Praise for Lyn Stone’s first book,THE WICKED TRUTH Kathryn must make her feelings about their union absolutely clear this very moment Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Epilogue Copyright

Praise for Lyn Stone’s first book,THE WICKED TRUTH

“...Stone has an apt hand with dialogue and creates characters with a refreshing naturalness.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A great adventure...witty dialogue and bold subjects... Lyn Stone could well be a writer ahead of her time.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“...a skillfully written mystery laced with passion and humor that intrigues and delights.”

—Romantic Times

Kathryn must make her feelings about their union absolutely clear this very moment

She might never be able to muster the courage to approach the subject later. Especially when this newly regained confidence of Jon’s wreaked havoc with her body’s needs. He was terribly appealing at his worst, and this looked as though it definitely might be one of his better days. With a sharp intake of breath, she prepared to speak.

He interrupted. “There can be no further incidents like last evening.” Kathryn noted the blunt determination in his voice as he continued. “If we are to succeed in this endeavor, nothing personal must get in our way. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Kathryn raised her chin and stared. Damn him, that was supposed to be ber line. She had expected him to argue when she refused him his rights, but apparently he didn’t even want them...!

Dear Reader,

Lyn Stone’s first book, The Wicked Truth, was one of the featured titles in this year’s March Madness promotion and earned the author a favorable review in Publishers Weekly. Her second book, The Arrangement, is another unique and touching story about a young female gossip columnist who sets out to expose a notorious composer and winds up first agreeing to marry him, then falling in love with him. Don’t miss your chance to enjoy this exciting new talent.

Kit Gardner’s The Untamed Heart, a Western with a twist, has a refined English hero who happens to be an earl, and a feisty, ranch hand heroine who can do anything a man can do, only better. And this month also brings us a new concept for Harlequin Historicals, our first in-line short-story collection, The Knights of Christmas. Three of our award-winning authors, Suzanne Barclay, Margaret Moore and Deborah Simmons, have joined forces to create a Medieval Christmas anthology that is sure to spread cheer all year long.

Our final title is Susan Amarillas’s new book, Wild Card, the story of a lady gambler who is hiding in a remote Wyoming town, terrified that the local sheriff will discover she’s wanted for murder in Texas.

Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you enjoy all four books, available wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Arrangement

Lyn Stone

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYN STONE

A painter of historical events, Lyn decided to write about them. A canvas, however detailed, limits characters to only one moment in time. “If a picture’s worth a thousand words, the other ninety thousand have to show up somewhere!”

An avid reader, she admits, “At thirteen, I fell in love with Brontë’s Heathcliff and became Catherine. Next year, I fell for Rhett and became Scarlett. Then I fell for the hero I’d known most of my life and finally became myself.”

After living four years in Europe, Lyn and her husband, Allen, settled into a log house in north Alabama that is crammed to the rafters with antiques, artifacts and the stuff of future tales.

For my mother, Louise Pope, who encouraged

me through all those years of music lessons.

You were right—no bit of learning is ever wasted.

This one is for you.

Chapter One

London, September 1889

“Follow that carriage,” Kathryn Wainwright ordered as her coachman folded up the steps and closed the door. “Make certain the driver doesn’t notice. When he gets where he’s going, drive on by without stopping. All I want is his destination.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man answered, climbing up to his seat.

Two hours later, they passed through a tatty, run-down village. A mile past the outskirts, the carriage ahead turned off onto a small side road through the trees. Kathryn knew she couldn’t follow it without revealing her presence, and probably her purpose, if the rutted track was no through road.

She tapped on the inside roof and stuck her head out the window. “Drive on up that rise, Thorn, and see if we can look down and see where that road leads.”

When the carriage reached the top, she could indeed see quite clearly, with her father’s old field glass to one eye. In the moonlight, an old manor house rose out of the summit of the adjoining hill.

No welcoming lights shone in the windows, nor could she see anyone about the place. She watched until she saw his carriage pull up to the wide circular drive. Jonathan Chadwick alighted, spoke with the driver, and then strode into the dark house. Kathryn collapsed the spyglass and clapped her hands in glee. So this was his lair.

She had followed him before, always to a modest set of rooms near the theater district. And she knew from trying to bribe her way past the landlady that he rarely stayed there, except on the nights when he was performing somewhere in town. He disappeared for days on end, sometimes a week or more, the woman had said. Now Kathryn knew where he had gone.

This must be his family home, she guessed. From the deserted look of the place, he must live alone.

Kathryn smelled a fine story here. Perhaps there was something to the gossip that he was of some impoverished noble family. No one seemed to know very much about him, except that he had once been a child prodigy, traveling Europe since he was in short coats. Then, on reaching manhood, he had dropped out of sight. He had returned this summer with a vengeance. London’s drawing rooms and concert halls fought to book him, while he stubbornly played hard to get. The ploy had worked nicely for him. He accepted only the plummiest offers.

Even if his music was not as marvelous as it was, the man’s mystique would have put him in demand. Yes, there was a grand old mystery about Jonathan Chadwick and she meant to uncover it.

Excited by the prospect, Kathryn knew exactly what she had to do. “Turn around, Thom, and let’s make for the village. We’ll see if they have an inn.”

They did indeed, a squalid little two-story hovel that barely deserved the name. Its sign, vaguely resembling a starving rabbit, swung precariously from uneven chains. The Hare’s Foot Inn.

Kathryn quickly dismounted, went inside, and secured a room—the only private one available.

Thomas Boddie, her driver, protested in a loud whisper, “Ye can’t be stayin’ here, Miss Kathryn. Look at th’ place! More ’n likely got bugs.” He glanced around again, tsking and scratching his head to emphasize the warning.

“Buck up, Boddie. You’re getting soft in your old age.” Kathryn giggled when he looked indignant and a sight younger than his twenty-four years.

She waited until the innkeeper disappeared upstairs to change the linen before she spoke again. “I want you to bring one of the coach horses around after they’re fed and rested. Oh, and get me your breeches.”

“Breeches, miss?” he squeaked.

“Yes, and the shirt, too. I know you keep a change in the boot for when you stash your livery. We’re about the same size, don’t you think?”

“Ye can’t wear me breeches! That’s scan’lous! Indecent!”

Kathryn smiled at his outrage. “No, it’s necessary. I need to get to that house and do some snooping if I’m to get this story. I can’t ride bareback in an evening frock.” She swatted behind her at her cumbersome bustle.

Thorn groaned and rolled his eyes. “Oh, Lord save us. Your uncle Roop will skin us both. I’ll have t’ come, too.”

“No. You’ll wait here with the coach.” When he started to argue, she placed a hand on his skinny arm to silence him. “If I should get caught, somebody has to get me out of this. Agreed?”

“Might as well,” he grumbled. “You’ll sack me if I don’t.”

“Precisely,” she admitted cheerfully. Then she punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Ah, c’mon, Thom. Where’s your sense of adventure? You used to dare me to do things like this!”

“We was children then, Miss Kathryn. Yer father—God rest ‘im—was a sight more understandin’ about yer pranks than yer uncle will be. Stealin’ round a strange man’s home ain’t no game. He’ll have th’ law on ye. Worse yet, shoot ye fer a thief.”

“That prissy wretch wouldn’t know one end of a pistol from the other.” Kathryn hoped he didn’t, anyway. Somehow, the composer didn’t strike her as the type to wield a firearm. In the only duel that she knew anything about, Chadwick had used a sword. Apparently he’d been rather young when it happened, but a French immigrant attending the last concert evening had resurrected the story. Probably embellished it, as well. He’d said Chadwick was the best swordsman in France at the time.

Well, the silly rogue wasn’t likely to run her through without getting close enough to notice she was a woman.

“Calm down, Thorn. He won’t even know I’m there, and I’ll be back before you can blink. All I want is a look around.”

“Lord save us,” Thomas groaned, and went for the breeches.

Kathryn decided the third time would be the charm. Twice before tonight she had attended Chadwick’s performances. And twice she had failed to find out a thing about him other than how well he could compose and play.

He was a genius, and an odd duck all around. Everyone said so. And everyone came to see, as well as to listen. His appearance intrigued his audience as much as the music. The cream of London society talked of little else these days, when the subject of music arose. He could do no wrong, no matter how hard he tried. And, no mistaking it, he certainly did try. Tonight he had been haughty to the point of obnoxiousness. Arrogant, even insulting.

The social scale apparently meant nothing to the man. Kathryn wondered whether she might have been the only one in attendance tonight without a title. Certainly she was the only member of the press, though no one admitted knowing what she did to earn her keep. They did know, of course. If the hostess, Lady Ballinger, was not an intimate friend of Uncle Rupert’s, Kathryn knew she’d have been snubbed at the door. Even then, her welcome had felt distinctly cool. Female news writers, even those who published discreetly under a male nom de plume, hardly qualified as guest-list material in the upper echelons of society.

Given the usual content of her column in Uncle Rupert’s popular gossip sheet About Town, she could certainly understand why the elite kept up their pretense of ignorance in regard to her occupation. They wanted to stay on her good side. So far, her barbs had nicked only those in the professional limelight, but they all knew that could change overnight.

If only she could become self-supporting, she would much prefer doing novelettes or short stories to the entertainment column. But Uncle Rupert insisted on her articles for his paper, and he did pay the bills. About Town rated only a jot above the scandalous rag Tit Bits, but both were avidly read and both competed fiercely for the latest ondit. Kathryn supposed she should be happy for the opportunity to be writing anything so eagerly received.

However, this latest assignment worried her. She had nothing substantial for the article on Chadwick. Apparently he had been the darling of the Continent during his youth, performing privately, as well as in concert halls in Milan, Rome, Vienna, Paris, even Germany. But never in London, until now. She wondered why? As far as she could determine, there were no lurking scandals, and no social life apart from performances such as this one. Rumor had it he was working on an opera.

Kathryn had interviewed a few people who recalled seeing him perform as a child and a young adult. He certainly appeared to be a man of the world now. She’d covered all the back issues of the major publications from around the civilized world, and the last mention of Chadwick had been over five years ago in Florence, Italy. Then he seemed to have vanished.

If she meant to get any kind of story out of the rascal for About Town, she needed a personal interview. He had refused her in no uncertain terms, the belligerent lout.

Who would think a head like his could conjure all that beauty? Well, it was a beautiful head; she had to give him that. That unfashionably long hair looked quite the rage on him, its wild mahogany waves tumbling over his brow as he played, the back locks negligently clubbed with red velvet. Except for that scarlet ribbon and white ruffles at his throat and wrists, he dressed all in black, as had been his custom the two times she saw him. It set off the false whiteness of his skin to a fare-thee-well. That mask of powder he wore only emphasized the stark handsomeness of his features.

His eyes were remarkable; cold and arctic blue, much too light, even for his powdered paleness. One expected them to be black, like his rotten attitude. The nose was noble—it was the only possible description—with its straight prominence and slightly flaring nostrils. And he did flare the things at every opportunity. His lips were slightly redder than Kathryn thought natural, wide and finely chiseled, almost voluptuous in repose. If one could ever catch him relaxed long enough to notice. Usually he set them in a forbidding line that defied anyone to question his overwhelming superiority.

Well, his size would take care of establishing that, even if his looks didn’t. He was enormously tall, with shoulders like a dockworker. She’d bet her last farthing he worked as hard at keeping those muscles fit as he did at perfecting his music. His apparel, the face paint and the long hair only served to underscore his masculinity. He obviously concocted the whole getup as a bizarre private joke on the public. They knew, of course. And they loved it.

She loved it, as well. The thought surprised her.

Considering her attraction to the man, wisdom told her to forget the story on Chadwick. Reason stopped her. She had a job to do, if she wanted to continue life as more than a decoration for Randall Nelson’s arm and a broodmare for his nursery. God forbid she should forget that. Uncle Rupert certainly wouldn’t. If she failed in this assignment, Kathryn figured, she might as well use that wicked little pen of hers to start addressing her wedding invitations.

It wasn’t that she was diametrically opposed to marriage—only to marriage to a man like Randall. Aside from the fact that her skin had crawled the few times he touched her, there was also the matter of his having mentioned all those children he would give her. As though that might encourage her to accept his suit. Ha!

Randall wanted only to use her. Perhaps all men were users; certainly all the men she knew were. Her father had expected her to take her mother’s place in ordering his household at an age when most girls still clung to their dolls. When he died, she’d had to argue with his old solicitor until she was blue in the face for funds to attend college. Thank God the will had provided that she complete her education without specifying where or at what age. They’d had to sell her father’s house to finance it, but she’d won in the end.

Uncle Rupert had righteously insisted on her moving in with him after graduation and put her straight to work editing copy. Until he found that she could write better than his best reporter. Now the only suitor she’d ever had, with her uncle’s eager blessing, wanted to station her in his bedroom and only let her out to push a pram full of babies around the park? Not bloody likely.

Surely, somewhere in the world there lived a man willing to share her life, rather than direct it like a dictator. Love wasn’t a necessary requirement, though a modicum of physical attraction certainly was. If she had to bear the indignities she and her school chums had discussed so thoroughly, it would damned well be with a man who didn’t turn her stomach.

