‘How do you know I’m not already fully a woman?’

‘Don’t be more of a fool than nature made you,’ he retorted, knowing it from the bold bravery with which she met his eyes.

Even his certainty reminded him he’d once been a rake and knew far too much about women for a simple countryman. She was far too good for him in every way he could think of, even if he’d had his old self back and could offer her so much more than a cottage in the woods and a life of toil and obscurity.

‘I’m a realist, not a fool,’ she said softly.

Her breath stuttered, as if not being his would hurt her in some drastic fashion, and he kissed her with a curse that shuddered through him and into her as something broke.

She was tangled around every sense and scruple Rich had. He raised his head to look at her at last, a desperate question in his eyes, seeking an answer he shouldn’t ask for and she shouldn’t give.

AUTHOR NOTE

Welcome to the third and last in my series of Seaborne books. If any of you are new to this rich and powerful family this story reads perfectly well as a single book in its own right, but if you enjoy this book you might like to find out more about the Seabornes in THE DUCHESS HUNT (Jessica and Jack’s story) and THE SCARRED EARL (Alex and Persephone’s story), which are available as eBooks.

Ever since the idea for the Seabornes came to me I have had a soft spot for Rich Seaborne, the family rogue and unwitting cause of so much trouble for the rest of the Seabornes. Even while I was weaving the stories of bold Jack and troubled Alex and their eventful journeys to happiness I was itching to get on with Rich’s story as well.

While those of you who have read THE DUCHESS HUNT might remember Lady Freya Buckle as being the least popular of Jack’s guests, I had no idea she would turn out to be Rich’s match back then. It wasn’t until she dashed into the first scene in a most un-Freya-like state of disarray and took over that I realised she was the perfect lady for a man convinced he could never love again.

So I hope you enjoy this tale of love against the odds, set in the midst of a series of secrets and misunderstandings, and agree that Freya and Rich truly do deserve each other by the time they finally manage to bring the Seaborne family the happy ending they have all been longing to see.

About the Author

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

Previous novels by the same author:

AN INNOCENT COURTESAN

HOUSEMAID HEIRESS

A LESS THAN PERFECT LADY

CAPTAIN LANGTHORNE’S PROPOSAL

REBELLIOUS RAKE, INNOCENT GOVERNESS

THE RAKE OF HOLLOWHURST CASTLE

ONE FINAL SEASON

(part of Courtship & Candlelight)

A MOST UNLADYLIKE ADVENTURE

GOVERNESS UNDER THE MISTLETOE

(part of Candlelit Christmas Kisses)

THE DUCHESS HUNT

THE SCARRED EARL

THE BLACK SHEEP’S RETURN

features characters you will have met in

THE DUCHESS HUNT

and

THE SCARRED EARL

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Black Sheep’s
Return

Elizabeth Beacon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

Rich Seaborne stretched his long legs towards the glowing fire and gave a contented sigh as he finally allowed himself to relax. It had been a long day crowded with tasks and responsibilities, but they all were nowadays. He wondered what his old friends and family would say if they could see him now and marvelled he’d ever been the man they would remember. Mr Richard Seaborne had also gone to bed late and never risen early for the simple reason he was seldom even home by the time most of humanity were ready to begin a hard day’s work.

‘Idle young idiot,’ he chastised his old self, feeling as if his very bones gave a sigh of relief at the luxury of sitting still at long last.

The careless young wastrel he’d once been seemed a puzzling stranger to him now. Despite the hard work and heavy responsibilities, Rich couldn’t imagine going back to his old, useless life of a careless beau about town. Back then he never knew the satisfaction of earning his family’s bread by his own labour. He’d never earned a penny in his life until he had to learn how, or starve and watch them go hungry as well.

He leaned back against the well-worn cushions his wife had made to soften the larger of the two Windsor chairs he’d crafted with wood from the forest. Content by his own fireside, watching a fire fuelled with wood he’d felled, seasoned and chopped himself, he let himself enjoy the pure pleasure of sitting still for ten precious minutes before he climbed the steep stairs he’d built when they restored the derelict cottage so deep in the woods he hoped everyone else had forgotten it was here and sought his bed after a hard day’s work.

If the old Rich could see himself six years on, he’d marvel at this homespun fellow with marks of labour on his hands, a day’s growth of beard on his chin and a streak or two of dirt across his face where he’d rubbed his nose when thinking. A bittersweet smile lifted his mouth as he recalled his Anna doing her best to break him of the habit with a combination of tenderness and nagging, but at the end of the day he would look in the small square of mirror over the mantel and see the proof that, whilst his ears heard her, his mind went its own way as soon as he was intent on something else.

Without her at his side to encourage, chide and push at him to be a better man it felt as if he was trying to move the world with a teaspoon. There wasn’t any balance to it all, even with their children asleep and reasonably clean, decent and well fed upstairs. No wife on the other side of his fireside, no warm body and acute mind relaxing in the smaller chair he’d made for her to wrap herself snugly into at the end of a hard day. No lover in his bed at the ultimate end of that day to welcome him, love him and, after they made love softly so as not to wake the baby, snuggle against him and fall so absolutely asleep he used to marvel at the quick neatness of her slumbers.

He felt the familiar deadening pall of hopelessness drive out his earlier contentment and frowned at the fire, shifting impatiently in his chair as if he might physically fight off the darkness his life could become without her. For months after Anna died he’d sat and brooded alone over the fire at the end of the day and despaired. In those dark days he felt no satisfaction in his isolated life. He’d silently rail at God, the devil and the world in general for letting his wife die and leave him behind, a useless hulk who couldn’t even quiet his crying children, let alone make up the loss of their mother in some way he still couldn’t fathom.

During those endless nights it had sometimes seemed stupid to carry on, looking over his shoulder and battling to be father and mother to two tiny mites who shouldn’t have to grow up in a hovel in the forest. Night after night he’d sat here and agonised over his decision to walk away from his loving family and privileged youth. If he went home, he told himself, his mother would raise his two motherless children so they hardly felt the loss he could barely live with.

Lady Henry Seaborne could fill the gaps left by a mother they lost so young with all the love they would ever need. His younger brother and sisters would enjoy their niece and nephew and help bring them up as a Seaborne should be raised—with full knowledge of a long and proud tradition at their backs, and a sense of responsibility their father had lacked until he met Anna. He wanted his son and daughter to possess the steadiness of character he would probably have mocked as tedious in another until the memorable day he met his fate in the Strand and his whole world changed between one breath and the next.

He sighed now for the hugeness of losing her, but three slow, hard years had gone by and somehow he’d learnt to go on from day to day for the sake of his children and not fume quite so hard or so often at her, the world and the devil about her untimely death. Now he could even recall meeting his love with a smile, not feel that terrible wall of grief tumbling on to him every time he triggered the slightest memory of falling in love with his wife. It had all begun as a gallant impulse to help a lovely but painfully young girl in dire straits; after five minutes in her company he had continued in heady exaltation at finding the love of his life and the memory woke an echoing thrill in his heart even now.

Even romantic love couldn’t sustain itself on fairytales, but somehow they had truly grown up together and it had only made them stronger. Once he and Anna had realised they would have to make their own way in the world, neither had had much of a clue how, he recalled with a wry grin. Yet they were stubborn, passionate people and managed to make new lives by hard work. Somehow it had built even firmer foundations as their feelings grew beyond that first heady passion for each other into a true, enduring love he doubted could ever fade, even with Anna’s death yawning between them like some unbridgeable void.

Their love had stood every test when she was alive, he reflected, and thanked God for it, although their time together was painfully short. He missed his wife so much it physically hurt at times and the only way to take the edge off his longing for her wisdom, loveliness and sheer, bright optimism in the face of hardship was to work so zealously he didn’t have chance to linger on how little his life felt without her.

She’d been slender as a whip when she wasn’t with child and so small a fool might take her for a child at a distance, but she’d proved as strong as steel when life tried them as they had never been tried before. Anna was a lioness in defence of her own and her own lay upstairs fast asleep—his own now, both of them. Her child, and her child and his child, two children he loved as dearly as he could ever imagine any father loving his brood, king or pauper, and Rich Seaborne lived as a poor man, despite the rich estate and comfortable fortune awaiting him if he ever dared reclaim them.

He reminded himself exactly why he was still living the life of a woodsman and bodger of everyday furniture and necessities in a remote cottage. He could go back, of course. Then he could be a gentleman again, return to his birthright as eldest son of the late Lord Henry Seaborne and his loving and gracious wife. Set in the Seaborne heartland, poised between the last of England and the first of Wales, he could take up his rich inheritance. The land there echoed with the challenges of the warrior princes and insurgent robber barons who had fought over it for centuries and he loved and sometimes longed for it as if it had a soul that cried out to his. He felt a familiar yearning to stand once more on that rich soil that was almost beyond reasoning away.

It wasn’t simple homesickness—nothing as straightforward as that for a Seaborne in exile. No, it felt like a deeper sense of connection to the beautiful land of his birth, so nearly into a Celtic land and not quite fully within rich England either; which was pretty much how the Seaborne clan regarded themselves, now he thought about it. They were very nearly subject to their king, so long as he didn’t interfere with them and theirs, loyal to their country, passionate about family and as determined to go their own way as any of the old Marcher lords, who had ruled their fiefdoms as if they were their own states and had often proved as stubbornly independent in thought and deed as the Welsh so-called rebels they were sent to awe in the first place.

