When her voice broke, Anthony pulled her into his arms. She put up a token struggle before relaxing against his chest.

“And I didn’t know what to tell Antonia,” she whispered. “What would she think?”

He nodded grimly. “You were ashamed of me. Of what I had become.”

“Never!” she exclaimed, giving him a fierce hug. “You’re the finest man I’ve ever known.”

He let out a tight breath. “Then what were you afraid of? You should have known I would never let anyone hurt you — either of you.”

She looked woeful. “I was afraid Antonia would despise me. My life was a lie, and I made hers a lie, too.”

Antonia propped her hands on her hips and gave her mother a severe look. “Mamma, I worry that your mind is as disordered as Papa’s. How could you think such a thing? I love you more than anything in the world.”

Marissa extracted herself from Anthony’s embrace and gently grasped her daughter’s shoulders. Mother and child gazed into each other’s eyes, seeming to communicate in some mystical, female way.

“Then you don’t mind that you have a new father? Your real father?” Marissa finally asked.

Antonia looked puzzled. “Why would I? He seems nice, and you love him. Plus, he’s rich. You are rich, aren’t you, Papa?” she asked, suddenly looking worried. “Mamma and I wouldn’t be happy if we had to live with Uncle Edmund, instead of with you.”

Anthony pulled the two most important people in the world into his arms. Each fitted snugly against him, as if they’d both been there from the beginning of time.

“No man could be richer,” he said.

And with the prizes he had captured, no man ever would.

Lady Invisible

Patricia Rice

Cotswolds — 1816

One

“‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,’” quoted Mrs Higglebottom, the vicar’s wife, reading from the novel on her husband’s desk.

Ill at ease, Major Lucas Sumner stretched his shoulders against the confinement of his civilian attire. He had hoped Reverend Higglebottom might be available for consultation. He did not remember the vicar’s wife being quite so … enigmatic … in her younger days. They’d both grown up here among the rolling hills of Chipping Bedton, but Lucas obviously had been away too long. He must adjust his military sense of order to village idiosyncrasies.

“My fortune is a major’s pension and a small inheritance,” Lucas corrected. “I am in want of a wife because I have a daughter in need of a mother.”

Mrs H. — Lorena, as he’d known her — waved a careless, plump hand. “The extent of your fortune does not matter these days. The village has lost most of its available young men to war and to the city and to marriage. You can have a choice of ladies, from fifteen to fifty, I daresay. The task is to find the right one.”

“Well, yes, that is why I thought I would consult with Edgar—”

“Edgar did not grow up here as we did,” Lorena admonished. “My husband has a worthy, virtuous mind, but not necessarily one connected to the realities of life. Women are far better at matchmaking than men.”

Lucas granted that possibility. He’d married in haste as a young man, and the result was currently uprooting daffodils from graves in the churchyard, if he did not mistake.

With an apology, he rose, pushed up the vicar’s study window, and shouted, “Verity! Stop that at once. Where is your aunt?”

His seven-year-old hoyden waved a bunch of yellow flowers and dashed off. Lucas could only hope it was in the direction of his much-put-upon sister.

“I have a lot to account for in this life,” he said, striding back to the chair. “Verity’s mother died far too young, and I’ve neglected my daughter’s upbringing. Now that the war is done and I’ve come home, it’s time I find a mother for Verity who can teach her to be a lady and turn my bachelor household into a home.”

Lorena nodded and consulted the list she’d evidently drawn up in anticipation of his visit. “Jane Bottoms is still unmarried. She’s a bit long in the tooth, but a very respectable, proper sort.”

Lucas tugged at his neckcloth. He remembered Jane. Thick as a brick, they used to call her. “My daughter needs someone a little more—”

Lorena cut him off, as she seemed to do regularly. “Yes, yes, of course. Verity would tie her to a tree and forget about her. How about Mary Loveless? She’s a bit plump and her mother tends to dictate …” She caught Lucas’ eye and hurriedly looked at the list again.

Impatiently, Lucas snapped the paper from her hand and scanned the names. “Harriet Briggs is still unmarried?” he exclaimed in amazement. “How is that possible? She’s the Squire’s daughter and had a dozen beaux before I left, but she was much too young to be interested in any of them.”

Lorena crossed her plump hands on the battered desk. “She is still not interested in any of them. She has not changed since the child you remember. You need a mature, proper lady to teach your daughter manners. Harriet is totally unsuitable.”

This time Lucas was the one to interrupt. “I remember her as a spirited little thing. Perhaps she was a bit of a tomboy riding to the hounds because her father never told her no, but she could argue intelligently. Verity needs a smart woman to guide her.”

Lorena vehemently shook her head. “Now that her mother has passed on and all feminine influence is lost, Harriet has become quite impossible. Rumour has it that she called off two perfectly respectable arrangements while she was in London, even though her looks are nothing to brag about.” She shook her head and cut herself off. “Her father has refused to give her another season.”

Lucas conjured a mental image of Miss Harriet Briggs the last time he’d seen her, when she wasn’t quite sixteen. He had been twenty and sporting his newly purchased officer’s colours. He’d been home to say farewells to family and strutting about in hopes his new uniform would impress the ladies.

The Squire’s daughter had been sitting on the doorstep of one of the village houses, showing a youngster how to feed a baby pig. She had not been impressed by his uniform but had appreciated his aid when the pig had squirmed free. They’d had a rational discourse on the care and feeding of abandoned farm animals, a conversation that he could not imagine having with any other female of his acquaintance.

