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as she has had her fourth child.’

      Lucinda paled noticeably. ‘Married with four children?’

      She gawped. ‘But he hardly looked old enough.’

      ‘Oh, people are always saying that to him. Are they not, Aunt?’ Desperation lent her voice credence and she was pleased to see Miriam nod vigorously. ‘Perhaps in the dark you did not see him properly.’

      The Duke of Carisbrook’s face was inscrutable, though his sister insisted on some recompense. ‘We are going to Falder next week, Asher. Could we not invite the Countess and her niece? As a means of saying thank you.’

      Emerald’s heartbeat accelerated at the question.

      ‘Indeed.’ His reply could hardly have held less of a welcome, but, seeing the glimmer of opportunity, she seized upon it.

      ‘We would be delighted to visit your home, Lady Lucinda. Why, I could hardly think of anywhere I should rather go.’

      A way into Falder. A first unexpected providence. And although Emerald wished that he could have shown more enthusiasm for the promise of their company, she was not daunted. One night. That was all it would take.

      ‘And your cousin, Liam Kingston, would be most welcome,’ Lucinda added, ‘for I should deem it an honour to thank him for his assistance in person.’ She gripped her brother’s arm in entreaty and Asher Wellingham inclined his head in response.

      ‘Bring him along by all means, Lady Emma, for a man who can dispose so summarily of the Earl of Westleigh and deliver my sister home without recompense is to be much admired.’

      The thought did cross Emerald’s mind that his voice had an odd edge of question to it but she couldn’t be certain, for he did not look at her again before gathering his sister’s hand into his own and politely bidding them goodbye.

      As they heard his carriage pull away, Miriam began to smile. ‘I would say that went very well, would you not, my dear? Aye, very well indeed.’

      Emerald crossed to the window and looked out.

       Very well?

      She wondered if her aunt needed new glasses and smiled at the thought before gingerly touching her own throbbing cheekbone.

      ‘What do you know about the Countess of Haversham, Jack?’ Asher leaned back in a chair in his library and drew on his cigar. He’d barely managed an hour of sleep last night but, with his body mellow with brandy, the peace here was pleasant. For just a moment the familiar anger that haunted him was quieter.

      ‘Her husband, Matthew, died from heart failure five years back and it was said that his gambling debts were substantial.’

      ‘So the Countess sold off the furniture to pay her creditors?’

      ‘She what?’

      ‘Sold off the furniture. I was at the Haversham town house in Park Street this morning and there were three chairs and a table in one room and little else in any of the others.’

      Jack leant forward, intrigued. ‘That explains the gowns they wear then. And the niece’s hairstyle. Home-done, I would wager, and by her very own hand, though there was something Tony Formison told me yesterday that did not ring true. He said that Lady Emma had not come down from the country at all, but had arrived a few months ago aboard one of his father’s ships with two black servants and a number of very heavy-looking chests.’

      Asher began to laugh. The books he had seen in the drawing room? They were hers? ‘Formison was on the docks when she arrived?’

      ‘Aye, and he said that he could have sworn her hair was longer.’

      ‘Longer?’

      ‘To her waist according to Tony, and looking nothing like it appears to now.’ He stood and retrieved his hat from the table beside him, bending to look at the label on the bottle as he did so. ‘It’s late and long past the time that I should have been home, but you always have such fine brandy, Asher. Where’s this one from?’

      ‘From the Charente in France.’

      ‘A boon from your last trip?’

      Asher nodded. ‘I’ll have some sent to you, but in return I want you to find out from Formison exactly where the boat that brought Emma Seaton to London came in from. Which port and which month.’

      Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

      ‘Ask discreetly and in the name of precaution, for I don’t want problems resulting from this information.’

      ‘Problems for Emma Seaton or problems for yourself? I thought you seemed rather taken by her at my ball.’

      ‘You misinterpret things, Jack. I put my arms out and caught her as she threw herself against me. Hard, I might add, and with none of the wiles that I am more used to. Before she had even hit the floor she had her eyes open; there was a calculation there that might be construed as unnerving.’

      Jack began to laugh. ‘You’re saying she may have done it on purpose?’

      ‘I doubt I’ll ever know, though a betting man would have to say that the odds were more than even.’ The humour faded quickly from his eyes as he continued. ‘Besides, I am too old to fall for the tricks of a green and simpering country miss.’

      ‘You’re thirty-one and hardly over the hill and Lady Emma is … different from the others … less readable. If you are not interested in her, then I sure as hell am.’

      ‘No!’ Asher was as surprised by the emotion in the word as Jack was, and to hide it he collected the remains of the brandy and corked the top. ‘For the road,’ he muttered as he handed the bottle to him, swearing quietly as the door shut behind his departing friend.

      Emma Seaton.

      Who exactly was she? For the first time in a very long while a sense of interest welled to banish the ennui that had overcome him after Melanie’s death.

      Melanie.

      His wife.

      He fingered the ring that he wore on his little finger, the sapphires wrought in gold the exact shade of eyes he would never see again. Her wedding ring. His glance automatically went to the missing digits of his other hand. With good came bad.

      He frowned and remembered his return to England after a good fourteen months of captivity. Any innocence he might have been left with had been easily stripped away. He was different. Harder. He could see it reflected in the face of his brother and in the eyes of his mother and aunt. Even his impetuous sister was afraid, sometimes, of him.

      Running his hand through his hair, he frowned. Brandy made him introspective. And Emma Seaton touched him in places that he had long thought of as dead.

      It was the look in her eyes, he decided, and the husky timbre of her voice when she forgot the higher whine. She gave the impression of a frail and fragile woman, yet when she had fallen against him at the ball he had felt an athletic and toned strength. The sort of strength that only came with exercise or hard work.

      He was certain that the mishap had been deliberate and he tried to remember who else had been standing beside him. Lance Armitage and Jack’s father John Derrick, older men with years of responsibility and solid morality behind them. Nay, it was him she had targeted and now he had asked her to Falder.

      On cue?

      No, that could not possibly be. He was seeing problems where none existed. The woman was scared of her own shadow, for God’s sake, and unusually clumsy. She was also threadbare poor. A wilder thought surfaced. Was she after the Carisbrook fortune? A gold digger with a new and novel way of bagging her quarry? He remembered the countless women who had tried to snare him since Melanie’s death.

      Lord, he thought and lifted a candlestick from the mantelpiece before opening the door and striking out for the music room. Melanie’s piano stood in a raft of moonlight, the black and white keys

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