To Serena, sharing outrageous midnight adventures with Sir Adam Langthorne seemed the ideal way of proving to both of them that she wasn’t as staid and colorless as he thought.

Glimmers of the wild young girl she had once been, up for any mischief on offer, must still lie under Countess Serena’s sober facade after all. She reminded herself reckless actions led to uncomfortable consequences and managed to crush her inner hoyden for the time being.

‘Good luck then, Sir Adam,’ she managed to say cheerfully enough, and offered him her hand in farewell as she opened the front gate.

He bowed over it like a beau from a previous age and kissed it lightly. Fire shot through her, as if he had touched his lips to bare flesh instead of her supple leather glove. She snatched her hand back and looked about her.

‘Shall we say half an hour, my lady?’

Captain Langthorne’s Proposal

Harlequin®Historical

Author Note

The idea for Adam and Serena’s story came to me whilst I was wondering if a Regency heroine whose ideal match had proved the exact opposite, leaving her an older, wiser and more cynical widow, could fall in love again and this time forever. Surely it would take an exceptional hero to convince her to take another chance on love? And he would need to be even more stubborn than she was herself if he stood any chance of persuading her to actually marry him.

That hero turned out to be Captain Sir Adam Langthorne, and I have to admit to finding him rather exceptional myself. But Serena was never going to be such a pushover and fought her feelings for the handsome baronet every inch of the way. I hope you enjoy their story and their company as they clash, test each other’s passions and love, while also becoming entangled in a series of perilous adventures that threaten to bring their story to an untimely end.

Captain Langthorne’s Proposal
ELIZABETH BEACON

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

To the two Di’s: Diana Russell and Diana Singelton,

the best friends any author could wish for.

ELIZABETH BEACON

lives in the beautiful English West Country, and is finally putting her insatiable curiosity about the past to good use. Over the years Elizabeth has worked in her family’s horticultural business, became a mature student, qualified as an English teacher, worked as a secretary and, briefly, tried to be a civil servant. She is now happily ensconced behind her computer, when not trying to exhaust her bouncy rescue dog with as many walks as the Inexhaustible Lurcher can finagle. Elizabeth can’t bring herself to call researching the wonderfully diverse, scandalous Regency period and creating charismatic heroes and feisty heroines “work,” and she is waiting for someone to find out how much fun she is having and tell her to stop it.

Available from Harlequin®Historical and ELIZABETH BEACON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Countesses didn’t hide in damp woods from handsome baronets, Serena Cambray told herself sternly. Once she had been too proud to hide from anyone—how her current cowardice would have been reviled. Well, people changed, and the widowed Lady Summerton perhaps more than most, Serena informed herself stoutly, and tried to sit as still and cool as an ice-sculpture on her slightly damp tree stump. Even as she tried to tell herself she was quite calm, her thoughts drifted to the man she was avoiding so assiduously. If only she had seen beneath his youthful arrogance and that annoying air of omnipotence to the man he would one day become, how different her life might have been.

The first time she had met Adam Langthorne he had threatened to tan her hide and send her home to her father, with a message informing him that his daughter would never be permitted contact with his sister again.

‘Only my grandfather’s sense of chivalry prevents me from packing you off right now, even if you have to travel all night,’ he had told her, and looked down his nose at her from the superiority of his lanky height and his new commission in His Majesty’s army.

Serena had glared back at him and refused to admit she had anything to apologise for—even if she and Rachel Langthorne had been within a whisker of causing a scandal and had put themselves in deadly peril. To be labelled ungovernable hoydens given to outrageous pranks like dressing up as coachman and postilion and stealing his grandfather’s carriage to go to a mill would have blighted their reputations for life, even though they had only been fourteen at the time, but how she had hated him that day, she recalled with a wry smile. Probably all the more so because she had known he was right. It struck her that if he had published her infamy to the world, George Cambray would never have tainted his great name with such a hoydenish wife. Only think of the danger of passing on such bad blood to the docile and dutiful daughters he had expected her to bear him as the inevitable side effect of breeding his heirs.

Shaking off such unwelcome thoughts, she listened for Sir Adam’s soft footfall on the unpromising surface of the ancient woodland floor and wondered about that first meeting. Even at fourteen to his nineteen had she already been secretly in thrall to the tall ensign of dragoons? If so, she’d stoutly refused to allow the idea room in her silly head—and that would have been one secret she would never have confided in her best friend even if she’d known it herself. So much as a whiff of a match between Serena and her adored elder brother would have turned Rachel into a hardened matchmaker on the spot. In fact, now she came to think about it…Could that explain Sir Adam’s uncanny knack of knowing where Serena was before she’d hardly thought of being there herself?

She shook her head absently and acquitted her friend of such perfidy; Rachel knew everything about her but that one almost unformed secret, and wouldn’t serve Sir Adam such a backhand turn even if she had a suspicion of it. Yet Serena’s stubborn thoughts lingered on what might have been, and she drifted into a fantasy of meeting the by then Lieutenant Langthorne at her come-out ball instead of the rather awesome Earl of Summerton. If only that dashing and dangerous gentleman had presented himself to be danced with, dined with, and even perhaps mildly flirted with, could she have seen a truly nobleman from the outward pattern of one?

Who knew? She had been ungovernably silly in her debutante days, so it would probably have been in the lap of the gods. So goodness alone knew why the wretched man was intent on getting her alone now. Once upon a time she would have assumed he wanted to make her an offer and preened herself on another conquest. Now she dreaded it. And he could hardly find himself a less suitable wife if he combed every assembly room in the British Isles.

‘Good day, Lady Summerton,’ the wretched man greeted her, as if he had no idea she was attempting to hide from him yet again.

Serena jumped at the sound of the deep voice she had been trying not to hear in her dreams, and turned to watch Sir Adam Langthorne effortlessly close the gap between them with a long, easy stride. She told herself it was foreboding that was making her heart beat faster.

‘Oh, dear—I mean…good day, Sir Adam,’ she said, and felt herself blush like a green girl instead of a respectable widow of four and twenty. ‘I felt unaccountably tired for a few moments,’ she explained feebly, trying not to see the hint of laughter and something even more dangerous in his dark gaze as one dark eyebrow rose in polite incredulity at her limp excuse for behaving like a fainting young miss with considerably more hair than sense. ‘It’s unseasonably mild today is it not?’ she heard herself ask with an internal groan, thinking she sounded very much like the vicar’s spinster sister, who was one of the silliest women in England.

‘Last week you were sheltering in that tumbledown barn because you informed me it was too chilly in the open air,’ he responded solemnly, and she wondered if she had been right as a girl to think she would quite like to strangle Rachel’s superior and insufferable brother. Then he grinned at her, and she knew it would have been a grievous waste of both their lives, and a smile trembled on her own lips before she controlled it and looked back at him rather severely.

‘And so it was. Such are the vagaries of the English weather, Sir Adam, in case you have quite forgot them during your sojourn in the Peninsula.’

‘Indeed I have not. This is the only country I ever came across where we have all our seasons in one day, but at least this one is fine and, as I never seem to see anything other than the hem of your pelisse disappearing over the horizon of late, my lady, it must be ranked an especially clement one for me,’ he added with a sardonic smile, and her stupid heart raced all over again.

‘I have been—that is to say, I am very busy,’ she told him solemnly. ‘Very busy indeed,’ she added, and took her late father’s half-hunter watch out of her pocket and inspected it as if every second of her day were precious.

‘Then we mustn’t waste your valuable time,’ he said, taking her gloved hand and raising her to her feet as if she was made of spun glass, then fitting it into the crook of his elbow as if it belonged there. ‘A lady of your advancing years should learn to take life a little more easily,’ he chided wickedly as he led her inexorably back onto the footpath that led away from her brother-in-law’s acreage and onto Sir Adam’s even larger estates.

It felt like venturing onto dangerous ground, but Serena told herself not to be silly for perhaps the thousandth time since she had met him again. It had only taken one look to know the infuriating, arrogant youth who had given her a tongue lashing that had bitten all the deeper for being well deserved, was now an infuriating, arrogant mature and potent gentleman she had endless trouble dismissing as merely her best friend’s brother.

‘And a gentleman of yours should learn better manners,’ she snapped back, before she had time to put a guard on her tongue. Catching a glint of satisfaction in his brown eyes, as temper robbed her of the starchy dignity she was forever striving for in his company, Serena decided she was an idiot to secretly prefer his provocation to the smoothest compliment.

‘I wonder if the objects of your inexhaustible charity know you are a spitfire of the first order,’ he mused, but this time she refused the bait.

‘They are my friends,’ she countered, mildly enough, ‘and as such aware of my faults without you taking the trouble to point them out, Sir Adam.’

‘No doubt,’ he replied amiably, and proceeded to guide her past a particularly persistent puddle.

Infuriating wretch! How dared he be so irritating and look so devastatingly handsome while he did it? Yet she suspected that even if he had been born as plain and homely as a man could rightly be, he would still have commanded the attention of any room he walked into—and why on earth wouldn’t he take the hint and turn his charm and wit and undoubted looks on some other unfortunate woman and stop plaguing her with them?

She had resolved to avoid the man when she noticed how his eyes heated whenever she met them, but he now seemed determined to force a meeting on her. A craven part of her wanted to wrench her hand from the warm contact on his russet coat sleeve and run away before she let herself consider the flesh-and-blood man underneath it, and reawakened some of the wicked fantasies that had been disturbing her dreams since he had come home. If she had ever met a man who inspired such contrary emotions in her she was very certain she would have recalled him, and a seductive voice whispered how very satisfying it might be to be constantly surprised, exasperated and seduced by such a faulty and unforgettable gentleman for the rest of her days.

Utter rubbish, of course, and the sooner her life returned to its usual mundane serenity the better. Until Sir Adam had come home from the wars the unchanging routine at Windham had been so soothingly predictable—and novelty, Serena decided huffily, was vastly overrated.

‘The news from Spain is decidedly mixed, is it not?’ she finally asked, in the hope of introducing a topic even he couldn’t bend to his own ends. The storming of Badajos by Lord Wellington’s Peninsular army had cost so many deaths Serena wasn’t sure whether to cheer or weep, and felt vaguely ashamed of herself for using it as a means to deflect a possible proposal and the discomfort and distress it would cost her to refuse him.