He could go back and be welcomed like the Prodigal Son and, once he explained this isolation was not chosen but forced on him, his family would forgive all the years of not knowing he was alive or dead and he could take up his old life. No, he wouldn’t go back to that hedonistic existence, but he could take responsibility for Seaborne House, accept the joys and burdens of a large landowner and lift some of the responsibility off the shoulders of the head of the family.

They were broad enough in all conscience, but Jack, Duke of Dettingham, currently carried out Rich’s duties as well as his own. Jack was married and two of his own sisters and his little brother had wed since Rich had left home. The urge to see them and meet their husbands and wives was sometimes so strong he wanted to pack up his family in the cart he used for taking his goods to distant markets and drive back home, so he could watch Hal and Sally run wild with their young cousins.

Yes, he could do all of that. He could live in his comfortable home, amidst his prosperous acres, within the protective circle of his family—where he could sit like an animal in a trap and wait for the devil to find them and tear it all apart. So he was still here, work boots resting on a battered fender used to rest the fire-irons against and dry the kindling for the following day. He would still be here tomorrow and next year and however many years it took for his family to grow up and face the world alone. None of which stopped him being afraid some harm might come to him and leave his children alone, or that he wouldn’t give them the sort of childhood Anna would want for them.

Sighing as he damped down the fire for the night, Rich set his battered old watch by the clock he’d painstakingly resurrected from a box of bits thrown out by the local doctor, who had discovered he was no better at healing broken clocks than patients. Rich hoped he’d hidden the wonderful Tompion timepiece his father had given him for his twenty-first birthday well enough for it to stay there until his son reached maturity and must be told the truth, but suddenly he longed for the luxury and comfort of it in his hand—a reminder of the good man who’d given it to him and he wished he even half-deserved to call father.

He recalled riding away from Seaborne after Lord Henry’s death, thinking he could never fill his sire’s shoes so there was no point staying, little realising he would never have a second chance to prove himself wrong. No point dwelling on old inadequacies—irresponsible young Rich Seaborne became a stranger when he met his future wife. Mature Rich regretted not a step that led him to Anna later that day, even though love had brought with it such untold depths of sadness and loss after she died.

Lady Freya Buckle had endured a day of wild exertion, misery and trouble and she was now very lost. It was about time she enjoyed her right to be warm, comfortable and well fed as befitted the daughter of an Earl, but there seemed little chance of any comfort at all in this endless forest. Her father’s last and least acceptable daughter had been forced to accept that money and position couldn’t buy happiness over the last few years, but losing even the small comforts of her everyday life was somewhere beyond ridiculous.

Now she was alone and penniless and it was dark and cold under these infernal, unending trees. Somehow she must find some shelter for the night to rest her weary limbs and take the weight off her aching, blistered feet until daylight returned and it was as safe as it ever got in this benighted forest. Freya wrapped the remnants of her once-fine cloak about her shivering person and only just managed to resist an urge to plump down on a carpet of dead leaves under the nearest tree and cry some of her misery out.

She was a Buckle of Bowland and that meant something, even if it currently meant she was exhausted, shivering and hungry in an ever-darkening world of trees that all looked the same. Nevertheless, Lady Freya could not sink into resigned indifference and sleep like a helpless babe lost in the wood as a lesser person might. A true Buckle did not crumble under misfortune, but it was difficult to stay regally resolute when her noble family didn’t care what happened to her and she frowned into the gathering darkness of the June night.

If only she had been able to marry the Duke of Dettingham, she would have a vital, handsome husband to make getting children tolerable and all would have been well with her world, but he had contrived to avoid the honour. Aristocratic marriages were seldom based on love, but it seemed the noble Seaborne family thought otherwise. Freya sighed at the contrariness of gentlemen while she walked with less and less confidence into the unknown. The Duke pretended to be a rational man looking for a well-connected wife who was pretty enough to make filling his nurseries bearable, but he turned out to be a romantic fool who fell head over ears in love with an antidote and married her instead.

So the Duke married his unsuitable Duchess and a year later her own mother, the widowed Countess of Bowland, was dead and Freya had been learning hard lessons about the world ever since. Nobody could accuse the rigidly proper Countess of being unfaithful to her lord, but the family made it clear Freya was an outsider. Mingling their blue blood with that of an East India nabob’s daughter might have been a deplorable necessity, since a Buckle could not take to trade and actually earn money, but it didn’t make the result a true aristocrat.

When she had a chance of another suitor pleasing enough to endure marriage with she went along with her half-brother’s plans, until she heard Lord George Perton tell his friends how he was about to suffer. She shuddered at the memory of hearing him describe her as a stubborn nag he would never ride given a free choice of mounts, but he’d take a gallop on her for her fat dowry. His friends laughed uproariously, then commended his courage.

‘Dare say the bad-tempered filly will throw you into a duck pond, Per old man. I’d jib in your shoes, fortune or no.’

‘Ah, but you ain’t as poor as me and the old man swears he’ll throw me out to starve if I don’t wed a golden dolly. I’ll marry her and tup her to get a brat or two, then my father can live with her while I take a ride with the fine fillies I can buy with her money. They might argue each other into an early grave, with any luck.’

So Freya had refused him and her halfbrother’s fury had been memorable, but it wasn’t as if she had grown up with the illusion that her wider family looked on her advent with unalloyed delight. She accepted she was unlovable, but lately being accepted by society as Lady Freya Buckle, daughter of an Earl of ancient bloodlines and old renown, hadn’t been enough to make her bend to her family’s wishes any longer. Now Bowland was favouring a political crony with even less charm than Lord George and Freya decided it was time to make a new life, before she was bullied into marrying a man she loathed. The thought of sharing a bed with Mr Forland made her shudder at the thought of his flabby body, greedy hands, mean little eyes and all the unthinkable intimacies she had no wish to learn with him.

A trip to her maternal great-aunt had seemed a good place to start an independent life. They corresponded dutifully and she’d been invited to Miss Bradstock’s house, but Bowland would not hear of her accepting. As a first, wary step into the unknown her decision to go anyway had seemed safe enough, but now look where it had landed her. The shudder that shook her this time was so powerful it nearly left her in a shaking and hysterical heap on the forest floor. No, she was a Buckle, even if her old life was over, Freya reminded herself starkly, and Buckles didn’t buckle.

She swished the skirts of her gown away from an encroaching bramble with some of her old panache, glared at it as if it was her worst enemy and finally let herself consider the idea she could have been going round in circles in the watchful silence of these woodlands for hours. If only she had done as Mama always insisted and travelled with armed outriders, who would have put off rag-tag scoundrels like the ones who had held up her hired carriage and threatened them with rape and murder. Freya clamped her hand over her mouth as she shook her head at the whimper on her lips and tried to hold back the terror threatening to turn her hysterical. She gulped in a huge gasp of cool, fresh air and reminded herself hysterics didn’t get a woman anywhere, unless she was the current Countess of Bowland, of course.

An audible snort of exasperation made her wonder if her mouth had an independent life this time, but her brother Bowland really was an idiot—unfortunately one with a dream of power and not enough sense to see he was being manipulated by his wife, who was a clever rogue. If Freya had known how dangerous it was to steal away and travel lesser-known roads, she would probably have risked the fat politician after all. No, she felt sick at the very idea and would rather be torn apart by wild beasts than wed Mr Forland, then she remembered how close she’d come to just that today and her empty stomach dry-retched painfully. Again she heard the betraying sob in her breath as dawning terror, then desperate flight, replayed in her mind and she trembled so badly she had to bully herself not to simply give up.

Heaven send the coachman and guard had not been murdered by the brutes who’d attacked them, Freya prayed and shuddered again at their possible fate. She desperately hoped handing over the hefty purse she was carrying had allowed them to escape, but tales of unscrupulous men who banded together to prey on the unwary, such as Lady Freya Buckle, kept nudging at her as she wondered if she was a bigger fool than Bowland to believe paying the hired coachman extra to help her run away from home was as good an idea as it had seemed at the time.

She was alive and unmolested, thanks to her headlong flight, but the thorny underbrush was intent on destroying the very clothes she stood up in and robbing her of her last shreds of dignity. If only she’d sewn a few guineas into her petticoat, or stuffed one of Bowland’s new-fangled paper bank notes into her short corset before she set out. She had been too intent on escaping to worry about what might happen along the way. One mistake she would never make again, if she ever managed to reclaim her true position in life.

She stopped to listen for any sound over the racing beat of her own heart. Breathing as deeply as she could, she sensed she was alone out here and suddenly she really didn’t want to be. If only she had been born in a different bed. A comfortable squirely one, perhaps, where she could have grown up as merely a passably pretty young miss. Then she might have made friends, gone on impromptu picnics and danced the night away at country balls with eager young gentlemen in search of a comfortable wife.

Dreaming wouldn’t get her out of this endless forest and now it was getting dark. It took all her resolution to face the endless isolation and strange twilight noises without giving in to her fears. Lucky it was summer, she told herself, and this was England so no wolves or bears were running about the forest hungry for a well-fed young aristocrat. Of course there were still human wolves, as she had found out earlier today, but best not to think of them.

