a passing acquaintance with her family. Which branch do you hail from?’

‘A distant one, I am afraid.’

Emma was a master at not answering any question about her past, Asher thought, but his mother failed to note the fact.

‘She had a brother, Beauvedere. Have you ever come across him?’

‘I do not believe so.’

‘Then it is well that you haven’t—I often wonder what happened to him. He was a striking man with the bluest eyes and a way with the women that was legendary. Ashborne always said he would come to no good …’ She began to giggle. ‘I am sorry. It is age, I think, this constant referral to times past. Easy to remember what happened thirty years ago and hard to think what it was one did yesterday. Instead of regaling you with old nonsense, I should be asking if are you being properly looked after here at Falder. Do you like the room you’ve been given? You are in the yellow room are you not? Do you play whist?’

‘Badly.’ Emerald looked startled by the quick changes of topic.

‘Good. Then I shall set you up as my opponent this evening. Would you mind? My sister usually partners me, but she has gone down to London for the week as my nephew has arrived from the Americas. You will have a lot to catch up on, Asher,’ she added, and even as she said the words his heart sank.

Just another person to tell him how he had changed for the worse.

He hoped that his cousin would keep any criticisms to himself and was suddenly as tired by it all as he ever had been.

It was the potency of Emma’s remedy combined with a lack of sleep, he determined, and resolved to knock himself out early tonight with a strong brandy. He hoped belatedly that no maid had woken his brother slumbering on the armchair in front of Melanie’s portrait. Taris must have come back into the room. He frowned. He had not heard him do so, which in turn suggested that some time around the very early dawn he had, after all, nodded off. The notion cheered him considerably. If he could sleep a little, it would follow that he could also sleep a lot. As his mother’s maid wheeled her from the garden, he had another thought.

‘Does the potion you made act as a sort of sleeping draught?’ He could barely keep his eyes open.

‘It does. And quite quickly too.’ The laugh she ended the sentence with worried him.

‘How quickly?’

When the dizzy whorl hit him he had his answer, then he felt only blackness.

He slept twenty hours straight and awakened just as the sun was rising on the dawn of the following day.

Emma Seaton sat next to him, reading Mary Wollstonecraft, the revolutionary tract criticising the restricted educative norms for women. Even her reading matter worried him.

‘You are awake?’ she said softly and put down the book. ‘I know that I should not be here, but it was my potion and I was worried that perhaps I had wrongly remembered the proportions. I came in to see that you still breathed.’

‘Just here?’ he asked back and looked around the room for any signs of shifted possessions.

‘I would not hurt your family. I like them.’

‘But you would hurt me?’ He was suddenly still, for today everything seemed clearer. It was him she had bumped into at Jack’s ball and him she had targeted at the Bishop’s dinner. Talking with George about it the next day, he had discovered that Lady Emma Seaton had intimated to Flora that she was an old friend of his and that she should be pleased to renew the acquaintance.

And when she had fallen against him at the ball he had known her faint to be false.

Lying on his back in bed with almost nothing on, however, he felt it was neither the time nor the place for confrontation. Consequently he turned the subject.

‘You could probably make a fortune curing the plight of London’s insomniacs with your tonic. The ton would take to you like a saviour.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Better.’

‘You do not sound it.’

‘How do I sound?’

‘Annoyed.’

‘And you could not imagine why?’

‘I gave you the gift of sleep.’

‘You knocked me out and God knows what you have been up to in the meantime, making free with the things in my house in your quest for … what?’ Steely eyes swept across her. ‘Is it money? You look as if you might need some.’

Today he was like a bear with a sore head.

‘My clothes may not be the latest vogue in London, but I assure you that it is from lack of desire rather than from lack of funds.’

‘You would not want a new gown?’

‘I know that to you the idea may be a preposterous one, but not all women have the need to garb themselves in the very latest style. Some—like me, for example—would rather buy books.’

He began to laugh. ‘Use my library, then. Feel free to choose something other than Wollstonecraft.’

He looked immeasurably younger with the humour dancing in his eyes and she capitulated. ‘When you feel better later on in the day, perhaps we might enjoy a discussion on the relative merits of women’s rights.’

