“C’est vrai!” Lady Emily’s companion, Madame Roche, sighed, swooping her black lace shawl about her shoulders and pursing red lips in a powdered face. “The gentlemen, they are not always speaking of the truth. It is tragique, some of the times.” She wandered away toward a painting of a winter landscape nearby that seemed to have interested Kitty.

Diantha studied Lady Emily, the clean edge of her profile, the clarity of her skin, the silvery gold locks contained haphazardly in plain pins. A self-proclaimed bluestocking and spinster at no more than three-and-twenty, Emily dressed with economy despite her parents’ dedication to high fashion, she required that others call her Cleopatra, and she went about with the most glamorous lady’s companion Diantha had ever seen.

“Do you really think men are irrational, Cleopatra?”

“I do. Most men are merely little boys in big bodies, prone to foolish games, overindulgence, and occasional cruelties toward friends and strangers alike.”

“Little boys . . .” Diantha drew in a long breath. “Do you recall the wedding of Lady Katherine and Lord Blackwood at Savege Park?”

Emily turned her emerald eyes from the painting. “Yes.” She had a way of looking at a person like she was thinking hard, always a small crease between her brows above the brim of her gold spectacles.

“The night of the wedding my stepsister held a ball. I wasn’t yet sixteen, but I dressed in my prettiest gown and went to the party. It was splendid, the music and ladies and gentleman all from town dancing so beautifully. No one took notice of me, of course, and eventually I went out onto the terrace.”

“I wish I had joined you. I don’t care for dancing, but Kitty is a particular friend, so I must have danced that night.”

“That night I wanted to dance more than I wanted to breathe.”

“Intriguing.”

Diantha smiled slightly. “The terrace was empty, so I danced by myself. Then a group of young men came outside and saw me. I’d known most of them for years—they were all local boys—so I asked if any of them would like to dance. I knew a lady mustn’t do such a forward thing, but I was so filled up with the music and thrill of the wedding day I didn’t care about the . . . rules.”

“Did any of them oblige you?”

“They said they would never wish to dance with me, even if there weren’t other girls around for miles. They said I looked like a sheep all white and spotty and round, and they made rude gestures. I shouldn’t have minded it, really.” Except that shortly before her mother left home, she’d called her round as a sheep. “But I cried, right there as they were laughing at me.”

“They were disgusting. I am astonished they were guests in Lady Savege’s home.”

Diantha shrugged. “They were normally all right. But that night they were quite drunk.”

“Miss Lucas, a man whose tongue goes astray when he is drunk is not a worthy man when he is sober. But it is true, strong spirits make idiots and cads of men.”

“All men?”

Lady Emily lifted her slender brows. “Know you an exception?”

“That night, when those boys said those horrible things . . .” Diantha twisted her fingers in the string of her reticule. “Mr. Yale rescued me. You are acquainted with him, I think.”

“Somewhat.”

“He was drunk that night too. But he helped me.” From the shadow of a tree beside the terrace where she hadn’t known he stood, he’d heard it all and come forward. “He told them to go away, and they did. Then he behaved with great gentlemanliness toward me.” He asked her to dance and became, irrevocably, her hero.

Lady Emily seemed to consider. “Perhaps a man must be cruel in his heart to be cruel when he has been drinking spirits.”

“Have you seen him?” She shouldn’t care. With Tracy’s pronouncement it didn’t matter anyway. But fear had begun to niggle at her, the specter of Mr. Eads never far from her thoughts. “Lately, that is. Here in town?”

“No. Have you?”

“I saw him several weeks ago. He assisted me with some trouble I was having. I had lost my maid on the road, and he helped me. He saw to the hiring of a traveling companion for me and escorted me to”—a magical place where she wished she were still, despite all—“my family.”

Lady Emily turned her attention to the painting. “I haven’t the least doubt of it, Miss Lucas. You see, several years ago he assisted me in a difficult situation as well. I was having trouble convincing my parents that I did not wish to marry where they chose. Mr. Yale pretended to court me so that the direction of their hopes would shift away from the other gentleman.”

“He did? And did you— Did you . . . ?”

“Did I what?”

Diantha could not ask what she wished. Emily was a noblewoman, four years her senior, and a bluestocking, after all. There was no telling if she still retained her virtue. Diantha certainly hadn’t been able to spend a handful of days with him without eagerly abandoning hers.

“What I mean to say is,” she managed, “you must have been pleased with the courtship—pretended or not—of such a gentleman.”

Emily’s emerald eyes took on a studying look. “My parents ceased insisting I marry their crony.”

“But didn’t they then want you to marry Mr. Yale?”

“Yes. But he charmed them so thoroughly they barely blamed him when his suit came to naught.”

“Oh. They blamed you.”

She smiled, but her gaze still seemed to consider Diantha carefully. Her hair sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the window. Lady Emily was wealthy, but she was not a sophisticate like her friend Kitty, nor a beauty. She nearly always had a book in hand, and even now carried a catalogue of the gallery exhibit. And Diantha had never heard her gossip, except now.

“Did he—” she ventured. “That is, I expect that he admired you greatly.”

“He was remarkably kind to me. But no, I do not believe he admired me in the manner you suggest. I think he felt responsible for me, although I never understood why, which of course brings us full circle to my original comment concerning the irrationality of the male sex.” She opened the catalogue. “Now, Miss Lucas, I have exhausted my patience for speaking about men today. I hope you won’t mind if we turn our conversation to a more edifying topic.”

