Under the gaze of the ton!

As the daughter of wild Pamela Winterley, Eve has always lived in the shadow of scandal. Society watches her every move, waiting for Eve to prove she is just as wayward as her mother...

Ever since his father’s scandalous affair, Colm Hancourt has lived life on his own terms. But then he comes face-to-face with Eve, the daughter of his father’s mistress! It may have begun with a kiss that set tongues wagging, but could the latest Winterley scandal be the start of something special?

He was so strung out with hot curiosity that he broke first.

He bridged the final gap between them with a kiss that healed and yet burned like wildfire at the same time. Haste, heat, fury, excitement and a pinch of doubt roared through him in a heady tangle he couldn’t begin to sort out. Then she kissed him back, and that wild rush of feelings melted into just her…just them.

‘Closer,’ he urged, and they shifted together so the back wall of the summerhouse stopped them.

He braced against it to keep her from the cold hardness, and now they were locked together as if they might dissolve walls and pillars and damp December with their own version of summer heat—never mind hard angles, chilly marble and the ever more ferocious storm outside.

Author Note

Welcome to The Winterley Scandal. Eve Winterley first appeared in The Viscount’s Frozen Heart, the first book of my A Year of Scandal quartet, and even then I knew she would need a book of her own one day.

Five years on from that fateful year of scandal, Eve has been ‘out’ for three years. She is determined not to let her notorious mother’s reputation taint her—but then she meets the son of Pamela Winterley’s last lover and must choose between keeping her spotless reputation and risking everything with this gruff, battle-scarred young man she shouldn’t fall in love with but somehow can’t forget.

I do hope you enjoy Eve and Colm’s story, whether you have read any of the other Winterley stories or not, and thank you for being such wonderful and loyal readers.

The Winterley Scandal

Elizabeth Beacon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

Books by Elizabeth Beacon

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

A Year of Scandal: Spin-Off

The Winterley Scandal

A Year of Scandal

The Viscount’s Frozen Heart

The Marquis’s Awakening

Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise

Redemption of the Rake

Linked by Character

The Duchess Hunt

The Scarred Earl

The Black Sheep’s Return

Stand-Alone Novels

A Less Than Perfect Lady

Captain Langthorne’s Proposal

Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess

The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle

Courtship & Candlelight

‘One Final Season’

A Most Unladylike Adventure

Candlelit Christmas Kisses

‘Governess Under the Mistletoe’

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

It’s so hot tonight I am only wearing my new rubies as I write. The stones are glorious, but the settings—oh, my diary—so old fashioned I could scream. Still, only the diamonds to coax out of Lord Chris now—and how his brother the Duke of Linaire will gobble with rage when he sees me wear them.

No, I shall wear every last one of Lady Chris’s jewels, ancient settings and all, the day I get hold of the lot. The Duke of Linaire wants them for his fat mistress, whatever he says about them belonging to his nephew. He doesn’t even like the boy—and how dare he threaten to have me whipped at the cart tail because his little brother loves me to distraction?

Chris’s plain wife is dead and the jewels her vulgar father showered on her never looked half so well on her anyway. The truth is the Duke hates Chris for being young and handsome and having me. After marrying that plain heiress the old Duke insisted one of his sons wed when Lord Horace ran off to the Colonies with that odd female who paints, rather than shackle himself to a nabob’s daughter.

Chris deserves some fun. He endured that low-born creature in his bed for so long it must be bliss to share it with me—and his son can’t wear the jewels, can he? So what use are diamonds of the first water to the horrid brat?

Colm Hancourt carefully put down the expensive notebook lest he throw it across the room and let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding in an uneven gasp. As the horrid brat in question, he could argue for a hundred better uses for a fortune in gold and jewels than decorating a vain and adulterous demi-rep with them all. The fortune she had been busy spending had been his as well—or it would have been if his father hadn’t stolen it before Colm was old enough to argue. Whatever Lord Christopher Hancourt had done with his son’s fortune, inherited from Colm’s fabulously wealthy maternal grandfather Sir Joseph Lambury, those jewels should be in the bank, waiting for Colm to take a wife. So here was proof, if he needed it, they were long gone. Colm’s maternal grandfather might have left his entire fortune to his only grandson, but that hadn’t stopped Lord Chris from spending it all before Colm was old enough to go to school.

He bit back a curse as the shock of that betrayal hit anew. All the wishing and cursing in the world wouldn’t make his lost fortune reappear and he should know; he’d tried every one when he was younger and seething with fury about the hand life and his father had dealt him. Rage and hurt fought to rule him even now, after eight years of soldiering and learning self-control at the charity school his eldest uncle sent him to before that. So how could he not curse his father for putting this heartless woman ahead of his children? That was the real question he had to answer if he was ever going to be content with what little he had left.

One thing he did know was that he should never have agreed to come here to Derneley House and meet the past head on like this. Pamela had grown up here, under the so-called care of her sister and brother-in-law, and reminders of the wretched female were everywhere. Portraits of the infamous Pamela seemed to jeer at him from far too many walls and it almost felt as if he might catch her and his besotted father up to something disgraceful if he turned round fast enough at times, although they had both been dead these fifteen years and more.

Still, he did owe the only one of his father’s brothers prepared to own up to him quite a lot. The current Duke of Linaire was so sheepish about asking him to come here that he couldn’t even claim he was bullied into it. No, he played down his revulsion at the idea of living in this house for however short a time he would be needed and had come here of his own free will, so he must endure this stupid suspicion that the woman who ruined his life was busy laughing at him from her front-row seat in hell.

He’d had to slot back into his old familiar disguise to live here for as long as this took as well. The Duke of Linaire’s librarian had been dismissed for selling one of the finest volumes in the Linaire Library to a rival collector and expecting the new Duke not to notice. As Uncle Horace would never find a man he could trust to do this task in such a hurry, here he was, Uncle Horace’s long-lost nephew, doing his best to do a good job with the neglected Derneley Library where he’d spent the last eight years with only one book at a time to his name, to be read and passed round other readers who liked to lose themselves in a book when life was almost unendurable on campaign. So he couldn’t even be himself now that he was back in London after all these years. Lord Chris’s son would never be welcome under this roof while Lady Derneley lived under it as well. She still raged about what she called the murder of her little sister to anyone who would listen and Lord Chris Hancourt had driven so recklessly along an Alpine road at twilight that the coach missed a bend and he and Pamela hurtled to their deaths. So here he was, Colin Carter again—just as he’d been in the army. He wanted to push aside the thought that he might have died under that name at Waterloo, if not for his sister Nell and the new Duke, but somehow it haunted him.

Nell had coaxed, or bullied, Uncle Horace into taking her to Brussels when everyone else was fleeing it as battle roared only a few miles away. Revulsion at what his little sister must have seen ate away at Colm every time he thought of Nell viewing the hell of slaughter and corruption the day after Waterloo. She had scoured the battlefield until she found him, dazed and half-conscious from loss of blood, and somehow got him back to Brussels to be nursed at the new Duke of Linaire’s expense. When he was pronounced likely to live, Nell raced back to England and her position as governess to four orphaned girls. Colm’s hands tightened into fists; his sister had to rescue him rather than the other way about and he so wanted to protect her; give her back the life she was born to. In his daydreams she was fulfilled and happy with a man who would love and cosset her as she deserved for the rest of her life. A reminiscent grin spoilt his frown as he reminded himself this was Nell he was thinking about. She wouldn’t thank him for such a husband, even if it meant escaping her life as a governess. He might as well forget the fantasy of giving Nell a Season so the world could see what a wonderful woman she was. She would chafe at the controls society put on marriageable young ladies and ask for her old job back.

So where was he? Ah, yes, Uncle Horace—the second eldest of his father’s three older brothers and the only one Colm liked and might even learn to love one day. Uncle Maurice, the next Hancourt in line after Horace, hated Colm for being his father’s son and he’d hated Lord Chris even more for succeeding with Pamela when he failed. Maurice ought to be grateful to have escaped her clutches, but Colm knew he would never forgive that slight to his reputation as a devil with the ladies. Colm frowned and decided he could well do without his Uncle Maruice’s approval, but Pamela probably chose the younger brother because he’d wed an heiress. Whispers of the fabulous Lambury Jewels locked away in a bank vault would have seemed too delicious to resist as well.

