A Most
Unconventional Courtship
Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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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 Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter One

Corfu Town—April 1817

Someone was trying to commit murder, and apparently they were doing it on her front step. The sounds were unmistakable. The scrape of boot leather on cobbles, the soft thud of wood on flesh, the clink of metal, the desperate, panting breaths.

Alessa sighed wearily, hefted the wicker basket up on her hip and retraced her steps around the corner to a spot where the shadows were deep and she could hide her burden out of the way of prying eyes. At eleven o’clock at night the familiar alleyways of Corfu Town were quiet, and apparently deserted, but she did not make the mistake of thinking that predators were not on the prowl.

One, at least, was in the tiny square formed by the back of the church of Saint Stefanos, Spiro’s bakery and two houses, their storeys rising high so that light rarely penetrated for more than a few hours a day. Alessa stooped to slide the knife from its sheath in her short calfskin boot and melted back into the shadows.

As she slid around the corner, through the narrow passage that opened out into the courtyard, she instinctively checked behind herself for light that might cast a shadow and betray her presence. But she was coming from darkness, and the scene before her was well lit by the lantern over Spiro’s door, the dim glow from the church windows and the oil lamp Kate had set by their shared entrance as dusk began to fall.

Her view, and much of the passage, was blocked by a pair of heavy shoulders. Their owner was propped against the wall, picking his teeth. A thick aroma of fish, garlic and unwashed man floated back to Alessa, so familiar that it provoked hardly a wrinkle of her nose. Georgi, the squid fisherman, of course, always to be found on the outskirts of anything in the neighbourhood where he might profit with little risk or effort to himself.

Alessa crept soundlessly up behind him and pressed the point of the knife into the unsavoury gap between his leather waistcoat and his belt. He stiffened, jerked, then was still.

‘Hérete, Georgi,’ Alessa murmured in Greek, forcing herself to stand close enough to whisper in his ear. ‘I think you need to be somewhere else just now.’ She winced at the coarseness of his hissed response, pressing the flat of the blade just a fraction further into the roll of fat. ‘Do you want the Lord High Commissioner’s men to know exactly what you are doing when you take your kaïki out on a moonless night, Georgi? I think they would be very interested if someone were to tell them.’

With another muttered oath he turned and pushed past her, back into the darkness. Alessa waited a moment for the sound of his boots on the cobbles to fade, then took his place.

There were two men fighting in the tiny space. One she recognised: Big Petro, a criminal bully who made no pretence of any other occupation, was wielding a cudgel in one hand and a long-bladed knife in the other. Facing him, dodging the alternating crude blows and vicious lunges, was a complete stranger. For a moment Alessa thought he was armed with a rapier, then she realised his only weapon was a slender cane that he was using to parry the knife, while keeping it out of the way of the cudgel that would surely shatter it.

He can certainly fence, she thought critically, watching the flickering cane and the man’s rapidly shifting feet, while part of her brain wrestled with the problem of what to do now she had shortened the odds for him. This was an elegant gentleman in suave evening dress. Only his discarded hat and disordered hair betrayed any loss of poise. His focus on his opponent was unwavering and, if it had been anyone else but Petro, she might have thought he had a reasonable chance of escape and could be left to his own devices. But the stocky man was a killer, and some foppish English gentleman new to the island would be no match for him.

Alessa edged round the wall towards her own front steps, her irritation at this eruption of violence on her territory, under her children’s window, growing. The stranger was forcing Petro back now—or, more likely, the wily Corfiot was tactically giving ground. Then she saw why: concealed in the shadows at the foot of the central fountain the drain gaped dark, like a trap waiting for an unwary foot. She bit back her instinctive cry of warning; that was likely to trip him as surely as anything. He was going to miss it—no, she saw the edge of his foot turn wrenchingly on the stone lip and he fell to one knee. Even as he did so he raised the cane defensively, but Petro smashed down on it with the cudgel, sweeping the weapon up again to catch the falling man on the side of his head. He went down with a thud, hard against the fountain base, and Petro stepped forward with a mutter of satisfaction, the long knife gleaming in his hand.

No, this was too much. Murder, even of inconvenient and reckless English tourists, could not be tolerated on her doorstep. Alessa reversed the knife in her hand, stepped out from the wall and brought the pommel down hard in the angle of Petro’s neck and shoulder, just as she had been taught. The blow jarred up her arm like a hammer blow, but the stocky figure collapsed with a grunt, sprawled across his victim’s legs—which meant that she now had two unconscious men cluttering up her courtyard. One of them was as likely as not to be in a killing frenzy of rage when he came to. The other one would probably yell for the Lord High Commissioner, the army, the navy and his valet—all of whose presence would be nothing but a thoroughgoing nuisance—or he would be murdered before dawn by some passing thief before he regained consciousness. And in common humanity, she could not leave him there, however much work he made.

With a sigh that reached down to her aching soles, Alessa climbed the steps, unlocked the battered wooden door and shouted up the stairs, ‘Éla, Kate! Kate, are you there?’

There was the sound of footsteps high above and a woman leaned over the banisters, her hair a tumbled red mop, her ample bosom challenging her bodice to constrain it at this angle. ‘Aye, I’m here, love. Do you need a hand with the basket?’

‘No, I need a hand with a man,’ Alessa replied, her head cricked back to look upwards. ‘Is Fred with you?’

‘He is that, just finishing his supper. Is someone giving you trouble? I thought I heard a scuffle. Fred!’

‘Yes, love?’ A dark cropped head topping a white shirt appeared next to Kate’s. ‘Evening, Alessa.’

They made their way down and joined her on the step. ‘Well, what have you got here?’ Sergeant Fred Court walked warily out to eye the tangled heap of limbs with professional detachment.

Kate, the love of his life and Alessa’s friend and neighbour, scratched her head, disturbing her coiffure even more than usual. ‘Who are they Alessa? Are they dead?’

‘One’s an English milord, some stupid tourist who wandered in here and got set upon by Big Petro and his friend Georgi. Goodness knows whether he is dead; Petro hit him on the head hard enough. Petro will have nothing worse than a stiff neck and a headache.’

‘I’d better get the Englishman back to the Lord High Commissioner’s residence.’ Sergeant Court scrubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. ‘Let me get my jacket and I’ll carry him.’

‘I don’t doubt you could,’ Alessa said, eyeing Fred’s well-displayed muscles, ‘but it’ll take you half an hour and it won’t do him any good, being dangled upside down. Best if we bring him in, I suppose.’

‘Do you want me to take a message to His Nib’s place anyway?’ Fred rolled Petro’s limp body away with a shove from one booted foot and stooped to lift the victim.

‘No, don’t trouble, it will make you late. I will send Demetri in the morning. I’ll just go and get the laundry basket.’

Fred was already inside and mounting the stairs with his burden slung over his shoulder by the time she got back with the basket. Kate swung it out of her hands, then grimaced at the weight. ‘I thought this was the fine stuff! Are they wearing lace by the pound these days? Go and catch his head, Alessa, Fred’s not being any too careful.’

Alessa climbed behind the trudging sergeant, fending the lolling head off the walls and grumbling under her breath at the spots of blood disfiguring the wooden treads that she and Kate kept scrubbed white. Fred was displaying the silent contempt most soldiers felt for their lords and masters in his handling of this one, and she could not say she blamed him. What was the reckless idiot doing, wandering round the streets and alleyways at this time of night anyway? Getting himself into trouble and causing a nuisance for hardworking people, that’s what.

‘You had better put him on the couch.’ She darted forward and swept an armful of mending and a rag doll off the battered leather. ‘Are the children asleep, Kate?’

‘Like logs, bless them. I looked in not ten minutes ago, checked the fire’s safe under the cover.’ She nodded towards the dome of discoloured iron that protected the embers on the brick hearth in one corner.

Alessa rummaged in a painted chest, found a pillow and a rug and eyed the now-prone stranger. His head had stopped bleeding, but he showed no sign of recovering consciousness. ‘I suppose I had better check him over, he went down with a wallop and twisted his ankle into the bargain. And, of course, Petro administered a light clubbing, just to put him to sleep before he slipped the knife in.’

‘Right. Let’s get on with it.’ Kate rolled up her sleeves, revealing brawny forearms. ‘What are you looking at, Fred?’

Her lover ducked back from the window where he had been leaning out. ‘Big Petro’s just staggered off, rubbing his head. I doubt he’ll have a clue what happened, come tomorrow. Do you lasses need a hand? Only I need to be back at the fort soon.’

‘We’ll manage, thank you, love.’ Kate followed him out on to the landing to make her farewells, leaving Alessa to study her involuntary guest. What made him so obviously English? His skin, for one thing—he was tanned, presumably after weeks at sea, but the colour was the gold of a fair skin, not the olive of the Mediterranean. His hair was brown, which she presumed meant he was not a Scot, whom she understood were all redheads, or Welsh, who were all dark if the regiment stationed at the Old Fort were anything to go by. His hair had streaked in the sun from its natural mid-brown to honey and toffee and autumn leaves. The tips of his improbably long lashes were gilt as they lay on his cheeks.

‘Good English suit,’ Kate observed, coming back into the room and fingering the cloth of the midnight-blue coat. ‘He’s a pretty lad.’

‘Not such a lad.’ Very late twenties, she supposed, probably thirty. Old enough to know better. And pretty was not the word either. He was too masculine for that, despite even features and an elegant frame that contrasted sharply with Fred’s sturdy bulk.

‘He is to me; don’t forget I can give you a few years. Do you want to bandage his head or shall we get his clothes off first? I’ve brought one of Fred’s old shirts up, it’ll do as a nightshirt.’

‘Thank you. Let’s see the damage.’ Between them the two women lifted and tugged and finally managed to reduce the stranger to his shirt and a pair of short drawers. Alessa tossed neckcloth and stockings to one side and hung the fine swallowtail coat and satin knee breeches over a chair. ‘He must have been at the Lord High Commissioner’s tonight.’ She gestured towards the splendour of evening dress and patent leather pumps. ‘Just what you want to be wearing for wandering around the back alleys.’

Kate was eyeing the long legs sprawled over the worn leather. ‘I don’t like the look of that ankle, and is that blood on his hip?’

