“Who did this to you, Brenna?” he asked.

She threw his hands away. Unshed tears of hot shame shone brightly in her eyes now that he had seen the badges of that which she had tried so hard to hide.

“I shouldn’t have come in here,” she began uncertainly, heading for her own room and cursing herself for not realizing earlier the state of her night attire. But she was not to be so lightly let off, for Nicholas Pencarrow had had enough and he was at the door before she was.

“Now, Brenna,” he said softly. “You are going to tell me how a girl well cosseted in a family of unquestionable name came by such abuse.”

“I won’t tell you!” He would hate her now. Hate her and despise her and expose her. Everything was finished, over. Black despair spiraled inward. “Please, Nicholas, let me go.” Her voice was an aching whisper.

“I can’t,” he returned. “Damn it, I can’t.”

Fallen Angel

Harlequin Historical #171

Fallen Angel
Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Available from Harlequin Historical and
SOPHIA JAMES

Fallen Angel #171

To Peter, Karen, Tim and Anne

for their love, patience and expertise.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

Airelies, Kent—August 1861

Brenna stood still, stock still, head tilted at the low sounds of a fine summer evening, and listened. The river ran behind her and the plane trees rustled in the light night winds, just as they always did. But something was different; Mars and Bellona, her hunting dogs, stopped with their hackles up stiffly along bony spines as if they had felt it too. Brenna’s hand went quietly to her gun before going forward, shaky fingers pushing the flintlock guard up and inserting a steel-tubed charge. The trees were thicker now as they entered into the wooded copse a half a mile from Worsley, bordering on the Northern London Road, and she had to thrust the leafy branches aside to push through towards the sounds which she could now identify with more clarity.

Voices. Men’s voices. Low and soft and dangerous. A spurt of fear leapt into her heart, making it beat hard, and she stepped back in retreat, signalling her dogs to do the same, crouching in the undergrowth to get a look at what it was the men were doing before she left.

Two men came into her vision, dragging a third barely conscious man between them, his head bloodied, a blindfold tied roughly across his eyes, the fine linen of his shirt and the cut of his trousers strangely out of place against the rough homespun of the others.

‘My God, highwaymen,’ Brenna thought, one hand moving unbidden to her mouth as if to stop the words that might come; the other one tightening on her weapon. Mars growled suddenly from behind her and Brenna held his muzzle, willing him into a calmness she herself was far from feeling. She watched the blindfolded man being tied roughly to the thick bough of an elm tree, then the two men walked away.

Listening, she tried to determine their movements. They’d be going back to the coach without doubt, for it was a robbery here in progress. She wondered at the fate of his lackeys or outriders and at the audacity these robbers had to strike on such a well-travelled portion of the road. Creeping forward, almost at his back now, she rounded the tree to his left, watching all the time for the return of the others whose voices she could hear as indistinct rumbles further out of view. Crouching as she reached him, she sensed his knowledge of her being there for his head turned in her direction, bandaged eyes sightlessly looking for the source of sound. She spoke then, quietly, in the lowest whisper that she could manage. ‘You have two men with guns, busy now with the spoils from your carriage, I think…’

He stiffened and broke across her words. ‘Can you loosen the ropes and this thing across my eyes?’ His husky voice was deep with anger.

‘I’ll get your ropes first. It will be safer if they should return.’ He nodded and she fumbled with the cords knotted across his wrists, cursing herself for the time it was taking and watching all the while for the reappearance of the others.

She just had them loose as boots crashed back into the small clearing, and as the man beside her whipped the cloth from his eyes she dropped down to her knees and sighted her gun, shooting it low into the leg of the first robber and ramming the charge into the barrel to take the second shot. Rough arms, however, pulled her behind the protective bough of a tree as a bullet whistled overhead, and she was held down firmly against a broadly masculine chest, the shirt gaping open to reveal all that lay within. Fury and shock hit her simultaneously, along with the echo of a more unfamiliar emotion. For a moment she felt safer than she ever felt before as the hard lines of his body rippled beneath her fingers. Strength, energy and unblemished brown smoothness. And heat. Then her dogs crashed between them, fearful of her closeness to this stranger. Blushing furiously, she pulled away from his grasp and crouched down beside him, careful to leave some space.

‘Give me the gun and get out of here,’ he ordered. When she did not move, his eyes met hers in question.

‘Get out of here, Princess,’ he repeated quietly.

‘You are practised with weapons…?’

His smile was unexpected as he took the gun and she felt her heart lurch with choking excitement. Instinctively she drew back from him. She must never let anyone close. She knew that. She had always known it.

‘I’ll keep them at bay until you are safe,’ he returned, jamming in the next flintlock and resighting the gun. She noticed the crested gold ring on his little finger and the threads of the same colour in his hair and then she ran, lifting the skirts of her hunting habit and fleeing across the forest into the safety of the fields, glad of the dogs at her side. The sound of gunshots echoed through the glade behind her: three, four, five and then silence. Biting at her lip, she imagined him falling, gold-green eyes sightless and still, and she was winded by the feeling of loss and worry.

‘Please, God, let him live, let him be safe.’ The words became a litany tumbling in her breath as she hurried down the paths to Airelies Manor and threw open the door, her heart pounding loudly in her ears as she leaned back against it. Mrs Fenton came from the kitchens to investigate the noise and, amazed at Brenna’s appearance, was at her side in a moment.

‘What on earth is wrong, love?’ she burst out, wiping flour-powdered hands on her large apron.

‘There’s some highwaymen in the woods. Lock the doors and windows and get the guns from the study. If the gentleman they’re trying to rob gets shot, they’ll be up at Airelies next. I think they saw me!’

Rose Fenton jammed the brass bolts home, locking the floor catches for further protection. ‘My God, Brenna. We’re alone here save for Albert and young Stephen. We can’t possibly shoot anyone.’

‘I just have,’ the younger woman answered, horrified anew as the housekeeper began to cross herself, uttering holy incantations to a forgiving God.

‘You killed someone?’

‘Shot his knee off, I think. At least it should slow him down a bit.’ She stopped herself from mentioning the other man. The gentleman would be safe, she told herself. He seemed strong and fit and the gun in his hand had been reloaded with expertise. She tried to recall the crest she had seen on his ring, a lion rampant across two drawn daggers. Strength and danger. She smiled at the way the image suited him so exactly, the colour returning to her cheeks as she ran to each front window, pushing the locks into place. The feel of her uncle’s gun in her hand heartened her further, as did the silence in the valley. Should she go back to help him? She dismissed the thought summarily. Her reappearance would more likely compromise his safety than help him. But still she could not relax as she strode up and down the front hall, eyes glued to the scene outside for any sense of movement.

No more shots had rent the quietness of evening, although they had heard the shouts of men from the village a short time ago. Mrs Fenton’s white face brought her back to the moment and she struggled to hide her own worry from the elderly housekeeper.

‘Whoever is dead or alive seems unlikely to bother us now,’ she said quietly and consulted the clock at the end of the hallway. ‘But, to be sure, we will pack in the morning and return to London. And I will ask Albert to send Stephen down to Worsley for any word of the incident.’

Just as she had finished speaking, however, a conveyance turned into the drive, stopping at the front of the house. The door was thrown open and Brenna’s heart leapt in shock as she fleetingly saw the man who’d been bound to the tree step out, her gun held firmly in his hand. Without further thought she turned to the housekeeper.

‘Tell him I have gone. Tell him, thank you for my gun and tell him…’ she called over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs ‘…tell him I don’t wish to see him again.’ She disappeared into a top bedroom just as the door knocker sounded.

Smoothing out her apron, Rose Fenton took a deep breath before opening the door with a less than enthusiastic smile, to be confronted by the most handsome gentleman she had ever had the pleasure of meeting, even despite his numerous bruises. He had hair the colour of burnt copper and gold-green eyes. The dark burnous cloak he wore was torn across the shoulder, the gold appliqué fraying badly.

‘May I help you, sir?’ she enquired breathlessly, her eyes on Brenna’s gun, which he suddenly handed to her, bowing in apology, a smile on his lips.

‘I have it from the inn at Worsley that a Miss Brenna Stanhope is in residence here and I think this may be hers. I can’t be certain.’

The housekeeper cut his words short. ‘Yes, sir. Miss Brenna told me what happened and she bade me to thank you.’

‘She’s here, then?’ His glance perused the empty spaces inside. ‘Might I speak with her for a moment?’

Rose Fenton blocked off his view by moving in front of him. ‘No, sir, she’s…she has just gone…’ The lie came picked from thin air and with little plausibility.

‘Back to London?’ he queried uncertainly.

‘No, not for now. She’s gone south.’

The man leant against the wall outside, a slight frown sifting across his features. ‘She doesn’t want to see me, let me give her my thanks?’

‘No, sir’.

‘Could I leave her a letter?’

‘No, sir. She just wants to forget the whole incident. It’s finished with and she’d rather just have it at that.’

‘I see,’ said the other, straightening and moving back from the overhanging portico. ‘Could you make sure she knows I have come and please do convey my warmest thanks.’

‘I will, sir,’ Mrs Fenton answered, frowning as the man looked up to a window on the first floor. The movement of a figure flitting back quickly from view behind heavy velvet curtains was easily caught.

‘You have other guests here?’ he enquired carefully, watching as she answered.

‘No, sir.’

Rose Fenton breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door.

Upstairs, Brenna witnessed his departure, a sense of disquiet permeating her whole being.

He had seen her.

He had even found out her name and where she lived. Could the information harm her? Could the interest she had heard in his voice translate into a menace? Or a damning curiosity?

With a deepening frown, she observed the carriage winding its way from Airelies and out into the darkness of the main road north.

Chapter Two

Nicholas Pencarrow, Duke of Westbourne, Knight of the Realm and owner of half a dozen of England’s finest estates, leaned back in his leather chair, feet up on his desk, reading with bemused interest a letter from his lawyer.