‘Very,’ he replied, seriously enough to make her feel much better, so it was a shame she merely felt guilty for reminding a former soldier of what his comrades had so recently endured. ‘Old Nosey’s not that good at sieges, I’m afraid,’ he added, and she had little doubt he was one of those who saw past the glowing accounts of victory to the long lists of dead and injured.

‘I dare say you know his strengths and weaknesses better than most, Sir Adam,’ she replied.

The mere mention of his service in the Peninsular reminded her of her first sight of him as a fully adult male, in the prime of his life and power, instead of the annoying brother of her best friend she remembered from that humiliating encounter as a rebellious girl. Captain Sir Adam Langthorne, dark-haired, dark-eyed and breathtakingly handsome, in silver-laced blue coat and all the attendant glory of a cavalry officer’s uniform, had still had the power to disturb her six months later. It ought to be made illegal for any man not blessed with a squint, or a figure akin to the Prince Regent’s portly one, to go abroad so decked out in the presence of susceptible ladies. Now he had sold out of the Queen’s Light Dragoons she would get over the memory, of course—if she contrived to avoid him a little more successfully in future.

Today his russet coat fitted loosely, and his shabby leathers shouldn’t enhance his powerful figure. But neither did anything to disguise the latent strength in his broad shoulders and those long and sleekly muscled legs. Put her brother-in-law in such a ramshackle outfit and he would look like a carter instead of an earl, yet Sir Adam looked just as dangerous as ever.

‘Your brother-in-law has just informed me the war is costing too much and our army should be brought home—to do nothing, presumably,’ he now informed her rather shortly, as if he was still restraining himself from telling his most powerful neighbour and fellow magistrate exactly what he thought of such waverers.

‘Henry has no concept of military strategy or battle tactics, I’m afraid,’ Serena said apologetically. Her brother-in-law probably had no idea how offensive such second-hand ideas were to a man who had seen what price the expeditionary forces were paying for keeping some of Bonaparte’s most battle-hardened generals so unsuccessfully occupied.

‘If he paid more attention to you and regarded his wife’s arrant nonsense a little less, I dare say he might speak a little sense once in a while,’ Adam said ruefully, and there was laughter and something more disturbing back in his fascinating eyes.

They were too complex to be categorised as just brown, she decided dreamily. His pupils were rayed with gold, as if permanently touched with sunlight, and there was a depth of rich colour to the rest that had nothing simple about it—although she really shouldn’t be intimately acquainted with them. Oh dear, now she was cataloguing his assets like a besotted schoolgirl! She looked away swiftly, but heat still surged through her in an embarrassing tide, and made her wish him distinctly less acute, for there was amusement and a little too much understanding of her confused feelings in his eyes now.

Having had six months to consider his graces, and one or two of his faults, she already knew he was tall enough to make her feel less lanky than usual. And she really must stop meeting his eyes in this coming fashion—just because she had met a gentleman who could look down at her without standing on a box! He was quick of thought and action for a tall man too, she remembered dreamily, picturing him exerting iron strength to stop a bolting horse stampeding through Marclecombe village and threatening to crush a child under its deadly hooves…

Reminding herself he was also impatient and domineering, and as irritating and persistent as a burr, she slanted a minatory glare at him, adding ‘managing’ to his list of faults. One benefit of widowhood was her freedom from being managed, she reminded herself sharply. And of course being excused marital duties. Given her late husband’s outspoken disgust with a wife who could not even give him a daughter in four years of marriage, that was a decided advantage.

Guilty that she couldn’t mourn a man who had changed from a light-hearted and carelessly charming fiancé into a spendthrift husband with a foul temper and worse habits, she ordered herself to be more dutiful. It hadn’t been George’s fault she had been too young to tell love from infatuation—although he had killed any lingering enchantment stone dead by the time he had died. She shivered even in the bright sunlight and turned her attention to the present. Even with the conundrum that was Sir Adam Langthorne in it, now was much more pleasant time in her life.

‘I can think of nothing more likely to cause trouble,’ she said, with a shudder at the thought of Henry being silly enough to listen to her views over his wife’s. ‘But pray tell me, is Rachel still busy with her spring cleaning?’ she added brightly, once more intent on finding a neutral topic of conversation.

‘Indeed, my house is not my own. I might wish myself back in Spain and enduring the rigours of campaign if not for certain compensations,’ he replied, with a warmth in his deep voice that shouldn’t make her senses sit up and take notice.

Drat the man! She should have known he could bend any subject to his own ends, and there it was again—that fascinating softening of his acute gaze she was determined to resist. If she once let him get the words out it would be the end to so much, and Rachel Langthorne’s friendship was too precious to lose because her brother refused to be set at a proper distance.

‘I suppose Burgess wishes to consult you about the lambing, Sir Adam?’ she asked, still trying to keep their conversation impersonal, despite his lazily amused gaze telling her he knew exactly what she was about.

‘I expect Burgess is all but finished with that,’ he replied, obligingly for once, ‘and at least he won’t talk me half to death while Mrs Burgess provides you with a list of her ailments and those of her numerous brood.’

‘Bearing twelve children and keeping ten alive is an achievement in itself,’ Serena told him, as she fought back a smile at this all-too-accurate description of Mrs Burgess’s preoccupations.

‘You’d think she would realise what was causing them by now, wouldn’t you, though?’ he asked with a wicked grin.

‘Well, really, Sir Adam!’

He raised one dark eyebrow and his eyes were alight with laughter. ‘I hope you’re not turning into a prig, Lady Summerton?’

‘Pray confine such comments to the gentlemen in future,’ she said stiffly, trying to remove her hand from the crook of his arm.

He bowed briefly, but placed his other hand over hers. She stilled immediately. ‘I beg your pardon. I thought you were beyond the series of hypocrisies and evasions that commonly make up polite conversation,’ he told her, and she couldn’t tell if he was teasing or deadly serious.

‘Then you thought wrongly.’

‘Perhaps,’ he replied enigmatically, releasing her hand at last—only to clasp it again as he helped her over a stile and onto the footpath that led to Red Bridge Farm.

‘I’m a conventional creature, Sir Adam. Despite any rumours you might have heard to the contrary,’ she made herself say airily, over the thundering of her heartbeat as she leant on his strength as briefly as she could without tripping over.

‘I don’t listen to rumour, my lady. Instead I like to gather facts and make an informed judgement for myself.’

‘If only more of our kind did that,’ she replied impulsively, and risked undoing all the good she had managed to do herself by smiling up at him as if they were more than the mere acquaintances she had assured herself they were.

Luckily he resisted such an obvious opening, and returned her look with a quizzical one of his own. ‘It has often occurred to me that most of the nobility and gentry don’t have nearly enough to do—unlike you, my lady.’

‘I hate being idle,’ she told him earnestly.

She didn’t have it in her to be as elegantly useless as her sister-in-law, although Amelia was increasing, and had an excuse at the moment, and the Dowager Countess was a martyr to rheumatics. As the only Countess of Summerton currently willing and able to carry out her duties, there was little risk of Serena becoming bored. Yet at four and twenty should her life really be so settled, so relentlessly unchanging? The suspicion that it shouldn’t had been driving her harder than ever of late, and she was almost sure Adam Langthorne had nothing to do with that unease.

‘How fortunate you married a Cambray, then,’ he now said brusquely. ‘But if your neighbours had their way, Countess Amelia and the Dowager would do more, and you would wear yourself to a wraith considerably less.’

‘The Dowager is ill and my sister-in-law in an interesting condition, Sir Adam,’ she replied, and told herself that ‘wraith’ was a gross exaggeration of her natural slenderness. She tried not to stare down at her person as if checking for too much skin and bone.

‘Since the other Ladies Summerton spend their time lying on sofas countermanding one another’s orders, it would do them a great deal of good to exert themselves now and again before the furniture collapses under their indolence,’ he observed sardonically, as if he had no idea why she was frowning down at her faded morning gown as if she had never seen it before.

If he dared to mock her preoccupation with his suggestion she was too thin she would turn on her heel and walk away, Mrs Burgess or no Mrs Burgess. Anyway, the Burgesses were Sir Adam’s tenants, and not Henry’s, so why she was here in the first place was beyond her. Tradition, the Dowager had claimed, since Burgess’s mother had been head housemaid up at the Hall, and at Windham tradition was everything.

‘It would do them both good to be more active,’ he went on, either oblivious to her frown or indifferent to it. ‘Then you could find a better use for your time.’

‘I’m happy as I am,’ she told him, dangerous ground shifting under her feet as a possible alternative presented itself.

‘No, you’re not unhappy,’ he insisted. ‘Which is a vastly different state from being truly happy. You spend your life waiting for the party to start.’

‘I have no liking for parties,’ she told him crossly.

Was he about to make her a very improper suggestion that she should spend lots of time lying about on the furniture with him, somewhere louche and forbidden? Or an honourable offer of marriage? Not to be thought of, she decided, impatient with herself for even momentarily lingering on the image of herself as a sinful houri, much too available for a gentleman’s pleasure, or an active and much appreciated wife. According to George she’d had no talent for either position and, considering how mistaken she had been about their marriage, she would be twenty times a fool to contemplate another—even if Sir Adam were ever so willing to put his head in the parson’s mousetrap, which she very much doubted from the slightly feral gleam in his eyes just at the moment.

‘Only because you lack the nerve to enjoy them,’ he told her inexcusably. ‘I’ve watched you sitting with the chaperones nobody else has the time or inclination to bother with, and playing the piano for the so-called “young people” to dance to. What happened to the eager young girl you used to be? The one I recall whispering mischief with my sister when you were schoolgirls together, and refusing to be awed by any threat or stratagem I could think up to keep you in line before you landed yourself and Rachel in Newgate? You do your best to fade into the furniture, and people have the devil of a job recalling if you were even at the few social engagements you attend. When you made your debuts my sister used to write about your mutual misdeeds so joyfully that I could tell you were doing her a great deal of good. Where did the headlong miss who danced every dance on her card and still found the energy to drive herself about the town in her own curricle and pair the next day and set the tabbies by the ears get off to, my lady?’

‘None of your business,’ she told him shortly, and glared at him as she wrestled for possession of her hand in a most unladylike fashion, winning at last only because she knew he would never knowingly hurt her.

‘Rachel’s letters used to come alive with the misdeeds the two of you perpetrated,’ he continued relentlessly. ‘Despite her terrible grief when poor Tom Hollard died, I thought such a lively neighbour would cheer her in time. Instead my sister is intent on becoming an antidote, and if the pair of you went to town for the season, I dare say you’d only attend Blue Stocking soirees and church.’

