A Year of Scandal

A gentleman for every season

At the mercy of a ghostly matchmaker, four gentlemen must perform a shocking task.

But claiming their inheritance might just lead them to the women who will steal their hearts!

Don’t miss this wonderful new quartet by

Mills & Boon Historical Romance author

Elizabeth Beacon

Now available:

The Viscount’s Frozen Heart

The Marquis’s Awakening

Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise

Redemption of the Rake

Author Note

Welcome to the last of my A Year of Scandal quartet. Ever since his great-aunt’s will was read I have been longing to tell James Winterley’s story, but he always had to be the last hero.

I hope you enjoy reading his and Rowena’s story as much as I did writing it, and thank you for your precious reading time, patience and support through this year of change and discovery for all my heroes.

Redemption of the Rake
Elizabeth Beacon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ELIZABETH BEACON has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English, and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon Historical Romance.

To the Monday Volunteers at Croome.

Thanks for being exceptional and making me laugh when I didn’t want to.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

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

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

‘Mr Winterley is very handsome, isn’t he?’ Mary Carlinge said with a wistful sigh.

‘If you ask me, he’d be more at home in London and the haut ton must be flocking back there for the Little Season by now,’ Rowena replied warily.

‘Don’t try and change the subject, Rowena Westhope. You’re four and twenty and in full possession of your senses, so how can you not be intrigued by a young, rich and well-looking gentleman like that one? I don’t know how Callie Laughraine managed to drag to him to church again this morning, but I’m grateful to her even if you’re not.’

Rowena eyed the tall, dark and, yes, very handsome gentleman and felt a shiver of something she didn’t want to think about run down her spine. ‘He’ll certainly need to be rich, as he’s bought the old Saltash place and it’s almost a ruin. I suppose he is good looking, but he’s far too vain and haughty for me to admire him because he was born that way.’

‘Either you’re a saint and belong in a nunnery, or you’re a liar, my friend,’ Mary murmured as Mr Winterley glanced in their direction, then let his gaze flit past as if they weren’t worthy of it.

‘And you’re a wife and mother, Mary Carlinge, and should know better.’

‘I may have wed Carlinge when I was hardly out of the schoolroom,’ Mary said blithely, sparing her husband of six years a fond but dismissive glance, ‘but your Mr Winterley is still worth a second look, then a third and fourth for good measure.’

‘He isn’t mine and he knows he’s attractive and well-bred and a fine prize on the marriage mart a little too well for my taste,’ Rowena replied as coolly as she could when the wretched man’s unusual green eyes flicked back to eye her speculatively.

She had thought herself all but invisible in the shadow of an ancient yew tree, until Mary tracked her down and insisted on asking impossible questions. Now he was watching them as if Rowena might put a toad down his back if he didn’t keep an eye on her. A decade and a half ago she certainly would have, but it was unthinkable for a sober widow to do anything of the kind.

‘Now I like a man who knows his own worth. I’d wager my best bonnet that one is a fine and considerate lover as well,’ Mary insisted on telling her, although Rowena didn’t want to know her friend’s innermost secrets. ‘When I finally manage to give Carlinge another son I do hope I’m still young and attractive enough to find out for myself, as long as some discerning female hasn’t snapped him up in the meantime.’

‘Oh, Mary, no; that’s an awful thing to say. We were only confessing our sins before God a matter of minutes ago. You can’t possibly mean it.’

‘Shush,’ Mary Carlinge replied and took a look round to make sure nobody was close enough to hear the vicar’s eldest daughter being shocked by things she really shouldn’t admit out loud. ‘It’s as well you lurk in dark corners nowadays and do your best not to be taken notice of. Is that a habit you learnt at your mama-in-law’s knee, by the way? If so, it’s a good thing she’s taken it into her head to go and live with her sister and abandon you to your fate, because you would have stayed with her otherwise and become a boring little widow who breeds small dogs and keeps weavers of iron grey worsted in luxuries.’

‘This particular shade is called dove grey, I will have you know, and it was kind of Mama Westhope to take me in when I came back from Portugal with little more than the clothes I stood up in. I stayed longer than either of us intended because she was so prostrate with grief I couldn’t bring myself to leave, but it was only until we felt more able to cope with Nate’s death,’ Rowena defended herself and her late husband’s mother, but she had a feeling Mary was right this time all the same.

‘Kind my foot, she made use of you, Row.’ Her old friend put aside her sophisticated woman-of-the-world manner for a moment to lecture. ‘You were little more than her unpaid skivvy and I doubt she’s let a single day of the last two years go by without reproaching you for being alive when her darling is dead. No, you have been cried at and belittled for quite long enough, my friend. It’s high time you learnt to live again and there’s the very man you should begin doing it with,’ she concluded with a triumphant wave of the hand to where Mr Winterley was standing with a less-distinguished gentleman doing his best not to know he was all but forgotten at his fellow guest’s side.

‘Who is the gentleman in the brown coat, Mary? You’ve become such a fount of information since you persuaded Mr Carlinge to live in his great-uncle’s house instead of selling it when he inherited and staying in Bristol.’

‘It’s healthier for the children, but are you calling me a gossip?’ Mary asked sharply. She seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then shrugged and grinned impishly, as if the truth of that silent accusation was undeniable, and Rowena remembered why she loved her old friend, despite her forthright tongue and interfering ways. ‘You’re quite right, of course. What else is there to do in the country but take an interest in your neighbours and watch grass grow? The man in that rather dull coat is the Honourable Mr Bowood and his father must be Lord Grisbeigh, who is the sort of mysterious grandee the government pretend not to have. He would have to admit to working if they did and we all know gentlemen don’t do that.’

Since Mr Carlinge was an attorney and Mary sounded a little bitter about the social distinctions that fed into, Rowena turned the subject to Mary’s little son and baby daughter and tried to listen to their doting mother’s description of their latest sayings and doings with all her attention and wipe Mr Winterley from her thoughts. For all her talk of taking lovers and the dullness of her life, she was almost certain Mary loved her workaday Mr Carlinge and their lively children far too much to take a risk with fashionably bored Mr Winterley. Or at least Rowena hoped so for her friend’s sake, not because the man was tall and broad shouldered and rather fascinating and stirred something in her she’d rather leave unstirred.

‘So this is where you’re hiding today, is it, Rowena Finch?’ the clear tones of her other friend from the old days interrupted Mary’s tale of teething and breeching and now she had two pairs of acute female eyes on her instead of one. Rowena shifted under Calliope, Lady Laughraine’s dark gaze and flushed ridiculously as Callie’s words drew the attention of the very man she’d been trying to avoid.

He looked like a Byzantine prince dressed as a gentleman of fashion and plonked down in an English village to overawe the locals, she decided fancifully. There was a sense of power and fine self-control about him that almost offended her somehow. It was hard to say truthfully how she felt about the interloper, even if a nice little competence and a more useful life than the one she had now depended on it, but no matter, she was done with handsome gentlemen and he would never seriously look her way even if she wasn’t. She was a dull and impoverished widow of the very middling sort and he was the brother of a viscount who looked about as tricky and handsome as the devil and that was that.

‘I’m not Rowena Finch any longer, as you know perfectly well, Lady Laughraine,’ she pointed out with a stern look for the woman she’d known ever since she could remember.

Callie was the last Vicar of Raigne’s granddaughter and had come to live with him as a tiny baby. When the Finch family arrived at Great Raigne, so Papa could be installed there as the Reverend Sommers’s curate, Rowena was a toddler and her brother Joshua a babe in arms. Callie was an elder sister she never had to long for, because she had one already, rather than a friend.

‘I do, although marriage doesn’t seem to have done you much good,’ Callie said in a voice low enough only to be heard by the three of them.

Mary nodded militantly. ‘Callie’s right, you should listen to her,’ she said and finally took notice of her husband’s repeated signals that their carriage was waiting and it was high time they went home. ‘I only hope you can make her see sense and come out of her shell, my lady. Rowena won’t listen to me and you always were better at getting her to see reason than I am. Only because you’re the eldest, you understand? Not because you’re Lady Laughraine and all set to be a power in the land as soon as you’re not quite so busy being Gideon’s wife we hardly ever see you now you’re finally home.’

‘Very well and I will try to be less busy and make time for my friends. Now go away and let me have my turn at bullying Row for her own good, Mary; your poor, put-upon husband will teach you a lesson and go without you one day if you’re not careful.’

‘I’ll go, then, since everyone is so keen to be rid of me. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on you and a certain gentleman, Rowena Westhope, so don’t imagine I’ll let you do so either.’

‘It’s as well she’s gone while we still have a little patience and affection left for her,’ Callie observed with a roll of her eyes after the friend they both loved and despaired of in equal measure. ‘Mary says outrageous things to disguise the fact she’s very content as a country wife and mother. It really is most unfashionable of her, apparently.’

‘A lapse you will shortly be sharing,’ Rowena said with a rather anxious look at her friend’s pale face and still perfectly flat stomach. The early months of Callie’s pregnancy were taking a heavy toll on her energy and spirits, and she couldn’t help worrying about her, as well as hoping and praying this babe would be born safe and well and Callie and Gideon could get on with being the doting parents they were always meant to be.

‘Don’t try and change the subject, Row,’ Callie argued as if she was tired of the concerned looks and veiled anxiety of her husband and close friends, and fully intended to worry about someone else today. ‘You’ve been home for nearly a month now and I’ve barely set eyes on you, let alone persuaded you to join me at Raigne for a comfortable coze. Every time we invite you there’s some reason you can’t possibly come and Mary says you avoid any dinner invitations or, heaven forbid, party invitations other neighbours send, as well. This simply won’t do, my dear.’

‘Why not? I’m a widow; why can’t I live quietly?’

‘Because you’re four and twenty, and not four and seventy, and you seem sad and a little bit defeated. Living with your mother-in-law has clearly done you no good at all. That woman was an invalid and watering pot before her son died in battle, so I hate to think what she’s like now. The very idea of you shaping to her ways as long as you have fills me with horror. Such a life does nobody any good, Rowena; take it from one who knows.’

The note of regret for all the years Callie wasted listening to her selfish and downright fraudulent aunt instead of her then-estranged husband was too sharp in her friend’s voice to be brushed aside as one more attempt to ‘bring Rowena out of herself’.

‘Gideon always loved you though, Callie. It shone out of you both from the moment you were grown up enough to know what love and passion are.’

