Housemaid Heiress
Elizabeth Beacon

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter One

‘You will have to marry Granby now,’ Lady Winforde observed with undisguised satisfaction.

‘I’d sooner wed the boot boy!’

‘Your low tastes are irrelevant.’ Lady Winforde contemplated the bedraggled figure in front of her with distaste, and Thea forced herself to meet those cold, colourless eyes as if it cost her no effort at all. ‘It’s not as if you have any claim to breeding, and my son will be taking a step down by marrying the granddaughter of a foundling.’

‘Your son is a gambler and a drunkard. No female with any regard for her comfort or sanity would willingly marry him, whatever her birth.’

‘Ah, but such a lady would not be shut in a gentleman’s bedchamber all night in the first place. How on earth you expect me to believe a door could stick at night and open freely in the morning I shall never know, but you have no choice but to accept my son’s offer. The poor boy thinks himself very hard done by I fear, having been trapped in such a distasteful fashion by a designing female with no pretensions to rank.’

‘No doubt unfettered access to my grandfather’s fortune will help him endure.’

‘How well you understand the matter. Now it’s high time you retired to your room to contemplate your undeserved good fortune.’

‘If you recall, Lady Winforde, my room is being refurbished. How unfortunate that such a catastrophic flood should force me to take up residence in the attics at such a time,’ Thea said drily.

‘Yes, the roof on that side is sadly neglected.’

‘How convenient.’

‘Oh, no, my dear, highly inconvenient when it puts you so far from my care and guidance, as last night’s escapade amply demonstrates. Never mind, once you are married to Granby you can join him in the master suite quite respectably.’

‘I’d rather share it with the lunatics at Bethlehem Hospital.’

‘Would you, niece? I’m sure that could be arranged, if you persist in showing such stubborn disregard for the conventions.’

‘I am not your niece.’ Thea had steadfastly refused to call the woman aunt from the day she and her repulsive son arrived under Grandfather’s much-maligned roof. ‘And my trustees would never believe such shameful lies.’

‘I think you might be surprised. Refusing such an honourable offer of matrimony, after being discovered in my son’s bedroom in such a state of disarray, will hardly convince them of your sanity. Especially when such impeccable witnesses discovered you in that dreadfully compromising situation.’

‘And just how were the vicar and his wife so conveniently to hand?’

‘What more natural in a worried aunt than to scour the countryside for her missing niece? It was hardly to be wondered at that a man of the cloth should rush to my side to offer support and succour at such a time.’

‘And his wife’s curiosity was the icing on the cake I suppose?’

‘What strange turns of phrase you possess, a legacy of your peculiar upbringing one can only suppose.’

‘There was nothing wrong with my upbringing,’ Thea was goaded into protesting and one of Lady Winforde’s plucked eyebrows rose incredulously as she let a smile fleetingly touch her thin lips.

Drat, she had let the scheming witch win another bout, and once upon a time she had thought herself so very clever.

‘Perhaps not for the granddaughter of a cit, but you are ill prepared to follow in my footsteps,’ her ladyship informed Thea haughtily. ‘Still, we must make the best of the inevitable. You will return to your room and compose yourself for your wedding to my son. A bride must prepare for such a solemn occasion.’

Thea was marched back to captivity by one of the thuggish servants the Winfordes had brought in when Grandfather was hardly cold in his grave. Somehow she must lull them into thinking her defeated; in the hope they would relax and give her a chance to escape.

Not that she feared another visit from Granby; even last night he did no more than half-heartedly molest her, until her virulent, and fluently expressed, disgust sent him back to his beloved brandy bottle. What an idiot she had been not to take the unscrupulous rogues seriously from the outset, when she might have stood a better chance of confounding them.

Thea plumped down on the narrow bed that was the only furniture in her dreary attic, apart from a broken joint stool. Tempting though it was to fall into a despairing stupor after such a night, she refused to give in. Somehow she would find a way out of this trap, even if it killed her. At least that would frustrate the conniving rogues after her fortune!

‘Confound it, Nick, I should have left you in Southampton,’ Major Marcus Ashfield, the new Lord Strensham, announced as he regarded his gaunt companion through narrowed eyes.

Even in the fading light of a March afternoon, he could see the stark pallor of his cousin’s thin face, and bitterly reproached himself for listening to the idiot’s demands to get him away from the sawbones.

‘Damn it, man, I should have let them take your arm off after all.’

‘Not losing my arm,’ his cousin mumbled, ‘nothing wrong with it.’

‘Only a festering slash from a French sabre to add to the bullet wound in your shoulder, and when did you study medicine?’

‘Know more about it than that bumbling fool,’ Captain the Honourable Nicholas Prestbury muttered darkly.

Marcus heard the slurring in his voice and noted his pigheaded relative’s feeble attempts to pretend he wasn’t about to fall out of his saddle. Evidently they could go no further today, but in the midst of this wilderness, where on earth could they safely stop?

‘Luckily even I know enough to tell you can go no further.’

‘Ride all night if I have to—never gave in when we marched over the Pyrenees.’

‘Maybe not, but you lacked two wounds and a fever to slow you down then.’

‘Won’t slow me down now.’

‘Stow it, you ass, of course they will.’

‘Sweep!’

‘Hyde Park Soldier!’

‘Always were an idiot,’ Nick muttered and finally lost the battle with his reeling senses.

Marcus was only just in time to steady his cousin’s slumped body and calm his spooked horse.

‘Thank heaven you have some manners, Hercules, old fellow,’ he murmured as his own horse stilled, obedient to the pressure of his rider’s legs, which was all Marcus could currently spare to control him.

The spirited bay snorted his disapproval of all that was going on around him, but fortunately made no attempt to gallop off when Marcus slid out of his saddle, while at the same time somehow keeping Nick in his until he could secure him.

‘We’re in the devil of a fix, old man,’ he informed himself as much as his long-time mount.

He finally managed to calm both horses to the extent where Nick’s precious black stallion was as quiet as he could ever be accused of being. Hercules nuzzled his owner’s shoulder as if to remind him there were more important things to think about than wayward cavalry officers and their restless mounts, such as oats and water, probably in that order.

Yet the woods were thick on either side of the track and it was at least a couple of miles since they had passed a rundown wayside tavern Marcus suspected must be the haunt of thieves, mainly because no one else would bother to go there. Maybe he should have insisted they stay for the night nevertheless, but he doubted his ability to guard his cousin and their horses so they could leave it again come morning. All he could do now was tie Nick to his saddle—as they sometimes had the lesser wounded on the march—and hope to find some sort of makeshift shelter for the coming night.

It was darker here than it would be in the open, and from the look of the overcast sky there would be no kindly moon to mark their path later. Marcus was contemplating making camp on the edge of the road when at last he caught a slight whiff of woodsmoke on the chill air. Used to moving in hostile territory, he was still too cautious to rush toward its source. This might not be Spain or France where hostile armies sometimes camped within yards of one another, but he wasn’t fool enough to think everyone in England a bluff John Bull, waiting to welcome the Marquis of Druro’s officers with unalloyed delight.

Cursing their vulnerability, he kept the horses as quiet as he could and listened intently. Nothing but the normal sounds of nature, which did little to help or hinder his attempts to plumb the darkness. Deciding all he could do was proceed with caution, he led the horses forward as quietly as possible. Of course it could be charcoal burners, but he was unsure they would be any better off with them than the rum company he might have found at the wayside inn. At last the scent led him down a ride and deeper into the forest, and he had no choice now but to follow it, for Nick was beginning to groan in his uneasy stupor and Marcus was desperate.

‘Idiot,’ he murmured, wishing now he had never listened to his cousin’s pleas not to be left behind in France for the surgeons to practise on when Marcus was forced to sell out and come home himself.

He was so busy wondering if there was a way to safeguard Nick’s limb from the knife that he almost missed the hut. Even in the twilight he could see how humble it was, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, so he rapped on the warped door. After a couple of very long minutes he grew impatient with waiting and called out.

‘We are benighted travellers and mean you no harm.’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the still clearing, but he was certain someone was inside pretending not to be and felt so thoroughly exasperated he didn’t much care if he frightened them. ‘Confound it, we need help!’

The householder seemed to consider his less than humble demands for shelter. ‘We ain’t got nothin’, go away!’ an anxious voice finally quavered, as if its owner was on the edge of panic.

‘Just open the door, child,’ he ordered more softly and waited with what little patience he could now summon.

Still the door stayed stubbornly closed and he finally had enough of standing outside like some frustrated lover pleading for admittance to his lady’s bower. Another groan from the direction of the now-tethered horses made him barge the warped barrier out of his way and force himself on the squatters, who must be the only ones desperate enough to want such a tumbledown shack in the first place.

‘I did say we needed succour,’ he said sharply as he stood on the threshold and surveyed the mean space within.

‘An’ I told yer we ’ad nowt,’ a surly voice mumbled in the darkness.

Instinct warned him to expect an attack of some sort, and he hastily raised his arm to take the blow from a bolt of wood instead of letting it hammer down on his head. Marcus shot out his hand to pin a slim wrist with merciless fingers until the improvised club fell to the floor and he forced his attacker’s arm up his back.

‘Ouch! You brute!’ the supposed child squeaked and he nearly let the girl go as he finally realised he had a slender and decidedly feminine body clamped against his own and not that of a scrubby youth after all.

‘Fortunately for you, ma’am, you are quite out in that assumption. Now shall we begin again?’

‘That fib would be a sight more convincing if you was to let me go.’

‘I may not be the villain you were anticipating, but neither am I a complete flat, my girl. So, do you promise to behave?’

‘Mumchance when you’m twice as big as me, your lordship.’

‘Never mind obfuscation, wench, promise not to attack again and I’ll let you go.’

‘I promise,’ she spat and the fury in her voice reassured him she meant to honour her word, as she was so furious about giving it.

Cautiously they stood like disengaged duellists, trying to assess their new positions in virtual darkness.

‘This is ridiculous, you must have the means to produce a light of some sort to have lit a fire in the first place.’

‘And wasn’t that a big mistake?’ the girl mumbled irritably as she fumbled about in the darkness to find the dark lantern that should have made him even more suspicious of her.

While it would have been a gross exaggeration to say the hut was flooded with light, the glow of a single tallow candle revealed the grim details.

‘There’s nothing here,’ Marcus exclaimed in disappointment, visions of getting Nick settled comfortably out of the cold and damp of an English spring vanishing like his breath on the chill air.

‘Told yer,’ the girl told him gleefully, arms folded across her skinny body as she nodded her triumph.

‘Which means you have naught either,’ he pointed out with excusable exasperation.

‘True,’ she acknowledged cheerfully enough and nodded in the direction from which he had come. ‘Road’s that way.’

‘I have no intention of dragging a wounded man any further along it tonight, so either you tolerate us for the night or leave yourself.’

‘I was here first,’ she said sulkily, the wind apparently taken out of her sails by the thought of a night in the open.

‘And ordinarily I should gallantly leave you to your solitude. However I have more important things to worry about tonight than a sullen runaway maid without a feather to fly with.’