Drat, he was thinking about the wretched female again and how she had seduced and nagged and wheedled that part of his inheritance out of Lord Chris. So where had he been before Pamela interrupted his thoughts? Ah, yes, Uncle Horace—he was a much more pleasant member of the family to think about. As soon as Colm was declared likely to live, the doctors insisted Colm convalesce before he settled into his new life, and neither the Duke nor the Duchess of Linaire would listen when he insisted he was fit to work. They even packed him off to the seaside to recover, so how could he turn his back on the only other members of his family willing to own up to him?

Uncle Horace had only come back to England when he’d inherited the dukedom last year. He probably didn’t realise how huge the scandal had been when his youngest brother had run off with Pamela Verdoyne and then died with her on their way to a party she’d insisted on attending whatever the weather. Uncle Horace had been cut off for refusing to marry the heiress Colm’s father had wed instead by then. Sensible Uncle Horace, Colm thought wryly, and almost wished his father had run off with a woman he could love instead of meekly marrying that unlucky girl as well.

No—he was brought up short by the thought of the woman his father had loved so deeply and unwisely after Colm’s mother died—he decided Sophia Lambury was a far better parent to own up to than the current Viscount Farenze’s first wife. His mother might have been the pawn her father sold for a title and a convenient wife Lord Chris didn’t love, but at least she wasn’t a lovely, heartless harpy.

He shot the portrait of Pamela Verdoyne-Winterley hanging over the fireplace a hostile glare. She had been ripe and lush and beautiful, he conceded, but the mocking sensuality in her sleepy blue eyes said how aware she was of her power over fools like Lord Christopher Hancourt and how she revelled in enslaving lovers until they satisfied her every whim, whatever it cost them and theirs.

He compared her image to his shadowy memories of his mother and, yes, he definitely preferred having gentle, plain Sophia as his dam. So how would it feel to have Pamela’s blood running in his veins? Appalling, he decided, feeling sorry for the girl with that burden on her young shoulders. He didn’t know her, but for some reason he’d waited in the shadows to catch a glimpse of Lady Derneley’s niece tonight with the other servants. Miss Winterley had looked self-contained and almost too conscious of her mother’s sins, or was he being fanciful? Dark-haired and not quite beautiful, she looked very different from her notorious mother. He had to try not to snarl at the near-naked portrait of Pamela whenever he was in this room, but now he examined it for signs that her daughter had inherited her bold sensuality. Miss Winterley had her nose and slender build perhaps, but her eyes, the shape of her face and her height were all very different. Pamela’s daughter looked as if she, too, could be haunted by her mother’s sins a decade and a half after they had ended so abruptly on that Alpine pass.

So at least he didn’t have to fear a feral beast might lie under his own skin as Miss Winterley looked as if she did in her worst nightmares. Lord Chris was a fool who had loved a noble doxy beyond reason, though, and Colm hoped and prayed he would never love madly and without limits like his father. So they were equal in some ways. He sat back to brood on fate and their very different destinies and concluded that was all they had in common.

Miss Winterley was doted on by her family; Colm barely acknowledged by his. Now Uncle Horace was Duke of Linaire he had a roof over his head and a job, but Uncle Maurice was next in line; he would turn Colm out the day he succeeded to the title. Colm liked his new relative very well, but if anything happened to the current Duke he would have to support himself on one good leg and nothing much a year. So if Uncle Horace wanted him to list and pack the entire library to make sure Derneley wasn’t selling off the best volumes to dealers behind his back, Colm would stay here and do it and Mr Carter could live on for another week or two.

Miss Winterley’s presence in this house tonight, when he was sure she didn’t want to be here, was still something of a mystery. He wondered how Lady Derneley managed it, when the distrust between Pamela’s sister and the Winterleys, once Pamela openly gave up on her marriage, never seemed to have been bridged by either family. Luckily the maids hired for the evening whispered and why shouldn’t another servant listen to gossip? Colm thought with a wry smile at his own expense. Apparently Lady Derneley had put it about that this party was to be held in her niece’s honour, as a peace offering in a war where she would hear not a word said against her late sister, and the Winterleys had, not surprisingly, not a good word to say in her favour so they said nothing at all. The Winterleys had to attend or let the world know they were openly at odds with Miss Winterley’s relatives. Since it was Viscount Farenze’s mission in life to keep scandal at bay whenever he could, he would be furious to be forced into a corner, but his wife and daughter would even endure an evening at Derneley House to keep the peace.

That was the how of it all, so what about the why? Lady Derneley was a widgeon and all the brass and cunning in the family must have gone to her little sister, but was there a deeper reason behind her husband’s scheme to get his wife’s niece here tonight? Colm shuddered at the idea, but Miss Winterley had a strong protector in Viscount Farenze and he had powerful friends. Derneley wouldn’t risk all that power and influence turning against him, would he? Unless he was going to flee to the Continent to avoid his debts and thought the Winterley interest didn’t reach that far. No, it was too much of a risk, so Colm had imagined a furtive air about the man nobody else saw as he greeted his ‘long-lost niece’ as if he might cry like a stage villain over her at any moment.

Anyway, what better way was there for the Derneleys to fool their creditors a family reconciliation had taken place? The Winterleys were rich and powerful and it might work, and there were no bailiffs in the hall or toughs in the kitchens tonight. He shivered at the idea of anyone being imprisoned for debt and resolved not to long for the wife and family he might have had if things were different. Derneley’s ruin was all his own work, though; Colm had nothing in common with that noble idiot. Even he knew selling the Derneley Library to the new Duke of Linaire wouldn’t keep Derneley solvent long, but the man didn’t seem worried. Colm wondered how the guests would feel if the bailiffs turned up for dinner, dancing and a nice little gossip with the nobs. Delighted, he suspected; they had come here to be entertained after all.

Colm eyed the beautifully bound book Pamela confided in and refused to be sorry it was probably the closest she ever got to a friend. She had hidden her diaries behind a row of sermons and he wondered that they hadn’t burnt holes in the worthy volumes. The library was being taken apart and shipped to Linaire House book by book, so they would have been discovered sooner or later and Colm was suddenly very glad he was the one taking it apart, not some poor clerk happy to sell such deliciously scandalous diaries to the highest bidder. Some of the lower branches of the publishing world would love to get their hands on such ‘work’. But what on earth was he going to do with them? Burning seemed a fine idea with that prospect in his head, but he wanted to find out more about his father. Lord Chris died when Colm was eight, but he’d left his children before then.

Stuffing the expensively bound books into a portmanteau and limping off into the night was a tempting idea, but his work wasn’t finished and the tale that would do the rounds if he was caught creeping out of the house with Pamela’s diaries would enliven the radical press for years to come. Someone might recognise his name and if Captain Carter of the Rifles was smoked out as Lord Chris’s son how the ton would sneer at a duke’s grandson forced to serve in a regiment famous for dash and daring, but officered largely by tradesmen’s sons and great gruff soldiers promoted on merit.

‘Oh, no, my dear, the fellow’s totally unsuited to polite company even without those unsightly infirmities. Not a penny to bless himself with and even a cit’s daughter wouldn’t risk marrying Lord Chris’s son since he’s likely to spend her fortune on a doxy like his father.’

It was uncomfortable enough to imagine, what if he had to listen to real asides and furtive titters when he was openly his uncle’s nephew? He’d end up calling some fool out and he didn’t want to flee justice, or shoot some idiot in a duel. Nell would be furious and the thought of his lion-hearted sister made him smile. If she were here, she would bid him get on with his life and forget the past. Well, he couldn’t quite manage that yet, but he would put most of Pamela’s diaries back and hope nobody chanced on them before he could think what to do with them. Then, if he could only forget his sister had to work for her bread because of the selfish adulteress who had bled their father dry, he might be able to enjoy the novelty of not being shot at on a regular basis and be himself for the first time in eight years.