‘We might have known what they were, but we weren’t old enough to understand how to live with them. You’re not going to divert me with my own past mistakes today though, because we’re talking about you and not me. It’s high time you made some sort of future for yourself that doesn’t involve writing letters for a bitter and twisted woman, and running errands she’s too idle to do herself. And don’t tell me you’ll be perfectly content teaching other people’s children as a governess either, because I know you won’t be.’

‘Why not, you did just that for nine years and don’t seem much the worse for it.’

‘Don’t I?’ Callie said looking as if every day she had spent away from her husband still cut at her now they were blissfully reunited and already expecting another child. ‘I don’t want you to turn aside from life for such a ridiculous span of time as I did, Rowena. I can’t tell you how much it pains me to think my dearest almost-sister has settled for an existence instead of a life because of one youthful mistake.’

About to defend her own impulsive marriage against that accusation, Rowena met her old friend’s challenging gaze and let out her breath in a long sigh instead. ‘Maybe I’m not as brave as you, Callie,’ she said and that felt a bit too true.

‘You could hardly be less so.’

‘Yes, I could. You were so brave when you lost Grace, then quarrelled so bitterly with Gideon you decided you didn’t want to live with him any more. It almost hurt to look at you at the time and he was nearly as good at concealing his feelings as you were. I wish now I hadn’t given you that promise not to tell anyone where you were or what you were doing as long as we could go on exchanging letters after you left Raigne. If I was a better liar I might have let it slip to Mama and she would have got the truth in the open long ago. Nine years was far too long for you to be so alone and shamefully deceived by your aunt, Callie.’

‘Yet you want the same sort of life I endured for yourself? No, Rowena, you can’t let yourself off trying to do better because your dashing lieutenant made you unhappy, and I can’t stand by and watch.’

Again Rowena drew breath to lie that she and Nate were blissfully content from first to last, but the act failed under Callie’s steady gaze. ‘Yes, I can,’ she said instead and defied her friend to argue black was white. ‘For me love was vastly overrated and I shall not marry again. Apart from that, I agree, it’s high time I stopped feeling guilty because Nate is dead and I’m alive and got on with living the best life I can. I intend to advertise for a position as a governess or teacher and look forward to using the fine education Papa and your grandfather gave me at last.’

‘At least that fantasy is the ideal opening to play my trump card. Gideon and I have been trying to make you an offer of employment ever since you came home so tired and out of spirits with your life as unpaid companion. Will you work for me instead, Row? Please? I need you and I doubt your fictitious young ladies with rich and doting parents even want a sound education. Very few of mine did. It’s true the odd one or two who did made my years away from Gideon bearable, but you don’t have to endure the frustration of trying to teach young ladies to be learned and wise when society wants them naïve and empty-headed.’

‘You certainly don’t need a governess yet, even if this babe turns out to be a girl. I doubt you need a companion either, not now you have Gideon to occupy every spare moment,’ Rowena told her friend.

Being offered a sinecure because she and Callie once ran wild about the countryside together felt as wrong as Mr Winterley clearly thought their earnest discussion, if the frown of concern on his face was anything to go by. There was a hint of steel in his not-quite-indifferent green eyes that said he cared about his hostess’s welfare, endanger it at your peril. She forced a pang of something uncomfortably like jealousy to the back of her mind and told herself the man ought to care about Callie and Gideon by now, since he’d been at Raigne an unconscionably long time for a house guest and clearly owed something for the privilege.

‘I don’t have nearly enough spare moments for Gideon to occupy, and I so want to be with him whenever I can. We wasted so many years apart every second seems precious now and I can’t find enough of them for us at the moment, or for this little one when it’s safely born, God willing.’

‘What would you want me to do for you, Callie? Mama Westhope tells me I’m a hopeless housewife, so I’d be very little use to you as one of those.’

‘Mrs Craddock would be highly insulted if I even suggested Raigne needed more housekeeping than she and her deputy already provide. No, what I need is a scribe and a clerk I trust and you’re perfect for both roles. You always did have a far neater hand than me and by clerk I suppose I mean a secretary. I know most of them are men, but just imagine what Gideon would say if I asked to share his.’

‘I wouldn’t sully my thoughts, let alone my ears, with your husband’s feelings about you being in such close contact with another member of his species on a day-to-day basis. But are you sure you need a female to deal with your correspondence and help with some of your duties? I shall hate it if my return home without much more than a penny to bless myself with put the idea of finding me pretend employment at Raigne into your head,’ Rowena made herself say. In truth the very idea of working with her dearest friend and living at Raigne was almost a dream come true. Almost, she reminded herself, as she tried not to meet the eyes of the man who could turn it into a nightmare.

‘Yes, I’m sure. I seem so taken up with this little devil the need for help has become a lot more urgent,’ her friend confessed with a protective hand on her still-flat belly that gave away volumes about her changed priorities.

‘Will you give me a few days to discuss the idea with Mama and Papa and Joanna? If I can persuade my darling sister to take her head out of the clouds long enough to think of aught but her beloved Mr Greenwood, of course.’

‘What a fine clergyman’s wife Joanna will be and she was always better behaved than either of us. I do hope Hester never falls in love with a serious man though, she’d drive him to drink,’ Callie observed with an indulgent glance at ten-year-old Hester Finch rolling over and over in the mown grass in the churchyard and doing her best to shove as much of it as possible down the necks of her mixed assortment of playmates.

‘She still has time to grow up and be a lady, more unlikely things have happened. We weren’t a lot better at the same age and look at you now,’ Rowena said. ‘Hes is in severe need of a lecture on the subject of not picking on much smaller opponents right now, though,’ she said and went off to supervise her little brothers and sisters after a despairing look from her mother and a promise to consider Callie and Gideon’s offer properly.

‘Imagine it was made by someone you don’t know half as well, then tell me truthfully you don’t want the post, Rowena,’ her friend called after her.

Rowena turned back to nod agreement, then shrugged ruefully as the squeals of her little sister’s victims became too overexcited for comfort. She needed to restore order before there were tears as well as giggles of high delight to disturb the serious-looking conversation her parents were having with Sir Gideon and Lord Laughraine.

Chapter Two

‘Reverend Finch and his lady have a fine brood of children. I wonder how they fit them all in to even the most generous parsonage. At least the lovely Miss Joanna will be off their hands soon, since her banns were read today. Which only leaves them with Mrs Westhope to get wed again before the next young lady is of marriageable age, don’t you think?’ Henry Bowood said so casually James knew he was being twitted on his reluctant fascination with the even lovelier widow.

The man saw too much, always had. James resolved to be more wary and stop watching the widow Westhope from now on. ‘Aye, they appear to have had a long and fruitful marriage,’ he agreed easily, as if it was of no matter and neither was the retiring beauty who hid in churchyards and sometimes looked as if she knew too much about life outside this lovely rural sanctuary for comfort.

He knew that feeling too well and the Vicar of Raigne’s eldest daughter intrigued him. Not that she’d done a thing to catch or hold his interest in the entire month she’d been back in the Raigne villages, he forced himself to acknowledge. He reluctantly turned his attention from the cavorting children and surprisingly indulgent referee to his fellow guest.

‘Jealous?’ he asked cynically, raising one eyebrow to add emphasis to the question and hoping the spymaster’s son would be diverted.

‘If I ever felt the want of a family, conveying two of your mixed bag of brats across the Channel and taking them to their new foster parents would have cured me very rapidly,’ Bowood countered wryly.

Aye, James decided, it was high time he forgot golden-haired enchantresses with cobalt-blue eyes and all the possibilities they would never explore together and concentrated on the true facts of his life. ‘I can’t thank you enough for doing that for me, Harry. I could have endangered them now Fouché knows I’m not a simple merchant. You’re the only other man skilled and wily enough to get them into cleaner hands than mine and safe at last.’

‘You still don’t trust me with the location of Hebe’s brat, though. The other two you picked out of the gutters once their parents met their end could do with being part of a family,’ Bowood said stiffly.

‘Better you don’t know, considering the lengths the head of Bonaparte’s police will go to in order to break the spy ring he’s been gleefully taking apart since he got parts of it out of Hebe La Courte before her jailers went too far and killed her. If he has Hebe’s child, every single one of us will be at his mercy and he knows it.’

‘Not all of us are as soft-hearted as you, James,’ Bowood said.

This was no time to feel as if a cold hand had been laid on the back of his neck, James told himself, even as he wondered how ruthless Harry Bowood would be if need arose. The happy shouts of children and the joyous song of a robin in a nearby tree faded away and he frowned at the terrible memory of his last botched mission to Paris. Even now he didn’t know why he had had such a strong feeling he must go there and find out for himself what was wrong. The awful sight of his one-time lover’s twisted and mangled body, cast into the darkest alley at the dark heart of the old city when her interrogators went too far extracting her secrets, made him shudder in the mellow sunlight of an English Sunday. Lucky Hebe’s child was not yet three years old and would probably forget her lovely, reckless mother in time.

‘That’s not softness, but guilt,’ he confessed bleakly.

‘You take responsibility for the orphans of your smoky trade and call it guilt?’ Bowood said rather less cautiously than usual. James’s turn to eye him sceptically and hope it would remind him to be quieter.

‘Why not? The good reverend would say I deserve to feel it after all I have done and not done in the cause of who knows what these last few years.’

‘Society is so wrong about you, James Winterley. You have the heart and soul of a monk, not an idle man of fashion.’

‘Do I now?’ James said, brooding over how a monk would feel about such locked-down mysteries as Mr Finch’s eldest daughter. Even less easy with the temptation to knock off her awful bonnet and run his hands through that heavy mass of gold hair until it curled down her back and softened her wary face than this particular idle man of fashion was, he suspected.

‘James, the horses have been standing too long,’ his brother called impatiently from the lychgate and James shrugged off all thoughts of shocking the Vicar of Raigne’s daughter to her buttoned-up core.

‘I could walk, if I really had to, Big Brother,’ he drawled as annoyingly as he could manage, because it hurt to feel the estrangement between them strong as ever on such a fine and family-intimate day.

‘No doubt you can, but the question is what you’d do if you ever got those spotless Hessians of yours mired with a speck of dust or, heaven forbid, a scratch?’

‘Oh, give them to my valet, of course. I couldn’t possibly wear them again after that,’ James replied with a weary sigh, as if the depleted contents of his wardrobe troubled him far more than his brother’s low opinion.

‘Idle fop,’ Lord Farenze said impatiently and, since that was exactly the reaction he’d been looking for, why did it hurt?

‘James is teasing you, Luke,’ Lady Chloe Winterley, Viscountess Farenze, told her husband of six months gently.

