Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author
KASEY MICHAELS

“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

“Michaels’s new Regency miniseries is a joy…You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke

“[Mischief Becomes Her] has loads of Michaels’s deft wit and fast plotting. Readers will be raring for the next book in this delightful series.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Known for developing likable characters and humorous situations, Michaels adds an element of danger and suspense to this sexy romp.”

—RT Book Reviews on Dial M for Mischief

“Michaels demonstrates her flair for creating likable protagonists who possess chemistry, charm and a penchant for getting into trouble. In addition, her dialogue and descriptions are full of humor.”

—Publishers Weekly on This Must Be Love

“Michaels has done it again…. Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It

“Michaels can write everything from a lighthearted romp to a far more serious-themed romance. [She] has outdone herself.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Gentleman By Any Other Name (Top Pick)

“[A] hilarious spoof of society wedding rituals wrapped around a sensual romance filled with crackling dialogue reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story.”

—Publishers Weekly on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie

Also available from
KASEY MICHAELS
and HQN Books

The Daughtry Family

How to Tempt a Duke

How to Tame a Lady

How to Beguile a Beauty

Don’t miss an exclusive Daughtry eBook prequel

How to Woo a Spinster

available now!

The Sunshine Girls

Dial M for Mischief

Mischief Becomes Her

Mischief 24/7

The Beckets of Romney Marsh

A Gentleman by Any Other Name

The Dangerous Debutante

Beware of Virtuous Women

A Most Unsuitable Groom

A Reckless Beauty

The Return of the Prodigal

Becket’s Last Stand

Other must-reads

The Bride of the Unicorn

The Secrets of the Heart

The Passion of an Angel

Everything’s Coming Up Rosie

Stuck in Shangri-la

Shall We Dance?

The Butler Did It

KASEY MICHAELS

How to Wed a Baron

Dear Reader,

Baron Justin Wilde presents himself to the world as witty, urbane and decidedly harmless. Yet for years during the war with Bonaparte, the baron served as the Crown’s most successful assassin. Outlawed for killing his man in a duel, Justin took on this soul-killing mission only in the hope of an eventual pardon and a return to his beloved England. But that royal pardon arrived with several strings attached to it—including an arranged marriage to one Lady Magdalèna Evinka Nadeja Valentin.

Lady Alina is no more thrilled with this arrangement than is the baron, but from the moment they meet their attraction is undeniable. But with secrets of both the past and present to overcome, will either of them live long enough to find the love that might be theirs?

How to Wed a Baron brings together the characters from my previous books, How to Tempt a Duke, How to Tame a Lady and How to Beguile a Beauty. It is the story of two people, yes, but it is also a tribute to friendship, trust and a belief in the power of love, forgiveness and new beginnings.

Please visit my website at kaseymichaels.com and let me know if you’ve enjoyed these four very special stories, and for information about all of my books.

Warmest regards,

Kasey Michaels

To Carol Carpenter and memories of a great day of brainstorming ideas for this book while seeing the sights in Williamsburg.

All vacations should be that much fun!

How to Wed a Baron

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

A QUARTER MILE FROM THE manor house located five miles outside the ancient city of Prague, and hidden amid mighty oak trees that swallowed up much of the September sunshine, a lone figure sat on the grassy bank of a meandering stream. Her knees were tucked up beneath her chin as she intently watched the progress of an early fallen leaf until it became caught up in a tangle of water lilies and disappeared below the surface.

The young woman’s sigh was audible as she turned her head and seemed to pick out another leaf floating downstream, ready to follow its progress toward capture and oblivion, powerless to change its fate.

So, the man watching her thought. She’s been told.

Luka Prochazka remained concealed behind a tree trunk as he cursed the Fates that had denied him any skill with the paintbrush, for surely this was a moment worthy of being captured on canvas for the ages. Her slim woman’s body clad in a worn gown, her marvelous tumble of thick dark curls that seemed almost too heavy to be supported by the fragile column of her throat, the downcast eyes, the complexion of purest ivory…

She sighed once more, her shoulders rising and falling in dramatic fashion. Dearest Lady Alina. At not quite her nineteenth birthday, she was so very accomplished at drama.

Yes, this would be how he would have titled his portrait: Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin, In Despair. Lesser hearts than his would break to see her this way. Her aunt, Lady Mimi Valentin, would give ten years of her life, perhaps twenty, to be half so beautiful, which was probably why she’d been so eager to do as the king had requested. Indeed, knowing the woman, she had most certainly delighted in the prospect of attending court with Lady Alina no longer in her train, capturing the eye of any man between the ages of twelve and three-days-dead.

Poor, beautiful Lady Alina. How very hard she had tried to be who and what she was not. Wild, free, unfettered. But an English mother and a half-Romany father, both long dead, did not a Romany make. In the end, it was the English blood that counted to those in power. Those in control. And to those in control, a young woman of marriageable age was nothing more than a pawn.

She would make a beautiful bride once Luka delivered her to her fate. Her groom, this unknown Englishman she was being sent to in six weeks’ time, would be a lucky man, indeed.

He turned away to silently retrace his steps, give Alina some privacy until the worst of her sulk was over. As he did, he thought to himself, In the end, she’ll make the best of it. She’ll find a way, her own way. She is her father’s daughter, and there is no defeat in her….

CHAPTER ONE

JUSTIN WILDE MOUNTED the curving right-hand staircase of Carleton House with all the joy of a condemned man being marched to the scaffold, one of his royal majesty’s flunkies on either side of him. At least the execution would be formal, not slapdash in appearance.

As his well-polished Hessians confidently struck each marble stair, his alert green eyes saw everything, his exemplary brain cataloguing and recording each detail of his surroundings. One might say the baron lived his life in a state of the highest readiness, prepared to fight or flee, should either necessity present itself.

Not that the pair of ridiculous liveried footmen, matching in their height and build and coloring as well, just as if they had been specifically chosen as a matched set—which they no doubt had been—would have entertained the slightest notion that, with little effort on his part, the baron could have dispatched them both to their final reward before they could blink.

And not that the servants could be faulted for their lack of perception. They saw, the world saw, what Baron Wilde wished them to see, and nothing more: a handsome, well-set-up gentleman who appeared to be as harmless as a morning in May.

Only those who knew Justin Wilde well—and these numbered less than a half dozen—saw more than the exquisite lace at his neck and cuffs, the fashionably fine cut of his coat, the perfection that was his longish, carefully casual black hair that matched in color a pair of wonderfully winged eyebrows.

Most impressive of all was his ready smile, which could be mocking, ironic, amused, open, disarmingly friendly and, as those privileged half dozen knew, very rarely genuine.

There was no smile on his lean face at the moment, real or subtly perfected. To receive the Prince Regent’s summons at some point in time had not been unexpected. The man had warned of the eventuality at their last meeting. But now, scant months after their agreement, the sure knowledge that he was to consider himself at the man’s beck and call for the remainder of one of their lives had been brought home in all of its unpleasantness.

“That chandelier is new since my last visit, isn’t it?” he inquired of the footmen, pointing to a crystal-and-gilt monstrosity that hung at the top of the stairs. “I probably paid for it, you know. My God, is that a crystal dove at the center of it?”

The younger of the two servants looked up at the chandelier, nearly losing his step on the marble stairs, so that Justin quickly reached out to steady him.

“Coo, that was a close-run thing, weren’t it? Thank you, milord.”

“Nonsense. I apologize for distracting you, knowing the danger. My late wife perished on these same stairs some years ago.”

“Is that a fact, milord? Took herself a fall, did she?”

“She didn’t drown,” Justin agreed pleasantly.

“Silas, stifle yourself,” the older footman warned, clearly aghast at both the question and his lordship’s answer. “This way, my lord, if you please,” he then added quickly, gesturing to the left—away from the ornate public rooms and toward the private area of the residence.

Wonderful. The only thing more off-putting than Prinny at noon would be Prinny at noon and still in his nightcap. Less than five minutes later, Justin’s worst fears were confirmed.

Once he was announced, the footmen retreated amid a flurry of deep bows. Justin advanced across an expanse of priceless carpets and parquet flooring, stopping at the foot of a bed so high, so wide, so lavishly hung with velvet draperies that even the Prince of Whales appeared small as he sat propped against pillows in the middle of it, munching on coddled eggs.

Justin smartly clapped his booted feet together and inclined his head and shoulders only enough to be civil. “Your obedient servant appearing at your command, Your Royal Highness.”

“Wilde,” the Prince of Wales said, sighing as he put down his fork. “You’re the only man I know who can turn an expression of respect into an insult. Did you see it?”

Justin racked his brain for a moment, and then nodded. “The dove may have been taking ostentation too far, even for you. What next, sir, pink waistcoats?”

“Ha! Nobody has dared to speak so freely around me since George. How I miss that rascal.”

“As do his many creditors, or so I’ve heard,” Justin said, remembering the evening not so long ago he’d spent doing his part in spiriting George “Beau” Brummell out of the city and on his way to safety in Calais. “Is that why I’m here, sir? To somehow assist in raising fond memories of the fellow who was once bosom chum? I’m flattered, yet devastated to admit that my man Wigglesworth doesn’t quite possess the man’s clever way with boot black.”

The prince swept out his arm, sending the silver tray loaded down with chocolate pots and plates and pastries crashing to the floor. “Damn you! Who are you to speak to me that— What do you want? Get out!”

This last was directed at the guardsmen who had entered at the sound of crashing silver and crockery, their swords drawn.

Justin stood his ground. And waited.

“For all of George’s faults, it’s true, I do miss him,” the prince said at last, almost wistfully, his well-known mercurial mood having shifted yet again. “He was well when you last saw him?”

“Alas, I cannot answer that question, sir, as I fear I’ve never actually met the man,” Justin lied smoothly.

“Yes, of course,” Prinny said, apparently remembering that he should show no interest in the Beau, or the fact that he’d cared enough to have ferreted out Justin’s participation in the scheme to extract the fellow from the clutches of the duns and even incarceration in debtor’s prison. “Let us move on to other things.”

“As you wish, sir. I am yours to command.”

“Good, you remember who I am. There are times I find that difficult to believe. Then you recall our private agreement as well, Wilde?”

Justin inclined his head yet again. “I believe I’ve committed it to memory, yes. If I might paraphrase for you?”

“Yes, yes, go on. I want to be assured you remember it.”

Justin’s smile was brilliant. “As I would a badly throbbing tooth, sir. In exchange for a sum of money numbering somewhere in the vicinity of what could in some twisted way be termed a king’s ransom, all of it deposited directly into Your Royal Highness’s private purse—”

“That is never to be mentioned.”

“I stand corrected. Although it was fifty thousand pounds, to be precise,” Justin said, actually beginning to enjoy himself. “Your Royal Highness, known to his intimates as George the Kind, I might venture, acting purely out of a generosity of spirit acknowledged throughout the realm and without thought to personal enrichment, pardoned my sorry self for the crime of firing in self-defense when the fool I’d been forced to challenge to a duel turned and discharged his pistol on two. A mistake that proved fatal to him and disastrous to me, as I then had to flee England or else be arrested and summarily hanged.”

“Better, although you fail to mention that dueling itself has long been outlawed, no matter the result of the meeting,” the prince pointed out smugly.

“How remiss of me. Shall we dig up Robbie Farber and charge him for his crime, do you think?”

“You’re impertinent. Go on, finish it.”

Justin really would rather not, so that the insult wrapped in his answer came to him easily. “In return for this grand and noble gesture, I, Baron Wilde, grateful to be once more standing on the ground first trod by my illustrious ancestors long before yours, sir, had ever heard of England and were still happily speaking German and feeding on cabbages, after eight long and painful years of exile, and once again in possession of both my estates and my fortune—most of the latter, at any rate—am the eager and obedient servant of Your Royal Highness, ready at all times to assist him whenever the need arises. That is our agreement, until such time as Your Royal Highness believes sufficient penance has been served.”

“I can’t abide cabbages, so your paltry attempt at yet another insult will be ignored. But I would be remiss if I weren’t to point out that you’re running perilously close to the limits of my forbearance.” Prinny wagged a finger in Justin’s direction. “You actually did quite well, Wilde, until the last. Handsome devil, I’ll give you that, but your jaw went rather hard there for a few moments. You aren’t eager and obedient?”

“I’m here,” Justin said, taking out his snuffbox. He wasn’t having fun anymore. In fact, he was very nearly bored, which was always dangerous. He deftly opened the chased-gold thing with one hand and then, delicately holding an infinitesimal pinch to his left nostril, sniffed. “For eager and obedient, I suggest His Royal Highness might accept my gift of the pick of my favorite bitch’s recent litter.”

“Damn, that was brilliant. Such understated flair, Wilde. You have to show me how you do it. Didn’t even sneeze.”

“Sneezing is so déclassé,” Justin said, returning the snuffbox to his pocket. “It’s all in the measure, sir. That, and I’ve had my blacksmith line my nostrils with lead.”

“I’d almost believe you. But enough banter. I’m due at the palace at three, to present myself to mine father, who please God isn’t ranting or drooling today. I’m about to make you a very happy man, Wilde.”

“How interesting, Your Royal Highness. And here I am, under the impression that I am already happy. Perhaps you plan to make me ecstatic?”

Prinny readjusted the covers around his ample belly. “There are times I think I’d rather make you mute. A pity we’re all now so modern and civilized. A well-maintained torture chamber was often a king’s only friend. How does one eat without a tongue, do you know?”

“In very small bites, I’d imagine,” Justin said, mistrusting the gleam in the prince’s vivid blue eyes, and therefore prudently not pointing out that the man was still one live if hopelessly mad father away from the throne.

“Your wife is dead these eight years or more, yes?”

“I believe so, yes.” Now Justin was all attention, at least inwardly. “A date you might remember with more clarity than I, as I was already escaped to the Continent. But I’ve always wondered, sir. How does one go about disposing of a dead body at the bottom of the stairs? A terrible inconvenience at best, I would suppose. Did you have her hauled away, or just fold her up inside a cabinet while the party went on without her?”

“You’re cold, Wilde. She was your wife. Granted, a little too free with her favors, but very beautiful. Exquisite, actually.”

Justin remained silent. Yes, Sheila had been beautiful. On the outside. And he’d been young, and beauty had mattered to him very much. Even after Sheila had no longer mattered, he’d found himself involved in a duel to protect her nonexistent honor.

“You don’t agree?”

“I scarcely remember her face, sir. There may be a miniature somewhere. Would you like it?”

“Cold. Cold. You make me almost regret what I am about to offer. A single service to put a period to your…accessibility. An end to your indebtedness. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Wilde lifted a hand to his face. And yawned. It was amazing what one could dare when one had moved beyond the ability to care.

“I’ve found you a wife,” the Prince Regent stated baldly, his tone clearly implying that he was no longer amused by Justin’s antics.

“Oh, I think not, sir. I’m not in the market for a wife.”

“You’re also not in a cell, awaiting the hangman. Which one of those two alternatives do you choose?”

Justin wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction of his answer. Even though they both knew that answer.

“Yes, quite. I will go on now. She is said to be the daughter of a war hero, unfortunately deceased. Allow it to be known only to you that this union is very important to the fellow who still most favors the ancient title of Holy Roman Emperor to that of—”

“Francis of Austria,” Justin supplied tersely. “Father of Marie Louise, who was wife to Napoleon, until Francis convinced her to betray him. Nephew of the doomed Marie Antoinette, whom he refused to save from the guillotine because he saw no personal profit in it. The man turned his coat so often since ascending the throne it is something of a marvel that he didn’t end up hanged and gibbeted by Bonaparte—or us. So, this female I’m not going to marry is German? Austrian?”

The prince shook his head. “Bohemian, although I’m assured that her mother, also unfortunately deceased, was English, and her late father a favorite at the court until his death on some battlefield.”

Justin was careful to keep his expression blank, even as an event in his life he’d hoped long banished returned to slap at his composure. “I once visited a city in the region. Trebon. I did not enjoy my time there.”

“No one but a fool enjoys being anywhere but England. Oh, but I know what you’re saying. You think perhaps she’s a Gypsy? Certainly not.”

“They prefer Romany, sir. Never Gypsy. At any rate, if you were told the lady is Bohemian, even if only less than half of her, I believe I’d prefer being hanged in the morning, thank you.”

“They’re a dirty people?” The prince’s face had taken on a rather haunted look, most probably thanks to a memory of his first sight of his now-estranged wife, Princess Caroline. It had been said that she harbored a decided dislike of soap and regular bathing.

“No, sir. And I’m certain the female in question is thoroughly civilized. I momentarily overreacted to an unpleasant memory, no more than that.”

“Please, don’t apologize. I believe I enjoy seeing the unflappable Justin Wilde even slightly discommoded. Trebon, was it? Nasty place? At any rate, this young woman, this—one moment.” He extracted a slip of paper from the pocket of his nightshirt, then read carefully: “‘Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin.’ Foreign names are all so needlessly complicated, aren’t they? Give me a good Mary, or Elizabeth, or Anne. At any rate, this woman is in need of a husband.”

“Disdainful as I am of repetition, I am not in need of a wife, sir.”

“You’ll pardon me my rudeness, Wilde, but I cannot find it within me to be concerned in the slightest with what you believe you might need. I need—no, strike that. England needs a suitable, well-born husband for the woman, for reasons of trade and all of that nonsense. You are to consider this marriage a foregone conclusion. Any and all information you might need will be provided to you as you leave. And one more thing—marry her and we’re finished. You will no longer be obligated to me in any way. And, yes, before you are so bad-mannered as to ask, you will also find a signed letter from me stating that fact, along with all those pesky details such as the time of her arrival at Portsmouth, which I believe to be fairly imminent. Now, see if you can find your way out without saying something that makes me rethink my generosity. And send in somebody to clean up this mess.”

Justin bowed, his jaw tight, and backed up three paces before turning to exit the overheated chamber. He might banter with the prince, he might even insult him, but there existed no way he could disobey him, not at the end of day, when such things mattered. And they both knew it.

He had his hand resting on the latch before the prince spoke again. Justin didn’t know what the man would say, but he had known he would say something. There was, with the Prince Regent, always something else.

“By the way, Wilde.”

“Yes, sir?” he asked, not bothering to turn around. Christ, the man was so woefully predictable.

“I may have forgotten to mention one other thing. Slipped my mind, I suppose. But, then, why else would I overlook your proven shortcomings as a husband for the lady in favor of your rather unique talents? You see, it would seem that someone wants your affianced bride dead. If any misfortune were to come to her, King Francis and I—indeed, England—would be quite displeased. You amuse me, Wilde, God only knows why. But my amusement has its limits. Now you may go.”

THE HUSTLE AND BUSTLE of the Portsmouth seaport and the array of tall masts Justin could see from his bedchamber window had not altered considerably in the time it had taken him to bathe and dress; which, for a gentleman of the first stare like the Baron Wilde, was, coincidentally, considerable.

He’d arrived in the town late the previous evening, having delayed departing London until he could be assured word had gotten back to the Prince Regent that it appeared Baron Wilde was flouting His Royal Majesty’s orders.

After all, why should Prinny be allowed a peaceful slumber if he, the victim in this sad farce, was to be denied his?

“Petty,” Justin muttered beneath his breath. “You are a petty, petty man. With a sore backside from being in the saddle for two full days.”

“My lord? You wish something?”

“No, Wigglesworth, thank you. I was only chastising myself for being seven kinds of fool.”

“Somebody should,” the valet answered, nodding his periwig-topped head. “It will take me days to brush all the road dirt from your buckskins, if they are to have so much as a prayer of ever being again presentable, which, sadly, I very much doubt. I’ll continue in my duties, then, my lord, if you don’t need me.”

“I would no doubt perish without you, Wigglesworth,” Justin assured the man. “Carry on.”

Justin was only half teasing, and both men knew it. Not that Justin needed his valet to survive. Not literally, and not since Bonaparte had been caged a second time and the world was again free to muck itself up without him. But it was Wigglesworth who still kept the facade of Lord Justin Wilde intact, and for a man like Justin, who’d felt himself in need of concealment and for so many years and so many reasons, the foppish, overdressed, fussy little fellow remained the perfect foil.

Plus, Wigglesworth understood the complete necessity of never overstarching one’s shirts. One should never undervalue such talent.

“Still no sign of an Austrian or Czech flag in the harbor, Wigglesworth. I shudder to think we might be forced to endure another day in this dreary hovel before the lady arrives. The prince’s man assured me he’d had word her journey was proceeding according to plan as of two days ago.”

“A man of your sensibilities, my lord, could not but be rendered maudlin by such a thought. If the lady’s ship does not appear by three, I shall make it a point to prepare your supper myself. You must not be made to endure both this inadequate chamber and a less than excellent repast.”

“Be sure to take our good friend and personal protector Brutus with you again if that unhappy event should become mandatory,” Justin warned, as Wigglesworth remained the only man in all of Creation to believe it was his consequence, and not the hulking Brutus’s mountainous physique (and fearsome expression) that opened the doors to sanctuaries like inn kitchens. Bless Brutus, he was an army unto himself, and invaluable to Justin.

“Yes, my lord.” Wigglesworth brushed some imaginary lint from the foaming lace jabot at his throat. He was a man who believed in his heart of hearts that Mr. Brummell should have been horse-whipped for convincing the gentlemen to give up their silks and satins and laces in favor of looking as if they were all a flock of penguins heading off to some perpetual funeral.

He fluttered about the inn bedchamber now like a small exotic bird himself, uncertain where to land.

Poor Wigglesworth. The man had a mind alive with bees….

Wringing his delicate hands, the valet finally flitted to the dressing table, counting for only the fourth time the number of brushes, combs and other silver-backed necessities of the well-groomed English gentleman to be sure none had slipped into the swift and crafty hands of the inn servants who had visited the chamber to light the fire or deliver his lordship’s breakfast, the fine repast Wigglesworth himself had overseen being created in the kitchens.

“Will you be climbing down from your usual worrywart alts anytime soon, Wigglesworth?” Justin at last inquired lazily from the chair beside the window before the man could suffer some injury to himself for lack of anything to do. “Or will I be forced to find a bootjack in this decrepit establishment in order to remove my boots? You did notice this spot on the left toe, did you not?”

Wigglesworth threw up his hands in horror and joy at the same time. How he needed to be needed. “Merde! A spot? A smudge? Say it is not so!”

Justin rubbed lightly beneath his nose, as it wouldn’t do to allow his valet to see him so amused at his expense. “Wigglesworth? Do you have any idea what you’re saying, have been saying ever since you broke bread in the common room last night with the chevalier’s valet?”

“Your pardon, my lord?” Wigglesworth asked as he ripped through the contents of one of the many pieces of luggage the baron required for an overnight stay on the road, at last coming out with a fresh white cloth and a tin of boot black. “And what is it I would have been saying?”

“Merde, Wigglesworth. You have been almost constantly parroting the word merde all the morning long.”

Wigglesworth dropped a small rug fashioned just for the purpose in front of his lordship’s chair before carefully placing his mauve satin-clad knee to it and motioning for his lordship to, if he pleased, lift the leg currently bearing the offending footwear.

“Yes, I have, haven’t I? Frenchmen are by nature a filthy people, but their language is quite melodious, don’t you think? So much better to say merde than mercy, which sounds so…plebian.”

Justin allowed his good angel and his naughty angel a few moments of debate before deciding he should be a better man. “Merde is not French for mercy, Wigglesworth. It is, in point of fact—and forgive my blushes—the word employed most often by the French in referring to…excrement.”

Wigglesworth, who prided himself on having risen from the depths of being put out as a chimney sweep in Piccadilly forty years previously to the heights of caring for arguably the most exquisite gentleman in this or any realm, looked up at the baron with tears in his eyes. “I am devastated, my lord. Ashamed. Aghast. Humiliated.”

“Yes, I should think you would be. Shall I give you the sack?” Justin asked him as Wigglesworth applied boot black and began rubbing an invisible mar with everything that was in his pitifully thin body.

“If it would be your wish, my lord.”

Damn. It was difficult to joke with Wigglesworth. The man was much too committed, too serious. “No, I shan’t dismiss you. After all, if you left you’d probably take Brutus with you. I would miss his conversation.”

“Brutus doesn’t speak, my lord,” the literal-minded Wigglesworth pointed out as he gave one last swipe at the boot and stood up once more.

“Precisely. Which puts him head and shoulders above most people. He can be counted on to never say anything boring. Ah, much better, thank you. I shall now not be ashamed to show myself in public.” He looked toward the window once more, and frowned to see a new flag blowing in the breeze. “Wigglesworth, it would seem the lady’s ship has just dropped anchor. Promise me you will not flee screaming from the docks if she should not be all you believe necessary in my wife.”

“I will do my utmost to contain myself,” the valet promised. “It remains to be known what you will do, my lord.”

Justin accepted his hat from the valet and headed for the door. “Prinny took refuge in cherry brandy, as I’ve heard it told, when he first espied his affianced bride. I think I’d rather face my potential demon fully sober. Although, if our worst fears are confirmed, I suppose a blindfold as I enter the bedchamber for the first time wouldn’t come amiss.”

“We shall hope for the best, then, my lord. It’s important that she’s presentable, if she is to bear our name, if you are to have her hand on your arm as you go about Society. Pleasing to the eye.”

Justin hesitated at the door, and Wigglesworth ran forward to throw it open. “Physical beauty is over-rated, you know. As long as she is passably intelligent and well-spoken, and does not eat little children or frighten the horses, I believe we’ll term the thing a success. Not that we have a choice. We must also remember that this marriage is not the lady’s fault. Why, she may take me in complete dislike.”

“Never, my lord,” Wigglesworth said, bristling. “She is the most fortunate of women.”

“Oh, hardly that. I fear I am not an easy man.”

“You are a very good man, my lord,” the valet said, following the baron into the hallway.

“Why, Wigglesworth, I don’t believe, in our nearly half-dozen years of acquaintance, you have ever before so insulted me.”

Brutus, stepping out from the shadows to make one of his own with his considerable height and breadth, made that snuffling noise that passed for laughter, anger, bemusement and most any other emotion, and fell into step behind them before taking the lead once they were on the street in front of the inn.

Brutus never touched another human as they made their way to the docks. There was nary a shove, a push. But, as was always the case, the bustling tradesmen and loitering sailors and importuning streetwalkers all melted away in front of him, clearing a wide path for his employer and his employer’s valet to follow. Brutus, Justin often thought, was more effective in parting the crowds than a fanfare of trumpets.

The whispers followed, too: Who is that fine set-up Lunnon gentleman? He must be very important. Did you see the cut of his jacket? Coo, ain’t he grand? I’d let him tup me for free, no lie! And look at the little fellow, all dressed up like a Christmas pudding. Let’s follow, see what he’s up to….

Justin liked to think of this recurring phenomenon as hiding in plain sight, a ploy that had worked well in his years of service to the Crown. Or, as someone once said (on quite a different subject, but no matter), there are none so blind as those who will not see. Why sneak in and out of cities under the cover of darkness? Why skulk about in alleyways if there are well-lighted streets to be had? And who suspects someone so determinedly visible of any skullduggery, when it is so much easier to write him off as a fool, a fop, a man concerned only with his own consequence and the tailoring of his waistcoat?

Who? Not the trail of dead men he had left behind him over the course of those years and in a half-dozen countries, that much was certain.

Justin had wearied of the game long before the war, and the necessity for it, was over. But he had held on to the facade, one he felt he needed now more than ever. If people, and most especially his few real friends, could be allowed to see past the silliness, the banter, the supposed fascination for show and fashion, they might be able to glimpse the darkness inside of him, the assassin he had been, the deeds he had done…the mistakes he had made. The one most terrible, unforgivable mistake he had made.

He was alone now, for the most part. Letting anyone in, truly in, was no longer in the realm of his possibilities. That’s probably why he had so easily brought himself around to the idea of marrying at the Prince Regent’s request. Better a stranger than someone he might care for. Better someone who had no interest in really knowing him, someone he had no interest in cultivating. An ancient title, a fine estate, a generous allowance, a blind eye turned to any discreet romantic peccadilloes once the heir was assured and an entrée into Society at the highest level. These were more than sufficient for any wife.

Bringing his mind back to attention, he realized that Brutus had halted at last, halfway along the dock, and stepped aside to give a clear view of the ship and those now in the process of disembarking down a— Was that a red carpet rolled out over the gangplank and onto the dock? By God, it was. And there were ribbons tied to the rope railings. With streamers.

Justin, Wigglesworth, Brutus and the crowd that had followed after them all watched as a full squad of hulking guardsmen in dress uniforms, peaked metal helmets and carrying long, lethal-looking halberds made their way down the gangplank to stand at attention on either side of it for the length of the crimson carpet.

The crowd craned its collective neck when the parade of soldiers came to an end, waiting to see who next might descend.

First came two no-longer-young women, similarly dressed in not quite the first stare, but more in the sedate look of paid companions. They took their place at either side of the carpet directly in front of the gangplank.

Next to disembark was a tall man, probably halfway into his thirties, although with those huge mustachios and sideburns favored in Francis’s court it was difficult to know for certain. The man was also in uniform, the amount of braid and the size of his helmet denoting his elevated rank. His alert blue eyes seemed to be everywhere at once as he surveyed the crowd, before his intense gaze met, and held, Justin’s.

“My, my, my, Wigglesworth, there’s a specimen for you. Should I be cowering, do you think?”

Deftly flipping one side of his short, gold-braid-befrogged cape over his shoulder, and with a hand holding the sword hilt steady at his waist, the man headed sure-footedly toward Justin, removing the ceremonial helmet as he did. “Baron Wilde?”

Justin acknowledged the correctness of the question with a very slight inclination of his head.

“Very good, my lord. We were told you had been warned to be prompt. I am Major Luka Prochazka, emissary of His Highness Francis of Austria, I. Fernec, Apostolic King of Hungary, Franjo the Second, King of—”

“Yes, thank you, Major Prochazka, I am aware of the titles and their implications, as well as my geography.” Stifling a yawn, covering his mouth with a lace-edged silken square he extracted from his sleeve cuff, Justin allowed his heavily lidded eyes to glide along the view of armed soldiers. “Tell me, and I make this inquiry only out of idle curiosity, Major, are you by any chance expecting an imminent assault? Should I be sending Wigglesworth here hot-footing back to my coach to procure my sword?”

The major’s neatly manicured yet hairy face reassembled itself into a bit of a scowl. He stepped closer, speaking softly yet forcefully. “You were not informed? I was told you would be informed, and respond accordingly. Her ladyship is in some danger. Where is your contingent of guards?”

Lord save him from serious men. Justin indicated Brutus with a languid wave of his handkerchief. “Behold. My army.” He turned his head to reassure Wigglesworth. “No offense, my friend. You possess your own unique talents.”

The major clearly was not pleased. “One man? You bring one man to protect your betrothed?”

“One very large man, you’ll agree,” Justin drawled. “There is also myself.”

Luka Prochazka’s lip curled as he ran his gaze up and down Justin’s fashionably dressed form. Or at least the baron thought the man’s lip curled; again, with those elaborate mustachios, it was impossible to say for certain. “You leave me no choice but to ignore my orders to dismiss the guard once her ladyship has been passed into your protection. They will accompany us to London.”

“Oh, hardly, sir. A contingent of foreign soldiers, armed and appearing quite lethal, parading about the English countryside? Many would consider such a thing an act of war. That cannot possibly have been your king’s intent.”

“I will have her safe.”

“I will have her to wife,” Justin countered, a hint of steel creeping into his lowered voice, although the smile never left his face. “What is mine, I protect. Better that we were friends, Major. A fool judges by appearances only. You would not like me as your enemy.”

The major didn’t even blink. “I have heard stories…”

“No, Major. You haven’t. When it comes to Baron Wilde, should anyone dare to inquire, your knowledge of him resembles nothing more than it would a blank slate. Now, if this no-longer-amusing pissing contest has reached its limits, shall we see the lady we have surely kept waiting long enough?”

At last, Luka smiled. “On the contrary, my lord. It is the lady who keeps us waiting.”

“Cowering in her cabin, is she?”

“Hardly, my lord.”

“Justin. As I was informed you are to remain in England for the foreseeable future, we either become informal, Luka, or we kill one another.”

“Justin it is, then. I’ve killed enough men.”

They set off down the length of the dock, their heights similar, their long strides matching perfectly, yet looking as outwardly dissimilar as any two men could be. “That’s the spirit. Always believe you’ll be the winner, even when it is painfully obvious that the outcome will not be in your favor.”

“Oh? We’d duel with handkerchiefs?”

“Only if you fancy mine stuffed halfway down your gullet,” Justin quipped with a smile as he gave the handkerchief one last flourish before it disappeared up his sleeve.

As they approached the ridiculous red carpet, one of the two females turned toward the gangplank, hiked up her skirts and returned to the ship, only to reappear moments later, her eyes downcast as she once more took her place.

Justin halted at the edge of the carpet and removed his hat, his dark hair immediately being blown about in a rather stiff breeze coming off the Channel. Behind him, Wigglesworth sighed.

“I sense her ladyship enjoys making an entrance?”

“Lady Alina is her own person,” Luka said, and this time Justin knew the man was smiling beneath that great mass of mustache.

“Does it itch?” he asked impulsively.

Luka turned to look at him, a question in his eyes for a moment, before he nodded. “And acts as a poor strainer for my food, yes. But all officers are required to be so adorned. When this commission is successfully completed, I plan to resign from the army. Just so that I might shave the damn thing off.”

Justin threw back his head, laughing, feeling that he and this fierce-looking soldier would have no problems now that they had survived their initial introduction. But the smile faded abruptly as a small figure appeared at the head of the gangplank.

She was cloaked in emerald velvet from head to foot, the hood edged with ermine, ermine tails scattered here and there as decorative tassels. Interesting. Queen Elizabeth had favored ermine at her coronation, to symbolize her virginity.

Her ladyship was more than a smidge of a thing, but much less than a tall, stately figure. The hand that reached for the rope railing was ungloved, the fingers long and slender. The face, however, remained in shadow. Teasingly, tantalizingly.

Justin’s thoughts about his prospective wife, and they had been few and far between, if truth be told, had conjured up a meek and obedient woman who could give him an heir and then retire to her knitting while he went about his own pursuits. Now he felt his first stirrings of concern.

Her left hand lifted to the hood and drew it back, slowly at first, and then with a flourish, revealing a mass of shining black curls and a face that drew astonished and admiring gasps from the multitude of interested observers.

Every notion of feminine beauty Justin had ever considered paled into nothingness as Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin raised her perfect, softly rounded chin and surveyed all the conquered who stood below her on the wooden dock.

Her skin was the finest cream, her brows like delicate ravens’ wings above enormous, tip-tilted eyes the color of old gold coins. The nose, regal, the mouth, wide and softly curving, the cheekbones, high, turning all of her beauty slightly yet wonderfully exotic.

In the suddenly quiet crowd, and without the slightest idea who this creature could be, several of the women curtsied, many men bowed or touched their forelocks. The lady acknowledged this homage with an infinitesimal nod of her head, accepting the gestures as her due.

“Merde,” Wigglesworth breathed, staggering where he stood, his eyes filling with tears of thanks and delight.

Luka’s voice seemed to come to Justin from a distance. “Lady Alina, my lord. Your affianced bride.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Justin murmured under his breath, “the impertinent chit has upstaged me.”

Worse, and for the first time in his memory, Baron Wilde realized that he might actually be experiencing some uneasiness—and a small modicum of anxiety for his own well-being.

CHAPTER TWO

HER HEART RACED SO RAPIDLY Alina feared it might stumble over itself and stop.

Tatiana moments earlier had whispered into her ear that the Baron Wilde was not an ancient ogre, but young, and a near-god, and that her ladyship had once more stuck her thumb into the pie only to emerge with a most glorious plum.

But that was the problem. Alina had not stuck her thumb into a pie. None of what had already happened had been at her desire or volition. His Majesty had stuck all of her into the pie, and she would have to find her own way out.

Except there was no way out. Luka had convinced her of that. Her mother dead these past three years, her father perishing at Waterloo, she’d had no one but her aunt Mimi to represent her wishes at court. Which was the same as to say she had no one to protect her, to fight for her, to convince His Majesty that his sometimes troublesome ward should not be sacrificed in some ridiculous gesture to help cement relations between her country and that of the greedy English.

Aunt Mimi had called the betrothal an honor, even as she could not hide her triumphant smile at the prospect of being rid of the now grown-up niece whose beauty was on the rise just as her own was teetering toward a slippery slide into middle age.

Once Alina had resigned herself to her fate, she had demanded only two things, one of which she received.

Her insistence on knowing everything there was to know about this Baron Wilde fell on deaf ears. She knew no more about the man today than she had two months previously, except for Tatiana’s silliness just now.

Her second demand had been not only met, but exceeded, as the ermine-adorned cloak well demonstrated. If she was to represent the court, the king, then she must be of the first stare, her wardrobe and retinue worthy of the emissary of His Majesty.

Gone were the childlike gowns her aunt had insisted she be limited to, replaced by only the finest silks, the most elegant designs, the most fashionable of accessories—including the full jewelry boxes that had once belonged to her mother but for the past years had somehow become the possessions of her aunt.

Alina had gifted the woman with the set of garnets and a pretty speech filled with gratitude for her loving care of her, and done so in the presence of the king, so that Mimi could not throw the nearly worthless stones back in her face.

Small victories, few and far between, but Alina took pleasure in them just the same.

She had been delighted to learn that Luka would accompany her, remain with her as long as deemed necessary, and that Tatiana had declared she would rather die than be left behind.

She had been flattered when Danica had been added to her retinue, as she had never before had her own dresser, but only shared her aunt’s. It was only proper that those closest to her be people with whom she could be comfortable, and not cold English strangers.

But the guardsmen? They had been a surprise to her.

Those guardsmen now stood at attention, clearly awaiting Alina’s descent to the dock. Very well, she had done as she’d planned; her first steps on the island of her mother’s birth would be taken with all the accompanying pomp and ceremony she could have wanted.

All she had to do now was face her betrothed, look into his eyes, allow him to take her offered hand, perform her necessary curtsy that indicated her subservience and willingness to obey.

And pray she did not throw up on his feet.

For the space of a full minute (she knew, because she had counted out the seconds in her head), Alina had cast her gaze about the dock without really seeing anything or anyone. But now she had no choice but to look to the bottom of the gangplank, where Luka and the “near-god” waited.

She drew in a quick, silent breath. This was her affianced husband? This tall, disturbingly beautiful man whose heavy-lidded green eyes smiled at her and mocked her all at the same time? She’d expected older, jaded, even a paunch and a cane. She’d prayed for amenable, stupid, easily led.

What in the name of the Virgin was she supposed to do with this?

The self-assured creature approached the gangplank, planting one gleaming black Hessian boot on it as if this somehow claimed not only her as his own, but this ship as well, and held out his hand to her, openly daring her to take it.

“Your servant, my lady,” he said, his eyes still mocking her. “On behalf of His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, I, Baron Justin Wilde, your delighted betrothed, welcome you to the homeland of your mother. Her passing was England’s loss, yet her daughter is clearly England’s gain.”

Very prettily said, she supposed. It was only as she opened her mouth to parrot the words she had learned by rote that must be spoken on this occasion, that she realized the baron had addressed her in flawless German, now the official language of Austria.

Alina supposed he’d wish to be complimented on his expertise.

She’d rather poke hot sticks under her fingernails. Although how silly of him to let her know she could not speak German in front of him and think he would not understand. Should she thank him for forewarning her? No, probably not.

Instead, she answered him in English as flawless as his German, putting her hand in his open palm and then watching rather intently as he bent his dark head to within a whisper of placing a kiss on her bare skin.

She ignored the tingle that ran up her arm, all the way to her shoulder.

“You’ve met my secretary, Major Prochazka?”

The baron had not released her hand, but had deftly drawn her arm through his, leading her back to where Luka and an odd-looking periwigged creature stood waiting, the latter beaming at her as if personally responsible for some wonderful occurrence. Then they both bowed—the little man with much more élan than poor Luka, who had to contend with his sword—turned and began leading the way off the crowded dock.

“Your secretary, my lady? Ah, yes, of course he is. And, in turn, I am the King of Siam.”

Alina stopped in her tracks, which made the baron do likewise. “What are you suggesting, my lord?”

“Suggesting? I? Nothing more, my dear, than that we begin as we plan to go on. All that faradiddle you spouted about improving trade relations? Very nicely said, but we both know the truth. Or do you wish that we go on with you pretending that you’re a pretty yet brainless twit, and that I…well, dear me, didn’t I just paint myself into a corner with my tongue? Very well, that I also continue pretending that I am a pretty yet brainless twit.”

Alina looked him up and down, amazed to hear a man call himself pretty; besides, he was much too much the male to be termed pretty, even in his fashionable clothes. But what did he mean? Pretending. Pretending what? Had she been betrothed to a lunatic?

“You’re saying that you’re not a brainless twit? Are you quite certain of that?”

“At this precise moment? No.” His smile reached all the way to his eyes, but then stopped, as if something barred the way. “Very well, then. We shall for the moment allow the definition of secretary to stand.”

“I don’t recall granting it permission to sit down,” Alina said, with just the sort of offhand sarcasm that had landed her in trouble so often, had called her to the king’s attention in ways that probably had hastened her banishment to an English marriage. She behaves as if she’s queen, her aunt had told anyone who would listen. Queen of the Romany, I suppose, for all her thin Englisher blood.

Alina walked forward once more, her gaze on the major’s militarily straight spine. “He’d die for me, you know.”

“Commendable of the major, I suppose. Allow me, please, to point out Brutus, my, um, secretary, lumbering along just ahead of yours. He’d kill for me. Of the two choices, I much prefer the latter. The major is fearful for your safety. But you’re aware of that, of course.”

Alina had been so busy trying to keep up with this verbal sparring that it took her a moment to understand what the baron was implying. “My safety? No, that can’t be correct. You’ve misunderstood his mission, one for which he volunteered. Luka is concerned for my welfare. He was my father’s aide-de-camp, and therefore feels responsible for me. Unless you’re telling me that England is an unsafe place?”

The baron looked at her for a long moment, and then smiled, another smile that did not quite reach those unsettling green eyes. “Forgive me, my lady, clearly I mistook his purpose. And I assure you, England for you is as safe as houses. Indeed, you will have the entire kingdom at your feet the moment you first appear in Society.”

“That is my intention, yes,” she told him, not understanding why she dared this impertinence, but enjoying herself all the same. He seemed to like teasing her, surprising her, for what reason she didn’t know. Why not return the favor?

Begin as you plan to go on. That’s what he’d said. As a good wife, she shouldn’t disappoint him. And what a shame that they must marry, be bound to each other by duty. He would be so much more fun to flirt with, wouldn’t he? As a husband, however, he might be more trouble than even his handsome face and enticing smile could overcome.

The baron cocked an eyebrow. “You’re quite the honest little thing, aren’t you? Some would consider that a failing.”

“Would you be one of those people?”

“Ah, and inquisitive, as well.”

“Inquisitive enough to have noticed that you have carefully sidestepped my question, my lord,” Alina said, her heart beating faster yet again. Goodness, but the man made her feel delightfully alive! “I shall have to be exceedingly careful around you, won’t I?”

He looked down into her face, his expression suddenly too intense, so that she looked away. “On the contrary. I believe it is I who will have to be exceptionally careful around you. I hadn’t expected to like you.”

She kept her eyes on the street at her feet, pretending polite indifference even as she felt ridiculously pleased that he’d said—admitted, really, as if it was some sort of failing of his own—that he liked her. “Oh. And…and is that so terrible?”

“It could be, yes,” he said, the teasing note back in his voice. “A good wife would have had the decency to be staid and boring and completely ignorable.”

“And I’m—”

“Hardly ignorable,” he said, patting the hand that rested on his forearm.

Alina swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. “I see. And…and is that a compliment?”

“Possibly,” he answered in that already familiar, maddeningly light tone as they mounted the steps to an ancient inn. “That, or a warning…”

“YOU SUMMONED ME?” The clipped tone of voice revealed that Major Luka Prochazka was not at all pleased to be in the position of taking orders from an Englishman.

Which wasn’t Justin’s problem, was it? No. He had problems enough of his own, thank you.

The baron had spent the past several hours reading and rereading the contents of the packet he’d been handed by the Prince Regent’s secretary, this time reading as much between the lines as he had the actual words. And it was those words not written that told him he’d been a fool to sign the agreement. The marriage, and “his silence on matters known to the Prince Regent and himself concerning a private arrangement,” in exchange for the termination of his indebtedness to the Prince Regent.

It had all been too easy, even with the added responsibility of keeping his unwanted bride safe until Francis had dealt with the man who wished her harm. Justin should have known nothing with the Prince Regent, or any royalty for that matter, was ever that simple, or that straightforward.

He looked toward the door to the private dining room of the inn and the man standing there, no longer clad in his uniform, but in a rather drab brown jacket and tan buckskins, his cravat a pure horror that would have crumpled Wigglesworth to his knees at the abomination of the thing.

“She doesn’t know,” he said now, flatly, looking Luka full in the eye.

Luka Prochazka merely blinked, and did not answer.

“Cat got your tongue? Very well, Major, we have the whole evening ahead of us. You wouldn’t care for a small side wager as to which one of us outlasts the other?”

“I…that is, you…your statement took me by surprise, and was not a question at all. To what exactly was I supposed to respond?”

“Ah, now you wish to play the fool? Too late for that, Major. Yet, much as such exercises pain me, I’ll repeat myself. She doesn’t know. She’s dancing about somewhere above our heads, delighted in her performance on the dock earlier, happy in her ignorance, and with absolutely no idea her life is at stake at the moment,” Justin said, even as he motioned Luka to take up a chair and avail himself of the bottle of wine that sat on the table between them. “No, don’t look at me as if you still don’t understand what I’m saying. She thinks this is all some political union we’re going to be entering into, an advance of trade between our countries, or some showpiece of how Francis and our George have cried friends and allies yet again. She recited an entire speech on the thing while we were at the docks, just like a good little idiot. But she’s not an idiot, is she, which is why you haven’t told her the truth.”

“But it is all of that,” Luka said, pouring himself a glass of finest burgundy, as Justin never traveled without his own wines any more than he would see it as civilized to travel without his own bed linens.

“Continue to evade my questions, Major, and you and I will go to war. It’s enough that the rain delays our departure to London until the morning and a man of my sensibilities must pass another night beneath this probably leaky roof. The girl is having herself a determined lark, even as it’s clear she loathes the idea of a marriage between us. Ermine tips, enough baggage coming off that ship this afternoon to raise it a two full inches above its previous waterline, a baldly stated intention to take London by storm. She’s beautiful, magnificently so, and she is clearly aware of that fact. As long as she must bow to the king’s wishes, she has come to conquer England, and she very well might. God knows I’d wager on it. If she isn’t put to bed with a shovel within days of her first conquest.”

“She doesn’t need to know that.”

Justin slammed the side of his fist on the tabletop, rocking the bottle of wine. “Bloody hell, she doesn’t!” He sat back, amazed at his outburst—he, who was always so cool, so controlled, so in charge of his emotions. He didn’t much care for the notion he could be concerned with someone else’s welfare, especially some impudent chit who seemed to have taken up instant residence in his head. He’d never been so attracted to a female, and he didn’t much care for the feeling.

His eyes closed, he rubbed at his forehead, willing himself back to his usual composure. “Why? Why hasn’t she been told?”

“It…it was decided that she might…balk at any strictures put on her movements if she were to know our concerns. The Lady Alina is young and…somewhat headstrong. If she can be made to believe that English customs are to be much more strict with the comings and goings of its females, more protective as it were, she would accept that as fact and not chafe at the restrictions quite so much. But if she were to learn that she is being guarded, that she is in fact more a prisoner within invisible walls than she is a young woman on an adventure, a young bride out to make her way in Society…”

Luka sighed and took a long drink from his glass. “A rather superior vintage for a simple inn, even to my admittedly unsophisticated palate. Clearly your economy is not so lowered as ours by the recent war.”