Diantha knew already that she had been a responsibility to him. But here was proof. He rescued girls. As he had tried to tell her, it was simply what he did.

Wyn went to Yarmouth, traveling north and east as swiftly as the filly could bear. It was madness; he was remarkably unwell. Molly Cerwydn’s medicines continued to relieve some of his illness, but without the remedy of Diantha’s body there was only craving again. If Duncan Eads appeared on the road, he was done for.

But Duncan would not appear, he knew. For all Diantha’s talk of the Highlander’s honor, if Duncan truly wanted him he would have taken advantage of his weakness at the abbey. Men of action did not wait upon the convenience of girls.

He rode until he reached the coast and the castle sitting upon its cliff high above the ocean, all sandstone and turrets and imposing medieval majesty. The porter swiftly ushered him into the central courtyard and bid him to His Grace’s withdrawing room to wait.

Wyn declined, handed over the filly into the groom’s hands, and without looking back rode from the place and put miles between him and the duke before nightfall. He could not fulfill his promise to a living woman if he held to his promise to the girl he had killed. Regret for his misdeed must finally be put aside. With her determination and compassion, Diantha had shown him this. She had turned his life upside down. But now that he was not to be hanged for killing royalty, he would do what he could with that life, beginning with his estate. The abbey was a lucrative property. It had only been his guilt that prevented him from living on its income. It deserved his attention, and he must prepare it for a new mistress.

During his absence Mrs. Polley had gone to the village and harangued the locals into thorough mutual dislike. But the meals she cooked compensated for alienating the people he’d known since childhood, and she managed the returning household staff with grumbling efficiency.

“I am grateful you remained, Mrs. Polley.”

“A grand gentleman shouldn’t be in the kitchen, now, sir.”

“You did not think I was so grand a fortnight ago.”

She scowled and waved him out of her realm. As he was packing his bag for the journey to London, two letters arrived.

Dear Mr. Yale,

I received your letter and read it with great interest, alongside the two other similar offers for my stepdaughter’s hand put before me in the past sennight. Unfortunately I can promise you nothing. Thrice before I attempted to engineer my daughters’ marital prospects, without the smallest degree of success; each of the three are now wed to men I did not choose. Fortunately I like these husbands well enough, and so will leave it to Diantha to determine her future marital bliss. In the end the Female Will shall always prevail anyway.

I wish you the best of luck. Do be aware that her brother, Sir Tracy Lucas, is her legal guardian and must be applied to for approval rather than I.

Sincerely &c.

Charles Carlyle, Baron

London

The other letter, penned on unadorned stationery, came from the unlikeliest of quarters: Lady Emily Vale. Within minutes Wyn saddled Galahad and set off on the road to London.

Chapter 24

“Ah. Beauty and wit in one small chamber. It’s good to be back in London.”

Standing before a filing cabinet, Lady Constance Read whirled about, her vibrant blue eyes wide.

“Wyn! You have returned.” She thrust out her hand and he bowed over it. Her smile that turned intelligent men to blithering idiots glowed.

“If I had known you would be the first lady I saw when I returned to town, I would have returned quicker.” He’d been disappointed in the first call he paid. At Savege’s house the butler informed him that Diantha was expected to be out for some hours yet. So he had come here to the Secret Office to find what he could.

Constance squeezed his hand and laughed. “You are a rogue, but you hide it well behind lovely flattery, as always.” Her gaze flickered up and down him. “You look remarkably good. Where have you been?”

He bowed. “I am honored, madam.”

“And . . . ?” She turned back to the filing cabinet. Daughter of a duke, Constance was received everywhere. She used this popularity in her work for the Falcon Club. “Where . . . ?”

“I went to see a man about a horse. But I suspect you know that already.”

“I am still jealous Colin assigned the task to you. Is Lady Priscilla as beautiful as they say?”

“More so. Our august secretaire would have sent you, I suspect, if he thought you enjoyed cards, brandy, and scantily clad working girls.”

“I see. But you retrieved her successfully, it seems, without too much distraction.” She threw him a glance of mild interest.

Wyn wasn’t fooled. Golden-haired, voluptuous, and an heiress, she was any man’s fantasy. But years ago he had learned that Constance Read’s reasons for joining the Falcon Club—and remaining in it after her cousin, Leam, quit—were none he wished to explore.

“Were you that jealous of me, Con?” He wandered to the desk in the modest whitewashed chamber. Sparely furnished, with a single portrait of the old king on the wall and one barred window, the Secret Office looked nothing out of the ordinary. But within filing drawers that lined the walls were stored every letter from every informant in the British Empire that had ever reached London successfully. Most of that correspondence had never been read. “Would you have liked the assignment yourself, or are you busy here with more interesting business?”

“Oh, this is nothing.” She shuffled through the file before her. “It was only that you were absent for so long. It should not have taken you over a month to retrieve a horse and deliver her to the duke.” Her gaze passed over the papers, but unfocused. “Really, Wyn—”

“Dear Constance, why don’t you put that down and ask me what you wish to ask me? Then we might move past it and speak of more pleasant matters.”

She pursed her full lips and peered at him closely. “You did not go directly from the house party to Yarmouth.”

“Do you know, you are especially beautiful when you are piqued. Would that I could pique you more often.”

“How do you imagine I learned of this most unusual detour of yours?”