James wasn’t sure if he loved or deplored her keen wits and kindness most right now. With Bowood always on the alert at his side, he wasn’t sure he wanted his estrangement from his brother taken out and inspected. It was what got him into this murky business in the first place, after all, and Bowood was one of the few who knew the truth about that dark time in the Winterley brothers’ lives. How could he not when James had fled to his school friend’s home and spilt his terrible new secrets into Harry’s ears that awful summer when he was seventeen and Luke was married to a vixen? Thank heaven his brother had found such happiness in his second marriage, even if it took him ten years too long to admit he couldn’t live without her any longer. The damage Pamela did to the Winterley brothers made James shiver, as if the doxy’s ghost was sitting nearby glorying over the rift she drove between them as gleefully as she did the day she made it.

‘High time I let Finch and his lady gather up their brood in peace,’ Lord Laughraine intervened, ever the bluff host. James marvelled once more that he’d found this haven in the storm his life had become this summer, and his lordship and his heir actually seemed to mean it when they pressed him to stay on now summer was over and Sir Gideon Laughraine was a very happily married man once more.

Riding back to Raigne in Gideon’s shiny new carriage through lanes already showing hints of autumn in the rich red of hawthorn berries and glossy blackberries basking in the October sun, James acknowledged Bowood’s arrival had taken some of the shine off the quiet country life he’d embraced this summer by buying a tumbledown old wreck of a house up in the Raigne Hills and the neglected estate that went with it. Brackley Manor, made of the local honey-grey stone and so ancient nobody had much idea when it was built, called to something in him. He didn’t want to call his instinctive attachment to a house the romantic whim Harry dismissed it as when he found out why James had lingered in this peaceful corner of England for so long. Yet Harry was probably right. The neglect of half a century made him long to see it come alive again under his care and it felt right to build something instead of plotting to destroy it, to restore instead of ruin a home, even if he wasn’t worthy of a happy retirement on his acres with a plump and contented little wife and a brood of children to make the old house a real home again.

Harry was part of another world, one where James no longer had a place. He was an unmasked spy; the most useless commodity a government could rid itself of as rapidly as possible. It was good of Harry to acknowledge him as a personal friend after that, he decided, and wondered why he didn’t feel the same impulsive warmth and gratitude towards his old friend and the man’s clever, devious parent as he had as a hurt and confused seventeen-year-old.

Back then Luke’s words echoed so savagely in his mind anyone who extended so much as a finger of friendship towards him after learning of them could have won his affection and loyalty. Now he wasn’t quite so sure the offer of an exciting new life and a secret beyond most youthful idiot’s dreams was as wonderful as he’d thought at the time. A summer in France, observing the daily horrors and euphoria of a revolution in full swing and reporting back to Lord Grisbeigh, sent him up to Oxford with a feeling of knowing so much he shouldn’t that Luke’s revolted avoidance of his younger brother hadn’t hurt as much as it should. Over the next three years he’d spent each long vacation in different parts of Europe and told himself it didn’t matter that Darkmere Castle in all its stern and breathtaking glory was lost to him along with Luke’s affection. The summers in Italy and Austria and even one memorable adventure in Russia set him up nicely for his future career of deception and disillusionment, but what if he hadn’t run to Harry that day? What if he’d had the courage to stay at home and chip away at the wrong he’d done Luke and, in his hurt pride, the lesser wrong Luke did him by banishing him from his home?

All of it was useless speculation now, but he still felt less trusting and grateful towards his old friend than he probably ought to. Another area of darkness in his cynical mind he didn’t want to explore, so did that make him a coward? Time couldn’t rub out his last terrible argument with his brother, but it did make his betrayal seem worse. Did you bed my wife? That harsh-voiced and unanswerable question was as clear as if Luke had asked it seconds ago even after seventeen years. It shook James to realise half his lifetime had gone by since that day. All he had to offer in reply was a dumb silence that stretched into a coward’s admission and Luke turned away from him as if the sight of his half-brother made him ill. I have no brother, then, he said and it was as true today as it was then, despite Luke’s new wife’s efforts to bridge the gulf between the half-brothers that her predecessor made.

* * *

‘Devil take it, Chloe, why can’t I stay?’ Luke asked his wife a few days later once she’d tracked James to his host’s library where he had permission to spread out the architect’s ideas for restoring Brackley to its former glory and adding a few fanciful touches of his own James wasn’t sure he approved of.

‘Because it’s my duty to see each of Virginia’s legatees alone before he embarks on his task for the season. I’d like to have seen your face if I let your brother sit in when I gave you yours, Luke Winterley.’

‘You weren’t my wife then.’

‘No, and I never would have agreed to marry you if I thought you didn’t trust me.’

‘It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s him,’ Luke said sulkily and James had to bite back a smile at the sight of his elder brother’s thunderous frown even though he hadn’t felt much like smiling after seeing the weighty letter in Chloe’s slim hand.

‘Stay if you must, Luke,’ he invited with a shrug it took a bit too much effort to make careless and indifferent. ‘It can’t come as a surprise to any of us what Lady Chloe has to say to me. I am the only person left on the list Virginia laid down in her will of us fools required to dance to her tune a season at a time. At least there won’t be any need to endure another wedding for my sake, after such a surfeit of them so far this year.’

‘Why not?’ Lady Chloe said so innocently he eyed her sharply and turned his attention to Luke for reassurance he didn’t expect the impossible, as well.

‘Because I haven’t the least desire to be wed and can you imagine me embracing fatherhood as you three did in your own unlikely way?’ he asked him directly.

‘Hmm, at the beginning of this year I would have said nothing was less likely, since then I’ve learnt even the impossible can happen if you want it badly enough,’ Luke said with a hot glance at his wife that made James feel he ought to blush, if only he still knew how.

‘At least you can end it on a certainty, then—I shall not marry. Not even Virginia could bring about that wonder and whatever she wants me to do will not result in marriage. As I have settled in a part of the country where you can see as little of me as you choose, Brother, we can continue as we are and I’m delighted to leave you two to carry on the Winterley line.’

It was a challenge too far, James realised as Chloe blushed rosily and Luke looked like a thundercloud, then stamped out of the room after curtly requesting his wife to get her business with his confounded brother over as swiftly as possible, then instruct her maid to pack for their departure on the morrow, now her last task for Virginia was done.

‘Why do you always have to stir his temper like that, James?’ Chloe asked with a sad shake of the head that killed the glib reply on his tongue stone dead.

‘It’s easier than trying to drag up feelings as dead as a doornail between us, Chloe. Don’t start a campaign to restore brotherly love between us, for that’s a marvel even Virginia couldn’t achieve.’

‘I don’t think any sort of love dies as easily as you think, but Luke is too good at hiding his feelings and you’re not a lot better.’

‘Maybe not, but some things are best hidden, or ignored until they go away.’

‘We shall see,’ Chloe told him with a very direct stare to challenge his refusal to take her hope fraternal love might yet blossom between him and her husband seriously. ‘Lady Virginia worked three unexpected wonders this year, perhaps there’s one to come,’ she said, extending her hand so he had to take the letter he’d been avoiding like a coward, or let it drop to the floor.

‘And perhaps not,’ he replied and accepted it. ‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned.

‘Your great-aunt Virginia taught me too well for me not to, James,’ she replied softly, then left him to read his last letter from a woman he had loved as much as he had it in him to love anyone.

Feeling closed in now, James rolled up the architect’s plans and shut his notebook. He was too distracted to risk riding his favourite stallion into the hills in search of the peace and quiet he craved, so he strode out of the house by the long windows of Lord Laughraine’s library and into the gardens and the wide parkland beyond. Confound it, now his hand was trembling as he checked Virginia’s letter was safely in his pocket. He stood still to let nature cure his uneven breathing with clear autumn air. There; he was almost himself again.

The sounds of busy nature preparing for winter only seemed to emphasise the fact he shouldn’t have come to Raigne, nor found a place in his heart for this rolling and generous countryside and his poor old wreck in the hills. No point bewailing what was done and out here nobody could see him grieve for a woman who simply loved him nearly nine months after her death. He sensed Virginia was weary with the world even before that last brief illness took her from it, but losing her put cracks in the shell he’d grown round his heart half a lifetime ago and they seemed to have been widening ever since.

A whole season had gone by since he came here, sickened by Hebe’s death and looking for who knew what? Now he’d fallen for poor tumbledown old Brackley and become fond of Virginia’s latest victim, as well. He could imagine her impatient frown at that description. Lady Farenze’s Rogues didn’t work—Luke, Tom and Gideon were good men. Three good men and a rogue didn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Now, where was he? Ah, yes, that last season: summer. When Frederick Peters, lawyer, turned back into Sir Gideon Laughraine, heir to a peerage and a magnificent old house and estates. Except Gideon was really Virgil Winterley’s grandson and, come to think of it, James had loved Great-Uncle Virgil as well, so that was two more on the list he couldn’t help loving if he tried. Gideon’s lovely, resolute wife Calliope put another crack in the walls James had built against the world at seventeen and it felt dangerous to care about anyone, but there seemed little point going on pretending he didn’t for much longer.

He should leave Raigne before any one of these people who got under his skin while he wasn’t paying attention got hurt like poor Hebe. As soon as he’d read Virginia’s letter he’d go. He was a landowner in his own right now, even if his house and estate weren’t much to boast about right now. On the unkempt Brackley Estate, James Winterley, rake, adventurer and care-for-nobody would be safe from his family and they would be safe from him. Striding freely now, he reached the arboretum Raigne was famous for among plant collectors in the know. It didn’t matter if their leaves were native wonders or more at home in China or the Americas, the tired and dusty dark green of late summer was shading into the glorious last gasp of gold and amber and fire of autumn that James secretly loved. He planned a modest version of this splendour at Brackley, then decided a well-stocked orchard would be better.

With a sigh he sat on a neat bench for those who had time to rest after the gentle climb. He couldn’t take out Virginia’s final letter and face her loss all over again yet, so he gave himself five minutes to enjoy the view like a tourist. The lingering warmth and richness of an English autumn must have soaked into his thoughts, because he felt much calmer when the screech of a jay reminded him life went on. Out here it hardly mattered if he was coolly arrogant Mr Winterley or a raving lunatic. Mother Nature only required him to be still and not bother her.

Chapter Three

At last James took Virginia’s letter from his pocket and examined the outside as if it could take him back to the moment she had finished, folded it precisely and directed it in her familiar, flowing hand. He imagined her getting to the end of her self-imposed task of writing four letters to her ‘boys’ and leaving them to be read after her death—one given out for every season of the year after she died. Missing her never seemed to fade, however many months he had to get used to it.

