“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us to the pub, sir?”

“Thank you, but not tonight, Crossley.” Gideon pointed to his in-basket. “I’ve enough paperwork to keep me busy–“

“—Until your meeting with Miss Stirling.” Crossley laughed from the doorway.

“In the library,” Easton added, slipping on his jacket.

“At half-ten,” Durbridge said, clapping his cap on his head.

“Yes. Thank you, gentlemen.” Gideon waved them on their way, then spent the next two hours sitting at his desk in the dim light provided by the single bulb of his lamp, his bad leg propped atop an overturned waste bin, preparing reports to his superiors, reading and responding to the many dispatches that seemed to arrive hourly from the War Office and the Special Operations Executive.

In addition to the deluge of paperwork and the business of siting and constructing a secret operational base, and recruiting and training the new Aux Unit, Gideon was expected to take command of the local Home Guard, undoubtedly a group of veterans from the Great War and lumbering farm lads who would resent him asserting his authority into their local company. But that was the nature of military protocol, at home or behind enemy lines. These Home Guard units needed the same training as the regular army, if they were to be effective in the event of an invasion.

The nationwide fear of invasion was as genuine as it was justified. In the few months since Gideon had been injured, he’d watched helplessly as the German army invaded Norway and Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France–the entire coastline of Europe in German hands, with only 26 miles of English Channel to protect her. By all accounts, the Blitz was an action meant to soften up England for a German invasion that could begin any day now.

Gideon had used his family’s influence and this very real threat to national security to insert himself back into the war effort, despite not being quite recovered.

Given the code name Invictus and sworn to secrecy, he was to establish contact through a dead drop with an intelligence agent in Somerset. Together they were to initiate a secret conduit of communication to link the Transatlantic cable office in Porthcurno, at the tip of Cornwall, directly to Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall. Should the country’s telegraph system be disrupted by aerial bombing or invasion, the Balesborough Link was to serve as the collection and distribution point for encoded messages that would save lives and help force the invading army back on its heels.

He’d learned the location of the dead drop just an hour before, when a message arrived from the SOE instructing him to approach the drop the next morning, but only if he recognized the signal indicating the drop had been made.

But that was for the morning. Tonight he was to meet with the singular Miss Josie Stirling, a confrontation he wasn’t looking forward to but was eager to begin. It wasn’t the outcome of their meeting that caused him concern—the requisition for billeting at Nimway Hall from the SOE was clearly documented and unbreakable, no matter how loud the woman’s objections. It was the battle itself that concerned him. Five minutes with the woman this afternoon, and she had become a fixture in his thoughts for the remainder of the day, and well into the evening.

Even now. Eyes bright and green as a new leaf, mind just as bright, as quick. The late afternoon sunlight glinting gold on her hair. Her mouth ripe and lush as a persimmon, pouting at him in her righteous anger. A woman fierce with a courage, unlike any woman of his acquaintance. A puzzle that needed solving before the night was much older.

With thirty minutes until the meeting, he locked his reports in the office safe, retrieved his cane, turned out his desk lamp then negotiated the clutter of ghostly furniture in the great hall, entering the library with every intention of unwinding with a bit of reading.

The library was almost completely dark, its deep corners shadowed, but for the fire that flickered and flared in the fireplace against the interior east wall and a reading lamp sitting on the octagonal table between the pair of tall-backed chairs facing the fire. As impressive as the library in his family’s home at High Starrow, but more welcoming, a place of study and comfort.

Twenty minutes after ten. No sign of Miss Stirling. She’d said ten thirty, was the sort of woman who would walk into the library as the clock struck the time.

His fingers still cold from sitting too long at his desk in the glass and marble chill of the conservatory, he rested his cane against the drinks table near the door and went directly to the fire, extending his hands toward the marvelous heat. His palms had just begun to warm when he sensed a shift of movement behind him, then a voice—

“You must be my Josie’s colonel.”

