“What were you thinking, Gabriel?” Ziyaeddin said from the corner of the library where he lounged.

Standing at the library window, Gabriel studied the ribbon of muddy road that stretched to the closest tenant farm. Only a portion of the road was visible; trees had grown up and blocked the castle’s view of much of the surrounding land. A late snow, melting now, cut a jagged path alongside the barrier that protected the north fields.

If he did not send men in there within the day, the earth would crumble and the entire valley would flood.

His predecessors must be scowling in their graves. He should have long since seen to such matters. The hope of Kallin and everybody there rested in these lands spread out before him, in these valleys that could be sown with wheat and barley, and in these rich hills that could pasture both cattle and sheep.

He had missed this land. And now he would make it right. In a month the lambing would commence. Then came the shearing. In the meantime the fields would be planted with grain, timber farming recommenced, and cattle purchased. Come harvest, Haiknayes would be making enough profit to send gold to Kallin. And wonderfully, all of it could be done with the labor of men.

Inviting eight town dwellers to the castle for an extended house party had not been in the plan.

Inviting her had been a colossal mistake.

What was he thinking, indeed?

“’Twas a business decision.” Not entirely untrue. He and Calum Tate had been wrangling for weeks already, and now Tate’s gout was ailing him. Inviting him to Haiknayes for a holiday seemed the easiest solution to softening up the savvy merchant.

But the real truth of it was that, standing in the darkness of that library, he had acted on impulse. With bright cheeks and defiant chin, she had blinked her lashes over those spectacular eyes he remembered like he remembered everything about her—too well—and he had wanted only one thing.

Again.

Only one thing.

The years had transformed the pretty girl into a beautiful woman.

“An’ green eyes,” he mumbled to the emerald vista that could not rival the brilliance of those eyes.

Moving to his desk, he took up a pen and wrote a message to Cassandra to accompany the sewing machine for Sophie in the village. Cassandra had made a fine case for the machine’s potential to speed Sophie’s productivity. Since dress shops were clamoring for her gowns, he could hardly reply that purchasing such a machine would deplete the ducal coffers yet again. As soon as his groom returned from Leith, he would send him off to Glen Village with the machine.

Apparently he could deny those women nothing, even if it meant destitution in the near future.

Nor, apparently, could he deny himself certain disaster.

Months ago at Kallin, sending her away had been wise. Reopening a wound was always foolhardy.

And yet.

He had touched her. And discovered that the reality was better than every dream. Soft and strong and warm and quivering with life, she had accepted it. With wide eyes, parted lips, and a quick pulse beating a rhythm in her throat, she had leaned in.

He needed more. He had always needed more of her. More and more and more.

So, after sixteen years he was finally home. And expecting guests.

One housekeeper and one manservant were insufficient servants to serve a party of eight.

“I’ve got to hire more servants.”

“More servants?” Ziyaeddin’s coat was of velvet, his lace cuffs languid, an affectation of calm belied by the intelligent gleam in his eyes. “For how many days do you intend to inflict these people on the peace and quiet of my house?”

“’Tis no’ your house. An’ you’re welcome to join the party, if you care to.”

“On my grave.”

“Hermit.”

“Barbarian. Who is she?”

“She?”

“The woman for whom you are now opening the doors of this castle for the first time since you took possession of it. You did not imagine I would guess it. Would you like me to paint her? In the regular fashion, of course. I would be delighted.”

“Suggest it to her an’ I’ll toss you from the ramparts, cur.”

“I am correct. There is a woman.”

“There’s always a woman.”

One woman. Only ever one woman.

He went to the door. Within hours a fiery-haired Englishwoman would arrive and set to doing God knew what—searching for clues to condemn him, probably.

As soon as he had seen to hiring laborers to clear the trees and mend the trench and a few more servants for the house, he would discover her intent in seeking him out yet again. He would listen to her questions and he would give her the answers he must to subdue her curiosity.

Then, as before, he would send her away. This time permanently.

The duke sent a coach. Entirely black on the exterior, with no noble crest or decorative adornments, it was luxurious within.

A fortnight’s sojourn, the invitation had read. His Grace welcomes you and your daughter two days hence to Haiknayes, as well as your esteemed houseguest.

In two days Libby had not ceased talking about the old duke’s extensive collection of treasures gathered on his many journeys abroad: dried plants and mysterious rocks and the skeletons and pelts of exotic animals. The amateur naturalist’s collection was a thing of legend. Part of it had burned along with the duke’s house in Edinburgh, but the bulk of it had always been at Haiknayes.

When the coach rounded a copse and Haiknayes Castle appeared on the ridge before them, a string of nerves wiggled into Amarantha’s throat.

