“My clothes, at long last!”

Amarantha eagerly received from the nurse the gown, stockings, shoes, and cloak in which she had arrived unconscious at the hospital eight weeks earlier.

“I began to believe you would never restore them to me,” she added with a smile as she pulled the gown over her shift.

“If you’d no’ attempted to escape before you’d fully healed, we’d have allowed it afore,” the nurse said, buttoning her gown, “Though we do wish you would remain, Anne. You’re a fine nurse.”

“A better nurse than patient, I daresay.” She laughed.

“’Tis good to see you smile, child.”

“I had no reason to smile before today.” Only dreams from which she awoke each morning muddled and confused. “Except your kindness.” Amarantha threw her arms about the woman and hugged tight. “Thank you.”

“Be off with you, Anne Foster,” the Scotswoman said upon a sniffle. “Or we’ll be keeping you after all.”

Amarantha’s throat was thick. After years of marriage to a man who never bothered concealing his disapproval of her while boldly lying to her face, the kindness of strangers in this gracious country made her watery.

With nothing but her clothing, and coins that the nurses had scraped together as a parting gift, Amarantha departed. After so many weeks of rest, she felt remarkably well, and beyond a single errand this morning, she had no plan, only information. The advantage of being forced to remain confined to bed for weeks was that she had had ample time to read through the hospital’s cache of old newspapers kept for kindling. She now knew quite a lot about Gabriel Hume.

He had been in the Mediterranean Sea commanding the Theia when his brother perished in an incident in Leith and, a month later, a longtime malady finally overcame his father.

He was indeed elusive—even reclusive.

He did not reside at Haiknayes Castle near Edinburgh, which had been empty for years.

He spent most of his time traveling, yet no one seemed to know to where. Some suggested Kallin, but that estate was sufficiently remote that no one had ever confirmed it.

He almost never went into society. Since inheriting the title, in fact, he had done so only once: in March, while Amarantha had been crossing the Atlantic, in Edinburgh he had briefly courted the beautiful heiress Lady Constance Read, but it had come to nothing.

And, finally, he had never denied any accusation leveled against him.

Two months ago—on the very same day strangers found Amarantha fevered and insensible, and brought her to the poor hospital—an Englishman had confessed to abducting the third missing girl, Miss Chloe Edwards, and to the murder of the fourth girl. Nevertheless, Edinburgh’s newspapers continued to call Loch Irvine the Devil’s Duke. After all, Maggie Poultney and Cassandra Finn were still missing, and the duke’s house in Edinburgh had mysteriously burned to the ground on the night of Miss Edwards’s rescue. While the villagers around that house insisted he had not been in residence for years, few heeded them. Most believed that the demonic duke had retreated to the countryside, where he was busy perfecting his mastery over the dark arts.

Setting off toward the toll road, Amarantha managed to walk halfway to her destination before she was obliged to rest. Continuing on more slowly, she was still a distance away when she fully understood what she was not seeing: his house.

She had one clear memory of the day eight weeks earlier when she had fallen so ill: standing before the duke’s house, staring up at its three stories of austere Palladian elegance and marveling at how the young man she once knew had, in five short years, gone from naval commander to duke to infamous villain.

Reading about the fire had not prepared her for this.

Charred and black, the stone foundations arose from the grass and moss that had already grown up around them like huge fingers of tar from some underground well. The little village huddled forlornly now, even in the sunshine.

Amarantha’s heart beat unevenly. It seemed not months but a lifetime ago when she had left Mrs. Eagan’s house with a wide smile, thrilled that the world believed him to be a villain.

What did the world believe her to be now? A poor woman, alone and friendless? Certainly not the daughter of a wealthy earl or the widow of a righteous missionary.

No one. She was no one. She had been gone from home for so long, they all probably thought her dead. No one would even know if at this moment she simply ceased to exist.

After Paul’s death she had sought anonymity. She had needed it—needed to no longer be the woman she had tried so hard to transform herself into, all to suit him. She had needed to be someone else, even no one else.

Now she truly was anonymous, an island, bound to none.

Walking toward the shops, she found all but two locked. At the door of the blacksmith’s, a burly, elderly man with reddened skin opened to her knock.

“Well now, lass,” he said with a meaty smile that tightened Amarantha’s throat for the second time that morning. “You be a sight for old eyes.”