She smiled as an image formed in her head. The man she chose would be witty, above all. And handsome as sin itself. Maybe, he’d fill out his evening clothes as did Jonathan Chadwick. Lord, that man cut a sharp figure! She could well imagine submitting to certain indignities with a fellow built like that. Oh, never Chadwick himself, of course. No woman in her right mind would choose him, a pretentious performer with a penchant for rudeness.

When Thom brought her those breeches of his, she’d go and get that story, all right. She would ride right out to that old estate and find out what the man was really like. By the time she finished with him, Jonathan Chadwick wouldn’t have a single secret left out of print. Make sport of her, would he?

“Damn that female!” As if he didn’t have enough problems right now, without having to dodge her curiosity.

Worrying about that only augmented the familiar roiling in his gut that always followed a performance. Stage fright—his old and dreaded bugaboo. Every time he stepped up to or held an instrument in public, he became that terrified eight-year-old he’d been the first time he played to an audience. He remembered thinking at the time that it must be a bit like taking all one’s clothes off in the middle of Trafalgar Square during the noonday rush. Well, he had decided then that, if forced to do it, by God he would do it with a flair. Did the Wainwright woman suspect it?

He couldn’t stand much more of this. If the past five years as a soldier hadn’t proved such a bloody fiasco, he’d never have returned to performing. Most composers hired the best musicians they could afford to present their work to possible investors. A pity he couldn’t. Every ha’penny he earned had to go directly to his creditors. The army paid better; perhaps he shouldn’t have sold out when Long San died. But the whole thing seemed wrong to him, this killing of men who were only trying to hold on to what was theirs. Too late for second thoughts, anyway. The commission money was spent and there was an end to it.

If he didn’t cultivate some backers soon for the opera, he’d find himself bereft of his precious collection of instruments and taking up space in debtor’s prison. He must get past his damnable shyness and make some real contacts. Rich ones.

God, he wished he had a head for business, or at the very least a compulsion to perform that matched the one to compose. Useless to try to escape that driving need to put down the notes, though. He’d tried that, without success, so he figured he might as well use it. In the best of worlds, he’d stick to composing and live a regular sort of life, whatever that was. Unfortunately, everything hinged on money. Always had.

Discounting the soldiering skills he hoped never to use again, music was all he knew. It was all he had ever studied, all that could save him now. Maman, relentless as she was, had been right about one thing; he couldn’t live without music and the music couldn’t live without him. He wished to hell he’d been born a bloody banker.

The playing should be a private thing, an opening up of his soul. At rare times, he could forget the audience was there—all those fawning, simpering faces, with their cow eyes, staring and judging—but usually, as tonight, he simply endured. Pretended. Held back. Threw up. Suffered And still blushed at applause.

Maman had solved the problem of his beet red face by powdering it white. That had worked when he was eight; it still worked. The dark wig looked a bit much, but it was necessary. His own hair, bleached near-white by the African sun, combined with the white face powder, made him look like an albino. He knew very well that the strange stage image he presented lent a certain mystique, an added attraction.

Tonight it had proved a massive drawback. The Wainwright woman had studied him like a sparrow hawk poised to swoop. A female predator. Those quick brown eyes of hers missed nothing. For the past two weeks, she’d been everywhere he looked. If he didn’t keep away from her, she would pick him apart like the puzzle he was and destroy him with a single swipe of her pen. God knew she was capable. And eager.

Her pieces in the About Town news sheet were caustic as lye, the praise rare as chicken’s teeth. She never even pretended to be other than what she was, either. As though working for that rumor rag were a thing to take pride in.

She didn’t even have the grace to look like a destructive force. That wispy halo of golden curls escaping her oh-so-proper hairstyle gave her heart-shaped face an angelic appearance, despite those dangerous chocolate eyes.

What the hell was a woman doing writing for a newspaper, anyway? And such a beautiful woman, at that. Damned unnatural.

Tonight’s confrontation had destroyed every vestige of pleasure he’d found in her appearance and any hope that she might choose another victim.

Immediately after the performance, Jon had hurried down the front walk to his hired carriage. The sweetness of lilacs had hit him full force as he climbed into the dark vehicle, and he had very nearly squashed the source of the scent by sitting on her.

“Get out!” he ordered, placing the perfume immediately. He shoved her skirts aside as he twisted around and plopped down across from her.

“Come now,” she answered calmly, fiddling with her gloves. “I only want to ask you a few questions. Why do you refuse to talk to me? It’s not as though I’ll bite.”

“Nonsense. You bite quite regularly. You chew people up and spit them out like a mouthful of bad fish. And you wonder that they run from you? Get the hell out of my carriage.”

“Your music is marvelous. What harm could it do to let people know what you’re really like as a person? You took a long hiatus in the midst of a brilliant career. Why don’t you share what occupied you in the interim?” she suggested, pausing to purse her lips for a second, “Assuming, of course, that you have nothing to hide. Do you?” She smiled sweetly and cocked one brow.

Tenacious little bitch. He relented a bit, not by choice, but out of trepidation. If he continued acting the ogre, she would write just that. The persona that intrigued an audience might not look so good on paper. “Look, Miss...?” As though he didn’t recall her name.

“Wainwright. Kathryn Wainwright.”

“Yes, well, Miss Wainwright, I’m very tired right now. Exhausted and really out of sorts. Perhaps another time. If you would, please?” He gestured toward the open door, not offering to assist her. She’d climbed in by herself; she could jolly well climb out.

She didn’t move. “Shall I call you Lord Jonathan? I heard an odd rumor that your late father was a peer. Is that true?”

Jon stiffened and sucked in a deep breath. Damn. If she’d managed to unearth that much, what next? She might even stumble on the worst of his secrets. No, not if he kept his wits about him. She knew nothing definite, and was merely fishing. He exhaled with a sigh and gave her his most withering look. “Chadwick’s my name. If you’re to call me anything, it must be that.”

“Ah, that’s right, you claim the famous Sir Roald of Chadwick as an ancestor, do you not?”

“Yes,” he answered carefully. Admitting that much couldn’t hurt him. He had used it for all it was worth most of his life.

“The noble one who penned all those lovely poems and songs about his liege, the Black Prince? Well, that certainly lends a note of credence to your choice of careers, doesn’t it?” she asked, smug laughter evident in her every word.

Who did this chit think she was to mock his ancestry, even if this part of it was one of Mamon’s outrageous fabrications? If the old minstrel hadn’t been an ancestor of his, then he bloody well should have been.

Jon summoned up all the hauteur he had left for the evening. “And you are a Wainwright you say? Judging by the origin of your name, your ancestor was likely nailing someone’s wagons together at the time. Just what are you trying to construct for me, my dear? Perhaps a trundle cart to your paper gallows?”

She gasped in outrage. Her hands flew up in frustration and then slapped angrily against her silk-swathed knees.

He laughed. And he continued to, louder and louder, as she scrambled down from the coach, muttering what sounded vaguely like obscenities. Jon leaned his head out the window and watched as she marched along the street to another coach, parked three back from his own.

When he realized what he had just done, the laughter died a quick death—almost as swift as the fatal blow she would deliver to his career when tomorrow’s papers hit the street. “Damn!” he said through clenched teeth, then drew his head back in and knocked it sharply against the back wall of the coach. The driver obviously took that bump for a signal, and the coach started with a jolt.

He had found it impossible to force thoughts of Kathryn Wainwright from his mind on the trip home. Even as he paid the hired coachman and watched him drive away, he had imagined her watching, imagined her wearing that knowing grin. A plaguing fancy, that was all. For the moment, he was safe at Timberoak.

Next time he’d be ready for her, he thought as he climbed the stairs to his room. Next time he would have some cock-and-bull story ready for her. Next time he would charm her knickers off.

He jerked off the stupid wig and gave it a shake. More mindful, he removed his evening clothes and hung them in the armoire. Raking both hands through his damp hair, he leaned over the basin of cold water and soaped off the powder and accumulated sweat.

But the heat inside him did not abate as he replayed the night’s events in his mind. Events condensed into images: Kathryn Wainwright absorbing his music from across the crowded room, Kathryn Wainwright leaning forward, her umber eyes wide with questions, Kathryn Wainwright smiling at some inner thought. Images gave way to notes, and the notes to a pervasive melody.

God, there would be no sleep tonight. None. He gave up without a struggle and slowly made his way downstairs, eager despite his exhaustion.

Chapter Two

Jon’s eyes stung from lack of sleep and the soap he’d used earlier to scrub off the rice powder. He blinked, shook his head, and picked up his pen again to get the notes down before they escaped him. They ran through his head like a string of crystal beads, tinkling against each other, winding around full circle, twisting playfully here and there. They’d been doing that ever since he arrived home.

He stopped scribbling to test their possibilities on the violin. Pleased with the results, he laid the instrument aside. Ink-dotted paper crinkled under his bare legs and feet as he wriggled out a comfortable spot. Stretching out full-length, his head on a threadbare cushion, Jon closed his eyes and let the music in his mind flow through him.

Last scene. The tenor returns.... Soprano greets him. Ahhh, a lyrical tease, a sly, dark-eyed cat... Dark-eyed? That woman’s face flashed through his mind, likely because she was the last one he’d seen. Jon lifted one hand toward the cracked ceiling plaster and waved in time with the imagined aria. Sforzando, now. Tenor offers final tribute to his lady. Now up, swiftly, like a cock...pounding, surging, reaching...

Jon’s voice joined in the process, using only pure sounds instead of words, bel canto, now rising in volume to return, almost unrecognizable, to his ears. Ah, yes... Slowly, on a burst of feeling that reached a crescendo, Jon rose to a sitting position and lifted the Stradivarius to repeat himself.

Then it came, profound as a lover’s cry, powerful as the urge itself, the whole of it sweeping over and through him, ending like the little death. Culmination, climax, ecstasy! Done!

He had finished! All but the finale with the entire ensemble, a mere repeat of the overture, with a few adjustments. At last!

Jon spared but a moment to savor the exhilaration, then laid down the violin and located his pen. He scratched madly with the pen, humming with his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

The ink trail crawled left to right in a wavy line, broken by myriad squiggles and curlicues. When it reached the right edge of the paper, it curved down and tracked right to left in a continuous scroll to the bottom of the page. Jon’s code, as Maman had laughingly called it, had developed when he was only five and untutored in the intricacies of the music staff and individual notes. She had quickly taught him to put down the music correctly, but suggested he keep to his own invented method for the first drafts when he wrote. No one could decipher the childish chicken tracks but himself, when he translated them later.

Poking a hole in the paper at the excitement of penning the last sound in his head, Jon sailed the pen across the room and boomed, “Bravo!”

A sharp “Ouch” jerked him off his cloud of euphoria. The shock of reality struck him dumb, and he stared, disbelieving, at the shadows surrounding the old grand piano. Out of the semidarkness crept a small figure nursing an ink-stained cheek.

“How did you know I was there?” she asked, rubbing the spot and smearing the black fluid down the side of her face.

Jon still stared, his mouth open. Good God, it was her! For a long moment, he feared he had conjured her up out of his imagination. How the hell had she gotten in? He looked around, seeing the open casement, feeling the cold night air for the first time. The candles in the broken candelabra next to him threw their wavering shadows on the peeling wallpaper.

He looked down in horror. He was sitting on the floor in his short flannel drawers, surrounded by a mountainous tangle of ink-scribbled papers. His lute, an ancient lyre and the Stradivarius lay about like scattered bodies on a battlefield. Frantically he snatched up the violin, worried she might step on it.

Hair tumbled across half his face, several frazzled strands caught on his lips. Jon winced, thinking how wild he must appear in this condition. Sweat from God knew how many hours of work wafted its scent upward from his body. He cringed. What a story this would make. Nasty, mad musician assaults female reporter with inky nib pen. He felt sick, and swallowed hard.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said softly, inching toward him. “I’m a friend. It’s all right now. Just be calm.” He recoiled as she crouched down and gently touched his bare foot.

Jon made himself meet her eyes. They held no sign of recognition, only compassionate warmth. Well, except for his size, he couldn’t possibly bear any resemblance to the man she had watched perform. The dark wig, nothing like his own light hair, was safely tucked in the armoire with his suit. He recalled scrubbing off the itchy powder and shucking his clothes to go to bed. But then the “ladies” had called him downstairs. At the memory, he stroked the Strad’s strings—it was his treasure of treasures, his most inventive lady, the most beautiful of his harem.

Maybe the woman thought him an interloper like her. She might take him for a village lad who’d broken into the main house to play with the instruments. Hope flared. He swallowed heavily again and nodded like an imbecile.

“You poor fellow. He keeps you here, doesn’t he?” Her voice held a wealth of pity as she patted his ankle.

Jon wiggled his foot, sniffed loudly and looked away. The dust from his hair made him sneeze. So, she thought he was mad. He fully agreed with her.

