FEAR FOR HER SAFETY PROMPTED HIS ANGER.

Hard, unsteady fingers lifted to her cheek before sliding across her jaw. Long sooty lashes parted to reveal tortured relief in David’s sapphire eyes. “What in damnation do you think you’re doing here?” he gritted out.

“Looking for you,” Victoria answered with rash honesty.

Mary Brendan was born in North London and lived there for nineteen years before marrying and migrating north to Hertfordshire. She was grammar-school educated and has been at various times in her working life a personnel secretary for an international oil company, a property developer and a landlady. Presently working part-time in a local library, she dedicates hard-won leisure hours to antique browsing, curries and keeping up with two lively sons.

A Kind and Decent Man
Mary Brendan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

‘I’m begging you to hear me out, sir!’

‘Remove yourself. I have nothing further to say to you and will listen to no more.’ The words snapped out, the frail man showed his visitor a slumped-shouldered back.

‘You will hear me out.’ The quiet determination had the elderly gentleman twisting unsteadily about. Undisguised alarm in weak grey eyes elicited a sardonic tilt to the youthful supplicant’s mouth. Talk of fighting had obviously also reached his ears. The doddering fool probably believed him disposed to hitting someone almost thrice his age. He reined in his temper, politely but firmly requesting, ‘Please, let me at least speak to your daughter before I leave…’

‘My daughter is removed to Hertfordshire with her aunt.’ The information was bitten out in icy triumph. ‘She seemed unaware of your true character but I have now told her of your revolting habits and morals. Moreover, she knows her duty to her father.’

Fierce blue eyes bored relentlessly into watering grey. A white line traced around the young man’s thin, compressed lips and a cord of muscle formed, jerking a lean cheek.

Instinctively the girl’s father stumbled back a few steps. He knew of his dangerous reputation. Oh, he had heard every sordid detail gossiped abroad, and he knew this was not a man to trifle with. But his contempt was impossible to contain, and finally exploded in a hissed, ‘You have the effrontery to come here and offer for my daughter? You? The younger son of a bankrupt viscount, with no prospect of title or wealth to recommend you? You, with your gambling, your whoring, your brawling…your disgusting breeding? If your parents were struck down dead in the street I doubt that carrion would risk the taint of picking them over.’ He had gone too far, he was sure, and his bloodless, puckered lips pressed so firmly shut they disappeared.

A flash of even white teeth revealed the young man’s appreciation of the imagery and the mirthless smile terrorised the elderly man more than the leashed rage he could sense radiating from him.

‘Remove yourself before I call Brook to eject you.’ The words were pushed out, emerging in a strangled whisper.

The threat provoked no more than a careless elevation in the young petitioner’s thick dark brows. But he exhaled a steadying breath through set teeth. ‘I am aware, sir, that at present I have little to offer. But within two months I will have. I have several deals on the table and the prospect of much more. I can raise considerable finance through a private source…’

‘You think you can buy my daughter?’ the elderly man spat, hoarse with outrage, bony fists quaking at his sides.

Exasperatedly snapping back his dark head, the young man finally yielded and pivoted on his heel. He turned by the door and leaned his tall, powerful figure back against its mahogany panels. Sapphire eyes narrowed in his handsome, angular face, riveting into his gaunt, stooped tormentor. ‘Oh, I know I can,’ he softly promised, before quietly closing the door behind him.

Chapter One

‘Promise you will, Victoria.’ The whispered words were thready and Victoria Hart inclined her head closer to her husband.

A thin-skinned, thick-veined hand trembled out and rested upon the crumpled black satin of her hair. He stirred it beneath his fingers. ‘Promise me, my dear, that you will write to him and tell him. I want you to do it now…this minute.’

‘Hush,’ Victoria soothed, closing wet grey eyes to shield her grief from him. ‘You can write yourself when you are feeling a little better.’ The words were gasped out as she battled against the tears threatening to close her throat at such futile comfort. She half turned for a sideways glance at Dr Gibson by the shadowy doorway. Leaping flames in the hearth revealed his stooped silhouette and the negative swaying of his head.

Her husband attempted a wry, appreciative laugh at her sweet, hopeless encouragement but it made him wheeze and he fought to regain his breath. ‘Will you do it now, for your poor old Danny?’ he eventually squeezed out on a long, painful sigh. ‘And will you promise that Samuel takes it today for the letter-carrier? For I want him to receive it in time. He is all the kin I have, apart from you.’ As he sighed into the silence, there was a faint, appealing smile for his beautiful young wife.

Victoria nodded her dark head beneath his fleshless palm and cold, dry fingers drifted across her warm, wet cheek before falling back to the coverlet.

‘Thank you, Victoria.’ Relaxing at her wordless vow, Daniel Hart allowed speckled lids to droop over colourless eyes. ‘You know what you have promised me, my dear. No widow’s weeds…not for your Danny. Nor moping about indoors away from the young people you like. Never deprive yourself of your youth, or anyone of your sweet company. It is what I want, you know that, and others will too. It is a condition of my bequest, witnessed and sealed.’ A dry chuckle preceded his next words. ‘What care we for convention…you and I…eh, my dear?’ He patted her slender white fingers in a gesture of dismissal.

As the rustling of her skirts told him she had risen from kneeling by his bedside, he murmured, ‘There is something else you have to promise me, Victoria.’ Into the rasping silence he finally breathed, ‘Promise me you won’t cry any more…’

David Hardinge, Viscount Courtenay of Hawkesmere in the county of Berkshire, paused while dictating and smiled. So infrequent a show of consideration and humour was this that Jacob Robinson, clerk and general factotum to the Viscount, actually ceased his frantic note-scribbling to stare at his master. He peered through his dusty spectacles at the lean profile presented to him as his employer settled broad shoulders comfortably back into his leather wing chair and brought the source of his amusement closer, savouring it. Startlingly blue eyes scanned an ivory black-edged card as he shoved back his chair and leisurely settled his highly polished top-boots on the edge of his highly polished mahogany desk. He reread the few lines of elegant black script while his long fingers sought on the desk for the cheroot curling a gentle drift of smoke towards the lofty ceiling of his walnut-panelled study. With the cigar stuck between his white teeth, his narrowed blue eyes flicked upwards, contemplating the ornate plaster coving. As his mind sped back seven years, the card was tapped idly against a manicured thumbnail. A few seconds of reminiscence had his teeth clenching on his cheroot and the card flipping casually across the desk to land in front of Jacob. ‘Send condolences and usual regrets at being unable to attend.’

Juggling his lapful of letters and ledgers, Jacob finally freed an index finger, stabbed it onto the card and slid it closer. Once he’d read it, he wondered what it was about a distant cousin’s funeral, notified to him by the man’s widow, that could possibly give the Viscount cause to smile in that unpleasant way. ‘Sad business…’ he volunteered, hoping to find out.

His sympathy was ignored. David Hardinge leafed impatiently through a lengthy document. ‘Have this delivered back to Mainwaring by hand this afternoon with a note stating that if he alters terms and conditions again the deal is off. The contract of sale I issued last month is the only one I will sign.’ Piercing blue eyes fixed on the clerk as David realised the man had noted nothing down but was apparently fascinated by the notification of Daniel Hart’s demise. ‘Have you got that dictation?’ he enquired silkily past the cigar clamped at one corner of his thin mouth.

‘Sad business…’ Jacob persisted, meaningfully pointing his sharp nose at the card on the desk.

‘Is it?’ David Hardinge asked, feigned concern spuriously softening his tone. The cigar was jerked from his teeth and he studied its glowing tip.

‘Oh, yes…’ Jacob opined, pulling his lips into a sorrowful droop. ‘Poor Mrs Hart. Not married more than seven years, I’ll warrant. Widowed so young. I met her just the once, you know, at your brother’s funeral. So charming a young lady, I recall.’ He shook his greying head, reflectively sucking his teeth. ‘Of course you were fighting alongside Wellington at the time, were you not, and missed laying your brother to rest, so perhaps you wouldn’t know her. It’s hard to believe that young master Michael’s been gone these five years and that I’ve worked man and boy for the Viscounts Courtenay for more than twenty-five years and—’

‘And there’s no real need for it to continue beyond today,’ David mildly threatened, while long fingers ground out his cigar so thoroughly that he singed them, shook them, swore audibly and scowled at Jacob’s censorious look.

Oh, he knew charming young Mrs Hart, and she could damn well go to hell alongside her husband for all he cared. But he didn’t, he reminded himself. He hadn’t cared for seven years or more, not since her father had unceremoniously tossed his marriage proposal back at him and sneered in his face for his effrontery. David had known his youthful hell-raising was a minor consideration; it was his lack of money and status that was the genuine stumbling-block. Vice in bridegrooms was customarily overlooked so long as the prospects were right.

But, in fairness to the man, all of Charles Lorrimer’s objections had been quite valid. And, in his own defence, in the six months he had gently courted eighteen-year-old Victoria Lorrimer, his behaviour and morals had been impeccable. Those of his parents, however, had continued to swill around in the gutter, to the vicious amusement of the haut ton. Paul Hardinge and the courtesan, Maria Poole, he had scandalously married by then had no further affluence or influence to buy acceptability.

In the distant days of childhood, he had been fiercely loyal to his parents, believing them to be the butt of malicious gossip. But the craving for reciprocal love and attention had slowly eroded, finally extinguishing in his mid-teens when he’d abruptly had to accept that his mother was an unreformed whore and his father a drunken sybarite who had gambled away practically every asset the Courtenays had amassed over two centuries. Henceforth David had unswervingly believed what he was often maliciously told—that his destiny must be tainted and shaped by theirs—and had lived his life accordingly.

Until he’d seen Victoria Lorrimer. For six months he’d believed in salvation. He’d lived in daylight hours and serenity.

Within a month of his proposal the only woman he had ever believed himself capable of loving had married Squire Hart of Ashdowne in Hertfordshire, who, with typical bitter irony, happened to be some distant relation of the Hardinges. His father’s great-aunt had married into the Hart clan in 1680, as he recalled.

Daniel Hart had a comfortable estate and wealth, and, at fifty-two, was some thirty-four years Victoria’s senior and a mere fifteen years younger than her own dear papa.

His own dear papa had been dead of syphilis within six months and his older brother Michael had inherited the viscountcy and the escalating debts bequeathed by their wastrel father. When Michael had succumbed to smallpox two years into his birthright, after a valiant but unsuccessful battle to repair the Courtenay fortune and standing, David had gained nothing other than a title he didn’t want and continuing ignominy. But he had risen to the challenge. If there was one thing David Hardinge had learned by the age of twenty-five, as he then was, it was how to survive, need no one, and decimate adversity through cunning and doggedness. He was grateful to Paul Hardinge for one solitary thing: his traditionally thorough education. His honed intellect was applied to his business affairs with the diligence of any trained banker. With the same typical irony, now he no longer cared, he found he had the respect and admiration of his peers, who ruminated enviously on how astonishingly he had turned about the Courtenay fortunes.

And now that David had money enough, he liked to enjoy the fruits of his interminable labour. He even allowed others to enjoy at his expense. He knew he had a reputation for being a generous man and was thus persistently targeted by women who, through necessity or choice, kept company with gentlemen. In short, he had a thoroughly pleasurable, if licentious lifestyle, and no intention of moderating any of it…ever again.

The devastation that had ripped into him on learning Victoria Lorrimer had married was now simply a hazy memory. Since then he was sure he had barely spared her an idle thought. He reluctantly conceded that odd; after all, thinking of her had for six months monopolised every waking hour and kept him hot, frustrated and celibate the night through. But then, at just twenty-three and still surprisingly reluctant to fully relinquish youthful idealism, despite the sewer in which he was reared, courting a beautiful, enchanting virgin to marry and play house with had seemed so appealing. A wry choke of laughter escaped him at the fairy-tale quality of it, causing Jacob to launch a quelling look his way and sniff, ‘I don’t see any humour in funerals myself.’

