Suddenly the carriage interior was flooded with sunlight again. Lauren moved her head closer to the window beside her and gazed ahead. They had drawn clear of the forest and were approaching a river, which they were going to cross via a roofed Palladian bridge. To her far left she could see that the river emptied its waters into a lake, which was just visible among the trees. Beyond the bridge, well-kept lawns sloped upward to the classical elegance of a large, gray stone mansion. The lawns were dotted with ancient trees. On the lake side of the house were stables and a carriage house.

“Oh,” she said, and Gwen pressed her face to the window too, turning her head to look backward.

“Splendid,” Aunt Clara said. She was looking through the opposite window. “That must be a rose arbor beside the house with flower parterres below it.”

Then Gwen was patting Lauren’s knee again and smiling, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“I am so happy for you!” she exclaimed. “I knew that sooner or later you were bound to meet the man who was created just for you. Are you very deep in love with him?”

But Lauren only half heard. The carriage had turned past the stables, and its wheels were crunching over a wide graveled terrace toward the steep flight of marble steps leading up beyond massive fluted pillars to the mansion’s great double doors, which stood open. There were people on the steps—two, three, no, four of them. And at the foot of the steps, dashing and elegant in a form-fitting coat of blue superfine over tight gray pantaloons and shiny, tasseled Hessian boots, a sunny smile on his face . . .

“Ah, yes,” Lauren said, though whether in answer to Gwen’s question or her own foolish fear that she would not recognize him, no one thought to ask—least of all Lauren herself.


Kit had been restless all day. He had ridden for hours, alone, across country, following no particular route, trying to kill the hours until she could reasonably be expected. Then, back at the house, he had paced in and out of front-facing rooms, peering out through the windows long before the carriage could possibly roll into sight unless it had left London in the middle of the night. He had even walked briskly down to the lodge shortly after luncheon to chat with the porter for a while.

He wished this whole thing were not happening. He wished, now that it was too late to do things differently, that he had simply written to his father earlier in the spring with a firm refusal to have any marriage arranged for him. He should have refused even to come home until he felt more ready to do so. He should not even have sold out last year. He could be with the armies now, doing what he did best. He should have written to his father . . .

But the trouble was that he was Ravensberg. He was the heir. And as the heir he had responsibilities, which he had shirked for almost two years even though he had ended his career. It was his duty to be at home, to make his peace with his father, to learn what the future Earl of Redfield needed to know, to take a wife, to father sons—yes, preferably plural.

But was he fulfilling those duties even now? With a sham engagement? And a homecoming that would have been difficult even under the best of circumstances? His father had been predictably furious when, after the first awkward exchange of greetings following his arrival, he had made his announcement. The situation, he had then discovered, was far worse than he had realized. A marriage settlement had been discussed and fully agreed upon by his father and the Duke of Bewcastle, Freyja’s brother. They had even signed a contract. It had apparently not occurred to either of them that it might be advisable to consult the wishes of the prospective bride and groom first.

Kit doubted that Freyja’s wishes had been consulted.

His mother had been dismayed and then tearful. The tight hug with which she had greeted him had not been repeated since. Even his grandmother had shaken her head at him with unspoken reproof. She was unable to say a great deal, having suffered an apoplexy five years before from which she had never quite recovered all her faculties. She still treated him with affection, but he knew that he had disappointed her.

And Sydnam—well, he and his younger brother, who had shaken hands awkwardly and without making full eye contact on Kit’s arrival, had had a nasty falling out that same night and now scarcely spoke to each other. Kit had found him in the steward’s office after everyone else had retired to bed, writing laboriously in a ledger with his left hand.

“So this is where you disappeared to after dinner,” Kit had said. “Why here, Syd?”

“Parkin retired before Christmas last year,” Sydnam had explained, looking at the worn leather cover of the ledger rather than at his brother. “I asked Father if I could take his place as steward of Alvesley.”

“As steward?” Kit had frowned. “ You, Syd?”

“It suits me very well,” his brother had told him.

Kit had assumed that Syd was living a life of enforced idleness here without his right arm and with only his left eye out of which to see and with no possible way of doing what he had been created to do. They had exchanged no letters in three years. He had assumed that Syd could not write any, and he had written none of his own because . . . well, because there had been nothing to say.

“How are you?” he had asked.

“Well.” The single word had been spoken abruptly, defiantly. “I am perfectly well, thank you.”

“Are you?”

Sydnam had opened the top left-hand drawer of the desk and placed the ledger inside it. “Perfectly well.”

They had been unusually close when they were younger, despite the six-year gap in their ages. He had been Syd’s hero, and in his turn he had adored his young brother, who had possessed all the qualities of character that he lacked—steadiness, sweetness, patience, vision, dedication.

“Why did you tell me to leave?” Kit had blurted suddenly. “Why did you join the chorus?”

Sydnam had not had to ask what he was talking about. After their father had banished Kit three years before, Syd had got up from his sick bed and come down to the hall, looking like a ghost and a skeleton combined, clad only in his nightshirt, his valet and a footman hovering anxiously in the background. But instead of offering the expected sympathy, he had told Kit to leave, to go, not to come back. There had been no word of farewell, no word of forgiveness . . .