On the point of impulsively informing the hateful creature that she actually had two pounds and ninepence ha’penny to her name, Thea just managed to keep her tongue between her teeth. Since that was all she had left of the few guineas she had managed to hide from the Winfordes, she had better keep quiet about her available fortune. She bit down on the urge to spark back and eyed the intruder balefully through the gloom.

She should never have given in to temptation to light that fire in the first place. Although she had let it out once her scratch meal was eaten, the damage was done. Still, she could have brought far worse down on herself than an officer in search of a billet for the night. Come to think of it, she could yet if she wasn’t more careful.

‘Am I correct in assuming that the “we” you spoke of was a lie to see off the fainthearted?’ he asked and she shivered.

Nobody would come to her aid if this man proved rather less of a gentleman than he appeared.

‘Maybe,’ she replied cautiously.

‘Either way you are the only person who can help me, so hold that lantern a little higher to guide me to the horses, will you?’ Seeing that she did not move, he made a noise of acute impatience and informed her sharply, ‘You’ll have a man’s life on your conscience before morning if you don’t help.’

‘And who says I’ve such a luxury?’

He sighed and took a shilling from his pocket and held it so it caught the poor light. ‘This does,’ he informed her so wearily that Thea almost dropped her guard and did as he bid her out of fellow feeling.

After three weeks of running and hiding and walking until she could walk no more, she had a lot of sympathy with the weary. Reminding herself she must not drop her guard, she eyed the shiny coin as if it represented nigh-irresistible temptation. It should of course, for heaven alone knew when she would have a chance to earn another one, so she nodded as if coming to a purely mercenary decision and signalled him to follow.

Complete darkness had fallen while they had stood arguing, but as her eyes adjusted to the night she saw a shadow move at the edge of the woods. Nervous of what she could not clearly see, she fought the urge to run back inside the hut and hide in a dusty corner.

‘My horse is wondering where on earth I got off to,’ the soldier’s voice reassured her gruffly.

His presence reassured her more than words and she relaxed a little as she let him lead the way. While she would find it unbearable to be ordered and bullied like a raw recruit in his regiment for long, for now it was oddly appealing.

‘Ah, but he’s a beauty, ain’t he?’ she murmured and reached out a gentle hand to the great horse so patiently awaiting his master.

‘Reluctant though I am to interrupt such a touching scene, more light would help me judge my cousin’s condition better.’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ she murmured as she held the lantern aloft and saw the vibrancy of gold braid and dash that was a Hussar’s uniform, but which now only emphasised the thinness and pallor of the gentleman wearing it.

‘There’s a lean-to round the back of the hut where the charcoal burners kept their beasts,’ she volunteered and would have taken the bay’s reins, if the first soldier had not put out a hand to stop her.

‘Light the way while I lead them.’

Knowing he thought she would ride off with his horse, she flounced along the overgrown track to the hovel, where the few ancient bundles of hay might serve to bed the animals for the night, even if they could hardly eat it. The officer hitched the black’s reins to the sturdiest post he could see and untied the ropes that held his friend in the saddle. Thea forgot her anger at being so mistrusted and hung the lamp on a nail driven in for the purpose.

‘I can manage his feet if you hold his arms,’ she offered, only to step back in awe when he hefted the unconscious man out of the saddle, setting him gently on the nearest pile of hay.

She shook her head in astonishment at such mighty strength united with gentleness. It flew in the face of all her experience and she didn’t want to soften toward his sex, unless some miracle led her to sanctuary. Even then she would probably do well to avoid this abrupt gentleman. Silently she moved to soothe the restless black until he calmed down enough to let her rub him down with a wisp of hay.

‘You have a way with horses,’ the man said, and if he was expecting her to fall at his feet in delight at his compliment, he would be disappointed.

‘I like them,’ she told him, wishing she could hate him.

‘He must be able to tell. I’ve often seen the bad-tempered brute lash out when he has a mind to be awkward.’

‘Shame I can’t be a groom then, ain’t it?’ she replied lightly and went back to reassuring the restless stallion.

‘Yes, it’s a lot safer for a boy to wander about unprotected than a girl.’

‘I don’t need nobody’s protection,’ she lied as he lifted the packs the horses had carried and took out nosebags and a good supply of oats.

‘Soon as we get your friend bedded down we’ll water them,’ she observed. ‘He looks about to wake.’

‘The sooner we get him inside the better. Are you good with people?’

‘Can’t abide ’em.’

He chuckled and she tried not to smile, even if he couldn’t see her.

‘I thought not. Bring my pack along like a good girl, will you?’

She scowled and tried not to show the slightest awe when he hauled his lanky comrade into his arms and bore him as if he weighed little more than a child.

Chapter Two

‘Light the fire again,’ the tall rifleman ordered, when they were inside the hut with the door safely shut behind them.

‘It’ll give us away.’

‘I have a rifle, four pistols, a sword and a cavalry officer’s sabre at my disposal, so I think we can deal with any intruders, don’t you?’

‘I dare say Boney’s too busy to call tonight, so likely we can.’

‘A wench with a sense of humour, how refreshing,’ he said drily and Thea subsided into mutinous sulks once more.

As she reached for the precious kindling she had gathered in case she could not get through the night without the comfort of a fire, she wondered just what the pampered girl of a few months ago would have made of this ridiculous situation. In all likelihood silly Miss Hardy would have thought a dark stranger in rifleman’s green deliciously overwhelming, and fallen headlong in love with him at first sight.

‘Silly clunch,’ she murmured at the very thought.

‘Who is?’

‘Who is what?’

‘I may be a clunch, but I’m not a deaf one.’

‘I meant someone else,’ she said, surprised to find she didn’t want to hurt his feelings after all. ‘A young lady at the last house I was in. She insisted her fire must be lit three hours before she got up every morning, so there was no risk of her delicate little feet getting cold. The maids had to rise early in the winter just to do as she bid us.’

Ashamed of the memory of that unnecessary demand, Thea was glad the subdued light would hide her blush. What an inconsiderate, objectionable female she had been, before the Winfordes took a hand in her education.

‘Cold-hearted bitch,’ he growled, and, if it had not been her true self he was traducing, she might have been warmed by his partisanship.

‘I dare say she’s learnt her lesson now. They say she’s to be wed for the sake of her fortune.’

To her surprise she saw a blush fire his tanned cheeks as the fire caught properly and began to warm the room at last.

‘We need hot water. There’s probably a shaving mug somewhere in my pack if you can find nothing else to boil it in.’

‘Then you find it. I’m not putting my hands in there. They might come out without some fingers.’

His teeth flashed white in the firelight as he grinned at her maidenly refusal to search a soldier’s possessions, and for once did as he was bid.

‘You really are a most unusual female,’ he told her as he handed her the tin mug, almost as if he approved of her rather odd behaviour.

She filled it carefully from the handleless jug she had made sure was full to the brim earlier, so she would not need to venture outside until morning. A precaution she might just as easily have not bothered with, as it happened.

‘Because I like my fingers where they are?’

‘Because you don’t mind saying so.’

‘They always said I had a big mouth,’ she acknowledged with an answering grin, and for a moment felt a peculiar heat run through her like warm lightning as he laughed and his rather sombre personality was temporarily transfigured.

Suddenly she could picture him, light-hearted and welcoming as he bid guests welcome to his home. War and responsibility had made him serious, but she imagined him transformed—galloping that great horse of his through summer meadows just for the joy of it, as he laughed with the lucky female who rode at his side, matching him pace for pace. Putting herself into that very attractive picture, she knew her heart would be in the smile she returned, that earlier jag of fire that had spread through her growing ever sweeter….

‘There, and won’t you look at that!’ she exclaimed with every excuse for annoyance, as a spark flew out of the fire when she poked at it unwarily and scorched her disreputable skirts before she could slap it out. ‘They said I was clumsy as well.’

‘They?’ he asked companionably, glad of any diversion from the task of discovering the state of Nick’s wounds.

‘The folk at the Foundling,’ she improvised, fervently hoping he knew less about such charitable institutions than she did.

‘No doubt very worthy people, but not given to spoiling their charges, perhaps?’

His voice was gentle as he contemplated the privations of an orphan’s life, and Thea felt guilty once more as she considered her very privileged existence as one until just lately. Grandfather had given her everything she asked for, apart from stubbornly insisting she must wed a man with a title. He even specified it in his will, and of course Granby had a title. She shuddered at the very thought and moved closer to the warmth of the fire.

‘They didn’t hurt you, I hope?’

He had evidently seen that shiver. She felt the burden of untruth weigh heavy on her slender shoulders, but too much depended on her staying out of the Winfordes’ clutches to resort to the truth now.

‘No, but I had to run away from my last place.’

‘Considering you find this place preferable, I can only imagine that the alternative must have been dire indeed.’

‘It was,’ she replied and could not hold back another shudder as she recalled the repulsive feel of Granby’s damp hands roughly thrusting at the neck of her gown as she gagged from sheer horror.

‘Not all men are brutes, you know.’

‘No, some try honey before resorting to vinegar,’ she said cynically, recalling some of the titled suitors Grandfather had lured to Hardy House.

Those poor and desperate men had soon put her off becoming Lady This or the Marchioness of That.

‘You have been unfortunate. Somewhere there must be an honest young fellow just waiting to value your youth and wit.’

‘Yes, most of them can’t wait to stone me from any parish that might be burdened with the burying of me, after they let me starve to death within their bounds,’ she said bitterly.

‘With a chance of earning an honest living, you might meet someone.’

‘And, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, now what of this poor man you were supposed to be so concerned about?’

‘Is the water hot yet?’

‘Any hotter and it’ll do him more harm than good.’

‘Hold that light as steady as you can then, while I see what the idiot’s done to himself this time.’

Thea gulped and reminded herself that she was a soldier’s daughter, even if she could hardly remember either of her parents. Her mother had eloped with a handsome subaltern, so perhaps this ridiculous attraction to the military was in her blood. Within five years both her parents were dead and her grandfather insisted she carry his name, then made the best of a bad job.

It took all her flagging courage to do the same now, and she gasped in shock when the warm water finally soaked the poor man’s dressing off, and revealed the angry slash marring the length of his upper arm. She gazed down at the puckered wound and the number of stitches holding it closed, and wondered how the unconscious man could have borne the jarring that riding must have inflicted on his wounds.

‘He should be in bed!’ she exclaimed.

‘If I hadn’t brought him with me, he was threatening to set out alone as soon as my back was turned. He always was stubborn as a mule.’

Thinking of this man’s determination to get his own way by fair means or foul, Thea raised her brows sceptically in the useful gesture she had learnt from her bitter enemy. He flashed her an unrepentant grin, then distracted her from thinking about the leap of her heart that it had caused her by bending down to sniff the wound.

‘According to his long-suffering doctor, if it starts to smell sweet I’m to get him to a sawbones as fast as I can tie him to his horse and force him there. Otherwise the damn fool stands as much chance of keeping his beloved arm as he might if he had had the sense to stay in bed in the first place.’

‘In other words, he’s getting better?’

‘So I concluded, but when he fainted on me tonight I began to think he was as big an idiot as his physician.’

‘And instead he’s just a run-of-the-mill idiot?’