Justin’s mouth lifted in a rueful, one-sided smile. “Yes. And the streets of London are paved in golden cobblestones.” He leaned forward once more, his elbows on the tabletop. “You’re telling me that my soon-to-be wife is completely unaware that her life is in danger. That you or some other idiot has decided it is best she not know—because she might otherwise chafe at her restrictions? My God, man, you speak as if you and your countrymen are afraid of the chit.”

“In my defense, Justin—if I might retain the honor of addressing you informally now that I have so disappointed you—you’ve only just met the lady. She has a decidedly strong will. The only reason she agreed to the marriage, in the end, was that she saw it as a way to become her own woman, out from under her aunt’s thumb. I believe the words she used went something along the lines of once I have put this husband I am burdened with in his place.”

“Hmm,” Justin mused, sitting back once more. “There was nothing in the packet given to me as to why she’s in such danger, but just that I’m to guard her safety until such time I am notified that the danger is past. Now I’m wondering—did she step on someone’s tail?”

Luka took another sip of wine, clearly a cautious man and obviously mentally measuring both Justin and the depth of information he was prepared to share. “Lately? Only her aunt’s, I suppose. But then those two got along like chalk and cheese even before General Valentin met his end at Waterloo. Ever since Lady Alina’s mother died, as a matter of fact. You mention a packet. Might I see its contents?”

“You may not. I am, however, reasonably comfortable with its contents as they pertain to Lady—you call her Alina. Does she prefer that?”

“Magdaléna is her given name, in honor of her paternal great-grandmother, but I’ve been told that her mother loathed it, pointing out that her daughter has more English than any other blood in her veins, and that she would have been fine with Mary, but Magdaléna was unacceptable. Her ladyship has been called Alina from the cradle, a compromise of sorts, I suppose. But to answer your question, if Lady Alina did not like the name, she wouldn’t allow it.”

“You’re trying very hard, and quite heavy-handedly I might add, to have me take my affianced bride in dislike. Is there a reason for that? Perhaps you had seen yourself as her husband until our two royal meddlers decided to gift the lady and me with each other?”

The major’s complexion—what could be seen of it behind the mustachios and ridiculous mutton-chops—colored. “Lady Alina is the daughter of a nobleman. I am the son of a farmer. I would never presume…”

God, the man was in love with her. Or doing his best to give the impression that he was in love with her. And why, Justin wondered, did he always doubt the motives of others? Of course, the simple answer was that it was this doubt, this hesitancy to trust, that had kept him alive all of those long years on the Continent. Yet he had accepted Alina immediately, seeing no ulterior motives, no undercurrents—only her honesty. Did that make him incredibly insightful, or a fool?

“No, of course you wouldn’t, Major. Forgive me. But you would die for her, wouldn’t you?”

“Without question or hesitation,” Luka responded at once, drawing his body to attention—not an easy feat, as he was still seated at the table.

Justin sighed, becoming bored by this grand show of devotion. “Heaven preserve me from martyrs and heroes—they always seem to end up doing something destined to prove their glorious assertions. Let us pray then that the lady never calls on you to make such a sacrifice, as you begin to alarm me with your fatalistic fervor.”

Luka chuckled softly. “I would I die for her, should the situation call for that death. That doesn’t mean I plan on any such event.”

“How you ease my mind. And now I remember, you want to live long enough to shave off all that ghastly hair and discover whether or not you possess an upper lip.” Justin put down his wineglass, and then asked the question that most troubled him. “Tell me more about this Jarmil Novak I see mentioned in passing in my packet, if you please, beginning with why he would want Lady Alina to be reunited with her deceased parents?”

Luka nodded. “Yes, Jarmil Novak. You were informed about him? Inhaber Novak.”

“Inhaber? So he is a colonel-in-chief?”

Luka couldn’t hide his surprise. “You know what that means?”

“I know the rank, but not the man. Inhabers raise and finance battalions during time of war, correct? But that doesn’t tell me whether this Novak fellow rode out in front of those battalions, brandishing his sword, gallantly shouting ‘forward, men,’ or if he used his money for political gain and doesn’t know which end of a sword to hold. In other words, is he dangerous?”

“Ah, Inhaber Novak is familiar with swords and their uses. But, yes, he only buys them, along with those who employ them for him. Otherwise, he does not dirty his hands to do what he can easily hire others to do for him. The Romany loathe him for the way he treated his hired soldiers. And, yes, he can be…dangerous.”

“Ah, yes, the…Romany.” Justin had nearly uttered the word Gypsies, but prudently corrected himself before he could make that particular blunder. He tucked away the information that the Romany hated Novak, as his concern now was more with Alina’s safety. “Is there anyone who can abide the man?”

“Our king,” Luka said, sighing. “Except when he doesn’t. I think they each have uses for the other. You’re a man of the world, Justin. You understand the fragility of political alliances.”

“More than I wish to, yes. Alliances and long memories, old feuds. Boundaries that shift position with seemingly every decade and each new war. Where your grandfather had worshipped, what language his great-grandfather had spoken. People seem to fight new wars over six-hundred-year-old arguments all the time, both in your country and here.”

“Then you do understand.”

Justin nodded. If he had learned nothing else during his eight years of exile, years spent making himself as valuable to England as possible, in any way possible, in hopes of being granted a pardon, he’d learned that those in power or in pursuit of power didn’t need a reason for anything they did. If they didn’t have a valid argument, they’d stitch one up out of whole cloth. If no enemy was available, they’d manufacture one. With Bonaparte caged only a year, was somebody already looking for another argument?

“But what does Novak and any of that have to do with Lady Alina, other than supposedly wanting her dead?”

“She is part Romany.”

Justin raised one well-sculpted eyebrow, gave a thought—not his first of the day—to the girl’s astonishing mass of ebony curls…and how they might look unbound, cascading across his pillow. “Really. And what part might that be?”

“The part that matters, at least to the Romany. Her paternal grandmother’s blood flows in her veins. Diluted as it is, what with her foreign mother and half-Austrian father, I’m told she is seen in some quarters to be the rightful owner of land suddenly returned to our country since the war. Even with the edicts of the Congress of Vienna, boundaries are still vague and shifting all over Europe, and arguments abound. There is for us even now some difficulty with France.”

Justin dismissed the subject of border disputes with France as unnecessary information. “I thought the Romany prefer the nomadic life. There are many here in England, at least for much of the year. They prefer to be citizens of the world and not of one country.”

“They prefer, Justin, not being scorned as outlaws and branded and murdered and betrayed. Always betrayed. In any event, there are murmurings of claims to this certain large tract of land, of some ancestral deed. With their own territory, no matter how small, how mountainous and mostly uninhabitable, they could begin to dream of becoming their own city-state within the kingdom. The Romany see such a thing as their refuge, their—”

“Yes, I believe I can take it from here.” Justin held up a hand to stop Luka as more pieces had begun to fall into place for him. “Let me finish for you, if you don’t mind. This expanse of land is now claimed by Inhaber Novak, while this supposed ancestral deed goes back any number of centuries, and then forward again to the sole surviving Romany Valentin, Lady Alina.”

“Exactly, and that land, or rather the ownership of it in the absence of any formal deed, has been disputed for at least those myriad centuries, long before the Congress of Vienna took a carving knife to half of Europe. The king himself took me into his confidence and told me as much. The Romany don’t have queens, per se, and power is traditionally limited to the men in any group, so that I was much surprised to hear what the king had to say. But as the saying goes, any port in a storm. Lady Alina is that port for the local Romany. Without her, the dream ends once and for all time, the possibility of one safe haven for the Romany people in the region. Not that it is more than a nebulous dream in any case.”

Luka sighed. “Lady Alina is inordinately proud of her few drops of Romany blood. She would see herself as their savior, at the very least, were she to know. Truly, it will be easier for everyone if she is never told, and if she is bound to England, never returning to her homeland. I was sworn to secrecy by the king himself, forbidden to tell you this, but it seems only fair you should understand the danger, and take the proper precautions until the king decides what to do with Inhaber Novak, as your lightheartedness earlier causes me some concern. Perhaps, once Lady Alina is married to you, Novak will no longer see her as a threat to him.”

There was a knock at the door and Wigglesworth entered, carrying a plate of bread and cheese. Justin waved a hand over the plate, inviting the major to eat, which gave Justin time to think.

He shook his head at his gullibility; how could he have been so blind? No wonder the Prince Regent had been so willing to allow his insults. The man had his fifty thousand pounds all safely tucked up in his purse, making Justin no longer necessary and, if he were to speak out of turn, potentially embarrassing. A nice, clean assassination of the pesky baron would not come amiss as far as the Prince Regent was concerned, and would rid him of that potential embarrassment. No wonder the man had been so eager to assist King Francis in his request.

It was time for another small chat with the Prince Regent. But first, he’d ask a few more questions of the wonderfully forthcoming major.

“Tell me, if the king knows Novak wants her dead, why didn’t he already do something about it, have Novak arrested? Why bother with this farce of a marriage?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The king is playing for time, and some sort of amicable solution. He doesn’t want to have his hand forced by making a decision on this land, the disputed deed, because either way he decided would gain him enemies. The Romany are an unavoidable nuisance, while Inhaber Novak has many who are loyal to him, and he is a great asset to the court.”

Justin was beginning to see more of the spider-web. He kept his tone conversational, even as he felt the slumbering beast inside him straining at its leash. “A king with many problems, your Francis. If Lady Alina is murdered, he must make a show of investigating her death, because she is his ward and because otherwise the Romany will make things difficult for him. To arrest or kill Novak would bring him trouble from factions loyal to the Inhaber. How much more convenient to have it all play out far away in England. Francis didn’t apply to his ally the Prince Regent for a bridegroom. He applied to him for an assassin, and dear Prinny knew just the man to approach, a man who couldn’t refuse. The moment I wed the fair lady what was hers is mine, and there will be a target painted on my back, so that it will be kill or be killed.”

Luka had the good grace to blush, which probably served to save him, or at least preserve his teeth and jaw so that he could chew his bread and cheese.

Justin pressed him further. “And Lady Alina, she of the ermine-tipped cloak and plans to take London by storm? Does it matter to any of them what happens to her?”

“But you’ll keep her safe.”

“That is not your concern, Major. You concern, and that of our two plotting sovereigns, is better directed at what I will do to you all if Lady Alina so much as stubs her toe before I can find some way out of this damned farce. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I will pay my betrothed a small visit before she turns in for the night.”

Luka leapt to his feet. “You’re not going to tell her anything, are you?”

Justin looked at the major without saying a word until the man had the good sense to subside back into his chair. “Don’t do that again, Major. Question me. And never stand against me unless you’re willing to suffer the consequences. Are we clear?”

The major nodded.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Justin drawled affably, smiling as if nothing had happened, as if there had been no threat of violence. “Now we can cry friends again, understanding each other so much better. Why, I might even be persuaded to convince Wigglesworth to give you a few pointers on how to tie your cravat so it less resembles a noose. Good night, Major.”

Justin walked out of the room in his usual, unhurried stroll, softly closing the door behind him. It was only when he got as far as the narrow hallway leading to the stairs that he pressed his palms against the sides of his neck and pushed hard, forcing his breathing and his heartbeat back into their usual rhythms.

He was angry that he had allowed any of this to happen to him. Unworried that he would not succeed in ridding Alina of any threat from the Inhaber Novak.

But damned if he could understand how he, a man who prided himself on his lack of emotional involvement with the rest of the world, could have suddenly become so intensely concerned for the welfare of one small female.

I don’t recall granting it permission to sit down.

At last he smiled with real amusement…and not a little bemusement. Yes, that was it. From the moment she’d uttered those words, he had become as wax in her hands.

God help him….

CHAPTER THREE

ALINA SAT CROSS-LEGGED in the middle of the hard tester bed, her sketchbook across her knees. She’d been so certain the baron would come knocking on her door to inquire as to why she had refused to join him downstairs for dinner. But when the clock had struck the hour of nine, she had at last given up on her fetching outfit of palest lilac silk in favor of a comfortable night rail she’d worn to the brink of shabbiness.

She only wished she hadn’t used the excuse that she wasn’t hungry in order to avoid him, for now her stomach had begun grumbling at her, pointing out that, if she was going to lie, she should first consider the consequences. Citing a headache from the excitement of seeing England for the first time? That would have been much better.

Except that the baron might have interpreted that as excitement upon seeing him for the first time.

That eventuality was not to be contemplated. The man was already entirely too pleased with himself just on general principles—that was obvious.

“And much too intelligent for my own good,” she muttered, her charcoal stick moving rapidly as she colored in the man’s hair, which was nearly as dark as her own. His skin was darker than hers; he was clearly a man who spent considerable time in the sun—she’d noticed as much when he’d taken her hand in his and bowed over her fingertips. He had hard hands, strong and even slightly callused, which had surprised her, for he certainly dressed (and behaved!) as a man who never so much as brushed his own hair without assistance.

She could still close her eyes and see her pale skin against his darker tones, her fragile bones no match for his strength if he were to squeeze her fingers between his. And she most certainly could still see those laughing, mocking green eyes.

He really did upset her sense of being up to any challenges her new circumstances could toss at her. She’d been so sure of her plans, back in the safety of her own bedchamber. And all it had taken was one look, one too-intimate touch of this man’s flesh against hers, to knock all of her confident pins out from beneath her. Oh, yes, he was going to be trouble….

Just to think—if she had worn gloves, as Danica had told her was proper, she would still not know that her betrothed had such an unsettling effect on her. Why, she might have gone down to dinner, prattled on in some inane way, all unaware that Baron Justin Wilde was anything more than a pretty fellow with an impertinent mouth.

Now what was she supposed to do? If there existed a way to control him, she had to find it. Quickly.

Strange how she had not thought about the marriage itself as anything more than a minor inconvenience, a necessary detail. At first, she’d been too angry to do more than think about being bartered away by the king, being forced to leave her home. But once her aunt had explained that a marriage of mutual convenience was all she could look forward to in any event, thanks to her birth and station—and had pointed across the king’s drawing room to where Count Josef Eberharter stood picking at his yellowed teeth with a penknife and declared the man to be Alina’s only alternative—the idea of traveling to England, to the birthplace of her mother, had begun to seem a reasonable alternative.

Her mother had told so many stories about her homeland, and always with such a wistful look in her eyes. Now she, her mother’s daughter, would see all the glorious sights herself. First London, of course, as everyone with any sense wished to visit this great metropolis. But then she would travel to Kent, and to her mother’s childhood home. Wouldn’t they all be surprised and delighted to welcome the daughter of their beloved and lost Anne Louise?

She cocked her head to one side and contemplated the now-completed sketch. Had she captured the correct degree of astonishment in his lordship’s entirely too-wise eyes as he looked cross-eyed at the fat fish tail sticking out of his wide-open mouth?

“Oh, my lady,” Tatiana said, leaning across the mattress to goggle at the sketch. “That’s even better than the last one. Danica, come see.”

“Humph,” the older woman snorted, staying where she was, busying herself with laying out Alina’s freshly pressed traveling outfit for the morning, a lovely thing of midnight-blue and military gold frogging, and a shako hat that was made to tilt forward above the lady’s right eye just so. “Horns and a tail? I see nothing so amusing in poking fun at one’s betrothed. You should only be thanking the Virgin for his handsome face and body. He could have been sixty, and fat and filthy into the bargain.”

“I’d rather he was eighty, and with one foot teetering over the grave, too crippled with gout and dissipated by drink to worry about such things as his new wife,” Alina said truthfully, for she saw nothing wrong with wishful thinking. “What am I supposed to do with a man no older than Luka? What will he want from me?”

Tatiana giggled, putting her pudgy hands to her mouth. “Should we tell her, Danica?”

“That is the job of the husband, and not for us to say. It is proper for a lady of breeding not to know—”

“About breeding?” Tatiana quipped, and then covered her smile with her hand.

“You have never been amusing, Tatiana Klammer,” the dresser said, turning her back to the woman, who promptly stuck her tongue out at her.

Alina sighed. It had been thus ever since they’d begun their journey, the two women always jabbing at each other, the dresser believing her position to be higher than that of mere paid companion, the companion believing the dresser was altogether too full of herself. She had begun to wish Danica had not accompanied them to England, for the woman was stiff, humorless and full of rules.

Plus, she clearly didn’t like her new mistress, something Alina couldn’t understand, because everyone liked her. Well, perhaps not Aunt Mimi, definitely not Aunt Mimi. But everyone else.

She closed the sketchbook and put it to one side. “That is not what I meant, Danica,” she said testily. “I don’t know if he will want my company and conversation, or if he will ignore me for the most part, as I hope, and allow me to go my own way. I already know he will kiss me and give me babies. My mama explained that to me years ago. It’s the only way to get babies. I asked her, and she told me. I am…resigned to that.”

As her mother had been dead these past three years, it could be wondered just how specific the lady had been with her explanations.

The way Danica rolled her eyes as she turned about once more, Alina now wondered exactly that herself.

“What? What did I say that is so impossible that you made that terrible face?”

“Danica means nothing, my lady,” Tatiana said quickly, and the dresser returned to her duties, laying out a pair of fine stockings with a flourish before dropping a rather insulting curtsy and leaving the room, muttering darkly under her breath.

“I don’t like her,” Alina told her companion, not for the first time. “And I don’t think she really wished to come here. I shall have her sent home immediately.”

“The Entschlossen sailed on the evening tide, my lady, along with all those handsome guardsmen. I saw it leave from this very window. You were sleeping, and I didn’t think to wake you. I would have, had I known you were planning to send Miss Pickles and Sour Cider packing.”

Alina slid off the side of the bed, her bare feet encountering the cool wooden planks. “Yes, well, there’s no use for it then, is there? She was Aunt Mimi’s choice, and she’d only have replaced her with someone even worse. We’ll have to make the best of things. You don’t suppose I could take a quick trip outside and find a nice fat toad to put in her bed?”

“Oh, my lady, you are such a joy to me,” Tatiana said, dropping to her knees and helping to fit a pair of satin slippers on Alina’s slender feet. “But so very young, for all your fine ways and wonderful ideas. Now I think you should tell me more about what it was your dear mother told you about kisses and giving babies.”

Alina sighed. “Then Danica didn’t pull that monkey face of hers simply to vex me, did she? What else do I need to know, Tatiana? I shouldn’t wish to have to ask the baron the time of day, so I most certainly don’t want him to be telling me anything else. He should believe I am a woman of the world.”

The companion, old enough to be Alina’s mother, but not accustomed to speaking frankly on a subject she knew about but, in her spinster state these past forty years, had no personal knowledge of, struggled to her feet once more.

“Husbands do not care to think of their brides as women of the world, my lady,” she said, avoiding Alina’s eyes. “They get really put out about it, as I’ve heard the thing. Best you should do as Danica says, I suppose, since your mother didn’t see fit to explain the way of the world to you, and let his lordship tell you. Not that Miss Uppity knows any more than me, for there was never a man eager enough to brave that one’s embrace. Be like bedding a board.”

Tatiana, an earthy woman for all she had been serving in the manor house for most of her life, ran her hands down over her own considerable curves, then hefted her massive breasts one at a time, so that they fit more comfortably above her corset. “Not that these things don’t get in the way, from time to time. Still, better a handful of these than those sorry pimples of Danica’s.”

Alina giggled. “You’ve got considerably more than a handful, Tatiana,” she said, and then sobered. Swallowed. Looked down at her own muslin-covered breasts that were somewhere between Danica’s pimples and Tatiana’s impressive largesse. “Why should that matter?”

“No reason, my lady,” the maid said hurriedly, pulling a handkerchief from between her bosoms and dabbing at her suddenly damp upper lip. “No reason at all, and I meant nothing by it, truly I didn’t. I could go to the kitchens and beg something for you to eat. You nary had a thing but some watered wine and dry biscuits pass your lips since this morning. The crossing was a mite choppy, and I didn’t eat anything, either, but I surely made up for that lack earlier. English food isn’t so terrible, my lady. Just let me nip off downstairs and—”

“Tatiana,” Alina intoned severely, hiding her apprehension. “I asked you a question. Why should it matter if a woman…if she has pimples or handfuls?”

“It’s…um…the thing is, my lady—your mother said kisses give you babies?”

Alina was beginning to feel very silly. “I saw Jurgen in the hallway behind the silver room one day, and he was kissing Astrid.”

“Astrid, is it? The girl is a round-heeled fool, tipping over for any who ask her.”

Round-heeled? And what did that mean? Silly was rapidly escalating to uncomfortable. “That’s neither here nor there, Tatiana. We’re much of the same age, and I thought I should know what she was doing, as it was…she seemed quite distressed. Moan…moaning and everything, and saying in this absurd voice, ‘Oh, yes, Jurgen, my stallion.’ Um…so I asked my mother, and she told me that Astrid was a very reckless and uncouth girl, and that kisses lead to babies, and that was why I should have nothing to do with kisses until I was married and my husband kissed me, as she had done with my father, and as good and chaste people have always done.”

Tatiana pulled a face, the more round-cheeked version of the same expression Danica had displayed a few minutes earlier. “And now Astrid has two babies and no husband. A stallion, indeed! Jurgen? But, see, my lady, your dear mother was correct in what she told you.” The maid turned companion sighed. “And that’s all she told you? Truly?”

“You know how ill she was, Tatiana. I could see that the subject distressed her, so I thanked her and left her to her prayer book. And…and then she was gone, and I had never dared to trouble her with more questions. I suppose I could have applied to Aunt Mimi, but I didn’t want her to…to know that I didn’t know. I…I’m supposing there’s more than just kisses, and I’ve heard things a time or two at court.” She shook her head in denial. “But they can’t possibly be true. Nobody would do that.”

Tatiana looked about the room, spying out the small table with a decanter of wine that had been sent up by the baron, whose man said that it was safer by far to sip wine than to get within ten feet of the inn’s supply of water unless it was for one’s bath. She hesitated only a moment before pouring herself a full glass and drinking the contents in three nearly desperate gulps.

Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she then sighed, replaced the wineglass and sat her bulk down on a chair without asking permission.

“Ah, that’s better,” she said, rubbing her palms together and looking at Alina expectantly. “Now, my dear, sheltered little girl, you tell your Tatiana—nobody would do what?”

THE SMALL GILT CLOCK that had been a parting gift from the king chimed out the hour of ten o’clock from a small table beside Lady Alina’s bed. She sighed, supposing she would hear the lovely thing chime out every hour until dawn, her eyes still as wide and shocked as they were now, and staring up at the cracked ceiling.

Tatiana had left her after an hour. Alina would have given anything to have their discussion forever erased from her memory.

That’s what Jurgen and Astrid had been doing? Her parents had done this? The whole world did this?

Why? Why would anyone do this?

Yes, her mother had explained her monthly bleed when Alina had first experienced it. But she’d called it Eve’s curse, which hadn’t meant much, even when Alina had gone to the Bible in the study and searched it thoroughly. The snake, the apple, she knew all of that. But she hadn’t found anything about a monthly bleed, and had to content herself with her mother’s assertion that it made her a woman, and no longer a little girl.

That had seemed a fair enough trade. After all, men like Jurgen and Luka and Papa had to shave every day because they were men. She only had to bleed once a month.

Oh, if only she had known! She would never have agreed to the marriage had she known. Removing herself from her aunt Mimi’s jurisdiction, her constant disapproval, had weighed heavily in her decision, as had Count Josef Eberharter’s teeth. Pleasing the king had, of course, been paramount…even if displeasing the king by refusing probably hadn’t been a serious option in any case.

The prospect of fine gowns, of moving in English society, of having a home of her own, these had all finally brought her around to the notion that, if she was not the luckiest girl in the world, she at least wasn’t cleaning out fireplace grates or living in some damp cave, worrying when next she’d have something to eat.

But this? She hadn’t known about this. The so disgusting, so crudely violating, so intensely intimate this.

She’d made Tatiana swear on her prayer book that she was telling the truth. She’d demanded the companion then swear on that same prayer book that people actually liked it. Tatiana wasn’t sure enough to put her immortal soul in jeopardy by swearing to the latter. But she was fairly certain men liked it. Men liked the oddest things.

The soft knock on the door to her bedchamber all but had Alina jumping out of her skin.

“Lady Alina? It is I, Justin Wilde. I see a spill of light under the door and feel impelled to disturb you. I believe we should have ourselves a small conversation.”

Her wide eyes popped open even wider. It was him…God and all His saints help her…her stallion.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she called out, wishing her voice didn’t seem to be a full octave too high, and piteously thin. Wishing she had dared to blow out her candle and face the dark, and the disturbing images Tatiana’s words had planted in her brain. “I am abed.”

“Ah, but not asleep,” came the assured voice. “One could hardly expect you to be, if your bed is half so uncomfortable as mine. Please. We really do need to talk.”

The disturbing images disappeared as her temper came to her rescue. Was the man always going to prove such a pest?

“Oh, all right, if you’re otherwise going to stand out there making a fuss,” she groused mean-spiritedly, throwing back the covers and slipping to her feet. “One moment.”

She located her dressing gown, not caring that it was old—why had she purchased so many pretty things, and completely neglected to refurbish her nightwear? She should probably add that question to the list of Things Nobody Had Told Her, praying it would not be a long list. She could only be grateful that the thing buttoned from her throat to her toes, rather like muslin armor.

But her parents had not shared a bedchamber. It had never occurred to Alina that her husband would share hers, that he would ever see her in her nightwear. There was no avoiding the thing—she was stupidest person in creation!

Not bothering to locate her slippers, she padded to the door, slipped back the latch and stepped back a half-dozen very large paces. “It’s open, my lord.”

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Alina crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Just in case he became “maddened by lust,” as Tatiana had said men were prone to do at the drop of a hat.

“My, aren’t you a picture,” the baron said, bowing to her before advancing toward her, daring to lift the single thick braid that hung down over her crossed arms. “I had a mare once whose tail was so long and fine that my groom enjoyed braiding it this way. It looks better on you,” he added as he dropped the braid, so that she quickly gave her head a flip, sending the thing flying behind her back.

“I’m not a mare, my lord,” Alina told him, knowing that, in many ways, she was. A broodmare…with an ermine-tipped velvet cloak.

He tilted his head to one side and looked at her more closely. “No, of course you’re not. Is there something amiss, my lady? Have I made you nervous? I promise you, that was not my intent in coming here.”

“Then what is your intent, my lord?”

Something was happening to her. He was looking at her in the strangest and most intense way, and something was happening to her. She was becoming curiously aware of her body, parts of it that had never before bothered to bring themselves to her attention. And hadn’t they taken a fine time to wake up and say hello!

Alina hastened to the chair Tatiana had been sitting in an hour earlier. The wineglass she’d refilled three times during the course of their discussion was still on the table beside it, still with half its contents. She picked it up and drained it, suppressing a shiver as her first taste of unwatered wine served to make her feel warm from her tongue straight down to the bottom of her belly.

Tatiana had said that wine helped when one was nervous, and if taken in enough quantity could even make the unthinkable, thinkable.

But nothing happened. Clearly it would take considerably more wine for that! Alina sat down with a thump, crossed her arms once more over her breasts that were neither more than a handful nor pimples.

She looked up at Lord Wilde; so tall, so very handsome, she supposed. But the unthinkable remained unthinkable. Mostly. Those parts of her body that had heretofore slumbered happily seemed to be coming even more awake, aware in some strange, unsettling way. She clamped her knees together tightly, even as she forced herself to lower her arms, clasp her fingers in her lap.

Do not think about his strong, callused hands, she warned herself. Do not think of where he will touch you, how he will touch you with his hands…and with his…with that other thing.

She couldn’t help herself. Her eyes strayed to the slight bulge at the juncture of his thighs.

She shivered and quickly looked away.

“Comfortable?” he asked, both his smile and his tone telling her he knew she was not.

“I am not accustomed to having gentlemen see me in my…when I am not dressed.”

“I should most certainly hope not,” he said affably. “But you are all that is modest. Almost aggressively so, one might say. Alina—may I please have the pleasure of addressing you so informally? I find it a delightful affectation.”

What did he mean, aggressively so? Was he making fun of her? Oh, he was such a man of the world, wasn’t he? The insufferable snot. “Alina is my mother’s name for me. There is nothing pretentious about it. My cloak is pretentious.”

His smile was different this time than it had been earlier. She could see this one in his eyes as well as on his lips. “Yes, it certainly is. You’re going to bankrupt me, aren’t you, minx? At least I’ve been forewarned. Please feel free to augment your wardrobe in any way you wish. I suggest you begin with your nightwear.”

She drew the dressing gown more closely about her. He had already made his point. She did need new nightwear. Preferably fashioned out of chain mail.

“Ah, now I’ve insulted you.” He pulled a straight-back chair away from the wall and turned it about, straddling it as he sat down. “I apologize, and can only put it down to something I learned earlier this evening.”

At least he wasn’t so big, now that he’d sat down. “The something you believe we must speak of tonight? Does it have anything to do with that nonsense you were spouting this afternoon? Because you very nearly frightened me. I thought I’d been betrothed to a lunatic.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. I’d like to apologize for that, Alina. I was under the mistaken impression that your king had informed you of—well, how do I put this?”

Her bare feet were beginning to feel chilled against the cold floor. “I would suggest, my lord, that you put it quickly. I would like to return to my bed.”

He stood up, replacing the chair against the wall, and held out his hand to her. “Much to my shock and even, yes, my consternation, I believe the devil is in it for me no matter where you deposit yourself, so why don’t you do that? Tuck the covers up under your chin, and perhaps I’ll be able to twist my mind around what I have to say.”

Now, what did he mean by that curious statement? Really, if it weren’t for the yellowed teeth, Count Eberharter was beginning to seem like the lesser of two evils. At least he was supposedly sane.

Alina scurried across the room and climbed onto the high bed, not unaware that she was, even if just for a moment, all but aiming her backside at her betrothed. Thinking about uncontrollable lust and dropping hats, she slid herself beneath the covers with alacrity. Then she quickly pulled the covers up and under her chin. “Back where I began,” she said, looking at him. “But you’re still here.”

Not only was he still there, but he had managed to pour himself a glass of wine, using the same glass she and Tatiana had used, as it was the only one on the tray. The thought passed through her mind that she and the companion had employed the wine for courage. Had he felt a similar need?

“I had a long and rather interesting chat with your secretary, Alina. He tells me that you believe this marriage of ours has been concocted solely to display friendship between your king and my Prince Regent, and to be an outward show of a new era of trade cooperation between our two countries now that Europe is once more at peace. Is that true?”

“No,” she said quietly, because she was, at heart, an honest person, and because her toes were curling beneath the covers at the way he kept looking at her and she would probably trip over her tongue if she dared a lie. “Not solely, my lord.”

“Justin,” he said, cocking his head very slightly. “Go on.”

“Justin,” she repeated, trying out his name, wishing her heart would kindly stop racing as if she’d just run up the long, curving flight of stairs at home. “Those were the king’s reasons, and your king’s, as well, I suppose. But I could have refused, you know.”

“How fortunate for you.”

She heard something in his voice, something that pulled all of her attention to him. “You had no choice?”

“Well, we all have choices, I suppose. Mine, however, were not acceptable to me.”

“Neither were mine,” Alina said, pushing up the pillows behind her so that she could sit back against them. She felt ridiculous, just lying there, while he stood over her like some…some…stallion. “Aunt Mimi made it very clear that if I refused this grand honor the king was gifting me with, I would be married off to someone of her choosing. She seemed entirely too delighted to have that power, so here I am.”

“I’ve been many things in my life, Alina, but I believe this may be the first time I am being seen as the lesser of two evils. I’m flattered.”

“You probably shouldn’t be, you know. I really never considered you. I’ve always wanted to travel to England. I want to meet the rest of my family, now that my parents are gone. It isn’t pleasant, you understand, to think that your single remaining relative is Aunt Mimi.”

Justin chuckled softly. “We must be thankful, then, that she didn’t decide to escort you here herself.”

Alina nodded, actually beginning to relax. Which was ridiculous. She was in bed, and he was standing there, and these newly awakened parts of her body were becoming more and more interested in having him continue to stand there. “She’s convinced Englishmen are all barbarians, so she refused to accompany me. She may even now be rubbing her hands together in glee, believing some great bear has already eaten me, or something.”

“There are no bears in England, Alina. At least not of the four-legged variety. I was told your mother was English, but I hadn’t given that fact very much thought. What’s your family name?”

“You’ll allow me to go see them?”

Justin shrugged. “I see no reason not to, do you?”

“No, I don’t. But Luka told me that English husbands are very strict, and that I will not be allowed to walk out alone, most especially in London, and that, as a wife, I will no longer have a mind of my own, but only my husband’s will and permission.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, which for some unknown reason suddenly seemed quite a natural thing for him to do. “God’s teeth! No wonder you don’t like me. He told you all of that? Did he tell you that we lock wives in the cellars if they dare to disobey, and keep them there on a diet of stale bread and ditch water for a month?”

Alina’s eyes widened at this, but then she noticed the tiniest bit of crinkling around the outside of Justin’s eyes. “You said that you and he had a long talk this evening. Did he tell you that I’m a very good shot and that I have a very bad temper?”

“He said you are prone to do whatever people tell you not to do. He didn’t mention any proficiency with firearms.”

“Oh. Then perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, either. And not just with firearms. I am also extremely proficient at archery, and I know how to throw a knife so that it actually sticks in whatever it hits. That isn’t easy, you know, getting the handle not to hit first.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” Justin said, and she believed him, because he was looking at her with some interest. “Many Englishwomen are proficient at archery. Some enjoy shooting, although not many. But I don’t believe I’ve ever met a female who knows how to throw a knife without the handle hitting the target first. Why would you want to learn such a thing?”

Alina lowered her eyes for a moment, and then looked at him again. “Your English ladies were safe here, on your island, while Bonaparte seemed to go where he willed all across Europe. My father said that when the fox threatens the chicken house, even the hens must know how to defend themselves.”

“Luka told me your father died at Waterloo. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Alina said, sighing. “But he didn’t mean to die. If he did, he wouldn’t have left me with Aunt Mimi. He would have been certain to leave instructions that I be sent to England, I’m sure of it. But Luka isn’t so sure, as Papa never said anything to him.”

“Ah, yes, your mother’s family.”

“My family,” she clarified. She hadn’t really thought seriously about her mother’s family, not until her father was gone, but she’d daydreamed about how they would be. How they’d love her. “They live in Kent. I looked at a map, and it isn’t all that far away from London. It’s all down here the way Portsmouth is, at the fat end of the island, and not up near Scotland.”

“Yes, I am familiar with Kent. My own estate is located in Hampshire, also in the…fat part of the island. What’s your mother’s family name?”

“Farber,” Alina told him proudly. “My mother was Lady Anne Louise Farber, daughter of the Earl of—”

“Birling. Yes, I know the family title.”

She watched as Justin stood once more, his handsome features suddenly cold, hard. She sat up straighter, sensing that the ease they’d seemed to have found with each other these past minutes was just that, a thing of the past. “What’s wrong?”

His expression softened, but only with some effort, she was sure. “Wrong? Why, nothing, my dear, nothing at all is wrong. I just thought of something else I must discuss with the Prince Regent when next I see him. I must tell him how very clever, no, how fiendishly clever he is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will, unfortunately. But not right now. It’s time you slept. Good night.”

“But…but you said we had to talk, that there was something you needed to tell me.”

His hand on the door latch, Justin turned, looked at her in the near darkness. She couldn’t see his eyes now, and she had the strangest feeling that this was because he didn’t want her to see them.

“Yes, it had to do with our destination. I’m afraid we won’t be traveling to London tomorrow. Instead, you’ll be heading off to West Sussex, and the estate of my friend Rafe, the Duke of Ashurst. And his wife, Charlotte,” he added almost immediately, as if he felt he should. “You’ll travel quickly, I’m afraid, with only a single night spent on the road and two full days in the coach.”

“And then we’ll go to London?”

“I will,” he said, and opened the door. “I most assuredly will be traveling to London. I’m convinced there is someone there who can barely contain his glee as he awaits my arrival.”

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. “But I won’t be going with you to see this happy person? Is that what you’re saying? You’re going to take me to this Ashurst, and this Duke, and leave me there?”

“You’ll remain with my friends until I return for you, yes.”

“But—why?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he closed the door and walked to where she was standing barefoot on the chilly wooden floor, and put a hand to her cheek, which made her feel very strange indeed. Not frightened. Not at all frightened. She fought to keep herself from tipping her head, so that she could press her skin more closely against his, feel the strength of his hand, the slight roughness of his skin.

“You’ve been badly used. I’m sorry, pet,” he whispered softly. “I’m so very, very sorry. But I’ll fix it, as best I can. I promise.”

“You make precious little sense, Justin,” she told him, caught between anger and fear…and a hint of something she felt fairly certain, after her instructional talk, Tatiana would have termed interest. Mostly, she knew she didn’t want him to leave. “How can you fix something I don’t even know is broken? How would I even know when you’d fixed it?”

He smiled, but it was one of those smiles that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Aren’t your feet cold?”

“Never mind my feet,” she shot back, deciding anger was perhaps the best option at the moment.

“Ah, but I find them adorable. Small and slim. Have you ever heard the expression I kiss your hands and feet?”

Alina curled her toes and clenched her fingers, and those parts of her that had been so happily slumbering shot out warnings that she might soon be in significant trouble if she didn’t apply some maidenly common sense and put a halt to this strange conversation, and that those previously slumbering parts weren’t all that averse to a little adventure.

“Once again you’re not answering my questions,” she pointed out, striving to regather her scattered wits. “We were speaking about my family, and suddenly you ran for the door.”

“I beg your pardon. I do not run for doors.”

“Very well, then, why did you come back?” she asked, believing the answer to that might be more important.

“Perhaps for this?” he offered, moving his hand so that now he was tipping up her chin. “One more look, and perhaps even a small taste.”

“Oh. I…that is…you shouldn’t have to answer every quest—”

Her eyelids fluttered closed as he brought his lips to hers, and then retreated before she could react at all.

“Innocence,” he said softly. “You taste like innocence. And I should be shot.”

And then he was gone, and Alina crawled back into bed, holding a hand to her mouth, knowing she wouldn’t sleep a single wink for the remainder of what was going to be a very long night.

CHAPTER FOUR

WIGGLESWORTH DEPOSITED the coddled eggs in front of his master with all the trepidation of the servant charged with delivering the head of John the Baptist to Salome; he thought it might be what the baron wanted, but could not be sure of its reception now that it was a done thing.

The porridge had been looked upon, but not eaten. The kippers—done to a turn!—had been waved away without so much as a “ye gods, Wigglesworth, not those horrid things.” Even the inn’s own country ham, purely a desperate move by the servant who put little trust in any cooking save his own, had been met with a fairly blank stare and a short shake of the head.

“Wigglesworth, I said I wasn’t— Oh, damn. Here, let me force these down. I wouldn’t want to put you into a sulk.”

“Thank you, sir,” the servant said, sighing. And then he dared more. “Is there…something amiss, my lord?”

“Your solicitude becomes tiresome. A man can’t forgo a single breakfast out of thousands without something being wrong?”

Wigglesworth wrung his hands even as Brutus, standing in a corner—hulking in a corner—shook his massive head sorrowfully, either for worry over his employer or the fact that he now, after being passed the porridge and the kippers for his own consumption, would be denied the coddled eggs.

“Your bed wasn’t slept in, my lord,” Wigglesworth pointed out quietly. “There was nary a hint of reproach when I nicked you that small—infinitesimal, I assure you—cut with the razor. And you did not even a single time remonstrate with me when I informed you that your second-best Hessians seemed to have suffered a fatal crack to the heel on the cobblestones yesterday.”

“My, what a litany of abuses you’ve laid before me, Wigglesworth. Very well, consider your sorry self run up and down by the rough side of my tongue. Now may I be left alone? Wait—a fatal crack?”

“Possibly. Perhaps. I may have overstated. I will deliver them personally to Mr. Hoby when we are returned to London.”

Justin put down his fork, what little appetite he may have had, either for the eggs or soothing Wigglesworth’s feelings, now gone. “An event that is to be somewhat delayed,” he said as the major entered the breakfast room. “Ah, Luka, there you are,” he went on, no trace of anything but happiness at the appearance of the man in his voice. “Would you like my man here to prepare you something with which to break your fast? He has quite taken over the kitchen, you understand.”

“Thank you, no. I’ve been up for hours, and have already eaten,” the major said, a note of recrimination in his tone, as if anyone who remained abed past dawn was a sluggard not worth considering. “Pardon me, but I could not help but overhear. We are not immediately setting out for London? It was my understanding that Lady Alina was to be presented to your Prince Regent, and then you and she were to immediately exchange your vows, sealing the…the, um, bargain.”

“Just what I tarried here to speak to you about. Such haste is unseemly, don’t you think? Her ladyship is fatigued from her travels. It would be unconscionable to force her to continue her journey without some small respite, which is why I sent off one of my outriders at first light to the estate of my dear friend the Duke of Ashurst, to alert him that Lady Alina will be his guest for a few days. The duke will be dispatching outriders to meet you along the road and escort you the remainder of the journey. They’ll be with you by the time you arrive at your first night’s lodging, I’m sure. Rooms will be waiting for you.”

Luka narrowed his eyes. His moustachios may have twitched as well, but it was a close-run thing to know if this was a natural occurrence or a remarkable aberration caused by the man’s consternation at the position he had been forced into by his king. If it was the latter, Luka had Justin’s full sympathy. And empathy, if it came to that.

“Lady Alina will be the duke’s guest? And you will be…?”

“Elsewhere. I see no need to provide you with a listing of my comings and goings, I’m afraid, as I’ve been my own master for quite some years now. Until recently, that is, which is a circumstance that is about to change. You’ve protected her thus far, and Brutus and my own trusted and quite prodigiously well-armed outriders will be with you. I imagine you’re up to getting her safely to Ashurst Hall. Well, Brutus is,” Justin qualified, getting to his feet, quitting the room and leaving the major to follow or not, whatever his inclination. Not that he was surprised to have the man hot on his heels as he strode out to the inn yard.

“I beg your pardon? Have you forgotten that you are charged with protecting Lady Alina?”

“She has her prepared-to-die-for-her secretary,” Justin said, turning to his left and heading for the stables. “Anyone approaches with a nefarious look in his eye, and you just be a good fellow and attack him with your quill. You—yes, you. Saddle the bay now, my fine young fellow, and there’s a guinea in it for you.”

The eager ostler hastened to do Justin’s bidding, but not quickly enough to save the baron from the major’s fury.

“You’re leaving? Just like this? I can’t allow you to do that.” To give credence to his words, he roughly took hold of Justin’s arm above the elbow.

Justin turned slowly to face the irate man. “Allow? You cannot allow? Worse, you’re putting a crease in my jacket.”

The major loosed his grip. “The devil with your jacket. Last night you looked like a man who was going to tell her about the threat to her life. Did you?”

“I allowed my mind to be changed on that head,” Justin told him, taking the gloves and hat and riding crop Wigglesworth, who had materialized seemingly from out of nowhere, pressed into his hands. “Thank you, Wigglesworth. You remain, as always, a treasure.”

“You’re welcome, my lord. I would have been here sooner, had you but told me you were about to depart. You will be careful, won’t you, sir?”

“Am I not always careful, Wigglesworth?” Justin asked, putting on his curly brimmed beaver and lightly tapping it into place.

“No, sir, you’re not.” The servant turned to address the major. “He’s not, you know. But he always triumphs. If his lordship says that everything will be fine, then it will be fine, because he wouldn’t have it any other way. But perhaps not always immediately.”

“I’m touched, Wigglesworth. Such damning praise.” The ostler brought out the saddled horse. “And now, adieu. Major, please deliver my felicitations to the lady, and my promise to join her at Ashurst Hall within the week with, I most sincerely hope, news that will please her.”

Along with information that will devastate her, Justin added silently as he put his booted foot in the stirrup and gracefully mounted the bay.

Once again Luka was proving meddlesome. He grabbed onto the bay’s bridle and stepped close. “If any harm comes to her, there will be no place safe for you to hide. Leaving her like this, knowing the danger? You’re nothing but an overdressed, pompous coward.”

“And now I am desolated. Are you telling me you are not up to protecting the lady by yourself for two more days, after getting her safely halfway across Europe and onto these shores? Have I so badly misjudged my man?” Justin asked him quietly.

“No harm will come to her,” Luka said firmly.

“Good.” Justin smiled, even as his eyes remained hard, cold chips of green ice. “Because, my new friend, if any does, you’ll have left me no choice but to kill you.”

The two men stared at each other for long moments until, as Justin had expected, the major released his grip on the bridle. Poor fellow; men who lived by the rules had so many problems to beset them. That’s why he’d given up on being bound by such pesky things a long time ago.

He was almost safely gone. But just as he was about to turn his mount and exit the yard, out of the corner of his eye he spied the Lady Alina in the doorway of the inn.

She had been an enchanting, provocative vision in her ermine-tipped cloak. She presented a heartbreakingly beautiful picture now, framed in the doorway, her midnight-blue traveling ensemble turning her exotic and yet still so very English—a mix of blood that had mingled to create a masterpiece.

Either he left right now, or he’d never find the strength to go.

He lifted his hat to her, bowed his head slightly, and without a word put his heels into his mount’s flanks, causing the obedient horse to break into an immediate gallop.

All the way to London, the vision that haunted the corners of his mind was not of Alina in her ermine-tipped cloak, nor of Alina in her dashing traveling ensemble and that silly shako hat tipped down over one eye.

No, the picture he could not get out of his head was of Alina in that disastrous and wildly appealing nightwear, her golden eyes wide and innocent as she proudly told him the name of her mother…and sent his soul crashing straight to hell.

ALINA HAD NEVER SEEN Luka so angry as he’d been today and all of yesterday. Not that he’d paid her much attention, concentrating most of his time and effort on positioning the baron’s outriders ahead of and behind the coach, and then, when the Duke of Ashurst’s men joined them last night at the inn, giving each of them instructions on how he wished them to fit in with the existing ranks.

As if he expected the French to attack at any moment, or some such nonsense. He’d even donned his uniform once more, and he’d told her he wouldn’t be wearing it while he was in England, so as to not insult the English government in any way.

When she’d attempted to question him about why the baron had left them, and why they were being sent to this Ashurst Hall and this good friend, Luka had only muttered and said something about having to supervise tying down the luggage so that neither of the two coaches might overturn if there was a need for speed at any time during their journey.

As to his impressions of the baron himself, Luka said even less. But when he left her at the inn doorway and promptly spit into the dirt, she’d gotten a fairly good idea of what her friend thought of her intended husband.

Why, anyone would think it had been his betrothed who had gone racing out of the inn yard as if the hounds of hell were after him.

“Her,” she corrected herself. “As if the hounds of hell were after her.” She didn’t know much about marriage, a fact that had been brought home to her with disturbing clarity by Tatiana, but she did know that women married men, and men married women.

Otherwise, her terrible, base, unable-to-beat-down but logical mind told her, the pieces wouldn’t fit.

“So good to see you smile, my lady, even if you’re only talking to yourself,” Tatiana said from the facing seat in the coach. “So good to know somebody can bear these terrible English roads without wondering if she’s soon to see her luncheon for a second time.”

“I told you, Tatiana. It’s silly for you to ride backward when there is certainly ample room next to me. Riding backward is sure to make you ill.”

“We’re not at home anymore, my lady, where we can do what we want because it is what we want. Danica told me as much. We can only be happy that she knows her place is with the second coach and the luggage. God never takes but what He gives, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Alina said, her mind already off the subject of traveling arrangements and back on to the subject of, well, traveling arrangements.

Why wasn’t his lordship—Justin; he’d asked her to address him as Justin, so she may as well begin thinking of him as Justin—why wasn’t he riding with them? Where had he gone, why had he gone, and would he really come back, or had he just said as much in order to get away without Luka shooting him or some such thing?

Had her night rail and dressing gown been that off-putting? And that kiss? Did innocence taste so terrible?

Or did he love someone, some sweet, biddable English miss with huge blue eyes and soft blond hair? Had he thought he could sacrifice himself for king and country, but one sight of Alina had been enough to make him feel the sacrifice was too much, even for a loyal subject?