“You’re the one who makes up the music, aren’t you? I listened to you singing and playing. It’s all right to tell me about it. I know you have to be the one who creates it. No one, even Chadwick, can match what you just did.”

What a hypnotic voice she had. And she looked even lovelier than he had realized when he was trying to intimidate her. Her hair, loose from its pins, rippled over her shoulders like a mass of fine gold filament. She had very wide, dark-fringed eyes that reminded him of rich Dutch chocolate. He licked his lips at the thought. The eyes held such pity, though, that it was hard to meet them for any length of time. Her skin gleamed like porcelain, just the right amount of sheen to it. Her small breasts heaved with indignation now—for him, he realized—or at least for who she thought he was.

Jon shook his head to break the spell, but it didn’t work very well. When he squeezed his eyes shut, all he could see were the slender curves of her hips and legs in those too-tight breeches as she crouched beside him.

“No need to pretend with me,” she said sweetly. “What is your name, dear? Can you tell me your name?”

“Pip,” Jon answered reluctantly. It was the first thing that popped into his mind, his father’s childhood name for him, one he hadn’t heard since he was eight years old.

The woman obviously believed him some sort of idiot, from the way she spoke to him. Small wonder. If he had come upon somebody wallowing in the middle of a cavernous ballroom, dressed—no, undressed—the way he was, and in the throes of a musical stupor, he would have thought so, too.

Oh, God, how was he going to get out of this?

No recourse now but to play out the scenario and hope to hell her sympathy was genuine. First, he had to find out how much she had already uncovered about the public Chadwick’s background. This could be tricky, but the alternative of a full admission would definitely be disastrous.

He plucked idly at the Strad’s strings with two fingers. “Where’s Jon?” he mumbled.

She looked vastly relieved that he could string two words together. “Gone again,” she said. “At least his coach was gone when I got here. The place looked deserted, but then I heard you playing, so I came in.”

Ah, so she’d seen the hired conveyance leave, he mused. She’d braved his den believing the bear had left. He wondered for a moment if she might be after more than his life story. The only thing of great value here was his collection of instruments. Only a few knew of his “ladies” and fewer still would know how to go about selling such traceable treasures once they took them. No, she was probably just what she appeared to be, a female writer from a third-rate publication devoted to gossip.

His only hope was to persuade her not to print anything too derogatory. As it stood now, she would either expose him as a horrible pockets-to-let slob with delusions of grandeur, or as a pompous fraud who had enslaved a gifted simpleton and used him to ghostwrite his music. The situation didn’t look good, to say the least.

Play dumb and think. He drew his knees up and rested his head on them, letting his tousled hair curtain both his face and the violin.

“By chance, is Jon your brother? Your eyes look like his.” She explained her assumption with a tender smile. Jon started violently when she touched his head. “Don’t!” he muttered, jerking away.

“I won’t hurt you, Pip,” she crooned. “I can help you.” He faked a shiver. “Go away,” he whispered. With feeling.

She responded immediately by scrambling to her feet. He hoped she would take herself on back to London now and let him be. It would be his word against hers if she guessed the truth. He would sue her frilly drawers off if she printed a single word of this.

And he would still be ruined. Jon sighed heavily.

“Don’t you worry, Pip. You’re coming with me! Come on, get up now. We’re going to find you some clothes and get you out of here. Your brother’s very wrong to make you stay in this dismal place.” She shivered, more with disgust than from a chill. “Aren’t you cold? Are you hungry? Did the wretch think to feed you?”

Jon waved toward a discarded rind of cheese and the remainder of the coarse bread loaf Grandy had left for his midnight supper. He kicked at the empty wine bottle peeking from beneath the first page of the overture. “You eat?”

“Oh, you dear thing! You’d share it, wouldn’t you?” She sighed and squatted down again to lay her hand over his. He thought he detected tears swimming around those rich brown orbs. “Oh, Pip, how can he do this to you?” she moaned.

“Jonny likes me,” he said defensively, thinking a large lie from him was no more damning than allowing her to make up her own. And it was a lie. He certainly didn’t like himself much at the moment. On second thought, he didn’t like himself at all.

She pulled a wry face and sniffed. “No doubt he likes you very well, since you’re making a bloody fortune for him. I simply can’t believe this, even of someone like him.”

Jon felt a small swelling of warmth in his chest at the thought that anyone would really care if he was used and mistreated. Even though she thought him a half-wit, he could tell she meant what she said and wanted to do all she could to right the situation. It had been so long since anyone bothered about his feelings. He couldn’t even recall the last time. However, he reminded himself, in this case he was also the villain of the piece.

The whole predicament was so ridiculous, he felt like laughing. Until he remembered his whole career hinged on whether he could keep up the Pip act and retain her sympathy.

Jon needed to get rid of her so that he could think about this. Keeping his thoughts straight was proving difficult. Lack of sleep and that marvelous scent of hers were making him dizzy.

Lilacs. The fragrance cut right through the smell of his own sweat and the rancid wax of the cheap candles. Even the odor of the mildewed walls retreated behind it. Heady stuff, in spite of its subtlety, maybe because of it. Way too distracting. It made him want to take her to bed. Now? Ha! She’d love that, wouldn’t she! Hell, maybe she would.

“Sleepy?” he asked, blinking up at her stupidly, savoring a wicked inner vision of sharing Kathryn with old Morpheus.

She squatted down very near him and put one of those expressive little hands on his bare shoulder. He felt the heat shoot right through her glove, his skin, and into his bloodstream. God, he was hot. And hard, of all things.

Jon squirmed a little and tried to recall the last time he had bedded a woman. A month? Two? Too long ago, apparently. His appetite never flared up so rapidly as this, at least not since he’d grown old enough to control it. No way to approach her with any kind of proposition now, though, without revealing his identity. He shifted the violin to cover his lap.

“Poor fellow, you look exhausted. Where does he make you sleep?”

Jon let his eyes wander around the chaos of the room and then up. He motioned toward the ceiling.

“Upstairs?” she asked, and took the hand that was still raised to point. “Come on, Pip. I’ll just see you settled for the night and come back with my carriage first thing in the morning. You’ll like where we’re going. All right?” She smiled in a reassuring way and tugged on his hand.

Jon got to his feet rather clumsily; no task to fake, really, considering how long he had gone without sleep. He never got a wink the night before a performance, and tonight’s sudden inspiration had kept him from collapsing afterward. It had been at least forty-eight hours since he rested. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. It might not hinder his creativity, but it certainly didn’t provide a clear head for dealing with disasters.

He ought not to continue this stupid charade. Even in his current muddled state, he knew it was madness. But, hell, almost everything he did was mad.

His mother, his tutors, his old bodyguard; every one of them had always drummed into him the necessity of thinking before he acted. “Look before you leap” had become a litany. So he’d looked. And usually leapt anyway. The failing persisted, in spite of all their best efforts and his well-intentioned promises.

Jon tugged at the fourth finger of his left hand, a crooked reminder of the impulsive act that had almost destroyed his budding career. He massaged the souvenir of the bloody fistfight that had settled the outcome of the wildest horse race in history.

Maman had brought them home to Timberoaks to sell off the paintings and silver. He had been a strapping thirteen then, drunk with freedom in one of those rare, stolen moments away from Maman’s watchful eye. His stallion, Satan’s Imp, had carried him to a closely-won finish with Bick Wallerford. Old Bick had conceded the race only after Jon broke the fellow’s nose with a powerful left hook. An hour or so later, at the sight of his mangled hand, Jon’s mother had collapsed. So had his racing ambitions, when she reminded him of his vow to his dying father. That had been when he knew without doubt his father had made a dreadful mistake, demanding that Jon give total obedience to Maman. The man couldn’t have wanted a son who quailed at a few fisticuffs. Jon had told her as much, and Maman reluctantly agreed.

A lad of his size and build—especially one who admitted to being musically inclined—couldn’t swear off fighting even if he wanted to. Fortunately, Maman had agreed with him and hired a strong dockworker as a bodyguard soon after the incident.

Sato Nagai, a young Japanese expatriate, relished his new post, anglicized his surname, and became Long San. Understanding Jon’s need to fend for himself and yet protect his hands, Long San had taught him to fight with his feet. The method of fighting had come easily to Jon. Learning precaution and avoidance of a confrontation had proved a much harder task, one he wasn’t certain he had mastered even yet.

Judging by his reaction to Kathryn Wainwright and the threat she posed, he must have regressed farther back than lesson one in sidestepping a conflict. He sure as hell had a conflict here. And his well-trained feet weren’t going to help him at all.

Jon laid the Strad and the haphazard stack of music on the table by the door and led the way upstairs to his bedroom. Stumbling over a broken riser, he grunted his frustration and kicked aside the debris that had fallen or been dropped on the stairs during the past few years.

“Good Lord, this place is a wreck!” Kathryn muttered, following in his wake. “I wonder how he would like to have to live in this mess. Poor Pip. Don’t you worry, I’ll take care of you.”

Jon bit his lip to keep from answering. Through her eyes, he noticed the state of the master bedroom when they entered. He rarely paid any attention to the squalor, since his stays were brief and his thoughts glued to his music. The only things he took care with were the tools of his trade—his instruments, his one good suit, and the blasted wig. There was little point in worrying about housekeeping, since he hadn’t the extra cash to hire a cleaning woman. Tidying things up himself had never occurred to him. Until now.

The grayed sheets lay in wadded lumps, mingled with yesterday’s discarded clothing. One drape hung askew, rotted half off its sagging, tarnished rod. A mouse scurried off a blackened apple core and into its hole near the ash-heaped fireplace.

“Whew!” She grimaced and turned away toward the door. “You can’t possibly stay in here. Is there another room furnished?”

Jon nodded, remembering his mother’s chamber. He’d never been welcome there in the best of times. He hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even opened the door, since she died. Five years ago now? Yes, just before his twentieth birthday.

She patted his shoulder. “It’s all right, Pip. Let’s have a look at the other room.”

He dreaded facing memories he had wanted buried along with his mother, but Jon led her down the hallway to the very end. In front of the dusty oak panel, he stopped.

She brushed past him, opened the door and walked right in. “Oh, much better,” she said brightly, and promptly threw open the windows. “Needs to air out, but at least it looks clean.”

Her pert nose wrinkled when she approached him, and he knew very well why. He needed a long, soapy soak in a hot tub, but Jon knew he couldn’t stay awake for it. His lids drooped over what felt like a spoonful of sand in each eye. “So tired,” he exhaled on a sigh, and collapsed on top of the embroidered coverlet of his mother’s tester bed. Maybe if he feigned sleep, she would go away.

Jon felt her efficient little hands tuck something around him as he wriggled out a niche in the softness beneath him. A smile of sweet contentment stretched his lower face. He drifted toward sleep with the feel of her lips on his brow, thinking that at this moment, being Pip was better than being Jon.

Infinitely better.

Morning dawned gray and dreary at the Hare’s Foot Inn. Autumn had arrived overnight. Chill rain plinked on the roof above Kathryn’s head as she drowsed, reluctant to rise just yet.

A sharp staccato of knuckles against the flimsy door roused her fully. Annoyed, she crawled out of bed and dragged the tattered blanket around her like a robe.

“What is it, Thorn?” she answered as she padded to the door and swung it open.

“He’s gone and it’s your fault!” The massive figure of a black-clad Jonathan Chadwick filled the doorway.

“You!” Kathryn blinked sleepily and shrank back from his furious, heavily powdered countenance. “What? Who’s gone?”

“Pip, that’s who!” he thundered, twisting half away from her and then back again, in a frustrated movement that spoke of violence barely leashed. “You frightened him half to death! What makes you think you can prey on him just for the sake of a damned newspaper piece about me? It’s unconscionable, that’s what it is!” He slapped his gloves against a bare palm and pushed past her into the room.

Kathryn exploded, anger bringing her fully alert. “I? I preyed on him? Why, you ill-mannered thief! How dare you accuse me, when you keep the poor boy locked away in that crumbling excuse for a house and steal every note he writes!” She clenched both fists, releasing her grip on the blanket, but she didn’t care. “If I were a man, I’d...”

“But you’re certainly not that, now are you?” he said, leaning his head back and raking her with those piercing blue eyes of his. “Not by a very long chalk.”

“Don’t you try distracting me with your nasty leers,” Kathryn warned, well aware that she stood dreadfully exposed in her flimsy knee-length chemise. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with what you’re doing to your own brother, you are wrong! Dead wrong!”

Chadwick seemed to drop his anger as if it were a wet cloak. He slumped down on the rumpled bed, shaking his head as he looked up at her. “Pip’s not really my brother.”

Kathryn scoffed, crossing her arms across her half-bared bosom. “Of course he is. He looks so much like you, it’s unreal, except of course for the hair and...” Then it dawned on her what he meant. “Oh, I see. He’s your father’s bastard, then?”

The dark head inclined, and he stared at her, nodding slightly. “He’s a bastard, all right.”

Kathryn narrowed her eyes and gave him her sternest look. “You must know what you’re doing is wrong, Chadwick.”

