One

 

Charlotte Deeping walked along a country footpath, partly shielded from the brisk October wind by a thorny hedge. The month was almost over, and she was glad of her warm cloak and thick gloves. Yellow leaves rustled at her side, under scudding clouds, and wizened berries hung on the branches. The air brought the scents of the waning year and thoughts of endings. She told herself she was not lonely, but she couldn’t help wishing for her three best friends. Ada, Harriet, and Sarah had been her constant companions since they had met at school at thirteen. They’d been the sisters she’d never had, and she missed them with a wistful melancholy that was unlike her. She was the acerbic one. Nothing depressed her spirits.

A clutching briar snagged her cloak. Charlotte pulled it free. Her friends were all far away and married now. She had turned twenty. It was time to think of the future—a topic as thorny as the hedgerow.

With only a flurry of hoofbeats as a warning, a rider hurtled into sight above the shrubs on her left, jumping bushes, path, and all. More than a thousand pounds of horse surged past a few feet from her nose, so close that it seemed gigantic.

Charlotte threw up her arms and jerked backward. Her bootheel caught in the hem of her cloak. She staggered, lurched, and fell flat on her back with a thud that drove the breath from her lungs. Her bonnet tipped forward and covered her face.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed an appalled male voice. There were subdued hoofbeats as the rider turned his mount. “Are you all right?” he called.

Charlotte concentrated on catching her breath. She knew she would, eventually, but the struggle was frightening. Her chest wouldn’t work, which goaded her toward panic. That and the fact that one more step and the horse would have hit her, breaking bones at the very least.

Feet hit the ground nearby. Then two knees in riding breeches thumped down at her side, just visible from under the skewed brim of her bonnet. “Miss? Are you all right? Oh lord. Can I…? What shall I…?”

At last, Charlotte’s lungs started functioning again. She drew in a welcome deep breath, and then another. She pushed back her hat and glared up at a figure silhouetted by the sun. “What the deuce did you think you were doing?” she asked.

The man drew back. He was holding the reins of a dancing, snorting hunter, who clearly objected to Charlotte’s incursion into their ride. “I didn’t realize there was a path along here,” he said. “I was just hacking cross-country, you know.”

She knew all too well. The area around the Deepings’ Leicestershire home filled up with hordes of hey-go-mad young gentlemen as the foxhunting season approached each year.

“My friend Stanley Deeping told me the country was good in this direction.”

“Oh, Stanley.” The second of Charlotte’s four brothers had the brains of a huge friendly dog. In her opinion.

“You know Stanley?” He seemed pleased by this fact.

“He’s my brother.”

“Oh.” The sun-dazzled figure cocked his head. “You must be Charlotte then. Miss Deeping, that is.”

His tone had altered. Charlotte didn’t know what her brothers had told their cronies about her, but she doubted it was completely flattering. She sat up and adjusted her bonnet, insofar as that was possible. She suspected the back was irreparably crushed.

“Let me help you.” He offered a hand.

“Is your hand shaking?” she asked him.

“What? No.”

It definitely was. She decided to take it. He rose and pulled her to her feet in one smooth motion with an excess of casual strength.

Charlotte looked up and up. She was thought tall for a girl, but this man overtopped her by six inches. He…loomed. Though she didn’t think he was doing it on purpose. He was bent forward, his forehead creased with worry.

Height was the only thing they had in common. He was well muscled, while she was often judged too slender. His hair was light brown, while hers was black. He had guileless blue eyes, and she an acute dark gaze. Handsome, yes, he was—very. A bit too much to be comfortable. And possibly well aware of it. She couldn’t quite tell. He was probably around Stanley’s age of twenty-six. She realized she was still holding his hand. She dropped it.

More than likely, he had the brains of a flea, Charlotte thought. Stanley didn’t cultivate intellectual friends, while she was known for her sharp mind. It went with her sharp tongue and angular frame.

“I really am sorry,” he said. “Are you all right? Shall I take you home?”

“Throwing me over your saddle like young Lochinvar?”

His eyes widened. “Who?”

“It’s a poem. Never mind.” It was foolish to quote poetry to Stanley’s friends. Even Walter Scott.

“Oh, a poem.” He said the word as if it explained any amount of strangeness.

“I’m quite all right,” Charlotte added. “You should continue your ride.” She wanted him to go. She needed to collect herself. Far more than should have been necessary, even considering the fall.