‘It is,’ Alessa said grimly, eying the sinister stain showing through the thicknesses of both shirt and drawers on the man’s left side. ‘He went down against the fountain base; I just hope he hasn’t broken anything. I suppose we had better get the rest of his clothes off and see.’

They eased off the drawers with more care than they had the satin knee breeches and fine silk stockings. Alessa got the shirt over his head and caught her breath at the ugly contusion that discoloured his hip. There was a purpling bruise the size of a dinner plate, a jagged cut in its centre oozing blood.

‘Hell.’ Alessa went to kneel at the foot of the couch and began to manipulate his leg. The ankle was definitely sprained—it was darkening and swelling already—but the bones felt safe as she ran the ball of her thumb up the elegant length of them. There was nothing wrong with the well-shaped calf, nor the muscular thigh. Alessa began to move the leg, one hand pressed to the hip joint, feeling for any clue that a bone might be damaged.

‘Very pretty.’ Kate sounded as though she was contemplating a fine roast dinner. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen the like since—’

‘Kate! For heaven’s sake! You are virtually a married woman, I am bringing up a boy, neither of us should be carrying on over the sight of a man in the nude…’ Alessa stopped focusing on his injuries and followed Kate’s appreciative stare. Yes, well, perhaps a naked, fully grown stranger was a different matter to a skinny eight-year-old after all. Come to that, he was a very different matter to the numerous marble statues of classical male nudes that littered the Lord High Commissioner’s residence. This was not a pre-pubes-cent boy. This was not even chilly white stone equipped with a fig leaf. This was a long-limbed, well-muscled, completely adult male with curling dark hair on his chest and—

‘He’s certainly well—’

‘Don’t you dare say it, Kate Street! You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a respectable woman now and I…I am attending to him purely in a medical capacity.’ Alessa snatched up the discarded neckcloth and dropped it strategically over the focus of Kate’s admiring scrutiny. Conscious that her cheeks were flaming, she finished her examination. ‘Nothing is broken, I am sure of it, although he probably shouldn’t try and stand up tomorrow. I’ll put a poultice on that hip.’

Kate, who had finally finished her unabashed inspection, began to pick up the discarded linen and took it to drop into one of the pails of water that stood against the wall. ‘Shall I put the other stuff to soak too?’

‘Please.’ Alessa kept half an eye on the delicate lingerie from the ladies of the High Commission as it dropped into the soaking-pails. It was a valuable source of income and she could not risk any damage; but Kate, despite her rough hands, was treating it with suitable care.

She fetched salves and bandages and a pad of old shirting from the cupboard and set them on the floor. The wound in itself was easy enough to dress, but wrapping a securing bandage around the slim hips was nothing short of disturbing and Alessa knew she was pink-faced before she had finished. Get a grip on yourself, girl! she scolded mentally, gratefully shuffling down on her knees to strap up the twisted ankle. The head wound, although angrily bruised, did not seem to call for a bandage, so she was ready by the time Kate had finished dunking the lawns and laces for their overnight soak.

It was no easier to wrestle the limp body of an unconscious man into a shirt than it was to get one off him, they discovered, and both women were panting with effort by the time the Englishman was decently covered, his head on the pillow, a rug pulled up to his chin.

‘You going to be all right with him here?’ Kate asked, taking a grateful gulp from the cup of watered wine that Alessa held out to her. ‘I can come up and spend the night, if you like.’

‘Thank you, but, no. He can’t give me any trouble—not with that ankle.’ Alessa regarded the silent figure resentfully. ‘He is just a thoroughgoing nuisance, and another mouth to feed for breakfast.’

‘Sir Thomas will have him fetched before the day is out,’ Kate forecast confidently. ‘Whoever he is, the Lord High Commissioner won’t want English nobs cast adrift in the back streets, that’s for sure. Good night!’

Alessa slipped the peg into the door latch to secure it behind her friend and started on the evening’s chores. Clean clothes for tomorrow, Demetri’s slate to find, Dora’s piece of lumpy sewing to flatten out so that it would not scandalise the nuns too much when they came to assess it, check there was enough wood by the hearth…

She realised she was achieving little, almost too tired to go to sleep, too restless to try. A deep sigh from the couch—which she had been carefully avoiding—made her start, but the man was still profoundly unconscious. Alessa hesitated, looking down at him. Why was he disturbing her so? He was nothing but extra work, her actions in helping him could lead her into all sorts of difficulties with some very unsavoury characters, and he combined the three things she distrusted most in the world: he was English, he was an aristocrat and he was male.

Trying to be fair, Alessa sat down and studied him. He might not be English, he might not be an aristocrat—although she doubted that, he had all the trappings of the upper classes—and not all men were bad. Just an awful lot of them. It was, taken all round, much the safest course to treat him with the deepest mistrust and to get rid of him as soon as possible.

If only she did not have this urge to touch him, to run her fingers through that intriguing tortoiseshell hair, to enjoy the feel of clean, faintly scented, healthily muscled skin under her palms. To touch those sharply sculpted lips with hers, to—Alessa clasped her hands together in her lap and stared aghast at the stranger. Witchcraft. Not that she believed in it, whatever old Agatha, their neighbour in the country, had told her on countless occasions. No, the only sorcery here was the effect of a handsome and mysterious stranger on a tired and bad-tempered woman who had long since given up any hope that there was a man somewhere for her.

‘And even if there was, it certainly is not you,’ she informed him crisply, getting to her feet and picking up the ewer of water that had been keeping warm on the hearth.

In the bedroom she stood for a moment with her back to the door, surveying the scene. At least here was normality, a very temporary peace, and her only sure source of contentment. Behind a screen Demetri lay sprawled face down on sheets rumpled as only an eight-year-old boy fighting pirates could make them. Across the room on one side of the big bed Dora was curled up with only the tip of her nose showing, her tousle of black curls spilling over the pillow.

Alessa went to touch the back of her hand to the warm cheeks of the sleeping children, beginning to loosen ties and hooks on her clothes as she did so. Undress, a lick and a promise with soap and water, then bed. Heaven. She slid in, careful not to wake Dora, and settled down to sleep, the sound of the children’s breathing a soothing backdrop to her own dreamless slumber.

It must have been hours later when the yowls and shrieks of a catfight on the roof of the bakery roused her. Alessa opened one eye, listened for any sign the children had woken, and then jerked into full consciousness. She was curled around the bolster, holding it in her arms like a lover, her cheek pressed against it. She snatched it up, dealt it a firm thump with her fist and settled it back at the head of the bed where it belonged. Goodness knows what she had been dreaming about. The sooner that man was delivered back to the Residency where he belonged, the better.

Chapter Two

The bed was not moving, which meant he was on land, which was fine. That was where he was supposed to be: in bed, on land. The only problem was, he could not recall getting into his bed—or anyone else’s, come to that. Chance lay very still. The thunderous headache might be one explanation for why his memories of last night were very hazy, although it argued a powerful amount of strong liquor, which he definitely could not remember. But there was someone else in the room. He had not yet engaged a servant; he was quite positive he would have had some memory of it if he had found himself female companionship; the only possibility left was a sneak thief.

Only…they were a very noisy sneak thief. There was the pad of soft leather soles on the boards, the occasional rattle of what sounded like pots, and someone—or something—was breathing like a grampus just inches from his face.

And the smell—that could not be right either. Wood smoke, herbs, soap, food. A kitchen? Chance cracked open his eyes and found himself almost nose to nose with a child. She jumped back and he realised there were two of them, brown eyed, olive skinned, with identical mops of black curls and identical expressions of intent curiosity.

‘He is awake!’ The small girl was squeaking with excitement.

‘Shh! What did I tell you about standing so close? Now you have woken the gentleman up.’ The voice from behind him was clear, flexible, and, although it was uttering a reproof, neither Chance nor the child made the mistake of thinking the speaker was angry with her. Then his befuddled brain started to work and he realised that both were speaking English. It seemed only courteous to make a corresponding effort.

‘Kalíméra,’ he offered.

It provoked an outburst of giggles from the small girl. ‘He speaks Greek!’

The boy, who had been regarding him closely, produced a rapid burst of what were obviously questions.

Lord! Now what? ‘Um…Parakaló, miláte pio sigá…’

‘He doesn’t speak it very well,’ the boy said critically, in accented English, to the unseen woman. ‘I speak English, Italian, French and Greek, all perfectly.’ There was a soft laugh from the watcher. ‘So, my French is not so perfect, but I am only eight and he is a man.’

Goaded, Chance retorted, ‘I speak English, French, Italian, Latin and Classical Greek. All perfectly.’ Then he smiled ruefully. What am I doing, entering into a bragging contest with an eight-year-old?

‘Aiee! Greek like the heroes spoke it?’

‘Yes. Like Paris and Hector and Achilles spoke it.’ Silenced, the boy stared at him, mouth open. ‘I am afraid I do not know where I am or how I got here.’ Or why I do not get up and find out, come to that. I cannot be that hung over, but nothing seems to want to work. Chance levered himself upright on the coach and fell back gasping. ‘Bloody hell!’

‘Not in front of the children!’ Now that was a reproof if ever he had heard one.

‘Sorry.’ He twisted round, trying to ignore the flame of pain in his hip and side and the sickening ache in his ankle. ‘I was not expecting anything to hurt.’

‘Do you not recall last night?’ The hidden speaker came into view at last. There was a moment of crowded thought and he realised his mouth was hanging open, just like the lad’s, but for a quite different reason. Chance shut it with a snap and made an effort to appear less half-witted.

‘I recall nothing of it at all, and I am sure I would remember you.’He would have to be dead not to, he thought, studying the tall, slender figure standing in front of him, hands on her hips and an expression of exasperated disapproval on her oval, golden-skinned face.

A veritable Greek beauty, he thought hazily, seeing how the weight of black hair at her nape balanced the imperious carriage of her head and how the traditional island costume with its flaring black skirt and embroidered bodice showed off curves that a fashionable gown would have hidden.

Then the impact of her eyes, her quite extraordinary eyes, struck him. Greek? Surely not, not with those clear green cat’s eyes, slanting under angled brows. And her accent was clear and pure. ‘You are English.’