‘That we shouldn’t. We’d dance ’til dawn to prove you wrong, Sir Adam, even if we wore our poor feet raw,’ she snapped. ‘You should thank your stars we’re so conventional nowadays.’

‘Never!’ he vowed, and there was no mistaking the resolution in his steadfast gaze now, even if it did seem very different from the one she’d thought. ‘You might be happy to watch Rachel dwindle into a reclusive old maid who’ll soon start breeding lapdogs, but I’m not. I want the eager young woman Rachel was before Tom died back, and you’re going to help me.’

‘Even though you just pointed out how staid I am?’ she asked coldly.

‘You think this good enough for my sister? This not unhappy state you have fallen into as if you were both four and sixty instead of four and twenty? Well, I think it only half a life. Yes, Rachel suffered a terrible tragedy, and you endured an unhappy marriage, but life didn’t stop because of it.’

‘My marriage is none of your business,’ she informed him very stiffly, as she did her best to retrieve her hand once more from the firm, warm clasp he had taken it in while she was preoccupied with his incendiary words.

He obviously despised her for losing the reckless spirit she had faced life with once upon a time. Just as well she didn’t need his approval nor want it. No longer being the thoughtless creature he had contrarily admired, she checked her temper, unclenched her teeth and forced herself to consider his words. Was this life enough? Not for her—she had taken her gamble on life and lost—but for Rachel?

‘You know Rachel loved Lieutenant Hollard very deeply,’ she said carefully, despising herself for the hesitant words issuing from her own lips.

‘You mean to warn me that my sister’s feelings run deep, my lady?’ he asked more gently.

She marvelled that he could go so quickly from stern commander to gentleman, whose reassuring presence invited confidence. And why was it that when he called her ‘my lady’ like that it suddenly seemed more like a promise than a rather archaic form of address? For a moment it seemed the most natural thing in the world to unburden herself, but then she decided it was a useful trick developed after years commanding troops.

‘Rachel may have put a brave face on her grief in her letters to you, but she was devastated when Lieutenant Hollard was killed.’

‘I read between the lines. But she was nineteen when Tom Hollard went down with his ship, and he would not have wanted her to wear the willow.’

‘Rachel could never cast his memory aside,’ Serena said with a frown. Yet at least Rachel had the lodestone of true love to measure her feelings against. So, yes, perhaps she could be happy with another man.

‘Tom wouldn’t want this state of not quite content for her,’ he said, with a flash of something in his golden-brown eyes that she couldn’t read. ‘It’s time my sister had another chance, Lady Summerton. Are you friend enough to help her take it?’

‘She’ll have my unflagging support once I’m convinced it’s for the best,’ she said, ‘but Rachel didn’t enjoy her debut very much.’

‘No, and she’s a stubborn minx,’ Sir Adam agreed philosophically. ‘But although she can’t be pushed she can be led—if one goes about it the right way.’

‘Which is?’ she asked, offended by the idea of his manipulating her friend, even with the best of intentions.

‘You sound every inch a countess when you put on that cut-glass voice and look down your inadequate nose at me, my dear.’

‘I’m not your dear, and it’s a perfectly good nose,’ she exclaimed, then frowned at him for provoking such childishness.

‘It is a perfect little nose—just not very well suited to looking down,’ he replied outrageously.

Serena wondered how Rachel had resisted the urge to murder him when they were in their nursery, for he must have been the most exasperating of brothers then, however considerate he was now. ‘My nose is irrelevant, Sir Adam, and if you’re so worried, why don’t you do something about it?’

‘What? Your nose? I like it very well as it is,’ he replied with an infuriating grin.

‘How flattering. But unfortunately your opinion of myself and my features is a matter of indifference to me. Confine yourself to your sister’s affairs,’ she informed him with frigid dignity.

‘She doesn’t have any,’ he informed her unrepentantly.

‘Something most brothers would be profoundly grateful for.’

‘I knew you hadn’t really become missish in your old age, Lady Summerton,’ he said, with every appearance of satisfaction.

Recognising his tactic of infuriating her to the point of indiscretion, she took a very deep breath and counted to ten. ‘Either stick to the subject in hand, Sir Adam, or I’ll drop my basket on your toe,’ she informed him coolly.

‘It’s really is most ungallant of me not to be carrying it in the first place. Whatever will Mrs Burgess say?’

‘I don’t care a straw what the wretched woman says. Give it back,’ she demanded, as he whisked the offending article out of her hand and put it on the grass at his side.

‘No. Now, stop distracting me and stick to our sheep,’ he goaded her, that wicked, compelling smile warming his gaze once more.

‘Pot calling kettle black, Sir Adam? You’re the one whose attention keeps wandering from the subject under discussion.’

‘With very good reason,’ he said with apparent satisfaction as his gaze dwelt on her animated face.

‘For no reason at all, so far as I can see,’ she countered smartly. Only to be confounded as he raised his eyebrows and gave her another of those warmly approving looks.

‘No,’ he replied softly, ‘I dare say you can’t.’

‘Oh, pray stop treating me like an idiot, and tell me how you plan to get Rachel to change her mind about marriage?’ she demanded impatiently.

Wrongfoot her and charm her as he would, she refused to succumb to the potent spell of a tall and handsome gentleman blessed with a wicked sense of humour and a very astute mind. Then there was his strength and integrity—qualities that would outlive mere bodily vigour, she reminded herself distractedly.

‘Very well, then, I shall take her to town—suitably chaperoned, of course.’

As his intent gaze fixed on her, Serena could hardly mistake the chaperon he had in mind. So that was why he had been conspiring to get her alone for so long. It was all she could do not to stamp her feet and fall into strong hysterics. All this time she had avoided him and he wanted her to chaperon his sister! She was delighted not to have to refuse a discreet affair between two untrammelled adults, of course, and need no longer call on Rachel when he was out. Except if he had his way she wouldn’t need to call on Rachel. She would be living with her.

Chapter Two

Serena had decided years ago that not even Sir Charles Grandison and brave young Lochinvar rolled into one dashingly perfect gentleman could persuade her to marry again. Not that Sir Adam had marriage in mind. No, even if he had been attempting to get her alone, he had a very different proposition to make her. Anyway, although he looked like a hero, Sir Adam Langthorne would probably tell a damsel in distress to pull herself together and fight her own dragons before he rode to her rescue. For some reason that sounded a wickedly tempting combination in a suitor, so it was just as well he had no intention of courting her.

‘That chaperon certainly won’t be me,’ she snapped, taken by surprise both by his determination to turn her into Rachel’s duenna and her own unwavering opposition.

Half an hour ago she might have found the idea of being removed from her monotonous routine and a distinctly unpromising future alluring—and in Rachel’s company as well. So why was she about to refuse such an escape from her responsibilities?

‘I should wait to be asked if I were you, my lady,’ he reproved, that infuriating smile once again making her palm itch to slap it off his lips.

‘I still won’t do it,’ she insisted implacably.

‘Well, that settles that, then,’ he said. And if he was trying to appear cast down he was failing dismally.

The wretched man was confident of getting his way; she could see it by the unwavering determination of his firm mouth and his golden-brown eyes had a glint in them she deeply mistrusted.

‘Unlucky Rachel, to possess such a fair weather friend,’ he said mournfully, and this time her wrist actually swung out before she sharply ordered it back to her side, and glared at him with infuriated ferocity instead.

‘We have no need to prove our friendship, sir, so I suggest you save your tricks for those who might be taken in by them,’ she told him, with a glare that should tell him she was too polite to say what she really felt about his stubborn aim of getting his own way, whatever the consequences.

‘If I ever find another lady so perfectly suited to bear my sister company I shall seek your advice,’ he said blandly, and she could see no lessening of his iron resolve whatsoever. ‘I’m determined to turn her thoughts into more hopeful channels, and she trusts you, my lady,’ he insisted relentlessly. ‘Rachel won’t put her confidence in a stranger.’

‘Perhaps, but she needs someone older to reintroduce her to the ton,’ she countered.

‘Indeed,’ he agreed meekly. ‘But such a hardened cynic might misjudge my sister and try to shuffle her onto someone rich and titled but totally unsuitable in every other way, don’t you think? While Rachel’s capable of fending off such an insensitive soul herself, it would probably ruin her stay, and you would let her pick out her own suitors.’

‘Rachel’s chaperon will be in for a surprise if you let her expect meek agreement with her every whim,’ Serena persisted.

‘No, she won’t. You know her too well for that.’ He held up his hand when she gathered breath to condemn his high-handed assumption that she would agree to his scheme. ‘I don’t want Rachel to be upset by battling over every detail from the cut and colour of her gown to how many steps she can take in the park with a beau without causing a scandal. Together you can both ease yourselves back into the polite world and actually enjoy yourselves,’ he replied, so reasonably that Serena had to remind herself she was in danger of being manipulated by a master.

‘I refuse to tell my best friend how to run her life,’ she said doggedly.

‘Little chance of that—which is why this arrangement will suit so well, if I can bring it about,’ he said with a wry smile.

‘Do you always arrange the lives of your family and friends in the way you feel is most likely to do them good, Sir Adam?’

‘Whenever I can,’ he replied, with an unrepentant shrug.

‘Lord, how I pity them.’

‘Lady, you have no need to,’ he told her, and suddenly there was an infinity of promises in those intriguing eyes of his, and she felt a shiver run down her spine that had to be apprehension—didn’t it?

‘So you say,’ she managed to reply, steadily enough.

‘So I know,’ he said quietly, and this time there was a steadfast intent in his gaze that worried her more than anything that had passed between them so far.

Serena made a determined effort to put everything else aside and concentrate on Rachel’s well-being. ‘I’m not sure I could stop the staidest two-in-hand racing out of control,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘let alone keep Rachel from being overwhelmed by unsuitable gentlemen.’

Rachel Langthorne was a considerable heiress and, even if she was far too shrewd to fall for a fortune-hunter, would find the ton at play intimidating after so long at Marclecombe, caring for her grandparents and more lately her ungrateful brother. For Rachel’s sake Serena supposed she had to take this idea seriously, even if going to London for the season in Sir Adam’s company was the last thing she should do if she had any sense at all.