Or it could have been something she’d said to him. What had she said? She’d told him the truth, she’d told him about Aunt Mimi and Count Eberharter’s yellow teeth. Had that been too honest? How had he answered her? Oh, yes. He’d never before been considered the lesser of two evils.

Had he been laughing at her? Of course he had. Count Eberharter’s teeth? Who said such things to one’s betrothed?

Oh, she was such a child! Clearly Justin Wilde was a man of the world, and just as clearly she was an ignorant infant who possessed the understanding of a gnat.

And it was all Aunt Mimi’s fault. Mama had gone to heaven while her daughter was still a child—more a child than she was now, at least—and Aunt Mimi had abdicated her responsibilities to her niece. There was more to education than learning the globe and her sums. There was also…those other things. The least, the very least the woman could have done was to instruct her niece to expand her selection of nightwear.

But Alina should have asked questions. Especially the one about being kissed and getting babies, because that had always seemed an incomplete answer to her. Not that she’d known what questions to ask in the first place, but also because no one could possibly ask questions that personal of a woman who always loved to look down her nose at you and snicker as if there were some Huge Secret she knew but wasn’t about to share with her annoying little niece.

Still, much as she wanted to lay any and all blame at her aunt’s feet, Alina knew she had only thought of this marriage from her own perspective. But now that she’d met the baron, and most especially since Tatiana’s lesson in the Way Of The World, it was impossible not to consider his part in the equation.

How selfish of her! To consider only herself, and not the man who would make up the other half of this arranged marriage. Men had feelings. She’d watched her father cry as her mother’s body had been carried off to the cemetery. Men loved.

As did women. Women loved.

But what was love? She understood the love of a child for her parents, but did she understand the love of parents for each other?

No.

She understood love of country. She’d loved the many pets she’d had over the years. She loved her ermine-tipped cloak, which was doubtless horribly shallow of her, but she did love it.

Alina winced, shivered. How many meanings to that single word: love.

She and Justin had not come together through love, but that hadn’t seemed important. According to Aunt Mimi, rarely did anyone of her station, her class, marry for love. They married to meld fortunes, to join lands, to improve trade relations, to beget heirs.

But her parents had married for love. Alina was certain of that. Her mother had left her home country for her father. She’d told her only child several times that she had never regretted that decision. Never for a single moment. She’d spoken fondly of memories of her childhood at Birling, but that was all.

Oh, how much easier to marry for love!

And how humiliating to be kissed, however briefly, by her prospective husband, only to have the man then bolt and run at the first chance he got, leaving her without so much as bidding her farewell.

That had been rude of him. Exceedingly rude. Possibly bordering on boorish.

Why should she be feeling ashamed? She hadn’t taken one look at him and called for a horse and raced off into the countryside.

Alina, after nearly two full days spent rehashing the same things over and over again in her head, variously feeling frightened and sorry for herself, began to feel the first stirrings of real anger.

Yes, none of this could be easy for him. But how dare he think this was some whopping lovely large slice of plum pudding for her? Had he given her a moment’s thought before he’d climbed on his big bay horse and raced out of the inn yard, leaving instructions that she be shunted off to some complete strangers? Oh, no, she doubted that. She doubted that highly.

“I think I shall be exceptionally cool to the baron when next we meet, Tatiana,” she announced with rapidly rising conviction. “I was much too honest and open with him the other night. I should never have allowed him entry to my chamber, for one thing, and I never should have confided in him about—about anything at all. I did so well on the dock. Just as I’d planned it all, exactly as I had seen it all in my head. Truly, it was a thing of beauty, you’ll admit. But I have had no practice at conversation with gentlemen other than Luka and those few gentlemen Aunt Mimi allowed to dance with me at court, and they were all my father’s friends in any case. Lord Wilde is a wholly new experience for me.”

The companion nodded. “Yes, I already supposed as much. I was waiting for you to stop worrying so much about the Englishman and realize you’ve been deserted. Will you also be out hunting for toads to put in his bed?”

Surprising herself, Alina bit her bottom lip in embarrassment. “No, I think that my years of childish mischief are well and truly over. He called me pet, you know. I am not a pet. I am not a child. I have learned the ways of a woman now, and must prepare myself for my new…position in life. But I will find a way to punish him, most definitely. After all, he did say to begin as we plan to go on. And I will not go on being left in the middle of nowhere whenever some whim takes the man.”

“About…what we spoke of the other night, my lady?”

“Yes, Tatiana?” Alina’s heart skipped in sudden trepidation. “Don’t tell me there’s more?”

Tatiana’s plump face screwed up in thought as she raised her eyes to the roof of the coach and considered the question. She made a few hand motions—one of them fairly disconcerting, as if she might be stuffing a handkerchief inside her clenched fist—before finally sighing audibly and saying, “No, I think I had the right of it, my lady. Having not personally experienced…”

“Yes, thank you, Tatiana. In any event, I was not at my best when the baron came to see me, but that will not happen again.”

“Yes, my lady, that was what I was about to say. If he comes back.”

Alina skewered the companion with those golden eyes of hers. “Luka said that the baron said that he will be joining us within the week. Luka doesn’t lie.”

“Ah, but does the baron tell the truth?” Tatiana asked, and then, too late, realized she might have been better served to keep her thoughts to herself. “Which I am sure he does. Truly. And…and he is very pretty.”

Alina rolled her eyes. “Yes, he mentioned that himself, I believe, on the off chance I hadn’t noticed on my own, I suppose. What a strange man. He seems to poke fun at himself so that nobody else has to go to the bother of doing it for him. I wonder why. Drat! Haven’t I had to learn enough these past few days? The last thing I want is to feel obliged to understand the man.”

And then, thanks to both her rather precarious position on the cushioned seat and the quick sawing on the reins by the coachman, Alina found herself deposited on the floor, attempting to push the bulk of her companion off her with both hands as the coach lurched to a halt.

“This could be a trick. Eyes alert and weapons at the ready, men!” she heard Luka shout as Tatiana slowly boosted herself back onto her seat, the companion muttering a few words of her own, none of them complimentary to the mother of the coachman. “I’ll personally see to the lady.”

Alina moved to open the door, to see what on earth was going on. But just as her hand settled on the latch, the door opened and Luka appeared, his stern face more immobile than usual.

“Nothing to worry about, my lady. Seems there’s a tree fallen across the roadway. The baron’s men are moving it now, and we’ll be on our way shortly.”

“May I come out and watch?” she asked him, as she was more than ready to be out of the coach for a while.

“It’s nearly dark, my lady. Nothing to see.”

“May I be the judge of that, please, Luka?” she asked, pushing the door open just as he was attempting to push it closed. “Honestly! Don’t you think you’re taking this business of being responsible for me just a little too— Luka!”

The shot had come from the greenery bordering the roadway. Alina knew that because she had seen the flash from the muzzle in the fading light. Luka looked at her strangely for a moment, surprise in his eyes, and then pitched headfirst onto her lap.

“Luka!”

There was suddenly ear-piercing screaming—courtesy of Tatiana—the sounds of more shots from both pistols and larger weapons, the shouts of men issuing orders, the nervous cries of horses, those locked in the traces and those being turned and wheeled to face some unseen enemy.

“My lady…”

She bent her head close to Luka, who was struggling to raise himself, although it seemed his right arm wasn’t cooperating. “Yes, I’m here. Don’t die.”

“Not…not planning on it. Just get down…lie down on the seat where you will be safe.”

“And what would that serve?” she asked him, already reaching into the pocket at the side of the cushioned seat, as an earlier inspection of the coach had unearthed the fact that the baron traveled with flasks of wine, lovely crystal glasses, a tin of sugar biscuits, and two braces of very pretty and also quite deadly pistols. Loaded pistols. “Somebody shot you, Luka,” she said with typical Alina logic, “now I’m going to shoot him back!”

Luka didn’t protest, assuredly not because he agreed with her plan, but because he seemed to once more have lapsed into unconsciousness as what sounded very much like a pitched battle continued outside on the roadway.

“My lady…”

“Tend to Luka, Tatiana. See the blood on his coat? He took a ball in the shoulder. We’re short one man, with Luka down, so I must help. Oh, and do please keep your head down, like he said.”

With Tatiana grabbing at her skirt in an attempt to stop her, with a heavy pistol in each hand, and what with having to maneuver her way over Luka’s inert body, Alina’s exit from the coach turned into a near somersault, landing her ignominiously in a puddle caused by the earlier rain, her nose an inch deep into the muddy water. One of the pistols went flying out of her hand.

Not that anyone outside the coach noticed, as they all seemed to be occupied either in shooting wildly into the trees or attempting to tie a stout rope to the fallen tree trunk in order to shift it off the roadway.

Alina was struggling to get to her feet when she felt what seemed to be a band of iron clamp around her waist from behind, and she was ignominiously hauled upright—hauled a good foot or more off the ground, actually. Kicking her feet impotently, she was unceremoniously shoved back into the coach, where she landed on Luka’s back. The major, who was not dead, groaned at her added weight and muttered a word Alina had never before heard, but one she was fairly certain he shouldn’t have uttered in her presence.

She righted herself, aimed her feet toward the door as she began to struggle to exit the coach once more, only to be faced with a wall of solid Brutus, Justin’s so-called secretary. Justin’s mountain was more like it.

Wiping at her muddy face with her sleeve, Alina demanded she be allowed to pass.

The mountain only grunted.

“I am reluctant to shoot you, Brutus, but the highwaymen have shot my friend. They can’t be allowed to get away with that, now, can they?”

The mountain rolled his eyes at this clear impossibility.

“I mean it, Brutus,” Alina said, pointing the un-cocked pistol at him. “I know how to fight.”

The mountain, using only two fingers, plucked the pistol from her as if picking a bit of lint from a jacket. The weapon looked small in his hamlike hand. She wouldn’t, in fact, have been surprised if he were now to bend the barrel in half, just to prove his point. Whatever his point—and she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to know what it was.

Another male face appeared, insinuating itself in the small amount of space left over after Brutus had blocked the doorway. “We’re clear, Major Prochazka. We’re ready to move again. Two wounded, but they’re fit enough, and able to ride.”

“Then let’s do that,” Luka said, crawling out from under Alina, who was beginning to feel very much like a muddy cork being tossed about on a sea of unyielding angles and, ouch, it would seem that Luka was wearing spurs.

The looming Brutus stepped back, shut the door. Opened it again, tossed in Alina’s lovely shako hat—now covered with mud—and closed the door once more, before she could send it sailing back at him.

By this time Luka had managed to sit himself down on the cushions, and even to hold out a hand to Alina so that she could join him. “If you wish,” he said, looking angry and amused at the same time. But mostly amused, which was not nice of him at all.

With the back of her hand she swiped at the tip of her nose because it tickled, catching a rivulet of muddy water just as it was about to drip and ruin her— Oh! Her new traveling costume! Look at it! It was ruined. “My outfit is nothing but mud!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself.

“The better to match your face, Lady Alina,” Luka said, grabbing on to his right arm, which was hanging uselessly at his side. “What the devil did you think you were going to do out there?”

Alina accepted the handkerchief Tatiana handed her and began wiping at her face even as the coach moved forward once more, clearly sacrificing passenger comfort in favor of speed. “I tried to avenge your death—not that you’re dead, but you know what I mean—and this is the thanks I get?” she asked as they were all bracing themselves so not to be tossed around the interior of the coach. “Questions, and that face of yours, Luka? Oh, don’t try to hide it now. I saw your smile. Or did you think I would be content to simply cower here and have a fit of the vapors or something while highwaymen attacked us?”

“Highwaymen,” the major said quietly, sobering. “Yes. It would appear that England is not quite so civilized as the English would like us to believe.”

“Clearly not! Do you suppose they have followed us from Portsmouth? That they saw my trunks being unloaded, and my cloak? Oh, I should have been ruthless with anyone who dared to attempt to steal my cloak, let me tell you that!” She accepted another pristine linen square Tatiana had unearthed from the large bag at her feet and promptly ruined it by wiping it over her face and hands. The farther removed from the heat of battle she got, the more she regretted her impulsive action. But someone had shot Luka. And that had made her so angry!

The facts that, now that they were safe and on the move again, her hands had begun to shake and her stomach felt exceptionally queasy, and she believed she could begin to weep rather copiously if anyone so much as looked at her slightly askance, were all suddenly being brought very much home to her. She’d been reckless, and she could have been dead.

Why did she not stop to consider the consequences before she acted? Why did the illogical and impossible always seem rational and infinitely plausible when her wild Romany blood was up, as Tatiana had always told her?

Alina was proud of her Romany blood, but even as she looked for some excuse to explain away her more rash and ridiculous actions, she did not think it fair to blame that blood. She knew where the blame truly lay, and it was with her.

Just another failing she would have to apply herself to correcting before she became a bride. And just another reason to resent the absent Justin Wilde. If he had done his duty, he would have been riding in the coach with her—the coach that would be on its way to London—and nowhere near those hideous highwaymen. He would have taken up the brace of pistols and defended her. Why, if she looked at the thing long enough and hard enough, it was all his fault that she was sitting here, her beautiful new outfit ruined, muddy water dripping off the tip of her nose.

All of which she would tell him when he came to fetch her from this Ashurst Hall they were heading for. If he came to fetch her.

Beside her, as he attempted to insert a much-folded cloth inside his unbuttoned jacket, Luka groaned, and Alina brought her straying mind back to attention.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Luka, I’m neglecting you. Are you all right?” she asked him. “Tatiana, why didn’t you help Luka out of his jacket, so that we can see to his wound? Oh, never mind, you were probably too busy watching me make an utter cake of myself. Here, let’s do it now.”

“I was told we were only little more than a mile from Ashurst Hall just before we were attacked, my lady,” he told her. “I can wait until we arrive. You shouldn’t have to see the wound. It isn’t seemly.”

“Neither is bleeding yourself dry,” Alina pointed out, but the coach had now turned, and the wheels were suddenly covering much smoother ground, the ruts and jaw-jarring potholes of the other road no longer in evidence.

“My lady…your clothing?”

Tatiana’s warning brought Alina back to her own personal dilemma. That was probably vain of her, but she couldn’t help herself. She was about to meet Justin’s friends—an English duke and duchess, no less—and she was going to see them for the first time while looking as if she’d just finished rolling about in a pigsty. Oh, how Aunt Mimi would have laughed to see her like this, and then pointed out that it was no less than she would have expected from her mongrel niece.

“I’m going to blame him for that, too,” Alina declared as Tatiana, being a down-to-earth sort in times like these—at least once the shooting and the shouting were over—asked her ladyship to please spit on the corner of yet another linen square, so that the servant could wipe some of the dirt off her ladyship’s cheeks.

But then I might allow him to kiss me again…

CHAPTER FIVE

JUSTIN WILDE ARRIVED at Carleton House just after midnight, clad in his usual impeccable evening clothes and looking fresher—and smelling better—than most of the other guests of His Royal Majesty, the Prince Regent.

His appearance in the midst of the haut ton was a surprise, and presented a dilemma to everyone else present. Did they pretend not to see him? Did they nod as he passed—after all, he would not have gained entry without an invitation from the Prince Regent. Did they dare to approach him, clap him on the back, behave as if they were delighted to see him again, after dealing him the cut direct only a few months earlier, when he’d first returned to London? So much of society was in knowing whom to speak to and whom to avoid.

But he did look dashing, his well-remembered handsome, impeccable self. All that fashionably styled dark hair above those oddly unreadable green eyes. The way his black evening clothes fit his exemplary body. His snowy-white neckcloth always above reproach, tied in an intricate style of his own design, one that had never been successfully copied. That insouciant walk, as if he saw nothing in the world he feared. Pockets so deep his wealth seemed to have no measure at all. He was a true rara avis in all respects, the compleat, set-up gentleman. And hadn’t he always had a smile for everyone, a joke for the men, a compliment for the ladies?

Yes, Baron Wilde was a bit of all right, really. Perfect in so many ways. Shame about him in that duel over his slut of a wife, firing early like that and shooting poor what-was-his-name in the back. Bloody coward…

No one could possibly imagine that the subject of their mingled awe, envy and repulsion had just spent the better part of two days in the saddle, or that he was harboring thoughts of committing dire physical mayhem on the body attached to the pudgy, beringed fingers he was now bowing over with such grace.

But, then, that had always been Justin’s way. His smile belonged to everyone; his thoughts were his own.

During his first years in town, he had been sought after, admired, hugely popular with not only the ladies but their mamas, and welcomed by other gentlemen to be one of any party or sporting event. Because he was pretty and mannerly. Because he was entertaining. Because he genuinely enjoyed life.

Before.

Before, in his shallow and trivial youth, he’d married Sheila Broughton after being dazzled by her pretty face, and the way, frankly, they seemed to turn all heads whenever they entered a room together. She had fit him well, rather like his perfectly tailored waistcoats.

Better he should have married his tailor….

He’d never loved her. After the first few months of their marriage, he hadn’t liked her, either, any more than she had liked him. He’d married her fine good looks, and she’d pledged herself to his title and deep pockets.

Still, they could have stumbled along, together yet not together, for several dozen years. Many did.

It was Sheila’s lack of discretion that had brought both of them down, and taken Justin to that dew-covered lawn where his damned unerring aim had put a period to both Robbie Farber’s existence and his own frivolous life as he had known it.

Eight years. Eight long years spent exiled from his country, his estates. Eight interminable years of doing whatever was asked of him, in the hope of gaining a pardon that would reunite him with his homeland and keep his neck out of a noose.

He’d returned to Mayfair only a few months ago, to learn that memories in the ton were longer than he would have imagined. There had been no welcome from anyone save Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, and Rafe Daughtry, Duke of Ashurst. But even those friendships hadn’t softened society’s condemnation of him. The three days he’d spent at his town house had been enough to convince him that he had rushed his reentry into Society, and he had taken himself off again, prepared to await the following spring season before trying again.

Now he was back, only two months passing between a nearly universal cut direct from those who had eight years earlier called themselves his friends and tonight’s very visible acceptance by the Prince Regent—all part of the bargain they had struck.

Justin could hear the whispers, even as he could not make out the words. When he bowed his way back from the prince, it would be to see those same people who had judged him, had shunned him, now taking their cue from the prince and rushing up as if they were delighted to see him again.

And he could, in return, be delighted to see them, allow himself to be brought back into favor. Even as he cursed them all for sycophants and fools, while also cursing himself for ever believing this life was the one he wanted, the life he’d sacrificed so much to regain.

“A word in your ear, sir?” Justin suggested quietly. “You may frown as you lead me off, as if preparing to give me one last stern scold before welcoming me back into the fold of sheep standing all about us now, breathlessly anticipating your reaction and ready to take their cue from you.”

“Damn you, what are you up to, Wilde? Where’s the gel?” the Prince Regent asked sotto voce as he allowed two footmen to help him to his feet. He pointed toward a door off in a corner, and Justin fell into step directly beside him, in just the way George Brummell had dared to do, as if declaring them not only friends, but equals. Oh, this would add to his consequence; being so publicly taken off for a private coze with the heir to the throne. How Prinny must hate that. “What are you doing here, Wilde? It was to be tomorrow night, at Covent Garden.”

“What? And miss this delightful gathering?” Justin responded lightly, insinuating his arm through the prince’s crooked elbow, knowing the man had no choice but to allow the intimacy. “Imagine my delight, sir, when I returned to London and espied the invitation waiting for me on my desk.”

He refrained from mentioning that the invitation had served to remove the problem of how to break into Carleton House at four in the morning and somehow make it past the guards.

“One of my fool secretaries must have already added you back to my invitation list. You shouldn’t be on that list yet, not until you’re bracketed with the gel. It was a mistake.”

“I wondered as much. But then I thought, my, how can I resist? After all, the wish of our Royal Highness can be nothing less than my command. I fair flew through my toilette, I tell you—taking only a miserly three hours to make myself presentable—and then hastened straight here. Please forgive my tardy and doubtless disheveled appearance. Although my man, Wigglesworth, persists in telling me that this waistcoat flatters me no end.”

“Humph,” the Prince Regent responded, which was as good as a compliment on Justin’s attire, combined with a curse that His Royal Highness would never see a waistcoat so fine himself…or be able to see past it to his toes, either, come to that.

They’d entered the anteroom now, and Justin carefully first shut, then locked the door, deftly pocketing the key.

“The gel?” the prince said without preamble. “Where the devil is the gel? Did you forget her on the docks? Can’t you get the straight of anything, Wilde? She’s supposed to be with you.”

Justin’s smile never wavered. It was the sort of smile that could make a guilty man feel the sudden need to find a quick exit. “You mean, sir, where is the daughter of one Lady Anne Louise Farber, sister to Robbie Farber, once Earl of Birling, and the man I shot down eight years ago for having maligned my then estranged wife’s nonexistent reputation?”

The prince shot a quick look toward the door. “You, um…you found that out quickly.”

Justin raised one well-defined eyebrow, feigning surprise even as his every suspicion was confirmed. “Oh? So you’re already aware of the connection? My, my, and here I was, prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, call the whole thing coincidence and be done with it. After all, how can a mere loyal subject even begin to conceive that his presumptive sire might be so devious, so cold-bloodedly calculating?”

“It wasn’t like that, Wilde. Not at the beginning, at least.”

“At least? Tell me, is it still considered regicide if you’re no more than a sorry excuse for a regent, and not the king? Or, knowing the mood of the populace, would I be looked upon more as a hero if I were to wring your damn neck for you in the next minute?”

The prince’s normally pink cheeks disappeared in the full, florid flush that now possessed him from cravat to hairline. “You cannot speak to me this way! I’ll summon the guards.”

“Do that,” Justin continued almost affably. “I’ve locked the door you keep eyeing—the only door to this quaint little closet set aside for your assignations with any of the plump, aged ladies you seem to enjoy having play mother to you. By the time the guards manage to break it down, you’ll be on the floor, your face blue and your tongue swollen half out of your mouth. Not a pretty picture, I promise you. They won’t even be able to shove your tongue back in your head for the state funeral. They’ll have to snip it off.”

The man who lived only for the day he would become His Majesty, George the Fourth, winced, and nearly gagged.

“Ah, so you do remember who I am and what I do, don’t you, sir? Who you and others like you made me? One minute, no more—that’s all it would take. But it would be the longest, and the last, minute of your life.”

The prince’s eyes shifted to the door, and then back to the key Justin was dangling in front of his face. “I didn’t set out to have it happen this way,” he said, nearly pleaded. “When Francis came to my ministers for our help with his problem and his possible solution, he mentioned the name Farber. I remembered the name. That’s when I realized I had just the man for what he wanted done.”

“Me.”

“Yes. You. You’re just the right man. I read the dispatches, you know. You have no conscience, no scruples. Everyone agreed you were perfect.”

Justin refused to react to the prince’s opinion of his character, or the lack thereof. “Counted on that, did you? And that’s why you summoned me from Vienna. That’s why you offered me the pardon I’d begun to believe would never become fact. That very expensive pardon with all those intricate strings tied to it. How wonderful for you that you could benefit your own pocketbook, even as you assisted your new ally.”

“Well, yes,” the Prince Regent admitted, relaxing slightly. “That did work out rather conveniently for me, I will admit to that. My creditors have become increasingly strident. Why should the benefits all run in Francis’s direction?”

“Stupid, yet clever. The two, combined, make you a very dangerous man, Your Royal Highness. There are times I not only wonder if a monarchy is necessary, but if any of you should be allowed to breed. Eight years. Eight years I’ve thought of nothing but returning to England. To my homeland and my home. Now I find myself wondering what all the fuss was about, why I even cared.”

“If that’s true, Wilde, I am deeply sorry. But I immediately saw that you were the obvious choice. Who better than the Crown’s own assassin to protect the lady from an assassin?”

Justin’s eyes went cold. “Please, allow us both now to put an end to that particular comedy. You could have found someone else to do what Francis needs done—and what your new bosom chum the king of Austria needs done has nothing to do with safeguarding the lady, but very much to do with ridding Francis of a nuisance. I am simply an added amusement you’ve thrown into the mix. How jolly for you, to know that you’ve bracketed Birling’s niece to the man who killed him. Why, I imagine you think it all but borders on the poetic.”

The prince said nothing. Which spoke volumes.

Disgusted but not surprised, Justin pushed harder, needing to hear what this pathetic man had to say. “Admit it. I want to hear you say it. If I were to fail to eliminate Francis’s enemy and the Lady Alina were to die because of that failure, her death would mean nothing to you.”

“Who?” The Prince Regent, known for many things, was not often included on any list numbering the sharpest knives in his chef’s kitchen.

“Never mind,” Justin said, suddenly unpardonably weary of this conversation. “I know what you want me to do.”

“You’ve always known that. I want you to marry the gel.”

“So you say. From where I stand, it seems you wish me to assassinate a very powerful and visible public figure for you and your royal friends, while you both keep your hands and your countries clean of the dead. And the devil with what happens to the gel.”

Prinny had the wit to at last look somewhat sheepish. “All right, yes, I will admit to not considering the possible problem with the woman. But you are now her protector, and she could have none better. Marry her, and keep her safe from this man the king is convinced wishes her dead. Yes, making the man dead in the process. They’re one and the same, really, as long as he dies. And what do you care about this man? You’ve killed so many. Then you’ll be free of any further obligation. You have my word on that, damn it.”

“You’ll forgive me if I remain less than confident.”

“As for this young woman who so concerns you? You will bring her here, present her to me. Why, it would be my honor to give the bride away at Saint Paul’s. That should make up for something, showing you are totally accepted by me, by the Crown. And then remain here in town for the small season?”

Justin didn’t answer, but only bowed. “You really are a fool, aren’t you? And now, as I’m fairly certain I’ve outstayed my welcome, I think it is time I rejoined my affianced bride.”

He turned toward the door, the key once more in his hand.

“Wait! I have to know. Would you have done it?” the Prince Regent asked, his voice trembling slightly. “Would you have…murdered me? Because you wouldn’t have outlived me for more than a few heartbeats, once my guards arrived. Had you thought of that?”

“Why do you think you’re still alive, Your Highness? Much as I know you hadn’t planned it this way, you’ve actually unwittingly given me something to hope for, to live for. Or, I should say, someone.”

Justin held open the door to allow the Prince Regent to exit ahead of him, but the man stopped just at the threshold, his gaze on the assembled guests in the larger room, his complexion paling this time rather than flushing. “Wait. You didn’t answer me. I admit I didn’t consider the young lady in all of this, the possible danger to her. But you will protect, you’ve said as much. Now will you be bringing the gel here to London? That was the arrangement. To bring her here, present her to me, use the special license I managed for you. I didn’t mean what I said. And then all will be forgiven, yes?”

Justin wondered how and when the prince would get back to the subject that most concerned him—after the worry over where his not-always-loyal subjects might put his sliced-off tongue before they buried him.

“I thank you, sir, but in point of fact I prefer to handle arranging my own nuptials. There will be ample time to visit London in the spring, during the season. For now, I should think my soon-to-be wife and I will adjourn to my estate and get to know each other. Oh, dear, wait a moment. Now you’re frowning again, aren’t you? That rascal Wilde, you’re thinking, he’s making a muddle of everything. I’m supposed to have my fiancée make her curtsy to you tomorrow night at Covent Garden, when that fierce-looking gentleman in the uniform of the Austrian high command isn’t present, as he is tonight. Shame, shame on me.”

“You already saw him? But you came into the room and headed straight to me. Like Doomsday, you know, no matter how you smiled.”

“Men who labored as I did don’t survive long if they fail to enlarge their powers of observation. Yes, I saw him. Inhaber Jarmil Novak, and your guest. Allow me, please, to hazard a guess—he is Francis’s new Minister of Trade, and simply delighted to be on our shores, although probably not because of any fervor to encourage England’s importation of fine Austrian cheeses. He has to know without having been told that he’s been sent here to eliminate the last of the Valentin’s, never thinking that it is he who is to die. I was wondering how you’d bring us all together.”

“So damned smug, figuring it all out. Aren’t you clever? You’re not amusing, Wilde. Not at all.”

“Unforgivable of me, I’m sure. And yet I will persevere. He arrived with quite a surprisingly large retinue, didn’t he? Big, strapping fellows, part of his own private regiment? You have all the makings of a splendid entertainment, and all of it to take place here in London, where you can watch it unfold. You really should thank King Francis. He has no idea how solving his problem for him has become your personal delight. Too bad that the lady and I won’t be obliging you.”

“Wilde, wait! Don’t you dare to turn your back on me. We have an agreement. I can still destroy you. I can snap you in two the way I snapped George when he dared to ridicule me, so that you’ll never be able to show your face in London society again. Worse, I still could order you tried for murdering poor Robbie Farber, and have you hanged.”

The guests closest to them heard most of what had been said, and were doing their best to pretend that they hadn’t, even as they, collectively, all leaned in closer, as if they were on a ship that had begun listing to starboard.

As long as he would be the subject of gossip all over Mayfair by tomorrow, as long as he was so determinedly burning his bridges, Justin thought he might as well give them all something more to natter about over their morning chocolate.

“Why, Your Royal Highness,” he said, shock in his every word, “are you saying that your signature is not your bond, your word not your oath? Can it be that your personally signed pardon, bestowed upon me only after I had gratefully and without question poured fifty thousand pounds into your private coffers, means nothing if you say it means nothing?”

“With those words, you have just nullified your pardon and forfeited your life,” the Prince Regent whispered fiercely.

“Possibly, sir. Probably. But not the lady’s. You might wish to warn Inhaber Novak of that fact, if not alert him to the target on his own back. Even on yours, if the lady is harmed. You and your new friend Francis played your game poorly, Highness, as I’ve already seen your cards. You will see mine only as I lay them out. But trust me on this. Mine are better. Oh, one thing more about the way I play the game. You were a lucky man tonight, as I very rarely bluff. I won’t do it again.”

Justin turned on his heels and strode out of the large reception room, feeling every eye on his back, with two particular sets of those eyes boring straight into it.

Riding clothes and his mount were both waiting for him at his town house, and he was changed and in the saddle within a quarter hour. He probably would not see London again in his lifetime, and for some reason this fact did not bother him. After so many years of longing for this city, this country, he could find no love in his heart for either.

He would not have believed this possible, only two short days ago. But that was before he saw a pair of frightened golden eyes looking to him for answers and reassurance. He’d been handed a gift, a way to do penance for so many crimes, so many mistakes.

Justin Wilde may have failed himself over the years, damned his own soul any number of times…but he would not fail her.

CHAPTER SIX

THE GIGGLES DREW HIM. Young, unaffected. The joy of life being enjoyed. He’d laughed like that, he was sure. Long ago. A lifetime ago.

He’d spent another day and a half in the saddle, riding across country, backtracking, until he was convinced he wasn’t being followed, that his destination was known to him and only to him. Because the last damned thing he’d ever do would be to bring the hell following him down on his friends.

Justin Wilde had done a lot of stupid things in the course of his two and thirty years. If he were to apply to his friends for a list, the length of it might surprise even him. But threatening the life of the heir to the throne of England had been the topper. That step, once taken, was impossible to correct, even if he’d wanted to, and he didn’t.

Because he’d never felt more free, even with the full might of England out to find him, jail him, execute him.

He was tired, filthy dirty thanks to the road dust, and more than slightly damp due to the early-afternoon rain, when he slid off his horse in the stable yard of his good friend Rafe Daughtry. Too dirty to present himself at the front door of Ashurst Hall, he’d planned to enter through the kitchens and sneak up to his assigned room, where Wigglesworth could render one of his miracles and make him human again.

But that was before he’d heard the giggles.

Alina. The woman he’d thought of night and day since the moment he’d first seen her on the docks in Portsmouth. The woman he’d dreamed of last night as he slept beneath the hedgerows. The woman who could never really be his.

Damn. He’d never before recognized this streak of melodrama he seemed to possess. He’d have to stop thinking like some lovesick swain and remember who he was. And the danger that followed him.

One of Justin’s own outriders had been lounging on a bale of hay, using a single stick of that hay to pick at his teeth. He didn’t bother to rise until he belatedly realized that the ragtag rider was his always immaculately groomed employer. He hastened to assist him with his mount, noticing that Justin’s gaze was on the open door to the stables.

“Lady Alina, my lord,” he offered without being asked. “Sounds like music, don’t it? But I’m keepin’ one eye on her, yes, I am. We all are, my lord. She just don’t like stickin’ in one place too long, she says.”

“And what is she doing?”

“Don’t know, my lord. I was told to watch, not to look.”

“Very good. I’ll see for myself.”

Brushing at the front of his jacket with his gloved hands, Justin left the sunshine of the stable yard for the cool stable, pausing just inside it until his eyes became accustomed to the darker interior. Rafe kept a fine stable, stalls lining it in both directions, the whole of it built into the side of a hill, so that hay and other supplies could be moved by cart, directly into the upper floor of the vast structure.

As Justin stood there, a few bits of hay came drifting down from the wooden plank ceiling above him.

And he heard another giggle.

A man could get very disturbing ideas, hearing a woman’s giggle coming from a hayloft.

He turned to the man, who was kicking at the dirt just outside the doorway, as if there was some invisible line he dared not cross. “She’s alone?”

“Oh, yes, my lord. Came back from her ride and went on in there, and didn’t come back out.”

“Thank you. What’s your name?”

“Willis, sir. Did I do somethin’ wrong?”

“No, Willis, you did not. Protecting the Lady Alina is paramount, but I will take it from here now. You may return to your post.”

Justin headed for the ladder that wasn’t much more than a series of foot-wide slats hammered onto one of the beams, marveling that a woman in a riding skirt would attempt let alone manage the vertical climb. Lady Alina, it would appear, was a young woman who went where she wished to go, when she wished to go there, no matter the difficulty.

He supposed, if he thought about it, he could come to at least two other conclusions. The young woman in question was fairly fearless. And the young woman was probably more than slightly reckless. A prudent man would store all three conclusions away for future reference.

He removed his hat and flung it on the hard-packed dirt floor, as nothing much could be done to the hat than hadn’t already been accomplished by the rain and the fact that he’d used it for a pillow as he slept beneath the hedgerows last night, before pulling himself up to the floor of the loft.

Following the giggles, he soon located Lady Alina in a small walled-off area of the large loft. She was lying on her back in the soft, fragrant straw.

And she was covered in kittens.

At the moment, she was holding up one of the furry black-and-white balls of fur and then bringing it down to her face, nuzzling the lucky thing nose to nose, as its littermates—Justin counted at least six of them—variously snuggled against her side or climbing over her as if she were some mighty Gulliver and they were the inquisitive Lilliputians.

The mother cat, that had obviously accepted the intruder, wasn’t quite as certain of Justin’s appearance, and strutted over to him, her tail high, her back slightly arched. “Put a scratch in these boots, Mother, and there will be no saving you from Wigglesworth’s wrath,” he warned, and Lady Alina immediately sat up, looking at him with those wide, golden eyes.

He’d surprised her, surely. But she didn’t look shocked. On the contrary, she appeared to be pleased.

Or he was weary enough to allow wishful thinking to cloud his heretofore clear judgment.

Her pins had fallen out of her hair. Ebony curls tumbled all around her head and shoulders. Sunlight streaming in through a barred window shone on her emerald-green riding habit and touched on her slightly reddened cheeks as she quickly put down the kitten and began buttoning up her jacket, for several of the buttons had slipped their moorings as she played with the frisky litter.

Justin caught a glimpse of snow-white skin and the soft curve of a breast above a silk chemise.

He swallowed like a schoolboy.

“You’re here,” she said unnecessarily as she began pulling bits of hay from her curls.

“Your powers of observation are astounding, Alina, if a trifle belated. Still, I couldn’t be more delighted with my welcome,” he told her, striving to get himself back under control, appear nonchalant while all he wished to do was take her in his arms and hold on tight to the best thing to have happened to him. Instead, he bent to pick up the kitten Alina had been playing with and brought it to his face. “Lucky little man, aren’t you?” he said before carefully putting it back down in front of its worried mother.

“Do you always sneak up on people unannounced?” Alina asked as he held out a hand to assist her. She ignored it, and got to her feet unaided. She began working at her hair, tugging loose more bits of hay.

“Your pardon, I’m sure. Clearly I should have had Willis announce me. He could beat on a drum, or perhaps crash some cymbals? Here, don’t do that, you’re only making more tangles. Let me play at lady’s maid.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and then lowered her arms and nodded. “At least you look worse than I do,” she said as if that made everything all right. “Wigglesworth told me you are always impeccable. Clearly I should not believe all that Wigglesworth tells me.”

“I wouldn’t believe the half of it,” Justin told her as he fought the impulse to thread his fingers through her hair. Her soft, silky, wonderfully warm hair. “I vastly overpay the fellow.”

If he just slipped his hands into the soft curls at either side of that sweet little face, and then gently drew her toward him, then he might kiss that full pink mouth, taste her sweetness once more, lose his wickedness in her innocence…

“What are you looking at? Do I have dirt on my nose?”

Justin pulled his mind from foolish fantasies and stepped away from her. “No,” he said shortly. “Are you ready to return to the house? I’ve a great need for a bath and a change of clothes before I find our hosts and thank them for their kindness in taking care of you while I was gone.”

She gave a rather imperious toss of her head, marred only by the sort of snorting hrummph that accompanied the gesture. “You make it sound as if I’m some infant and need taking care of. Which I don’t, thank you. I’m quite out of charity with you at the moment. And if Brutus hadn’t gotten in the way, I would have shot that man.”

As she attempted to rush past him, Justin grabbed at her elbow and spun her around to face him. “Would you mind repeating that last little bit, kitten?”

Alina pulled her arm free of his grasp. “Don’t call me that, even though I’m certain you think it’s charming. You think you’re charming. Wigglesworth insists that you’re charming. Is it charming, my lord, to go riding off, leaving me in a strange land, surrounded by strangers, and having Luka shot into the bargain?”

Justin’s blood froze in his veins. “Luka has been shot?”

“Yes, and my best traveling ensemble has been destroyed. Not that anything so trivial is so important as Luka being shot. But if you’d not had us riding all over this silly island while you did some flit as if you couldn’t stand being with me—with us all a moment longer, instead of taking us to London, as you were supposed to do, then we wouldn’t have been accosted by highwaymen intent on stealing my cloak. I shouldn’t have flaunted it on the dock, granted, because that was horribly stupid of me now that I’ve had time to reflect on the thing. But still, it’s mostly all your fault.”

Justin’s head was spinning, a circumstance that he felt no need to apologize for, as the woman could have been speaking a language he didn’t understand for all the sense he could make of her words. He decided the cloak and the silly island could be disregarded as superfluous to the point for the moment, and instead concentrated on the words Luka shot and highwaymen.

“You were accosted by highwaymen on the way here, and Luka was shot?”

She looked at him in wide-eyed exasperation. “Didn’t I already say that? Yes, we were accosted by highwaymen, and Luka was shot. And then I ended up in the mud and Brutus scooped me up and all but threw me back into the coach. For a man who doesn’t speak, he can certainly make his point extremely clear.”

Justin relaxed, but only slightly. She was clearly safe, and the major’s wound couldn’t have proved fatal, or else she wouldn’t have been out here, giggling with kittens. “I find myself powerless to resist asking, kitten. How did you end up in the mud?”

“That isn’t important to the point,” she told him, shifting her gaze away from him. “Luka wants to see you as soon as you’ve returned. He is very put out with you.”

“It would appear he’s not the only one. Alina, I had to leave. But I could only leave if I believed that you would be safe until my return, which you most obviously were. But you think I was running away from you and our…arrangement. Don’t you?”

“No, of course not. Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t even know you. I could not care a drop why you left.”

She lied badly, and Justin’s heart lifted with delight.

He put a bent finger beneath her chin to hold her in place, so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Ah, but I care what you think of me. We have an adventure ahead of us, Alina. I need you to feel able to trust me. Without question, without hesitation.”

“I don’t understand. Are you speaking of our marriage?”

“There will be no marriage, kitten. I wouldn’t so abuse you as to saddle you with a fugitive for a husband.”

She blinked, but then looked at him rather intensely. “A fugitive from what? No, now you’re lying to me. You’re an English nobleman. You are your king’s choice for my husband. Of course we’re going to marry, it’s all arranged. You’re making no sense.”

Why couldn’t he have left this for later? Why couldn’t he simply continue to enjoy this moment, this unexpected interlude?

He knew the answer. The more he was with her, the more he would miss her when he had to go.

There was no good place to start, no easy way to say so much that had to be said. And no time to say it all, damn it. He may have avoided the king’s men on his way to Ashurst Hall, but the Inhaber’s men, those Alina had believed to be highwaymen, had to have followed them from Portsmouth. Someone was watching, and that someone had seen him ride into the stable yard, and word was undoubtedly already on its way to London and Inhaber Novak.

“We have to leave,” Justin said, taking her hand and leading her toward the ladder. “Tomorrow morning at dawn, no later. There will be time for explanations once I have you somewhere safe.”

He descended the ladder first, and then helped guide her down until she was standing in front of him once more. “I feel safe where I am, thank you. Charlotte has been everything that is kind, and Rafe apologized most profusely about the highwaymen, who he says have been a problem these past few months. I feel eminently safe here, thank you, except perhaps not quite so much now that you’re here, too. You really are a very strange man, you know. Are you really a fugitive?”

Justin picked up his hat and offered Alina his arm. “So, from your question, I take it that trusting me implicitly is not under consideration?”

“Without question or hesitation I believe I can say yes, that’s correct,” Alina told him as they walked toward the house. “And I will add that this supposed marriage of convenience we both agreed to has been very much less than convenient since the moment I first saw you preening on the dock.”

“I wasn’t preening,” Justin objected, laughing. “I was standing there awestruck, as I was supposed to do, my considerable consequence totally eclipsed by my affianced wife, whom I’d supposed to be fat and with a hairy chin, when I thought of her at all.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “So I don’t repulse you?”

Justin stopped on the brick path and turned her around to face him. She meant it, she really didn’t understand just how beautiful she was. “Repulse me? You thought that? Your country has no mirrors?”

She put the back of her hand to her mouth for a moment, as if sorry she’d let the words escape her, but quickly rallied. “What was I supposed to think? You all but ran out of my…my bedchamber at the inn, and then you rode off the next morning without so much as another word to me. I know I’m only a woman, but women can think, too, you know. And I think you behaved like a man who very much wished to be anywhere this woman wasn’t.”

Justin threw back his head and laughed; a laugh so free and open he actually amazed himself, for he had guarded his emotions for too many long years. “God, you’re adorable. No wonder your aunt wanted you gone.”

Alina rolled her eyes at this. “She considers me painfully young and gauche.”

“She considers you competition would be more to the point. But back to what we were discussing.”

“We weren’t discussing anything,” Alina said testily. “You have been making pronouncements, for the most part, and very little sense for the rest of it. Fugitive or not, I don’t think I want to marry you, and not because you say we won’t. Our children would all be idiots.”

“Blithering, drooling idiots, yes, I agree, if that makes you happy. But you do realize that we would then be flouting the wishes of two separate royal edicts.”

“Oh. And that’s why you’re a fugitive? You went to London and told your Prince Regent that you refuse to marry me. Will they hang you now?”

“If they catch me, that’s the least they’ll do, but not for the reason you think. So you really don’t wish to marry me?”

She hesitated, as if searching for just the correct words to answer him. “You already don’t wish to marry me, so what I might want or not want doesn’t matter, does it? If you want, you can take me to my mother’s family, and I’d promise not to ever be any bother to you.”

“Kitten, it’s too late for that, as you bother me very much. The devil and the delight of it is that you don’t seem to have any real understanding of just how and why you do.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “There you go again, making absolutely no sense. I bedevil you, I delight you. You run from the sight of me, you come back again saying we must leave here and go somewhere safe, but you don’t want to marry me. You say you’re a fugitive and then you— Oh! I don’t know what you’re saying or doing.”

She had a temper. Good. Fearless, possibly reckless, and with a temper. If the gods had ordered up a woman for him, they could not have done better. Except that the gods also had a sense of humor, and they had conjured her up for him knowing he would not be able to keep her. He put his hands on her slim shoulders. “All right, kitten—”

“I am not a kitten!”

“You’re certainly not purring, I’ll grant you that. I know you don’t understand what I’m saying. I’ve barely begun to understand most of it myself, as even my mind isn’t accustomed to running in such devious circles. But understand this, Alina. What I am doing is saving you from the man who is trying to kill you.”

“Kill me?” Her eyes went so wide it was almost laughable. “Who is it that’s supposed to be killing me?”

He’d rather have gotten her full attention by kissing her. But then, Justin Wilde had long ago learned that one does not always get what one wishes for.

He walked her toward a nearby bench, sat her down, and proceeded to tell her everything he’d learned in London.

ALINA’S HEAD WAS STILL positively spinning as she stepped out of her tub and into the large white towel Tatiana held out for her to wrap herself in before moving to the fire so that one of the Ashurst maids could brush her hair dry.

“Thank you, but no,” she told the maid as she put out her hands for the brushes. “You may go now.”

“Sit, my lady,” Tatiana said, already going down on her knees. “I’ll do that for you, and you can tell me why you sent the maid away.”

Alina subsided onto the hearth carpet, sighing as Tatiana began working the brushes through her wet hair. “Danica isn’t going to come walking in here, her ears flapping as they do when she tries to pretend she isn’t listening, is she?”

“Not since I locked the door to the dressing room and hid the key in my pocket, my lady, no. Although when she’s done packing up most of your belongings and discovers she’s locked in there it might get a little noisy. I could see when you came upstairs that something was troubling you. Is it that his lordship has come back, or that he says we must leave this lovely place tomorrow morning?”

“It is lovely here, isn’t it?” Alina said, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable. “If everyone in England is as friendly and kind as the duke and duchess, I will find it easier to be happy in a strange land. I wonder if the baron’s estate is even half so pretty.”

“Is that where we’re going, my lady? I thought we were bound for London.”

Alina tipped her head so that all her long, thick hair fell to one side. Tatiana lifted its bulk, fanning it out over her arm to catch the heat from the fire. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “There are so many things I don’t know….”

Tatiana’s hands stilled on the brushes. When she spoke again, it wasn’t the voice of the sweet, paid companion, but that of a woman who cared, and cared deeply. “He told you? The Englisher told you? The major said he might, once he’d come back. He should not have done that. He puts his nose where it does not belong. We would have kept you safe.”

Alina closed her eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath. Now, at last, she believed, really believed: someone wanted her dead, needed her dead. “Does everyone know but me? Does Danica know?”

Tatiana made a rude sound. “That one? What good is she? She knows nothing but laces and crimping irons and how to be annoying. What did his lordship tell you?”

Slowly, to be certain she had the right of it, Alina repeated all that Justin had told her.

She was, save her aunt, the last Valentin. Not that Aunt Mimi mattered, for she had already refused to help the Romany lay claim to the land disputed between them and Inhaber Novak. If anything happened to her niece, she would sign whatever documents the Inhaber put in front of her (for a fee, surely), revoking all possible claim to the land that her silly, romantic niece would just as surely have signed over to the Romany. But as her father’s daughter, Alina stood first, and her aunt second. Eliminate the first, the second becomes first. It was that simple, Justin had told her as he held her hand, as he’d dabbed her damp cheeks with his handkerchief. He’d been so sweet, so caring—how could he still insist he could not marry her?

Alina did not believe her aunt wished her dead or knew about the plot, but she also did not think the woman would go into mourning for her niece unless she could find a becoming wardrobe in black. She’d probably just ask for the return of the Valentin jewels, and then bury her niece with the garnets. Alina had said as much to Justin, and that had made him laugh.

But there was very little else to make either of them smile.

Everything about this business of the land was complex. Francis did not want to be forced to make the decision between the Romany claim and Novak’s claim. But she understood that; the man had many problems.

After that, complex rapidly became murky. The king wanted the Inhaber dead, out of his way, for reasons that most probably went beyond the matter of some disputed land. So the English Prince Regent had agreed to welcome Novak to England, and then have him assassinated by Justin Wilde, the husband who was, after all, only protecting his wife and himself, since a wife’s possessions automatically became the possessions of the husband.