Luke had been ordered to do what he’d always wanted and discover all Chloe’s secrets, then Virginia’s godson, Tom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, had to face his childhood demons next, before Gideon took on a summer of abiding love and startling revelations. Now it was his turn. It would be a workaday ending to a year of changed lives. The others were lured into doing what Virginia wanted by the promise of James being independent of his half-brother and wasn’t that the biggest irony of all? He smiled wryly at the thought of Virginia baiting her hook with a lie. She knew he could buy a house and estate like the tumbledown one he’d acquired without feeling a dent in his ill-gotten gains.

He wondered why she had done it and why he’d failed to mention his fortune. Even a brother who wasn’t supposed to care a snap of his fingers for anyone could see Luke had lived half a life since he wedded his first wife Pamela. The woman was ten years dead, but some of the damage could never be undone, James concluded bleakly. At least Virginia made the stubborn great idiot change his mind about love and marriage and his great-aunt’s mysterious housekeeper. Now Tom Banburgh and Gideon Laughraine were happy as well and Luke’s new wife had given him his letter with a look that said she knew he wanted to sob like a child at the sight of it. Heaven forbid Virginia expected some impossible love match from him because he’d hate her to be disappointed. Not that she was here to be anything. He tested the weight of several pages of closely written hot-pressed paper and still hesitated to break the familiar seal of two Vs interlocked that always made him smile at their effrontery.

For goodness’ sake, boy, why don’t you get on and open the dratted thing?

The voice popped into his head as if Virginia was pacing about this manmade glade waiting to have her say and as impatient with shilly-shallying as ever. James looked round as furtively as he’d done as a boy when his great-aunt caught him in mischief and she felt so acutely present he only just stopped himself peering round this glade to see where she was hiding herself.

Don’t be ridiculous, it didn’t take supernatural powers to read the mind of a grubby schoolboy then and you’re not so different now.

So much for the calming effects of nature and a serene autumn day; fighting a superstitious shiver, James fixed his gaze on the only part of her that could be real today and lifted the seal with a neat penknife she would have confiscated on sight in the old days. Anything was preferable to the madness of conjuring up the beloved, infuriating, marvel of a woman he missed so badly nine months on from her death.

Darling James

Now don’t sit there thinking, Who? Me? I love you and always have done. From the very first moment I laid eyes on you as a squalling brat I knew you were special when you decided to trump your mother’s cast-iron certainty you would follow her family and came out a Winterley instead. Now I love you for your own sake and you have to accept that, James. You are a good, loving and, yes, a lovable man, and it’s about time you realised it.

So why did I do all this? You know as well as I do there’s no need to provide you with the fortune you will receive the day Gideon carries out his task to dear Chloe’s satisfaction. I hope she and Luke are happy together by now and Gideon attained his heart’s desire, by the way? I set the other boys quests they were eager to carry out, deep down, except perhaps for my beloved Tom. I had to push him to going back to the place he least wants to go to for his own sake.

You know almost as well as he does how it feels to be damaged and manipulated by those who are supposed to care for you the most and yet do not. I trust you to watch out for Tom and see he is not going wilder than ever since I made him return to Dayspring Castle and face his demons.

James looked up from his letter with a broad grin at the idea of Tom doing anything wild without his rather fierce new love at his side. The new Marchioness of Mantaigne was sure to outrage the ton as carelessly as her husband, but she would love him until their dying day. James felt the lightness of knowing all three were deeply and abidingly happy with their chosen brides and realised Virginia was right, he had worried about them—at least the ones he knew about. Gideon was a new comrade-in-arms and for some reason his wife, Callie, felt almost like a sister. Who would have thought he’d feel fraternal towards such a spectacular beauty as Lady Laughraine, bastard daughter of Lord Laughraine’s son and true heiress of Raigne?

That odd idea brought him neatly back to people who didn’t know themselves. Callie still thought of herself as a superannuated schoolmarm, even now she was reconciled with her doting husband. He frowned at the idea he’d settled near his newest siblings of the heart to protect them from wolves who saw Callie’s vulnerability and tried to exploit it. No, he had fallen for broken-down and neglected Brackley Manor House at first sight and that was quite foolish enough to be going on with. Almost feeling the impatience of Virginia’s letter in his hand, he went on reading as if she was here to nag him into it.

As for Gideon, I think you would like him and his wife if you would let yourself.

James laughed and shook his head, she would have enjoyed the joke that he was perilously close to being both friend and kin to the pair of them after years of walking alone. Nobody could accuse Virginia of lacking humour at his expense.

I know you have the makings of a fine man in you, James, and I trust you to be the strength at the heart of the Winterley family in the years to come. You have a power for good in you that you refuse to trust. I want you to know yourself better than you do today, lest you become a lonely and frustrated man and the true glories of this life pass you by. The pity of it is your mother poured all her frustrated ambition into you as a boy and you were still too fine a human being to let her turn you into a fool and envy your brother his future title and possessions. I only wish she and your father were blessed with more children to dilute her folly.

Still, at least you and Luke managed to love each other as boys. When Luke married Pamela because of some maggot your father got in his head about getting the boy wed and begetting heirs since he knew he was dying himself, she was determined to destroy that love, because she knew he didn’t love her. She was incapable of feeling true love for another human being, although she craved it as a miser does gold. I know she did something terrible to you both, but I dare not probe the sore places she left you both. I love the two of you too much in life to risk it, so in death I can say your quest will take longest, which is why I left you until last.

You have to learn to love and trust a lover, my dearest. Be she mistress, wife, or friend, I want you to open your heart to love as you never have since the little witch Luke married cast some wicked spell over you both and froze you in your tracks at seventeen. That’s so heartbreakingly young to cut yourself off from the most dangerous and breathtakingly wonderful of human emotions, my love. I was blissfully happy with the love of my life and couldn’t wish I’d never met him, even when he died, and grief and fury seemed likely to send me mad for a while. Love is something to celebrate and treasure, never a burden to be avoided at all costs as you appear to think.

So, even if it takes you until your deathbed, darling James, your quest is to learn to love with all the strength and humour and power in that great heart of yours. Don’t shake your head; I know you do your best to keep it secret from the rest of the world, but you are a special person and I value you as such. Luke always wanted to love his brother and I felt so sorry for you both when it became clear the main purpose of your mother’s life was to prevent him doing so. What you choose to do about your frosty relations with your half-brother is up to you. If you think it right to hold aloof from your family, I ache for you all, but know you have good reason.

James looked up from his letter to stare unseeingly into the soft autumn afternoon. Oh, yes, he had very good reason to stay away from those he loved. It ached in his heart as if a tight band had been strapped round his chest at seventeen and would never be loosed this side of the grave. He shook his head and found himself a coward for refusing to explore it. Revisit that pain and anger and sense of worthlessness, when all that could be done was move on as best he could? No; this time Virginia was wrong. Hadn’t he said he’d be her only failure?

‘Three out of four is a fine record, darling,’ he murmured as he stared unseeingly at the soft, serene blue of the October sky.

And a full house trumps it every time, came the reply so certainly he looked for Virginia’s shade again, then called himself a fool for expecting it to show up for him. There was a little more in her missive from some time last year, when she had put her affairs in order while she had the strength and certainty to do so. How he admired and loved the one woman he could safely adore until his dying day. Come to think of it; if she was ordering him to give his heart, wasn’t she already too late?

Cheating, my boy, the gruff almost-sound of her voice reproached him and what he wouldn’t give to actually see and speak to her one last time? That’s a different sort of love. Virgil and I simply tried to give you and your brother and Tom a firm foundation of love to build your lives on. Love between a man and a woman, full and true and without boundaries, is very different to the deep affection of true family. That love is an undeserved gift that can light up a whole lifetime with the joy and surprise of it, for however long or short a time you are together. I want you to love like that, James, I need you to love truly if I am ever to have peace and join my far-more-saintly Virgil in heaven one day.

‘Now that’s blackmail,’ James muttered with a frown at the circling buzzard that had taken off from the perch where it had been dreaming in the sun at the top of the tallest oak in Lord Laughraine’s beloved woods. ‘I’ve made love to some of the loveliest women in this land and quite a few further afield and not fallen in love with a single one of them. If I couldn’t love any of them, I’m beyond heavenly intervention.’

No, just looking in the wrong place, the not-quite sound of Virginia’s distinctive voice in his head insisted stubbornly.

James felt that restriction where his heart ought to be again and did his best to ignore it. Did she expect him to find a saint? The very idea made him snort with derision. Even the slightest hint of the saintly martyr in a woman would make him play the devil more than ever. No, he didn’t have it in him to give himself wholeheartedly to any deep human emotion, let alone loving a woman who’d preach at him and pry into his sooty soul. Shaking his head at the very idea, he forced himself to read the final farewell of the most matchless woman he’d ever met.

Whatever you do, live well and never close your heart to loving those around you if you can’t let go of your pride or your tender conscience long enough to truly love a partner for life. I was lucky to adore your great-uncle from the moment I met him and perhaps that’s not a miracle given to many of us sinners. You must believe that if I could have had a son I wanted him to be just like you, James. Know that now and please shrug off the self-loathing you struggle with for some reason you never would confide in me.

I find it hardest of all to stop writing to you, but now my pen is in need of mending and I am weary of this wide and wonderful earth of ours at last. Don’t grieve for me any more, love. I’m more than ready for a new adventure the other side of this little earthly life, if God will allow a sinner like me into heaven where I know Virgil already abides.

Farewell, my love; be happy and true to yourself. I pray one day you will be truly loved by the right woman, despite your conviction you do not deserve her,

Virginia

James blinked several times and watched the buzzard lazily circle its way up to the heavens on a warm thermal of autumn air and call for its mate to join it. Soon two birds were mewing in that circle, gliding and calling in the still air as if all that mattered was the miracle of flight and one another. For wild creatures with only their next meal and the urges of nature to answer perhaps it was. For James Winterley there was good earth under his feet and a mass of mixed emotions in his heart. He must go back to Raigne soon and show his sister-in-law and his hostess he wasn’t bowed down with the task Virginia had laid on his shoulders. Truth was he didn’t know how he felt about it. How could an unlovable man end up like the other three? Impossible, so he shook his head and decided he’d been right all along, he was destined to be Virginia’s only failure.

Perhaps he should give back the small fortune Gideon had passed to him as Virginia’s lawyer? James had plans for it, so, no, he’d accept the sacrifices Virginia’s nearest and dearest had made to get him off their hands. It would be an insult even he couldn’t steel himself to make if he was to throw the money back in their faces and tell them he didn’t want it.