He chuckled. ‘Nothing about Mad Nick is commonplace.’

‘Nevertheless you are very fond of him, I think?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, but Thea had seen his affection for his relative in his actions tonight and perhaps he thought it was too late to pretend to mere duty. ‘We both suffered for our respective mothers’ sins, so I understand him better than most, I suppose.’

‘I don’t see how you could be made to suffer for your mother’s deeds.’ She forced bitterness into her voice by remembering her grandfather and his twin brother, abandoned on the doorstep of the foundling hospital.

‘Oh, we weren’t, at least not in the way you must have been. Anyway, I must get this mess cleaned and rebandaged, so, for the sake of Nick’s sensibilities, perhaps you could water the horses and give him freedom to swear like one of his troopers? Not even he can sleep through that, and you will inhibit him sadly.’

She hesitated, fighting her fear of the dark wood.

‘Take this if it’ll make you feel better,’ he offered, handing her an evil-looking pistol, which she examined as if it might bite. ‘It’s loaded, so just draw this back and pull the trigger when you’re close enough to disable your quarry.’

Thea gulped as she contemplated actually using a gun on her fellow man. Even if Granby was lurking out there in the darkness, she would not be able to shoot him, so she pulled back from it with horror.

‘Couldn’t I scream for you?’

‘It might be too late by the time I find you, but since this is England and black night I dare say you’ll be safe enough.’

‘Yes, I dare say,’ she said, with the oddest feeling of disappointment she had ever suffered in her life because he didn’t think her worth protecting.

‘Well, then, if you would not mind, Miss…We appear to have omitted to introduce ourselves. The gentleman on the floor is Captain Nicholas Prestbury of the 10th Hussars and I am Major Marcus Ashfield of the 95th Rifles and at your service, ma’am,’ he said with a half-mocking bow.

She bobbed him a perfunctory curtsy, copied from those long-suffering maids at Hardy House. ‘Hetty Smith, Major,’ she lied.

‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Smith.’

‘I doubt that, sir.’

‘How did you come to that conclusion, my dear?’ he asked, acute interest suddenly lighting his dark gaze.

‘I ain’t your dear.’

‘Odd how that accent of yours comes and goes, is it not?’ he mused and Thea cursed her own carelessness, even as she wondered how she could explain her lapses.

‘Now then, children, I’m not up to playing referee,’ a weak voice chided from the floor where the sufferer lay.

‘The devil—how long have you been awake?’

‘Long enough, Marco, long enough.’

‘You always had peculiar ideas of entertainment.’

‘I hail from a peculiar family.’

‘And are commonly considered the pinnacle of our eccentricity.’

‘I don’t usually waste time interrogating pretty girls in the middle of the night, so I could argue with that, were I feeling up to it.’

‘No doubt you soon will be, so if you will excuse us, Miss Smith?’

‘You’ll come if I scream?’

‘Trust me,’ he said with a rueful smile that did something to her heartbeat.

Dazed, Thea went out into the night without her usual feeling of dread dogging her every step. She doubted Granby’s thugs would be a match for her tall rifleman and his fearsome artillery, so at least tonight she was unlikely to be captured and forced up the aisle.

Murmuring soft endearments to reassure the nervous black charger, she carefully untied his reins. The stream ran only yards from the back of the hut and she knew Marcus would never have sent her out here if he thought there was the faintest degree of danger, but he was not to know what devils stalked her footsteps.

She caught herself thinking that, if only some of the lords Grandfather lured to Hardy House had been more like him, she might have wed before Granby’s mother realised what an opportunity was going a-begging. Anyway, the Major wasn’t a lord, so there was no earthly reason why he should want to marry her. If she did not wed a titled man, her fortune would be tied up so tightly only her grandchildren would receive more than a pittance.

Now her reputation was so comprehensively ruined, no self-respecting gentleman would marry Miss Alethea Hardy, and she instinctively knew Major Ashfield was one of those. All she could hope for was to stay out of the Winfordes’ reach until her twenty-first birthday, then live in obscurity on her hundred a year. It was so much less than her once-grand expectations that she almost sat down and cried.

By the time she had repeated the process of gently leading a horse to water and letting him drink with Hercules, she was resolved to be on her way as soon as dawn lightened the way.

‘I was beginning to think you a figment of my fevered imagination,’ Nick joked weakly when she crept through the ill-fitting door at last.

‘Funny, I hoped I was having a nightmare,’ she replied, wondering crossly why his darkly romantic looks had no effect on her silly heartbeat.

‘I like your waif, Marcus.’

‘You liked every pretty female you ever set eyes on.’

‘Well, they like me,’ he replied smugly.

Thea chuckled and got a penetrating stare from his cousin that she met with proud contempt, in case he thought her susceptible.

‘Will the Captain be fit to ride tomorrow?’ she asked at last.

‘He wasn’t fit today, but that didn’t stop him.’

‘You’ll be on your way at first light, then?’

Marcus frowned. ‘I shall be, but I hope you’ll stay while I fetch our cousin’s carriage to take him to Rosecombe.’

‘To the Park?’

‘Yes, do you know it?’

‘I saw it on my way,’ she said casually, trying not to sound wistful.

From the road she had caught a glimpse of the beautiful neo-classical mansion through still-bare trees and thought it everything she could never have. Elegance and harmony, she thought now, and the protection of a loving family. These two men were inside that family, and she could not keep a twist of bitterness from her lips.

‘You dislike the aristocracy?’

‘No, I just wish they’d give me a job in one of their grand houses, but no respectable family employs a vagrant maid.’

‘Oddest vagrant I ever set eyes on,’ Nick observed faintly from his makeshift mattress.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go to sleep,’ his loving relative ordered sharply.

‘Don’t see how I can with you gossiping.’

‘I’m going out, so I suggest you recruit your strength. Lydia won’t be best pleased with you as it is, without working yourself into a high fever.’

‘No, the little darling will no doubt give me the scold of my life.’

‘Then get some sleep, instead of fantasising over Cousin Ned’s wife.’

‘Got to be fresh tomorrow to greet the flower of the regiment,’ Nick said irrepressibly and closed his eyes at last.

After a few minutes they heard his breathing deepen and knew he was genuinely asleep at last. Marcus put a finger to his lips and quit the room with a significant nod at his patient.

Did he think she would make a bolt for the open road in the middle of the night then? Thea tried hard not to feel insulted. It seemed that the rifleman’s trust was hard won, and she wanted it for some reason. Which was ridiculous, she decided, stoking the fire from a dwindling reserve of logs before she sat against the wall next to the primitive fireplace.

The rifleman’s bedroll was under his cousin along with his own. Their cloaks lay over him, with Thea’s cherished blanket, but she didn’t expect to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt her or the Major to pass the night in a draughty shed, but their patient was a very different matter. She focused her tired eyes on the pallid oval of his sleeping face. She was supposed to be watching him, not thinking about his arrogant cousin.

Hours later, Thea felt someone shake her gently and came awake, panic stark in her startled face. Gracious! She was leaning confidingly against Marcus Ashfield’s mighty torso. No, she had snuggled into his warmth like a shameless hussy in her lover’s arms. Thea tried to put as much space as possible between them and her hair promptly fell out of the knot held in place by her diminishing supply of hairpins.

‘If you have a particle of sense you’ll hold still, if you don’t want to make me into the rogue you seem determined to cast me as,’ Marcus gritted as if an armful of bedraggled woman fighting sleep represented limitless temptation.

Finally realising her dishevelled state, she flushed and shook her head to try and clear it of the nonsense his coming upon her last night seemed to have stuffed it with, and felt her heavy locks fan out in an untidy cloak that threatened to enmesh them both.

‘Why?’ she managed to whisper at last, nodding at his scandalously positioned arms.

‘For warmth,’ he said abruptly and her heart sank ridiculously.

‘Of course,’ she mumbled and rubbed sleepy eyes before stretching against his muscular chest, feeling a terrible temptation to rub up against him like a luxuriating cat.

‘I could not have you catch your death, Miss Smith.’

‘No, I would be for ever on your conscience, I suppose.’

‘I think you could be anyway,’ he replied with a sombre look and Thea’s heart plummeted; she didn’t want to be numbered among an officer’s obligations, especially not his.

‘I’m an independent woman,’ she informed him crossly and felt him chuckle through the warm connection of their still-entwined bodies.

‘You’re a penniless runaway,’ he corrected and the growing daylight revealed that his grey eyes were shot through with hot silver sparks she should definitely be wary of, since excitement and curiosity were coursing through her in the most immodest fashion.

‘I still have my pride,’ she assured him crossly.

‘Does it keep you warm at night?’ he asked huskily and the feel of his superbly fit body lying so close said the rest for him.

He had kept her warm all through the night, and for the first time in her life she felt the traitorous stir of passions she did not understand, and could not hope to resist if she spent much longer in his arms.

‘No, but it ain’t so likely to land me back at the foundling’s in nine months’ time.’

‘I told you I honour my obligations, I believe,’ he informed her rather coldly and in turn shook his head as if to clear it of incendiary thoughts. ‘I must apologise if I have behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion toward you, Miss Smith. I promise I am not a vile seducer.’

No, a wayward voice informed her, he would probably prove all too pleasant a one. She tried to rein in scandalous images of being locked in his strong arms, and learning things a proper young lady would never picture. Her baser self told her that if she was to lose her virtue, how much better to do so to a virile and attractive man like Marcus Ashfield rather than Granby. She shuddered at the memory of the night she spent in the dissolute baronet’s bedchamber, and tried not to protest when Marcus misinterpreted her revulsion and let her go, as if he had just unwarily touched a burning brand.

‘Will you stay?’ he asked abruptly.

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘I should reach Rosecombe by breakfast time, if I set off now. Unless yon lunatic wakes up and insists on coming too.’

The subject of lunatics reminded her what she was running from, and panic threatened, heedless of the injured man only feet away. Fighting it cost her a bruised lip as she bit down on her full lower one, but she managed it and looked up into his questioning eyes.

‘Please hurry,’ she pleaded in an urgent whisper she hoped would not wake the sleeping Hussar.

‘Don’t worry, I will, and you can keep my armoury.’

‘Take it, I will stand less chance of shooting myself.’

‘Nick could shoot the pip out of an ace left-handed even in his current state. If anyone sinister appears, wake him up and he will shoot for you. I would not leave you if I thought you were in danger. Oh, and if he decides to importune you with unwanted attentions as well, just squeeze his bad arm.’

She managed a weak smile, and watched him perform an abbreviated toilette by running his fingers through rebelliously curling dark hair and rubbing a rueful hand over his unshaven chin. Then, with a last look and a quick gesture of farewell, he left the hut with his boots in one hand and his rifle in the other.

The place seemed cold and empty as she listened to the faint noise he made resuming his boots and the jingle of Hercules’s tack and the indistinct murmur of a deep masculine voice reassuring both horses as he mounted, then rode away. Never had a room felt so silent and bereft as this ramshackle shed, despite the man sleeping in the dying light of the fire and the strengthening daylight round the ill-fitting door. Thea reminded herself of the realities of her new life and sat down to wait in the cold dawn for the injured man to need her, or his rescuers to come.