“And this killing of the Inhaber would have taken place in far-off England, with no hint of blame or conspiracy falling on King Francis?” she’d asked Justin, thinking perhaps she at last understood the impossible to understand. “And that’s the reason why you will be a fugitive? Your Prince Regent has agreed to make you into a murderer, hasn’t he?”

He’d agreed that she was correct.

And she’d known he had just lied to her. She felt certain—no, the look on Justin’s face had told her—that there was more, but that the entire truth would have to wait for another day. She had already begun a mental list of questions for the moment that day arrived. Beginning with why you, Justin? Why did the Prince Regent, of all the men in England, choose you?

“Those weren’t highwaymen that attacked our coaches, Tatiana,” she said now, willing herself to relax as the companion went back to brushing her hair for her. “They were sent by Inhaber Novak. And you knew that, Luka knew that. Everyone knew that except me. That’s why we have to leave here, because his lordship doesn’t want his friends put in any danger, to which I certainly agree. But I don’t know where we’re going, because he won’t tell me.”

“Does he know?”

Alina turned about so quickly, one of the brushes caught in her hair. “Do you think he doesn’t? That he’d planned to leave me here with Luka, all unknowing, until I told him about the attack on the road? Do you think he is just taking us away now, without a destination in his mind? But that would be…”

“Yes?” the companion prompted.

“That would be something he might do,” Alina admitted, thinking of the man she had only just barely begun to know, if at all. “I don’t think he planned to go to London and confront his Prince Regent, but he did it once he’d figured out that he was to play the role of dupe, as he termed it, in all of this. He probably was very angry, and said terrible things to the Prince Regent. Mostly, I think he was showing off. He’s a very strange man, Tatiana. And now he’s a fugitive, an outlaw.”

“The major trusts him.”

“Luka is in bed with a wounded shoulder and is all but useless. He has little choice but to trust someone else. He told me as much when I went to see him earlier and demanded that he tell me the entire truth.” She took Tatiana’s hands in hers. “How did this happen? How did I go from silly girl to silly woman to a woman marked for death, all without noticing?”

“You were busy ordering bride clothes, my lady.”

“Please, don’t remind me of just how shallow and silly I have been. Do you know what I should do? I should return home and fight for the land. I may not have much Romany blood, but it would be my honor to give the land to them and confound the Inhaber. And the king as well, I suppose. Is it very much land, do you know?”

Tatiana shrugged. “I don’t know, but it is not important, my lady. It isn’t the land the Romany want, it’s the having it. If the Inhaber dies and you were to live, then yours is the only claim. The king would be forced to honor it. And the Inhaber deserves to die, for so many reasons. That is why the major has allowed any of this. His lordship sticking his nose where it has no place to be is making things difficult for all of us.”

“I won’t tell him that,” Alina said, sighing. “It would only make him happy, I’m sure. And still I’m left asking—where will he take me?”

“That I do not know, my lady. I do know how he will take you. We who care for you did not arrive on these shores unprepared to protect you. We simply could not know that your bothersome betrothed would not take you straight to London. But that’s all been fixed, and we are ready now.”

Alina looked at her companion blankly, only smiling after the woman had begun her explanation.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHARLOTTE DAUGHTRY HAD been so kind and so very welcoming these past days. She hadn’t so much as blinked when Alina arrived covered in mud, as if visitors came to her door every day in that same sorry condition.

What Alina saw in the duchess was not simply a beautiful woman, but a very practical one, the sort who managed everyone around her without making anyone feel managed. Her husband, the duke, obviously adored her, as did all of the servants.

And if there was one thing Alina knew, it was that you could not fool the servants. They were the ones who saw you most, and at your most vulnerable. Anyone could manage to be polite and friendly in company. It was behind closed doors that the real person was revealed.

She’d also observed Charlotte with her son, one of the sweetest infants she’d ever seen, and one of the most fortunate. Little Rafael Fitzpatrick Daughtry had his mother’s soft eyes and his father’s determined chin, and he seemed to smile all the time. Alina had caught herself wondering how the product of a mix of her and Justin Wilde would look, and then quickly had banished the thought because first, well, first they’d have to…do that.

Except that this afternoon, when Justin had sat so close to her, and he’d looked at her in that strange way, and even as he told her things she found difficult to believe, she’d found herself half hoping he’d kiss her. And those parts of her that had slumbered for so long had stirred yet again. It was all very…interesting. She’d found herself watching his hands tonight at dinner, how they held a glass, how he used them when speaking. She watched his mouth, the slight upturn of his lips when he was genuinely amused. Her breath had caught in her throat when a lock of that dark hair had dared to fall forward onto his smooth forehead, and he’d casually brushed it back with his spread fingers…wondering what he would do if she copied his gesture when they were alone.

“You seem distracted, my dear,” Charlotte whispered as she pretended to be admiring the embroidery on the sleeve of Alina’s gown as they returned to the drawing room after a relaxed and delicious dinner. “Are you nervous now that Justin has returned? He’s harmless, or so says Rafe’s sister Lydia, who knows him much better than I. Although, from everything I’ve heard about him, I’m frankly surprised that he’d agree to an arranged marriage, no matter if the king himself had asked it of him. That doesn’t seem anything like him, especially after his first marriage, which Rafe tells me was disastrous.”

Alina shot a quick, involuntary look toward the two men standing in front of the mantelpiece, sharing drinks and conversation. “His first marriage, you said?”

Charlotte took her new friend’s hand and led her to a lovely flowered couch, urging her to sit down. Which Alina did, although she was faintly surprised that her suddenly stiff legs remained capable of bending at the knees. “Oh, Alina, I’m so sorry. I should have realized you might not know. But it was all very long ago, almost ten years, I believe. You stay here, and I’ll go fetch you a glass of wine. You’re terribly pale.”

Alina nodded, her gaze still on Justin. She told herself she didn’t care, that a marriage that was no longer a marriage was no concern of hers. Just as she’d told herself that it didn’t matter that Baron Wilde was such an arresting figure, so very handsome. And clean, and young, and as prospective husbands went, probably a most wonderful catch. If she’d been looking for a husband, which she hadn’t been. But since being presented with him, she’d fairly well accepted him as such…right up until the moment he’d announced that there would be no marriage.

Could he really decide that on his own, when the announcement of their upcoming nuptials had already been made in Francis’s court? The banns had been read in church for the third time only two days before she had begun her journey to England.

She probably ought to tell him that. Tell him that, at least in her country, they were already as good as married. Or would that make her seem a pathetic creature?

What he’d done was to put her in some sort of Limbo; that’s what he’d done when he’d announced they would not marry. And told the Prince Regent as much, if he could be believed. She’d left her home an affianced bride, and landed in England only to be rejected by her affianced husband.

It was all so humiliating.

For some reason, one she didn’t care to delve into too deeply, or else she would look more foolish than she already believed herself to be, this unforeseen development upset her more than the thought that Inhaber Novak wanted her dead.

And now to learn that Justin had been married before? What would be next? Did he have an entire gaggle of children hidden away somewhere she wasn’t going to know about, either?

“Here you are, dear,” Charlotte said, handing her a glass as she sat down beside her. “I was cudgeling my brain as I was pouring your glass, and I’m afraid I cannot remember much of what Rafe told me about Justin’s marriage. She had an accident of some sort while Justin was on the Continent. Really, it’s nothing to concern you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. He’ll tell you everything in his own time. After all, you’ve barely met, haven’t you? Truth to tell, I find it disturbingly medieval that you two should be all but ordered to wed each other in the first place. And if Rafe heard me say any of what I’ve just said, he’d remind me that none of this is any of my business.”

Alina smiled. “No, I think you’re correct. It’s very strange. I had thought only royal princes and princesses were married off to strangers for the sake of some government alliance. But I was given a choice—my aunt was very specific about that. It’s my decision to be here.” She looked over at Justin again, still deep in conversation with the duke. “I don’t know why his lordship agreed.”

“And I don’t know why I’m continuing to tell tales, but I am. According to Tanner, Lydia’s husband, the Prince Regent has some sort of control over Justin. What sort of control I don’t know, but it would seem that in order to remain in England, Justin has to do whatever the Prince Regent requires of him. He’s only recently returned, you know—or perhaps you don’t—after living abroad even since before his wife died, even throughout the war with France. I really should pay more attention, but as I always profess to abhor gossip, I try not to listen too well when people tell me things, or at least to forget them as soon as I’m told. Ah, and here’s the tea tray. Thank you, Grayson.”

As Charlotte went about the business of pouring tea, Alina sat very still, digesting all of this. So that was why he’d gone to London. To inform His Royal Majesty that he would no longer obey him. And that was why he’d called himself a fugitive. It had nothing to do with her, or whether or not it would be so horrible for him to marry her. Here she’d been, thinking herself repulsive to him in some way. Too young, too silly, too foreign—something. And all the time, as she’d variously worried, fretted and considered wreaking mayhem on the man, it hadn’t been her at all. It had been Justin’s private problems with the Prince Regent that had sent him haring off to London.

There were a few things she knew—very few. There were a few more things she’d guessed, rightly or wrongly. It had never occurred to her that she was no more than a convenient reason for Justin to go to the man and, in the words she’d overheard one day from one of the grooms, tell His Royal Highness to bugger off.

He was either very brave, or the most foolish, dangerous man in creation.

Alina put her hand to her mouth and pretended a huge yawn. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. Would you mind terribly if I excused myself and went upstairs? I’ve already been warned that we’re making a very early start in the morning.”

Charlotte rose at once, announcing that Alina would be leaving them, and the two men immediately joined them to say their good-nights.

“It has been our pleasure to have you here, my dear. I won’t see you in the morning before you go, I’m afraid,” the duke told her, and then surprised her by kissing her on the cheek. “I know this man. He’ll let no harm come to you,” he whispered softly before stepping back.

Alina smiled her thanks and had already turned toward the foyer when Justin took her hand and threaded her arm through his. “You look rather pale. Wrestling with kittens has fatigued you?”

“Wrestling with many things has fatigued me,” she countered as they stopped in the foyer and she reluctantly withdrew her arm. “But I am confident that I shall find answers to all that troubles me very soon. In fact, I’m convinced of it. Until we meet again, my lord, good night.”

She ascended the first few steps sedately, but once she was sure Justin had returned to the drawing room, she hiked up her skirts and raced to her bedchamber, for once praying that Danica was waiting to help her into her nightclothes. After all, the sooner she was thought to be safely tucked up in bed, the sooner she would see Danica’s disapproving back following her pimple-dotted front toward the door.

“Is that the best I’ve got, out of all these trunks of clothes?” she asked almost plaintively a few minutes later as she stood in the middle of the room, stripped to her chemise, and looked at the same night rail she’d worn that first evening in Portsmouth.

“I can only lay out what is there to lay out, my lady. It is you who chose to think only of how you could impress everyone with your fine gowns.”

Alina made a face as the chemise fell away and she immediately became half-buried in yards of aged white muslin dropped over her head by the dresser. She had to fight her way free, shoving her arms into the sleeves that covered her past her wrists, and then stepped back as Danica went to close the dozen or more front buttons that would cover her almost halfway up her neck.

“Thank you, that will be all,” she said, covering yet another feigned yawn. “I’ll wear the rose tomorrow to travel, Danica.”

“You’ll wear the blue. Everything else is packed.”

“But…but the blue was ruined in the mud.”

“A few stains, here and there, but good enough to ride in a coach, bad enough to not suffer too much if you see a puddle you might wish to jump up and down in…my lady.”

“Danica, you’re impertinent, do you know that?” Alina wanted the woman gone, not just from her bedchamber at this moment, but from her life, her employ. “And clearly you are unhappy here. Perhaps you should return home. I am certain his lordship can arrange suitable transport.”

The dresser didn’t burst into tears, nor did she throw herself at Alina’s feet and beg for her position, but her stern face did take on a faintly wounded expression. “This is how I’m thanked for leaving my homeland in order to serve the daughter of the good and kind General Leopold Valentin, so beloved of his countrymen, so mourned upon his death at the hands of the outlaw Bonaparte, so—”

“Oh, Danica,” Alina exclaimed in a horror of remorse, clasping the unbending woman to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Danica took hold of Alina’s shoulders and sternly put her at arm’s length, her hatchet face once more implacable. “Gut. Good. Then that is settled, you have apologized as you should, and we will speak no more of this. You will wear the blue.”

“Uh…yes?” Alina said, caught between surprise and an insane urge to laugh. “I will wear the blue. Most definitely. I can’t imagine why I thought otherwise. I’ll braid my hair myself—you just go to bed now. Good night, Danica.”

Once the woman was gone, Alina stripped off the offending night rail and climbed back into her chemise, which at least didn’t button to her chin, and then wrapped herself in the ermine-tipped cloak already laid out for the morning chill.

Before she could reflect too much over what she was about to do, she then opened the door to the hallway, stuck her head out far enough to be certain she would not be observed, and then raced on bare tiptoes down the length of the corridor before entering Justin’s chamber, closing the door and flattening her back against it to catch her breath. She’d made it!

And then she very nearly leapt out of her skin when Justin spoke to her.

“You were somehow detained? I’d expected you a full ten minutes ago, and was just now feeling I’d misjudged you. How gratifying to see that I haven’t. You’re as foolish as you are brave.”

The silky voice had come from somewhere in the dimness lightened by only a few candles. “And looking quite fetching, I might add,” Justin said as he stepped forward, making himself visible in the candlelight.

“You knew I’d come? You’ve been waiting for me?” Alina shook her head at her own foolishness. “Yes, of course you did, of course you are. Now I feel foolish and…predictable.”

Justin took her arm and led her toward the fire and the pair of facing leather wingback chairs that were much like the pair in her own chamber. As she’d already decided these chairs were less than comfortable, she sank to her haunches on the hearth rug, the cloak forming a velvet puddle around her.

Justin looked toward one of the chairs, and then shrugged his shoulders as if to say why should he be any different than his guest, at which point he also lowered himself to the floor, still holding a snifter of brandy delicately in one hand. He looked…magnificent. Without his evening jacket, with his shirtsleeves hanging loosely, the neat ruffling of his cuffs tickling at the backs of his hands, with his neckcloth gone and his waistcoat undone, he managed to look both wonderfully groomed and approachable. Human.

She should remember that he was probably neither.

“How did you know I’d come to see you?”

“I couldn’t be certain,” he told her, swirling the brandy in the snifter. She felt her eyes drawn to it, losing herself in its honeyed highlights. “If you hadn’t, I would have found my way to your chamber. Charlotte, you see, apologized to me after you’d gone. She believes she may have been indiscreet.”

With some effort, Alina tore her gaze from the brandy snifter. “About your dead wife, yes. But you would have told me in your own good time.”

“If I didn’t disappear again, as I did from Portsmouth.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, I suppose so. But mostly, if you were to go through with the marriage, that is, which you aren’t, so I really have no reason to be curious about your…personal past.”

“Ah, but you’d give that fine cloak to know, wouldn’t you?”

“I most certainly would not,” she protested, finally unable to resist looking him in the eye. He had such arresting green eyes, different from any color she’d ever seen. “But I do have a perfectly lovely reticule with seed pearls stitched all over it in the design of a peacock, if you think you’d fancy it.”

“Now I’ve upset you.”

“You can’t upset me, my lord, if I don’t wish to be upset. I am only curious about the man I am not going to marry. Anyone would be, you know. You’re exceedingly strange. May I have a sip? I’ve never tasted brandy, but I like the smell of it. You warm it with your hands, don’t you?”

He offered her the snifter, and she took it with both hands, holding it beneath her nose and breathing in its heady fragrance before touching the glass to her lips. The moment the warmed liquid hit her tongue she had to force herself not to gasp, and determinedly took a long swallow before handing the thing back to him.

“Here,” he said, holding out a handkerchief he’d produced from somewhere on his person. “Your eyes are tearing. You are supposed to sip, kitten, and then hold the brandy in your mouth for a few moments, allow it to caress your tongue, and only then swallow. When something is good it is to be savored. Not gulped.”

And then, without taking his eyes off her, he raised the snifter to his own mouth and demonstrated what he meant.

Those slumbering parts of her had clearly only been napping since she’d first seen him again this afternoon. Now they yawned, stretched and slowly began to wake up once more. “Why do you make me feel this way when you look at me?” she asked him before she could stop herself. “I don’t like it.”

“No, kitten, you don’t understand it. There’s a difference.”

His gaze was steady, unwavering and mind-shatteringly unnerving. She tried to get up to leave this man and his unsettling way of saying what she didn’t think he knew. But when he held out his hand she subsided, sighing.

He took her hand in his, stroked his thumb against her palm.

The entire world seemed to have suddenly narrowed to include only the two of them, wrapped inside the soft glow from the fire. He was so intensely male. She, for the first time in her life, believed she might know what it meant to be a female.

“You want to kiss me again, don’t you?” she asked him quietly.

“No, kitten. That is precisely the last thing I want to do.”

She looked down at her hand, lost in his, believing his touch put the lie to his words. “Forgive me. There was a time, my lord, when I thought I was a fairly intelligent person. Do you think it’s that the air here in England is different? Is that why I’ve been so very stupid ever since I left the ship? Or…or perhaps it was the brandy, because, you know, I’ve never really drunk strong…”

His finger beneath her chin signaled that he wanted her to raise her head, look at him. Her heart beating madly, her breath somehow gone, she couldn’t seem to refuse.

“Have you ever wondered about the difference between what we know we shouldn’t do and what, against all good sense, we find we have to do?” he asked her, his face close to hers, the smell of brandy on his breath somehow intoxicating her more than the drink itself. “And, much as I shouldn’t want to do this, kitten, I find that I have to…. I really, really must….”

Alina’s eyelids fluttered closed as, only his light touch beneath her chin holding her in place as if she had lost the power to move, he put his lips to hers. And this time he didn’t move away again.

She didn’t know what to do, how to react. She tried pursing her lips, but that didn’t seem right. She tried simply tightening them against her teeth, and half felt, half heard his soft chuckle, so she knew that had to be wrong, as well. She probably looked like Danica in one of her disapproving attitudes.

So when Justin put the pads of his thumbs to either side of her mouth and began to lightly massage her skin, she simply relaxed, deciding that he knew much better than she what a kiss between a man and a woman was all about.

“Better,” he breathed, moving back slightly, just enough to look into her eyes. He tipped his head slightly to one side, his eyes alight with mischief. “Now let’s try that again, shall we?”

“I…but I…”

He didn’t allow her to finish, which was probably a good thing, as she had no idea what she might have said, but just captured her mouth even as she was speaking.

He kissed her, and then he kissed her again, and yet again. Each time she felt she learned more, until she actually became frustrated each time he withdrew, and found herself lifting her face to him, seeking out his next kiss.

He nipped lightly at her upper lip, which rather tickled. He actually drew her full bottom lip between his teeth, and ran his tongue along the soft underside of it, sending a trumpet blast to her sleeping parts and rousing them to full attention.

And when she sighed, and he insinuated his tongue into her mouth, probing, touching, stroking…why, she thought she might simply go mad.

She raised her arms to slide them around his neck, her cloak falling away without notice or care. It was only important that she hang on, keep him close, urge him closer. Because there was more than awareness in her now. There was hunger, a hunger she didn’t understand but felt certain only he knew how to feed.

His hands went to her head, and she could feel the slight tug as he pulled the pins from her hair, slid his fingers into the tumbling curls even as he sighed against her mouth. He liked that? That was good, because she liked it, as well. Very much.

Now his hands were on her shoulders, and he was kissing her ear, his breath hot against her, sending shivers down her arms. He was pressing kisses along the length of her neck, and she was falling…no, he had her. He had her safe, and if they were falling, they were falling together, until she was lying on the soft velvet cloak.

And he was still kissing her, his fingers lightly tugging at the squared neckline of her chemise, his lips following the descent of the lace-edged silk, setting her skin on fire, making it impossible for her to breathe, but only possible to gasp in surprise as her breasts were suddenly free of the silk and he was touching her…touching her everywhere, kissing her everywhere, whispering that she was beautiful, she was everything, she was heaven and hell and the world in between….

His mouth closed over one taut, straining nipple, and Alina pressed her head back, raising her chin, raising her upper body toward him, offering she knew not what, as long as he didn’t stop, never stopped.

She wanted to be touched, needed to be touched. Would simply die if this feeling went away.

His fingers closed over her other nipple, squeezing, rubbing, and she cried out at the intensified pleasure that shot through her, caused an ache to begin between her thighs. She dragged her nails down his back, feeling the ripple of his muscles beneath the fine lawn of his shirt, the faint shuddering of those same muscles as she cupped her breast, lifting it for him as he stroked the very tip with his wonderfully rough fingers.

She was his instrument, and he was composing a symphony upon her body. She soared, she swept, she sighed. She urged, she purred, she demanded. Because there was more, there had to be more. No symphony, no matter how wonderful, doesn’t build, and build, the way she felt her senses building, without a heart-pounding crescendo somewhere, a thrilling climax, a sound so perfect and wonderful that it stops your heart, your breathing, only to take you up, up, into the stars before at last returning you to earth.

She was his instrument, and as Justin strummed her, his tongue flicking at her in time with his stroking thumb, his thigh somehow insinuated between her thighs, pressing hard against her, urging her to return that pressure.

Without thought, without shame, she responded, rubbing herself against him. With growing awe, she knew there was a crescendo coming to her, an ending to the symphony, yes, but one that she had to know.

And yet, when it happened, when the glorious became nearly intolerable, when her body at last found its own music, as her eyes flew open wide and she could only hold on to Justin as every cymbal crashed, and her heart became a tympani, she was still aware somewhere inside of her that it wasn’t enough.

Not for her. Not for him.

Justin covered her breasts and rolled onto his back, taking her with him, pressing her cheek against his chest as his arm came around her and held her close.

They lay there for some time, feeling the heat from the fire, barely stirring when a log burned through and crashed in the grate. Alina’s breathing at last returned to something less frantic, and her heartbeat was no longer audible in her ears.

And still she said nothing. Justin said nothing.

The mantel clock chimed out the hour, and at last Justin moved. He kissed the top of her head, and then helped her sit up, lifted her cloak up and around her shoulders.

She looked at him in open curiosity. “Why…why was that all?”

He retrieved his snifter of brandy and downed the remainder of its contents.

“You’re supposed to sip, remember?”

He put down the snifter and, at last, he smiled at her. “I should be shot,” he said affably enough. “That…uh…that wasn’t intended. It was to start and end with a kiss.”

Alina drew the edges of the cloak close together over her breasts. “I know. Tatiana explained it all to me. Gentlemen can be overcome by lust at the drop of a hat. They can’t help themselves. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Tatiana? She said that? And who, pray, is this font of wisdom?”

“My companion. She was once my maid, but now she’s my companion, and Danica is my dresser.”

“I see. And which is which, may I ask, so that I can thank your companion for having explained it all to you?”

“Now you’re being facetious. I know I really don’t know anything. In point of fact, until just now I thought the whole thing…” She stopped herself.

Justin helped her to her feet. “Yes? You thought the whole thing what?”

Alina bent her head and muttered the word beneath her breath.

He leaned closer, pushing her tangled curls away from her face. “Your pardon, kitten. I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Repulsive,” she said quietly, and then looked up into his face. “I thought the entire thing repulsive. There, I’ve said it.”

“Ah, I see. Now I wonder if Tatiana’s explanations left much to be desired, or if I should thank her again, as she made it much easier for the reality to exceed your woefully low expectations. Although I will tell you, I believe that I am not completely without talent, and that you are delightfully teachable. That is who I was supposed to be tonight, wasn’t it, my curious little kitten? Your teacher? Your small experiment in what it means to be a woman? It may be a little late for warnings, but you should know that it is dangerous to play with me.”

She wasn’t certain which most upset her, his words or his tone. She only knew that the next thing she was aware of was the stinging of her palm after it had connected with his smiling face.

“Good,” Justin said as she turned and began to run toward the door, her face aflame with shame. “We’ll deal much better these next days if you hate me. Or at least I will.”

She whirled about to face him, her cloak swirling around her feet—which would have been marvelously dramatic, she supposed, except that she nearly tripped over the thing as she walked back to him.

“I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this very much, but I don’t understand you most of all. Why are you here? You’ve already told your Prince Regent that you won’t do as he wants you to do. You won’t marry me. So what does it matter to you if Inhaber Novak wants to kill me? I am none of your concern. You’ve made your own bed with your Prince Regent, for whatever reasons, so why don’t you just go lie in it, and leave me to myself? Luka is more than capable of protecting me. He was a soldier, and loyal to my father. You were nothing but a, a— Oh, and that’s another thing! I have no idea what you were, what you are. So thank you very much, my lord, but we won’t be requiring your services anymore. Luka will shoot the Inhaber dead and then take me to my mother’s family. You, my lord, can…can simply go to straight to hell.”

“Wait,” Justin said quietly, just as she was about to make a second attempt at a dramatic exit, this time first carefully raising her cloak hem above her bare ankles. “There is no good time to tell you this. There is no family here in England for you to go to, Alina.”

“There’s not?” Alina felt the first stirrings of what could turn out to be real panic. “But—”

“Your mother had a single surviving relative, a sibling, a brother, Robert, Earl of Birling. He died without issue a little over eight years ago, in a duel. Everything was entailed, and there were no more living male relatives to inherit. The titles, the lands, everything reverted to the Crown at that time. Your mother didn’t know, Alina, because when she married your father the Farber family cut her off and had nothing to do with her ever since. She never told you that?”

Alina stumbled to a chair and sat down with a thump. “No…no, she never said anything.” She looked up at Justin, her eyes awash in tears. “Disowned her? Why?”

“Your mother was several years older than her brother, who was a contemporary of mine. I don’t know the entire story, but there was something about the disgrace of having the only daughter married to…to a bloody foreigner. I’m sorry, that’s all I know.”

Alina rubbed her hands together in her lap. “So I am totally alone. Aren’t I, Justin? Except for Aunt Mimi, of course, but I could not go back to her. I really couldn’t. And…and you won’t marry me.”

He took hold of the desk chair and put it down in front of her, backward, and straddled it. His face was so serious, she felt frightened.

“No, kitten, I can’t marry you. I told you, I’m a fugitive. Once you’re safe, I’ll be leaving England, never to return, or at least not until the Prince Regent is dead and unable to refute his signed pardon I have safely tucked away. Even a week ago I would have given everything I own to remain here, but now leaving is not only necessary, but I’m actually glad to be going. There’s nothing here I want anymore save for a few friends. My estate is in the hands of my longtime manager, and will wait for me. It’s not entailed in any event. What fortune that has remained here is my own and is already on its way to join with the bulk of my funds in Brussels.”

“It all sounds so neat and tidy, the way you say it. And bloodless. You really don’t care, do you? It’s not a sham. You’d be safe in Brussels?” She didn’t know why she asked that last question, why it was suddenly so important to her that he be safe.

He shook his head. “Once I make it to Brussels, I’ll set sail for America. I’ve had my fill of kings, a surfeit of kings. The Americans got rid of us, and I think they had the right of it.”

“America,” she repeated. “That’s a world away.”

“A lifetime away. But you’ll be fine here, Alina. While I was in London I made arrangements with my banker. My town house in London is now yours, as is a small estate located very near my friend Tanner Blake and his wife. I’ve already alerted them that you will soon be taking up residence, and I know Tanner will agree to manage your finances for you until such time as they present you next season in London and you capture the eye of half the gentlemen there. You are, no matter what, the granddaughter of an English earl, the daughter of a war hero. Prinny won’t say a word against you. He can’t, not after half of London is already sending around the word that I paid him fifty thousand pounds for the pardon he gave me.”

Alina’s head was spinning. She would be safe. She would be her own person, here in England. He was giving her the world. This man who barely knew her, this man who owed her nothing, was giving her everything. “I, um, I…thank you. You didn’t have to…that is, there was no reason for you to…thank you.”

He reached out and took her hand. “There was every reason, Alina. That’s what you don’t know but the Prince Regent did. Your uncle’s duel was with me, and I fled England to escape the hangman for putting a period to Robbie Farber’s existence. The Prince Regent summoned me back, pardoned me, so he could use me to rid Francis of this Inhaber Novak. And also to have himself a giggle or two at my expense, I’m sure, knowing I could not turn away from this chance to make up for my crime. I doubt he’s considered the possibility of your death any more real than he would a play at Covent Garden. The man already half believes he fought with Wellington at Waterloo. Insanity seems to be his father’s gift to him.”

Alina pulled her hand free. “You? You shot my uncle? My mother’s brother? You? Why?”

“That’s not important. I have no excuses to offer you. Only my apology, and my thanks for allowing me this chance to make some small amends in the only way I can. The Prince Regent knew that, as well. He knows I can rid you and Francis of the Inhaber because that’s what I do, what I’ve done these past long eight years. I’m not a nice man, Alina. In fact, I am the utter antithesis of the sort of man you deserve.”

She would not listen to such foolishness. He was being forced to assassinate the Inhaber—for her! He was doing it all for her, as he was giving her his possessions, cutting himself off from his own country, making himself into a fugitive. As some sort of penance for something that had happened so many years ago? Dear God! He was many thin things, perhaps, as he insisted, but he was not an evil man. How could she convince him? She felt so powerless, and so very sad.

“Alina, don’t let your mind wander. Listen to me. Once the Inhaber is dead, both Francis and my Prince Regent will know they’ve gone as far as they can go. That will…be made clear to them. They’ll both accept their losses and move on to the next intrigue. With monarchies, there is never a lack of intrigue. The Regent will find it easier to forget I ever existed. Your Romany will get their pitiful piece of land, and Francis will find a way to take it away again, one that doesn’t involve you. Please, kitten, take what I’m offering you. It’s all I have to give.”

“My life. You’re offering me my life.”

“On the contrary, Alina. I prefer to see the thing as you saving mine. As for the rest—for tonight— that was my mistake, not yours. It’s best if we simply forget it ever happened.”

She nodded, unable to say anything else, knowing he would not listen to her anyway, and got to her feet. She walked toward the door slowly, stopping once to look back at him, and then left, softly closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JUSTIN MELTED INTO THAT peculiar darkness that comes just before dawn. The ground was unfamiliar, but the rules remained the same. See. Do not be seen. Act, don’t think. Don’t look in the face, not if you can help it. No one’s nightmares were ever haunted by the remembrance of a turned back, a soft sigh as a soul surrendered to the afterworld.

Never hesitate.

Don’t think of the child. Never, never think of the child….

He’d left the first body behind the buttery. The man had been easy, half asleep at his post. Another reason to strike just before dawn: guards were at their most vulnerable as the night ended, as they congratulated themselves for a job well done and dreamed of a hot breakfast.

The second had proved more difficult, one of those rare soldiers that actually possessed some skills other than marching in a straight line and never thinking independently. But, in the end, he’d been no match for Brutus, and his neck had snapped like a dry twig.

Justin tapped Brutus on the shoulder and pointed toward the stand of trees set back about fifty yards from the gravel drive that led to Ashurst Hall. He then pointed to himself, and then to a similar grouping of trees on the other side of the drive. Brutus could move with the grace of a much lighter man, but he could not hope to conceal his bulk out in the open, crossing the drive.

No words were necessary. The man nodded once, showing his understanding, and the two parted ways.

Bent nearly in half, his knife concealed up his sleeve so that the blade didn’t glint in the fading moonlight, Justin moved soundlessly over the gravel and slipped into the shadows.

There had been four men. Now there were two. Rafe’s estate manager had seen the strangers indiscreetly and fatally advertising their presence in a local tavern, and they’d been under observation ever since. For two days and nights, as they’d watched Ashurst Hall, Ashurst Hall had been watching them. Now it was time they were gone.

Justin circled through the trees, his breathing slow and measured, his eyes on the ground, avoiding any errant twigs or loose stones, yet always flicking up, watching the shadows, separating tree from bush, at last locating the shadow that didn’t fit either category.

Waiting, his ears alert for Brutus’s signal that he’d gotten his man, Justin slid the blade forward, his hand closing familiarly on the hilt of the knife he’d had specially made for him at considerable expense in Spain after nearly losing his life to an inferior weapon. A workman is only as good as his tools, he’d known, and when your work is kill or be killed, there is no room for mediocre tools.

The short, shrill whistle broke the early-morning silence, and Justin was running and on his man before the fellow could fully rise from his crouch at the unexpected sound.

One arm encircling the man’s chest, the tip of the Spanish knife lightly pressing against his throat, seemed to steal all thought of resistance, and the fellow began pleading in German, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.”

“But it would be so easy, and relatively painless,” Justin replied in flawless German. “Are you quite sure? Why should I spare you?”

“I do only what I’m told. A man has to live.”

“Not necessarily. But you’re a very fortunate man. Your companions are dead, all four of them.”

“Four? But there were only three others. Please, sir, don’t kill me.”

At times, it was almost too simple to present a challenge. Having had Rafe’s reconnaissance so easily proved correct, Justin slipped one leg between the man’s thighs and, with a flick of his bent leg, had the man sprawled on the ground on his back. His captive lay there, showing no inclination to run, panting beneath his ridiculous mustachios and sideburns that had helped identify him and his compatriots in the village. After all, who outruns a knife in the back?

The knife was replaced by the pistol Justin carried in his waistband.

“We will now have a friendly chat about Inhaber Novak, my fuzzy friend.”

“The Inhaber? But how did you—”

“Shh,” Justin warned affably. “You have but one job now, my friend, other than to remain alive, and that is to answer my questions. Now, are you listening carefully? You really don’t want to get any of the answers wrong, do you?”

The man shook his head furiously, his eyes never leaving the barrel of the pistol.

“Good. You know the Inhaber’s location, hmm?”

“Lon-London, sir. There is a hotel…the Pulteney. The Russian Tsar headquartered there during the Allies Peace Celebrations, so the Inhaber wished to set himself up there, as well. It…it is very fine.”

“How personally gratifying for the Inhaber and his consequence, I’m sure. The Pulteney is quite a lovely establishment. Now, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, you will tell me where he is.” To be certain the man understood the seriousness of his question, Justin cocked the pistol.

The man swallowed, shook his head. “But I told you.”

Justin sensed Brutus’s presence behind him. “Brutus, do I look stupid? More importantly, do I look harmless? And even more, do I seem to you a man who suffers fools gladly?”

Brutus growled low in his throat.

“He…he’s on his way here,” the hireling said quickly, his terrified gaze on Brutus. “We were to watch here, and wait for him, and the others. And…and have two of us follow you if you tried to take the girl away.”

“Thank you. Brutus’s imposing presence to one side, I had begun to worry I’d somehow lost my touch.” Justin eased his pressure on the hammer of the pistol and returned the weapon to his waistband before pulling a folded letter from his pocket. “Not to insult your powers of retention, my good man, but I have composed a missive to your employer, one which you will deliver personally. You are hereby commissioned to present my compliments to the Inhaber, as well as the information that the lady has departed Ashurst Hall as of this morning. Observe.”

As if to give credence to his words, the sounds of harness and coach horses could be heard from the drive. Brutus hauled up the man by his collar and turned him to watch as two coaches appeared out of the early morning mist and then disappeared into the distance. Brutus’s whistle had not only alerted Justin. Wigglesworth had been stationed just outside the front door to Ashurst Hall and had flown into action the moment he’d heard the signal, quickly herding Alina and her small entourage into the pair of traveling coaches.

Once he had seen what he was meant to see, the Inhaber’s minion was roughly redeposited on the ground. He drew himself up into a fetal position, covering his head with his arms. “Please don’t let him hurt me.”

Justin rubbed at his forehead and sighed. “More and more, the world is populated by idiots, Brutus,” he complained wearily. “He won’t hurt you,” he then assured the whimpering man. “This letter saves your life. Here, sit up, take it. There’s a good fellow. Now, why don’t you just run off and play postman. Go on, run.”

The man didn’t need a second invitation. He snatched the letter and took to his heels, heading, Justin knew, for the place where he and his compatriots had tied up their four horses, knowing that what he would find there would be those same four horses, only now, thanks to some of Rafe’s men, three of them were roped together into a line and had bodies strapped across their saddles.

When it came to making statements, Justin knew nothing made more of an impression than a show of power. In this case, his.

It also made it easier for him and Brutus to mount their own horses and follow.

“Lovely morning for a ride,” he remarked to his friend as the now-rising sun made it less than child’s play to follow the tracks of the four horses. “And much too lovely a morning to die, Brutus, so we will approach with caution. The Inhaber may not believe I am a gentleman of my word and am in fact breaking it by following that fool up ahead of us.”

Brutus made a noise that could be interpreted as amusement.

With luck, and he knew he’d need it, the Inhaber also would still be abed, wherever he was, and his guard would not be too numerous, and as hapless as the four he’d put to guarding Ashurst Hall. Money could buy many things, even men. It could not insure competence or inspire loyalty.

Justin wanted this over, the Inhaber dead, Alina safe. He and Rafe had agreed that this would be the easiest, the quickest way to guarantee both. That success this morning would also hasten Justin’s departure from England, never to see Alina again, could not be a factor. Giving her his possessions to make up for having killed her uncle, no matter how justified, was not his penance, as he’d thought it would be. Never seeing her again, never holding her, never smiling at her frank speech and her attempts at being worldly and sophisticated? Never really knowing her?

That was to be his true penance, and it would last a lifetime.

Luka had his orders. Employing a circuitous route, he was to remove Alina to the home of Rafe’s sister Nicole and her husband, Lucas Paine, Marquess of Basingstoke, and once she was safe, from there to Malvern, and the home of Rafe’s other sister, Lydia, and her husband, Tanner, Justin’s closest friend. Once the Inhaber was dead, Justin would get word to his friends before himself heading to Dover, the port of choice, it seemed, for those finding it necessary to escape England. Byron had made his a dramatic exit, Brummell had slipped the web of creditors to make for Calais, and soon Justin Wilde would escape the hangman via the same route, his destination Ostend, then Brussels and, finally, a ship bound for America.

A world away, as Alina had said last night—had there been a hint of sadness in her voice?

Brutus put out his arm and grunted, bringing Justin back to his surroundings. Damn. He’d nearly ridden straight down the hill leading into the small village, his mind elsewhere. His friend looked at him quizzically, or at least Justin decided the look was quizzical; with Brutus, it was difficult to tell.

“My apologies,” he said as he saw the four horses tied up in front of a ramshackle inn, the only building of more than two stories the backwater village could boast of, and only then because there was precious little of note elsewhere on the single street that bisected the rutted dirt road that clearly was meant to lead somewhere else.

He doubted the place even had a name. Which made it perfect, in so many ways, both for the Inhaber and for Justin.

They turned their mounts into the trees bordering the road. Battling low branches, they walked the horses a good twenty yards before dismounting and leading them farther into the trees, where they tied their reins to branches. “We don’t know how many there are. Are you ready?”

In answer, Brutus pushed back his coat, revealing an amazing total of five heavy, workmanlike pistols stuck into his stout waistband. He then pulled knives from both his boot tops, and two more from elsewhere on his person.

“Only four?” Justin asked facetiously.

Brutus reached up behind his back and extracted a fifth knife from its sheath hidden beneath his coat, this blade even uglier than the others.

“My faith has been restored, but with only a modicum of luck, you won’t need any of them. Unless the Inhaber is a complete fool, he’ll be heading out shortly, to regroup somewhere else.”

Brutus carefully replaced the knives, looking only slightly crestfallen. The man did enjoy the exercise of a good fight now and then.

Rafe had insisted that he go with Justin, as well as some of his own men from the estate, but Justin had refused. He’d worked alone for too many years, and with Brutus for the last five. He had his own way of doing things, ways the large man understood, and too many people presented opportunities for too many mistakes. Not that he didn’t trust Rafe Daughtry, but he would not chance having that man’s blood on his hands in order to solve his own problems.

Brutus slung Justin’s custom-designed rifle over his shoulder and followed him. When Justin hunkered down at the crest of the small hill that looked down on the few buildings, Brutus hunkered down behind him. When Justin pulled out a collapsible spyglass and lifted it to his eye, Brutus squinted. When Justin inhaled, he smelled the sausages Brutus had ingested for breakfast two hours earlier.

Justin stood up once more and looked about, noting the substantial cover of the trees, the fine elevation that had him looking down at the inn roof and the cleared ground around the building. He could not have asked for better; barely a test of his particular skills, actually.

“Now we wait. This terrain reminds one of Remiremont, does it not? The same sort of fine vantage point. May we have the same success here today.”

No more than ten minutes later, they watched the team that pulled the black traveling coach being led from the stables, to be maneuvered into the traces with more haste than expertise.

“He’s already on the move. Our friend the Inhaber must be an early riser,” Justin said to Brutus unnecessarily, thinking of their mounts, which had never been pressed to a gallop on their more than ten mile ride here, but which were nonetheless not precisely fresh. He held out his hand for the rifle. “We’ll make the first shot count, Brutus, as we won’t get a second chance.”

As Justin dropped to his knees and removed his hat and gloves, tossing them aside, Brutus went down on all fours in front of him, offering his back as a human platform Justin could use to steady his arms and the rifle.

Justin raised the rifle and sighted down it to a spot approximately six feet beyond the door leading to the dirt yard and the coach, his heart rate slow, his breathing slower.

He could do this. He had to do this.

How many times had he been in this position? Too many. The French major who’d ordered the execution of British soldiers after they’d surrendered. The titled English general who’d been passing secrets to the French, supposedly brought down by an enemy sniper and transported home to be buried with honors so that no shame could be associated with the family name. The Swedish diplomat who had resisted the break from Bonaparte and had fought against the institution of a secret treaty between his country and Britain and Russia against France. The pompous Austrian financier—for reasons Justin hadn’t even bothered to learn, because by then he had been past caring. Did any soldier marched onto a battlefield stop to ask the name and occupation of the enemy he had been ordered to kill?

For Justin, the only difference was that he had often dined with his unknowing target only a few hours earlier, and more than once had even bedded the man’s wife.

The hustle and bustle in the yard below him increased, until at last the coach seemed to contain its limit of trunks and other luggage, and the outriders were all mounted and ready to leave.

Justin relaxed his shoulders as the door to the inn opened one last time, taking in a long breath, ready to let it ease back out as he squeezed the trigger and put an end to Alina’s danger, and quite possibly to his own future.

He heard the cries before he saw the man he’d first seen at Carleton House. Inhaber Novak emerged from the inn carrying two poorly dressed children, girls of no more than ten. He held one clamped tight in each arm; both struggled to be free of his viselike grip. Human shields.

For a moment, Justin thought he might vomit. He dropped the rifle as the Inhaber covered the few feet between the inn and the coach, ducked his head and disappeared inside. Moments later both children exited the equipage, roughly tumbling to the ground and then quickly regaining their feet and running toward the frantic woman who had just exited the inn.

The coach sprang forward, the half-dozen outriders flanking it as it headed for the roadway and quickly disappeared, leaving behind only clouds of choking road dust, three horses and their dead riders, and the baron, the fugitive Justin Wilde, who could only look down impotently at his badly trembling hands.

“He knew,” he said at last. “That’s where he got the idea. Damn him, how did he know?”

The big man picked up the rifle and then held out one hamlike hand to assist Justin to his feet before patting him on the back and making sympathetic sounds.

“Yes, you’re right, my friend,” Justin said, determined to shake off what had just very nearly happened, what had happened before. “No sense rehashing my failure. He can’t know for certain I was even here. And he has the letter. It’s not as if we’re totally out of the game.”

Brutus, clearly trying to cheer his friend, pressed his hands together and put them to his cheek, tipping his head almost girlishly as he smiled a wide, gap-toothed smile.

Justin nodded. “Yes, and we’ll see the pretty lady again. And the scowling major, who warned me I was doomed to fail, so that he made plans of his own, thank God, and will no doubt enjoy hearing of my lack of success,” he added as Brutus made a show of twirling the ends of an enormous, nonexistent mustache. “Come along. We’re off to Basingstoke.”

ALINA WATCHED AS WIGGLESWORTH carefully picked his way toward her along the narrow, rutted track that was somewhat the worse for wear after a morning of rain, the expression on his face a mix of horror and determination.

He was dressed as always in shimmering silver satin and ridiculous amounts of dripping lace, the style of his suit one that hadn’t been seen in England or anywhere else in many a year, but one that matched his, as Tatiana termed it, hoity-toity ways.

Lifting his befeathered tricorn hat from his powdered wig, the valet swept Alina an elegant bow and then gave in to his obvious distress. “Surely, my lady, this is a jest. We cannot possibly be abandoning the comfort and consequence presented by my lord’s fine coaches in favor of—” he pointed toward the gaily painted caravans in abject horror “—those.”

“Oh, Wigglesworth, but we are. And we do it, I understand, with the full blessing of his lordship. The coaches will return to the main road as soon as we transfer the most basic of our needs to these two fine equipages that have been waiting here for us, the bulk of our baggage still visibly strapped to the coaches and ready to lead anyone who might somehow stumble over them and then follow them off on a merry chase while we safely proceed to our next destination.”

Wigglesworth looked about in panic as a few—a very few—bits of baggage were lowered to men waiting to transfer them to the caravans. “I see none of his lordship’s baggage, my lady. His ensembles? His linens? His tins of food? But…but how is he to perform his toilette? How am I to present him in his best light? How…how will he survive?”

Alina’s smile faded. “His lordship most probably won’t be here at all, Wigglesworth. The coaches go to a seaport by the name of Rye, the major tells me, and he will be reunited with his belongings when they are shipped off to their final destination in Brussels. Mine,” she added without much interest, “remain for the most part at Ashurst Hall, and the trunks you see are in fact empty.”

The valet looked to the coaches and then back to the pair of gaily painted caravans. “But…but where am I to be? Nobody told me.”

“Why, I don’t think I know, Wigglesworth. I’m sorry. I supposed you’d continue on to Rye with the coaches, and I imagine the baron did as well, although the major insists that no bad penny ever disappears forever, and he is confident the baron will show up here eventually, which will mean he has failed to…to eliminate our problem as simply as he’d hoped.”

Had she ever prayed harder for failure, even as she stormed heaven with entreaties to keep Justin safe? And did that make her the most terrible person in the world?

Wigglesworth turned his hat round and round in his hands, clearly caught on the horns of a dilemma.

If he opted for Rye and a reunion with his employer in Brussels, he could continue on in comfort, as he’d been doing for the past three or more hours, ever since leaving Ashurst Hall. Unless, of course, the Inhaber’s men accosted the coaches and became perturbed when they did not discover Lady Alina inside one of them. Why, they might even take out their anger and frustration on his fragile body, mightn’t they?

With Brutus nowhere to be found, he would be defenseless. After all, he might pretend that it was his sartorially enhanced figure and his consequence as the baron’s man that opened inn kitchens and such to him and his demands, but he knew it was Brutus standing at his back as he made those demands, smiling his gap-toothed smile as he drew up his hands into huge fists, who made the difference between success and being stuffed upside down in the midden.

On the other hand, if his lordship was not successful in his mission—heaven strike him down for thinking such a calumny!—who would take care of him if his own personal manservant had been too particular to travel in a rackety contraption that looked very much like a small red house on wheels, accompanied only by Lady Alina and a gaggle of variously toothless and garishly clad creatures who all seemed to be even now gaping at him as if he were the most amusing creature on earth? Who would shave his lordship if he were not available? Who would see to it that his linen was spotless? Who would cut the fat off his meat? Why, the man couldn’t exist without him!

When the coachies climbed back up on the boxes, Wigglesworth turned and ran toward them, waving his arms wildly and calling out, “Wait! Wait!”

“Comin’ with us, pretty man?” one of the coachies called down to him.

“I…don’t be ridiculous! Someone has to remain to protect the lady, what with all you huge, strapping men deserting her here, in the middle of God only knows where,” Wigglesworth declared even as he climbed halfway into the coach and pulled out his most important case, the one containing all his most prized possessions (including a half-dozen bars of scented soap; he was already convinced there could be no soap in either of the caravans).

He stepped back onto the roadway and pointed imperiously at a large black trunk strapped to the boot of the first coach. “And that one.”

“Nope,” the coachie said, shaking his head. “Stays with the coach.”

Wigglesworth was not by nature a brave man. One might say he was not by nature even a timid man. But he did have his priorities, and his limits. Traveling without his lordship’s own fresh linens exceeded those limits.