Gideon made a painfully quick turn in the direction of the voice, was automatically reaching for his sidearm—which he realized too late was locked in the safe in his room, at the very same moment he located the speaker who was lounging in the chair to his right. A smiling, distinguished-looking gentleman, with a trimmed gray moustache and beard, a book open and braced on his crossed knee, a snifter of brandy and a bottle of calvados on a small silver serving tray on the table beside him.

Gideon settled his frayed nerves, gone stale and soft these many months of his recovery. “Lt. Colonel Gideon Fletcher. And you are?”

“Edward Stirling,” the man said as he laid his book on the reading table. He rose from the chair in a single sweep of graceful limbs and an easy smile, coming to rest eye-to-eye with Gideon and offering a strong hand. “Late of Stirling House, London. Newly arrived father to the lady of the Hall.”

“Edward Stirling? Of the theatrical family?” The connection was a surprise, but explained the daughter’s unabashed spirit. “The Stirling Theatre, Stirling Pictures?”

“The celebrated actress, Kitty Stirling. And you mustn’t leave out the Stirling Scandal Sheet or the arcades at Brighton and Blackpool—that would be our Stirlings. The family business. Entertaining the audiences of England, America and most of Europe since long before the time of Shakespeare. We Stirlings were mercers back in the days of the York Mystery plays, apparently took to theatricals with enterprising enthusiasm and great quantities of textiles, which costumed the new extravaganzas. This was long before my untold great-grandfather teamed up with Mr. Shakespeare and other rogues and vagabonds to form the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.”

Gideon found himself both in awe of the man, and relaxing considerably. “Sir, if you meant to impress me with your family tree, you have done so—”

“Edward, please.” Stirling gestured to the opposite chair. “And I only meant to put you at ease after I startled you. Please sit with me. Your reflexes are quick, Colonel. Had you been armed, I fear we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I hope that’s not true.” Gideon laughed for the first time in days, gripped the upholstered leather arms and lowered himself into the supremely comfortable chair, relieving the pressure on his leg and back. “I do apologize, Edward. I thought I was alone.”

“And you thought you were armed, as well.” Stirling canted his head in a piercing study that many a man must have shrunk from in terror. “Career military from your bearing. Either that or an aristocratic upbringing.”

“Both, I’m afraid. Am I that transparent?” That out of shape, off my guard, he thought, but didn’t add.

“And engaged in the secret services, if I’m not mistaken.” When Gideon refused to bend to the man’s silent inquisition, Stirling continued with a smile, “I only know this, Colonel, because I was there in your place during the Great War. Counter-espionage for the Secret Service Bureau; what you modern chaps call MI6.”

Bloody hell! Edward Stirling, a counter-intelligence agent! Gideon hoped his surprise didn’t show in his face. But the man seemed amused that Gideon wasn’t offering a comment, let alone a confirmation, and continued the one-sided conversation.

“I note your surprise, Colonel. But what better training for an agent than a life spent in the theatre? I was fluent in German and French, had a bit of Russian, was well into my 30s when the war came along and was a familiar fixture on the European theatre circuits—a natural, or so ‘M’ said when he came to recruit me.”

William Melville, himself, the founder of the Bureau. More than impressed, Gideon only nodded, enjoying the man’s tale.

“You’re very good at your job, Colonel. I commend you.” Another smile, as though a sharp memory had lodged itself in the man’s mind. “I would sit here and regale you with my adventures, but, damn me, if my long ago missions aren’t still covered by the Official Secrets Act. Care to join me in a brandy while we wait on my daughter? Your secret is safe with me, by the way. She told me you were to meet her here and that I should be sure to absent myself. Which I shall, the moment she arrives.”

“Yes, thank you. I’d be delighted to join you, Edward.” On the advice of his family doctor Gideon hadn’t had a drop of alcohol in all the months of his recovery. Until now. Now he needed one.

“I warn you, Colonel—”

“Gideon, please.”

“As I was saying, Gideon, my daughter can be quite despotic when she wants something done her way.” Stirling handed him the snifter of dark amber. “Comes by it honestly, from a long line of tenacious women and imperious theatre directors who delighted in making grown men cry.”