Freya struggled to see further than a foot in front of her nose and came to the unwelcome conclusion that she would have to find a suitably dry tree and curl up under it for the night, before she fell flat on her face into some sharp and clinging bush that would snare her fast in the darkness, or cut her to ribbons when she tried to escape. Failing anything better, it might be as well to stop before she did more damage.

Hesitating as she fought what felt like an ancient terror of being trapped in the forest by night, she snuffed the air like one of Bowland’s hunting dogs and caught an elusive flare of scent made up of wood-smoke and manure and perhaps even a garden that told her she wasn’t so far away from humanity after all. Unsure if that was good or bad, given the horrors of her day, she tried to creep closer as softly as she could. Shivering like a nervous racehorse as full darkness brought the threatening chill of night with it, she hesitated in mid-stride and tripped over a protruding root and fell awkwardly into a heap of felled logs waiting to be split by the forester she was trying not to disturb. She tried her best to get up as she flailed around to find a prop in the dark and grasped yet another bramble instead.

With hot pain from her new scratches bringing tears to her eyes she made herself splay her hands palms down to push herself up and discovered she couldn’t endure any weight on her ankle as agony shot through it and she couldn’t hold back a grunt of pain. At last tears were streaming down her face unchecked at the misery of it all and she couldn’t seem to stop now she’d finally got started. Conscious of a huge and probably fearsome dog baying to be let out, so he could fight off the clumsy idiot come to attack him and his, she decided all she had left in her to do was to curl up as small as possible and hope she wasn’t about to be savaged.

Sure enough, the vast-sounding hound was unleashed by his probably terrified owner and she could hear him howling with eagerness. Now she heard the soft pound of huge paws on the echoing floor in this dry part of the forest and she let herself breathe in the surprisingly sweet scent of old leaves, lichen and earth in case it was the last thing she ever sensed. Almost wishing the rest of her senses hadn’t sprung into action now the darkness rendered her eyes useless, Freya heard the dog panting between growls and knew her fears were about to come true. Suppressing an irrational plea not to hurt her, she stiffened and waited as it bounded up to her and at least terror had stopped her crying. Almost resigned to feel its huge teeth close on her flesh, she heard a gentlemanly snuffle, then a puzzled whine as the huge beast lay down beside her and sniffed politely at her wildly disordered curls where she had buried her face in her arms in instinctive defence.

Chapter Two

Daring to raise her head half an inch from her sheltering arms, Freya ventured a hesitant look in the direction of a vast sigh, as the large hound decided it didn’t understand humans at all and seemed about to go to sleep. She couldn’t actually see much, but it was enough to know the animal was as large as its bark indicated. Wishing she knew more about dogs and her mama hadn’t been so afraid of them that she wouldn’t have the smallest lapdog in the house, Freya wondered how you made friends with an animal the size of a small horse.

She hesitantly held out a still-shaking hand and he sniffed it obligingly before putting his head on his paws and sighing once again as if all the cares of the world lay on his doggy shoulders. Biting back what she assumed would be a hysterical chuckle, she risked pushing herself up on to her knees before the shock of pain in her ankle made her collapse in an inelegant heap and wish she was brave enough to cuddle up to this apparently benign dog for comfort.

‘What have we got here then, Atlas old boy?’ a deep voice rumbled out of the darkness and nearly made Freya jump out of her skin.

‘Who the devil are you?’ she snapped, finally feeling anger burn away the tears and shock of these last horrible hours.

‘I think it’s the host’s prerogative to ask that question,’ he replied with lazy indifference to a lady’s plight and she wondered if that burst of fury had been such a good idea when her safety and possible future might lie in this man’s hands.

‘You can ask, but I’m not promising I’ll answer,’ she muttered, supposedly to herself, but from the deep chuckle it won from him, he had amazing hearing.

‘Let’s start with what you’re doing lying in the middle of my favourite coppice and work it out from there, shall we?’

‘No, I didn’t have the least idea it was yours and you should keep it in better order if you don’t expect strangers to trip over things in the dark and do themselves an injury.’

‘Had I known you were coming, my lady, I would have made sure everything was shipshape and neat. As it is, you’ll have to excuse a working man for being just that.’

She almost leapt at that satirical ‘my lady’ and asked how he knew who she was, but stopped herself just in time when she realised her normal haughty manner had sparked his sarcasm and she should be more conciliatory, under the circumstances.

‘I’m sorry, it’s been a very long day,’ she managed more graciously.

‘Clearly, so let’s get you inside and at least fed and watered, even if comfortable is beyond hope for a lady such as you with my slender means. It’s far too dark to put you on the road to wherever you were going before you got lost now,’ he said gently, as if he could hear the fear and horror in her voice despite her best efforts.

‘I can’t walk,’ she explained blankly.

‘I hesitate to ask how you got so far from civilisation then,’ he teased as if it didn’t really matter how she got here, here she was and he would deal with her as best he could.

‘I fell over,’ she explained earnestly and wondered why it felt so tempting to give up fighting at last and let him take over.

‘Better for you perhaps if you’d done so sooner,’ she thought she heard him mutter, but it was lost in the sensation of his touch, as if he was learning her by feel since he’d failed to bring a lantern with him.

‘Where does it hurt?’ he asked and she marvelled that the authority in his voice had her pointing to her ankle, feeling more foolish than ever when she realised he couldn’t see her in the dark.

‘My ankle,’ she said gruffly and yelped as he found out for himself which one.

Atlas whined his puzzlement that his master was hurting the surprise human he’d found him, then settled at a soothing word.

‘I hope you’re not heavy,’ the man said as he rose to his haunches beside her and it felt as if he was towering over her as he insinuated strong hands under her legs and shoulders and lifted her in his mighty arms.

‘Goodness!’ Freya managed weakly as she found herself airborne. ‘If you’d only let me lean on your shoulder, I’m sure I could manage to walk.’

‘It would take all night,’ he told her and strode along the forest path with her in his arms as easily as if it was clear daylight.

‘It’s unladylike,’ she muttered as she listened for the almost silent pad of Atlas’s feet on the forest floor, surprised to find she already liked the huge animal and wanted his warmth and proximity as she didn’t dare covet that of his master.

‘Probably, but we don’t worry too much about such delicate notions out here in the wilds,’ he told her as if familiar with the dictates of polite society, which seemed unlikely.

Come to think of it, she’d taken him for one of her own kind when he first spoke and perhaps that accounted for this feeling she could finally relax and let a gentleman take care of her. It had been a very trying day, she assured herself, and she was probably wishing the world was how she wanted it to be. If she got through the night in one piece, no doubt it would lurch back to its proper order by morning. For now it felt oddly pleasant to be borne along in a strong man’s arms. She could feel powerful muscles and sinews few gentlemen of her acquaintance could boast as she settled against his broad shoulder with a contented sigh.

‘There,’ he said at last, as he rounded what seemed a deliberately serpentine last twist in the path and the faint glow of a small curtained window made her open her eyes wider. ‘As well it was no further, perhaps, or you would have been fast asleep,’ he whispered as he shifted her to open his door.

‘What a cosy room,’ she managed sincerely as she took in the still-glowing fire and companionable-looking chairs on either side of the fire.

Clearly his wife had gone to bed and that was why he was murmuring, for fear of waking her after a long day of hard work. She admired his consideration and let herself envy his lady for a moment, surprised how appealing the notion of being cared for by a very masculine husband at the end of a tiring day seemed to someone who’d never done a hard day’s work in her life.

‘It could do with being a little larger. With myself and Atlas to accommodate, one of us always ends up a little too far from the fire for comfort,’ he said and gently set her down in the smaller chair before she could demand to get there on her own one foot and a stick.

‘It seems truly comfortable to me,’ she admitted as she shivered at the idea of all that lay outside this warm room and how deeply uncomfortable her day had been so far.

‘We can argue about that when we try to decide how to find you a respectable place to sleep in such a confined space later,’ he told her as he sank to his knees in front of her and insisted on removing her stained shoe.

He gave her an impatient look when she batted his hand away from her torn stocking and insisted on undoing her own garter after he turned his back.

‘Done?’ he asked irritably and stared into the fire as if it annoyed him nearly as much as his uninvited guest.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, once she wasn’t biting her lip to conceal how much that small movement hurt her.

‘Good, now let me have a proper look at it,’ he said, as if mentally girding his loins for an unpleasant task. ‘This will probably hurt, but I would be grateful if you could manage not to scream, since my children are asleep upstairs. They would normally sleep through cannonfire, but I doubt a lady screeching at the top of her voice could fail to wake them and I don’t need more complications.’

So he had children, did he? He’d made no mention of his wife so it seemed likely he was a widower and she went back to wondering if she was as safe after all. Yet there was no air of menace to this man such as she had felt so terrifyingly earlier today from the highwaymen and, once or twice, on the dance floors of Mayfair when a so-called gentleman insisted on brushing too close as they moved through the figures of the dance together. This man might not overtly threaten a young lady’s honour, but he had surprising presence for the rough woodsman his clothes, cottage and everything but his voice proclaimed him to be. He sank to his knees in front of her again and she was determined to show him not all ladies screeched and fainted at the slightest provocation, or even, she revised with a muffled gasp, quite a lot of provocation.