She did not answer him, but the expression that passed over her face, fleetingly, was one of barely suppressed anger. ‘Children, introduce yourselves, then leave the gentleman in peace.’

‘I am Dora and this is Demetri.’ The little girl nudged her brother with a sharp elbow. ‘Stop staring, Demi. He said he can speak like the heroes, not that he is one.’ She followed this comprehensive feminine put-down with a sweet smile and skipped off, pulling the boy behind her.

‘Stir the pot, Dora, please,’ the tall woman called after her. ‘And, Demetri, more wood. I do not think you brought much up last night, óhi?’

The cool green eyes turned back to regard Chance. ‘You may call me Kyria Alessa.’ He was left with the distinct feeling that, whatever his chores might have been on the previous evening, he had failed in them also. ‘You were attacked in the courtyard below last night by two men, wrenched your ankle in the drain, fell against the fountain base and were hit on the head. Do you remember nothing of it?’

Chance levered himself up his elbows again and she pushed the pillow down behind his back, stepping back sharply the moment she had done so, as though he had an infectious disease. ‘I can recall playing cards at the Residency—the Lord High Commissioner’s residence,’ he explained. From the impatience on her face she knew what he was talking about. ‘It was my first night on the island, Sir Thomas had introduced me to various gentlemen, his usher had found me lodgings. I discovered I was more tired than I thought, so I made my excuses and started back—’ He broke off, trying to recall. ‘I think they offered me a footman with a torch, but the night was clear, there seemed to be lights everywhere, so I refused.’

‘A foolish decision, in a strange town,’ she observed crisply. ‘Where are you lodging?’

‘In the fort—the Paleó Frourio.’

‘Then what on earth were you doing here, in the middle of the town, at almost midnight?’

The chilly criticism was beginning to penetrate both his headache and the general sense of dislocation. Chance began to feel an answering anger, and some other emotion he was too irritated to analyse, tightening inside him. ‘The night air woke me up, I thought I would explore—what is there in that to displease you?’

Any other woman of his acquaintance would have blushed and backed down in the face of a firm masculine reproof. Not this one. Her eyebrows slanted up and she smiled as though humouring a rather backward child. ‘Other than the fact that you were set upon by a pair of murderous no-goods on my doorstep? That you blunder about a strange town flashing your silver-headed cane and your shiny fobs and your pockets full of coin to attract them? That this happens under my children’s window and I have to deal with the consequences?’

Chance could feel the heat over his cheekbones. ‘I gather I have your husband to thank for my rescue, Kyria.’

‘I have no husband.’

A widow then, and a very young one. What was she? Twenty-four? ‘I am sorry for your loss. Who, then, rescued me from these two assassins?’

‘No loss.’ She said it so baldly that he was shocked. It probably showed—he was still too dazed to manage much finesse. ‘And I dealt with them.’

‘You?’ He felt incredulous and made no effort to hide it.

In answer the widow stooped and drew a knife from her boot. She held it as though she knew exactly how to use it.

Chance eyed it with horrified fascination. ‘You knifed them?’

‘Of course not, I am not a murderer. I suggested to one that it would be better if I did not tell the Lord High Commissioner about his smuggling, and I hit the other one.’ She reversed the knife in her hand, displaying the rounded knob of the pommel. ‘He left when he regained consciousness. I thought about having you taken back to the Residency, but it was late, I did not know how badly you were hurt, I was tired and it was inconvenient. Demetri will take a message on his way to school.’

‘Thank you.’ There did not seem to be much else to say, given the turmoil of emotions that were churning around in his aching head. He felt humiliated that he had had to be rescued by a woman, angered at her attitude, physically in pain and, regrettably and damnably inconveniently, thoroughly aroused.

Angry, green-eyed witches were not within his experience; if he had been asked, he would not have thought it likely that he would find one attractive. This one, this Alessa, was reaching him at a level he did not understand. It was not just her looks, which were remarkable. There was some quality in her that made him want to say mine, drag her into his arms and wipe that cold, disdainful look off her face with his passion.

Which was impossible to contemplate. Chance had a strict code when dealing with women: professionals or experienced society ladies only, and this young widow with her children was quite obviously neither.

‘Breakfast is ready.’ It was little Dora, working away in the far reaches of the room behind him where he could not see. Chance tried again to twist round and was brought up short by the pain in his hip.

‘Is anything broken?’He kept the anxiety out of his voice, but it struck cold in his belly. What were the doctors like on this island? How likely was he to end up with a limp for life, or something worse?

‘Nothing.’ She turned away with a swish of black skirts that gave him a glimpse of petticoats and of white stockings over the cuffs of the short leather boots. The costume was exotic and alluring, yet at the same time practical.

There was a brisk discussion in Greek going on. He gave up trying to follow it and made himself relax back against the hard pillow. Then the boy reappeared, dragging a screen, which he arranged around the couch. ‘This is mine, but you can borrow it,’ he announced importantly, stomping off, only to reappear with a bowl of water, towel and soap, which he set down on a chair by Chance. ‘You must wash your face and hands before breakfast. Oh, yes, I almost forgot.’ He thrust an earthenware vessel with a cloth over it into Chance’s hands and grinned. ‘You are to push it under the couch when you have finished with it.’

So, her anger with him did not extend to humiliating him by making him ask about basic needs. That was something to be thankful for. Flipping back the blanket, Chance made the discovery that perhaps he was not so grateful after all. The shirt he was wearing was not his. All his own clothes had gone, down to, and including, his drawers, and someone had bandaged his hip very professionally. Somehow he doubted that this was Demetri’s work.

He made himself decent again and waited, expecting the boy to come back with some food. Instead, Alessa pushed aside the screen and put down a beaker and plate on the chair, shifting the basin on to the floor.

‘Did you undress me and bandage my wounds?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, laughter glimmering in her eyes. He must be showing his embarrassment. How damnably unsophisticated. ‘Mrs Street, my neighbour, helped me. An unconscious man is not easy to handle.’

I will wager I was not—and aren’t you finding this amusing? ‘Thank you, Kyria Alessa. You must allow me to recompense you for your trouble,’ he said smoothly. He saw from the flash of her eyes that he had succeeded in angering her. She regained her poise with the agility of a cat.

‘That is not necessary. Greeks regard it as a sacred duty to care for strangers.’ She stood there calmly, her hands with their long, slender fingers folded demurely across the front of her apron.

‘But then…you are not Greek, are you?’

Again, she dealt with the direct question by ignoring it. ‘You should tell me your name so Demetri can tell Mr Harrison where you are.’

‘Harrison?’ The name was vaguely familiar, then he remembered. The events of the previous twenty-four hours were beginning to come back in hazy detail. ‘Oh, yes, Sir Thomas’s secretary. How do you know him?’

‘I know everyone at the Residency,’ she replied, without explanation. ‘Your name, sir? Or have you forgotten it?’

‘Benedict Casper Chancellor. My friends call me Chance.’

Alessa ignored the implied invitation. ‘And your title?’

‘What makes you think I have one?’ And what makes her ask it as though she is suggesting I have a social disease?

‘Your clothes, your style, the way you move. You have money, you have been educated in these things. You have been bred to it in a way that simply shouts English aristocrat.’

‘Shouts?’ He was affronted, then amused, despite himself, at his own reaction.

‘I should have said whispers. Shouting would, of course, be ungentlemanly and vulgar. So unEnglish,’ she corrected herself with spurious meekness ‘Am I right?’

‘I am the Earl of Blakeney.’

‘Well, my lord, I suggest you eat your breakfast and then rest. Demetri will ask Mr Harrison to send a carrying chair for you this afternoon.’

‘I can leave on my own two feet just as soon as I have eaten and got dressed, I thank you.’

‘You can try to see if you can stand, let alone walk, of course,’ Alessa conceded with infuriating politeness. ‘And if you can, you can hobble through the streets in satin knee breeches, a sergeant at arm’s third-best shirt and no stockings and neckcloth. But I imagine Sir Thomas will have something to say about the impression of their English masters that would create with the local populace.’ She picked up the washing bowl and tidied the screen away. ‘I will be back when I have taken Dora to the nuns.’

There was a skirmish over a missing slate pencil, the whereabouts of Demetri’s jacket, the finding of Dora’s bag, and then the room was silent. The absence of all that vibrancy left an almost tangible gap.

Chance tossed back the blanket again, reached out to grip the back of the chair, and tried to get up. The effort brought the sweat out on his brow and a stream of highly coloured language from his lips. He hauled himself to his feet and found he could hop, very painfully. But that little witch was quite right; he could not get back to the Residency, nor to the Old Fort, under his own power.

He could see his evening suit neatly arrayed on a chair, the shoes tucked underneath. Sweating and swearing, he hopped across the room in search of his stockings, using the sparse pieces of furniture as crutches. She was right about that as well—he might get away with this worn old shirt, but he would be a laughing stock with bare legs under satin knee breeches.

Wooden pails were ranked against the wall, each full of water and white cloth. He fished in one, hoping to find his stockings; he could dry them at the fire. The garment he came up with was unidentifiable, but certainly not his. He hastily dropped the confection of fine lawn and thread-lace back into the water and fished in the next pail, coming up with a delightful chemise. It reminded him forcibly of a garment he had seen on his last mistress the night he had said goodbye to her.

Now there was a proper woman, he thought wistfully. Feminine, attentive, sweetly yielding to his every desire, and flatteringly regretful to be paid off before he set out on his Mediterranean journey. Why, then, he brooded as he straightened up painfully and scanned the rest of the room with narrowed eyes, why did this one arouse him far more than the very explicit memory of Jenny did?

The drip of cold water on his bare foot reminded him that he was standing, as near naked as made no difference, clutching intimate feminine apparel, in the middle of some Corfiot tenement and at the mercy of an icy and mysterious widow who might be back at any moment. Chance dropped the chemise into the pail and groped his way back to his bed. It chafed to admit it, but she was probably correct—he should rest if he wanted to escape from this nightmare.

Alessa climbed the stairs, noting gratefully that Kate had already been and scrubbed the bloodstains off the whitened wood. They took it in turns to look after the communal areas, long resigned to the feckless family on the ground floor ignoring their own obligations.