He sighed soulfully. “Yes, I know.” His wonderful hands uncurled, and their long agile fingers lay open in supplication, bearing traces of the powder from his face.

“What would you have me do, Miss Wainwright? Stick him in some crofter’s hut to tend the sheep? Bury his music?” She watched him unfold his large body and pace the confines of the room with a catlike grace. He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Or I could banish him to Bedlam, where he could while away his days in like company. You tell me what I should do.”

Kathryn felt confused, thrown by Chadwick’s admission of guilt and obvious distress over the dilemma. “At least he ought to receive some credit for his talent,” she suggested.

“Ha! Credit, of course. We surely ought to advertise his talents. I could parade him about London, maybe even Paris and Rome. Introduce him as the calf-witted composer, the nimble-fingered numbskull. How do you think he’ll do in polite society, Miss Wainwright? Will you applaud him as he drools on the ivories? Perhaps you could stand by with his bonbon rewards and wipe the spittle off his chin.”

“Oh, God,” Kathryn groaned, clenching her eyes shut as she turned away toward the window. The silence grew, broken only by Chadwick’s harsh breathing and the increasing patter of the rain.

“Has he always been...that way?” she asked gently.

“An unfortunate accident,” he explained, “and I’ve dealt with it the only way I know how. Look, I know you only want to help improve Pip’s circumstance, but Tim-beroak is his home. God knows I can’t afford to improve on the old place, but to sell it from under him would be unthinkable. Impossible.” His voice grew soft and imploring. “Believe me, Miss Wainwright, he’s usually quite content there. He needs his forest and the lake. They provide his inspiration, and what precious snatches of peace he can find.”

“Is that where he’s gone now, do you think? To his forest?” she asked, suddenly fearful that she might be the cause of Pip’s venturing too far from his haven and into danger.

“That’s where he usually goes when he’s troubled. When I returned this morning, he told me you planned to take him away today. He ran off to hide from you. He’ll probably come home before dark. I apologize for my temper, but you did upset him, and therefore me.”

Then Chadwick did the strangest thing. He rose and offered her his hands and a look of sad entreaty. “Will you please not expose us, Miss Wainwright? I ask this for Pip’s sake, as well as my own. We cannot let his music die, and a few words from you in print could slay it outright.”

Kathryn reached out to him in spite of herself, grasping the hands that brought such wonder to the world. Pip’s wonder. “What kind of monster do you take me for, Mr. Chadwick?”

“A benevolent one, I hope,” he answered, with a pale, dimpled smile. His eyes sparkled with light azure fire and wry humor. Her knees turned to pudding when he did that.

Kathryn forced a laugh and squeezed his fingers gently. “I’m no monster at all. And I no longer believe that you are, when you speak so eloquently on Pip’s behalf. I believe I’ve misjudged you, sir, at least this private side of yourself.”

“I do promise to take better care of Pip,” he offered sincerely. “Rest assured, I shall.”

His gaze grew even more heated as it wandered down the length of her, reminding Kathryn that she stood half-naked, unchaperoned, holding his hands, in the middle of a sleazy bedchamber. What must he think?

“Perhaps you’d better excuse me now, Mr. Chadwick.”

“Please call me Jon. I feel we’ve become friends in the space of our visit. May I call upon you when next I’m in town? Perhaps the interview was not such a bad idea after all.”

Kathryn pulled away from the handclasp and backed up a bit to put a decent distance between them. This beguiling charmer was almost as different from the Chadwick she knew as his brother Pip. “I’d be honored. No doubt I’ll see you again when I call on Pip. I’ll worry till I know he’s safe.”

Chadwick looked wary, as though he hadn’t considered that she would pursue the matter farther than this conversation. “Oh, that’s not necessary. Not even wise, under the circumstances. He was so frightened, he’ll take a bit of calming down, I expect. Tell you what, I’ll send word to your offices when I’ve found him, so you needn’t fret.” He reached for the door handle.

Kathryn laid a detaining hand on Jonathan’s arm. “I never meant to upset Pip. It’s just that when I found him there, so engrossed in his music, practically naked and shivering, all I wanted to do was help. Your resemblance is so remarkable, it was obvious to me you were brothers. I feared you had mistreated him.”

“And that I’d stolen his compositions. A natural assumption. I just regret you discovered him in such an embarrassing condition.” Chadwick touched his fingers to his temple and sadly shook his head. “The lad simply doesn’t know any better. Will you consider, then, not writing about it? Your article could destroy the only outlet for pleasure the poor wretch has. Music is all he knows. All he’s able to comprehend.” Silvery eyes, so like his unfortunate brother’s, pleaded for compassion. His beseeching smile melted her heart, a heart long dedicated to exposing all entertainers for the arrogant, self-centered scoundrels they were.

She offered no definite promise about the exposé, but gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Your concern is admirable, Jonathan. You are not at all the man I first thought you to be.”

He glanced down at her hand and Kathryn felt the hard muscle flex beneath his carefully tailored coat sleeve. The ice-crystal eyes had darkened a shade when he finally returned her gaze. “Indeed, Miss Wainwright,” he said, “I am not.”

Kathryn stood idle for a long time after Jonathan Chadwick left, her mind sifting the new information for stones of hard truth. He pretended to be a cocksure genius looking down his gifted nose at the rest of the plebeian world. Instead, he gave his protection to a baseborn, disadvantaged half brother and provided an outlet for the man’s creativity.

True, Chadwick performed Pip’s music as his own, but what other option had he, other than to ignore it? He benefited greatly by claiming authorship, of course. But where would Pip be without Jon’s support? Somewhere cleaner, perhaps, but likely no happier or better off.

Men thought little about their surroundings, as a rule—at least the men she knew did. Ought she to judge it Jonathan’s fault if the manor house was a wreck? How much time did he spend there? she wondered. Apparently not enough. He had promised to do better by Pip. She meant to see that he did. The least she could do was ensure that the place was cleaned and sufficient food laid by.

Something about Pip stirred maternal instincts Kathryn hadn’t realized she possessed. Children didn’t interest her much at this point in her life. But Pip, the overgrown child with a mind full of beautiful sounds, had uncovered something tender in her heart. Something beyond ordinary compassion. She wanted to hold him and protect him against a world she knew could be hostile and cold.

Kathryn began dressing for the trip back to London. As her hands worked the bodice of her dress over her breasts, she suddenly recalled Pip’s long-fingered hands, ink-stained and tanned, clutching a violin to his chest, caressing it as tenderly as a lover.

She shoved the errant thought away. Heavens above, what had happened to her propriety and good sense? First she’d gone weak-kneed over Jon Chadwick, a world-weary cynic who probably wallowed in depravity, and now she was lusting after his innocent, younger brother. Pip was just a child, not a man to think of in such a way. He was a large, precious boy in a rather perfect adult body. A body she must learn to overlook, not look over.

Pip needed motherly care and nurturing. The haughty Jonathan Chadwick could hardly be expected to understand that. Men simply were not born to nurture. In his overprivileged, autocratic way, Jon probably did all he knew how or had time to do.

He simply needed help with Pip, Kathryn decided. Her help.

Chapter Three

Jon spurred his stallion to a lather on the way home, his feelings a jumble of agitation, anger and embarrassment. Riding full tilt failed to calm him as it usually did. Truth told, he felt more like Miss Wainwright’s Pip at the moment than he had last night in the ballroom.

He despised the feeling. Trust a woman to twist a man’s guts like taffy. Just when he had everything more or less worked out in his life, she had to come along. Now she had tangled him up in a lie that could grow to impossible proportions. Almost worse than that, she had stirred up the lust he needed to have lie dormant. And she threatened his career, all he had left in the world at this point.

At least all he could claim as his. His survival as a composer was definitely at stake. If Kathryn Wainwright ever found out he was Pip, she’d crucify him in print, if not in deed. His career would stop dead in its tracks. Then he might as well be that slowtop bastard writing ditties in his underwear.

Damn. He hated that anyone—especially a woman—held that kind of power over him. Female influence ought to stop when a man shucked off his mother’s control. But even then, he’d been unable to get out from under that completely. Thanks to the promise he’d made his dying father, Lady Caroline Chadwick had kept him partially under her thumb right up until the hour she died.

Women wielded guilt, love and old promises like weapons of war. The time had come to erect some defenses, before this new battle got out of hand. He would see Kathryn Wainwright once more, on neutral ground in London, and make it abundantly clear that she was to leave him, and that simple fellow Pip, alone. He would charm her first and, if that didn’t work, he would employ a few threats of his own.

Jon lifted Imp’s reins, shouted a command and leapt the high stone fence by the brook. Imp sailed over the barrier, landed solidly and jerked to a halt. The mighty Chadwick sailed over his head as though weightless and landed facedown in the mud.

“Ah, hell!” he groaned and rolled to one side, nursing his stone-bruised temple. Immediately he checked his hands for damage. God, he had twenty fingers! He’d cracked his head for certain, to be seeing double like this.

Slowly, carefully, he staggered to his feet and caught up the dragging reins. Imp whinnied and snuffled, nudging for an apology. “All right, then! It was a damn stupid jump. And the next time you dump me, dog meat, I’ll sell you to the knackers.” He mounted after three tries to find the stirrup with an unsteady foot.

This was the last time, he promised himself as he rode home, the very last time, he would leap before he looked.

With Imp stabled and fed, Jon dragged himself to the back entrance of the house and into the kitchen. This morning’s bathwater, now cold as a frog’s ass and scummy with soap, stood waiting to be emptied. Without pausing to dread it, Jon peeled off the wig and muddy clothes, draped them over a chair for Grandy to clean later and stepped into the tub.

He submerged his head and came up shuddering. When he cleared his eyes, a long-haired tortoiseshell feline greeted him with a perfunctory growl and an angry green glare.

“Dagnabbit, I just fed you not two hours ago. God knows there’s enough four-legged food in the house to keep you busy if you weren’t so damned lazy.” He slung a spray of water in the cat’s direction. “Get out of here or I’ll give you a bath. And it’s bloody well cold, I can tell you!” Jon rose and grabbed for the still-damp toweling draped over a rickety chair.

When he was mostly dry, he wrapped the length of cloth around his hips and scrabbled through the pie safe, searching for bread and cheese.

“Aha, look, Dag! Grandy’s been and left us some grub. Here.” He tore off a mouthful of a mutton pasty, swallowed greedily, wolfed another bite and tossed the rest on the bare floor for the cat. The lone bottle of stout was emptied with a few noisy gulps.

His hair dripped, sending chilling rivulets down his chest and back. Taking the stairs two at a time, he dashed to his room and shrugged into his old velvet robe. The ash-coated coals in the fireplace leapt to life when he added kindling and poked them up.

Jon peered warily into his small shaving mirror. At least only one of him stared back. Maybe no concussion, then. He probed the bruise on his head, wincing as he touched it. Ah, well, it could have been worse, he supposed.

He whistled Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria from The Magic Flute, changing a few notes as he went along. While he snuggled into his overstuffed wingback, he looked around the bedroom at the years of dirt and clutter. The Wainwright woman had a point. He ought to take better care of Pip. The thought prompted a lazy smile.

Exhausted and comfortably warm, he drifted into a half-waking dream of a furious Kathryn Wainwright prancing around in her diaphanous little underthing. Sassy little baggage. He could even imagine her scent of lilacs.

A clatter downstairs brought him upright and onto his feet in an instant. Good God! She was back! He tore downstairs to see what she’d tripped over. God help her if it was one of his ladies. Had he left the Strad on the floor?

As he rounded the corner into the ballroom, a fist connected with his jaw and sent him spinning backward. Hands caught and pinned his arms behind him while a blow to the midsection took his breath away. Gasping he lifted his head and got another fist in the mouth for his trouble.

“Now that I have your attention, Chadwick, let us get down to the business at hand. All your markers are mine. I’ll have five thousand pounds or the Stradivarius. Now!”

“Bunrich.” Jon spat blood out of his mouth, aiming at the man’s feet. “I should have guessed.” Jon cursed his luck. Ned Bunrich had approached him several times about buying the Strad. His best guess was that the man had a wealthy client hot to add it to a collection. Fat chance of that. He slumped between the goons holding him and played for time until his head cleared.

The violin in question, his most beautiful lady, lay on the table near the door, where he’d stuck it last night on the way up to bed. The shuffled-up sheets of his opera score camouflaged it, thank God. No one with his wits intact would be expected to treat such a treasure so casually. Scattered amid the pages of music left on the floor lay the antique lyre and his precious lute.

Damn Kathryn Wainwright. Anyone who could make him forget his ladies, even for a moment, was dangerous. He glanced toward the large wall safe where he usually stored them. Standing wide open and empty, just as he had left it.

The two instruments on the floor looked forlorn and helpless. There was no way he would fight the bastards in this room and risk shattering his ladies. Somehow, he had to move the conflict to another place.

If only he’d saved the old violin he had dragged around while on campaign. Perhaps he could have fooled Bunrich with a switch. Suddenly a plan formed. Not a perfect plan, but with a bit of luck, it could buy him time to raise the money.

