Guin climbed into bed, snuffed out the candle and lay imagining that she could hear Jared’s breathing on the other side of the door. Of course this could never be anything but an affair. How could she agree to marry him now, if that was the alternative he was offering to them remaining as lovers? She had lost two husbands in suspicious circumstances, the print shops had been full of her image. Her innocence would not weigh in those scales. Even if they managed to resolve this awful situation, neutralise Elizabeth’s venom, prove Theo innocent, scandal would still cling to her.

Scandal would cling to Jared too, the long-lost second son reappearing conveniently to claim his inheritance, the reasons for his disappearance a subject for gossip and speculation. He must marry and marry well to counter that in the eyes of Society. Sophie the Duchess would be able to find any number of well-dowered eligible young ladies of breeding for him. He did not need a twice-married, scandal-ridden wife from the obscure Lancashire gentry.

She was not going to cry, she told herself. She would go to sleep thinking of ways to expose Elizabeth and avenge Augustus, find a way to live her life when all this was over. Guin rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. The man had ears like a cat, he would probably be able to hear the most silent tear…

 

Ravenscar was as rugged as its name. It was bleak even in sunshine, growing out of the sandstone outcrop from where it loomed over a deep-cut ravine with a narrow torrent at the bottom. All around the landscape was more benign, green, prosperous, but Ravenscar looked what it was, a house that could withstand a siege, built in an age when your neighbours would take your stock by force of arms and your womenfolk too if they could.

But it was home. He had thought that he hated it, never wanted to see it again, but now Jared blinked hard to get the battered silhouette into focus then set about breaching its defences.

First it was necessary to get inside the high stone walls without going through the two-storey gatehouse. He had no intention of announcing his presence until he was inside and knew who was there, but the section of wall to the south, where some penny-pinching repairs in the mid eighteenth century were beginning to crumble, offered the same handholds that he had used as a schoolboy.

The turf was soft as he dropped down at the back of the shrubbery. The sense of being fourteen again almost made him grin, before the silent mass of the house sobered him as returning always had. It was the classic E-shape of the 16th century, a long range to the west with two side wings at either end of the eastern side and a massive porch forming the central stroke. He had no intention of walking in at the front door.

The grounds seemed deserted and garden room door was probably unlocked. Jared sauntered across the grass between shrubbery and house. No-one glimpsing him would see suspicious or furtive movements.

The handle turned under the pressure of his hand and he was inside, edging between benches holding pitchers and vases, a pair of shears, bundles of wire and a vast bucket full of greenery. It seemed Bella, or the housekeeper, still arranged flowers in the house.

The hall clock struck ten as he came out of the shadows under the great carved oak staircase. Unless his father had changed his habits he would be in his study now for an hour. That would be the usual time for summoning boys in disgrace. Jared recognised now that it had been deliberate in order to give the culprit – usually himself – a sleepless night and no appetite for breakfast. He wondered if some long-engrained habit had made him time his arrival for just this hour.

Voices from the front of the hall – a pair of footmen by the sound of it – brought him out of time past back to the present, sent him away, down the corridor to the study door.

The hinges were as well-oiled as they ever had been and he was inside and in front of the desk without the man sitting on the other side of it looking up. He had always found it a strange choice, that piece of frivolous French rococo furniture when something massive and oak would surely have suited his father better.

‘Wait,’ The Earl was writing something across the bottom of what looked like an invoice, something dull and agricultural from the absence of any fancy bill-head and the closely packed lines of writing.

Jared stood, as patient and silent as the best-trained footman. The bent head in front of him had the same golden brown hair as his own, but short and thickly laced with silver now. The shoulders in their mourning black were as broad as he remembered, the handwriting as determined.

His father put the pen on its stand and looked up. ‘Yes?’ He came to his feet as he spoke, the colour draining out of cheeks weather-beaten from the hunting field and riding the estates in Yorkshire weather. ‘Who the devil are you?’ Then, ‘Jack?’

‘I go by Jared these days.’

‘Jack.’ His father seemed not to have heard him. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Good to see you, too, Father dear. ‘I heard about William. I am sorry.’

For a moment his father’s face crumpled, the grief raw and brutal, then he had his formidable composure in place again. ‘You’ve come to see what you can lay your hands on now, have you?’

Well, it wasn’t as though he had expected any other reaction, certainly no-one rushing out to kill fatted calves and open the best champagne. ‘No. I have my own life, my own concerns and my own business. This – ’ He waved a hand to encompass study, house, estate, title, ‘– This would be a damned nuisance.’