“I shall keep that in mind.” Gideon cupped the bowl of the glass and leaned back against the chair.

“Good man!” The clock on the mantle chimed the half hour. Half-ten. “Interesting, though—” Stirling said, with a swirl of his glass, “Josie is punctual to a fault. Claims that keeping to a schedule is the only way she can manage Nimway Hall on her own.”

“An unusual role for a woman, don’t you find? Managing an estate the size and complexity of Nimway Hall.” He found himself curious as hell as to why and what placed her in the position.

“My Josie is an unusual woman, the mistress of an unusual estate. You’d best keep that in mind, too.” Stirling relaxed against the back of the chair. “Where do you call home, Gideon.”

“I’m a soldier, I live where I’m posted. But my family’s home is High Starrow, near Ramsgate.”

Stirling sat upright, eyes wide. “Indeed! Your father was Michael, Lord Starrow? I knew him, a thousand years ago. A Cambridge man, right? Bit of a knave?”

“My father?” A knave—not possible.

“Known far and wide as ‘Flash Hot Starrow, the Lord of Misrule.’ Could assemble a bacchanal with the drop of his hat.”

“You’re talking about Michael Tiberius Fletcher?” The most strict and stolid man he’d ever known. “Couldn’t be one and the same.”

“The very one! Oh, my boy, the stories I could tell you. I understand he has passed?”

“Three years ago.” Gideon whirled the brandy’s sweet fumes beneath his nose, trying and failing to picture his father as the Lord of Misrule, finally slipped the calvados onto his tongue, savored its shock of apple and fire. “My older brother, Joseph, assumed the title of viscount. He tries to run High Starrow, but complains endlessly about the RAF requisitioning more and more of the estate with every passing week of the war.”

“Just as your lot has requisitioned my daughter’s home—”

“Perhaps.” Gideon dismissed the notion out of hand. “My mother lives in the dower house. A formidable woman herself.”

“Excellent! Then you’ll have rehearsed dealing with a woman like my Josie. Speaking of which—” Stirling nodded toward the mantel clock “— it’s ten thirty-five. Something has delayed her. She won’t be happy with whatever, whomever has made her late.”

As though the great Edward Stirling had delivered a cue to an actress waiting in the wings for her grand entrance, Josie Stirling appeared like a hurricane in the space between them and the fire, a wild, shapely silhouette against the dancing flames.

“Good Lord, Daughter, what’s happened to you?”

Gideon found himself standing, staring at the apparition in front of him as she stepped into the glow of the table lamp. The woman was drenched and muddied from her wellies to the top of her head. A leafy twig of willow was jutting from the hair above her right ear, her cheek streaked with dirt, lips full in her furor, deep red in her passion.

Even in the dim light of the table lamp her eyes flashed with a fire brighter than his memory, more golden than the flames in the hearth. Filling him with a longing so intense, it clenched his chest, a heat so fierce it lodged in his groin. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Ever.

“I fell,” she said, as though the act of her falling was impossible.

“In the hallway?” Stirling stood and peered closely at his daughter, brandy still in hand, a tick of humor in the corner of his eyes.

“On my way through Balesboro Wood, thank you for asking, Father.” She threaded her fingers through her hair, combed out the twig, gave it a scoffing scowl and tossed it into the hissing fire. “My own wood, which I know better than the back of my own hand.”

“What the devil were you doing trekking through the woods this time of night, Josie Bear? Were you alone?”

“And without a torch.” She glared at Gideon, as though he were somehow to blame, then dropped a pair of logs into the fire grate, stepping backward as billowing sparks dashed up the flue. “I do apologize for being late, Colonel Fletcher. It’s never happened before. It won’t happen again.”

Gideon couldn’t stop staring, words clamoring around inside his head. “Yes. Accepted, Miss Stirling. And understandable, given—”

“Understandable to you perhaps, Colonel, because you don’t know me. At. All.” As though declaring that he never would know her. “However, I see you’ve met my father.”

“Gideon and I have been chatting about old times—”

She dashed a suspicious frown between them. “You know each other? How?”

