About her daughters and how charming they were. Then a demand to marry one of them.”

“Marriage? Why would they want you to? You were a second cousin.”

“The dowager likes to think everyone and everything is under her control. If she married me to one of her girls it tied up the inheritance neatly. She doesn’t consider people, she thinks dynasties and influence. My lack of the latter was made up for by the former.”

He paused. “Her second son, Vivian, was married, but after two years there was no issue. And I believe she found out about her oldest son.”

“What about him?”

He traced a line from her throat to the dip between her breasts, savouring the smooth, soft skin. So lovely. “He preferred his own sex. You understand?”

Meeting her shocked gaze, he saw she did. “I’ve seen it happen.

Sometimes if a man cannot get a woman...”

He shook his head gently. She had seen far too much. His desire to protect her never surprised him as it did now, with evidence of her deception so evident. “This was not expediency. His mother discovered his preference, and it led to a rift. She could not comprehend why he couldn’t have both. Some men can, some can’t.

Stephen could not.” He watched her take that in, but his Faith was no sheltered maiden. She knew. “Even if he married there wouldn’t have been any issue.

“Vivian’s wife never conceived,” she said. “Poor lady.” Vivian’s wife had died a year ago.

“Vivian mourned his wife truly and wanted time before he remarried. It was why they came all the way to Canada to see me, once they discovered I was alive.”

“How did they find out?”

“I wrote to Vivian after I’d established myself in Halifax as a man of substance. I did write to Stephen after I arrived in Canada, but I didn’t wait for a reply before I went into the depths of the forests, so I had no idea that letter went astray. The one to Vivian, to his posting in Vienna, arrived safely and both brothers came to Canada to entreat me to come home and do my duty by you. To get you with child for the family’s sake.” He paused. “I hadn’t realised I had a wife before then.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, as if she were suppressing a wince. “I’m glad I wasn’t born into that kind of family. I’ve seen enough to know that.” Before he could ask her, she told him. “I’m the daughter of a country vicar. Barely genteel. Twelve children were a strain on the stipend and my father’s small independence.”

“How did you come to marry a soldier?” He wanted to know more about her, to fill in the spaces, to give him a proper assessment of her.

“John and I were from the same small town in Shropshire and when he returned on leave, he courted me. I believed he loved me, at least at first, and I saw I would be useful to him. My parents were only too happy to be rid of me. I’d thought I was destined to become a governess.” She paused. “Three girls in our family, nine boys and most of them went into the army or the navy. Most have done well for themselves. I don’t have a lot to do with them these days. They are strangers to me.”

So after Waterloo she’d been effectively alone. Nobody to turn to, and while her husband had been an officer he had the lowest rank and consequently would have barely anything to leave a widow. She could have been destitute. The similarity of their names must have formed too much of a temptation for her.

“So you had nothing?”

“And no one.”

There, she’d given him total honesty on that point. Relief flooded him. He understood. Not a designing adventuress, then, more a poverty-stricken woman with nobody to help her. He wasn’t mistaken in his assessment of her. She’d taken the step she had from desperation, and the conviction that she was harming no one.

The thought impelled him to draw closer still. He slid his hand over her delightfully trim waist in a gesture more protective than desirous, although he guessed from the way his cock stirred that wouldn’t last long. Her side pressed against him, her breasts plumped by her arms, especially when she raised a hand. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to push him away and he waited, tense, until she relaxed and smoothed her palm down his chest to rest under his ribs. He smiled his encouragement but she did no more. Just as well, he supposed. He hadn’t finished talking to her yet.

He had to make one matter clear. As soon as he’d climbed through the window and seen the carpetbag, he’d known what she’d planned. “You weren’t packing to move to Grosvenor Square, were you?”

She glanced down, then back at him, pretty colour mantling her cheeks again. She couldn’t have missed his state of tumescence.

Their proximity completed what had started a bare minute ago and he hardened for her, his body begging for a repeat performance.

“No.”

He kept his voice soft and unthreatening. “What exactly did you think you would do?”

“I’d disappear. I’m not unemployable, I could make a living.”

She shrugged. “I still can. I left the marriage lines to John Smith and a letter declaring that we were never married. It’s on the table, with the deeds to this house and a promissory note for whatever funds you feel I owe you.”

“Could you get a position with no character references?” He grazed the top of her buttocks with his thumb. Perfectly rounded.

She snorted. “Please. As if I can’t handle that.”

The concept interested him. “How would you do that?”

“I’d reference my mother, who would do anything rather than have me back home and an old friend who married well. She’ll help me, and be discreet about it if I asked her. Or I’d forge something.”

He laughed, a gentle chuckle. “Anyone who thinks women are helpless should consult you.” He wanted to kiss her, but he held off, because he suspected he wouldn’t stop once he’d begun. Already he desired her with a desperation entirely new, an emotion he badly needed to process before he gave into it again. On the first occasion her nearness to him had provoked him into kissing her, and then more followed as day did night. His lack of control worried him, even while he planned to make love to her at least once more tonight. This time with no mercy. “So you’d disappear, live a miserable life as a poorly paid employee. Why did you do it in the first place?” Confirmation. Coming at the question again, so he could watch the way she reacted.