Hope surged, despite Lorena’s warning. His household was in dire need of the discipline a lady could bring to it.

“She must be twenty-three or twenty-four by now?” In the eight years of his absence Harriet should have grown into her lanky limbs at least. Lucas didn’t think he’d care for a skinny woman, although a mother for Verity should be more important than attractiveness.

Well, perhaps not, or he’d have hired a nanny. So he needed a wife who appealed to him, as well as a mother for Verity. Doubt crept in at the seeming impossibility of that task. Perhaps he should have gone wife-hunting in London.

His sister should not have to deal with Verity while he danced through society. There had to be someone local, who would want to live here and raise his child among his family.

“Harriet should be a good age for looking after a child.” A man of action and decision, Lucas rose from the chair. “I don’t think anyone younger would be up to the challenge.”

Lorena looked harassed. “No, really, Lucas. Don’t be foolish. I do not wish to speak ill … Look, here is Elizabeth. She’s an extremely attractive young lady …”

Having made up his mind — and worried that Verity would be digging up the dead next — Lucas was already halfway out the door when Lorena leaped up, waving the list. “And Mary Dougal! Mature, quiet, and very lovely …”

“I will consider them all, of course,” Lucas said, making his bow, although he privately thought Elizabeth to be a simpering ninny and Mary Dougal to be a pinchpenny prude. Verity was a bright child. She needed a disciplined woman up to the challenge of taming her. And a patient one to ease them into their new domestic routines.

“I told you not to climb the trees!” he roared, after departing the vicarage. He crossed the cemetery in long strides to where his sister stared upwards in dismay. He could see the bright blue of his daughter’s gown several limbs from the ground. “Come down from there at once, you little monkey.”

He nearly had failure of the heart when Verity’s small foot slipped and missed the branch below her. Without a second’s thought, he swung up on the lowest limb, heedless of his best trousers, caught Verity by the waist, and lowered her to Maria.

“I have three of my own, Lucas,” his sister called back. “I cannot do this much longer. You should hire a circus trainer.”

“I am amazed you did not hire her out to a zoo before this,” he said in exasperation as the child took off running before he could climb down. “Does she never speak?”

Maria shrugged and followed Verity across the church lawn at a slower pace. “She can talk if she must. Mostly, she does what she wants rather than ask, because she knows she’ll be told no. I have three young boys. It’s all I can do to keep up with them. I hate to burden you, Lucas, but now that you’re home safe and sound, she’s your responsibility.”

“I agree. And someday I hope to repay you if possible. You have been a saint, and I don’t know what we would have done without you.” He caught up with Verity when she stopped to pet a shaggy mutt. She was no longer a toddler for Lucas to heave over his shoulder and carry off as he had the few times he’d been home when she’d been younger. He’d missed almost her entire childhood.

“Your safe return is payment enough,” Maria promised. “If you never go to war again and can provide a home for Verity, that will ensure our happiness.”

Lucas thought of his sister’s request as he knocked at Squire Briggs’ door the next afternoon. Now that Napoleon had been routed, he would not be going to war again, but that meant he had no other purpose.

Lucas’ father had died before he could attend Oxford or obtain any type of training. Other than the cottage and the lot it sat on, he had no lands of his own. The only trade he knew was soldiering. It was a problem he must solve after he found a mother for Verity.

Before setting off on this visit to the Squire, he’d left his daughter with Maria, had his hair properly barbered, and had his old cutaway coat with the broad lapels brushed and pressed. And still he squirmed like a raw lad on the brink of courtship.

He had been far too young to have encountered Squire Briggs regularly before he’d left for war, so he didn’t know the man well. The unfamiliarity of civilian life threw him off balance, forcing him to recall that he had earned his major’s stripes and fought battles far worse than the encounter ahead.

A maid led Lucas inside to a fusty parlour in dire need of a lady’s care. He frowned over that. Even if Lady Briggs had been deceased for some years, should not Miss Briggs have directed the servants in cleaning? Or at least replaced the cat-tattered pillows?

Cat hair was everywhere. He declined the maid’s offer of a seat.

Lucas liked to do his own reconnaissance and had made several enquiries before setting out on this call. From all reports, Squire Briggs was a hearty man who loved his horses and his hounds. His lands were fertile and well tended, and his tenants spoke well of him. Lack of funds or servants did not explain this lack of order.

The tenants had spoken well of the Squire’s daughter, as well, but with a certain degree of caution. Lucas trusted that was out of respect, but Lorena’s warning rang in his memory.

He heard the Squire roaring at a rambunctious hound somewhere deeper inside the house and smiled to himself, thinking taming a dog was very much like taming Verity. He’d nearly broken his neck falling over her this morning when she’d darted out from under a table on her hands and knees.

“Sumner!” the Squire boomed as he entered the parlour. “Good to see you home, lad! Major now, ain’t ye? Made the town proud, you did. Shame your father is no longer about to brag on you.” He pounded Lucas on the back and gestured towards the door. “C’mon back to m’study. We’ll have a bit of brandy and celebrate your return.”

Brandy was an excellent idea. Lucas thought he needed fortifying before he explained his presence. He was starting to think he should have sought out Harriet first, but he’d forgotten the protocol, if he’d ever known it. How did one woo a lady without going through her parent? He was no dab hand at courtship.