His father sat down again with a thud. ‘My son is dead and you call it a damned nuisance.’ When Jared made a sharp gesture of denial, he added, ‘You’d turn your nose up at an earldom?’

‘I won’t have the choice when it comes to it, will I? Until then, I thought I had a duty to come back and see if I could help. Bella did not mention seeing me the other day, then?’

‘Bella? No, of course not. She knows no more about you and your whereabouts than I do.’ The colour was coming back into his face now and his breathing slowing. Jared told himself that he really did not want his father’s death by apoplexy on his conscience.

‘She has known where I am, who I am, for nearly a month. Yesterday I encountered her in Whitby.’ It did not seem that he was going to be offered a chair so Jared took one anyway. His father simply stared at him as though he was a ghost. He supposed he was. ‘It is probably a waste of breath to say this, but I did not force myself on her all those years ago and I am not the father of her child.’

‘I know.’

The shock kept him in the chair, knocked the breath out of his chest, the words from his mouth. He stared at his father, stared into the amber eyes just like his own and fought for some control. ‘You knew. When did you know?’

‘A month or so after you had gone, when William had stopped ranting and posturing and playing the little gentleman and Bella had stopped pretending to be a wronged woman and had dispensed with the crocodile tears and had got a wedding ring on her finger. Your brother never could tell a lie with any conviction, not and make it stick.’

‘You knew. You have known for eleven years. Did you bother to look for me?’ Pride kept his tone ironic, kept him from getting to his feet and hurling things about the room.

‘Yes, I knew. And I searched, believe me. But by that time they were married. My son and heir was married to the daughter of some jumped-up Whitby coal merchant, they had tricked me into agreeing to a marriage William knew damn well I would forbid, and you had vanished off the face of the earth. In the end I put it about that you’d run off to join the army, at least that preserved the family name from scandal.’

‘That’s a relief,’ Jared drawled. ‘I was worried that I might have caused some embarrassment. Heaven forbid.’

‘What would you have had me do?’ his father demanded, red in the face now.

‘Look harder? You accused me of having no honour whatsoever, you took Bella’s word against mine that I had seduced her with no intention of marrying her and you believed William when, for the first time in his life, he showed an inclination to do something involving self-sacrifice.’

He stood up, now that he had the urge to smash the furniture under control, and began to pace up and down the room. ‘How are you? Don’t pretend with me, this must have hit you hard.’

The Earl passed his hand over his eyes. ‘It is a nightmare. He was fit, healthy – and then he was gone.’ He shook his head, a wounded, confused bull. ‘I am Huntingford and I will not give way to this grief.’

The defiance affected Jared as tears would not have done. He turned towards the desk, his hand held out, and his father flinched. It stopped him dead in his tracks as no word could have done.

‘Are you frightened of me?’

‘You come in here with that damned sword at your side and every excuse in the world to use it.’ His father stood, suddenly every inch the Earl of Huntingford. ‘I would not blame you if you did. I thought you dead but, yes, I should have looked harder, I should not have given up and told myself that the family name and avoiding scandal was more important than my son.’ He turned, hands open, defenceless. ‘I would not blame you,’ he repeated, the words almost a whisper. ‘And I do not know you, the man you have become. My son.’

Jared drew the rapier from its scabbard and laid it down on the desk, the hilt towards his father’s hand. ‘You wounded me more than that ever could. Hanging on to hate is not going to heal it. I do not know if I can forget, I have no idea whether anything will ever be easy between us and this is complicating my life almost more than is tolerable, just at the moment. But I am Ravenlaw now and so I suggest we try and make this work.’

The Earl picked up the weapon, flexed his wrist and tried the balance of it. ‘A fine blade.’ He was recovering his composure again, his breathing was slowing. He handed it back to Jared. ‘Just who are you now, Jack?’

‘Jared Hunt the swordmaster hired by the late Viscount Northam. I am hunting his murderer.’

 

‘For one moment I believe he thought I was there to kill him.’ Jared unbuckled his sword belt, dropped the rapier on the table within reach and collapsed into the biggest, deepest chair the turret hideaway possessed.

‘But that is ghastly.’ Guin took the chair opposite. ‘Does he understand that you forgive him now?’

The look Jared gave her was decidedly jaundiced. ‘Do I, I wonder? I understand him and that’s the next best thing, I suppose. I was always the unsatisfactory son and he was stuck with his heir marrying beneath him, as he thought. He reasoned he couldn’t add scandal to that, conveniently assumed I had run away to join the army and tried not to think too hard about the situation. If my mother had been alive she wouldn’t have let him get away with it, of course, but she had died two years before. Now he has sent to Bow Street and to private investigators in an attempt to track down his lost heir. He has been spared that expense, at least.’

