Even if everyone in the room had still been a stranger, she would immediately have known the identity of the man who was coming toward her, Anne was convinced. Tall, dark, and austerely handsome, he was also the consummate aristocrat-aloof and dignified, with a powerful presence. And here she was, an ex-governess, an unwed mother, an uninvited guest in his home-and about to dine at his table.

She would have turned and fled if the duchess had not had an arm linked through her own, she believed.

Or perhaps not. She did have some pride.

“Wulfric,” the duchess said, “here is Miss Jewell at last. This is my husband, the Duke of Bewcastle, Miss Jewell.”

Anne curtsied. She half expected that the next moment she would be banished into outer darkness.

“Your grace,” she murmured.

He inclined his head to her and she noticed his long fingers close about the handle of a jeweled quizzing glass, though he did not raise it. It was somehow a terrifying gesture.

“Miss Jewell,” he said. “Her grace and I were sadly remiss yesterday in not welcoming you personally to Glandwr. You will, perhaps, be good enough to forgive us. I trust you and your son have been made comfortable and will enjoy your stay here.”

They were gracious words, but his strange silver eyes did not smile.

“She has been busy in the nursery all day, Wulfric, breaking up fights and organizing games,” the duchess said, smiling brightly at him as if he were the warmest of mortals.

“I see no bruises, ma’am,” his grace said with perhaps the merest glimmering of humor. “But perhaps our nephews and nieces were merely warming up today for worse to come tomorrow. And perhaps it is as well for your health that our son is still but an infant in the cradle. We have great hopes of his keeping alive the Bedwyn reputation for hellery in the years to come.”

The duchess laughed.

And yes, Anne decided, there was definitely humor in his words. And she liked the way he had referred to his child as our son rather than as my son, as many men in his position would have done.

And then she was whisked away by the duchess to meet those to whom she had not yet been introduced-Mrs. Pritchard, Lady Aidan’s elderly Welsh aunt; Lord and Lady Rannulf Bedwyn and the Earl of Rosthorn, who had visited the nursery but had come while she was in David’s room playing word games with him and some of the older children; Baron Weston, Lady Alleyne’s uncle; Mrs. and Miss Thompson, the duchess’s mother and eldest sister; and her middle sister and brother-in-law, the Reverend and Mrs. Lofter, Alexander’s parents.

Anne tried to memorize faces and names-though she hoped not to be in a position to use them for the next few weeks.

“Ah,” the duchess said, her arm still linked through Anne’s, “and here comes Mr. Butler at last.”

The steward, who was supposed to fall violently in love with her elaborate coiffure and propose marriage to her before the night was out, Anne thought as she turned and looked toward the doorway, feeling the first flickering of amusement she had felt since leaving her room.

For a moment she was again arrested by the extraordinary good looks and manly physique of the man standing there, fully visible this time in the early evening sunshine that streamed through the west-facing windows. And again it was his left profile at which she gazed.

But even as a jolt of recognition half robbed her of breath, he was obscured from sight as Lord Alleyne, tall, dark, and handsome himself, and Lord Rannulf, even taller and fair and ruggedly good-looking, converged on him and slapped him on the back and greeted him heartily.

“Syd, old chap,” she heard Lord Rannulf say, “where the devil have you been hiding? But Wulf put the fear of God in you this morning, did he?”

So he was not a stranger, Anne thought. She was fated to meet him again. He was Mr. Butler, the steward at Glandwr.

She felt slightly sick to the stomach. The little appetite she had had as she made her way downstairs to the drawing room fled.

How she wished she had not behaved so badly last evening-or that she had been able to find him afterward to apologize.

And this on top of everything else.

If she could have crept back up to her room without his seeing her, she would have done so. But he was standing almost in the doorway. Besides, the duchess still had an arm linked through hers. And besides again, she had behaved cravenly and even cruelly last evening. Now she had a chance-perhaps!-to make amends.

Though she would surely be the very last person he would wish to encounter again today.

Sydnam had walked up to the main house despite the drizzle. He would a million times rather be at home in his cozy cottage, he reflected as he let himself in through the front door, handed his wet cloak and hat to a footman, and climbed the stairs to the drawing room. But Bewcastle had issued the invitation in person this morning, and when Bewcastle invited he was really commanding-especially, Sydnam gathered, when he invoked the name of his wife.

“The duchess was disappointed when you did not come to dine last evening,” he had said while pulling one of the estate books toward him across the desk in the library, where he always did business while at Glandwr. “I have a curious aversion to seeing her grace disappointed, Sydnam, though of course it was unavoidable last evening since you did not receive your invitation until well after the dinner hour. There will not be that problem this evening.”

Bewcastle had recognized a lie when he heard one, of course. Not that it had been an outright lie. Sydnam had not actually read the invitation before going outside to walk, but he had seen it and guessed what it was and deliberately avoided opening it until it was too late.

“I will apologize in person to her grace this evening,” he had said while Bewcastle turned pages as if he were not even listening.