He had dark-gold hair, she catalogued desperately, as the sickening pain of having her injury even this gently prodded surged through her with an oily chill. There was a touch of auburn to it in the firelight and it made for a distinctive contrast with the darkness of his brows and the golden tan of an outdoorsman under his end-of-day stubble of whiskers. He had strong rather than patrician features and a bony nose, but there was a hint of humour about his expressive mouth that saved his face seeming austere as a medieval monk’s.

Since she had avoided his gaze when they came into the mellow light of what smelt like a luxurious wax candle rather than the stink of tallow she expected, she had no idea of the colour of his eyes. Such faint light probably wouldn’t show it anyway, even if she somehow found the courage to meet his shrewdly assessing gaze, but he had the most amazingly long and thick dark lashes she had ever seen on a man. Meanwhile, the touch of his work-worn hand on her tender foot was surprisingly gentle and she let herself watch him prod and probe her poor battered feet to divert herself from the pain and noticed his fingers were long and sensitive, as well as clearly strong and very fit for whatever purpose he set them by day.

She took in the scent of him without the sort of indelicate snuffle she had allowed herself on smelling smoke from the blessed fire that was now thawing out her aching limbs when she was still in darkness and she decided he shared that oddly clean smell of wood-smoke and deep woodland she had appreciated with what she thought might be her last breath. Add to that a touch of soap and clean man and she concluded he washed of a night, perhaps at the same time as he bathed his children, so he could leap into action of a morning with only an early morning shave.

Only just restraining herself from adding touch to her exploration of him, she pulled her hand back in time not to explore his overlong thatch of curly hair and see if it felt as alive and wilful as she thought it must be under her probing fingers. Perhaps that was why he lived out here in the middle of nowhere, because the family who had made sure he was educated and taught the manners and speech of a gentleman then found they couldn’t control him either. He looked like a man who went his own way, so why would that way bring him to a humble woodsman’s cottage in the heart of the most remote forest he could find?

Everything about the man was a puzzle and when he met her eyes with cool resignation, she could see that he knew it. Whatever shade his eyes were there was no cruel, hot greed in them as there had been in the eyes of the men who attacked her coach today and those of her parliamentary suitor. She had been desperately frightened and on the verge of a very un-Freya-like attack of the vapours all day, but suddenly the world seemed to rock back on to its proper axis.

‘You’re probably wishing you’d never found me lying out there now,’ she said as he knelt at her feet like a subject king.

‘Shall we say you could prove a mixed blessing, Perdita, and leave it at that?’ he said as he rose to his feet and moved into what she presumed was a scullery from the cool air that wafted in and reminded her how much night there was out there to be terrified of.

‘Isn’t she the heroine of A Winter’s Tale?’ she questioned and caught herself presuming cottage dwellers didn’t read Shakespeare. ‘I’m sorry to sound so astonished,’ she added as he reappeared with a bowl and some rags. ‘Out here in the midst of nowhere, I dare say you read to pass the long winter hours when you cannot work.’

‘I dare say I do,’ he said uninformatively and she began to realise there were areas of his odd way of life he refused to lay open for her to read and became even more intrigued.

‘Pray, what is your name?’ she asked with some of Lady Freya’s haughty assurance.

He raised his eyebrows and went on soaking rags in the icy water as if only the slight wind getting up outside had disturbed the peace of the night, other than Atlas’s lusty snores.

‘It will seem odd if I address you as “sir” or “you”, will it not?’ she said in this new Perdita’s softer tone and found she liked it better as well.

‘You can call me Orlando,’ he said at last, kneeling at her feet again and startling a gasp out of her as he bound the ice-cold wet rags about her flinching foot.

‘Oh, so we’re galloping through As You Like It now, are we?’ she ventured when the initial shock had passed and she felt every muscle and bone in her misused foot sigh in relief.

‘We are wherever we choose to be,’ he said quizzically, then got to his feet and looked down at her as if he could read her life history in her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, fervently hoping he couldn’t.

‘For giving you the liberty not to be yourself, or doing all I can to relieve the pain?’

‘Perhaps for both?’

‘You’re very welcome, lady,’ he told her with a courtly bow that seemed as sharply at odds with his humble circumstances as his educated accent.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said with a regal gesture and a wry smile in return.

‘Now there’s only the problem of where you can bed down for the night to deal with,’ Rich said, turning away from the temptation of this suddenly enchanting lost lady.

Left to his own wayward devices, he might linger half the night talking with her if he wasn’t careful. She intrigued him with the odd contrast of dowager queen and lonely hoyden she seemed to switch between as her moods changed, or he got a little too close to the truth of who she might be for her comfort. He’d seen such mischief in her extraordinary amber eyes just now that he knew she was far more complex a person than either role allowed. He wished now that he hadn’t plonked the candle so close to her that he could see the true glory of her unusual eyes when he rose from attending to her foot by its flaring light and felt as if he might fall headlong into them if he wasn’t very careful indeed.

‘If you can endure Atlas snoring all night long on the rug next to it, I think you’d best take the box-bed in the corner. My son and daughter will bounce out of their own beds on to mine before the sun is hardly risen tomorrow and I don’t think your ankle would like two wild animals stamping about on it if I lend you mine for the night and sleep here instead.’

‘After today it seems almost beyond wonderful to borrow such a cosy bed for the night. I defy any thief or rogue who found this place by an unlucky accident to get to me before he got to them, so I’m very happy that your dog will bear me company,’ his waif said cheerfully and clearly found his simple life an intriguing novelty.

After a few days his mundane existence would pall on a princess in hiding and he hoped he would be rid of her long before then, before they recklessly explored the daring female under all those rigidly correct manners of hers and complicated this inconvenient business even further.

‘I’ll make you a posset to take away the worst of the pain and while it’s brewing I can make up the bed for you,’ he said, in what he hoped was the detached tone of a dutiful host.

‘Thank you, Orlando, you’re treating me like royalty,’ she said politely and he told himself it was a good thing the laughing rogue of a few moments ago was back in hiding.

He preferred her withdrawn and coolly polite, he assured himself. He preferred any youthful and even remotely attractive young woman to stay at a distance nowadays. Indeed, he had felt no more than a soon-dismissed masculine reaction to any other woman since he first laid eyes on his darling Anna. It felt like a betrayal of his own beloved that a feral part of him wanted to know far more about Perdita than the colour of her eyes. After the unmatchable joy of making love to his wife, the rest of her sex had faded into friends, or lusty females to be avoided. He told himself feeling even a hint of hunger for this intriguing female was an insult to Anna’s memory.

‘Are you a wise man?’ she asked curiously as he went about the task of adding a pinch of this herb and a dot of that spice with a sweetening of honey to the pot over the fire until he had the right mix to bring her relief from pain, but not leave her drugged and lost in wild dreams.

‘Do you think I would be living miles away from my fellow creatures if I had an iota of sense, Perdita?’ he asked unwarily and saw reawakened curiosity light her fine eyes.

‘You might, if you had reason enough,’ she said shrewdly.

He distrusted the speculative glint in her eyes and set about finding what linens he had to spare for the box-bed that a previous owner of the cottage had built so well it was too much trouble to dismantle when they moved in. It had been all that was left, apart from most of the roof, the walls and part of the chimney, when he and Anna had found this place and claimed it for their own, since nobody else wanted it.

‘Maybe I don’t like company,’ he let himself mutter loudly enough for her to hear and felt a pang of guilt at the long Seaborne tradition of hospitality he was betraying.

‘Next time I run away from a pack of desperate and dangerous rogues, I’ll be sure to bolt in the opposite direction,’ she said with a cool social lightness that set him at a distance and he was contrary enough to dislike it.

‘Were they really so desperate?’

‘Of course they were—why else would I have run so far and so fast I got completely lost to avoid them?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he had the grace to admit, ‘you have been through an appalling ordeal and all that matters is that you recover from your hurts and we somehow manage to reunite you with your friends and family as soon as we can. They must be desperately worried about you by now, so I could make sure a letter is delivered to inform them you’re safe and reasonably unharmed, if you would care to write one.’

She was silent for a long moment and he began to wonder if she had fallen asleep by the fire. He reluctantly turned to look at her in time to see her shake her head regretfully and look a little mournful and sorry for herself for the first time.

‘There is no one,’ she said bleakly. ‘It was a hired coach and the relatives I left behind will not miss me. I thank you, sir, but I will not put you to so much trouble on my behalf.’

‘You were travelling alone?’ he heard himself ask disapprovingly and wondered when he’d begun to care what rich and overindulged young ladies did to put themselves in danger nowadays.

‘I’m of age, why should I not?’ she asked as if a young lady hiring a carriage and travelling without either companion or protector was perfectly normal.

‘For the very good reason it turned out to be such a disaster, I should think. You would have done better to travel post and enjoy the protection of an armed guard and the King’s mails.’

‘There’s no post road to my destination.’

‘Which is?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Do you expect me to set you on your way to the nearest village in the morning so you can blithely limp off into more ill-advised and plainly ridiculous escapades? How can I turn my back on a disaster in petticoats like you and leave you to wander about the country with no more idea how to go on than my three-year-old daughter?’

‘I know how to conduct myself,’ she informed him in her best mistress-of-all-she-surveyed voice.