There were the muffled sounds of an altercation from behind the ground floor door. Sandro was no doubt being taken to task for lying abed instead of taking his boat out. Amid the hard-working fishermen he was a notable exception. There was silence from Kate’s rooms: she would doubtless be out marketing.

Alessa counted the chimes from the church bell as she climbed. Nine o’clock. So, his lordship had not put her behind so very much. Two hours to deal with the laundry and set it to dry, then there would be her usual visitors before the town settled down to its afternoon somnolence. His lordship would probably have to contain himself in patience until three o’clock when the Residency would send servants to collect him. It often took the visiting English a while to accustom themselves to the sensible Mediterranean practise of a rest in the heat of the day, although Sir Thomas, with his experience on Malta, and in the even greater heat of Ceylon, accepted it without question.

Alessa stopped outside her own door, conscious of her heart beating faster than the climb should account for. What was she apprehensive about? He was only a man, when all was said and done. However careless he had been the night before, he had behaved with remarkable forbearance on waking up to find himself in a strange place, in considerable pain and confronted by a hostile woman and two children.

She had overreacted, she admitted to herself painfully, and she supposed she had better apologise. She laid her hand on the catch and reviewed her excuses. He had brought violence and two unsavoury characters to her front door, she had been very tired, he was an outstandingly attractive man. Yes, well, Alessa my girl, that is not something you are going to explain to him, even if you could explain to yourself why that should discompose you so much. She took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Chapter Three

Lord Blakeney was sitting up, only now the pillows were at the other end of the couch from the way she had left him. Now he faced the body of the room. ‘Have you been out of bed?’ Alessa asked sharply, good intentions forgotten, her eyes skimming round the room to see what else he had been up to.

‘Of course,’ he drawled, watching her face. ‘I read your diary, I found your money hidden behind the loose brick in the hearth and I left dirty fingerprints all over the pretty bits of nonsense in the soaking pails.’

Ignoring the first part of his sarcastic retort—she kept no diary and her savings were woven into strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling beams—Alessa latched on to the final remark. ‘And what were you doing with the laundry?’ she demanded.

‘Looking for my stockings.’

‘You can have them when they are clean and not before,’ she said briskly, in much the same tone as she would use to Demetri when he tried to wheedle something from her. ‘And how did you get as far as that across the room?’

‘I hopped.’

It must have hurt. Alessa felt a grudging flicker of admiration at his single-mindedness. ‘Is there anything you need?’ She set down her marketing basket and remembered she should be making her peace with him, not lecturing. ‘I am sorry if I was…short this morning, my lord. I was angry that you had led such men to my doorstep.’

‘I am sorry too. You were quite correct to scold me for it. I should have known better, as you said. My only excuse is tiredness, the pleasure of being on land again after several days at sea and, ridiculous as it probably seems, the warmth of the evening.’

‘Warmth, my lord?’ Alessa untied her flat straw hat and hung it behind the door before reaching for her apron.

‘I wish you would call me Chance.’ Dark brown eyes watched her, a smile lurking behind apparent seriousness.

You, my lord, are a charmer and you know it. I should refuse. ‘Very well, Chance.’ She reached behind her to tie the apron strings and saw his glance flick to her breasts as the movement strained them against her embroidered lawn shirt. The glance was momentary and not accompanied by the knowing leer that she had come to expect from so many of the Englishmen who had passed through the town in the wake of the French retreat. She poured a little of the heavily resinated red wine from the north of the island into two beakers, watered both generously, then passed him one. ‘You were explaining how the warm evening made you careless?’

He took the beaker with a murmur of thanks and sipped. To her secret amusement his eyebrows shot up as he tasted it, but he made no comment. His second sip was far more circumspect. ‘I was behaving like a tourist,’he admitted. ‘A picturesque scene, friendly, smiling faces, intriguing little streets, a balmy evening made for strolling, the stars like diamonds on black velvet. Who could have expected danger?’

Alessa raised a quizzical eyebrow and was rewarded by a self-mocking grin.

‘Any idiot, of course, as you are obviously too polite to remind me. If it had been Marseilles or Naples, I would have been on my guard. As it was, I took a risk and paid for it, but not as much as I deserved, thanks to you.’

Alessa hefted the cauldron on to the fire and poured in water. Then she began to lift the individual items from the soaking pails, checking each for marks that would require further treatment. ‘Is your nickname because you take risks? Or gamble, perhaps?’

‘Chance?’ He smiled. ‘No, just a convenient shortening from when I was a child. I am really quite painfully respectable and sensible.’

Alessa felt her eyebrows rising again and hastily straightened her face. He was too good to be true: handsome, nice to children and respectable to boot.

‘I can see you do not believe me.’

‘If that is so, you most certainly do not fit into the mould of most of the English gentlemen of my experience.’ Alessa reached down a bottle of liquefied soap and measured some out into the cauldron. He was very easy to talk to. ‘No gambling?’

‘Well, merely to be sociable.’ That sounded almost convincing.

‘No carousing late into the night?’

‘I do not carouse, merely enjoy fine wines and spirits in moderation.’ That was positively sanctimonious, if difficult to believe.

‘No ladies of the night, glamorous mistresses, orgies?’ Aha, that had produced a faint flush of colour on Chance’s admirably sculpted cheekbones.

‘Absolutely no orgies.’

Alessa shot him a slanting look, but did not comment. After all, one did not expect a man to be a saint—or one would be severely disappointed for most, if not all, of the time, in her opinion. A gentleman who did not squander all his money at play, drink himself into a stupor and pursue the female servants with lecherous intent was, as Chance said, positively respectable.

Was he also very conventional? He was standing up surprisingly well to her frank interrogation. What would he make of her story, if she were rash enough to tell him? She took a paring knife and began to flake off slivers from a block of greenish-grey olive oil soap; the last bottle she had prepared was almost empty.

‘Is there nothing useful I can do? I cannot feel comfortable lying here while you are working so hard.’

Alessa shook her head, then realised that he might as well carry on with the soap so that she could be dealing with the more soiled items while the water heated. ‘Thank you. Perhaps you can do this.’ She perched on the edge of the couch and handed Chance a bowl, the knife and the soap. ‘I need fine slivers so it will dissolve well in water, then I bottle it up concentrated and use it with the washing. It is better with the fine fabrics than scrubbing the soap directly into them.’ She realised she was explaining, as though to the children. ‘I am sorry, you could not possibly want to know all that. I get into the habit of teaching.’

He took the knife and began to whittle at the block. ‘Like this?’

‘Perfect.’ She smiled stiffly at him, suddenly self-conscious at their close proximity. She could feel the firm length of his thigh against her hip and made rather a business of standing up and twitching the cover straight. It did not help that she knew precisely what lay under that blanket.

He was so approachable that it was almost like chatting with Fred Court, or Spiro the baker, and she had fallen into the Greek habit of openly expressed curiosity about strangers. Her neighbours would think nothing of a close interrogation about family, occupation, views, interests and wealth, but she must not allow herself to fall into the trap of undue familiarity with someone from the Lord High Commissioner’s circles.

As she massaged soap directly into the dirty marks on Chance’s stockings, Alessa reflected that she had allowed herself to swing from irritable suspicion to liking, and, if she was honest, attraction, in the space of barely twelve hours. And all because of a handsome profile, a pair of thoughtful brown eyes and an open manner. Careful, she admonished herself, tossing the stockings into the cauldron, this man is serious temptation.

It did not matter in the least that a man in his position was obviously not going to be interested in a laundress for anything other than dalliance. Her instincts told her he would not take advantage of her in that way; she was quite safe from Lord Blakeney. But was she safe from herself? She needed to guard her heart as carefully as she hoarded her money, if she were to remain strong and single-minded for herself and the children.

They worked in companionable silence. As the bowl of shavings grew fuller and the items of clothing followed each other into the hot water, Alessa pushed the damp hair back from her forehead and forgot to worry about her involuntary guest.

The church clock striking eleven brought her back to herself. She straightened up and looked across at Chance. There was a full bowl of soap shavings on the floor beside him and he was intently whittling the remains of the soap into some kind of animal. He looked up, caught her eye and grinned. ‘Pathetic, is it not?’

Alessa scrutinised the stunted creature, called on all her tact learned from praising juvenile attempts at art, and said encouragingly, ‘It is a very nice pig.’ Probably it should have one more leg, but one should not be over-critical.

‘Thank you. Honesty, however, leads me to confess it is supposed to be a horse.’

‘Oh, dear!’ His rueful laughter was infectious and Alessa was still chuckling as she pulled out the screen from the wall and arranged it around the couch. ‘I am expecting…clients. Your presence might embarrass them. Would you mind…?’

‘Pretending I am not here? No, not at all.’

Alessa smiled her gratitude and hurried to set the bedroom to rights. It had only just occurred to her that, as the couch which she normally used was occupied, she would have to retreat to the rather more intimate setting of the bedroom. All her visitors would be known to her, but even so, it felt like an intrusion, and she wanted to make certain no personal items were visible.

Chance lay back against the pillows, tried to get comfortable and contemplated taking a nap. That felt like a good idea—unless he snored, which would most certainly draw attention to his presence. Presumably Alessa was expecting ladies with intimate items of apparel for laundering, or perhaps she did dressmaking alterations. A strange man would most definitely not be welcome in the midst of that feminine activity.

No one had ever complained about him snoring; perhaps he could risk dropping off. The knock at the door cut across that train of thought and he listened to Alessa’s hurrying feet as she went to open it.

‘Kalíméra, Alessa.’

‘Kalíméra, Spiro. Ti kánis?’

Chance sat up abruptly. A man? He made himself lie back, wondering at his own reaction; presumably there were men without wives or servants who needed laundry and mending services. Alessa was speaking in rapid, colloquial Greek that he could not follow beyond the initial greeting, but something about the tone, intimate and concerned, disturbed him. And they were going towards the bedroom. The door opened, shut, and the sound of their voices became a murmur.

Chance sat up again, now unashamedly listening. The conversation had stopped and all he could hear from the bedroom was a sort of rhythmic thumping. Visions of bed heads knocking against walls, and what might cause that, came to mind only too vividly. She is…no! His instinctive revulsion startled him. What was the matter with him? She had every right to earn her living as she pleased. Who was he to judge? And yet he was. Which made him a hypocrite.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this Spiro had come to mend a broken bed frame. And perhaps I’m the Duke of York, Chance thought grimly, waiting for the thumping to stop, which it did after a few minutes. The murmur of voices reached him again and after an interval the bedroom door opened.

