Regency Rogues

August 2019

Outrageous Scandal

September 2019

Rakes’ Redemption

October 2019

Wicked Seduction

November 2019

A Winter’s Night

December 2019

Unlacing the Forbidden

January 2020

Stolen Sins

February 2020

Candlelight Confessions

March 2020

Rescued by Temptation

April 2020

Wives Wanted

May 2020

Disgraceful Secrets

June 2020

Talk of the Ton

July 2020

Exotic Affairs

About the Author

CHRISTINE MERRILL wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. During a stint as a stay-at-home-mother, she decided it was time to ‘write that book.’ She could set her own hours and would never have to wear pantyhose to work! It was a slow start but she slogged onward and seven years later, she got the thrill of seeing her first book hit the bookshops. Christine lives in Wisconsin with her family. Visit her website at: www.christine-merrill.com

Regency Rogues: Disgraceful Secrets

The Secrets of Wiscombe Chase

Lady Priscilla’s Shameful Secret

Christine Merrill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90734-1

REGENCY ROGUES: DISGRACEFUL SECRETS

The Secrets of Wiscombe Chase © 2016 by Christine Merrill Lady Priscilla’s Shameful Secret © 2012 by Christine Merrill

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

The Secrets of Wiscombe Chase

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lady Priscilla’s Shameful Secret

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

About the Publisher

The Secrets of Wiscombe Chase

Christine Merrill

To Kevin McElroy and Wayne White.

Congratulations from someone who knew you when…

‘Love is something eternal. The aspect may change, but not the essence.’

—Vincent van Gogh

Chapter One

‘Miss North, would you do me the honour of accepting my hand in holy matrimony?’

Lillian North did her best to smile at the unfortunate boy kneeling before her on the parlour rug and readied herself for the only answer she would be permitted to give.

Once, she had harboured illusions about love and romance. Most young girls did. But they had been left in the nursery, along with the other spectacular fictions about fairy princesses and brave knights riding to their rescue. When she’d made her come-out, Father and Ronald had explained the way the world truly worked.

It was her job to be pretty, pleasant and biddable, and attract what offers she could from gentlemen of the ton. In the end, she would marry and marry well. But it would be to a man of Father’s choosing and she was not to question the choice.

She had been in London for months, both this year and last. She had danced at Almack’s until her slippers were near to worn through. She had smiled until her cheeks ached with it and been so agreeable that people must think her simple in the head. It felt as if she had been introduced to every eligible man in Britain. While she’d her favourites, she had not allowed herself to form an attachment to any of them. She must never forget that the final choice would not be hers.

She had done as she was told and cast the properly baited net as wide as possible. When the time was right, her father and brother would draw it in to evaluate the catch. They would throw back the unworthy and keep no more than two or three of the very best. Then, the serious negotiating would begin. In the end, she would be decked in flowers and sent up the aisle of St George’s to stand at the side of a scion of the nobility. Father had assured her that he would settle for nothing less than a London cathedral and a groom that would leave other girls green at her success.

But now, all the plans and the manoeuvring of a season and a half were for naught. Without warning, she had been hauled out of town and informed that the choice had been made. She was to marry Gerald Wiscombe.

And who was he? It was as if she had cast her net and brought in a dark horse. Her metaphors were as muddled as her thoughts, but she could hardly be blamed for confusion. Mr Wiscombe was a total stranger to her. Although he was not a particularly memorable fellow, she was sure she’d have recalled meeting him, if only because he was unlike any of the men who’d courted her in London.

Lily had prayed each night that her future husband would have admirable qualities beyond wealth and station. Perhaps a love match was unrealistic. But, her future would be happier if it was, at least, founded on mutual respect. When she had taken the time to search for them, she had found good qualities in each of the men who had escorted her. Why, then, could she find nothing to recommend her father’s final choice?

To begin with, Mr Wiscombe was too young to be taken seriously. He was barely into his majority, only a year or so older than her. He was not even out of university and more interested in his impending Tripos in Mathematics than wedding her. In fact, he’d refused to come to London and court her. She had been expected to go to Cambridge to see him, so that the burden of this proposal would not interrupt his studies.

It did Mr Wiscombe no credit that he augmented his youth and uninterest with a lack of fashion and an awkwardness of address. Where was the evidence of his precious education? There was no sign on his soft, round face that he was destined to be a wit or a wag. When he smiled, the gap in his front teeth made him look as simple as she felt.

Looks were not important, she reminded herself. After dancing with men old enough to sire her, she had steeled herself to ignore appearances. Brains were not necessary if one had rank or money.

But that still did not explain Gerald Wiscombe. A few short weeks ago, Father had turned up his nose at an interested baronet as being too low-born to qualify as son-in-law. But now, there was nothing more than a ‘mister’ rocking uneasily on his knees in the parlour of a roadside inn, awaiting the answer.

He must be quite wealthy to make up for the lack of a title. But Mr Wiscombe had not bought so much as a bottle of wine to celebrate this day, nor had he visited a tailor to impress her. The cuffs of his coat were worn and one of the unpolished buttons clung to the garment by its last thread.

‘I do not have much,’ he said, affirming her worst fears. ‘I have no family to speak of. None at all, actually. I am the last of the Wiscombes. And the family fortune was gone a generation ago.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ she said, not so much sorry as totally perplexed.

‘Of course, Wiscombe Chase is lovely.’

A country manor? She smiled encouragingly.

‘Was lovely,’ he corrected with a shrug and a frown, as though he’d meant to lie and could not quite get it to stick. ‘It needs much work and the loving hand of a woman.’

Which probably meant it was a mouldering ruin and he was seeking a rich wife to repair it for him. This man was the polar opposite of the one she had been sent out to catch.

At some point, Father’s agenda had changed and she had not been informed. But when was Father not hatching a plan of some kind? His schemes invariably left him better off than he had been, while those who had dealings with him always seemed surprised to be poorer and less successful. Even so, few of them would have called him swindler. Those who lost to him preferred to think of him as that dashed, lucky Mr North.

She had always been inside the invisible boundary that separated her family from the rest of the world. No matter how precarious things might seem, everything would go well for her in the end. Because she was a North.

Until today, at least.

Did her father not understand that a young lady’s reputation was a fragile thing? Marriage was a permanent and nigh unbreakable contract. He could not barter her out of the family only to pull her back on some tenuous legal string, like the Bolivian emerald mine she’d seen him sell at a profit some three times already.

Worse yet, she was alone in her ignorance. Her brother, Ronald, had baulked when forced to escort her about London on the hunt for a suitable match. But he had been the one to introduce Mr Wiscombe and seemed as eager to see her married as Father did.

‘Miss North?’ Mr Wiscombe prompted, noticing the long and doubtful silence that had followed his offer.

She looked down at what was likely to be her future husband. He was staring up at her, mouth gaping slightly. He reminded her of a barely formed chick, unfledged, inexperienced and waiting to be fed. She feared the young avis Wiscombe was about to be pushed early from the nest and gobbled by waiting predators, genus North.

It made his next statement all the more worrying.

‘I wouldn’t bother you, if that’s what you are afraid of.’ Now he was blushing. ‘We need time to get to know each other, before that. Your father has promised to buy me a commission so I might make my fortune. I will be gone for some years. When I am returned there will be enough money for the two of us to live quite well. And then…’

The mystery deepened. First off, he’d said the word bother with such significance that she assumed he meant something. And he assumed she understood. She supposed she did, after a fashion. He must be talking about what occurred between a husband and wife. She had no mother to explain details to her and was far too afraid and embarrassed to ask Father. If it was bothersome, she was not sure she wished to know the specifics.

But if he meant to join the army at her father’s bequest and be gone for several years? That was simply laughable. She doubted Gerald Wiscombe would last several minutes before the French, much less several years. Did her father mean to send this poor boy to his doom?

She did not want to believe it. While her father was somewhat less than honest, she had never known him to be brutal. But the harder she tried to reject it the more her mind filled with the icy certainty that this was precisely what Phineas North intended. If he was willing to sacrifice his own daughter like a chess piece, what hope did this poor young man have to survive until checkmate?

If that was the game, then she refused to play her part in it. It would be a lie to say that she felt affection for the man in front of her. But neither did she wish him ill. Even if she felt nothing at all, how could she live with herself if the marriage was little more than a death sentence for her husband? She would not be permitted to refuse. But perhaps if she could get Mr Wiscombe to withdraw the offer, the matter would settle itself.

Lily wet her lips. ‘Are you sure that is wise?’

He was blinking at her as if he had no idea what she meant. Perhaps he was not quite right in the head.

‘The army will be very dangerous.’ She spoke slowly, so he could understand. When this did not seem to make an impression, she added, with additional emphasis, ‘There is no guarantee that you will return in a few years with a fortune. In fact, there is no guarantee that you will return at all.’

In response, he blinked the watery grey eyes in his round face and gave her another foolish grin.

‘You might be killed,’ she said. Now her voice sounded testy. She did not wish to be cross with him, but he needn’t be so stupid, either. She shouldn’t have to spell out the trap he was walking into.

Finally, one doughy hand reached out to cover hers. ‘You need not worry about that. It is a possibility, of course. But there are many others equally grim. I might fall off my horse and break my neck before we can even say the vows. Or get struck by lightning while picking flowers in the garden. Or I might survive the battle and live to a ripe old age.’ He blinked again. ‘You are not afraid of that, are you?’

Afraid? Why should she be afraid of such an unlikely possibility?

Now he was looking at her as though she were the one who did not understand the gravity of the situation. Suddenly, she was sure that, all this time, he had been measuring her just as she had measured him. ‘You do understand, if you are to marry me, it will be till death us do part,’ he said and paused to let the words sink in. ‘Although you obviously assume otherwise, my death may be a long time in coming.’

Did he think her so stupid that she did not understand the basic vows she would be taking? Or had he just insulted her, hinting that she was marrying him in the hopes that he would die? It would be too horrible, if there weren’t some truth to it.

He was still blinking at her with those innocent, wet eyes. There was something hiding deep within them and it was not the eagerness of a bridegroom. The light shining there was like the sun reflected off cold iron. What he felt when he looked at her was not passion, or even affection. It was grim resolve.

His words had been a last attempt to make her prove her worth and admit that she had no desire to marry him. If she said yes to his proposal, he would assume she was as grasping and sly as the rest of her family, and meant to lure him into a marriage with the hope of imminent widowhood.

She stiffened. Any other girl would have withdrawn her hand and rejected his suit without another thought. She’d have cut him dead, had there been any chance that they would ever meet again, which they would not. If he liked his mathematics books so well, he could marry them. She would go back to the handsome, titled men of Almack’s and forget him utterly. He could return to his ruin of a house. Once there, he could lick his wounds and brood upon this day with the embarrassment it deserved.

But she was not any other girl. She was the daughter of Phineas North. If she left the room after refusing Mr Wiscombe, Father would turn her back at the doorstep to hear him again. Should she manage to escape to her room, she would be locked there until she came to her senses and did as she was told. If the current plan fell through and she was able to divest herself of Gerald Wiscombe, there was no guarantee that the next choice she was offered would be any better. In fact, it could be much, much worse.

She was as trapped and doomed as the boy on his knees before her. So she looked down at him with what she hoped was an aloof, but ultimately benevolent stare. ‘I am well aware of the words of the marriage ceremony, Mr Wiscombe, and have enough wit to understand their meaning. If we marry, it is for life. However long—’ she gave him another probing, significant look ‘—or short that might be. I am also aware that it gives you the right to, as you put it earlier, bother me whenever you so choose to do so. But if you do not have the sense to be afraid of Napoleon, than why should I be afraid of marrying you?’

For a moment, everything changed and not for the better. He favoured her with the gap-toothed grin of an idiot. Then he rose to his feet. Rather than attempting to kiss her, he clasped her hand in a firm, manly shake. ‘Very well. It is a bargain, then. We will be married as soon as your father can arrange for the licence. When I return from the Peninsula, we will begin our future together.’

The poor fool. What else could she do but nod in agreement? Once he was gone, perhaps she could persuade Ronald to tell her what was really going on. But there was one thing that she already knew. If Gerald Wiscombe had chosen to make a bargain with her father, his future and fortune were decided and fate was laughing in his face.

Chapter Two

‘If you are intent on selling your commission, Wiscombe, we shall be sad to see you go. It was a fortuitous day for the British army when you first decided to take up the sword.’

‘Thank you, Colonel Kincaid.’ Gerry dipped his head in modest acknowledgement to the man seated at the desk. Whenever he received such compliments, he was always faintly relieved that his commanding officers had not been present on the day, seven years ago, that he’d made that decision. It had been an act of desperation, pure and simple. There had been nothing the least bit heroic about it.

‘It is a shame you do not wish to continue in the service. Surely we could find a place for an officer with such a past as yours.’

The thought had crossed his mind. Even as he passed through the arched gate of the Horse Guards, he had considered asking for another posting. A few years in India would not go amiss. But after so much time away, avoiding his home felt more like cowardice than bravery.

Gerry looked Kincaid square in the eye to show that he would not be moved. ‘It would be an honour to continue in service to the crown. But after seven years, it is time to trade one war for another.’

The colonel gave him the same mildly confused look that others had given him when he had phrased it so. It did not matter. Understanding was not necessary. He smiled back at the man to show that it was all in jest. ‘It is a long time to be away from home. When I left, I was but newly married.’ He opened the locket he carried that contained the miniature of Lillian.

The colonel smiled back and gave him a knowing wink. ‘I see. There is little the army can offer that can compete with the open arms of a beautiful woman waiting eagerly for your return.’

Gerry nodded again. She had been beautiful. Likely, she still was. The position of her arms and her degree of eagerness were yet to be determined. His smile remained unwavering, as the papers were signed that severed him from the military.

From Whitehall, he went to Bond Street to find a tailor. He shuddered to think what clothing was still in the cupboards of his old room. He’d been a half-formed boy when he’d left the place to go to Portugal. Even if the coats still fit, they would be even more threadbare and out of fashion than they had been when he’d left. After Father had died, he’d had not a penny to spare on his appearance. But there was no need to spend the rest of his life in uniform, now that he had earned enough to pay for proper clothing.

His dragoon’s regimentals were more than impressive enough to turn heads as he walked down the street. He heard the whispers that followed him as he passed the shops.

‘Is that Wiscombe?’

‘There he is.’

‘Captain Wiscombe. Hero of Salamanca. Hero of Waterloo.’

Had the word of his return reached Wiscombe Chase? It must have, if strangers could recognise him on the street. What would North’s reaction be when Gerry turned up to reclaim his home, after all this time?

And what would she think of it?

He turned his mind away from that question and ordered the new clothes sent on ahead of him. Then he turned his horse to the north and began the ride home.

Once he was clear of the city, he gave Satan his head and let the miles pass uncounted. This was how it should be, man and steed travelling light. When the beast tired, they stopped and slept rough, not bothering with an inn. When it rained, Gerry threw an oilcloth over his coat and let the water run off him in sheets. Later, the sun returned and dried them, filling his nostrils with the smell of steaming wool and horse.

Kincaid had been right. He would miss this. But the whole point in buying a commission had been to gain the money to save the house and secure his future. He’d succeeded in that some years past. After Vitoria, there had been more than enough money to clear his debts, fix the roof and have a tidy sum left to invest.

He could have gone home then. But he had not. Even after Boney was sent to Elba, he had dawdled. The little Frenchman’s escape had come as a relief, for it meant a few more months during which he could delay the inevitable.

Now that the last shot had been fired and Napoleon was off to St Helena, he was out of excuses. It was time to return to his first responsibility.

And there, on the horizon, was the stone marker that indicated the beginning of the Wiscombe family land. His land, he amended. There had been no family living when he had taken up the sword. If there had been anyone left, the cowardly boy he had been would have appealed to them for help and avoided the next seven years of his own life.

Gerry shrugged at the thought and the horse under him sensed his unease and gave a faint shift of his own.

He stroked the great black neck and they continued on the road that wound through the dense wood surrounding the house. The wild, untamed nature of the property was more beautiful than any formal garden. Beautiful, but useless. Dense woodland was bordered on one side by rills and streams too small to navigate by boat and on the other by granite tors and bogs that made coach travel impossible.

His life might have been easier had his ancestors settled in a place capable of sustaining crops, cattle or industry. The land around Wiscombe Chase was fit for nothing but hunting. Since he did not intend to ever take another life, animal or human, it might be better to sell the lot to a sportsman who could appreciate it.

But after all the blood he had shed to keep it, he could not bring himself to entertain the idea. Some men at his side had fought for king and country. Others hated the French tyrant more than they loved their own cause. Still others wanted money or glory.

He had fought for his birthright. This ten square miles of wood and moor was his own country to defend and rule. It generated not a penny of income. If he was honest, he did not even like the draughty and impractical manor that had drained away the Wiscombe fortune. But, by God, it was his, to the last rock.

As if to confirm the wisdom of his decision, he saw a shift in the leaves on the left side of the road. He reined in and warned Satan to be still. A twig cracked and he held his breath, waiting. The stag stepped into the road, watching him as intently as he watched it. The spread of the antlers was broader than he remembered and the muzzle had more grey in it. But the left shoulder had the same scrape from his father’s bullet, so very long ago.

‘Hello, old friend,’ he whispered.

The deer gave a single snort, then tossed his head and disappeared into the trees.

In response, Gerry’s heart leapt with joy at the rightness of being home. Though he’d fought against it since the day he’d left, he belonged here. He spurred the horse to clear the last stand of trees and the house came into sight.

