Wren was looking forward to an afternoon drive to Kew Gardens with her betrothed. There were three days still to go to her wedding, and it seemed to her that some invisible force must have slowed time to a fraction of its usual speed. Yet there was pleasure too in going shopping with her future mother-and sister-in-law and simply being at home, getting to know them better and learning to relax in their company.

Her future family had gone visiting on this particular afternoon, however, and Wren stayed behind in her room in her favorite place by the window, reading one of the books she had borrowed from Hookham’s Library. The earl was not due to arrive for another hour yet. He had assured her she would find Kew Gardens lovely. She particularly wanted to see the famous pagoda.

When she heard the distant sounds of closing doors and male voices, she glanced at the clock on the mantel. He must have mistaken the time—or she had. He was an hour early. It did not matter, however. She was ready and eager to go. She got to her feet, took up her bonnet and gloves and shawl and parasol and hurried light-footed down to the drawing room.

The door was open. Wren could see that Mr. Lifford, the butler, was bent over another man, who was seated in a chair close to the door. Her first thought was that her betrothed must be unwell. Too late she realized that the man was a stranger—she was already inside the room and had been noticed. Both men looked up at her, the butler in some consternation, the other man with a frown and a blank look in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked, jumping to his feet.

He was a very young man, tall and thin, almost to the point of emaciation. He might once have been very good-looking, but his complexion now was pasty apart from two spots of hectic color high on his cheeks. His fair hair was untidy and matted in places. He was wearing a green military coat, which looked both dusty and shabby, breeches and linen that must once have been white but were no longer so, and scuffed dusty boots. Even from a slight distance away, Wren could detect an unpleasant odor. She knew even before the butler spoke who he must be.

“Lieutenant Westcott has come home, miss,” Mr. Lifford said. “Miss Heyden is staying here as a guest, sir.”

“Captain Westcott,” the young man said almost absently, still frowning, and Wren could see now that his eyes were bright and feverish and rather wild. “Dash it all, Mama is not here, is she? Or Cam. Or Abby. They left. It slipped my mind. I remembered yesterday. At least, I think it was yesterday. Who is here, Lifford? Anastasia? But she married Avery. Devil take it, I ought not to have come to this house, ought I? I knew that. Forgot.” He was noticeably swaying on his feet.

Wren set her things down on a table beside the door and hurried forward. “You are Harry Westcott,” she said, taking his arm. “Have you just come from the Peninsula? Do please sit down again. Mrs. Althea Westcott is staying here for the Season with Lady Overfield, but they are out this afternoon. The Earl of Riverdale will be here soon. Mr. Lifford, perhaps you would bring the captain a glass of water?” She could tell as soon as she touched him that he was burning up with fever.

The butler hurried away and the young man sank back down onto his seat. “Riverdale.” He rested one elbow on the arm of the chair and set three fingertips against his forehead. He laughed weakly. “That used to be me, by Jove, and my father before me. No longer, though. All the time I was on the ship and then in the carriage I remembered. How could I have forgotten as soon as I saw London? If I could only get here and through the door, I thought, I would be home. I even argued with the driver of the hired coach when he told me this was not the address I had given him. I called him a fool.” He grinned and then looked stricken.

“You are home,” Wren told him, setting the backs of her fingers lightly to his cheek to confirm that indeed he was very hot. “You are with your family.”

“Home.” He closed his eyes. “The very place where that damned Alex is living. It was not his fault, though, was it?”

“It was not,” she said.

“I expected that they would all be here,” he said. “Mama and the girls. They are not, though, are they? How the devil could I have forgotten? I remembered when we were at sea before I forgot again. Cam married a dashed schoolteacher because she thought she could do no better. Mama is afraid to show her face anywhere she may be recognized. She is not here, is she?”

The butler had returned and Wren took the glass of water from his tray and held it to the young man’s lips as he sipped from it. His hand closed about hers and he drank more greedily. She doubted he had had a chance either to wash or to change his linen since he left the Peninsula, even though he was an officer and one would have expected him to have received preferential treatment among all the other military wounded with whom she supposed he had been shipped home.

“Who are you? I have forgotten,” he said, taking his hand from the glass. “What did you do to your face? A musket ball glanced past, did it? It looks as if you had a narrow escape.”

“I am Wren Heyden,” she said. “It is a birthmark.”

“Of course,” he said. “There are no musket balls whistling around here, are there? I am in England, aren’t I?”

“You are,” Wren said as he sat back in his chair, and she saw that his eyes were suddenly swimming with tears.