By twisting painfully Chance could catch a glimpse of the room through the join in the screen. Spiro was a stocky middle-aged man, just now rather flushed in the face. No tool bag. Whatever he had been doing in there, he had not been mending the furniture.

Alessa was a trifle pink in the face as well. He watched grimly through his spy hole as she smoothed back her hair. There was another knock at the door. This time it was a younger man, favouring his left leg with a slight limp. Again the greeting, the rapid flow of conversation, the firm click of the bedroom door latch.

This time there was silence from the room. Chance realised he was straining to hear and shook his head sharply in self-condemnation. He was furious with himself for listening, furious with Alessa for putting him in this position—furious that she had shattered his illusion of the hard-working, virtuous young widow.

A tap on the door was followed by it opening. Chance missed being able to see who had entered beyond a glimpse of a man’s coat, but the creak of a chair seat told him that the new visitor was waiting.

How many more, for heaven’s sake? The sound of a man’s voice raised in a gasping cry penetrated from the bedroom. Chance lay down, put a pillow over his head and waited grimly for it all to be over.

He was roused from his uncomfortable doze by the sound of the screen being pulled back. Alessa was regarding him, hands on hips, an expression of amusement on her face. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

‘Attempting not to eavesdrop.’ Chance hauled himself up into a sitting position.

‘Eavesdrop?’ Now she looked thoroughly confused. Just how brazen was this woman?

‘Yes, on your business transactions.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Alessa asked slowly, ‘Just what, exactly, do you think I was doing in there?’

Chance said nothing, but she could read the message in those expressive brown eyes as though he had written her a placard. He thought she was prostituting herself and he was struggling to find a way to avoid answering her direct challenge.

Alessa felt sick. Then angry, both with herself and with him. She should have realised how it would look and said something first. But why should I have to explain myself in my own home? I did not invite him here.

‘You think I was having sex with them? For money?’

Silence. Her frank speaking must have shocked him even more. The gentry did not like to call things by their true, ugly, names. Then something seemed to change in the atmosphere of the room.

‘No. I do not think that. I do not know why I do not, in the face of what I have just seen and heard. I would be a hypocrite to condemn you for it in any case. But I do not believe it, and I am glad.’ Chance’s mouth twisted. ‘There’s a jumble of muddled thinking for you.’

‘Indeed.’ She stared at him, fighting her way through her own muddle of emotions. What did she feel? Embarrassment, anger, disappointment that he should have thought such a thing of her, pleasure that he rejected the evidence, complete confusion over why his opinion should matter. ‘Why?’ she demanded, before she could stop herself. ‘Why do you not believe it?’

That direct question had taken him aback. What were the women of his acquaintance like, that he was so surprised by direct questions, a willingness to argue? ‘Because I think I know you, even after so short a time. Because I do not think you would use your own children’s bedroom. Because, if it were so, I would be jealous.’

The last words were soft, as though he was speaking only to himself. Her eyes, which had been watching his hands, powerful and elegant on the homespun blanket, flew to his face. He had taken himself by surprise as much as he had her.

‘Jealous—?’

The knock on the door cut off what would have been an impossible question. Alessa tore her eyes from Chance’s and went to open it. ‘Mr Williams! Please come in. I had not expected you until this afternoon, but Lord Blakeney will be delighted to see you so early, I am sure.’

The Lord High Commissioner’s steward stepped into the room with the polite half-bow he always favoured Alessa with. It amused her, and puzzled her too, that he should treat one of the Commission tradespeople with such courtesy, but he was unfailingly punctilious where she was concerned. She managed an answering smile and bobbed a curtsy.

‘Sir Thomas was most concerned when he received the message, Kyria Alessa. Although, with your skills, we knew his lordship could not be in better hands.’ Alessa could almost feel the waves of curiosity emanating from the couch as the steward turned towards it. ‘How do you find yourself, my lord? We are all appalled that you should have encountered such violence and criminality in a town under English governance.’

‘I am justly punished for my recklessness in wandering around alone at night in an unknown town, Mr Williams, but I will recover soon enough, thanks to Kyria Alessa.’ His smile was warm, even though she was conscious of a certain constraint in it. The things that had passed between them were too recent and too strangely intimate to leave either of them comfortable.

The two stalwart footmen who had followed Mr Williams were waiting just inside the door. ‘Have you brought a change of linen for his lordship?’

Roberts, the one she knew best, hefted a portmanteau. ‘All in here, Kyria, just like young Demetri said.’

‘Perhaps you can assist his lordship to dress, in that case.’ Alessa indicated the screen and drew the steward to the other end of the room, leaving Chance to the mercy of his helpers. She caught Mr Williams’s eye with a smile as a grunt of pain and a hasty apology from one of the men marked his lordship’s progress with his clothes. ‘He is not seriously hurt,’ she assured the steward. ‘But I imagine both his hip and ankle are extremely painful and it would be best if you can see that he rests for several days. He will be guided by Sir Thomas’s own doctor, of course.’

‘Doctor Pyke will not venture to contradict your diagnosis in such matters.’ Mr Williams took out his pocket book and handed Alessa a list. ‘He asked if you had any of these salves in stock. If not, he would like to order them.’

Alessa opened the big press and began to lift pots down. ‘All except the lemon balm ointment, which I am potting up today, and the sage wash. I will have some of that ready by the end of the week—it is still infusing. Here, it will all go in this rush bag with his lordship’s clothes. His linen is still in the wash; I will bring it with the rest of the Residency laundry.’

Further muffled curses heralded Chance’s emergence from behind the screen. He was hopping on one foot, the other unshod, his hand gripping Robert’s shoulder. ‘We can carry you, my lord,’ the footman was protesting. ‘Make a seat with our hands. You’ll not manage the stairs otherwise.’

‘I am not drunk and I am not dead,’ Chance retorted grimly. ‘I can manage a flight of stairs.’ The look he shot Alessa was defiant, but she refused to gratify him with feminine flutterings and protestations that he take care, despite the fact that his lips were set in a thin line and he had gone white under his tan. He was a grown man, and he could take the consequences of being too proud to be carried in front of a woman.

‘Kyria, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for me. I apologise that you have been put to such inconvenience by my actions, and, if in my…confusion, I blundered.’

Do not go, not until you explain what you meant…The words were so clear in her mind that for one awful moment Alessa thought she had spoken them out loud. ‘There is nothing to apologise for, my lord,’ she said calmly. ‘Xenia, hospitality to strangers, is important to us. You may best repay it by taking care of yourself. And, Roberts…’ the footman turned ‘…be careful with that arm.’

‘I will, Kyria.’ The man grinned. ‘But it’s all healed up now.’

Alessa let them all out on to the landing, but went straight back inside, leaving the door a little ajar, and waited, braced for a crash. None came, but the muttered curses rising up the stairwell added a little to her vocabulary. With a smile she closed the door and went to look out of the window down into the courtyard below. Chance was resting, one hip hitched on the edge of the fountain, apparently engaged in questioning Roberts. The footman, who was wearing a sleeveless waistcoat, unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and began to roll up the sleeve, just as Spiro wandered out of the bakery door to see what was going on. Alessa’s eyebrows rose—this was going to be interesting.

‘Kyria Alessa’s a wonder with salves,’ Roberts explained in answer to Chance’s enquiry as they had hopped slowly down the stairs. He bared a forearm for inspection. In the bright sunlight the tanned skin was puckered with a pink scar. ‘The cook splashed me with boiling water three weeks ago—and look how she’s got it to heal. Hey, Spiro, you see Kyria Alessa for your back, don’t you?’

‘Ne.’ The stocky man nodded politely to Chance, subjecting him to the intense stare he was beginning to expect from the local people. He had seen him somewhere before. ‘She fixes it good now.’ The man rolled a shoulder experimentally, sending flour off his coat like snow. ‘She is a tough one, Alessa. She bangs my back hard where it is all knotted and she rubs in the ointment that stings, and she tells me not to be a baby when I shout. It makes it much better.’Of course—this was Spiro of the thumping bed head.

Chance regarded his clasped hands thoughtfully. He had managed to put his foot in it comprehensively. Both feet, in fact. Alessa had probably saved his life, she had dressed his wounds with a skill that ought to have told him something, if only he’d stopped to think beyond embarrassment at the knowledge that she had stripped him to do it—and what had he done? Leapt to the worst possible conclusion about her.

And why did you do that, you bloody fool? he asked himself savagely as the footman and the baker topped each other’s stories of how wonderful the Kyria was. Because you want her, that’s why. The first thing that enters your head when you think of her is sex.

Mr Williams strode back into the courtyard. ‘The carriage has managed to get through to the next street. Just a few more yards, my lord, if you are rested.’

‘Of course, thank you.’ Chance got upright, his hand on Roberts’ shoulder, and looked up. Far above them Alessa was leaning out of the window, framed with scarlet flowers in pots. She was watching them, her weight on her crossed arms. He thought she was smiling. Chance lifted a hand in salute and wondered if he was going to receive a plant pot in return. Instead she lifted a hand in response and he thought he glimpsed a flash of white teeth.

A forgiving woman then, or perhaps she was just enjoying the sight of his undignified exit from the courtyard and out of her life.

Chapter Four

Alessa turned from the window, the smile still playing about her lips. A stubborn man that, but one who was at least ready to admit his faults. Even from her lofty viewpoint she could read the mingled chagrin and regret on his face.

How could she blame him for the conclusion he had jumped to? And how could she explain that leap of faith, which had led him to deny what common sense told him was the disreputable truth about her?

She pulled the cauldron well clear of the fire on its hanging bracket and began to lift out the clothes and drop them into the rinsing water. She squeezed and wrung and worked her way down the mass of flimsy feminine items until she found a pair of uncompromisingly male stockings and Chance’s shirt. Her hands stilled on the fine cloth, then, with a shake of her head, she wrung them out vigorously and tossed them in with the rinsing.