It had been near to ruin when he’d left. But now the heavy brown stone was clean and the roof sported new grey slate. The windows sparkled bright in the growing dusk. And every last one of them was lit.

Perhaps they had filled the house to the rafters with friends to welcome him home. He could not help the ironic smile this idea brought. He’d had no friends at all when he’d left England. To the best of his knowledge, that had not changed in his absence.

It likely meant that he was interrupting someone else’s party. He felt the same unholy glee that sometimes took him when charging on to the battlefield. It had never been the carnage that attracted him. It was the clarity that came when one knew life might end at any moment. Other fears paled in comparison, especially the fear of one’s own mistakes. He had learned to act before he was acted upon. After years of being life’s pawn, he had become the force of chaos that acted upon others.

He smiled. If ever there was an opposing army deserving of chaotic upset, it was the North family.

He cantered the last half mile, coming to an easy stop at the front door. The footman who came forward to take the horse did not know him. But then, in ’08, he had not been able to afford a servant at the door, much less the livery that this boy wore.

His butler had no such problems with recognition. The door opened and the expression on the man’s normally impassive face changed to surprise. ‘Master Gerald?’ Those words were smothered with a quick clearing of the throat and ‘Begging your pardon, Captain Wiscombe.’ But underneath the reserve, he was near to grinning, and so proud of his master that he looked ready to pop his waistcoat buttons.

Gerry had no reason for reserve with the man who had comforted him on the night his father had died. ‘Aston.’ He reached forward and offered a brief, manly embrace, clasping the fellow’s shoulder and patting him once on the back. ‘It is good to be home.’

‘And to have you home as well, sir. We have followed your exploits in the newspapers. It was very exciting.’

So they had heard of him here. Of course they had. Who had not? All the same, he was glad to have worn his uniform so that he might reinforce the image of returned war hero. Even after days in the saddle, the short jacket and shiny boots were more than a little impressive. And the sword at his side was proof that he was no idle fop in feathers and braid.

Aston looked past him. ‘Are you unaccompanied? Where is the luggage?’

‘Arriving later. I had it sent, direct from London.’ He smiled at the old servant. ‘I did not wish to wait for it.’

The man nodded back, taking his haste for a compliment. ‘We are all glad that you did not.’

Was that true above stairs as well as below? He sincerely doubted it. ‘Where is she?’ he said softly, looking past the butler. ‘Not waiting at the door for my return, I see.’

‘Come into the house, Captain.’ The man was still grinning over the new rank. ‘While you refresh yourself, I will find Mrs Wiscombe.’

‘Aston? Who was at the door, just now?’

It seemed the summons was not necessary. Lillian was standing on the main staircase. She looked as beautiful as he remembered and as enigmatic. He felt the same tightening in his throat that had come upon him the day they’d met. This time, he fought against it. While it might be fashionable to moon over another man’s wife, it did not do to be so affected by one’s own.

He straightened to parade-perfect attention, then looked up at her. ‘No one in particular. Merely your husband, madam.’

Her head snapped up to see him. Her face shuttled through a half-dozen expressions, trying to settle on the one that could both express her emotions and welcome him properly. He was pretty sure that none of what he saw resembled gratitude or joy. But before any of it could truly register, she gave up and her eyes rolled back as her knees began to fold under her.

‘Bugger.’ He lunged forward, putting his battlefield reflexes to good use, and caught her before she could reach the ground. The woman in his arms was heavier than she’d appeared at the altar. Hardly a surprise. He had changed, as well. But she was not too heavy. Had he found her in Portugal, he’d have described her to his mates as a ‘tidy armful’.

‘The bench, Captain.’ The butler gestured to a place beside the stairs.

‘The sitting room,’ Gerry corrected.

‘I will send for madam’s maid with the hartshorn.’

‘Nonsense,’ Gerry announced, carrying his wife through the open sitting-room doors to a divan by the fire. ‘She just needs to get the blood back to her head.’ He settled Lillian on the sofa and sat at the opposite end, taking her feet into his lap to elevate them.

The feel of her dainty slippers against his thighs did more to redirect his blood flow than hers. He snatched a pillow from behind him and slipped it beneath them to give her more height and him a chance to regain his sanity.

Her eyelids fluttered, the long lashes revealing flashes of eyes as soft and brown as a doe’s. It must have been God’s own joke to give such an innocent face to a woman like Lillian North.

He smiled to hide his thoughts. ‘There. See? It is working already. Fetch her a ratafia, or some other restorative.’ Damn it all, he could use a stiff brandy himself. But he needed a clear head if he was to stand against the Norths, so he asked for nothing.

His wife was fully awake now. When she realised her position, she hurriedly pulled up her feet and righted herself, swaying slightly on the cushion beside him as she tried to regain her poise.

‘Easy,’ he cautioned. ‘Do not rush or you will become dizzy again.’

‘You startled me,’ she said, rubbing her temple as if her head ached. More likely, it was to shield her face so she did not have to look him in the eye.

So she was startled. How unfortunate. Even though she had not expected to see him again after their wedding breakfast, she must have heard of him in these past years. It had probably vexed her and her family to find him so stubbornly hard to kill.

The butler signalled the footman, who stepped forward with a glass. Gerry pressed it into her hand.

She drank deeply, as though desperate for anything that gave her an excuse not to talk.

‘So it shocked you to unconsciousness to see me again,’ he prompted, enjoying her discomfort.

‘I was aware that you had returned to England. But if you had notified us of your impending arrival, the house might have been prepared for you.’ She had the nerve to sound annoyed with him.

He smiled all the wider. ‘In my time away, I’ve learned to value the element of surprise.’

‘I must tell the servants to air out your room.’ She set aside her glass and made to stand up.

‘No need.’ He grinned at her and took her hand, pulling her none too gently back to the seat next to him. ‘They saw my arrival and are most likely doing so without your instruction. I am sure they would not expect you to leave my side so soon after our reunion. We have been apart for ages. We have much to discuss.’

She looked so miserable at the thought of their impending talk that he almost pitied her. Then he remembered that she had earned any misery a hundredfold for the way she had treated him.

Before they could begin, they were interrupted by voices in the hallway. A man and boy were coming towards the sitting room in animated conversation about the quality of the trout they had caught for tonight’s dinner.

In truth, it was the younger one that did most of the talking. The man with him answered in annoyed monosyllables before shouting, ‘Aston! What would it take for a man to get a drink before dinner? And what the devil is all the ruckus about? The rest of the party is not yet back from their hunt, but servants are running around as if the house is on fire.’

Lillian’s eyes widened and she looked ready to call out a warning.

Gerry laid a hand on her arm to silence her. Then he spoke in a voice that carried easily to the hall. ‘You have but to ask the lord of the manor, Ronald North. Or have you been playing that role yourself, in my absence?’ He’d meant it to sound joking, but it came out as an accusation. Gerry softened the words with his most innocuous smile, as his wife’s brother appeared suddenly in the doorway and braced a hand against the frame as if to steady himself.

‘Wiscombe.’ Though his voice had been clear and jovial a moment before, now Ronald seemed winded. He looked even more shocked than his sister had been.

Gerry took care to hide the malice he felt behind a wide-eyed, innocent look. ‘What a surprise to come home and find you still in my house.’

‘Surprise?’ The man stammered over the word, still trying to decide what his reaction should be.

‘Well, not really,’ Gerry added, his grin broadening. ‘Of course I expected to find you here. I gave you permission to live here in my absence. But there appears to be a house party in residence. Is it to honour my return? You must have heard of my homecoming and gathered my friends to welcome me.’

‘Of course.’ Ronald leapt for the lifeline he’d been offered, clinging to it for all he was worth. ‘When we heard that you had survived Waterloo…’ He gave a capacious wave of his hand to encompass the frenzied celebration that his success had caused. From one who had no right to set the comings and goings of the household it was more than a little presumptuous.

‘It was a dashed piece of good luck that I am here at all,’ Gerry answered him, with a pleased nod. ‘I’ve been within ames ace of coming home in a box so many times over the years that I quite lost count.’

‘How did you manage to survive?’ By his tone, Ronald North was annoyed that he had done so.

Gerry shrugged. ‘I suspect it was the prayers of my lovely wife that did it. There always seemed to be an angel who could grab me by the collar and pull me back from the brink.’ He gave a deliberately expansive wave of his hand and jostled the glass Lillian had been holding, sending a splash of her drink on to the rug.

‘I suspect so.’ Ronald was staring at him intently as if wondering whether he might still be the lucky idiot they wanted him to be. Gerry smiled back, doing his best to look harmless. Let him think what he liked. Better yet, let him think what Gerry meant him to.

‘But Waterloo is several months passed,’ Gerry continued. ‘Do not say you have been rejoicing all this time without me. Judging by the red in your nose, the cellar must be quite empty by now.’ The same years that had toughened Gerry had softened his wife’s brother. The chestnut hair he shared with his sister had lost its lustre. His waist had thickened and his face was bloated from over-indulgence. In school, Ronald had been a handsome fellow with an easy manner and enough blunt in his pocket to ensure his popularity. But now it was hard to see his brother-in-law as anything other than the dissolute wastrel he had been even then.

‘You need not fear that the house is dry,’ Ronald said, matching his tone to Gerald’s. ‘Your cellar is excellent, Wiscombe. I know, for I stocked it myself. And the guests that are here for your arrival?’ He gave another flourish of his hand. ‘The cream of London society, dear boy. The very pinnacle.’

‘The pinnacle? Then they are likely strangers to me.’ He’d been a young nobody when he’d left for Portugal, well beneath the notice of the ton. It had flattered him that Ronald North might think him a fit match for his beautiful sister. He had been a fool. He gave Ronald another empty-headed smile to prove nothing had changed. ‘But I am sure we will get on well. The chaps in my regiment said as long as I was paying for the wine I was very good company.’

He felt his wife tense next to him as she recognised the sarcasm that her brother had missed. Even at their first meeting, she had been better at reading him than either of the other Norths. It was a shame that her character was not equal to her intelligence.

‘You will meet the guests over dinner,’ Ronald said, smiling back. Apparently, he was also oblivious to the fact that it was not his place to be issuing such assurances to the man who owned the house.

‘I must change the seating at the table,’ Lily added, trying to escape him again.

Gerry pulled her down again. ‘Aston will have told the housekeeper by now. Mrs Fitz is quite capable of rearranging a few chairs.’ He gave her a smile that would have terrified her, had she known him better.

Perhaps she did know him. He felt another tremor in the muslin-draped leg resting against his. He dropped a hand on to her twitching knee in an overly familiar gesture of comfort and she stilled. But it was not a sign of calm so much as the terrified immobility of a rabbit before a hawk.

For now, he ignored her and her brother as well, staring towards the hall. ‘Never mind them. There is but one person here I truly wish to meet.’ He raised his finger to point towards the shadow hovering in the doorway behind Ronald North. ‘Come forth. Let me get a look at you.’

The boy stepped forward from around Ronald’s legs and walked into the room. He looked at Gerry with none of the nervous suspicion of the two adults in the room. But what reason would he have to fear this stranger? Especially since he had been eavesdropping on the conversation and must be aware who he was about to meet.

Gerry saw the lightning-fast glance that passed between the siblings as the boy stepped forward and they sought the words to cover this situation in a single shared look.

Once again he had the element of surprise. He pressed his advantage and sprang the ambush before they could speak. ‘As if I could not discover with my own eyes who this must be. Come forward, boy. Meet your father, returned from the wars.’

Chapter Three

Lily was going to faint again. She could see the black dots gathering before her eyes as Stewart stepped forward towards Captain Wiscombe’s outstretched hand. Now, of all times, she must not lose her senses. The dizziness came from holding one’s breath and denying oneself of air. It was a bad habit of hers and she must learn to break it if she did not want to appear frail and unworthy to her heroic spouse. She forced herself to take the breath that would clear her head. The resulting gasp was loud enough to be heard by the entire room.

Stewart started like a rabbit. But Captain Wiscombe ignored it, even though he must have felt the couch shake with her quaking knees.

She had nothing to fear in this meeting, or so she’d been telling herself for most of the past seven years. Before he had left her, Mr Wiscombe had been kindness itself. He had been gentle with her, considerate of her feelings and almost as frightened of the idea of marriage to her as she’d been of his chances in the army. The Gerald Wiscombe she remembered had been more likely to be harmed than to cause harm to another. She would explain to Gerald what had happened. He would understand and arrange a quiet separation.

But it was foolish to think of the man beside her as the same person who had left. He had not just been transformed by experience. He had been transmuted into another being. There was nothing left of the pudgy, scholarly boy who had stammered out a proposal to her. The soft brown hair had burned blond in sunlight and wind had given it a casual wave. In contrast, the skin of his face had darkened and the features had sharpened to a hawk nose and cleft chin. The grey eyes set beneath his furrowed brow were bright and as hard as flint.

He was still wearing the dashing red coat of a dragoon, with gold at shoulder and sleeve. And somewhere, there had to be a sword. By the resolute look on this man’s face, it had seen good use. If he decided to punish those who had wronged him…

‘Stewart, isn’t it?’ His words stopped her breath again. He knew her son’s name without being told. ‘That was my father’s name, as well.’ He favoured the boy with the same harmless smile he had used on Ronald. But there was an ironic note in the statement that was hidden so deeply she could not be sure that it existed outside her imagination.

Stewart swallowed nervously. Then he smiled back and nodded.

Now the captain was touching her boy, taking him by the shoulders and turning him side to side to give him a thorough examination. She tensed, waiting for his reaction. ‘You look very much like your mother.’

Was that meant to be ironic, as well? Or was it only she who noticed the way it focused attention on the lack of similarity between the boy and the Wiscombe family?

Why was he, of all people, not surprised to see this child? While the rest of the world might think it quite normal that she had a son, she must now face the one man in the world who would have questions.

And yet, he was not asking them. He was pretending to be simple and pleasant Gerald Wiscombe, and behaving as if he had expected this meeting all along. He had known the name of her boy because someone had told him. But who? How much had he been told? And how much of what he thought he knew was the actual truth of the situation?

Now he was questioning the boy in languages and receiving the sort of indifferent responses one could expect from a very young child who enjoyed the countryside more than the classroom.

When he had tried and failed to answer yet another simple question put to him in Latin, Stewart’s limited patience evaporated. ‘I am much better at mathematics than at Latin. Mama says that you are, too. Would you like to hear me do my sums?’

For the first time since he’d arrived, Captain Wiscombe’s composure failed him. He might have known of Stewart’s existence. But clearly he had not prepared himself to face a living, breathing child who was eager to give him the hero’s welcome he deserved. His overly bright smile disappeared, as did the bitterness it hid. Stripped of his armour, she caught a glimpse of the awkward boy who had proposed to her, trapped in a social situation he was ill-equipped to manage.

Then the facade returned and he clapped the boy on the shoulder. ‘Your sums. Well. Another time, perhaps. Now run along back to the schoolroom and leave the adults to their talk. I am sure you have a nurse or a governess about who is supposed to give you your dinner.’

Stewart hesitated, staring at the captain with a hunger that could not be filled by his dinner tray. But Wiscombe saw none of it, or at least pretended he did not. Now that he’d made his acknowledgement, his interest in the child had disappeared as quickly as it had arisen.

Her son shot a hopeful look in her direction, as if pleading on her part might earn him a reprieve.

She gave him a single warning shake of her head and a slight tilt of her chin towards the stairs. Captain Wiscombe was right. Until they had spoken in private, Stewart was better off taking tea in the nursery.

Once the boy was gone, her husband turned his attention to Ronald. ‘I expect you have somewhere to be, as well.’

‘Not really,’ her brother replied with a bland smile. Now that he’d had time to recover from the shock of seeing Wiscombe, her brother’s sangfroid had returned.

‘Might I suggest you find somewhere?’ Her husband was smiling, as well. But there was a glint in his eyes that promised mayhem if his orders were not obeyed immediately. Then he softened to harmlessness again and threw an arm around her, hauling her into his lap. ‘After seven years away, it is not unreasonable that I wish to be alone with my wife.’

The sudden feeling of his arms tightening under her breasts and the rock-hard thighs beneath her bottom sucked the wind from her lungs and she was seeing spots again. Breathe, she reminded herself. Just breathe.

When she’d mastered her panic, she found her foolish brother was smiling in agreement as if he expected Captain Wiscombe was seeking immediate privacy so he might mount his wife in a common room. Could he not see that the gullible young man they’d roped into this union had returned as a dreadnought?

‘Then I will leave the two of you alone,’ Ronald said with a wink to Captain Wiscombe, treating her as though she were not even in the room with them. ‘Do not worry, Lily. I will see to the dinner arrangements and tell the guests of the captain’s arrival.’ Then he disappeared, shutting the door behind him, totally unaware of the storm about to break when her husband gave vent to his true feelings.

‘Yes, Ronald. Go and see to your guests. Inform them of my presence. I hope you remember to tell them enough about me so they can pretend that we share an acquaintance.’ Now that he was gone, her husband made no effort to hide his scorn for her brother. She could feel his muscles tensing like a great cat gathering before the spring. Then he shifted, dumping her back out of his lap and on to the cushion at his side.

Lily moved as well, sliding to the far end of the small couch to put as much distance between them as possible. Never mind breathing, it was impossible to think when he was touching her. Even when he was not, she could feel an aura of virile energy emanating from him, raising the hairs on her skin.