‘You’d soon get back into the way of it,’ he said with remarkable gentleness. And Serena didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was referring to driving a pair of spirited Welsh greys around Hyde Park.

‘Not if I stay here, I won’t,’ she replied stubbornly.

‘Faint heart,’ he accused her lightly, as if he was supremely confident she would see things his way if he persisted long enough.

‘If you like,’ she told him steadily, striving for the appearance of indifference, even if she couldn’t quite manage the fact.

‘I’m not one to meekly give up on an enterprise likely to succeed so well, Lady Summerton,’ he warned her, with a mildness she refused to mistake for wavering of purpose—he was altogether too dangerous to her peace of mind for such leeway.

‘And that enterprise is?’ she demanded frostily.

He had the effrontery to laugh at her imitation of an affronted aristocrat before sobering. ‘My sister’s future happiness, of course,’ he told her seriously. An underhand statement if ever she’d heard one—for how could she argue with such a motive?

‘I’m not convinced going to London would enhance it,’ she argued stubbornly.

‘We’ll see who’s right when we get there, then.’

‘No, for I’m staying here, remember?’

‘Of course,’ he agreed, with a smug smile that was enough to try the most patient of saints as they approached Burgesses’ rather perfunctory front garden at last, and Serena was forced to swallow a less than polite reply.

‘Oh, my lady and Sir Adam—what a pleasure to see you both,’ Mrs Burgess declared rather breathlessly as she bustled out of the front door.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Burgess, and how are you today?’

‘None too stout, I fear, Lady Summerton.’ The worthy lady faltered, and Serena sent Sir Adam a reproving look when she saw his broad shoulders shake—for Mrs Burgess was very far from slender after her many pregnancies.

‘I’m very sorry to hear it. Perhaps we could all take a glass of your delicious cowslip wine while you tell us all about it, Mrs Burgess?’ said Serena.

Which would serve him right, she decided. The idea of Sir Adam Langthorne choking down this good lady’s home-made wine when he was reputed to have the finest cellar in the county made her long to laugh out loud.

‘None of that potent brew for me thank you, ma’am, I need to keep a clear head for whatever business your husband has with me,’ he informed their hostess with an engaging smile—the slippery rogue. ‘But there’s no reason you and her ladyship can’t have a comfortable coze before I see her home.’

‘I can find my own way, thank you, Sir Adam.’

‘Normally I’m sure you would, Lady Summerton, but after indulging in Mrs Burgess’s famous cowslip you might go astray. We can’t have her ladyship spending the night in a ditch, can we, Mrs Burgess?’

Serena might have been tempted to argue for the ditch if her hostess’s eager ears had not been taking in every word. Instead she sent Sir Adam a pallid smile that promised revenge, and allowed herself to be led into the parlour and fed plum cake and gossip while she cautiously sampled her wine. It really was quite pleasant, she decided, and she was thirsty. But when Mrs Burgess would have topped up her glass she managed to refuse.

‘I have no wish to become tipsy and prove Sir Adam right—delicious as this is, Mrs Burgess,’ she excused herself, and sipped gratefully at the cup of tea she was offered instead. ‘Now, tell me all about this ghost the sexton saw the other night. It sounds a most unlikely tale to me, and I can’t help but wonder if he hadn’t been at your excellent wine.’

‘I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of him,’ Mrs Burgess declared with a disgusted sniff. ‘That ne’er do well would drink the dregs out of the chalice of a Sunday if he could get hold of them. The drink has got to him well and truly at long last, and I dare say he’ll be found laid in one of his own graves one morning, stone-dead. I’ll believe in that there ghost when I set eyes on it and not before, my lady.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it, as all sorts of wild tales are doing the rounds. A voice against it is most welcome.’

If rather surprising, Serena added in her head. Mrs Burgess usually believed every wild rumour that went around, and added a few embellishments before passing them on. She had several times told Serena that the French were stealing Burgess’s turnips and the eggs from her hen-house, despite the fact that Red Bridge Farm was seventy miles from the sea.

‘And that daft besom he’s married to has spread tales as would make your hair curl,’ Mrs Burgess went on indignantly.

‘Has she indeed?’

‘Said this ghost of his rose up out of the Canderton vault and that Lady Canderton was walking, she did, my lady. I told her sharpish that my old mistress was as respectable a woman as ever walked God’s good earth. She would no more come back to haunt us than the King himself would—if he was dead, of course, which he ain’t. Might just as well be, the poor mad soul, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m not having that baggage putting it about that my poor late lady’s unquiet in her grave, for she was as decent a woman as you could find in the whole of England.’

Serena vaguely remembered hearing Mrs Burgess had been in service before she’d wed. The family had died out with Sir William Canderton’s death twenty years before, just a few months after his formidable mother went to her own eternal rest. The land had been sold off to pay wild Sir William’s debts, and the ancient house demolished as a danger to anyone rash enough to venture inside its rotten shell.

Mrs Burgess was probably the only one who cared if the Candertons were at peace or not, and that seemed rather sad. Serena set herself to soothe her with such a liberal helping of sympathy and flattery that by the time Sir Adam reappeared her head was reeling with our Liza’s hives, the shocking price Mrs Burgess’s remaining eggs had fetched at market, and the French spies who were ruining the country from within.

‘You should have kept on with the wine,’ her escort informed her unsympathetically when they finally got away from the voluble farmer’s wife. ‘No doubt the infernal woman talked you into a headache anyway. More alcohol might have blurred her confounded rigmarole.’

‘I doubt I could keep sufficient guard on my tongue.’

‘There’s that, of course, but once she’s in full flow I doubt she hears what anyone else has to say.’

‘Probably not. But she was in a rare state over the rumour Wharton is putting about. I’ve never heard her as voluble as she was today.’

‘Whereas Burgess is as close mouthed as she is loose-tongued—which may explain why they go on so well together. He’s the ideal audience, and she saves him the effort of thinking of aught to say.’

‘So far as I can tell Mrs Burgess is upset that the sexton said he saw a ghost coming from the vault where her late mistress is laid. She takes offence that so virtuous and generous a mistress should be thought to trouble the living instead of staying respectably dead.’

‘I hope time will deal so well with my reputation after I’m gone, then. Lady Canderton was a complete tartar. They had the pew behind ours in church, and she used to clip me round the ear whenever she felt I wasn’t paying enough attention to the sermon. She once got me a fine beating for stealing cherries out of her kitchen garden as well.’

‘Deserved, I suspect,’ she said unsympathetically.

‘Rachel was the culprit. But maybe Lady Canderton thought I should take her punishment as I shared her booty.’

‘None of which gives reason for her ghost to walk. Indeed, it sounds like a mare’s nest to me, and I dare say Mrs Burgess is right.’

‘That seems unlikely. But about what?’

‘The sexton is addicted to the bottle—and not her cowslip wine neither, “for he ain’t worthy to so much as taste it.”’

‘Are you sure you didn’t have too much yourself?’ he asked, grinning at her imitation of the voluble woman.

‘Not nearly enough, I assure you, Sir Adam. Now our ways must diverge, as I need to see Janet Partridge and I doubt she wants to see a gentleman when she’s so near her time.’

‘I dare say you’re right, but I’ll escort you to her door nonetheless. Gadding about the countryside alone with all those light-fingered Frenchmen and restless ghosts running about is pure folly, my lady.’

Sensing a serious note under his teasing, she wondered fleetingly what it might feel like to be ruthlessly bullied for her own good by Sir Adam Langthorne for the rest of her life. She had undoubtedly drunk too much of that wine after all, because it seemed a seductively attractive notion—and that would never do.

‘I doubt if either are bold enough to venture abroad in daylight, and I have no wish to visit the churchyard or Hangar Woods during the hours of darkness, I assure you.’

‘You have no taste for the gothic, my lady?’

‘None whatsoever—which shows a sad want of sensibility I dare say. Indeed, I can imagine nothing more horrid than coming across a headless spectre or a restless spirit while I’m busily minding my own business and harming nobody.’

‘I suspect one or two of them might like to come across such an appealing quarry as yourself, though. But it’s my belief Wharton is hiding something in that churchyard and means to frighten everyone away from it—especially after dark.’

‘So you intend to go there just to confound him?’ she asked sharply.

‘Maybe I’m foolish enough to wonder what a supernatural encounter might be like,’ he admitted laconically. Why did she think he was serious about this odd business? Surely there weren’t really French spies running about rural Herefordshire for want of something better to do?

‘Trust a man to be curious,’ she accused, knowing she had no right to protest his determination to run headlong into the first danger that presented itself because he might be bored after his adventures in Spain.

‘And trust a woman to know best,’ he parried infuriatingly.

‘Not two minutes ago you were warning me to be careful, and it’s commonly held to be the other way about.’

‘Have you never wanted to break out of the role you were allotted in life, Lady Summerton?’

‘Frequently. But then I grew up.’

‘Ah, so that explains it! Women grow up and men just learn to hide their curiosity a little better.’

‘Or we pique your curiosity, so you satisfy it at no cost to ourselves.’

‘Then you want to know about the ghost after all?’

‘No, but I should like to know just what Wharton is hiding in that vault.’

‘Meet me there tonight and find out, then,’ he challenged her, and for a reckless moment she was sorely tempted.

Sharing outrageous midnight adventures with Sir Adam Langthorne seemed the ideal way of proving to both of them that she wasn’t as staid and colourless as he thought. Glimmers of the wild young girl she had once been, up for any mischief on offer, must still lie under Countess Serena’s sober façade after all. She reminded herself that reckless actions led to uncomfortable consequences and managed to crush her inner hoyden for the time being.

‘Not even if I consumed a whole bottle of Mrs Burgess’s wine. You’re a former soldier, and used to alarms and night watches. It’s probably your job to satisfy the curiosity of your neighbours while we sleep safely.’

‘I hope I know better than to go looking for trouble, but I’m also a churchwarden, and duty must outweigh caution.’

‘Good luck, then, Sir Adam,’ she managed to say, cheerfully enough, and offered him her hand in farewell as she opened the Partridges’ front gate.

He bowed over it like a beau from a previous age, and kissed it lightly instead of shaking it. Fire shot through her, as if he had touched his lips to bare flesh instead of her supple leather glove. She snatched her hand back and looked about her. Luckily the men were at work and the women busy cooking. This time she had been lucky, but she must avoid him in future.

‘Thomas will meet me here with the gig,’ she lied brightly.