‘Jacob,’ David gently threatened, ‘if we don’t get through this correspondence in the time I have allocated to it, which is—’ he consulted his gold fob-watch ‘—five minutes more, you’ll be unamused to find yourself seeking alternative employment without a character.’ Abruptly swinging his long legs off the desktop, he shoved back his chair and stood up. He stretched and flexed his powerful shoulders before wandering idly to the large casement window. A hand eased a niggling cramp at his nape as he gazed down onto the quiet elegance of Beauchamp Place. Cream-stuccoed Palladian splendour soothed his restless gaze before blue eyes met a scene that elicited a smile of genuine amusement.

Richard Du Quesne, splendidly attired in a striking burgundy greatcoat trimmed with luxurious gold frogging, was sauntering towards his residence as though he hadn’t a care in the world. This despite the fact that clutching at the man’s arm was the mistress he had been trying to offload. Dickie Du Quesne was his closest friend—a true companion of similar taste and habits who shared a good deal of David’s history, time and vices.

Sensing eyes on him, Dickie glanced up at the study window and grimaced his bored disdain for his friend.

A shrug of exaggerated sympathy met this. David drew a long finger leisurely across his immaculate silk cravat before closing his hand and explicitly indicating with his thumb along the street. She might be a countess, the wife of an impecunious, much cuckolded earl, but he had no intention of enduring her presence in his house this morning. Roberta Stewart knew her relationship with Dickie was in its death throes and had been casting about for an equally wealthy replacement. David knew himself as prime target. Since he had finished with her some months before Dickie had taken her on, her constant pathetic attempts at seduction aroused disgust rather than lust.

David currently had set up two fresh, eager young mistresses, one at either end of town; that way, whether finishing the evening at Cheapside or Mayfair, he had a willing body close by should he require it. When neither Annabelle Sharpe’s creamy skin and thick auburn tresses nor Suzanna Phillips’s rosy charms and wispy blonde curls held any allure, he allowed himself to succumb to sexual enticements. And he received plenty. Ambitious seamstresses, impoverished widows, bored titled ladies all constantly prowled in his vicinity, flirtatiously displaying their interest and availability. As he was so popular, he could afford to be choosy…and cautious. He had no intention of losing his own robust health to a dose of the pox or risking the appalling ravages that had preceded his father’s death.

Thinking of widows brought Victoria Hart’s pale, pointed face, smoky eyes and silken black hair floating into his mind’s eye. A self-mocking twist of thin lips acknowledged that, seven years it might be, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten her delicate beauty. Lean hands braced at either side of the casement showed steadily blanching knuckles. She was probably grown fat and matronly in her wedded bliss, and had several brats clinging to her rustic skirts.

He casually pushed himself back from the window, concentrating on his promenading friend. Once rid of Roberta, Dickie and he would take their usual stroll to Watier’s for an afternoon of cards, dice or whatever pursuit took their jaded fancy. He idly pondered whether the bare-knuckle fight on the cobbles in Haymarket would go ahead this afternoon, but it occupied his mind only briefly. He collected his thoughts with iron discipline. His meeting with his clerk was not yet finished and business always took priority.

He had grown up having very little money, now had more than he was ever likely to need, and knew which state of affairs he preferred. Unlike a lot of his peers, commerce was accorded serious respect: he oversaw the execution of every single enterprise. He had a reputation as a fair yet unforgiving master. Those keen to feather their own nests at their employer’s expense gave Viscount Courtenay an extremely wide berth.

His boot had once sent an amateur opportunist sprawling down his elegant front steps, causing Dickie to say admiringly that it took one to know one. That irreverence had earned his friend a playful cuff…David was professional…especially when devious. He slanted a glance at the old retainer who had stayed with the Lords Courtenay through fair, foul and fair again. Jacob was an inquisitive, irreverent old buffer, but he was extremely efficient and unwaveringly loyal and trustworthy. David knew that his half-hearted threats to put him off were now a source of amusement to them both. In fact, he’d really grown quite fond of him.

‘Make sure that Mainwaring has that response regarding the sale of the property in Chelsea and deal with all other matters as we discussed.’

Jacob’s short, wiry body carefully unfolded from the chair. He cradled his day’s work in one arm while the other hand sprang to catch his spectacles before they slid from the end of his nose.

Reaching over his desk for another cheroot, David lit it and drew deeply until the tip ruddied. He speared long fingers through his dark mahogany hair, aware of the length of it and that he should get to his barber some time this week. In all other respects he was immaculately turned out as usual: a shirt of finest white lawn, a deep chestnut silk cravat similar in shade to his thick hair, and buff breeches of excellent quality and a style that snugly emphasised the considerable muscular length of his legs.

‘Mr Du Quesne,’ Jeremiah Clavering, his butler, intoned from the doorway, allowing David’s comrade, well wrapped into his exquisite greatcoat, entrance to the cosy study.

As he caught the draught from the corridor, David stirred the glowing coals with the tip of his expensive leather boot. It had been a long, hard winter and these February mornings were invariably solid with frost. A sideways grin at Dickie acknowledged his glowing red nose, white cheeks and blond hair, lank with cold. His freezing friend immediately sought a place by the roaring fire.

‘Nippy out there?’ David needled.

‘I’d taken two extra turns of the square with that silly bitch before someone hove into view and I managed to dump her. I’m not sure Wainwright will still be speaking to me…Damn!’ he exclaimed, through chattering teeth. ‘He’d best not consider returning her home a favour and cancel my duns.’

David laughed down into the leaping flames. As the chill from his friend’s body permeated his comfortable warmth, he shifted to allow Dickie the best position in front of the hearth. ‘You did well,’ he soothed. ‘Had you brought her in here, I would not have been best pleased. You’ll get your money from Wainwright—’ He broke off, noting Jacob was hopping from foot to foot, shifting and balancing documents in his arms while making grabs at the door handle. He strolled over and held the door wide. As the clerk exited under his braced arm, David instructed, for no reason he could understand, ‘Forget that letter to Mrs Hart. I’ll convey condolences myself at the funeral.’

It was certainly comforting to see so many paying their last respects to her dear Danny, was Victoria’s consoling thought as she buried her small, trembling hands further into her sable muff.

This February morning was bright with winter sunshine but bitterly cold; the grave-diggers had laboured long and hard to scoop out her husband’s final icy resting place.

Parson Woodbridge dropped a fistful of dark soil into the grave and it hit Daniel Hart’s coffin with a splattering thud. He inclined his head at her and she stepped unsteadily forward on numbed legs at the signal. The mixed sheaf of fragrant herbs and flowers she had collected that morning was released into the earth-dark void. Despite her solemn promise to Daniel that she would not cry, she felt melancholy tears heating her hastily closed eyes. Withdrawing her gloved fingers from their warm nest, she pressed them to her eyelids, chafing delicate skin with the black lace veil shrouding her small, sculpted face. Damp, inky lashes slowly unmeshed to expose luminous damson-grey eyes and she raised her head, again composed…and saw him.

She squinted through a teary film and an involuntary gasp of recognition was heightened by fierce frosty air abrading her throat. He was standing a way off, absolutely still—a solitary figure divorced from those by the graveside stamping frozen feet and huddling close together for warmth. She was sure he was staring at her as intently as she was at him, despite her veil and matted lashes distorting her view. And she quietly knew that after seven years he would look as she remembered him even though his features were indistinct. He looked statuesque outlined against a washed winter sky, and quite frighteningly imposing. He seemed more powerfully built. Perhaps he had grown broader, or perhaps it was just an illusion created by his heavy black greatcoat. A steamy haze froze before his face and this undeniable proof that he was not a figment of her imagination but a living, breathing man simultaneously cheered and alarmed her.

He must have just arrived, walked up alone from Hartfield to the chapel, for he hadn’t left with the mourning party. He was a head taller than any man here and impeccably attired; she would never have missed him.

Victoria dragged her gaze back to Parson Woodbridge’s kindly face as he concluded the funeral service and indicated to her that the pair of grave-diggers would like to continue about their business.

It was too final! She couldn’t yet relinquish the man who had cared for her, provided for her and her relatives. It was too soon.

Despite the empathy radiating from the friends and neighbours grouped about her, she felt alone and frightened, and that stomach-churning anxiety was now oddly intensified by the shadowy, remote figure on the edge of her vision. She suddenly wished that Daniel hadn’t insisted she write and ask him to come. Why had he? There had been no bond between them other than a distant kinship that neither man had ever sought to acknowledge or build on.

She became conscious of people looking more purposefully at her. Stiff fingers were being warmed with puff-cheeked breaths and chilled cloaked bodies batted with rigid arms. They were patiently awaiting a signal to leave.

‘Are you ready, Victoria, my dear?’ the parson enquired kindly as he took a pace towards her. ‘Come, my child, you’ll freeze,’ he coaxed, taking her arm gently and turning her about. ‘You can return later, when these men have done their work, with another pretty posy and a nice hot toddy inside you.’ He lifted a bony gloved hand to his bulbous nose set in a curiously gaunt face. ‘I do believe this is twice its normal size,’ he gently joked as he led her away. Sheeny grey eyes raised to his painfully purple proboscis and Victoria choked a hysterical giggle. She gratefully held his arm as they slowly made their careful way back down the frost-glistening grassy hillock to the shingle path that wound to Hartfield. The mourning party, approximately a score in number, fell into step behind them. A quiet murmuring among its members could be heard, conveying gladness that the ceremony was satisfactorily accomplished, and that a fire and a warming drink awaited them at Hartfield.

They would pass close by him, Victoria realised, for he had not so much as budged an inch from his isolated spot. Raising her head as she drew level, she turned; courtesy decreed she acknowledge him. Glistening grey eyes were immediately entrapped by a steady sapphire gaze. Powerless to break free, she glided on until looking across at him became impossible and she finally twisted her veiled face away and exhaled.

The blonde woman climbed the last mound. Pausing to draw a spiteful breath, she spied the snaking trail of mourners trudging away towards Hartfield. But her narrowed green eyes were almost immediately skimming back to the churchyard, targeting the sole remaining figure. Her interest quickened at his virile attractiveness, but it was his obvious affluence that drew forth a calculating smile.

Ignoring the open grave, the tall, impressive man strolled the rimed grass towards the shingle path. Feline eyes tracked him until he latched the lychgate, when they pounced forward onto the slightly built young widow far in the distance and close to the saintly parson.

The woman’s generous mouth thinned in malice. Wrapping herself more closely into the warmth of her thick cloak, she picked a careful path across the slippery turf. She glared boldly at the two labourers who began whispering as she approached. Leaning on shovels, they watched curiously as she stared down at the coffin partially obscured by a few scoops of rich dark soil.

Muttered curses, loud and crude enough to make the grave-diggers exchange an appreciative look, preceded earth piled along the edges of the grave being sent hurtling unceremoniously back into the void by a small booted foot. Then, with a dramatic swirl of her cloak, the blonde woman was hastening back across the fields in the opposite direction to the mourners and Hartfield.

‘Here, drink this,’ Laura Grayson urged her friend as she held out the glass of mulled wine.

Victoria gave her a grateful smile but her eyes were discreetly watching the door, sliding over familiar faces to find one she hadn’t seen for so long.

She felt neglectful now and ill-mannered. She had not so much as nodded to him in welcome or recognition. All she had done was stare like an idiotic fool. She so hoped he would enter the house and take a little refreshment before leaving. He had no doubt travelled from London. He must be tired…thirsty. Guilt and shame suddenly swamped her. He obviously felt shunned; she had written and invited him to attend the funeral, as Daniel had bidden her, yet done nothing to greet him. Daniel would have been rightly horrified by such lack of hospitality.

Her aunt Matilda entered the drawing room and immediately made for the roaring fire, a glass of warm wine grasped in each hand.

‘Your aunt Matty seems in fine form,’ Laura said wryly, but her troubled hazel eyes searched Victoria’s strained countenance. ‘Daniel would hate to see you looking so peaky. Remember those promises you made,’ she gently reminded her.