Or perhaps he was simply angry. She rushed to fill the silence before the fear of him could suck the breath from her lungs again. ‘If company is not to your liking, we will send them away immediately.’

‘But that would be most rude,’ he replied in a soft, mocking tone. ‘And above all things, I would not want to be thought rude. Tell me, wife, who are my guests? I do not like being the last one to know what is going on in my own home.’

‘Mr and Mrs Carstairs…’ she began hesitantly.

‘And they are…?’ He made a coaxing gesture with his hand.

‘A businessman from London, and his wife.’

‘What is his trade?’

‘I believe he is an ironmonger.’

‘A wealthy one, I presume.’

She cleared her throat. ‘I believe so.’

‘Who else, then?’

‘The Burkes and the Wilsons, also of London.’

‘And also cits?’

‘Yes, Captain.’ How quickly she had fallen into the role of loyal subordinate. But there was something about the man that commanded respect, even in a private setting such as this one.

‘Others?’

‘Sir Chauncey d’Art and his friend, Miss Fellowes.’ She hoped he did not wish her to speculate on the nature of the friendship. Though she had provided two rooms for the couple it was likely that only one of them was getting use.

‘Is that all?’

‘No, Captain.’ She wet her lips. ‘We are entertaining your neighbour, the Earl of Greywall.’ He was the last person she wished her husband to meet. All the more reason that they should clear the house as quickly as possible.

‘Greywall.’ There was another moment of blank vulnerability before his smile returned and he counted on his fingers. ‘If we add you, your father and brother, there are twelve.’ The smile became a lopsided grin. ‘Now that I am here, there shall be thirteen at dinner. I expect it will be quite unlucky for somebody.’

Lily threw caution to the winds and reached to touch his arm, adding a smile warm enough to melt butter. If she used her imagination and all the talent she had inherited from Father, perhaps she might persuade him that she was glad to see him home and had not been dreading this moment for most of the time he’d been gone. ‘Unlucky? Surely not. We are all fortunate to have you here.’

For a moment, it actually seemed to work. He softened and looked ready to cover her hand with his. Then he remembered that she was nothing more than a fraud and pulled away with a frustrated sigh. ‘Really, madam. If you must lie to me, try not to be so transparent about it. The facts are these—your father and brother tricked me into marriage with you for their own ends and never intended for me to return. In giving me that commission, they thought they were sending me to my death. And you—’

‘I’m sorry.’ She blurted out the words before he could finish his sentence. ‘Despite what you think of me, I am glad that you are safe.’ She was relieved, at least. For years, she had been too afraid to pray for his return. But that was not the same as wishing him ill. Just as he had said in jest, she’d prayed for his safety each night.

‘Are you?’ His expression hardened. ‘Then you are more foolish than I thought. After I am satisfied that you’ve paid for what they have done to me, I mean to put you and your family out in the street. The guests, as well. And your precious Stewart will be the first to go.’

She was feeling light-headed again, images impending of exile and humiliation swirling in her mind. But this time, she was not alone in her suffering. She had to be strong for Stewart. She took another deep breath and cast down her eyes to assure him she was beaten. ‘It is within your right.’

He laughed. ‘What? You are not going to plead for your safety? I would have thought, at least, you would have a word of defence for our darling boy. Are you not going to beg me? Tell me I am hard-hearted to turn the product of our love off the property he is heir to. Why, when I think of that one night of passion we shared…’

‘Stop!’ She could not bear his mocking a moment longer.

‘Do you remember it differently?’ he said, innocently. ‘It has been so long. Perhaps I am mistaken. If so, tell me the truth of it now.’

She could not speak. Her tongue was frozen in her mouth, unwilling to speak the truth.

‘Talk!’

If this was what he brought to the battlefield, it explained his success. His command was stronger than the fear that kept her silent. ‘We shared no night,’ she said, choking out the words. ‘Only a brief ceremony, the breakfast and two separate rooms at the inn. We did not lie together. The next morning, you were gone.’

He nodded. ‘I promised I would not come to you until we knew each other better. To be gone so soon and with no guarantee of a future…it did not seem fair to either of us.’ For a moment, he sounded almost wistful for the innocents they had been.

Then his voice hardened. ‘When I think of how it was, in those first months… I carried a miniature of you, everywhere I went. I kissed it each night at bed and before battles for luck. I was pure as a monk, waiting for the moment when I might come back to you. I wrote you dozens of letters. There was not a single response.’

She had been too upset to write. At first, she had been angry at him for being so foolish as to fall for the plan, going to what was likely certain doom. She was ashamed of herself as well, for obeying her father when she had known what they were doing was wrong. Later, she had been ashamed for other reasons and angry at him for leaving her alone and defenceless.

He did not notice her discomfiture and went on. ‘When a commanding officer came to me, less than a year later, with the good news of the birth of my son?’ He laughed at this, as though it were a ribald joke in a brothel. ‘I did not have to feign surprise. We all went to a cantina, where I had to pay for the wine so they might drink my health, and to the health of my good wife and heir.’

He had known, almost from the first. It explained why his letters to her had stopped. ‘When you stopped writing…I thought you had died.’ Would he believe that she had cried over him? Probably not. But she had.

‘That news was the making of my career,’ he added. ‘When a soldier has no reason to fear death, it leads to the sort of recklessness that makes heroes. Or corpses,’ he added. ‘I do not like to think of the men under my command who lacked the damnable luck of their leader.’

She’d felt bad enough knowing that he might lose his life because of Father’s scheming. But to think that others had been affected and that she was in some way responsible for their fates made her guilt even heavier. ‘I am sorry,’ she said again.

‘So you keep saying,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘Tell me now. The truth, for once. Were you with child when we married? Was that the reason that your father rushed to unite us?’

‘No!’ There was much wrong between them, but she did not want to claim a fault that was not hers. Then she saw the change in his expression and knew that it would have been kinder had she lied.

‘So you admit to cuckolding me.’ He shook his head again. ‘Were you really so sure I would die that you did not think I might return to see the consequences of your infidelity?’

The answer to that was very nearly yes. But it was so much more complicated than that. How could she even begin to explain? Having to talk about it at all was bringing on one of her headaches. She rubbed her temple and tried to concentrate. ‘At first, I did not know what to do. I barely understood what was happening to me, much less what to do about it. The longer I did nothing, the easier it became to go on as I had started.’

‘How well does it work for you now?’ he asked, staring at her as though she had confirmed his low opinion of her. ‘And do not apologise to me again. There is no apologising for what you have done.’

There was an explanation. But it had been years since that night. What proof could she offer him that she spoke true? She took a breath and squared her shoulders. ‘At least the waiting is finally over. You will do what you will do. I do not have to imagine what that might be. My only request—’

‘You have no right to request anything of me.’ Once again, she heard the command in the voice and understood how the boy she had married had become a hero.

‘I will do so, all the same. My son is not at fault. If there is kindness in your heart at all, do not let the punishment fall on him.’

‘You mean, on your bastard?’

She had been foolish to hope for better. ‘My son,’ she repeated softly. ‘If you cannot mete out both shares of the punishment to me, then give me time to tell him the truth before he hears it from another.’

‘He does not know?’ For a moment, his anger was replaced by surprise.

‘No one knows,’ she said. ‘A few people closest to me might guess. But no one is sure, other than you and me.’

‘Not even…’ He was wondering about Stewart’s father.

He had been so drunk that night she doubted he even remembered what he had done. She shook her head. ‘No one knows. And Stewart is far too young to understand. All his life, he has been fed on stories of the heroic father he has never met. To find that it is a lie… It will come as a shock.’ This was not true. It would be utterly devastating to him.

‘His heroic father,’ the captain said with bitterness. ‘And who is that man? I wish to congratulate him and make him aware of his responsibility. Or are your affairs so numerous that you cannot fix on a single name?’

She did not think he had the power to hurt her with mere words, but the question stung like a slap to the face. ‘There was but one man and one night. I could point to it on a calendar, if you wish.’ Not that she needed a paper record. The date and time, down to the minute, had been burned into her memory. The clock in the hall had been striking twelve as her life was ruined.

She shook her head, which was still ringing. ‘I will not tell you his name. Nor will I tell Stewart. You are the only father he has ever known. He had been learning to read by following the news of your battles. His first toy was a wooden sword. He has entire battalions of tin soldiers and sets them to fighting each other at every opportunity. His only ambition is to grow to be as brave as you have been.’

‘That is no doing of mine,’ he insisted. But there was a gruffness in his voice that hinted at emotions other than anger. And then the brief flicker of sympathy vanished. ‘You should not have lied to him.’

‘Nor could I have told him the truth.’ It was an awful enough story to carry on her own. She had no desire to taint the boy’s life with it. ‘I told him a partial truth at least. You are brave and worthy of his admiration. If he meant to create an idol, he could do much worse than you.’

‘Do not think to flatter me,’ the captain said. ‘It will not work.’

But neither did it seem to be doing her any harm. This time, he had been the one to look away, as though her praise made him uncomfortable. ‘It is not flattery if the statement is truth.’

‘I didn’t return to this house seeking your approval,’ he snapped. The tenuous connection she’d created was gone. His gaze locked on hers again as his suspicion returned.

‘I know that,’ she said quickly. ‘You owe me nothing and you need nothing from me.’ But she could not believe it was in his nature to be cruel, even to an enemy. And certainly not to a child.

Suddenly, his look held speculation. ‘On the contrary. I owe you much. I vowed before God to protect you. I do not like to break my word.’ His voice did not sound kind. But neither was it as sharp as it had been.

Had she said something to change his mind? What had it been? She grasped at the opportunity. ‘I made promises to you, as well,’ she said, softly. ‘And I have broken them. You deserved to find a virtuous wife waiting for your return. I failed you. I have failed Stewart, as well. If you could help me in any way…’

It had been too much to ask. He’d flinched at the mention of the boy’s name.

She tried another way. ‘If, once you have decided my fate, you could at least allow me enough time to speak to him, to try to tell him the truth gently, before…’ Before they were turned out of the house, as he had threatened before. It was no less than she deserved. The only consolation she might find in it was that her brother and father would follow her in banishment. After seven years, this charade would finally be at an end.

Captain Wiscombe did not answer. He was staring at her in a way that made her even more nervous than before. His eyes held the same curious intensity that her father’s sometimes did when he found a pigeon ripe for plucking.

Since she had no choice in the matter, she stood his scrutiny in mute embarrassment.

At last, he spoke. ‘There is another possibility.’

She fought down the urge to agree without waiting for an explanation. Sometimes, she suspected she was far too obedient for her own good. It was quite possible that what he planned for her might be even worse than the humiliation she would experience when the truth about Stewart was revealed.

‘You said I needed nothing from you.’ His hand reached out to her, his fingers brushing her cheek. ‘That is not precisely true.’

She could not help it. She shuddered. Part of it was nerves. But there was something else, something about the look in his eyes that raised other, more pleasant feelings in her. She was being touched by the dashing hero whose exploits she had followed for years. In person, he was even more handsome than she had imagined him. And he wanted her help. ‘What do you wish from me?’

He smiled. ‘What does any man wish from the woman he has married? Loyalty, my dear. Thus far, you have given me every reason to doubt that I have yours.’

Loyalty? That was disappointingly mundane. But it was also easily accomplished. According to The Times, Captain Gerald Wiscombe inspired devotion in all who knew him. She would much rather obey him than her less-than-honourable father. She dipped her head in consent. ‘Despite appearances, you have my complete allegiance, sir. Let me prove it to you.’

‘You will have to,’ he said, ‘if you wish to remain in the house even one more night.’

‘Anything you want, I will get for you,’ she said. ‘What do you require?’

He was still looking at her with an intensity that sent chills down her spine. ‘What do I want? Satisfaction. Reparation. Revenge. I have done my duty, in service of my king. I have seen things that no man should see and done things I would never have thought myself capable of. But I survived, madam. Though your father and brother thought they were sending me to my death, I survived. Now I mean to make them pay for what they have done. Are you with me, or against me?’

‘With you, of course,’ she replied without hesitation. Hadn’t this been exactly what she had longed for? Someone to come and make her family regret its selfishness? It would be her pleasure to help him.

‘You answered very quickly. It is as if you didn’t think about it at all.’ He nodded in mocking approval. ‘Do you expect me to believe you without question?’

‘You are my husband,’ she said. ‘By the laws of man and church, I must answer to you in all things. My father and brother have no say in the matter.’

‘Just as you no longer have a say in what will happen to my son,’ he said, with a wicked smile. ‘The fact that you bore him does not give you the right to decide his future. You are but a woman and I am the head of the house.’

‘Your son?’ Her heart stuttered eagerly. Did he mean to claim the boy?

‘You have declared him so,’ the captain reminded her. ‘If you did not wish me to have power over him, you should have told the truth.’

‘What do you mean to do with him?’ she said, suddenly afraid.

He fixed her with an insincere smile. ‘If you do as I say? Nothing so terrible. When we have cleared this house of your family and their accompanying friends, I will find a school for the boy. He will start as soon as it can be arranged and will remain there over summer and for holidays as well. He will be perfectly safe, fed, clothed and cared for. But he will no longer live in my house, pretending to be my blood. Until the time comes for him to go, you will keep him out of my sight. I do not wish to be reminded of his presence.’

She had known that school was in Stewart’s future, but not for a few years, at least. He was still so young. This was not education, it was banishment. Stewart would be crushed when he realised that the father he worshipped could not bear the sight of him. And when he was gone, she would lose the only unsullied love she had ever known.

He had noticed her silence. ‘It will not be so different from my own childhood,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘My father sent me to Eton when I was eight. I stayed between terms when he was away from the house. I grew to prefer it to home.’

‘Stewart is much younger than that,’ she said in a whisper.

He gave her a pitying look. ‘Surely you did not expect that we would remain together as a happy family.’

‘Of course not,’ she lied. But he was the hero of Salamanca. She had been hoping for a miracle.

‘Well, then you understand that I am being more generous than most men in this position.’

She nodded, for it was true. But she did not care. She needed more than this. Boarding school was an improvement over the immediate exile he had been threatening less than an hour ago. If he was given time to get to know the boy, she must trust that his mood would soften even more.

‘Will you stand with me, or against me?’ he said.

‘With you, of course,’ she said, eager for the chance to prove her worth to him. ‘I am yours to command.’

‘Very good,’ he said with a nod. ‘I am glad we have an understanding.’

He stood and walked towards the door. Then he stopped and turned back to her again, placing his index finger against his chin as though there was some point they had forgotten to discuss. Then he smiled, as if the idea had suddenly come back to him. ‘We have not yet discussed what is to become of you, after all is settled.’

‘Me?’ The word came out in a squeak, like a mouse that had just been caught in a trap.

‘There is more to being a wife then parroting “yes” each time I ask a question. I expect you to share my bed, as well.’ He’d added it in an offhand manner, as though it was a minor consideration, hardly worth mentioning. ‘You will submit to me whenever I request it. I will use you as I please, when I please. If I tire of you, I will abide no fussing or tears. Under no circumstances will you be taking admirers of your own. I said I wanted loyalty, my dear, and in the bedroom it will be absolute.’

His eyes narrowed in satisfaction at her look of shock. ‘The alternative is that I turn you from the house this very day. There will be no time for niceties. You will leave with your whelp and the clothes on your back, and the devil take you both.’

The fear of that was clearer and more immediate than anything that might happen in the captain’s bed. She gave a hesitant nod.

He nodded back at her, the old, harmless smile returning. ‘Very good. I knew we could come to an understanding, if we had a few moments alone to talk.’

She fought against another shiver. If she thought about it, she would realise that this meeting had gone better than she could have hoped. Stewart would be safe. She would be rid of her family. And as long as he had a use for her, she might keep her place as lady of the house. It was not the stuff of fairy tales, but it never had been.

More importantly, this was Gerald Wiscombe ordering her to his bed. If she searched, she might still find traces of the gentle, awkward boy who had postponed the consummation of their marriage to spare her feelings. At the very least, he was an officer and a gentleman, not some uncaring brute. If she did what he asked of her, he would not hurt her just for the sport of seeing her suffer.

He was also the hero of Salamanca.

Half the women in England swooned at the mention of his name. In their midnight fantasies, they offered themselves to the gallant and heroic Captain Wiscombe, thanking him for his service with their bodies.

Would it surprise him to discover that his wife was no different? That she felt a dark thrill at his command to submit to his desires? If he had meant it as a punishment, he would be just as likely to reject her again, should she seem too eager for his attention.

She stood so that she might look him in the eye and pretend that it did not matter to her if he wanted her or not.

Then, as if to prove just how false her bravery was, he pulled her forward into his arms and kissed her hard upon the lips.

It was over just as quickly. But fantasy paled in comparison. He had told her with a single kiss that he was her lord and master and she had responded as if she longed to be ruled by him. When he released her, she fell back into the cushions of the divan, weak from the sudden loss of control over her body and her future. Before she could comment, he rose, walked out of the room and left her alone.

Chapter Four

In Belgium, when they’d all thought the war was over, there had been far too much time to drink and reminisce with other officers. Gerry had noticed a certain arrogance on the part of the infantry commanders towards their counterparts in the cavalry. Given any excuse, they would insist that fighting from horseback was not real fighting at all.

To be above the action and looking down upon it was, in their opinion, to cheat. Not only did it give the rider a tactical advantage, but it removed the need to face the enemy eye to eye. Bravery, to an infantryman, was to see all of the common thoughts and emotions that rendered one man equal to another reflected in an enemy’s face, and to attack in spite of them.

