LITMIR.BIZ

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bell pull and left the chamber.

      She met the valet in the hall, where he must have been hovering, having no doubt been informed by the butler of her brother’s return—and condition. ‘I’m afraid he’s disguised again and feeling quite ill. You’d better bring up some hot water and strip him down.’

      Feeling a pang of sympathy for the long-suffering servant, Amanda headed for the stairs. She paused on the landing, pressing her fingers against the temples that had begun to throb.

      Between her irresponsible brother and her sullen cousin and having to watch Papa drift around the halls and fields, a wraith-like imitation of his former hale and hearty self, was it any wonder she longed to leave Ashton and throw herself into the frivolity of London? There the most difficult dilemma would be choosing what gown to wear, her most pressing problem fitting into her social schedule all the events to which she’d be invited. Her day would be so full, she’d tumble into bed and immediately into sleep, never lie awake aching and alone, yearning for the love and security so abruptly ripped from her.

      Oh, that she might swiftly make a brilliant début, acquire a husband to pamper and adore her and settle into the busy life of a London political wife, seldom to visit the country again.

      She only hoped, as she went to search out Cook and rearrange dinner, that their unwanted guest would not make the last few weeks before she could set her plans in motion even more difficult.

       Chapter Two

      With a bestial roar, the crewman tossed the boarding nets over the side of the pirate vessel. Fear, acrid in his throat, along with a wave of excitement, carried Greville over the side and on to its prow, into the mass of slashing cutlasses, firing pistols and thrusting pikes. Blood already coated the decks, thick and slippery, when he saw the pirate charging at the captain, curved sword raised and teeth bared …

      Abruptly, Greville came awake, his heart pounding as the shriek of wind, boom of musket fire and howls of fighting men slowly faded to the quiet tick of a clock in a room where warm sunlight pooled on the floor beneath the windows.

      Morning sun, judging by the hue, he thought, trying to get his bearings. Brighter than light through a porthole.

      About the moment Greville realised he was in a proper bedchamber—a vast, elegant bedchamber—in Lord Bronning’s home at Ashton Grove, Devonshire, praise-the-Lord-England, he heard a discreet cough. Turning towards the sound, he spied a young man in footman’s livery standing inside the doorway, bearing a laden tray.

      ‘Morning, sir,’ the lad said, bowing. ‘Sands sent me up with something from the kitchen, thinking you’d likely be right sharp-set after so many hours.’

      ‘Have I been asleep long?’ Greville asked, still trying to recapture a sense of place and time.

      ‘Aye,’ the young man replied. ‘All the first night, the next day and now ‘tis almost noon of the next. Some of the staff was worried you was about to stick your spoon in the wall. But Mrs Pepys—that’s the housekeeper, sir—she’s done some nursing and she said as long as you was breathing deep and regular, there weren’t no danger of you dying and that you’d feel much the better for the rest.’

      He did feel much better, Greville thought. Moreover, he realised suddenly, for the first time since his wounding over a month ago, he hadn’t awakened to the slow, strength-sapping burn of fever.

      He was also, he discovered, truly starving. Contemplating what might lie beneath the plate cover on the tray, his mouth began to water.

      ‘You are right, I am very hungry,’ he told the footman.

      ‘Shall I put the tray on the bed here for you, sir?’

      ‘Yes, that would be fine. Thank you …’ He hesitated.

      ‘Luke, sir,’ the footman supplied. ‘Sands says I’m to assist you with dressing and such, if’n you need any help.’

      ‘I’d like a bath after I’ve eaten, if you would arrange that. I’ll be better able to ascertain how much assistance I’ll require then. Oh—and if you please, ask that housekeeper for some linen bandages. I’ve a wound I’ll have to rebind.’

      ‘Very good, sir,’ the footman said, depositing the tray in front of him. ‘I’ll go see about your bath. By the by, there’s a chest by the fireplace and a note sent by your sister, Lady Greaves.’

      Greaves? He did not even know which of his sisters had married into that name.

      After being gone so long from England, his time spent at hard labour in a job for which he’d had no preparation or training, the idea that he was part of a family beyond the wooden walls of the Illustrious seemed disorienting. Not that he’d paid a good deal of attention to his closest kin before his involuntary removal from British soil.

      A frisson of guilt passed through him. Truth be told, he’d seldom troubled himself to think at all about the family that had pampered and sheltered him for the first sixteen years of his life, before his father and sisters departed for India, leaving him at Cambridge. He’d contacted Papa only when he needed him to call upon his Army contacts to arrange Greville’s service with the commissariat during the Waterloo campaign. And afterwards, wanting for some sort of position to support himself, he’d solicited his cousin the marquess’s help in providing one.

      He shifted uncomfortably. He still had much to atone for in rectifying how that latter situation had turned out.

      ‘Let me have the letter before you go,’ he told the footman. ‘I’ll deal with the trunk later.’

      After passing him the folded missive, the footman bowed himself out of the room. Greville’s growling stomach reminded him it had been many hours since he’d last eaten—he had only a dim memory of wolfing down some sort of stew sent up the night of his arrival. He put the letter aside, content to wait to discover which of his sisters was the mysterious ‘Lady Greaves’ until after he’d taken the edge off his hunger.

      As he removed the cover from the plate, the wonderful odour of eggs, bacon, beef, potatoes, ham and kippers wafted up, along with the sharp aroma of hot coffee and the pungent tang of ale. Inhaling with rapture, he abandoned himself to the pleasure of consuming the first full hot meal he’d had since leaving England eight months ago.

      The food tasted better than any breakfast he could remember. Of course, after months at sea on a diet that consisted mostly of hardtack, boiled beef and an occasional plum duff, it wouldn’t take much for Lord Bronning’s cook to impress him.

      A short time later, his happy stomach replete, Greville broke the seal on the note and, still sipping the delicious ambrosia of hot coffee, rapidly scanned it.

      The signature, ‘Joanna’, indicated his benefactress must be his widowed elder sister, who had obviously remarried. He vaguely recalled that she’d sent him word of her first husband’s death just after he’d taken over as manager at Blenhem Hill. Greville scanned his memory, but could not place any gentleman with the family name ‘Greaves’. Still, by adding ‘Lady’ to her name this time—more dignity than had been due her after wedding a mere younger son from the prominent Merrill family—she must have married well.

      She might even rank higher now than some of the former in-laws who had snubbed her. Greville hoped so.

      If Papa and the rest of the family were still in India—and he had no reason to suppose they had returned—it must have been Joanna who’d pieced together the mystery of his disappearance, then entreated his exalted cousin Lord Englemere to search for him.

      Having dismissed Greville from the job he’d solicited as estate manager at Blenhem Hill for incompetence and embezzlement—the first charge deserved, the second not—Englemere himself was unlikely to have been concerned about, or even aware of, Greville’s precipitous and unwilling departure from England.

      That Englemere had intervened, he was certain. Only a man with the influence and the prestige of a marquess, one

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