“Good day, sir. I have come to thank you.”

“Seeing you hale be thanks enough. You gave me an’ the wifie a powerful fright.”

“I am sorry that I put you to the trouble of rescuing me, and of paying the hospital to keep me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled forth the coins that the nurses had given her.

“Keep your money, lass. The wifie’s been fretting for weeks that we didna take you in ourselves and nurse you back to health. But our daughter was in childbed, an’ Bess was needed in the country.”

“Oh! Have you a grandchild now?”

“Aye, the eighth! Now, come inside for a dram o’ tea. Bess just finished the baking an’ she’ll be glad to see you.”

“Your wife is the baker in this village?”

“She’s been baking for the dukes o’ Loch Irvine since she were a wee one.” With a glance at the field of ashes, he made a big exhalation through his nostrils like a horse. “Come. There be cakes just out o’ the oven.”

Inside, a fire blazed. A woman entered with a bakery tray.

“Lass!” she exclaimed, dropped the tray on a table, and enveloped Amarantha in an ample embrace. When she finally put her to arm’s length, she gave Amarantha a long study. Gray haired, with light Scottish skin, she had a kind face. “’Tis a miracle! When we found you in the rain behind the shop, you were in such a fever Angus here could o’ forged iron upon your brow!”

“I don’t remember any of it. In truth, I don’t even remember either of you. The nurses told me about you, and I have come to thank you.”

“There be a fine lass, aye, Angus? But I knew it: apologizing to us for the trouble as you burned up in the wagon on the way to the infirmary. The manners o’ an angel. Now, we’ll have a cuppa an’ you’ll tell us all about what brought you to the village as poorly as you were that day.” She drew her toward a chair at the table.

“What beautiful cakes,” Amarantha exclaimed.

“Fit for a duke.” The blacksmith spooned tea leaves into a pot.

“Have you customers here? Still?”

“No, lass,” the baker said. “The duke’s no’ lived in the house for years, even afore the fire.”

It was confirmation of the police’s conclusions, despite what others believed.

“How Angus an’ I miss the ol’ days,” Bess said with a cheerful sigh.

“Did you know him?”

“His Grace? Aye.” She set a cake on Amarantha’s plate. “We’d suspected you did too.” She settled at the table. “After the fire, an’ with you wishing to speak to him . . .”

“Did I say that to you?”

“Dinna you remember, lass?”

“No. I remember walking here from Leith and arriving in this village so tired I could barely stand. Then nothing after that. But in the hospital I had dreams—many dreams that felt like memories.”

Angus and Bess exchanged a glance.

“What brought you here that day, lass?” Bess said.

Amarantha looked into the baker’s broad, honest face.

Then she told them the truth.

“Do you know of any reason that my friend Penny would seek out the duke?”

“I dinna, lass.” Bess’s brow creased. “But those rumors o’ the devil be a pack o’ nonsense.”

“Aye, nonsense,” Angus echoed.

“The lad I knew afore he went to sea could ne’er be what they claim.”

“Will you tell me about him?” Amarantha said, her hands warm around her teacup. “When he was a boy.”

The baker set another cake on Amarantha’s plate. “The young master were all skin and bones. You’d ne’er seen such a homely lad.”

“Really?”

“Aye, a wee monster he were, with that heavy brow, an’ those fine coats hanging on him like he’d no flesh, only shadows between his big bones.”

“I understand that he is quite handsome now,” she said, pleasure stealing through her that she no longer bothered to quell.

“He’s a fine man now, lass.” Bess clucked her tongue. “But too alone.”

“He was not always so alone?”

“No. In those days, Her Grace took him about with her everywhere, to the parks an’ museums an’ to see all the great ships at Leith. An’ to church, o’ course. The old duke were oftentimes at his studies, you see. But when he weren’t, there’d be parties like festivals, with music an’ dancing an’ all the grand ladies an’ gentlemen in finery.”

Like her parents’ parties at Willows Hall.

She had always thought them so unalike: he a dangerous man of the world who had done violence and reveled in earthly pleasures; she an ignorant girl who had never studied and knew nothing about anything, even about the righteous missionary life into which she had thrown herself.

But she had never actually been that woman—not really.

“It all sounds marvelous,” she said.