‘After much searching we can find out very little about Brenna Stanhope. There is certainly no mention of the girl until she was sixteen, making a name for herself on the piano in select gatherings organised by a Sir Michael De Lancey, her uncle. Miss Stanhope appeared briefly in society five years ago as a débutante in one season only in London. Further enquiries have turned up the name of the Beaumont Street Orphanage. It seems Sir Michael and his niece run the establishment together, Miss Stanhope teaching at the school…’

Nicholas frowned. An orphanage? The idea intrigued him as did everything else he had discovered about the elusive Miss Stanhope. Flicking through the remainder of the letter, Nicholas determined it to contain brief mention of Michael De Lancey’s reduced family circumstances and little else. ‘Damn it,’ he cursed under his breath. Why was she so secretive? His mind ran back to the woman he had seen in the woods, hair the colour of ebony, eyes of violet and a body rounded and feminine. ‘Brenna Stanhope…’ he whispered her name softly into the empty corners of the room, remembering the timbre of her voice, the dimples in her cheeks and the feeling of her warm breath against his bare chest.

And when he had touched her…

A noise from outside pulled him from his thoughts and he rose even as the door opened to admit Lady Letitia Carruthers, all blond ringlets and flashing blue eyes, her fashionable pink redingote day dress shaped to a waist so thin his hands could easily span it. ‘Nicholas darling,’ she said breathlessly, throwing herself headlong into his arms before perching on a nearby couch and artfully arranging her skirts around her. ‘I am exhausted, and this ball you are going to throw will be the culmination of hours of hard work. Even Christopher in his heyday did not contemplate such opulence.’

Smiling at the reference to her long-dead husband, Nicholas poured two generous brandies, one of which he placed in her outstretched hand. ‘Your taste is always exquisite, Letty, and I appreciate the time and effort you have invested in the occasion.’ Crossing to his desk, he extracted a black velvet jewellery box, and laid it before her. ‘This is for you by way of gratitude.’

Letty squealed, throwing open the lid with a hurried delight. ‘Rubies, Nicholas,’ she whispered, ‘and such beautiful ones.’ With infinite care she drew the chain of gold and red from its soft bed and, unbuttoning her bodice, presented her back to him. ‘Will you fasten them?’

Nodding, he moved behind her, assailed instantly by the expensive perfume that enveloped her in a cloud wherever she went, his hands competent at her back while she waited for him to finish.

‘Nicholas, you do know I love you, don’t you?’

He turned, caught by the seriousness in her voice, swallowing at her admission and feeling guilty, as he did each time she had said it, for he knew, in truth, that he could not say back what it was she longed to hear from him. A tight smile played around his mouth as he perceived her disappointment. Why did women always want what he could never give them? Why could he not relish the commitment to relationships other men made without recourse to a safer distance? He knew the answer even as he voiced the question.

Johanna. His mother.

His father had married for love and look where that had got him. Widowed at twenty-six with two young boys and a heart as broken as he was, Gerald had finally drunk himself into the oblivion he functioned best in.

At eight Nicholas had tried his hardest to comfort both his father and five-year-old brother Charles, but without Johanna the family centre was gone, dissolved into a strange mix of long silences and unfathomable anger, the remnants of a family who had loved too much and lost everything because of it. And when, thirteen years later, Gerald’s liver had finally succumbed to the abuse of a decade and he had died, predicting that his sons would follow the same path as he had, Nicholas had vowed that this prophesy would never come to pass and had spent his life either in the arms of experienced widows or hardened show girls, neither pushing for the state of matrimony that he was determined to escape.

Bending down, Nicholas collected some papers lying in a bundle at the top of his desk. Aye, to him survival marched hand in hand with distance, mere affection containing no real power to hurt. And if sometimes he recognised the flaws in his reasonings, he was also quick to remember the lonely years of his childhood. Never again would he let himself be so vulnerable.

Breaking the awkward silence of the moment with the merely mundane, he turned back to her and said, ‘I’ll see you out then.’ His words came harshly across Letitia’s admission and he was pleased when she followed his directive without argument and walked before him, the clutter of servants in the corridor precluding any other more personal talk.

The party after the opera was crowded with people thronging out into the open halls, and it seemed every second one was calling to Nicholas on an urgent and important purpose, invitations offered and congratulations given for some new and successful business venture of his.

They all knew of his Midas touch, the way he made thousands from every concept he believed in and the way his holdings multiplied each year: land, horses, ships and women.

Nicholas Pencarrow, Duke of Westbourne, never went anywhere without every female eye in every room fastened upon him, young and old, and all with the same thought in their minds—how they longed to be the one to tame the lion who stalked in their midst, with copper hair and tawny eyes, the most handsome man in court and the richest to boot.

Tonight, dressed entirely in black, he seemed to prowl the confines of the small room in an unspoken need to be free, though as he stood, glass in hand, a name mentioned behind Nicholas made him turn.

‘Michael De Lancey.’ A woman was introducing an older man to a couple directly to his left and the name on Brenna Stanhope’s file leapt to mind. Her uncle? His eyes raked across this man and Nicholas smiled as he heard the accent, cultured and quiet like his niece’s. With care he beckoned a footman stationed across the room, the servant hurrying through the crowd at the summons and waiting as the Duke pulled out a card from his jacket pocket.

‘Please inform Sir Michael De Lancey that I would like to meet with him when he finds himself free,’ he said politely, returning to his own conversation as the man hurried off.

It was only a few minutes later when he felt the small man’s presence at his shoulder. Nicholas held out his hand to the other’s uncertainly offered bow, taking Sir Michael’s hand firmly in his own and saying with feeling, ‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir. Your niece, Brenna Stanhope, has no doubt told you of her part in my lucky escape near Worsley!’

Michael De Lancey started, a frown deep in his eyes as he shook his head. ‘No, your Grace, she has told me nothing.’

The admission floored Nicholas. ‘You have not seen her in the past three weeks?’ he asked in amazement.

‘Oh, indeed, yes, Brenna lives with me.’

‘And yet she has mentioned nothing?’

‘No, I am afraid not!’ Grey eyes came up to his own, honest eyes with all the look of a gentleman, and Nicholas, surmising this man not to be lying, changed tack instantly.

‘Would you permit me to call on your niece, Sir Michael?’

‘No!’

One word and so unexpected Nicholas could hardly credit the answer. Did he not know to whom he was speaking? Did he not understand the social etiquette due to such a title as his own? He sized up the situation and tried again.

‘You won’t let me call on your niece?’ The query was phrased more in incredulity than anger.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘And you have my card?’

‘I do, your Grace.’

Perplexed, Nicholas ran a hand through his hair. ‘Is she married already?’ he said suddenly.

‘No, your Grace.’

‘Betrothed?’

‘No, your Grace.’

‘Then you would agree that she’s free to make up her own mind about whether or not to see me?’

Sir Michael shifted uncomfortably, giving the impression of a man who was backing himself into a quickly approaching corner. ‘Yes.’

‘Then please give her this.’ Taking out another card, Nicholas wrote on it in haste. ‘I would very much like a reply.’

Nodding, Michael De Lancey clutched the paper in his fist and Nicholas watched him call for his coat and hat and take his leave.

Brenna rose the next morning early, dressing in one of her customary dark-blue velvet gowns, then hurried downstairs to the breakfast room, coming to a halt as she saw her uncle already seated and looking very perturbed.

‘Good morning,’ she said, favouring him with a smile as she took the seat opposite and poured herself some tea.

He cleared his throat. ‘Brenna, I need to talk to you.’

‘Mmm, what about?’ She glanced up as he took a card from the table in front of him, and placed it before her.

‘That!’ he stammered as she raised the gilt-edged card to her eyes.

NICHOLAS PENCARROW

DUKE OF WESTBOURNE

‘Who is he?’ she returned quietly, a premonition of disaster seeming to emanate from the words themselves.

‘Read the back.’ With dread she flipped it over, her heart beating faster as she placed the context of the message: Would you permit me to say thank you in person for your help at Worsley?

Unsure eyes surveyed her uncle. ‘I didn’t tell you. I thought it might make you worried.’

‘But you’ll tell me now?’ he asked softly.

‘Yes,’ she answered, giving him a blow-by-blow description of the whole episode.

Her uncle was silent when she finished, phrasing his next question only after much thought. ‘Did you talk with him at Airelies?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see him properly, Brenna?’ The words came hesitantly.

‘No. Why?’

‘I think he could be persistent, you see, as well as both powerful and stubborn. The whole of London treads carefully in his wake and it seems he owns almost half of it.’

‘The wrong man to rescue, you mean?’ Brenna quipped. ‘I should have left him to an untimely end, especially now if he’s going to harass me.’

Michael De Lancey grimaced. ‘I do have a feeling about this man. I think you should at least meet him. Be as dour and miserable as you want. It is the mystery that is making him interested. I know his type. It is only the thrill of the chase that he craves and there are plenty of women in London who will attest to that truth, or so I’m told.’

The words made sense, though already Brenna’s heart beat painfully at the thought as his gold-green eyes and dark copper hair came fully to mind. With a rising irritation she stood and pulled at the plait that hung across her shoulder. She knew better than to allow herself such feelings.

‘I thought I’d finished with all this, Michael. That season in London was by far enough. I’m twenty-four now, a happy spinster and a woman in my own right and I don’t want the Duke of Westbourne to come and call on me.’

Michael frowned. ‘Well then, let’s get it over with. I’ll have Kenneth take over your reply this morning and with any luck we can have him out of our lives by this evening.’ He stood then, searching in a drawer on one side of the room for paper and pen. ‘Here, write to him and say you could see him at three o’clock. I’ll come home at three-thirty and remind you of an appointment we have at four. That way we can have the whole thing finished within under an hour.’

Reluctantly, Brenna took the page and wrote a very brief and very formal invitation to Nicholas Pencarrow, hating herself for having to do it while mentally calculating all the things she’d need to put off till the morrow now that she had him to deal with today.

A reply had come from Pencarrow House by noon: Nicholas Pencarrow would be pleased to call on her at three o’clock p.m.

At half past two Brenna made her way upstairs to prepare her hair in the most unappealing style she could arrange, buttoning her velvet dress up to the collar and placing upon it the shapeless blue oversmock, which she often wore at the orphanage. At five to three she was sitting stiffly in the wing chair near the fire in the small dining room, hands primly in her lap, when she heard his carriage pull to a halt outside. She resisted the urge to go to the window. He’d seen her at the curtains once before and she had no wish for him to think her remotely inquisitive about him. Instead she stood facing the door and waited until it was opened by Polly, the serving maid.