Today he wondered if there might be truth in that. When he’d imagined himself coming home, it had been in a metaphorical galloping charge. It would be the work of an instant to vanquish the interlopers who had claimed his home. He would take special pleasure in seeing his wife wailing and gnashing her teeth as he put her out and slammed the door in her face.

In his imagination, it was always raining the kind of cold drizzle that one got in the north. It added an extra air of pitifulness to her entreaties and those of the rat-faced whelp clinging to her skirts.

The actual meeting had been quite different. Evidence still proved she was a cheating whore. But he’d thought she would make some effort to deny the obvious. Perhaps she would try to hide the child. At the very least, she would have some tragic story to explain it.

Instead, she had offered complete surrender before he could strike a metaphorical blow. Even worse, she had displayed her greatest weakness. She wished to protect her son even if it meant sacrificing herself. She had not even resorted to the weapon all women seemed to use against men. Not a single tear had been shed as she’d awaited his judgement.

These were not the actions of a worthy opponent. She was behaving like a martyr. Even worse, the boy showed no mark of his mother’s perfidy. Because of Lillian’s lies, the child seemed illogically eager to see him. To send him away would be like kicking a puppy because it had wagged its tail.

After the interview, he’d felt dirtied by more than the grime of travel. There was no fault in expecting fidelity and no villainy in being angry when one did not receive it. There was no sin in demanding that one’s wife behave like a wife, in bed and out, if she wished to remain under one’s roof. But if all that was true, then why did staring into those sad brown eyes make him feel like a lecherous cad?

And what had the kiss meant to either of them? Compared to his plans to take her to bed, it had seemed almost chaste. But at the end of it, she had been shaking in his arms and he had been left unsettled, ready to saddle his horse and go before closer contact with her made him forget her unfaithfulness.

He would feel better after a drink and a wash. But apparently, that was too much to ask. ‘Aston! Mrs Fitz!’ He roared for the servants in his best battlefield voice and was satisfied to hear doors opening and closing up and down the guest-room corridors. His unwanted visitors had learned the master of the house was home and was not happy.

The servants appeared, out of breath and in unison, before he had to call a second time.

He pointed to the door to his room. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ There was a shiny brass lock on the door of the master bedroom, where none had been before.

‘Oh. Oh, sir. I mean, Captain, I am so sorry.’ His poor housekeeper was devastated that their first meeting after his return was because of an error in her management. ‘When the maid aired the room and lit the fire, she locked it after. It is always locked. The mistress’s room, as well.’

‘I see that.’ He had tried the door just down the hall from his, thinking he could enter his own room through the connecting door. He had been blocked there, as well. ‘Am I expected to break down the benighted doors to gain admittance, then?’

‘No, sir.’ Aston was fishing on his ring for a key. He turned it in the lock and then placed it in his master’s hand. Gerry’s single glance down the hall to his wife’s room had the servant relinquishing that key as well.

‘We meant no insult by it,’ Mrs Fitz said hurriedly.

‘Of course you did not. But what is the purpose of such security?’

Aston cleared his throat. ‘There are frequent guests here. Strangers to the house sometimes wander down the wrong hallway and disturb the peace. Mrs Wiscombe thought it better that the family rooms be locked when not in use.’

‘Yours especially, Captain Wiscombe,’ Mrs Fitz said, as though it was somehow a point of pride. ‘She was adamant that no matter how full the house, your room was to be kept empty and ready for your return.’

‘As it should be,’ he said. The housekeeper gave his wife far too much credit for simple common sense. ‘Before I left, I gave the Norths permission to use the house as their own. But it is not as if we are running some roadside hostel with rooms to let.’

There was an uncomfortable silence from the two servants at his side.

‘I said, my home is not an inn.’ His voice was rising again, as was his temper.

Aston cringed. ‘Of course not, Captain Wiscombe.’ Then why did he sound doubtful?

‘But?’ Gerry gave a coaxing twitch of his fingers and waited for the rest of the story.

‘The Misters North entertain here. Frequently,’ Mrs Fitz said, with a little sniff of disapproval.

‘There are often large house parties,’ Aston supplied. ‘Guests come from the city for hunting and cards.’

‘Friends of the family?’ Gerry suggested.

‘The Earl of Greywall is usually among the party. But the rest…’ Aston looked uncomfortable. ‘Very few guests are invited twice.’

‘I see.’ In truth, he did not. Why would Ronald and his father bring crowds of strangers to such a remote location? And why was Greywall here? He knew he was not welcome and he had a perfectly good residence only a few miles away.

He considered. ‘Is the earl in residence now?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Damn. When he was alive, Gerry’s father had loathed the peer who could not seem to limit himself to the game on his own side of the property line. After he’d died, Greywall had not waited for the body to cool before he’d begun to pester Gerry to sell house and land for less than they were worth. The crass insensitivity of his offers had convinced Gerry that anything, including a sudden marriage and military career, would be preferable to giving in to Greywall’s demands.

His stubbornness had netted nothing if the earl had caged a permanent invitation to house and grounds. It was about to be rescinded, of course. But it would have to be done carefully. Even peers one did not like demanded special handling in situations like this. He sighed. ‘Then I suspect I will meet him and the rest over dinner.’

‘Very good, sir. Do you require assistance in changing? A shave, perhaps?’

‘As long as my bag and kit are waiting, I can manage on my own,’ he said, although the thought of the master dressing without help clearly appalled his poor butler. He gave them both an encouraging smile. No matter what had occurred in his absence, the staff was not at fault. ‘It is good to be home,’ he added.

They smiled back, and Mrs Fitz bobbed a curtsy. ‘And to see you again, safe and well, sir. If you need anything…’

‘I will ring,’ he assured her and gave a brief nod of thanks to dismiss them. Then he opened the door and entered his room.

For a moment, he paused on the threshold, confused. Before his sudden marriage and equally sudden departure, he’d never felt at home in the master suite. He had gone from the nursery to school, returning only on news of his father’s death. For most of his life this had not been his space at all, but his father’s.

He’d felt woefully out of place during the few months he’d been master of the house. Days had been spent in his father’s study trying to decipher the bookkeeping and poring over stacks of unpaid bills. Nights had been marked with uneasy sleep in his father’s bed, too embarrassed to admit that he missed his cot in the nursery. How was one expected to get any rest, surrounded by so many judgemental eyes?

His father had been a mediocre parent, but an avid sportsman. The bedroom, like so many other rooms in the house, was full of his trophies. Gerry did not mind the pelts, so much. He would even admit to a childish fascination for the rugs of tiger and bearskin in the billiard room. But what was the point of decorating the room in which one slept with the heads of animals one had killed? Stags stared moodily down from the walls. Foxes sat on the mantel, watching him with beady glass eyes. Antlers and boar tusks jutted from the wall behind the bed as though they might, at any moment, fall to impale the sleeper.

Gerry had proved in countless battles that he was no coward. When the killing was done, he’d treated the dead with as much respect as he was able. He had hoped for the same, should his luck fail him and circumstances be reversed. A gentleman should not gloat on the lives he’d taken, especially not at bedtime.

His father had not shared the sentiment. Of course, to the best of Gerry’s knowledge, his father had never killed a man, much less dozens of them. The stuffed heads had been nothing more than decorations to him. But to Gerry, they would be reminders of other soulless eyes, judging him as he tried to sleep. It was with trepidation that he opened the door tonight, prepared for the distasteful sights within.

He stood on the threshold, confused.

Today, as he’d walked through the house, he’d noted the subtle changes that had been made to the decorating. The overt masculinity had been retained. There could be no doubt that he was in a hunting lodge and not a London town house. But the stained and faded silks had been removed from the walls and replaced. Paint had been freshened. Furniture had been re-upholstered and rearranged. Though most of the trophies remained where he remembered them, they had at least been dusted. One could entertain both ladies and gentlemen here, without fear of embarrassment.

But no room he’d seen so far had been so totally transformed as his own bedroom. The dusty velvet chairs had been replaced with benches and stools covered in saddle leather. The heavy green baize on the walls had been exchanged for a cream-coloured, watered silk. The hangings over the bed were no longer maroon brocade. They were now a blue sarsenet shot through with silver. To stare up at the canopy would be like staring into a night sky full of stars.

The table at the side of the bed held the two volumes of the Théorie Analytique des Probabilités and a fine wooden version of Roget’s new slide rule. He’d heard about the advances in mathematics since he’d been away and had been eager to return to his books. If he wished, he could take up his studies this very night.

Best of all, he could do it without the distractions of dozens of glass eyes. All evidence of his father’s skill as a hunter had been removed. The walls were decorated with watercolour landscapes. He stepped closer to admire the work and started in surprise.

He knew the place in the picture. He had been there himself. It was Talavera de la Reina in Spain. But the picture was of the sleepy village and not the backdrop for battle. The next was of the Nive flowing through France. And here was Waterloo. Beautiful places all, not that he’d had the time to enjoy the scenery when he was there. But this was how he wanted to think of them. The land had healed. The blood he had shed was not muddying the dust. It had soaked into the ground and left only grass and wildflowers as memorial to the dead.

As he admired the work, he felt relaxed and at peace, as though he had finally come home. This was his room, totally and completely. If he had written his wishes out and sent them ahead, he could not have been more pleased with the results. The years of sacrifice had been rewarded with a haven of tranquillity. He could leave the war behind and become the man he had once intended to be.

This must have been Lillian’s doing. No mere servant would have dared to take such liberties. Hadn’t Mrs Fitz said it had been his wife’s orders to keep the place locked until his return? But how had she known what he would like? How had she managed this without consulting him?

Most importantly, why had she done it?

Chapter Five

‘The diamonds, or the pearls, madam?’ The maid was holding one earring to each ear, so Lily could judge the effect in her dressing table mirror.

She frowned back at her own reflection. She wished to look her best for the captain’s first night at home. Despite their current difficulties, she could not help the wistful desire that he might admire her looks and perhaps even comment on them. When he’d proposed she had been a foolish young girl, so supremely confident in her ability to enthral him that she hadn’t even bothered to try. She certainly wouldn’t have needed jewels to enhance her appearance. But now that he could compare her to half the señoritas and mademoiselles of Europe she was obsessing over each detail in an effort to win his praise.

And what message did it send to wear jewellery that he had not bought for her? The diamonds had been a gift from Father for her last birthday. But suppose he suspected they’d come from a lover? It would be better to wear the pearls she’d inherited from her mother. She’d been wearing them on the day the captain had proposed.

Would he remember them? Even if he did not, they were modest enough that he could not accuse her of profligate spending or accepting gifts from strangers. She pointed to the pearl drops and the maid affixed them and brought out the matching necklace.

On her left hand, she wore the simple gold ring that had belonged to his mother. When they’d married, he’d had nothing else to offer her but the ring and the house. His fortunes had improved since then. She was not sure how much money he had sent back from Portugal, but his banker in London had assured her that any bills she submitted would be paid without question. She hoped he was a rich man. He deserved to live comfortably after sacrificing a third of his life to the army.

But she had done nothing to earn a share of his wealth and had done her best not to abuse his generosity. She had taken very little from the accounts for frivolities, preferring to make sparing use of the allowance that had been provided for her. One of the first lessons learned as a member of the North family was to keep back a portion of any success for the moment when things went wrong and a quick escape was necessary. To that end, she had a tightly rolled pile of bank notes hidden in her dresser that not even her father was aware of.

The gown she was wearing had been one of her rare purchases, a London design that had arrived not two weeks ago. The pearls did not suit it at all, but they would have to do.

There was a knock on the bedroom door and her brother entered without waiting for her welcome.

She did not bother to turn to him, frowning at his reflection. ‘Such rude behaviour is why my door is almost always locked.’

‘Surely you have nothing to worry about, with your husband in the next room.’ Ronald was smiling back at her, as if he thought the prospect of rescue was unlikely, even if she needed it.

‘You have more to fear from Captain Wiscombe than I do,’ she said, amazed that he would joke about such a thing.

‘The day will never come when I can’t out-think Gerry Wiscombe.’ Ronald’s arrogance was undimmed by recent events. ‘Nothing he said to you today after I left the room will make me believe otherwise.’

This was probably his way of requesting a report of her conversation with the captain. She ignored it, turning her attention back to her maid so that they might finish her toilette.

Ronald made no move to leave her, leaning against the wall by the door and staring as she made Jenny re-pin her braids and fuss over the ribbons at her shoulders until it was plain to everyone in the room that she was stalling. At last, she gave up and dismissed the maid, remaining silent until the door was shut and she could hear the girl’s retreating footsteps at the far end of the hall.

‘Well?’ her brother said, arms folded over his chest. ‘What did he say to you?’

She stared back at him, expressionless. ‘If the words were meant for you, he’d have spoken them in your presence.’

‘Ho-ho,’ Ronald responded with an ugly smirk. ‘You mean to side with him in this?’

She blinked innocently. ‘Was that not the intention, when you and Father gave me to him?’

‘I doubt Father expected that the day would come when you would throw your own flesh and blood to the wolves to save yourself.’

‘Throw you to the wolves?’ She laughed. ‘If Captain Wiscombe has a problem with you or Father, I will have no say in it.’

‘But what about your son?’

‘What of him?’ she said. Ronald had always been the least subtle of the Norths, trying to force information from her rather than waiting for it to be revealed. She turned back to the mirror, giving full attention to her appearance and none to his simmering anger.

‘Gerry did not seem overly surprised by his presence.’

‘Why should he be? We are married. There is a child.’ Ronald had hinted his suspicions before. Now was not the time to confirm them.

‘Your child was born nearly ten months after your husband left for the army.’

‘You exaggerate,’ she said, adding a touch more powder to her cheeks. She shouldn’t have bothered. The addition took her from perfection to unhealthy pallor.

‘When Stewart’s next birthday arrives, even a man as stupid as Gerry Wiscombe will count out the months and have questions for you.’

She turned to glare at him. ‘My husband is no fool.’

At this, her brother laughed out loud. ‘So sorry to offend you, little sister. If that is what you wish, I will try not to think of him as the poor gull who I tricked into marrying you.’

‘You tricked him?’ Now she was the one who doubted.

‘I told him you had seen him from afar. That it was practically a love match and that all it would take to win one of the most celebrated beauties of the Season was a show of courage on his part and an offer. He asked for your hand. Then, dutifully as a child, he ran off to war to impress you.’

‘That is how you remember it?’ Perhaps Gerald had shown a different face to her family than he had to her. Though his proposal had been gallant enough, she’d got no sense that he was dazzled by her beauty. He’d been a man with a plan. Marriage to her had been little more than a point of intersection between his goals and those of her father.

Her brother was still smiling at the memory. ‘I had never met a fellow so easily persuaded or so quick to act against his own best interests as Gerry Wiscombe the day he proposed to you. It was a pity he had nothing more to offer than the house. If there had been money in his purse, I’d have got it all in one hand of cards.’

‘It does not matter who he was when he left England,’ Lily said, disgusted. ‘The man who returned is different from the boy you remember.’

‘So you claim,’ he said with a sceptical nod. ‘But when we spoke today he was the same amiable dolt I went to school with.’

‘His successes on the Peninsula were not those of a halfwit. If you’d read the accounts of the battles…’

Ronald held up a hand to stop her. ‘Your obsession with the war has always been most unladylike. Now that Napoleon is imprisoned, I wish to hear no more of it. Even your brave captain admitted that it was luck that saw him safely home. That seems far more likely than a magical transformation into a man of action. Just an hour ago, he was smiling over nothing and all but upsetting your wine glass.’

‘It is an act,’ she said and immediately wondered if she had already broken her vow of loyalty to her husband by giving him away. But his bravery and tactical acumen were hardly a secret to one who bothered to read the papers. ‘Even if he was not shamming this afternoon, you must realise that he plans to take control of his estate. Your games with Father must end.’

‘Must they?’ Ronald gave her an innocent stare. ‘I see no reason that they cannot continue, once we have taken the time to convince Gerry of their usefulness.’

‘You mean to convince a man of honour to run what is little more than a crooked gaming hell?’

Her brother clucked his tongue at her. ‘Such a way to describe your own home. This is not a professional establishment. It is merely a resort for those from the city who like sport, good wine and deep play.’

‘Call it what you will,’ she said. ‘It is not, and never has been, your house. Now that the master has returned, things will be different.’

‘Yes, they will,’ Ronald agreed. ‘Once Gerry has settled his account with us…’

‘Settled with you?’

‘The upkeep on such a large place is extensive. The slates. The curtains. The wine in the cellar…’

‘You do not mean to charge him for wine that he has not even tasted. And though he gave you permission to live here, he did not ask you to fix up the house.’

Ronald held his hands palms up in an innocent shrug. ‘I am sure he did not intend for us to live with rain pouring through the holes in the roof. Something needed to be done. How much blunt does he have, do you think?’

‘Even if I knew, I would not tell you.’ However much he had, her brother would see to it that the captain owed him double. If a direct appeal for funds failed, Ronald would win it at cards or billiards, or through any other weakness that could be discovered and exploited. Before he knew it, her husband would have empty pockets and the struggles of the past few years would be for naught. That was the way the Norths did business.

Ronald smiled. ‘We might be persuaded to forget his debt, as we did for Greywall. The chance to meet the famous Captain Wiscombe will bring even more people up from London. I am sure he must have friends recently retired from service who would enjoy a chance to share our hospitality. We simply have to persuade him.’

‘You will never convince him to do such a thing,’ she said, praying that it was true.