Victoria gave her friend a wan smile, then directed a speedy, searching glance at the ancient gentleman ensconced close to the wide hearth. It judged him to be quite comfortable and cosy. ‘Would you mind my papa, Laura, while I ensure everyone has some refreshment before they leave? It is so terribly cold and some have travelled far.’ Having received an immediate affirmative to this request from her friend, she hurried away.

People waylaid her to sympathise, making her pause to graciously thank them, but as soon as possible some inner desperation had her hastening on. She was sure he was here solely from his own sense of duty: he felt obliged to pay his last respects and would probably leave as soon as he deemed that achieved. The notion that he might go before they had even exchanged a few words, before she had even thanked him for attending, had her running.

Her black crape skirts were gripped in small white fists as she flew out into the chilly hallway and came upon him immediately, talking with the Reverend Mr Woodbridge. She stopped dead, her heart thumping so hard it was as though she had sped up three floors while searching for him in each of the fifty-two rooms that comprised Hartfield.

She paused to compose herself, noting that Jonathan Woodbridge had the appearance of a scrawny crow beside the expensively attired, athletic physique of the man who stood head and shoulders above him. He was listening with his lean, handsome face politely inclined towards the cleric’s sunken features. Both men saw her at the same time and as she moved forward again she silently gave thanks to Jonathan Woodbridge for his thoughtfulness. No doubt he had noticed the stranger in their midst and had taken it upon himself to welcome him. The people of Ashdowne were naturally hospitable folk. As she now classed herself amongst them, and was the largest landowner, she felt sadly lacking in duty. And duty was something Victoria had never shirked.

‘Mr Hardinge.’ She warmly greeted him, extending a small, gloved hand which he courteously, fleetingly touched. The extreme brevity of the contact made her withdraw it quickly and shield it amongst her stiff black skirts. But she cordially continued, ‘I’m so glad you have joined us today. It is an honour that you have travelled in such perilous weather to attend Daniel’s funeral. You are very welcome. Please come through into the warm.’ Perhaps he had misunderstood her invitation to seek the fire in the drawing room, she thought when he neither moved nor spoke, but she felt the intensity of his blue gaze prickling the top of her head. ‘May I fetch you some mulled wine? Something to eat? There is a spread upon the dining table,’ she coaxed huskily, including Jonathan Woodbridge in this invitation so she could avoid those penetrating sapphire eyes.

‘That sounds very good, Victoria,’ Jonathan said, with a twinkle to his watering eyes, his skeletal gloved hands clasping together before him as he purposely made for the drawing-room door.

Left alone in the marble-flagged hall, Victoria realised that now the parson had withdrawn there was no one else on whom to focus. She summoned a firm smile as her eyes finally raised to meet his and the breathtaking sight of him stopped her heart.

He was as she remembered but every feature, every hard, angular plane of his face, seemed more intense, more roughly hewn in maturity. There was none of the bright freshness of youth left in him. But his eyes seemed bluer, his jaw leaner, his mouth thinner—crueller, she realised. His hair seemed deeper in colour, bronze-black in the dim hallway light, and so long it curled thickly onto the collar of his coat.

‘Please have something to drink at least,’ she quickly rattled off, aware that she had been staring. ‘I would hate you to set back on the road having partaken of nothing at all.’

‘Well, I’ll accept a little refreshment, then, Mrs Hart, for I’d hate to offend you,’ David Hardinge smoothly said.

Victoria visibly relaxed and smiled at him with an unconscious sweet familiarity that hinted at their distant courtship. For a moment the charm bound him. Long fingers were raised to her face, lifting and slowly folding back the lacy veil over the crown of her hat, revealing her features.

His eyes scanned her countenance and she watched his back teeth meet, shooting his jaw out of alignment. Her smile and budding confidence faltered as she waited for a comment or sign as to how their reunion would proceed. As the silence between them tautened, she obliquely recalled addressing him incorrectly and seized on that for further conversation. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. You are now Lord Courtenay. How stupid of me to have forgotten. I knew, of course, because I attended your brother’s funeral with Daniel. It must have been…five years ago. But I didn’t see you then…you weren’t there…I believe you were abroad…the war…’ She was babbling, she realised wildly, and abruptly clamped together tremulous lips and bit down on the lower one.

David’s eyes were drawn immediately to the small white teeth gripping at that soft full curve. His lids swept down, shielding the expression darkening his eyes to midnight, and a muttered curse was hastily choked in his throat. Fat? Blowsy? Matronly? If she had children and this was how they’d left her…

She was everything he remembered, but so much more. More beautiful, if possible: she’d lost the youthful fullness in her face and now had cheekbones like ivory razors. Her inky lashes seemed lusher, her eyes more storm-violet than grey, her hair gleaming, glossy jet. Her nature seemed as sweet; that poignant melancholy she was trying to disguise with tentative friendliness made him want to do something idiotic like comfort her; cuddle her against him in a way he remembered doing so long ago…

His eyes ripped from her upturned face to stare across her dark head. The sooner he was out of here the better. He’d been a fool to come. There had been no need. A simple note of condolence would have sufficed. He’d take a glass of wine then get the hell out back to the Swan tavern at St Albans and pray that Dickie had found them some diversion to occupy his body and mind before they set off on the road back to London in the morning.

‘Lord Courtenay?’ a male voice queried uncertainly.

Victoria and David both immediately, gratefully looked about, glad of the distraction as the tension between them strained unbearably.

Sir Peter Grayson, Laura’s husband, had just entered through the great arched oaken doors of Hartfield and was clapping together his leather-gloved palms to warm them. He brushed flakes of snow from his caped shoulders and knocked them from the brim of his hat.

‘It’s snowing…’ Victoria murmured.

‘I thought I recognised you,’ Sir Peter said at the same time, directing a huge grin at David Hardinge.

David smiled as recognition dawned. ‘Peter, how nice to see you.’ He gripped the hand extended to him, while trying to block the memory of the last time this man and he had socialised. It had been about a year ago at a discreet private salon run by a personable widow. The evening of music and cards had terminated in its customary drunken orgy. The amusing memory of this young buck, cavorting naked except for his cravat, was difficult to banish.

As though abruptly recalling the same event, Sir Peter flushed, making Victoria look curiously at him. An embarrassed cough preceded Peter’s hasty, ‘I must introduce you to my wife, Lord Courtenay. Where is Laura, Vicky? Have you seen her?’ He chattered on. ‘It must be more than a year since last I spoke to you. How have you been? I rarely get to London now, you know. I spend all my time here in Hertfordshire. I was married in October of last year…and have never been happier.’

David inclined his head, acknowledging the caution. ‘Of course…’ he soothed.

‘Ah, here she is…’ Sir Peter said with a mix of relief and horror as Laura’s slim, black-clad figure drifted into the hallway from the drawing room.

Aware that a perfect opportunity for her to escape and compose her thoughts and a perfect opportunity to waylay David Hardinge longer had presented itself, Victoria appealed to her friends. ‘Please show Lord Courtenay the fire and the refreshments. I must just check that my papa is comfortable.

‘It is freezing out, Papa, and snowing again too,’ Victoria consoled her father a few moments later. ‘It is bitterly cold. Far too cold for you.’ She raised a cool, pale hand and laid it gently against his papery cheek. ‘See how chilled I still am, and I have been indoors for some while. Daniel would not have wished you to endure such inclement weather by the graveside. You know it would make you cough.’ She tucked in the rugs more closely about his bony frame but he grumbled incoherently and plucked at the blankets as she neatened them.

‘I’m hungry. Is there some wine?’ he demanded testily, making Victoria smile wryly. At times her poor, confused papa had no difficulty at all in making himself understood.

‘I’ll fetch a little porter for you,’ she promised, while removing his spectacles from where he had wedged them in the side of the chair.

He suddenly stiffened and leaned forward to hiss, ‘Who is that? Do I know him?’ Victoria half turned, still bending slightly over him, and even before she saw him, she knew to whom her father referred.

David Hardinge was grouped with Laura, Sir Peter and several other neighbours who, curious as to his relationship with the deceased, had come forward to be introduced to this handsome, charming stranger.

And he was both, Victoria had to acknowledge. His manners and appearance were exceptional. He had removed his greatcoat and handed it to Samuel Prescott, her male servant, on entering the drawing room, and now stood, superbly attired in black superfine tailcoat and trousers of expert cut and finest quality. A large black pearl nestled in a silver silk cravat at his throat. That he was now fabulously wealthy was beyond doubt. Everyone in his vicinity was focussed on him, and although he returned conversation his attention soon drifted elsewhere. He raised his glass of warm ruby wine and tasted it while watching her and her father over the rim.

‘Who is that?’ her father demanded stridently, making several people close by turn and sympathetically smile at her. ‘I recognise that devil…’

‘Papa…hush…’ Victoria soothed, feeling her face heating. As she turned away, she caught sight of a strange, humourless slant to David Hardinge’s thin lips, and heard his murmured excuses to his companions before he strolled over.

He looked down impassively at the brain-sick, elderly man for several seconds before quietly saying, ‘Hello, Mr Lorrimer.’

Charles Lorrimer peered up at him. He dug frantically in the sides of his chair for his spectacles but, finding nothing, he simply squinted foxily. ‘I suppose it’s been two months, then,’ he finally snapped, running his rheumy grey eyes over the man’s supremely distinguished figure, ‘and you’ve come back to buy my daughter.’

Chapter Two

‘You have a fine memory, Mr Lorrimer,’ David Hardinge quietly, drily commented.

Long, sooty lashes swept to shield the horrified embarrassment darkening her eyes before Victoria snatched a glance through them. David’s face gave nothing away. He was watching her father with what could have been wry amusement twisting his hard-moulded mouth. Any anger or umbrage was admirably concealed. Victoria steeled herself to hold the narrowed blue gaze that sliced to her, hoping he could detect in her expressive eyes her heartfelt regret at her father’s indiscretion.

‘Hah, you see, I have a fine memory.’ Charles Lorrimer smugly emphasised his point by clawing at his chair with skeletal fingers and inclining his fragile frame towards them. ‘She will not believe me when I tell her so,’ he conspiratorially confided to David Hardinge. ‘She says I am confused. But it suits her to say such things…to be cruel to her father and to lie to me.’

‘Papa!’ Victoria gasped, hurt and shame hoarsening her voice.

‘I remember she said she would fetch me a nice glass of warm brandy, but she has not,’ was next sniped craftily at his white-faced daughter.

‘I said a glass of porter, Papa. And I will fetch it, or get Sally to do so, if you are just patient a moment—’

‘And where is Daniel?’ Her father tetchily cut short her hushed placation. ‘Danny said today I could have snuff. Where is my son-in-law? He treats me better than my own flesh and blood; I swear he does. He is a true friend, a fine fellow. He will fetch me snuff and brandy…’

‘What is up with you now, Charles?’ a female voice boomed into his senile self-pity. ‘What are you blathering on about?’ Matilda Sweeting’s black-bombazine-clad figure pushed forward and she thrust one of her glasses of mulled wine towards her brother. ‘Here, take this and cease crabbing,’ she ordered him bluntly. ‘And don’t guzzle it so or ‘twill make you cough. No doubt your lungs will then be my concern…’

As Matilda continued to upbraid her brother good-naturedly while tugging at his blankets to neaten them, and Charles ignored her advice and gave hearty attention to his wine glass, Victoria instinctively withdrew. The past few fortifying minutes had drained her complexion and dilated her pupils to glossy gunmetal. She thankfully noticed that none of those standing close seemed to have overheard her father’s impropriety. Or, if they had, they were paying scant attention to Charles Lorrimer’s latest odd ramblings. Indeed, there was an atmosphere of pleasant gregariousness about the mourners now that Sally and Beryl had set to and mulled wine was being freely distributed and imbibed. Victoria finally allowed her dusky eyes to glide up to David Hardinge’s face, for she was aware he had moved away from her father’s chair as she did.