When the whole lot was done and the laundry basket full, she dragged it to the foot of the stepladder that rose to a trap in the ceiling, tied the handles to the dangling rope and began to climb. As she emerged on to the flat roof high above the town she looped the rope around the pulley fixed to the parapet and hauled it up. The basket landed with a wet thump and she dragged it to the washing lines strung across the roof between the chimney stacks and the rickety vine arbour.

Doing washing was so much better in the summer, when there was hardly any smoke from the chimneys and the sun shone hot, drying and bleaching the white linens and lawns in a fraction of the time they took in the winter, dripping all over the living room.

Alessa hung out the load, then went down the ladder again for some bread and cheese and a jug of watered wine. She could spare time to rest up here in the shade and eat her luncheon. There was a shirt of Demetri’s with yet another missing button she should be mending and there was her accounts book to check through. The clock chimed, the bells only just above her level up here on the roof. Yes, she could spare an hour, then perhaps she would not feel quite so much on edge.

The sound of puffing and complaining jerked her out of her reverie. Kate Street emerged on to the roof, red-cheeked from negotiating the steep ladder. ‘Here you are! I met your two little ones on their way home and thought I’d drop in and see what you’d done with your handsome patient.’ The sound of the children drifted up from below. They were squabbling mildly over whose fault it was that there were none of the yeast buns left from yesterday.

‘Whatever time is it?’ Alessa jumped to her feet and looked round. ‘It must be past three!’

‘Half past,’ Kate confirmed, perching on the edge of the crumbling parapet with blithe unconcern for the drop beneath her. ‘And you’ve been sitting up here daydreaming for how long exactly?’

‘I haven’t been daydreaming—I’ve been eating and mending and doing my accounts.’ Alessa followed her friend’s gaze to take in the full mug with the fly floating on the surface, the cheese sweating in the sun, the shirt with the thread and loose button lying on top of it, the closed ledger. What have I been doing? ‘I must have dozed off, I’ve had a busy morning,’ she amended defensively.

Kate’s lips twitched, but all she said was, ‘His lordship’s been removed, then?’

‘Yes. The Residency staff collected him. And he is a lord, in fact—Lord Blakeney.’

‘All the better. You charged him plenty for the trouble, I hope.’

‘Certainly not! How could I? One does not charge guests, however unwitting they may be.’

‘Honestly, Alessa, sometimes I think you are more Greek than the Greeks.’

‘I am Corfiot. What else is there for me to be?’ Affronted, Alessa stalked over to peer down into the room below. ‘Dora, Demetri! Have you had a good day? I will be down in a minute.’

Two round faces appeared, tipped up to smile at her. ‘Very good,’ Demetri announced. ‘Doctor Theo says my French story was incredible.’ Alessa kept her face straight.

‘And your English spelling?’

‘Not so incredible,’ the boy admitted.

‘And, Dora—are you coming up here?’

‘I had a good day too. The nuns have got new kittens. May we go and play?’

‘If you like. Take your hats—and stay in the courtyard.’

The thunder of feet heading for the door was all the answer she got. Kate watched over the parapet. ‘No hats—but then, they are born to it.’

‘Mmm,’ Alessa agreed absently. Getting either of the children to wear a sunhat was a lost cause. There was so much she should be getting on with—why did she feel at such a loose end?

‘So,’ Kate settled herself, ‘tell me all about him.’

He helped me with the soap, I asked him any number of impertinent questions, he thought I was selling myself, I can’t stop thinking about him, and now I do not know what he thinks about me. And that matters somehow.

‘Nothing to tell,’ she responded with shrug. ‘He rested, I worked on all the usual things, Mr Williams came with two footmen. His lordship was too proud to be carried downstairs and had to hop, so he is probably feeling very sore and sorry for himself as a result. But he is Dr Pyke’s problem now—I do not imagine he will be finding his way back here for some arnica lotion for his bruises.’

By the afternoon of the next day Chance was feeling not the slightest inclination to go anywhere. The Lord High Commissioner had announced that he must be accommodated within the Residency so that his personal physician could attend upon him, and as a result Roberts the footman had assisted him to a comfortable wicker chair in the shaded cloister of the inner courtyard.

With a footrest, a pile of cushions, a table at his side for journals and refreshments, a walking stick and a bell, Chance allowed himself to sink into unfamiliar indolence. He lazily considered that he probably resembled nothing so much as a valetudinarian colonel taking the spa waters at some resort, but really could not summon the energy to care.

Doctor Pyke assured him it was simply the after-effects of a blow to the head. Chance thought it more likely to be the reaction to a halt to his travels for the first time in months. His every need was being taken care of, there were no decisions to be made, no unfamiliar cities or uncertain modes of transport to be negotiated, no servants to hire.

He had set out four months previously, suddenly restless at the realisation that, with the war with France at last over, this was the moment to travel before doing his duty, finding a suitable wife and settling down. Not that he had been leading a life of irresponsibility and excess. Chance was used to hearing himself described by his various fond female relatives as a paragon of domestic virtues, an ideal son and a wonderful brother.

The praise amused him, but he would have thought less of himself if he led them to believe anything different. A gentleman could manage his private life discreetly, and he had a duty to his womenfolk to care for them. He turned over the closely crossed page of one of the letters that had been awaiting him when he arrived.

Mr Tarleton is proving ideal, as I knew he would, you having chosen him. Such a tower of strength over every matter small or large! And he has explained the correspondence from the estates and sat with me when Mr Crisp came with those papers about the sale of the pasture…His mother continued with her praises of the secretary he had appointed before he set out on his tour, in addition to the battery of advisors and agents at her beck and call.

Chance did not expect Lady Blakeney to concern herself with, let alone understand, the business of the estate, nor that she, or his three sisters, should have to trouble themselves with anything beyond their domestic sphere. That was as it should be and he would never have left if he had any doubts about the arrangements.

I do hope that you are looking after yourself (three times underlined) and wearing wool next to the skin at all times. Also that you are avoiding foreign food—he was not quite sure how she expected him to accomplish that—and the dreadful temptations and lures that one hears these foreign cities place before English travellers. Chance grinned. He could recognise a sharp wherever he met one—and between Paris, Marseilles, Rome and Naples he had met plenty—and he had admired, but resisted, the lures thrown out to him by an exotic assortment of barques of frailty.

He was well aware that his family regarded him as immune from the dreadful things they heard about in London society: and that too was right and proper. It simply meant that one enjoyed oneself with discretion and without excess; ladies did not have to know about such matters.

He read to the end, noted that his own letters were reaching home in an order wildly different from that he had sent them in, and lay back, brooding on the news that Lucinda, his middle sister, aged seventeen, was apparently becoming attached to young Lakenheath. His mother found that worrying. Chance, beyond wondering why Lucy inevitably fell in love with unsuitable young men who fancied themselves as poets, was less concerned. It wouldn’t last, not beyond Lucy encountering the formidable Dowager Lady Lakenheath. He decided against offering any advice to his mother on the subject.

Which left him with nothing to think about but his own affairs, which honesty forced him to acknowledge he had been avoiding doing for twenty-four hours. Specifically Alessa. Not that anyone would consider that she was his affair. Thank goodness. He tried to put some feeling into that pious conclusion and failed. But to his mind she was very much unfinished business, and he was damned if he knew what to do about her.

She had saved him from the consequences of his own recklessness, looked after him—and in return he had insulted her about as badly as it was possible to insult a lady. But she presented herself not as a lady, but as an herb woman who took in washing. Which meant she should be treated with the courtesy due to all her sex and recompensed financially.

Chance shifted without thinking, swore at the pain, and forced himself to confront the problem. Alessa was a mystery, and, whoever she was, she was certainly not simply a Corfiot widow running a couple of business ventures to support her children. She was English. Put her into a fashionable gown, suppress her independence of speech and she could pass, very convincingly, in society. However, she had ended up in the back streets of this town, she did not belong here and something ought to be done about it.

He shifted position again, almost welcoming the warning stab from his ankle as an antidote to the almost equally uncomfortable stab of lust that thinking about Alessa provoked. Lust and liking. The soft pad of footsteps approaching the courtyard came as a timely distraction, then he saw the sway of black skirts in the shade of the arcade opposite the one under which he was sitting, the crisp white of a full-sleeved blouse catching the sunlight, the tall, graceful figure carrying a laden basket. ‘Alessa.’

He spoke as she vanished through a door without glancing in his direction, and he realised he had pitched his voice as though speaking to himself, as though she was a dream.

Alessa found the steward without difficulty. As usual at this time of day he was in his cool office facing into the courtyard. ‘Good morning, Kyria Alessa. I have your money here for last month’s laundry. Are the children well?’ He counted out the coins, the familiar muddle of Venetian and French currencies, and handed her his quill with a smile. As always, Alessa made the point of producing a careful squiggle, which could be taken as a signature or a mark.

‘Very well, thank you, Mr Williams. Shall I leave the salve that Dr Pyke ordered with you?’

‘Certainly.’ He helped her unpack the pots from under the piles of ironed laundry. ‘Would you care to leave that washing with me as well?’

‘Thank you, but I will take it up to the housekeeper. There are one or two things I would like to draw to her attention.’

She left him with a smile, hefting the basket that was considerably lighter now the jars had been removed. The household was quiet, only the subdued bustle of servants going about their business disturbing the calm that Sir Thomas insisted upon when he was working in his study. He did not always get it, of course, not when his widowed relative, Lady Trevick, and her two daughters were entertaining.

They must all be out, she mused. They had probably taken their new guest with them in the landau to show him the sights, and to allow him to admire the Misses Trevick to their best advantage under pretty new sunbonnets. As she rounded one corner of the cloister, making for the stairs to the housekeeper’s room, she was congratulating herself upon taking such a detached, ironic, view of his lordship.

‘Alessa.’ It could not be anyone else. Even the one word was distinctive in that pleasant, lazily deep voice that seemed to her fancy to be the same brown as his eyes. She dropped the basket. By some miracle it landed squarely on its base and none of the pristine items fell out.

Chance was half-sitting, half-leaning, on the low inner wall that separated the shaded cloister walk from the open garden in the centre. ‘I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.’