‘Perhaps not. But I will not have to. You are so very good with men, little sister,’ he said, touching her shoulder.

She shrugged off his hand. ‘I will not help you hurt him.’

‘You did once, Lillian.’ He patted her shoulder again.

‘And I regret it,’ she said. She had been young and foolish, and there had been no choice. It would not happen again.

‘Regret?’ Ronald laughed. ‘You are a North, Lillian. That is not an emotion we are capable of. The time will come when blood will tell and you will come around to our way of thinking again.’

‘Never,’ she said.

‘We shall see. But now I must go to my own room to dress. I will see you at dinner.’ He smiled. ‘Remember to look your best for Gerry. If he is a happy and contented husband, it will be that much easier to bring him into the fold. And once we are assured of his help, we will be even better off than before.’

As it usually was at Wiscombe Chase, dinner was a motley affair. Guests were either tired from the hunt, well on the way to inebriation, or both. Today, most of them still wore their fox-hunting pinks, having gone from the stable to the brandy decanter without bothering to change for dinner.

At the centre of the table, as it so often was, there was venison. When she’d first arrived here, Lily had liked the meat. She had to admit that Cook prepared it well. The haunch was crisp at the end and rare and tender in the middle. The ragout was savoury, with thick chunks of vegetables from the kitchen garden. The pies were surrounded by a crust that flaked and melted in the mouth like butter.

But venison today meant that yesterday another stag had been shot and butchered. The supply of them seemed endless, as did the stream of guests that came to hunt them. Was it too much to ask that, just once, a hunt would end in failure? Perhaps then the word would spread that the Chase was no longer a prime destination to slaughter God’s creatures.

Of course, if there were no more deer, they would just switch to quail. A brace of them had been served in aspic as the first course. At tomorrow’s breakfast, there would be Stewart’s fresh fish. A starving person might have praised the Lord for such abundance, but Lily had come to dread meals when requesting vegetables had begun to feel like an act of defiance.

At the head of the table, Captain Wiscombe stared down the length at the plates and gave a single nod of approval. His eye turned to the guests and the approbation vanished. And then he looked at her. Did she see the slightest scornful curl of his lip?

He must think her totally without manners to have arranged the table with no thought to precedence. But she could hardly be blamed for the tangled mess that these dinners had become. Attempts to arrange the ladies according to rank before entry to the dining room were met with failure, as none of them seemed to understand their place. If she resorted to name cards beside their plates, they simply rearranged them and sat according to who wished to speak to whom. The men were even worse, with businessmen bullying lords to take the place next to the earl.

With the addition of Captain Wiscombe, things were even more out of balance than usual. The ladies at either side of him were the youngest of the four. Miss Fellowes, who had pulled her chair so close that she was brushing his right sleeve with her arm, was not even married. Mrs Carstairs hung on his left, laughing too loudly at everything that he said, as though polite dinner conversation were a music-hall comedy.

Her father and brother had packed themselves into the middle of the table on either side and chatted animatedly with the guests who lacked the spirit to fight for a better chair.

On her end of the table, the earl took her right, as he always did. He remained oblivious to the insult of the cit at his other side, as long as he was supplied with plenty of wine and an opportunity to ogle her décolletage.

The space between them was punctuated by silence. He had long ago learned that if he attempted to speak to her, she would not respond. But even if she did not look in his direction, she could still feel his eyes upon her like a snail trail on her skin. She took a deep sip of her wine to combat the headache that came with pretending indifference to it.

On her left was Sir Chauncey, staring dejectedly up the table at Miss Fellowes as though watching his romantic hopes disappearing over the horizon. Tonight she made a half-hearted effort to engage him in conversation, to take his mind from the sight of his lover flirting with her husband. But eventually she tired of his monosyllabic responses and let their end of the table return to silence.

Then she looked towards the head of the table as well and hoped that the captain would not catch her studying him. Who would have thought that a shy boy could turn into such a magnificent creature? Even when at ease, he still had the air of command that she had noticed in the sitting room earlier. He did not stare, nor did his eyes dart from face to face. Yet he seemed aware of each action taken and each word spoken up and down the table.

While he took care that this observation of his guests did not seem ill-mannered, the women surrounding him did not bother with niceties. They stared openly at the way the candlelight shone gold off the waves in his hair and the shadows accented the sharp planes of his cheeks. When he smiled, and he did so often, they could not contain audible sighs of admiration. Fox hunting might have held their attention this afternoon. But if such a fine male specimen showed even a hint of interest, the women of the party would be doing any future sporting inside the house with the captain.

The feeling this aroused in her was unfamiliar, but she assumed it must be jealousy. It explained the urge she had to pry the two women away from him and claim the place at his side. When she’d imagined his homecoming, it had not been at all like this.

For one thing, he was even more splendid to look at then she’d dreamed. She had pictured him as growing taller, leaner and more mature, an older version of the ordinary boy who had left her. She had not expected the blond god lounging at the head of the table tonight.

She stared, fascinated, as he rolled the stem of his wine glass between his fingers. Was it a sign of irritation? Boredom? Or was it simply a habit? It did not matter what it meant to him. To her, it hinted that the hands that had been brutal on the battlefield were gentle enough to hold a wine glass, or a woman.

Miss Fellowes was watching his hands, as well. And there was another difference. In Lily’s fantasies, there had been no competition for his attention. Nor had he stated plainly, during their first conversation, that he might desire others and that she was to have no say in the matter.

She should have spent less time on dreams and focused on the harsh realities. He had no reason to like her, much less love her. Even in the best marriages, male fidelity was not guaranteed or expected.

Her father had no such trepidations. He was smiling up the table as if Christmas had arrived in September. A dragoon in dress uniform was just what the table needed to convince a band of foolish cits that they were dining with the upper class. The splendid red jacket hugging his shoulders had an excessive amount of gold braid covering it. Despite the time spent on horseback, the breeches beneath it were still snowy white and tight enough to display the muscles of a superlative horseman. Though the captain’s excuse was that his clothing would arrive in a day or two, the full uniform made him into just the sort of prize that would have guests swarming to the Chase to meet him.

Her father stood, raising his glass. ‘May I offer a toast to our host and thanks for his safe return?’

Lily tried to contain her flinch. No, he might not. If a toast was to be made, especially so early in the meal, her husband should be the one to offer it. Even while attempting courtesy, her father was rudely overstepping his place.

Gerald accepted it with a smile and only the slightest narrowing of his eyes, to show his annoyance.

As she feared they would, the guests responded not with a polite, ‘Hear, hear’, but with raucous laughter and applause. The toast itself resulted in several spills on the linen and a cracked glass from Mr Wilson. Greywall, who always drank twice as much as the other guests, needed to have his glass refilled before he could participate. He drained it rather than sipping and gestured for the footman to leave the bottle. He turned to smile at her, lifting his glass in a private salute, and Lily could feel the slight pain in her head turning to a full megrim, tightening about her temples like an iron band.

From halfway down the table, Mr Burke began to regale them with a tale of the day’s hunt. Conversation on all sides ground to a halt, except for the interjection of needless details by Mr Wilson and a brief argument between the two over whether the wind was easterly or from the west when the dogs first caught the scent.

At the head of the table, her husband was silent. His eyes were on his guests, but the knife in his hand was slicing the meat on his plate with mathematical precision.

When, at last, the poor vixen had been run to ground and her gory dispatch applauded, the table turned to Captain Wiscombe for his reaction.

He responded with a smile. Then, very deliberately, he set down his knife and fork and pushed his plate of venison away as if he’d lost all appetite.

Mr Burke stared at him in surprise. ‘Do not tell me, Captain, that you do not enjoy hunting.’

‘Not so much that I would wish to kill the animal a second time, during the meal,’ he said, continuing to smile.

‘Surely a little blood does not bother you, Wiscombe,’ Greywall said. He forked up a large bite of rare meat and waved it before him as if to goad his host.

‘A little blood?’ He considered for a moment. ‘It depends on whom it belongs to. I am more bothered by a small amount of mine than a large amount of another fellow’s. And that of a fox?’ He shrugged. ‘If it does not come into my home to provoke me, then I see no reason to run through its home with a pack of dogs, waving my gun.’

‘Did you see very much blood, when you were in Portugal?’ This question came from Mrs Carstairs, who seemed to find nothing unladylike in broaching such a topic at the table.

The others at the table leaned in expectantly.

Lily held her breath.

‘See blood? Yes. Yes, I did. But, unlike a fox hunter, I did not intentionally rub it on my face to mark my first kill.’ His smile dimmed and his distant expression made her wonder if he still saw carnage when he closed his eyes at night.

Mrs Carstairs was as oblivious to the slight as she was to the small fleck of blood left on her cheek from her first hunt. ‘I am sure you have stories that are far more interesting than Mr Burke’s. Was stalking Napoleon and his men so different from hunting dumb beasts?’

He thought for a moment. ‘I wonder if, in a table somewhere in France, there is a man being asked the same thing about hunting me?’ He offered nothing more than that, staring at her with a fixed smile until she looked away and changed the subject.

When dinner had ended, her father stopped her before she could escape to her room to ease the pain in her head. ‘Lillian, a moment, please.’

For a moment, she considered pretending she had not heard him, as she usually did when he spoke to her. She had learned, years ago, that there was little point in conversing if she could not believe anything he might say. But if they did not talk here, he would follow her to her room, just as Ronald had done. A conversation in the hallway would be shorter and less painful. She rubbed her temple. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have not yet got the chance to speak to your husband about the future of our endeavours here. And I was wondering if you—’

She cut him off. ‘It will not be necessary. There is no future for them.’ Then she glanced about her to remind him that they were on the main floor where anyone might overhear them.

‘No future?’ He seemed surprised. ‘It has taken years to get things running just as they are. We cannot stop now.’

‘On the contrary. What you are doing is wrong. You should stop it immediately.’

Her father was looking at her as Stewart had, when she’d explained that nice little boys did not pull Kitty’s tail. ‘Wrong? The guests enjoy their visits here. In fact, they leave as happy as they arrive.’

‘But poorer,’ she reminded him.

‘But they do not mind it,’ he argued. ‘If they do not, then I fail to see why you do.’

‘The fact that they do not mind it does not make it right,’ she said. She was using her patient, mothering voice. But she did not feel at all patient. She should not have to teach decency to this man. He should have been the one who taught it to her. The imaginary metal band that circled her head was tightening with each word.

‘Right and wrong are nebulous things, Lillian. If no one is hurt, has a wrong truly been done?’

‘How would you know that no one has been hurt?’ she snapped. ‘Have you ever asked them? Have you thought, for even a moment, about anyone other than yourself?’ She was getting angry. If she was not careful, people would notice. And then everything would be worse and not better. She took several slow, deep breaths and felt the pain in her head lessen somewhat.

Other than to stare at her in shocked silence, her father did nothing. And that was just as expected.

When she’d calmed herself enough to continue, she said, ‘What happens will be Captain Wiscombe’s decision, because it is his house. He is an honourable man and he will want no part in the humbug you have created.’

Her father favoured her with a childishly eager smile. ‘Then you must make an effort to persuade him.’

‘I?’ she said, shaking her head in amazement at his stubbornness. ‘After all that has happened in this house, you come to me for help to keep things as they are?’

Now his expression turned to one of puzzlement. ‘Of course I do. Who else could better help me persuade the captain?’

The pain in her head was near to unbearable. If she did not go to her room soon, the servants would have to carry her there. ‘Even if I wanted to help you, what makes you think he would listen to me?’

Now it was her father’s turn to speak to her as if she were an ignorant child. ‘Because he dotes on you, my dear.’

‘He certainly does not.’ If anything, the opposite was true. She’d had years to develop an infatuation with her own husband. But his affection grew more unattainable with each passing minute. ‘He hates me,’ she said and the ache in her head seemed to move to her heart.

‘Nonsense. He adored you when he offered. I saw the look in his eyes after you’d accepted him. It was as if the crown jewels had fallen out of a tree and landed in his lap. I am sure nothing has changed.’

He was telling her what she wanted to hear, to win her to her side. But then, her father had always been good at making people believe in the impossible, even as he ignored the obvious. She must not be swayed by him. ‘Everything has changed, Father. Everything.’

He smiled. ‘Then you must change them back. Captain Wiscombe might have prevailed against Napoleon’s army. But you, Lillian, are a North. The poor man does not stand a chance.’

Chapter Six

Gerry had begun to envy his wife her megrim.

Lillian had claimed illness and disappeared immediately after the meal, forcing the female guests to settle in the parlour with only a footman for company. The elder North and the earl had joined them, seeking a quiet game of cards by the fire.

The other men were proving themselves to be as annoying after dinner as they had been at the table. At Ronald’s suggestion, the six of them remaining had retired with their port to the billiard room.

Either Lillian had not completed her redecorating, or she had given up on trying to make this room look like anything other than what it was. The tiny game room retained the utter lack of charm that had been so evident in the home of his youth. Hunting trophies still lined its upper walls, staring down at them as they played. Their glassy eyes glittered in the smoke from too many pipes and cigars.

Gerry leaned against the wall under a moth-eaten roe, sipping a brandy and watching as Lillian’s brother toyed with his third opponent of the night. It was clear from the way he played that no one had bothered to take care of the slight warp that existed in the surface of the table, nor had they taken the time to properly iron the baize covering before the game began. The small wrinkles that still marred its surface would make play difficult.

The problems were near invisible to the naked eye, especially in a smoky room. But Gerry had found his ball trapped by the table’s deficiencies often enough when learning the game from a competitive father who showed no mercy. When he’d whined about the unfairness of it, his father announced that a man who played a game without assessing the risks deserved what he got.

The elder Wiscombe would have got along well with the Norths. Tonight, Ronald was using the same philosophy to remove money from his guests. Poor Carstairs had just lined up a shot he had no hopes of making. Before he attempted it, he paused to chalk his cue by grinding it into the plaster of the ceiling like the barbaric cit that he was.

Gerry gritted his teeth into a smile and retracted his sympathy for the man. Then, without a word he offered Carstairs the cube of white chalk that sat on the table’s edge. He would have to come back in daylight to assess the damage to the ceiling. Judging by the current company, there were likely years’ worth of marks left by men that had no sense of how to deport themselves outside of a public billiard hall.

For now, he would enjoy the surprised look on Carstairs’s face as his ball rolled just short of its mark and stopped.

Ronald’s response was to pot two balls in one stroke and finish the match.

‘Game to me,’ he said with a smile.

‘You are a damned lucky fellow,’ Carstairs said, wiping his brow and reaching for a pad and pencil to write a marker of his debt.

‘Very lucky,’ Ronald said, feigning modesty. ‘But I will allow that I have some skill in the game.’

‘You must play me next,’ Gerry said, finishing his drink in one gulp and giving the broad smile that he knew made him look like a simpleton. ‘I have not played in ages. There was no time for games in Wellington’s army.’

‘Well, then. This should be interesting for both of us.’ Ronald’s smile was positively wolfish as he chalked his cue.

Gerry turned to the rack and chose a mace instead. The old club-headed sticks were horribly out of fashion. But he was as good with one as he was with a cue and they overcame the deficiencies of the table quite nicely.

Ronald arched an eyebrow in surprise and replaced his cue, as well. ‘My, but it has been a while since you played.’

‘When Father taught me, it was with wooden balls so lopsided there was no telling where they would go, even at the best times.’ As if demonstrating, he swung the mace wide, nearly knocking a drink from the hand of Wilson, who was standing too close to him.

‘You’ll find that the new ivory balls work much better,’ Ronald said, setting up his first shot and tapping the red ball with his white one.

‘I expect so,’ Gerry said and deliberately missed, sending his cue ball bouncing off the padded rail. Then he looked up and smiled. ‘But we have not set a wager yet.’ He brought the mace up so quickly it set the oil lamps above the table to swaying.

Ronald sent Gerry’s cue ball rolling into a pocket. ‘Nor have we set the points. Play to six?’

An easy thing for him to say, when he was already up by four. Gerry smiled broadly again. ‘Excellent. And let us make it interesting. Fifty quid?’

‘Fif…’ The wind was escaping from Ronald like gas from a balloon. ‘I do not have so much ready money.’

‘Fifty from me, then,’ Gerry said. ‘And if I win, you may forgive the debts of the men who have played so far. That should call it even.’

‘If you really think that is wise,’ Ronald said, pityingly.

Gerry grinned and nodded like a fool. Then, with a single stroke, he sunk all three balls with a cannon, to the calls of ‘Capital shot’ and ‘Huzzah for the captain!’

‘And how many is that, again? I cannot remember.’ Gerry counted points on his fingers.

‘Ten,’ said Ronald, his smile disappearing. ‘Game to you, sir.’

‘It is all a matter of geometry, dear fellow. Back in the day, I was quite good at mathematics. The markers, if you please.’ Gerry held out his hand for the IOUs and his brother-in-law handed them over with a frown.

Gerry tore them in half with a single decisive motion and dropped the pieces on to the table beside him. Then he yawned. ‘And now, I think it is time that I retire.’

‘You must not,’ Carstairs said. ‘The night is just beginning.’ By the slur in his voice, the night had gone on far too long already.

‘I have been away from home and wife for seven years,’ Gerry said. ‘She will not want me lingering with the gentlemen until dawn.’

‘A lovely woman she is,’ Burke announced. ‘And a shame that she has been alone so long.’

Gerry felt the hair at the back of his neck prickling as if it could rise like the ruff of an angry dog. How many other men had noticed Lillian’s beauty and made drunken comments over the billiard table about her sleeping alone? And what sort of man was Ronald North for showing not a hint of disapproval?