‘The Duke of Westbourne, Miss Brenna,’ the young girl announced breathlessly, shepherding him in before going out again and closing the door.

Brenna’s widening eyes came up to his, all the handsomeness of each reckless libertine who’d ever pursued her across countless nightmares rolled into one. At Worsley with blood on his face and a split upper lip he had still seemed well favoured. Today, dressed in tapered trousers, a double-breasted jacket and silk hat and gloves in hand, he emanated pure masculine grace and style—and something else a lot more unsettling.

He registered her fright and the dress all at once. Today she seemed different and his glance was drawn to her fingers, which turned a handkerchief nervously this way and that.

‘Miss Stanhope,’ he began quietly as cold violet eyes stole up to his, a flinty hardness in their depths, which he could not comprehend.

She fears me, a warning voice came from deep inside. ‘I am Nicholas Pencarrow and I thank you for receiving me.’

‘You did not have to come,’ she spoke now for the first time, her velvety voice exactly as he had remembered it.

‘But I wanted to,’ he replied. ‘May I sit down for just a moment?’

Nodding, she indicated a chair furthest from where she sat. She seemed older today, her hair bound up into unbecoming braids at each ear and drooping down across her neck. He couldn’t recollect ever seeing anybody’s hair put up quite like that and wondered why she should have fashioned it in such a way, knowing he was to call. The truth hit him suddenly even as he pondered it. She wanted him to see her like this: the clothes, the hair, the lack of a welcome, they were all mixed somehow in a puzzle he could not even vaguely begin to comprehend.

Nicholas shifted in his seat and began softly. ‘I wanted to thank you personally for your help last month outside of Worsley.’ Wary eyes flickered briefly to his and then away. ‘If you had not come when you did, I am sure I would not be here today.’ A frown crossed her face as though she struggled for a fleeing social politeness.

She does not want me here. She wishes she had left me in the woods. Nicholas’s mind rebelled at the thought as he continued slowly, ‘The man you shot was taken to the doctor and his leg was lost. I’m afraid he knew who you were. The Worsley constable said your name without thinking. I hope that will not be a problem.’

Palpable fear flickered momentarily in Brenna’s eyes. ‘Yet he’s in prison?’

He nodded. ‘And I’ll make sure he stays there a long time.’

‘What happened to the other one?’

‘He is dead.’

‘Oh.’ Silence stalked the room, a heavy silence, uncomfortable and unbroken, and as she sat there he knew she would not speak.

‘Do you go out often?’ His voice was soft as he tried to lighten the subject and piece together some of the parts of her life of which, as yet, he knew so little.

‘No,’ she answered quietly, a slight frown forming on her brow.

‘Then would you not accept an invitation to my ball next month?’

‘No.’ The reply came definite and flat, a ‘thank you’ added afterwards almost in an unconscious notice of manners.

‘Is there anything you would like to accompany me to in London? The opera? The ballet? The symphony?’ Brenna’s head came up at the mention of the last and for the first time he saw interest, though she shook her head even as he thought it.

‘You like music?’

‘Yes.’

‘You play the piano well.’

It was said not as a question but as a statement, and she looked up, puzzled. ‘How could you know that?’ she asked unsurely, and suddenly it hit her. He had been finding out about her. A giddy spiralling slam of terror crossed her face as she stood.

‘Your thanks are acknowledged, your Grace, but I shall now say goodbye. Polly will see you out.’ Her words left room for no others as she rang the bell and turned towards the window and Nicholas’s perusal of the back of her was abruptly cut off as the young servant bustled in. Amusement creased his eyes at the dismissal. This girl had no notion of the respect normally accorded to him by polite society.

And he liked it.

Gathering his hat and coat, he made towards the door, stopping as he reached it. ‘I shall leave my card on the table here, Brenna. If, by chance, you should change your mind and have a want to see the symphony, I would be most willing to escort you.’

She stiffened at the liberty he took in using her Christian name and turned as she determined him gone, catching her reflection in the mirror above the mantel as she did so. White faced and drawn, even her eyes seemed bruised and guarded.

Is this what I have become? she wondered, as her fingers unlaced the ugly plaits and she pulled her thick hair free. Tears stung her eyes and for a second she longed to call him back and be seen even momentarily in the way she would have liked him to remember her by, but common sense stopped her. If people knew even a tiny part of her secret, the patronage of her orphanage would flounder and the protection of the children would be at risk. With determination she tucked her hair behind her ears and faced the mirror.

‘Forget the Duke of Westbourne,’ she told herself sternly and was disturbed by the dash of anger that threaded her eyes.

Chapter Three

Nicholas entered the orphanage in Beaumont Street just after eleven o’clock. He’d had his secretary make an appointment for him to view the place in the guise of becoming a financial patron using a secondary title of his, the Earl of Deuxberry. He hoped Brenna Stanhope would forgive him the deception if she saw him, knowing otherwise he may not even get a foot in the door.

The corridor was crammed full of children’s paintings, and the sound of a piano and voices could be heard coming from a room towards the back of the house. As he entered he was met almost immediately by a tiny grey-haired woman, who thrust out her hand in introduction.

‘I’m Mrs Betsy Plummer, the Matron here,’ she said kindly, ‘and I presume you are Lord Deuxberry.’ She inclined her head as if unsure of the protocol involved when addressing the titled peerage, looking up as a question came nervously to her lips. ‘We understand you may be interested in lending your patronage to Beaumont Street? Lord knows we could do with some.’ She reddened at the realisation of her blasphemy.

Amusement filled the Duke’s eyes and then query as music sifted through the thick walls. ‘The music is lovely.’

‘Yes. That’s Miss Stanhope on the piano. She’s the lady who opened the place, you see.’

‘May I be allowed to watch the lesson?’

‘Well…not normally,’ she faltered, frowning heavily. ‘But perhaps there is a way around it. If you’re very quiet, we could observe from the upstairs balcony. That shouldn’t disturb them at all.’

Following the woman up a narrow staircase, he entered a room filled with sunlight, a balcony overhanging the hall beneath them.

‘This is far enough. Miss Stanhope is very particular about her privacy.’

Nicholas looked down in the direction of her gesture, and the sight of Brenna, hair down and playing to the children, assailed him with all the force of a salvo fired at close range.

She was beautiful and completely changed from the deliberately dour woman who had greeted him two days ago in her London drawing room. Today, curly dark hair fell in a glorious curtain to her waist and her violet eyes sparkled with playfulness as she rose from the piano and formed the children into a circle, taking a hanky from the sleeve of her navy blue gown and wiping the nose of a carrot-topped toddler who clung to her skirt.

‘Oh, my goodness, Tim, I hope it is not you next with the sickness. Laura is quite enough for now.’ The boy smiled as she ruffled his hair and joined up all their hands. ‘Let’s sing “Ring a Ring a Rosie”, shall we? I’ll start you off.’ Breaking into the circle, she began to chant the words of the ditty, falling down at the end just as all the children did.

‘Excellent. Only this time let’s not fall on me.’ A laughing voice came from the very bottom of the pile and, reassembling them, she went to begin again. Nicholas felt a hand pulling him back and reluctantly drew his eyes away from the sight before him.

‘I’ll take you to the office now. Perhaps I could show you some of our hopes for the place and for the children.’

The door shut behind them as the music faded, though Nicholas stood still for a second, breathing in deeply to try to mitigate the effect Miss Brenna Stanhope seemed destined to wreak upon him. God, she was so lovely and so different from any other woman he had ever come across. Working for a living, and here? His eyes flickered to the mouldy ceilings and rusty pipes, as the reports of Sir Michael De Lancey’s financial problems came into mind. Where was the music and dancing and laughter with her peers that a beautiful woman like her should have. She was only twenty-four and hardly the matron her lifestyle espoused her to be. Dark violet eyes and dimples and a face that should be etched upon the surface of some ecclesiastical ceiling came so forcibly to mind that he had to shake his head in an attempt to regain a lost semblance of reality. With an effort he made himself follow Mrs Plummer into an office.

‘Does Miss Stanhope come here often?’ Nicholas asked, trying to appear indifferent to the answer.

‘Yes, indeed. She teaches three days a week and spends most evenings here. Her uncle has funded much of it, you see, but has fallen on harder times, so now we have to put out our feelers, so to speak.’ She looked slightly nervous again. ‘We try to keep our costs down to the minimum but, as you can appreciate, the whole task is a bit daunting given the age of this building and the needs of this community…’ Mrs Plummer was finding her tongue with growing gusto and it was almost ten minutes later when Nicholas was able to interrupt.

‘What I have seen has impressed me greatly. If you would like to put your figures together and send them to my secretary, I’m sure we could be of assistance.’

Mentioning a large sum of money, he leaned across the table and wrote down a name and address.

‘It has been most interesting, Mrs Plummer.’ He could hear that the music in the background had stopped and suddenly he had no desire to have Brenna Stanhope discover him here. Not now. Not yet. ‘And I am sure we shall be seeing each other again.’ Opening the door, he strode down the hallway to the outside sunshine and was pleased to see his man ready and waiting with the horses.

Betsy Plummer watched as he entered his coach and then she hurried back inside as soon as the conveyance had turned the corner.

‘Brenna, Kate,’ she called loudly, her voice shrill with unquestioned elation. ‘We got it, he’s promised us so much.’ Two faces came into sight, whooping with laughter and relief. ‘And you should see him, girls,’ Betsy added slowly. ‘He’s the most handsome man I think I’ve ever seen.’

Warning bells rang in Brenna’s ears. ‘What did you say his name was again, Betsy?’ she asked slowly, fearing the answer.

‘The Earl of Deuxberry,’ crooned the other, and Brenna expelled her indrawn breath with relief.

The months aged into November and the summer weather seemed all but gone. Brenna settled again into her comfortable, untroubled existence now that Nicholas Pencarrow seemed happy to leave her alone, though at nights sometimes, when the business of the day had receded, she allowed herself to daydream about him. Quietly at first and then with more ardour, the Duke of Westbourne’s gold-green eyes and lopsided smile invaded her fantasies, leaving her with a feeling of guilty pleasure in the morning and a firming resolution to put him from her memory.