‘I’m so sorry…’ she breathed.

‘I have to be going…’ he said.

Their quiet words collided and they fell silent together too. After an awkward pause, Victoria resumed her low apology. ‘I assure you he meant no real offence. He cannot help the way he is. I sincerely regret if he has caused you—’

‘He has caused me nothing. Nothing at all,’ David interrupted lightly, his eyes on a spot on the ceiling. ‘But you have every right to feel slighted. Is he often so?’

Victoria glanced hastily away from eyes that had swooped to hers, feeling more humiliated by this man’s pity than by her father’s rudeness. She simply nodded quickly, casting about in her mind for a change of subject in case he enquired further.

He did not. He repeated mildly, ‘I have to go now, Mrs Hart. I’m not offended, I promise. My leaving has nothing to do with your father…’

David glanced down into her beautiful, solemn face. Well, that’s the whole truth, ran self-mockingly through his mind as he forced his eyes away again. It certainly was nothing to do with her decrepit father. It was everything to do with her. If he stayed longer she might tempt him to do or say something he was sure to regret. The urge to touch her was tormenting him. He longed to discover if her hair was as silken; even now he could recall its fine texture slipping beneath his fingers. He wanted to glide his thumb across her sculpted jaw, the delicate ridge of her cheekbones—repossess skin that looked so incredibly pale and soft.

But he could control it, he sardonically reminded himself, because he was different now. He readily acknowledged burgeoning lust; more worrying was a stirring of emotional commitment. But it was a while since that had mangled him and the notion of ever again allowing such vulnerability was so ludicrous, it almost prompted him to laugh.

So what if her father treated her ill? It was none of his concern. So what if she was now widowed? It was hardly the time or place to capitalise on it. Propositioning a woman on the day she buried her husband was beyond even his amoral sensibilities.

So he was still leaving, right now, and going back to what he knew he wanted: a good tavern, a good friend and a good night of uncomplicated roistering. Because that was what he was good at. And then tomorrow, as he journeyed home to Mayfair and his life of luxury and debauchery, he could leisurely castigate himself for ever being idiotic enough to come here at all. God only knew why he had. Travelling in freezing weather to watch earth shovelled atop some distant relative he barely knew…sheer madness!

David flicked a glance at the elderly man he had once despised and felt nothing. No disgust, no hatred. But he avoided looking back at that man’s daughter, because he knew he couldn’t pretend the same apathy, much as he wanted to.

‘I shall just find one of the servants to fetch your coat,’ Victoria politely informed him, feeling ridiculously hurt that he would not stay longer; that he could not even seem to look at her for longer than a second.

Cool hallway air fanned welcomingly against her flushed cheeks as she sped to find Samuel. Her head hammered with tension and haunting words she’d believed she had successfully buried so long ago but never would stay forgotten.

‘He wanted to buy you…he said he would do it. He wanted to buy my daughter as though she was some common whore. But then that is all he is used to and all you mean to him…’

Her father’s bellowed words of seven years ago throbbed in her head. She had dismissed it all as lies. Everything she had heard whispered abroad about David and his family she had rejected as vile rumour. She was aware that the beau monde loved nothing better than to maliciously dissect reputations, especially those of their peers. Even when Aunt Matilda had tendered cautions about her socialising with roguish David Hardinge or his wayward friends, Victoria would have none of it. She was too much in love, too obsessed with this man who wooed her with a captivating, tender passion yet never once attempted to coerce or take advantage of her. And she knew there had been times when he could have, when fate and obliging friends had allowed them a stolen hour alone, and she would have summoned little resistance had he decided to seduce her.

During their short, six-month courtship, David had shown her more affection, more gentleness and respect than any other man she had known. Even her own father. And she’d told her father that, earnestly, and it had earned her a hefty blow and her immediate banishment from Hammersmith to Hertfordshire. Following her father’s ranting censure, still she would not believe that David Hardinge was a callous rogue who did not love or want her.

Unknown to her father, she had managed to smuggle out two letters to David and had been certain he would soon rescue her. In them she’d made so plain her love for him, and the fact that she was prepared to wait, to elope, to do whatever he wanted, so long as he still loved her and would soon come for her. Yet the weeks had passed with no message, no reply…

Then one afternoon, when her father was away from home, Matilda had managed to sneak to her room to gently break the news that David had left the country and was believed to be travelling abroad. With those few whispered words had come real despair. The first inkling that she had been duped…abandoned had iced her skin and made her stomach churn so violently, so indelibly that she could taste the fear again now. Curled on her bed on that autumn afternoon, she had finally given way to a keening, draining grief that no amount of calming draughts or soothing platitudes from Matilda could ease, and only exhaustion could curtail. The redolence of that earthy, rain-spattered October day teased her nostrils anew; the memory of the incongruous perfection of the rainbow that had later bridged the house dazzled her mind. Swollen-eyed at her window, she had watched the drizzle soften into a harvest evening of such serene beauty that somehow she had found the strength to weep again.

Yet still she would have waited…so desperate was she to believe David honourable and her trust in him justified. But the empty days had crawled by, her father’s rancour had escalated to new, demented heights and a final, painful decision had had to be made.

And now she finally knew the truth of it…The awful fear that she had been wrong to marry so soon, that she should have suffered in that harsh, soulless environment longer, had evaporated. Her decision to accept Daniel’s offer of shelter in an unconventional marriage had been vindicated.

‘I suppose…you’ve come back to buy my daughter…’ her father had just said in his painfully honest way, and David Hardinge had simply smiled and complimented him on his fine memory.

Her black lacy veil tumbled forward onto her brow and Victoria swiftly unpinned the hat, dropped it carelessly onto a hall table and hurried on.

What did any of it matter now? It was all seven years old! she impressed upon herself, furious that a wedge of melancholy was blocking her throat. How could she even dwell on it? She had just buried her dear husband. He had been a fine, generous husband for seven long years. David Hardinge had been a reprobate playing a convincing role for just six months.

Daniel’s selfless goodness had stirred feelings of guilt: he might have made a second marriage to rival the consummate success of his first. But whenever Victoria had mentioned such doubts he would smile, with his pale eyes distant, and tell her that such love came but once and that once was a privilege. But a daughter to care for…God had never been that kind to him…until now.

Victoria sighed, dragging her thoughts to the present. If only Daniel had not made her promise to write to David Hardinge, she would have been as oblivious to his disturbing presence today as she had been last week…last month…last year. But for the worry of Danny’s illness and her papa’s worsening dementia, she had been virtually content with her lot in life here at Hartfield. Now she felt hot and restless…and queasy, as though a nest of vipers writhed in the pit of her stomach.

Nearing the kitchens, she spied Samuel’s broad back huddled close to the short, plump figure of Sally, one of the domestics. She had believed Sally still to be serving refreshments in the drawing room. A sigh of impatience escaped her.

‘Samuel, Lord Courtenay is leaving. His coat, please…’ The young couple immediately shifted away from each other. Sally bustled past with a deferential dip of her brunette head but her face was blotchy from weeping.

Victoria closed her eyes in sheer exasperation. She could not countenance dealing with any histrionics from the servants…not today. She already felt as though she was wound as tightly as a spring. Just one more twist and she would snap; of that she was sure.

Samuel tried to pass her too with a gruff, cooperative, ‘I’ll fetch it straight away, ma’am.’

Victoria placed a restraining hand on his beefy arm. ‘Samuel…this is too much today. Can you and Sally—and I suppose it’s Beryl involved too—can you not at least cease your bickering on a day such as this?’ she stressed in a voice quivering with emotion.

‘Sorry, ma’am…’ Samuel mumbled, his coarsely attractive features ruddying in embarrassment and remorse. Straightening his waistcoat with a businesslike jerk, he sedately walked on.

Victoria stared at the kitchen door then momentarily closed her eyes, composing herself, before swishing about and calmly retracing her steps.

She emptied her mind. Nothing was allowed other than the need to get through this day. She concentrated on whether any mourners would expect bed and board. The weather was now so inclement it would invariably come to that, she decided. That would entail arranging chambers and linen, further meals…She was exhausted and desirous of solitude, not extended company. But it was her duty and she would deal with it, just as she always had since Danny’s illness had shifted such mundane matters onto her slender shoulders. For with his declining health had come declining fortune when he’d no longer devoted attention to his business affairs. And as their income had reduced so had the number of servants they could employ at Hartfield. But she had been happy to take over housekeeping duties when Mrs Whittaker had retired and gone to live with her sister in Brighton. And thus the first economies had been made.

Victoria completely ignored the reflexive jump of her heart as she rounded the corner into the main hallway and immediately spied David Hardinge’s tall, imposing figure. He was chatting to Sir Peter by the double arched entrance doors. She focussed on being relieved that Samuel had speedily set about the task of returning the Viscount his coat. That comforting emotion was immediately whipped from her as she anxiously noticed Beryl’s neat, black-uniformed figure sidling up to Samuel by the hall table. But they both appeared fully occupied attending to guests’ cloaks and gloves and quite oblivious and uncaring of each other.

A grateful sigh escaped. Any further embarrassing domestic situations and she was sure she would scream or weep. Instead she stifled a wry laugh at the very idea; such selfish indulgence was a luxury, and there would be no more of those.

Having cordially shaken hands with his old acquaintance, Sir Peter turned back to the warmth of the drawing room. Victoria received a friendly, slightly inebriated grin as he passed.

‘Thank you once again, Lord Courtenay, for being good enough to attend Daniel’s funeral. I hope the weather improves for your safe journey home.’

David inclined his dark head, acknowledging her civil good wishes, even though they held the same arctic quality as the air outside. His eyes reluctantly shifted from her face to gaze at something distracting behind her. ‘One of your servants seems a little upset,’ he mentioned impartially.

Victoria felt a stinging surge of blood heat her cheeks. So Beryl and Samuel had not contained their differences, not even for the five short minutes that would have been necessary for David Hardinge to have taken his leave. Narrowed blue eyes scanned her pink, tense face as he said, ‘You already know about it…?’

The hint of mild concern in his tone snapped up her glossy black head. She had no use for his pity and would have liked to tell him so. Instead she murmured stiffly, ‘Yes, I do know, thank you,’ while wishing the floor would open up and swallow her…or this taciturn man who assuredly never tolerated tantrums from his domestics.

Pride aided her swift composure. ‘It has been a very sad time for us all. My husband was well liked and respected by the servants…by all who knew him.’ It was a quite truthful prevarication. The rustling of Beryl’s stiff skirts as she scurried away was all that broke the ensuing silence.

‘I believe I’ve been remiss in not yet offering condolences on your loss, Mrs Hart,’ David eventually said. ‘Was he a good husband?’

Grey and blue eyes linked then strained. ‘I’m sure there was never better,’ Victoria quietly stated, and something about the way he found that cool sincerity amusing twisted her stomach.

He extended a hand in farewell and she allowed him one of hers for the briefest moment. His smile quirked sardonically as she exactly matched his reaction to her touch earlier. Then all that was left with her in the hallway was an icy draught and a dusting of snowflakes melting on the marble flags.

The sun was lost early today, Victoria realised glumly as she glanced out through the casement window in Hartfield’s small library at the clouding sky. She finished totting up the column of figures in the household accounts before pushing the ledger away from her and laying the quill back on the blotter. It mattered little how many times she did the sums; the balances never looked any healthier. But she had made economies before; it was simply a case of cutting back a little further.

Daniel had always praised her housekeeping skills, in the early days of her undertaking the task, marvelling at the way she could make do and mend, bargain with tradesmen and generally pinch a penny until it squeaked. As he’d grown weaker, she’d known he no longer had strength enough to worry or enquire as to how she did.

She had no idea where her talents for parsimony came from: until her marriage she’d had no experience of household budgeting or hiring servants or paying wages. But she had been reared on thrift. Her father had never been a generous man where she was concerned—either in his time, his affection or his coin.