‘He must be devastated by William’s death.’

Jared nodded. ‘But he is keeping it all inside. He was always good at maintaining the façade, his composure. He hasn’t lost that.’

‘Reminds me of someone,’ she murmured. ‘And now that he has you?’

‘Now he wants to give me everything William had – the allowance, the run of the London house, the hunting lodge. Thankfully the law does not permit me to marry my brother’s wife or no doubt he would like me to do that as well in order to tidy up all the loose ends.’

‘Surely not, if she has only borne daughters,’ Guin commented, feeling suddenly and uncharacteristically bitchy.

‘There is that.’ Jared smiled for the first time since he had returned.

‘Is there a Dower House?’

‘No. Widows were always accommodated about the place – it’s ludicrously large and there are suites in the most unlikely corners. Father says she is hinting at him buying her a house near Scarborough, which seems an excellent idea to me.’

‘Provided she does not find herself on trial for conspiracy to murder,’ Guin said tartly. She should be pleased that Jared’s confrontation with his father had not been as dreadful as she had feared, but her nerves were jangling and she was finding it difficult to hold on to any sense of humour. She could just imagine the Earl’s reaction to her as his next daughter-in-law: twice widowed, no family or connections to speak of, no dowry, trailing clouds of scandal – and scandalous prints – behind her.

But it seemed she could not have Jared any other way than by marriage if his determination to do the right and honourable thing persisted and he would not take her as his lover.

‘And what does your father want from you?’

‘For me to cut my hair, stop this nonsense of working for my living, stop associating – ’ There was a breath of a pause ‘– with murderers and come home to live.’

‘He has heard about me, hasn’t he? The London papers reach Yorkshire the next day, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. He was as wary as if she was sharpening a long knife in front of him, Guin realised. ‘And he has not disinherited me of all that he might, as I had expected.’

‘So you are a desirable marriage prospect.’

‘Yes.’ Jared’s eyes narrowed.

‘You may relax, my lord.’ His gaze sharpened. It must be the first time anyone had addressed him so. ‘I do not want to marry you, I have not changed my opinion since we discussed this last night.’

‘Why not?’ He leaned forward, wrists on his knees, intent.

‘We desire each other, we have from the beginning. But that is all that it is – and it is no basis for a marriage, especially an unequal one. I would like a nice conventional affaire, you apparently would not.’ She shrugged, sure she was hiding the insecurities – He does not want me any more, he has had what he wants, he has realised what a quagmire I have drawn him into… ‘Besides, if you are going to cut your hair, I may not desire you any more.’

‘More than likely. Good thing that I have no intention of doing so.’

‘You want me to desire you? You will not make love to me but your pride insists that I pant and pine, is that it?’ She bounced out of the chair, propelled by indignation. Men had all the power, all the arrogance, all the insolent nerve in the world, while women –

A pair of hands bracketed her waist. ‘Stop flouncing.’ He moved like a ghost. The ghost of a cat.

‘I am not – What are you doing?’ She did not turn around. Did not move. Through the sensible cotton of her morning dress his hands were warm and sure and felt very permanent, anchoring her there.

‘Being seduced.’ His hair brushed her ear as he bent and kissed the angle of neck and shoulder, the one inch of exposed flesh. ‘I am hoping you will pant and pine. Guinevere, I want to do the right thing, I want to treat you as you should be treated. I should be strong enough, but it seems I have sufficient self-control about everything else but you when you tell me you might… pant and pine.’

‘I would like to be treated as an adult woman who can make a decision about what is right for her.’ She tipped her head a little so it rested against his.

‘Touché. Je cède à toi.’ I yield to you. ‘You are right and I should not presume to make your decisions for you.’

‘Especially when they happen to coincide with what you want, deep down,’ she said.

‘There is that.’

I love you, Guin thought. I love you, but this time I am not going to snatch at love or security. She had eloped with Francis without thought or restraint and she had seized the lifeline that Augustus had offered her without worrying about anything else – how it might make him an object of fun as a doting old husband, that it might cause a rift with his family. Neither had happened, but that was luck, not her own forethought. Jared might seem calm and in control but he must be in turmoil inside. That was no condition to make a decision about something as vital as marriage.

Her gown gaped suddenly and she realised those clever fingers had not been caressing her, they had been dealing with fastenings and ties. His hands came round to cup her breasts, the heat streaking down as he toyed with her nipples through the fine linen of her shift.

‘Shouldn’t we be planning?’

‘Later.’ Jared said, still behind her as he dealt with her corset strings. ‘Much, much later.’