‘So well you just informed a complete stranger nobody will notice if you disappear for good, so I could make a quick getaway after foully doing away with you or having my wicked way with you, whatever you have to say about it? I begin to think my Sally has more sense in her currently very little finger than you have in your whole head, Princess Perdita.’

Chapter Three

For a moment the girl looked disconcerted by the realisation he was right and she’d put herself totally in his power. She rapidly rebuilt her innate assurance she was right and the rest of the world wrong and drew herself up to give him a disdainful look worthy of his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Dettingham, in her most formidable glory. Wondering if this aristocrat had ever met the one lady who would be able to stare her down and stand none of her nonsense, Rich tried not to admire the stony dignity she was facing him with. For some reason he liked his granddam a lot more than the rest of the family did and found his unwanted visitor’s steely poise unexpectedly endearing.

‘I trust you,’ she finally admitted very quietly. He felt another burden settle on his shoulders and suppressed a gusty sigh.

‘You can,’ he promised easily enough. ‘I’m no killer and can imagine nothing more repulsive than forcing myself on a woman against her will.’

‘Clearly my judgement isn’t as bad as you think, then,’ she argued gallantly, but he could see the blue shadows under her lioness’s eyes and the stark pallor of her face and knew it was only her steadfast spirit that held her upright in her chair right now.

‘Whether it is or not, mine currently tells me you’re very near the end of your tether, Perdita,’ he told her in much the same tone he used on his stubborn little daughter when she was about to fall asleep on her feet after a long day of mischief and mayhem.

For a moment she raised her chin and looked ready to swear she was fresh as a daisy and ready for her next set of misadventures, then she literally drooped, as if a great wave of exhaustion was about to claim her, much as it did his Sally, who had been known to fall asleep in her dinner only a second after insisting she wasn’t a bit tired. Afraid she might tumble headlong into dreamland in a similar manner, he scooped her out of the chair and up into his arms once more.

‘Quiet,’ he ordered when her eyes seemed about to cross with absolute weariness.

She glared at him instead and he admitted she had a very effective glare by nodding ruefully at the ceiling to remind her they weren’t the only people in the house who needed their sleep tonight. Feeling her relax against him for the short journey from his hearth to the box-bed, he felt that peculiar stir of interest in her as a very desirable young woman once more and sternly ordered his inner satyr back into retirement.

‘I’d best unwrap you and bandage that ankle properly for the night, or you’ll spend a very uncomfortable night in a damp bed,’ he said as he set her down on the side of the bed and knelt at her narrow, but sore and scratched feet once more to do so. ‘Keziah has an evil-smelling salve that will do wonders for these blisters. I’ll get some from her in the morning so it won’t be so painful for you to walk on them once your ankle has healed enough for you to hobble about on it.’

‘Who’s Keziah?’ she asked and he thought her words were saved from slurring into each other only by her stubborn determination to fight the waves of shock and exhaustion finally catching up with her.

‘Keep still,’ he demanded grimly as he realised he was going to have to unlace her gown and strip her, since she was beyond doing anything but pretending she wasn’t half-asleep. ‘Lift up,’ he ordered as if she really was Sally, and perhaps by believing that he could fool himself there wasn’t a mature and very desirable woman under his questing fingers and control his inner beast long enough to get her safely into bed and asleep.

Freya huffed and told herself it was like being back in her nursery, but she managed to raise herself from the feather mattress long enough to feel pain in her ankle and blisters on her feet and flinched when he undid her sash and the side-lacing of her gown, then stripped her once-fine sprigged-muslin gown off in one neat and practised swish that reminded her he had a little girl upstairs he evidently tended himself.

‘Have you other wounds you didn’t tell me about?’ he asked as she slumped back on the temptingly comfortable bed.

‘No,’ she said and had to stop herself tumbling back and falling asleep in front of him.

‘Then stand up as best you can and I’ll pull back the covers so you can finally lie down and rest,’ he ordered abruptly.

‘Yes, Papa,’ she murmured defiantly, but did as he said, trying not to notice that a hot shiver threatened to streak through her as he reached round her scantily clad person to do so.

‘Believe me, I don’t feel in the least bit fatherly towards you at the moment, Perdita,’ he warned gruffly.

Without visible effort he lifted her on to the clean cotton sheet covering the mattress before drawing the bedclothes over her and tucking her in as if it was far safer to have her covered up and neatly pinned into her bed for the night. Sighing with bliss at the feel of clean sheets and a comfortable bed, she opened her eyes long enough to mutter a thank you before tumbling headlong into unconsciousness between one word and the next.

‘You’re welcome, my lady,’ Rich whispered as he watched the strain leave her face and sleep smooth her features into someone softer and younger than she tried to pretend she was when awake.

Shaking his head at the contrariness of fate in bringing her to his door in such a state he couldn’t turn her away, he gestured to Atlas to come outside once more and relieve himself before they both settled down for the night. Reassured that his guest would hardly wake if a battalion of Boney’s soldiers began manoeuvres in his vegetable garden, he waited for Atlas in the cool of the late spring evening and tried to forget he had just put a very adult woman to bed in the corner of his living room and he couldn’t fairly be rid of her until she was strong enough to walk away.

If tonight was anything to go by, he would be raving mad by the end of the week that ankle probably needed for her to be able to put it to the ground for long without pain. He felt raw with unwanted longings, bewildered by the animal need he felt for a female he probably wouldn’t even have liked if he’d met her as humble woodsman to her regal lady of high birth and position. The beast in any man could sometimes shock him, but his seemed to have taken on a life of its own tonight, even though he’d thought his Annabelle had tamed it and spoilt him for any other woman while she was about it.

Urges were there to be controlled, he assured himself, and his high-born waif had been through far too much to suffer from his, even if he wanted her to. He would offer her shelter, food and warmth until she was well, then he would set her back on her way with a huge sigh of relief. A week with a woman he wanted but couldn’t have seemed like a lifetime at the moment, but Rich sighed morosely, whistled Atlas back inside and stole upstairs as quietly as a thief in the night. Closing the door of his narrow bedroom on the world and trying to sleep after a long day working hard, caring for his children and rescuing grumpy young ladies from their own folly, he tossed and turned until exhaustion finally overtook him and all the occupants of the isolated cottage deep in Longborough Forest finally slept.

‘Is she going to sleep for a hundred years like the princess in the forest?’ a shrill little whisper sounded so close to Freya’s ear that she felt as if she was swimming from fathoms’ depth of sleep to meet it coming the other way.

‘Of course not, silly, that’s a fairytale,’ a slightly less shrill, but still very young voice replied scornfully. ‘She’s probably dead.’

She wondered if the second child might be right for a fleeting second as she tried to make sense of an unfamiliar bed and a world she’d forgotten to be terrified of while lost in slumber. The throbbing pain in her ankle, half-a-dozen lesser ones and the stiffness of her aching limbs made her feel half a century older than she was, but informed her she was alive and suffering for all the things she’d done yesterday to stay that way.

‘Is not so, she just blinked.’

Freya felt the second child’s breath on her cheek as he, for somehow she thought he sounded like a boy, stood on tiptoe to peer at her inquisitively, as if he rather hoped she might be his first real dead body and his sister was imagining that movement. Forcing open eyes heavy with sleep, she met the boy’s brilliantly blue eyes at very close range and wondered if she might be in heaven after all. At first glance he could have sat for a cherub on an altarpiece; a second look showed the mischief and verve in his bright blue eyes and told her a very human boy was gazing at her as if he’d never seen anyone quite so odd.

‘Move,’ the tot at his side ordered and swatted him with the carved dog in her hand with such vigour Freya winced on his behalf. ‘I can’t see,’ the little girl explained as if it justified anything she must do to change that sad state of affairs.

‘I’ll put Pod in the bonfire next time we have one and burn him to cinders,’ the boy said as he rubbed his bruises and tried to grab her weapon.

‘No, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t,’ the furious little girl ordered at the top of her voice and seemed about to bellow herself into a storm of tears at the very idea.

‘I thought I told you two limbs of Satan to let the lady sleep,’ Freya’s rescuer of the night before interrupted what might well be an inexhaustible tantrum, given the way the tot had screwed up her face and seemed about to settle into a fine dramatic performance.

‘We did, Dada, we did,’ the little girl said with such a purposefully winsome smile Freya felt her heart melt at the sheer brass-faced audacity of her.

‘I dare say you did, for a whole minute after I took my eyes off you so I could take that thorn out of Atlas’s foot you said you were so upset about. Next time I shall have to leave it in, if that is what you get up to as soon as my back is turned.’

‘Oh, no, Papa,’ she begged and real emotion in her clear green eyes revealed what a fine little actress she was the rest of the time.

‘No, for I wouldn’t let a kind and decent animal like Atlas suffer for the misdeeds of a naughty little girl and her big brother, both of whom are old enough to know better.’

‘We wanted to see if she was dead or not,’ her brother said earnestly.

‘As you woke her up to find out, you now know otherwise and may say your best hello, then beg the lady’s pardon,’ the now clean-shaven and disturbingly attractive Orlando said as coldly as he could with two pairs of wide and innocent eyes gazing at him as if their owners never had a wicked thought in their lives. ‘I’m your father, don’t forget. I know you two imps were sent from Hades to plague the rest of us, so there’s no point pretending to be little angels with me. Make your curtsy, Sally, and you, young man, can give the lady your best bow for waking her when a big boy of more than five ought to do as he’s told by now.’