‘Are you a hermit, mister?’

James jumped and looked for the source of that voice, so attuned to ghostly intervention he wondered for a moment if it came from a cherub instead of a child. He looked harder and spotted a grubby urchin peering down at him from halfway up a vast and curiously branched tree.

‘No, are you a leech?’ he asked as casually as he could and watched the girl squirm a little higher. Was there some way to get close and catch her when she fell without alarming her into falling in the first place?

‘Of course not, do I look like such a nasty, slimy bloodsucking thing?’

‘Only by hanging on to an unwilling host and defying the laws of gravity.’

‘You’re a very odd gentleman. I watched you for ages until I got bored and decided to see if I could get to the top of this tree instead.’

‘So that’s my fault, is it? I suppose you will tell your unfortunate parents so if you survive the experience?’

‘No,’ the pragmatic cherub said after a pause to think about it. ‘They will know it’s a lie,’ she finally admitted as she carefully worked her way up a little further and James’s heart thumped with fear as he let himself see how far from the ground she truly was.

‘How perceptive,’ he managed calmly as he strolled over so casually he hoped she had no idea he had his doubts about her survival if she took a wrong step.

‘Yes, it’s a trial,’ she admitted with a sigh that would normally have made him laugh out loud, but he was holding his breath too carefully to do any such thing as a branch writhed and threatened to snap when she tried it too hard.

‘I can see how it must be,’ he somehow managed to say calmly. ‘Sometimes knowing what you know and keeping quiet about it has to be enough, don’t you think?’

‘What?’ the adventurer asked rather breathlessly, as if not quite willing to admit her lucky escape had scared her so much she hadn’t been listening.

‘You know you can climb that tree, so perhaps that’s enough.’ He did his best to reason with her as if every inch of him wasn’t intent on persuading her to come down before she fell and he must try to catch her.

‘There’s no point me knowing I could do it if nobody else does.’

‘Yes, there is. You have the satisfaction of achievement and I’ll know.’

‘No, you won’t. I’m only halfway up.’

‘Which is about ten times as far as anyone else I ever came across can get. Being further up than anyone else can be has to be enough at times, don’t you think? I believe that’s the sign of a truly great person—knowing when it’s time to stop and be content.’

His latest critic seemed to think about that for endless moments before she took another step either way and he felt slightly better when the whippy branches above her head stopped swaying from the intrusion of a small human into its stately crown.

‘Do you really think it’s a big achievement to get this far?’

‘Of course it is; Joan of Arc couldn’t have done better.’

‘She got herself burnt,’ the urchin said doubtfully.

‘There is that, of course. Well, then, whatever great woman you think the most highly of couldn’t have done, as well. No woman of my acquaintance could touch you.’

‘What, not even one?’ she asked as if she didn’t think much of his taste in friends.

‘One might have done, but she died nearly a year ago now and I suppose by then even she was getting a little old for climbing trees. She would have been up there with you like a shot otherwise,’ he assured her.

‘And you think she would have thought this is far enough?’

‘I’m certain of it, she was the most lionhearted woman I ever came across and even she would say it’s enough to prove your courage and daring to yourself at times. Now I do wish you’d come down, because I’m getting a stiff neck and I’m devilish sharp set.’

‘Why don’t you just go, then?’ the girl said rather sulkily.

James wondered if he’d blundered and might have to risk both their lives by climbing up after her. If the girl insisted on going too high for him to be able to break her fall, even if he could judge the right place to try, he might have no choice. A lot of those branches simply wouldn’t take his weight, though, so he wondered if he could shout loudly enough to attract the woodsmen and hope they were lean and limber enough to do what he couldn’t.

‘There’s roast lamb and apple pie for dinner,’ he said as if that was all he could think about right now. He hoped the mention of food would remind her she hadn’t eaten for at least an hour and eating might trump adventures even for intrepid young scamps like this one.

‘I wish I was going to your house for dinner.’

‘I suppose if we’d been properly introduced I might get you invited another night. I’ve heard rumours about plum cake being available for hungry young visitors at any time of day, but I don’t suppose you like it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Only boys like plum cake, don’t they?’

‘No, I’m as good as any boy and twice as hungry.’

‘So girls don’t prefer syllabub and sponge cake after all, then?’

‘I don’t.’

James was delighted to see the girl look for a way down almost without noticing she was doing it. She might make it back down to earth without killing herself on the way now, but he tried not to let his relief show lest she went further up the tree, because she couldn’t let him see she was almost as scared as he was she might fall right now.

‘What don’t you like? So I can tell Cook when you come to dinner,’ he went on as if he hadn’t noticed she was thinking better of her plan to reach the top of the slender tree.

‘Cucumbers and rice pudding.’

‘Oh, dear me no, I can’t think of a worse combination.’

‘Not both at the same time, idiot,’ she said scathingly and felt less confidently for footholds on the way down and his heart seemed about to take up residence in his mouth as he watched her fumble, then find one.

‘How, then?’ he made himself ask as if he hadn’t a serious thought in his head while she hesitated between the next unsteady foothold and an even less likely alternative. Luckily the first held long enough to let her find a better and he sucked in a hasty breath and tried to look calm and only mildly interested when she found the nerve to look down again.

‘Rice pudding is worse, it looks like frogspawn and tastes like it by the time it gets to the nursery all cold and shuddery,’ she told him rather shakily.

‘I know exactly what you mean, but it goes down much better with big spoons of jam. I would never have got through school without wasting away if my brother hadn’t insisted I have jam with my pudding or succumb to a mysterious ailment unique to our family.’

‘I wish one of my brothers would think up stories to get us out of having to eat cold rice pudding on its own,’ she said wistfully and moved a few feet closer to the ground.

James estimated she was still about thirty feet above his head and worryingly unsafe when the girl’s elder sister appeared at the edge of the clearing, looking visibly shaken and pale as milk. She seemed about to distract the girl with a terrified exclamation and part of him whispered it would be good if she turned out to be a widgeon and released him from the spell he’d been in danger of tumbling into since the first day he laid eyes on her.

This wasn’t about him, though, so he shook his head and glared at her to keep quiet. He’d done his best not to know the Finch family better after spotting this disaster of a female hovering on the edges of it after church a few weeks ago. And who would have thought he’d let himself be cajoled and persuaded inside one of those for the good of his sooty soul quite so often?

‘I don’t think my brother would save me from rice pudding at every meal now we’re grown up if that makes you feel better,’ he shouted cheerfully enough.

He held his breath as the next branch the child tried gave an ominous crack. Again she skipped hastily on to the next and both watchers let out a quiet sigh of relief. The girl in the tree had frightened herself with her own daring and he had to keep her calm enough to take the next step to safety and the next, until she was low enough to catch if she fell.

‘Why not?’ she quavered bravely and how could he not put all he was into saving a girl who seemed as reckless and brave as Virginia must have been as a child?

Despite her mass of golden hair and bluest of blue eyes, she reminded him of Hebe’s little daughter Amélie. The defiant determination not to cry and admit how frightened she was put him in mind of the poor little mite he’d smuggled out of Paris at the behest of Hebe’s mother. The Terror had taken her husband and sons, now treachery had robbed her of her daughter, but she was still brave enough to part with her grandchild. Now it was up to him to see that the child had a better life than her mother and the responsibility felt terrifying at times.

‘We argued,’ he admitted, although it wasn’t exactly true. The problem was he and Luke hadn’t even had the heart to argue, they just let each other go and that was that.

‘Me and Jack argue all the time,’ the girl said matter-of-factly.

‘Is he your only sibling?’ he said with a warning glance at the one he wanted to know about least right now.

‘What’s a sibling?’

‘A brother or sister.’

‘Oh, no, but Nan’s only a baby and can hardly walk yet. I’m next, then there’s Jack, he’s two years older. Sophie is fifteen; Josh is at Oxford. Joanna is quite old and she’s getting married in November. Rowena has been grown up for years and years; she lived with her mama-in-law for ages but she’s home now. I hope she stays with us. She’s really old, but much more fun than Sophie. It’s nice to have one big sister who doesn’t scold all the time.’

James couldn’t spare a glance at Mr Finch’s eldest daughter to see how she’d reacted to that quaint summary. ‘Your parents must be busy with such a large and enterprising family,’ he managed coolly.

‘Oh, Papa and Mama are always busy. What with Papa’s pupils and all those services, Mama says it’s a wonder we ever see him.’

‘You must be Reverend Finch’s daughter, then?’

‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a surprise?’ the girl grumbled.

‘I really can’t imagine,’ he said wryly.

His breathing went shallow as the child stretched a grubby bare foot to find her next precarious hold. At a crash of unwary movement behind him he turned his head to bark a furious command at Mrs Westhope and saw a gangling stripling stumble into the clearing. Shock at the sight of his sister perched halfway up the wretched tree was written all over the boy’s ashen face. James drew breath to shout out an order to be silent just too late.

‘Good Lord, this time she’ll kill herself, Rowena,’ the boy shouted furiously.

The girl in the tree started, snatched at a much-too-slender branch to steady herself and screamed when it snapped off. This time there wasn’t another close enough to grab and save herself. She did her best to stumble on to another slender branch and shuffle her way back to the relative safety of the trunk. James’s heart seemed to jump into his mouth as he tried to calculate where best to stand to break the child’s fall, at the same time as briefly snatching off a prayer she wouldn’t need him to in the first place, since it was so hit and miss. The force of even her slender little body made the fine branches whip away or break as she grabbed at them. He winced for the scratches and bruises they would cause even as he reminded himself far worse would happen if he didn’t get in the way and stop her fall.

‘Stay back, you’ll do no good,’ he ordered the boy who looked about to dash forward and get in the way.

James had to forget him and hope his elder sister would stop the boy. She must have dragged her brother away, because James could pick the best spot to try and catch the child. He braced himself against the impact of the solid little body now hurtling towards him in a flash of flailing arms and grubby petticoats. A pity she couldn’t grow wings like the buzzards he’d been watching earlier, he found time to reflect as stalled time passed sluggishly. He did his best to second-guess gravity and snatch the girl from the shadowy arms of death by adjusting his stance as she fell. An image of this intrepid child lying lifeless and broken if he failed flashed in front of his eyes to truly horrify him, even as he stepped back to compensate for a little flail she managed, as if trying to slow her flight on the way down. He couldn’t quite think her a hell-born brat as every sense he had was intent on saving her from as much harm as he could.