He coughed and spat again. “You’re too late, Bunrich. I pawned it months ago.”

Bunrich growled and drew back to hit him again. “This will flatten that pretty nose, fancy boy.” He hesitated. “Unless you want to give me the pawn chip.”

“All right.” Jon heaved and nodded frantically. “Let me go, and I’ll get it. Just don’t break my nose.” He felt the hands on his arms relax and drop away. As soon as he could straighten himself, he staggered to the door, the assistant “collectors” at either side and Bunrich just behind him.

Maybe a fight wouldn’t be necessary after all, he thought as they cleared the ballroom. The outcome of one might not be favorable, anyway, since he could see a blurry six of them, when he knew very well there were only three. His head pounded, and several of his ribs felt cracked. Given that, Jon wasn’t altogether certain how high he could kick.

Entering the study, he strode to the only piece of furniture left in the room, a large cherry desk he had kept because it once belonged to his father. Retrieving a wrinkled pawn ticket from the right-hand drawer, he held it out, faking a frown of regret as Bunrich snatched it up and read it.

“You idiot! You pawned the thing for two hundred pounds? Are you mad? And in Edinburgh, of all places!”

Jon shrugged painfully and fingered the cut just inside his bottom lip. “Needed the blunt.”

Bunrich hissed through his teeth and clenched the paper in his fist, shaking it under Jon’s nose. “You’ll still owe me whatever it takes to get it out of hock. Plus travel expenses. I’ll be back, Chadwick. Depend on it.” Jon nodded as Bunrich turned to leave.

When the sound of hooves faded away, Jon sank to the floor and lay there groaning. Jesus, life was getting too complicated First, Kathryn Wainwright’s poison pen threatened his livelihood, and now Maman’s creditors were beating down the door. Not to mention her son.

Best he could recall without checking accounts, he thought he owed Ned Bunrich a bit less than three hundred quid after last month’s payment. Maman had owed the man less than she did the others. He’d offered to purchase the Stradivarius outright, less the amount of Jon’s debt. Now he had gotten altogether too serious. Maybe Bunrich Antiquities’s business depended on whether old Ned could produce the Strad. Well, the bloody Thames would dry up before Jon let him have it. If Bunrich had bought up all the other markers now, Jon would simply have to find the money somewhere to pay him in full.

He turned his head to one side. The desk could go next, he supposed. Then maybe the little harp. She was a scaled-down child’s instrument, designed for his fifth birthday, virtually useless for present purposes and valuable only because she was unique. But how could he part with her? He couldn’t. Not on pain of death. Rising on one elbow and gasping with agony, he rapidly reconsidered. Well, maybe on pain of death. He lay back down, drawing shallow breaths to ease his ribs.

Jon figured he should have at least ten days until Bunrich found the obscure little pawnshop, got the fake Strad appraised and returned. Maybe, with luck and bad weather, a fortnight. What would happen then was anybody’s guess, but the options were not that hard to imagine.

From the amount demanded, Jon knew Bunrich must have bought up every one of Maman’s debts, and he could bring the law with him next time he came to collect. That could mean debtor’s prison or transportation, but the greedy toad would get nothing for his trouble but the satisfaction of seeing the mighty Chadwick brought low. Somehow, Jon didn’t think Bunrich would bring the law. He wanted the Stradivarius too badly to settle for revenge on a reluctant seller. In that case, Jon knew a broken nose might be the very best he could hope for.

Within ten day, he had to amass five thousand pounds and a bit extra for Bunrich’s trouble, or face music not of his making. Not a pretty tune to dance to, either.

Few knew that the house was entailed. He couldn’t have sold it even if he wanted to. If Jon produced no heir in his lifetime, the property would revert to the Crown. As if Queen Victoria would want the damned thing, in the condition it was in.

He doubted anyone knew he held the Lyham title, either. Maman, in her dubious wisdom, decided to let it rest with her elder son, Edward, who lay in an unmarked grave in America. An earl, even an impoverished one like Jon, didn’t make his living playing in parlors and concert halls around the globe. Maman had known society would never condone a titled gentleman taking money for his talents. But a second son made his way as best he could, and more power to him. So, when they received word of brother Edward’s death in Charleston eight years ago, the news had remained a closely guarded secret. Anyone who cared enough to inquire would think the earl was still adventuring abroad, squandering what was left of the Lyham wealth.

There never had been much of it, and what little there was, Edward had spent long before he died. Maman had taken every farthing Jon made from performing and tried to increase it the only way she knew how. Only she hadn’t known how very well at all. It amazed him still, how deeply mired she had gotten them. Some days he despaired of ever reaching solvency.

Now, nearing the age of twenty-five, Jon owned a broken-down manor house he couldn’t sell, an aging stallion nobody in his right mind would try to ride, a collection of instruments he’d rather die than part with and a tortoiseshell cat too stupid to chase mice. Oh, and the mountain of gambling debts, he added with a grimace of pain. Mustn’t forget Maman’s debts. His wonderful inheritance.

Success with the opera he’d just finished seemed his only hope for survival. And, hell, he didn’t even like opera all that much. The libretto he’d concocted was trite—idiotic drivel about thwarted love and such—but then, that was the expected thing. The recitative stank like rotten eggs. The music, however, was magnificent, if he did say so himself, the episodic fugue in the second act, truly inspired. No point entertaining any false modesty there. If he could do nothing else—and he had fairly well proved that true—he could damn well compose.

If only someone else could promote the cursed thing. God knew he suffered the agony of the damned every time he forced himself to a keyboard in public, every time he lifted a bow to the strings. This knock on the head and a few cracked ribs seemed nothing compared to it. Not that had much choice in the matter.

Well, he thought as he ran a tentative hand over his injuries, he had been thoroughly trained in one other thing. But killing people—in legal battle or otherwise—didn’t seem a viable alternative. England had no real war at present, and life as an assassin certainly held no appeal. If he were inclined that way—and he almost wished he were—he might have started with Ned Bunrich. Hell might well be his destination eventually, but he didn’t intend to pave his way with any more bodies if he could avoid it. He’d left enough of those on battlefields in Africa. Stage fright ran a distant second to the sleep terrors he had endured after wielding his weapons at Abu-Klea and Khartoum.

He had to get the damned opera produced somehow, even if that meant playing it for every backer in London and on the Continent. The time had come to admit his limitations; without the music, he was nothing. Nobody. A shell of a man, full of imposing sounds. And a load of guilt for what he’d almost become, the one time in his life he tried to abandon the curse for a soldier’s life. With another groan, he tried to roll over.

“Jon? Are you there? Pip?” The door knocker echoed only twice through the hall before he heard her shoes clicking on the tiles.

“Oh, Jesus Christ in a manger, this is all I need!” he moaned, and curled his knees to his chest, hoping to God he would go ahead and die before she found him.

Her sudden scream he could have done very nicely without. It scraped over his brain like sharp fingernails. The flurry of silk skirts over his naked legs, and the enveloping scent of her, almost made up for it.

Well, hell, he ought to get some small pleasure out of today, whether it be the whisper of silk ruffles on his skin or a laugh at her expense. The little wretch wanted to spend her sympathy? Why not let her, then? A private joke on her was better than dwelling on his misery.

He opened one eye and peered up at her through a wild tangle of sun-streaked hair. “Hurt,” he said, enjoying the tears that sprang to her eyes. Lord, he wished he deserved them.

“Oh, your poor face! Who did this to you, Pip? I’ll send Thomas for the constable right now! Did Jon hit you?” She touched two gloved fingers to his swollen temple.

He jerked away. “I fell down.” God’s truth, several times, he thought with a wince.

Her face softened, and she pulled off her gloves, tossing them aside. “Can you get up, dear? Come, I’ll help you. We should get you up to bed so I can tend you.”

Jon sat up, holding his side and trying to keep his robe together at the same time. He felt torn between wanting to send her packing and needing sympathy from any quarter where he could get it. So far, it had not been a good day. The need for sympathy prevailed.

When they had struggled up the stairs, she turned him automatically toward his mother’s old room. No sooner had she seen him stretched out on the unmade bed than she began to tug at the neck of his robe. He was bared to the waist before he could yell, “Stop!” He clutched the fabric close.

“Don’t be silly, Pip. You’re hurt, and I need to see where, so I can help you.”

“Bad! You can’t see that part.” She’d better not see that part, he thought, or she’d get the shock of her life. Those gentle hands touching his waist, her firm little shoulders beneath his arm on the way upstairs, had wreaked havoc on the lower part of his anatomy, in spite of the headache and pain in his side. He felt fit to burst.

The sight of his erection would definitely get her out of here, but he wasn’t at all sure he wanted her to go just yet. The longer she stayed, the more he pretended with her, the worse it would be if she found him out. He knew that.

He also knew that some part of him—the Pip part, maybe—needed her softness. Acting the village idiot was a small price to pay for something he’d always craved and rarely found. Sex was easy enough to get, if he wanted it. Sometimes he had even run from it, when the supply exceeded his demand. But real caring was scarce as summer snow.

Surely he could risk acting the part she’d presented him with for a little while. Just long enough to grab a bit of solace. Comfort was all he would take from her, he decided firmly, no matter how she fired his loins. He could be noble if he tried, even if he hadn’t been trained to it.

“Will you tell me where it hurts you, Pip? Just point to the places, and Kathryn will make them better.”

Oh God, I wish! he thought, and rolled his eyes. “Here,” he said, pointing to his temple and his mouth. There was nothing to be done for the ribs, and he doubted very much she’d be willing to ease the other, lower part that was aching like the devil.

“Are ye up there?” a too-familiar voice called up the stairs. The voice of doom, Jon thought with a clenching in his gut. Grandy would show up now, of all times. He could never find the blasted woman when he needed her. Now she’d ruin everything.

“In here,” Kathryn sang out. “Hurry, Pip’s been injured.”

A thud of heavy footsteps promised the death knell of his hopes. He watched with a fatalistic languor as Grandy’s pudding face peeped around the doorframe. “What is it, lad? Who’s this woman wi’ ye?”

Good, she hadn’t called him by name yet. Jon thought he might as well go for broke. He stretched out his arms and groaned, “Grandy, Grandy, I fell down!”

“And dropped yer pie all over th’ floor, too, ye clumsy oaf. I near slid down in it. Ye know I canna see worth beans.”

Kathryn’s mouth dropped as she rounded on Grandy, shoulders squared in a militant manner. “Now you see here...”

Jon grasped her elbow and gave it several yanks. “The ladies! I want my ladies!” There, that distracted her. And it wasn’t a bad idea to have them up here where they’d be safe.

“Ladies?” Kathryn asked, thoroughly confused, as he had known she would be. Jon widened his eyes, trying his best to look innocent, as he met Grandy’s curious gaze.

“He’s meanin’ th’ fiddle and ‘is other dulcies,” Grandy said to Kathryn. Then her pudgy finger pointed at him. “Ye’ll have to go find ’em yerself, rascal. God only kens where ye left ‘em layin’ this time.”

He gave Kathryn a piteous look and whispered, “Please.”

She patted his hand tenderly and squeezed it. “Of course. I’ll go find them for you. Lie back and rest now.”

“Don’t fall down,” he added as she started for the door.

As soon as he heard the stairs creaking, he beckoned Grandy closer. “She doesn’t know I’m Jon, and you’d better not muck me up here, old woman. Do you understand?”

Grandy snorted. “I ain’t helpin’ ye trick no gel into yer bed, Jonny.”

She had not been a decent nursemaid when she really was one, and he certainly didn’t need her services. He held on to her faded sleeve. “That’s not it, Grandy, I promise. Now listen to me carefully. Bunrich has bought up Maman’s markers, and if I don’t come up to scratch in a week or so, I’m cooked. This Wainwright woman writes for the newspaper, and if she learns Jonathan Chadwick is up to his ears in gambling debts, it will be all over London with her next column. There won’t be any more concerts, for the nobs or anybody else. No patrons for the opera, either. Neither of us will eat, do you understand? If I can turn her up sweet on Pip, she won’t go after Jon.”

“What’s all th’ Pip business, then?” she asked, rubbing her bulbous nose with a callused forefinger.

“I told her that’s my name. Can’t you imagine what a joke all of London would make of it should she describe Chadwick looking like an overgrown pig boy? She thinks I’m Jon’s dim-witted brother, and she feels sorry for me. As long as she believes I’m Pip, she won’t write anything bad about me—us. Just bring the meals and see you don’t give me away, or I’ll have your hide. And then you’ll starve!”

“Don’t ye threaten me, ye wee turd. I’ll pin yer ears back to yer head wi’ roofin’ nails!” She gave his hair a tug for emphasis.

“All right, please, then. C’mon, Grandy, help me out here.”

“What about this Bunrich? He th’ one what kicked ye around today?” Grandy asked, poking roughly at his head.

Jon winced as he endured her prodding. “Uh-huh. I’ll have to worry about him after I get her out of here. Shhh, now, she’s coming. Mind your mouth.”