‘He must have learnt the dark art of being in two places at the same time, then. When I met him not half an hour ago he was on his way to Hereford. Either he’s a top sawyer and that old grey nag a phenomenon, or you’re guilty of shameless untruth, my lady.’

‘It’s not at all the thing for a gentleman to argue with a lady,’ she said hotly, squirming at being caught out under his amused gaze.

‘Dear me, what a hard furrow such paragons choose to plough.’

‘How would you know?’ she muttered under her breath, but his sharp ears caught her words and he gave her an unrepentant grin.

‘I wouldn’t, of course. But I’ll meet you here after I’ve seen the smith. Shall we say half an hour, my lady?’

‘You can say what you like, Sir Adam,’ she replied with a shrug she hoped looked as pettish as she felt. ‘I’ll go my own way.’

‘I can’t tell you how glad I am about the first part of that statement. Half an hour and no longer,’ he ordered, and turned away, as certain of being obeyed as if she were a subaltern under his command.

She’d see about that, she decided militantly, tapping at the front door.

‘Lady Serena—how lovely,’ her once properly reserved ladies’ maid exclaimed. ‘Come on in off the street, do,’ she ordered as they embraced with a lack of reserve Serena’s sister-in-law would have found profoundly distasteful between one-time maid and mistress.

How that neat, coolly efficient maid had once intimidated her, Serena recalled ruefully. Yet since coming to Windham as the new Lady Summerton she and her personal maid had become firm friends. Indeed, Janet knew a great deal about her that Serena had trusted in nobody else. Over the last five years the aloof little Londoner had blossomed, and become as staunch a convert to country life as you could find anywhere—especially since succumbing to Zachary Partridge’s heartfelt pleas to become his wife.

‘Marriage suits you, Janet,’ she told her.

‘Ruined my figure, but I dare say Partridge’ll not stray far.’

‘He can’t take his eyes off you long enough to look elsewhere, and well you know it.’

‘I’d never have married him otherwise, Lady Serena,’ Janet said, and sent her a speculative look. ‘Time you found yourself a good man who loves you, Lady Serena. It’s two years since himself died, and not even the Countess Almighty could object.’

‘I like my independence too well to give it up.’

‘Independence? Those other two countesses don’t let you rest from sunrise to sunset—and I never took you for a coward, my lady,’ Janet told her sternly.

Serena wondered why her words never seemed to carry weight. ‘I’m not made for domesticity, and prefer to stay as I am.’

‘I did say you must find a good man this time,’ Janet chided, more gently, and Serena knew they could stand here arguing all day and never agree. Janet was like a dog at a bone when she was trying to organise the life of one of the select band of people she truly loved.

‘Well, your Zach might live under the cat’s paw nowadays, but I cunningly escaped you when you married him, and fully intend to follow my own path from now on,’ she teased, and a militant light came into her old friend’s eyes.

‘Cat’s paw, my foot,’ Janet snorted. ‘Sir Adam Langthorne is a fine man,’ she continued, as if she had not heard a single word Serena said.

‘Yes? And what has that to do with the price of fish?’

‘He’ll make some lucky lady a fine husband.’

‘I’m sure he will, but he certainly won’t be mine.’

‘Strong men don’t have anything to prove, so he’ll treat his lady like a queen, I’m thinking.’

‘I dare say. I’ll dance at his wedding when it comes.’

‘Happen you’ll do it with a heavy heart, then,’ Janet insisted.

‘Nonsense. I’ll wish him very happy.’

‘Aye, and so will I—supposing he weds the right lady,’ Janet agreed, with a significant look at her former mistress.

‘Today, however, I wish him at Jericho. So, unless you have any other plans for the rest of my life to discuss, I’ll take myself off and be in good time for my dinner for once.’

‘Sir Adam has the look of a very determined gentleman,’ Janet observed with some satisfaction.

‘And I’m an equally determined lady,’ Serena declared firmly, hoping that was the last she would hear of the subject. Sir Adam had taken up too much of her day already, and she didn’t care to grant him any more of it.

‘There now—even you admit how well matched you are, Lady Serena. Fate. That’s what it is.’

‘It’s wishful thinking, and next time I come I hope you’re thinking straighter.’

Janet put her head on one side, as if to deliberate better—a sign that a pearl of wisdom was about to fall. ‘With respect, my lady, it’s your thoughts that have got out of the way of running true, and we both know why.’

‘Maybe, but luckily I’m in too much haste to stay and argue with you today, Janet. So, if there is nothing else you want to lecture me about, we can have a really good dispute about it another day.’

Giving her tenacious ex-maid a quick peck on the cheek, Serena hurried out of the neat house on the village green before Janet could regroup. Only twenty minutes had gone by, so she could set out for Windham with impunity. She had never asked Sir Adam to treat her as if she were a young miss just out of the schoolroom, so a few minutes cooling his heels outside Janet’s house might prevent him repeating that particular error.

Chapter Three

One more turn in the village street and Serena would be alone in open country. Or at least she would be, had Sir Adam not been sitting in his curricle, waiting for her to appear, like a rather handsome spider in the midst of a well-spun web. How had the wretched man managed to summon up such a neat equipage at short notice? she wondered crossly.

‘You’re late, Lady Summerton,’ he said, by way of greeting.

‘I’m ten minutes early,’ she was flustered into saying. Then could have kicked herself for making it sound as if their assignation existed anywhere but in his head.

‘On the contrary, you’re at least five minutes after I expected you,’ he argued. ‘If you wanted to confound me, you should have slipped out of your friend’s back door.’

It was quite true; the shortcut across the fields would have got her to Windham much more quickly and he would never have seen her. Whatever had she been thinking of not to use it? Did a secret, rebellious part of her really want his company so badly that quarrelling with him was preferable to not seeing him at all? Next time there was the least chance of avoiding him she must seize it determinedly—if only to prove to herself he meant nothing to her. Maybe then he would take the hint and stop plaguing her.

She was so sunk in gloom at this happy notion that she let him hand her into his curricle before she noticed she was doing as he had planned all along.

‘I haven’t the least wish to ride home with you,’ she protested idiotically, and she didn’t need his amused grin to feel a fool when she was doing such a good job by herself.

‘Your reluctance is duly noted,’ he said solemnly, and set his team in motion.

‘And you fully intend to ignore it?’

‘Precisely. The fact that you’re here speaks for itself.’

‘You are ungallant, Sir Adam.’

‘And you’re in the mood to argue with your own nose today, my lady.’

‘I’m not considered in the least contrary by anyone else I know,’ she told him between clenched teeth.

‘Of course not. You’re far too busy trying to please them all to argue with anybody. Which makes me wonder why you resist my perfectly natural wish to make your life more comfortable so stubbornly.’

‘I have an aversion to being managed, and milk-and-water misses get trampled all over,’ she said with an audible sniff.

‘How would you know?’

‘I have observed it,’ she said, and shivered.

‘Cold, my dear?’

‘No, and I’m not your dear.’

‘Even you can’t police my thoughts, Lady Summerton,’ he said, with that wicked glint back in eyes she had no intention of meeting, despite the shiver of awareness that shot through her at the intriguing idea of reading those thoughts there.

‘Then pray govern your tongue, Sir Adam,’ she said primly, fervently hoping her waspishness would divert him from the silly blush that had stolen over every exposed inch of skin.

‘I’ll endeavour to do so, my lady,’ he said smoothly, sounding not in the least bit chastened as he gave his pair the office to trot.

Something told her their thoughts were in a most embarrassing harmony on the forbidden subject of her finding out just what it might be like to be mercilessly ravished by the handsome, intelligent and uniquely intriguing gentleman who was Sir Adam Langthorne. She felt ridiculously ignorant of such sensual delights, and she was quite certain they would indeed be almost too delightful. He might be arrogant, and far too certain that he knew best, but she suspected he’d be a lover to eclipse all others. Not that she intended taking any more. Appalled at the direction of her own unwary thoughts, she mentally corrected herself. No, she never intended taking any lovers.

Not that he wouldn’t be a magnificent lover, she conceded silently. It was there in his heated appreciation of her, the way his eyes lingered on her slender curves and played over her slightly too generous mouth, as if intent on reassuring her that their pleasure would be absolutely mutual when she finally yielded to him. She believed it emphatically. It had been quite a revelation when she’d first caught the feral gleam in his dark and light eyes, and a warm shudder shook her at the memory of the flowering of heat it had awakened in her wilful body. Considering they could never be more than neighbours, however he might persuade her, such thoughts really were no help in her battle with her baser impulses. And neither was he, she decided militantly, as she once more caught that look of sensual amusement on his far too fascinating mouth, as if he could read her struggle with the ultimate temptation in her stormy eyes.

‘We’re going the wrong way,’ she informed him stiffly.

‘Not if we intend going via Thornfield Churchyard.’

‘Well, I certainly have no wish to visit the wretched place.’

‘It’s not dark, and you have told me many other things I intend to disprove today, my lady, so we might as well start with Thornfield and work our way down the list.’

‘No, let’s go to Windham Dower House instead, so I can take my leave of you, Sir Adam. Once I’m home you can chase ghosts all day and night with my heartfelt blessing. Take half the neighbourhood with you, as long as you leave me out of it.’

‘Shush. We’re nearly there, and you really shouldn’t be so uncivil to your neighbours—myself included.’

‘I won’t hush, and I like being uncivil. I didn’t want to come and I have no desire to racket about the countryside with a person who never listens to a single word I say,’ she said smartly, fervently wishing it were true. Something told her she might go with him to the ends of the earth if he asked with just the right pitch of need and hunger in his dark voice.

‘Coward. But why not just humour me for once? I would never have brought you if I thought you were in the slightest danger.’

‘Then your definition of danger and mine must be wildly out of kilter,’ she muttered darkly, then subsided into silence as he halted the curricle well short of the church and passed her the reins.

‘If I’m not back within a quarter of an hour fetch my head groom from the smithy, then go home,’ he ordered quietly, before jumping lithely down and ghosting off into the shadows himself, before she could think up a sufficiently indignant and crushing protest.

‘Insufferable, ungovernable, insensitive man,’ she muttered under her breath, but she sat and kept the pair as quiet as she could even so.

If it hadn’t been for her nagging fear that Sir Adam might end up lying disabled and hurt in the ancient churchyard, she might even have found this peaceful interlude quite pleasant, she decided, as she listened to the triumphant fugue of birdsong. Instead she had to force herself not to imagine ruthless villains lying in wait for him, and reluctantly considered his ridiculous scheme to find Rachel a husband to distract herself.