Colm cursed the day Lord Chris set eyes on Pamela as he limped towards the steep little stair to the upper shelves of the library to replace the rest of her diaries and the Derneleys’ guests enjoyed the remnants of their host’s once-fabled wealth only a few rooms away.

* * *

Eve Winterley still couldn’t work out how her stepmama talked her into attending this wretched party. She wished clever Lady Chloe Winterley, Viscountess Farenze, hadn’t right now. First there was Aunt Derneley’s delusion they doted on each other to endure, then Lord Derneley trod so clumsily on her skirt in passing as she curtsied to her dance partner that she had to hastily leave the room. If not for that the appalling old man who waylaid her on her way to find a maid to help mend it she could have left this horrible house by now... Ugh, no, she didn’t want to think about him yet, but how she wished she had invented a headache to keep her at home tonight.

She didn’t care if the gossips gloated over the split between the Derneleys and the Winterleys. Her mother had willed her to die in the attic of this place once upon a time, so little wonder she couldn’t wait to go home even before... No, she wasn’t going to think about that awful old wineskin until she was safe. She wasn’t sure she could endure the thought of him and what he might have done even then. Papa always said the best thing her mother did was reject her and usually Eve agreed, but tonight a small part of her wanted to throw something fragile because Pamela did her best to starve Eve to death in the attics here instead of being any sort of mother to her newborn babe.

Pamela didn’t matter. Dear Bran was brought here to nurse Eve and then Papa rescued them both. Eve grew up knowing she was loved as surely as the sea beat on the rocks below her father’s northern stronghold. Then Papa married Lady Chloe Thessaly when Eve was sixteen and what a relief to love and be loved by such a remarkable woman, she reminded herself, and supposed she would have to forgive Chloe her part in this wretched evening after all.

A nasty little voice at the back of her head whispered she couldn’t escape the past in this down-at-heel mansion the Derneleys were clinging on to somehow. What if the gossips and naysayers are right when they whisper, ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ behind my back? her inner critic goaded. What if one day I meet a man who wakes up the greedy whore in me and she makes me need ever more wild and wicked things from him and the rest of his sex as Pamela did?

No, never, she denied it as her headache beat in her ears and she scuttled down the next half-lit corridor in the hope of sanctuary. She was a Winterley—everyone said how closely she followed her father in colouring, build and character. Even after three years out in society not a whiff of real scandal tainted her name, despite all the rakes and fortune hunters who tried to blast it so she would have to marry them or accept a lover. Still those whispers circulated without proof to back them up and malicious eyes watched for signs she was like Pamela. Anyone who mattered knew her and not the creature gossip said she was, but ageing rakes like Sir Steven Scrumble still thought they could force her into an unlit room and make her agree to marry him because she must be like her mother, or so he’d mumbled as he did his best to make sure she was the next Lady Scrumble. She shuddered at the memory of his wet mouth and invading hands and wiped a hand across her lips to try to rub out the feel and taste of him. Hadn’t she just promised herself not to revisit that horror?

If she collapsed into a weeping heap everyone would know she had something to cry about and she hadn’t got her flounce mended either, so she had to hold it out of the way not to trip over it and now she was lost. The wicked old fortune hunter fell into an agonised heap when she’d kneed him sharply in the privates, though, so she doubted he’d be on her tail. Uncle James was a most satisfactory mentor for a young lady who didn’t want to be landed with a husband she hated. If that tactic failed, there were more to fall back on so thank heavens she belonged to a powerful clan; if she was poor and alone her mother’s wild life and blasted reputation would have ruined her years ago.

Her first real suitor came so close to doing it she shuddered at the thought of her youthful stupidity. How had she ever thought herself so in love with a fool? Papa and Chloe had warned her he wasn’t the man she thought. It wasn’t until she told him she wouldn’t elope that the gloss and excitement of having her first grown-up lover melted. He wanted her because she was her mother’s daughter, not despite it. Memory of the hot, greedy need in his eyes as he tore her gown and got ready to rape her made her feel sick even now. That was when Uncle James intervened and, as that boy hadn’t shown his true colours since, maybe his punishment worked.

Fighting the memory of that night and all the times since when even a quiet and outwardly respectable man would look at her with the memory of her mother in his hot eyes, she looked for somewhere to ply the needle and hank of thread snatched from the deserted ladies’ withdrawing room. Opening a promising door warily, she checked for fat and lazy fortune hunters, then slipped inside. There was an air of peace in the old-fashioned book room; a very small fire and one branch of candles cast mellow shadows. Her uncle by marriage would never come in here for a quick read; he was probably allergic to printers’ ink. She moved the candle and sat on a stiff and old-fashioned sofa by the fire to whip quick, impatient stitches into her torn flounce, glad to be alone for a few precious moments. Shifting the material round so she could reach the tear, she made herself sew more neatly, so it would look as if a maid mended it for her and that was where she had been all along.

There, that was the tear darned. Once she had the strip of fine French braid tacked neatly in place she would be respectable again. It was still trailing like a tail behind her when a suspicion this wasn’t such a wonderful place to hide crept up on her. One of Uncle James’s rules was assess all escape routes when you entered a strange room. She froze in her seat, needle in mid-air and every sense alert now it was too late. Another faint movement made her look round and see there was a gallery to this faded room she should have noted of earlier. Someone was coming down a hidden stair so slowly and quietly a superstitious shiver ran down her back.

Too late to avoid whoever it was now, she wasn’t about to run back to the ballroom with her braid trailing behind her, so she grasped the needle like a weapon and hoped it might work. Lord Derneley’s cronies were too soft and idle to fit into the narrow confines of the ladder-like stair she could see now her eyes were used to the dim light, so this was a less substantial person. Halting steps met the marble floor at last and she squinted against the candlelight and deep shadows it cast to see whom she must defend herself against this time.

Chapter Two

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ a gruff male voice rumbled as Eve froze, staring at the stiffly held figure and telling herself he wasn’t made of shadows.

He took a step forward and stared nearly as rudely back. He looked both old and young at the same time and she wondered how such a shabby gentleman could seem so arrogant it was as if he owned the room and not Lord Derneley’s creditors. His overlong hair was neither brown nor gold but a mixture of both and his nose had been broken once upon a time. There was an air of contained power about him that didn’t fit his modest shirt points and a very ordinary dark coat and breeches. He shouldn’t be in the least attractive to a lady like her and yet he was. Now he turned his head as if to listen for more intruders into his domain and the candlelight struck his face full on. She could see a still raw scar high on his forehead that made her gasp, then wondered how much damage his tawny pelt hid and if that explained why he let it grow. Something wary and proud in his unusual eyes stopped her answering his question with a casual put down from lady to upper servant. Even from several feet away and by weak candlelight those eyes looked dark and light at the same time. He came a little closer to peer down at her as if she was an exhibit in a museum and she gazed up and saw his irises were brown, but his pupils were rayed with flares of light gold that made them look paler.

Here was a man who kept his hopes and dreams hidden, but when their gazes met something sparked between them that she didn’t understand. It felt as if he was important to her somehow, but he couldn’t be so, could he? Looked at coolly he was a young clerk in shabby day clothes and had nothing in common with the Honourable Miss Winterley. Still she felt an eager leap of the heart she had heard about but never experienced before; the dawn of something huge she never believed in until now. It threatened to turn her world upside down as they gazed at each other as if under a spell. Which was just plain nonsense, wasn’t it? There might be enough mysteries in this stranger’s striking eyes to intrigue a flock of unwary young ladies, but she was Eve Winterley and he was an upper servant by dress, if not his arrogant manner as he silently dared her to set him down as nobody.

‘You took the words out of my mouth,’ she informed him huskily, doing her best to act the composed society lady in the face of his impudence.

‘Her ladyship’s ball is that way, Miss Winterley,’ he said and Eve felt that tingle of warmth she’d been trying to fight turn to ice. The coldness in his voice made her shiver and something like disapproval iced his gaze as he dwelt on her exposed ankles and calf, then he looked away as if she offended him.

‘You have the advantage of me, sir,’ she said stiffly.

‘Carter, ma’am,’ he said unenthusiastically.

‘And now I know?’

‘The Duke of Linaire engaged me to sort the Derneley Library and have it packed up and sent to Linaire House or the bookbinders.’