“It is one devil of a lark being out there, you know,” he said, grinning at her. “Mama and the girls are out, are they? I should have sent notice from Dover that I was on my way. But I had a spot of fever again.”

Wren exchanged glances with the butler. “Mr. Lifford,” she said, “is Captain Westcott’s old room unoccupied?”

“It is, miss,” he said.

“Then will you lead the way there?” she said. “After we get him settled, perhaps you could have a bowl of cold water with some cloths sent up? And will you perhaps send for the family physician? Come, Captain Westcott. Take my arm and we will go up to your room. You may lie down there and be comfortable while I bathe your face and see if I can relieve your fever.”

“Oh, Mama will do that,” he said. “You need not concern yourself.” But he got to his feet and allowed Wren to take his arm and steer him out of the room and up the stairs. The housekeeper had appeared and come around to the young man’s other side to steady him.

“Mr. Harry,” she said in a voice thick with emotion, “you have come home. All in one piece, your mama will be happy to know.”

“She is so happy,” the young man said, “that she has gone out just when I was expected home and taken the girls with her.”

She clucked her tongue. “She is at Hinsford, worrying herself silly about you, Mr. Harry,” she said. “And Lady—And Miss Abigail too. They sent you home from that nasty heathen place, then, did they?”

“Kicking and screaming,” he said cheerfully. “I got a sword cut on my arm again. A mere scratch is all it was, but then it turned putrid and I got the damned fever and dashed near died. When I didn’t, they packed me up and sent me home. Colonel’s orders until I am better. He doesn’t want to see my ugly face for at least two months, he told me. And here I am, fit as a fiddle and half a world away from my men, where I ought to be. It’s a lark out there, you know.”

By the time he had finished babbling they had him in his room, had stripped him of his coat and hauled off his boots, and had him lying on his bed. The butler had gone off to send someone running for the physician, the housekeeper had opened a window to let in some fresh air, and two maids had come hurrying in, one with a bowl of water, the other with cloths in her hand and towels over her arm.

Half an hour later Wren was alone with the young man, the door of the bedchamber open behind her. Mr. Lifford had gone downstairs to await the arrival of the physician, the maids had gone about their duties, and the housekeeper was in the kitchens supervising the making of nourishing broths and jellies for Captain Westcott. Wren was bathing his face with cool, wet cloths and listening to his increasingly delirious ramblings. His right arm, she had seen through the sleeve of his shirt as soon as his coat came off, was heavily bandaged from shoulder to wrist. If the physician did not come soon, she would have to change those dressings herself. She very much doubted it had been done recently.

She turned with some relief when she heard a light tap on the door, expecting to see either the physician or—please, please—her betrothed. The man standing in the doorway, however, was decidedly not the latter and could not possibly be the former. He was not a tall man. Indeed, he was several inches shorter than she. But he was a man who somehow filled the room with his presence even though he had not stepped quite into it yet. He was blond haired, handsome, exquisitely tailored, and decorated with rings on several fingers, a jewel that winked in his intricately tied neckcloth, and chains and fobs at his waist. He looked gorgeous and powerful and somehow dangerous. He was holding a silver quizzing glass halfway to his eye but beheld the scene before him through lazy, heavy-lidded eyes without its aid. She knew instantly who he must be, just as she had known who Harry Westcott was, and felt more exposed than she had for days and weeks. Her veil might have been a hundred miles away for the amount of good it could do her now. Her hand—the one that was not holding the wet cloth—came up to cover the left side of her face.

“Netherby at your service, Miss Heyden,” he said in a weary voice as he strolled into the room and approached the bed. “I suppose that is who you are. Lifford sent a runner for me, and apparently the lad really did run. Perhaps Lifford has forgotten that I am no longer Harry’s guardian since he passed the age of majority several months ago. But I was in the act of leaving the house when the runner came, so here I am.” He turned his attention then to the young man in the bed. “You have a bit of a fever, do you, Harry?” He set the backs of perfectly manicured fingers against the captain’s brow, Wren having stepped to one side.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Avery?” the captain said irritably. “If you have come to stop me from enlisting, you can damned well forget it. I want to be an army man. I like the military life. And you are not my guardian any longer.”

“For which blessing I shall offer up a special prayer of thanks tonight,” the Duke of Netherby said. “I came to cool your fevered brow, Harry, though Miss Heyden appears to have been doing an admirable job of it without me. I hope you have not been unleashing similar language upon her to what you are using on me.”

“I damned well have not,” Captain Westcott said testily. “I know how to speak to ladies. If you want to be useful, Avery, stop the wardrobe and the dressing table from walking about the room, will you? It’s dashed unnerving.”