A rather dashing yet dainty ivory-handled pocket pistol of a type most often seen in the reticules of the more daring ladies in society appeared in Wigglesworth’s hand. “It might well not prove a fatal shot, but I won’t miss, either,” he told the coachie. “The black trunk, if you please. Now.”

One of the outriders, who had been amusing himself by dancing about behind Wigglesworth, imitating him for the delight of his fellows, had nearly reached the valet when Alina pressed the barrel of the pistol she’d earlier taken for herself from the coach into the small of his back.

“Let him alone, please,” she said quietly. “Clearly he is under considerable duress. We will take this one trunk. In point of fact, you, personally, will offload it for him and place it in one of the caravans. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yes, milady,” the outrider said meekly, and Alina quickly put the pistol behind her back and smiled at Wigglesworth as he turned to her in triumph at having rescued the precious trunk.

“So, you’re going to travel with us,” she said, happily letting go of the pistol as Tatiana casually strolled past behind her and took it from her. “Does that mean that you think his lordship will be joining us?”

“I pray he won’t, as he is certainly unused to such…simplicity,” the valet answered, sighing and looking rather longingly at the coaches as they moved off, heading once more to the main road. “But as I do him no good at all in Rye or on a ship bound to wherever it will be bound, I see my place as here. His lordship will have me fetched in any case,” he added more brightly. “He can’t survive without me, you understand.”

“We’re ready to go, my lady,” Tatiana said, joining them. “He is to come with us?”

Wigglesworth drew himself up straight. “He is.”

Tatiana nodded, eyeing him up and down as if measuring him. “When we get to the camp, I’ll see if someone can find him some clothes. Perhaps one of the children has extra.”

The valet’s eyes grew so wide they seemed in danger of popping straight out of his head. “I beg your pardon,” he said haughtily.

“Not mine you should be begging,” the companion said, winking at Alina. “It’s everyone who has to look at you who you should be apologizing to. My lady—that is, Magdaléna—there is clothing for you in the first caravan. Danica is grumbling mightily, but she is seeing to sorting it all out and will help you change. Then we must be going.”

Alina thanked Tatiana and then looked kindly at the woe-begotten face of the valet. “We have to do this, Wigglesworth. The major arranged it all even before the ship docked here in this country, and the Romany will protect us as we travel on. We will keep to the back roads the Romany know so well, and we will be safe. But not if we don’t appear to be Romany ourselves, or otherwise all this fine subterfuge will have gone for naught. You do understand, don’t you? It will be an adventure, Wigglesworth, a grand adventure.”

“Playing the page and watching as that rascal Napoleon greeted his lordship at the Grand Trianon at Versailles, all unknowing we were there to steal his plans for the proposed march on Russia, my lady. That was a grand adventure. This, begging your ladyship’s pardon, is a mockery of all that is civilized. If I am needed, I will be in my…domicile.”

And with that, Wigglesworth was off, heading for the caravan holding his case and the coveted black trunk. He was no longer tiptoeing through the mud, but rather ignoring it, strutting with his nonexistent stomach pushed out, his shoulders flung back, his arms straight as they sawed back and forth through the air, front to back.

“It’s called a vardo, not a domicile,” Alina was left to say quietly, knowing she had just been firmly put in her place.

CHAPTER NINE

AS THEY HAD BEEN HEADING in nearly diametrically opposite directions, and because Justin could only estimate where, generally, the Romany camp might be, it was not until he smelled the smoke from the cooking fires that he was able to track it to its source…and to Alina.

He knew that their progress for the past mile or more had been noted, could actually feel the eyes watching him and Brutus from the trees, and that comforted him, although he wouldn’t be truly at ease until he saw Alina.

He’d been alone for a long time, and had convinced himself that he would continue alone, without feeling the loss. And then Alina had stood at the head of the gangplank in that ridiculous cloak and his carefully crafted world had tipped on its axis. Before he’d known who she was, why they’d been brought together the way they had, he’d already known she was someone who could shake him to his core—wake him up, because he’d been asleep for too many years, even as he’d traveled the Continent doing the Crown’s bidding, even as he’d believed his one true happiness would be attained only if he could return to England, no matter what the means, or the cost.

Now the prospect of departing England, never to return, seemed a simple thing. Watching Alina leave him last night had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done, but he had been right to send her away. He didn’t know if he could survive leaving her another time.

But he’d find out….

They rode into the camp at a sedate walk, and he counted the caravans. Eight in total, and in varying stages of repair and disrepair. He’d never known this many caravans to travel together here in England. That could be problematic, most especially when he informed the major that at least two of them would have to go.

The last thing he wanted was to attract attention as “those damned thievin’ Gypsies” often did in the less enlightened areas of the country. If there was one sin Justin rarely committed, it was overestimating the intelligence of his fellow man and thereby underestimating the chances of something or someone totally unrelated to the point causing trouble for him.

As he led the way through the camp, caravans on either side of the clearing, mongrel dogs barked and ran around the horses as the men, from boy to man to aged grandfather, fingered the weapons stuck into their wide waistbands. Women raised themselves from their vigils over the campfires, pressed hands to aching backs as they pushed their ample bosoms forward and eyed him with a frank appraisal that had him smiling and tipping his hat to them all.

“Brutus,” he said, his lips barely moving, “as I lack eyes in the back of my head and am loathe to turn around as we travel this gauntlet, I do hope you’re smiling as you demonstrate how harmless you are. And perhaps a cheery wave to those kiddies over there wouldn’t come amiss. We’ll dismount at the last caravan once we’re past it and wait for someone to alert the major that we’re here. Unless Wigglesworth does it for us. What the devil is he doing here?” he ended as his valet cried out his name in a voice that could probably be heard for miles.

“My lord!” Wigglesworth yelled once more. “Thank the lofty heavens you have come to rescue me! I vow, I cannot exist like this for another moment!”

Justin turned the bay about and looked back from whence he’d come, taking in the small clearing and the caravans and the Romany who still watched him, but now with wide smiles on their faces.

“Wigglesworth?” he said in some astonishment a moment later. “What in the name of all that’s wonderful are you supposed to be? My God, man, have you no pride?”

“Not any longer, my lord, no,” the valet said, sighing deeply as he waited for Justin to dismount. “It was either this or show my head to the world, which I most firmly and reasonably refused to do.”

Justin attempted to take in the apparition standing before him clad in a voluminous homespun blouse, its rather indiscreet neckline embroidered in red and green thread, a wide green sash about his waist above a black skirt, also embroidered, the fabric shiny in places from wear, all but threadbare in others. Atop his head was one of his wigs, still showing signs of the powder he used on them all, but combed out so that it hung in straggled disarray to his—dear God—bony bare shoulders.

From somewhere behind him, Justin could hear Brutus gasping for breath.

Justin was a gentleman, raised to never betray shock or surprise unless either was expected of him. It took all of his long years of hiding his true feelings to help him maintain a bland countenance at the moment, however.

“Please pardon my curiosity, but what would be wrong with your head, Wigglesworth, that you’d consent to…this.”

The valet walked closer and crooked his index finger, so that Justin lowered his head to listen to the man’s confidence.

“I have no hair, my lord.”

“Really.” Justin bit the insides of his cheeks. “All these years together, Wigglesworth, and I had no idea. None at all?”

“I shave it off every morning, my lord. My wigs fit much better that way. Many in the last century did the same.”

“Yes, I seem to remember something about that. So, beneath that fairly ruined wig there is…”

“Nothing save my bald pate, my lord. I attempted to tie one of those colorful handkerchiefs about my head, as some of these people seem to do, but it…it kept sliding off, my lord.” Wigglesworth lifted his chin in something nearing defiance. “I cannot allow anyone to see my naked head, my lord. It isn’t proper, and might frighten the ladies.”

“At the moment, Wigglesworth, you’re doing a fair job of frightening me, if you’re at all concerned with my sensibilities. But I’ll bow to your ingenuity if you’re content with the costume.”

“Disguise, my lord, not a costume,” the valet corrected. “I am incognito.”

“Not to mention incomprehensible, and rendering me nearly incoherent,” Justin muttered under his breath as his attention turned to the far side of the camp, because he believed he had heard his name being called. “As long as you’re happy, Wigglesworth.”

“Happy? I am submerged in the depths of despair and still sinking, my lord, but to serve you, I will not complain. Oh, and my name is now Papin, my lord, for the duration of my incognito, um, incognito-ness. It means gray-haired lady.”

“How very wonderful for you. But if we are to be players in this, Papin, I am no longer my lord, or even sir. For the nonce, you must address me as Justin.”

Wigglesworth staggered where he stood. “But I couldn’t!”

“You’d rather find a new employer once I am caught out and hanged? You’ll not find another as lenient as me so easily.”

Wigglesworth stood there, silent, before saying, “Just—Justin would not be good, my lord. Someone might still suspect. Better you take a Gypsy, er, Romany name. I will go ask the old lady who gave me my name, and—”

“Justin!”

All thoughts of his name, or Wigglesworth and his skirts—not to mention his chicken breast—fled as Justin turned to watch Alina running toward him across the field.

She was clad in a costume much like Wigglesworth’s: a blouse, a scarf tied about her waist, a full skirt to her ankles. But that was where all similarity ended.

Her unbound hair trailed out behind her as she ran, her bright red skirt held up and showing glimpses of several lace-edged white petticoats. Her breasts strained against the ruffled neckline of her blouse, and the bright green scarf turned her waist into an incredibly small span, one he could easily encircle with his hands.

He took two steps toward her, ready to open his arms and catch her as she flung herself against him. He would lift her high off the ground, twirl her about and then draw her slowly down his body until he could kiss her smiling mouth.

Except that, still a good ten yards away, she suddenly stopped running, even as his imagination continued traveling down a path he knew he should not tread. He could see her composing herself before she began to walk toward him again.

Had she remembered that she should be angry with him? Even as he had brought himself back to the knowledge that he had no right to her affection?

“You’re safe,” she said at last. “Not…not that I was worried.”

“Good. The last thing I would care to do, Alina, would be to cause you worry. You look…well. There was no trouble making the exchange? Are the accommodations suitable?”

“The accommodations are marvelous,” she told him, finally smiling again. “I have always wanted to ride in a vardo, but I wasn’t allowed, of course. To think I had to travel all the way to England to finally get my wish. Luka will want to know that you’re here. He’s asleep in the last vardo, back that way. It’s probably too soon for him to be attempting to take command. He’s feverish again. Tatiana and I were putting cool wet cloths on his head when someone told me you had arrived.”

“Then perhaps it’s as well that I’m here, although you have to have realized that I am here because I failed. Your nemesis is still breathing.”

“Yes, but so are you,” Alina pointed out, as if that balanced the scales. “Does this mean we will not be traveling to your friends at Basingstoke?”

He chose his words carefully. “No, nothing has changed there. I want to keep heading north, until you’re safe at Malvern. I made more than one plan, and the second may work where the first failed. Alina—”

“Magdaléna,” she corrected, pulling out her skirt and slowly turning in a full circle in front of him, pausing with her back to him to look over her shoulder at him in a way that pierced his heart. “I am Magdaléna, a simple Romany girl and no longer my lady. We’ve been practicing all afternoon, Tatiana and Danica and I, so that we are never caught in a mistake.”

“Yes, Wigglesworth—that is, Papin—told me. He tells me the name means gray-haired lady. But by the look on that fellow’s face over there, the one eavesdropping on us even now, I’m not convinced that’s correct.”

Alina lowered her head, her cheeks flushing. “Poor Wigglesworth. No, Papin does not mean grayhaired lady. I was told it means goose.” She looked up at Justin again. “But Luka would not allow any of the other names they wanted to give the poor fellow. I think some of the suggestions were rather…naughty.”

“I’ll remember that when Wigglesworth comes to me with my name for the duration.”

“You can simply ask Luka. He speaks Romani.” She then looked past him and waved to Brutus, apologizing for not greeting him at once.

Justin knew he could dredge his mind for days and not come up with the name of another woman who had even taken the time to say hello to Brutus. Or worry herself about Wigglesworth, for that matter. Add to that the fact that, rather than hiding in her caravan, terrified, she seemed to be enjoying herself mightily.

“This is an adventure for you, isn’t it, kitten?” he asked her as they walked between the rows of caravans on their way to see Luka.

“My father often told me that all of life should be an adventure. Yes, I am enjoying myself, except for the times I remember that Inhaber Novak wants to see me dead in order to steal lands from these wonderful people. You never saw him today?”

“I saw him,” Justin answered shortly. “I will see him again. You’re not to worry about the man.”

“I worried more that I wouldn’t see you again. I know what you said. That I should forget what happened ever happened. That you think I was only…curious. But how can that be, Justin? Something did happen. How can something have changed nothing?”

Justin stopped walking and turned her to him, his hands on her upper arms. “Nothing has changed, kitten. My plans have only been delayed.”

Her eyes searched his as if looking for answers to questions she wasn’t sure she dared ask, but could not resist asking. “You left this morning without a word of goodbye. Was…was that easy for you? Because it wasn’t easy for me.”

“Christ…” Justin took her hand in his, and they continued walking toward the last caravan. She held on tight, trusting him. Him! Nobody should ever trust him, let alone an innocent young woman like Alina. “I knew last night was a mistake. I knew it, and yet I allowed myself to…” He squeezed her hand. “You’re young, vulnerable. And I’m a very bad man.”

“The Bad Baron. Yes, Charlotte told me some call you that.”

“I’ve been called worse by those who know me best. Listen closely, Alina. You don’t care about me. You don’t know me. What happened…what very nearly happened last night would have been the same with any man who knew only the half of what I know. You were curious, any fool could have seen that, and I was available. I didn’t rouse your heart, kitten. I awakened your body. That’s all it was. That’s all it could ever be for us, for reasons I’ve already explained. Someday, someday soon, you’ll travel to London with Tanner and Lydia, and you’ll meet a man worthy of you. In a year, you won’t even remember me.”

“Don’t say that!” she commanded, cutting him off. “How dare you presume to tell me what I think, what I feel? How dare you!” And then she turned on her heel and ran from him, her glorious black hair lifting in the breeze the way it had a lifetime ago, when his heart had swelled as she’d run toward him.

ALINA REMAINED IN HER caravan for several hours, until dinner was over and the children had all been gathered up and tucked into their beds. Only then did she venture out into the center of the camp, on the hunt for Stefan, the young Romany who had driven their caravan that afternoon.

Stefan was very pretty. Even Danica, who never unbent enough to indulge in casual conversation, had remarked that Stefan could snap his fingers at any silly female and have her come running to him.

Stefan didn’t walk. He swaggered. His coal-dark hair was long, and he tossed it often, rather like a girl. His eyes were as blue as a summer sky, and ringed with long, curling lashes that rightfully belonged on a girl. His teeth were so white, they gleamed. He wore his full, blousy shirt open to the waist and tucked into tight-fitting leather breeches that ended just below his knees. Below his knees, his strong calves positively bulged with muscle.

He wore his face shaved smooth, but had a considerable amount of dark, curling hair on his remarkably muscled chest.

He sang like an angel, and had done so most of the afternoon, often turning about to peer inside the caravan to be sure his three female passengers were listening appreciatively.

Alina thought he was probably the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. And the most immensely silly.

But he’d do.

Carefully avoiding Luka’s caravan, as she’d waited until Justin had entered it again a quarter hour earlier, she flung her black wool shawl up and over her head so that it settled low across her shoulders, and then began strolling along the clearing, past the eight campfires that illuminated the area.

She smiled to the women sitting on the steps of their caravans, knitting, mending, some turning cards over on small tables and nodding at what they saw. A young mother nursed her infant, a corner of her shawl covering her breast.

The men, those who had not disappeared into the trees to set up a perimeter guard, smoked long pipes as they rested their feet on the stones around the campfires, talking and laughing amongst themselves, one of them daring to whistle as Wigglesworth pranced by on his way back from the nearby stream carrying a shallow copper basin and some toweling, his expression a study of injured dignity.

Brutus appeared from between two of the caravans just as Alina approached, and the whistling and laughing abruptly stopped. The large man had that effect on people.

“They mean no harm to him, Brutus,” Alina told him, and the man nodded his agreement, and then shrugged.

“And you’ll see to it that they do no harm,” she said, smiling. “It must be very gratifying to be able to command so much respect merely by being you. That’s called consequence, Brutus. You were blessed with consequence. Why, I believe there have been princes and kings who have not commanded a room the way you do, simply by entering it.”

Brutus seemed to chew on this thought for a few moments, and then nodded his thanks. Or she supposed so, anyway.

“Was there anyone else at the stream when you were there, Brutus?” she asked, having walked the entire camp and seen no sign of Stefan.

The big man nodded, and then pointed toward Alina’s assigned caravan before seeming to mime a person holding reins, driving a team of oxen.

“Ah, Stefan. Stefan is at the stream. Thank you, Brutus, that’s just who I was looking for.”

Brutus smiled, clearly happy to have pleased her, tugged at his forelock and lumbered on, following after the bewigged and beskirted goose.

Alina waited until anyone who had been watching the exchange between her and Brutus went back to what they had been doing, and then she slipped silently into the gap between two of the caravans and headed for the stream she had visited earlier, having volunteered to help bring water for the cooking pots.

She found Stefan easily, and watched him as he stood on the bank, his long legs spread as if he’d just laid claim to the ground around him, one hand on his hip, the other just then very precisely and almost ceremoniously bringing a thin black cheroot to his lips. He inhaled deeply, and then blew out a stream of smoke that seemed blue-white in the fading light as it wreathed his head before blowing away in the breeze. Everything he did, every move he made, seemed to Alina to be planned, practiced, deliberate, even when he thought himself alone.

Except for the cheroot, and the hair on his chest, he reminded her very much of her Aunt Mimi.

“Stefan,” she said before she could change her mind. “What are you doing here?”

He swiveled about slowly, moving first his head, so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes, his slow smile, before he turned to fully face her, holding out his hand to her, palm up. “Come, Magdaléna, see the moon as it rises in all its glory. The smoke from the fires obscure, but here, at the water’s edge, there is nothing to hamper our view of the wise man who smiles down on all of us.”

“Some of us more than others, do you think?” she asked as she joined him, noticing that once again his shirt was opened to his waist, baring his chest to the moonlight even as he raised his face to it, as well.

“Moon baths are salubrious to the complexion. I wait here until it is fully risen, and then I shall bathe in it.”

Alina covered an involuntary giggle with a cough. “Really? I…I’d never heard of that, Stefan. You…you do have a lovely complexion.”

He nodded, accepting her compliment as his due as he fingered the single gold hoop earring in his right ear. “The sun? The sun is not good for the complexion. Look at those who seek it and see the leather they call skin. But the moon? The moon washes all clean.”

“I had thought that the job of soap and water. That’s…fascinating. Really.”

He denied the moon the pleasure of his face as he lowered his chin and turned to her, his smile confident. “You should bare your complexion to the moonlight, Magdaléna. I have with me a blanket. We could bathe…together.”

Only the elders knew that Alina was their key to the land they coveted, as Luka believed that the fewer who knew, the fewer who could make a mistake and give her away. Stefan had not been told who she was, that she was anything more than what she appeared to be, as she’d changed her clothing in the caravan before they’d joined with the other wagons. To him, she must be simply another Romany girl to seduce with his vaunted beauty and ridiculous prattle about moon bathing.

“I don’t think so, no,” she told him, careful to maintain her smile. “But perhaps a kiss? A single kiss in the moonlight? It…it would seem a shame to waste it.”

He looked crestfallen for a moment, but then shrugged his wide shoulders before tossing his cheroot into the stream. “A kiss tonight, a hope for tomorrow,” he said, taking her hand and pressing her palm against his bare chest. “You will dream of me, and I of you, and tomorrow night, beside another stream, we will visit the moon again…and perhaps the stars, as well.”

“But for now,” she reminded him, “only a kiss. You have to promise, Stefan.”

“Agreed, it is a promise. But you will ask for more.”

Alina closed her eyes as he lowered his head toward her. She knew now not to purse her lips, nor to tighten them against him. Instead, she opened her mouth slightly and prepared herself for the first small explosions inside her to begin, the first stirrings of what she knew now as desire.

And there was nothing. Nothing happened…except that her palm began to tickle against the hair on his chest.

She ground her mouth against his, and he responded by clasping her close against him, insinuating his tongue between her lips.

And nothing happened.

He wasn’t clumsy. He didn’t attempt to overpower her. He was very gentle as he cupped her left breast, actually, and probably very practiced. He rubbed lightly at her nipple through the thin material, moaned low in his throat as if pleased by the feel of her.

But nothing happened.

“I…I’m sorry,” she said as he dropped his hands from her and stepped back, looked down into her face. “That was…very nice.”

“For me, Magdaléna, a moment in heaven. But not for you. Stefan knows this. There is another. But for another, you would be mine. The fault lies with him, not me.”

She did not wish to discuss Justin. “The fault? Stefan, this… What happened just now is nothing to do with you. And there is no one else.”

He brightened. “No? Then the fault is with you. This happens with females. But I can fix that. I will merely redouble my efforts, and you will soon swoon and sigh. Oh, Stefan, Stefan, you will cry. Yes, Stefan, yes.”

He reached for her, but Alina only laughed and deftly danced out of his reach…and straight into Justin’s arms.

“Dear me, I feel decidedly de trop,” he said, steadying her. “Shall I go away, and leave you two your privacy?”

“No!” Alina exclaimed, and then quickly lowered her voice. “That is, Stefan and I were just talking. Weren’t we, Stefan?”

Stefan pointed at Justin with his chin and sneered. “Who is this? Your father?”

Alina looked up at Justin, wide-eyed. He looked so…so at a loss for words. She couldn’t help herself. She began to laugh. She laughed so hard, in fact, that she found herself clinging to him as he continued to stare at Stefan until it seemed that his mistake had finally penetrated the young Romany’s brain, and he took to his heels, returning to the camp.

“Stop it,” Justin said quietly once the young man was gone.

But she couldn’t. She’d attempted her small experiment, she had proved Justin wrong…and now Stefan had mistaken her almost lover for her father?

“But…but it’s so funny!”

“I fail to see the humor.”

“Oh, pooh, Justin, of course you do,” Alina said, using her sleeve to wipe at her streaming eyes. “Stefan is such a child. Not a man at all, even if he is older than me. He sees you as ancient. Do you feel ancient, Justin?”

“I feel like turning you over my knee. What the devil maggot did you take in your head? Bathing in moonlight? Allowing a lummox like that to kiss you? Paw you? What did you think you were doing? Were you trying to make me jealous?”

Alina sobered as suddenly as she had burst into laughter. “And now you think this is about you. Do all men think they are the most important creatures in nature?”

Finally, Justin smiled. “Yes, kitten, we do. It’s an illusion women have allowed us from the beginning. Our mistake is in ofttimes believing what you all tell us.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, then, I suppose that’s all right. And I wasn’t in any danger, you know. I told Stefan one kiss, and he agreed.”

The smile disappeared. “He sounded as if he’d agreed. Did he act as if he’d agreed?”

“Well…no. But if you hadn’t stood in front of me like some great wall for me to run into, I would have been safely back in the camp, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?”

“Ah, so now it’s not Stefan’s fault, or your fault…but once again my fault. A thousand apologies, I’m sure.”

“I accept your apologies, all thousand of them. And one more, for saying that it didn’t matter who kissed me last night because I was simply being…awakened. Even you would have to agree that Stefan is exceedingly handsome—”

“Even if he is thick as a plank,” Justin inserted neatly.

“Well, yes, there is that. But it was not his mind that I was kissing, was it? Are you hairy?”

“I beg your pardon?” Justin said in a faintly strangled voice.

“Stefan is very hairy. On his chest. I don’t think I like that. Not that I considered the thing until now, but there is such a thing as too much of anything, don’t you agree?”

Justin rubbed at his forehead. “I can’t believe we’re having this insane conversation. Alina, no more experiments, please. I shouldn’t have said what I did. You’re infatuated with me, and I thank you for that—it’s quite flattering. But the fact remains that in a few months you will be making your debut in London and I will be in America, a fugitive from English justice.”

“But if you weren’t? In America, I mean. If you were in London with me…?”

“Geography changes nothing. I’m also too old for you, Alina,” he said, probably believing he was being logical.

She could also be logical. “My father was fifteen full years older than my mother. Besides, we are already betrothed. That’s next door to being married. Tatiana told me. So what we did…almost did…was not wrong. I don’t understand why you are so set against it. You did kiss me, and if we don’t always like kissing other people but we like kissing some of them, then we must feel something for that other person. Please, Justin, I don’t want you to be a fugitive. If you marry me, then you will have obeyed your Prince Regent. He will forgive you, and you can remain in England. It’s…it’s as if you aren’t running only from England, but from me, as well.”

Justin rubbed at her upper arms, and she shivered even though she wasn’t cold.

“You’re forgetting the Inhaber, Alina. He must die or else he’ll kill you, so he is already a dead man as far as I’m concerned.”

Alina had forgotten. With her head so full of Justin, of finding some way to keep him here in England with her, she had forgotten the Inhaber, the disputed lands—all of it. But now she remembered. “Why would everyone find it so easy to see you as a murderer? Because of what you did to my uncle all those years ago?”

A shadow seemed to cross Justin’s face, even though the full moon continued to shine down brightly.

“There are those who say it was an unfair fight, that I fired early.”

She tipped her head to one side and looked up at him with some intensity. “And did you? Fire early, that is.”

“I fired on two,” he told her, his voice dull. “Some say his back was turned. Some say he’d turned to fire early, into my back, and that I was warned just in time to save myself.”

Alina swallowed down hard. “And what do you say?”

“I say it was a long time ago, and we should let the dead rest. All the dead men. All the shadows I can’t let touch you in your innocence. You came into my life years too late, Alina. I’m already lost.”

And she knew she was losing him, losing the arguments she could not believe she had brought to him in the first place. She had been all but begging him to marry her! Why did she feel frustration, but no shame? Was this what it was like to be a woman? Or was she a headstrong girl who simply could not hear the word no without trying to turn it to a yes?

“You can’t be right,” she told him fiercely. “We are two people, Justin, that’s all. We’re not simply the tools of our countries. That ceased to be the truth when you kissed me. All we have to do is start from here, from today. Yesterday doesn’t matter.”

“And tomorrow may never come?” he asked her, his smile sad and knowing. “That was my argument to myself last night, but the clear light of morning showed me the error in my thinking. I’ve killed men, Alina. For good reasons, for bad reasons, for no reason at all that I bothered to ask about before going off to put an end to their existence. I’ve done things no fine words or thoughts could reconcile with the actions of an honorable man, a soldier. For eight years, I was the Crown’s assassin, as I attempted to procure a pardon for killing my man in a duel. Not for king and country, Alina, for myself, for my own selfish gain.”

Alina blinked at the tears stinging her eyes. Yes, she was losing him. Without ever having him, she was losing him. This time, forever. “But that’s the past. The past is over.”

He shook his head slowly. “It’s too late. Killing those men killed a part of me. I can’t run from the truth of who and what I am, but I’ll be damned if I’ll make you a part of it.”

She wiped at her wet cheeks and threw back her head defiantly. “You can say those words to me ten thousand times, Justin, but I will never believe them. Until, someday, you don’t believe them, either. You don’t have to be the one to kill the Inhaber. If Francis wants him dead, he’ll be dead. You’re killing him to save me, when it is so obvious to me that you never want to kill again. You didn’t have to shower me with your money and your property the way you have done. You never had to tell me about my uncle, who I am convinced was a coward and a fool. You never…you never had to stop last night when you knew I was there for the taking. Justin Wilde is a good man. You’re the only one who doesn’t believe in him. But I do. And I’m not giving up on him until he learns that.”

She didn’t run from him this time. She simply turned and left him there in the moonlight. Perhaps, she thought, the wise old man in the moon might shine down some wisdom on him….

CHAPTER TEN

MORNING CAME EARLY AFTER a nearly sleepless night, and Justin left a hand-wringing Wigglesworth behind in the caravan to tend to Luka while he visited the stream to wash himself in the cold water before donning the clothes he’d been given.

He didn’t shave (or allow Wigglesworth to shave him, which had something to do with the hand-wringing). He didn’t brush his hair into its usual style after washing it in the stream, but only shook his head hard and then raked his fingers through the damp locks and let them settle where they would. He donned the black leather trousers and pulled on the soft, low-heeled black suede boots that ended just below his knees, and then tucked the full-sleeved white shirt into his waistband, buttoning all but three buttons, so that his shirt collar lay open. He wound the long red cloth around his waist twice, and then knotted it so that the fringed ends hung to his knees.

Lastly, he added an inferior but highly decorated blade to his sash and slid his Spanish-made knife into his right boot.

When he reentered the camp, it was as Markos, and nobody looked at him a second time as he accepted a tin cup filled with hot coffee from one of the women before returning to the caravan. As he went, he saw that the oxen were being hitched to the caravans, and, indeed, two of the caravans had already left the camp, as he had asked. They were still too many, he thought, but he was also loath to give up more of the men who had sworn to protect Alina.

Luka was sitting up in his narrow bed, filling his face and his mustachios with chopped eggs, his trembling hands giving the lie to his insistence last evening that he was fine, and ready to take charge once more.

“The fever?” Justin asked Wigglesworth, just then adjusting his straggly wig over his “naked pate.”

“Still with us, I’m afraid, my—Markos. He says there is no time for it until we reach Basingstoke at the least, but the ball has to come out, and he needs medicine. One of the elders was here while you were gone, and he says he knows a surgeon in a town only a few miles from here. We’re heading there as soon as the ladies have breakfasted.”

“It’s not necessary,” Luka protested, nearly spilling the contents of his bowl as he sank back against the cushions behind him. “After Leipzig, I fought on for a full week, chasing the Little Corporal back to France to harass him in his retreat, and all with a ball in my thigh.”

“How commendable,” Justin said, relieving the man of the bowl. “And if you were to succumb to this fever due to some overweening sense of honor or bravado, you’ll die with the comfort of knowing there will be a fine statue of you erected in some quaint village square somewhere, for the pigeons to decorate with their usual flair.”

“Go to blazes, Wilde,” Luka said, and then winced as he tried and failed to sit up once more.

“Markos. I am Markos, remember? And you, my friend, are in no fit state to insult me. Now, tell me what the Romany do when they encounter a village? We’ll take only this caravan into the town, I assume, and leave the others in some makeshift camp until we return?”

“No. This is a village they visit each time they come this way. They usually camp for the night and the villagers come to buy goods, to be entertained. It would be odd if they didn’t stop, and cause more comment about my wound. Yet another reason to leave the ball where it is until we reach Basingstoke. It will only be two more days.”

“Yes, oxen don’t move with the speed of horses, do they? My plan had been to alert you that the Inhaber still draws breath, and then leave you to carry on while I went on the hunt once more. Now I will be delayed until you’ve reached not only Basingstoke, but Malvern. Lucas Paine is a good man, but he’ll ask too many questions I don’t care to answer. Tanner will simply ask what I want him to do, and then do it.”

“I still don’t understand what happened yesterday. You said you tracked the Inhaber to some small inn. Why did you let him go?”

Justin saw a quick flash of the Inhaber as he ran from the inn, the two little girls clasped to him like living armor. “My vantage point wasn’t one that pleased me. If I’d shot and missed, I would have destroyed any chance that he’d consider my offer.”

“Yes, the letter you gave to his henchman. You never said what it contains.”

“No, I didn’t, did I? And now it’s time we were on the road. Wigglesworth, your wig has slipped down over your ear. Have you, I wondered, considered a judicious application of glue?”

Leaving the major to stew, and Wigglesworth to ponder, Justin stepped outside the caravan to see Brutus standing with his legs wide and braced, his massive arms folded across his chest, staring at Stefan, who had been about to climb onto the box of the caravan taken over by Alina and her women.

“And a cheery good morning to you, Brutus. Is there a problem?”

“He won’t let me pass,” Stefan said, pouting. “Magdaléna wishes for me to drive her, as I did yesterday. I sing for her.”

“Like the proverbial angel, I’m sure,” Justin said, all smiles and affability. “However, unless you’d like to be able to join a real angels’ chorus in the next two minutes, I suggest you find something to occupy you elsewhere. No, no, don’t look at him,” he went on as the youth shifted his gaze to Brutus. “This is between you and me. I’d much rather we cried friends and moved on, but if you’ve a mind to be difficult, your difficulty rests with me.”

“It would not be a fair fight. You carry a knife,” Stefan accused.

“No, I carry two. Fighting fair, as you term it, is for those with no expectation of dying peacefully in their own beds after a long and fulfilling life. But, please, it’s such a beautiful morning, and I am your guest. You agree to keep your distance from the girl, and I will allow you to keep the hand that dared to touch her.”

“You want her?” Stefan declared with amazing bravado. “I give her to you. Her and the oxen both. May you be in good voice.”

As the young Romany stomped off, Justin turned to Brutus. “And may I be in good voice? Is that some obscure Romany curse, do you think? That was stupid of me, baiting the boy like that. Unforgivable. It’s never wise to make enemies, Brutus, remember that. This is where women will get you, if you allow it. Puffing up and strutting, squawking discordantly, like a peacock out to intimidate his fellows in order to keep the peahen for himself.”

Brutus grunted and nodded before stepping aside so that Justin, noting that everyone else seemed ready to quit the camp, could mount the box behind the team of oxen.

Loiza, introduced to him last evening as the leader of this clan of Romany, stood in the clearing and waved his arms to the drivers, motioning for them to alternately, one by one, move out into a line.

Justin unwound the thick leather straps that served as reins from the large foot brake and looked out over the pair of broad backs. Releasing the brake, he flicked the reins as he would for a team of horses.

The oxen remained placidly standing there.

He couldn’t be certain, but he thought they might be snoring.

Now here was a dilemma. He’d ridden any horse that could be ridden, driven any horse that could be driven. But he’d never sat up behind a pair of hulking great oxen who ignored him with such admirable panache.

Loiza shouted something to him in Romani, but Justin didn’t understand. He saw the stout whip standing in its holder and picked it up, flicked it expertly just above the team’s heads, a move that had no effect on them.

“I suppose I should tell you. Stefan sings to them,” Alina said from behind him, and Justin turned to see that she’d opened the top half of a narrow door just behind his seat and was poking her head and shoulders through the opening. “He sang to them most all of the afternoon yesterday.”

May you be in good voice.

“So it was a curse.” Justin figuratively tipped his hat to Stefan, who was standing in the clearing, his smile so broad it nearly split his face in two. “Excuse me,” he said, setting the brake—probably an unnecessary precaution. “I believe I have some groveling to do.”

Several hours later, Justin sat on his horse and watched as the caravans formed a broken circle in the middle of a grassy field just far enough away from the market town of Farnham that the castle keep was only partially visible above the trees.

As soon as the last caravan was in place, the makeshift camp turned into a beehive of activity, everyone seeming to know what he or she was to do, including Alina, who apparently believed she would be accompanying Luka and Loiza into Farnham itself, to see the surgeon.

“No, you’re staying here,” Justin told her, dismounting in front of the caravan just as she was about to climb its steps and go inside. “The major will be fine with Loiza. He told me he’s been coming here twice a year for the past decade and more. Nobody will think anything of seeing him. But you…stand out.”

Luka, who had managed to get to his feet, appeared in the doorway of the caravan to add his voice to Justin’s, at which point all thought of conversation abruptly stopped. The man was clad in Romany garb, his right arm in a sling. Neither of these things was surprising. What was rather shocking was Luka’s clean-shaven face.

“Luka! I would not have known you,” Alina exclaimed as he slowly made his way down the few built-in steps to the ground, Wigglesworth descending behind him and looking quite pleased with himself for having a hand in the major’s transformation.

“Resigning from your king’s army a little sooner than you’d thought, my friend?” Justin said, surprised to see how much younger the other man looked now that all those whiskers were gone.

Luka raised his hand and stroked at his cheeks and chin. “I would say I did it so as to further disguise myself, but in truth, I could not overcome a strong urge to prove to you that I do possess an upper lip,” he answered, suppressing a grin. “Lady Alina, the baron is correct. You must remain here, as we have no idea where…a certain person might be. But you’re safe enough here. Perhaps you can help the women when the townspeople come to buy their wares.”

Alina looked ready to launch a protest, but then merely shrugged her shoulders—wonderfully visible thanks to the fetching cut of her blouse. “At least I can watch over the children while the women work.”

Justin assisted the major to the waiting horse and helped him mount; the man had sworn he could ride without tumbling to the ground in a dead faint. “She pretends this is all a game, but she knows how serious the situation is, and she’ll behave. She’s had a considerable lot to deal with in these past few days, one way or another.” No thanks to me, he added silently.

Luka nodded his head. “She is her father’s daughter. Perhaps even more determined. And fearless. All her concern yesterday was for you, with none reserved for herself. But you don’t care, do you? We are not your friends, and the Inhaber is not your enemy. Your Prince Regent is the one you would destroy if you could, for his betrayal of you. Wigglesworth told me all about your supposed arrangement, believing he could gain my sympathy, and he did, to a point. You’ve been used badly, Justin Wilde, but you are not without blame. Now Lady Alina pays the price. And her every tear damns you to hell.”

Justin watched as Loiza led the way out of the camp, Luka behind him and with Stefan belatedly bringing up the rear, a rifle slung across his back.

Justin’s hands balled into fists at his sides. He hadn’t attempted to refute anything the major had said because the man was right, straight down the line.

Except for one thing. He did care.

He cared very much.

ALINA SAT ON A LOW STOOL placed on the thick grass, surrounded by Romany children as well as other young ones who had come to the camp with their mothers.

All around them were the sounds of voices, some raised in song, some sharp with haggling, and much laughter in between. The whirr of the whetstone as one of the men worked the pedals as he sharpened knives brought to him from Farnham kitchens competed with the sound of a small hammer attacking the dents in a cooking pot.

She put the last few touches on her drawing of a sweet little cherub whose huge blue eyes had stared at her intently the entire time she’d been sketching him. “Here you are, sweetheart,” she said, tearing off the page and handing it to the child, who immediately squealed in delight and then ran to show his mother his new treasure. “Now, who’s next?”

Justin leaned against one of the caravans, watching as a young boy missing several of his top teeth shot both hands into the air as he yelled, “Me, me! But with teeth, please? Mama promised I’d get more.”

Alina’s clear laugh floated to Justin, washed over him, and he smiled.

She was so many different people, all wrapped up together to make her irresistible to him. The haughty Lady Alina, surveying her domain on the Portsmouth docks. The practical daughter who thought it perfectly understandable that she learn to shoot in order to protect her home from French invaders. The Romany Magdaléna, turning a plan to hide her from the Inhaber into a grand adventure. The insistent debater, throwing out arguments in order to get her own way.

The frightened, inquisitive girl, determined to become a woman.

Two more days, and he’d know if Inhaber Novak had taken the bait. Two more days, and he’d have his answer. He wasn’t going to accompany Alina all the way to Malvern and the home of his friend Tanner Blake. That had been a lie, convenient to tell, necessary that everyone believe.

He would leave them all at Basingstoke and ride to Sandhurst, there to meet with one of the few other men he trusted with his life, and had done more than once during his years on the Continent.

Captain Richard Matterly was now an instructor at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, the relatively new invention that would turn the next generation of rosy-cheeked English sons into hardened soldiers.

Justin had penned two letters before leaving Ashurst Hall. One to the Inhaber, putting forth his offer and directing him to reply via a missive delivered to Captain Matterly, and another to Richard, warning him that he would be watched and that Justin would contact him to relieve him of the Inhaber’s reply.

Two more days. One more night. And then the rest of his life. Alone.

“May I stand with you, my lord?” Wigglesworth whispered, coming up to him so quietly that Justin realized he was making a very poor guard at the moment.

“You don’t add to my consequence in that rig out, but I will allow it, yes. Is there a problem?”

“Yes. There is a man, and he keeps looking at me. I…I think he wishes to purchase…my favors.”

“Oh, I hardly think—” Justin’s amusement at this bit of ridiculousness evaporated as his every muscle tensed. “Where is he? Show me this admirer of yours. Discreetly, Wigglesworth, if you please. Don’t look his way or point him out. Just talk to me.”

“Yes, my lord. There are many people here, but if you look past the lady with the rather formidable girth, the one with the berries on her hat, then it is that man in the poorly cut blue frock coat, standing just outside the major’s domicile. He was attempting to speak with my lady’s dresser, when I went to the stream to launder your smallclothes, but she was having none of him. Then he saw me, and all thoughts of dallying with her fled his mind. He has been watching me ever since, even if he tries not to look as if he is. I think it is the new way I’ve tried with the wig, my lord. I should have thought earlier to add these bows.”

“And now you’ve led him to me,” Justin said quietly. “Very good, Wigglesworth.”

“Papin, my lord.”

“Oh, I fear that with the introduction of your gentleman admirer we’ve passed beyond that, Wigglesworth. Go search out Brutus, discreetly please, if you will be so kind. Tell him Lady Alina is not to leave his sight until I return, nor should anyone be allowed to approach her.”

“Immediately, my lord. But where are you going?”

“Hunting,” Justin said shortly, as the nondescript man in the bad frock coat seemed to have noticed that he was no longer unnoticed and had begun sidling toward the gap between two of the caravans. Anxious to escape…or anxious to have Justin follow him? “Now, go.”

Justin was on the other side of the grassy clearing and did not cut straight across it in some hurried pursuit sure to capture Alina’s attention. Instead, he faded into the growing shadows between two caravans and then beyond them, into the trees.

Swiftly working his way parallel to the caravans, he circled around until he was deep in the trees behind Luka’s caravan, just in time to intercept the man in the frock coat. The man had been walking backward, stepping carefully, a pistol in his hand, certain pursuit, if it came, would come from the camp. Which may have accounted for his sharp intake of breath when he felt the tip of Justin’s knife pressing just beside his spine.

“Leaving so soon?” Justin asked conversationally—in German. “But everyone is so happy. I understand there will be food later, and dancing. Oh, yes, and you will oblige me by dropping that evil-looking pistol. Now.”

The man raised his arms, pistol still in hand, as if to show that he was harmless, but still keeping his back to Justin. “I don’t know what you’re saying, you crazy Gypsy! Just go on and rob me. Nice fat purse for you in my waistcoat. Go on, take it!”

Justin was surprised. He’d been expecting one of the Inhaber’s men. “You’re English? Oh, and as you didn’t understand me, you will now greatly relieve my mind by dropping that evil-looking pistol. There’s a good fellow. Now turn around so I can get a good look at you.”

The man did as he was told. Justin always appreciated cooperation, it made things so much easier.

The man’s dark eyes widened with relief and no small shock. “Lord Wilde? Is that you? Oh, thank God. I only saw you the once, on the dock at Portsmouth. But it is you, isn’t it? Please, I can explain.”

Justin lightly turned the knife in his hand, so that they were both aware of its continued presence. “Really?” he drawled. “And I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to that explanation. But first, you seem to have the advantage of me. Who are you?”

“Your pardon, my lord. My name is Phineas Battle,” the man supplied helpfully, lowering his arms to his sides. “Late of His Majesty’s army and for the moment employed by a person or persons who wish to remain—”

“Don’t bother to finish with that drivel,” Justin said, holding up his hand. “I think I’d rather guess in any case. You’re not really sure who hired you, but you do have a fairly good suspicion it was someone important.”

“I really couldn’t say, sir. I have considered that possibility, but felt it prudent to keep my questions to myself. I was told that you are a very clever man. Yes, yes, exceedingly clever. And in disguise, no less. That was a man back there, wasn’t it, all dressed up that way? I confess, I couldn’t stop staring. But I am quite harmless, my lord, with orders to watch over the lady and yourself, without being detected, of course. You haven’t made my mission at all easy for me. I’m not accustomed to such deviousness.”

“Clearly. A thousand pardons, I’m sure,” Justin said, still trying to sort things out in his head. Battle had to be the Prince Regent’s man. “You were sent to watch over us, you say? To what end?”

Battle, a man with the look of an underpaid clerk, frowned. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“To what purpose, Phineas,” Justin repeated, as the question had seemed to take the man off guard, as might happen to someone forced to deviate from a prepared script. But that didn’t make sense, not if the man was sent to observe without being detected. Did Justin have Wigglesworth’s unusual attire to thank for discovering yet another twist in what was already a complicated plot? Or was he being led into some sort of trap?

“I was to report to…my employer. Your location and destination, my lord. That is all.”

That did smack of something the Prince Regent would have ordered. Would Justin really dare to defy him, not come to London as ordered? Yes, Justin could understand Prinny’s desire to know that information.

Or had he been supposed to discover Battle, so that the man could feed him information, perhaps deliver a threat? Also possible.

But wait.

Why this man? Why this sad excuse, this little clerk who was so obviously incompetent in the role of spy? And why wasn’t he sweating, swallowing over and over again to ease his dry mouth? Justin was holding a knife on the little clerk, and the little clerk wasn’t sweating….

“Something niggles at the edges of my brain, Phineas. Why you? Why were you chosen for this mission? Exactly what did you do in His Majesty’s army?”

“Do, sir?”

Justin maintained a casually interested expression. “It isn’t a difficult question. Unless, of course, the answer proves troublesome.”

“Not troublesome at all, my lord. I was merely a soldier. And perhaps not a very good one.” Battle raised his arms slightly, and shrugged.

Justin cursed himself for a gullible idiot even as he dropped to the ground, rolling to his left and coming up with both Battle’s pistol and the Spanish knife. He didn’t bother aiming the pistol, as he was fairly certain it wasn’t loaded, or else Battle would never have been so eager to put it in Justin’s possession. Still, just to be safe, he flung the pistol into the trees.

His movements had been swift, fluid and took only two heartbeats before he was on his feet once more, but already Phineas Battle held a short, wicked-looking two-sided knife in each palm, probably lowered by some mechanism beneath the ill-fitting frock coat, activated when he shrugged his shoulders.

Battle was also in a crouch, moving his arms side to side, the blades gleaming. “What was it, my lord, if I may ask? I was being so very helpful, letting you discover me, telling you just what you wanted to hear. What do I do wrong?”

As they began to circle each other, Justin kept his eyes on Battle’s waist, the center of the man’s body. No matter which way a man moved, the first indication was always at the waist; nobody moves feet or arms first, nothing is done without that telltale giveaway.

“You were too meek, Phineas, too eager to give up, give everything away. You volunteered too much, and overplayed your hand. It’s always the little things. Now, as you’re about to kill me anyway, don’t you first want to regale me with how clever you really are?”

“Not particularly, no, as I’ve already ordered my dinner at the inn for seven o’clock, and I wouldn’t wish to be late. My instructions were to follow you until you’d exterminated a certain foreign minister by the name of Novak.”

“One wonders why you simply weren’t hired for the job.”

Battle smiled, even as the two men continued to circle each other, feel each other out. Neither had yet to attempt a single move with the knives, a mutual show of respect for the other’s abilities. “I don’t think the lady would have fancied me as her affianced husband, do you?”

“You know more than I would have suspected. How?”

“My employer’s minion likes his gin and his ladies. Provide both, and a determined man can learn much that is necessary to keep himself alive. But we digress and, as you told me, I’ve already talked too much. Still, as you are a fellow assassin, I will make allowances. Indeed, I’ve often wished we could have met during the war, broken open a few bottles and talked. I thought there were perhaps some things I could learn from you, as I was told you were the master of our craft.”

“You’re about to learn if you were told correctly,” Justin pointed out to him, adjusting his stance slightly, as Battle was a good five inches shorter than he. Whether his own height would prove an advantage or a disadvantage, he had still to find out.

“Ah, very droll, sir,” Phineas said as Justin feinted with the knife and then quickly drew back once more. “In honor of your reputation, I will tell you this, because I know you want to hear it. I was here today only to keep you on point, as it were, remind you that you have a job of work still to do. My real assignment is, of course, to silence you after you’d dispatched your man to his greater reward.”

“Of course. I should have seen that for myself.” Justin began altering the configuration of their invisible circle, counting his sideways steps and his distance from a network of large, barely concealed tree roots hiding amid the long grass and fallen leaves. Carefully, he moved back a few inches after every dozen steps, so that Battle stepped slightly forward to keep their distance unchanged; each new maneuver bringing the track of the circle into closer proximity with the tree roots.