‘Well, it’s a fine collection and Lord Derneley is desperate,’ she said, then wondered what demon had got hold of her tongue tonight.

‘His father was a notable scholar,’ the man said as if every word must be paid for and he was unwilling to waste them on the likes of her.

‘Maybe his son is a changeling then,’ she said, her temper prickling. She refused to tell polite lies after the evening she’d endured so far and this man’s hostility seemed to be coming towards her in waves now he’d taken a good long look at Miss Evelina Winterley and decided he didn’t like her one little bit.

‘Lord Derneley is my host,’ he reproved her, as if she had no idea it was rude to make comments about one when you were under his roof.

‘And therefore above criticism? I shall employ you to sit in my father’s library and whisper my grace, talent and general omnipotence in my ear when I feel less than pleased with myself and the world.’

‘I shall be very ill occupied then,’ he said unwarily—so that was what he thought of her, was it? ‘I beg your pardon, I’m sure dozens of fashionable gentlemen queue up to praise your elegance, beauty and cleverness, Miss Winterley,’ he added patronisingly, as if that should make her feel better.

‘Since we seem to be jumping to conclusions about each other so freely tonight, you must be a cynic and a Jacobin, Carter. Why else would you take against a lady you don’t know, unless you hold a grudge against my family, of course?’ she demanded, suddenly very tired of being Pamela Winterley’s daughter. Tonight was bad enough without a stranger sniping at her as if she must deserve it.

* * *

Colm tried to rein in his temper, but the sight of her looking as if she had only just left the arms of her lover made him deaf to the voice of reason. Apologise, then bow politely and leave her to her sewing, you blundering idiot, it whispered, but this was a very different Eve Winterley from the one he saw enter Derneley’s hall tonight. Then she was pale and composed; a dark-haired version of the Ice Queen, so cool and distant she could have been made of bronze and cold painted. Now she was ruffled and flushed and he still wanted to touch her, not to find out if she was real this time, but to carry on the work of the lucky devil she must have been kissing in the long-disused conservatory at the end of this corridor.

He sounded like a jealous lover and how could that be when he didn’t even know her? He still wanted to be the one who tousled all that cool perfection, though. If he had sent her racing along dusty passage ways to find the least-used part of this rambling old place and set herself to rights after their amorous encounter, now that would be much more acceptable. Even the thought of being the one whose kisses set her delightful breasts rising and falling with every fast and shallow breath made him hard. Exploring even the edges of passion with her warm and willing in his arms wasn’t to be thought of. No, it really, really wasn’t, he argued with his inner savage.

Colm felt the gnawing of bitter envy as he let himself sneer ever so slightly at the difference between her public face and private morals. Miss Winterley was set fair to follow her disgraceful dam after all. He recalled Pamela’s shocking declaration that she was writing her diary wearing nothing but rubies and that did nothing to help his wild fantasies about seeing her daughter in a similar state of nature.

‘How can I feel anything about your family when I don’t know them?’ he asked as coolly as he could while he tried to shackle his inner sensualist.

‘I don’t know; how can you?’

‘Obviously I cannot.’

‘Yet you have your shallow prejudices about me and mine and seem to think it quite acceptable to show them off. For a mere librarian you are very daring, Mr Carter,’ she said with a pointed stare at the scar on his forehead he usually felt so defensive about.

‘Librarians do not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus like the goddess Athene, Miss Winterley.’

‘Waterloo?’ she demanded rudely and he supposed he’d asked for it by leaping to conclusions about her as well.

He nodded, still unable to talk about that terrible day. Not even Nell knew the terror he had felt, the dreadful urge to turn his back on his men and this hell of powder and shot and pounding artillery all around him and walk off into the woods to find peace. Now that his emotions seemed too close to the surface he was afraid he might let her see things he didn’t want any other human being to know about. She was his enemy; Winterleys and Hancourts had hated one another since his father ran off with her mother. It was probably his duty to think the worst of her, but as his lust and temper cooled he took a second look and wondered if he misjudged her.

‘I can see how a library might offer peace and quiet after that,’ she added as if she understood a bit too much. ‘Will this be enough for you after a life of action?’

‘I don’t know, Miss Winterley. No doubt I shall find out when these books are safely housed in my employer’s various houses.’

‘And rescued from the neglect of nearly half a century,’ she agreed rather absently, as if her real thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Indeed,’ he said, sounding stuffy even to his own ears. ‘I wonder they are not in worse condition.’

‘Fascinating as you find this topic, Mr Carter, I need to get back to the ballroom before people notice I have been away too long. Kindly turn your back, or go away, so I can finish sewing this braid back in place and go.’

‘I still have work to do tonight,’ he said, wishing he had pushed the open volume of Pamela’s diary he had kept out to read under something else, so there was no risk she might spot it if she wandered closer to the library table to see what he had been doing. ‘Here, let me move the candle so you can see better and be gone all the sooner,’ he offered ungraciously and moved it before she could argue. Then he meekly turned his back as ordered and hoped that was distraction enough from her mother’s appalling scribbles.

‘You are almost as eager to see the back of me as I am to go,’ she said, her voice muffled because she was paying close attention to her gown.

Colm was tempted to use the old mirror nearby to sneak another look at her fine legs and ankles as he fantasised about the thread pulling up her hem as she worked on the most awkward part of the braid once again. The unresolved question of who did that damage plagued him and he could still hear her move, feel her presence in this shadowed and oddly intimate room and long to be someone else.

‘You can’t marry a librarian if we are caught here in such a compromising position,’ he explained gruffly.

‘Even if you are a hero?’

Wouldn’t it be fine if they truly felt easy enough to laugh together? They never would if she knew who he really was. After tonight they could go back to different worlds. Except he thought Uncle Horace and his Duchess had plans that might make those worlds collide. Heaven forbid, he thought. He hated the idea of who he really was frosting Miss Winterley’s eyes when they met as polite strangers.

‘I am nobody’s hero, Miss Winterley,’ he said dourly. ‘They usually end up dead and not maimed like me.’

‘If that scar was on the back of the head I suppose I might believe you got it running away,’ she said as the faint sound of her needle penetrating the heavy satin of her gown reached his over-sensitised hearing and he held his breath against the quiet catch of her breathing and what it was doing to his dratted body.

‘Maybe I walked backwards from the guns?’ he said wryly and she chuckled. The warm sound of it brought back all the temptations he had been fighting since she walked into the room and he saw her all flustered and compelling from his perch at the top of the spiral stairs, before she even knew he existed.

‘And maybe a bullet bounced off somewhere else and hit you in the leg, but somehow I doubt it.’

‘I could have been devilishly unlucky.’

‘You could.’

‘Are you done yet?’ he asked sharply, because it felt dangerous to argue, then almost laugh with her.

‘Eager to be rid of me?’

‘Eager to keep my job, Miss Winterley. That will not happen if we are found alone here with the door shut.’

‘Yet the new Duke seems such a reasonable sort of man,’ she said as if he could be explained away with a careless smile and a shrug that said of course we were not up to anything untoward, how could a viscount’s daughter and a librarian be anything but strangers?

‘Your papa doesn’t look so where you are concerned.’

‘True, but he’s not here and now I’m set to rights he won’t need to be.’

‘Kindly hurry away then and make sure of that, if you please. Can I turn round, by the way?’

‘Yes, I am quite neat and unmarred again,’ she said and he frowned as he turned and met her challenging gaze. ‘I cannot say it has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Carter.’

‘Good evening, Miss Winterley,’ he said curtly and wished she would go away and leave him in peace.

‘Good evening, Mr Car...’ she began, then faltered as the sound of hurrying feet sounded outside. ‘Where can I hide?’ she demanded urgently.

He darted a look at the alcove set aside for a clerk to catalogue new finds in the days when Lord Derneley’s father collected rare volumes from anywhere he could. Even that dark corner couldn’t conceal a young woman in pale and rustling silk. She gave him an impatient look and darted towards the narrow wooden stair he had climbed down so carefully only minutes ago. She scrambled to get out of sight and was lost to his view, if not to his senses, just in time not to be seen when the door opened and Lord Derneley sauntered in.