It was nothing like Kallin.

Two massive towers, paired so closely that they were connected all the way up to the sturdy crenellations of the ramparts, reigned majestically over the valley. Surrounded by a wall taller than a man, with a gate of iron surmounted by pikes and a long, straight drive lined with ancient trees, Haiknayes was an imposing fortress. Windows pocked the sheer walls of the keep irregularly, and a giant crater marked one façade: the remnants of centuries-old cannon blast.

Yet in its power it was beautiful. Built of stone that was more luxuriously pink than gray, there was a lushness to both castle and walls. The hills brindled with snow and the dark pines rising along its eastern flank rendered it almost like the setting for a fairytale.

“Whose carriage is that?” Libby said, stepping down from the carriage and looking back through the gate toward the stable where a traveling coach stood unattended with its placid team.

“Perhaps the duke has other guests,” Dr. Shaw said.

Amarantha moved toward the gatehouse. A wide, round structure, it commanded the corner of the wall that surrounded the keep. Stepping up onto the stone bench at the base of its stair, she poked her nose over the wall. On its other side was a tangle of winter forest dipping abruptly to a creek far below.

“’Tis a steep drop. If you’re wanting to escape, lass, you’d best go by way o’ the drive.”

He stood at the top of the gatehouse stair, his eyes hooded.

“Is that an invitation, Urisk, or a threat?”

“Whichever you please.”

“It is an impressive castle. Do you hide the maidens in the dungeons?”

“Aye.” A one-sided smile transformed his lips.

Amarantha’s fingers clung to the rock wall.

He descended the stairs to stand before the bench.

“Come inside an’ I’ll introduce you to the lot o’ them.” He offered his hand.

Amarantha suspected he must think her a fool in all sorts of ways. But she was not such a fool as to welcome the touch of his hand that had caressed her breast. Gathering her skirts in all ten of her fingers, she climbed down from the bench.

He flexed his hand and dropped it to his side.

“Duke!” came a man’s bellow from across the forecourt. “’Tis a fine thing you’ve done, opening your castle to us!”

From a gate on the far side of the forecourt, Mr. Tate, Mrs. Tate, and their three daughters appeared.

“Oh!” Libby said. “You have invited our friends too.”

“Welcome to Haiknayes, Miss Shaw,” the duke said. “Doctor.”

“It is an honor to be here, Your Grace,” Dr. Shaw said.

“An honor indeed!” Mr. Tate exclaimed. “Ha ha! Already chased my gout away! Loch Irvine, I might just have to capitulate to your demands about my ships after all.” He had florid cheeks and a jovial air.

“Such a charming castle,” Mrs. Tate drawled as though she owned one herself. The daughter of a minor English baronet, and full of her own consequence, she had married her noble blood to Calum Tate’s Scottish mercantile fortune and constantly made certain everybody remembered it.

“Papa wished us to come,” Jane said quietly to Amarantha. “He and the duke are doing business, and he said he could not bear to be even a day without us.”

“Your Grace,” Libby said. “May we see the collection without delay?”

“Without delay it’ll be.”

A narrow flight of exterior stairs led up into the fortress. From the entrance foyer they went into an enormous hall. Two stories high, with giant hearths at either end, it was of baronial dimensions and magnificent. An enormous table dominated the center of the room, tapestries covered the walls, and the sofa and chairs before the fireplace, along with the pelt of a great beast that decorated the floor, looked soft and inviting. Firelight glinted off two full suits of armor tucked in niches.

“This way, Miss Shaw,” he said, gesturing to a door to a spiral stairwell. They all followed, climbing the tightly winding steps. At the top landing he pushed the door wide.

Libby passed by him and her gasp echoed.

From one side of the castle to the opposite was one large room, its ceiling a vaulted arch. Sunlight illumined dozens of glass cases bursting with bones, skulls, and rocks, jars of dried flowers and leaves, and bottles of murky liquid.

“Good gracious.” Mrs. Tate lifted a kerchief to her nose.

“It is even better than you led me to believe,” Libby exclaimed, and fell to her knees before a crate. “Do you see this? I believe it is the skeleton of a raccoon, an animal I have only seen in books. But it has no identifying label. There is work to be done here.”

Iris drew a jar out of a case. “Look, Libby. An ear!”

Libby pulled her head out of a crate, objects clutched in each hand. “A fortnight will hardly suffice to catalogue everything in this room, even with Iris and Amarantha helping. Iris, take care. The wings of a desiccated bat can be extraordinarily fragile.”

“Your Grace,” Dr. Shaw said at the duke’s side. “Thank you.”