Time flooded back in a rush. The girl’s speed crashed into him with all her slender weight behind it. He frantically closed his arms and caught her close. In the flail of limbs and hammer of his own heartbeat he knew he was between her and the dry, hard-packed earth. For a long moment it seemed they would escape winded and a bit bruised. Then he felt his foot slide on the smooth bark of an outstretched tree root, as if the wretched thing was reaching out to claim them even now he had the girl safe. Unable to flail about and get his balance because of the child in his arms, he had no hold on solid ground. He twisted and turned as best he could to save the girl injury and fell heavily to earth with a bone-jarring thud and actually heard his own head slam against the next tree root with a vicious crack. Almost at the same time a harder, sharper slap of sound rang through the wood like a death knell as James fought hard to hold on to his senses.

Chapter Four

‘Oh, Lord, Hes, what have you done?’ Jack Finch yelled.

Rowena let go and they dashed to the dark-haired stranger who still held Hes, despite a blow to his head that still seemed to echo round the clearing. Perhaps he’d been mortally wounded by the shot that followed his fall so closely it might almost have been one sound.

‘Be quiet, Jacob Finch,’ she ordered, knowing shock and his full name would silence him while she took her little sister from Mr Winterley’s arms and willed air into her lungs. ‘You can let her go now,’ she told the all-but-unconscious man. Her little sister was whooping for air with dry little groans that terrified Rowena that she’d never restart her much-tried lungs without wiser help than she had right now. ‘Let her go!’ she demanded this time.

He did one of those terrifying saws for air that echoed Hester’s and she wrested her suddenly frighteningly small sister out of his grasp. She spared a preoccupied moment to be relieved his much-more-powerful lungs were forcing air into his labouring chest now they were free of the slender weight.

‘Come on, Hes, breathe,’ she shouted desperately.

‘How could you, Hes?’ Jack shouted, terror making him sound so furious he could hardly get the words out. ‘How could you?’ he repeated on a sob.

‘Hush, Jack,’ Rowena managed to say as calmly as she could when her own nerves were stretched almost to breaking. ‘Sounding as if you’d like to strangle her won’t help her recover. She’s alive and breathing, so leave her to me now and run for help as fast as you can. We must get her home and get help for Mr Winterley. We owe him our sister’s life,’ she reminded him when Jack shot Mr Winterley an impatient look, as if he was the last thing on his mind.

‘I startled her and made her fall in the first place, didn’t I?’ he said, an agony of self-reproach in his eyes.

‘And did you make her go up the tree she’s been expressly forbidden to climb time and time again? You know you didn’t, so just run to Raigne as fast as you can now, love, and we’ll worry about who did what later. Tell the grooms to bring a hurdle or the best sprung cart they can find, but go now, love, and hurry. They need a doctor and Raigne is closest.’

‘I suppose someone has to fetch him, even if Mama and Papa are home and I don’t suppose they will be.’

‘No, go to Raigne and tell Sir Gideon what happened. He’ll know exactly what to do and which order to do it in.’

‘Don’t alarm Lady Laughraine, boy,’ the stranger managed in a broken whisper.

‘Do as he says,’ Rowena ordered brusquely. ‘Now go.’

With one last look round as if he’d like to go and stay at the same time, Jack went as fast as his legs would carry him and Rowena managed a sigh of relief. A fleeting idea that the powerful male at her feet cared too much about Callie’s serenity flitted though her head, but she banished it to a dark corner and concentrated on facts. If that really had been a gunshot so close she had felt the echo in her own ribcage, two semi-conscious adventurers and an over-bold poacher were enough for one woman to worry about right now.

Hester’s stalwart little lungs were gasping in air as eagerly as if it was going out of fashion now and colour was coming back into her pallid cheeks. Rowena went on rubbing her narrow ribcage as she leant Hester forward to help as best she could. She stared down at the stranger, feeling helpless in the face of his deeper hurts. Now Jack was gone and with the worst of her fears for Hester calming, she had time to feel the horror of what might have happened, if not for this supposedly idle gentleman. Had he sustained some terrible injury as he strove to save Hes, or maybe he’d been shot although he twisted to save her sister from a terrible fall at what seemed like exactly the right moment at the time?

Considering the loud crack his head made when it hit the tree root, how could he not be badly hurt, Rowena? If he’d taken a bullet as well there would be blood, though, wouldn’t there? She examined every inch of him visible; his closely fitting coat of dark-blue superfine was only marred by grass seeds and the odd leaf that dared cling to it. His dark hair fell in rougher versions of the neatly arranged waves she’d seen gleam like polished ebony as the late summer sun shone through the plain side windows in church only last Sunday. There was no sticky trail of blood matting it to dullness when even this far into the woods light came in leaf-shaded speckles.

She made herself glance lower and concluded such pristine breeches would give away a wound all too easily and as for his highly polished boots, what was he doing wearing such expensive articles of fashion in Lord Laughraine’s woodland? No, he seemed unmarred by bullets and she knew too much about such wounds to be mistaken. He wasn’t flinching away from the ground pressing against one or moaning in agony. She doubted he’d do that if he was badly injured, though, for the sake of the child sitting so close she would feel as well as hear them. Some instinct she didn’t want to listen to said he’d put Hes’s welfare before his own. Under all the Mayfair gloss and aloofness this was truly a man. Trying to pretend otherwise every Sunday since she had come back to King’s Raigne and found Mr Winterley a welcome guest at the great house had been a waste of effort.

Never mind that; he must be horribly uncomfortable on that unyielding root. She dare not move him for fear of causing more harm. One of the better military surgeons once told her that well-meaning efforts to help an injured man often did as much damage as the wounds inflicted by the enemy. She wanted to remove her light shawl and cushion his poor head, but would that do more harm than good?

Since he didn’t appear to have been shot she could discount that as a reason for his continuing unawareness. Perhaps she had misheard in all the shock and confusion of Hes’s wild tumble anyway and there never was a second sharp crack ringing through the now-silent wood. He did take the full force of a surprisingly substantial little body hurtling towards him after all. She suspected Hes could have broken one or two of his ribs when she slammed into him almost as hard as a bullet might. The thought of a gun being fired in anger took her back to the terrifying noise of the battlefield and the long, terrible tension every wife endured when waiting to find out if she was a widow. She shuddered at the tragic end to that waiting for her and all the other wives and lovers facing the full stop put on a man’s life by war, then drew in a deep breath to banish old terrors from her mind and concentrate on new ones instead.

‘Will she do?’ the man made the huge effort to ask in a rasping whisper.

Even the breathy rumble of it told Rowena there was more to his hurts than simply being winded by her little sister’s plunge into his arms. She shifted the small body in her arms to peer at Hester’s face and saw a trail of tears on her grubby little face that almost made her break down herself. She couldn’t put her sister aside to check on the gentleman who had rescued her. While she was grateful to him, this was Hes, her sister, and she came first, even when she was sitting between two injured souls and none of it was his fault. She wiped away her sister’s tears with her fingers and kissed her grubby cheek.

‘I don’t think much harm befell her ladyship here, as long as she does as she’s told for a day or two and doesn’t climb this particular tree ever again. I think all will be well with her, don’t you?’ she said softly and Hester managed a wobbly smile.

‘I won’t,’ she managed to gasp between breaths. Her little sister was a daredevil scrap of mischief far too headstrong for her own good, but Rowena loved her so much it physically hurt right now.

‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, went even paler, then finally lost consciousness.

‘Is he dead, Row?’ Hester managed to wail in an almost-normal voice.

‘No, love, but remember he’s been hit on the head and probably hasn’t managed to get enough air into his lungs quite yet.’

‘He looks dead.’ The little voice sank to a fearful whisper.

‘No, I’m sure he will be perfectly fine in a day or two and Jack is sure to be at Raigne soon. You know he can run like the wind when he chooses. So help will be on its way before long and Dr Harbury will probably insist he stays in bed for a while. Mama and the doctor are sure to insist you stay in yours until we’re sure no harm was done and you deserve it, so don’t look at me like that,’ Rowena added as her little sister shuddered and seemed unable to bounce back to her normal state of barely suppressed mischief.

‘You know how much I hate being shut inside on a lovely day.’

‘Let’s hope for rain, then,’ Rowena murmured hardheartedly, with an apologetic look at the serene blue sky and a shiver. Somehow she dreaded the coming winter and all the long and lonely dark nights it would bring with it even more than usual.

‘I hate that even worse.’

‘I know, all mud and stickiness and damp stockings.’

‘Ugh, don’t,’ Hester said with another shiver and clung to Rowena in a way that made her more anxious about her little sister and at the same time guiltily annoyed at Mr Winterley for worrying them with his long and somehow painful silence.

If not for him, she could carry her little sister home and put her to bed, then send for the doctor herself. If they didn’t have to wait for someone from Raigne to take responsibility for Mr Winterley, they could be halfway back to King’s Raigne Vicarage now. Rowena would love to hand over the care of their most-adventurous child to her mother and father and take time to be shocked and shaken herself. She shouldn’t dream of being so selfish, she decided, with an apologetic look at the unconscious man. If not for him, Hes would be dead or so near to it they must pray for a miracle to save her from a fall from such a height. Now he was suffering for his heroism while Rowena wished him at Jericho.

She was a bad and ungrateful woman and ought to do penance. Luckily Papa wasn’t a fire-and-brimstone vicar who thundered hellfire and damnation at his parishioners from the pulpit and expected constant repentance from his family. Flinching away from the poor man because he lay almost as still and pale as her husband after the terrible battle at Vimeiro that day was cowardly and wrong, though. He was deathly pale under the unfashionable tan that gave him away as a contradiction. Even she knew pinks of the ton prided themselves on having a pallor that set them apart from those who toiled for a living, or country squires who rode their acres so they could afford a spring Season in town to marry off their daughters.

The bronzed smoothness of this man’s skin was tight over high cheekbones and she suspected he was forcing stillness on himself now. Perhaps he was suppressing his injuries so as not to shock her little sister with his moans of torment? She refused to think about the chance that really had been a gunshot aimed with deadly accuracy. After all, she had to sit here with her shocked little sister and a semi-conscious and injured man until help came. The idea hostile eyes could be looking for a chance to try again felt intolerable right now, so she wasn’t going to admit it was possible on a sunny autumn day in safe little England.