She withdrew her mother’s locket from the pocket of her serviceable serge gown and laid it on the blotter. A finger traced the carved gold surface before she opened it with gentle reverence and looked at the miniature portraits of her parents. The likenesses had been painted shortly after their marriage, some twenty-eight years ago. Her father was strong and handsome, his hair as black as her own, despite the fact that he was then in his forties, and his eyes bright and alert. Her mother looked serene: her luxuriant auburn tresses swept back from the delicate bone-structure of her ivory-skinned, heart-shaped face. She had been more than twenty years younger than her husband.

Whenever Victoria feasted her hungry eyes upon the beautiful mother she had never known, she understood how awful it must have been for the man who’d doted on her to have lost her. She understood why her father resented her; why she had grown up shunned as an unwanted burden rather than a cherished child. For her mother had relinquished life in order that Victoria could have hers and she knew her father had found that impossible to forgive. The sad irony was that her late husband had lost both his new-born daughter and his first wife in childbed and had cherished Victoria as his child-wife.

In her early years, her dear aunt Matty had done her best to substitute herself as the mother Victoria had never known. She had also upbraided her brother many times for his coldness and neglect of his only child. Victoria had overheard their cross words on occasion, and knowing she was causing her father that family pain too had served only to turn the screws of the awful guilt that racked her. And she marvelled at her aunt Matty’s temerity. For she had been, during their days in Hammersmith, an impecunious widow reliant on her brother’s charity, and to scold him as she did, and on another’s account…

Matilda Sweeting’s life had never been easy. She had married a penniless scoundrel who purported to be a naval officer, given birth to a son and been widowed all in the space of two years. Despite her wastrel husband having frittered away all his own money and then hers too, Matilda had managed to retain her pride and her sanity. And then when her only son, Justin, had disappeared in his sixteenth year, she had again drawn on that unbreachable resilience to overcome the disaster. He had been press-ganged, or so they believed, for there was no other credible solution to his disappearance some eleven years ago in the vicinity of the London dockland. Matilda spoke rarely of him now, but when she did it was as though he was alive and well but just too busy and successful to visit yet awhile.

Victoria focussed again on her parents’ youthful, attractive faces. There had been a lot of heartache for the Lorrimers in the past twenty-five years. A troubled sigh escaped as she dwelt on her father’s dementia. Heartache wasn’t yet over.

A bar of warmth gilded her clasped hands on the desk as the sun escaped cloud. She turned her dark head to the window. The bitter winter was extending into late March but had not prevented spring bulbs spearing the frozen ground. The sight of yellow and mauve crocuses interspersed with snowdrops bobbing their drooping heads prompted a wistful smile. The sky was clouding again already, slowly obliterating the lucid sunlight, but she resolved to go. Each afternoon in the hour between finishing her bookkeeping duties and organising preparation of the evening meal, she would walk the short distance to the chapel and tend her husband’s grave.

‘I thought I might find you here.’

Victoria started, gasped and twisted about so quickly that she almost pitched forward onto her knees. She shielded her eyes as she peered up at the man standing a few paces away on the shingle path. He stepped jerkily forward, belatedly steadying her with a meaty hand.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hart; I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he earnestly apologised. ‘Samuel said you’re to be found here most afternoons. I…I needed to speak with you…’ He looked at the grave, the pretty arrangement of pastel spring flowers atop the cropped grassy mound. ‘I apologise for intruding on a private moment…I just…I’m afraid it is important….’

Victoria banged earth from her gloved hands. ‘Please don’t apologise, Mr Beresford. In any case, I was just about to return to Hartfield. ‘Twill soon be time for dinner. Will you stay and dine?’ she pleasantly invited her late husband’s attorney.

Alexander Beresford reluctantly demurred but with grateful thanks for the kind offer as he gallantly helped Victoria to her feet. She was surprised to see him. He usually made the trip from the town of St Albans to the village of Ashdowne about once every six weeks to advise her on Daniel’s investments and her current financial situation. She was sure not yet a fortnight had passed since last she had seen him. He was a pleasant, stocky man of perhaps thirty-five. He seemed efficient in all he did and had been a great deal of help to her in the weeks following Daniel’s death, patiently explaining exactly what provision Daniel had made for her and that, with careful administration and a tight grip on the purse-strings, the funds would prove adequate to frugally maintain Hartfield.

She noticed he seemed more nervous than usual. Despite the chill afternoon air, a beading of perspiration glistened along his hairline. ‘Is something amiss, Mr Beresford?’

He cleared his throat, thrusting large hands into his greatcoat pockets while gazing off into the distance. This was to be a momentous day for both of them and he still wasn’t sure how or where to start. So he didn’t. ‘You have made that look very nice indeed, Mrs Hart. Those bright flowerheads can be seen from beyond the chapel gate.’ His praise was fulsome yet not once did he glance at the crocuses he so admired.

‘Is there something amiss, Mr Beresford?’ Victoria persisted, seeking contact with his evasive brown eyes.

‘Yes, Mrs Hart, there is,’ Alexander Beresford told her bluntly, his gaze finally colliding with hers. ‘But I think we should leave further discussion until we’re back at Hartfield.’ With a solemn air of finality he offered her his arm.

‘Surely the warehouse ought to have been insured against fire?’ Victoria demanded of Alexander Beresford, seated opposite her, his papers spread across her small library desk.

The man raked some chubby fingers through his brown hair. ‘It seems it was not, Mrs Hart. I have to admit to being equally amazed and angry at this discovery.’ A stubby finger poked between his neckcloth and his red-mottled throat. ‘The clerk charged with dealing with insurance cover on the premises at the East India Dock had not paid over the cash to the insurance company. In short, the man appears to have fraudently used the money as his own and allowed the policy to lapse.’ Mr Beresford clapped both hands down on the table, pushed himself back in his chair and issued a hearty blow of mingled annoyance and resignation. ‘None of which helps your cause, I’m afraid, Mrs Hart. Practically all Daniel’s stock was lost in the inferno. The rogue could possibly be punished, if the theft was proven and his whereabouts discovered. I have it from a reliable source that the coward is gone to ground. No doubt he trusted the theft would go undetected.’

Victoria gazed at him with wide grey eyes. The enormity of what he was saying was slowly penetrating her mind, in terrifying fragments. ‘Just how badly will I…will Hartfield…be affected by this loss, Mr Beresford?’ she asked quietly, determinedly.

His thick fingers plucked distractedly at the papers in front of him before clasping together. ‘To pay off creditors Hartfield must be sold,’ he eventually burst out.

‘Never!’ Victoria whispered in fierce astonishment. She certainly had not anticipated that things were as bad as that. ‘Daniel bequeathed Hartfield to me to provide a home for us all. And also to retain the servants who have served him…us so faithfully. Some have been at Hartfield for twenty years or more. Samuel was but nine years old when he commenced work in the stables. I would feel I had utterly failed Daniel…betrayed him, and so soon. It is barely eight weeks since his death. No! There must be some other way…’

‘I have searched for other ways, I assure you,’ Alexander Beresford stressed quite truthfully, his fleshy face ruddying in indignation. ‘The bank that forwarded loans to Daniel for the speculative purchase of those silks and cottons, now mere ashes, is pressing for payment. I need to forward some cash soon. An interim payment might appease them for a short while. I suggest sale of the last of the sterling bonds…’ He swivelled some papers towards her as he spoke, but they barely received a cursory glance. Her grey eyes were pinned back on his face, desperate for some reassurance that this awful, unexpected situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. None came.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but Hartfield will need to be sold. And as soon as possible. There is no stock now to sell to meet the interest or the principal. You probably know that during your late husband’s illness his finances declined quite considerably. There is the matter of the overdue rent from the Holdbrook farm, but I know Daniel was not keen to sue for that while the family were suffering such tribulations.’

Victoria nodded, murmuring her wholehearted agreement with Daniel’s forbearance. The tenants at that farm were experiencing dreadful hardship: two of the sons had been taken with consumption and just before Daniel had died of the same pitiless condition they’d had word that the youths’ mother was also afflicted. Adam Holdbrook, a man in his late forties, was now struggling to run his farm single-handed and rear three young children under five years of age. To insist on payment of overdue rent at such a time would have been beneath humanity. In fact, it was time she visited the family with a little of Hartfield’s butter and cheese. Samuel had told her only that week that, in desperation, Adam Holdbrook had sold the family’s last dairy cow. At one time, Daniel had been in a position to help luckless villagers. It had cemented good relationships between landlord and tenant. Now there was very little she could offer at such times. Her thoughts raced back to her own predicament. The awful truth was that she might soon be in need of a little charity herself.

‘Will there be any residue from the sale? Enough to provide a home for myself and my father and aunt?’

‘There will be very little, my dear…very little indeed.’ Alexander knew there would be nothing but voicing as much was beyond his courage.

Victoria stared at him, obliquely aware that he was kindly trying to comfort her. He had done so before on the fateful evening Dr Gibson had told them that Daniel would be dead before morn. And when reading Daniel’s will to her and explaining that everything her late husband owned was to be hers.

Hartfield was to be hers to keep or sell as she would but no other man would ever lay hands on it. Codicils had been added to the deeds to Daniel’s estate so it could be bequeathed to her yet never pass out of her control and into the unworthy clutches of a future husband, should she remarry.

Alexander Beresford’s brown eyes settled on the woman he secretly desired and admired. He strove for the boldness to voice his proposal. ‘There is another way, Victoria.’

The immediate bright hope in her eyes made him blurt quickly, ‘You could…you should remarry.’

Victoria frowned across the library table at him. ‘Remarry? My husband is barely eight weeks buried. It is far too soon; besides, I have no wish…’

‘I realise, my dear, that so soon might seem indelicate but in circumstances such as these…desperate circumstances…people understand such behaviour. What choices have you? A man to support you or employment are the only options if you are to avoid the parish relief.’

‘Well, which man would take on a widow with an estate and property to upkeep that will never be his own? He would need to be a wealthy saint. No such man exists.’

‘Well, naturally, Victoria,’ Alexander Beresford said mildly, ‘no man would burden himself so. Hartfield must be sold to meet your debts, for no man would take on such losses. But you still need protection and security. And any amount of gentlemen would be proud…happy to have you grace their home…’ And their bed, ran involuntarily through Alexander Beresford’s mind, making his chubby features perspire at such lustful thoughts. He repeated quickly, ‘No, Hartfield must be sold to pay your debts and I expect you would feel obliged to make provision for your relatives before you wed, if at all possible.’

‘My relatives? You mean my papa and Aunt Matilda? Well, naturally they would live with me…’

‘Daniel Hart was indeed philanthropic. But a new husband might not countenance such an arrangement, my dear,’ Alexander warned firmly. His brown eyes roved discreetly over her fitted buttoned bodice. Even the drab mourning grey and serviceable material could not deflect an appreciative glance at her slender ribcage and small rounded breasts.

He was determined to make his offer and in the circumstances was reasonably confident of it being successful. But his means and generosity would never stretch to her extended family. He earned a reasonable salary, had good prospects, and a comfortable home in St Albans. Victoria was very welcome to share it as his wife but his duty ended there. He had no intention of charitably boarding and lodging her brain-sick father or her outspoken widowed aunt, no matter what precedent Daniel Hart had vexingly set.

She would lose Hartfield. She had debts to pay and would thus lose the home her husband had had in his family for three generations. This was all that dominated Victoria’s mind. Daniel had left it in her safekeeping and within two months of his death it was to be lost. But how could she have prevented it? She could never have averted this disaster. Was there sense in Alexander’s proposal that another good man might be her salvation? She had married one kindly husband who had cared for her and her family. But then Daniel Hart and Charles Lorrimer had been old acquaintances: she had known her late husband all her life. She had always liked him…trusted him implicitly. It was the reason she had agreed to marry him when her future looked so bleak. She sighed dejectedly. ‘My papa and my aunt are settled here. I so wish my father could see out his remaining days at Hartfield.’