“Not a bit, Daughter dear, until just now. Which is my cue to exit, as you’ve directed me.” Stirling turned to Gideon with a wink. “She’s lodged me up in the old nursery. Tells me she’s rescuing me from the Hun and then puts me out to pasture like an old bull.”

“You are an old bull, Father.”

“There’s my girl; quick as lightning!” Stirling whispered to Gideon in a volume that would carry to the back of the Royal Albert Hall. He then turned clearly adoring eyes on his daughter, bent and kissed her gently on her forehead and said to Gideon, “Beware, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! A pleasure, sir!”

With that, Edward Stirling exited, leaving them both staring into the shadows of the backstairs.

“You must excuse my father, Colonel,” she said, the fine design of her profile lit by the golden light of the fire, lush mouth, perfect chin, high-born cheekbones, “the Stirling side of the family wouldn’t know how to make an ordinary exit from a room, even if their lives depended on it.”

“I would agree, Miss Stirling.” He held her gaze for as long as it took for her to register the memory of her own dramatic exit from the conservatory. “And your mother’s side of your family—” Gideon asked, wondering if the mother had been as beautiful as the daughter “—what did you inherit from her?”

“I inherited the guardianship of Nimway Hall, Colonel.” She turned to him, her brow winged in shadow like a flight of ravens. “And now it seems I have inherited you.”

* * *

Josie flushed to her toes, realizing that she had just claimed the arrogant Lt. Colonel Fletcher as her own. All six foot three of him. That broad chest, as well, the square jaw and superbly sculpted mouth. The raw fire of his gaze that seemed to snatch all thought from her brain, the maddening quirk of his dark eyebrow directed downward, right into her core.

“Of course, Colonel, I don’t mean that I’ve inherited you. Yourself. Actually. After all, you’re here temporarily—you and your unit.” His unit! Dear God, she’d actually glanced down the front of his trousers. Hadn’t mean to, it just happened. Her flush deepened, heating her neck, rising up to her ears. “It’s—it’s just that this war has created strange bedfellows—”

“Bedfellows, Miss Stirling?’

“Merlin’s beard, did I just use that word? Bedfellows? And am I speaking my thoughts aloud now?”

“You are, Miss Stirling.” He laughed, a deep-chested rumble that surprised her with its generosity.

“Well, good, then,” she said, still blushing, furious for making herself vulnerable to him, for allowing him free access to her unguarded thoughts. “Honesty, sir. If we’re to manage a truce for the duration of your—shall we say ‘occupation’ of Nimway Hall—then we must both be willing to deal in good faith with any issue that might—arise—between us.” ‘Arise?’ Really? Oh, damn! She’d done it again, glanced down the front of his trousers like a street-corner tart. And double damn the man for the smile he was so unsuccessfully trying to hide—for noticing the double-entendres that kept tumbling out of her mouth.

“I agree completely, Miss Stirling.” He took a long, deep breath, then exhaled as he set his glass down on the reading table and turned back to her. “We must encourage honest cooperation between us, whenever possible.”

“Whenever possible?” The abrupt change in the man’s attitude set her teeth on edge, reminded her why she was here.

“Within, of course, the dictates set by my orders from the War Office.”

“And my orders as head of Nimway Hall. That said, I suggest we start by clarifying our boundaries.” Hoping to separate herself from the man’s unbalancing influence, Josie turned away to the wall of bookshelves that framed the huge map of Nimway Hall, its fields and farms, the woods and the village of Balesborough. “Here, Colonel. This map should help.”

She flicked on the sconce lights and stepped back for the wider view of the alcove, would have collided with the man, but he caught her upper arms from behind with his powerful hands, warming her all over with the heat pouring off his chest as he held her there. An intoxicating place to be standing, with him gazing up at the map of her estate, his head above hers, his breathing strong and even, grazing her neck, lighting her nerves on fire.