Mr Winterley must have a very low opinion of her after today. She had stood paralysed with fear while he acted to save the life of a child he must only have had a vague idea existed until today. Rowena shivered at the thought of his contempt for such a useless female and fought not to pass on her disturbed feelings to Hes. Struggling with her horror at being so close to a wounded man after scouring the battlefield for her husband’s mangled body that awful day two years ago, she gently laid the hand she could spare from hugging Hester on the man’s forehead, as if touching him might tell him she was sorry. His skin felt warmly familiar under her hesitant fingers. Seeing his faint hint of a frown smooth out, she made a gentle exploration of his temples and further back and was relieved to see no blood issued from his finely made ears. Not sure how she knew that was a good sign, she sighed and wished she knew more about how a vigorous male should react to the world around him.

Even with that last awful image of him in her head, Nate was little more than a boy in her memory rather than a mature warrior like this one. Why had her imagination painted him as a battle-hardened knight and not an idle gentleman of fashion? Somehow this vital man had lessened her husband in her memory and she’d meant to find out about his hurts, not compare him to a corpse on a godforsaken battlefield a thousand miles away.

Rowena caught in her breath and reminded herself she must be cool and logical, despite her fear that a mortal wound might lurk under this man’s crisply curling black hair. His fine and fashionable haircut wouldn’t guard his head from attack. She recalled the noise as he hit this confounded tree root with horror; it sounded like the crack of doom when he hit the earth with Hes locked in his arms. What a shame he wasn’t wearing the fine beaver hat she could see on the bench where Lord Laughraine usually sat after walking up to his favourite viewing point. It might have shielded his head from the worst Hes and the tree could do. She gently winnowed her fingers though the midnight unfamiliarity of his thick dark hair and felt a slight tightening of his skin. He was awake and suffering as she suspected, so she padded her fingers a little further away so as not to hurt him, then snatched them away altogether. Surely it was wrong to feel so in tune with a stranger that you knew where he hurt even when he was pretending to be unconscious? He frowned almost imperceptibly and she automatically smoothed it away and saw a faint smile relax his stern mouth.

She had touched a perhaps mortally injured man and found him warm and human under the bravado and show of a Bond Street beau. Far from being cold and glaring in death, or alive and somehow desperate to feed off her vitality, he was himself. She stopped again and he shocked her a little by raising the hand nearest to her reaching one and meeting hers as if he knew exactly where she was by instinct and didn’t need to open his eyes. He wanted her touch, it was as plain as if he’d sat up and told her so. And she wanted to touch him back; that was equally plain, since her hand closed gently on his as if it belonged there without any permission from the rest of her. Perish the thought—she reminded herself how firmly she had resolved never to marry again after she found Nate dead that day—but she couldn’t bring herself to slide her hand out of his and break the contact even so.

Tempting to tell herself the warmth spreading through her was caused by the simple human contact of another hand on hers—tempting, but not very honest. A tingle of something more exciting and less understandable ran under it, a feeling of heat and homecoming. She felt shocked to realise this was the first physical contact she’d had with Mr Winterley, a man who stayed with lords and ladies as casually as she might with her sister and Mr Greenwood once they were wed and ready to receive visitors. Even as she did her best to remind herself of the gulf between them, the feel of his hand against hers without pressure bridged it. So she sat and let warmth flow from her hand to his and back again, rather bemused by the intimacy and telling herself her lungs had an excuse to be breathless after such a shock.

Birds were still singing in the distance and Hes was squirming to be let out of the fierce hug Rowena still held her in with her other arm and that made her recall where they were and what had happened. She couldn’t simply let her little sister go or leave this man’s side to watch over her as the wary widow in her wanted to. It would be so wrong to desert a warrior in disguise while he was brought low like this. Although she hated the way his gentle grasp on her hand tugged her back into a world of feeling she thought she’d put behind her with Nate’s death, none of it was his fault. Well, part of it was, but she doubted he’d reached across the gap between them for the comfort of her touch and done it on purpose.

‘Be still, little love, you’ll hurt yourself and Mr Winterley if you flail about so. You’re not going adventuring again until Dr Harbury says you’re over your latest attempt to kill yourself,’ she murmured softly and Hester stilled.

‘I never meant to hurt him, Row,’ she whispered, on the edge of an overwrought storm of tears as the seriousness of what had almost happened finally sank in.

‘Oh, my love, I know that and so will he when he’s awake,’ Rowena said, using her sister’s distress as an excuse to slip her hand out of Mr Winterley’s light grip and stroke the wild white-blonde curls off her little sister’s face. She met her little sister’s teary gaze and did her best to reassure her there was no need for hysterics. ‘You are a dear, you do know that, don’t you?’ she assured her sister with a fond smile as blue eyes so like her own gazed back at her sorrowfully.

‘I don’t think many people would agree with you right now, Row.’

‘This gentleman obviously liked you enough to save your life,’ she said lightly.

‘That was nice of him, wasn’t it?’

Rowena saw Mr Winterley’s surprisingly expressive lips twitch as if he was amused by Hes’s artless comment. Even in such pain as he must be in to lie here as if he’d truly been felled by that blow, he still managed to find her sister endearing.

‘Yes, love, very nice,’ she confirmed.

She let her gaze flick over his compelling face and person once again, lingering on his perfectly barbered dark head and beautiful coat. Such fine tailoring should be forbidden gentlemen with so many natural advantages, she decided severely. Ruffled and slightly battered by his adventures, he didn’t look like a heartless dandy any more and that seemed a little unfair for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom.

‘There’s someone coming,’ Hester whispered.

‘Thank heaven for them, then, love.’ Rowena breathed, a little of the tension easing from shoulders she hadn’t realised she was holding so stiffly until now. He wasn’t going to die in her care; this man wasn’t going to let life slip out of him between one breath and the next as Nate had moments after she found him on that bloody and blasted battlefield, as if she wasn’t worth struggling to live for.

‘I will,’ her sister promised so solemnly Rowena believed her.

‘We’ll do it together,’ she murmured and the man let his mouth relax for a moment, as if he was about to speak, then thought better of it.

‘Why are they coming creeping through the bushes like that, Rowena? Jack must have told them where we are and what the matter is and that they should hurry.’

Rowena glanced at the watch Nate’s mama had given her for a wedding present, as if she knew they must count the hours. Now she realised how little time had passed, her heart jigged like a frightened horse in panic. It was too soon even for Jack to have run all the way to Raigne, found someone capable of organising a rescue, then got here before Hes’s lungs had quite settled into their usual unhurried ease.

‘Maybe one of your friends escaped from their books and won’t show their face for fear of being sent home,’ she said as cheerfully as she could.

Memory of that sharp echo ringing out as this man hit the ground with Hes in his arms sniped at her and a superstitious shiver slid down her back. The thicket of evergreens a past Lord Laughraine had planted to preserve game looked ideal cover for a hunter of men now. Even the air in the mellow autumn woodland seemed to have gone wary; birds stopped singing as if they were listening and there was the angry flick of a squirrel’s russet tail halfway up the tree that had caused all this trouble in the first place. Nothing stirred but the branch echoing the squirrel’s flight, yet it felt as if half the world was listening for what came next.

‘I’m frightened, Row,’ Hester whispered, as if she felt like a pheasant in the sights of an expensive shotgun, as well.

‘This gentleman isn’t in a fit state to hurt you even if he wanted to. We have proof the boot is on the other foot and he must wish you well, since he’s saved you a hard tumble and more broken bones than I can bring myself to think of right now,’ Rowena joked as best she could.

With another glance at the unfriendly evergreens she counted how many seconds it might take her to snatch her little sister up and run for safety. No, she couldn’t leave this man staked out here like a sacrifice, even if it wasn’t a little bit too far to take the risk. Mr Winterley had saved Hester’s life, even if he had brought an enemy into this wood with him. Nobody had tried to shoot her or Hes or Jack in all the time they’d lived here, so the danger was his. What a poor return it would be for saving Hes if they left some villain to murder and rob him as brutally as she’d seen the dead and wounded on the battlefield stripped and plundered that awful day, irrespective of which side they fought for. Even if she was that ungrateful, this odd feeling of connection to the man would keep her here. So should she let Hes go and tell her to run home as fast as her shaky legs could carry her? No, she might be caught and used against them and, knowing Hes, she’d refuse to go.

Her little sister had heard the furtive movement as if a marksman was finding a snug spot for an ambush, as well. Rowena shuddered at the idea of Mr Winterley coldly murdered, yet he was Lord Farenze’s brother and wouldn’t that bring every single instrument of the law down on his killer? It seemed too big a risk for a sane man to take, but a leaf stirred where no wind could reach it and she sensed a predator waiting for a clear shot at his quarry even so. The safety of two other beings felt heavy on her shoulders. Mr Winterley’s face was still blank and serene as if he lay unconscious, but the flex of his hand nearest to her, shielded from view by her skirts, told her he was aware as any man could be after that savage blow to the head.

‘Can you see that patch of dried-up moss and oak leaves yonder, Hes?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,’ Hester said impatiently.

‘Then go and gather the driest and softest bits and bring them here so we can make a cushion with my shawl for the poor man’s head to rest on,’ Rowena said and hoped the silent listener had no idea she was thought to be a sensible woman the rest of the time.

‘Didn’t you say he should be kept...?’ Hester’s still slightly shaky voice tailed off at the sight of Rowena’s fierce glare. She hoped the fact she was being moved out of the line of fire wouldn’t dawn on her reckless sister. ‘Oh, very well, it really is taking for ever for Jack to get back with Sir Gideon or his lordship and that tree root must be very hard,’ clever little Hes said with her bottom lip stuck out, as if she felt sulky and furious and a bit bored.

Rowena tried to make it seem natural to shift round a prone man, then hover slightly hysterically. She took her time forming her least favourite shawl into a square and wondered aloud if it would ever be the same again if the man bled all over it.

‘Not even the most careful laundering will get the stain out of wool and it’s not as if I have dozens of them to be ruined,’ she twittered fussily.

‘Here, this ought to make him comfortable as the Sleeping Beauty,’ Hester said as she trudged back with an armful of leaves and moss and some bleached and dry grass harvested from the edge of the clearing.

Rowena bundled the driest of her sister’s offerings into her shawl, then wrapped it into a makeshift pillow. Keeping between her sister and harm, she thrust the neatly wrapped bundle at Hes, then knelt at Mr Winterley’s other side to frustrate his attacker.

‘The instant I lift his head you must put my shawl between his poor head and that nasty tree root,’ she ordered as if she and Hes were nearly as dimwitted as one another.

‘Yes, of course, sister dear. How you do fuss,’ Hes said with such a huge sigh of long-suffering patience Rowena frowned at her for overacting. Nothing stirred behind her, though, so maybe it was working.