Kathryn sailed into the room, her arms full of his musical instruments. “Here are your ladies, Pip!” Carefully she laid each one on the bed beside him. “Now lie back like a good boy and let Kathryn see to your hurts. Mrs. Grandy, would you heat some water and bring it up? Also, he’ll need a towel and some soap, if you have it....”

“Humph, no chance o’ that. Canna see t’ take th’ stairs totin’ nothing. He’ll live.”

Jon watched Grandy shuffle out of the room with her usual rolling gracelessness. “Bye, Gran,” he said, as lovingly as if he were her very favorite grandchild. He ought, by rights, to go trip her on the top step, the fractious old wart.

At least she wouldn’t give him away. Grandy’s instinct for survival surpassed even his own. And, deep down in that mass she called a body, Jon suspected she had a heart.

“She’s a mean old woman!” Kathryn said, brushing his hair back out of his eyes. “You rest a bit and I’ll go get something to wash you up.”

“Kathryn?” Jon said, grabbing her hand in both of his. Her tender smile nearly stopped his heart. He had to close his eyes against it so that he could think of something to say.

When he opened them, they felt unfocused, rolled around like marbles in a bowl. Maybe he did have a concussion after all. It wouldn’t do to have her here after he gave in to sleep. He had to get rid of her now. Discounting the secrets she might unearth by snooping around the house, there was always a chance Bunrich would begin to suspect the trick Jon had planned. He might come back and finish what he had started.

“Go get Jon,” he said. “Please?” He knew that was the only way he would get her out of the house.

“Where is he?” she whispered, leaning over him to examine the lump on his head more closely. Her soft palm slid down to the uninjured portion of his face and rested lightly against his left cheek.

Jon breathed in her scent, hoping to hold it until he could fall asleep and dream.

“Town,” he answered. His need for sleep battled with his reluctance to make her leave. “Go to town.”

“Will you be all right until he gets here?”

“Um-hmm. So tired,” he mumbled, and turned away from her.

Ten minutes later, Jon relaxed for the first time since entering her room at the inn that morning. The sound of her carriage wheels crunching down the driveway provided much-needed relief. And a surprising sadness.

Why did he yearn so for her to stay, when he knew it was impossible? The woman could wreck his life, for pity’s sake. He ran a tentative finger over the swelling at his temple. That fall on his head must have left a severe dent in his brain. It had definitely mangled the section dedicated to self-preservation. Too bad it hadn’t numbed the region that ruled his nether parts.

He wanted her. Craved her. Not like the tasting of a sweet roll or a snifter of fine brandy. More like drawing his next breath. Damn.

But would he be satisfied by a mere tossing-up of her skirts, if and when she ever allowed it? He let his fingers drift down the side of his face, where she had last touched him.

Probably not.

Chapter Four

Kathryn set aside her lap desk, glanced out the window of her second-story room and wondered again how poor Pip was getting on today. She didn’t think he had been seriously injured, but Chadwick surely would want to know about it.

She had left word with the landlady at Jonathan’s rooms the moment she arrived in town the day before. Since mid morning she had searched for him. She’d sent Thom to the servants’ entrances of the gentlemen’s clubs with questions, and contacted everyone Chadwick had performed for in the past few weeks. By midafternoon, Kathryn had decided to give it up and come back to Uncle Rupert’s. Either no one had seen Jon or they were helping him avoid her.

Perhaps she should have mentioned the reason she wanted to find him in the inquiries she made. Even then, everyone would probably believe she was only after a story for the paper. Her “secret” occupation was hardly a true secret.

Working did nothing to alleviate her worries. The article on Chadwick was a futile effort, anyway. All the way back to London yesterday, she had thought of little else. Aside from his obnoxious public arrogance, she had found nothing derogatory to write about. Of course, she could expose his secret about using Pip’s music. That, coupled with his nose-thumbing superiority, would have everyone believing him as reprehensible as she had at first. Such a story would set London on its collective ear. But it would destroy Jonathan, and probably Pip, as well.

She laid the pen aside and crumpled the paper in her fist.

Where the devil had Jon gotten to, anyway? She had turned the city upside down, and he was nowhere to be found. As far as she could discern, he wasn’t performing anywhere in town tonight. Kathryn thought again of poor Pip, wounded and waiting in that sorry excuse for a home, with no one but that crotchety old crone to look after him. She had half a mind to go back there tonight and make certain he didn’t go hungry. If there was no word from Jonathan Chadwick, she’d go first thing in the morning, she promised herself.

Right now, she had problems enough of her own to face. Uncle Rupert would fly into a rage when she told him she had decided not to make Chadwick her subject for the week.

If only she could beg off doing the column for two months, she wouldn’t have to write anything about anyone. She would be twenty-five and financially independent. Well, just how independent remained to be seen. But however much she received from her inheritance must suffice. Maybe she should be grateful to Uncle Rupert, but living under his thumb was becoming increasingly intolerable. There were times when she thought him a bit unbalanced, especially when he nagged her so about the articles. Chadwick did not seem to warrant ruining, as the others had.

In the beginning, she had reveled in the chance to knock some entertainer off his golden perch. If only she hadn’t done the exposé on Thackery Osgood six months ago, she wouldn’t be in this mess. The wretch had ruined three young singers fresh off the farm. Three in a row! Those poor girls hadn’t had a clue what the lecherous old sot was up to when he offered them parts in his musicale. Promises of fame and riches had turned to shame and degradation within days of their respective arrivals. Luckily—or maybe not so luckily, given her present predicament—Kathryn had virtually stumbled on one of the unfortunates, a vicar’s daughter, trying to throw herself into the Thames. Osgood’s admirers had nearly lynched him from the theater marquee after Kathryn’s column revealing what he had done appeared. She couldn’t regret having a hand in that. Hanging was too good for the bastard.

Then there had been Theodosia Lark. Lark, indeed! Sang more like a goose with a bad throat, Kathryn thought. The woman had abandoned her own children, infant twins, on the steps of a local orphanage just so that she could resume her career unencumbered. Lark’s return to the stage had lasted only until the next edition of About Town. The pathos Kathryn injected into the piece about the babies had inspired their subsequent adoption by a wealthy merchant’s family. Now the singing doxy had neither career nor motherhood to worry about. Public outrage had forced her retirement.

Other scandals had followed, dutifully penned by her alter ego, K. M. Wainwright. Kathryn knew that targeting entertainers had everything to do with her own mother’s profession. Maria Soliana’s operatic career flourished even today, but Italy’s darling had better not dare a return to London. Father had never quite recovered from his wife’s abandonment. Kathryn had adjusted to being motherless, but it had left her bitter. How could any mother put her career before her own child? No, Kathryn didn’t regret dashing Theodosia Lark’s career. Not for a moment.

Kathryn knew there were good and talented people in the business, but most of them were self-centered and uncaring. What began as a small crusade against the worst evils of the stage had simply gotten out of hand. She thought perhaps she had run out of truly ignominious individuals. Uncle Rupert would have to find himself another writer with a grudge. Hers had spent itself, at least for the present.

He could threaten all he liked, but Kathryn didn’t really believe her own uncle would set her out on the street without a farthing. And if he still intended to thrust her into a marriage with that pompous Randall Nelson, he could jolly well think again.

With her shoulders squared and her mouth firmly set, Kathryn went down the stairs to confront him with her resignation.

When she stopped on the first floor landing to brush out the wrinkles in her skirt and bolster her flagging courage, Randall’s voice drifted up from the open door of Uncle Rupert’s study. His words were indistinct, but his tone sounded angry. The fact that he was here wasn’t out of the ordinary. He owned a part interest in the paper and he and Uncle Rupert had been friends for years, despite the difference in their ages. This was no ordinary conversation between chums, however. Kathryn had been a reporter just long enough to heed her instincts. Quietly she descended just far enough downstairs to overhear without being seen.

“You ought to keep a tighter rein on her, Rupert,” Randall said. “I don’t like the idea of her haring off about town unescorted. Her reputation’s already in shreds since you let it be known she’s the one doing those columns in the paper.”

Rupert laughed; it was a nasty sound. “Hey, you can’t blame me for taking full advantage of her talents, now can you? She’s good at what she does—subscriptions have doubled! And you won’t mind all that talk when you get your hands on her inheritance, will you? Not every day a man comes into a fortune like that Eighty thousand pounds can sugarcoat the foulest little pill, can’t it?”

“Eighty thousand? But that’s only half! You said a sixty-forty split in my favor, Rupert.”

Kathryn grasped the stair rail. Her knees wobbled so violently she thought she would collapse right there, in a heap. One hundred and sixty thousand pounds! Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined her father had accrued so much in his lifetime! Ten or fifteen thousand at most, she had figured. She was a bloody heiress! She could live forever on that amount Like a queen! Drawing in a shaky breath, she made herself listen further.

“What if she refuses? We only have two months left to convince her, and so far she hasn’t given me a speck of encouragement,” Randall complained. “She won’t marry me.”

“Don’t you worry about it, my boy. A little laudanum in her wine will do the trick. I’ve got the parson in my pocket already. Old Tim Notchworthy’s not above a hefty bribe. We’ll have this marriage sewn up right and tight in a few days. All we need do is keep her groggy afterwards. Ain’t that unusual for women these days to fall slave to the opiates.”

Kathryn heard the clink of glasses. Good God, they planned to drug her, concoct a sham of a marriage and take over her inheritance? Her own uncle, for heaven’s sake!

Outrage overcame her shock, but, fortunately, not her prudence. Confronting them with their heinous knavery could be dangerous. With a quick shake of fury, she crept back upstairs to her room and stuffed a few clothes in a small carpetbag. Obviously, Uncle Rupert hadn’t heard her come home this evening. If she hurried, she could be away again before he knew she had ever returned. But where could she go that he or Randall wouldn’t find her and drag her back to complete their plans?

She had no close friends living near London, and no funds with which to travel far. Tearing open her reticule, Kathryn counted her money. The pittance Uncle gave her for fripperies wouldn’t hire fare to the next county. Taking Thomas and the carriage back out would draw attention. She would have to ride. With an angry sigh, she tore off her day dress and donned her sturdy blue riding habit.

With all the stealth of a practiced thief, Kathryn stole down the servants’ stairs and made a dash for the stables. Thomas was nowhere about, thank God. Not that he’d ever tell, but Uncle might dismiss him if he thought they had conspired in her getaway. Her stout little mare whinnied a greeting.

“You’re about to become a racehorse, Mabel,” Kathryn said as she struggled with the sidesaddle. “And God help me, you’d better go the distance!”

A plan began to gel as she threaded Mabel through the back streets at a steady clip. She would call in a favor, or resort to blackmail, if necessary, but Jonathan Chadwick was going to be her savior, one way or another. He was the only one she knew with a great place to hide. If no one had discovered Pip in all this time, no one would be able to find her, either.

Jon exited the lane onto the main road, carefully keeping Imp to a walk. Wouldn’t do to arrive at the Turkingtons’ affair covered with road dust and sweat. As it was, he would probably smell of horse, but there was no help for it. He hadn’t been able to scratch up enough to hire the coach this time. Perhaps his smell would keep the female leeches at a distance. He resisted the urge to wipe his forehead. Already the powder was beading up there and threatening to run down his face in rivulets.

A rider approached and stiffened in the saddle as he watched. The woman sped to a canter, and he recognized her, even at a distance. Kathryn Wainwright.

“Chadwick?” she called, reining to a halt several lengths away. “Thank God it’s you. I need your help!”

He dismounted and strode over to assist her down. She pushed herself away from him and brushed tousled blond ringlets out of her eyes with the back of her hand. He wondered if she knew how fetching she looked in her disarray.

“If it isn’t Miss Wainwright! To what do I owe the pleasure?” Jon inclined his head in a mocking bow.

She drew in an unsteady breath and looked at her feet. Even in the fading light of sundown, he noticed the fierce blush on her cheeks. “I really need your help.”

“So you’ve said. My wish is your command, of course, but I’m in rather a hurry. An engagement, you see.” He took her hand and felt it trembling. “Come now, speak up. I haven’t got all night.”

Her hand turned palm up to grasp his in a death grip. “Let me hide in your house, sir! Please!” She rushed on before he could think what to say. “If you will, I won’t write a word about you. Ever. My oath on it. Just let me stay for two months. I can look after Pip for you, cook, clean, whatever. Please say I may!” Her other hand joined the first and worked frantically over the stretch of his ostrich-skin gloves. “I will pay you, too. Soon I’ll have lots of money and I’ll pay you well.”

Jon looked down into the wide, teary eyes. They darkened to near black. Deep, rich chocolate. Her brow furrowed and her lips trembled as she waited for his response.

While nothing in the world would have pleased him more than holing up in his house with this spicy little morsel, Jon knew he couldn’t allow himself that. How could he explain Pip’s absence? Even if he could concoct an explanation, Grandy wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. She’d give away the whole ruse, and Kathryn would have the story of his life. So would all of London. “That’s not such a good idea, Miss Wainwright.”