Chapter Three

Marcus rode away from the tumbledown hut with contrary feelings. Of course it was normal for a man waking up to a delicious armful of slenderly curved woman to be aroused by her. Just because the wench had stirred his baser instincts, he did not have to act on them. After all, he was a gentleman—no, he was a nobleman now, and one did not always preclude the other.

His grandfather’s death, only ten days after that of his direct heir, had brought the new Viscount Strensham home to try to sort out the havoc his father’s wild spending had wrought. Julius Ashfield must be turning in his grave now that the son he had despised had inherited the title he had coveted so long for himself. Although, according to the family lawyer, his father had made damn sure only crushing debt accompanied the family honours—maybe he was having the last laugh after all.

There was one clear solution, and he would take it if there was truly nothing left, but a man who was contemplating matrimony to the richest woman he could cozen into becoming his viscountess had no business seducing the first attractive female to fall into his arms. He considered Miss Hetty Smith with a reminiscent smile. No doubt the fiery little creature would read him his fortune if he offered to set her up as his wife in watercolour, and he couldn’t afford her even if she surprised him and said yes.

A picture of her, flushed with sleep and delightfully ruffled, rose in his mind’s eye. With his attention wandering from his quest, it was just as well that Hercules had realised comfortable stables lay close as they neared Sir Edward Darraine’s country home. She had looked enchanting with that heavy mass of tumbling nut-brown curls falling about her slender shoulders and down her back, Marcus remembered with a wolfish glint in his eyes. Yet the sleepy mix of puzzlement and heat in her blue-green eyes indicated she was an innocent, in that if nothing else.

He reflected on the presence of his untouched purse in his pocket and decided he did her dishonour. She was certainly no thief, nor willing to earn her bread on her back. The grim truth was that she would starve without recourse to one of those undesirable occupations, and he found the idea of her being forced into either repulsive.

It went against his baser instincts, but he must provide her with an escape from poverty if he was not to exploit her vulnerability to get her into his bed. Shocked by the potent drag of desire at the thought of having her under him, he knew he must reject such a venal notion out of hand. If either of them was to come out of this with any self-respect, the less he saw of her, the better for both of them.

A very resolute Major Ashfield rode into Ned Darraine’s stable-yard ten minutes later and issued a set of precise orders to the staff, who found themselves running to obey before they questioned his right to hand them out as if he was with his old brigade.

‘Marcus, good to see you, old man!’ The master of the house greeted him as if they had parted yesterday, instead of over a year ago when Ned had inherited his own title under very different circumstances.

‘Same goes for you, Ned, but where’s Lyddie when I need her?’

‘Getting dressed of course. Where else would she be at this unearthly hour of the morning?’

‘In the old days she would have been up and about for hours. You have become a fine pair of slug-a-beds since you came home.’

Ned just smiled an extremely smug smile. ‘One day you’ll understand,’ he assured his cousin, and the memory of where he had awoken himself drove all desire to tease from Marcus’s mind.

‘I need you too,’ he insisted instead and Ned knew he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t need it.

A plan was taking shape in Marcus’s mind for rescuing both his charges, so he had better get on with it before his baser self gave in to temptation.

Luckily it took less than half an hour for the Darraines’ travelling carriage to be fitted out with quantities of cushions, an ominous-looking box from Lady Lydia Darraine’s stillroom and the noble lady herself.

‘Marcus will come with me,’ she told her husband, who meekly ordered a groom to lead the second-best hunter in his stable for the Major to ride back.

‘Ned hates being cooped up in a coach, but now you can tell me just what you have been up to,’ her ladyship informed him. ‘And don’t leave anything out.’

Marcus left a considerable amount out; after all, he needed Lydia’s sympathy for his waif, not her abiding mistrust.

‘You ordered the poor little thing out into the dark to water your horses, after forcing your way into her refuge and terrifying her half to death? Marcus, how could you?’

‘Nick was faint and there was nothing but a disreputable hedge-tavern for miles.’

‘If you had had a woman with you, things would have been so much easier on the girl.’

‘No, they wouldn’t, Lyddie. You know very well women can play up like the very devil if they scent a rival.’

‘I didn’t mean one of those blowsy creatures who used to shamelessly chase you and Nick in Spain. A lady of quality would have put the girl at ease, and made sure you were the one fumbling about in the darkness, attending to two great horses.’

‘Such a lady would have been compromised the moment we set out from Southampton,’ he pointed out helpfully, or so he thought.

‘I was speaking hypothetically.’

‘Then please don’t, it confuses me.’

‘Doubtless your waif is a runaway, and I will have some unprincipled employer turning up on my doorstep and demanding her return if I take her in. Anyway, how would I convince Ned she will not try to run off with the silver, or, even worse, one of his precious horses?’

‘I can’t argue with the first. The wench admitted she ran from her last place because of some man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She also let out that she was raised in a foundling hospital.’

‘Poor thing. They raise those unfortunate children to be deeply ashamed of their beginnings. It made me cross whenever I visited one of the places with Mama to take clothes and books. I knew they would strip any ornament off the clothes and sell the books to buy improving tracts.’

‘Surely not all of them are so austere?’

‘You should try visiting one, but that’s beside the point. We must do something about the poor girl if she truly is respectable. You can put your mind to finding some practical way to reward her for looking after Nick, presuming he and his kit are there when you get back.’

‘They will be,’ he said confidently and in that at least he was right.

By the time they got to the clearing, Lady Lydia had come to a decision. After insisting two strong ex-army officers were quite sufficient to heft Captain Prestbury out of his hut, she ordered the grooms to stay and protect the coach from marauding villains.

Sweeping into the dilapidated hut, she took a comprehensive look around and sniffed loudly. Thea almost flew to the defence of her makeshift home for the last two days, but she was eager to escape it and kept quiet. One look at this stunningly beautiful golden-haired creature, dressed in the very latest kick of fashion, had made her feel more like a beggar-maid than usual. Watching the Captain being carried out by Major Ashfield, and his cousin, at least she could be sure he was safe. It was high time she put as much distance as possible between herself and the acute major’s family.

She hesitated too long, cravenly fearing what lay ahead and not wanting to leave behind the first sense of security she had experienced in months. Trying to melt into the shadows and slide out of the door while her ladyship was preoccupied with gathering Nick’s possessions, she cannoned into a familiar broad chest.

‘And just where do you think you’re going?’ Major Ashfield demanded sternly, putting out a hand to stop her bouncing backwards into Lady Lydia.

She swung round to stare at him with pleading eyes, hoping he would let her slip off into the woods.

‘Yes, you cannot just leave, my dear!’ the beauty added in the mellow contralto voice that had almost made Thea dislike her—she was so perfectly everything her various governesses always insisted she was not. ‘You have cared for poor Nick, after all.’

‘I did nothing more than keep the fire burning, watch his sleep and give him water whenever he wanted it,’ Thea protested.

‘Something he will thank you for himself when he is feeling better, but won’t you speak to me in private, my dear?’

Thea hesitated, unsure that a lady could have much to say to a homeless nobody. At last the mixture of her ladyship’s pleading smile and imperious manner disarmed Thea into staying when Major Ashfield went to stop Nick’s black stallion kicking down his makeshift stable.

‘Don’t worry,’ her ladyship told her airily, when Thea protested about the waiting carriage and her ladyship’s entourage, ‘they can look after themselves for five minutes.’

‘I’m sure they can, my lady,’ she agreed, trying to hide a smile at the idea of three stalwart gentlemen who had held his Majesty’s commission in crack regiments being unable to organise a simple expedition without this vital female’s assistance.

‘Although I probably shouldn’t leave them for ten, so let’s get to more important matters. I am fond of both my husband’s cousins, and you rendered them a service I want to thank you for.’

‘When I realised they were real gentlemen, I was glad of the company, my lady. It’s very lonely here after dark. I was too scared to sleep the first night.’

‘You couldn’t induce me to stay here half an hour in the dark for a handsome bet, let alone a whole night, but are you hard working and honest, Hetty? Marcus says you were brought up a foundling, so you must be, if their teachings have any effect at all.’

‘I’m as honest as I dare to be, my lady.’

Lady Lydia shot her a penetrating look, but seemed convinced by Thea’s steady gaze.

‘If you truly do not mind hard work, my third housemaid has left to look after her little brothers and sisters now her poor mother has died. You can have a month’s trial in the post, if you care to risk not suiting me?’

‘I wish for nothing so much as a roof over my head and a place in the world, my lady.’

‘Even such a very humble one? You speak well and seem used to better things.’

‘I shall hardly find them lurking in woods or being moved on by the constables in every village where I dare show my face.’

‘True, then you will accept my offer?’

‘Gladly, Lady Lydia, and I promise you will never regret your kindness in making it to one in great need.’

‘Your hard work will be thanks enough for me. Follow this road north for about six miles, then cross Rosecombe Common. The village edges on to it and the first cottage on the green belongs to my husband’s old nurse. She will happily take you in when I explain what you have done for Nick. Then come to the Park tomorrow to see if you might suit. It will sit better if the other servants think you a connection of hers.’

‘You are very considerate, Lady Lydia.’

‘See if you still think so in a few months’ time, when the Park is full of guests and you have to tramp up and down the stairs half a dozen times an hour. Now we must say goodbye, Hetty, and there must be no familiarity between us in future, if you wish to be accepted by my household.’

‘Certainly not, my lady,’ Thea said, managing to look shocked in the style of all the best servants she had ever come across, who considered such encroachments a cardinal sin on both sides.

‘Although I might give in to curiosity when we are alone,’ her ladyship joked, as Thea resolved to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The walk in broad daylight, over ground where her pursuers could have easily caught her, had been an experience Thea never cared to dwell on afterwards, but it had passed without incident. Maybe the Winfordes had given up, or thought she could not have got so far from her home in Devon alone. Once they might have been right, but fear and loathing had spurred her to self-reliance. Grandfather would hardly have believed his indulged granddaughter could change so much, so little wonder if the Winfordes thought her so feeble.

Thea presented herself at the back door of the great house at Rosecombe the next morning, dressed in a print gown she and Nurse Turner had spent the previous evening taking in. Having subjected her to a grilling that would have done justice to Bow Street, the housekeeper conducted her to my lady’s sitting room, so she could interrogate her as well.

‘Any relative of Nanny Turner’s is worthy of a trial,’ Lady Lydia declared at last, ‘but make sure she is trained all over again, Meldon. You know how particular I am about having things done my way.’

‘Of course, my lady.’

‘The usual wage, and find her something decent to wear,’ her ladyship concluded and they curtsied and silently left the room.

‘The head housemaid will send down your new clothes, and you will be expected at six o’clock sharp tomorrow, ready for work.’

‘Yes, Mrs Meldon. Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Thank me by doing your duty and learning our ways quickly.’

‘I always do my best, ma’am.’

The dignified woman just sniffed in the proscribed style, and Thea went out of the side door with a lighter heart. She managed to walk down the path that led to the village without dancing a jig, but it was a close-run thing. Maybe she would evade the Winfordes for the five more months she needed after all. Even if she had to live on very little a year after she came of age, at least it would be her choice.