At Beaumont Street things had become more agreeable, for under the patronage of Lord Deuxberry much of the old leaking plumbing had been fixed and the dormitories had been lined to make them warmer as they awaited the onslaught of winter. His chits came with a regularity no one dared to question and all hoped would continue, for, apart from the first visit, they had never dealt with him again directly, but rather with his chief secretary, a dour-faced but competent man called Winslop.

Today Mr Winslop had come to call with invitations in hand, one each for Brenna, Betsy and Kate, asking them to a supper Lord Deuxberry was hosting at his home in Kensington. Brenna felt uneasy as the man spelled out what would be expected of them.

‘His Lordship has made it very clear he would like the three of you to come. I think he may be ill pleased were this not to be the case as he has gone to some trouble to assemble an audience whose patronage would be forthcoming should you promote your orphanage well. It will not be too formal. If the weather is kind it may even spill out into the conservatory and, if not, all three drawing rooms will be in commission.’

Kate and Betsy looked at each other as they imagined the magnificence of the house. Brenna stared straight ahead and knew exactly what it would be like. Her one year out in the season had been so indelibly impressed on her mind, how could she not remember? The staff would stand at attention whilst cynical well-dressed men and women would condescendingly dissect their mission, their clothes, their manners and their looks, piece by piece until there was little left. And the worst of it was that she was caught, she would have to go, for to displease this patron could affect the welfare of the children who, after all, had no hand in the realm of these politics.

Mr Winslop handed each of them an invitation, their names printed boldly in black and he spoke quickly as he stood to depart.

‘The sixth is the date set, as you can see. I could arrange for his Lordship’s carriage to be sent if you should wish it so.’

Brenna shook her head, breaking in across his instructions. ‘No, my uncle will lend us his conveyance.’ The others nodded at her suggestion, anxious to be able to leave when they wanted rather than to be marooned in such illustrious company and dependent only on the whim of Lord Deuxberry.

Mr Winslop demurred and closed his book, handing over yet another chit to Betsy. ‘Very well, then. We will see you all next week.’

Five days later Brenna, Betsy and Kate found themselves pulling into the drive of a house far bigger than any of them could have imagined.

‘He must be one of the richest men in England,’ Brenna said as she observed the huge mansion and all the women looked at each other with undisguised apprehension. ‘No wonder he can afford to help us.’

‘Lord Deuxberry…’ The name ran upon her lips as she strove for any recollection of such an aristocrat when she was doing the season and failing in her quest. It was strange that she did not know of him, given his obvious wealth, for such opulence rarely went hand in hand with anonymity.

The carriage stopped outside the front portico, two footmen walking down huge marble steps to help them alight and accompany them to the butler, who stood stiffly at the main doorway.

Nicholas came out a moment later and his breath froze in his throat as he watched Brenna, dressed in simple blue, hair bound simply and face alight, her beauty reflected somehow in the moonbeams that danced across the glass dome above her, isolating her in the silver of an ethereal lightness.

‘Ladies,’ he said gently, striding forward on long legs, his gaze fastened firmly on Brenna Stanhope, ‘welcome to my home.’

Brenna whirled towards the voice, her glance snapping to his face. The Duke of Westbourne! For a second she thought to turn and leave—indeed, took the first step—before reason stopped her, and in that second she knew that this trap had been set most wisely, with patience and stealth. Her heart beat loudly in her ears as she forced her body into a stillness she was far from feeling, fists clenched white at her side as his hand came forward. She did not dare to let him touch her for fear of feeling again the sharp knowledge of his skin and was pleased when he let his fingers fall. The gentleness in his eyes flummoxed her, though, given her obvious insult, as did his next words.

‘I watched you from the balcony as you were on the piano playing “Ring a Roses”,’ he explained softly, his smile touching his eyes.

‘Indeed, Lord Deuxberry,’ she stressed the title and raised her chin, licking her lips in an unconscious message of fear.

‘I sometimes use the name, which is also mine by right, for it lets me function more anonymously.’

He looked straight at her and, liking his directness, she smiled.

Her face changed from hard to soft in a second, large dimples gracing both cheeks and liquid eyes dancing with lightness. God, she was so beautiful, how could her season here ever have gone poorly?

‘Could I take you through to meet our guests?’ he asked quietly. ‘I have tried to assemble a group who are the least wolfish that I know and also the most generous.’ Kate and Betsy nodded at his words.

Brenna frowned. Lord, please let there be none amongst them that she might once have known.

The drawing room was full of guests though the gaslights burned low, almost as candles, evoking a sense of warm friendliness conducive to their cause, and she felt heartened by the half-light. Missing Nicholas’s sign to his secretary to take the others, she found herself escorted by the Duke, and, as he introduced her to the guests with an unaffected charm, she noticed the deference he was accorded by all with whom he chatted. He made it easy for her to speak of the orphanage, bridging the way with his own admission of patronage. In his company, buffered as she was from any more personal queries, she felt herself relax, all the dreads and fears of discovery pushed away.

As she asked for their coats at the end of the night, she could not credit just where the time had gone.

‘Would you permit me to show you my home before you go?’ Nicholas asked the group as they stood at the front door. Kate and Betsy jumped at the chance, Brenna looked more tentative. ‘Just the music room, then?’ he compromised and led the three across into the other side of the house to a large glassed conservatory filled with palms and flowers, a fish pond along one end of the windows and a huge grand piano down towards the other. The women gasped in astonishment at the size and beauty of the place, so unexpected and inviting. Betsy and Kate moved to the pond and Brenna to the piano, where her fingers tinkled lightly across ivory keys checking its tone. Nick watched her and stood quietly as she played a simple arpeggio.

‘Would you like to play?’

His voice was husky and her eyes expressed her confusion. ‘No, thank you. It’s very beautiful, but now we have to go.’ The words came stilted and formal across her tongue and she sensed his disappointment. ‘My Lord…’ she began, but he held up a hand to stop her.

‘Nicholas, please.’

‘My Lord,’ she continued more firmly, ‘I have no doubt you have patronised our orphanage purely out of a misdirected belief that you owe me something. I helped you at Worsley simply because you were in trouble and now I want to know that you are helping the children of our orphanage simply because they are in trouble. Tonight was an invitation that, had I known the truth of your identity, I would have refused, and in the future I would like you to know that this cannot happen again. You have paid your debt with more than interest, your chits come regularly and with a generosity that staggers us all. But I am not part of the bargain, my Lord. You could never pay enough for me.’

He stood watching her, stepping back slightly, wondering why life held her so rigid and noticing the way her lips turned up at each end, even when she did not smile. She was both beautiful and clever—he had not expected that. He observed her carefully and began slowly, mindful of the other two who looked about to join them. ‘May I ask but one small favour, Miss Stanhope?’

Uncertain violet eyes regarded him.

‘If I was able to get a private ballet performance of the Christmas version of La Sylphide at Her Majesty’s Theatre, would you and the children do me the honour of being the audience?’

Brenna gasped at the invitation. ‘You could do that?’ she asked, amazed that he should think such a feat even possible, her mind running to the reviews she had heard of the pageant made famous by Marie Taglioni herself.

‘Money can buy dreams,’ he said quietly, watching the smile die in her eyes and perplexed by her answer.

‘That is debatable, my Lord,’ she whispered distantly, ‘for more often it kills them.’

Charles Pencarrow bounded into the southern drawing room of Pencarrow House the next afternoon and Nicholas stood to greet his younger brother with delight.

‘Charlie,’ he said, shaking the proffered hand with warmth. ‘When did you arrive up from Hertfordshire and why did you not let me know you were coming? Grandmama is not with you, is she?’ He looked around behind his brother for any sign of his grandmother, Elizabeth, Dowager Duchess of Westbourne, his eyes coming back to Charles for his answer.

‘Grandmama is not here, and I was only coming for the day except the meeting in London went on for longer than I had hoped, so I deemed it safer to wait here and go home in the morning.’

Nick nodded and crossed to the cabinet behind him. ‘You want to join me in a drink? Whisky?’

‘Brandy, I think. I’d already started on one at the club before I heard the news.’

‘News?’ Nicholas asked, a puzzled frown across his face. ‘What news?’

‘The news that a girl dressed like a nun turned down an invitation to the symphony from the highly acclaimed, but perhaps overrated, Duke of Westbourne.’

‘Ahh, that news!’ Nick laughed. ‘The gossips, I fear. Well, they’re half right. She did turn me down, but she doesn’t look like a nun.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Brenna Stanhope, the same girl who rescued me in the woods on the London Road.’

‘But you said she wouldn’t see you?’ Charles queried.

‘She wouldn’t. I had to trick her into coming here. I’ve become the patron of an orphanage she runs in the East End, and she only accepted an invitation—and with great wariness, I might add—from that patron, Lord Deuxberry.’

Charles laughed in disbelief. ‘She doesn’t like you?’ He beamed. ‘You must be losing your touch, Nick.’

Nicholas frowned and lowered his voice to almost a whisper so that Charles had to strain to hear. ‘When Father met Johanna he knew in one moment that he loved her. “Once and forever”, those were his words…’ Raising his glass, he finished his drink, all layers of urbanity overshadowed by a savage anger. ‘And he said it would be the same for us.’

‘My God,’ Charles retorted, all humour fleeing, ‘you can’t be telling me…’

‘I’m not telling you anything.’ His eyes darkened perceptibly. ‘And don’t worry, it’s a passing fancy that’s all. In a month she’ll mean as little to me as every other women I’ve known.’ He stalked over to the window and threw open the sash, enjoying the air that rolled into the room. Brenna Stanhope made him restless and uncertain, for she made him imagine possibilities he thought he’d long since dismissed.

‘The men at the club called her clever.’

Hearing the question in Charlie’s voice, Nicholas refilled his glass and tried to explain with a stoic patience.

‘Brenna Stanhope has a mind that would cut most men’s logic to ribbons; if I had to describe her personality in one word, it would be “formidable”. Last night she told me that she was not a part of any bargain and that I could never pay enough for her. That was just before she ordered me to leave her alone.’