Her friend might be happier, more fulfilled than she was now if she were married to a good man. But after so many years of longing for her dead love, would a mere everyday one ever satisfy her? In such a mundane marriage Rachel might crave the unconventional life of an officer’s wife she would have had with Tom, if only he had survived long enough to live it with her. Excitement, Serena decided with a stern frown at an ancient yew tree that had done her no harm at all, was vastly overrated. Yet if she was strictly truthful she had been bored and restless with her own life for some time now. The question was, had she got to the point where she would grasp any opportunity to escape. Especially if Sir Adam were the one offering it to her, and with her best friend the supposed beneficiary?

Looked at dispassionately, she supposed a season in London with Rachel should be an offer seized on with delight, rather than regarded as a gift horse of the most suspicious variety. Yet she suspected Sir Adam had more in mind than diverting his sister’s thoughts from her lost love. The headlong Serena of her debutante days, that impulsive idiot he had just waxed so lyrical about, would have accepted his offer without a second thought, and worried about any consequences when they came along. Which was precisely why she refused to let the little ninny command her life now. If he thought to influence her by comparing her current lack of spirit with her overabundance of it during her youth, then he was very wide of his mark.

Indeed, if she could go back in time she would settle for one of the worthy young gentlemen who had laid their all at Lady Serena’s elegantly shod feet, instead of the more outwardly fascinating Lord Summerton. And if Sir Adam Langthorne considered her poor-spirited for choosing safety over risk with the benefit of hindsight, then he’d better find someone closer to her former self to confuse with his hot glances and arrogant certainty. A picture of a heady what-might-have-been slotted into her head. If only the then Lieutenant Langthorne had attended the same balls and parties as her younger self had, only to be ruthlessly dismissed. She knew the full treachery of air dreams nowadays, and reality invariably failed to live up to such fool’s gold promises.

She heard the church clock strike the quarter and could hardly believe only ten minutes had ticked by since he had left her sitting here, doing just what she had told herself she wouldn’t and thinking only of him. Even by considering his plan she was giving it credence. Janet’s coming baby was a much more attractive topic to dwell on, she decided resolutely, and spent five minutes wondering how much influence a godmother had over a child’s life, and if she was worthy of such a role.

All the time she was straining to hear the softest of footfalls on the mossy grass that grew under the yew grove at the churchyard perimeter. She felt she was fast becoming part of it. If only he would hurry back, he could drive his restless pair to Windham, restore her to her rightful place, and the world would settle back into its allotted course. By sitting here on pins, as if Sir Adam Langthorne’s safety was of prime importance to her, she was being drawn further and further away from her place of safety and deeper into the dangerous land of make-believe.

Tomorrow she would go and see Rachel, and between them they would circumvent the almighty Sir Adam and his ridiculous schemes. Unfortunately there was today to be got through first, and a cold fear was settling like ice in her belly, almost convincing her that he was lying in the graveyard gravely injured and in dire need of help. She shifted on seat cushions that were somehow becoming harder by the second, and began to seriously contemplate tying the reins to the rail and creeping to the rescue.

If he didn’t need rescuing, or was lying in wait for some nameless villain, she would spoil everything, of course. She would count to a hundred, and if he hadn’t put in an appearance by then, she would drive boldly up to the church and put paid to this whole ridiculous episode. Serve him right if she did put his quarry to flight, she decided militantly, for treating her like some inanimate parcel that could be left here until he was ready to deliver it. When she lost count and had to start again for the third time she gave up, and diverted herself by contriving fitting punishments for such a faulty gentleman.

‘Good girl.’ His deep voice seemed to arrive before he did, and she jumped several inches in the air.

‘I’m not a spaniel. And don’t creep up on people in such a fashion, Sir Adam. Unless you wish to see off your entire acquaintance from the apoplexy,’ she chided furiously. ‘It would serve you right if I was of a vapourish persuasion, just so you would have to cope with my delicate nerves after giving me such a shock.’

‘Believe me, Lady Serena, if they were that finely strung you wouldn’t be here in the first place. Your nerves are as stout as Mrs Burgess’s are wasted,’ he replied, looking infuriatingly unrepentant.

‘Then I must spend more time in her company in the hope of acquiring some sensibility.’

‘Pray do not. I’d hate to be deprived of your delightful companionship for such a flimsy reason—and even you must admit the good lady’s nerves are the only insubstantial thing about her.’

On the verge of a betraying chuckle, she forced her mouth into a straight line, ‘Stop it, Adam,’ she said with a stern look. ‘It’s not kind to mock a good woman.’

‘I promise never to do it again if you’ll call me by my name and not my title more often.’

‘That I won’t! I never meant such a coming piece of over-familiarity to slip out in the first place.’

‘A pity. As we’ll be seeing so much of each other in town, I thought we might consider ourselves friends and be comfortable together.’

Which was the very last thing she would ever be with disturbing Sir Adam Langthorne, Serena decided darkly.

‘You know very well only close family members are so familiar with each other. Anyway, I’m not coming to town, so the need won’t arise for us to call one another anything for several months.’

‘Don’t celebrate your escape too soon, my lady. I learnt strategy from a master, and I’m not so patriotic I can’t watch and learn from Boney’s tactics either. A skirmish is never over until the last shot is fired.’

‘Except your foe might refuse battle.’

‘You never ran from a fight in your life, my lady,’ he said softly, and the steady understanding in his eyes made her shiver.

At least she somehow convinced herself it was a shiver, even as she was held by his gaze, warmed by a host of wonderful possibilities even as her sensible self was telling her to break eye contact and shore up her faltering defences immediately. Torn by two contrary urges, she felt the true power of sensual temptation for the first time in her life.

‘On the contrary, I shall retreat to fight another day. It may just be that you haven’t observed the enemy, Sir Adam.’

‘You’re not my enemy, and it’s high time we went—unless you’d like me to compromise you irredeemably, of course?’

Carefully relinquishing the reins to him, with as little contact as possible, she preserved what she hoped was a chillingly dignified silence from then on and tried hard not to admire his easy mastery of the pair. They were highly trained and well mannered, but spirited enough to prove a handful to a less experienced whip. He had good hands as well, she conceded, slanting a look at them—long-fingered and elegant, despite his size and all too evident strength. They would be sure of touch but gentle, she decided, and shivered once more as she guiltily imagined them touching her in the most shockingly intimate fashion. She blushed and turned an apparently intent gaze on the spring barley rushing to fresh green life in a nearby field.

Watching him like some besotted schoolgirl gloating over her hero wouldn’t do at all. She was a widow of four and twenty, not some dazed child, greedy to experience all the forbidden delights the world had to offer.

‘Are you going to enlighten me about your discoveries, Sir Adam?’ she asked, hoping he was too occupied with his pair to notice that betraying flush.

‘Oh, that feminine curiosity you all share—however strikingly you differ in other ways,’ he said, with a secretive smile that probably meant he missed nothing. ‘I found some things I expected and others I certainly did not.’

‘Well, now I know. Pray don’t be more infuriating than you can help, Sir Adam—even if you are a man and therefore can’t avoid it.’

‘Well, that’s put me in my place,’ he lied blithely. ‘But if you must know the vault had been opened lately, as I’m sure you suspected after hearing Wharton’s fanciful tale. The grass around it was torn, as if something heavy was dragged over it. Why anyone should disturb the dead when there must be so many less macabre hiding places in the neighbourhood is currently beyond me, but I did find this,’ he told her, taking the reins in one hand while he dug in his pocket. He handed a small object to her with yet another frisson of shock when their fingers touched.

Serena wondered if he felt it too, but if he did nothing showed on his face as he concentrated on his pair once more and she forced herself to look coolly composed as she examined the object he had passed her. It was a button of distinctive design, still attached to a piece of dark grey cloth. An elusive memory stirred at the back of Serena’s mind, but however hard she tried she couldn’t make it tangible.

‘It looks vaguely familiar,’ she finally admitted, ‘but anyone we know could have lost it in the village churchyard.’

‘It has been torn off in some sort of accident—or an argument, perhaps. No man would have a button wrenched off like that and not notice unless he were preoccupied with something very urgent indeed.’

‘Yet until we discover something illegal has taken place we’re as guilty of flying at phantoms as any gothic heroine.’

‘Speak for yourself, my lady. Nobody ever accused me of being a heroine before.’

And nobody ever would, she decided, with considerable exasperation at his wilful misunderstanding. ‘It amazes me that Rachel never pushed you into the lake when you were children, Sir Adam.’

‘Not for want of trying. But, being five years younger than I am, she was always too small to manage it on her own.’

‘What a shame I didn’t know you both better then; somehow we could have soaked you between us.’

‘In your presence I would have been on my best behaviour even in my unregenerate days,’ he said, with such a mix of teasing and admiration that she felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘You regarded me as a scrawny and irritating chit, not worth knowing because I couldn’t play cricket. Believe me, I’m liberally supplied with male cousins who left me in no doubt as to the general inferiority of the female half of the population when they were home for the holidays, so there’s no need to pretend you were any different,’ she managed, coolly enough.

‘Scrubby brats!’ he said, with apparent amusement and far too much understanding of her contrary emotions in that teasing smile. ‘Point them out to me when we’re in town and I’ll dunk them in the Serpentine.’

Serena couldn’t suppress a delighted chuckle over her mental picture of the scapegrace Marquis of Helvelin, immaculate Mr Julius Brafford and the very dashing Lieutenant the Honourable Nicholas Prestbury picking mud and pondweed off their normally resplendent persons. ‘Well, you could try,’ she said with a smile, as she reckoned up the combined strength of her three tall and muscular relatives.

‘You should laugh more often, your ladyship. It makes you young and carefree instead of overburdened and old before your time.’

So he thought she looked haggish, did he? Her smile wiped effectively off her face, Serena frowned, then gazed haughtily at the distant Welsh Hills to prove he meant nothing to her whatsoever.

‘I am a widow,’ she informed him majestically. ‘And I live a very comfortable life, thank you very much.’