“How old is this?” he asked so near her temple, his words might have been a kiss. He took a sharp breath, muttered something to himself, released her and stepped forward, drawing an electric torch from his belt and flicking it on. His beam fell so immediately on the Hall itself, she half-expected to see the light playing outside the library windows, seeking entry through the shutters and the blackout curtains. A ridiculous notion, of course, but the man had an uncanny way of spinning her thoughts into fanciful shapes.

“If you’re asking the age of the house, Colonel, no one quite knows.” She joined him at his side, hoping to judge what liberties he might be plotting to take against her. “The map itself was created for Nimway Hall by John Speed himself, sometime in the late 1600s.”

“An original Speed? I’m impressed.”

“Of course, the canvas has been added to over the decades by other artists as the estate changed and expanded. A bit fanciful in places. The Arthurian elements there in the corners, and Excalibur rising out of our Lake Myrrdin—a family legend, of course, but the map is otherwise quite accurate.”

“But it’s current as of today?” His beam settled on the house and its outbuildings.

“Current as of 1938.” The year of her majority, when the guardianship was granted to her by dear Aunt Freddy before she and Uncle Anthony left for America with her grandparents. “Is the date important?”

“Very. I’m surprised it’s still hanging in the open, with all the road names pulled down from intersection posts, and driving maps removed from the shops.”

“We’re not a stately home that gives tours; we don’t advertise.”

“Still—” His inquisitive shaft of light danced across the map, from the Hall, to the woods, then the stables, around Lake Myrrdin, to the tenant farms on the perimeter, to the village itself, the fields and sheep folds, following roads and lanes, streams and footpaths, pausing now and then on the places she loved, before shooting off to the next location.

What had begun as a bolt of resentment at his highly invasive scrutiny of her estate was fast awakening a far more intimate sensation in her, stealing her breath, scrambling her thoughts, as though he were appraising her, his beam of heat first warming her ears, then shifting to her chin, the nape of her neck, the skin between her breasts.

“What exactly are you searching for, Colonel?” she asked, barely finding the breath to do so. “Perhaps I can point it out for you.”

“Sorry, I was just—” He switched off the torch and looked down at her from his great height, as though surprised to see her standing beside him. She watched him, waiting for him to answer, realizing suddenly that he was staring at her mouth, frowning at it, really, which caused her to wonder if she had dirt on her cheek from her strange stumble through the woods tonight.

Self-conscious for the first time in years, she brushed her finger lightly across her nose, found nothing there. “Have I mud all over my face?”

He stroked his jaw, his smile almost shy. “No, Miss Stirling. I’ve… uh… I was just—” he glanced quickly back at the map, switched on the torch again “—just assessing the lay of the land.”

“The lay of my land, Colonel. Isn’t that the very point of our meeting tonight—to establish boundaries between us? For you to understand where the War Office’s influence ends and mine begins.”

He said nothing, was staring again at the map, his light roving wildly, as though mesmerized by something she couldn’t see, no matter how hard she tried to figure out his intentions. The beam stopped abruptly in the middle of the northern-most field. “Are these structures occupied?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Who normally uses them?”

“Sheep.”

“Ah.” Unfazed, he kept staring at the same spot. “Anyone else?”

“Using the sheep fold?” She laughed at the very idea. “Not that I’m aware of.”

He grunted. “Abandoned, then?”

“We were forced to cull our sheep flocks last fall, by order of the Ministry of Agriculture. Seems that an acre of land planted in a food crop such as barley or wheat or sugar beets can feed many more people than can that same acre of grass, reserved as grazing land for sheep or cattle.”

“Ah, yes.” He turned back to her, flicked off the torch. “My second-eldest brother operates Fletcher’s Packing Enterprises in Maidstone. Last I spoke with Benjamin, he was doing battle with our father’s old school chum, Lord Woolton, head of the new Ministry of Food. Something about bacon processing and the diminishing supply of hogs. Frankly, I prefer soldiering to farming.”

“I can’t see there’s a jot of difference,” she said, pointedly testing the boundaries of the man’s view of her world. “Between the soldier and the farmer.”

He lifted a skeptical brow. “As different, Miss Stirling, as day is to night.”