Her face crumpled. Two giant tears trickled down her cheeks and dripped off her chin before she got herself in hand. He led her over to a large boulder just off the road and settled himself beside her. “Now then, why don’t you tell me what’s prompted this unseemly suggestion of yours?”

Kathryn cleared her throat. She drew her hands away from his and smoothed them over her corseted waist. “My uncle plans to marry me off to his wretch of a partner. They want my inheritance, and I don’t mean to let them have it.”

“Inheritance?” Jon hoped his greed didn’t show. Not greed, he reminded himself. It was need that prompted his interest. Need, and his healthy sense of self-preservation. “They cannot make you wed if you refuse to.”

“Yes! Yes, they can! I overhead them planning to drug me and bribe some minister to perform the deed. Oh, please, Mr. Chadwick, you have to help me!” Her breath shuddered out, and he feared she was about to begin weeping in earnest.

“Your own uncle is party to this scheme? It must take a frightful amount of money to inspire that sort of thing,” Jon said, probing none too tactfully.

She didn’t seem to notice his lack of subtlety. “One hundred sixty thousand pounds!”

Jon’s mouth dropped open. “Good Lord! I’ll marry you myself!”

Her wits seemed linked to her anger. At least they both returned to her at the same time. “Ha! What makes you think I’d let you get your long-fingered paws on my money, when I just ran away to prevent such a thing?” She stood up and paced furiously back and forth in front of him, twisting her fingers and shaking her head.

He hadn’t really believed she would entertain his half-baked proposal, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to push a little further when the time was right. For now, he would be the helpful friend. “Well, then, it seems to me you should simply take your fortune and make yourself scarce,” he suggested amiably.

“No, I can’t do that,” she declared. “Father left it in trust to me, and I can’t touch it until I’m twenty-five. He didn’t trust me to manage it until I’d passed my youth. Not even then, if you want the truth. He thought I needed a husband, of course.”

Jon smiled. He wanted to jump up and down. “Then take a husband you can manage, sweetheart. I promise I’ll be the soul of cooperation. You call the tune, and I’ll play it. What say?”

She stopped pacing abruptly and faced him. A light came on in her eyes, turning them almost amber. An unsteady little laugh escaped, and she clapped her hands. “Genius! I knew you were a genius, Jon Chadwick!”

“So you’re proposing to me now? I accept!” He laughed, too, amazed at how easily he had solved both their problems.

“Dream away, Chadwick,” she said smoothly, and raised that square little chin of hers. “You’re going to arrange a marriage for me, all right, but not with yourself. I’m going to marry Pip.”

His speechlessness lasted for five whole seconds. “Over my dead body!”

“What’s your objection?” she asked. “I could look after him for you while you’re away performing. It wouldn’t be a marriage in the real sense, of course. I understand that he has a child’s mind.” Her face grew earnest. “I do feel affection for him, Jon. He would never want for anything, I promise. You must know I’d never take advantage of his...” She faltered and dropped her head.

“His idiocy?” Jon finished, with a dark look. He felt a sharp pang of guilt for what he was about to do, but he had learned long ago to grab an advantage wherever and whenever it presented itself. This one had virtually fallen into his lap and screamed, Take me!

“Please, Jon,” she implored, resting a hand on his arm. “If you have one scrap of compassion in that black soul of yours, do this for me.”

He sighed. “All right, Kathryn. I’ll do it, but I want something for my trouble.”

“Anything!” she promised, and then obviously thought better of the offer. “What?”

“Six thousand pounds,” he stated baldly.

Kathryn’s mouth worked soundlessly. She looked irate.

Jon tried to explain, “It’s not so mercenary as it sounds. I’ll never ask you for another groat, and I’ll pay you back with interest before year’s end. Five percent. My word on it.”

She looked doubtful, considered in silence for a few moments. “Eight percent,” she countered.

“Six.”

She bobbed her head once. “Done.”

Jon held out his hand, and she gave it a firm shake. He tried to disregard the disappointment in her eyes.

“Come with me,” he said. “I’ve a friend in Lakesend who’ll perform the ceremony without the banns. He owes me a favor. It’s probably best if I stand proxy for Pip.”

Kathryn hesitated, tugging her hand away from his and remaining where she stood for the moment. “Well, I suppose that would do. Are you certain that will be legal?”

“Binding as a hangman’s noose. Sure you really want to do this, Kathryn? Pip’s not exactly every lass’s dream come true.”

“I think it’s the only solution,” she said with a sigh.

“We’d best get on with it, then,” he said, ushering her toward her mare and providing a boost up. “If we hurry the ceremony, I can still make the Turkingtons’ do by nine o’clock, and you can put your bridegroom to bed by ten. Let’s ride.”

All the way to Lakesend Jon watched her with a wary eye. She could call the whole thing off at any second. He prayed. He promised whatever gods were watching that he would make this up to her. He would face her wrath when she discovered what he had done, and give her her freedom whenever she asked for it. And, in the meantime, Pip would be the most docile, undemanding husband any woman ever had. No, Kathryn would never suffer because of this night’s events. She would be saved from the machinations of that avaricious uncle, and Jon could pay off Bunrich. A perfect scheme.

Kathryn was right. This was the only way.

Darkness had fallen and the full moon risen by the time they arrived. “You wait outside and let me talk to the vicar first,” Jon suggested as they reached the outskirts of the village. The old stone chapel snuggled comfortably at the edge of Lakesend Common. Unthreatening moon shadows bathed the churchyard that flanked the parsonage. A weak light shone through the window signaling the presence of Reverend Carl Lockhart. Thank God Carl was home tonight. Jon thought it a good omen.

He dismounted and looped his reins over the spiky wrought-iron fence. “I’ll be back in a few moments,” he promised with a pat on her knee.

Lockhart answered immediately, and after a perfunctory greeting, Jon stated his case. “Carl, I need a hasty wedding performed. The lady outside doesn’t know she’s to be a countess, and I’d as soon you didn’t make any reference to it. For my sake, just do the pretty and say only what’s necessary, will you?”

Duplicity didn’t sit well with the good reverend. “I don’t know, Jonathan. Doesn’t seem right, somehow.”

If you only knew, Jon thought with a grimace. He lounged negligently on the corner of the parson’s desk. “Why? She needn’t know just yet about my title. She’s perfectly willing to marry me thinking I’m Nathan Chadwick Lyham, a simple musician. If she knew the rest, she’d balk. Her attitude toward the nobility could make this marriage impossible, and then I’d be done right out of my heir. The chit has no notion how difficult it would be to rear a bastard. Her parents will throw her out. No telling what she might do then. Best we marry and have done with it. I promise I will tell her the rest when the time’s right.”

The vicar shot him a suspicious look and began to shake his head.

Jon held up a gloved hand to forestall any denial. “Bear with me on this, Carl. We were fast friends as children. Still are, eh? Didn’t I see that Edward gave you the living here when your father died?”

Lockhart snorted. “Such as it is. You’re a sporadic landlord, at best. Better than Edward was, but still...”

Jon brightened. “Well, you’ve the best music in three counties, haven’t you? Draws ’em in like flies. We’ll build that school of yours by next summer, too. Things are looking up.”

“Sounds like bribery, milord,” Lockhart replied with an infectious grin.

“We always did understand each other, Carl,” Jon said. “You fix the papers. I’ll get the bride.” He turned on the way out. “Don’t mention the child. She’s dreadfully embarrassed about it.” Again he paused. “And thank you, friend. I won’t forget this.”

Kathryn took the whole thing rather well, Jon thought with relief. The words were said in a rush, witnessed by Carl’s sleepy housekeeper and the resident gravedigger. Jon punctuated the ceremony with a brief kiss he dared not prolong.

The taste of her soft lips lingered in his mind as he handed her the pen to sign her name on the church register. When she had done so, he handed her the marriage lines. She pored over the document for a moment and then scratched her name with a flourish.

Her eyes rested on his hand as he boldly wrote J. Nathan Chadwick. dropped down a space and wrote Lyham a little to the right. He handed her the paper. She looked at him then, with a helpless little smile, as though she’d only just realized what Pip’s real name was. No mistake there, Jon thought with a wry twist of his lips, only a few letters missing. A lie of omission.

He waited until Carl drew her away to congratulate her and then turned back to the church register. Jonathan Chadwick, Fifth Earl of Lyham, he wrote clearly beneath Kathryn’s signature and quickly closed the book.

God help him, it was done. He had wed Kathryn Wainwright for her wealth, an act of desperation and wicked deception. Hell was too good for him, but at least he had postponed that destination for a while. Ah, well, he’d march along the path of survival, as out of step as ever, and hope one day to find the rhythm that always eluded him. This was only another stumble.

“We must away now, Reverend. Our thanks to you,” Jon said with a nod to the housekeeper and the gravedigger. “Come, my dear, and leave these good people to their rest.”

Kathryn laid her hand on his arm and preceded him through the door. “What now?” she asked as they reached their mounts. She placed her tiny boot in his hand and let him boost her up.

“I’ll ride back with you as far as the Hare’s Foot Inn, and then you’re on your own. Say what you will to Pip, but see he gets to bed at a decent hour. If I don’t show at Turkington’s affair tonight, he’ll let his stork of a daughter sing. The whole county will heave up its supper, and they’ll be blaming me for it.”

She laughed hard, leaning forward in the saddle and almost unseating herself. Jon grinned up at her, wishing it was him she would be putting to bed later on. Actually it would be, but certainly not in the manner he fantasized. Curse his luck.

As soon as they reached the village inn, Jon blew Kathryn a kiss and waved goodbye. He kicked Imp to a gallop and cut through the woods to the manor. Old Turkington would have to hum for his guests tonight. There were only moments to spare before his wife arrived at the house, expecting a wedding night of some sort. He supposed music would have to suffice.

Kathryn took her time approaching Timberoak Manor. Moonlight did nothing to disguise the ragged condition of her new home. Half-dead vines hugged the stones as far up as the second-floor windows. The ivy appeared to be all that was holding the place together. Paint-peeled shutters hung precariously, threatening to drop to the ground with the first strong breeze. Knee-high grasses probably concealed all manner of debris around the weed-infested gravel of the driveway. Still, one could clearly see the ghost of former grandeur. Perhaps, with care and a hefty portion of her inheritance, she could resurrect that ghost.

Kathryn clung to the newly realized ambition. Such as it was, she now had a home to call her own. She had always craved a home, a family and a husband. Timberoak, Jon Chadwick and Pip weren’t exactly what she’d had in mind during all those wishing sessions, but at the advanced age of almost twenty-five, she could hardly hope for much more.

After she located the stable and fed Mabel, Kathryn walked around front again. The heavy door swung open at a touch. She strode down the entrance hall and entered the littered ballroom with forced confidence and determined hope. She had always heard it was best to begin as one meant to go.

Pip sat on the floor with his back to her, humming along with the small harp he strummed. His tattered green robe was bunched around his hips, and his outstretched legs were bare. “Pip,” she called softly, afraid she would startle him. “It’s Kathryn.”

He turned with a wide, vacant smile. Simply beautiful, she thought with a catch in her breath. And beautifully simple. Regret and sympathy streaked through her, leaving in their wake a need to do something, anything, to improve the quality of his life.

“May I join you?” she asked as she knelt beside him.

“Want to play?” Pip handed her the child’s harp.

She pushed it back into his arms. “I don’t know how, dear.”

“I play. You sing,” he ordered, and began to pluck a folk tune she vaguely remembered from childhood.

“‘Winnowing Away,”’ she remarked as the title came to her. Her mother had sung it to her when she was little. Before...

“I don’t sing. Ever,” she said. The words came out more sharply than she had meant them to. His mouth drew down in a pout.

Before she thought what she was doing, Kathryn reached up and brushed his hair back, uncovering the dark bruise on his temple. He had scrubbed it nearly raw. The whole of his face and neck looked freshly washed, his sun-kissed hair still damp around it.

She wondered whether he shaved his own face. Perhaps Jon or Grandy did it for him. At least he made some attempt at cleanliness on his own. She caught a faint whiff of cologne and smiled. He must have dabbled in Jon’s things out of curiosity.

“Sing to me,” he mumbled, stroking the harp strings.

Kathryn sighed. She hadn’t sung in thirteen years. The last time had gained her the only beating her father ever gave her. After that, even humming had drawn dark scowls from him.

“My mother used to sing,” she said, almost to herself and noticed Pip’s head cock to one side as though he were interested.

Kathryn realized then that she now had a confidant. Pip could listen to all her woes and would promptly forget them. She had talked to her cat when she was small and had no one else to listen. Whiskers had probably saved her sanity after Mother left and Father grew morose and distant. Come to think of it, Pip’s curious expression had a certain similarity to her feline friend’s.

She smiled and clasped her hands together in her lap. “Mother sang like a nightingale, Pip. Still does, I expect.”

“Mother died,” Pip said bluntly, catching a bass string with one fingernail. The note bonged and then faded to silence.

“Your mother died? Mine went away. Sad, isn’t it?” Kathryn leaned against his shoulder, and Pip grunted softly in assent.