‘That you do not,’ he replied, as if he would like to shake her for taking such an optimistic view of her situation. ‘You’re exploited by your mother-in-law, and when not relieving her of her duties or fussing over her you’re at the mercy of a sister-in-law who delights in setting your consequence at nought and her own A1 at Lloyd’s. What I quite fail to fathom in the face of such wilful self-abasement is why on earth you endure it and what Helvelin is about to let you, considering he’s head of your family. If you’re truly content with such a lot you’re far more poor-spirited than I ever thought you.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ she snapped furiously, trying hard not to let him see how that brutal assessment of her character had hurt. ‘And I’ll thank you to leave my cousin out of this and mind your own business.’

‘No. You’re Rachel’s best friend, and it concerns her deeply that you let yourself be trampled on by a family who don’t really appreciate you. Even if you won’t allow me to be concerned on my own account, you can’t forbid me to worry about my sister’s friend.’

His voice was gruff with emotions she dared not examine too closely. Her breathing threatened to stall in the face of any chances she might be about to throw away—the main one being the possibility Adam Langthorne might care about her. That could not, must not be. There was no future in such thoughts on either side. Even if she loved him—and so far she’d managed to avoid that trap—she couldn’t marry him. Come to think about it, she couldn’t consider it especially if she loved him.

‘I suppose I could always join my aunt in Bath for a while,’ she said without enthusiasm.

‘Where you’ll run her household and look after Helvelin’s tribe of sisters instead of being at the beck and call of your family by marriage, I suppose? You have a way of humbling a man with your choices to avoid him that is without parallel, Lady Summerton,’ he replied austerely.

Inflicting pain on Sir Adam Langthorne was difficult, but less unthinkable than seeing him grow restless and bored with her. ‘I feel very real affection for my cousins, as I believe they do for me. But they have a doting mama and little need of me, and I do like to be busy.’

‘Yet you just made it sound as if your boxes are packed and your farewells all but complete. Could it be that you are less convinced than you sound, my lady?’

‘I have no wish to be a burden.’

‘Anyone less likely to be a charge on any household she became part of I find it hard to imagine. You overflow with misplaced loyalty to those who don’t deserve it, and begrudge yourself to those who’d value it way above rubies.’

‘That I don’t. I value true affection and consideration far above duty,’ she said stiffly.

‘Then prove it and come to London with Rachel, who surely deserves your friendship and loyalty even if I don’t. Prove you mean it, Lady Summerton, instead of revelling in the heady delights of sacrificing yourself on the altar of family duty in Bath instead of Herefordshire.’

‘I can’t,’ she replied in a hard little voice, trying not to slavishly watch for his reaction to her denial.

She knew without looking that his eyes would be flinty now, and his sensuous mouth set in a disapproving line. It was an effect she had been striving for these many weeks, after all, but she couldn’t resist a sideways glance at him, despite destroying any admiration he had for her once and for all. To her amazement he was smiling at her as warmly as if she had agreed to his ridiculous scheme as eagerly as a schoolgirl.

‘You mean you won’t let yourself, however strong the temptation?’ he asked with considerable satisfaction, and seemed to require no answer. ‘You have no idea how flattering it is to be regarded as so dangerously irresistible that a lady of character dares not risk my company lest she succumb to my fatal charm.’

‘Pray don’t congratulate yourself on reaching that ridiculous conclusion, Sir Adam,’ she replied stoically, although of course it was true. Trust him to deduce exactly why she was refusing such a tempting offer. ‘You must have every single one of your attics to let to truly believe no lady dares spend time in your company lest she falls at your feet in a frenzy of gratitude and infatuation.’

‘Well that’s properly put me in my place. If I might suggest you take a few lessons in rebuffing a gentleman’s hopes and dreams with finesse before you brave London society once more, Lady Summerton? Or perhaps it should be the other way about and your potential suitors are the ones who need their courage honed by an expert? At least giving lessons to them will help me pass any tedious moments during our stay, and I feel uniquely placed to offer such forlorn hopes my wise counsel.’

‘You can’t possibly live with us!’ she heard herself say, as if everything was settled and nothing left to do but decide where they would reside.

‘I really don’t see why not. Even the most exacting chaperon would trust your reputation to Cousin Estelle and my sister.’

‘Your cousin wouldn’t notice if you held an orgy under her very nose!’

‘An interesting notion, but I think I can restrain myself. And my sister would be justly furious if we abandoned her to Cousin Estelle’s tender mercies. She would never see the outside of the nearest library or Hatchards.’

‘You would be there,’ Serena protested, but her resolution was faltering.

She recalled the circus that was the London season for debutantes such as she and Rachel had once been with a shudder. To leave Rachel to face all that in the care of bookish, otherworldly Miss Langthorne would be distinctly unfriendly, and she knew she couldn’t do it.

‘My presence will make matters worse,’ she defended herself weakly, feeling she was leading a forlorn hope against a superior tactician.

‘Rubbish. Nothing could be worse than poor Rachel spending months being carted from one blue-stocking salon to another on my cousin’s coattails, and you know it—unless you’ve become as blue as my esteemed relative.’

‘You know perfectly well I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘and nobody could call Miss Langthorne formidable,’ she added lamely, quite ruining her effect.

‘I prefer to call her a force of nature,’ her undutiful cousin said with a surprisingly affectionate smile for a relative who benignly ignored him and everyone else most of the time.

‘That’s one alternative, I suppose.’

‘It is the only description I ever found that fitted her.’

‘As she has a reputation for speaking her mind, I can’t think why you consider her a suitable chaperon for myself or your sister, given that she will doubtless refuse to attend any event that’s unlikely to amuse or interest her.’

‘Which is precisely why I need your presence. Cousin Estelle, eccentric though she might be, would never permit immorality to flourish under any roof where she was residing,’ he replied, with every appearance of shocked virtue himself. ‘Any more than I would dream of suggesting it.’

‘I should stop right there, Sir Adam. You were doing so well until you got carried away,’ she said, with a frown that was only partly in jest.

‘Then ignore my pleas and come for Rachel’s sake. It could be a bigger disaster than her first season if you don’t support her.’

‘I really don’t see what I can do that any other widowed lady might not do better,’ she protested.

‘You have the sophistication of taste to see my sister is dressed to suit her own looks, rather than those of whichever blonde beauty the dressmakers are promoting this season—or you have when you choose to employ it,’ he said, with a disapproving glance at her very plain gown and shabby cloak.

‘You have a way of flattering a lady that is almost unparallelled, Sir Adam,’ she forced herself to parry lightly, but he had given her pause for thought and she suspected he knew it.

‘What do you think the Bond Street Beaux would say about my sister if she turned up in the salons of the ton in her current guise?’ he challenged her.

‘Poor Rachel,’ she said unwarily, as she considered her friend as she had last seen her clad in a tobacco-brown stuff gown that had never been fashionable, even in the dim and distant past when the village dressmaker had made it up for her.

‘Then you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll talk to Rachel, and if she truly wishes to go I’ll support her in any way I can.’

‘Hmm, an admirably evasive reply. You’ll support her, but is that to be from a distance or at her side, where she needs you?’

‘Where she needs me, of course. It’s time I returned the favour.’

Chapter Four

Sir Adam gave her a sharp look, but Serena focused her attention on the east lodge of Windham looming on the horizon as if she had never seen it before. She had never discussed the darkest days of her marriage and widowhood with anyone but Janet and Rachel, from whom it had been impossible to hide her unhappiness, and she refused to start now.

‘Thank you,’ he finally said quietly, and she turned to look at him at last.

She could see nothing on his face but relief that she had agreed to his scheme. He was a good and thoughtful brother, yet she couldn’t dismiss the idea that she had just conceded the first round of a match that was more important than she knew—and to a master of strategy as well.

‘Unless you wish to be invited for dinner at Windham tonight, I suggest you set me down by the picket gate into the park, Sir Adam, so I can walk to the Dower House unremarked,’ she said, rather helpfully for someone who had been so neatly outmanoeuvred.

‘Will you be there?’ he asked, and she tried not to care that he asked as if his enjoyment depended on her company.

‘Luckily my sister-in-law takes my no for an answer, but you wouldn’t be so fortunate, I dare say,’ she said lightly.

‘Then I shall do as you say, my lady, and trust such humility will lead you to greet me with a little more than bare civility when next we meet.’

‘I hope you don’t think me so rude as to ignore my neighbours, sir?’

‘Well, that is good. I must put myself forward more often,’ he replied, with a decided twinkle back in those rather fascinating eyes.

She really must concentrate harder on winning their battle of words and wills if she was to see him every day when they went to London, she decided. Refusing to dwell on his victory, she graciously allowed him to tie the reins to the kickboard once more and hand her down with due ceremony.

‘Thank you, Sir Adam. You have saved me from arriving home all aglow from walking home on a warm day.’

‘I have, haven’t I? What a splendid gentleman I am,’ he said, in a self-satisfied tone that had her hiding a smile despite her resolution to be all dignity and propriety with him from now on.

‘That you’re not. I’m too much the lady to say what you really are.’

‘Very commendable, my dear,’ he replied, then gave her such a warm smile before he touched his hat brim with his whip and drove away that he left her feeling as flustered as if she had run all the way home after all.

When she reached the Dower House her flushed cheeks and windblown hair led the Dowager to inform her that she looked like a milkmaid, which gave Serena a good excuse to seek out the privacy of her chamber while she restored her appearance to suitably subdued order. A quiet evening at the Dower House with a cosy fire and a good book was, she decided, just what a female under siege from a determined gentleman and her own wayward inclinations needed to restore her peace of mind.

Sir Adam made sure the whole household knew he would be busy with his account books and correspondence that evening. He even managed to give them some attention—until his sister came in to inform him he was very poor company and she was going to bed. He murmured something suitably infuriating, before going back to his figuring as if lost in concentration, then sat back in his comfortable chair, feeling vaguely guilty as she wished him an impatient goodnight and left with a sharp click of the door that told him she would have slammed it if she wasn’t too much of a lady nowadays.

If he let Rachel get so much as a sniff of his planned trip to Thornfield churchyard in the middle of the night she would attach herself to his coattails like a burr. He grinned as he recalled their youthful misdeeds, and decided their neighbours must have windmills in their heads to think the outwardly proper Miss Langthorne bore the slightest resemblance to the real woman under that false image. Frowning now, he thought of another deceptively proper young woman, and wondered what on earth he had been about to encourage Lady Serena to join him on this midnight adventure. At least now he was away from her incendiary presence and thinking rationally again. What would he have done if she had taken him at his word? Although, given the impulsive nature he was certain only lay dormant under all that propriety, it was better to know where she was and what she was up to, it had been pure folly to even hint he would welcome her presence tonight.