‘I take it your mission was successful?’ a deep voice she wished she could forget asked as she rounded the corner that would take her into the Park.

‘Major, you startled me.’

‘Miss Smith, I could hardly bid you farewell in front of your future colleagues or the lady of the house, now could I?’

He was going, then? A traitorous voice within told her that would take the shine off her new life quicker than anything, but she silenced it and faced him with composure.

‘You should not be talking to me, sir. I could lose my place.’

‘Since I have no intention of doing you such a backhand turn, will you walk with me?’

‘Aye, sir,’ she could not resist saying, even knowing she was courting a danger that had nothing to do with her enemies for once.

It was two miles to the village and she was glad of company. She tried to believe any would have done and failed miserably. This morning he was fresh shaven and his dark mane subdued to strict military order, and he looked even more handsome than he had done dishevelled and weary that first night.

I spent the night with this man, she mused, a wry smile quirking her lips at the very thought. If the starchy housekeeper ever found out, Thea would be out the back door faster than Mrs Meldon could say ‘trollop.’

‘Do you think you will suit, Miss Smith?’

‘I’m sure of it, desperation is a fine teacher.’

‘Oblige me by not abusing Lydia’s trust. I didn’t finagle this place for you so you could run off with the family silver.’

‘I thought it was Lady Lydia’s idea to offer me a job?’

‘So did she. The only way to handle her ladyship is to let her have the ordering of everything. Ned always does, so long as it suits him. I learnt my strategy from a master, which is something else you would do well to remember. My cousin is very far from being the slow-top he often does his best to appear.’

‘Why should I take advantage of either?’ she protested hotly, stung by his assumption that she would abuse the trust of people who had taken in a stormy petrel.

‘Who knows, Miss Smith? I certainly do not. That is a conveniently common name, by the way.’

‘Only when it’s not yours, Major.’

‘You are either a steadfast liar or exactly what you seem, and at the moment I can’t quite make up my mind which.’

‘Then put me out of your mind. You did your duty and provided a sanctuary that lets me keep my honour. Any obligation is satisfied, and I do not intend to lose a place where I have no need to fight off my master.’

‘Ned hasn’t noted another female’s existence since he met Lydia.’

His voice was warm as he spoke of the lovely Lady Lydia and his guarded eyes softened. Thea wondered with a fierce pang of jealousy if he was in love with his cousin’s wife. Not that it mattered of course, he would never feel more than fleeting desire for humble Miss Smith, and heaven forbid that he should discover her real identity. Then she would see his clear grey eyes cloud with distaste and his firm mouth straighten in revulsion. She would rather face Lady Winforde than that particular scenario.

‘And I would be an idiot to endanger such a place for a life crime.’

‘Yet I can’t help but be struck by the fact that you speak very much better than your peers, and express yourself in surprisingly sophisticated language. Who are you really, Miss Smith?’

She was a fool, she silently decided, and tried hard to pretend he had not shaken her composure. She could not seem to draw back behind a mask of humble ignorance when she was with him, which meant she cared what he thought. Nonsense of course, they could not mean anything to one another.

‘I am nobody,’ she replied bleakly.

‘At some stage you must have been somebody, to acquire such a vocabulary.’

‘I might have thought I was, but I was mistaken,’ she admitted, suddenly tempted to pour out the whole unsavoury story after all. ‘My first mistress was a good woman, who wanted her servants to read and write, however humble their origins,’ she improvised hastily instead. ‘She taught me to read fluently when her eyesight began to fail.’

As lies went, it sounded convincing, she thought miserably, and tried to believe it under the acute scrutiny of Major Ashfield’s steady grey eyes.

‘And when she died you went back to domestic service?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are your hands those of a lady who has recently suffered a reverse?’

He took those offending hands in his and she jumped as a lightning beat of responsive heat shot through her at his touch. Hoping he would take it for a flinch of revulsion, she stared numbly at her hands cupped in his.

‘I take care of myself,’ she offered hopefully.

‘Without noticeable success.’

‘In this case I seem to have done better.’

‘So you do, but I suspect you were a ladies’ maid in this former life, and this role will be a comedown,’ he finally concluded.

Thea had to bite back a sigh of relief. ‘I shall learn to bear it,’ she said truthfully. ‘Destitution is a fine teacher.’

His grip on her slender hands gentled, some of the feelings she longed to inspire in him lighting his gaze, or so it seemed. ‘I’m glad Lyddie saved you from starving or selling yourself even so.’

‘I would starve,’ she breathed.

‘You would be surprised what a person can be driven to, when there is no alternative,’ Marcus replied bitterly and dropped her hand to step away.

‘I probably wouldn’t, you know.’

‘But you aren’t driven by the need of others,’ he murmured, almost as if he was reminding himself of some significant factor she knew nothing of.

‘No, luckily I only have my own to consider.’

Unless she could describe herself as driven by the Winfordes’ greed, and she refused to do so.

‘And as you are no spoilt miss, accustomed only to eating sugarplums and reading gothic novels, I suppose you will do well enough here.’

‘I shall,’ she agreed serenely enough.

If she had been such an idle damsel, she never would be again. She didn’t regret her uselessness, but mourned her blackened reputation. If not for that, she would have faced her major as someone more equal. She might even have told him the truth, which would have been folly of the finest order.

‘Once I thought I could order the world at my own convenience,’ he continued absently, as if he was thinking out loud. ‘And rapidly discovered the error of my ways when I joined the army. Now my father and grandfather have made me a pawn in their game. God knows they have been playing it all my life, and I thought Grandfather would win. He delighted in conundrums and his treasure hunts were famous all over Gloucestershire at one time. Playing games where you do not know the rules can be the very devil, Miss Smith.’

‘Perhaps we are all pawns in a much larger one?’

‘Maybe, but now I must go and perform the new role set out for me. Just as tomorrow you take up yours.’

‘And you consider my lot the easier of the two?’

‘You are too perceptive by far, but I would rather say it is the simpler. I have seen too much of hardship lately to dismiss yours as easy, and I shall adapt. Here we are at the crossroads already. Even you can hardly come to any harm between here and Nurse Turner’s cottage, so we will say goodbye. Being seen walking with me would do your reputation no good.’

Thea felt a bitter smile tug at her lips, but managed to banish it. He had dismissed her with one shrug of his mighty shoulders. Instead of learning to love him, she could just as easily hate a man who could so casually say his goodbyes to her.

Chapter Four

‘Goodbye, then, Major, and thank you for my new post. I did little enough to earn it.’

‘Goodbye, Hetty, and thank you. Would that I were a different man.’

‘Should you not say if I were not so humble, or so poor?’ she challenged, and let out a great shush of breath when she was clipped into a powerful embrace and kissed ruthlessly.

‘Say rather if I were a better, more worthy man,’ he told her in a dangerous undertone and despite all his warnings that they might be seen, he obviously enjoyed the experience and promptly did it again.

Now she knew why she had never responded to the halfhearted overtures of Grandfather’s fortune hunters, she decided hazily, and if she had a shudder to spare it might go on Granby’s revolting embrace. As it was, she was too consumed by the explosion of heat that seemed to course back and forward between their greedy mouths. Of course she could not possibly have felt such intimacy with another man, she decided dazedly. He was the one designed to unlock the passionate nature she hadn’t known she had until that morning in the hut, and she was more than half inclined to wish it imprisoned again. This would come to nothing, despite the heated magic that bound her to him as if for life itself.

If she had not loved its presence so deeply, she might have bitten his sensual mouth for awakening her to such need, such endless, unmet need, when she might easily have gone through life never knowing what passion was. He nibbled a line of infinitely gentle bites along her lower lip, then smoothed them away with his tongue, running it along her soft damp skin as if he loved the taste of her.

She whimpered, and a stern part of her longed to think it was in protest against what he was doing, but what she really wanted was more; more of him; more of his kisses, just simply more. She moaned her approval as he once more deepened his kiss and this time opened his wicked, wonderful mouth on hers and probed her velvet warmth with his tongue. All the steel seeped out of her bones and she arched towards him ever more closely, binding her soft curves to hard muscles and strength without any menace but the one she wanted.

For all her lofty resolutions that she would stay untouched for a lifetime in memory of a man who would soon forget her, she suddenly knew that she was wrong. To be loved and left by Major Ashfield of the 95th Rifles would warm those stark and lonely years that were all the future seemed to offer her now. She could never have his respectable attentions, so why not simply melt into his powerful embrace and save her regrets for after he was gone?

Now he was trailing more urgent kisses down the exposed length of her throat, and when exactly had he exposed it? She felt fine tremors of heat shake her and knew they were both on the edge of being consumed. Could the fact that they were standing on a public highway where anyone might see them go hang? Could she ignore the last whisper of caution that warned against this? Could she throw away all the kindness Lady Lydia was offering her for one tumble with that lady’s handsome relative?

Probably, she conceded, as his wondering hand trailed a line of fire down her backbone, but she could not do the same for him. Despite those bitter words that seemed to condemn him as a heartless philanderer, she knew her seduction would haunt him once he found out he was her only lover. The only one she would ever have, for how could other men follow ardent desire combined with such tenderness? Yet the thought that he would wake up one morning in his new life and remember what he had done, and feel it as a betrayal rather than a glory, was one she could not live with.

Forcing her dazzled eyes open, she saw how his molten grey gaze dwelt on her disgracefully open gown, apparently fascinated by the rise and fall of her creamy breasts. She catalogued the flush of heated desire across his hard cheekbones and the wondering curve of his shapely mouth, that looked as if it remembered hers and wanted more. Then she drew back and shook her tousled head. His dark hair was disordered once more, by her wandering, wondering hands. I did that, she told herself in awe. I was his lover for just a brief, uncrowned reign of mere minutes. And now I am not.

‘No,’ she whispered when she could find enough breath even for that feeble objection. ‘I would not have you dishonour yourself, Major.’

With an almost animal sound of denial and possession, he went to tug her back into his strong arms and cover her all-too-willing lips with kisses, so they could both forget her ‘no.’

‘Nor would I have you dishonour me,’ she added inexorably, scant inches from the ultimate temptation of surrender, and still he seemed ready to read actions rather than words.

That earlier promise he made about honouring his obligations bit like acid into any lingering dream she was clinging to. ‘And I could not let you tarnish your name, Major Ashfield.’

He stepped back from her as if she had slapped him and stood, chest heaving and looking as if he had just run a heat with the devil.

‘Tarnish?’ he rasped out. ‘How could I tarnish a name my father dragged through every patch of filth he could mire it with?’

‘By muddying your own along with his.’

‘Oh, preach me no such piety, Miss Smith. Just tell me no and mean it, then have done with me.’

‘I can’t,’ she whispered miserably and for just a few seconds felt useless, hateful tears salt her eyes.

‘At least that’s honest,’ he told her fiercely.

‘As am I,’ she informed him proudly, and for the first time in weeks truly meant it. She had been in danger of taking herself at the Winfordes’ valuation.

‘Then you cast your bait in dangerous waters, madam. You must be more careful what you catch.’

Sending him a look of pure hatred, Thea decided she would never forgive him for what he had done today, then looked down her nose at him as if he was Sir Granby Winforde himself and stalked away without another word.