‘Thought you could have helped Lady Derneley with the wallflowers, Carter,’ he said distractedly, looking round as if this half-empty room was a surprise to him.

The thought of Miss Winterley standing so near and still made Colm tense as a drum. He breathed more shallowly for fear she might make a noise and be found and what on earth would they do then? An offer of marriage from him would hardly quiet the scandal. Yet there was something furtive in Derneley’s pale eyes that said he knew she had flown somewhere to set her appearance to rights and he intended to find her. That suspicion he had earlier that the man was up to something devious as far as his wife’s niece was concerned returned in spades. He felt a fierce need to protect her from whatever moneymaking scheme the rogue had thought up at Miss Winterley’s expense.

‘It seemed best that I not embarrass the young ladies, your lordship,’ he said and when the man looked baffled Colm pointed at his damaged leg.

‘Oh, aye, quite right. Forgot you’re a dot-and-carry one and can’t dance. Make the poor little things a laughing stock if you tried, I suppose.’ The man’s glassy gaze lingered on the scar high on Colm’s forehead, then flicked away as if he was being delicate about mentioning yet another reason he could not show his face in public.

‘Quite,’ Colm managed flatly, willing the girl hidden so precariously nearby not to move even a finger while this noble rat was in the room to hear her and force her to do whatever he had in mind.

‘I’ll tell her ladyship that’s why you’re hiding yourself away then, shall I?’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Colm made himself say as humbly as a clerk should when invited to join the nobility at play, even if it was only to dance with wallflowers.

‘Ah, there you are, Derneley,’ Viscount Farenze said from the doorway.

Colm knew who he was because he was standing by his daughter’s side earlier, looking formidable and aloof and ready to challenge any man who put a finger on his eldest child against her will. Colm marvelled at Lord Derneley’s stupidity for thinking he would get away with whatever he was up to without being flayed alive. His fury sharpened as he wondered if Derneley had been forcing his attentions on a girl he shouldn’t even think of touching, but no, he looked too sleek and fashionable to have done anything so repellent. No doubt it would take hours to redress, so that was one horror he could discount. Which left his first thought when he saw Miss Winterley so disarrayed and seductive looking; she had a lover and Derneley knew. And wasn’t that a guilty secret she and her father would pay handsomely to keep that way?

Lord Farenze eyed Colm coolly before he took a quick scan of the room from the doorway, then stepped inside. Colm thought of Miss Winterley a few heartbeats away from disaster again and he didn’t want her to be found out, lover or no. A sneeze or a snatched breath could give her away and then where would they be?

‘Came to find Carter here,’ the master of the house said uneasily under his one-time brother-in-law’s stern gaze. He even managed to make it sound logical for the host to seek the humblest gentleman here in the midst of his own evening party.

Colm called on all his experience of hiding his feelings not to glare at the man. If it wasn’t Miss Winterley who was a hair’s breadth from disaster, he might be stifling laughter instead of a savage growl as the man let his gaze shift past half-empty book stacks and sharpen on the deepest shadows as if he was looking for her. There was something damned odd going on; he hadn’t been imagining things earlier. Colm couldn’t help wondering what Miss Winterley was thinking, standing in semi-darkness and wondering what Derneley was up to as well.

‘I’m weary of cards and gossip and my wife is deep in conversation with Lady Mantaigne, Derneley. I might as well keep Linaire’s librarian company for you, as you have a great many other matters to attend to tonight. You know how I dote on books and a good host can’t absent himself from his own party for long, can he?’ Lord Farenze said so genially Colm shivered. The man’s good humour had so much steel in it he was surprised Lord Derneley wasn’t shaking in his boots.

‘Always knew you were an odd fellow, Farenze, but I suppose you’re right. Best get back to m’wife’s party before anyone notices,’ Derneley agreed airily.

‘I’ll join you as soon as I’ve picked this learned young man’s brains,’ Lord Farenze replied and Colm eyed him uneasily as Lord Derneley finally ran out of reasons to stay in his own library and left with one last frustrated look round the room, as if he might spot Miss Winterley climbing a half-dismantled book stack, presumably desperate for a good read.

Chapter Three

‘Hold still,’ Lord Farenze murmured, as if he could see through all that finely carved wood and a wall to his daughter’s hiding place. Colm held his breath as Lord Derneley’s steps faded rather slowly down the marble-floored corridor and Lord Farenze finally shut the door on him. ‘It’s safe to come out now, Eve,’ he said softly.

‘How did you know I was here, Papa?’ she said and did so as if nothing much had happened.

Colm took a second look to be sure she wasn’t on the brink of hysteria. No, Miss Winterley’s blue-green eyes even had the hint of a smile in them now. If not for the way her fingers fisted into her palm on the side her father couldn’t see, he might think her calm as a millpond.

‘The same way I did at hide and seek when you were a child; you are in the place that makes the most sense,’ her father said.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said and Colm wondered why she still looked so white and strained now her father was here to make all right if another lord came in and caught them having a bookish discussion instead of dancing.

‘I wish you both goodnight, my lord, Miss Winterley,’ he said stiffly, feeling he was the invisible upper servant everyone thought and it hurt his pride somehow now he’d finally met Miss Winterley face to face.

‘First promise not to tell anyone I was alone here with you tonight.’

‘I am not a braggart, Miss Winterley,’ he argued before he could think straight. Colm saw Lord Farenze’s eyes harden and found it difficult to meet the steely distrust in the man’s level gaze, but he did.

‘If any scandal is whispered about my daughter, the person who spread it is likely to regret he was ever born,’ the Viscount threatened so quietly it was far more potent than if he’d shouted and shaken his fists.

‘Don’t, Papa,’ Miss Winterley said with a weary wave of her hand that touched Colm far more than feminine hysterics ever could. ‘I think we can trust him.’

‘I don’t trust any man with your safety and peace of mind tonight.’

‘Please give him your word as a gentleman not to reveal I was here alone with you, Mr Carter, or we’ll be here all night,’ she said with a pleading look Colm couldn’t resist, however little he’d wanted to be part of this scene.

‘I promise not to whisper scandal about Miss Winterley, my lord.’

‘You seem to be a man of words, Carter.’ The man gestured at the chaos of packed books and the stacks waiting to say Colm might not be beyond writing scandal even if he didn’t speak of it.

‘I wouldn’t write anything that damaged a young lady’s reputation either.’

‘I am suitably grateful,’ Miss Winterley interrupted their silent battle with rather magnificent irony.

‘And I have nobody much to write it to if I did,’ he told her as if that ought to make this better. He doubted it did from the chilly look she gave him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about anyway.’

Lord Farenze looked hard at him. ‘Derneley is up to something and the servants will gossip, so you had better add a promise to tell me what they have to say about us to that gallant oath, Carter. Then I might trust you to leave my daughter’s reputation alone and let you leave this room in one piece.’

‘Very well, my lord. I vow to report faithfully what the servants are saying or not saying over breakfast. I hope that will be all?’

‘Not quite, I am also unreasonable enough to expect you to come to Farenze House tomorrow and tell me about it in person. Do not put anything in writing.’

‘I have work to do, my lord, but I dare say his Grace will spare me from it for an hour or so to take some air, if I ask him nicely,’ Colm said not quite humbly enough to be truly Mr Carter, who only wanted his bed and an end to this ridiculous situation.

‘Oh, come on, Papa. Leave the poor man be. Don’t forget someone I wish I had never set eyes on could be back in the ballroom by now and busily spreading rumours,’ Miss Winterley said with a pained look in the direction of the ballroom that said her ruin might be going on even as they dallied.

‘Even Derneley isn’t that stupid and I bloodied the nose of that someone else you are talking about. I doubt he’ll say anything for a while, let alone admit he was bested by a slip of a girl he thought to force himself on, then knocked out by her very irate father,’ Lord Farenze added matter of factly.