“I shall have a word with them,” the duke said, and looked at Wren. “I take it Cousins Althea and Elizabeth are from home, as well as Riverdale? I apologize for this unexpected intrusion upon your privacy by yet two more members of your betrothed’s family, Miss Heyden. I understand that you are something of a recluse.”

“I agreed to meet you all on my wedding day,” Wren said. “That is only three days away.” She was still holding her hand over the left side of her face.

The duke took the cloth from her other hand, dipped it in the water, squeezed it out, and spread it over the young man’s brow. “We all have things about ourselves that we would rather hide than display,” he said softly, more as if he were speaking to his former ward than to Wren. “I grew up small, puny, timid, and pretty, and I was unleashed upon a boys’ school when I was eleven.”

She could only imagine what that must have been like. Boys’ private schools—though they were called paradoxically public schools—were reputed to be brutal. She wondered how he had come from there to here, for though he was still small and slight of build and beautiful to look upon, there was not the merest suggestion of puniness or timidity or effeminacy about him. Quite the opposite.

“One either succumbs,” he continued, “or … one does not. I think perhaps you are in the process of not succumbing. Why else would you have agreed to take breakfast on your wedding day with strangers who just happen to be related to your prospective groom?” He dipped the cloth and wrung out the excess water again. “It sounds as if the physician may have come ambling along at last.”

It was not he, however. It was the Earl of Riverdale who appeared in the doorway, taking in the scene before his eyes.

“How is he?” he asked, flicking a glance at Wren.

“Alex?” Captain Westcott turned his head on the pillow. “What the devil are you doing here? Is a man’s own room not his private domain any longer? I am supposed to resent you, aren’t I? Can’t remember why, though. I’ve never had anything against you. Where are Mama and the girls? Why are all these people in my room?”

“Because you have come home safely from the Peninsula, Harry,” the earl said, moving closer to the bed, “and we are happy to see you. Your mother and Abigail will be here soon. They are coming for my wedding to Miss Heyden in three days’ time. At least, I trust they are. Camille is in Bath with her husband and children. I understand from Lifford that a physician has been summoned. Is his fever high?” The last question was directed to Wren.

“Yes,” she said, lowering her hand at last. “He has a wound on his right arm that needs to be cleansed and dressed again.”

“If you would care to withdraw from the room to spare your blushes, Miss Heyden,” the Duke of Netherby said, “Riverdale and I will contrive to undress Harry and make him more comfortable. And ourselves too, I hope. You do not exactly smell like a rose, my lad.”

Wren went to her room. A few minutes later she heard what must surely have been the arrival of the physician. Another half hour passed before the Earl of Riverdale tapped on her door.

“How is he?” she asked, opening it wide. “That poor young man. He was sent home to recover from the recurring fever following a wound that had turned putrid, and in his delirium he thought he really was coming home—to the way things used to be. He expected to find his mother and sisters and his old life here.”

“He has been thoroughly washed from head to toe and put between clean sheets and tended and dosed,” he said. “Netherby is sitting with him while he rattles on about what a famous lark it is to be over there fighting. He will sleep soon, the physician has assured us, and now that his wound is clean and he can be cared for by a doctor again, the fever should run its course within a few days and stay away. He is going to need some recovery time, however. He will need to be fattened up, but with everyone here who will be eager to fuss over him, that should not take long. Come outside with me to stroll in the garden. It is a bit late for Kew today, I am afraid.”

She did not even stop at the drawing room to pick up her bonnet and other things. She went outside with him, her arm through his, and reveled in the feeling of the warm breeze on her cheeks.

“I really am sorry for all this,” he said as they strolled among the flower beds. “Your dearest wish was a modest one—someone to wed. Someone, not hordes of others associated with him. I promised to protect you from all that and have failed miserably so far. You will be thinking me a fraud and a deceiver.”

“No,” she said.

“Shall I send you home to Withington?” he asked. “I know you sent your own carriage there after you moved here. Would you like to go back to the quiet privacy to which you are accustomed? Perhaps, if you are kind and prepared to give me a second chance, I could bring the special license to Brambledean when I am released from my responsibilities here, or even sooner if you wish, and we can marry privately there and live privately ever after there.”

“And next spring?” she asked. They had come to the small herb garden, which had indeed been set out as an old-fashioned knot garden, each cluster of herbs separated from others by low walls of stone. The smells were as enticing as those of the flowers. “Would you not need to come back here then and every year?”

“You could remain in the country when I am in Parliament if you wished,” he said.