‘You had best do up your gown and tidy your hair if you don’t want to be run out of this village as well,’ his deep voice taunted behind her.

Overcome by an irresistible impulse, she swung round and stuck her tongue out at him like a street urchin.

‘Goodbye to you too, my dear,’ he called cheerfully, then turned on his heel and strode away whistling, as if not a single kiss or caress of that steamy encounter had meant a thing to him.

‘I am not your dear!’ she yelled defiantly and stormed up the wooded bank and on to the Common, completely forgetful of her safety and the dictates of everyday good sense for once.

‘I hate you, Marcus Ashfield. I hate you every bit as much as you want me to, and I wish I could forget you as easily as you will me,’ she raged. ‘When you find a more deluded female to warm your bed, I hope she leads you a merry dance, then walks away as if she hasn’t a care in the world.’

She calmed down at last and returned to her temporary home and scrubbed and dusted every corner of Miss Turner’s cottage in return for her kindness. By the time the woman came back from clucking over her precious Master Nick that evening, Thea was calm again and ready to share their simple supper. They retired early, for Thea had a brisk walk to look forward to and a hard day’s work. It was a very long time before she slept. When Thea did, she was glad her hostess was rather deaf, for she had woken from a nightmare on a panicked scream.

It was strange living on the wrong side of the myriad of doors designed to hide servants in the service of their betters. The sun rose and set on her labours, but Thea got used to her duties. The news that Major Ashfield was the new Viscount Strensham galled her more. Of course it made no difference. With her name besmirched she couldn’t marry him, although his title would free her fortune. Yet could she have lived with his cold logic, if he had found out who she really was and offered marriage for mercenary reasons? Yes, the instant reply came, then she contemplated such an unequal match and shuddered.

The great idiot had already hurt her more than the Winfordes had succeeded in doing by stripping her of home and worldly advantages. Marcus Ashfield had left her without the luxury of hope. Some last childish part of her had harboured the delusion that one day she might meet a man who valued her for herself alone. She did not have that vague hope now and, if she hadn’t been so busy, she might have been miserable.

She found comfort in the thought that, even if she were a lady, he would dish out the same hurt. The deluded girl she had been could well have gone into a decline, so at least she was saved making that discovery too late.

Then one April morning the sounds of church bells pealing out joyously interrupted the calm of Rosecombe, and such small considerations as a bruised heart faded into unimportance. The now nearly recovered Captain Prestbury rode out with his cousin to find out what was going on, to be met with the joyful news that Bonaparte had surrendered to the Allies. The cousins galloped back to Rosecombe with joy in their hearts.

‘Peace at last, my love!’ Sir Edward shouted, and threw himself off his horse to share the glad news with the woman he loved so much.

‘Oh, Ned, is it truly all over?’ her ladyship gasped breathlessly, as he seized her and swung her round, all the time laughing with joy.

‘Unless Farmer Boughton has been at the apple brandy, which I doubt as he has been a teetotaller ever since I can remember.’

‘Then we must ring the bell so we can share the news, my love.’

As they were standing in the hall under the bemused gaze of most of their household, there was no need, and there was much cheering and chattering with joy and relief. They were given a half-day to celebrate and by nightfall bonfires were blazing for miles around.

‘Not celebrating, Miss Smith?’ Captain Prestbury asked Thea as she melted into the shadows where he watched joy being unconfined.

‘Of course, Captain, who would not?’ she replied cautiously, wishing she had checked the darkness before she tried to melt into it.

‘Someone who finds it hard to believe it’s all over I suppose.’

‘It does seem strange.’

‘Strange is too mild a word. After so many years of fighting that genius of a madman, I can’t believe it’s over.’

‘You think Bonaparte mad?’

‘Not in the sense poor old Farmer George is, but anyone who seeks to rule the world is unhinged.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘Do you, Miss Smith?’ The light mockery was back in his voice and Thea wondered if anyone was allowed to catch more than a glimpse of the real Captain Prestbury.

‘Only a fool refuses to acknowledge his enemy’s strengths.’

‘And you are far from being a fool.’

If only that were true. ‘Neither am I very wise.’

‘Yet, does a hard start explain your contradictions, I wonder?’

Now his voice was speculative and Thea felt her heart race for a very different reason than it had in Marcus Ashfield’s company. Both cousins were dangerous in their own way.

‘I must leave you, sir, lest we be seen.’

His grip was surprisingly firm for a man who was recovering from dreadful wounds. Most unattached females in Wiltshire were in love with this tall, dark and handsome Hussar, but she just felt a twinge of regret that they could never be friends. His cousin had dealt with any weaknesses she had for rogues ready to break her heart and leave without a backward look.

‘Just a warning from one adventurer to another,’ he continued, his grip impersonal and his gaze steady.

‘I’m no adventuress.’

‘Yet you’re not what you seem either, are you, Miss Smith?’

‘I am exactly what I seem, sir. Someone who needs a job to stave off destitution.’

‘Those are the plain facts,’ he agreed, but she could still see the glint of cynicism in blue eyes that were dark in the distant light of the flames. ‘Yet it is my business to look beneath them, even if my intentions are pure for once.’

‘You can hardly expect me to believe that, now can you, Captain?’ she told him, with a significant glance at his long fingers fettering her wrist.

He chuckled and let her go, trusting his words to keep her.

‘You have a way of looking adversity in the face and defying it that says you are a kindred spirit, Miss Smith. Would I had met you on the dance floor.’

‘You must have a touch of fever, Captain. Housemaids hardly ever go to grand parties.’

‘I observe, my dear. I don’t report unless my commanders decree it, and even if you were Boney’s best spy it could hardly signify now.’

‘Well that’s a relief.’

Thea saw him smile by the intermittent light, but he was sober and unsmiling when he finally came to the point. ‘My cousin Marcus is a fool, but a very determined one,’ he said gently.

She held up a hand in protest, feeling as if someone was probing a wound as tender as the one finally healing in his arm.

‘I’m not always so fast asleep as I seem, Miss Smith. With the number of stitches in my arm, I am often pressed to do more than doze.’

‘You have the habit of deceit, Captain,’ she told him disapprovingly.

‘True, but perhaps we had best not to examine that trait too deeply, since you share it. At first I was sparing the great oaf worry by staying still, then I nearly ended up blushing like a schoolgirl.’

‘Serves you right.’

‘True, but I was glad you finally remembered my presence.’

‘I recalled my own good sense, you had nothing to do with it.’

‘I’m suitably mortified, but nevertheless you did well. Marcus decided long ago to have nothing to do with love. I doubt anything less would seem worthy of throwing your bonnet over the windmill.’

‘I realised that for myself.’

‘Yet it can’t hurt to say he’s as stony hearted as I’m thought to be.’

‘No, Captain, the gossips are wrong.’

‘That they’re not. Marcus is quieter than me, but he’s still dangerous, and your sex has a way of yearning for the unattainable.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said softly and reached a gentle hand up to touch his still-thin cheek. ‘Lord Strensham is essentially cold, but I think you, Captain, are far from it.’

He looked uncomfortable, more used to brazening out misdeeds than fielding praise. ‘I leave at the end of the week to continue my recovery at my grandmother’s house in Bath,’ he said with every sign of revulsion.

‘Poor Captain Prestbury.’

‘Oh, confound it, why not call me Nick?’

‘Because I’m the under-housemaid.’

‘My friends call me by my given name.’

‘Thank you, Nick, but when we meet again, please forget you ever set eyes on me?’

‘Aye, but a letter to the Dowager Lady Prestbury in Sydney Place will find me.’

‘I will remember,’ she said softly and with a gesture of farewell, went to find the solitude she needed. If only she had a brother like Nick Prestbury, how different her life would be.

At the end of April the Darraine family left for the capital to enjoy the Season and to join the peace celebrations. Although most of the senior staff went too, the rest stayed at Rosecombe. Which could hardly be described as a holiday, Thea thought one sunny day at the end of June, considering the housekeeper would pounce on any neglect of their duties. Yet, if she made up her work in double time, a few minutes could be stolen from the day.

‘You’ll get caught one day you will,’ Carrie, the head housemaid, informed her cheerfully when she came upon her second lieutenant illicitly reading one of Sir Edward’s beloved books.

‘Caught dusting the library? That’s what we maids do.’

‘The rest of us don’t read the books while we’re dusting them, but you’d best be more careful, now.’

‘Why?’ Thea got on very well with the cheerful country girl and doubted her warning was a threat to reveal her secret.

‘Family’s coming home, and bringing guests with them.’

‘I thought they were off to Brighton.’

‘So did I, but we was both wrong. His lordship and the Captain will join them later, or so Mrs Meldon says, and she wants their rooms got ready before we start on all the others, just in case one of them takes it into his head to arrive before we’re ready.’

Thea’s heart thumped at the mere mention of the new Viscount Strensham, but she told herself not to be a fool. He had made his feelings, or lack of them, clear last time they met. He was just another stranger who would fill her days with work as Lady Lydia had promised.

‘I’d best hurry up in here, then,’ she said calmly and put her book back.

‘I’ll help, then we’ll find Jane and make a start. Let’s hope the missus don’t expect us to do it all ourselves, or we’ll be dead on our feet.’

Plenty of help was forthcoming, but Thea was soon wondering if they might not all drop from exhaustion, just running about satisfying the guests’ constant demands. Lady Lydia and Sir Edward Darraine cultivated a very odd set of friends. A bullying and humourless heiress whose father made his money in the cloth trade in the north; a lively widow with a merry eye; and a very young lady so shy she hardly spoke. They didn’t seem to have much in common and would surely have been better entertained by the protracted victory celebrations the newspapers were full of.

Miss Rashton’s demands and constant complaints about country servants and their uncouth ways was wearing everyone’s nerves to tatters. Thea kept out of her way, and tried to consider the wretched female her punishment for once also being a demanding and inconsiderate miss. Then the maids were ordered to help in the hall one day and the reason for the lady’s presence became clear as glass.

She saw a tall and immaculately dressed gentleman climbing down from a hired carriage, just as an artlessly disordered Miss Rashton came drifting down the stairs as if by pure chance. For a moment Thea’s ears buzzed as if she might actually be in danger of fainting, but she refused to give him the satisfaction. Not by one look or gesture would she reveal she even remembered him, she told herself, and folded her hands behind her back where nobody could see them shaking.

‘Oh, the dear viscount is here,’ the chief heiress breathed in the softest tones anyone at the Park had heard since she arrived. ‘Now we shall be merry again,’ she added, with an eager sparkle in her hard eyes, and the unscrupulous rogue greeted her with a wicked smile and a bow that would have done credit to a Bond Street Beau.

‘Miss Rashton, and Mrs Fall,’ Lord Strensham said, bowing just as gracefully and smiling just as wolfishly at the widow, who emerged from the music room where she had probably been hiding from the tone-deaf Miss Rashton. ‘London was a veritable desert without you, ladies, so I escaped Prinny’s celebrations as soon as I could.’

‘Indeed, it must be nigh unbearable by now, what with all the noise and heat and that vulgar crowd turning out to see the Sovereigns off,’ Miss Rashton said rather wistfully.