“’Tis my pleasure,” he said, but his gaze came to Amarantha.

“Jane Tate is not as empty-headed as she pretends to be,” Libby said as Amarantha returned her writing materials to their case.

Morning sunshine glimmered through the thick fortress window frame of Amarantha’s bedchamber. Everything about the castle seemed both harsh and gentle: vast halls and dark rooms built of cold stone covered with colorful tapestries; plain furniture adorned with rich draperies and soft linens; simple roasts served on gilded dishware; vast hearths blazing with warmth, and chilly stone nooks perfect for hiding; and the castle’s master himself, dark and gruff and short of conversation yet gracious to all and unquestionably affectionate to Libby and Iris Tate.

“After dinner last night she spoke intelligently about Mr. Scott’s latest novel,” Libby continued. “I was surprised you remained so quiet on the subject. I heard you discussing that novel with Tabitha last week. I thought you liked it.”

“Oh, after all of those hours in the carriage yesterday I was famished.” Amarantha took up her shawl and went to the door. “My mouth was filled with cakes.”

“Ha ha, as Mr. Tate would say. It is obvious that you and the duke have met before.”

Amarantha’s heartbeats skipped. “Is it?”

“I wish you would tell me why you did not speak all evening. I know you cannot possibly be frightened of him.”

“There you are wrong. I am positively terrified.”

“Not on my account. You don’t believe that he abducts maidens, do you?”

“Absolutely not. It is clear to me that he has no intention of abducting you.” Adopting her, perhaps, and possibly Iris Tate as well. He was not yet even thirty but the pleasure he seemed to take in them seemed so genuinely paternal.

“Good, for I would think you as silly as Cynthia Tate.” She went into the stairwell. “He said that the library contains a volume of his father’s illustrations. I should retrieve that before we begin working.” She opened a door.

A veritable trove of bookshelves appeared before them, stacked with volumes.

“Magnificent!” Libby exclaimed.

“Yet I haven’t even spoken a word,” came a man’s voice from across the room. “But my nurse always did tell me I had remarkably good bone structure.”

He lounged in a chair by the hearth. He was handsome, young, and neither English nor Scottish: his tongue, skin, and features marked him quite obviously a foreigner.

“Oh! Who are you?” Libby said.

He lifted black brows. “I might ask you the same.”

“Then ask it.”

“Alas, I cannot. For every mote of my attention is engaged in enjoying the vision of you beneath that monstrous sculpture of Saint George hanging above the door. Like an angel at the feet of the triumphant Lucifer. Light and dark. Beauty and grotesque. It is positively Caravaggesque.”

“Caravaggesque is not a word, at least not in English,” Libby said. “You might, however, say Caravaggio-like. And Lucifer was not, of course, triumphant.”

“He won a kingdom of his own in the end. I should think that counts as a triumph.”

Libby crossed the threshold and craned her neck to peer up at the stone carving over the lintel. “Saint George did not fight an angel, rather a dragon.”

“I stand corrected,” he murmured.

“I hope we are not disturbing you, sir,” Amarantha said. “We have come in search of a single book.”

“Be my guest.” His gaze followed Libby across the room.

“Here it is,” Libby said, plucking forth a volume. “Precisely where the duke said it would be.”

“I should like to draw you,” the man said.

“Draw me?” Libby said.

He nodded.

“A caricature?”

“I do not draw caricatures.”

“You cannot possibly wish to draw a portrait of me. I have no remarkable features or distinguishing physical characteristics to make a portrait interesting,” she said, opening the volume. “Unless you are an uninteresting person, I suppose, who prefers regular features to unusual features.” She glanced up at him again. “Are you?”

“I believe I am now becoming one.”

“Why did you not stand when we entered the room? Your English is excellent and your clothing is fine. In English society, gentlemen are required to stand when ladies enter a room. I am not a lady, of course. Amarantha is the daughter of an earl, although she doesn’t remind people of it, unlike Mrs. Tate, who reminds everybody who will listen that she is the daughter of a baronet. You must know you should have.”

“I believe a question lurked somewhere in there.” A smile played about his lips.

“I am asking if men in your homeland are not required to stand when ladies enter a room.”

“In my home, never. Would you like me to stand?”

“No,” Libby said as though surprised. “I am merely curious that you did not.”

He set his book aside. Taking up a walking stick with a silver handle and clutching the chair arm with his other hand, slowly he stood. He was lean and very elegantly dressed, and his hand was tight about the cane: the straining knuckles whitened his dark skin. “You may now cast away your curiosity and be at ease,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “I beg your pardon.”

“Do not. Contrition is entirely inappropriate on the face of an angel.”

“You are teasing me, aren’t you?”