‘Well, I would do all in my power to please you, my dear,’ Alexander said. ‘But retaining Hartfield even for one more month is, I believe, quite beyond me.’

Victoria looked at him with wary grey eyes. Surely he didn’t mean…?

‘I see you have guessed, and I can’t say I’m surprised for I know I have difficulty at times in shielding my feelings for you. I have long admired you, Victoria. To my shame, I held you in great affection even when Daniel was alive. I envied him so…’ The admission seemed ripped from him.

‘Please, I feel I should stress that I…that I…’ Victoria could think of nothing to add quickly to make him stop.

‘No, let me finish. I must say these things, my dear. I have loved and admired you for a long while. It would make me the proudest man alive if you would consent to be my wife. I have a comfortable villa in St Albans and good prospects and salary. I have my business premises there and ambitions to expand and take on a partner—’

‘Please, I have to speak.’ Victoria softly interrupted him. She smiled and it prompted the florid-faced man to spontaneously reach across the table and grasp one of her small-boned hands in his pudgy fingers. The instinct to withdraw from his moist palm was not easily curbed. ‘I truly thank you, Mr Beresford, for your proposal. But I cannot…I cannot even countenance remarrying at present. Your kindness in offering to share your home with me does you great credit and me great honour. But at present I cannot consent…’

‘I understand; of course I do. A year at least to mourn one’s dear departed is usual…indeed expected. I have spoken too soon in the normal way. But circumstances are no longer normal. People understand that financial hardship countermands such codes. But I understand you need time to think.’ He gave her a rather sweet smile. ‘I pray you will consider quickly and favourably, Victoria.’ He hurriedly collected together his papers and within five minutes was gone from Hartfield.

As Victoria pivoted on her heel in the hallway after the great door closed behind him, she pondered on all he had told her. She thought of her father and her aunt and, because he was a kind man, she knew Alexander would provide for them. She turned back and stared at the arched oaken doors of Hartfield. He was quite right: her circumstances were exceptional. Protection for herself and her family was a priority; clinging to social niceties was not. She suddenly felt sorely tempted to run after him and give him her answer now.

Chapter Three

‘Well, I think it is an admirable idea!’

‘You do?’ Victoria quizzed her aunt, amazed.

‘Of course. What you have to bear in mind, Vicky, my dear, is that you are property-rich but income-poor. You need an alliance with a man who is the reverse. That would solve everything.’

‘I am not property-rich, Aunt Matty,’ Victoria patiently explained. ‘The bank will seize Hartfield, and Alexander Beresford is hardly rich…’

‘Tush, not him!’ Matilda Sweeting dismissed, contemptuously flapping a hand. ‘We can do better than him, I’ll warrant. We want a man of serious wealth, not reasonable prospects. No, what we will have to do, my dear Vicky, is take a trip to London and put you on the marriage block!’

‘You are simply priceless, Aunt Matty,’ Victoria censured on a giggle. ‘In case it’s slipped your mind, I am not a debutante of eighteen with an enticing dowry but an impecunious recent widow in her twenty-sixth year. Husband-hunting so soon and so blatantly would be frightfully unseemly. Besides, how many rich saints do you know that we can impose upon? For such a man is indeed what we need. Someone willing to take on all the responsibilities of Hartfield, and yet be content never to own it himself. A man prepared to support with equanimity a wife and her relations…’ Victoria glanced anxiously at Matilda’s reaction to that; she hadn’t meant to imply her aunt was a burden.

‘Keep your head still,’ Matilda ordered, unperturbed by Victoria’s tactless comment. She gently drew a silver-backed hairbrush through her niece’s thick hair, fanned ebony tresses over the shoulders of her white cotton nightgown and teased strands to frame her ivory complexion. Satisfied with her artistry, she curved her age-spotted hands over Victoria’s silken scalp, showing her her reflection in the glass. ‘Now tell me which man would not like that beautiful sight greeting him nightly.’

‘Aunt Matilda!’ Victoria admonished in an outraged squeak.

‘Now don’t get prudish with me, my girl. What you have to bear in mind is that what always counts with gentlemen when the chips are down—or more importantly aren’t down in our case, as we are all now so poor—is the lure of beauty. I suppose that tubby solicitor courting you told soppy tales of admiration and respect,’ Matilda fawned, contorting her lined cheeks into further wrinkles. ‘Pah! He desires you. So does every lusty male who claps eyes on you…that’s the truth of it.’

Placing her elbows on the dressing table, Victoria rested her slender chin in her cupped hands and looked. Limpid grey eyes roved across her creamy brow from where ebony satin hair curtained her small, heart-shaped face. She swivelled her pointed chin in her palm, examining her features. Her nose was too short and narrow, she was sure, and her mouth too full and wide. But throughout her life she had been told she was pretty. Even her papa had once grudgingly admitted that she mirrored her mother’s pale beauty and not a scrap of him…apart from his black hair. But she could only recall him complimenting her that once, when mellow with brandy and bonhomie after a successful afternoon’s gambling at his club. There had been very few such cheering incidents. He’d invariably lost, and heavily. Yet he would return to St James’s confident of recouping the previous day’s misfortunes.

Daniel had constantly said how proud he was of his child-wife, as he affectionately termed her. But the man who had pleased her most with his quiet compliments…she no longer thought of, she firmly reminded herself, abruptly sitting back in her velvet chair. But her grey eyes held with her reflection. She rubbed at her high cheekbones, stirring some colour into them.

‘Leave yourself be!’ Matilda whipped pins from her own greying locks in readiness for retirement. ‘You weren’t meant to be one of those milky-pinky misses with yellow hair and baby-blue eyes,’ she lisped through the pins lodged temporarily between her teeth. They soon scattered on the dressing table. ‘You’re just fine as you are. I noticed David Hardinge couldn’t keep his eyes from you…when he thought you were looking elsewhere, of course. I swear you quite took that wealthy bachelor’s breath away,’ she innocently declared, sliding a pale blue eye sideways at her niece.

Victoria stood up abruptly. ‘Indeed I did,’ she admitted sourly. ‘So breathless was he in my company, he had difficulty speaking at all. We barely exchanged a dozen words, in the short while he deigned to stay at his kinsman’s wake.’

‘Well, the memory of him has certainly cured the lack of roses in your cheeks,’ Matilda lightly remarked, eyeing the becoming flush warming Victoria’s face. ‘I’ve heard from my sources in London that he is now so eligible he is sought by all the top hostesses, yet shuns most in favour of carrying on regardless. Of course his affluence and title ensure he is welcome whatever his character and reputation.’ A reflective pause preceded her next words. ‘I thought he seemed much older and rather cynical about the eyes and mouth. But then it hasn’t detracted at all from his looks; quite the reverse. Maturity sits well on some men: gives them presence and sophistication. To look at him, so handsome and dignified, you would judge him a paragon of propriety.’

‘Perhaps he is,’ Victoria remarked lightly, as though, truth or not, it concerned her little.

‘Indeed, he’s not!’ Matilda scoffed. ‘Last time I sat down to a hand of brag with Colonel Whiting and his lady, I overheard the gentlemen tattling about Viscount Courtenay. Never mind.’ She drily anticipated and answered Victoria’s unspoken inquisitiveness. ‘They sounded quite green with envy and were no doubt vastly embellishing it all. They must have been! The few snippets I caught would have shocked the devil himself!’

‘How can you intrigue me so then refuse to say more? You have to tell me now,’ Victoria petitioned with a brittle little laugh.

‘Indeed, I shall not! It’s not fit for these old ears.’ Matilda batted at them in emphasis. ‘I’ll certainly not repeat such lewd, shameless behaviour to a genteel young female.’

‘It concerned his lady friends, then?’ Victoria probed, dipping her head and brushing her hair.

‘Friends, maybe…ladies, never!’ Matilda snorted. ‘And you’ll prise no more from me, my girl. You’ve tricked me into saying too much as it is. Now I’m off to find my bed. These old bones need some rest.’ She halted with her hand on the doorknob. ‘What you have to bear in mind, Victoria, is that there are far worse things than marrying a libertine for his money and his title. After all, once you were prepared to marry him when he had neither,’ she added wryly, closing the bedroom door.

‘I thought I ought to bring this to your immediate attention, my lord. Albert Gibbons had it hand-delivered. As you and the lady are almost related, he probably guessed you’d be concerned at the news.’

David Hardinge frowned at this cryptic comment and immediately took the proffered note. It had to be news of some import from his solicitor, he supposed, breaking the seal, that had brought Jacob out in the sleety rain to seek him at his club. A frown and narrowing of incredulous blue eyes were swiftly followed by an exceedingly contented smile. As David relaxed back into his chair, leisurely rereading the note, he gave a throaty, satisfied laugh, thereby prompting Jacob to sigh and give an imperceptible shake of his head. He had anticipated a mood of shock and sorrow at the calamitous information contained in the missive, but his master was merely surprised…and pleased.

He had always believed he knew this Lord Courtenay well. He would have held him up as a charitable man; not one apt to crow over others’ misfortune. It was true he was ruthless in his business dealings, especially with any foolish enough to attempt trickery. Nevertheless, he could be outstandingly generous. William Branch, not even one of his closest chums, had fallen foul of the dice once too often, yet had been saved from the Fleet by the Viscount’s funds forwarded at a paltry percentage. Was not his lordship also invariably generous to his women, past and present? Redundant paramours were amply compensated. In fact, Jacob was prone to tut and mutter about economies every time he dealt with such pension funds.

Yet Lord Courtenay learned of disasters affecting his late cousin’s family and it gave him cause to chuckle. Jacob had heard about the inferno that had decimated a warehouse on the East India Dock and knew, unofficially, that Mrs Hart was now destitute because of it. Well, perhaps the hard-hearted devil wouldn’t find it quite so amusing if his kinsman’s widow decided to petition for his charity. Jacob glared through his spectacles at his master’s hard face. Yes, that might just test his generosity and his humour, for he’d heard her losses were colossal.

Having folded his hand of poker and taken leave of Dickie Du Quesne and various other acquaintances at White’s, David Hardinge walked back through the cold drizzle towards Beauchamp Place. His thoughts would have surprised his clerk, half running beside him to keep up with his long stride, had Jacob but known them. Far from maliciously relishing Victoria’s fate, what he sardonically savoured was his own.

At one time, and not so many years ago, nothing in his life had ever gone the way he wanted. Now luck ran so persistently in his favour that it tended to rouse his sceptical amusement.

During the past two months, a plausible reason to approach Victoria Hart and offer her his protection would have had him bartering his soul. And now he had one. Not only that, but after what he’d just learned he was quite confident she would be readily amenable to his overtures. Contrarily that disappointed him: nothing and no one seemed to be a worthy challenge any more.

In the first month following their reunion he had striven daily to exclude her from his mind. Finally accepting that as utterly impossible and therefore utterly infuriating, the second month he’d given in, succumbed to self-torment and had cast about desperately for some tenable excuse to return to Hartfield.

Now he had it, and just in time: this irritating obsession he had with possessing her had vexed him long enough. Deliverance from it lay in indulging it until it palled, and that was exactly what he intended to do. So her impending bankruptcy aroused little sympathy for it suited him and need never harm her. She would be well cared for. His women always were.

Dwelling on her delicate beauty softened the hard set of his features. Despite her grief on the day of her husband’s funeral, she had clung tightly to her composure, admirably dealing with her servants and her deranged father. She had dealt admirably with him too. Yet she had wanted him to stay longer and had poignantly lacked the guile to conceal it. Pride had made her try, he allowed with a wry smile, recalling her aloof civility and how sweetly vulnerable it had made her seem.

From the moment he had walked away and into the snow he had wished himself back with her. It was only later, at the Swan tavern, that he’d grudgingly accepted he’d run for cover. No other woman had ever rattled him the way she did, or made him feel simultaneously lecherous and caring.