Charles began to laugh in earnest. ‘What does she look like?’

‘She has dimples.’

‘Alan Wrightson claims she is beautiful.’

‘Then the man, for all his faults, cannot be accused of having bad taste in women.’

‘He claims she has violet-coloured eyes.’

‘Those too.’ His brother’s whoop of delight made Nicholas’s heart sink.

‘When do I get to meet her?’

‘You don’t and I’ll see you at dinner.’ Draining his glass, Nicholas put it down on the table and walked out of the room.

In his own study he shut the door and leaned back against the cushioned header of his favourite chair. For twelve years he had been the quarry of countless feminine wiles and pushy doyennes all eager to marry him off and tie him down. For twelve years the gossips had run his name with this woman or that one until finally they had framed him callous and hardened. The ‘Heartless Duke of Westbourne’ was how he had heard his name bandied as the cream of each year’s débutantes were paraded before him and failed to rouse even the slightest interest. He ran his fingers across his temple and closed his eyes. Letitia Carruthers. Deborah Hutton. Alison Smythe-Finch. His consorts of the moment were all well bred, all well experienced. And all easily left. His father’s legacy personified. What stamp, then, did Brenna Stanhope make on him and why? He shifted in his chair and finished his drink.

Beautiful, clever, mysterious and with eyes the colour of Scottish heather after the rain. He shook his head at his sudden predilection for the way of poetry and smiled wryly before bending his head to the figures in a thick ledger on his desk.

Chapter Four

Nicholas spent the next morning at the London Ballet Company’s headquarters arranging a private session of La Sylphide to be performed as a matinée the following Wednesday. He then hailed his cabriolet and drove straight to Beaumont Street, running into Brenna as he stepped into the place. She was dressed today in a white smock splattered with colour, carrying a tray of spiky paintbrushes. Her hair was bunched up untidily upon her head, curling tendrils escaping down dark against the lightness of the uniform.

‘Hello,’ she said softly, and he was surprised by the deep blush on her cheeks as he came to stand beside her. Clenching his fists, he jammed them in his pockets just to make certain that he would not touch her.

‘You’re painting?’

‘I’m m…making a mural for one of the dormitories. The children are helping me, which explains the mess.’

She stammered slightly, both from the question and his demeanour. Today he seemed as far from the grand lord as she’d ever seen him.

‘May I have a word with you alone, Brenna?’

She frowned, both at his continued familiarity in using her Christian name and at the implications of a private conversation. She didn’t want to be alone with him, but under the circumstances there was little else she could do to prevent it. With feigned nonchalance she opened the door to her study, making sure that he sat before she went around to her desk, having no wish to leave him with the opportunity of shutting them in together.

Nicholas noticed a well-used copy of Alexander Kingslake’s revolutionary tract ‘Eothem’ beside her elbow. Why was he not surprised? ‘I have organised the ballet for Wednesday,’ he began. ‘The performance starts at three, but we’d need to be seated by at least a quarter before the hour.’

Brenna nodded, unsure as to her reaction to the whole thing. A ballet performed privately just for them pointed out to her his privilege, but also she understood, for the first time, the power that lay close to his hand should he choose to use it. It worried her, this sovereignty above others, accorded not merely because of his title but inherently there because of who he was. If he could organise an outing of this magnitude on just a whim, then think of what he could find out should he really set his mind to it. He would make a powerful foe and adversary, and a dangerous investigator should she cross the threshold of his curiosity and cause him to venture into the realms of mystery he might easily wish to dissipate—because of this she would need to be careful. Her uncle’s words came back to her from the morning of Nicholas’s first visit: I think he could be persistent… The whole of London treads carefully in his wake and it seems he owns almost half of it.

She forced her mind back to the present and her eyes narrowed doubtfully. All the problems of dress and shoes for the children presented themselves as her mind ran fretfully over the number of nights left for the sewing.

Nicholas, for his part, understood none of the reasons for her reticence, placing it, instead, to her fear of public places and he said, less gently than he meant, ‘I think, Miss Stanhope, that the children would definitely enjoy it even if you are determined not to.’

She caught his glance and replied coldly. ‘My feelings for such an outing hardly need figure here, your Grace—’

‘Then why do you hesitate?’ he broke in.

Brenna sighed and stood, turning to the window, arms wrapped tightly through each other as she replied, ‘It’s all so privileged and dreamlike, this world you offer us, and far from the reality that will ever be Beaumont Street.’

‘And you think that it’s wrong to want to share it?’ he countered, watching her with a growing interest.

‘I think it is wrong to want it.’ She turned to him now, eyes ablaze with intensity. ‘It’s like the children’s bedtime stories, endings that belie all sorts of beginnings, fairytales that only live in books or in a rich man’s world, for none of them will ever have what it is you so easily offer, though many here may want it afterwards. You can’t covet what you don’t know, you see. Ignorance counteracts want, just as knowledge fosters it.’

‘And where in your philosophy lies choice, Miss Stanhope?’ His words cut deep across her arguments and she was still as she answered him.

‘The freedom of choice has never belonged to any of these children, your Grace. It was gone before they ever had the means to exert it.’

‘So now you choose for them. They never had it nor are they likely to with your reasonings.’ His voice came louder with his own growing exasperation. ‘You think people, once choiceless, can never be empowered; you think opportunity must be dismissed in the face of a chequered past and all in the name of a changeless future. You think people can’t drag themselves out of a mire and triumph over adversity and disaster to spite circumstances over which they never had control in the first place?’ His fist came down hard upon her table. ‘Damn, Brenna, I don’t believe you or you wouldn’t be here trying to make the difference.’

Brenna jumped at the noise, her eyes large and dark in a paling face as she struggled against his anger, knowing that to lose his patronage would be a disaster and knowing too that his money did buy him the right to order things just as he willed it. Accordingly she withdrew into silence.

He watched her with a frown in his eyes. He wanted to cross the room right there and then and drag her away from all of this: his anger and her fears and a world of parentless children, the poverty of east London, a table of food set only with scraps, and a house that had seen better times. And Brenna herself, this dark-haired lady of mystery, whose world offered no path for friendship or understanding but, rather, buried the gifts he offered under the age-old resentment of privilege. He spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat and said wearily, ‘Think it over and send me word of your decision tomorrow.’ With that he bowed his head slightly and left the room, this time shutting the door firmly behind him.

Brenna groped her way to the chair and leant her head against her arms, her mind running numbly over their dispute. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered to herself. She was too old to feel like this, like a child who’d been castigated by a righteous and reasonable parent, though one fully ignorant of the very arguments themselves.

She lifted her eyes to the door, knowing the reaction Kate and Betsy would give to even the mention of a privately performed ballet; all the joy and disbelief she herself might have felt had it not been Nicholas Pencarrow who was offering it. In a flash she knew what it was that she would do. The others and the children would go on Wednesday and she herself would depart for Worsley with three of Michael’s burliest servants accompanying her, given the recent problems of the road. Her absence would then determine the Duke of Westbourne’s true intent. If he continued with these more-than-generous offers, it would be on the basis of his wanting to for the sake of the children and not for some misbegotten sense of indebtedness that their meeting in the woods of Worsley had seemed to inspire in him.

She wanted their personal relationship severed. He was dangerous and she was vulnerable. She wanted Nicholas Pencarrow, Duke of Westbourne, Earl of Deuxberry, completely gone from her life.

Returning to London from Airelies the following Friday, Brenna found her uncle ill and propped up in bed, surrounded by lemon barley drinks and a strong smelling camphor-based inhalant. One look at him, however, told her the problem was one far worse than the common cold he seemed to be attributing his breathing problems to, for he appeared blue about the lips and his chest rose and fell in a motion she found instantly disconcerting.

Gesturing to Dumas, she crossed to Michael’s desk, took paper and a pen from the top drawer and addressed the letter to the doctor, asking for his immediate assistance. Folding it and sealing it, she handed it to Dumas.

‘Take this to Dr McInnes’s house immediately and wait till they give a reply before you come home. Tell him I said it was urgent and that I’d be very indebted if he could come straight away. And, Dumas,’ she whispered as she followed him to the door, ‘please be as quick as you possibly can. I’m sure Michael is a great deal worse than he realises.’

Dumas squeezed Brenna’s hand and she watched him leave, using the small space of time to plaster a smile back on her face. She did not want to worry Michael with her own fear. He nodded at her weakly as she rejoined him, taking the hand he offered and bringing it to her lips. ‘Michael, you’d be cross with me if I’d just lain there as you have and demanded no help at all, and at the moment I feel like strangling you for your carelessness.’ Fluffing the pillows up behind him, Brenna ordered hot water to be added to the camphor to try to create an inhalant to ease him. The minutes ticked on, each one inexplicably longer, Brenna’s ears listening.

At last there was the sound of a carriage drawing up to the front porch, then she heard footsteps upon the paving.

‘The doctor’s here.’ She sighed in relief, leaving Mrs White to watch Michael as she hurried to the front door to let him in, pulling it open in one quick movement, almost colliding as she did so with the Duke of Westbourne. Frustration and anger veiled manners as she gave him no greeting. Could she never meet him without this ridiculous blush?

‘I am waiting for the doctor,’ she said shortly, stepping outside to peer up and down the street for any sign of a returning Dumas. Fresh tears of frustration rushed unbidden to her eyes as she saw the street empty and Nicholas was both astonished and alarmed.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked brusquely, pulling her around to meet him.

‘It’s Michael,’ Brenna answered tightly. ‘He’s so sick and a doctor has yet to arrive.’

Hailing his waiting phaeton, Nicholas ordered his driver to Harley Street for help before returning to the house. He caught a glimpse of Brenna as she hurried to the second-floor landing and was beside her in a trice. Both came at the same time into Michael’s room. His breathing now was erratic, jerkily taken and noisily completed and Nicholas went to his side, loosening the nightshirt from around his neck and pulling him from the bed towards the window.

‘Get the chair, and bring it over to the balcony,’ he said to Brenna, throwing open the doors to the frigidness of the late afternoon. Cold winter air came rolling on to Michael in icy waves and the change in temperature seemed to soothe him for, seated in the armchair by Nicholas, he regained at least a little measure of his breath, and his colour settled slowly into a more normal pinkness.