‘My lord.’ He stood up, taking all the weight on his uninjured leg, and she realised he was dressed like the sailors on the English ships that crowded the harbour under the walls of the Paleó Frourio. Only none of the sailors would be dressed in loose cotton trousers and linen shirt of quite such fine cloth and pristine white finish. He was hatless, that intriguing tortoiseshell hair glinting in the sunlight.

‘No harm done, my lord.’ To pick up the basket and bolt, as her nerves were screaming at her to do, seemed gauche, so she left it and stood waiting, feeling at a disadvantage. Who would he be today? The man who talked so easily with her while he whittled ridiculous animals out of soap? The intense, almost angry man who had spoken of jealousy? Or was he, on his own ground, going to prove to be one of those English aristocrats she had learned to despise—cool, remote, arrogant? ‘Are your injuries less painful today?’

Her eyes were regaining their focus. He did look better. The lines of strain around his eyes had gone and his colour was healthier. ‘They are much improved. The hip joint is much more comfortable, although the bruise is spectacular. My ankle is still painful, but Dr Pyke promises me rapid improvement if I will only rest it.’

‘Good, I am sure he is right.’ His feet were bare, she realised with a shock—long-boned and elegant like his hands. It was the most sensible thing, of course, with one ankle bandaged, but somehow it seemed shockingly intimate. Alessa dragged her eyes away, trying to forget the feel of his unconscious, naked body under her hands. The look of his body…Then, until Kate had commented, she had thought of nothing but his injuries, now she could no longer maintain that indifference.

She began to back away.

‘No, please do not go. Have you brought me my clothes back?’

‘Yes.’ Alessa nodded to the basket. ‘They are in there. I should—’

‘Please sit down.’ He patted the wall beside him. ‘Have a glass of lemonade, if you would be so kind as to fetch it.’

‘It would not be proper.’

‘Why ever not? I am not inviting you back to my bedroom, for goodness’ sake.’ His shirt was open at the neck, showing just a hint of dark hair. His trousers were belted tight, emphasising narrow hips and taut waist. Alessa was certain she was blushing.

‘Because of my position here,’ she said stiffly. Any minute now Mr Williams might come out of his office.

‘You are not a servant. Why act like one?’ The deep brown eyes were amused. It was all very well for him—he did not have to tread a careful line between familiarity and subservience in the most important household on the island.

‘I provide a service here. I am expected to know my place.’ She said it without rancour; she did not envy them their lives, their position.

‘And I am asking you to sit down, drink lemonade with me and keep me company for a few minutes. That too would be a service. If you wish, I will pay for your time. You are not in your own home, so I can offer remuneration without risking your wrath, can I not?’

Defeated, Alessa went to fetch the tray, set it on the wall and sat down. Beside her an orange tree in a pot gave out its sweet fragrance and she bent her head to inhale.

‘They flower at the same time as they fruit—I had not realised that.’ Chance was twisting to reach the jug of lemonade. Alessa jumped to her feet and stretched across him to take it before he hurt his hip, realising too late that it brought them almost face to face.

She could smell the tang of limes, not from any tree, but from the cologne he was using. Seizing the jug in both hands, she moved round to pour it at a safe distance. ‘Limes are the same,’ she blurted out. ‘And lemons. Grapefruit as well, I believe.’ I’m prattling. She stopped talking and handed Chance his glass carefully by the base so there was no opportunity for their fingers to touch.

Back on her perch, she raised her glass to her lips. The sweet-sharp shock of the drink jerked her back from the turmoil that his closeness and the scent of him had stirred up. It was ridiculous. She was among men every day. With some of them she massaged their naked shoulders, or dressed injuries on their bare limbs. None of them made her feel like this, as though one word would tumble her into his arms…

‘Alessa, what is your real name?’ He said it in so conversational a tone that she responded before she could think.

‘Alexandra—’ She caught herself just in time.

‘And you are English? You would not answer me before.’

‘My father was English.’ She took another mouthful of lemonade. No one in Corfu Town except Kate knew the truth. Why am I telling him?

‘And your mother? Was she Greek?’ She found she was watching the firm, expressive lips as he spoke.

‘French.’ His lips parted fractionally in surprise. He did not expect that. ‘My father met her long before he came to Greece or the islands. She died when I was very young.’

‘It cannot have been easy for them, with England at war with France. But of course, she was a Royalist sympathiser, a refugee in England, I presume.’

‘Oh, no. Papa picked her up—quite literally—in France in ‘93. Her husband had been killed in the revolt in the Vendée; Papa found her near Niort.’

‘Good God, that must have caused difficulties!’

‘Not really. The General was dubious, but Maman was so very charming and Papa was always extremely unconventional, so he shrugged and did nothing. She followed the drum, even after I was born. I have been to England a few times, but I hardly recall it. Then, when she died when I was twelve, I just stayed with him. It made his disguise more convincing. He changed my name to Alessa then.’

Alessa came out of the haze of memories conjured up by telling the story to find Chance staring at her with dawning comprehension. ‘There were no British troops involved in the Vendée—not regular British troops, in any event. You are an officer’s daughter. An intelligence officer’s daughter.’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it now. ‘We’d been in and out of the Ionian islands for years on missions, but we settled on Corfu in 1807 when the French regained it. Papa would use his boat at night to rendezvous with English agents. He had a reputation locally as a smuggler, which helped.’

‘But he could have been shot! Is that what happened in the end?’

‘No.’ Alessa shook her head, giving herself a little time to steady her voice. Even now, it was hard to speak of. ‘He took the boat out one night, out towards Albania for a meeting. A storm blew up, as they do hereabouts, very sudden, very fierce. He never came home.’

Chapter Five

She had done it now, told Chance almost everything, as much as she had confided to Kate. Madness.

‘Alessa—’ She threw up a hand as if to ward off his sympathy and he caught it in his. ‘Alessa, why are you still here? Where are your family?’

‘Here. Dora and Demetri are all my family now,’ she said doggedly, her eyes fixed on the orange tree. It was the truth in every way that mattered.

Chance had trapped her hand, palm down between his. ‘But you must have relatives in England! Aunts, uncles, cousins—someone, for heaven’s sake. They cannot know that you are alone like this, surely?’

‘Papa did not wish…after Mama died…They did not want me,’ she burst out hotly. ‘I do not want them.’

‘And so you married a local man,’ he stated. ‘Was it for love or for security?’ His voice was oddly flat.

Alessa turned her head away, avoiding answering. He still thought her a widow and it seemed safer that way, although she was not sure why. But she did not want to lie to him.

‘Well, you are not married now,’ Chance said briskly. ‘Tell me your maiden name and we will make enquiries. Sir Thomas will have all the right reference books, we will soon see who to contact in England.’

‘No.’ She made herself meet his eyes. ‘No.’ The idea horrified her—could she ever make him understand? No, of course she could not. The Earl of Blakeney would be no more capable of that than he was of flying. He was English, an aristocrat, a man. To him home and family meant wealth, position, security, independence. For her it meant a kind of imprisonment in a foreign country, and the aching fear that they—whoever they were—would take the children away.

To Alessa’s surprise he did not persist, instead looking down at her hand as it lay trapped between his. Chance’s skin was as tanned as hers, his fingers long and somehow expressive, even though they were still. On one hand there was a signet ring with a dark intaglio stone.

‘How soft your hand is,’ he commented. ‘I would have expected all that washing to take its toll.’

‘You forget, I make salves for a living. I use olive oil soap too.’ She tried to match his light tone. Anything, to keep his mind off the subject of her parentage and her English relatives.

Chance lifted her hand. For a moment Alessa thought he was simply going to look at it, then he raised it to his lips, fingertips to his mouth. Startled, she did not draw back until it was too late, and the tip of her index finger was touching his lips. The sensation froze her where she was. It could not be called a caress—could it? He did not move his mouth, just held her finger against it.

Wide-eyed, Alessa stared back at him, and then he parted his lips and bit down, so very, very gently, on the pad of her fingertip. The effect was shocking. Not the painless pressure of his teeth, but the effect on her body. Heat pooled in her belly, her breath shortened, she could feel her own lips parting, but there were no words.

Then she felt the touch of his tongue against the tiny nub of flesh and she thought she would swoon. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the effect of such a simple thing. How could it be so intense? He was hardly touching her and yet she was drowning in those dark eyes. Her breasts felt heavy, aching as though they, and not a fingertip, were being ravished by the brush of his tongue. His hot, moist tongue.

What would have happened next, and how she would have reacted to it, she had no idea. The shrill yapping of Lady Trevick’s lapdog startled them both out of their wordless trance. Chance released Alessa’s hand and she snatched it back, jumping to her feet in the same movement, her skirts sending the beaker of lemonade to splash on the flagstones.

‘Alessa.’ Chance was on his feet, but she caught up the basket and ran, around the angle of the cloister, through the low arch and up two full flights of stairs before she collapsed, panting, against the housekeeper’s door. Safe. She was safe, but from whom? Herself or Lord Blakeney?

‘Hell and damnation.’ Chance sank back onto the ledge and cursed himself for a fool, fluently, and at length, and in five languages. It did not help. He had almost got the truth from her, the full story. Then he had yielded to whatever enchantment she spun around him and touched her. And not just touched her. The feel of her hand in his, so soft and slender and strangely fragile, despite the strong tendons, had completely undone him. Instinct had made him raise it to his lips, and sheer aching desire had made him open his mouth and take her in, between his teeth, against his tongue. The images that had conjured up had aroused him almost beyond bearing—were still arousing him, come to that. When he closed his eyes all he could see were Alessa’s green eyes, the winged black brows, the look of smoky passion, so responsive to him.

The sound of feminine laughter brought him to his feet. Lady Trevick and her daughters must be back, and here he was, bare-footed, dressed like a deckhand and in a state thoroughly unsuitable for conversation with well-bred virgins. Abandoning his possessions, Chance hobbled, wincing, towards the cover of one of the staircases, reaching it just in time as a party of ladies entered the courtyard from the opposite corner.

He leaned back against the wall, too shaken to attempt the stairs—wherever they led—praying that no one would come exploring. He closed his eyes and got his ragged breathing under control.

‘My dear Lady Blackstone, this is delightful! I am so sorry we were out when you arrived.’ It was Lady Trevick, apparently greeting a newcomer. ‘We had your letter, of course, but one never knows how long the sea passage will take. Now, do come and make yourselves comfortable in the shade. It looks as though Lord Blakeney has not long gone—he had a most unfortunate accident, poor man, no doubt he is resting in his room. You will both meet him at dinner.’