“I might be,” he said.

Snapping the book shut, Libby left the room.

“Good day, sir,” Amarantha said, and followed her friend.

She found Libby in the room at the top of the castle.

“A Luna Moth! Extraordinary!” Libby said. “Where is Iris? I asked her to come up directly after breakfast.”

“Here I am! Papa and Dr. Shaw have ridden out with the duke to hunt birds for dinner. Dr. Shaw said Papa should not ride, but Papa said his foot feels capital and anyway it’s much more pleasant to talk about business in the saddle than indoors. I cannot understand why, when I should think business is prodigiously dull no matter where one talks about it.”

“Men are generally odd creatures,” Libby said with a furrow in her brow. “Except Papa and the duke. Here, Iris. This crate first.”

When the streams of sunlight across the floor shortened, Amarantha rose from her knees and dusted off her skirt.

“Can you spare me, Libby? I would like to stretch my legs.” And find him.

“Take care that Mrs. Tate does not see you go, or she will tease you again about your liking for exercise in order to bring to everybody’s attention Jane’s delicate constitution.”

“Jane is so dull spirited,” Iris said. “She doesn’t even care that we are living in a haunted castle.”

“There really are no such things as haunted castles,” Libby said.

“Then why does everybody call the duke a demon?”

“Because everybody is silly. Do pass me that skull.”

In the foyer, Amarantha gathered her cloak. There were few servants about, and no one else around either as she pulled the hood over her hair, tucked her hands into her pockets, and walked to the gate in the forecourt wall.

In the keystone of the arch, a star had been carefully carved. With six points and a crossbar at the base of the top triangle, its lower points touched three other symbols: a trio of wavy lines, a triangle, and a vertical almond.

To see it in situ now, when six months earlier she had seen it all over Edinburgh—on gateposts and the corners of buildings—gave her the oddest sensation of possession. Which was ridiculous.

Continuing through the gate, she passed beneath the tree branches. To one side, another wall separated the drive and a church.

On the hill opposite, a horseman appeared on the road, the hooves of his enormous mount churning up the slushy mud. Two dogs ran alongside, large and shaggy. The Duke of Loch Irvine had returned.

Amarantha awaited him. He was alone, and she had come here for precisely this moment—her twirling nerves be damned.

The master of Haiknayes and Kallin rode a massive black beast and wore a black coat. He was altogether intimidating, and when he reined in the horse before her the sight of his splendid shoulders and powerful thighs did nothing to lessen the effect.

He removed his hat.

“Good day, my lady.”

“Good day, Urisk.”

Gabriel allowed himself the smile he had been resisting for days. He knew he was every sort of fool. He didn’t care.

But he caught himself at a half smile. No need to be an utter fool when a partial fool would do.

“So it’s to be Urisk now?” he said.

“It suits the location. And you are no longer a sailor.” The sunshine illumining her face picked out every shade of cream and gold and pink, and made her eyes like gems. The roundness of girlhood had gone from her features, leaving the sleek, soft beauty of a woman. “Do you ride a black horse and wear black clothing to convince everybody that you are in fact the devil, or simply because you like the color?”

“If it’s the former?” he said.

“Then I should be terrified of you.”

“Are you?”

“I haven’t decided. But I have not yet seen the dungeons.”

As he dismounted she watched him. To feel her watching him—again—after years—was like waking from an opium dream. He felt it beneath his skin.

“If you intend these as guard dogs, they are not very good at it,” she said, bending to run her fingertips through the fur between a hound’s ears. Dappled sunlight from between the branches of trees only just beginning to bud dotted her skin, mingling with the riot of freckles across her nose and cheeks. “Do they usually help to keep away curious people?”

“No’ this time, obviously.”

“They are kittens. What are their names?”

“Lucifer an’ Diablo.”

She laughed. As though she had touched him, he felt it in his bollocks.

“Really?” she said.

“Aye.”

“And your horse’s name?”

“Beelzebub.”

A smile lingered on her lips.

“The dogs at Kallin were also ridiculously friendly,” she said. “The locked gates of the grounds, however, were not.” She lifted her gaze to him. “Last autumn I went there. I stayed at the Solstice Inn at the village. Not as a guest. I worked for the innkeeper, Mrs. Tarry. It was she who suggested to me that you are an urisk.”

“Aye,” he said.

Her fingers stilled in the hound’s fur.

“I went to Kallin,” she enunciated very clearly.

“Aye.”

“You are not surprised.”

“You have come here,” he said.

“Twenty miles from Edinburgh. By invitation. Kallin is eighty miles of mountainous roads away.”

She had intended to surprise him. He should now pretend to be surprised.