Brenna knelt at her uncle’s feet, her hand in his, tears streaming down her cheeks in relief at his improvement, her trance broken moments later when a well-dressed stranger appeared in the bedroom.

‘Clive.’ The Duke of Westbourne strode towards the new arrival, hand outstretched, and Brenna’s eyes strayed thankfully to the black medical bag he carried. Nicholas Pencarrow’s doctor and here so quickly? She stood with an uncertain gait, wishing Dr McInnes and Dumas present so that she might dismiss this pompous-looking newcomer, but one glance at Michael changed her mind for he still struggled for a normal breath. The man observed it too and quickly took control.

‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting downstairs, miss, I would like to examine my patient in private.’ His eyes moved to the Duke, who came forward and led her out of the room and down to the parlour he’d been in the first time he’d ever come here. His ministrations raised Brenna from the state of shock she’d felt ever since she’d seen the danger of Michael’s affliction and she shook free from his arm and seated herself on a chair near the cold and fireless hearth, raising her eyes to Nicholas’s as she did so.

‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say; she couldn’t even speak any more. She was sorry for herself and for Michael, sorry for all the huge and unsolvable problems that suddenly seemed laid at her door, sorry for Nicholas’s help given so freely even in the face of her own secrets, and sorry she could not lean into his strength and sob her heart out. Her chin wobbled and, as her hand came up to hide it, she cast her eyes down towards the floor, willing herself not to cry, not here and not now. She drew in a noisy breath and held it, struggling for a strength she far from felt.

Nicholas watched her efforts and crossed to a drinks’ tray, pouring out a liberal brandy and swirling it in his hand to warm it before turning to rejoin her. Effortlessly he came down on his haunches in front of her and placed the glass in her hands, a little distanced so as not to alarm her, but close enough to be able to speak quietly and try to allay all the fears for Michael he could see reflected so plainly in her beautiful violet eyes.

‘Brenna, Clive Weston-Tyler is a thorough physician and Michael already looked a lot better before we left his room.’ Her eyes strayed quickly to his, glad of his hopeful words, and she nodded as he continued, ‘I’m sure he’s seen lots of cases just like this one and he will be more than competent in dealing with your uncle.’

Taking a deep breath, Brenna tried to recover her scattered composure and tried also to still the shaking that seemed to have gripped her since leaving Michael’s room.

Seeing this, Nicholas pushed the glass to her lips. ‘Clive will be having to come and see you next if you don’t drink up.’

The words brought her eyes to his face. ‘He looks expensive,’ she blurted out before she had a chance to stop herself and Nicholas nodded, a smile in his voice.

‘He is.’

Goodness, she thought. I hope he’s not too much longer then, the shock of the bill could harm Michael just as easily as his lack of breath. ‘He is your family doctor?’ she countered awkwardly, trying to fill in the gap.

‘Yes. I keep him on a retainer for any medical emergency. Tonight I’m getting my money’s worth.’ Laughter glinted in green eyes and embarrassment crossed into hers as she turned away. Had he guessed at her thoughts? Was this his way of saying that he’d settle any accounts? First the orphanage, and now in their very home. How far did his indebtedness to her extend? Surely he was beginning to feel the weight of all these unexpected burdens.

She put down her glass, uncertain as to the effects of the brew, for her mind seemed already apart from her body and she always liked to feel in control. Standing, she walked to the window, looking out towards the dusk as it fell over the rooftops, her thoughts racing across the last few months.

With a new resolve in her eyes she began quietly, ‘Thank you for your help tonight, your Grace. Michael is dear to me and without him—’ She stopped, unable to go on, and he nodded as he saw what it was she was trying to say to him, though she hurried on as she guessed he was about to speak. ‘I consider your debt to me paid in full. A life for a life, yours for Michael’s. It’s a well-fulfilled obligation and I hold you in no arrears…’ She hesitated then, unable to phrase the obvious final conclusion, though he stepped forward and did it for her.

‘So you’re saying that now you want me gone. Is that it?’

Said like that, after all that he had done, it seemed so callous she could barely agree, though when she lifted her eyes to his she was amazed at the wry amusement that had settled there.

‘I’ll bow out on one condition, Brenna,’ he said softly and a frown creased her forehead as she searched without success for his meaning. ‘I want both you and Michael to come to my ball.’

Another social gathering! Unsureness knotted in her stomach.

‘Why?’

‘Your life is too narrow and you’re too young to live like a nun.’

‘And you think it’s up to you to change it?’ She coloured, angry now as she tossed her words at him with little care. ‘Your title affords you lordship only over your demesne, Nicholas Pencarrow, and lies far from deciding what may be best for me.’

‘Then you won’t come to my ball?’ he countered lazily, a muscle ticking at the back of his cheek, making a lie of his carefully placed indifference.

She felt caught. He always made her feel like that. If she rejected his offer, he still might meddle in her life, and if she accepted, all the old dangers lay very close at hand. A room filled with the game of love, dancing and flirting. Hard violet shards raked across him.

‘If I accept, it will be on one condition only,’ she mirrored his words and his smile deepened.

‘What’s that?’

‘I won’t dance.’

Fresh merriment filled his voice. ‘As you wish.’ He held out his hand but she failed to take it, angry at his teasing in a way he would never understand.

‘I don’t have a dress.’ The words were out even as she thought them—childish, she knew, but she wanted to diminish some of his pleasure at having cornered her and let him worry about what it was she would wear.

‘I’ll send you one.’

‘You will not.’ Shock ran through her body at the intimacy of his suggestion.

‘Then come in navy. It always suits you.’ His face creased into a wide smile as he continued, ‘I’d even be happy with the paint-splattered white smock, just as long as you’re inside it.’

She blushed again, her whole body roiling at his unspoken meanings. Nicholas Pencarrow was flirting with her? Her, when he had the choice of every other London female? Without wishing it, she softened her tone, disarmed against the power he was so pointlessly offering, and deep dimples appeared.

‘I begin to think it would have made my life more tranquil had I just left you to the mercy of the highwaymen, your Grace.’

‘Tranquillity can sometimes be equated with boredom, Brenna. You have to take risks in life to get what you want.’ Gentling his teasing when he felt her withdrawal, he added, ‘I missed you at the ballet the other afternoon.’

She had the grace to look slightly guilty. ‘I had business in Worsley. We’re selling Airelies.’ She disguised the hurt well, she thought, her businesslike tones hard across the softer sorrow.

‘That’s the house I came to with your gun?’ Nicholas asked.

‘Yes, I was brought up there from the age of twelve.’ She added, ‘It’s home,’ before she could stop herself.

‘More so than this one?’ He gestured at the building they stood in.

‘Michael brought me there first after York…’ Halting in mid-sentence, she realised the extent of what it was she had just revealed to him, and cursed herself for the inadvertent slip of both tongue and mind. The arrival of Dr Weston-Tyler at that moment saved her from any awkward explanations.

‘Will he be all right?’ she asked, her legs readying for flight upstairs should his answer prove different from what she hoped.

The older man nodded. ‘He’s had a severe attack of asthmatic bronchitis, Miss Stanhope, due largely, I gather, from the fact that you were not here to send him off more quickly to a physician.’

Brenna’s face crumpled. ‘’Tis much the same as I told him. I’m afraid he’s very stubborn.’

‘And no longer a young man.’

‘That, too.’

‘This condition is worsened, you see, by two things: age and worry.’ He gave the prognosis as if he had just read it from a textbook and Brenna paled as she answered grimly.

‘He’s suffering from both, I fear, and there’s not much I can do about either.’

‘Then take him on a holiday,’ the doctor answered nonchalantly with the universal prescription he meted out to all his rich patients.

Where could they go, thought Brenna, and with what money could they get there? The realisation hit her in that second that neither the doctor nor Nicholas Pencarrow would ever know the curse of dire financial straits. Why, the fee from one consultation alone would probably cover a week at a resort on the south coast beaches and the Duke of Westbourne’s legendary wealth was common knowledge amongst all.

‘Well,’ continued Dr Weston-Tyler as he made much of packing away his gleaming equipment, ‘there’s nothing more I can do here.’

Nicholas watched, his hands tightening behind his back. God, couldn’t Clive understand there was no money? How plain did she have to be? How humble did she need to become, or had Clive tripped so much in the world of luxury that he now failed to understand its other face of hardship? Nicholas interrupted, putting the moment of uneasiness at an end.

‘I am sure Sir Michael and Miss Stanhope will find some solution. Are there medicines to be left?’

The practitioner nodded. ‘I’ve made a list…’ He went to hand it to Brenna, but Nicholas took it instead.

‘I’ll get these,’ he murmured, tucking the paper into his jacket pocket before Brenna could insist otherwise. ‘And I’ll give you a ride home, Clive.’

Brenna walked towards the door, ushering them into the small hall and opening the front portal with obvious relief, though Nicholas stopped as he stepped through.

‘I will send Thompson back with the medicines as soon as they’re made up and I will include the invitations.’

Brenna looked at him uncertainly.

‘For the ball,’ he enlightened her. ‘As you promised, minus the dress and the dances.’

She nodded, little in the mood for teasing. ‘Goodbye, your Grace.’ She curtsied stiffly, though her eyes softened. ‘And thank you for helping Michael and for the doctor…and the medicines,’ she added lamely, for it seemed her constant place to ever be the receiver of favours, apart from in the first few moments of their acquaintance.

Nicholas almost began to speak again but, thinking better of it, tipped his hat and walked into the night. How did one offer gifts without also offering an affection he knew she wanted nothing of? How did he, knowing De Lancey’s financial problems, balance pride against charity, balance help against interference?

Chapter Five

Nicholas spent the next two days sifting through the records of Michael De Lancey’s family, finding, to his surprise, the notice of a brother, Fenton, blessed with six daughters by 1837 and then a long-awaited son born in the same month and year that Nicholas’s investigations had turned up as Brenna’s birth date. He glanced again at the latest letter from his lawyer, which had uncovered some more facts. Fenton’s wife Daphne still lived out of York, mad by all accounts but cared for by the youngest daughter, the others having made respectable, if not grand, marriages. A furrow creased his brow as he copied the country address of the house called Farnley, standing in a borough of the northern city of York. Crossing to a drawer, he pulled out a map, unfurling it on the table before him, trying to plot the exact route he would need to take to reach this place.