“Different battlefields, certainly. Different weapons, different enemies, but, farming and soldiering are equally critical to winning the war.”

“A poetic sentiment, I’m sure,” he said in a patronizing air that raised her hackles. “Spoken by a civilian who has never slogged through a battlefield under fire from an advancing tank. Who’s never slept in a muddy trench or stalked an enemy through the woods—”

“Or slogged through the mud behind a plow until your feet bled, because the tractor has run dry of petrol, or delivered a breech calf in the middle of a blizzard, or driven the miller to the nearest hospital because the runner stone has crushed his leg— ”

“Hardly the same thing—“

“How dare you say that, sir? That my work—our work—my laborers and me, the Land Girls, my tenants, every farmer across this beloved country who work their fingers to the bone to feed your staff officers, your soldiers, the brave pilots of the RAF—that their work isn’t just as critical to the waging of war as the men they support? Is that how you really feel? You implied it earlier, but I hoped it wasn’t your true feelings. Because, Colonel, if so, there’s no point to this meeting at all.”

“How either of us feel about each other or the war is immaterial. The War Office has requisitioned Nimway Hall for military purposes and those orders require your unconditional deference to me.”

“I beg to differ, Colonel. I take my orders from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food, who take their orders from the War Office, just as you do.”

“Your point being?”

“That my duties and yours are of equal importance to the war effort. No more, no less.”

“I disagree.”

“I don’t care if you agree with me or not, Colonel. I supervise a vast estate farm, a commercial forest, a large orchard, a cider mill, a flour mill, the village council, the local Women’s Voluntary Service, the Women’s Institute, the care and feeding of four evacuee children, four Land Girls, you lot, my tenant farmers and my household staff—all working toward the war effort. And, should I fail to meet the draconian requirements set down by the Ag, I might very well lose control of Nimway Hall—my family’s home for centuries.”

“Commendable, however—”

“What exactly do you do for the war effort, Colonel, besides hole up in my conservatory?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, his jaw hardened and working beneath the bronze skin of his cheek as he seemed to gather his temper and laid the electric torch carefully on the table in front of the map.

“Without revealing the details of my orders, Miss Stirling, I can tell you that we are to assess the work of the Defense Chain Operations Task Force. Additionally, we will be surveying and siting locations for the Taunton Stop Line.”

“What are you trying to stop?” She knew exactly what a Stop Line was.

He eyed her. “A Nazi invasion.”

“Must be a big chain.” She added a wide-eyed blink and then tried a half-smile.

He frowned, clearly unamused. “A Stop Line is a chain of field fortifications: gun emplacements, anti-tank islands, slit-trenches, natural defenses—”

“That’s why you’re interested in the Speed map. The reason you and your staff were so intent on the map of the Hall when I entered the conservatory, why you were trying to hide it from me. You were looking to construct an anti-tank island in the middle of my barley field.”

“There’s a boundary you should not cross, Miss Stirling, should you find me or my staff wandering the estate with surveying equipment and measuring devices. We are not trespassing on your privacy, but scouting for elevated locations such as this—” he returned to studying the map, took up his infernal electric torch, shoulders straight, one hand behind his back as though about to launch into a lecture to his troops. He landed his beam of light on the top of Windmill Hill. “From this spot, we will survey the terrain across the Levels, west toward Taunton and Bridgwater to the Bristol Channel, north toward the Mendips and south along the Polden Hills.”

“You’re a surveyor? I thought you were a soldier.”

“And an engineer. I hold dual commissions, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Marines.”

“And you’ve been posted to rural Somerset?” She paid little attention to military matters, but there must be a story here. A fearsome soldier like Fletcher posted to the wilds of Somerset?

He left her question hanging and went on. “My staff office will also serve as a command center for a number of other DCO Task Forces who are operating in the area—”

Command center? “Just how many people do you anticipate coming and going every day?”

“Me, my staff of nine, plus or minus another ten, possibly twenty, depending on the day.”