‘Yes, you would not have liked it at all,’ he returned, and Thea wondered if she was the only one who detected mockery in his grey eyes.

He was here to marry one of these creatures. At the moment she fervently hoped that he saddled himself with Miss Rashton for the rest of their days. Such a cynical alliance would suit him perfectly.

She stood, head bowed and waiting for orders, trying to pretend the man standing so close and so remote meant nothing to her. Her battle-worn major had become the sort of fastidious aristocrat who might turn a menial into a rabid Jacobin. This cynical rake really didn’t appeal to her at all. Or at least not very much.

His broad shoulders were encased in a coat of dark blue superfine that fitted him without a wrinkle, his cravat was perfection and his linen as spotless as if he had just stepped out of his dressing room. She was in an excellent position to know that his mirror-polished Hessians were unblemished by so much as a speck of dust, and his pantaloons were designed to emphasise rather than disguise the muscular strength of his powerful legs. If he had become as idle as he looked, very soon he would run to fat, she concluded vengefully, and just remembered in time that she was not superior enough a servant to give vent to a sniff of disapproval.

‘Before I join the delights of the drawing room, you really must let me get rid of my dirt, ladies,’ he drawled and Thea longed for the pail of dirty water she had recently washed down the drain, after scrubbing the pristine marble under his fastidious feet.

No, he could bring all the heiresses in Britain into his cousin’s house and shamelessly flirt with them in front of her, then cynically make his choice for all she cared. She set her face in an indifferent mask as the butler ordered her to help with his lordship’s luggage. Her gaze fixed on the middle distance as was only proper and she spared the tall figure at the centre of all this fuss not another glance; he wasn’t worth it, after all.

Chapter Five

Wishing he could be as serenely indifferent to the little wretch as she appeared to be to him, Marcus ran upstairs and tried to reorder his world again. It had cost him weeks of turmoil to forget the hurt in a pair of unique turquoise eyes, and harden himself to this task. He would not let the mere sight of her throw him off course now. Three months spent turning this way and that like an animal in a trap, and he was held as fast as he had been when he began. Still, now he knew he had no alternative but to marry the money he needed to drag his estates out of River Tick.

Despite the immaculate attire that made Thea itch to muss and muddy his splendour, he stripped off and shaved himself once more, before donning pristine breeches and a spotless linen shirt. He was absently tying his neckcloth when he reminded himself of Nick’s cynical advice.

‘Look like a ragtag without sixpence, Marco, and you will be taken for the desperate man that you are. Dress like a top o’the trees and you will be fighting off the rich little darlings in droves.’

A smile fleetingly softened his austere mouth. Few believed Nick had a kindly bone in his body, but gain his loyalty and he was steadfast as granite.

Nick had come to town to consult the doctors about his arm, and ordered his own tailor to outfit his cousin. ‘And if he don’t pay you out of his ill-gotten gains, send the bill to me and I’ll dun him instead.’

He had gone on to countermand the modest wardrobe Marcus had ordered, and thus he stood here, dressing in fine feathers to charm the gold out of the heiresses’ dower chests. He probably deserved Miss Rashton he decided, and at least her iron determination to wed a title would work to his advantage. He could make her a viscountess and she could save his bankrupt estates. They might have been made for one another.

He shrugged himself into the elegant waistcoat and beautifully tailored coat Nick insisted no self-respecting fortune hunter should be seen without, and wondered what his lordly ancestors would have made of their latest descendant. Not much, he determined grimly. The Ashfields had been a shrewd race, until his father gambled, drank and caroused his way through every penny he could lay his hands on, and a good many that should have been safely out of his reach.

Hastily running a brush through his thick dark hair, Marcus knew he looked as elegant as a gentleman could without the services of a skilled valet, and decided it was high time he wrote to his lawyer again. Surely something must have escaped his father’s headlong pursuit of pleasure? After all, his grandfather had outlived his only son by ten days, so it wasn’t as if the Honourable Julius Ashfield had ever inherited the title and estates. He had been borrowing against expectations, so how had he managed to beggar his heirs?

Preoccupied with this dilemma, Marcus forgot his promise to join the ladies in the drawing room and marched downstairs with a determination his former brigade would have recognised, even if the light-hearted Major Ashfield they knew off-duty had vanished along with his dark green uniform. He was halfway down the room in search of a decent pen and hot pressed paper when he finally took in the picture before him.

The humblest female in the entire household was taking her ease in Ned’s favourite chair. Marcus blinked and wondered if too many sleepless nights and occasionally drinking too deep to escape harsh reality, had caught up with him. No, his eyesight was sharp and his senses stubbornly unclouded, so the troublesome wench really was sitting reading some solemn tome with such intense concentration she hadn’t noticed him come in.

‘And what the devil are you up to now?’ he barked, and watched her start violently with an unworthy sense of satisfaction.

A faint feeling of shame made his expression all the more forbidding as he stood in judgement over the female he had fought so hard to forget. How could the annoying little witch be so wrapped up in her studies, when he had been so ridiculously conscious of her every move the instant he stepped over the threshold?

Thea glowered back at him, Lord Strensham was a fortune hunter of the worst sort—a man who could easily earn his own wealth if he could be bothered to do a day’s work now and again. To prove that he meant nothing to her, she had slipped away from the furore his coming had caused and taken this ridiculous risk. Ten minutes of forgetfulness were needed to erase the image of dashing, self-sufficient Major Ashfield from her mind, and set foppish, useless Lord Strensham in his place.

‘Improving my mind,’ she snapped as he continued to wait for her explanation like examining counsel. ‘An example you might follow, if only you could spare the time.’

‘And you obviously spend yours avoiding the job you’re paid to do. I should never have told Lyddie you needed work, for you quite obviously don’t value her kindness in taking you without a reference.’

Maybe he was right. If he had let her slip into the woods that day, she would never have suffered the hurt and humiliation of being rejected by this handsome idiot. Of course she might also have starved to death or been caught by the Winfordes by now, but sometimes even that seemed better than yearning for a man who did not want her. It was his fault of course—if he had stayed away just a little bit longer she would have forgotten him. Anyway, he was changed, if the trappings of a fashionable fortune hunter and the indolent, impudent manner he affected were anything to go by.

‘Her ladyship knows we’re run ragged by that virago of yours.’

He looked conscious, and so he should. If he was really planning to wed the confounded female for the sake of her bulging coffers, he was selling himself short. After all, if a fortune was all he wanted, he could have married her. By reminding herself that she would have been storing up a lifetime of heartache, she forced her numb legs into supporting her and prepared to make a dignified exit.

She watched as his grey gaze ran lazily over her rather crumpled uniform and found her lacking. How she wished she dared to slap the suggestion of a smile from his handsome face. Spoilt and silly Miss Alethea Hardy would have fallen headlong for such a dangerous, damn-your-eyes rogue, but prosaic Hetty Smith was surely immune to his dubious charm.

‘Tiresome heavy these great books, ain’t they, your lordship?’

‘So you sat down and waited for that one to jump back onto the shelf?’ he asked quietly, a hint of laughter vanished from his grey eyes as if it had never been and she shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.

His deep voice sounded as if he had permanently rasped it barking orders on the battlefield, she mused, feeling for one shocking moment as if his baritone rumble had found an echo in her very bones. She caught herself remembering how seductive it was when he pitched it low and lover-like and rapidly slammed the door on such idiotic memories.

‘No, my lord, and now I must be about my work again,’ she said, meeting his sceptical gaze with a blankness she hoped would signal her indifference.

Too well acquainted with her own features to find them in any way remarkable, she could make nothing of his frozen stillness as his grey eyes met hers. Yet a whisper of that forbidden longing brushed down her tingling spine like a lover’s touch once again. He turned to gaze at the Wiltshire countryside through the long windows. His grey eyes were so wintry when he fixed them on her again that she had to control an urge to shrink away.

‘I need to get on,’ she said truthfully.

‘Then stop treating me like a flat and tell me what you’re up to.’

Heaven forbid! ‘Her ladyship will need me any minute,’ she told him with a perplexed expression that should have told him she was innocent.

Lord Strensham’s reflexes were so good that her wrist was caught in an iron grip before she had time to take evasive action. She held as still as a statue and refused to struggle with him like a country maid in a bad play. Yet the touch of his warm fingers on her bare flesh sent an insidious streak of warmth jagging up her arm to earth itself in the most unwelcome places, and she shivered with superstitious dread before bravely meeting his eyes again. If only she was as indifferent to his touch as she had been to Nick Prestbury’s, she thought hazily, but it seemed there was no point wishing for the moon.

‘I don’t think my cousins will be downstairs betimes if the lady you refer to has been running the household round as you say. Since you don’t look like any ladies’ maid I ever came across, I rather doubt Lyddie will need you either,’ he said silkily as he ran his mocking gaze over the housemaid’s uniform no self-respecting dresser would be seen dead in.

Feeling the hot colour stain her cheeks, Thea could not govern her reaction to his touch. Lately she had shrunk from any contact with the male sex, managing to avoid the roving eyes of both visiting masters and their servants by keeping her head down and disappearing into her ill-fitting, hand-me-down clothes. Lord Strensham’s less than lover-like grasp on her wrist sent her wayward heartbeat dancing as if performing a waltz at Almack’s.

It was perfectly ridiculous, this terrible need to have him kiss her again, she told herself. Secretly longing for him to draw her nearer and satisfy this feral desire was folly. She controlled a warm shiver as his strong hand gentled on her slender wrist and sparked those ridiculous curls of heat into life. They were worse than strangers and must remain so. There was an unbridgeable gulf between them, and she ordered herself brusquely to stop staring up at him like a mooncalf.

‘And to think I was warned about gentlemen like you,’ she snapped.

He dropped her hand as if it burnt him and jerked backwards so violently he was in danger of being overset for a moment. His dark brows snapped together, his eyes fierce as a hawk’s and his firm mouth set in a hard line. At least he was himself again; the drawling fop banished by the raw reality of what lay between them, however he tried to deny it, and she tried not to exult at the transformation.

No, she was ruined in the eyes of the world and he didn’t want her even as Hetty Smith, foundling! Thea gasped at the bitter memory of that day at the crossroads and almost shrank away from him, shocked at her own stupidity in laying herself open to such hurt a second time. She stood and faced him, raising her chin to spark dumb defiance at him; set on defying him even if it cost her the place she needed so badly.

‘You know I don’t trifle with innocents,’ he ground out, as if the very idea outraged his peculiar notions of honour. ‘But if you trap any more unwary gentlemen in otherwise empty rooms you won’t be one of those for very much longer, you foolish child.’

Child—how dare he? Thea gritted her teeth and managed to remember why she had to stay here undetected for at least two more months. By dint of promising herself that she would seek him out the moment she came of age—and give him her unvarnished opinion of his dubious morals and scurvy manners—she somehow mastered her fury. Unfortunately a mental picture of him, faced with a vaguely familiar female haranguing him over the breakfast table, presented itself to her inner eye, and an appreciative chuckle escaped her before she could check it.