Colm went very still as he realised why Miss Winterley had really come in here to repair her gown. What a fool he was not to see the difference between a young woman dishevelled by her amorous beau and one attacked by a raddled old rake. His own convalescence in Brighton had given him the inside track on all the society gossip his breathless landlady gathered from friends who let out rooms or their houses for the Season. So he sorted through the guests he’d seen arrive tonight and came up with the ideal candidate. Sir Steven Scrumble was on the lookout for a wife with enough blue blood and powerful connections to drag him back to the heart of polite society. The man would pay generously for such a bride and Derneley must have sold him a perfect chance to rape Miss Winterley and force an April-and-December marriage on her. The very idea made his flesh crawl, so goodness knew what it did to hers. Scrumble was very rich, so selling a convenient accident to her gown and a neatly empty sewing room wouldn’t trouble Derneley’s conscience. He clearly didn’t have one. Then, with his ill-gotten gains and the money he got from the Duke for his father’s books, Derneley might have made it across the Channel and disappeared. Colm thought Derneley’s creditors would soon learn Lord Farenze wouldn’t lift a finger to save his one-time brother-in-law and they would foreclose. Serve the vicious sot right, Colm decided as the Viscount frowned as if he wished him a thousand miles away, then did his best to reassure his daughter.

‘I made it clear you won’t be marrying him if the whole world is baying for you to do so; I’ll kill him first,’ he told her.

‘I’m not dashing round the world evading justice even for you, Papa, and Chloe has had quite enough of living in shadows. What if he tells everyone anyway?’

‘And admit he was bested by a defenceless young lady? The man’s not that much of a fool.’ Lord Farenze went on with a sideways look at Colm that told him not to be one either, ‘Even in his cups he’ll remember what I threatened to do to him if he didn’t keep a still tongue in his head.’

Colm wanted to find the cur and add his fourpennyworth to the mix. He could hardly threaten to have the bastard drummed out of the clerks’ guild though, could he? Their inequality of power and rank would forbid the man fighting if Colm challenged him to meet at dawn, swords or pistols at the ready. Reminded how little he and Miss Winterley had in common, he used a trick he’d learnt in his youth and retreated into his thoughts until he was calm again. He went back to the table, realised Miss Winterley had put the candle back in the ideal place to highlight what he’d been reading before he got distracted and tried to slide Pamela’s journal under a sheaf of ancient letters.

‘Wait,’ Lord Farenze said sharply, catching that furtive movement as if he was the one who’d spent eight years sharpening his senses in the Rifles and not Colm. ‘What have you got there?’ he asked and came closer for a better look. ‘I’ve seen a notebook like that before and that looks like my late wife’s scrawl. Let me see.’

‘My employer paid a fair price for any item in this room he chose to take away, my lord,’ Colm protested half-heartedly.

‘And it pains me to see such a fine collection neglected, but if that’s truly a volume of my late wife’s scribbles then it isn’t Derneley’s to sell. As her husband I lay claim to it.’

‘Papa—’ Miss Winterley touched her father’s arm ‘—surely all her scandals are already out in the open by now? We really must go.’

‘I’ll not have them reawakened in the yellow press and we shall say you wanted to look at the portrait of your mother you knew Derneley had hidden away somewhere in this house. We can explain our absence to your stepmother when we return to the ballroom and the gossips will nod and whisper she has a great deal to bear, but I’m not leaving this room until you explain what you have there, Carter, and if there’s aught else I should know about in this musty old collection.’

‘I really couldn’t say, my lord. I only found the first Lady Farenze’s diaries hidden behind a shelf of sermons this afternoon.’

‘You have to admire her cheek, don’t you?’ he said to his daughter and Colm saw the man behind the stern mask before he sent Colm another challenging stare. ‘How much have you read?’ he asked menacingly, as if it was an intrusion he found hard to forgive.

‘Only this last one,’ he said, refusing to stand here like a schoolboy sent for punishment and say nothing in his own defence. ‘I certainly won’t tell her secrets to anyone else,’ he promised easily enough.

He had more reasons not to want them known than the Farenze family, and reading Pamela’s words really hadn’t got him any closer to his father. A woman that self-obsessed was hardly likely to waste pages describing her lover, was she? He would do better to put her and her entire family behind him forever the day he left this place and handing them over might help him do it. The sneaky thought that Pamela’s daughter was more difficult to forget nagged at him, but he did his best to ignore it.

‘Will you hand over anything else you happen upon before your work here is done?’ Miss Winterley asked as if she had caught her father’s distrust of him.

‘Anything that concerns you, yes,’ he said with a weary sigh.

‘Good, now we must leave the lad in peace, Eve,’ his lordship urged his daughter when she would have argued. ‘He can rehash this argument with me in the morning, but you’re right, it’s high time we returned to the ballroom.’

‘We can hardly carry a stack of my late mother’s diaries with us. Will you bring them to Farenze House for us, Mr Carter? I would be most grateful.’

Since she didn’t wheedle or make any attempt to charm him into doing her bidding, Colm saw no reason to object and delay their departure. ‘I suppose it’s easy enough for me to carry books in and out of here, so, yes, I’ll bring them when I call on your father tomorrow. Now please, will you both go? I don’t want to be caught up in the affairs of the great and the good any more than you want me to be.’

‘Thank you,’ she said and they were back to humble clerk and lady again.

‘Goodbye, miss, my lord,’ he said with a bow that would do a butler credit.

‘Goodbye, Carter,’ she replied with a dignified nod and took her father’s offered arm to be escorted back to civilisation.

He watched them go and wondered. How would it feel to stroll back into that ballroom with them, sauntering confidently at their side as an equal in birth and fortune? For a moment he thought wistfully of all he once had and didn’t regret it as much as he thought. The polite world looked bright and glittering and sophisticated from the outside, but he didn’t think it gave the Miss Winterleys of this world much joy. He had grown accustomed to a life where worth and courage counted for more than birth and fortune. When you were all hungry and cold and miserable, on the retreat through harsh country already ravished by French troops, birth and privilege didn’t count for much.

As for knowing young ladies like Miss Winterley outside the charmed circle of the ton, that was clearly impossible. He put the very idea behind him, limped back up those stairs one last time and packed the eight volumes he had found into a handy little box, stowed it under his arm and was glad neither Winterley was waiting below to see him descend on his clerkly behind as he needed one hand and his good leg to get him down again without disaster. Confound his weak leg and the suspicions Lord Farenze had put into his head about his fellow servants. They were probably too busy to search for such scandalous gems in the library their master had sold off tonight, but Colm turned the key in the lock and pocketed it when he left the library all the same.

* * *

‘So are you going to let me read my mother’s journals, Papa?’ Eve asked her father as soon as they were safely out of earshot.

‘Certainly not.’

‘You do know you can’t protect me from her sins for ever, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but please don’t expect me not to try. Even when we’re both old and grey, I shall still be your father and convinced it’s my role to keep my daughter safe.’

‘Nobody could guard me as carefully as you have done, Papa, but I am an adult now in the eyes of the law.’

‘I know that too well,’ he admitted with a frown that spoke volumes of his concern for her peace and future happiness.

Eve had to live with her mother’s many scandals hanging over her, but the world must deal with her as she was, not as they expected from her mother’s wild ride through life. ‘I do love you, Papa, and Chloe and Verity and the boys, but I need to live my own life.’

‘Your stepmother has told me time and again not to follow you about like a mastiff and glare at any young idiot who notices you are a woman. Don’t ever fool yourself, I like watching you hurt yourself on briars that aren’t of your setting though, my Eve.’

‘If I am to live any sort of life I must find my own way through them, though.’

‘I suppose so, but not right now. It’s high time we got back to indifferent wine and weak lemonade and rescued your stepmother since not even she and Polly Mantaigne could keep the curious at bay for the amount of time we have been gone. The poor girl will have talked herself into a headache again by now.’

‘You are a fine and remembering sort of husband; I do love you, Papa.’

‘Don’t try to wheedle your way round me with soft words, minx; I’m still not letting you read Pamela’s selfish outpourings.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Eve pronounced him and took a look at herself in one of the long mirrors placed at strategic points even along this dimly lit and seldom-visited corridor. She looked remarkably unscathed. ‘Aunt Derneley is the vainest woman I have ever encountered,’ she said after she twitched a frill back into place and brushed a piece of lint from her skirt.