He began to play again, this time a piece she didn’t know—one of his own, she suspected. The soft music soothed as a maternal caress was meant to. Perhaps Pip had invented his own consolation for the loss of his mother and was sharing it with her. What a lovely thought that, despite his disability, he possessed such sensitivity, such natural goodness.

She lay back on the chilly floor and covered her eyes with one arm. Pip’s sweet, comforting sounds enfolded her, warmed her, and eventually lulled her to sleep.

Chapter Five

Strong sunlight and the smell of coffee greeted Kathryn when she woke. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, groaning as her corset bit into her rib cage.

She was in Pip’s room. Or at least the one she had assigned him when she saw the pigsty he usually occupied. The covers lay tangled half about her, half on the floor. Otherwise, the place looked much as it had the last time she was in it. The dust was more evident, and the furnishings seemed a bit more faded than she recalled. How in the world had she gotten here?

Searching her memory, Kathryn vaguely remembered strong arms beneath her, the shifting movements of being carried like a child. She lay back and sighed. So Pip was looking after her. The future didn’t look half so bleak as she had expected it would this morning.

Once she had her money, she would restore his home and make it livable. Maybe even as beautiful as it had been in its glory days. And she would give him a life of comfort and ease. Her Pip would have no worries at all other than what note to play next. Her Pip. Nathan. She remembered the name Jon had written on the marriage certificate, but she could never think of Pip as Nathan. He probably wouldn’t answer to that name, anyway.

So what if Pip wasn’t her ideal husband? Not likely she would ever have found the man she’d envisioned anyway. She had imagined a somewhat older fellow. Handsome, naturally. Virile and experienced, worldly, sure of himself, the master of all situations. And rich. Well, now she didn’t require a rich man. Love had never been on her wish list. She’d seen what love did to her father when he lost it. She wasn’t even certain what love meant; passion, supposedly, coupled with obsession. She would gladly settle for a different, safer kind of affection with Pip.

She couldn’t deny that she felt a strong physical attraction to her brother-in-law, Chadwick. But then, she had experienced a stirring toward Pip that proved nearly as strong. The failing was one she’d have to combat until she got over it. Desire might be new and unsettling, but she could deal with it until she got used to the near proximity of two extremely handsome men. Once they became familiar in a family setting, she would surely come to think of both in .a sisterly way.

They could live a pleasant life here at Timberoak. Jon would come periodically, of course, to get the music Pip wrote. They would make him welcome and be a real family. Even old Grandy might fit in, once Kathryn set her straight about showing Pip the respect he was due. Just because a childhood accident had stolen some of his reason, that gave the woman no call to grump at him the way she did. Everything would work out beautifully. Kathryn meant to see that it did. They were all her responsibility now.

She listened to the steady thump of footsteps on the stairs and the firm knock at her bedroom door. “Come in,” she called, fully expecting Pip.

“Good morning, Kathryn,” Jon said as he entered. “You slept well, I trust?”

Kathryn shifted uncomfortably in her wrinkled riding habit. He looked too wonderfully decadent, still in his evening clothes. Powder lay thick on his face, its pallor interrupted only by his dark brows and lashes, and the natural color of his expressive mouth. Most of his dark, wavy hair had escaped from its scarlet thong, as though the wind had pulled it free. Was he just coming in from last evening’s affair at the Turkingtons’ or leaving for another? The night had passed, but she had no idea what time of day it was.

Or did he never allow anyone to see him without this ridiculous mask of his? One would think he was hiding something. Scars, perhaps? La, men could be more vain than women!

His appearance ought to have set her teeth on edge, and in a way it did just that. It was as though he were daring anyone to challenge his eccentricity. He wore his trappings like a badge. Kathryn stifled a sudden urge to rip away the pretense and discover the real man underneath. She supposed most women felt that way, and that it was precisely what Jon intended.

“You have a performance today?” she asked, assuming the coolest voice she could manage.

He handed her a mug of steaming coffee. “Actually, no. I thought we might go into the city and announce the marriage.”

“And collect the money,” she said acerbically.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” At least he had the grace to look embarrassed.

Kathryn shrugged, took a sip of the over-sweetened brew, and shivered with disgust before she answered. “I told you I can’t have it until I’m twenty-five.”

“But you said a husband would make all the difference. You said...”

Kathryn saw where this was going. “I said no such thing. I still can’t get the money until my twenty-fifth birthday. Nor can anyone else. Why do you think my uncle waited this long? If I could have collected merely by taking a husband, I’d be long married by now, with my brain pickled in laudanum syrup. You’ll just have to wait along with me, I’m afraid.” She finished the coffee in two swallows and winced again at the sugary taste.

Even under the pallor of his powder, Kathryn imagined, Jon looked ashen. He just stood there wearing one of Pip’s blank expressions. Odd, aside from their hair color, she hadn’t realized just how close their resemblance was until now. She had a strange urge to reassure him, the same urge she usually felt toward his brother. “Don’t worry, Jon. My birthday’s in two months.”

“You’ll be twenty-five?” he asked, visibly shaking off whatever troubled him. “I’d thought you much younger.”

“Thank you. The blush is off, though.” She flashed him a quick grin. “At least I’m no longer an old maid.”

His eyes registered surprise at her sally, and then resignation. “No, no, I suppose not.” He stepped back toward the doorway, stumbling a bit on the edge of the rug. “Well, then... Well, I’ll be off to town. If you don’t need anything else, that is.”

“Where is Pip today?” she asked as she stood up and placed her coffee mug on the bedside table.

“Uh...he goes down to the lake most mornings. Sometimes the woods. Look, Kathryn, I have to leave now.”

“Wait awhile, if you’re going into the city. I’d like you to take a message to my uncle. Even if I can’t collect the money yet, I’d like to make at least one announcement.”

He shook his head and looked eager to be on his way. “I’m afraid I haven’t time to wait.”

“Oh, I promise you it will be short and to the point,” she assured him.

When he stood back, she preceded him down the stairs and into the ballroom. Amid the scatter of music sheets, she located a blank page and sat down on the floor to write.

Dear Uncle, On Tuesday night, the fifth of September, I was married to Mr. Nathan Lyham. We are residing at his country house until my birthday. Your niece, Kathryn

Jon peered over her shoulder until she had finished. He cleared his throat and rocked back on his heels when she looked up. “Is that all?”

“It ought to do the trick. His plans are definitely foiled. Will you post it for me?” She folded it in thirds and handed it up.

“I shall have it delivered. Will he come looking for you, do you think?”

Kathryn laughed as she took his hand to get up from the floor. “He won’t know where to look, now will he?”

Jon crouched and picked up the little harp Pip had played the night before. He stuffed her letter in his pocket and tucked the harp under his arm as he rose.

“Won’t Pip mind if you take away one of his ladies?” she asked.

“He will weep buckets, Kathryn, but there’s no help for it.” The look on his face was pure grief. She knew then that he felt the same affinity for the instrument that Pip did.

Kathryn took his free hand in hers. “You will sell it? Are we really so desperate for funds, Jon?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a long breath through his nose. “Everything will come right, Kathryn. Not to worry.”

Then he shifted the harp to a more comfortable position and offered her a rather forced smile. “Leave Pip to his own devices today. He’ll wander for a while and then return late this evening to work in here. Food’s in the pie safe and there’s fruit in the orchard out back. Make yourself at home.”

Kathryn followed to the back door and watched him stride across the yard. “Anything else I should know?” she called out.

He turned and walked backward as he answered. “The cat’s name is Dagnabbit, and he bites. So does Grandy. Have a care!” Then he laughed and disappeared into the stables.

Kathryn felt deserted, but she also felt rather adventurous. Never since she was a child had she been quite so free and left to her own inclinations. She could do whatever she wanted!

After wolfing a few slices of bacon and a handful of biscuits, she washed it all down with the remains of Jon’s ale. Next thing, Kathryn thought, was to get rid of the corset.

The freedom of it all went right to her head, and she laughed aloud as she ran up the stairs. Married life was wonderful already, Kathryn thought, even without the money!

A midafternoon message caused a crisis at the Wainwright town house.

Rupert Wainwright crushed the letter from Kathryn into a wad and threw it into the grate. “The little fool! She’s gone and got herself wed!” He raked his hand through what was left of his graying hair and scratched his bushy side-whiskers.

“That’s it, then,” Randall Nelson said, slumping his gangly frame down on the horsehair settee.

“You limp-wristed nodcock! You’re giving her up? Just like that?” Rupert threw up his hands, wondering whether he had chosen the right man after all. He needed Kathryn wed to someone malleable enough to go along with the scheme. And someone stupid enough to share the wealth. Pity the lad didn’t have more gumption, though, when it came to overcoming obstacles.

“What we have to do is find the bastard she married and get rid of him!” Wainwright settled himself behind his scarred oak desk and pounded a fist on the blotter. “Now then, think hard, boy. Do you know any Lyhams? Unusual name. Can’t be many of ’em. Check the census records first. The fellow has to be from here in town, or she’d never have met him, eh?”

Nelson’s gray eyes widened and his head came up with a start. “You mean to kill the man, sir?”

Rupert snorted with disgust. “You have a better idea?”

Nelson winced. “I hadn’t thought to do murder, Roop.”

“How else can we pull this off? You think she’ll simply divorce him and fall in your lap for the asking? We’ll have to make it look an accident, of course.”

Nelson stared out the window, saying nothing.

Rupert nodded and breathed out a gusty sigh. “Shame we can’t just do away with her. Wouldn’t get anything that way, though. Charities would get it all. Damn that brother of mine!”

He noticed Nelson’s brooding silence. “What is it?” Then louder. “What is it, man? I know that look! You’re hiding something from me, I can tell. Let’s have it.”

“I knew a Lyham once. Was up at school with him. Eton, when we were just lads.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t be the same one.”

“And why not? Well, spit it out.” Rupert wanted to cuff him, but he held off. No sense in alienating his only hope.

“Name wasn’t Nathan. Edward, I believe we called him. Surname was Chapton, or something like that.” Nelson nodded, satisfied he’d remembered correctly. Yes, I believe it was Edward Chapton, or perhaps Chudwyn.”

Rupert threw up his hands again and rolled his eyes. “Well, if his given name wasn’t Nathan and his last name wasn’t Lyham, what’s the bloody point, man?”

Nelson folded his hands and returned Rupert’s glare. “Lyham was his title, Roop. The fellow was a lord. Father was an earl, I believe. Left school when the old man died.”

“Christ’s nails! An earl?” Rupert’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The gel’s gone and got herself an earl?”

“No, no. I told you this fellow’s name wasn’t Nathan. And besides that, wouldn’t Kathryn have thrown the man’s title at you if he had one? That would make her a countess, and I doubt very much if she’d forget to mention that.”

Rupert thought for a moment. Randall was right for a change. The lad hadn’t much in the way of fortitude, but he had a head on his shoulders. A fine-looking head it was, too. Rupert had been banking heavily on Nelson’s good looks to snag Kathryn’s attention. Bugger that idea now; they would simply have to resort to elimination and force.

“You find out, boy. I want to know who this rascal Lyham is by week’s end. Get on it first thing in the morning. Better yet, tonight. Ask around, check the peerage books just in case. Hire a detective, whatever it takes. We have to know who we’re dealing with and get rid of him before the girl turns twenty-five.”

Very late that evening, Jon stopped in the village and stabled Imp with the smithy, Ike Noblett. He then trudged through the woods to Grandy’s cottage, where he left his suit and the small case containing the wig, mirror and stage paint. After scrubbing himself in the lake, he donned the rough work pants he had brought with him. His heart had gone out of the charade, but he had little choice but to continue now that he was in it up to his neck.

The chilly night air revived him a little, but nothing could restore the bit of his soul he had left with his harp at Graythorne Antiquities. With a huge dose of luck, he might retrieve her someday, but that would rest with fate and the whims of Ned Bunrich.

He approached the house and noticed candles flickering in the ballroom windows. Had Kathryn waited up? “Halloo th’ house!” he called, so that he wouldn’t frighten her.

“Pip! Where have you been? It’s so late!” She caught his arm and shook it gently. “I was worried about you.”

Jon patted her hand and fought the urge to raise it to his lips. There was a stupid thought. He had always hated kissing hands. Pretending attentiveness. Watching women simper. But Kathryn’s hands were so small and so soothing, even when she was berating him for being late.

“Hungry,” he mumbled. And not just for food, he thought.

She sighed and pulled him toward the kitchen, where she had obviously been sitting. One of the chairs stood out of place. Usually they all did. Someone had scraped away his huge mound of candle wax from the center of the table and replaced it with a dish holding a fat new taper.

Kathryn nudged him to sit. “There’s a bit of the bacon from this morning. Your Grandy brought a tin of biscuits, and I cooked some of the apples I picked out back.”

Jon looked around while she gathered the food on a chipped plate. The whole room seemed different. The floor had a near shine to it. The cobwebs had disappeared, and the window glass reflected the light clearly. He didn’t recall ever seeing it do that. “It’s clean!” he exclaimed.