“Yes, yes, so now you understand. But we’ve finished talking, my lord. I thought you could teach me, but it seems that your skills have suffered since the war. Still, as we appear to be at an impasse and it is getting on toward dinnertime, and much as it will undoubtedly pain my employer, you really do have to die now.”

“It would appear that one of us does,” Justin said, having decided that although Battle had been carrying the pistol in his right hand, he was in reality, left-handed. Clever, clever boy, although if he routinely employed those little toys he was brandishing now, he was probably proficient with both hands. A fair fight could prove injurious, if not deadly. With Alina to protect, much as he no longer valued his own life, he could not die now.

Careful to only keep up the count in his head, and not betray himself by looking at the ground, Justin suddenly lunged forward clumsily with the knife, demonstrating a sad lack of expertise. The now overconfident Battle’s instinctive reaction was to laugh and dance backward. His left foot landed awkwardly amid the web of tree roots. He lost his balance, and fell.

He looked up at Justin in real surprise, and perhaps even a little professional admiration, and then down at his chest, and the hilt of Justin’s blade that protruded from it. And then he died.

Phineas Battle was laid to rest deep in the trees once it was fully dark, rolled into the grave dug by Brutus and then covered with dirt and leaves, until there was no indication that the ground had been disturbed.

“Poor Phineas,” Justin told Brutus. “Some lessons can only be learned once, but by then it’s too late.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ALINA REMAINED WITH THE children and the women until the townspeople had drifted back to Farnham and the last cooking pot washed, the last Romany child tucked up in bed.

She had looked in on Luka earlier, but he was still asleep after his visit to the surgeon, and Wigglesworth was tending to him in any case. She’d asked where Justin could be, as she hadn’t seen him in several hours. She’d been told that he and Brutus had taken the job of guarding the camp while the men played the instruments as their women danced for the townspeople, who expected this sort of entertainment.

She’d enjoyed her day, most especially her time spent with the children, and then the mothers. All of the Romany were by legend at least loosely related by blood, the sister of one of those Alina spoke to was married to the brother of her sister’s husband, and three generations of this particular family traveled together in England as they did each year, before retiring to Wales for the winter. They had none of them been to the Continent in more than a generation, but they each held dear their memories of summers wandering France, winters camping on land surprisingly no more than twenty miles from Alina’s childhood home.

Some of these exotic nomadic people had seen Rome, others had walked the streets of Toulouse…and many of their family had died in the wars against Bonaparte.

“Brutus, there you are,” she called to the man as she took one last circuit around the camp on what was proving a fruitless search. “Have you perhaps seen my sketchbook? I thought I left it on one of the tables, but now I— Oh, no!”

She hiked up her skirts and took off in a panicked run as she saw Justin carrying her sketchbook toward her caravan, idly leafing through the pages as he walked along. She’d told herself she wouldn’t speak to him until he came to her, but now she had no choice.

“Justin, wait! Stop! That’s mine, don’t look at it.”

He turned to her, smiling, and held up the page he’d been looking at. “A fish, Alina? You shoved a fish in my mouth? Ah, and it’s dated, as well, how wonderful. The day we met, isn’t it? Clearly your first impression of me wasn’t overwhelming positive.”

“What a dreadful, wretched man you are!” She reached for the sketchbook but he held it up over his head, and she wasn’t about to be so undignified as to jump up and attempt to snag it from his fingers. Besides, it was far easier to ball up her fingers into a fist, and punch him in the stomach.

Laughing, pretending to be mortally wounded, he handed over her property. All except for one page, she noticed, one he had previously ripped from the sketchbook.

“What did you take? Justin? What did you take? I did not give you permission to take anything.”

“Then, kitten, we’re even, aren’t we? I did not give you permission to sketch me.”

Not only dreadful and wretched, but also much too pleased with himself. She turned over page after page, until she’d figured out what sketch he’d taken. She looked at him quizzically. “But…but that was a sketch of me, dressed in these clothes. It was only so that I’ll always remember. What could you possibly want with that?”

He put his crooked finger beneath her chin and looked down into her face in the near darkness broken only by the nearby campfires and the full moon. “The same thing as you, albeit for different reasons. So that I’ll always remember,” he told her quietly. “It’s getting late, and it has been a full day for everyone, one way or another. Let me walk you back to your caravan.”

That was the last thing she wanted.

“I…I’m not in the least sleepy. Can’t we take a walk? I barely saw you today, and you’ll be gone in another few days. Besides, I wanted to tell you something important one of the women told me earlier. About Inhaber Novak.”

“Ah, that dreary man again. The woman knows him?”

Alina began walking in the direction of the stream, as the Romany knew all of the streams and ponds, always camping near a supply of clean water. Justin had no choice but to follow if he wanted to hear what she had to tell him.

They had to proceed single file along the narrow path cut through the underbrush, so it was only after she’d dropped to her knees on the soft grass that he could either sit with her or stand there like some great looby, pretending he didn’t want to sit beside her, which he would not like at all.

“This had better be good, kitten, because otherwise I’d have to think you have lured me out here for some nefarious purpose.” But he smiled as he said the words, and she was of a mood to forgive him most any of his silliness, if she could only be alone with him.

“It’s very tragic, Justin, and explains much of why the Romany don’t want the Inhaber to have this land that is disputed, and even why they are so willing to help us.”

“Luka paid them. It was all arranged.”

“And the Romany never refuse an open hand holding gold or silver,” Alina told him, arranging her skirts about her. She really did love this skirt, and wished her own clothing could be as adaptable to running, to twirling about as she’d done during the dancing (even though she wasn’t very adept at it), and to sitting on a stream bank with a man she hoped with all her heart would soon be kissing her. “They are only romantic to us, Justin. In truth, they are an exceedingly practical people. You have to be, I suppose, when you are continuously outlawed and looked upon as little more than animals.”

“Your own Romany blood is boiling?”

“I suppose so, yes. If the land that belonged to my father’s family through his mother is really mine to give where I will, then I will give it to these people.”

“Don’t, kitten,” Justin warned her, taking her hand. “From what I’ve managed to learn from Luka, the land covers only a few square miles, and most of it is uninhabitable in any case. You don’t want your new friends dying over it. Because, Inhaber or no, you alive or dead, Francis is not going to allow the Romany even an inch-wide foothold in what he sees as his country, his kingdom. He’ll find some excuse to brand anyone who tries to live there as thieves and traitors, and the land will be forfeit.”

“I know you’ve told me that,” she said, prepared to argue. “But what else can I do?”

“Kings don’t like to lose, kitten, and they never do so gracefully, so it will be up to you to be graceful for him. Once the Inhaber has been dispatched, you will write a letter to Francis, gifting him with the land you were told is yours, in thanks for having shown you such kindness in the past. Or some such drivel. That’s the only way I can know you’re safe here in England.”

“But these people! I would be betraying them.”

Justin reached out and stroked her cheek. “You aren’t listening. If any of them try to go back there, they’ll die. I just made the same argument with Luka and Loiza, and they agree. In fact, Loiza had already come to that conclusion on his own. They want Novak dead for quite another reason. That’s why they’re helping us.”

“Oh,” Alina was crestfallen, on more than one count. She was not going to be able to see herself as some bountiful mistress, bestowing great gifts on her subjects. And the most important thing she was going to tell Justin was something he already knew. ‘Then I suppose I have nothing else to tell you.”

“If you were going to tell me that the Inhaber raised himself a small army of Romany in order to look loyal to the king, and then sent them off to fight in France—women and children naturally following after their men—and then left them there alone and without provisions, to be slaughtered by the French? Then no, you have nothing new to tell me. But I do have something to tell you.”

“You’re not leaving? You found a way to stay? No, don’t say anything. I see your answer in your eyes.” She turned her head away and folded her hands in her lap. “Tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I know why Francis wants Inhaber Novak dead.”

She turned her head quickly, to look at him. “It’s not because of the land?”

“No. That was convenient. Loiza is a very intelligent man. He knew when he first heard the story of the disputed land that it was something that was not new to anyone. Francis could take the land at anytime. Your king wants Novak dead because he is powerful, and because he knows things about the king that would not endear him to his allies. Allies such as my own government.”

Alina listened as Justin explained what had gone on at the Congress of Vienna, which he had attended in part himself. The allies had carved up what remained of the Holy Roman Empire, dubbed the new collection the German Confederation, and Francis, who most coveted his title of Holy Roman Emperor was now, to his chagrin, no more than Francis of Austria.

“Quite a comedown from Emperor, you’ll agree,” Justin said as Alina listened intently. “So, kings being kings, your Francis smiled and agreed and feted the tsar and Prussia’s Frederick and all the others, all the while negotiating a secret treaty with King Louis of France. There could be another war, kitten, or at least a coup that topples Francis, if anyone were to know about this.”

“But…but what does the Inhaber have to do with anything?”

“Novak was Francis’s secret emissary to King Louis. That was when Francis trusted him. He trusts him no longer, obviously, and envisions a world with out the man in it. But not by his hand, and not inside his country. Let England grovel and apologize for the actions of the rogue Baron Wilde, that terrible murderer, while Francis declares a month of national mourning for the great Inhaber Novak. I would give most anything to be able to stand face-to-face with Prinny and explain all of this to him, spell it out so that even that imbecile could understand, but that isn’t going to happen.”

“But when you kill the Inhaber, you’ll have made terrible trouble for England, yes?”

“I’m not going to kill the man. I’ve killed enough men. Let Francis deal with Francis’s problems, and let the Prince Regent have to explain away why he failed and yet should still be allowed to retain any gold your king undoubtedly paid him.”

“But—but if you don’t kill him, he will kill me.”

“Not once he knows what I know. He’ll forget about you and the disputed land entirely.”

Alina made a face. “Well, that’s very nice, but you’re saying I’m not important. Not at all?”

“Rather lowering, isn’t it? To be nothing but a tool in the hands of someone else, someone who sees a way to use you to his own ends. But you’re not safe yet, Alina. Not until I can meet with Novak and get him to listen to reason. None of which is a foregone conclusion.”

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“I always try to be, yes.”

“Your Prince Regent is going to have even more reason to hate you if you spare the Inhaber, isn’t he?”

“He should never have attempted political intrigue, or any other kind, for that matter. He isn’t very good at it. The buffoon can’t even manage his own wife. But he may assuage his injured sensibilities by remembering the fifty thousand pounds he coerced from me.”

Alina put her hand on his forearm. “And allow you to stay in England?”

“At the rate I’ve been burning bridges these past days? No, that isn’t possible.”

“Let me go with you, Justin. There is less for me here in England than there is even for you. Why can’t I go with you? You kiss me as if you are not repulsed by me, and you know that I…care.”

“It’s because I care…” His voice trailed off, and he turned to look out across the stream and the path of moonlight that led to the other shore. “While you were sketching the children this afternoon, Alina, I killed a man.”

She couldn’t hold back the gasp of surprise and shock. But how? How could he still look the same as he’d done earlier? How did you kill a man, and then continue on as if nothing had happened? “That’s not true. You’re lying to me, trying to frighten me.”

His voice sounded dull, without emotion, as he answered her. “I dispatched him as if he were an annoying fly, or a cockroach under my foot. He was alive, now he’s dead. Do I feel remorse? No, I don’t. Nor do I feel joy or shame, or justified in any way. I lost some essential part of what we need inside us to be truly human, and I lost it a long time ago. There’s no bringing it back, and I won’t subject you to what’s left of me. You have your whole life ahead of you, Alina. Mine is behind me, as what happened today proved to me yet again.”

Alina had so many questions, but none of them were important. If Justin had killed a man, he’d had a good reason. If this was blind faith in a man she barely knew, then so be it. She could only do what her heart told her was right, as her mother had done before her, giving up her family, her home, her country, for the man she loved. Surely she could sacrifice a little pride.

She blinked back tears and felt a new determination overtaking her. She went up on her knees and moved slightly behind Justin to wrap her arms around him, rest her cheek against his shoulder. He said he felt nothing, but she didn’t believe him. No matter why he’d killed, he had to be feeling something. He was vulnerable tonight, or else he wouldn’t have told her anything at all.

He needed her. She was sure of it.

“If not a lifetime, then just this one night? Please. Tonight we don’t have to be who we are, or even who we think we are…or aren’t. I can simply be your Magdaléna, and you my Markos. Two simple people, living a simple life, one with no complications. Can’t we pretend, just for tonight?”

He put up his hands, touching hers. “Alina, don’t do this….”

She would say it, all of it, now. While he was still here.

“Don’t do what, Justin? Don’t wonder what it would be like to lie in your arms? Don’t yearn to have you touch me again? Don’t long to kiss you, and hold you, and find out if you can fill this aching void inside of me I didn’t know existed until you came into my life? Maybe you don’t feel what I feel, or maybe you’re lying to me, and to yourself. Maybe you’re afraid that if you touch me, really touch me, you won’t be able to leave me.

“Are we both to spend the rest of our lives not knowing if those lives could have been different, better? You say you have no life, Justin. Or is it that you’re afraid of life? Is it the chance of feeling again that’s so frightening to you? If I’m not afraid, then how can you—”

Smothering a curse, he pulled her forward onto his lap and crushed his mouth to hers, a move meant to silence her, she supposed. She believed she could taste the desperation in his kiss as his hands moved over her roughly, pushing the blouse from her shoulder, digging his fingertips into her soft flesh.

She clung to him as he ravaged her mouth, kissing her half in demand, half in supplication. She grabbed at his jaw, holding him still, and returned his passion with some of her own, biting his lower lip until she could taste blood and then plunging her tongue inside his mouth to join with his, duel with his.

His hand found her bare breast beneath the thin lawn of her blouse, and she cried out when he pinched her taut nipple, sending sharp spikes of desire down her body and to the heated ache between her legs.

She couldn’t be still, couldn’t have enough of him. In desperation she grabbed at her skirts and struggled to hike up the fullness of heavy fabric and the cotton slips beneath, taking his hand and pressing it to her bare thigh.

She whimpered against his mouth as he reached up and roughly tore her last undergarment from her. She grabbed onto his shirtfront and raised her hips instinctively, the tightening between her thighs so pleasurable, simply in the anticipation of his touch. She knew what he wanted, because she wanted it, as well.

She couldn’t know all that he knew; the unknown was still ahead of her, but she wasn’t frightened. She welcomed it, all but begged for it. She spread her legs as wide as she could, her heels digging into the soft grass as she raised herself to him again. Touch, touch, touch. Take what’s there for you, take it all, give back what you can. I’m here for you. Touch me. Love me….

Still with his mouth on hers, Justin ground his hand against her in an intimacy she encouraged, gasping with unexpected pleasure as he then stroked her, learning her even as she learned from him. She felt herself rising to some precipice, the same one she had fallen off the other night, only to be left wanting.

More. The word repeated itself inside her head. There has to be more.

She put her hand flat against his chest and pushed with all of her might, freeing herself from his grasp and quickly rising to her feet.

“Alina. Dear God, I’ve hurt you. I must be out of my mind.”

She couldn’t speak, had no words to say what she needed to say. Her hands went to the long scarf tied about her waist, her fingers fumbling to undo the clever knot. The scarf had barely fallen to the ground before she was pulling the loose blouse up and over her head, tossing it aside as she reached for the buttons at her waistband.

There was no shame, no thought of maidenly reserve as the skirt and petticoats puddled at her feet and she was entirely naked, standing there in the moonlight, offering herself to this man.

Still unable to speak, she took his hands and pulled him to his knees along with her. Her breath coming fast and hard, she tugged his shirt free from his waistband, pushing back the material so that the buttons strained in their moorings. She felt a frustration so great she nearly screamed with it.

“Please,” she managed at last, her mouth close to his. “I want this for you, too. I’m not afraid, Justin. And I want no half measures. If we’re to be together only this once, then let it be completely. Don’t you need me? I need you, Justin. I need you in ways I still don’t even understand. Help me. Let me help you…”

His clothing melted away somehow and she was now free to touch him, learn him as he was learning her. The ripple of his muscles told her when she was pleasing him, and that pleasure came back to her twofold.

“Two people,” he whispered as he took hold of her shoulders, easing her back onto her petticoats and following her down. “We’re just two people…”

His kisses were deep, and drugging. His hands touched her in ways not possible before, with an intimacy that bordered on worship. He was becoming lost in her, and that’s what she wanted for him.

He took her hand and guided it down between her legs as he whispered into her ear. “Feel what I feel, Alina…touch what I touch. That’s your heat, that’s your agony, there lies your white-hot center. All the pleasure, all the longing. And just when you think you can’t bear the pleasure anymore, that’s when your body longs for mine. Inside you. Deep inside you. There. Right there. That’s it, sweetheart. Touch yourself. Feel the silk of you.”

“Justin…”

“I’m going to hurt you, kitten. I don’t want to, but I am. But what you want lies beyond the now, what you’re feeling now. What lies beyond is why we were created. God’s joke is that you should feel pain this first time, and that I’d rather die ten deaths than hurt you.”

Alina’s breath caught on a sob. She tugged her hand free of his and attempted to pull him up and over her body. “I’m not frightened. Don’t be frightened for me. Please.”

He kissed her, held that perfect kiss as he moved between her legs. When the pain came she barely felt it, and it was swiftly gone, to be replaced by a new fullness that, of all things, had her smiling against his mouth.

And then he began to move, his rhythm slow, careful, even as his short hard breaths matched her own, so that she bit at his shoulder in a new and different frustration, urging him on, her fingernails digging into his back. What she didn’t know, her body did, and her body knew there was even more. Without conscious thought, she raised her legs and clamped them around his back, taking him deeper, wanting him even deeper inside her. “We’re not two people anymore, Justin, we’re one. Don’t hurt for me…I’m not afraid…”

He kissed her again and then pushed himself up on his palms, looking down into her face, searching for some lie in her words, so that she reached up and cupped his cheeks in her hands.

He began to move more purposefully, his thrusts deeper, growing faster, with more of his strength behind them. His gaze locked with hers, he ground against her, until her eyes widened and her breath caught and what he had called her “white-hot center” pulsed in a glorious ecstasy that only increased as she felt his own body do the same. On and on and on, until he collapsed against her and there was nothing but the night and the moon and their mingled breathing.

And the tears that mingled on their cheeks. Because it had been so right. Because it had been so good.

Because they might neither of them ever feel this way again.

JUSTIN STAYED THE NIGHT in Sandhurst after he’d retrieved the Inhaber’s answering letter from his friend at their arranged meeting place, for no good reason other than he knew he should stay away from the Romany camp…and Alina.

Briefly, he debated with himself the wisdom of traveling on to London, finding some way to confront the Prince Regent, but he knew that for what it was: a dangerous as well as fruitless enterprise. Even if he could convince the royal buffoon of what he knew, there would be no forgiveness. He’d threatened the man’s life, and then publicly announced that he’d pocketed fifty thousand pounds in return for a worthless pardon. By now everyone in Mayfair knew about it, and those in the countryside, at their estates, were reading letters from their friends, recounting Prinny’s latest scandal.

No. There was no possible way he could remain in England. As he’d told Alina as he’d left her outside her caravan, after they’d shared one last kiss, he had burned too many bridges.

And now he had committed the worst crime of all. He’d stolen Alina’s virginity. He could spend hours over the bottles he’d taken with him to his small room at the run-down inn where he’d met with Richard, telling himself that he’d been temporarily out of his head. That the events of the day and the encounter with Phineas Battle had affected him more than he would ever allow anyone to know. That he’d needed a pair of warm arms around him, had desperately needed to be reminded that a part of him at least was still alive, was still capable of feeling. That he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer, but only a man doing what he had to do, and that maybe, just maybe, he deserved some happiness.

But in the morning, when the sun rose and his head throbbed and his mouth tasted as if something foul had died there, when the nightmare that woke him to feel his heart pounding so fast he thought he might die banished the memory of Erich’s face, he saw the truth. He deserved nothing but the hell he had made of his life.

He washed and dressed with some care, knowing Wigglesworth would not approve of even his best efforts, but at least he was once again clean-shaven and in his own clothes. He paid his bill and ventured out into the streets, a London gentleman on the stroll, swinging his cane idly as he sought out his breakfast and took in his surroundings, pausing to admire the facade of one of the many churches, lingering over a glass of wine at a quaint outdoor café. And all the time watching, assuring himself he wasn’t being followed.

He was back to playing the game he’d played for eight long years. And he hated it. Had he ever walked a street without having a care for his back? Had he ever smiled without first calculating the effect of that smile? Had he ever in the last long eight years been free to simply be?

Two people, just two people…

Enough! He’d detected nobody following him, and if someone did, well, he’d take care of that annoyance somewhere along the road. He returned to the inn and ordered his bay saddled for the ride to Basingstoke. There he would meet Alina and Luka, Wigglesworth and Brutus. There he would answer Lucas Paine’s questions with careful lies and flatter the Lady Nicole into sharing something of her wardrobe with Alina before sending her on to Malvern Hall, another two full days’ travel away.

He’d promise to join her there, once his business with the Inhaber was completed.

That would be another lie, the last he would tell her. Or was it to be the last he would tell himself? Because from the first moment she’d looked into his eyes, she’d found a part of him he’d thought long ago gone, and now she’d given him not only her body, but her trust, her belief that he was somehow better than he knew himself to be.

Was it his past that kept him away from all she offered to him? Or was it his fear that he could never be what she believed him to be?

How many shadows did it take to submerge a soul into eternal darkness, with no hope of redemption?

CHAPTER TWELVE

“NICOLE, DARLING, PRECISELY what is it you think you’re doing?”

Alina bit back a giggle as she watched Lucas Paine, Marquess of Basingstoke, attempt to extricate his wife from the caravan sitting in the circular drive in front of a most spectacularly enormous estate home. “Delicious as the view is from where I’m standing, I don’t think backing out is the proper way to exit one of these things.”

“I was only taking one last look,” his wife explained reasonably once he’d taken hold of her at the waist and lifted her to the ground. “It’s amazing, Lucas. There’s an entire world inside there, and it all fits together in a space half the size of my dressing room. Alina, explain to me how three of you slept in there.”

“I’m afraid the answer is, not very comfortably. My dresser snores with a dedication that could probably mow down an entire forest. But the drivers have to leave now, Nicole, to return to their camp. Stefan?”

The young Romany, who’d been pretending not to look at the marchioness even as he devoured her with his eyes, stepped forward and bowed to Alina.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she said, feeling annoyed rather than flattered. “We’ve been on the road for days. It’s ridiculous for you to begin bowing now.”

“Yes, my lady,” Stefan responded, bowing yet again. “And we visited the moonlight. I will forever treasure that moment.”

“You’d be better forgetting it,” Alina said, feeling hot color run into her cheeks.

“But how can I, my lady? We were there, you and I, and—”

“I will count to three, Stefan, and you will be up on the box, singing to your oxen. Understood?”

Stefan shot one more look at the marchioness, touched his fingers to the gold hoop in his ear and then did as Alina said.

“You and that near-god, in the moonlight?” Nicole slipped her arm through Alina’s. “You do realize that I won’t rest until I hear the remainder of that story.”

“It wasn’t what you think,” Alina said quickly. “It was…it was more in the nature of an experiment.”

Nicole’s eyes positively twinkled in her beautiful face. “Wait, don’t say anything else until we’re inside and I’ve fetched Lydia from wherever she is. Then you can tell us both about this…experiment. And be prepared for questions, as I will insist on hearing all of the details.”

The caravan moved off, Stefan singing to his oxen in a clear baritone. His lordship, clearly having intercepted and understood a look from his wife, said something about a pressing meeting with his estate manager and took himself off as Nicole dragged Alina back inside the house.

Nicole told her to wait in the main salon, instructed one of the footmen to have tea and cakes served in the next ten minutes, and then took off up the stairs more in the way of a carefree young girl than a lofty marchioness.

This left Alina free to wander into the lovely blue-and-white room and sit herself down rather primly on one of the soft couches arranged in a grouping in front of one of the three massive fireplaces.

Ever since their arrival at Basingstoke the previous evening, Alina had felt as if she’d been dropped headfirst into a whirlwind. Her aunt Mimi had told her that the English were a cold and haughty people, and that she must be on her best behavior at all times or else she would reflect badly on everyone from King Francis himself down to the lowliest scullery maid in his palace.

And yet, within an hour of her arrival, Alina had found herself luxuriating in a hot bath attended to by not only the marchioness but also her sister, the Duchess of Malvern. A duchess! Alina had never been naked in front of anyone save Tatiana…and Justin, of course…and suddenly she was submerged to her shoulders in lovely scented bubbles while Lady Nicole twirled about the room wearing her Romany clothes and the duchess reclined on a chaise, daintily eating grapes.

Alina learned that the women were not only sisters, but twins, and that they were both newly married. Yet, if she hadn’t been told, she would never have believed the two were even distantly related.

Nicole was the most gloriously different and exciting creature, both alive and lively. Her hair was black, as was Alina’s, but her eyes were not the drab golden-brown of Alina’s, but nearly violet in color, and fringed with long dark lashes that made the violet all the more startlingly beautiful. Her skin was softly kissed by the sun, and she possessed the most delightful dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She looked like mischief, and the Romany clothing suited her perfectly.

By contrast, the duchess was a blonde, with huge, innocent-looking blue eyes and a smile that was warm, welcoming, yet slightly reserved. She moved with the sort of easy grace that cannot be learned; you had to be born with it, Alina was sure. And when she looked at her husband, the duke, she became probably the most stunningly lovely woman Alina had ever seen.

Ah, yes, the duke. Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, and the man to whom Justin was entrusting her: her life, her newly acquired estate and fortune, even her town house in London. Justin had seemed to have it all perfectly worked out, except that the duke was not at Malvern. He was here, at Basingstoke.

Justin would probably be unhappy about that, when he learned of it.

It might be perverse of her, but as she’d been having her life controlled by the man from the moment she’d first set foot in England, she believed she’d rather enjoy his reaction once he deigned to arrive from wherever it was he’d disappeared to this time.

Once Tatiana had wrapped her in a wondrously thick white robe and she had been settled in front of the fire, Alina had dismissed her maid-cum-companion with the information that she would manage brushing her own hair and that the woman should retire for some much-needed rest in a real bed.

She’d taken the silver-backed brushes from the woman only to have them snatched away by Nicole, who’d gone down on her knees behind her and begun drawing the brushes through her damp hair, exclaiming at the hints of red and gold picked out in the firelight.

“Tell us more about your adventure,” Nicole had suggested as Alina closed her eyes, luxuriating in the warmth of the fire and the gentle strokes of the brush, so unlike the rough tugging that was all Tatiana seemed able to manage. “Lucas only told me Justin’s letter to him said we’re to watch over you until you can leave for Malvern, which of course you can’t, not with Lydia and Tanner here. And Charlotte’s letter, which arrived by post this morning, only told me that I was to treat you kindly because you will have had a difficult journey. Dearest Charlotte—she was once in charge of us, you know. It’s so difficult for her to remember that I’m a grown woman now. She keeps expecting me to do something outrageous, heaven only knows why.”

Lydia had nearly choked on a grape, but then recovered quickly.

“We’ll ignore her as well, won’t we? I really don’t know Justin Wilde, except for what my sister has told me, and all she has told me is that he dresses well and can be very witty when he thinks anyone might see more in him than he would like, whatever that means. Is he really such a rogue?”

For the next hour, Alina had answered the twins’ questions, knowing she was being gently interrogated, but not really minding, as she was talking about Justin. If he couldn’t be here with her, talking about him seemed the next best thing and kept her from worrying about him overmuch. After all, he said he’d meet her here, and Wigglesworth had assured her that the baron always kept his promises.

Besides, he wouldn’t leave her now. He simply couldn’t. So she’d regaled them with her adventures, making Nicole laugh as she recounted her ignominious encounter with a mud puddle, and delighting in Lydia’s sympathetic noises and smothered giggles as she described Wigglesworth in all of his womanly garb.

An adventure. That’s how she described all that had happened to her. A grand adventure. She did not mention Justin other than to inform them that he was her betrothed, and that he was off doing something somewhere, but would surely explain everything when he arrived. She most certainly didn’t tell them about the night beside the stream, or his revelation that he had been killing people.

Except that Lucas and Tanner seemed somehow to know that, and at breakfast this morning, whenever the ladies’ conversation drifted toward the absent baron, the two men had gently steered it back to safer territory.

So they knew. Perhaps not what was occurring at that moment, but they knew Justin. They knew a man whose history was still much of a mystery to her, and they seemed to sense that whatever Justin was about now, it wasn’t the stuff of friendly mealtime conversation.

I killed a man this afternoon. He was alive, and now he’s dead.

“Lydia, don’t dawdle, you know you want to hear this as much as I.”

Alina shook herself back to the present, watching as the sisters entered the main salon, Nicole’s violet eyes alive with mischief, Lydia looking more sedate, almost indulgent of her twin’s enthusiasm. Alina felt a momentary pang that she had been denied siblings, most especially a sister. How wonderful it must be to have someone always there to confide in when the need arose, someone who understood you better than anyone else and who had only love for you, as you did for her.

“You didn’t see him, Lydia,” Nicole was saying, “so I’ll describe him for you. He was tall, enormously tall, or perhaps he just seemed that way because of how he held himself so erect. Oh, I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Stefan poses like a man looking in a mirror, and liking very much what he sees,” Alina supplied helpfully.

“Yes! That’s it exactly. You know, now that I think about it, he’s probably fairly insufferable. Was he insufferable, Alina?”

“I think I prefer the word oblivious—to anyone and anything other than himself. But I used him badly, I’m afraid.”

By the time she was done recounting what had happened at the stream, and even admitting why she had approached Stefan in the first place, Nicole was wiping her streaming eyes and Lydia was rubbing her palms together as if they itched.

But then Lydia said quietly, “You’re in love with him, aren’t you? The baron. Does he know?” And even Nicole’s smile faded.

The room became very quiet.

Alina had been alone for so long. And even when her mother had been alive, she had been sickly and often kept to herself, as if to shield her daughter from any unpleasantness. With her father off to war, they had remained in the country, fairly isolated. Alina had learned to amuse herself, in daydreams mostly, probably remaining young longer than other girls her age, many of whom had been married at sixteen and seventeen and had gone on to have babies of their own while Alina had been left to those daydreams…and been taught to shoot and to throw a knife so that the hilt didn’t hit the target first, because her father didn’t know anything else to teach her. But if, as she’d felt herself changing, the world around her looking different to her, if she’d had any questions for her mother they still hadn’t been the sort of questions she would have had for her now.

She hadn’t anyone to consult when Justin barged into her daydream and made the world so very real so very suddenly. But that wasn’t his fault.

She’d bungled everything with him, she knew that. She’d been young and gauche and most likely much too honest. Instead of helping him, she’d probably only compounded his problems.

She needed to stop lying to everyone—and to herself. Alina looked down at her hands, unsurprised to see that she’d entwined her fingers together and that her knuckles had turned quite white. “It doesn’t matter. He’s leaving England in a few days, for America. Because, you understand, he has burned too many bridges and his life is over and there’s no place for me in what’s left of it.”

And then she cried…and told these two warm and wonderful women who could have been her sisters everything that was in her heart.

THERE WAS NOTHING IN the world to compare with the English countryside. Justin had traveled through Europe, its towns, its cities. He’d seen grape vineyards and snow-topped mountains and lush plains planted with wheat and fed by wide blue rivers. He’d sipped tsipouro at a small café in Athens while looking out over the Aegean Sea, walked the same streets once trod by Julius Caesar and his legions, ridden in a dogsled toward the colorful spires of St. Basil’s in Moscow, and visited the royal mounds of Gamla Uppsala in Sweden.

But nothing he had seen or experienced could take the place of the sight of his most neat and orderly England. The carefully manicured fields, the hedgerows and stone walls that divided them and yet at the same time bound them all together. The church spires always visible in the distance. The ruins, the manor houses, the quaint villages, the thatch-roofed farmhouses, the fat cows in the meadows, the rosy-cheeked children laughing on the village green. Even the rain; the rain was different in England.

It was time he was truthful, if only to himself.

This was his country. His home. It wasn’t always right, its leaders not always wise, its fights not always fair or justified. There was poverty, there was greed. But there was also good. So very much good. England. Always to endure.

Justin reined in his mount at the crest of a hill overlooking Basingstoke, where Alina waited for him. He wondered what she’d thought when she’d caught her first glimpse of this, one of the premier estates in Hampshire, larger even than Ashurst Hall. She’d probably been impressed; God knows he’d been when he’d caught his first sight of it through the trees.

His own Hampshire estate was only half the size, but Justin believed its setting was equally fine, and that if anyone thought they required more than twenty bedrooms, then that person lived a life much different from his own.

Alina would never see his Hampshire estate, the one he’d carried a picture of in his heart for the past eight years. He couldn’t allow himself to see her there, or even to imagine her there, especially if the Prince Regent found some way to confiscate the property that had been in the Wilde family since the fifteen hundreds. But she’d be fine with his town house, and with the much smaller estate near Malvern, in Worcestershire.

He’d never see her reaction to either of those places, either. He’d never watch, his pride in her absolute, as she charmed the ton with her wit and beauty, her wonderfully wise innocence. He’d never waltz with her in the candlelight, playfully hand her the reins as they drove through Hyde Park. Because he’d be a world away from her.

And it was all his fault.

Why, for only the second time in his life, had he acted without a single thought to the consequences?

His first thoughtless action had been to respond in anger when the surgeon in attendance had shouted out he turns early the day Robbie Farber’s insane action had robbed him of his life and Justin of his country.

Why, having had eight long years to reflect on the danger of choosing his battles poorly, had he done what he’d done? What maggot had got into his brain so that he’d confronted the Prince Regent—for the love of God, threatened to strangle the miserable excuse for royalty where he stood?

But he already knew the answer. Alina. He’d acted in some misguided idea he was safeguarding her, and with no thought to himself.

No, that wasn’t completely true. He’d also been angry—incensed!—that the Prince Regent had inadvertently shown him a future, and then taken it away by pairing him with the niece of the man he’d killed.

He could only hope that he’d put enough fear into the Prince Regent that he now regretted his insane plot that could include Alina’s death at the hands of Inhaber Novak. Justin had seen the confusion in the man’s eyes when he’d pushed at him; clearly he hadn’t thought all the way through the thing, past the part where he would no longer be bothered with one Baron Justin Wilde. It was always those who had never killed, never seen a battlefield, never felt their own life in danger, who plotted most with the lives of others, blithely believing in that most terrible of axioms: the end justifies the means.

And yet. And yet.

And yet there was no way to erase what had been done. No way to change the past. No way to deal with this damn Inhaber. No way to assuage the Prince Regent. No way to remain in England.

No way to ever see Alina smiling up at him as he gently laid her down on the ancestral bed of the Wildes and, together, they set the course for their future. Love. Children. A lifetime together…

“Are you planning on spending the day here? I admit this aspect is one of my favorites, but I believe there’s someone down there, waiting for you. God only knows why—you look like hell. Tanner, I barely remember Justin from our salad days in London, so you be the judge. He looks like hell, yes?”

Justin turned about in his saddle to see Lucas Paine walking his mount toward him, followed closely by— “Tanner? What in bloody blazes are you doing here?”

“Hear that, Lucas? I told you that’s what he’d say,” the Duke of Malvern said as the three men shook hands. “Not so much as a single hello, just what in hell am I doing here. You’re becoming damned predictable, Justin. Although threatening the life of our future king? I wouldn’t have won any wagers betting against that one as being too mad even for you.”

Justin looked at his smiling friend in complete amazement. “How…?”

“How could I have known?” Tanner Blake removed his curly brimmed beaver to run a gloved hand through his dark blond hair. “How could I not? It’s all over Mayfair. That, and the fact that Prinny coerced fifty thousand pounds from you to secure that pardon you wanted so badly and labored so diligently to deserve—I seem to have been indiscreet there, telling all who would listen how well you’d served the Crown. Difficult as it is to fathom, as you’re no longer the easiest fellow to get along with, it would seem that the sympathies of the ton are firmly with you, and our Prince Regent has taken to his bed, to be bled by his leeches and fretted over by his latest aged cherie amour.”

Justin’s hands tightened so on the reins that the bay began to dance sideways in protest. Because, even though it was his life they were talking about, all he really wanted to know was how Alina was, was she all right, happy. Had she asked about him, cursed him; was she waiting for him. “That…that doesn’t seem possible.”

“It’s London, Justin,” Lucas Paine said as the three headed their horses toward the estate house. “Anything is possible, and the more absurd that anything is, the more possible it becomes. Hell, man, the populace tosses eggs at Prinny’s coach when he dares to go abroad. You were only a little more…direct in your protest. But he’s not yet forgiven, isn’t that right, Tanner?”

“Far from it. Not since the Austrian government has lodged a formal protest with our government over the unprovoked murder of three of its citizens at the hands of one Baron Wilde. Oh, and there is supposedly a witness, although he keeps babbling about a giant more than he does about you. Would you happen to know anything about that, Justin?”

“They were sent to kill Alina,” Justin protested, and then shook his head. “But you’re right. I didn’t have to dispatch them. I could just as easily have disabled them. I was…making a statement.” Mine. Do what you want to me, but this is what happens when you touch what is mine.

“You were making a mess more of mess,” Lucas Paine said with the certainty that his most recent guest wouldn’t kill him on his own property, with his brother-in-law as witness. “Although I don’t blame you. They’d already made one failed attempt on her life while you were busier in London than Puss in Boots, frightening the piss out of Prinny. Somebody had to pay for that.”

“I suppose so, Lucas,” Tanner agreed as they rode three abreast along the wide gravel drive toward the front doors. “Then again, diplomacy has never been Justin’s strong point. And we’d have to consider his cloak-and-dagger years for the Crown. War changes a man, God knows I know that. Perhaps he saw the elimination of those men as nothing more than expediency, reducing the number of the enemy, and nothing out of the ordinary for him. It’s understandable.”

“All right, we’ll give him the three men. But what about the colonel-in-chief, this Novak fellow who seems involved somehow?”

Justin sat forward in the saddle and looked across at the two men. He really needed to begin paying attention. “Yes, what does he do about the Inhaber Novak? Pray do continue your discussion, and don’t consider me in the slightest. Why, I might not even be here.”

Tanner grinned at him. “Yes, I’d already noticed that your mind seems elsewhere. But good God, Justin, you should have heard us before you got here. I felt like an old biddy full of gossip and in a fever to tell somebody what I knew as I raced here from London, thanks to a letter from Charlotte telling me you’d been to Ashurst Hall, and another from Lucas here, telling me where you were heading. It’s a good thing Lydia was already in residence, visiting her sister, or she would have missed all the fun, and we all know she’s fond of you, Lord only knows why. By the way, the ladies are, however, all out of charity with you at the moment. As your friend, I thought I should warn you.”

They dismounted as three footmen hastened to take the reins of their horses. “The ladies? If I were to count noses on these ladies,” Justin inquired carefully, thinking of Alina, “how many noses would I be counting?” Other than Alina’s. God, what a mess he’d made!

“Three. Oh, wait. Four?” Tanner laughed. “Do we include your man Wigglesworth in that? It seems that some jokester in the Romany camp decided it would be great good fun to hide his usual clothing, so that he arrived here in his incognito-ness, as he kept indignantly informing anyone who was listening rather than simply being doubled over in laughter. The skirts, and most especially the bows in his wig, didn’t help his case, let me tell you.”

Justin wanted to be where he wasn’t, and he wasn’t inside Basingstoke, hunting down Alina. But the game must be played. “He has to be devastated, and a devastated Wigglesworth, gentlemen, can be worse than a toothache. I’m tempted to call back my horse and ride on. Where is he, Lucas?”

“One of the Gyp—pardon me. One of the Romany brought the clothing early this morning, all brushed and pressed and ghastly. It seems your man Brutus paid a small visit to the camp last night. I believe his powers of persuasion saved the day. At any rate, I imagine he’s in your assigned rooms, once more properly overdressed and breathlessly awaiting your arrival. Shall we get back to counting noses?”

Justin’s head was spinning. He was in no shape to confront Alina. He looked as if he’d been dragged through one of the hedgerows backward. More importantly, he wasn’t in control of himself. For the first time in too many years, he was worried that he had something to lose…and even more worried that he might already have lost it.

And Tanner knew it. Not Lucas, who couldn’t know that he was on the very edge of tossing aside whatever sangfroid he’d always prided himself on possessing. But Tanner knew. He had to get away from them, regroup. Only then could he see Alina again.

It also wasn’t lost on him that this singular woman he hadn’t known existed until a few short days ago had the power to reduce him to a quivering mass of nerves and apprehension….

He looked at the open doors to the house and very deliberately shrugged his shoulders. “I imagine I’ll be able to work that out for myself when we meet for dinner. For now, I’ve barely slept in days. Would it be cowardly of me to postpone meeting the ladies until I’ve slept, had a bath and perhaps some food that doesn’t move around on the plate of its own accord?”

“What do you say, Tanner?” the marquess asked in mock seriousness. “Shall I agree to harbor this dastardly fugitive?”

“He did make a cake out of Prinny. There’s that in his favor,” Tanner pointed out. “Although I’d still like to hear more about this Novak fellow and why Justin’s been racing about the countryside, gleefully dispatching his attendants. We can’t seem to figure that one out, can we?”

“Oh, the devil with the both of you merry imbeciles,” Justin declared, climbing the front steps two at a time and striding into the entrance hall. “I think I’d rather face your wives. But not until I’ve had some damned sleep. Wigglesworth! Show yourself, man, I’m in need of a bed!”

Justin Wilde had relied on himself for so many years. He’d operated in the shadows of life, shunning his friends, protecting them from the man he’d become. He’d turned to Rafe and Tanner and Lucas only because he had no choice; he’d needed a safe place for Alina. Not for himself, for her.

But somehow Alina had opened that door he’d so firmly shut the day he’d fled England and the hangman. Now the door seemed easier to open to others. Because of her. Because she took him on faith, took him on trust, and believed she saw something still good inside him long after he’d thought he’d traveled beyond caring what anyone thought of him.

The laughter of his old friend and his new friend followed Justin up the curving staircase and, strangely, his step felt lighter than it had done in days. Was there hope? Was there really a way out of this damnable mess he’d help create?

And where the devil was Alina?

LET HIM COME TO YOU. That’s what they’d told her. You were very brave, Lydia had said as she’d handed Alina a handkerchief when tears threatened yet again. You went to him. You bared your heart to him. He has his demons, yes. We all have demons of some sort. I know this won’t be easy for you, as you’re more like Nicole than could possibly be comfortable for you, but it’s up to Justin now to realize that your love is greater than his fears for you. He’s a much better man than he believes himself to be. I know, because he was enormously helpful to Tanner and me during a…a difficult time.

Nicole’s advice had been equally as heartfelt, but more direct. No, no, we don’t let him come to you. We make him come to you. And I’m less kind than my sister. Demons or no, he has behaved abominably. Of course he’ll marry you. He compromised you. Even the Bad Baron is aware that there are rules a gentleman can break, and those he cannot.

And that, Alina had decided during a mostly sleepless night, was now the problem. She and Justin had been formally betrothed, albeit by proxy, an agreement between her king and his Prince Regent. The banns had been read in her home church. A substantial dowry had been agreed upon and sent off to London (and probably had gone straight to the Prince Regent, but that didn’t make it any less official, did it?). That was all troublesome, but there had to be ways and ways to wriggle out of the betrothal, as Justin had so clearly stated he wished to do.

The easiest, of course, was for him to take himself and his demons off to America. Nicole had said something very interesting about that, as well. If he didn’t care for you, he’d marry you. It’s because he cares that he’s being so ridiculous, you know. Men and their honor can be extremely annoying at times, and when their hearts are involved, annoying can turn even the best of them into blockheads. Even Lydia had nodded her agreement.

But then, Alina knew, there was still the worst of it: she’d seduced him. She hadn’t known there was a term for what she’d done that night at the stream, but Nicole did, and the word was seduced. How that compared to being compromised, Alina wasn’t too clear about, but it seemed to her that she was as guilty, or even more guilty, than Justin. All that business about gentlemen succumbing to uncontrollable lust at the drop of a hat. If truth be told, and she might as well be truthful, if only to herself, she’d rather counted on that….

Poor Justin. He’d been under constant duress ever since she’d first stepped onto the dock at Portsmouth, and all because of her. Well, mostly because of her. He shouldn’t have to marry her just because she was in love with him.

The kindest thing she could do would be to relieve him of any sense of obligation to her. Then, if Nicole and Lydia could be believed, there might still exist a way for him to remain in England, which he could not do if he did something terrible to the Inhaber because of her. Clearly she was a complication he didn’t need.

Alina looked around the conservatory, where she had been sitting for half the afternoon on the twins’ orders, waiting for Justin to come to her. She would soon grow whiskers, waiting for him to come to her. But both Nicole and Lydia had agreed on that one single point: the next move had to come from him.

Perhaps someone would be kind enough to gather her dry and withered remains after she’d expired here among all the pretty flowers, waiting for him—

“Alina?”

She nearly cried out as Justin walked toward her, looking as wonderfully exquisite as he had that day on the docks. He’d made a handsome, roguish Romany, but when rigged out in his marvelous London finery, there could be no other man on earth who looked so fine. He stopped on his way, plucked an orchid from its curving stem and carried it with him, depositing it in her outstretched palm before sitting down beside her.

“Beautiful, but not perfect. They have no scent, you know,” he said just as if the last words he’d said to her before these hadn’t been I can never forgive myself for what I’ve done to you….

She lifted the bloom to her face and inhaled deeply. It was a pretty flower, a lovely gesture, but she’d rather he’d kissed her. “I can imagine that this one does. Nothing is ever perfect, except in our imaginations. The rest of the time, we simply have to learn to muddle through, taking the good with the bad.”

“And what are we muddling through today?” he asked, lifting her hand and pressing his lips against her suddenly heated skin.

He wasn’t going to be serious, which meant that, inside, he was very serious indeed. She longed to slap him.

Why didn’t he kiss her somewhere other than her hand?

“I’m not sure. I would imagine you’d know that better than I. Are the duke and duchess about to take me off to Malvern so that you can go kill somebody else?”

“Would you go with them if I asked it of you?”

Still they hadn’t looked at each other. Not really. Physical intimacy beneath the moonlight, it would seem, resulted in nervous avoidance in the mundane, everyday world. Did we really do that? It had all seemed so natural, so wonderful, at the time. So why are we so loath to be reminded of it now?

“I don’t think so, no. I believe I am done being shunted off somewhere else each time you decide what you think is best for me. I’ve already lost my beautiful new wardrobe to Ashurst and my caravan to Basingstoke. I imagine the only thing I have left to lose to Malvern would be…you.”

He avoided a direct answer, a fact she didn’t miss. She was learning him, she really was. He should be careful about that, not that she was going to warn him.

If she looked at him, would he kiss her?

“You enjoyed the caravan?”

“I enjoyed the…adventure. The Romany have a freedom we can never have, even as they are at times persecuted and even shunned for who they are. But at least they have each other, and the streams, and the moonlight. People who don’t understand such things say they have no home, but Loiza told me their hearts and homes travel with them, and that it’s only the heart that needs a home.”

“And what of the land? The Inhaber seems to want it very much, and I say that with my tongue so firmly in my cheek I’m surprised you can understand what I’m asking.”

Alina sighed. No, he wasn’t going to kiss her. He was going to talk. Did he have any idea how fatigued she was with talking? “You were right. Loiza says it would bring them only sorrow. But, Justin,” she said, turning to look at him for the first time since he sat down beside her, “the land is not mine to give, not really. It’s not his to take, either. It’s disputed. Correct?”

“You’ve been thinking, haven’t you?” He smiled, stroked the back of one finger down her cheek, so that she was caught between sighing and leaning against him and wanting to shake him for not really listening to her.

Very nice, the way he touched her. Almost as if he could not sit so close to her and not touch her.

But she’d rather he kissed her.