‘Those days are now past,’ Gerry said and gave Burke a look that brought a mumbled assurance that no disrespect was intended.

He nodded and looked past the man at Ronald. ‘I am home for good.’ Then he stared into his brother-in-law’s eyes to be sure the idiot noticed that there was a wolf beneath the sheepskin. ‘I will be with her, until death us do part. Just as I am sure you intended when you introduced us.’ Then he quit the room, ignoring the low curse behind him.

Chapter Seven

Once upstairs, Lily put on her best nightgown and allowed the maid to put a ribbon in her braided hair. By the smile on Jenny’s face, she could guess that the girl was imagining the fond reunion to come.

The ribbon was superfluous. She doubted it would matter to Captain Wiscombe how she looked. Despite what her father and brother believed, Gerald’s reasons for lying with her had nothing to do with romance. He was merely staking a claim of ownership.

Would that her own motivations were as clear. She could tell herself that going to his bed tonight was nothing more than an attempt to be the loyal wife he’d deserved from the first. It would have been much easier to believe, if both her father and brother had not reminded her that she was a North and therefore an expert manipulator. Was she being her usual, obedient self and doing what Gerald wanted her to do? Or was she following her family’s instructions and doing what might make him do what she wished at some later date?

Or was this about nothing more than her fascination with Captain Gerald Wiscombe, late of the Fifth Dragoons? Her only experience with what went on in the bedroom had left her with no desire to repeat the act. But after years of reading about his exploits, the thought of Captain Gerald Wiscombe made her heart flutter in anticipation.

There was fluttering in other places, as well. Her husband was not some paper idol. He was here and all too real. And tonight, she would finally be his bride. Suddenly, it felt like her chaste cotton night rail was made of butterfly wings. Each shift of cloth on skin reminded her of just how bare she would be when he removed it.

For a moment, memories from the past clawed at her mind like a rat in a cage. The headache, which had eased during the quiet hours since dinner, began to return.

She took a slow breath to clear her head. The past was the past. Tonight would be different. There would be no fear or guilt since the man involved was her husband. Not only that, the man she had married was a romantic daydream come to life. There was not a braver or more honourable man in all of England than Gerald Wiscombe and there were few men as handsome.

If only he didn’t hate her…

After what seemed like hours of silence, she heard the hall door of the room beside hers open and close. There was no second voice, or any other indication that he’d summoned a servant to help him prepare for bed. In fact, there was no sound at all. Had he forgotten about her already and gone to sleep?

It would be better to face her fears and seek him out than to lie awake in her bed, waiting for a summons that might never come. It took a few more minutes to steel her nerve before she tiptoed across the floor of her room to the connecting door and opened it, just a crack.

‘Come.’ It was a command. The first of many, she suspected. As a good wife ought, she obeyed it.

Perhaps the wine at dinner had mellowed him. Except for his boots, he was still dressed and stretched full length upon his bed, staring at the canopy above him. Compared to the scowls of the afternoon and the guarded smiles of dinner, he looked at peace with himself and the world.

It would be a shame to ruin that for either of them. She had the sudden, craven desire to retreat.

‘I thought you had a headache,’ he said without looking in her direction.

‘It is better,’ she lied. Now that she was in his room, it was coming back again.

‘Then do not hang about the doorway. If you are coming in, come in.’ He did not finish with the suggestion that she should do it or go away, but it was implied.

So forward she went, into the room, shutting the door behind her. A different man, she reminded herself. A different room. Or it might as well have been. She had made sure that nothing remained of the old master bedroom but her memories.

He turned away from her to stare at one of the pictures on the wall, giving it far more attention than a simple landscape deserved. Were the details in some way wrong? Most likely they were and he was making a note to have the thing removed and replaced.

The one thing he did not seem interested in was her. She had not expected him to spring upon her like a wild beast and force her on to her back. But neither had she expected uninterest. She felt like a fool standing here in her simple gown and her sad little hair ribbon. He did not want her. Now that they were alone, there was no reason for him to pretend otherwise.

He sighed as if her presence in the room was an interruption and looked back to her, then gestured absently to the side of his bed closest to her own door. When she did not move, he prompted, ‘Get in.’ Then he sat up and untied his neckcloth without bothering to see if she complied.

Before he could ask again, she pulled back the coverlet and climbed between the sheets, resisting the urge to pull them up so she might hide under the blankets. It was not as if there was anything to see, should he decide to look. Her gown was buttoned to the throat. But it proved one thing to both of them. She was not planning to bend him to her will through seduction. If she’d intended that, she would have done a better job of preparing for it.

Her husband sat on the edge of the bed, his back still to her. When he pulled his shirt over his head, she got her first look at a man’s naked back. She could not help it. She gasped.

‘Eh?’ He turned with a half enquiring, half annoyed look.

‘The scar.’ She pointed.

His face softened, then he laughed. ‘It is not a very heroic story, I’m afraid. A screaming Frenchman was galloping down upon me from behind. On seeing that my attention was elsewhere, my friend, MacKenzie of the Scots Greys, shot him in the back. It was too late to stop the full charge. He did not run me through as he’d planned. But the damned frog dragged the blade down my back as he fell and cut my coat to ribbons. It was some time before we were able to dress the wound, which was hardly deep enough to care about. I stripped off what was left of my shirt, and Mac poured a measure of his usquebaugh on my back and a wee dram into me. Then I sewed up my jacket and slept on my stomach for a week.’

‘That is all?’ she said, surprised.

He nodded. ‘If it bothers you, then I suspect you will be even more disturbed when you see the rest of me.’

She had been thinking just such a thing when trying to imagine him naked.

He laughed again and gave a lascivious waggle of his eyebrows to show that he had been talking of other scars, but knew full well what she’d been thinking.

She shrank a little farther under the covers. The papers had said nothing of such things. They’d left her to imagine entire scenarios based on the phrase heroic charge. ‘Were you injured often?’

He gave a non-committal shrug as he pulled off his stockings and threw them towards the wardrobe. ‘As much as anyone, I’m sure. But not as much as those who did not come home.’ Then he stood, turned to face her and displayed his chest. There was another cut across his upper arm, but it was clear from the wide scar that this had been deeper than the one across his back. And lower, just above his waist, was a puckered puncture.

He pointed. ‘This is the one that should have done for me. A hole in the guts is a damned ugly way to die. But it managed to miss my vitals and come right out the other side. Of course, you won’t see that until I take off my breeches.’

‘But you recovered,’ she said with a sigh of relief.

‘I was feverish, of course. But I fought it off and was back in the saddle in a month and a half. The surgeon said it was a miracle. I assume I should be thanking you for your prayers for my safety.’ He said the last with an ironic twist of his lips.

For all she knew, it was exactly how he had survived. Would he believe her, should she tell him so? ‘I prayed fervently for your good health each night for seven years.’ When she saw the answering glare, she added a smile as ironic as his had been. It seemed to satisfy him more than her sincerity.

‘And now you have got your wish.’ He undid the buttons on his breeches, dropped them to the floor and kicked them out of the way as he pulled back the bedcovers and climbed in beside her.

She had known for some time that it would not be the soft dumpling of a boy who came to her, should her wedding night ever occur. But she had not been prepared for Gerald Wiscombe in the flesh. Even flaccid he was a formidable specimen. His lack of embarrassment at his own nakedness made him all the more intimidating.

Despite the scars, he was also blessedly intact. She’d seen more than her share of veterans of the Peninsula walking the halls of the Chase on wooden legs and crutches, or with empty coat sleeves pinned up to keep them out of the way. But whether from luck or answered prayers, her captain had returned with two strong arms and two good legs.

Now that she could see all of him, she’d noted the tracery of smaller scars that accompanied the major wounds. This was a man who viewed injury as mere inconvenience, should it stand in the way of what he wished to achieve. Once he had begun, resisting would be futile.

For a moment, the old fears returned and she shrank back even farther towards the edge of the bed, glancing towards the door of her room.

He made no effort to reach for her. ‘You may leave if you wish. I have no intention of holding a wife by force, especially you.’ Then he rolled on to his stomach. ‘Or you might make yourself useful and rub the knots out of my shoulders. After three days in the saddle I am as stiff as an unsoaped harness.’

‘H-how would I do that?’ It was an unexpected request. But it would be less frightening to do than to be done to.

‘It will not be difficult. Begin by putting your hands about my throat and pretending that you wish to choke the life out of me.’ He laughed into the pillow.

She could not see his face. But by the tone of his voice he seemed to be honestly amused by the idea that she might want to hurt him. At least he trusted her enough to turn his back to her while naked and defenceless. She responded to his trust with her own and pulled her legs up under her to kneel at his side. Then she placed her hands on his shoulders and began to knead.

It was easy to see why he’d wanted her help. The muscles beneath her fingers were as hard and unyielding as bags of sand. Or perhaps that was normal. She had never touched so much bare male skin in her life. As she worked over them, she felt the flesh begin to soften and relax.

Her own tension was easing, as well. The warmth of his body and the rhythmic kneading of her own hands worked as a soporific. The last of the pain in her head diminished to a dull throb, then disappeared.

It was replaced by hesitant pleasure. She liked touching him. There was something very comforting about the feel of his warm flesh beneath her hands, as if he could transfer his bravery to her through the skin. She wanted to curl up next to him, to press her cheek into his shoulder and stay there until the world felt right again.

In response to her massage, her husband grunted in satisfaction. ‘You are almost as good at this as an army leech. Of course, he used horse liniment.’

In spite of herself, she smiled. Then she dug her fingers more deeply into the space beneath his shoulder blades. ‘I am sure we can find something better than camphor and turpentine to use in the bedroom. My maid has a recipe for a balm made with beeswax and peppermint…’

He was laughing again, his shoulders shaking with mirth. Then he gave a lurch and rolled, catching her wrists and pulling her off balance and on to her back. ‘By all means, we must render me sweet-smelling if we are to share a bed.’

The sudden change in position left her breathless and light-headed. But this time it was a good feeling, more like floating than fainting. There was something about his smile, so close above her, that kept her from being afraid. She answered him with a hesitant nod.

He leaned on his elbows so that he might look down into her eyes. ‘You are a comely wench, Lily Wiscombe.’ He ran a fingertip along the line of her jaw. Then his smile was coming closer and his lips met hers.

Wiscombe.

She was not a North any more. She was a Wiscombe. One of two. Soon, two would become one. If it was anything like this kiss, she had nothing to fear. His mouth was open and his lips moved slowly against hers. Very gently, she reached out with the tip of her tongue to taste the crooked smile and the tiny imperfections that made him so fascinating to look at.

In response, his body stirred. His arms tightened around her. Their breath mingled in a sigh.

‘He mounted his horse in the night at the door,

‘And sat with his face to the crupper.’

The song, bawdy and off-key, came like a nightmare interrupting a dream. Mr Carstairs was in his cups, and walking down the corridor of the family wing at the worst possible time.

Her mind immediately flew to the hall door of her own room. She replayed the memory of locking it after her maid left. She’d set the key upon the dresser, just as she did every night. She was safe.

But that room had never been the problem. This was the room that was dangerous. It might look different, but underneath the paint and paper it was the same. And the doors here were not locked as they ought to be. Anyone might enter from the hall. Her head was pounding now as she waited for the sound of a hand testing the handle.

Her husband pulled away from her, staring at the door. ‘What the devil…?’

‘Some scoundrel has cut off the head of my horse,

‘While I was engaged with the bottle…’

The song was even louder now, even closer. But she was not alone this time. And it was not just her husband come too late to save her from dishonour. Her hero, Captain Wiscombe, was finally here and bristling with righteous anger.

Suddenly, her fear of the drunk in the hallway seemed overblown. She touched her husband’s bare arm. ‘It is nothing,’ she said, praying that was true. ‘If we ignore him, he will go away.’ She would lie awake the rest of the night fearing that he, or someone else, would return. But as long as Captain Wiscombe was here, she would be safe.

‘Which went gluggity, gluggity, glug.’

All the same, she could not seem to control her body’s response. She was trembling, quite out of character with the foolishness of the song. Please let him go, she entreated silently. Please. The day had been hard enough without this.

‘Enough.’ Wiscombe pushed away from her and swung his legs out of the bed, reaching for his breeches.

‘It is nothing,’ she repeated, if only to convince herself.

‘It damn well is not. It is Carstairs. The man is a bloody nuisance,’ he said, throwing a shirt over his head and pulling boots over his bare feet. ‘Despite what may have been condoned in my absence, my home is not a tavern and my bedroom is not a music hall. I mean to put a stop to it.’ Then he was through the door and it slammed behind him.

‘’Tis strange headless horses should trot,

‘But to drink with their tails is a—’

The song came to an abrupt end and the silence was profound. She waited, breath held, to see what would happen next.

The minutes had stretched out into an hour and still nothing happened. The singing did not continue, but neither did Captain Wiscombe return. Had he locked the door when he’d gone? She stared across the room, at the door handle, watching for movement.

She debated the sense of slinking back to her own room so that she might safely lock herself inside. Then it occurred to her that, should someone look for her, this was the one place they would not search. Even if they suspected that she was here, they would not dare enter the bedroom of a decorated soldier. She was safer in Wiscombe’s room than she had been in her own.

The thought was strangely comforting. She was in her husband’s bed, where she belonged. She eased back into the pillows and pulled the coverlet up. Then she closed her eyes to rest them until her husband returned.

Chapter Eight

When Lily woke the next morning, it was in her own bed. She lay perfectly still for a moment, trying to dredge up the memory of the previous evening. Had she roused sufficiently to get herself here, or had she fled? If so, had it been before or after her husband’s return?

She searched both her body and her mind for any trace of disturbance that could explain this situation. She was a sound sleeper, particularly after a megrim when she had been stressed to the point of exhaustion. But if Captain Wiscombe had returned to bed her, she’d hoped she would have some memory of it.

It appeared that he had returned to find her sleeping and carried her to her own bed without waking her. She had a vague recollection of arms lifting her up and a sigh of soft breath at her temple. It seemed he had chosen to prolong this part of his homecoming for another night, at least.

She rang for her maid. As usual, she selected a day gown that was both simple and sensible. Her father sometimes accused her of dressing no better than an innkeeper’s wife. When he did, she invariably told him that since he insisted on housing strangers in her home, she saw no reason to behave as if she were entertaining friends.

But this morning, when she went down to breakfast, she would be greeted not just by her father’s friends, but by the critical eye of her husband. She rejected the first gown and chose a snow-white muslin with a wide border of violets embroidered about the hem. There were purple ribbons at her waist and she requested that Jenny thread more of them through her curls. When they were finished, she looked as fresh as a spring morning.

Before he’d arrived, she’d imagined what it might be like if the past between them did not exist. Suppose they had never married and she was meeting Captain Gerald Wiscombe for the first time at a ball or garden party. This was the way she would want to look if she wished to capture the attention of the hero of Salamanca.

Against all reason, her stomach filled with hopeful butterflies. Things had seemed different last night. Though he had refused to discuss the war while at table, he’d been willing to tell her about his injuries. While she had been touching him, he’d been happy and content, as had she. Perhaps this kernel of trust might grow to be something more.

Would he notice a difference in her look or manner when she arrived at the breakfast table? If he did, he did not say. There was no indication that he approved, other than a slight raise of his eyebrow as he examined her over his coffee cup. When he smiled, it was the same false grin he had been using at supper. Whatever truce they’d achieved while together in the bedroom did not extend to the other rooms of the house. ‘Good morning, my dear.’ His voice was just as dispassionate as his expression.

She could answer in kind. But if she wished for a change, there was no point playing games with him. She gave him her warmest smile and curtsied. ‘Good morning, Captain Wiscombe.’

‘I trust you slept well?’

Was he asking because he had put her to bed, or was it nothing more than polite conversation? ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I suspect it was difficult because of the noise in the hall.’ This was said to no one in particular, as if he meant to call the perpetrator to task over it.

‘That was Carstairs,’ her father announced, as though there were nothing particularly strange about drunken serenades. ‘We really must teach the man a new song.’

‘Or teach him to sing the current one correctly,’ Ronald added. ‘He cannot seem to hit the high note, for all the times he tries. I see he is sleeping late this morning.’

‘Perhaps feeling the ill effects of the bottle,’ Mr Burke added.

‘He is not sleeping late,’ Mrs Carstairs announced. ‘At least he is not doing so in our room. He was not there at all last night.’

All assembled shifted in their chairs, trying to pretend that they were not hearing accusations of infidelity over breakfast.

The offended wife’s gaze swept down the table, searching for signs of guilt. ‘Miss Fellowes is not present, either.’

Mrs Burke made sympathetic noises of disapproval.

‘Neither is Sir Chauncey,’ her father supplied. ‘Perhaps Miss Fellowes is with him.’

‘What would they be doing together so early in the morning?’ Mrs Wilson’s smile was positively evil.

‘I am sure they are both in their own rooms where they belong,’ Lily said, trying to stop the rampant speculation. ‘And Mr Carstairs…’ Really. She had no idea. ‘Perhaps Mr Carstairs is hunting.’

‘If he is, he must be told to leave the old stag for me,’ Greywall announced to no one in particular. ‘That fellow is mine.’

‘I do not think that is the game he is after,’ said Mrs Burke with a sniff. ‘More likely he has caught a young doe.’

Mrs Carstairs hissed through her teeth and pushed away from the table as if preparing a physical response to the insult.