Chance grimaced. If they would only settle down, he could risk tackling these stairs and make his escape.

‘I will just run and get my reticule, Mama.’ That sounded uncomfortably like a young, unmarried daughter to Chance. He was already having to exercise considerable caution in dealing with the Misses Trevick. They were delighted to have an eligible, single, gentleman staying and Chance had no intention of being lured on to balconies after dinner or finding himself in compromising tête-à-têtes. Marriage was the last thing in his plans just now. When he returned to England he would look for a wife, a nice conventional, well-trained young lady who would understand her duties and who would please his mama.

‘Very well, Frances.’ There was the sound of chairs being moved and the creaking of wickerwork as the ladies sat. Hurrying feet scuffed lightly along the flagstones and Chance flattened himself back into the shadows of the archway at the foot of the steps.

‘Oh!’ The young woman who whirled round the corner collided with Chance, took a hasty step backwards and fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I am so sorry, sir.’

Chance closed his mouth, which was hanging open unflatteringly, and found his voice. ‘Ma’am. The fault was entirely mine. I was catching my breath before tackling these stairs.’

Big green eyes gazed back at him from under winged dark brows. He flattened his palm against the comforting solidity of the wall and made himself focus. It was not Alessa, of course. This young woman was perhaps nineteen, her hair was brown and she was shorter, and rather plumper, than Alessa. But the eyes, the shape of her chin, those eyebrows—she could have been her sister.

‘You must be Lord Blakeney,’ the girl said, dimpling at him. ‘May I help you? Lady Trevick said you have had an accident.’

‘Frances?’ The woman who swept into the now-crowded lobby could only be this girl’s mother—or Alessa’s. And the resemblance to Alessa was even more pronounced than with the younger girl. Chance shook his head to clear it, but he was not hallucinating. Lady Blackstone was tall and elegant. Her black hair, with sweeps of white at the temples, was dressed simply and did nothing to detract from the winged black eyebrows slanting over deep green eyes.

‘This is Lord Blakeney, Mama,’ Frances said, before he could speak.

‘Ma’am. I am Benedict Chancellor.’ Chance got his face under control and managed a reasonable sketch of a bow. ‘Am I addressing Lady Blackstone?’

‘You are, my lord.’ The cool look swept down past his open-necked shirt and loose trousers to his bare feet. Chance decided that convoluted explanations were pointless—if she decided he was a dangerous eccentric, not to be allowed near her daughter, so much the better in his current mood. Her ladyship deigned to smile. ‘I understand you are convalescing, Lord Blakeney. Perhaps we will see you at dinner. Come along, Frances.’

Left alone, Chance negotiated the stone stairs with gritted teeth, but his mind was only vaguely aware of the pain. It was surely impossible that Lady Blackstone was not related to Alessa. Which left one glaring question—what was she doing on Corfu? Could her presence there possibly be coincidence?

He found his room. Alfred, the valet put at his disposal by Sir Thomas, was folding away something in the chest of drawers. ‘Your clothing has been returned by Kyria Alessa, my lord.’

‘Let me see.’ He lifted the neckcloth off the top of the pile. It smelt of rosemary and some herb he could not identify. The valet waited patiently for it to be returned. Reluctantly Chance laid it back with the stockings. ‘Will you ask Sir Thomas’s secretary if he could lend me a Peerage, Alfred?’

‘Of course, my lord.’ The man shut the drawer and hurried out. Chance opened it again and lifted out the neckcloth, letting the soft fabric drape over the back of his hand. Soft, like her skin. Fragrant. Somehow he imagined her hair would smell like this, of sunshine and herbs and the sea air.

Alessa had been snatched out of her rightful place by a father who, however courageous, seemed to have been unconventional to a fault, and now she was being kept there by her own stubbornness. He could not believe that her English relatives would not want her. There must have been some falling-out over the French wife and Alessa was refining too much on the stories her father would have told her of that.

He folded the neckcloth and was standing holding it, deep in thought, when Alfred came back into the room. Hastily, Chance stuffed it into his pocket. Carrying a lady’s handkerchief around was one thing, one’s own neckcloth quite another.

‘The Peerage, my lord.’ Alfred laid it on the desk. ‘Dinner is at eight. Shall I have your bath fetched at seven?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Chance was already thumbing through the thick, red book. He found Henry, Lord Blackstone. The name rang a faint bell: someone in the diplomatic service possibly. He ran his finger down the entry: Married to Honoria Louisa Emily Meredith, only daughter of the late Charles Meredith, 3rd Earl Hambledon and his wife the late…

Impatient, he flicked forward to the entry for Hambledon. Edward Charles Meredith was the fourth Earl, married and with a large family. His father had been less prolific: one daughter—Lady Blackstone, his heir Edward and one other son.

‘The Honourable Alexander William Langley Meredith,’ Chance read out loud. ‘Alexander.’ And Alessa had said that her real name was Alexandra. He studied the entry, but it showed no marriage, no date of death. It was as though the Honourable Alexander had vanished into thin air. ‘Or into the Ionian islands with his scandalous French wife and his daughter.’

Chance dressed for dinner with care. He had not got off to the best of starts with Lady Blackstone and now much depended on the degree of diplomacy he could exert.

Sir Thomas had loaned him an elegant silver-topped ebony cane and Chance considered that with its aid he managed to cut not too ridiculous a figure as he limped out on to the broad terrace overlooking the bay. It made a charming setting for the Residency dinner-party guests to assemble.

Sir Thomas, easily distinguishable amongst the gentlemen with his bald head fringed with pure white, came over to greet him. ‘My dear fellow! Do you find yourself in less pain this evening? Yes? Excellent, excellent! Now, I think you have met everyone except Lady Blackstone and Miss Blackstone.’

Her ladyship acknowledged the introduction with an inclination of her head and a gracious smile. It appeared she was going to pretend that she had not already met the Earl in bare feet and shirt sleeves. Miss Blackstone giggled and blushed. Chance, who would have expected nothing else from a young lady at a fashionable London dinner party and thought nothing of it, now found himself making unfavourable comparisons with another young woman altogether.

‘Are you taking a Greek tour, Lady Blackstone?’ Chance enquired once Sir Thomas had taken himself off.

‘My husband is on a mission in Venice—he is with the Foreign Office, you understand. Frances and I are joining him for the last few months of his time there.’

Corfu was certainly not on the obvious route from England to Venice. Chance risked some further fishing. ‘How imaginative of you to take this route,’ he observed. ‘So many people would have gone direct to Venice—from Milan, perhaps.’

Lady Blackstone smiled tightly and Chance recognised discomfort, for all her poise. Oh, yes, she is hiding something. Just so long as it is not a flaming affair with the Lord High Commissioner…

‘It seemed such a good opportunity. I am sure Frances will never have the chance to see the classical sights again.’

Not that there were any classical ruins to be seen on Corfu—Chance knew that perfectly well, and so would any educated English traveller. ‘Will you be staying long, Lady Blackstone?’

Again, a hesitation. ‘I am not entirely certain; it seems such a charming island, and Lord Blackstone is most anxious that Frances gains the most benefit from the tour.’

Chance was saved from comment by the butler announcing dinner and the polite scrimmage while partners sorted themselves out. Charming Corfu might be, but surely Lord Blackstone would consider the artistic merits of Venice of more educational value to his daughter, and she would most certainly find far more in the way of balls and company to entertain her there.

He offered his arm to Lady Trevick. ‘I was just speaking with Lady Blackstone, your daughters must be delighted to have a houseguest of their own age.’

‘Indeed, yes.’ Lady Trevick took the seat at the foot of the table and waited while Chance sat at her right hand. ‘Although I am not sure how long they will be staying. Lady Blackstone has some family connection with the island, I believe.’

‘Indeed?’ Chance put polite indifference into his tone and began to discuss the plans for the new Residency that Sir Thomas had mentioned. At the other end of the table, Lady Blackstone sat next to her host, his secretary, Mr Harrison, on her left. She appeared to be asking him questions. Chance accepted a dish of salmon and tried not to think about Alessa, but the name Alexandra Meredith kept running through his mind.

He looked up and saw Frances Blackstone looking at him. Her hair was up in a fashionable style, her gown was silk, a pearl necklace and pearl earbobs glowed against her pale skin. What would Alessa look like in that gown, her hair coiffed, her throat circled with jewels?

He smiled at the thought and Frances blushed rosily as she dimpled back, thinking the smile was for her. Careful, Chance admonished himself, or you’ll find yourself with the wrong cousin.

It was only much later that evening, as Alfred eased the tight swallowtailed coat off his shoulders, that the import of that thought struck him and he swore softly under his breath.

‘My lord?’

‘Sorry, Alfred. I was thinking about women.’

‘Indeed, my lord? An endlessly fascinating subject, if I might be so bold.’

‘Endlessly.’ One could puzzle for hours over why one was attracted to a green-eyed, mercurial widow who was anything but encouraging.

‘The island is famous for its handsome women,’ Alfred persisted, shaking out the coat. ‘And they are most…hospitable.’

‘I have encountered island hospitality.’ Chance limped over to the bed and allowed the valet to gently remove his shoes.

‘And, of course, there are a number of eligible young ladies, if your thoughts are turning to less er…recreational relationships.’

‘I am not looking for a mistress on Corfu, nor for a wife, Alfred,’ Chance said repressively. ‘I was just thinking about women in the abstract.’

‘Of course, my lord, forgive me. Does your lordship require assistance with the rest of your clothing?’

Damn his tact. Chance had no intention of confiding in his valet. ‘Thank you, no. Just pass me my dressing gown.’ He was not at all sure there was anything to confide about, come to that. Only Alessa was beginning to preoccupy him, and he was uncomfortably aware that he was feeling proprietorial towards her.

The solution was to solve the riddle of her birth and restore her to the bosom of the woman he was increasingly certain was her aunt. Then he would not have to think about her at all, he would have done his duty and he would have restored things to the state they should be in. As this would normally have gratified him greatly, it was a puzzle why it now seemed to give him very little peace of mind.

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