She slapped his hand away (thinking this a good compromise between the two) and got to her feet. If he wanted to talk, then he should be prepared to listen, as well!

“I refuse to discuss this with you anymore, Justin. All you can think of doing is going around killing everyone. Shooting the Inhaber because he tried to have me shot, which he did, and it was horrible of him and he probably deserves to die for any number of good reasons, but that doesn’t make it right that you be the one to kill him. Just when your friends think they can find a way to rescue you from all your follies—yes, I heard about the Prince Regent, yet again—you will ruin everything by thinking there is no solution except to hunt down the Inhaber and…and execute him. That’s what you were doing while you were gone, wasn’t it. Finding some way to kill the man? Or is he already dead?”

He stood up as well and took hold of her by the shoulders, obviously knowing what she knew—that she was ready to run from the conservatory.

Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me unless you mean it. Don’t talk to me. Hold me. Don’t you want to hold me?

“I was attempting to contact the man, Alina. There’s a difference. Contrary to what you think, an impression I imagine you gained from me, I do not go around killing everyone.” And then he smiled. “Sometimes I only threaten to kill them.”

Alina rolled her eyes in frustration. “Now you’re making a joke, which only tells me that you’re thinking again what a bad man you are, and all of that drivel you keep mouthing every time I try to tell you that I—”

She clamped her mouth tightly shut on the words love you. She wasn’t going to say those words. They’d only make him feel more obligated to her.

“Every time you try to tell me what, Alina?” he asked her, stepping closer, so that her heart began to pound almost hurtfully in her chest.

“Nothing,” she said, looking down at her shoe tops, her borrowed shoe tops, and felt herself slowly begin to shatter into very small pieces. She couldn’t help herself. She was only one woman, and only very newly a woman at that, and she had been bartered by her king like so much produce, betrothed to a man she didn’t know, dropped into a foreign country only to learn her only living relative really was her odious aunt Mimi and there would be no cousins or uncles and aunts to welcome her. She’d been submerged in a mud puddle, nearly shot, been hidden away with the Romany, had kissed a fool, had been introduced to parts of her body and feelings, both physical and emotional, she hadn’t until that moment known existed, and…and… “You keep trying to make things better for me, and you only keep making them worse for both of us!”

He stepped back, shock evident in his expression. “Well, so much for Justin Wilde, the better man. I wondered how long it might take you to realize the gravity of my sin against you. No matter the provocation, the circumstances, I should be shot for touching you.”

“Shot! Do you hear yourself? Everything is life and death to you,” she accused, waving her arms (in what she would later think the way of a demented windmill). “The Inhaber wants me dead, so he must die. Your Prince Regent connives with my king, so you puff yourself up and run off to threaten his life. I don’t know why the man you killed while we were with the Romany had to die, because you didn’t tell me, but I’m certain he did something worthy of dying for.”

“I suppose,” Justin said tightly, “that your conclusion would depend on where you were standing when the man produced a pair of wicked-looking knives and announced that he was going to kill me.”

Some of the wind went out of her sails. “Oh. Well, then I guess that was all right.” And don’t you laugh at me now. Don’t you dare laugh at me!

Justin took her hands and pulled her back down on the bench. “Contrary to what you may think, kitten, I do not rise from my bed every morning and think to myself, ah, and who might I kill today? I thought I was done with that when the war ended. I prayed I was done with it long before the war ended. I bought my way back to England, intent only on living out my life in my homeland. I didn’t ask for anything I had to do in these past few days. But I won’t apologize for it. I did what I was trained to do. I’m talking about something entirely different here, and you know that as well as I. Knowing I couldn’t marry you, knowing I couldn’t ask you to give up everything and follow me as I escape to America, knowing that of all the men in the world I am the one man least worthy of you, I took your virginity.”

“That…that doesn’t matter,” she said, her head down, watching as he took her hands in his, lightly squeezed her fingers. “I mean, that last part. I made you do it.”

He’d probably forgotten that part. You can’t steal what is freely given.

“Oh, kitten,” he said, chuckling softly, “you mustn’t believe everything your companion told you. I knew exactly what I was doing, including what a bastard I was for not putting a stop to it. I simply couldn’t find it in myself to give a damn. At the time. Now, however, we have to deal with the consequences, which means we must marry. Then they can hang me.”

“Hang you? But you said you didn’t kill the Inhaber.”

“No, but it does seem that three of his men, all military attachés and completely innocent of any wrongdoing, I’m told, although they looked very much like hired thugs to me, seem to have been killed, and I have been named as their murderer.”

Her heart sank to the toes of her borrowed slippers. If the man had to be so excessively good at something, couldn’t it have been something less lethal?

“The Inhaber is telling everyone this because he wants you arrested so he is free to come after me,” Alina said, marveling at the words as they came out of her mouth. She was beginning to think like a devious person. And Justin had been forced to think this way for all those long years he refused to talk about with her other than to say that those years had killed something important inside him. She was beginning to understand how that could happen. “But he could not chance killing Lady Wilde, could he, especially if she were to make herself very visible in London? That would be too suspicious, and make for strain between our two countries.”

“Very good, kitten. Your mother was English, the daughter of an earl. Your country is England. Your death would cause a strain between two new and still tenuous allies who seem to have less in common now that their common enemy is gone. You’d be safe.”

“Then I refuse to marry you,” she said firmly.

“Alina, for the love of God—”

“No, Justin. Either you find a way to assuage the Inhaber and your Prince Regent and make both of us safe here, or I refuse to be safe and you dead. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it?”

For a handsome man, he could look very silly, what with his eyes all wide like that and his neck turning a deep red above his pristine white neckcloth.

Suddenly she felt very brave.

“No, Justin, I won’t. You’re so intent on how terrible you are, and on being some sort of martyr or atoning for past sins, or whatever you think it is you’re doing, and I am thoroughly out of patience with you. So, no, I won’t do it. If you’re going to save my honor or whatever such ridiculousness you’ve been spouting, then you’ll simply have to find another way. Because I will not marry a dead man!”

Then, because brave wasn’t the same as fearless, she stood, turned on her heels and ran out of the conservatory, on the hunt for Nicole and Lydia, who would surely hide her until Justin no longer looked as if he’d explode at any moment.

She certainly hoped those two wonderful women would be able to come up with some sort of miraculous ideas as to what they could all do next, because, after having knocked Justin back on his heels, Alina had completely run out of ideas.

And he still hadn’t kissed her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE FOLLOWING EVENING, after a dinner attended only by the three gentlemen, Justin stood at the opened window of his bedchamber as fading sunlight turned the evening to a misty portrait of muted colors and soft outlines, and looked down into the garden three stories below.

Alina was walking there with the marchioness and the duchess, and the three of them had their heads together like true conspirators. It had been the sound of their conversation wafting up to him that had drawn him, and now he was too fascinated to turn away. They reminded him of three beautiful, perfect flowers, dressed in their gowns of yellow, pale green and softest rose, rivaling any blooms in the gardens.

They’d been constant companions, taking their meals together, shunning male company, and all with the excuse that Alina was not quite well…although, oh no, not ill enough to have the doctor sent for. She’ll be fine, they said. We’re simply bearing her company.

And Tanner and Lucas seemed to have swallowed this story whole. Either that, or they were better at subterfuge than he’d formerly have given either of them credit for possessing, and were both in whatever plot was going forward up to their starched cravats, and knew more than they were saying.

Had she told the women why she and he were at odds? Had she told them everything?

Of course she had. Who else did she have to talk to, if not Lydia and Nicole? Surely not her companion, she of the “uncontrolled lust at the drop of a hat.” Look where that particular conversation had led them!

No wonder he was in so much trouble. He was only a man, for all his supposed sophistication and talents. What man had ever outcomplicated a woman?

And no wonder she had refused to come down to dinner last night, and turned away the notes he’d sent to her bedchamber. Headache be damned—she simply was refusing to see him while she and the ladies made their plans.

Plans that had to include his downfall, that was certain. He could only guess at how much he was intended to suffer before that downfall.

He’d told Alina he couldn’t marry her—for very reasonable reasons—and she’d fought him. He’d told her they had to marry—again, for exceedingly reasonable reasons—and she’d thrown his offer back in his face.

Now, most probably on the advice of two women he would have otherwise thought of as perfectly intelligent human beings, she wouldn’t speak with him at all.

He had become so frustrated with his inability to find a way to circumvent the ladies and see Alina that he’d actually appealed to Tanner and Lucas for their help.

The next time he considered going to his friends for their advice, he’d have to grab up several bottles of wine, lock himself in a cabinet and drink until he’d overcome the impulse.

“The great Justin Wilde, flummoxed by a slip of a girl?” Tanner had looked at him in feigned astonishment. “The same man who could so coldly and calmly threaten the life of the Prince Regent can’t so much as say boo to that sweet girl who my wife tells me is so young and innocent it’s nearly painful? It’s lowering, Justin, I have to tell you. I’ve lost all faith in you. But I bow to my wife’s wisdom on this. Sorry.”

Lucas Paine had been even less help. “Lydia sees young and innocent, but my wife sees independent and determined. As Nicole is more than generously gifted with both attributes herself, I believe I’ll take her at her word. My advice? Well, actually, I don’t have any. I rather enjoy Nicole the way she is.”

Justin took a sip of his wine and looked down into the garden again. Now they were laughing. Laughing! The Inhaber was still out there; Alina knew the man wanted her dead. Justin still couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t be locked up in chains for having threatened the Prince Regent, or if his pardon had been revoked, three charges of murder were soon to be placed at the feet of this same man who was to become her husband, except that she’d refused him—and she was laughing?

He hated war. But, damn it all to blazes, war between men was reasonably straightforward, even in his job of spy and assassin; both sides had them. War between a man and a woman had no rules, or at least none the men were informed about by the women, who also seemed to possess all the weapons.

Without consciously searching out the memory, he was suddenly reminded of one of his least-favorite schoolboy lessons, his assigned reading of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. But surely the women weren’t plotting to withhold their…favors from the men until this small “war” was settled. Were they?

If so, he could probably expect a visit from Tanner and Lucas in his very near and unpleasant future. At least then perhaps they wouldn’t be so damned jolly!

Ah, they were moving on, the ladies on the stroll. At least Alina had moved on, rather aimlessly walking ahead of the other two down the path toward the large hedge maze Lucas had told him was more than two hundred years old.

Wait a moment. Did Nicole just take a quick peek up at his open window? Had she seen him standing there, gawking like a fool?

He leaned closer to the sill.

Now she was whispering in Lydia’s ear and pulling rather inelegantly on her sister’s arm when her sister began to turn her head, probably to also look up at the window.

He could imagine the whispered conversation:

He’s up there, poor lovesick fool, watching us. Shh, don’t let Alina hear us.

He’s up where, Nicole? Let me—

No! Don’t look, don’t turn around!

“From this evidence, my lord Wilde,” Justin intoned in mock gravity of purpose, “it may be reasonably deduced that you do not remain unobserved.” A niggling thought knocked on the back of his mind, one that was calling out helpfully: You’ve completely lost control of what’s left of your wits. You do know that, don’t you?

What followed below him was a pantomime wherein Nicole crossed her arms and seemed to shiver in the cool, early evening air, Lydia nodded her head in agreement before taking a few steps toward Alina’s departing back and saying a few words, Alina resuming her walk toward the maze, Lydia and Nicole turning to head for the steps to the terrace—obviously to fetch shawls—and Nicole hanging back as her sister mounted the steps, looking up at Justin’s window, putting her fists rather belligerently on her hips, tilting her head, and then finally throwing her arms wide as if to say, “Well, what are you waiting for?” before disappearing out of sight.

Justin scribbled a mental note to himself to be extremely nice to Lucas Paine; the man must really have his hands full. Although he’d said he rather liked Nicole the way she was. And Tanner seemed to be more than content with Lydia, which made perfect sense to Justin, as he’d been half in love with the lady herself before it became clear that she had eyes only for his friend.

Now he knew why he had been drawn to Lydia. It was because he would have been half in love with Nicole as well, if he’d met her before now.

Alina was a delicious mix of the two wives of his friends, and possibly with a touch of the gracious and intelligent Charlotte Daughtry thrown in for good measure, for Alina certainly seemed to like managing people, a thought that pleased him even as that small voice knocking on the back of his brain told him that he had only one option open to him now that he fully understood what lay in front of him. Surrender. Complete and total surrender.

His.

“Wigglesworth?” He called out, turning from the window. “Fetch me a blanket.”

The valet hurried into the bedchamber from wherever he’d been lurking, awaiting his master’s next request, looking splendidly outlandish in his satins and refreshed wig. “A blanket, my lord? Goodness, who opened that window? Have you taken a chill? I have something in my case for that, a mixture one of the Romany ladies was kind enough to press on me for the paltry sum of threepence when I—”

“Never mind, Wigglesworth.” Justin cut him off impatiently, striding to the large bed and stripping off the heavy tapestry-like coverlet. He wound it around and around as he walked to the open window. Then he tossed the probably priceless bit of silk down onto the flagstones below.

“My lord! That…that was Flemish, sir, and now most probably ruined…. I think I feel faint.”

“Not yet, Wigglesworth,” Justin warned him as he dealt with his evening jacket, removing it with some effort as it had been tailored to fit him within an inch, before tossing it in the valet’s general direction. “You will oblige me by withholding your apoplexy until after you have found Brutus and told him to station himself at the entrance to the maze, barring the way to anyone who might dare to enter, including the master of this house. Understood?”

“The…the maze, my lord?”

“I believe that’s what I directed, yes,” Justin said as he stripped off his neckcloth and opened the top button of his shirt.

“If his lordship is perhaps warm…”

“I’m not stripping to the buff, Wigglesworth. I’m merely…” He stopped himself before he said stripping for battle. “Now go, man, do what I’ve asked. No! Wait! The servant stairs, Wigglesworth. They lead down to the kitchens and the rear of the house, yes? Show me where they’re located in this hulking pile of a place, because I’ll be damned if I’m using the main staircase and giving them all a show as they watch from the main salon, which I’m sure they’re all already doing.”

“My lord,” Wigglesworth lamented, wringing his hands and clearly on the verge of tears. “I am aware, we are all aware, that you have been placed under a considerable strain these past—”

“You have three seconds to do as I’m asking, man, or that wig gets stuffed in the chamber pot. I haven’t yet decided if you’ll still be wearing it when that happens.”

Not quite a full minute later, Justin stepped out of the back door he’d been led to by a clearly terrified kitchen maid. It was short work to locate the coverlet—it was damned large and twice as heavy; he might have chosen better—fold it as best he could and then toss it over his shoulder as he took off for the path leading to the maze.

There would be a moon soon, but for now the night was still caught between dusk and dark, and it was easy for him to navigate the twisting brick path. He hefted the coverlet when it began slipping from his shoulder. It was only moderately cool now, but he was prepared for an evening chill. It wasn’t her emerald and ermine-tipped cloak in front of the fireplace at the inn, or the bright skirts and petticoats of her Romany clothes on the bank of the stream, but a priceless Flemish silk coverlet would serve the purpose.

Someday he really ought to try taking Alina to his bed. If, when the mess was finally over, he still possessed one.

He hastened his step.

As he did not encounter Alina along the way, it was obvious to him that he’d been correct in his assumption—the twins had directed her to enter the maze without them, as they went back to the house for shawls, or lanterns, or both.

Brutus wasn’t at the entrance to the hedge maze when Justin reached it, but he knew he could rely on the man to do what he was told. The precisely trimmed ten-foot-high hedge would do the rest.

Justin plunged into the maze with more haste than knowledge of the twists and turns of the thing, and a frustrating five minutes later he knew himself to be hopelessly lost. Thanks to the height of the hedges, he couldn’t even see the estate house in order to regain his bearings.

“From Paris to Warsaw in the dead of winter, without a map, and while being pursued by a full French company, and you found your way,” he grumbled to himself. “And now, when it’s even more important, you let a damn fool hedge defeat you?”

“Justin?”

He turned about in a full circle, but he was still alone on the path. “Alina?”

“Justin. It is you. What are you doing out here?”

He turned to his left, sure the voice had come from the other side of the hedge. “Getting myself lost, apparently. Where are you?”

“Lost,” she said, her voice sounding small. “I studied the map earlier, and thought I knew the key, but I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I wanted to surprise Lydia and Nicole by making my way to the gazebo in the center of this dratted thing before they returned. Now, again, what are you doing here? I’m not speaking to you, you know.”

“On orders from les jumeaux terribles, I imagine. The terrible twins. Although I am, for the moment, in charity with them both. Unless we never find our way out of here, that is, and have to be rescued, which would force me to reconsider my current sympathetic feelings for the women who have told you to avoid me.”

“They…they sent you after me? Have you come to apologize?”

“Certainly,” he said, trying to peer through the dense hedge, but to no avail. He’d give his best curricle for a sharp sword at the moment. “For trying not to embroil you in my sad and sorry life via matrimony, for pointing out the logic of temporarily aligning you matrimonially with that same complicated—and, as it happens, probably temporary—life, I most humbly apologize. For shunting you from pillar to post these past days, for depriving you of your wardrobe and your caravan, I beg your pardon. Whatever you might wish me to apologize for, consider me figuratively at your feet, begging forgiveness. I will not, however, make the same mistake as I did yesterday. I will not apologize for taking your virginity. I do try not to make the same blunder twice.”

He waited, but she didn’t answer him.

“Alina? Alina!”

“I…I remembered where I made the incorrect turn,” she said from behind him, and he turned about sharply to see her standing only a short ten paces behind him. “You were saying something? I followed the sound of your voice, but I’m afraid I couldn’t make out your words.”

God. How beautiful she was.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told her quietly, careful not to move, because he couldn’t know if she’d turn and run off again, like some woodland sprite, leaving him lost again, not in the maze—the devil take the maze—just simply lost. “I was, in my own insufferable and fairly self-serving way, trying to tell you I’m sorry. And I am, Alina. I’m so, so sorry I’ve hurt you. That was never my intention.”

She took two small steps toward him. “What on earth is that great lump hanging over your shoulder?”

He looked to the coverlet as if he’d forgotten it was there. “This? I think this is called, in the vernacular, a good idea at the time I first had it. Now I feel like an idiot. A presuming idiot at that. In reality, it’s…it’s, um, the coverlet from my bed. I rolled it up and threw it out the window.”

A slow smile began on Alina’s face and put an unholy twinkle in her eyes. “You really are the Bad Baron, aren’t you? Well, I suppose it is your turn.”

“My turn for what?” he asked as she took his hand and led him back the way she’d come. Her hand was so small in his. Amazing how it was large enough to hold all of his heart.

“Your turn to seduce me. You did come out here planning to seduce me, Justin, didn’t you?”

“I could lie and say no, but the coverlet rather gives me away, doesn’t it? I can remember a time I believed I was successfully subtle in advancing my interests.”

She grinned up at him. “I don’t believe I knew you then. That must have been a long time ago.”

“Touché, kitten. Every time I attempt to tell myself I’m too aged for you, you turn me into the rawest of green youths. May I ask where we’re going?”

“To the gazebo, now that I remember the way. Can I assume we won’t be disturbed?”

They turned yet another corner, which was when, in the increasing dark, he finally saw the small square metal marker at the side of the path. The one with an engraved M on top and an arrow pointing forward on its side. He pulled on her hand, halting her as he then looked to his right, toward a second small square metal marker, this one with an H on top and an arrow pointing in the opposite direction on its side.

He remembered the sight below his window. The three women, lingering there, when there were at least several dozen other places they could have stopped to have their conversation. The laughter, sure to rise up to his open window, the only open window out of the half dozen in the chamber, the one Wigglesworth (a man incapable of intrigue; witness his recent incognito-ness) hadn’t opened because he was surprised to see that it wasn’t shut. The easy way Alina had gone off on her own rather than returning to the house with the other two…connivers.

Damn. He was being led about like a monkey on a chain.

“Brutus is guarding the entrance by now,” he said after a moment during which he mentally kicked himself halfway across the maze. “There is only the one, isn’t there?” He gave his head a quick shake. “I’m most probably going to pay dearly for asking this question, kitten, but I’m afraid curiosity has won out. Was Nicole the only one who knew I was standing at my window, watching the three of you?”

“Does it matter?” she asked him, pulling him around one more turn and into a clearing holding an ironwork fantasy of a gazebo at its center.

“Does it matter? It should, at least I think so. But I’m finding it difficult to come up with a good argument, considering I’m where I’ve been trying to be since you ran off on me yesterday and locked yourself away.”

“I allowed myself to be convinced,” she told him quietly as they mounted the three shallow steps and entered the gazebo. He dropped the coverlet onto the floor, and drew her down instead on the wide chaise longue that occupied most of the small space. “But by this afternoon, I began to feel silly. You kept sending me notes I wasn’t brave enough to read or else I’d surely lose my resolve, and I was becoming quite sick of my bedchamber, pretty though it is. But Lydia and Nicole insisted that you had to come to me, not I to you. So…so Nicole and I put our heads together and…”

“Not Lydia?” Justin asked, for he knew how proper the lady Lydia could be, bless her.

“She thought truthfulness would be the better route, but when we discussed the thing, and found that the truth was rather convoluted, and would probably only lead to another argument, she added her agreement. I was the only one not sure it would work, that you’d follow me. But I thought you might not be able to help yourself.”

While she explained, he’d been pulling the pins from her hair. Now the long dark tresses fell down past her shoulders like some warm, living veil.

“It’s that uncontrollable lust business again, isn’t it? You still half believe in it.”

She busied herself unbuttoning his waistcoat and shirt, even as she avoided his gaze. The timid temptress. She made him want her more than he already did, which had seemed impossible only moments earlier.

“I don’t…I don’t think the failing is strictly a problem for you gentlemen, you know. I did worry, a little, but Nicole and Lydia assured me that ladies can also…harbor yearnings of that sort. Which…which is a good thing, Justin, because I have been…yearning nearly from the moment you returned me to my caravan.” She sighed almost theatrically. “Are you ever going to kiss me?”

He shook his head slightly, even as he reached for the thankfully few buttons at the back of her gown and undid them, one by one. “Not yet, kitten, no. I think I want to hear more about this yearning of yours.”

He slid the gown from her shoulders, baring her breasts. Her nipples were taut, revealing her arousal, as did the increasingly rapid rise and fall of her chest as her breaths quickened, shortened. He’d barely touched her, and she was already responding. The pleasurable coil in his gut tightened.

“Justin, please…” She pressed her hands against his thighs. “But you’re going to insist, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. I really must insist. Tell me, kitten. Tell me all that you feel…all that you yearn for.”

“This is my punishment for avoiding you. Very well. But I don’t know how to describe what it’s like for me. I…I yearned for this feeling I’m feeling now. There’s…there’s this almost pleasant thickness that begins just at the base of my throat, and it seems somehow connected to…other parts of my body.”

He nuzzled the side of her neck, his blood running hot. “Yes…go on….”

“There’s this… A strange sort of anticipation of your touch, as if I’m somehow already feeling your mouth against me, your tongue stroking me, your fingers pinching me lightly as you rub at me, again and again, making me grit my teeth and beg you for more, beg you to feed this hunger that robs me of my breath and— Yes. Yes, like that. Oh, Justin…”

He lowered her all the way back onto the soft cushions, suckling at her budding nipple, playing her with his hands and tongue, glorying in her unashamed moans of pleasure as she cupped her own breasts for him, raised them to his mouth as if offering him the gift of her, a gift he greedily took.

He kissed her heated flesh, easing her gown down, pressing a kiss against her flat stomach as she lifted her hips, helping him free her of her garments.

He’d dreamed of this, lain awake thinking about this, nearly lost his mind envisioning this moment. She’d been a virgin, she wouldn’t have understood such undiluted intimacy. She might not understand now, but she was fearless, he knew that. And she trusted him.

He probed her navel with his tongue, stroked her flat lower belly with his thumbs, was driven on by the way, once again, she instinctively raised her hips to him, her body telling him that it was ready for what he would do next…even if her mind still wondered.

He eased her suddenly taut thighs apart and sought her out with both hands, to find her wet and slick and swollen with desire. He knew what to do, how to stroke her, how to reach her, and when her thighs fell open bonelessly, he knew he’d moved her past the point of any lingering modesty. When he finally brought his mouth to her, she reacted with a low moan of pleasure, not shock or dismay.

Like spreading the petals of a delicate, exotic flower, he fully explored her, finding the white-hot center of her and then sealing his lips against her, stroking that center of her pleasure with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth, feeling her small explosions as they rippled through her body and his.

She was still for long moments, pressing against him, blatantly prolonging her enjoyment, before she seemed to come alive with a fury that surprised him. She reached down for him, pulling at him, her fingers curling into his back as she urged him upward.

He was powerless to resist.

Now he was the boneless one, somehow turned onto his back as she knelt beside him, tearing at his buttons, whimpering softly as she divested him of his clothing, and then pulling him back across her body as she collapsed once more onto the cushions.

There was a fierce desperation in the kisses she pressed on his face, his throat, his chest, in the way her fingernails dug into the bare flesh of his back, the way she moved her body beneath his. She needed him. She’d been pleasured, but not fulfilled. She needed him for that. She needed to feel whole, and she couldn’t do that until their two halves were joined.

She didn’t say the words, but her actions told him all he needed to know, all he’d never hoped to experience. His woman. Wanting him, only him. Needing him…as he needed her, only her.

Her sigh when he sank into her nearly unmanned him, and he felt tears stinging at the backs of his eyes. She took him into her, held him tightly, brought her legs up and over his back in order to take more of him, all of him. She gave herself even as she invited him to take what he needed.

And all he needed, all he’d ever needed, all he would ever need, was her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ALINA LAY WITH HER HEAD on Justin’s gently rising and falling bare chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. Beneath the coverlet he’d pulled across them earlier, her hand rested at his waist, her left leg drawn across his as she melded against him, into him, imprinting him with her body, branding him as hers.

She loved when he touched her, reveled in the sensations he so easily aroused in her, exulted in his loss of control as he plunged deep inside her, briefly taking them both out of the world and into a fleeting realm of delight surely no two other humans had ever known.

But this was somehow even better. Lying here with him as he slept. The thickness at the very bottom of her throat, the fullness in her chest, were not the stirrings of passion, of need. This was an ache of love, filling her up with an emotion that encompassed every feeling she’d ever had, and then doubled it.

She would protect him, comfort him, hold him when he was ill or in pain. Her arms would cradle his children, the milk from her breasts would give them sustenance. He was hers, always hers, and she would die for him, live for him, be nothing without him.

There was passion for his body, and she’d gloried in it. But this was a passion for him, for Justin, the man. The way he smiled at her with his eyes as well as his mouth, a smile that seemed reserved only for her. The way he teased her, even how their wills clashed. His affection for Brutus, and his amused tolerance of Wigglesworth’s antics. The loyalty he inspired in his true friends. The way he walked, as if the world belonged to him, the way he took her hand in his as if that was the most natural thing in the world to do.

The way he cared, when he did everything to show that he did not.

Alina drew in a breath, let it out in a shuddering sigh. What was she going to do with him?

“Kitten?”

She smiled against his chest. “You know, Justin, it’s a good thing they weren’t puppies in that barn. I’ve learned to tolerate kitten, but pup would have been quite unacceptable.”

His low chuckle pleased her. As did the way he put his arm around her and pulled her close against him. “I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. You don’t know what it took for me not to join you in that hay and cover you with kisses. But then I remembered what I had to tell you.”

“Do we have to talk about any of that now? Life was still so uncomplicated that day, before you told me about my uncle, the Inhaber and your ridiculous notions.”

He pushed himself up against the cushions, drawing her along with him. “I beg your pardon? I never have ridiculous notions.”

She rolled her eyes; clearly even the best of intentions couldn’t last, for she longed to box his ears. “Yes, you do. And since most of them come from some ridiculous notion of protecting me from you, I believe I have the right to say whether or not they are ridiculous.”

He wrapped a coil of her hair around his finger before letting it drop onto his chest. “I believed I was protecting you from my unworthy self. The past had just come rushing up into my face, along with all its attendant demons, and I thought the past was all that was left of me. Not enough to build a future on, and not fair of me to impose on you, either. You looked at me with such innocence and trust, as if I were some fairy-tale knight in his polished armor. I wasn’t, kitten. I’m not. Your Inhaber knew it.”

Alina pulled the coverlet along with her as she sat up, facing him in the moonlight. She couldn’t really see his face clearly, but she knew he was wearing that maddening mask of indifference he tried on with everyone, fooling most of them she was sure, but not her. Never her.

“What does the Inhaber have to do with your demons, as you call them? Are you telling me you know him? You’ve met him? What does he know?”

“No, we’ve never met. But what happened couldn’t have been coincidence. He’s heard of me, somehow, about my time in Bohemia.”

She was rapidly running out of patience with him now. “Justin, if the Inhaber knows something about you that upset you so much that you refused to honor our betrothal because of it, I have the right to know what that something is, and if you continue to be so cryptic, I will probably hit you.”

He was silent for long moments, during which Alina wondered if he was going to continue to be so stubborn and how she’d ever find a way to get through the walls he’d kept about him, obviously for years.

“Let me begin at the beginning, when I was not much older than you are now, kitten,” he said at last, and she nearly cried out in relief. Nothing he might tell her could possibly be worse than not knowing. “Please don’t think of anything I’m going to say as putting forth excuses. There are no excuses.”

“Will you hold my hand while you tell me?” she asked quietly, putting out her hand to him. She was already crying silent tears when he took that hand in his and squeezed it softly.

And then he told her.

He’d been wild in his youth, wonderfully well-named. Blessed with an ancient title, nearly bottomless wealth, a pleasing countenance and several varied talents that meant that most anything he attempted came easily to him—perhaps too easily. You don’t value what you don’t earn.

He’d excelled at school, kept up an easy friendship with most everyone he met, and when he came to London he came to conquer it. And did. He could outfence, outshoot, outfight and outride anyone, including his teachers. He didn’t seem capable of losing at cards, or with women. His was a charmed life, a gift from the gods, and he enjoyed it to the top of his bent…and then beyond. Until the pleasures began to pall, the achievements coming too easily.

So he married, as this seemed the next logical thing to do. He chose a young woman who was nearly equally popular within the ton, a beautiful woman who would look good on his arm. Together, they would continue to effortlessly swim through life, hosting balls and perhaps the occasional musical or literary evening, but otherwise go their own way.

But she’d been indiscreet. Not once, but several times, leading to that misty morning and the reflexive shot that ended Robbie Farber’s life and changed Justin’s forever.

Within days he was in Brussels, then Vienna, and from there into oblivion. Until, months later, sunk in drink and despair at his lost life, he was approached by a man bearing a letter from his widowed mother. There was a way, she’d written, a path not easily traveled, but he wasn’t without talents that could be valuable to the Crown during this terrible time. If he did as he was told, made himself valuable to the war effort, there would be a pardon at the end of his service.

He’d resisted, argued that he’d rather fight in the army as the lowliest field soldier, but in the end he’d agreed. With every other door closed to him, he had no choice but to go through the only one left open.

The French welcomed him, the banished and disgraced Englishman with the ready wit, the deep pockets, the pleasing countenance. Oh, yes, when they conquered the English he would be delighted to take them on a tour of London. He taught the ladies bawdy songs, played and drank deep with the gentlemen. Money, his own, ran through his hands and into theirs, and they liked him all the better.

And then, in the cold gray of dawn, he would lay in wait on a hilltop and put a rifle shot squarely between the eyes of a French field marshal as he stepped outside his tent to relieve his bladder.

Better a single shot than dozens of volleys in a battle that would no longer be necessary. It wasn’t honorable, and the Crown would have denied responsibility. But it was effective.

For the first three years, he kept count of his kills. He added Brutus and somehow acquired Wigglesworth, or perhaps it was Wigglesworth who’d acquired him. He was always on the move, always playing a part, a role.

And the war dragged on.

And his mother died.

And he became more reckless, less caring. Until he realized he no longer felt much of anything about anyone, most especially himself. He no longer kept count of his kills.

Until Trebon.

Alina knew Trebon, had even once, as a child, visited the small Bohemian city with her father.

Justin’s hand tightened on hers, so that her fingers hurt with the pressure, but she ignored the pain, unwilling to stop him now when, obviously, he was so close to telling her the worst of what he saw as his eternal damnation.

He’d been sent there to eliminate a traitor, a merchant who had been forwarding dangerous information to the French. More than that, Justin hadn’t asked. This was, after all, only another job of work, as he’d begun to think of his activities, another stepping-stone that would lead back to England.

He’d spent a few days in the ancient city, acting the tourist while, as usual, tossing his money and his smiles and his wit about willy-nilly, introducing himself through forged letters of recommendation. He’d met with the widowed merchant, dined with the man, even been introduced as that amusing Britisher to the man’s youngest child, the fourteen-year-old Erich, spending one pleasant afternoon teaching the boy how to shoot.

Erich had been polite, if not proficient, and in the end he’d shyly produced some poetry he’d written and read it to Justin, telling him that his papa disapproved, and that he was a sad disappointment to the man, unlike his brothers, who were already off fighting the evil Bonaparte.

Knowing he’d tarried too long, become too involved, but seeing something in young Erich’s eyes that he knew he’d not seen in his own for too many years, Justin returned to the manor house that same night, intent on completing his latest job of work. Theodor Janosi had to die. His traitorous actions were costing too many lives; he had even put his own soldier sons in danger by diverting supplies from his factory to the French. He had to be stopped, and it was Justin’s job to stop him.

Justin fell silent for so long that Alina believed he would refuse to tell her the rest. And it would be terrible, what he would say, she knew that in her heart.

“Erich, Justin?” she asked him softly. “What happened to him?”

“He…he died. That bastard must have sensed my presence and pulled Erich from the shadows, where I hadn’t seen him standing, placing him in front of him as a shield just as the knife left my hand. His own son.”

Alina bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood.

“I killed Janosi with my bare hands, Alina,” Justin told her quietly. “I was nothing more than a wild animal. I beat him until every bone in both my hands seemed broken. I continued to beat him long after he was dead, until I simply couldn’t hit him anymore. Brutus helped me bury Erich beneath the tree where he’d read me his poetry that afternoon. I…I, um, told them that I was finished, done, and six months later they finally took me at my word. I was sent to Vienna to help with the negotiations when Bonaparte at last admitted defeat, and remained there until long after his escape and recapture. Until I was finally offered the pardon that had cost young Erich his life. You know the rest.”

Alina used the coverlet to wipe at her streaming eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, Justin.”

“No,” he said with that maddening flippancy she’d learned he used to protect himself. “It was Janosi’s fault. No, wait. It was my mother’s fault. No, Bonaparte’s. How about your uncle the earl? If he hadn’t turned early, I would have never met Erich, would I, and the boy would still be alive and writing his poetry. It’s my fault, Alina. Put the blame where it belongs, and it belongs with me. I thought I could forget, put the past in the past, tell myself I’d done enough penance, that I deserved the life I’d once had and so stupidly thrown away. When the pardon arrived, even with all the strings Prinny attached to it, I took a chance and came home.”

“Only to have one of those strings show up in the form of the niece of the man you’d killed in the duel that had started it all. Oh, Justin, how cruel that was for you.”

Now she understood why he’d been so incensed with the Prince Regent, and why he’d gifted her with his belongings while telling her he would not marry her. He had been performing some sort of penance.

Until she’d seduced him, in her selfishness, her curiosity, her determination that she could change his mind about their marriage. But he’d still refused to burden her with his supposedly terrible self, until after the Inhaber had— “Justin? You still didn’t tell me about the Inhaber. You said he knew. Do you mean he knew about…Erich?”

He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it. “The morning I sent you off from Ashurst Hall, it was so that I could follow the Inhaber’s man and dispose of our…problem in the way I know best.”

She listened as he told her how that terrible man had exited the inn carrying the two little girls, using them as shields so that he could safely reach his coach. Justin had been waiting, his finger caressing the trigger of his rifle, only to see that stomach-clenching sight, only to relive the moment Theodor Janosi had pulled young Erich into the path of the knife.

“He’s an evil man,” she said, wrapping her arms around Justin’s neck. “A coward. But I’m glad you didn’t kill him. I spoke with Tanner earlier today, and he swears to me there is a way out for us, Justin, if you’ll only agree. We can appease your Prince Regent. We can find a way around your…zeal with the men who attacked my coach. But only if you let the Inhaber live. There has to be a way to let him live, so that…so that we can live.”

“There is,” he told her, dropping a kiss on her nose and then actually smiling. Perhaps he was pretending again, or perhaps he felt lighter somewhere in his soul now that he’d told her about Erich. “I never told you what I wrote to him in that letter I sent to him via his henchman.”

She sat back on her heels, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “No, you didn’t. What did you write in that letter?”

“That, at a time and place of his choice, and for the mere pittance of ten thousand pounds, I’d hand you over to him.”

Alina tried to speak. She opened and closed her mouth several times, but no words would come.

“He replied via a friend of mine in Sandhurst, agreeing to the terms, if I produced Luka, as well. Do you happen to know why he’s interested in your secretary?”

“You…you weren’t really going to hand me over to the man. I know you wouldn’t do that, that it’s all a trick. But it would be encouraging to me if you were to say the words.”

“Come here,” he told her, reaching for her.

She allowed him to pull her against his chest, but then she carefully took a pinch of his chest hair and gave it a sharp tug, so that he cried out in mock pain. “You have a most terrible, devious mind, Justin Wilde. The Inhaber believes he will have all three of us served up to him on a platter, doesn’t he? While you have, in turn, learned where he will be, and even when. But now you won’t kill him, because then there is no hope of you marrying me now that I am so thoroughly and happily compromised, and then not being hanged the next day. And I very much wish to marry you, so that you can compromise me every night for the rest of our very long and uneventful lives.”

“That is what tonight is about, isn’t it? I’ve surrendered. Completely, utterly and quite happily.” He kissed her hair, her brow. “You’re forgetting only one thing, kitten. The bastard still needs you dead in order for him to have the only claim to that damned land.”

“But we settled that, didn’t we? The Romany don’t want the land, so I don’t have to worry about depriving them of it, and if I write a letter to the king, giving up all claim to the land, then it is over. Oh.”

“Yes, kitten, oh. You can’t give up land that isn’t indisputably yours to give. I believe you’re the one who pointed that out to me.”

“Yes, somebody pointed that out to me, I think. Perhaps the Inhaber has some idea how we could arrange matters?”

“Other than eliminating you and tossing the disputed claim into the lap of your aunt?”

“Who would renounce any claim immediately, for a price. Why can she do what I can’t? I’m certain Luka told us that’s what she’d do. He also told me that I couldn’t give up the land, remember? He said that, didn’t he? We really do need to speak with Luka, now that the horrible Inhaber is going to be allowed to grow fat and old.”

“Yes, I think we do, kitten. I’ve never quite understood this business about the land. I’ll admit that.”

“You were too busy killing people and ruining me,” Alina told him, trying not to smile. “It’s understandable. Yes, tomorrow we need to speak with Luka.” She slid her hand lower on his belly. “Tomorrow.”

“The land. I should have concentrated more on the land, Alina. All I really heard was that your life was in danger. Your king needs the Inhaber dead. I was chosen to marry you because the Inhaber wants you dead, and I was the most likely man to successfully assassinate him while protecting my betrothed wife, keeping your king’s hands clean. Then I realized that Robbie Farber had been dug up and thrown into the mix, and went charging hotfoot after that idiot Prinny, burning bridges everywhere I went. I should have thought more about the land….”

He remained distracted, but she was determined.

She slid her hand lower, finding and capturing him. He was silk against her skin, his own skin so smooth and pliant as she closed her hand and began gently pulling on him, then pressing down, the silk now sheathing a growing hardness.

She tugged lightly again, moving his soft skin up, down. Again. He seemed to grow beneath her fingers.

Did that feel good to him? He wasn’t talking to himself anymore, so she thought she was safe in assuming that it did.

He reached for her, but she evaded him, going to her knees and pushing the coverlet down so that she could better concentrate on her discovery of this new power she apparently possessed.

She dared to touch the very tip of him with one inquisitive finger, and found him to be moist with a droplet she then spread over the entire tip. Silk on silk.

She had done this to him? Her touch had done this? What he had done to her, she could do to him?

Fascinating.

Amazing what could be dared in the nighttime, when there was no room for thoughts other than the next pleasure.

She moved her hand faster, thoughts of how he’d moved inside her causing her to feel a clenching between her thighs each time she stroked the length of him. She lowered herself onto her haunches, her knees spread, and continued to stroke him, moving her hips as she closed her eyes and lowered her head, imagining him inside her. Big. Strong. Silk and hard, throbbing heat.

When he slid his hand between her legs she moaned in pleasure and anticipation. His thumb grazed her, again and again, spreading her, finding that small, hot center that took pleasure and turned it into need. Deep, teeth-grinding, jaw-clenching greed to feel more, more.

Then he slipped his fingers inside her, deep inside her, and she thought she might come apart, not possibly survive such intense bliss. She matched her deep strokes with his, her eyes still closed, her heart pounding so fast and hard she could hear it in her ears.

What he had done to her, she could do to him?

She wanted him to forget. She longed for him to be healed. There were no miracles that could erase the past, but there could still be a future. What he’d thought dead inside him was only in hiding, waiting to be reawakened, to fill him once again. He was beautiful, so very beautiful. In his mind and in his heart. She would not give up on him, even if he’d given up on himself.

The passion she’d felt, the carnal pleasure that so inflamed her, began to merge with the true love she felt for this man, this good man. They couldn’t be separated and, combined, she knew she had the power to show him how much she loved him, trusted him, believed in him.

What he had done for her, she could do for him.

She lowered her head even more…and found out that she was right.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“WELL, IT’S YOU, JUSTIN,” Nicole said in seeming surprise as he entered the morning room. “I would have thought you’d still be abed, as you hadn’t come in from wherever you’d gone off to before Lucas and I finally gave up on playing the good hosts and went upstairs.”

“Nicole,” Lucas said quietly from his seat at the head of the table. “You promised you’d be good.”

Justin laughed, then rounded the table and placed his hand on the back of Nicole’s chair. “Lucas, I’m going to kiss your wife.”

The marquess languidly waved a slice of toast above his plate. “I have no opposition. Nicole?”

Her answer was to push back from the table and stand up, wrapping her arms around Justin as he bussed her firmly on the cheek. “I knew all you needed was a nudge. Lydia, come here,” she said as Tanner and her sister entered the morning room. “You probably get one, too.”

“No, she gets two, because I know she allowed herself to be convinced.” He kissed Lydia on both cheeks as he wrapped her in a hug. “Thank you.”

Lydia blushed prettily and kissed him back. “We were terrible, weren’t we? I don’t know what we would have done if it had rained,” she said seriously, sending a faintly harassed look toward her twin. “No, that’s not true. I do know, and may I say, Justin, you can thank your lucky stars that the night was dry.”

Nicole giggled and bent her head to concentrate on her breakfast.

The three men all shook hands, Justin accepting their congratulations before realizing that he had never formally asked for Alina’s hand in marriage. He’d been foisted on her, he’d rejected her, he’d reneged on his rejection, she’d rejected his renege—but he’d never actually proposed to her, and she’d never actually said yes.

“Excuse me,” he said putting down the plate he’d been about to fill at the buffet—he had the most ravenous appetite this morning. “There’s something I need to fetch from my chamber.”

He headed for the now-familiar servant stairs, forgoing the main staircase, not wanting to pass Alina on the way, and entered his bedchamber in time to see Wigglesworth standing in front of the cheval glass in the dressing room, caught in the act of replacing his wig.

“Ye-gods, man, you were right—the women needed to be spared that particular sight. You’re bald as a doorknob.”

“My lord!” Wigglesworth exclaimed, clapping the wig to his head, sideways, as it turned out, covering himself as if his modesty had been violated. “You are supposed to be breakfasting. If I cannot count on you to be where you say you are going to be—well, then there’s no hope, is there?”

Justin bit back a grin at the reprimand. “A thousand apologies, Wigglesworth. I can only say that I will strive to be more dependable in future.”

“Just so, yes, my lord,” the valet said, nodding his head, causing the wig to turn a bit more, so that the beribboned queue slid forward over his nose. “I have just inspected the Flemish silk, and am delighted to report that it has suffered no more damage than a few broken threads, which I have repaired. But you won’t be tossing it out the window again, will you, my lord? I do not know if it could sustain a second insult.”

“I believe I will be able to restrain myself. Wigglesworth, where’s my jewelry case?”

“Ah, my lord, so you noticed.” The valet gave a final adjustment to his periwig, pulling it down snugly over his ears, and toddled over to the tall dressing chest, going up on the toes of his heeled shoes and opening the top drawer. “I didn’t wish to say, my lord, but I did think the onyx studs would have been more the thing with that waistcoat. The brushed gold is acceptable, but much better suited to the—”

Justin reached inside the case and extracted what he wanted. “Yes, thank you, Wigglesworth. I’ll be returning to the morning room now. Please feel free to dance a jig or whatever else it is you do when I’m not here.”

He chose the servant stairs yet again, and this time the kitchen staff didn’t even bother to look up from their chores, probably having decided that the gentry were simply queer, and to basically ignore them when they popped up where they had no business being.

When he reentered the morning room it was to see Alina standing at the heavily laden sideboard, a plate in her hand as she seemed to be having some difficulty choosing from the considerable choices before her.

She looked wonderful, most especially when he considered that they had not stolen back into the house until nearly dawn, startling the boy who was building up the fire in the kitchen hearth. He’d dropped a log on his foot and begun to yelp, causing Alina to attempt to go to him to be certain he was all right before Justin held her back and, instead, tossed the boy a gold crown, which immediately put a halt to his injured cries.

They’d whispered and giggled like children themselves as they stole up the servant stairs, him dragging the Flemish silk with him, and he’d kissed her thoroughly at her door before finally returning to his own bedchamber, where he’d collapsed into a short but dreamless sleep until his rumbling stomach woke him.

Ah, how good it was to be alive again…or perhaps alive, truly alive, for the very first time in his life. There were still problems to be solved, waters to be smoothed and one huge dilemma in the form of the Inhaber to be dealt with, but he wasn’t going to think about them today. Today was for Alina. Tomorrow he would have to let the world back in.

But not today.

“Alina,” he said when she turned to look at him, her smile unabashedly gleeful, unashamedly lover-like. She positively glowed. For him. He wasn’t a humble man, had never been, but he felt humble now. Humbled and grateful. “There’s something I forgot to do.”

Her smile faded. “Where are you going this time? I thought we’d have just this one day….”

Before she could get the bit between her teeth—wives did that, didn’t they, when they thought their husbands had gone beyond the pale—he went to her, took her free hand in his and dropped to one knee.

“Justin!”

There was a general scraping of chairs as the other four occupants of the room, along with two footmen who had been charged with lifting the lids on the silver servers, all turned to see why Alina had sounded so shocked. “Shh, kitten, I’m about to make a public cake of myself,” he said, reaching into his pocket and extracting the ring he had taken from his jewelry case.

Not the one Sheila had worn, and not the ring he had purchased for his unknown bride, but the betrothal ring that had been in his family for over three hundred years, the one his mother had worn until the day she died and it was sent to him, finally catching up to him somewhere in Spain and giving him a reason he hadn’t needed to drink himself into a stupor for three days.

The gold had been refilled where it had been worn thin on so many Wilde bride hands. Its size had been changed and changed again, to fit several dozen fingers. A few lost stones had been replaced around the center diamond. If the ancient portrait in the Long Gallery could be believed, the original center stone hadn’t been an emerald-shaped diamond at all, but a round ruby. But for all the changes, all the years, it was still the Wilde betrothal ring; that’s what tradition was all about.

And now it would grace the finger of another Wilde bride.

“But, Justin, we’re already—”

“Not correctly,” he told her as, behind him somewhere, Lydia could be heard sniffling. “This is not anyone else’s decision. This is you, kitten, you and me.” He paused, smiled, looked around at the other occupants of the room. “Well, almost you and me. But we’ll endeavor to ignore them.”

“Oh, Justin…”

“Here, I think we can dispense with this,” he said, taking the empty plate from her hand and replacing it on the sideboard, then taking her hand in both of his. “Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin…”

“You remember that entire mouthful?”