‘We’re very sorry for disturbing your rest, lady,’ the boy said with a quaint courtly bow that instantly enslaved Freya.

‘Sally?’ the tough little girl’s father prompted and it looked for a moment as if he might have a revolution on his hands.

‘We’re thorry,’ she said, as if expecting them to fall for the lisped sweetness of her false words so hard they would forget the rest.

‘And?’ her father prompted ruthlessly.

Sally sighed, a long-suffering gust that said Do I really have to? A quick nod from her father told her she wasn’t going to get away without one, so she attempted a wobbly curtsy before plumping down on the floor with an annoyed huff.

‘I can’t do it,’ she informed them crossly and sat there with her arms folded over her chest and a furious frown on her face as if it must be someone else’s fault.

‘You’ll learn, if we both live long enough,’ her unsympathetic father said and plucked her up, set her on her feet, then ignored her mutinous expression as he frowned at Freya.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he ordered brusquely before leaving the house with his children firmly in tow.

‘Well, really,’ Freya huffed at Atlas, who decided he preferred peace and quiet to being with his master this morning and settled on his rug with a relieved sigh.

Reluctantly amused by him, his master and the determined son and daughter of the house, Freya lay back and almost did as she was told. Deciding after five minutes she was now fully awake, she fought her many aches and pains to sit up in bed and wondered if the room would spin round or not if she tried to get up. When it stayed obligingly as it was, she risked pushing back the covers and, examining the grubby hem of her shift, she marvelled at herself for sleeping in all her dirt even after such a demanding day as she had had yesterday.

Wrinkling her nose at the idea of somehow getting herself clean, then having to put the mired and torn gown of yesterday back on, she carefully slid her good foot to the floor and stood on one leg. Her body felt stiff and sore and her ankle throbbed sickeningly, but she was whole and alive and the rumble in her stomach reminded her she was also desperately hungry. First she needed soap and water and a comb—oh, and a privy, her body reminded her as normal everyday needs collided with brisk reality. The expectation that all those necessities would be provided for Lady Freya Buckle without question made her feel alien and suddenly very alone and forsaken in this cramped cottage in the woods. She looked about for inspiration and saw only that the place was neat as a pin and surprisingly free of dust and dirt.

Hopping to the door ‘Orlando’ had opened last night to fetch cold water and binding for her foot, she opened it and found a spartan lean-to scullery with a cold and empty copper and two large buckets of water standing on a scrubbed deal table. There was an empty bowl and a metal cup on a long handle that she supposed must be used to scoop up water without the risk of spilling most of it by tipping the heavy bucket. Her nose wrinkled as she wondered how it would feel to wash in freezing cold water and she shrugged and looked about her for some soap and anything to use as a towel because even that was preferable to staying dirty for another minute. Cursing her absent host for being so remorselessly tidy, she ran a half-used washing ball that smelt of lavender and summer to earth in a box on the windowsill, then wondered if she could hop back to her bed and draw the curtains while she washed, or simply do so here when that would mean spilling most of the contents of the bowl on her way.

Improvising with the rough piece of unbleached cloth he probably used for wiping the dishes for a towel, she made sure the door was firmly shut before unlacing her short corset and stripping off her ragged and dirty shift. The blessed relief of cool water and remarkably good soap on her skin made her sigh with pleasure and she washed the sweat and fear and grime from her face and upper torso before attending to her filthy and scratched legs and feet. It wasn’t easy to get yourself thoroughly clean while standing on one leg, she found, and a sponge or flannel would have been a wonderful help.

Frowning at the very feel of her still half-pinned-up hair and the wild bird’s nest the rest of it felt as bits tried to escape while the rest was still in a knot, she searched for her hairpins and piled them up on the table and sighed with relief when the whole heavy mass tumbled down. Oh, the sheer pleasure and relief of feeling the uncombed length of it flow down her back and the pull and tangle subside a little. Freya went back to her filthy feet and legs and found another bowl to fill with clean water when the soap scum and mire in the first seemed too disgusting to use any more.

At last she felt as clean as she could make herself without a hot bath and shut off the blissful thought of one of those with a regretful sigh at the very moment the door to the little kitchen-cum-scullery opened and Orlando strode in. Horrified and at the same time oddly frozen in her position, half-propped and half-sitting on the table so she could wash her good foot and take the weight off her bad one, she blushed so hotly it felt as if every inch of her must be covered in shame. Peeping at him from behind her tumbling mass of hair, she saw an arrested, almost shocked look on his face—as if he’d been hit on the head for no good reason. This time she noted numbly that his eyes were as clear and green as his little daughter’s by daylight and full of contrary emotions as they fixed on her like a sailor sighting land after a long voyage.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he finally managed in a deeper and huskier voice than normal and turned sharply about and was out of the door before she could think of a word to say.

Since she still couldn’t, it was probably as well he’d disappeared faster than a scalded cat, she decided, making herself finish her makeshift toilette. She was contemplating her grubby chemise and shift with disgust when the door opened the smallest distance it took for a vigorous male hand to squeeze through it, then drop clean replacements on the floor before shutting it firmly once more. For some odd reason it seemed funny and Freya gratefully pulled on the chemise as she tried not to giggle hysterically at the latest act in the farce she and Orlando seemed to be playing.

She looked ruefully at the shift before scrambling into it and decided his wife must have been considerably shorter than herself. It seemed she would have to wear her own half-ruined gown to preserve any hint of decency, if only she knew what he’d done with it. The next time the door did its remarkable trick he produced a cotton bedcover she took silently and wrapped round her body like a bath towel, before stiffening her shockingly naked shoulders and hopping out to face him as best she could. It took every ounce of well-honed Buckle pride to meet his eyes as if he hadn’t just seen her in the same state of nature in which she came into the world.

‘I should like to borrow a comb,’ she said loftily.

‘These belonged to my wife,’ he said with so little expression in his green gaze as he handed her a brush and comb she almost forgot to be deeply mortified for a moment.

‘Thank you,’ she returned and raised her eyebrows at him to indicate he should now make himself scarce if he was any sort of a gentleman at all.

‘I have been promised an outfit that I doubt very much is up to your usual standards whilst your own gown is being washed and mended. I will see you have it as soon as possible now you are up and awake,’ he said stiffly and took himself off.

Freya crossed to the bed with more painful effort than she liked to think about and sank down on it before pulling the curtain across behind her so she would have the belated illusion of privacy. She examined the brush as if it might give her some clue to the woman who once owned it, but not even one stray strand remained to tell her what colour hair the lady had rejoiced in. Freya sighed and began the long and frustrating business of combing out the wild tangles from her own heavy mane and heartily wished for the ladies’ maid she had left at Bowland with not even a second thought how she would shift for herself without her. Of course she knew how to comb her own hair, everyone knew that, but she thought of the gentle patience little Mercy Dawkins had always shown her exacting mistress and felt oddly ashamed as she teased knot after knot from her rebellious locks.

She wasn’t a fool, she decided as distance and the oddest of circumstances made her think hard about her day-to-day self, but Lady Freya Buckle had managed to go through life so far without thinking too hard about herself or those around her. The loss of her grandfather had hit her far harder than that of her own father and the sudden death of her mother two years earlier had shaken her world to its very foundations. Apart from those two heavy losses, the only event that had caused her even the mildest suffering until yesterday was the marriage of his Grace the Duke of Dettingham to Miss Jessica Pendle, and that certainly wasn’t because her heart was broken.

No, she decided now with a preoccupied frown as she finally tracked down the piece of twig caught in the depths of her worst knot so far and set about removing it without pulling a hank of hair out with it, the fact that he preferred a lame spinster to the Earl of Buckland’s pretty daughter had been the first indication the rest of the world didn’t share her conviction she was entitled to all the best things in life that society had to offer her. For a while she had been so offended and furious she hadn’t asked herself why Jack Seaborne, Duke of Dettingham, preferred damaged Miss Pendle to her pristine and noble self.

She and her mother had been a little too sure Lady Freya would be the next Duchess and the subsequent Little Season had been dogged by sniggers and snide whispers as she tried to pretend she didn’t care that the new Duchess was still on a protracted wedding journey about the Lakes with her besotted husband. The most eligible bachelors had begun to slide out of dances with her and find themselves engaged when Lady Bowland organised an elegant supper party or visit to the theatre and Freya had somehow become a laughing stock to the very people she had so wanted to impress with her ancient lineage and proud good looks when she made her début.

It had taken Lady Bowland’s death and two years of living at Bowland, instead of comfortably ensconced in the Dower House with Mama, to finally make her realise she was not some entitled being, blessed by every god of good fortune at her christening. Being stripped of the advantages of wealth and rank had forced her into her true self: Lady Freya, the glowing hope of her mother and grandfather’s wildest dreams, was gone. Here sat a woman who must find out what she really wanted from life before it was too late to achieve it and suddenly she was determined to find out what that was as soon as possible.