He looked uncertain. “I’m Glendarvon, by the way,” he said. “Not a proper introduction, but I know your name, so…”

Charlotte searched her memory. She didn’t think Stanley had ever mentioned anyone named Glendarvon. By the way he said it, she suspected it was a title. Her mother would know. She was a compendium of such information.

“It’s too bad you don’t have your horse. You could show me the best fox runs hereabouts.” He said it with the air of someone offering a treat.

It never occurred to him that she wouldn’t have a horse. Which was reasonable. Of course she did. In her family, it was unthinkable not to ride. The Deepings had been breeding racehorses and hunters since the time of Charles the Second. That racing-mad monarch had knighted her ancestor for his outstanding efforts. The family had grown increasingly prosperous because they didn’t keep a racing stable themselves but rather sold to those who indulged in that expensive pastime. And the hunting season was her family’s glory. Her father and brothers were all dead keen, even Cecil the dandy. And her mother enjoyed their happiness. “I’m sure Stanley will take you around,” Charlotte said.

He nodded, not looking particularly disappointed. “Don’t suppose you hunt.”

She could have. She certainly rode well enough. But she didn’t. Charlotte had no interest in being spattered head to toe in mud while chasing foxes who didn’t deserve that level of organized aggression. In her opinion. She started to say so. But this topic was the subject of fierce arguments with her brothers, in a family that specialized in loud debates over the dinner table. She didn’t care to begin one here, with a stranger.

“If you’re sure you’re all right?” he asked.

“Perfectly.”

“Well, then I suppose…”

“Go on.” Charlotte made a shooing motion.

Moving with loose-limbed grace, he mounted the horse.

“Do watch where you jump,” she added.

“I will.” He gave her a small salute and rode off.

Charlotte watched him go. He had an admirable ease in the saddle, but any friend of Stanley’s would. He didn’t look back. Why would he?

She resumed her walk but found her steps turning back toward home rather than onward. And when she reached the house, she went in search of her mother.

“That’s Laurence Lindley, Marquess of Glendarvon,” Mama replied when she inquired. “Stanley knows him from Eton. He’s staying with us. He arrived this morning.”

“Here?” asked Charlotte. Their house was spacious, but the family nearly filled it when they all were at home. It couldn’t accommodate many of her brothers’ cronies who came up for the hunting. They usually stayed in nearby inns.

“I thought we would put up a few of the boys’ friends.”

“The most ‘suitable’ unmarried ones?” Charlotte asked drily.

Her mother looked furtive. They resembled each other in the face, with dark eyes and angular features. Mama was smaller and more rounded, however. Ladies were supposed to be softly rounded, Charlotte thought. As well as sweet and biddable. And pure as the driven snow. She’d often wondered how these traits were to be reconciled. Biddable and pure could so easily conflict.

“You didn’t take to any young men during the season,” her mother replied. “I thought this would be an opportunity to become acquainted in easier circumstances.”

“I’ve told you I don’t intend to marry,” replied Charlotte.

“You have.” Her mother’s tone had gone acerbic now. “A number of times.”

“Yet you don’t listen to me.”

“Because it’s nonsense. What else will you do? All your friends have married.”

“I could help Papa breed horses. Henry doesn’t wish to. He wants to be a diplomat. And Cecil is too fashionable to run the stables.”

“And Stanley and Bertram?”

It was true that these brothers were deeply involved in the breeding schemes. And they were far better at it than Charlotte. Her liking for horses didn’t stretch to the smallest details of their pedigrees and temperaments.

“You will be happy with a husband and family of your own.”

As Mama was. And so she wanted that for Charlotte. But they were quite different people. Oddly, Charlotte thought she was probably most like her brother Cecil, despite her tepid interest in fashion. He would be horrified by the comparison, she thought with a smile.

“That’s better,” said her mother. “You have such a lovely smile.”

No one seemed to realize how infuriating that remark nearly always was, Charlotte noted.

***

Laurence couldn’t believe the level of noise at the Deeping dinner table. Shouting seemed acceptable, even de rigueur. Passionate debates raged in several spots, competing for attention. The other two houseguests, old friends of Henry Deeping, had plunged right in, seemingly accustomed to the din. One of them pounded on the table now, rehashing a controversy from past hunting seasons with obvious relish.

He supposed it wasn’t really shouting. Just lively argument. But Laurence had been reared by dutiful, correct, and very quiet people. Orphaned at four, the last of an eminent family line, he’d been put in the hands of subdued caretakers whose faces had continually changed. He’d scarcely had time to know one before they were gone. Later, when he came of age, his trustees had explained that they hadn’t wanted him to become too attached to any caretakers, lest he be taken advantage of. They’d seemed to expect praise and gratitude for their efforts. Laurence hadn’t provided them.