He lay back in his chair and contemplated the youthful widow Lady Summerton until his glower gave way to a wolfish smile that would probably have given Serena palpitations had she only seen it. She thought herself so different from the spirited young woman she had once been, before George Cambray had convinced her that all that made her unique was deplorable. What a pompous dolt the man had been! To win such a wife, then fail to realise his extraordinary luck confirmed every doubt Adam ever had about the Cambrays’ collective intelligence—and George’s lack of it in particular.

Yet perhaps he had the late Earl to thank for giving his wife such a disgust of marriage that she was still widowed now, when Adam had come home. The very idea of another man coming between him and his fate made his fists clench and the heady passions he had been holding in check since the day he came home threaten to slip their leash at long last, so that he might march over to Windham Dower House and drag the stubborn female home to his bed, will she nil she.

For the thousandth time he ordered those untamed longings back to their kennel and told them to stop there until they could have their day. If it took years, somehow he would get her to trust the reckless passion that slumbered under her prim exterior. At least Summerton hadn’t quite managed to stifle the warm, sensuous woman he still caught a tantalising glimpse of now and again under all that protective starch, but he must give her ladyship room to realise that what she now considered the shady side of her nature could be set free after all, without disaster inevitably following.

There had been one or two cracks in her determination to hold him at arm’s length lately, and he planned to widen them at every opportunity. Perhaps he should give her a little longer to accustom herself to being wanted as he wanted her, but he wasn’t a plaster saint and his patience was beginning to wear out. There had been a spark of very feminine interest in her lovely azure eyes today, before she’d retreated behind her proper façade and pretended they were little more than strangers.

It was high time he fanned the sparks into flame. If he hesitated she might take herself off to Bath after all, just to make their lives difficult. Fighting the surge of primitive, possessive emotion threatening to put everything else out of his head, he reminded himself he had other business to deal with tonight. Somehow he had to forget the lovely Serena, Countess of Summerton, and give his full attention to the task in hand. He could spare tonight for whoever was using such a grisly hiding place, but woe betide them if they got between him and his true quarry too often.

Shrugging out of his well-cut evening coat and elegant waistcoat, he swiftly replaced his snowy linen with a dark shirt and stock he had hidden in the window seat earlier, then flung his grandfather’s old cloak over it all, listening for any sign of wakefulness. Nothing indicated anyone was stirring, so the household must have left him to his figuring and gone to bed as ordered. Carrying the soft-soled boots he had secreted here for midnight wanderings, he raised the sash on the nearest window and silently closed it after himself before ghosting out into the night.

Even as he rode towards Thornfield, fugitive thoughts of Lady Serena wouldn’t quite lie. Surely she wouldn’t take him at his word and join him after her vehement denial and her current love affair with propriety? Or would she? He shook his head impatiently. Of course she wouldn’t. If she loved him Serena might find it impossible to stay safe and warm in her bed while he took the mild risk of watching for the unwary miscreants using the Canderton vault, but at the moment he didn’t think she knew what love was. He stifled the thought that if she turned up after all it might show that she cared more than she knew, and tried to dismiss the idea that even the best of women were devilish unpredictable at times.

There was only one thing wrong with Serena’s plan to spend an evening in splendid solitude—and he was well over six feet tall and possibly the most infuriating gentleman she had ever met. She knew Sir Adam would go to Thornfield Church at dead of night to find out what was going on, and that he would probably do so alone. The thought of him lying there injured and needy until he was found in the morning, after some mysterious attacker had done his worst against that magnificent body by some foul means, ruined her longed-for respite.

At last she put aside the book that had failed to capture her attention and tried to think about the whole business logically. She considered the macabre idea of body-snatchers coming this far into the country to ply their gruesome trade, and concluded that nothing in that particular vault was fresh enough to interest them even if they did. With a shudder at the very idea, she told herself she had no wish to set foot in a churchyard at any hour of the night, and parted the heavy curtains to stare out into the darkness and carefully consider how she could get there undetected.

Suddenly there was no question of her staying here, and all there was left to do was to get out of the house without anyone knowing she had gone. Telling the butler she would retire early, then waiting impatiently for the nightly rituals to roll inexorably on, she knew she should be feeling guilty at such deception. Instead she was impatient at having to wait so long before she could safely slip back downstairs. Having to undress and get into bed was a confounded nuisance, of course, but she managed a few artistic yawns before ordering her maid off to bed too.

Somehow Serena made herself wait, listening to the soft sounds of an occasional footfall on a creaking board as everyone finally went to bed. At last it seemed safe to get up and dress in an old black round gown she usually wore to walk the dogs, before draping a black crepe shawl over her unfortunate hair. Carrying kid half boots soft enough not to make much noise when she ran across the cobbled stable yard, she left her room, feeling as exhilarated as an errant schoolgirl escaping her stern governess.

Long ago she and her cousins had crept about Heron House in the dark when they were supposed to be in bed. Practising their staff work, her cousin Nick had called it at the time. According to her father’s household they needed no practice, already being limbs of Satan who would rather make mischief all night long than sleep quietly in their beds like good Christian children. Serena smiled and felt that childhood daredevilry rise on a shiver of pure rebellion as the dignified propriety George had insisted on his countess assuming at all times cracked irreversibly. Looking back, she realised it had just been easier to comply with his demands than argue with them and she was suddenly ashamed of what her marriage had made of her.

She could think of few things George would have hated more than to see her now. He would have been furious, she decided, with an impish grin her childhood partners in crime would have recognised with glee. She briefly wondered if she was really worried about Sir Adam’s fate, or just intent on enjoying her unaccustomed freedom. A bit of both she concluded, as that unwelcome picture of him lying injured in the darkness forced itself into her mind once more. Bracing her shoulders, and telling herself not to be a pessimist, she slipped the key to the garden door out of her pocket and turned it so stealthily it moved the mechanisms without so much as a click. At least good housekeeping occasionally paid off, she decided wryly, relocking the door and slipping the key onto a chain round her neck before she set off across the garden, blessing her night eyes for rapidly adjusting to the darkness.

It had all been much too easy, she decided a few minutes later, as she finally allowed her mare to break into a trot. The Dowager’s ancient coachman and groom were at the Hall with the equally ancient carriage her ladyship considered superior to any modern conveyance. Her own groom, Toby, was walking out with a girl from the village, and so the stables had been deserted. She frowned briefly, deciding she must have words with him about leaving the horses unattended when she was done with her own nocturnal adventures. No self-respecting horse thief would steal the Dowager’s stubborn old mare, of course, but Serena didn’t want to lose her lovely Donna, the one present she had received from George she had truly appreciated.

‘Gently, lovely girl,’ she murmured, as the fretting thoroughbred grew frustrated with the slow pace. ‘It’s much too dark to risk our necks tonight, but next time it’s clear moonlight we’ll have a good gallop, and to the devil with propriety,’ she promised recklessly.

Donna shook her dark head sagely, as if she understood every word, and suddenly Serena felt like laughing out loud. In the darkness, with nobody awake for miles around to see her, she felt young and carefree again for a few precious moments. Maybe the fact that she was still only four and twenty was breaking through the pall of respectability George had insisted on at last. Indeed, she was enjoying herself so much that she might have let her horse find her way as she chose until dawn came if not for Sir Adam’s lone watch for villains unscrupulous enough to disturb the dead.

Nagging concern finally nipped away her euphoria in the most disturbing fashion, and if Sir Adam had been nearby he might have received a mighty scold for his recklessness even as she managed to ignore her own. Such a protest might be interpreted as caring for the wretch’s well-being, of course, so she would just make sure he was safe, then go home without him ever knowing she had been there. She checked Donna and wondered how on earth she could conceal her from any watchful ears and eyes.

Farmer Grey’s barn was far enough away from both farm and village for her to leave Donna there in safety and walk the rest of the way in silence. When they got there she found it already tenanted by Sir Adam’s raking grey, and Serena sighed even as her mare pushed impatiently at her shoulder. Donna might not get a gallop tonight, but the exclusive company of her beloved Silver Birch was probably even better to her way of thinking.

Serena unsaddled her mare and rubbed her down. No doubt she would have a job catching her when it was time to persuade her to leave her favourite companion behind, but that was a problem for later.

Afterwards she would have no idea how she’d managed that walk through the dark countryside. Before she had had the warm breathing presence of her horse to keep her company, but now she suddenly felt horribly alone in the deserted lane. Or at least she fervently hoped it was deserted. All of a sudden her imagination was ready to believe almost anything was lurking just beyond the limits of night vision. The furtive movement of some living thing off to her right made her freeze in her tracks, almost expecting a heavy hand to fall on her shoulder, or an angry fist to club down on her head. She softly cursed herself for an over-imaginative fool when she heard the sharp, hoarse call of a vixen and forced herself to carry on, despite the shiver of primitive fright it gave her.

Once a hunting barn owl went past her on pale wings and she recalled the country superstition insisted that they were omens of death. Yes—death for some small creature going unwarily about its business, she told herself hardily, and ordered her racing heartbeat to slow down. The creatures of the night were not to be feared in this safe corner of England; it was the human beings who might be in it that she should be wary of.

She managed to reach the churchyard wall in safety, and once she’d furtively clambered over it there were a whole new parcel of fears and superstitions to overcome.

Luckily Serena had never been terrified of the peaceful dead. To her way of thinking a churchyard set in a sunny countryside was far too quiet a place for the dead to bother haunting. If they walked at all, they would look for more promising places than hallowed ground, and she quite enjoyed a stroll among the gravestones while she was awaiting the Dowager after church on Sundays. Fortunately George was interred in the Cambray mausoleum at Windham—which reminded her, she must make sure nobody ever put her with him when she reached the end of her earthly span.

She reassured herself that her fascination with the worthy inhabitants of the village in days past didn’t make her morbid, as the Dowager insisted, but this place certainly had no horrors for her by daylight. Now it felt curiously alien, though, and the sweep of a furtive breeze in the yew and holly trees sounded like someone whispering dark mischief to an imagination that had suddenly grown annoyingly vivid. There was nobody here, she assured herself. Well, nobody but Sir Adam Langthorne, and she might well give him a large piece of her mind when she finally tracked him down and found him perfectly hale and hearty.

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