She squirmed on the disarrayed bed and tried to tell herself it was the constant nag of pain from her ankle making her so restless, even as her fingers patiently continued the task she’d set them. It wasn’t the fact she’d been seen mother-naked by Orlando, but she had to admit the sneaky idea it could be very pleasant indeed if he was entirely undressed too haunted her like a bad dream. She shifted impatiently again and had to suppress a yelp of agony as her injured foot reminded her how desperate her current situation was. Clearly it behoved her to behave like a lady for however long it took her to heal, then depart with as much of her tattered reputation and self-esteem intact as possible.

Despite her burning cheeks and the shock she should be suffering from, she wondered how she had looked to Orlando and didn’t even notice her busy fingers had found the last knot in her nut-brown hair and she was now combing the heavy softness of it as if her life depended on it. Even allowing for the flattery her rank and fortune attracted while the ton laughed at her behind her back, she knew she was pretty enough and reasonably well formed. She was shaped like a nymph rather than a goddess and some might consider her slight and unformed, of course. Yet perhaps some men preferred subtlety to the obvious charms of more buxom women, she let herself wonder. After all, her legs were long and slender and her waist small above the long line of her hips. Feeling as guilty as if she was testing the ebb and flow of those very curves with her own hands to see if they could please a lover, she gasped at the thought of Orlando ever watching her with a lover’s eyes and told herself it was with horror at the very idea.

Chapter Four

No use trying to pretend any longer she was essentially cold and passionless when she wasn’t even deceiving herself. The leap of hot and vigorous fire at the heart of her, the quickening of what felt like every inch of the body, made this new Freya feel very different from the old one. Not sure she approved of the change, she laid down the wide-toothed comb and took up the brush with the vague idea soothing her abused hair into shining smoothness might somehow turn her back into the safe and certain Freya she had been before she found Dukes didn’t obligingly fall into her lap like apples from a tree.

She had never felt this hot burn of curiosity towards the tall and strikingly handsome Duke of Dettingham, of course, but had assured herself during that June when he’d set up a house party at Ashburton New Place to choose his Duchess that she was born and bred for marriage to the highest in the land. He was well enough and so was she and she assumed that would make their marriage bed a bearable place to beget a tribe of little lords and ladies.

Some determined remnant of the old Freya whispered she was right, but the idea of such a marriage with Jack Seaborne now seemed icy cold as she sat on the lowly bed of a lowly man and fought not to think about sharing it with him. Shorn of the stubble of the day before, his face had been sharply defined in the soft north light of the shadowy scullery. It wasn’t as if he was starkly handsome like Jack Seaborne, she told herself crossly, or romantically dashing like the Earl of Calvercombe, who had married Jack’s lovely cousin Persephone so soon after the ducal wedding that rumours of a dashing scandal had flown delightedly about the ton for weeks. Even young Telemachus Seaborne, known as Marcus, would outshine Orlando if he had cared to shine in anyone but his stormy-looking young wife’s eyes, and everyone knew theirs was another love match.

Why on earth she was sitting here dwelling on the family who had begun her descent into the ranks of the unmarriageable she had no idea. Perhaps it was because Orlando struck her as a man of suppressed power, she suddenly realised, and her instincts were probably better than she’d realised back when so much was done for her she had never needed to test them. Or at least she hoped they were, because if he wasn’t an honourable man she could still be in deep trouble. It was obvious he had deliberately marooned himself in the heart of this forest where nobody would find him except by the purest chance, but he didn’t strike her as a man who would run from trouble. She could imagine him meeting it with guile and reckless courage, but not hiding where he could do no good except to his family and there, she decided with a triumphant sense of those instincts leading her well, was the key to the whole mystery.

For the wife she sensed had been more dearly loved by her Orlando than Lady Freya Buckle had ever dared dream of being loved by a man, he would have crossed oceans and fought every battle it took to keep her safe. The reason he was still here now had to mean there was some sort of threat to his children as well and she shook her head and frowned, dubious at the idea anyone would harm such bright and hopeful little mysteries in miniature. Had he eloped with Mrs Orlando in the teeth of powerful opposition? she wondered. He was clearly raised a gentleman, so maybe he had been tutor to a noble family and run off with some great lord’s daughter? Or, worse still, could it have been the man’s own lady he stole away from him? She would have been the man’s legal chattel and he couldn’t raise a bill to divorce her in the House of Lords, or drag her home by her hair to fulfil her duty and bear him a boy instead, if he couldn’t actually find her in the first place.

Freya tried to be shocked by the very idea of such scandalous goings on, but found she couldn’t blame the woodsman’s wife if she had decided she preferred him to some fat old noble her family had forced her to marry. She had nearly been the victim of such a conspiracy herself, although she lacked the gallant rescuer who would make that marriage to the fat politician irrelevant. Finding herself guilty of the most shocking immorality as she wondered why the woman couldn’t have taken a handsome and vigorous young lover to make up for the lack of both in her marriage bed, Freya reminded herself this was all speculation and even the prospect of a one-day lover could not have reconciled her to marriage with Bowland’s latest repellent protégé.

Maybe Orlando was a follower of Rousseau, or a romantic philosopher-poet who preferred a simple life wrenched from the forest by his own hand? Yet the picture of him, austere and intent as he stood and watched her for one long moment with hot green eyes telling of unimagined delights in his bed, argued he had once been a more rash and hedonistic adventurer than any idealistic poet or shrinking recluse could ever be. For a quick and wickedly exciting minute she knew how it felt to be urgently wanted by a compelling rake. Then he doused the lust and longing and promise sparking between them before it could become a blaze and walked away as if she was dressed from head to toe in propriety.

Dropping the brush on the rumpled bedclothes as if it had become red hot, Freya fought off the most ridiculous jealousy of the woman who once owned it. Her now wildly flying imagination invited her to visualise Orlando brushing her hair for her with long, sensual strokes as he played with the heavy locks and arranged them over her naked body to his satisfaction, before satisfying her as royally as a woman had ever been satisfied by her man. Except she had no idea how it felt to be sensually seduced and satiated, she reminded herself sternly.

Nor did she want to know, if her lover had to be this penniless ex-pirate who hid in the woods from his own kind. A burn of curiosity tightened her suddenly very sensitive nipples under the bedcover toga and made her squirm against the surprisingly comfortable mattress under her, as she sought to douse the inquisitive fire at her feminine core. She told herself she didn’t want a rustic lover with two bold and enterprising children dependent on him as both father and mother, who were likely to resent even the smallest sharing of his attention with her. As soon as she could put her foot to the floor with any degree of comfort she would walk out of here and not look back, ever.

So why did it feel as if she was on sabbatical from her duty once she’d plaited her hair a little clumsily and tried to put her foot to the floor once more? Pain shot through her as sharp and almost sickening as it had been last night when she first injured herself. Fool, she castigated herself as she tottered across the room in search of the next necessity of life and peered out of the door for a privy or conveniently secluded bush to relieve herself behind, since the problem was becoming urgent. Spotting a rustic shelter some yards upwind of the house, she blessed the fact she hadn’t tumbled into his cesspit last night and told herself Lady Freya Buckle could not afford to expect comfort in this most basic form of country life. She hopped towards the honeysuckle-covered shelter with her flapping bedcover grasped to her body with one hand, while she used the other to prop herself upright with a stout stick left leaning by the back door for her with a consideration she refused to find disarming.

It didn’t matter if he had been sensitive enough to her needs to let her get on with learning to do as much for herself as she could. Yet Lady Freya seemed to be fading into a stiff caricature of herself as she embraced being Perdita instead. She reflected on William Shakespeare’s story of a foundling princess left to be brought up by peasants. How would she have been now if she had been taken from Bowland Castle in some fanciful start of her father’s that her mother had been unfaithful and his despised daughter was not his child? A nagging suspicion she might be relieved not to be Lady Freya Buckle seemed unthinkable, considering her mother brought her up so proud of the ancient name she bore.

Luckily the privy turned out to be surprisingly clean and smelt of tarred wood and earth as much as it did of humanity. Observing the strange device her host had rigged up for his family, she shovelled what looked like dried earth into the hole after herself and hoped that would cover everything, then limped back towards the cottage feeling considerably better, if now left with one less distraction from being very hungry indeed.

‘We’re having Percy for breakfast,’ the boy popped out of the trees at the other side of the clearing to inform her mysteriously and the little girl doggedly caught up with a squeal of triumph, as if she spent most of her life following her big brother about just in time to watch him disappear again.

‘Who is Percy?’ Freya asked distractedly as the delicious cooking smells emanating from the direction he had just come from began to tease her eager nostrils.

‘One of last year’s piglets,’ he told her with a resigned shrug for the realities of cottage life that left Freya wondering if she really wanted to know the name of her food before she ate it.

‘It smells delicious,’ she managed as hunger fought her scruples for at least ten seconds as her mouth watered at the scent of breakfast and wood-smoke.

‘It is ’licious,’ Sally stated emphatically, with a frown in her direction, as if it was her fault they weren’t already eating. ‘Papa said we was to fetch you,’ she accused and Freya realised it would be no easy task to win over the female so firmly in possession of the cottage and its owner’s heart.

‘That was kind of him. I am very hungry indeed after missing my luncheon and my dinner yesterday,’ she said with unfeigned horror.

‘Not even any supper?’ the little girl asked with a slight softening towards this unwanted guest she had better not take for granted, Freya decided ruefully.