‘Only because you didn’t know your mother,’ Lord Farenze said as he removed a cobweb from his daughter’s dark hair. They re-entered the ballroom to run up against a clever scold from Chloe for avoiding their social obligations and a frown of concern for the headache Eve didn’t know she had until now.

Chapter Four

‘What’s he like then, Eve?’ Miss Verity Revereux demanded the next morning as she bounced on to Eve’s bed before staring wistfully at herself in the mirror across the room and wondering out loud if she was developing a spot.

‘What was who like? And it seems unlikely since you were blessed by far too many good fairies at your birth and never had a single blemish I know of,’ Eve said.

Then she remembered what a grim situation her honorary sister was born into. Her mother died as she gulped in her first lungful of air and poor Chloe was left with a newborn to care for at the tender age of seventeen as her twin sister died in childbirth. Eve groped about for a rapid change of subject and hit on the least welcome one to hand. ‘Whomever can you mean anyway?’

‘The man you met last night from the dreamy look on your face.’

Eve frowned and did her best to avoid the apparently guileless blue eyes Verity had inherited from her father. Neither Captain Revereux nor his beloved daughter were the innocents they appeared, so Eve hardened her heart against the plea in her best friend’s eyes and turned to her lady’s maid instead.

‘You were right, Bran, this colour looks better on me this morning,’ she said with her head on one side as she studied the choice of morning gowns on offer. ‘I’m not sure which sash to wear,’ she added, hoping to divert Verity with fripperies. She ought to know better, she supposed. Verity might look like an angel sent to humble lesser beings with her golden beauty, but looks could be deceptive. When her father was at sea they were all inclined to spoil her and Eve wished the gallant captain would hurry home and check his beloved child’s wilder starts before they got her into real trouble.

‘I can stay here all day if I have to, Eve dear,’ Verity told her. ‘Miss Stainforth has agreed to go and see a dentist at last, so I have all the time in the world to plague you until she is feeling better.’ Verity lounged back on the bed to prove it. ‘I loved it at school, but I’m so glad Papa insisted on hiring Miss Stainforth to teach me instead. Now I can be with you and Aunt Chloe and Uncle Luke all the time when he has to be out of the country and you can’t lie to me at a distance. I can’t see why you treat me like some artless child who must be kept in ignorance of the important things in life, Cousin dear. I preferred you before you made your curtsy to society and became so terribly worldly wise.’

‘No doubt your governess left you plenty to do, Miss Verity, and you ought to be doing it right now,’ Bran said sternly.

‘She was in so much pain she forgot and why should I have my head stuffed with more facts and figures that I shall be expected to forget the moment I set foot in my first ballroom?’

‘Our sex makes up half the world, Verity, and if we were all wilfully ignorant it would fall apart. You should be worrying about the poor lady’s pain and suffering, not gloating over your freedom like some horrid schoolboy let off his lessons,’ Eve tried to scold. Verity looked unimpressed and went on sorting Eve’s sashes.

‘Lady Chloe will find you something useful to do since your poor governess was in too much pain to bother, young lady,’ Bran added with a look at Eve that said her disturbed night was showing on her face.

‘No, don’t bother her at this hour of the morning,’ Eve intervened. Chloe was in the early stages of pregnancy yet again and if this one went like the last two, her stepmother would not be ready to deal with her wayward niece for another hour or two yet. ‘You can take a stroll with me to Green Park among the nursemaids and governesses. I need some fresh air and you will be working too hard this afternoon and poor Miss Stainforth won’t be well enough to accompany you out anyway.’

‘Sourpuss, but I’m not put off that easily. You didn’t answer my question, Eve Winterley. Are you quite sure you didn’t meet the man of your dreams last night?’ Verity asked, being of an age when fairy tales weren’t quite impossible and beckoning womanhood whispered how wonderful if they happened to her.

‘I never had those sorts of dreams, but, no, I did not,’ Eve said firmly, pushing a mental picture of the gruff, wounded and annoyingly unforgettable Mr Carter out of her mind. ‘If Betty comes with us to the park, will you stay and make some of your peppermint tea for Lady Chloe, Bran?’ she asked once Verity was fully occupied with finding her pelisse and muff, then dragging her favourite maid away from her duties as well as the second footman. Verity loved a romance and as Eve refused to live one for her, she must have decided to promote that one instead.

‘Of course I will. You have a good heart under those stubborn ways, haven’t you, my chick?’

Eve eyed her own reflection in the mirror and saw an almost perfect lady of fashion staring back at her. She almost expected a magical image of Mr Carter to peer into the glass behind her and smile mockingly, so she turned away with a sigh. Hadn’t she had just told Verity she didn’t have daydreams and here was the least comfortable hero she had ever encountered intruding into them?

‘I’m too old to be anyone’s chick now,’ she replied to Bran’s question lightly enough before she left the room.

‘You’ll never be too old for that, my love,’ Bran whispered as she watched the almost sisters join up on the wide landing, then go downstairs for their walk. ‘And perhaps I’ve good reason to worry about the dark circles under your eyes and stubborn set to your chin this morning.’

* * *

‘Ah, now don’t remind me, I’m determined to recall your name for myself, sir. There now, I knew it would come to me if I thought about it hard enough. You’re Mr Carter, are you not? I dare say you have been calling on my father?’ Miss Winterley’s pleasing contralto voice asked Colm as if they had met at some fashionable soirée.

Damnation, Colm thought darkly; he thought he was safe out here, trying to get some air into his lungs before making his way back to Derneley House. Lord Farenze’s daughter wasn’t as indolent as most of her kind and fate wasn’t on his side this morning either.

‘Good morning, Miss Winterley,’ he managed dourly.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ she replied brightly, as if his failure to sneak past her unnoticed made it a lot better for some reason.

‘We should not linger together in public or private, ma’am,’ he told her in an undertone he hoped he’d pitched too low to carry to the ears of a nearby knot of overgrown schoolgirls giggling over something best known to themselves.

‘We should not linger anywhere, then? You are very unsociable, Mr Carter, and the title ma’am is reserved for ladies with considerably more years in their dish than I have.’

‘Forgive my ignorance, Miss Winterley. It’s as well I have no inclination for high society and it has none for me,’ he said with an odd pang at his exile from the polite world that felt nothing like the burning resentment he had once struggled with.

A Mr Carter had to shape his life around his work, so Colm tried hard not to meet Miss Winterley’s challenging gaze with one of his own and wondered how it would feel to have the wealth and status his father took for granted back right now. Perhaps then he could meet her gaze for gaze and it wouldn’t matter that his father once ran off with her mother. With all that noble blood and nabob wealth at his back Colm Hancourt might have challenged Miss Winterley back and...

No, there was no and...for them and there never would be. Even when he was under his uncle’s roof and being himself again he wouldn’t have much more than a rifle and a tiny annuity. Mr Hancourt worked for his uncle and most of his salary would go on being the Duke of Linaire’s nephew. He must have better clothes and a sturdy horse and anything else could go into a small dowry for his sister. He and Miss Winterley would still not meet as equals and she would probably hate him for who he was when she found out. So he hoped she would tire of such a stiff-necked block and dismiss him before he said something disastrous.

‘You go off into a world of your own at the drop of a hat, don’t you, Mr Carter? That could get you into all sorts of trouble at Derneley House,’ she warned lightly.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Winterley,’ he said. ‘I’ll go about my business and leave you to enjoy the sunshine.’

‘Please don’t go,’ she protested impulsively. ‘My cousin has met some old school friends and is catching up on all she’s missed since they last met.’

The three of them were standing a few yards away, so absorbed in excited conversation they might as well be the only people in the park. ‘I thought your cousins were still in the nursery,’ Colm said, revealing he knew more about her family than he wanted to admit.

‘Uncle James’s various chicks are, but Verity is my stepmama’s niece. I’m surprised you haven’t heard the story yet; it caused a sensation five years ago when my father married Lady Chloe Thessaly and the truth had to come out.’

‘I have spent the last eight years in the army. The sayings and doings of the great and the good passed us by for most of that time.’