She bit her lip. “I didn’t think I was doing anyone any harm.

Without a wife your army pension would have died with you. My only extravagance was this house. I was harming nobody. But now I know you’re alive, you don’t deserve I should do this to you.”

“Do what? Prevent the dowager from foisting one of her daughters on to me?” He watched her take the piece of information in. Her pretty eyes widened, her body stiffened against him. “If you are not here, she won’t relent. I’ll be married before the year’s out.”

“Charlotte and Louisa are much more agreeable without their mother present. I believe she imposes on them a little too much.

But it is none of my concern. Either would make an excellent countess.”

“Not while I’m married to you.” He rolled further in to lean over her, his cock lying on her hip, informing her, as if she needed it, of his renewed arousal.

She blinked but showed no other sign. “We’re not married.”

He framed her face with his hands, bent his head lower, watched her lips part, ready for his kiss. He wondered if she knew she was doing it, or if it was a natural action, and craved the latter. “We could be,” he murmured, before finally giving way to temptation.

He’d give her that much, the temptation of the worm on the hook.

She sighed into his mouth and he surrendered, for the time being at least. Gave himself over to pleasing her, and by doing so, pleasuring himself. He’d taken women in desperation, with the certainty this would be the last time he would do this because the next day he’d stare death in the face. Again. Taken them with mutual pleasure in mind. Never before had he desired anyone this badly. He needed her, more than here, in bed, but elsewhere too. If he could not persuade her, then his task would be all but insurmountable.

When she arched into his hold, teasing his cock with her feminine slickness, her soft skin, her sighs, he forgot any other consideration.

His shaft didn’t need guidance this time. It knew its way. All he had to do was rise up enough to let it slip between her legs. When she widened her thighs and opened for him, he drove in, deep and sure, all the way home.

A sense of rightness washed over him, together with an insatiable need to thrust hard into her, force her to call out, accept him as her—he would have said ‘master,’ but he didn’t want that.

Only his recalcitrant member seemed to force him to want it. He could use the feeling, and he did.

When he pushed straight in, she moaned, but it seemed practiced, by rote, her actions what she expected him to want.

Difficult to describe, but he knew he’d seen those reactions in other women. At the time he’d known they were trying to please him, mostly because he was paying them.

Not now. He watched her when he changed his angle, so he thrust sharper, then lifted an inch or two so he grazed the lower part of her channel.

There. Victory roared through him when she gave a sharp gasp and reached out as if to clutch him. “Open your eyes,” he whispered to her. “Let me see you.”

She did so, blinking into his face. He saw shock, mingled with heat. Oh, yes. Her expressive gaze showed him her reactions. Her unguarded behaviour with him flattered him more than any words.

She trusted him, and he suspected she gave her trust to few people.

Urged on, he moved again, touched the same sweet, soft place and watched her pupils widen, her bright eyes darken, sparkling with shared intimacy.

“Let me help you there, Faith.”

He continued with his slow, steady thrusts, taking care to touch the spot that gave her most pleasure. Another time he’d work on her clitoris, but they were still learning and in his experience one step at a time worked best. Get that right and move on to the next.

Concentrating on her helped him to delay his own culmination until he could ensure hers. As she blindly reached out, her hands touched his shoulders, clasped tightly and held on. Her cries became whimpers, shreds of sound in rhythm with his thrusts, keeping the beat until he changed, paused and then began again.

One, strangled cry, her eyes closed and she turned her head, pressing her cheek against the pillow, crying his name as she came.

The rush of heat and the way her body clenched around him were enough to set him off. Barely able to think, he gave a helpless choke as his seed spilled into her. Crushing his body close to hers, he felt every throb, every spurt.

He dropped his head to the empty space on the pillow and breathed hard, inhaling the heady aroma of their coupling. He revelled in the feel of a woman’s soft form under his. It had never, ever felt this way. Every woman was different, he knew that, but this woman was completely unique.

Breathing heavily, his mind flashed back to the moment of sheer terror when he woke in the medical tent and realised he didn’t know who he was. Nothing. His memory loss had been total for a day or two before fragments seeped back over the next week. But one instant remained; the horror of being nobody in a mass of people he didn’t know.

Now he welcomed the temporary blankness as respite from what he had to face, in the certainty he’d remember. He felt helpless in her arms as if he’d given her everything he was.

It didn’t last. It never did. He rolled away, flung back the bedclothes and found the cloth to clean her, barely noticing the chill in the air once he’d left the safe haven of her bed.

She watched, her eyes half closed while he performed his task before joining her again. She curled into him as if she belonged there. He kissed her, slow and affectionately.

“You said we could be married?” A note of fear entered her voice.

He sighed. He’d wanted to have this conversation later. It seemed it had to be now. He had to make her understand, or at least to stay for a while. “You were planning to leave. What did you think would happen after you’d gone?”

She shifted, but didn’t urge him to let her alone, for which he was glad. She felt good in his arms, right. “You’d denounce me as a fraud and laugh about me with your friends. It’s my fault, so it’s only fair I take the blame.”