Secrets of the Heart - Candace Camp

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the heart of a woman.

      He had been almost thirty when he met Rachel, far too old to still know so little about love and courtship. He had grown up quiet and bookish, in chosen opposition to his father. His father had tainted the Westhampton name with scandal. An outdoors man with huge appetites, the former Lord Westhampton had lived exactly as he pleased. He had eaten and drunk to excess, never counting it a good evening unless he went stumbling and belching to bed. He had been wild in his youth, gambling, drinking and wenching, and his ways did not change much when at last Michael’s grandfather forced his son into marriage.

      Michael had been more like his mother, a quiet, intelligent woman who loved books and knowledge far more than the usual feminine pursuits of clothes and parties. Michael had seen the pain in his mother’s eyes, and he had known that his father was the cause of it. He had hated his father for his excesses and his bullying, and he had vowed never to be the sort of man his father was.

      Michael had learned to ride and shoot and hunt; he had been taught the manly art of boxing, as well as the more gentlemanly art of fencing. His father had insisted on his learning these things, which to him constituted the education of a British gentleman, and Michael had learned them as he did everything, with quiet determination. But while he did not have it in him to do any less than the best he could in such sports, he did not love them as he loved the education of his mind. His happiness lay in books and in the quiet hours he spent reading and puzzling out the mysteries of the universe. He had a thirst for knowledge that equaled his father’s thirst for liquor.

      He despised his father for his loose, hedonistic ways, for the shame he had brought upon his family’s name and the pain he had brought to his gentle wife, and he had vowed early on never to be like his father. Where his father was prodigal, he was wise with money, recouping the family fortune that his father had tried his best to throw away. Where his father was greedy, he was abstemious. And where his father blustered and roared, he kept his temper in check. Michael was controlled, intelligent and circumspect. He enjoyed his time at Oxford and made friends among the men of letters and science whom he met there. After his father died—from a broken neck in a fall off a horse one night as he rode home inebriated—Michael spent most of his time in solitude at the family estate in the Lake District, reading, restoring the estate and corresponding with those of like mind.

      The only time he had veered from his quiet life had been during the war, when Sir Robert Blount—a friend of his who worked in the government—had begged for Michael’s help in catching a ring of Napoleon’s spies operating within England. His friend had asked Michael to try his hand at deciphering the coded messages that the spies were using, knowing that such puzzles were precisely the sort of thing that Michael enjoyed. He had soon broken the code, and had found himself being drawn more and more into the game of intrigue. He told himself that he did it only for patriotism and for the intellectual challenge, but he knew, with some degree of shame, that he enjoyed the excitement and danger of it, as well. There was something elementally satisfying in using his wits and physical skills to defeat his opponents, a certain giddy pleasure in escaping danger. He discovered that he had a heretofore untapped talent for disguises and accents, that he was able to mingle with people of widely varying classes and places without being detected. His unobtrusive demeanor and his attractive but unremarkable looks made it easy to disappear into any crowd.

      After the war ended, his life settled into its former quiet routine. It bothered him a little that he missed the excitement of the intrigue; the love of danger reminded him too much of his father, and he hated to see in himself anything of the former Lord Westhampton.

      He was not actively looking for a wife. When he chanced to think about the matter, he assumed that he would someday marry someone of appropriate birth and like interests, a woman with whom he could raise a family and share a life. He was not expecting the thunderbolt of passion that struck him the first time he saw Rachel Aincourt.

      He was in London for part of the Season, as was his custom, and he had attended a large party with his friend Peregrin Overhill. Perry had been waxing enthusiastic over a new beauty in town, but as Perry was the sort who often raved over some girl or other, though without ever actually pursuing them, Michael had, frankly, paid little attention to what he had said about Lord Ravenscar’s youngest daughter. He had little doubt that she was lovely to look at. Michael was friends with the Duke of Cleybourne, and his duchess, Caroline, Ravenscar’s oldest daughter, was, indeed, a beauty.

      But when he entered the crowded ballroom and caught sight of Rachel, slim and tall in her elegant white dress, the word beauty scarcely seemed adequate to describe her. Her face glowed, the fair skin touched with pink at the cheeks and as soft as velvet. Her green eyes, fringed with lashes as black as the curls on her head, were brilliant and huge. And when she smiled—well, there were not words to convey how his heart had turned within his chest, and his life, formerly so routine, organized and calm, suddenly became a chaotic and glorious tumult of feeling.

      All his previous thoughts of a pleasant marriage flew out the window. He knew as soon as he crossed the room and spoke to her that this was the woman he wanted as his wife. This soft-spoken girl with the dazzling smile awoke in him such passion, such emotion, that he knew he could never feel this way about anyone else.

      He set about courting her in a gentlemanly way—never, of course, doing anything untoward or extreme, but consistently calling on her, taking her for an occasional ride in his high-wheeled tilbury, dancing the politely curtailed two dances at balls. He was aided in his efforts by the fact that he was already friends with the Duke of Cleybourne and therefore had frequent access to his house. Both the duchess and Lady Ravenscar, alert to every nuance of interest from a marriageable male, were sure to include him in any party they made up, whether for a picnic or a night at the opera or taking in the newest play at Drury Lane.

      Michael did not delude himself that he was a figure of high romance to a young girl, but he was aware that he was considered a marital prize, being not only titled and wealthy, but also quite presentable in looks and manner. He knew that Rachel did not love him, but he was hopeful that in time he could win her heart. She did not turn down his offers of a ride along Rotten Row, and she always seemed happy enough to talk to him whenever he made up one of their party. He would have moved more slowly, allowing her time to develop some affection for him, but he knew from Cleybourne that Ravenscar, perennially strapped for cash, was likely to give his daughter’s hand to the first eligible man to make her an offer. Given that one of the most likely men to offer for her had been Sir Wilfred Hamerston-Smythe, a widower old enough to be Rachel’s father and from whom many had suggested his wife had died to get away, Michael knew it was not a matter of conceit to think that Rachel would be happier married to him.

      He had not really considered the possibility that Rachel would turn down his offer. Daughters generally married as their parents wished, and she, too, would have known that his offer was among the best of her options. So, even though Rachel’s demeanor when accepting his proposal had been subdued and even, he thought, a little red eyed, he had put it down to the remnants of a girl’s romantic hopes that her future husband would be a knight from a fairy tale, come riding to rescue her. He would make her happy, he told himself. He knew that he was probably a rather dull, bookish figure to a young woman, but he thought that his gentle wooing, his respect and love and consideration of her would engender in her some affection that he could build into, if not the fire of passion, at least a warm glow of love.

      He had not realized then that not only did she not love him, she loved someone else.

      Just thinking about it now was enough to pierce his chest with pain. Michael sighed and dropped the curtain, walking away from the window. He wrapped his dressing gown around himself and slumped down in a chair, his gaze turning inward to the time over seven years ago when he discovered, only two days before the wedding, that his fiancée had eloped with another man.

      

      Their wedding was to be celebrated here at Westhampton in the picturesque stone Norman church in the village, where all the earls of Westhampton had been married for longer than anyone could remember. The house was packed with friends and family who had come to celebrate the wedding, and still more were staying in the inn in the village and with Sir Edward Moreton, a neighbor whose kind lady had taken on the

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