‘I suppose you had more important things to think about than gossip and scandal, but you must have been little more than a boy when you took up your commission to have been in the army for so long, Mr Carter.’

‘A compliment, Miss Winterley?’

‘An observation,’ she said with a slight flush on her high cheekbones that told him she thought it might have been as well.

‘I was sixteen,’ he said, his eldest uncle’s brusque dismissal of his hopes and dreams of being a writer and scholar one day like his determinedly absent Uncle Horace sharp in his voice. He heard the gruff sound of it, shrugged rather helplessly and met her gaze with a rueful smile. ‘I thought myself the devil of a fellow in my smart green uniform,’ he admitted and suddenly wished he’d known her back then.

He’d felt so alone under his boyish swagger the day he entered Shorncliffe Camp and began the transformation from scared boy to scarred Rifleman. Mr Carter came into being in a regiment where officers won their rank largely by merit and gallantry in battle. Colm wanted a plain name to go with his dashing uniform mainly because he wanted to fit in and the Hancourts wanted nothing to do with him and Nell. Eight years on he must be Carter for a little longer, but at least nobody was trying to kill him.

‘Were you a Rifleman, then?’ she asked and he supposed he must have looked bewildered. ‘Since you wore a green uniform it seems a strong possibility,’ she added logically.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘some folk call us the Grasshoppers because of it.’

‘To survive eight years as a Rifleman you must be brave as well as fortunate, whatever they called you,’ Eve managed to reply lightly enough.

Instinct warned her not to let him know how she pitied a boy who began his dangerous career so young. What if he was born rich and well connected instead? Would she have met a rather dazzling young gentleman in an expensive drawing room when she came out and fallen for his easy charm? Or would she have thought him as shallow and unformed as the other young men who paid court to her with an air of fashionable boredom she didn’t find in the least bit flattering? She could have found the way his thick honey-brown hair curled despite his efforts to tame it fascinating. His gold-flecked eyes might have danced with merriment and lured a discerning young lady into falling in love and his scarred forehead would be unmarred. As for that lame leg—that would be as long and strong and lithe as the rest of him. That charmed and charming man would laugh and smile with her, then grow serious long enough to look deep into her eyes with his soul alive and clear in his own. And then he would kiss her.

Her breath caught in heady anticipation in the much less magical here and now and she almost gave her thoughts away by moving a little closer to him and behaving like a besotted ninny. A dreamer deep inside her whispered it would be almost unbearably glorious, whichever version of him did the kissing, but that might be Pamela’s daughter speaking and Eve didn’t want to listen to her. Carter certainly didn’t adore her and he was the Duke of Linaire’s clerk and librarian, for goodness’ sake.

‘I was just lucky, I suppose,’ he said with a self-deprecating shrug as if nothing else could account for it.

Eve shivered at the thought of a stray bullet or sabre slash that might have ended his life and refused to think of the number he must have survived right now. ‘I doubt any officer could survive long on luck in a regiment like yours,’ she challenged.

‘You would be surprised and at least I had enough of it to know when it ran out. This summer I was at the end of it and sold out as soon as I recovered enough to sign my name after Waterloo.’

‘You seem determined to make light of your experiences.’

‘A limping man stands little chance of surviving a forced march or fighting retreat, but let’s not speak of such horrors on a day like today. Didn’t you promise me a fine story about your cousin by marriage and your stepmama just now?’

‘Did I?’ Drat the man, having a conversation with him was like trying to hold a slippery trout wet from the river. Last night he seemed almost too dashing to be an upper servant, today he carried his shallow dark hat as if itching to have it back on his head and go before someone caught him speaking to a lady. ‘It’s no secret now, so you might as well hear it from me. Lady Chloe and Verity’s mama were twins, Mr Carter. At much the same age as you joined the army, Lady Daphne Thessaly wed a young naval lieutenant to avoid an arranged marriage. Her father was furious at being robbed of what he saw as his right to sell his daughter to a rich old man so he had her husband pressed, then left his twin daughters to birth her baby in such dire conditions it’s a miracle Verity and her aunt survived, but Lady Daphne died in childbed. Lady Chloe spent the next decade acting as Verity’s mother and became a housekeeper, then my father spent most of it trying not to be in love with her.’

‘And when he couldn’t resist any longer they told each other their secrets and seized the day?’

‘I don’t recall it being that simple, but the end result is they are very happily wed and Verity lives with us when her father is at sea,’ she said and wondered why she hadn’t let him go in the first place. It was that bland mask of the onlooker on life that did it, she supposed. For some reason she itched to rip it off and show the world a real man stood here, despite the repressive black garb and his fiercely guarded aloofness. Now she waited for his stiff farewell and told herself to let him go this time.

‘Would my sister had had an aunt like your stepmother to love and protect her when I was sent off to school by our uncle,’ he said instead and why was she this glad he hadn’t mumbled a hasty farewell and limped away?

‘What happened to her?’ she said with all the horror stories of girls sent out as apprentices by their cruel relatives in her mind as she saw him frown.

‘Oh, nothing very awful, she was put in the care of a governess until she was old enough to go to school and our family could forget us. My wicked uncle still found her useful as a stick to beat me with; if I ran away from school or tried to argue with the career he had in mind, my sister would be apprenticed to a milliner. I’m sure you know what happens to most girls bound to that trade, Miss Winterley. Even at eight years old I knew I must be a pattern card to save her from such a fate.’

‘How cruel,’ she exclaimed and felt furious with his appalling relative when he shrugged.

‘It’s the way of the world, my father annoyed two of his brothers so much they would have loved to have nothing to do with his children, but the scandal would have deafened them if they let us go into the poorhouse.’

‘What did your mother’s relatives have to say for themselves?’

‘She was an only child and her parents died before her. If she had any relatives I don’t know of it,’ he said as if he wished he’d never told her so much in the first place.

‘I am astonished her friends and neighbours let your uncle treat you both so, then,’ she said although Mr Carter didn’t want her to feel anything for him or his.

‘They would shake their heads and mutter it was terrible we were left destitute, then whisper about bad blood and decide we were best forgotten,’ he told her with some passion in his voice at last. ‘Poverty stalked my sister’s childhood and she is always a hair’s breadth away from it even now, Miss Winterley. One wicked thought in an employer’s head; a wrong word or unwitting action can get a governess dismissed without references. I can’t endure the thought of such a life grinding her down as the years go on, so it is up to me to find a way out of such an existence for her, before it drives the youth and laughter out of her completely.’

Eve only had to see the purpose burning in his fiery gaze to know she was right about the hidden depths he tried to keep to himself. He wasn’t the flat character he tried to be; he couldn’t be if he pretended he was until doomsday.

‘Your uncles are as guilty as your father of not making sure she is provided for. You will need very broad shoulders if you intend to take the sins of your entire family on them, Mr Carter.’

‘You are very direct this morning, Miss Winterley.’

She shrugged. ‘For direct I shall read rude, but I have no patience with pretend ignorance, sir, and if you had moved in polite society for the last three years you would not have any either. Your sister might count herself lucky not to be watched like a prize heifer by every idiot on the marriage mart if she knew how it felt.’

‘Are they all idiots, then?’

‘Not all, but no sensible man will hold an interesting conversation with a marriageable young lady for long unless he is in serious need of a wife.’

‘So there is some merit in being ineligible after all, then?’ he joked and Eve felt a tug of temptation to make him do it again.

He was so unaware of how handsome he was when he forgot to guard his tongue that he could steal an unwary female’s heart before she knew she was in danger. Lucky she wasn’t unwary then, wasn’t it?

‘Why come to London for the Little Season then, since you dislike it so much?’ he asked as if truly interested.

‘The House is sitting and Papa hates coming on his own. My parents worry about me if I don’t come with them and there’s Verity’s future to think of as well. If I refuse to take my part in this pantomime the ton plays out twice a year she will be an oddity by association. That would be so unfair when we’re not related except through Papa and Chloe’s marriage and a common link with my little half-brothers.’

‘So you only dress and dance and behave like a fashionable young lady who is enjoying herself for the benefit of others?’ he said with a sceptical glance at her fashionable pelisse and high-crowned bonnet that said he thought her vain and not very self-aware.

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