“You were destroying all of us,” Sydnam had said in answer to his questions. “Yourself most of all. You had to go. I thought you might defy Father. I thought you might go after Jerome again and kill him. I told you to go because I wanted you gone.”

Kit had crossed the room to the window, from which the curtains were drawn back. But he had been able to see nothing outside—only his own reflection thrown back at him, and Syd’s, still seated at the desk.

“You did blame me, then,” he had said.

“Yes.”

The single word had pierced his heart. He would never forgive himself for what had happened, but without Syd’s forgiveness there was no hope of any kind of lasting peace. Only more of the restless search for forgetfulness, which he had been able to achieve with a measure of success while he had still been commissioned, but which had been impossible to find since he sold out. He had tried. He had hardly rested, day or night.

“Yes, I blame you,” Sydnam had said. “But not in the way you think.”

It had not been worth pursuing.

“Do you think,” Kit had asked, “that I would not have taken all your suffering into my own body if I could? I wish it had been me. I wish I had made that choice. If you could be made whole again, do you not think I would give my life to make it happen?”

“I’m sure you would,” his brother had said. “I am quite certain you would, Kit.” But there had been no forgiveness in his voice. Only harsh bitterness. “I do not want to talk about this. It was my suffering and these are my deformities and this is my life. I ask nothing of you, nothing whatsoever.”

“Not even my love?” The words had been almost whispered against the windowpane.

“Not even that, Kit.”

“Well.” Kit had turned and smiled, feeling as if all the blood in his body were draining downward, making him rather light-headed. He had crossed the room toward the door with deliberately jaunty strides. He had let himself out and closed the door behind him before bowing his head, his eyes closed.

No, no one had been made happy by his return to Alvesley, least of all himself. He felt like a stranger in his own home—an uncomfortable, unwelcome stranger. He felt useless—he, who had always been active and brilliantly successful and highly respected in his career. His father had made no move to educate him in the duties of the heir or to include him in any activities of his daily routine. Perhaps he was waiting until after the house party and the return of normality to the household. And Kit too felt as if he were waiting for the next phase of his life to begin—yet the very next phase was to be a charade. A lie. Unless, that was, he could persuade her to marry him after all and redeem some of his honor by doing what was right by her.

He had not been sleeping well—again. And when he did nod off from sheer exhaustion, the old nightmare kept rearing its ugly head. Syd . . .

By the middle of the afternoon he found himself in the drawing room in company with both his mother and his father—who rarely spent his afternoons there—as well as his grandmother. The others sat in quiet conversation while Kit made no pretense of doing anything but standing at the window waiting, his eyes fixed on the point of the driveway just beyond the bridge at which a carriage would first come into sight. They were all waiting, of course, for the unwanted, unwelcome arrival of their guests—though none of them had been discourteous enough to put it quite that way.

Kit’s betrothal had caused an awkward rift with their neighbors at Lindsey Hall six miles away—the Duke of Bewcastle and the Bedwyns, his brothers and sisters. Kit had ridden over there on his first morning back and had asked to speak with his grace. Bewcastle must have assumed, of course, that the call was a courtesy one for the making of a formal offer for Freyja. Kit had been shown into the library almost immediately.

Wulfric Bedwyn, Duke of Bewcastle, was not the sort of man anyone in his right mind would deliberately cross. Tall, dark, rather thin, with piercing gray eyes in a narrow face, a great hooked nose, and thin lips, he bore himself with all the unconscious arrogance of his breed. He had been brought up from the cradle for his present position and so had always held himself somewhat aloof from his brothers and his brothers’ friends, even though he was only a little more than a year older than Kit. He was a cold, humorless man.

He had not exploded with wrath when informed about the betrothal. He had merely crossed one elegantly clad leg over the other, taken a sip from his glass—the very finest French brandy, of course—and spoken softly and pleasantly.

“Doubtless,” he had said, “you are about to explain.”

Kit had felt just as he used to feel during his boyhood years when hauled up before the headmaster at school for some mischief—caught out, in the wrong, on the defensive. He had prevented himself only just in time from acting accordingly.

“And you will explain,” he had replied just as pleasantly, “why you would negotiate a marriage contract for your sister with my father rather than with me, her proposed husband.”

He had found himself being regarded steadily from cold, inscrutable eyes for long, silent moments.

“You will excuse me,” his grace had said softly at last, “for not offering my felicitations on your betrothal, Ravensberg. You do, however, have my congratulations. You have a fine sense of revenge. Better than you used to have. Less brash, shall we say?”

He had been referring to three years before, of course, when after breaking Jerome’s nose Kit had galloped hell-for-leather over to Lindsey Hall and banged on the outer door for half an hour—it had been late at night—before Rannulf, Bewcastle’s brother and Kit’s particular friend, had opened it and told him not to make an ass of himself but to go on home. When Kit had demanded to hear the truth of her betrothal to Jerome from Freyja’s own lips, Rannulf had come outside and they had stripped down and engaged in ferocious fisticuffs for all of fifteen minutes before a burly footman and Alleyne, another brother, had dragged them apart, both bruised and bloodied, both snarling and struggling to continue. Bewcastle, standing outside the door silently observing the fight, had then advised Kit to take himself off back to the Peninsula, where his rage could be put to better use. Freyja had stood at his side, her head thrown proudly back, a smile of open contempt on her lips as she stared at Kit. She had not uttered a word.