“Twenty or thirty of you, tramping through my conservatory? You bloody well better treat it with the respect it is due. That goes for the rest of Nimway. Because if I find any damage, anywhere, I will blame you personally and raise holy hell with Mr. Churchill, himself. A man who has been entertained in that very conservatory on countless occasions.”

“We are not barbarians, Miss Stirling.”

“Some of your lot have proved otherwise! I’ve heard horror stories from family friends who live just a few miles south of here. Bannington Manor, their once stately country home, has suffered a collapsed ceiling in the entry hall, broken furniture, not to mention the damage to the grounds, turned to mud by the reservists and volunteers being trained and billeted there. Lady Bryce is beside herself with the extent of the destruction.”

“Ah, yes, I know the case in question.” He had civility enough to look contrite. “I assure you that the officer commanding that particular unit has been disciplined and demoted as a warning to others. Myself included.”

She wanted to believe the man, for no other reason than the earnest expression on his handsome face, so deeply planed in the shadows of the library. But this was no time to falter in defense of her home. The sooner she plowed and planted every inch of arable land for the war effort, the safer Nimway Hall would be from additional requisitioning by the military, or from her practices being found in default by the Ministry of Agriculture and losing possession of the estate.

“Now that you’ve shared the nature of your operations with me, Colonel, it’s time for you to listen to my list of concerns and demands.”

The lout crossed his arms and leaned against the bookcase. “I am agog.”

“You are not.”

He shrugged. “I’m listening, then. Will that do?”

Best to ignore the man and the flickering quirk of his smile. His wry sense of humor humanized the hell out of him. Not a good sign.

She grabbed his electric torch and focused the beam on the map, landing squarely on the entrance to Nimway. “First and foremost, Colonel, I require full access to my own front gate and my own front door. If I’m to keep the estate running in top form, I must be able to freely come and go as I normally would. That goes for deliveries, hay wagons, tractors and everyone in my employ.”

“I have no quarrel with that. Through the main gate, with my guard posted day and night. Anyone who shows the proper papers and identity cards is free to come and go.

“You mean to have me stopped at my gate every time I—”

“Every time, Miss Stirling. Strict orders from the War Office to keep the enemy from sneaking into our operations.”

“Sapper Mullins knows full well who I am. We met today, as I told you. Met my father, as well, a man with an unforgettable face.”

“I’m certain that Mullins well remembers you and your father, however, that’s not the point—”

“And I don’t see the need for a guard at the front door of the Hall. Post a guard at the door to your office, but having one at the front door is a waste of manpower.”

“Seems reasonable.”

“I also have five tenant farmers, their families and a variety of farm hands that work on the holdings, depending on the season. If any of them walk or ride across the fields as they usually do when they come to the Hall for business, what then?”

“Do your tenants carry identification papers?”

“Yes, they do. And gas masks.”

“Then we’ll take care of those situations as they arise. Nimway Hall has a vast uncontrolled perimeter that can be monitored only if everyone on the estate is on guard for strangers or unusual activity, and reports to me anything suspicious. The main gate will guard against overt enemies and unsecured vehicles.”

“Enemies of Nimway Hall?” The blasted man was beginning to make a certain amount of sense and she didn’t quite know what to do about it, what to say. “If only you could stop the Timber Supply Department at the gate and refuse them entrance.”

“Who is this?”

“They arrive tomorrow morning to lay waste to Balesboro Wood, Nimway’s ancient forest.”

“A timber operation? No one cleared that with me.”

“They won’t start tomorrow. I can guarantee it. In fact, Colonel, they will start felling my trees over my dead body.”

He blinked, scowled. “Explain please.”

“Two inspectors from the Timber Supply Department will be here tomorrow to assess the suitability of Balesboro Wood as a source of timber for the war effort. Our wood has been here since time immemorial, and it will survive the war, but only if I protect it with my last breath.”

“You sound very like my family’s forester. He would lay himself in front of the timber van before he would allow our woods to be abused.”

“Your family has a forest?” Another surprising detail about the man who was asserting dominion over her home.

“Starrow Wood. My favorite place to ride.”