Before Lily was forced to intervene, there was a shriek from the hall and the sound of breaking glass. The residents of the breakfast room hurried to the doorway, eager to see what fresh scandal was brewing.

All except Captain Wiscombe. He merely helped himself to more fish and refilled his coffee. She left him to it and followed the others into the hall.

Once there she found something far more interesting than the gossip over last night’s serenade. Mr Carstairs was standing in the hall, sporting a blackened eye and naked as a jay except for the silk runner he had seized from a nearby side table. Sally, one of the younger and more impressionable parlourmaids, was collapsed in a dead faint, surrounded by the sherry glasses she had been retrieving from the parlour.

‘I had no intention…’ stuttered Mr Carstairs. ‘I awoke in a horse trough in the stables. But my clothes… I do not know… And there was a black stallion snapping at my…’ He gripped the table runner even tighter over his unmentionables.

‘Was the trough not full, then?’ Wiscombe said innocently. He stood at the back of the group, coffee cup still in hand. ‘Poor Satan must be starving. I will go and speak to his groom.’ He passed his drink to an approaching footman and walked past the shivering Carstairs as though he did not see him, muttering to himself about the need to set in a decent supply of oats and mash.

Since Mr Carstairs had been just outside their door before the singing stopped, Lily suspected that her husband knew perfectly well about the condition of the horse trough, the source of Carstairs’s black eye and the location of the gentleman’s clothes. But if he did not wish to speak of them, neither did she.

She pushed through the knot of guests blocking her way and went directly to the maid, who needed more help than her embarrassed guest. She positioned herself so that Sally would be spared from witnessing more nakedness if she woke. Then she called for a footman to bring a glass of water and spirits of ammonia.

Behind her, in the doorway to the breakfast room, Mrs Burke could no longer contain herself. Her stern disapproval of moments earlier dissolved and she let loose with a braying guffaw worthy of Satan the stallion. Mr Burke joined her, as did the earl. Mrs Carstairs answered them with a torrent of words that no lady should know.

Phineas North made a desperate attempt to re-establish a semblance of decorum and tried to shoo the ladies back towards the table. But no amount of gesticulating and tut-tutting sympathy from her father could quell the general mirth at the poor man’s misfortune. With a moan, Mr Carstairs fled for the stairs, the table runner fluttering behind him.

Mr and Mrs Carstairs left later that day, citing urgent business in London. Gerry smiled to himself as he watched from his bedroom window and saw the carriage disappearing around the last bend of the drive. He had been successful in removing the first two interlopers. The rest would follow soon enough.

A single punch to the eye had been enough to stop the singing. But Gerry had not wanted the man sleeping off the liquor on the floor of the hall, only to awake unabashed and resume the song. He’d deemed it best to provide a lesson that could not be unlearned. He had thought about the matter for less than a minute before his own infernal sense of humour had taken hold. It had ended with him carrying the man like a sack of grain out to the stables, stripping him of his garments and leaving him.

He had not intended to abandon his wife. It had just taken more time than he’d planned to settle with the drunk in the hall. He’d meant to return to Lily with an amusing story to tell. When he’d left, she’d been shaking beneath the covers like a half-drowned puppy. He’d felt almost sorry for her.

Before the interruption, things had been going better than he’d expected. He’d had a damned fine reason for his foul temper yesterday afternoon. But the satisfaction of besting North at billiards had improved his mood. Retiring to that most suitable of bedchambers to have his shoulders caressed by a ministering angel had left him as tame as a kitten. To finish the night with his needs satisfied and his head pillowed on a soft breast would have made a fine end to a difficult day.

Then Carstairs had come and ruined everything. He’d lost his temper and the lady had lost her nerve.

By the time he’d got back to his room Lily had been fast asleep, curled into a ball beneath the blankets as if she feared attack. It had been an impulse to carry her to her room and put her to bed properly. There, she had settled in her own place with a happy sigh and continued sleeping.

What was he to make of her strange behaviour? When he’d imagined his return to Wiscombe Chase, he had assumed his wife was as conniving and crooked as the rest of her family. She would come up with a dozen unlikely stories for the condition of his house and the child presented as his heir. Perhaps she would try to seduce him into forgiving her. He would allow her to attempt it, at least for a time. She might be faithless, but she was every bit as beautiful as she had been on the day he’d married her. Back then, he’d been too embarrassed by his own inexperience to take what was his by right. Despite himself, he still wanted her. He would not miss the opportunity again.

But she was not the scheming jade he’d expected. Her dress was modest, her manner apologetic and obedient. At dinner she’d remained polite but aloof from the dinner guests. He wondered if she had feigned illness to escape them. When she’d come to his room, there had been no sign of the chronic headache that had been described to him by her brother.

Instead, she had been concerned and sympathetic to his injuries, old and new. She had talked of beeswax and peppermint, hinting at massages to come. And she had returned the kiss he’d given her.

She had been cautious of him, but not frightened. She had not shown fear until they’d been interrupted by the man wandering outside in the hall. But why? Carstairs had been no threat at all. He was just a jolly drunkard who could be tricked by his own weakness. It served him right for treating his hostess’s hospitality with the same contempt he had for the billiard-room ceiling.

This morning, it pleased him that Lily had needed no instruction to hold her tongue. She’d taken her cue from his indifference and pretended there was no logical explanation for the naked man in her hall. But he suspected she had been amused by it. Had he seen a faint flicker of a smile on her lips as she’d rushed to help the maid?

She approved. Her approval should have meant nothing to him after all this time. But it did.

But he had far more approval in this house than he really wanted. He frowned down at the paper on the writing desk that sat under the bedroom windows. When he’d returned to his room after breakfast, he’d found it on the rug in front of the door, as if it had been slipped beneath to lie in his path as he entered.

The rectangle of parchment was folded once, the crease bisecting the writing with a razor-sharp line. Opening it revealed the multiplication table copied out in ink. It would have been an exaggeration to call the writing neat. There were smudges and blots, and a few grains of sand still clinging to the drying ink. But it was hard for a small hand to manage a pen. At that age he’d been using pencil, or chalk and slate.

This was clearly an attempt to impress him. And damn it all, he did not want to be impressed. He wanted to forget the one doing the writing so he might enjoy his new life at home. He wanted to clear the house of undesirables and stare into Lily’s soulful brown eyes and pretend that she had never betrayed him. That would be impossible with a child underfoot, trying to get his attention.

He crumpled the paper and turned to throw it in the grate. Then, something stopped him. Too much work had gone into the preparation of this gift. While he did not want it, he would feel guilty if he destroyed it. Perhaps the child’s mother would wish to see proof of the boy’s educational success. He smoothed it flat again and tucked it between the pages of the Théorie Analytique where it would be out of sight until he was ready to deal with it.

He smiled down at the books. They were just the sort of gift he appreciated. How had she known he would want them? For that matter, how had she known to do any of this? Did she have some ingrained talent for homemaking and hospitality, to turn his detested childhood home into such a welcoming place?

Now that he’d got a look at it in daylight, he was even more eager than he had been to evict the guests, so he might enjoy his home in peace. The old heap of stone was comfortably familiar, yet so very different from the way he remembered it. It had been a sad house when he’d left it. Generations of neglect had worn on it, making it seem not just old, but tired of spirit. Even on the best days, there had been an odour of rank greenery and loam about the place, as if in a few more years the forest would reclaim the land and leave nothing for the last of the Wiscombes.

Now, even standing by the open windows, the air seemed fresh and cool. Lily and her horrid family deserved some credit for chasing out the dampness, fixing the roof and giving it all a wash and a coat of paint.

Then he reminded himself that if the other Norths were involved, the spaces outside his bedroom had not been done for his benefit. There was a plot in progress and he was tired of feeling as if he’d wandered in on the last act of the play. It was time for Lillian to prove her loyalty and tell him what had been going on here.

To find his answers, he left his room and took the stairs down to the wing that was the ladies’ side of the house. There was no such thing, really. But his family had traditionally split itself along the line created by the centre hall. The billiard room, the library and the trophy room were to the left. The breakfast room, the morning room and the conservatory were to the right. Generations of Wiscombes had found that, if one wished to, one could avoid one’s wife most of the day, except for dinner and the bedroom. A man’s life could be largely unchanged by marriage if he had the sense to stay on his own side of the hall.

In his youth, Gerry’s father had limited himself to half the house, even after his wife had passed. While Gerry kept the memory of his mother alive by haunting the spaces that had been hers, Father had treated the right side of the house and the son in it as if they no longer existed.

If the current lady of the house truly wished to avoid her houseguests, she must have fallen in with Wiscombe tradition and retreated to the wing not littered with empty wine bottles and dead deer. As Gerry turned down the right hallway a young face peeked out from behind the curtains in the hall, then disappeared again.

It was the boy. It explained the feeling he’d had all morning that he was being watched. The sounds of scrabbling and rustling that he’d heard while touring the ground floor earlier had not been mice in the wainscoting. It had been but a single pest, following behind, waiting for an invitation to come closer and discuss the gift.

When he was young, Gerry had tried such tricks on his own father and had been consistently rebuffed. The elder Wiscombe had had little use for anyone not old enough to take up a weapon and follow him into the field for a hunt. But at least Gerry had been the actual heir. It was annoying that this little whelp who had no claim of blood thought he was entitled to attention.

He did his best to ignore it. But now that he had recognised it, the sound of shifting feet on the hall rug behind him was maddening. At last, to no one in particular, he said, ‘Go away.’

There was a sniffle in response.

Children’s tears were even more annoying than women’s. Especially when they were someone else’s children and none of his concern. But it was not the child’s fault that he was a bastard. It would be unfair to treat him too harshly. ‘And well done on the mathematics,’ he added, without turning around.

The sniffling stopped. There was a sigh, then the shuffling receded down the hallway.

Very good. He had no time to deal with a single mouse when the whole house was full of rats. He continued down the hall. Gerry checked the morning room, and music room, and salon, but found them vacant. This left him with the biggest folly of his foolish house: the conservatory.

Father had claimed that no true Wiscombe cared a fig about plants, on a plate or in a pot. So it had been the first space to fail after his mother had died. With its cracked panes and overgrown tangles of ivy and ferns it had sat for years like a cancer in healthy flesh, letting the noxious wildness into the rest of the house, as if the woods themselves had come to take revenge for the continual disturbance of the wildlife.

But when he entered today, he was struck by the fresh smell of lemons on the two dwarf trees that flanked the entrance and the sweet spice of geraniums and gillyflowers in pots by the windows. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof and walls, which were both clean and unbroken. The beams shining though the green glass panes that decorated the walls cast a mottled pattern on the veined marble floor that resembled a carpet of fallen leaves.

In the midst of it was the fairest flower in the house: his Lily. She had not yet noticed him enter, so he used the opportunity to observe her. Did she know that the midday sun behind her shone through the muslin gown to reveal far more of her figure than he had seen last night while they were in bed? A thin layer of gauze and a few embroidered flowers were all that stood between him and the paradise of her high, full breasts, round hips and shapely legs.

Seven years’ bitter experience separated him and the naive child he’d been when he’d married her. Yet, when he looked at her he felt the same tightening in throat and groin that he’d experienced on the day he’d met her. He’d known that they were not making a love match, despite what her father claimed. What would a beauty like her want with a nothing like him? But perhaps, if he returned to her with a chest full of medals and a full purse, she would look at him with something other than frustration and disappointment. What a fool he had been.

As if she had heard his thoughts, she looked up at him now and gave a little gasp of shock. She dropped the bamboo-handled paintbrush she had been holding and it rolled across the floor to stop at his boot toe.

He stared down at it in surprise. Just now, he’d been too preoccupied by her figure to notice the easel she worked at and the watercolours on the glass-topped table beside her. It should not have surprised him. All ladies had hobbies and this one was not uncommon. But it had never occurred to him that his wife would have interests, other than spending his money and making him miserable with her infidelity.

Without a word, he picked up the brush and went forward into the room to give it back to her.

‘Thank you, Captain Wiscombe.’ She gave a nervous curtsy and cast her eyes downward, as though not quite sure how to respond to his sudden appearance.

His mind was equally unsettled by her demure response. ‘You paint?’ It was good that he had not been trying to impress her. He’d never have done it with such a fatuous remark.

She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Watercolours, mostly.’ When pressed to make conversation, she seemed just as awkward as he felt.

He glanced down at a tall stack of books and newspapers beside the paints. A closer look revealed them to be a mix of atlases, gazetteers and histories of Spain, France and Portugal, along with several old copies of The Times. ‘And these?’

‘Inspiration,’ she said and almost knocked over her water glass as she tried to hide the clipping on the top of the stack.

He was faster, holding her wrist with one hand and snatching up the paper with the other. He scanned the text, reading a few lines aloud. ‘“And notable for their valour in the charge was the troop led by Captain Gerald Wiscombe…”’ He put the paper back on the table and smiled at her. ‘You find me inspiring?’

She shrugged again, blushing. ‘I followed the news of the war. It would have been foolish not to. And while flowers are lovely, one can only draw so many of them before it becomes tiring.’

A feeble excuse from someone who was obviously enamoured of the dashing hero the newspapers had made him out to be. He’d met such women before. He could set them to giggling and blushing with a single smile. An invitation to hear a few of his tamer war stories would end with them sitting indecently close, his arm draped about soft shoulders in reassurance as sweet lips offered rewards for his bravery.

He looked at the woman before him, his woman, and stifled recollections of his romantic past with an embarrassed cough. He released her hand. ‘And what is your current project?’ He glanced at the work in progress. ‘Mont-Saint-Jean?’ He could not keep the surprise from his voice.

‘It is only a copy.’ She pointed to the open book beside her paints.

Perhaps it was. But the style of rendering was familiar. ‘You did the paintings in my room?’

‘It seemed like a sensible place to put them,’ she said. ‘At least until something better could be found to decorate the walls. I hesitated to choose permanent ornaments without your input. I will remove them, if you like.’

‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Your work is surprisingly accurate for someone who has never visited those places.’ He glanced back at the picture in the book. ‘See here?’ He pointed. ‘You’ve changed the angle of the light and captured the colour of it in a way this pencil sketch did not. And in the pictures in my room you’ve found the wild beauty of the countryside and omitted the chaos and blood that we left. It is how I want to remember the places I’ve been. The pictures are perfect just where they are.’

‘Perfect,’ she repeated, surprised.

‘I like them well, as I do the rest of the decoration. Is that also your doing?’

She gave another shrug. ‘I merely chose the things I imagined a man such as Captain Wiscombe might appreciate, after reading accounts of your bravery.’ Her gaze dropped even farther, as if she were fascinated with the toes of her own slippers. ‘You were quite famous, you know.’

‘I did nothing that other soldiers wouldn’t have done in my place.’ If she would giggle or flirt, he might be able to respond in kind. But the earnestness of her praise embarrassed him. While in the thick of the action, he’d never intended to be a hero.

‘On the contrary, the papers said Captain Wiscombe showed singular bravery, charging ahead when others retreated.’ Now that she’d admitted to her preoccupation with his career, she gathered the nerve to look up at him with wide-eyed awe.

‘You talk of this Wiscombe fellow as if he is some sort of paragon that a lady might swoon over and not standing here in front of you.’ He looked at her, waiting for her to laugh at the hyperbole.

Instead, the blush in her cheeks turned scarlet. She could not seem to utter a syllable in response. This was no common infatuation that might be appeased with a single kiss on the cheek. She might have stood yesterday’s criticism with cool grace. But today, she was suffering an agony of mortification over gentle mockery.

Had she really created an ideal of him in her mind and doted on it, just as he’d hoped she would? If so, it was too late. Her loyalty was worth nothing if she’d only found it after she’d betrayed him. But staring at the half-finished picture on the easel, he felt the anger beginning to drain out of him, just as it did when he entered his room the previous evening. He looked away.

‘Whatever the reason for your painting,’ he said gruffly, ‘you’ve done well by it. And the bedroom you’ve prepared for me is quite the nicest I have been in. It suits me. Do not change a thing about it and hang as many pictures there as you care to paint.’

‘Very well, Captain.’ With her assent, she seemed to stifle her more tender feelings with the unquestioning obedience he’d requested yesterday.

She must not give up so easily. ‘We will admire them together tonight,’ he reminded her, flashing his most devilish grin. It was unfair to toy with her, but he could not resist.

‘Yes, Captain.’ This time, the breathlessness in her voice stole his own, as did the thought of this beautiful creature in his bed. It would be just as he dreamed of, after all. Once he’d chased the last of the guests from the house, they would be able to explore their passions in private.

And then he reminded himself that she and her family had been instrumental in gathering the people he must now evict. While they might have stopped the leaks in the roof, they’d let Greywall into the house, allowing the one thing he’d hoped to avoid by accepting wife and commission.

While his wife’s devotion to him was flattering, it was a new thing compared to the loyalty she’d shown to her conniving father and brother. Though Lily was beautiful, sometimes poison could be hidden in a pretty bottle. He should have better sense than to drink it.

‘I did not come here to speak of my war record, or your feelings about it,’ he said, crushing the fragile rapport between them. ‘I want you to tell me what is really going on in this house.’

‘What, exactly, do you wish to know about?’ He watched the blush fade from her cheeks, revealing the cool, distant woman who presided over his dinner table. Her question was not an evasion so much as a request for clarification.

He gave it to her. ‘What are your father and brother doing in my house, and who are these guests they have invited here? And what does it have to do with their initial eagerness that I marry you?’