“That would not be marriage, would it?” she said. “I have not been forced into anything, Lord Riverdale. You are not responsible for me. I chose to meet Mrs. Westcott and Lizzie. And Lady Jessica. I chose to meet the Dowager Duchess of Netherby and the duchess. I agreed to a family wedding when your mother suggested it. I suggested inviting Miss Kingsley and her daughter to our wedding.”

He was smiling at her and drawing her down to sit on a wooden bench near the knot garden. “And I suppose you chose to meet Harry and Netherby,” he said.

“I met them under unforeseeable circumstances,” she said. “It was not your fault. And I am glad it is over with. He is very formidable, is he not? I am not sure why, but he is.”

“Netherby?” He laughed. “I used to think him a bit of a fop and scoffed at those who always seemed to think there was something dangerous about him. And then I discovered that he is dangerous, though he almost never needs to prove it.”

She looked at him. “Well?” she said. “You cannot tell me that much without explaining yourself.”

“Cousin Camille was betrothed to Viscount Uxbury,” he told her, “but he forced her to end the betrothal as soon as he discovered she was illegitimate. He was not pleasant about it either. And then he tried to ingratiate himself with Anna. When he turned up uninvited at a ball in her honor and tried to harass her there, Netherby and I kicked him out. The morning after, he challenged Netherby to a duel in Hyde Park. No doubt he thought it would be an easy victory for him, especially when Netherby, who had the choice of weapons, chose none at all. On the appointed morning he stripped to his breeches and nothing more—not even boots. I was his second and thought him mad. Everyone else there thought him mad. Uxbury laughed at him. And then Netherby proceeded to knock him down—with his bare feet. When Uxbury got up, Netherby launched himself into the air and felled the man with both feet beneath his chin. Uxbury was unconscious for some time. I do believe Netherby went gently on him, however. I was and am strongly of the opinion that he could have killed Uxbury with the greatest ease if he had wanted to. Afterward, he explained he had been trained in various Far Eastern arts by an old Chinese master.”

“Oh,” Wren said, “how splendid.”

“Bloodthirsty wench.” He grinned at her. “So Anna thought, and so Lizzie thought. They were both there, hidden up a tree and behind the tree respectively. Ladies never ever go anywhere near duels, I must add. You would have been there too if you had been given the chance, I suppose?”

“Oh, definitely,” she said, and he laughed outright.

“Miss Heyden,” he said, “you are going to fit right into this family, you know.”

She smiled at him. What a lovely thing to say. Just as if she were no different in many ways from Lizzie or the Duchess of Netherby. And she realized, like a sharp stab to the heart, that she had always longed for just that—to belong, to fit in.

He lifted one hand to cup the left side of her face and ran his thumb lightly over her cheek. “Thank you,” he said, “for tending to Harry, especially when he was smelling so ripe and his language was not any better. He is very precious. Had he retained the title, he would have borne it well. He was very young and a bit wild, but he would have settled down within a year or two and done a far better job than his father did. He is of sound character. His mother saw to that.”

“You are not responsible for him either,” she said. “I have discovered your character flaw, Lord Riverdale. You mentioned it yourself in Hyde Park. You would take the burdens of the world upon your own shoulders if you could and solve them. You cannot do it, and it is not a good idea even to try. We all have to find our own way in life. It is, I believe, what life is all about.”

“Finding our way?” he said. “You mean we get to choose? It did not feel that way last year when my life was turned upside down and inside out and all I wanted was the old life back. I had found a way through that and I had followed it with determination and hard work and satisfaction.”

“You had choices even so,” she said. “You could have chosen to ignore the monstrosity that is Brambledean and continued along your familiar path. You could have chosen to marry for love or not at all. You could have chosen any of the young ladies who have made their preference for you this year clear. You could have ignored my more blatant marriage proposal. You still have choices and always will. So do I. I could leave for Withington tomorrow morning if I chose.”

“And do you choose?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I am going to remain here and marry you. I must have met about half your family already. I can surely survive meeting the other half.”

He laughed again and then closed the distance between their mouths. He kissed her warmly, lingeringly, gently. She breathed in the scents of rosemary and sage and mint and thyme and the background fragrances of sweet peas and other flowers and thought that she could forfeit passion for this sense of … Of what? She could not put a name to it. Affection, perhaps?

“I should go back up and see how Captain Westcott is doing,” she said regretfully when he lifted his head. “Perhaps there is something I can do to help.”

“Captain?” He got to his feet and offered his hand.

“That is what he said when Mr. Lifford called him Lieutenant Westcott,” she said.

“Impressive,” he said. “You do not need to tend him, you know. There are other—”

“Yes,” she said, interrupting him, “I do know.”