The kind of mayhem surrounding him now would have meant disaster in his early life. A voice somewhere deep in him cried, “Fire, fear, foes!” He didn’t show that, of course. He’d learned very early to keep such feelings to himself. And since he’d attained his full growth and musculature, no one seemed to expect emotion of him, which made things easier. People who looked like him were not supposed to be anxious.

“Fop,” said Bertram Deeping to his older brother Cecil.

“If you think being fashionable makes one weak, I am happy to take you outside and thrash you,” replied Cecil.

“What, beat me senseless with your masses of fobs?” asked Bertram.

“With my punishing left,” Cecil replied. “As you may remember from the last time.”

Bertram grimaced. Then he laughed, which Laurence found inexplicable.

Laurence was still getting Stanley’s brothers straight. They all had dark hair and eyes and a similar sharp cast of features. The eldest, Henry, was three years older than Laurence’s twenty-five and seemed a pleasant, polished fellow. Apparently, Henry was set on the diplomatic corps as a path to make his way in the world. He was also, according to Stanley, a devil of a marksman, the envy of Manton’s shooting gallery in London.

Stanley threw back his head and laughed at something his father said. The tallest and bulkiest of the four Deeping brothers, Stanley was the most open, accepting fellow Laurence had ever known. They’d met at Eton when Laurence first arrived, fresh from the strict, austere preparatory school he’d detested. Thirteen years old, Laurence had been wary and reluctant and nearly sick with nerves. And then Stanley had happened along, discovered they lived in neighboring counties, and greeted him with metaphorically open arms. Stanley had just assumed they’d be friends, with no guile whatsoever, and he’d guided Laurence to his quarters and the classrooms and past the potential perils of the place with kindness and unfailing good humor. Laurence would always be grateful to this least self-conscious of human beings.

Perhaps the third brother, Cecil, had absorbed all the self-consciousness available in the family, Laurence decided. Cecil was unmistakably a dandy. His waistcoat was bright enough to hurt one’s eyes. And he couldn’t wear all those fobs hunting, surely? The clatter would scare off the foxes. Yet, unlike many of his ilk, there was muscle under Cecil’s exquisite coat and a hint of laughter in his eyes. “Puppy,” he said to Bertram.

The youngest brother at eighteen, Bertram stuck out his tongue, earning a reprimand from his mother and ignoring it with all the exuberant bravado of his age. He seemed a bit unformed. Like Stanley, he was horse mad and involved in the Deeping breeding farm. Laurence had already discovered that those two could talk horses for hours. Literally. Fortunately, they didn’t insist on it. Bertram didn’t appear to have many other topics of conversation, however.

His gaze moving on, Laurence encountered the dark, sardonic eyes of Miss Charlotte Deeping, the lone daughter of the household. He’d nearly killed her earlier. He shuddered at the memory—the slender figure suddenly beneath his mount’s hooves, falling backward. Catastrophe avoided by inches. Really, mere inches. He couldn’t bear to think of it.

Miss Deeping’s lips turned down as if she could read his thoughts. Which she couldn’t, of course. Thankfully, that was impossible. She was a creature of angles, striking rather than pretty, dark and…spiky. The word came to him out of nowhere. It felt as if she had more spines than a hedgehog. Did hedgehogs bite? He wasn’t sure. She looked as if she might.

Her dark eyebrows rose, and Laurence quickly looked away. He drank some wine and ate some of the excellent roast beef before continuing his examination of the company. Miss Deeping was one of only three ladies at the dinner table with eight men, which was unusual. The other two were his hostess, an older, softer edition of her daughter, and a sturdy square-shouldered lady of perhaps fifty. The latter had been introduced as Mrs. Carew, and she resembled their host, Sir Charles Deeping. Both of them had hair more dark-brown than black, and hazel eyes rather than the deeper brown of the rest of the family. Laurence hadn’t quite figured out Mrs. Carew’s position in the household. She’d said very little, but she did not have the air of a timid companion.

None of the ladies seemed bothered by the noise. Miss Deeping was self-possessed amid the cacophony of male voices. Her mother looked serene, focused on seeing that everyone got plenty of food. Laurence wondered if Mrs. Carew might be deaf. She simply ate with oblivious concentration. Then she looked up from her plate and said, “When we put him in with the mares, he had no more idea of what to do than a gelding.”