Brenna Stanhope was taking over his rational thought, he thought wryly, remembering back to last night’s unexpected visit from Deborah Hutton. The opera star at the height of her career and charms had always appealed to him, yet, as he had taken her to his bed, he had imagined not honeyed tresses but ebony ones, not sky blue eyes but fearful violet orbs, not light flirtatious banter but a heavily veiled articulate aloofness that bespoke all of the one he was becoming increasingly obsessed with. Last night had shocked and worried him in a way no other incident ever had. He had to be mad to let Brenna affect him like this and yet he was completely powerless to change it. ‘Keep your distance, Nick,’ he chided himself softly. ‘Remember, Brenna Stanhope is just an interesting diversion, nothing more.’ He rang for his butler. Burton appeared less than thirty seconds later, bowing slightly as he entered the Duke’s company.

‘You called, your Grace?’

Nicholas smiled, easing the other man into a more relaxed stance. ‘I need to go to York for a few days tomorrow on business. Could you let the stables know and have them bring the brougham around at nine o’clock in the morning?’ He stopped, trying to find a way to phrase the next sentence. ‘If my family should enquire of my whereabouts, tell them that I have had to go north and I will be home on the Sabbath. If there is a problem that you feel needs my attention, you may send word to the Excelsior in York, though I can think of nothing that could warrant such a need, short of a disaster.’

Burton nodded, a look of puzzlement crossing the man’s countenance, though if Nicholas saw it, he gave it no heed.

Farnley was an old house, once grand but run down and tatty looking, and the farm cottages were in the same sad condition. Nick was not surprised. He knew the family to be in straitened circumstances since the death of Fenton.

The carriage stopped at the front portico and Nicholas stepped out. Without warning, a door swung open and a young woman appeared. She came out into the light with a familiar reticence, and in that second Nicholas knew the answer to all his intended questions, for there could be no doubt that this was much more than a distant relation to Brenna Stanhope.

‘Good afternoon, I seem to have lost my way to Smail’s Mill.’ He made mention of a small town he knew to be a few miles to the west of Farnley, bringing a map from his pocket to reinforce the statement. ‘I am Nicholas Pencarrow, newly come from London, and you would do me a great service if you could point out the direction I must follow.’

‘Oh.’ The girl blushed, obviously hesitating as to whether or not it was proper to speak with him, when a voice came loudly from inside.

‘Who is it, Charlotte? Who is there? Who has come to see us?’

‘Excuse me.’ Charlotte bowed politely, and disappeared into a side room to return immediately and bid him enter into the company of Daphne De Lancey.

Even in old age she was a beautiful woman, though there was a glint of madness in her eyes and a certain unkemptness about her appearance. Charlotte mirrored her handsomeness, but Brenna outdid them both, and a portrait that hung askew upon the wall behind her showed the six daughters all from the same mould, and a son thatched blond and freckled. His glance flicked back to the woman he now knew to be Brenna’s mother.

‘Welcome, Mr Pencarrow, to Farnley. I am Daphne De Lancey and this is my daughter Charlotte.’

Nicholas turned and favoured the girl with a smile. She was taller than Brenna, heavier of feature, though much more open to strangers.

‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir.’ She curtsied as stiffly as Brenna did. That trait must run across all the De Lancey women, Nick thought, for a sense of independence sprang from these two nearly every bit as strongly as it did from the youngest Miss Stanhope. Or De Lancey, he corrected himself.

Brenna De Lancey, born exactly the same day as her brother George and disappearing thereafter for all of twelve years.

Daphne’s voice brought him back into the present. ‘My daughter tells me that you are lost.’

‘I am, and if you could but give me some instruction as to the path I must follow to reach the Mill, I would be most grateful.’

Daphne stood. ‘We usually eat here within the next half an hour. I know this is an invitation pushed upon you without much warning and indeed by strangers as we are, but we would deem it an honour if you were to join us.’

Put so humbly, how could Nicholas refuse, and his smile touched his eyes for the first time as he surveyed the two women before him. With a little persuasiveness in the right direction there was much here that he could learn and he could also begin back for London that very same night.

‘I would be delighted, Lady De Lancey, though it truly cannot be for very long as I have business matters most pressing to attend to.’

‘Hurry then, Charlotte, and fetch Mr Pencarrow a beverage,’ Daphne barked the order and the girl jumped up towards the drinks’ table, turning back to him only as she reached it and enquiring of Nicholas what it was he wished to have. His glance raked across the ill-laid trolley chancing on a port he enjoyed, and he gave her his preference.

‘Are there just the two of you here?’ His eyes flicked to the family portrait behind Daphne.

‘At the moment…yes,’ Charlotte answered with an open honestness. ‘All of my sisters are married. George, our brother, died soon after that drawing was completed.’ She stopped, watching Daphne before adding, ‘Our father too.’ Sadness showed plainly across both faces.

‘You were lucky, then, that the land was not entailed,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Some families could lose everything were the male heir to die.’ It was said more in innocence than design, though as he looked up an expression of such guilt was written across Daphne’s face it was as if she had screamed, We lost it way before that, and taking her drink she finished it in one long and unbroken swallow.

Charlotte glanced around uneasily at her mother, and Nicholas, seeing her uncertainty, raised his glass in a toast.

‘Here’s to life,’ he said slowly.

One begun, one ended. Two babies, born on exactly the same day to two very different women, and a family lost to Brenna.

A coldness began to settle inside of Nicholas, an answer to a puzzle he didn’t want to find, a premonition of Brenna’s fear, of her secrecy, an understanding of Michael’s protection and an explanation for Daphne’s madness. He squashed it down, not willing to dissect it at all further, and questioned Charlotte instead. ‘Do you ever come down to London?’

‘Oh, hardly ever,’ she laughed. ‘We have a relation there, my father’s brother.’ She glanced around uneasily. ‘He has a house in Camberwell, I believe. A Sir Michael De Lancey—mayhap you know of him?’

Nicholas made light of his answer, unwilling to take the subject any further for he didn’t wish to alarm Daphne or inadvertently frighten Michael or Brenna into flight.

‘It’s a big place,’ he replied flatly, his eyes flitting unbidden back to the visage of an unlawful male heir and a family portrait which should have proudly held the likeness of a woman who was becoming increasingly important to him.

The drive back to London was a long one for Nicholas, all his energies spent trying to unravel the puzzle of Brenna De Lancey Stanhope, and, on arriving in town he directed his driver to deliver him to his club instead of Pencarrow House.

Almost the only other occupant of the place as Nicholas walked through the salons was the Earl of Drummorne, Francis Woodhams, sitting ensconced in an armchair by the fire, brandy in hand and lost in thought.

‘Penny for them?’ Nick chided as he sat to join him, beckoning a passing waiter for a whisky.

Brown eyes rose in greeting, a tepid smile barely lighting them in humour. ‘Sit at your peril, Nick, for I warn you today I am not good company.’

‘Did your brother abscond with more of the family jewels?’ Nicholas quipped without apology, thinking of Bertrand, a known gambler whose excesses seemed paid for only by Francis’s good intelligence in business.

‘Nay, it’s Louisa. She’s leaving me!’

‘But you only just returned from Paris and, from all accounts that I’ve heard, the trip seemed more than a success.’

For the first time Francis smiled. ‘I thought so too! It seems, however, the life of a well-bred courtesan is not enough for her. She wants her independence.’

Nicholas grimaced. ‘Tough to promise,’ he said with feeling.

‘My thoughts exactly. Seems she has a woman friend in business on the east side of town, someone from her far and distant past. The woman is the epitome of “unconventional femininity”, according to Louisa. Together they could rule the world.’ He up-ended his glass. ‘Louisa working in an orphanage. Can you even imagine it?’

‘Hell!’ Nicholas lurched to his feet. ‘Not the Beaumont Street Orphanage run by Brenna Stanhope?’

Astonishment raced across Francis’s brow. ‘Yes. I’m sure that is the name she mentioned…’

‘Interesting, indeed.’ Nick stood, running his hands through his hair before facing Francis urgently. ‘Where’s Louisa now?’

‘She’s at the town house. You want me to go with you right this minute?’ Francis groaned and stood. ‘This had better damn well be important, Nick.’

‘Believe me, it’s very important,’ came the cryptic reply, and Francis hurried to catch him up.

The walk through Hyde Park to Mayfair was a long one and Brenna paused to look around her, the semi-dusk of the early afternoon burying the city under a carpet of smoke.

London. It was glorious and dismal, rich and poor, elegant and tatty. Here, in an area favoured by the fashionable and wealthy, the houses changed their coats; larger, spacious, gardened and well to do, and Brenna, walking now into Mount Street, smiled as she caught sight of Louisa waiting patiently at the corner, parasol opened above her to guard against the dampness in the air.

‘Brenna!’ The girl came forward. ‘It seems an age since I’ve seen you.’

‘It has been,’ Brenna returned, kissing the offered cheek lightly, her eyes widening with astonishment at the beauty before her. ‘And how a year in Paris has changed you, Louisa! You look wonderful.’ Her glance fell across the colourful silk bodice of a day gown cut daringly low.

Louisa smiled, tucking errant blond curls beneath a lace-edged cap. ‘Francis bought me a whole wardrobe in Paris. He bought me this too.’ She pulled forth a necklace, laced in gold and emeralds, and Brenna, holding them, felt the warmth of Louisa’s body on the metal.

‘And you’re happy?’

‘I am trying to be, though sometimes…’ Her blue eyes darkened as she struggled to continue. ‘Sometimes I would like to be more in control of my own destiny, Brenna, and determine my future just as you have yours. But enough of that. The reason I have asked you here today is to give you a gift!’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, and from Paris no less! You’re to come right now and try it on. Francis has just left and won’t be back till tomorrow at least and I have the apartment entirely to myself.’

Brenna stepped back, unsure about continuing. They met usually in some anonymous safe place far from the real world of either, and seldom discussed the past that bound them both together. Now, well dressed and pampered, Louisa wanted no recollection of her early years, and Brenna had little want to delve there either. It was as if in this mutual pact of silence something was salvaged, some sense of dignity and honour, some shape of a past that mitigated their guilt and let them stand free and independent.