‘Perhaps,’ he murmured and pulled a pillow over his head, ending any possibility of conversation.

Chapter Eight

Emerald walked to the sea early before anyone was about, before the night stars had faded from the sky, before the chamber maids had risen from their beds, and before Miriam would have the notion to miss her and comment. She had searched Falder for hours last night, searched Asher’s room and the alcoves off it, searched the kitchens and the salons and the library. Searched the map room that Miriam had spoken of and come away with nothing. Had he thrown the cane away? She shook her head. The jewels on the carved head were too valuable to just get rid of and even the most dull-witted of folk could have determined the worth of the thing. Had he sold it off? Could she ask him somehow of its whereabouts without raising his curiosity and jogging his memory?

The water was cold as she waded into it, but not the freezing cold she had expected and the temperature took her thoughts on to further possibilities.

Looking around, she wondered if she dared to take off her gown and swim out to the first break of the waves. Behind her the land was silent and grey, a row of tall dark pines sheltering the beach from a cottage that lay half a mile in from where she stood, and the cove was bound at both ends by sharp outcrops of rock. No access there, then. No sudden stranger. No peeping Toms or vagrant passers-by.

She made her mind up in a moment and walked to a large bush at the head of the beach, shrugging off her jacket and her gown and boots. She left her silk gloves on. Out of habit. The slight breeze sent goose-bumps across the skin on her forearms and she laughed in sheer and unadulterated joy. Freedom.

Her first true freedom in four months. She rubbed away the tears that started in her eyes and walked straight into the ocean.

Asher saw her from a distance, a lonely Aphrodite with her hair a froth of bright gilt curls upon her head. Nothing was hidden. Nothing. Her long slender legs and arms, her rounded bottom, her waist, her full breasts moving up and down as she turned to look at the shore one last time before diving under. And under. And under …

His heart began to race and he urged his mount on, hitting the beach in a flat-out gallop and pulling off his boots and jacket after he had dismounted. God, where the hell was she?

‘Emma.’ His voice was wild, angry, desperate, furious, the beat of his heart so loud he thought he might fall over with the power of the blood racing through his veins, thought he might explode with the red-hot fear, thought he might …

She came up fifty yards further out from where he had last seen her and it was her laughter that sent him completely over the edge, a laughter that stopped abruptly as she turned and her eyes caught his own.

‘Get out of the water. Now.’ He could do nothing to soften his wrath. All he wanted was for her to be safe.

‘Go back.’ Her voice was breathless, horrified. ‘Go away. I do not need any help.’ Turquoise eyes searched the shore for any sign of others and her cheeks, despite the cold of the sea, were a burning bright hot red.

He was not swayed at all. ‘If you don’t come out this second, I’ll come in and get you.’

Emerald bobbed down in the water and wondered what to do now, for Asher Wellingham stood directly in a line in front of her clothes. From the look on his face she didn’t think he’d be making anything easy for her either.

Already the water had lapped at his trousers and was now just above the point of his knees. Would he keep coming? Would he swim in and drag her out as he threatened?

‘All right, then. Turn around.’ Her placatory tone was hardly won, and when she saw the white of his teeth gleam in a quick smile she was pressed not to call his bluff and see just who was the stronger swimmer. But where could she then come ashore?

‘Turn around.’ She repeated the command when he made no move to do so and her trepidation grew as a movement on the high ground behind Asher formed the shape of another man, far away enough to still be safe, but coming closer with each wasted second. Her distraction had Asher turning.

‘It’s Malcolm Howard, a cottar from the hill.’ His barely concealed laughter made her swear and, swimming in on the first wave, she stood up as late as she could manage it. Asher Carisbrook held his bulky jacket out to her, but not before he had had a good eyeful.

‘Most gentlemen would have at least averted their faces,’ she ground out and pulled her hand away, shrugging into his jacket with the intent of showing as little flesh as possible and pleased when the hem fell below her knees.

‘Most ladies would have worn a shift,’ he returned, looking over his shoulder and whistling. His large black stallion walked from the bushes at the top of the beach, carefully picking his way across the sand. Glancing across his shoulder, Emerald was surprised to see no sign of the stranger in the distance.

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