Laurence coughed at this sudden eruption into the debate about breeding plans. No one else seemed surprised.

“Poor Dancer is dense as a bag of rocks,” said Bertram.

“Ah, a kindred spirit, then,” said Cecil.

Bertram threw a bit of bread at him, hitting Cecil square on the nose.

“Bertram!” barked Sir Charles.

Laurence’s hand jerked at this voice of disapproving authority. He didn’t wince. He’d stopped that years ago, but he couldn’t help going still in apprehension.

Bertram dropped the piece of bread he’d been readying for a second shot.

His father gave him a stern nod.

Bertram made a face at him.

“Barbarian,” said Cecil.

“Coxcomb,” replied Bertram.

“I? You have no idea what you’re talking about,” replied Cecil in a lofty superior voice. “You’ve never been on the town.”

“Well, I’m going to London next season, and I shall take the ton by storm.”

“Ha!”

“I’ll be the envy of the sporting set. You’ll see.”

“Yes, Bertram. I will.” Cecil sounded sympathetic as well as unconvinced, and Laurence realized there was no real rancor in the brothers’ banter. He was glad of it. The opposite would have been intolerable.

Dinner proceeded in the same vein. Some disputes were settled. Others had obviously been running for years and were more a game than issues to be finally decided. The second course was cleared away. The ladies departed. But there was no lingering over port in this household, where gentlemen expected to be up early and engaged in active sport. The bottle had only gone around twice before they joined the ladies in the drawing room.

Laurence had taken a few steps into the chamber when Lady Deeping appeared at his elbow. “Perhaps you would turn the pages for Charlotte?” she said.

Miss Deeping sat at the pianoforte, ready to provide some music. Though how anyone expected to hear it through the continuing roar of conversation, Laurence did not understand. “Of course,” he replied, as good manners demanded. He moved to stand at the young lady’s side.

Charlotte had watched her mother’s maneuvering with resignation. “Do you read music?” she asked when the marquess was delivered to her like a neatly wrapped package.

“No, you will have to give me a signal when I am to turn the page.”

She sighed. “I’ll nod.” She began to play.

“You are very good,” he said after a while.

“I’m middling.” Charlotte had been required to learn at school. She knew her ability was only average. Competent but not inspired, her teacher had said. At the time this had distressed her. She had grown to accept the fact since. “It doesn’t matter because no one listens,” she added.

“I’m listening,” he replied, his deep voice simply sincere.

Charlotte was overtaken by an odd sensation, like a tingle running across her skin. More than a twinge, less than a shiver. It came with the idea that no man had ever said those two words, in that serious tone, to her before. She frowned. That couldn’t be true. Yet when she riffled through her memories, she couldn’t recall another occasion. She glanced at Glendarvon. His handsome face was blank of emotion. He’d meant nothing in particular. She nodded. He missed the signal. “Page,” she said.

“What? Oh.” Hurriedly, he turned it.

She played on. “You don’t wish to join the discussions?” she asked. She could manage the pages herself. She usually did.

“I don’t care for them,” he answered tonelessly.

Too dull to be drawn in, she concluded. Charlotte couldn’t be interested in a slow-witted man. No matter how handsome.

“I apologize again for this afternoon,” he said. “I have no excuse for my carelessness.”

“You can’t think of a single one?” Charlotte asked.

“What?”

Another small test failed. “My brothers would come up with whole lists.”

“Of…”

“Excuses. Mostly involving my heedlessness in being in their way.”

“You weren’t in the way! I surprised you.”

She looked at him. He’d sounded indignant, but his expression remained stolid. “Page,” she said.

He hurried to turn it.

“Were you in London last season?” Charlotte asked. She thought she would have noticed if he’d shown up at any of the balls or evening parties. The marquess was exceptionally good-looking, and Mama would have made Stanley introduce him.

“No. I stayed home last year.”

“Where is that?”

“A bit east of here. In Rutland.”

“Ah.” She waited for him to say something more.

He did not.

“Page,” said Charlotte, feeling impatient. Conversation without sparkle was sheer hard labor. She’d plowed through enough such slogs during the season. She couldn’t be bothered here in her home. A handsome face and athletic form were insufficient, she reminded herself. They might spark attraction. Well, they did, in this case. But disappointment would follow as the night the day.

She decided to make this her last piece of the evening. She doubted anyone would notice if she simply slipped away. Well, apart from Mama, who would scold her tomorrow.