“I knew you were there,” he said unwisely. But he could not lie to her. Let the entire world believe fantastical stories about him. To this woman alone he would never tell untruths.

“You knew I was there. You knew it then. Last autumn?”

“Aye.”

For a stretched moment she simply stared at him.

She walked away.

He followed, leading his mount along the road toward the church. He reached her side and she did not break stride.

“It was you,” she said. “On the roof.”

“Aye.”

“I thought it was you,” she said to the road ahead. “I assumed you had forgotten me.”

“No.”

“I see.”

Probably not. Certainly not.

“I walked up to the castle a number of times. Thrice weekly, in fact,” she said.

“’Tis a distance from the village.”

“Since speaking to you was my purpose in traveling to Kallin, that distance was immaterial. I was never admitted to the castle grounds. The place was thoroughly locked up. Yet you were apparently in residence the entire time?”

“Aye.”

“How exceptionally taciturn you have become.” She tucked her hands into her sleeves and moved with even, steady steps, just as she had when he had walked miles through cane fields and down dirt roads simply to remain at her side.

“Have I?” he said.

“I have been loath to believe the rumors of your reclusiveness,” she said. “But perhaps all of this isolation has had a deleterious effect on your ability to converse. Or perhaps you are simply reveling in solitude after sharing cramped ship’s quarters for years with so many others.”

“Could be.” He bridled his smile yet again.

“Yet now you have invited all of these people here. For a party, no less.”

“You required it.”

She halted. “I required it?”

“Aye.”

“You are the most—the most unusual man.” She shook her head and the sunlight danced in the fiery locks that peeked from beneath her hood. “Do not attempt to convince me that if not for what I said the other night in that reading room you would have not invited Mr. Tate here to discuss business or Libby to study your father’s collection. I won’t believe it.”

“Then I’ll no’ attempt to convince you. ’Tis the truth, though.”

She breathed very markedly for several inhalations, the clasp on her cloak glittering with the abrupt rise and fall of the most beautiful breasts in creation. Unlike five years ago, now he knew what it was to have that in his hand. Her.

“I see,” she finally said, moving toward the church again. “Apparently you do in fact still enjoy teasing. I can only hope that you will be more forthcoming in answering my questions.”

“Questions o’ the devil?”

“I will ask the questions, Urisk. You will answer them.”

“You’ve no respect for my consequence. I’m a duke now, you know.”

“Yes, I had heard that somewhere.”

“You’ll find no answers,” he made himself say.

“Let us see if that is true.” Halting again, she faced him and for the first time in five and a half years Gabriel wished the entire world away—everything but this woman. He had forgotten this pleasure, the acute pleasure of walking beside her, feeling her near, his senses filled with her voice and colors and the cadence of her movements. That simply trading words with another human being could forge a well of joy in his stomach seemed a miracle. He had forgotten this. He had made himself forget.

“Last winter,” she said, “my friend Penny Baker left Kingston unexpectedly and alone. She took passage on a ship bound for Scotland. There was nothing left for me in Kingston, so I—”

“Nothing?”

“I am a widow. When my husband died, his mission passed to another man.”

“Aye.”

“We have returned to single syllables, it seems.”

“I know you are a widow.”

“You do?”

He took a step closer and Amarantha willed herself to remain in place.

“Do you imagine I would touch a married woman as I touched you?” His head bent a bit and an ebony lock dipped over one dark eye. She wanted to sweep it back with her fingers then explore—to touch him as he had once touched her. He was temptation and mystery at once.

“I have no idea what you would or would not do.”

“You went to Kallin to see me,” he said. “You came here to see me. You canna stay away from me.”

“It is clear at least that your arrogance is as vigorous as ever.”

“My appreciation for the obvious is as well, lass.”

“I came here to learn what part you played in my friend’s death.”

The amusement disappeared from his features.

“When I disembarked in Leith, I searched for Penny. Her trail led toward Kallin. I found her in a farm cottage by the River Fyne. She was very ill. Shortly after my arrival, she was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Passed away.”

As though a shade had fallen over his eyes, she could not read the expression in them now.

“You believe I’d something to do with it?” he said.

“Why else would she have tried to travel to Kallin, despite the danger?”

“The danger?”

“Penny was not a planter’s daughter or a missionary. She was a freedwoman and half-sister to my husband. Yet she traveled without escort across a land considerably more vast than the island upon which she had always lived. But when I found her I discovered that she had not journeyed across the ocean entirely alone.”

“Was there a man?”

“In the cottage in which I found her, the day before I arrived Penny had brought another being into the world. A son. I found her minutes before she breathed her last. And the only words she spoke to me were your name.”