And yet another surprise. “You ride, as well?” He surely didn’t seem the type.

“Not often since my long-ago college years. I do miss it though. The quiet of moving through the morning woods on my bay.”

“We’ve two hunters in our stables,” she heard herself say, as though the man were a guest, not an invader. “You’re welcome to ride our woods when they’re not needed for the farm.”

He tilted his head, lifted a brow, the corner of his mouth where his smile seemed to lurk. “Thank you, Miss Stirling. I may take you up on your generosity. Now, is there anything else?” As though the disruptions caused by the man’s very presence had been smoothed over by her allowing him a horse to ride in the wood.

“Yes. Since you and your men are taking all your meals here at the Hall, you must surrender your ration books to me immediately. Mrs. Lamb will be shopping tomorrow and needs to register you and your staff at the butcher and the grocer.”

“I will fetch our ration books when we’re finished here. What else is on this list of yours?”

Josie had shoved her list into the pocket of her dungarees, now retrieved it because she couldn’t recall the remaining items until she consulted the smeared pencil markings. “The children. You must remember that we are host to four evacuee children who have the run of the estate. They are curious and inventive and fearless in their play. They get into everything. Their health and safety is my prime concern and should be yours as well. You must not leave dangerous items where they can find them, because they will.”

He frowned deeply, seemed to be considering this carefully. “Define dangerous.”

“Guns, ammunition, hammers, saws, vehicles, construction material for your anti-tank islands. Come, Colonel, you were a boy once. You must have put yourself in danger more times than your mother would care to have known.”

His wry smile was answer enough, before he added, “Thankfully, she still doesn’t know.”

“You just think she doesn’t.”

“Point made, Miss Stirling. Next item on your list.”

Distracted again, she straightened the damp and crumpled list. “Chickens? Ah, yes! Please make it clear to your staff and visitors that Nimway is home to a wide variety of living things that need as much care as the people. Dairy cows, new calves, horses, free ranging chickens, active beehives located at the margins of fields, hedgerows that provide homes to badgers, rabbits, birds, voles, hedgehogs—”

“What are you saying? Are we to feed them? Milk them?”

“No. Just don’t run them over with your vehicles or poison them with your—”

“With what? Our mustard gas?”

“Dear God, you’re storing mustard gas? Here at Nimway Hall?”

“Are you mad, woman? This is a farm, not a military reservation. And why the bloody hell would you think we’d be in possession of chemical weapons? They were banned by international law twenty years ago.”

“Of course I don’t think that. I was just—just mind the welfare of the animals and the children. They don’t understand the danger they’re in.”

“Miss Stirling,” he said, leaning close and whispering as though a secret, “I know just how they feel.”

Josie’s pulse set off like a rabbit, her heart racing alongside. He smelled so good, of wood smoke and leather. “How do you mean, Colonel? Are we in danger after all?”

He made a soft sound in his throat then straightened. “Not if we keep careful watch, Miss Stirling. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she said, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to.

“And to that end, I have a proposal.”

“A proposal?” The bloody man had dashed her logic to pieces, was now walking toward the library door.

He stopped at the drinks table, picked up something as he turned back to her. “May I suggest that you and I meet every night—”

“Where?” She felt suddenly bereft of his circle of warmth, a chilly reminder that her clothes were damp through.

“Here, in the library. Say ten o’clock?”

Another night like this one? Sparring, speaking their minds, warming their hands by the fire? Well, now there was a danger! “Why, Colonel?”

“To compare our schedules for the following day and, as you say, to avoid conflicts as best we can.” The lamplight from the reading table could barely reach him from that distance. Yet, its glow planed his face, broadened his shoulders, rendering her without words. “While you think on it, Miss Stirling, I’ll fetch our ration books. Where shall I deliver them?”

“I’ll wait for you here. And yes, Colonel, a nightly meeting with you would be lov—” good grief, she’d been about to say a meeting with him would be lovely “—logical. Quite logical. Though I insist on half-ten.”

“Half-ten it is.”

The library door clicked behind him and she was left shivering in the cold.