On hearing another low, private chuckle, Jacob muttered beneath his breath, sprinted ahead up the steps of his master’s magnificent town house and rapped impatiently on the enormous stately door. Turning back, he watched his employer stroll on through the icy mist as though promenading on a summer’s day, hands thrust deep in his pockets, a vague smile about his narrow mouth.

‘It’s fate, that’s what it is. The stars have decided the matter for us,’ Aunt Matilda announced breathlessly on entering the dining room two mornings later.

Victoria enquiringly raised dark brows, while carrying to her father his tea and toast. She placed his breakfast close by him, retrieved his napkin from the carpet, replaced it on the polished mahogany table, then gave her aunt her full attention.

Matilda held out a letter towards her niece, shaking it excitedly. ‘See what the express has just brought. There, read that!’ she ordered. ‘It’s a sign. I swear it is. Charles, if you drop it again, you remain jammy-mouthed,’ she warned her brother as he furtively lowered white linen towards the persian rug.

‘Where are the kippers?’ Charles Lorrimer demanded, through the napkin scrubbing at his mouth. ‘I don’t want this…’ He sent the plate of toast and jam skidding away across the table’s glossy surface. ‘Where is my proper breakfast?’

‘You know kippers give you indigestion, Papa, and the bones catch in your teeth,’ Victoria calmly answered, while reading the letter in her hand. It was from her aunt’s sister-inlaw, Margaret Worthington, and its purpose was to invite Matilda and a companion to Cheapside in London to attend her daughter’s birthday celebration in two weeks’ time.

‘Well, you must go, of course,’ Victoria told her gleeful aunt as she handed back her letter.

‘We must go,’ Matilda stressed for Victoria. ‘You and I now have a reason for a trip to town and the perfect venue to socialise. Margaret has some very influential friends. You must remember her daughter, Emma. Nice enough but a plain little thing. I’ll warrant Margaret must be fair despairing of ever shifting her. She must be twenty-four now if a day. But the girl always was too much of an opinionated blue-stocking…’ Matilda halted mid-flow. ‘Of course! She has probably invited every eligible man for miles around to attend. It will be just perfect for us. You’ll outshine every female there. Margaret will be spitting mad…’

‘Aunt!’ Victoria cautioned, noticing that her father was leaning towards them in his chair, straining to listen, a crafty look crinkling his eyes and mouth. ‘You must go and enjoy yourself, Aunt Matty, but much as I would love to join you it’s impossible,’ she stated quietly and firmly as she noticed her aunt about to protest. ‘I am a recent widow. I know I promised Daniel not to mope and weep but extravagant socialising is too much. Besides, Papa needs me and so does Hartfield.’

‘Well, what you have to bear in mind, my girl, is that this might be your last chance for either of them to need you,’ Aunt Matilda hissed in an undertone. ‘There will soon be no more Hartfield to concern you. Every stick of furniture, every acre and barn will be sold…gone unless you find a man to take it all on. And as for your papa…’ She nodded meaningfully at her brain-sick brother, polishing the dining table with his napkin dipped in tea. ‘How long do you think he will stand the rigours of the parish relief? Or a lunatic asylum, for that matter? Your chubby solicitor suitor has no intention of burdening himself with either of us old ‘uns, you know.’ She gave Victoria’s arm an encouraging shake. ‘Daniel doted on you. He would want you safe and happy. With his last breath he decreed you enjoy your youth. You know that’s the truth. Besides, Margaret is my late husband’s half-sister and it is an age since we met. We are not gadding, simply visiting relations.’

Victoria started awake from her snooze as the carriage jolted. As it slowed a small exclamation of dismay escaped her. But mercifully it picked up speed. If they had halted once again and she had had to endure George Prescott pacing to and fro mumbling and grumbling that he was in a bit of a quandary, she was sure she would have resorted to hysteria.

Her tapered fingers whitened on the battered upholstery of Hartfield’s travelling coach as she leaned forward to blink sleepy eyes at the passing shadowy scenery.

The cottages were getting closer together and there were fewer intervals of wooded countryside—a sure sign that they were approaching the outskirts of the city. They had already lost several hours while Samuel’s uncle had dithered about going this way or that.

As Samuel could not be spared from managing Hartfield or caring for her papa in her absence to drive them to London, he had suggested that an uncle of his, now retired, would be happy to take on the job for a small consideration. A reciprocal small consideration from Samuel’s uncle would have been very welcome: to wit, an admission that the man had not travelled this route either as coachman or passenger for more than sixteen years and that his sight and his memory were useless.

Twice they had turned into narrow lanes leading nowhere. Manoeuvring their small carriage and two elderly greys about had proved arduous and almost impossible.

Twice Victoria had suggested cancelling the trip and returning to Hartfield. Then later in the week they could catch the stage from St Albans and travel to town in a sane and relaxed manner.

Beryl, for her own reasons, had heartily concurred with this. Her aunt had told Beryl to mind her business before impressing on Victoria, with a cautionary wag of the head, that they bear in mind the importance of this trip. Also, that Margaret Worthington was expecting them and would be horrified should they not arrive, suspecting all sorts of devilry had befallen them on the journey. This genuinely concerned Victoria. There was no way a message could speedily be sent to their hostess, who was kind enough to be putting them up for a week at Rosemary House in Cheapside. She was probably even now preparing for their arrival.

When George Prescott had then insisted that he was out of his quandary and into his stride, Victoria had relented. So they persevered towards London but were several hours behind schedule.

She glanced across at her two female companions, one propped in either corner of the creaking carriage, both sleeping soundly. Neither had spoken a word to the other since the clash of opinion about continuing to London. Thereafter, simmering resentment was limited to ostentatiously shifting as far apart as the small travelling coach allowed.

Beryl had sulked from the moment she had learned she would be acting as maid to Victoria and Matilda on this trip. Victoria knew it was not the thought of dressing a head of hair, which she did remarkably well, but the thought of Sally exerting influence over Samuel in her absence. But it would have been impossible to leave the two women together, sharpening their claws on each other while vying for Samuel’s favours. Separating the housemaids was the only option in her absence from Hartfield.

The carriage juddered and slowed. Victoria immediately pulled herself towards the window and peered out. There were two conveyances in front of them now and, on the right-hand side, a row of grimy building tenements.

London! At last! A few hawkers’ shouts were audible amongst the rattling of carriage wheels and as they proceeded they merged into a thrum of sound. Victoria inhaled carefully, sure she could detect tar and brine in amongst the pungent whiffs assaulting her nostrils. She squinted into the gloom and in the distance made out rigging and masts rising like grey skeletons against a velvet night sky. They were obviously near the Thames.

A young boy, perhaps seven years old, caught her attention by waving a hand; he then held it out, calling for coins. Even in the twilight, Victoria could discern his ragged, emaciated body and it tweaked her heartstrings.

The babble and stench of the city increased, permeating the coach. A mouth-watering aroma of savoury pies became submerged beneath the stomach-churning stink of ordure. Victoria drew the leather curtain over the draughty window. She glanced at her female companions; neither was in the least disturbed by the city hullaballoo and both gently snored on.

The thought of Rosemary House—warm refreshment and a soft bed close at hand—made Victoria simultaneously contented and conscience-stricken as she thought of the filthy urchin she’d just spied. As she shifted to find a comfortable spot on the cracked hide seat, her weary head lolled back into the squabs and her eyelids drooped.

They flicked up within a few minutes. The coach had stopped. She waited tensely, then felt the vehicle rock on its axle as George Prescott descended from his perch. Victoria fought to budge the coach window to speak to him; he was now conversing with someone by the greys’ heads.

George looked searchingly about in the manner of someone locating their bearings and Victoria groaned despairingly. He scratched his head thoughtfully, then, urged by his rough-looking companion, walked towards a crowd of people.

Without sensible thought, Victoria was out of the coach and running to apprehend him. ‘Mr Prescott!’ she called loudly, holding her skirts as she skipped and dodged the debris in the street. ‘What is happening? Where do you think you are off to? Are we arrived at Cheapside? Why have we stopped here?’ Her queries and accusations came tumbling out.

‘I’m in a bit of a quandary, you see, Mrs Hart…’ he began sheepishly. ‘Now you get yourself back in the coach while I finds out from these folks jest where we are. This kind gent reckons Rosemary Lane be up there and a turn back towards the Ratcliffe Highway where I believe we jest came through. Er…we’ve been around in a circle, like…’

‘We’re lost again?’ Victoria demanded incredulously, and then, horrified, corrected, ‘We require Rosemary House, in Cheapside, Mr Prescott. Not Rosemary Lane.’ She glanced warily at the scruffy, stocky man with George Prescott. His features were virtually lost beneath a tangle of beard that seemed almost attached to scraggy brows. His sharp black eyes were distinguishable: they slipped assessingly over her fine clothes before sliding sideways to the unattended carriage behind her.

Victoria stiffened. Two sleeping women were left there alone and unprotected. She attempted to divert the man’s astute stare. ‘Are there street entertainers?’ She was sure her voice sounded squeakily unnatural and quickly indicated a crowd of people forming a circle. Raucous shouts and laughter crescendoed as people began spilling onto the cobbles from brightly lit inns and gin shops situated on either side of the narrow street. Flares formed moving pools of glowing gold amid flickering patches of darkness. She watched in increasing alarm as drunkards linked arms, holding each other up, yet still up-ended tankards and tots. Two blowsy, rouged women passed close by and subjected Victoria to a spiteful-eyed stare.

‘Look at ‘er…proper Miss ‘Oity-Toity, ain’t she?’ one spat coarsely. They both screeched with laughter as the scruffy man gave them a playful shove and told them to mind their manners. Before weaving on, they swore and gesticulated good-naturedly at him.

‘Why not look, my lady?’ her unkempt champion challenged her. ‘We gets people o’ quality about here on cock-fighting night. Lords ‘n all sorts. They comes to wager and partake o’ the sport. Jugglers in the market there. Plenty to see ‘n buy. Yer’ll judge us proper decent folk compared to the Ratcliffe Highway scum. Come, yer’ll not be alone wi’ ruffians. I’ll look out fer yer and finds out direkshuns to…What was that address agin? Rosemary sumthink?’ He solicitously lowered his head for her response but his intention was closer inspection of what delightful promise Victoria’s cloak concealed.

Cautiously stepping back, Victoria glanced appealingly at old George Prescott. Her driver was scratching at his head again. ‘As I recall, Cheapside is…’ He rotated on the spot with a searching finger in the air.

‘Cock-fighting, you say?’ Victoria gulped, feigning interest in the barbaric pastime. Their carriage was still intermittently drawing this rough stranger’s acquisitive attention, and, hoping to distance him from it, Victoria said breathlessly, ‘I’ve never before seen such a spectacle…’

The man obstructed her as she made to speed past him. ‘Nor never likely to see agin, I reckons. What you doin’ ‘ere? Sweet little lady like you? Come fer the sport, did yer? Bored little lady, is yer?’ he breathed close to her face with a foxy smile. ‘Well, I’ll shows yer some better sport than yer’ll get off them cocks…’ He howled with laughter, painfully tightening dirty fingers about an evasive arm.

‘Unhand me at once,’ Victoria demanded, her alarm now backed by anger, her grey eyes sparking jet-black in her white face.

‘Unhand you…is it?’ he mimicked. ‘You ain’t in Mayfair now, duckie. Yer on my manor and yer’ll…’

Victoria was no longer listening. She was staring wide-eyed past her tormentor and at that precise moment the focus of her amazement turned, laughing, from his male companion and saw her.

‘David…’ Victoria whispered in shock and stupendous relief.

‘Victoria?’

She was too far away from him to hear her name, but she saw it on his lips, just as she saw her own disbelief and astonishment mirrored in his face. His blond companion took money from his unresisting fingers then wandered off towards some stalls set up.

There was a small group of gentlemen present, clearly distinguishable by their arrogant bearing and expensive dress. And they were, indeed, wagering, she obliquely realised. This local ruffian hadn’t lied on that score. As though sensing he was favourably considered, the man fumbled two large hands inside her cloak.