And so here he was to eat humble pie before dining. He amused himself grimly with the mental picture of all the Bedwyns and their spouses being forced to sit at table with a patch over one eye and their right arms bound behind their backs. But he must not be vicious, even in his thoughts. The invitation was a kind one. And being human, with all the contrariness to which human nature was prone, he supposed that if they were here for a month and never once extended an invitation to him to join them, he would be hurt and offended.

He grinned ruefully at the admission.

He must be somewhat late, he thought as he approached the drawing room doors. Or if he was not late-and he knew he was not-he nevertheless was last to arrive. A grand entrance was all he needed. But even as he stood in the doorway looking about for Bewcastle or the duchess, Rannulf and Alleyne bore down on him, one from either side, and suddenly he felt that the ordeal would not be so bad after all. Many of the people here were old friends of his, and none of the others would bear him any ill will. It was not as if he were a houseguest to be in their sight every moment of every day, after all. And none of the children would be here.

“I have been cowering inside a cave down on the beach,” he said in answer to Rannulf’s question, “as you might have discovered for yourself if you had come down there to look, Ralf. But a little rain kept you indoors, did it? Or is it the steep cliff path that deterred you?”

Alleyne clamped a hand on his right shoulder, a gesture that endeared him to Sydnam since most people avoided his right side whenever they were able.

“How are you, Syd?” he asked. “It is a veritable age since I saw you last. We have brought a stack of messages from home, some from Lauren, a dozen or more from your mother, one or two from Kit, one from your father-but I cannot for the life of me recall a single one of them. Can you, Ralf?”

“Something about wearing warm woolens in the damp weather, at a wager,” Ralf said with a grin. “Of course I do not remember. The ladies will, though. You had better come and meet the people you do not already know, Syd. Ah, here comes Christine. Have you met our formidable duchess?”

“He has,” the duchess said, smiling warmly at him. “I am so glad you were able to come this evening, Mr. Butler.”

She gave him her left hand and he bowed over it.

“I must apologize most humbly, your grace,” he said, “for last evening. I was from home and did not read your invitation until-until it was too late.”

The sudden pause had been occasioned by the glance he had stolen at the lady through whose arm the duchess’s right hand was drawn.

He recognized her instantly.

He had certainly not been mistaken about one thing, he thought. She was quite breathtakingly beautiful, with hair the color of warm honey and blue eyes made smoky by long lashes, and regular, perfect features. And now that she was no longer wearing a cloak, it was obvious that she had a figure to do justice to the face.

So his first guess had been correct, he thought. She was one of the Bedwyn wives.

He felt a curious, quite unreasonable bitterness.

“No apology is necessary,” the duchess assured him. “May I make you known to Miss Jewell, a particular friend of Freyja and Joshua’s? Mr. Butler is Wulfric’s steward at Glandwr,” she explained for the lady’s benefit.

Sydnam bowed and she curtsied. Miss Jewell. Her name suited her well. And she was not one of the wives. But he felt no kindness toward her.

He remembered suddenly that he had dreamed of her last night. She had stood on that path waiting for him, and he had walked close enough to touch her cheek-with the fingertips of his right hand. And he had looked into her lovely blue eyes-with both his own. He had asked her please not to pinch him as it was important never to wake up, and she had told him that they needed to wake up without delay so that they could go searching for his arm, which had fallen over the cliff, before the tide came in and washed it away. It had been one of those strange, bizarre dreams that sometimes have one hovering between reality and fantasy, dreaming but knowing that one dreams.

“Miss Jewell,” he said now.

“Mr. Butler,” she murmured in return.

The duchess took him about the room then, without Miss Jewell’s company, and introduced him to the people he did not know.

He still disliked meeting strangers, though he was long past the stage of trying to keep the right side of his body out of sight. His ugliness had been hard to accept. He had been accustomed to seeing nothing but admiration in the eyes of others-and even adoration in some female eyes. Not that he had taken a great deal of advantage of the latter. He had still been very young when everything changed. And he had never been conceited about his good looks. He had taken them for granted-until they were destroyed forever.

Everyone here had known about him in advance, he realized as he made his way to the dining room a short while later with Miss Eleanor Thompson, the duchess’s sister, on his arm. None of them had openly flinched.

But she had not known-Miss Jewell, that was. She had run from him last night as if he were the devil himself. He found himself resenting her incredible beauty even though he recognized that it was somewhat childish to do so. Some people just had an easy path through life.

He turned his head to note that Morgan was seated on his blind side and set himself to making conversation with her as well as with Miss Thompson. At least, he thought, the kitchen staff here knew him and understood that they must not place anything before him that could not be cut one-handed, preferably with the edge of a fork.

Miss Jewell, he could see, was smiling warmly at Baron Weston beside her and saying something to him that brought an answering smile to his face. She was charming him, enslaving him.

No, he would not dislike her, he decided. Or resent her. Or envy Weston or Alleyne on her other side.

Good Lord, he was not a man normally given to petty jealousies.

Or to spite. Or resentment.

He picked up his soup spoon with his left hand and tackled the first course.



The evening turned out to be slightly less of an ordeal than Anne had anticipated. Not all the guests were aristocrats or the offspring of aristocrats.