‘Right pocket,’ Mr Winterley murmured when Rowena bent even closer. She felt almost as fluffy and distracted as she was pretending to be as she fought off the feeling of being too close to a sleek and magnificent predator. ‘Get your sister out of here,’ he added so softly she bent over him like a ministering angel to hear him and her hair tumbled out of the last of its pins and hid even more of him from prying eyes.

Close to he was lean and vital and ridiculously tempting as she breathed a little too heavily in his ear and heard him grunt with pain when she lifted his mistreated head. Hes pushed the improvised cushion under him and Rowena watched as fascinated by him as the silly debutante she was doing her best to ape. He smelt of clean woods and a faint, cool undercurrent of spice and lemon water and man. The scent pleased her somehow as Nate’s linen rarely had, even when she laboured hard to keep it clean herself when they were on the march and he said the laundresses were too rough with his precious shirts. How unfair of her to contrast a man intent on fighting his country’s mortal enemies with this idle fop. Cross with herself, she flinched away, then saw him frown as if in pain and called herself every sort of a fool under her breath.

Chapter Five

James willed the ringing in his head to subside and pushed the darkness away. He distracted himself from feeling awful by wondering where a vicar’s daughter had learnt so many unladylike curses. He hoped the imp on his other side was too busy wondering if he was dead again to hear and resolved to have words with the woman when they were free of an audience. He knew from the warning tingle at the back of his neck the man who had shot at him was out there. The worm was probably puzzling about what to do next, but James couldn’t dismiss him as that shot was so true that, if not for this iron-hard tree root and the impulsive girl who felled him, he’d be dead. He’d be dead meat if he was standing where he was when the shooter aimed and no doubt the man had a second weapon and nerve enough to try again.

How the devil had his enemies tracked him down? He’d thought it safe to be James Winterley when he had to come home with his tail between his legs. Nobody took a useless society fribble seriously and it was a relief to saunter through life as if he hadn’t a care in the world. If he was being honest, and it might be as well if he was considering how close to God he might be, he took perverse pleasure in living down to James Winterley’s raffish reputation. He’d been very young when he gained it; a confused and angry boy at odds with himself and the world. Fifteen years on from his riotous start to adult life as the Winterley boy, the spare half-brother, he could almost pity his younger self. Or he could if he wasn’t saddled with the low standards the boy set him so many years on.

This wasn’t the best time for chewing over past mistakes, but even that cover had failed him if the skill of the stalker so close he could almost taste him was anything to go by. He lay still as a corpse behind the coward’s shield of Rowena Finch’s glorious hair and delightful body and did his best to plan a speedy exit from this open space without either Finch girl getting hurt. It was more of an effort to keep his face blank when he felt a slender hand insinuate itself into his coat pocket and heard the rustle of hot-pressed paper under the fair Rowena’s searching hand. Not that, he wanted to shout at her. Don’t touch Virginia’s letter.

He managed to crack open his eyelids by the smallest distance and saw her wrinkle her nose in distaste at having to search a gentleman’s pockets. The sight somehow calmed the worst of his fears and that was a beginner’s mistake. Between one breath and the next a woman as full of life and promise as this could be dead as mutton. Why had he thought that one certainty of a spy’s life less true here? Raigne had cast a spell over him, but he should never have stayed so long. But how could he have thought it would be easy to give up his unseemly profession and live near here in peaceful obscurity either?

‘Got it,’ Mrs Westhope murmured as she bent close to cover the movement of her lips with a front of fussing over his injuries as she slipped the lethal little pistol out of his pocket with the finesse of the finest pickpocket in the land.

‘Take your sister and run, then,’ he muttered as urgently as he dared.

‘No,’ she whispered emphatically.

‘This isn’t some rustic coney-catcher ready to shoot me for my boots.’

‘Who is he, then?’ she asked as if she had a right to know.

‘None of your business,’ he grumbled so faintly she pressed closer, as if shielding him with her body was all the answer she need make to that grumpy denial.

Somehow he must fight the blankness that blow on the head threatened every time he tried to move. She was risking so much and all he really wanted was to reach up and cup her chin, see a flush of consciousness across her fine-boned cheeks and a softening spark of desire in those extraordinary cornflower-blue eyes of hers. He wanted her to bend an iota of space closer still and kiss him as if she meant it. Had that blow on the head truly driven all the sense out of it? Until now he hadn’t thought he had enough masculine idiocy left in his pounding head to lust after this luscious mixture of a woman, but now it was sending messages to the rest of him he didn’t want to hear. He must make her go, before she got killed, or noticed the state his body would be in if she didn’t move further away.

‘Get her out of here,’ he risked demanding loudly as he dared.

‘And risk whoever is out there attacking us? Don’t be more of an idiot than that blow on the head made you.’

‘Is he coming awake at last, Row?’

Hearing the panic under that question, James hesitated and Rowena seemed caught between admitting it and laying them open to his enemy, or denying it and making her little sister more disturbed by the whole business.

‘Wha...?’ he moaned artistically and made the decision for her.

‘Do be still and stay quiet, sir,’ the fair Rowena ordered so sternly he suspected she would prefer to slap him.

‘Who...?’ He gasped, as if fighting unconsciousness, and now at least he could snatch a glance round the wide clearing and take in the slender options available.

‘You saved my little sister’s life,’ Rowena proclaimed dramatically. He frowned under cover of her tumbling hair as she bent over him again to act out her fantasy heroine.

‘Da...?’ he managed. Maybe the watcher would believe him addled by the blow any listener must have heard, since it sounded like the crack of doom inside his head.

‘I think our patient is asking if you are truly unscathed by your latest misadventure, Hes. Show yourself to the gentleman, dear, and prove you’re truly in one piece, although you don’t deserve to be after what you did.’

For a moment James dreaded the fearless girl being cowed by her lucky escape. Even if it might stop her being so reckless next time she wanted to defy gravity, he didn’t want that. Then he caught the little devil peering at him over her grubby handkerchief with enough mischief in her eyes to supply the proverbial cartload of monkeys and had the deuce of a time not grinning back.

‘Good...’ he managed as if that was a small part of his worries taken care of.

‘Perhaps his mind was affected by that blow,’ the woman said hopefully. James thought that was taking drama too far, but it wasn’t her mind so she probably didn’t care.

‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ Hester wailed, then buried her head in her handkerchief to muffle the noisiest pretend sobs James had heard in a mercifully long time.

At least she was suffering for her art, he concluded, with a fierce frown at the elder sister to make his impatience clear. He spared a moment to wonder why Rowena’s tumbled mass of fair locks felt like a soft golden lure against his cheeks, then told himself not to be such a fool. It was hair, admittedly of the silken and shining kind, and as thick and soft as a lover’s wildest fantasy, but still a workaday feature most women of her age enjoyed in one form or another. Reminding himself that blow on the head hadn’t addled his wits entirely, he cleared his senses of Rowena Westhope and tried to use them on his enemy. Something told him the man was furious and impatient, and James couldn’t spring up and dash for cover without warning his co-stars, so he made as if to sit up to divert them from amateur theatricals.

‘No, sir, you must remain still until help comes. I couldn’t live with myself if you did some terrible harm to your poor head because I lack the wit to keep you lying quiet,’ the lovely Rowena said earnestly, fixing a steely gaze on him and daring him to argue.

‘Grab her and run when I say so, then,’ he demanded as softly as he could. Something in her wide blue gaze made him think it was highly unlikely the minx ever did as she was bid without an argument. Seeing a similar talent in the blue eyes her little sister fixed on him reproachfully, James shifted to test his reflexes. No better than satisfactory, he concluded, but they would have to do. ‘Now,’ he urged and wondered if he was about to faint and make this too easy for the shooter as he lurched to his feet.

He wasn’t giving in yet; not after all the years of warding off blows and knife blades in dark alleys where the likes of him lurked. He imposed his steely will on his wavering legs and managed to keep pace with Rowena and her wriggling captive. At least this way a shot would hit him first. They were too close for even the best marksman to be certain of shooting him and not one of Finch’s beloved daughters, and James sent a desperate plea to heaven to guard that good man’s offspring from a death James probably deserved and they didn’t. The hasty movement jarred his bruised and protesting head and spine, and he winced and waited for a kill shot to smash into him. Breath sawed in his labouring lungs as if he’d run a mile instead of a few yards. He thought for a moment he’d been shot and his body was keeping going in the long moment when terror blocked agony for mortally wounded men. He’d seen it, inflicted it even, yet he’d never felt it and by some miracle he still hadn’t.

There were no more hurts to his person than Hester Finch had inflicted by accident when they reached the opposite side of the clearing. They sank into the sheltering hollow of a mighty oak tree’s roots. It took the lack of any blood coursing out of any of them to convince him his foe hadn’t risked picking him off, then getting away before anyone could give chase. This was no time to sink into the leaf-cushioned sanctuary and give in to the headache pounding at his temples, though. No rest for the wicked, he reminded himself ruefully, and managed to cling to his right senses by a hair’s breadth.

‘You’re safe?’ he gasped as if he’d run a mile instead of less than fifty yards.

‘Aye, but how much do your enemies hate you?’ Rowena asked impatiently, as if all her talent for pretence had been used up.

‘Enough,’ he admitted. Hester patted his shoulder solemnly, as if to console him.

He couldn’t help the surprised guff of laughter it shocked out of him. She smiled wisely at him as if she understood his confused thoughts, which was more than her sister did from the impatient frown knitting her surprisingly dark brows.

‘Some of them dislike me almost as much as my friends,’ he joked. The girl’s silent sympathy took him closer to tears than a grown man wanted to be, especially with a deadly enemy nearby.

‘You can watch that way while I cover our backs,’ Hester’s unimpressed sister ordered him, expertly cocking his deadly little pistol, then turning away to ignore them both.

‘She would learn how to shoot before she went to Portugal with Nate,’ Hester explained with a shrug, as if that covered her sister’s ability to defend them to the death.

‘Nate?’ he managed lamely.

‘Her husband, he was a soldier,’ the child said matter-of-factly.

James supposed that was what a generation or two of war did—made death part of day-to-day life and cut off a young woman’s hopes and dreams in a moment. He risked a sidelong glance at the young widow and saw her intent glare into the middle distance, as if she’d cut herself off from them and her past. Somehow that moved him far more than the most delicate of flinches or a bravely blinked-away tear. The girl with the bluest of blue eyes he’d ever encountered had lost so much yet she had fire and courage enough to tie her knots and carry on. Wasn’t it about time he did the same?

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