To his surprise, she looked almost relieved that he had asked. ‘My father makes regular trips to London, where he has ingratiated himself into the sorts of circles where there is too much ready money and very little standing in society. When he has found three or four fellows who seem interested in changing one for the other, he invites them to a house party.’

‘You cannot buy rank,’ Gerry said with a shake of his head.

‘You did,’ she pointed out. ‘Father often opines that it would be better if society worked as the military did. There would be room enough at the pinnacle if it were easier for men of vision to pay their way up to being gentlemen.’

‘Perhaps so,’ he acknowledged. ‘But that is not the way of things.’

‘But suppose there was an opportunity to dine in intimacy with a member of the peerage. A friendship there might result in other invitations and a chance to move in more august circles once one returned to London.’

‘Greywall,’ Gerry said with a frown.

‘An earl could be kept like the bear in the Tower of London,’ she agreed.

‘As if my neighbour was ever of real benefit to anyone,’ Gerry said sceptically. ‘And what does your father gain by this far-fetched altruism?’ It was a question he should have asked himself when offered a beautiful wife and a commission. ‘Does he charge admission?’

‘That would be too obvious.’ She waved the hand that held the brush as if painting the truth in the air. ‘The gentlemen who visit are better at making money than friends.’

‘They are drunken louts,’ Gerry agreed.

‘It makes them susceptible to offers that appear friendly, especially when they include a chance to make even more money. After a few days spent bagging partridges and chasing foxes, and a few nights drinking good wine, they are offered an opportunity that cannot fail to profit. My father thinks of them as investors.’

‘Investors,’ Gerry repeated. ‘In what?’

‘I believe the current offering is the breeding of Russian sables,’ Lily responded with a sigh.

‘That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.’

‘So you would think. But it has worked several times before. The first time, he bought an actual pair of the animals to bolster the plan.’

‘The first time?’ he said, amazed.

‘It seems the sable farm is doomed to failure. The first pair escaped into the woods and have been—’ she gave an embarrassed cough ‘—fornicating with martins and not each other.’

‘If he has no sables, how can he convince anyone of the viability of this plan?’

She gave a small shrug. ‘Does a Londoner know what a sable looks like before it has been made into a coat collar? A stoat dyed black will do just as well.’ Now she was smiling. ‘Ronald got a rather nasty bite during that process. Apparently, stoats do not enjoy being dipped.’

‘Is that your brother’s sole part in the scheme, the painting of weasels?’

She shook her head. ‘My father is a man of big ideas. My brother less so. He enjoys cards and billiards. Any game of chance, really. He invariably wins. That is why Greywall is here. At this point, I believe we own more of his estate than he does himself.’

We. Had she even noticed she’d said it? Possibly not. But it annoyed him that as she’d explained her family’s plans, she’d grown more animated and the colour had returned to her cheeks. ‘That explains your father and brother,’ he said. ‘The guests and the earl, as well. But what is your part in all this?’

Her smile disappeared. ‘Recently? I am hostess. Nothing more than that. I make sure the house is maintained. I avoid the guests as much as I am able. I do not approve of what is happening here. Really, I do not.’ The protest was adamant, but it came far too late in the conversation.

‘But that is, as you say, recently. What was your part before?’

‘To be pretty and biddable,’ she said, her eyes falling. ‘To marry where I was told and not ask questions.’

‘You were bait for me,’ he clarified.

‘To make the plan work, they needed the earl. He is your neighbour.’

‘And he has coveted this house since my father was alive,’ Gerry added.

‘He wants the stag that has been roaming your land for ages.’

Gerry nodded. ‘My father called him Rex. King of the forest. I saw him in the woods as I arrived.’

‘Wanting a thing is different from getting it,’ she replied.

‘I am aware of that.’ He looked at her and thought of his own marriage and what that first decision had gained and lost him over the years.

‘They wanted you so they might get the house. They needed the house to trap the earl. The earl attends these parties to reclaim his markers from my brother.’

‘And his presence attracts your father’s investors from London,’ he finished.

‘As will yours, if they are allowed to continue,’ she whispered, glancing at the door as if she feared to be overheard. ‘My brother thinks he will convince you that you owe them for the improvements made on the house. If that does not work, he will find some other way to trick you out of your money. Father assumes I will help them because I am a North. And the Norths always look after their own.’

She looked so dejected at the thought that his common sense fled, just as it had on the day he’d met her. ‘Then it is a good thing you are not a North,’ he reminded her, taking the paintbrush from her hand. ‘You are a Wiscombe now.’ Then he tipped her chin up so that he might kiss her.

In Portugal, he’d often regretted that he had not come to her on their very first night as man and wife. He should have claimed her as his own immediately. But kissing her today, the remorse faded. Without having known others, how would he have recognised the sweetness of her kisses? Her mouth opened to him with the slightest coaxing. As he drank deeply from it, her body settled against his, ready to submit.

His hands were resting on the bare flesh at the base of her neck and he felt the pulse beating against the tips of his thumbs grow faster. He squeezed her shoulders in encouragement before smoothing his palms over and down her back, pressing her breasts and belly hard against his chest. At last, he reached the flare of her hips and her rounded bottom. He first cupped and then kneaded the flesh until she was squirming against his budding erection, gasping in eagerness.

He would have her here, naked as Eve in the Garden of Eden. He could imagine trapping her against the windows, his palms pressed flat to the cool glass. The scent of lemons would mingle with her musk as he thrust. And her cries…

Her cries would alert the household. He did not give a damn for any of the people here. But it would be more enjoyable to act out this particular fantasy once he had divested the Chase of the excess inhabitants.

He tightened his hands to fists, digging his nails into his palms to distract him from the temptation of her body. Then he moved his hands back to her shoulders and gently pushed her away. It pleased him to see that she looked as disappointed as he felt by the end of their play. But it was not nearly as nice as it would be when they had time to continue.

He cleared his throat and smiled. ‘As I said before, tonight we will have time to discuss the pictures that are hanging in my room.’

‘Yes, Captain Wiscombe,’ she said with a dazed smile.

‘And we will discuss your concerns about the future, as well. But do not worry, Mrs Wiscombe.’ He added a slight emphasis to the surname, so she might remember it. ‘Since there are but two of us Wiscombes, we must stick together.’

‘Three.’ The child’s voice came from the doorway, breaking his mood like a stone through window glass. ‘There are three Wiscombes, Papa. Do not forget me.’

He had, damn it all. Just for a moment, he had forgotten the boy. But his memory had returned and ruined everything. He shot a wordless glare at the woman before him. Then he turned, pushed past the child and was gone.

Chapter Nine

No matter what he intended, Gerry was far too quick to play the fool for this family. A few daubs of paint, a doe-eyed glance and a pair of soft lips and he had been ready to forget the obvious, until it had intruded on him and demanded his attention.

He must not be swayed by appearances. The woman he’d married was as crafty as Eve, just like the rest of her family. But if she was to be any use to him outside the bedroom, it would be easy enough to prove. He crossed the length of the house to his study, pulled the chequebook from the desk drawer and wrote a hurried draft. Then he went in search of his brother-in-law.

‘Ronald North.’ He found him in the billiard room and greeted him with the same joviality he had on the previous night.

‘Wiscombe.’ The memory of the previous night’s game must have been fresh in his mind, for he did not bother to be pleasant.

‘Practising for a rematch?’ Gerry said, picking up a ball from the table to spoil the shot. ‘I would think, after years of chasing Rex about the wood, you would know that it is very hard to beat a native habitué of the Chase at any game played here.’

‘It was never my intention to best you,’ Ronald said, with a smile. ‘There is no reason we need to be at odds. We are family now, after all.’

‘By marriage,’ Gerry reminded him. ‘And while I am grateful for the help you provided with the house and lands, I suspect you must be growing tired of the place and eager to get back to wherever it was you came from.’ He pulled the cheque from his pocket and held it out to his wife’s brother. ‘This should cover the cost of repairs made to the house and the commission your father bought. I have added an expression of my gratitude for your help, as well.’

The look of shock on Ronald’s face was most satisfying. It was clear that he would not have thought to ask for this much, had he carried through with his original plan. Now, he was torn between pocketing the money and looking for the catch hidden within the offer.

‘There should be enough here to find a place of your own, if you do not already have one,’ Gerry added. ‘Dear Lily and I are eager to begin a private honeymoon, now that I am returned.’

Ronald withdrew his hand. ‘You and Lily and Stewart, you mean.’

And there was the boy again, in the way even when he was not here. ‘We are speaking of you at the moment,’ Gerry reminded him, dragging the conversation back to where it belonged. ‘I suspect it will be very dull for you, once your friends are gone. Unless you wish to spend your future evenings playing Spillikins with us.’

Ronald laughed. ‘No guests and nursery games? Are you going to tell me you had no time for cards in the army?’

‘I am as skilled at them as I am at billiards,’ he admitted. ‘But I do not like them overmuch, since the time I was forced to challenge an acquaintance for cheating at the table.’

‘A rather extreme reaction for what was probably a mistake on your part,’ Ronald said, watching him closely.

‘On the contrary, it was the other fellow’s mistake.’ He smiled, baring his teeth. ‘He didn’t have an opportunity to make another.’

‘And what does this story have to do with anything?’ Ronald asked, impatient.

‘It is merely to inform you of the future of Wiscombe Chase,’ Gerry said. ‘No guests. No cards. No hunting either, for that matter. Nothing but peace and quiet from here onwards.’ He held out the cheque again.

Ronald took it from him, ripped it in half and handed it back to him. ‘Do not insult me, sir.’

Gerry grinned back at him. ‘If you find this insulting, you have much to learn, Ronald. Let me know when you have found a place to settle. We will need the direction so we can forward the mail.’

‘I do not think Papa likes me very much.’

After the captain had left them, Lily had struggled to calm her racing heart. It was not just the touch of her husband’s hands that left her feeling naked and exposed. She thought he’d uncovered everything about her, from the reason for their marriage to her devoted reading of his war exploits. Then Stewart had come into the room and reminded them both that there were some secrets still remaining.

Even though the captain was no longer in sight, her son was staring back down the hall, hoping he’d return. It had been foolish of her to feed the child on tales of the hero of Salamanca. Had she honestly thought that an outpouring of devotion from the boy would result in answering love from the man?

Of course she had. It was different for women. She had not wanted a child, either. At one time, she’d even planned to send him away, never to be spoken of again. But once he’d arrived she could not manage to do it. He was harmless and blameless and he needed her. More importantly, he was blood of her blood, closer to her than her father and brother would ever be. Stewart was the only person in the house, perhaps the only one in the world, who truly loved her without boundary or question.

Now she came forward to take him by the hand, leading him away from the doorway to their favourite place, a bench by the window that was all but hidden by large ferns.

‘Papa does not like you?’ She put her hand in the middle of his back and felt the trembling that was a first indicator of tears. It would be even worse for them both if the captain realised that he had been burdened with what some might call an overly sensitive child. She rubbed his shoulders, soothing him until the tremor passed and he was calm again. ‘I think it is too soon to make such judgements against him,’ she lied. ‘He has been home but a day. You barely know each other.’

‘Before, in the hall, he told me to go away,’ Stewart said.

‘And so you followed him into the conservatory?’ Lily could not help but smile.

‘I did not know he would be here,’ Stewart argued.

‘But he thought you disobeyed him,’ Lily said gently. ‘That might be the reason he seemed angry.’ One of the reasons, at least.

‘He was kissing you.’ Now militant anger was banishing the doubt.

Here was another thing she had not thought to prepare him for. ‘Yes. And he will do so again. At least, I hope he will. I quite like it when the captain kisses me.’ Finally, there was a bit of honesty in the conversation.

‘Do you like it better than when I kiss you?’ Worry was creeping back into the boy’s voice.

‘It is a very different thing when you kiss me. I like your kisses, as well.’ She turned to him, held out her arms and was rewarded with a wet kiss on the cheek. She kissed him back on the top of the head and smiled down at him so he might see nothing had changed between them.

Stewart frowned back, unimpressed. ‘Well, I do not like it when he kisses you. If anyone must go away, it should be him. At least he could stay away from the conservatory. That is our place. He can have the stables. He likes horses. I do not.’

This was another problem that she had not dared mention to the cavalryman. The only time they had tried to put him in the saddle, they’d found Stewart a mare so placid it should have been no more dangerous than riding the parlour sofa. And yet she had dumped him into the first hedge and broken his collarbone. Stewart did not like horses and, as far as anyone could tell, the feeling was mutual.

‘It does not matter if you like horses or not,’ she said, hoping it was true. ‘I suspect he would rather you not ride at all than that you do so simply to hunt foxes. He seemed most disapproving of that activity at dinner last night.’

The boy brightened a little.

‘And we cannot send Captain Wiscombe away,’ she added. ‘This is his house and he is quite eager to stay in it, after so long away.’ But her husband was far less eager to share the house with the child at her side. How could she ever explain it to Stewart in a way that did not break his heart?

She gave him an encouraging smile. ‘But for now, you must do your best to be patient with the captain. I am afraid he does not know very much about the likes and dislikes of little boys.’

Stewart frowned. ‘He should know more than you. He used to be one.’

That was true enough. But it did not sound as though his childhood had been a happy one. ‘When he was young, things were very different. The captain’s father was very strict and sent him off to school at a very young age. He was not allowed home, even for holidays.’

‘But he would not do that to me, would he?’ he asked in a frightened whisper. By the look on Stewart’s face, he could not imagine a worse fate than the one that might very well be his immediate future.

‘Of course not.’ Perhaps she was not a North. No member of family had ever been as unconvincing a liar as she was now.

Despite her efforts to hide it, Stewart had glimpsed the truth. ‘But if he wanted to, you would not let him,’ he said and stared up at her, desperate for reassurance.

If her husband insisted, what choice would she have but to obey? How would she survive when he was gone? What meaning would life have if she regained the love and trust of her husband by sacrificing the child who had loved her without question from his first breath?

‘Of course not.’ She kissed him on the top of the head so that he could not see the fear in her eyes. ‘Do not worry about the captain, or anything else. I will take care of him and you.’ She would find a way to make this work. She had to. ‘But for now, do not cling to his heels. Give him time to recover from his travels. I am sure everything will work out for the best.’

She must have grown more convincing with practice. Her son nodded to her and gave her a small smile and another hug.

She smoothed his hair. ‘Now back to the nursery with you. It is almost time for lessons and you do not want to keep Miss Fisher waiting.’

When he had gone, her brother stepped forward from the other side of the fern. ‘Everything will work out for the best?’ He applauded her with a series of slow claps and an ironic smile. ‘A touching performance, Lillian.’

‘It was not a performance,’ she whispered, glancing towards the hall to make sure her son had not heard.

He laughed. ‘It was made up of whole cloth to keep your son from crying.’

She walked across the room to shut the doors so there would be no further interruptions. ‘He is just a little boy. What would you have me do?’

‘You could tell him that his position here is even more precarious than yours.’

‘What good would that do, other than to frighten him?’

‘At least it would be honest. You should have told him the truth from the first. You should not have raised him to idolise a man who is not his father.’

‘When did you become a champion for the truth?’ she snapped.

‘When did you become so good at lying to yourself?’ he countered. ‘You are pretending that it will be possible to resolve the problem of Stewart with time and patience.’

‘Stewart is not the problem,’ she said, closing her eyes so she would not have to see the smile on Ronald’s face.

‘Of course not,’ he said, suddenly gentle. ‘Gerry Wiscombe is. If he’d had the decency to die as expected, we would not be in this mess.’

‘You mustn’t say such a thing.’ She opened her eyes again to stare past him, at the door.

‘Do not lie and say you never thought it yourself.’ Ronald moved in front of her so she could not avoid his gaze. ‘Admit it. Life would be easier for Stewart if your husband was dead.’

It would. But she would die herself before she said so. ‘I will not choose between my husband and son. And if you and Father have plans for Captain Wiscombe, you should not be wishing him dead.’

‘We had plans,’ Ronald said, almost too sweetly. ‘But just now, he caught me in the hall, grinned like an idiot and, without so much as blinking, offered me ten thousand pounds for the repairs done on the house. Then he asked me where our future home might be, now that we would no longer be able to entertain here.’

‘Did you take the money?’ she said, hoping that, just once, her brother would do the sensible thing and admit defeat.

‘Of course not. We can make ten times that if we stay here. But how did he know to bribe me? Did you tell him of my plans?’

She said nothing, for it was clear he knew the answer.

Her brother nodded, as if he had expected her silence. ‘It is clear that we cannot trust you to be loyal to your family, even though it is in your best interest. So, dear sister, I will make it easier for you.’ There was something dangerous in his offer of help, like the warning hiss of a snake before the strike.

‘What do you mean to do?’

He smiled again, and waved a warning finger. ‘If I tell you, Lillian, you will pass the information on to Gerry, just as you did before. You’ve done enough tattling, so I must give you a reason to stop. If you offer him so much as a word of warning that something is afoot, I will track down young Stewart and tell him everything that you have not.’

‘You would not dare.’ But, of course he would. After a lifetime watching her brother take advantage of others, there was not a doubt in her mind that he would hurt a child to further his ends.

‘If you wish to test me, talk to your husband. Ask the heroic Captain Wiscombe to protect the boy from me and see what that gains you. He cannot stand the sight of the child. He might even applaud my effort to clarify Stewart’s position here.’

‘He would never be so cruel,’ she said.

‘Put him ahead of your family again and we shall see. Or do what you should have done from the first. Hold your tongue and trust that we will take care of you, just as we always have.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.