“You’ve ne’er seen the like, lass,” Bess said.

By the hearth, the old blacksmith had folded his hands over his belly and his snores competed with the crackling flames. Amarantha took up the teapot and refilled the baker’s cup.

“I adore hearing about parties,” she said. “Do tell me every little detail.”

As the sun fell, the couple invited her to take dinner with them and, later, to stay the night. The following morning, as Amarantha tied her hat ribbon, Angus appeared leading a horse. These days they had little use for the animal, he said, and she might put in a good word for them with the duke if she were so inclined. For, Bess added, it was clear that she was setting off for Kallin, and an honorable man like their master would never ignore the wishes of a lady.

When Amarantha found the Allaways’ farm, dusk was falling. As she tethered her horse, a pair of dogs rushed forward, barking. She offered her hands for them to smell and waited for their cavorting to cease, straining against her impatience.

From Edinburgh all the way to the mountains that bordered Loch Lomond, she had found traces of Penny’s journey—consistently toward Kallin. But three days earlier she had lost Penny’s trail. This morning her hosts told her that she might retrace the road to where a narrow path along a tributary creek led to a hidden farm. This farm.

Tucked into a crevice of a hill dipping toward the Fyne, and accompanied by two sturdy outbuildings, the stone and timber cottage with cheerful draperies peeking through the windows looked welcoming, exactly the sort of house Penny would find.

The door jerked open.

“Doctor—” The man’s face was red and his farmer’s shirt and trousers stained with drops of blood. “Did the doctor send you, lass?”

“No. I am seeking a traveler who might have come this way. But I have some medical skills. May I help until the doctor arrives?”

His eyes seemed to take her in now, her hair and her face. “Be you English?”

Her heart turned over. “Yes. Is my friend Penelope Baker here?”

He opened the door wide. “Come now, quickly, lass.”

Inside, a fire crackled in the hearth and the place was clean. Through a doorway Amarantha could see a bed and a woman’s prone form.

“Penny.”

Penny’s eyes twitched open. They were not the shimmering amber that had always danced with liveliness when Amarantha had needed levity most, but dull and shot across with red. Now they filled with tears.

Amarantha lowered herself to the chair and found Penny’s hand on the coverlet. She grasped it, but no pressure returned hers; the usually strong, lithe fingers of a woman who had labored every day of her life were limp and cold. Her skin was not warm golden brown, but the color of dust, and lay listlessly over her features. There was blood on the quilt tucked up beneath her chin.

Amarantha had seen women like this before. In an instant she understood.

Gently cupping Penny’s cheek, she swallowed back the sob clinging to her throat.

“You needn’t fear. All will be well.”

A tear crested Penny’s eye and her lips cracked open. But she did not speak.

“Now, dear, strong friend,” Amarantha said, “I must have one final confidence from you.” Curling both of her hands around Penny’s fingers, pain pressing at her ribs like nothing she had ever felt before, she said, “Give me his name.”

Amarantha closed the bedchamber door. Mrs. Allaway sat in a rocking chair before the hearth. The cozy little room glowed with lamps and smelled of fresh bread.

“She is gone.” The words sounded tinny to Amarantha’s ears.

“May the angels take her into their care.”

Amarantha finally allowed her gaze to dip to the bundle in the Scotswoman’s arms. Tugging apart the clean swaddling, Mrs. Allaway revealed a tiny nose, miniature pink lips, two tightly closed eyes, and a fluff of silky hair.

“This be Luke, miss.”

“Luke,” Amarantha whispered.

“A fine, strong lad he already be. His mother suckled him thrice before the bleeding stole her strength, but he took to it quick. I told her since my youngest went off the teat only Thursday, this lad’s come just in time. Mother an’ son had a nice long look into each other’s eyes.”

Penny’s son came into her arms as so many infants had in five years—the children of patients at the hospital and of her husband’s parishioners. And Amarantha’s own tiny son, her perfect gift from heaven who had never suckled and whose eyes had never opened, whom she had held for a few precious minutes before he left her.

If Heaven did exist, Penny was there now, cradling Amarantha’s son.

Tracing Luke’s little features with her gaze, Amarantha spoke the promise that had given her friend the peace she needed to slip away.

“I will find your father, Luke. I will not rest until I do.”