For little more than a second Victoria desperately fended him off, then he was savagely spun away from her and sent tottering back on his heels.

David Hardinge stood facing the giddy Lothario with his back to her. ‘Not your type, Toby,’ he stated, in an odd mix of lazy drawl and steely threat.

The man regained his balance, simultaneously shaking his shaggy head and whipping up ham-like fists in aggression. But, instead of charging, grimy fingers scraped across his bristly, bashful face. ‘Sorry, milord. Didn’t know she was yours, honest.’ He shifted uncomfortably then executed an incongruous sort of bow-cum-curtsey before sloping off, muttering, ‘Some looka.’

Before Victoria could draw breath to thank him, she was propelled backwards, fast up against the licheny brickwork of a building. Two rigid, barring arms slammed at either side of her, shielding her face from view.

Everything once dear and familiar about him bombarded her senses: his warmth and muscular strength, his fresh cologne, so welcome a fragrance in the hotchpotch of odours. Instinctively she swayed closer then started back.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ David Hardinge bit out so ferociously through his teeth, his thin lips barely parted.

Victoria winced as though he’d hit her. His intense, almost tangible fury dried her mouth and her head throbbed with tension.

The shabby stranger had alarmed her; this elegantly dressed man she believed she knew terrified her. Yet, paradoxically, a serene sense of safety let her rest back against the brickwork and raise languid eyes to his. Flickering torchlight threw into stark relief his fierce, anxious expression. Fear for her safety had prompted his anger. The instinct to protect radiated from him. It was in his rigid stance, in the way he used his body to shield her as people pressed close by them.

Hard, unsteady fingers lifted to her cheek before sliding across her jaw.

Mesmerised by the soothing caress, Victoria simply stared up at him. She had thought this all forgotten, banished from her life for ever. This touch…this man inclined towards her, his mouth close to hers.

Long sooty lashes parted to reveal tortured relief in his sapphire eyes. ‘What in damnation do you think you’re doing here?’ he gritted out.

‘Looking for you,’ Victoria answered with rash honesty.

Chapter Four

‘Looking for me?’ he repeated.

Victoria dipped her head, feeling her face heating at her unguarded confession. But it was honest, she remotely realised. It was the absolute truth. She now accepted in this noxious London marketplace what she had refused to acknowledge in the quiet sanctuary of Hertfordshire: the only reason she had agreed to leave her papa and Hartfield in the servants’ care was to come to London with her aunt, seek out this man and ask him to marry her. To save them all from destitution, she needed him to want her again.

‘Looking for me?’ David persisted, a light finger sliding beneath her oval chin to try to make her meet his eyes.

Victoria subtly shielded her chagrin by turning her face into his shoulder. Everything had gone so awfully wrong! And so soon! He would naturally expect some explanation for such an outrageous declaration. She had seen this man but once in seven years. That reunion had hardly been auspicious, yet, despite it, she had just freely implied searching an insalubrious London district for him on a chilly spring night.

Subconsciously she had planned a far more favourable meeting. Perhaps when she was finely dressed in her beautiful lilac silk gown, when she could attempt to charm him as she once had. As it was, she knew she looked fatigued and dishevelled. Her grey velvet bonnet had been discarded in the carriage and dusky tresses wisped untidily about her face in the biting night breeze. Her dark woollen travelling cloak had been chosen for warmth rather than fashion. Oh, there couldn’t have been a worse time for her to have let slip such vital information!

‘I’m flattered, Mrs Hart, that you wanted me so desperately you tracked me to one of London’s most notorious rookeries. Nevertheless, a visiting card delivered to Beauchamp Place would definitely have been wiser.’

His bored irony and the way he formally addressed her both froze and fired Victoria. So she was ‘Mrs Hart’, and no doubt a tiresome nuisance who was ruining his evening’s entertainment.

Her cool, dignified expression clashed with one of sardonic intensity. ‘I intended to do exactly that, Mr Hardinge. I have certainly not sought you out specifically this evening. How could I possibly have known of your whereabouts?’ she demanded on a derisive little laugh. ‘I had no idea you would be here…I had no idea I would be here, for that matter. We are lost and…’ Her scornful defence faltered. ‘We are lost’ ran back through her mind. Oh, God! She had completely forgotten about her aunt and Beryl, still in the coach. Oh, she hoped they were still in the coach. They could have been abducted or robbed or murdered because she had been foolish enough to abandon them defenceless and sleeping.

‘Thank you for your aid, sir. I apologise for detaining you,’ tumbled from her lips as she attempted dodging past him.

It was impossible to go anywhere. His arms remained stationed at either side of her. Her small hands rose, yanking desperately at his forearms to remove them. Iron muscle flexed within the fine wool of his coat as he thwarted her attempts to shift him.

‘Do you really want to roam unescorted through this drunken rabble, Mrs Hart?’ he quietly asked. ‘You’ve met Toby and should deem yourself fortunate: in comparison to some of the stevedores around here, he’s a reasonably decent chap. He, and many others about here tonight, are also in my employ. Were they not, both you and I and my companions would now be fighting to keep our valuables…and our lives. You haven’t the vaguest idea where you are, have you? This isn’t a charming Hertfordshire village, Mrs Hart. There’s a deplorable lack of chivalrous squires in these parts.’

‘I am being made perfectly aware of that, Mr Hardinge,’ Victoria tartly retaliated, incensed by his ironic allusion to her dear, late husband. ‘Please allow me to pass. I have to return to my companions and I have no wish to detain you from rejoining yours.’

‘Companions? There are more of you?’ David demanded on an incredulous laugh.

‘Indeed. And I am anxious for their welfare after what you have told me…’ Her voice quavered as her fragile composure finally cracked. She heard him curse beneath his breath and frantically blinked away the betraying, humiliated tears glossing her eyes.

She had been such a stupid fool! In every single way! She railed at herself. She should never have voiced her intention to approach him while in London. She should never have clung to her idiotic hope that he might treat her with respect and kindness. If he could abandon her to seek diversion abroad merely weeks after proposing and declaring undying love, then there could be no chance of courteous indulgence now, after seven years. He had forgotten their youthful friendship and had made that much perfectly clear two months ago at Hartfield. She almost laughed hysterically; it had been her intention to come and appeal to his good nature!

She knew bored, wealthy gentlemen mixed with all levels of society in their quest for diversion, but for this viscount to mingle with these vagabonds…And, worse still, to seem quite at ease and accepted by them. She recalled the painted-faced vulgar women who had verbally abused her. She also recalled her aunt’s genuine shock and disgust when recounting details of his debauchery. Surely not with such as were hereabouts…? It was too much! With a choked, woeful sob, she shoved fists against his solid torso, desperate to escape.

Firm, gentle fingers slid into her hair, holding her close, as he wordlessly allayed her alarm and anger. And, despite all her misgivings, her face instinctively sought the familiar muscled nook below his shoulder as though it were only yesterday when last she’d found comfort there.

‘I have to go back to my aunt. Please let me go back. I’m worried some ill might have befallen her and my maid…’

Shielding her slender body with the solid strength of his, David began shouldering a path through the throng. Even in her agitated state she realised people were deferentially clearing a path for him to move through. One woman bobbed a curtsey and several men dipped heads or tugged forelocks as he approached.

A press of people milling on all sides forced them to a halt and David’s arms circled her protectively. Victoria darted anxious glances this way and that and spied Toby; with him was a woman whose neat, fashionable attire made her seem oddly out of place. At that precise moment the woman’s blonde head turned and almond eyes glanced idly about then swept back to her. They narrowed to slits and Victoria was horrified to read not only recognition but cold hatred there too. Those feline eyes shifted to David, lingering covetously on him.

Victoria stared, mesmerised, as the woman spoke to Toby. He looked startled and stared over at them before dropping his dark, wiry head close to his companion’s elegant coiffure. The woman began hurriedly moving away from him. They were arguing, Victoria realised, and quite violently, judging by the way people close by were turning to laughingly watch. Then the couple were disappearing into the bobbing, seething throng.

Feeling unaccountably alarmed, Victoria nestled instinctively into David. Her disquiet took on a keener edge as long, controlling fingers urged her body into even closer contact with his. Her senses were chafed raw by the heat of him warming her, a muscled thigh melding against her hip, a hypnotic gaze drawing grey eyes to blue. Slowly, inexorably, her ebony head was angling back. She sensed him inclining towards her, his mouth a mere sigh away.

Cherished, buried memories surfaced immediately. She had loved it when he kissed her. Leisurely, drugging assaults inflicted with narrow, sensual lips that looked so selfish, so savage…yet had often been unbearably attentive and kind. Her thick, lush lashes unmeshed; she glimpsed what she yearned to touch her as her eyes swept upwards to his face…and through a break in the crowd she spied her coach.

Drenching guilt that she had momentarily forgotten it and relief that it hadn’t, after all, been misappropriated vied for supremacy. She prayed her aunt and Beryl were still safely within.

They weren’t! Victoria ripped free of David’s grip. Dodging the last few folk weaving about, she skipped over the filth on the cobbles and ran lightly to her travelling companions.

‘You are a most stupid man!’ met Victoria’s ears as she came close to her indomitable aunt. ‘Anyone knows this is not Cheapside. Look about you! Gin houses—flash houses too, I’ll warrant. Rogues and doxies everywhere…’ Matilda halted midflow, catching sight of Victoria and then of David walking behind her.

‘We’ll all be murdered in our beds…deaded by morn…’ Beryl wailed, enfolding herself tightly into her cloak and jamming her bonnet hard down over her pretty fair hair to conceal it.

‘Foolish girl! We’ll be lucky to get to our beds tonight, let alone be murdered in them. Cease that shrieking and moaning. You’ll draw every wretch’s attention to us with your caterwauling.’

Victoria wrapped her arms about her rigid-backed aunt and then drew Beryl’s shivering form into her embrace. ‘Quick…get back into the coach…please. Don’t fret…I’m sure these people will let us leave unchallenged. They are far too busy with their entertainment to bother with us,’ she encouraged. She addressed George Prescott sharply. ‘Let us be moving on immediately…’

He nodded his sparse grey head knowledgeably at her. ‘Well, I reckons, if we keep the Thames to the left and the moon to the right…’

‘You’ll end up back here in about ten minutes,’ David Hardinge remarked drily, nonchalantly leaning his immaculate figure against the battered coach.

Matilda beamed at him then sent her niece such a look of explicit congratulation that Victoria felt mortification and anger heat her face. She glanced at the focus of her aunt’s appreciation, hoping he had not noticed the woman’s tacit approval. A cynical smile told her he had, as did the very blue eyes watching her. And all at once an awful realisation struck her: he had not seemed as surprised as he ought to on learning that she was seeking him!

‘Mr Hardinge was by lucky chance here with some friends.’ Victoria quickly put both of them right, sure he quite believed she had somehow managed to engineer the whole incident to waylay him.

‘How fortunate,’ her aunt said in a tone which only served to endorse this theory.

‘Get in the coach now, Aunt, and you, Beryl. We must leave here immediately.’ Beryl needed no further prompting. She scrambled aboard with Aunt Matilda quickly following.

‘No doubt you’ll want to thank and take your leave of the Viscount.’ Matilda reminded Victoria of his status through the window she had forced open then jammed shut again.

Her aunt was, of course, right. He was most certainly owed her gratitude. She didn’t dare guess what might have befallen her at these scoundrels’ hands. ‘Thank you for your protection, my lord…’ she dutifully said.

‘You’re very welcome to it, Mrs Hart.’

The insinuation in his immediate, husky reply made Victoria blush although she was unsure why such innocuous words should make her feel so uncomfortable. Or why he should look at her in that sleepy yet intent way.

‘If you’re hoping to arrive at your destination some time this evening, Mrs Hart, perhaps I ought to accompany you. Your coachman still seems confused.’ David indicatively raised his eyes to George Prescott, now perched on the driver’s seat but swivelling about on his posterior muttering to himself about left and right and moon and stars.