“Alina, be good. Now, what was I doing?”

“You were being imperious.”

He playfully squeezed her fingers. She’d never feared him, had completely failed to be overly impressed with him, had always seen through him as if he were a pane of glass to her. She’d seen all the way to his soul, the one he’d believed he had lost long ago.

“Alina, I’m still accused of murdering the men sent to attack your coach. I threatened the life of the Prince Regent and could be clapped in chains at any moment. My pardon for killing your uncle in a duel and thus robbing you of any living relatives save your odious aunt Mimi may be revoked. I still don’t know what will happen with that damnable Inhaber. For all of those reasons, I may have to flee England yet again, this time to never return.”

“For God’s sake, Lucas, stop him,” Nicole implored sotto voce. “He’ll talk her out of it yet.”

Tanner gave a bark of laughter, quickly stifled, probably thanks to a speaking look from his wife.

“You’re to be witnesses, not participants,” Justin said, never taking his gaze away from Alina’s somewhat pinched, white face. “Alina, I love you. I’d die for you, but I’d much rather live for you, and for our children, and for the happiness I know we can bring each other, hopefully—please, God—here in England, surrounded by our very good and wonderfully meddlesome friends, building a life together. Please, before this becomes any more farcical…will you do me the not unmixed honor of becoming my wife?”

“Tell him you need a few moments to consider,” Tanner advised. “He could do with a little more time on his knees. I know I’m certainly enjoying the sight of a humble Justin Wilde.”

“Well, I am not!” Alina said feelingly. She took the ring from Justin’s hand and slipped it onto her finger, then took his hands as if to pull him to his feet. “There. It’s done, finally. Will you kiss me now, Justin? Am I destined to always having to ask you to kiss me?”

He slipped his arms about her waist. “You haven’t yet said yes, kitten.”

She rolled her eyes. He loved when she did that, how she never held back her feelings, good, bad or indifferent. No, never indifferent, and never indecisive. Alina always knew just what she thought, and just what he should be thinking.

Going up on tiptoe, she clasped his face between her hands and brought her mouth to his, kissing him deeply, thoroughly. As their delighted audience applauded approvingly, Lucas instructed one of the footmen to tell the butler to bring up several of his best bottles of wine from the cellars so that they could toast the happy couple. Through it all, she kissed him, and he kissed her back, until one of them—he’d never remember if it had been her or him—began to smile. And then to laugh.

“You’re such a wonderful idiot. I’ve said yes a dozen times,” Alina told him as they broke the kiss and once more stood there, lightly holding on to each other’s hands, devouring each other with their eyes.

“I think you have your answer, my friend,” Tanner said, clapping him on the back as the ladies drew Alina aside to hug her and admire the Wilde ancestral betrothal ring. “And for all the trouble you’re in, damn me if you’re not still the luckiest devil I know.”

TODAY WOULD BE THEIR day, one devoted only to each other, with no shadows from the past, no worries about what was still an uncertain future.

Wearing a ruby-red riding habit borrowed from Nicole and matched with a Basingstoke mare only a little too gentle for her taste, Alina had enjoyed a ride with Justin that had taken them to the village and an establishment called the Crown and Bell.

Over Justin’s protests, they sat in the public taproom rather than a private dining room, and Alina entertained herself by smiling at the farmers and laborers who sat at the many scarred wooden tables pretending they hadn’t noticed the finely dressed young miss sitting in the corner with that handsome, well dressed, yet evilly scowling gentleman.

Also over his protests, she drank a mug of the inn’s own beer, warm and fairly bitter, and, as she told him, not even a patch on the beer brewed near her childhood home. Justin had seemed amazed that she’d been allowed beer, but she’d never told him that she actually had, and simply allowed him to assume she spoke from experience.

The fib, the omission, had been to test him, although he couldn’t know that. To test him, and her “fibbing ability,” which Nicole had assured her all females possessed, if they only worked at it. Not that anyone should go about telling lies—fibs—willy-nilly. But sometimes they were for the greater good, and that made them all right. Especially when they were meant to protect men, who were notoriously unable to protect themselves when they thought their honor was involved.

Alina knew someday she really had to hear the history of Nicole and Lucas’s courtship. Especially if the head-shakings and sighs of Lydia when the subject was even casually touched upon meant anything.

“Justin,” Alina said quietly, drawing her finger around the wet circle left by the mug, “would you ever lie to me?”

He hesitated only the merest heartbeat before saying he would never lie to her for her to believe him.

“Good. Then I will never lie to you in the same way that you will never lie to me.”

He put his elbow on the tabletop and propped his chin in his hand. “Other than to hint very broadly that you’ve been imbibing beer since your childhood, you mean?”

She sat back, alarmed. “You knew I was fibbing?”

“Kitten, you have the most expressive face in creation. You could no more hide an untruth than fly to the moon.”

This was unsettling. “What does my expressive face do that gives me away?”

He reached across the table and gave a small flick to the side of her nose. “Oh no, kitten. If I tell you, you’ll be careful not to do what you do, and then where would we be?”

“Is it my eyes?” she persisted. “Do I squint? Or perhaps I frown? I might do that, as I really don’t like being untruthful—it seems such a waste of energy. Please, Justin, tell me. I won’t rest until you tell me.”

“Absolutely not. I’m in love—I haven’t turned imbecilic. Now, drink up the remainder of that beer, and we’ll head back to Basingstoke. I still need to speak with Luka.”

She eyed the beer as if a snake had just poked its head above the surface of it. “I really don’t like it,” she admitted, “although you probably know that, too. No, don’t say anything, because I already know the answer. You certainly can be insufferable, Justin. You should have told me I wouldn’t like it. And why must you speak with Luka? You said that tomorrow could wait for tomorrow, remember?”

He took her arm in his and walked them out of the taproom, pretending not to notice as she gave a quick wave of goodbye to the young man in the homespun smock and leather gaiters who had been looking at her shyly for the past hour—although she did see him smile while pretending to be stern.

As he helped her up onto the sidesaddle, he said, “Tomorrow I meet with the Inhaber, remember? Much as I’d like to forget, much as I wish he’d simply go away. I have a few questions for Luka.”

“About the land. I remember.” She turned the mare, and they walked the horses toward the end of the village. “The Romany don’t want it, I don’t want it. I still don’t see why we can’t simply give it to him. According to Loiza, it isn’t even very good land. It’s really no more than a symbol. Do people actually die for symbols?”

“All the time, kitten, yes. People hate, fight and die for the damndest things. That’s probably why I never questioned what Luka told us about the land. And the Inhaber did send his men to kill you. That’s something not easily forgotten. Or forgiven. Shaking the man’s hand tomorrow will not be the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Luckily, I’ve had considerable practice in being duplicitous.”

She wished he wouldn’t talk like that about himself. He’d been a soldier. Granted, not the usual sort, but a soldier for it all. Besides, that was the past. It was now, and tomorrow, and the rest of their lives that were important.

There was a break in the neat hedgerows, and Alina turned the mare into the field beyond, leaving Justin little choice but to follow her. She rode between the harvested rows until she reached the end of the field and a small, nearly circular stand of trees where the land was too rocky to be cultivated. There she dismounted without his help and tied the reins to a low-hanging branch.

He dismounted as well, shaking his head. “There are at least three dozen beds at Basingstoke, kitten. We really should try at least one of them.”

“Oh, so you are assuming I’m about to seduce you, Lord Wilde. Is it my turn? Why, I believe it is. Perhaps later. Right now, I really think we should talk about the Inhaber.” She walked over to a fallen tree trunk and sat down, then waited for him to join her. “Are you really going to include Luka? Because if it comes to a fight, he’s still injured.”

“Worried about your secretary, Alina?”

“No, I’m worried about you. See? I’m not fibbing, because you can tell, so I may as well be honest, even if that makes me a bad person. You’d be so busy rescuing him that you might forget to rescue yourself. I think he should be made to remain here, at Basingstoke. You’re not taking me, correct?”

He lifted her gloved hand to his lips, turning it so that he could kiss the bared flesh at the inside of her wrist. “Because if it comes to a fight, I’d be too busy rescuing you to remember to rescue myself? Yes, that’s correct. Brutus and I will do very nicely on our own. We always have.”

“You didn’t answer me. Are you taking Luka?”

“No, I’m not. I never planned to include him.”

She sighed, that one worry assuaged at least. “But you still have no idea what you’re going to say to the man? He’ll see soon enough that Luka and I aren’t with you. He’ll be very angry.”

Justin leaned in, began nuzzling the side of her throat. “I suppose I could prevail upon Wigglesworth to don his incognito-ness yet again, and hope the Inhaber is shortsighted. Must we really discuss this now? I’d really much rather you seduced me.” He took her hand, laid it in his lap, proving to her that he wasn’t completely joking. “Here, let me help you, if you don’t know how to make the first move.”

“Justin,” she said quietly, tugging to free her hand from his grip.

“Darling. Try that, kitten. Try calling me darling.”

“Justin. The children.”

He licked her earlobe. “Exactly. The first one won’t mind being conceived in a— Damn.” He straightened quickly, thankfully also releasing her hand so that she could move it away from its most compromising location.

She put a smile on her face and waved to the half-dozen children who were crossing the field not twenty yards from them. “Wave to them, Justin. I think they might believe you were hurting me.”

“You’re not the one in pain,” he grumbled as he got to his feet, not only tipping his hat to the children, but removing it to hold in front of him. “We really have to begin considering making love indoors.”

Alina waved again as the children waved and then began to run across the field once more. “Tatiana naps in her room in the attic each afternoon, but Danica never seems to leave my dressing room. I think she knows. She looks at me all disapproving, so I’m more than fairly certain she knows.”

“Wigglesworth dances the jig in my dressing room,” Justin told her as they retraced their steps to the horses.

“Oh, he does not. You really shouldn’t tease him so. He worships you. Justin?”

Something in her voice as she said his name must have alerted him, as he turned to her immediately, taking her hands in his. “Kitten, I really don’t want to discuss tomorrow with you. I want us to enjoy today.”

“Because you think it may be all we’ll ever have?”

“No.” He looked at her so seriously, she had to believe him. “I think I can…redirect the man, point him toward a more pressing problem he doesn’t seem to know he has. My problem is in getting close enough to him to have that conversation without having to dispose of any more of his men. I’m also going to pray that he’s so grateful to me for passing along the information I have for him that he’ll withdraw his accusations about his deceased guards. My worry, since you won’t rest until I tell you, is how in God’s name I’ll ever be able to mend fences as it were, with His Royal Highness. If I fail there, it doesn’t matter where else I might succeed.”

Alina’s heart skipped a beat. He was genuinely worried about the Prince Regent. Her new friends had been correct; he already had more than enough on his plate, so it was clearly up to them to rescue him from the worst of his folly.

And it wasn’t as if she’d actually be lying to him, which she now knew wouldn’t work, thanks to her so depressingly expressive face. She simply had to keep him occupied, his mind on other things until it was tomorrow and time for him to ride off to meet with the Inhaber.

She looked out over the field, and the children were gone. Good. “You know, darling,” she said, taking his hand and leading him back toward the trees once more, “this tiny forest is fairly dense, and there is all of this late-afternoon shadow, isn’t there? Why, I imagine if we were to go no more than a few feet off the path, we’d all but disappear.”

Really. It was so easy to distract men. She might even call it child’s play….

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THEY’D RETURNED TO Basingstoke to find that, for reasons only women knew—and definitely reasons only women understood—Alina was not left alone again with Justin until tea was served at ten o’clock and all three ladies announced they were retiring for the night, leaving the men to amuse themselves as best they could without feminine company.

Which meant that all three men made for the terrace and lit up cheroots Lucas passed around. Fragrant blue smoke began to rise in the cool evening air. Nice, actually quite good tobacco, but Justin would rather be with Alina.

“What the devil was that about?” he asked his friends as Tanner handed him a glass of port, not his favorite drink, but he’d manage it. “Why have your wives suddenly turned into duennas?”

Lucas blew out a thin stream of smoke, and then smiled. “If I might quote my wife?”

“As she seems to be the one in charge, yes, do that.”

“Nicole believes you have been indiscreet enough. From now until the wedding—you do have one in mind fairly soon, correct?—you are to behave yourself. Again, not my words. Oh, and Lydia agrees. Actually, I understand she more than agrees. It would seem our dearest lovers have turned into wives. It would be depressing, except that they’re enjoying themselves so much.”

“There’s a special license waiting at my town house in London, courtesy of Prinny. If I can dare show my face there, that is. Clearly, as if I didn’t have enough as it is, I now have new incentive to get back in the man’s good graces.”

“Prinny has no graces,” Tanner said, leaning his elbows on the balustrade. “I was one of those unfortunate enough to see him harnessed and then winched up in the air so that he could be lowered onto his horse for some ceremony in Hyde Park. Richard led his men into battle in the Crusades. Henry fought side by side with his army at Agincourt. The Louis we propped up on a throne in Paris is so fat he can’t lift his foot high enough not to trip over his own red carpet, and our own poor king George is mad as a hatter and has been fitted for his own straitjacket. Prinny can’t even mount a horse without aid, and the only place he’s led his countrymen is into debt. Truly, our only hope is that Princess Charlotte will grow up to be another such as Elizabeth, and bring some honor back to the monarchy.”

“Elizabeth, as I recall,” Justin pointed out, “had somewhat of a penchant for chopping off heads. A man in my current position might be grateful that Prinny can be so easily distracted by simply placing a new, expensive toy in his greedy hands.”

Tanner and Lucas exchanged looks Justin did not miss, but could not interpret.

He tossed his barely smoked cheroot out onto the grass. “Pleasant as this company is, if I’m not to be allowed to see Alina any more tonight, I may as well go visit the major and discuss something that’s been troubling me. I’ll be gone by first light and hopefully returned in one piece by noon, free of at least half my problems. Wish me luck?”

“Will you need it?” Tanner asked him.

“I don’t know. I may have used up the last of my store of luck when the Fates gave me Alina. But even the Fates can’t be that cruel.”

“We’ve both offered several times to accompany you,” Lucas said, walking with him to the French doors leading back into the main salon. “That offer still stands.”

Justin clapped the man on the shoulder. “If your lovers have become wives, then their lovers have become husbands. And husbands don’t go skulking about old church ruins, pistols drawn, exposing themselves to danger not their own. But thank you. Thank you both, most especially for keeping Alina safe here.”

This time he only caught out Lucas shifting his gaze toward Tanner, who’d remained still, his expression impassive.

“She will be safe here, correct?” he asked Lucas.

“She’ll be as safe as she can be, definitely,” Lucas answered.

Justin nodded. He was becoming an old woman, fretting when there was no need to fret. He smiled, shook both men’s hands and headed upstairs to see the major, his mind already on the following morning and his meeting with the Inhaber, most especially the logistics that would be involved in getting past the man’s guards.

Strange that he’d always planned how he would eliminate somebody. He’d never before had to plan for a way to keep his intended target alive.

Alina hadn’t actually said the words, but he thought she knew: killing was easier.

At the head of the staircase, he nearly turned for his bedchamber rather than have another dreary conversation about the Inhaber Novak, but then headed for the major’s bedchamber. He supposed he’d owed the man an explanation as to why he would not be accompanying him tomorrow morning.

He rapped on the major’s door, and then was forced to wait a full minute before the man bid him enter, only to find him fully dressed and reclining atop the coverlet, his arm tucked in its sling. Strange again. Alina had told him that the major had been up and about yesterday, and that he’d thrown off the sling, protesting that he was no longer so ill as to be kept confined to his bed.

“You’ve looked better,” he said smoothly as Luka slid to the edge of the bed and stood up, rather dramatically holding on to the bedpost for support.

It might be prudent to tear his mind away from Alina, away from the Inhaber, away from the Prince Regent, and concentrate a bit more on the earnest, clean-shaven major. A friend is not a friend merely because he says he is your friend. You’ve been asleep, Wilde. Lost in love and misery. Time to wake up!

“The fever came back today. Knocked me flat, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, damned plaguey things, fevers. I hesitate to further distress you, but I find that before I go hunting up your Inhaber tomorrow morning for our hopefully productive tête-à-tête, I have a few questions about this disputed land that’s caused us all so much bother.”

“Talk. Then it’s true—you’re actually going to talk to him at this meeting you’ve arranged. Lady Alina told me you hope to settle everything…amicably. But I didn’t really believe her. As if such a thing is possible with a monster like the Inhaber Novak. You were bent on killing him. You went off to kill him that morning, remember? We’d discussed it, you understood. You agreed. It was the plan then, and it should be the plan now.”

Well, now the fellow was looking a little more robust, and his color was better, as well.

“Ah, yes, the plan. It came to me late, this revelation I’ve had, Major, but I’ve realized that I followed other plans, created by others, only implemented by me, for too many years. Always with the assumption that the cause was right and just, or at least right and just to somebody’s mind. Now I find myself chafing at the notion of possibly being forced back in the role of tool, a weapon without choices of my own.”

“But that is who you are.” The major’s lips curved in a smile; he’d have been well served to keep the mustachios, as at least this particular smile was neither pleasant nor flattering, but revealing. “I suppose we take off the gloves now, as you English say? In truth, I’ve been wondering when you’d come to me about the land. It was my mistake that got you to finally wondering in the first place, wasn’t it?”

Justin hid his surprise at the man’s unexpected candor—and that hint of disdain that was rather troubling. Had he been so intent on Alina, on his feelings of guilt concerning her uncle and the threat to her from the Inhaber, that he’d overlooked what was directly beneath his nose? He quickly cudgeled his brains for what had to be the correct response to the major’s question; there was no room for error now. Not when he’d stumbled onto something he didn’t yet understand.

“Yes, certainly. Time for candor. And it was dashed clumsy of you, I agree,” he improvised smoothly, walking over to the decanter and glasses that stood on a table near the windows. “But clumsy of me as well for taking so long to realize what had been staring me in the face. Wine?”

“Thank you, no,” the major said, his tone once more light, conversational. “So, what exactly gave me away?”

Justin grabbed onto the seeming discrepancy he and Alina had discussed only that afternoon. “Must we?” he asked, turning about, one of the wineglasses in his hand. “Oh, very well. It made no sense, you see, that Alina could not sign away the land to the Inhaber, yet her detestable aunt Mimi could. A piddling thing, especially stacked up against all that has transpired these past days. The man’s attack on Alina’s coach, his minions armed to the teeth and skulking about Ashurst Hall? Both events lent considerable credence to the notion that her life is in danger, and the Inhaber’s permanent removal the only real solution. Yet it continues to niggle, that small discrepancy.”

The major nodded. “Yes. Just as I thought. Loiza had several strong words for me on that subject after he’d spoken with Lady Alina.”

“She is the one who first picked up on the thing, truth be told,” Justin said, nodding, and at the same time surreptitiously measuring the major, wondering what he’d missed, how he’d so badly misjudged him. Weighing the notion that the sling would make a convenient hiding place for a knife or small pistol. “Tell me more about your king, and exactly why he wants the Inhaber dead.”

The major didn’t strike him as a man who believed confession good for the soul. He did, however, strike him as a man who would play for time until he learned whether or not more decisive measures were necessary. As Justin was doing himself.

And him standing here in his evening clothes, and without his knife or any weapon close to hand. Still, a bit of well-placed pressure on the man’s wound should be enough to incapacitate him. If not, snapping off the head of the wineglass on the table behind him would turn the stem of the glass into a tolerable weapon.

Standing here, holding forth on what is at least outwardly a civilized conversation, while contemplating grinding his fingers into a gunshot wound, putting a wineglass stem through a man’s throat. God, had he ever thought like a normal man? What all had he lost on the day thoughts like these became normal to him?

“The king? You still think this is about the king? That I would risk so much for him?”

At last Justin believed he understood. “You’re Romany, aren’t you? That business about the In haber hiring Romany as part of the army he raised, and then abandoning them to be slaughtered by the French—men, women, children. That’s true?”

“Unfortunately for my family, yes. From that day onward, the Inhaber has been marked for death. But he stubbornly refuses to die. Instead, he continues to prosper.”

Justin wanted to keep him talking, perhaps lower his guard. “How inconsiderate of the fellow. It all begins to come clearer, although far from completely transparent. No wonder you had found it so simple to arrange the caravans, the Romany protection for Alina.”

“Loiza is my uncle, and it was always planned to remove Lady Alina to the caravans, where I—we would be safer. In any event, she was never to be harmed or exposed to any real danger. The rest?” The major made a crude hand gesture that had Justin raising one eyebrow in near admiration. “Yes, the rest is lies. There is no disputed land, there never has been, other than in convenient legend. The land had only been a plausible story, although the lie difficult to maintain.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Major. I swallowed the whole thing like some idiot schoolboy for longer than it pleases me to realize, among other things I may have overlooked. Discovering a fellow assassin so close to Alina did nothing to change my mind. Your hireling, I suppose? He seemed almost eager to guide my suspicions to my Prince Regent, and I remember myself being damnably eager to point him in that same direction. Information you spoon-fed him, I’m sure.”

Luka shrugged, both his injured and uninjured shoulders. So expressive, the Romany. Sometimes to their detriment.

“It was imperative that you didn’t think too much, but only believed what was in front of your eyes. That was Loiza’s idea, once he decided I had bungled things. We’d considered others before choosing you, and that particular man had been brought to our attention. It was easy enough to hire him to lurk about the encampment in order to reinforce in you the belief that Lady Alina was in grave danger. He assured us he could speak with you and convince you of everything we needed you to believe. But something clearly went wrong.”

“For him, certainly. Although I congratulate your uncle on this much, as I certainly was distracted. Led by the nose might be more accurate, if personally damning. But now you’re attempting to tell me that Alina has never been in danger. You disappoint me. I thought there were to be no more lies.”

“I’m telling you the truth. At least the truth as we’d hoped it would be.”

“Ah, I’m relieved. I was beginning to wonder if there could be any truth left anywhere in this,” he said quietly, remembering that the Inhaber had specifically asked that the major accompany them to their meeting. “You’re a bit of a bastard, aren’t you, Major? I actually pitied you, believing you were in love with her. But that day the coach was attacked? That bullet had never been meant for Alina. It had been meant for the target it found.”

“The Inhaber had to know I would come hunting him when he learned I was to come here with Lady Alina. In Prague there had been…other attempts, but the man is always well protected. My name was somehow connected to those attempts, which is why I was asked to see the king in the first place. He made it clear to me what he wanted, and that he would help me. Yet even here in England, I would never again be allowed close to the Inhaber.”

Justin’s mind was whirling. “But someone at the English court, someone who had just been wed to one of his countrywomen, someone he would never question—that someone would be allowed close. Someone who believed he had good reason to want the Inhaber dead. Most importantly, preferably someone who wouldn’t muck up the job the way you had, someone already known—modesty aside—as being very good at what he did. Befriend the man, dine with him, and then…eliminate him, probably with what some might term extreme malice. Instead, Alina very nearly died.”

“I didn’t choose the time and place of the confrontation—he did. I was protecting her, you know. I would have suggested the caravan to you when I told you about the Inhaber, after that first night at the inn in Portsmouth, as my uncle was already waiting for us on the road to London. That was always the plan, for she and I to disappear while you executed the Inhaber for us.”

“How terribly inconsiderate of me, I’m sure. Hearing all of this, I’m amazed you can contain your contempt for me.”

The flushed cheeks were back. “You made a confusion of everything. It was you who put all of us in danger with your mad decision to send her to Ashurst Hall. She could have been injured in the cross fire during the attack, which made it my duty to protect her. I owed her father that much. And may I remind you that, by doing so, I presented my unprotected back to the enemy.”

“And now I imagine you believe I should be searching about for a medal to pin on your front? Forgive me if I leave it to others to do you that honor. Your king, I would imagine. I wonder, Major, how much of what you’re doing can be laid at the door of revenging your fellow Romany, and how much at the door of your own personal ambition. Does Loiza wonder, as well?”

“My uncle may have considered this, yes. I am not in favor at the moment.” The major shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wincing as the movement caused his shoulder to remind him of his wound—or he meant to remind Justin of his wound, assuming a gentleman wouldn’t strike an injured man. And how wrong he was. Justin hadn’t been a gentleman for a long time.

He allowed the silence to grow, until the major apparently felt it necessary to fill it.

“I may have been promised…something, once the Inhaber was no longer a problem for the king. But that’s of no matter. He needs to die.”

“Somebody should, yes, I agree. I could begin a list.”

“It was never meant to be so complicated. Your damn Prince Regent—”

“Please, leave the damning of our future king to those who will be His Royal Highness’s subjects, if you don’t mind. I should have known he didn’t come up with such an intricate plot on his own. He did try to appear brilliant and conniving, I’ll give him that, but he hasn’t the brain for intrigue.”

“True enough. He was most concerned in deciding how much he might be able to profit if he assisted our king in a matter that had nothing to do with his own interests.”

Justin laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, even to his own ears.

“Finally, something that makes sense in all of this. Prinny the plotter made no sense. Prinny the greedy buffoon and even dupe? Yes, that I can understand and even somewhat forgive. He can’t help who he is. It was you who dangled the idea in front of his face of having me buy my way back to England. No wonder he’s taken to his bed. He had no idea what I was talking about when I accused him of plotting Alina’s murder.”

“To be fair, King Francis didn’t know, either. But I tell you again, Lady Alina was never in any danger.”

“She was very nearly shot! I killed people, damn you to hell. For what?” Justin took a calming breath. He wondered if the major knew that he was seeing him through a red veil of anger. Then the rest of what the major had said penetrated his brain. “What do you mean, your king didn’t know?”

Luka sighed rather dramatically. “Kings know what they want to know. And then, like all royalty, they walk away. Minions do the rest. This doesn’t surprise you, does it, Justin?”

“Lord Wilde, thank you. Only my friends address me as Justin, Major.”

“Yes, the inestimable Baron Wilde,” the major said, and now his tone took on somewhat of an edge. “We heard about the boy in Trebon. And what you did to the father. A killer without mercy, without conscience. You were perfect for our needs. Did you really think that fat flawn in London came up with your name on his own?”

Justin ignored the question. “Why not just come to me, hire me to assassinate the man for you?”

“Would you have done it? What could we have offered you?”

Justin didn’t answer.

“We had our choice of many men, but Trebon made it clear that you were the one we wanted, especially after our failed attempts, because now the Inhaber was never alone or unprotected. We know everything about you. Tell me—the man who insulted your wife. We heard you shot him in the back at the count of two,” the major said almost gleefully. “Is that true?”

“Yes, of course, as I kill children and unarmed men, just as you said, without mercy or conscience. I’m a very bad man,” Justin said, not giving a damn what Luka thought of him. It was enough that the major had not stumbled on the fact that Robbie Farber had been Alina’s uncle. God only knew what the major would have done with that information. Perhaps there was such a thing as Fate.

Luka nodded his head, as if a suspicion had been proved true. “I thought we had chosen the wrong man that day on the dock. You play the game well, my lord, but the savage lies not far beneath the so-civilized surface. It is not only what the king will do for me that is important. What is left of my family needs to see the Inhaber dead. We, all of us, need to know he suffered, as did the merchant in Trebon. I was glad you failed the day you went riding after him. A quick death is not what we wished for him. Now I suppose we will have to satisfy ourselves if you merely tell me where we can find him. I need you to do that now, my lord.”

“I’m afraid you and your hoped-for fortune are doomed to disappointment, Major. I’ll be damned if I’ll give you his location so that you and your family can murder him and place the blame on me. He can cool his heels where he is, and then return to London. I don’t—”

Justin remembered the letter. The one where he’d offered up Alina in exchange for ten thousand pounds. The letter he’d signed with his usual flourish. Even if the Inhaber had destroyed the letter, there was still the matter of the man’s presence in London. There was no choice now; he had to meet with him. Explain. Grovel yet again, and this time to a real bastard of a man, not simply a well-born buffoon.

“Something has changed your mind, my lord, I can see it in your eyes. You will meet with the Inhaber tomorrow, won’t you? Tell me, tell me the place of this meeting.”

“Major, you’re still alive for only two reasons. The first is that I would not have Alina if not for your insane and, frankly, self-serving plotting. The second is that Loiza and the others I met in the camp have my sympathy for what Inhaber Novak did to their families. But if you want him dead, you’ll have to find a way to do that without me. I’m done, do you understand that?”

“A man like you? The madman of Trebon? A man like you does not find it so easy to be done.”

“Don’t push me, Major, or I might prove you right. I’ll proffer your thanks to the marquess and give your farewells to Alina. Brutus will meet you at the stables in one hour, to escort you back to your uncle’s camp. It seems you are to be a disappointment to him once again.”

He turned away, but then, as if he’d just thought of something else, he turned back once more. It was a maneuver that had served him well before, had even saved his life. “That morning at the inn,” he said, “when you were so adamant I not leave Alina with you while you traveled to Ashurst Hall. It seems a lifetime ago. I truly believed you were concerned for her. For the sake of her affection for you, I’d like to continue to believe that.”

The major drew himself up straight. “I would of course have been upset had any real harm come to her. She is the daughter of my commander. Still, she is only a woman. They have their place in life. They were born to be useful to us, and sacrifices must sometimes be made. That is simply the way of the world.”

“Ten minutes,” Justin bit out between clenched teeth. “Brutus won’t be happy if he’s kept waiting. No, that’s not fair. You’re injured. I’ll give you the full hour, and then Brutus can carry you out.”

“Carry—?”

Justin knocked the major to the floor with a fist flush to the jaw, then swiftly stepped down hard on his injured shoulder until the man’s eyes rolled up in his head. Then, to satisfy his curiosity, he rummaged inside the man’s sling, to be rewarded when his hand closed around the small pistol hidden there.

He pocketed the weapon that probably would have been shoved into his back before he’d made it safely out of the room.

“You should have paid more attention to your own argument, Major,” he calmly told the unconscious man. “You were right—it’s not that easy for someone like me to be done.”

But ten hours later, he very nearly was.

The Inhaber might not have been as grateful for the information Justin gave him as one would suppose, as he’d already decided that his king was very much looking forward to attending his funeral. But once the farce of the disputed land was cleared up—the man had thought Lord Wilde mad when he’d read his letter—he’d agreed to reconsider the charges of the murder of his guards, accusing instead one Major Luka Prochazka.

This seemed reasonable to the newly civilized Baron Wilde, and he instructed Brutus to please put the Inhaber down, as the man’s already red face was beginning to turn somewhat blue. He’d then tossed the Inhaber the keys to the cellars of the ruined church where the meeting had taken place, so that he could release his henchmen, who had surrendered with even more alacrity than Justin could have hoped.

A well-armed and growling Brutus did have that effect on some people, the last-moment addition of a crossbow an almost inspired touch.

With the letter that could have damned him (for the third or fourth time, he’d rather lost count of his recent indiscretions) now destroyed, all that was left was to ride back to Basingstoke, soundly kiss Alina, assure her he was fine and then gather up the inestimable Wigglesworth and hotfoot it to Carleton House, where he would grovel for, hopefully, the last time.

Except, when he rode up to the front doors of Basingstoke at noon, it was to be told that the master and mistress were not at home. Indeed, they had all, master, mistress, duke, duchess and the dear Lady Alina, departed for London within minutes of sunrise that very morning, a journey of nearly fifty miles that would require several changes of horses and the constitutions only the young possessed.

As Justin went tearing up the stairs, already ripping at his neckcloth and shouting for Wigglesworth, the butler called after him, “The Duke and Duchess of Ashurst will be meeting them there, my lord. I overheard Lady Nicole say as much to her sister the duchess. I imagine it will be quite the merry party. You are to join them at Carleton House this evening at eleven, if you wish, although you will be cutting it rather fine, won’t you, my lord?”

The butler quickly clapped his hands over the ears of the youngest footman standing in the entrance hall as Justin offered his sentiments concerning what he wished….

“NICOLE, SIT STILL,” Charlotte Daughtry begged, not for the first time since the twins had joined Alina and the duchess in the luxurious town carriage and headed off for Carleton House.

Alina had been taken to the duke’s residence because her baggage had come to London with Charlotte and Rafe, leaving the twins to complete their toilettes in Tanner’s Mayfair residence, so they had still to see Alina’s gown for the evening. Charlotte thought that delicious, proving that though she might have been a practical sort, she could very much enjoy surprising the two young brides who had once been her charges.

“But it’s so annoying. With all these coaches clogging the streets, it will take us forever to arrive. Justin can’t get there ahead of us, or it won’t matter when we get there, for he’ll have already ruined everything.”

Alina’s stomach performed a small flip as she sat on the facing seat, and it wasn’t because she was riding backward, especially not at the snail’s pace they were traveling. “She’s right, Charlotte. That could be disastrous. He’d strut into the Prince Regent’s presence, perfect as Wigglesworth can make him, imperiously demanding to see me and be assured I’m fine.”

“Just before he tears a strip off your hide for having come to London without him,” Lydia pointed out reasonably. “Tanner and Rafe have wagered fifty pounds on how long it will take him to turn from terrified fiancé to infuriated lover.”

Nicole laughed. “Well, now that we’re all such a jolly party, I must say I’m pleased that Lucas was clever enough to confine our party to just two coaches. What do you think they’re discussing back there behind us? How to subdue Justin if he becomes violent?”

“Justin doesn’t become violent,” Alina told her rather proudly. “He becomes efficient. And if he were to think that any harm might come to me, I believe he could become prodigiously efficient.”

“Oh, Lord, she’s right,” Lydia breathed, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder not only why my mind manufactures ideas such as this, but why I ever think to voice them in front of my sister.”

“But it is a brilliant idea,” Charlotte said soothingly. “It’s just as your aunt Emmaline has always said—sometimes men simply have to be saved from themselves.”

Alina giggled and sank back into the cushions. She had yet to meet the twins’ aunt, but she already liked her. Emmaline, she’d been told, was also married to a duke: the Duke of Warrington. She giggled again, knowing her nerves were badly rattled, unable to stop herself. But her aunt Mimi had always impressed upon her something she called the privileges of rank. Tonight Alina was absolutely knee-deep in dukes, and adding in the marquess made everything all the better. Bless Justin, he might think he was alone in his life, but he had very good, loyal and well-placed friends.

Perhaps enough of them to keep him from some dank cell, if Lydia’s idea failed, if she, Alina, could not do her part as she was so determined to do.

The coach moved ahead yet again, and Nicole leaned forward to peer out the window. “We’re finally here. I can actually see a small mob of people waiting to mount the steps to the front doors. I’d always thought London was very thin of company at this time of year.”

“He’s still the Prince Regent, still the heir to the throne,” Charlotte reminded them. “If His Royal Highness wishes to commemorate the anniversary of the Great Fire with tonight’s reception, then who are we to question his judgment?”

Nicole laughed. “Especially when it so neatly dovetails with our own plan. How fortunate Rafe received that invitation. Ah, at last.” She reached for the handle, ready to open the door herself before Charlotte restrained her. “Impatience. The greatest of my sins.”

“Really? I don’t remember being offered a vote in that,” Lydia said, and her sister looked at her in amused surprise, so that she shrugged delicately and added, “Tanner tells me I should speak my mind more often, rather than to keep my thoughts inside as I have always done. He said it would be very…freeing. I think he’s right.”

“And I think I’m extremely grateful the two of you are married now, and no longer Rafe’s and my responsibility. Shall we go? Alina? Are you all right, dear?”

She nodded, not quite sure she could trust her voice, and within minutes they were all slowly making their way up the outer steps and then up the curving marble staircase that led to the first floor of the Prince Regent’s London residence.

She could feel eyes on her, both from the men and the ladies. She could hear the whispers. She took herself back to the Portsmouth docks and the first time she had set foot on English soil, the homeland of her mother.

And then, in her mind’s eye, she replaced this multitude of well-dressed gentlemen and their perfumed and bejeweled ladies with the sailors, dockworkers, even the prostitutes on those docks. After all, people were people, weren’t they?

Besides, it made the whole thing easier. Especially if she continued to believe that Justin would soon be here. She did not doubt that he would have been successful in his dealings with the Inhaber. It was as Wigglesworth had assured her—the baron always prevailed. Perhaps not at first, but in the end the result was always the same. Success.

To divert her mind, she held on to the curved railing and took in her surroundings. There certainly was a multitude of gold gilt everywhere, along with crystal and stucco and a flotilla of candles that could easily have lit up a village. And yet the entire structure seemed somehow fragile to her, as if it might be only the stucco and gilt that held it all together and they were all fortunate to not have the vaulted roof tumble down on them at any moment.

She raised her eyes to the enormous chandelier at the very top of the staircase. Was that a crystal dove at the center of it? With its eyes picked out in rubies? How ludicrous!

“I’m not afraid anymore,” she whispered to Lydia as they passed beneath the chandelier. “Anyone who must try with such dedication to impress his guests cannot be anything other than terrified that he will not measure up to whatever is expected of him. Poor man.”

Lydia leaned close to whisper. “That poor man is one day to be George the Fourth, King of England. And you pity him?”

“Yes. He is probably much like my aunt Mimi. So very concerned with all that is outside of her, so that no one will notice that there is very little inside of her.”

“No wonder Justin loves you. And you will balance his cynicism for his fellow man with your compassionate heart.”

“No, it is all of you who are so compassionate, so extraordinarily kind. The Prince Regent could very easily take you all in disfavor for what you’re doing tonight.”

“We’ve already discussed this, haven’t we? We’d be very poor friends if we did not support Justin now. We’re prepared for the prince’s punishment, and even more certain there will be one. We’ll survive it, knowing we’ve done the right thing.” She squeezed Alina’s gloved hand. “Now, are you ready? We’re next to be announced. Thank goodness they limit the introduction to only the most senior titles, or we’d have another five minutes ahead of us to get through.”

Alina took a deep breath, then nodded. She only flinched the first time one of the pair of liveried footman—were they twins? did it matter?—rapped the bottom of his staff sharply against the marble floor and announced in a near bellow, “Your Royal Highnesses! The Duke and Duchess of Ashurst!”

The second footman followed with, “Your Royal Highnesses! The Duke and Duchess of Malvern.”

“Your Royal Highnesses! The Marquess and Marchioness of Basingstoke!”

And then, as her new friends stood with the ladies to the left, their husbands to the right, as though an honor guard of lesser mortals sent ahead of her, “Your Royal Highnesses! Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin!”

Alina took five steps forward into the vast ballroom and raised her gloved hands to the hood of the cloak fashioned from a thin ivory whisper of silk and antique Austrian lace that had made her such a curious and intriguing sight to the others on the stairs.

The Duke of Ashurst himself stepped forward as she lowered the hood and untied the silken strings at her throat, lifting it all away from her shoulders to reveal what had been so well hidden.

Several gasps were heard, and a ripple of low whispers began spreading out across the ballroom. “Who is she?” Alina heard. And “My God—magnificent!”

Ah, if only Justin could be here beside her. He would be so proud. She also thought he would appreciate such a moment. He was so delightfully vain.

Alina’s gown had been her greatest achievement in her purchases, other than the velvet, ermine-tipped cloak that she had once sworn she loved with all her heart.

She knew the material of her gown to be extraordinary, appearing as liquid gold, its simple bodice devoid of ruffle or sleeves. The bodice stopped at the high waist, accented by an intricate, braided knot of material, and the nominally full front piece of the skirt was seemingly made up of hundreds of pleats that ran vertically down to within a whisper of the floor. There were forty-two pleats, actually; Danica had told her that several times, having been the one who had to make them perfect with the pressing iron in an obscenely brief amount of time.

Emeralds and diamonds were everywhere. In Alina’s dark hair, which was piled at least six inches high, with ringlets caressing her neck. In her ears, on her wrists, over top her long gloves…and in the heavy necklace that possessed the famed Valentin emerald at its center. How Aunt Mimi had coveted that necklace that was never truly hers.

In the midst of all the quiet, Alina heard what she thought might be something that sounded very much like coo from somewhere behind her. She had no idea what it might mean, but she decided she would choose to be flattered.

Her chin high, she surveyed the dockworkers and sailors and prostitutes in her mind’s eye and then took the arm the Duke of Malvern offered her and proceeded directly down the center of the enormous chamber, toward the pair of thrones sitting on a cleverly tiered dais. The royal princess Charlotte occupied the smaller throne, her father the monstrously large and overly carved creation beside it.

An Ashurst footman followed them, the velvet-and-ermine cloak cradled in his outstretched arms.

Her heart pounding, her expression one of the confidence she tried with all her might to believe she possessed, Alina dropped into a deep curtsy that spread the deceptive fullness of her gown into a graceful golden puddle. “Your Royal Highness,” she said, holding out her right hand as she kept her chin high, refusing to lower her gaze as she knew she should. “My affianced husband, Lord Wilde, sends his most abject apologies for his tardiness. He assures me he will be arriving shortly to apologize personally. And to thank you, as I do now, for being the wisest of men, who has in his infinite wisdom and charity bound our two hearts together. We are both of us now and forever your most grateful and loyal subjects.”

The world stopped, held its collective breath.

Alina remained deep in her curtsy, at last lowering her head, baring the nape of her neck, as if in supplication. Her outstretched hand remained steady.

Just as she thought she had surely failed, she heard the creak of bone stays. She believed she could sense the Prince Regent rising from his red-velvet-and-gold-gilt throne. A fleshy hand took hold of hers, and she was drawn to her feet.

He bent over her fingertips, not actually kissing them, but still quite graciously, as if acknowledging her extraordinary and faintly exotic presence.

And the world breathed again.

“The shimmer of your gown is as nothing when matched with the worth of the true gold I see in your eyes, madam. The emeralds, however, are astounding. You’ve brought a present for me? From your king?” the Prince Regent asked in a curiously high-pitched voice.

Alina carefully recited the words Lucas had also penned for her, working on the two short speeches, refining them again and again during their hurried journey.

“For Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte, sir, a gift from Lord Wilde and myself, if it pleases you. There is not another like it anywhere, as is proper, for only the daughter of the most beloved Florizel can do it justice. May she wear it in good health for the next fifty years.”

Rafe nodded to the footman, and he stepped forward so that the duke could lift the cloak and flourish it, the ermine tails showing to their best advantage.

From her throne, the princess inclined her head and smiled.

“My compliments, madam. You may inform your affianced husband that he has gained himself a most delightful and formidable advocate,” the Prince Regent said quietly.

There was the sound of some commotion at the doorway to the ballroom, and Alina hid a smile.

“I believe it may be possible that you might tell him yourself, Your Highness.”

She didn’t turn to watch, even as another round of gasps danced about the ballroom, even as she heard and recognized the confident footfalls of her beloved approaching.

Only when she felt his presence beside her did she dare to look at him. Oh, he was such a handsome fellow in his finery. Even if his neckcloth was slightly askew, and his hair somewhat the worse for the hat that must have sat on it for several long hours. She bit back a smile. The man actually smelled a bit of horse. Poor Justin. How his consequence must be suffering, that he was not his usual pristine and perfect self.

And how important she must be to him.

“Justin,” she said quietly.

“Alina,” he drawled almost languidly, without so much as nodding his head in her direction. “Imagine seeing you here. Was Basingstoke that much of a bore in my absence?”

Oh, dear. If he grew any more polite, she felt sure the pressure building up inside of him would soon have the top of his head exploding into pieces. He must be very worried about her.

“Your Royal Highness,” Justin said then, as he moved closer to the dais and bowed deeply to the Prince Regent, his voice so low, so intimate, that even Alina had difficulty hearing him. “My betrothed means well, but she is not a part of this. I am here to tell you that I was wrong and present myself for punishment. What transpired between us the last time I was in this building was unforgivable, the worst of it being that I misjudged you, and that I likewise misjudged my deep love and devotion for this country. I offer no excuses. No apology, no matter how abject or sincere, can adequately correct the insult I have dealt you. I can only say that I will do anything you ask, Your Highness. I am yours to command.”

“How delightful, if difficult to believe. Yet rather easy to prove,” the Prince Regent said just as quietly. “Would you give her up if I were to ask it of you—for love of Crown and country?”

At last Justin turned his head to look at Alina. His eyes widened slightly, which served to warm her heart quite a lot. He took her hand in his, which brought tears to her eyes.

Please, Lord, let him behave. Please make him be diplomatic. Please don’t let him say anything witty and damning….

Justin turned back to the Prince Regent. “No,” he said flatly.

The future king at last showed that he wasn’t as shallow and perhaps even stupid as many of his subjects would believe. He nodded, smiled—he was really rather handsome when he smiled, Alina thought charitably—and said, “Take her home, Wilde, now. Leave this very minute. Your lady, and your impertinent friends. We look forward to the pleasure of your company again in the spring. But not until then, not any of you. Do we understand each other?”

They were prepared for this. They knew this could be their very public punishment so that the Prince Regent might have his small victory. Say yes, Justin, Alina prayed silently. They’re your friends, our friends. Take what they’ve offered. You’re not alone. You’ll never again be alone….

“Yes, Your Highness,” Justin said.

EPILOGUE

ALINA RAN ALONG THE PATH that wound through trees just budding with bright, spring-green leaves, her muslin skirts hiked almost above her knees as she laughed, occasionally daring a glance back to search out her pursuer.

Just as she burst from the shade of the trees, into the grassy clearing that bordered one of the streams flowing through the country estate, she found herself caught up and swung high off the ground.

“Justin! How do you always do this?” she exclaimed, resting her hands on his broad shoulders. “We always begin together, yet even when I manage to elude you, I can never arrive here first. You must know a secret path.”

He lowered her slowly, their bodies touching in that now-familiar and yet still so thrilling way, until their lips met in a brief kiss before he set her back on her feet. “Perhaps I am a mullo, and flew here in the form of a bat,” he said teasingly as they walked hand in hand to the edge of the stream.

“No,” she protested, her good humor fled. “Loiza has told me stories of these supposed vampires. To the Romany a mullo is a terrible dead person who returns only to do malicious things. You do good things. You gave Loiza some of your land.”

“Our land, kitten, and he refused the deed, only accepting the offer to set up camp there whenever he wished. And in return he gave me your caravan,” Justin pointed out. “I think that you’re taking my selfishness for more than it is.”

She glanced back at the gaily painted caravan that had been her refuge for several days during that terrible and yet glorious time and now sat permanently here, a wedding gift from her husband. She hadn’t told him, but she valued this gift more than any of the others, including the sable-trimmed cloak he had been so proud of. Cloaks, furs, jewels: they were all simply things. The caravan was and would always be their most private refuge, something much more special, something totally theirs.

“You also arranged for Loiza to be able to return Luka’s body to Prague, for burial.”

“And to watch as the Inhaber Novak was publicly executed for having murdered the major right on the streets of London. I enjoyed listening to Loiza’s recounting of that particular event. Darling, I’m trying my best to be good, but don’t paint me as more than I am.”

“If you promise not to paint yourself as less than you are,” she bargained, taking his hand and leading him toward the caravan. “I must insist you be your wonderful, witty, imperious self when we all travel to London next week. Lydia wrote to me, you know. She says that it is definite, and the princess Charlotte will be presenting the Prince Regent with his first grandchild before the year is out. You must remember to congratulate him when we appear at Carleton House.”

“Why?” Justin teased as he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the caravan. “He had nothing to do with it.”

“I see I should have made myself more clear. You will please be witty and imperious except when speaking to the Prince Regent. Honestly, Justin, do you like being banished to the country for months at a time?”

“As long as you’re here with me, I believe I might even prefer it. Now, kitten, I assume you invited me to join you here for some reason?”

Accepting the support of his hand, Alina mounted the three steps to the caravan and ducked inside, quickly stepping to her right so that he would have an unimpeded view of the interior.

“Well, hello,” he said as he joined her, his smile, as always, melting her heart. “Would that be a splendid new and infinitely larger bed I’m seeing, or an invitation? Or, if I’m a very lucky man, and I thank the Fates that it appears that I am—both?”

She smiled, her heart full, and reached up to undo his neckcloth. “And I am a very fortunate woman.”

ISBN: 978-1-4268-7567-0

HOW TO WED A BARON

Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn Seidick

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

For questions and comments about the quality of this book please contact us at Customer_eCare@Harlequin.ca.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

www.HQNBooks.com