For a second his remote façade seemed about to crack and his chilly grey eyes warmed, as if he too realised how ridiculous they must look, facing one another across Sir Edward Darraine’s library like duellists. Then his expression became bleak and unreadable again, even as all manner of forbidden questions trembled on her unruly tongue. She blinked to rid her mind of a ridiculous image of those grey eyes hot with passion, a smile of infinite promise on a firm mouth that had suddenly become sensual rather than hard and angry, as he moved ever nearer to her own waiting one and…and nothing!

‘I ain’t got all day to waste gossiping, even if you have, m’lord.’

‘No, I dare say you have work to catch up on.’

‘Most likely I have at that.’

‘Just make sure you don’t get caught next time, Hetty.’

‘There won’t be a next time,’ she assured him emphatically, and swore privately that it was true.

Some risks were not worth taking twice, and my Lord Strensham was one of them.

‘If I catch you out in one more misdeed, your mistress will hear of it,’ he warned and his mistrust hurt.

‘Maybe she’ll wonder why you care,’ she was stung into replying pertly, wondering why that threat tormented her so much she had to blink back tears.

They could never be more than master and housemaid after all, the Winfordes had seen to that.

‘Try that tack and you’ll soon find out your mistake, my enterprising little doxy, and maybe I was mistaken about that innocence after all,’ he ground out harshly, and she was helpless in his powerful embrace before she had even registered the fact that he had moved closer.

Lost for words and even breath as the potent reality of being locked in his arms once more hit her, she forced air into her protesting lungs. Breathing in the scent of clean linen, warm male and fine broadcloth, she forgot all else. Strength so certain it knew nothing about force wrapped her round and she had the most absurd desire to nuzzle deeper into his arms and forget all her troubles, even as common sense was vainly ordering her to drag herself out of them by whatever means needed, fair or foul.

His touch was gentle and sure, and she felt as if she alone knew the breadth and depths that made up Marcus Ashfield, the person under the lordly cynicism. Even that foolish notion flew out of her head as he stroked down her cheek to her chin in a caress that had her obediently raising her head before her brain managed to inform her she was making life too easy for a practised seducer.

Even as her wiser self was ordering her to struggle, to kick or bite if that was what it took to get him to let go, the fool in charge angled her mouth to meet his descending one and determinedly shut her eyes to reality. His lips were gentle on hers and her eyelids fluttered open again so her dazzled eyes could meet stormy grey ones. She gasped in a breath that carried his unique scent and an echo of his latent power right to the heart of her. Then, as the blue faded from her turquoise eyes and they became green under such extreme emotion, his own need burnt hotter, and his kiss seemed about to draw the very essence of her into his powerful protection.

‘Sea-witch,’ he murmured, his lips so reluctant to leave hers that she felt his words as much as heard them.

Then he ran his tongue along the softening gap between her lips and they parted for him on a sigh, as if she spent her entire life waiting around for his kisses. Sensible Thea was screaming at the willing and needy creature who seemed to have been born fully formed and defiantly wanton in his arms that morning in the woods, but the thunder of his heartbeat where her wondering fingers rested against his powerful chest all but drowned her out.

She was putting the few dreams she had left at risk, for a few moments of enchantment in the arms of a philanderer. Yet his mouth firmed and demanded on hers, and he explored her lips with a wholehearted pleasure that was a seduction all on its own. Despite everything, she longed to explore this heady passion with this unique man. Stern Thea snapped something very rude at melting, desiring Thea, who just murmured something foolish and felt Marcus’s tongue explore her all-too-willing mouth with irrepressible delight as he asked more than her pride should grant him. A request she unhesitatingly allowed as her mouth opened under his, and the feel of him dipping between her lips and flirting with her tongue sent shivers of longing down her spine.

‘No,’ sensible Thea murmured a protest that she knew was half at losing his warmth as he raised his head.

She saw a blaze of emotion light his grey gaze to silver, and knew all that heated desire was for her. Then he put his hands on her upper arms and set her at a distance as she realised just what she had done.

‘Oh, no!’ she whispered and it sounded like a parade-ground bellow in the sunny room she had previously found so peaceful.

‘Oh, no, indeed,’ he murmured softly.

Wasn’t it just like him to act as if he had just discovered her committing some trifling misdeed? Especially when she felt as if caught by such wonder she was surprised the world had not changed by more than seconds since he shook the foundations of it again. It had never occurred to her that he might be as amazed by that tumultuous kiss as she was herself, so she took his light tone for mockery and her temper lashed the hurt aside to blaze at him.

‘I hope you marry the high-nosed bitch who runs us all ragged from dawn to dusk with her demands and her megrims!’ she raged, what had to be hot fury stinging her eyes. ‘You richly deserve one another, and at least then you won’t inflict yourselves on better people,’ she finished triumphantly and stamped a sensibly shod foot so there could be no mistake about her outrage.

‘Indeed,’ he replied blandly, all expression vanishing from his face as he stepped back from her, looking as if he had just encountered a flying artillery shell and was unsure where it might explode.

‘Oh, get out of the way, you, you…man, you,’ she demanded in reply to such blatant provocation and could have kicked him when he obligingly did so. ‘Somehow I’ll make you pay, my lord, if it’s the last thing I do,’ she threatened, once she was so far out of his reach that even he had no hope of catching her.

Thea marched out of the library with a seething mass of confused emotions powering her about her neglected duties so effectively that she had finished them in record time, despite that shocking interlude in Sir Edward Darraine’s well-stocked library.

‘No doubt you will, you little shrew,’ the rueful gentleman she left behind her murmured as the echoes of the door slamming still resounded.

Marcus had never intended to touch the girl again, let alone kiss her. Now he was half-willing to sell his soul to the devil for a night of insanity in her arms. It could not happen, he informed himself sternly. It must not happen. He hadn’t spent so long battling his inner demons to succumb within minutes of setting eyes on her again. Even such fiery passion faded, he reassured himself, and she would hate him for ruining her if he gave in to it.

So why did he constantly have this uneasy feeling that he was wilfully turning his back on something unique? Because he was an idiot, and, even if love existed, he still had nothing. Nothing to offer Hetty Smith, housemaid and enigma at any rate. Miss Rashton, heiress, wanted his title and a well-bred son and heir, so at least he had something to give her in return, even if the thought of bedding her left him cold. He shivered as he contrasted his molten feelings for Hetty with his indifference to the strident heiress.

Yet the lovely Mrs Fall would want affection at the very least. Timid little Sophronia Willet would sooner be locked in a cage with a hungry bear than marry him, so Miss Rashton it must be, and at least there would be no nonsense about love. No nonsense at all and the thought of carrying out his marital duties under his bride’s stern gaze made his toes curl.

A few minutes alone with Lyddie’s humblest housemaid was all it took for passion to make a fool of him. His loins quickened at the thought of her lips under his and the delicious friction of her curves fitting themselves to his angles. It always felt as if they had been formed to meld with such rightness, when the time inevitably came to do so. Not so, Major Ashfield sternly informed his traitorous body. He had to marry money, or let his dependants starve and reduce his brother to penury along with himself. No impulse to forget the world in a runaway wench’s arms could stand in his way.

Years of military discipline made him sit at Ned’s desk to write his letter, fighting the inclination to lounge there and muse over a stolen kiss, as well as Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin Hetty had left there. It was on that renegade thought that the peculiar nature of her reading sank in.

Marcus put aside the letter he couldn’t give half his attention to stare intently at the book, trying to make sense out of Hetty Smith. A female of birth and education who read Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin would be an eccentric, so surely a maidservant could not con such a text? Although this particular maid might pretend she was no more capable of reading it than she was of rowing to the Antipodes, he was far from convinced.

The wench was hiding something, besides sea-changing eyes a man might happily drown in and the softest, most tempting mouth he had ever kissed. Perhaps she had been waiting for her lover in that shack in the woods that night? The very thought made his long fingers tighten into fists and his mouth hard. She felt like the most innocent female he had ever kissed when she took fire in his arms, but was she acting a part?

If she could play the housemaid to Lady Lydia’s satisfaction, she might as easily fool an ex-soldier who had spent years fighting for his country rather than dealing with duplicitous females. Disillusion set another layer of ice about what he assured himself was a cold and indifferent heart, and he tried to consider the Darraines’ third housemaid dispassionately.

The cunning minx could earn a fortune on her back if that naiveté was an act. Marcus was well aware of the dangers of taking liars at face value, even if a less disillusioned man might forget discretion and common sense under Hetty Smith’s potent spell. It was clearly his duty to find out if she presented a threat to his cousin’s household after introducing her to it so blindly. Passion was a snare that could bring down the best of men, let alone a fortune hunter with nothing a year to support his obligations on, but he didn’t have to give in to it.

Picking up the calf-bound volume, he shook it and, when nothing fell out, assumed she had been looking in the wrong place. Yet Ned was a respectable country gentleman nowadays—and what fool would risk hiding anything in here, when his cousin was commonly known to be bookish? Maybe he had read too many improbable tales for his own good.

Of course the wench could have been taking a wistful look at the mysteries of the written word and not know English or Latin from Double Dutch. Despite this comfortable notion, he was left with a lingering impression of her remarkable eyes, full of native wit and wary as a cat’s. Someone must keep an eye on her, and, if a gang of felons were targeting the house, he would frustrate them, short of putting the under-housemaid’s slender neck in the hangman’s noose.

An icy shudder ran down his spine at the thought of such an outcome, but the idea of any woman suffering such an untimely end would disturb him, he hastily reassured himself. Yet never before had Marcus experienced such an insane compulsion to seduce one of the servants, and how he wished he had only ever known her as such.

To compound his sins by continuing her downfall would be despicable, and he prided himself on carrying on his amours with women who knew the rules. Somehow he had managed to convince himself she was an innocent after all and, picturing her looking as confused and confounded as he had felt just now, he could not believe her the hard-eyed seductress he half wanted her to be. If only she were that siren, he could take her and be damned, but somehow he must slam the door on that heady notion if he was to be fit for company any time soon.

Could the wench’s eyes be best described as sea-green, aquamarine or turquoise? he mused. Without the abundant life behind them, they could be any of those fanciful colours. With it they were extraordinarily her own and then there was her mouth, so soft and yielding under his that he felt the rogue she thought him as his body clenched with need. He shook his head in an effort to gain control over his baser self. No sooner had he resolved to forget all idea of succumbing to Hetty’s artless charm that the memory of her tripped him up once more.

Well, it had to stop—the little witch was quite right to wish him on Miss Rashton. He lacked the funds to keep his vagrant waif in anything but penury, if he ruined her for the sake of his pleasure and made it impossible for her to stay under his cousin’s roof. Anyway, it would inevitably be more than that—once he lost the self-control he had once prided himself on, he knew he could never stop his obsession ruining her in more ways than one.

Hetty Smith was an ingenue with hard edges who could not possibly understand Virgil, he reassured himself, and marched from the room as if he was back on parade. He even managed to look delighted at the sight of the heiresses gathered in the drawing room, despite what fate and Miss Rashton had in store for him. At least he could not dwell on the third housemaid’s hidden depths in their presence, for fear of saying or doing something so idiotic even Miss Rashton gave him up as a lost cause.

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