‘I’m not sure,’ Brenna hedged, thinking of some reason to leave, but seeing the hurt of disappointment in Louisa’s eyes. ‘Well, perhaps only just quickly. I really can’t be long.’

‘Nay, not long.’ Louisa wound her arm through Brenna’s and excitedly bundled her down the street, stopping at a well cared-for, semi-detached house that lay wreathed in elegant black iron lacework. Finding the key, she pushed the door open and Brenna, stepping inside, was assailed by the unmistakable smell of expensive perfume.

‘Up here!’ Louisa beckoned, running up steps draped in eastern carpets. ‘I want to show you your present.’

Brenna followed, crossing to a bedroom that filled the whole front of the house, French doors spilling out to a balcony and lawn lace curtains shielding it from the view of others. Her mouth fell open with amazement.

‘This is your bedroom? You sleep here?’ Her eyes noted a bed, easily the largest she had ever seen, and shifted back to the woman beside her, her dimples appearing as unexpectedly as the sun after a long and dingy day. ‘Goodness, Louisa, but this is decadent.’

Louisa chuckled and threw open her cupboards. ‘Wait till you see the rest, but be warned against criticism, Brenna, for our childhood of otherwise has taught me to enjoy excess.’

The words were said gently and Brenna sobered, running her fingers now through yards of silk and velvet and tulle in the shape of what seemed like a hundred gowns hanging in proud array. ‘They’re beautiful, Louisa. I think that this Francis must truly love you.’

Blue eyes twinkled. ‘He does and one day he’ll realise it, but for now…’ She went to one end of the cupboard and pulled forth a gown still wrapped in calico to shield it from the light of day.

‘This is yours, Brenna. I found it at Bussy’s. The madam there said it had been ordered by the daughter of a Marquis who had never come back to claim it and I thought of you straight away.’

Brenna pulled off the drab material that enfolded the garment, and her eyes were filled with wonderment at the sight before her: an evening gown of dark red silk, high backed and square bodiced, the V-shaped front trimmed with wide lace revers, and an overskirt gathered at the waist before falling in scalloped edges to the floor.

‘My Lord,’ she breathed to Louisa. ‘It’s lovely…more then lovely…’

‘You truly do like it?’ Louisa squealed in happy anticipation. ‘Try it on!’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Both girls fell into laughter. ‘You’re sure no one will come?’

‘Positive.’

It was all the encouragement Brenna needed and, peeling off the blue velvet, she reached for the red silk, Louisa fastening the row of tiny buttons at her back.

Intrigued, Brenna went across to the armoire, stretching up on her toes to see the hemline and un-pinning her hair, using Louisa’s brush to stroke out the shiny heavy mass of curls until they gleamed. ‘I can’t believe that you bought this for me,’ she whispered, trying at the same time to pull up the bodice a little. ‘You’re sure it suits me?’ A tiny niggle of doubt sat in Brenna’s mind as she turned towards the mirror, her breasts swelling across the tightness.

‘Wonderfully!’ Louisa supplied, laughing as the other woman blushed. ‘And it’s well past time you broke out and wore something apart from navy. The world of men is not at all as you may think it to be, Brenna, and old age can be lonely without a soulmate.’

Brenna was still, caught between the past and the future in a way she often was in the company of Louisa. And the dress of silk and lace felt undeniably luxurious.

‘People truly wear the décolletage this low?’ Brenna’s knowledge of the latest in fashion was, at her own admission, sadly lacking.

‘All of them, though this one would be considered tame, even on an unmarried lady.’

Brenna pulled the bodice up for a final time, sighing as she made not a whit of difference to the amount of exposure. ‘It almost seems indecent,’ she whispered, wishing suddenly that she did have the confidence to be seen in such a gown, given that it was hers to keep.

‘Well, it’s not, though you may feel happier if I showed you the whole thing. Come downstairs with me and help me bring up the mirror from the front salon. It’s usually kept up here, but Francis has just had the hinges mended. We’ll find some shoes and a hat and you’ll be able to see your dress properly then.’

Buoyed up by Louisa’s enthusiasm, Brenna nodded; five minutes later they were in the front hallway, heaving the heavy mahogany piece of furniture towards the stairwell.

‘Tip it my way,’ Louisa commanded, ‘and hold it still. I’ll see if I can lever it up on to the banister.’ Brenna strained and brought the length across her chest, lowering her arms to try to heave it upwards and feeling the breath leave her body with its heaviness.

‘Are you sure we can manage this, Louisa?’ she queried doubtfully.

‘I’ve done it before with the maid.’ She frowned. ‘Or perhaps it was with Francis…’ And at that second the front door, not five steps away from them, was flung open, spilling forth an astonished-looking blond man and Nicholas Pencarrow, two pairs of eyes staring at them in disbelief.

‘Brenna?’ Her name came incredulous and huskily from Nicholas and she almost expected him to reach out and touch her just to ascertain she was not a mirage. Her arms quivered beneath the weight of the mirror, caught in its heaviness so that she could not even adjust the neck of her gaping dress and, as Nicholas came forward to relieve her of its burden, she felt his eyes running across her.

Shock surged through Nicholas’s body. Brenna here and in the company of Louisa Greling and shoeless, her hair falling loose across a gown fashioned from lace and silk? Brenna with one of London’s most celebrated courtesans and looking just as provocative? Where were the high-necked blue velvets, the books, Beaumont Street? How could he reconcile one with the other?

The question was forming on his lips as she whirled, racing up the stairs without pause, her face aflame with embarrassment, the dress seen through Nicholas’s eyes acquiring only a cheap showiness, which in Louisa’s company had not been obvious.

Slamming the door behind her, she hauled off the gown, tears of frustration rising as she tried to unfasten all the tiny buttons. Reaching with shaky hands for the blue velvet, she pulled it on with as much quickness as she could muster, one foot against the door to bar entry given the complete absence of any lock. Once the dress lay in place across her body, she felt stronger, wrenching her stockings into place with fingers more like her own and tying her hair back in one long and customary plait. Wide eyes observed her reflection in the mirror. Lord, what could she say to him? How could she explain away her friendship with Louisa or her reasons for being here?

Honesty!

The word came quiet and true and with a growing resolve, but the newly found confidence completely shattered when she heard a knock on the door and the Duke of Westbourne’s voice without.

‘Brenna? May I come in for a moment?’

In panic she made for the door, pushing it open and herself out in almost the same movement. She would meet his questions on the landing, not in the bedroom, though with no sign of Louisa or the man she presumed to be Francis, her heart began beating anew.

Nicholas stood, leaning slightly against the railings of an ornate balcony, his gaze softening as he observed the transformation of the woman now before him, laced into the shapeless navy velvet as though covered from head to foot in androgynous armour.

With quiet patience he stood his ground, waiting for her to look at him, willing her to explain what was going on. Finally, an anguished visage tipped up to his.

‘It…it…it is not as you may think, your Grace,’ she stuttered in her haste to explain. ‘The dress was a present from Louisa, from Paris, which she insisted that I try on after making it plain no visitors at all were expected this afternoon.’ She stopped, taking a breath in nervousness. ‘It’s very flimsy and hardly me and far too…too…’

‘Revealing?’ Nicholas supplied. Green eyes glittered with a hard masculinity. ‘You do know what this house is, do you not, Brenna?’

She turned at his question and walked towards the stairs, willing him to keep his distance, willing herself to stand her ground.

Quietly she nodded.

‘Then you also realise how damaging it would be to your reputation if another had arrived instead of me? No matter what the reason?’

Again a small shake, the brittle sharpness of unshed tears welling behind her eyes. He could never know how well she understood the danger or how close to the truth he tarried.

‘Louisa has been a friend of mine for a long time, though today is the first day I have ever come here. The dress…’ she added brokenly, ‘I haven’t many and thought perhaps for your ball…’ She bit back the words as soon as she had said them, cursing her stupidity and waiting for laughter.

None came.

Nicholas stood still, fighting the pain in his heart, fighting the desperate want of her that swept through his body at her confession. In truth the dress looked stunning, but for all the wrong reasons. And she still did not have a dress for his ball.

His mind flicked to the countless clothes most ladies of his acquaintance had the choice of, worn once and discarded, and it was on his tongue to offer again the gift of a more suitable gown, but he kept silent, seeing the intrinsic pride in the lift of her chin and in the anger of her own admission.

‘Come, Brenna,’ he whispered softly. ‘Let me see you home.’

She hesitated, bewildered by his gentleness and her own lack of alternative. ‘And the other man with you,’ she said. ‘You will explain?’

He nodded, watching her carefully, the man in him hard pressed to act the gentleman she expected. God, if he had any sense he’d seduce her here and now and be damned with the consequences. Already he could hear the muffled noises of lovemaking in the salon below. Francis and his mistress seemed to have settled their differences in passion, he surmised, wishing it could be that easy for him. His loins ached with the want of her.

‘I think we should leave,’ he said huskily, stepping back as she preceded him down the stairs, unwilling to speak further until they were outside, so little did he trust himself.

Brenna frowned and did as she was bid. Suddenly he seemed angry and withdrawn. Would he let it be known that he had found her in such a compromising position, or worse, would he withdraw his money from the orphanage altogether?

Concerned violet eyes raised up to his as they came outside into the drizzle of a late afternoon. Taking a deep breath, she began in earnest. ‘I realise my behaviour today was inexcusable, my Lord, and the dress—’

He let her go no further.

‘You looked beautiful.’ The words came harsh and ragged and hardly like the Duke of Westbourne. In consternation she looked up to find darkened eyes boring down into her own. ‘Thompson will deliver you to Greerton, Miss Stanhope,’ he said unevenly, opening the door to his carriage to let her in and stepping firmly back as she seated herself. ‘And I will see you at my ball.’

She could only nod, watching as he signalled to his driver to leave, watching as he turned back to Louisa’s house, a desperate dread beginning to form about her mind as she realised his intentions. Would Louisa be savvy enough to deflect his curiosity? She hoped so. How she hoped so.

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