‘By then I was too tired to care,’ Freya confirmed and could almost see the child brace herself against nodding sympathetically.

‘We’re not tired and we’re very hungry indeed, since Papa had to light a fire in the woods to cook on because we weren’t supposed to disturb you,’ the boy asserted with a cool stare that accused her of causing a delay he found nigh intolerable.

‘And yet you still did so?’ she said just as coolly and met his uncannily direct blue eyes equal to equal.

‘I never saw a dead person,’ he explained as if that trumped every idea of polite consideration his long-suffering parent had tried to teach him.

‘Oddly enough you still have not done so, have you?’ she parried.

‘No, unless you feel a bit ill?’ he suggested as if she might, out of consideration for those who were kind enough to delay their breakfast for her.

‘Not in the least,’ she said airily and discovered it was true. ‘Just a bit sore and my ankle hurts,’ she admitted as she hobbled along and even little Sally had to slow down to match her pace.

‘It could be worse than you think,’ the boy suggested hopefully.

‘Why are you so eager to see a dead person?’ she asked.

‘’Cause my mama is one and I can’t really remember what she looked like no more,’ he said crossly, as if he blamed her for asking, but was still too young to lie.

‘I’m very sorry about that. My mama is dead too, and I miss her every day of my life, but at least I remember her. I hadn’t realised how lucky I was until I spoke to you, Master Whoever-you-are.’

‘That’s not my name,’ he said, reluctantly impressed she shared his motherless state.

‘He’s called Hal,’ the boy’s sister said impatiently, as if everyone ought to know that and she was a very ignorant visitor after all.

‘My name is Henry Craven, Master Henry Craven to you.’

‘Very well then, Master Henry,’ Freya said with the shadow of an elegant curtsy that was all she could manage with her staff clutched in her hand and an ankle that was sure to let her down if she bent any lower.

‘Who are you, then?’

‘Miss Perdita…’ Freya cast about for a suitable alias and found inspiration all around her. ‘Rowan,’ she finally came out with and decided she might like being Miss Rowan of nowhere in particular, if she wasn’t dressed in a bedcover and someone else’s underwear whilst hobbling along like a ninety-year-old invalid to eat a breakfast her hosts were personally acquainted with before it became a tasty meal.

‘It’s a pretty name,’ Sally approved with a smile of feminine conspiracy she must have acquired by instinct and years of manipulating her father mercilessly.

‘Thank you, and so is yours, Miss Craven.’

‘Papa, we found her,’ Sally cried as if they had been looking much of the day and Freya tried not to envy her host the confident joy in the little girl’s voice at the sight of him.

It would be easy to love the spirited and naughty little girl, Freya decided wistfully. Their father seemed to be raising his children as individuals, not patterns of childhood silence kept strictly away from the adult world her own father had expected children to be. She supposed it was easier to gently teach the realities of life when you lived in a hovel, not a mansion, and dined on what you could grow or raise, like poor Percy the pig.

‘Your breakfast, ma’am,’ Orlando said with a piratical bow as he handed her a trencher of rough bread topped with bacon, mushrooms from the forest and her share of a kind of omelette he seemed to have made with the addition of herbs and tips of various greens from the large garden he must have hacked out of the forest.

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said as she sank on to the tree stump they had saved for her with as much dignity as she could manage, which wasn’t much as she tried to ease herself down without jarring her foot. ‘It smells delicious.’

‘Your fork, ma’am,’ he added with the wicked parody of a liveried and impassive footman that made her wonder anew about his real place in the world.

‘What a delightful luxury, Mr Craven,’ she said lightly as she took the two-pronged, freshly carved wooden one he must have whittled especially for her.

‘Then eat, Miss…’ he said, trailing off as he realised she hadn’t given her surname last night.

‘She’s called Miss Rowan, Papa, had you forgot?’ his son piped between mouthfuls of food and shook his head at them with such quaint wonder they were bothering with social flummery while their food went cold that Freya was reluctantly enchanted all over again.

‘I don’t believe Miss Rowan gives her name as easily to grown gentlemen as she did to you, my son. You must have charmed her quite wondrously well.’

‘Yes, he did,’ Freya insisted in the face of Henry’s slightly conscious flush at the memory he had actually demanded it of her rather rudely.

‘Eat,’ said Orlando Craven as if unable to argue with a lady just now.

Freya had never enjoyed breakfast so much, sitting on a tree stump in a forest clearing miles away from civilisation. Birds sang and Atlas snuffed politely about the edge of the clearing, pretending not to be lurking for leftovers. Every bite of crisp bacon, richly dark mushroom and deliciously herbed egg tasted like ambrosia and as the juices soaked into the bread underneath, it seemed no hardship it wasn’t fine and white as she was used to and she pulled pieces off it with the same glee she saw in the children’s rapt faces as they ate. Now and again she allowed herself a shy glance at Orlando and noted he ate with neat economy, but somehow the idea of him seeing her naked in his scullery not half an hour ago stopped her saying how she appreciated his cooking and the thoughtfulness that had made him do it outside and not disturb her. Because he had disturbed her, acutely.

‘Better?’ he asked at last, seeming to wake from some sort of reverie when she sighed and handed Atlas the still-savoury remains of the bread where the crust was too hard to eat without endangering her teeth.

‘Much better, thank you,’ she said with a contented sigh. ‘Your dog has very fine manners, Mr Craven,’ she added as Atlas took the morsel with such polite courtesy she felt no fear as his impressive teeth and powerful jaws closed on it.

‘Nice to know I can flatter myself on one success in that area,’ he said with a stern eye on his angelic-looking offspring that argued he hadn’t forgotten their disobedience.

‘I wonder what time it is?’ she mused, more to divert him than from an urgent need to know.

‘About seven of the clock,’ he said without reference to a timepiece and she must have betrayed her disbelief, since Sally piped up,

‘Papa always knows what time it is.’

‘I’ve learnt the habits of the sun and the creatures around me,’ he said with a shrug, as if that wasn’t an unusual skill, and Freya felt guiltily at her own ignorance about the busy schedules of those who must toil for a living.

‘It must prove very useful,’ she said and heard self-consciousness in her voice as she couldn’t get the awkwardness of their last encounter out of her head.

‘It is,’ he said as if he couldn’t either.

‘Can we go, Papa?’ Henry interrupted as if growing tired of adult silliness.

‘So long as you stay within earshot,’ his father said with a straight look that said he meant it and his son returned it with a solemn nod. Sally gave an exasperated shrug at the sheer contrariness of men that made Freya long to laugh out loud.

‘And while my little demons are gone, we need to think about your day, Miss Rowan,’ Orlando said without looking directly at her.

‘I will try not to get in the way,’ she said, Lady Freya’s rigid dignity hard in her voice and she regretted the return to her old self more than she would have dreamt she could only yesterday.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped as if she was demanding he devote every minute of it to her comfort.

Now Freya knew what Sally meant to convey with her long-suffering gesture. She must know all too well what it was like to live with two such prickly males. Freya wished she had the faintest idea how to cope with this Craven male and bit back a weary sigh.

‘You still need to do whatever it is you do to earn your bread. I cannot see how my offer to let you do so is ridiculous, sir,’ she told him with icy dignity.

Hopefully he didn’t know how conscious She was of sitting here with bare shoulders and a rather inept plait of hair hanging down her back. She did her best to stop her impromptu gown showing the length of her right leg to anyone who wanted to see it, even if he already had, along with the rest of her, and she tried hard not to blush at the very idea.

‘A day away from it won’t hurt me,’ he said gruffly as if silently agreeing he was being unreasonable, but unable to stop being so.

‘I don’t need to be entertained like a fractious child.’

‘Good, I already have two of those to cope with,’ he said and finally the wry smile that had made her trust him against her will last night broke through his dark mood. ‘We need to solve some practicalities before you hoe my peas to the ground or randomly chop down trees,’ he told her as if he had as little confidence in her domestic skills as she did herself.

‘Even I know this isn’t the time of year to fell whatever it is you usually fell.’

‘And do you know a pea from a bean?’

‘Not unless it’s on my plate.’

‘So you might as well agree to leave them where they are until I can teach you which is which, might you not?’ he said.

She wondered if he really thought Lady Freya Buckle might dirty her hands and get blisters on her fine soft skin to repay his hospitality, or relieve her boredom in a household without the usual ladylike occupations. Freya nodded regally and wondered what on earth she was going to do with herself while she waited to be well enough to walk away.

‘It will all work out in the end,’ he reassured her as if he knew the reality of her situation had come rushing back as soon as she thought about the day she would have to leave here and go back to finding her way in the wider world.

‘I really don’t see how,’ she argued with a quiet despair that sounded very un-Lady Freya-like in her own ears.

‘With life and hope it’s remarkable what the human spirit can cope with, Perdita,’ he said and she supposed he must know what he was talking about.

‘I know and I will try to be more optimistic.’

‘And perhaps agree you need to sleep as well?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then why don’t you do so while I take the children over to fetch some clothes for you?’

‘I don’t see why you should put yourself to so much trouble, sir,’ she said a little stiffly, wondering where he was to get them and a ludicrous shaft of jealousy bit into her as some likely possibilities leapt into her mind.

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