Hours later Emma lay staring up at the slanted ceiling of the unfamiliar bedroom, stubbornly awake. She should have expected it—sleep was always elusive in the best of times, and not only had she slept most of the day away in that blasted carriage but her spirits were completely disordered. Whenever she began to relax, the memory of the man below would return, and it would require all her effort to dismiss him again, reminding herself that he meant absolutely nothing to her.

There was no way she could tell the time, but she’d always relied on a kind of inner clock, and she knew it had to be midway between midnight and dawn. She’d heard Brandon retire to his bedroom several hours ago—his footsteps heavy and uneven on the stairs and the old wooden floor of the place.

Uneven. Of course they were. When one looked at Brandon’s strong, lean body one assumed he was whole. No, that was wrong, she reminded herself. Most people had only to see the ruined half of his face to know he’d suffered grievously. Odd, but she never saw it. It was simply part of who Brandon was. She’d never pitied him. Even when he hovered close to death, she’d known he was a fighter, and she’d goaded him into doing just that.

She didn’t want to think about it.

He hadn’t favored his leg at all while he’d been at Starlings, and she knew he had to have been hurting. For some reason the thought of him still enduring that kind of pain, never letting on, caused her heart to clench, and she wanted to go to him, soothe him, talk to him and distract him from the pain as she had so long ago in the hospital during the empty hours of night.

She wasn’t going anywhere but to sleep, she thought with steely determination, and she’d lain in bed, summoning oblivion.

Oblivion never listened, and eventually she was forced to give up. She had no slippers, and Sally had taken her stockings. It would have to be barefoot, something she was used to, and she climbed down from the high bed, determined not to put it off any longer. There was bound to be milk in the kitchen of the old inn, fresh from the evening milking, and the stove would doubtless retain enough heat that she could warm herself a mug of the stuff. She might even find a bit of cinnamon to spice it, though dabbling in a cook’s precious spices might be too presumptuous. She had no idea whether the hot milk would be efficacious or not, she only knew that once she made the effort she could finally sleep instead of tossing and turning and dwelling too much on the past.

The house was silent, and she knew her footsteps didn’t carry as she crept down the narrow attic stairs, past Brandon’s closed door and on to the main stairs. There were only two rooms on that floor, and one of them remained open. Noonan must have chosen to sleep in the stables with the coachman after all, and the Bosomworths would be sleeping in another wing of the building. It was far from troubling—she could be alone with Brandon on a desert island and have no fear for her. . . her inviolability. She paused on the stairs, looking back, and then stuck her tongue out at his door. The childish gesture entertained her until she reached the bottom of the stairs to come face to face with her nemesis lounging by the banked fire, watching her.

“Why were you sticking your tongue out?” he said lazily. “Did poor Noonan offend you in some way?”

She froze where she stood. At least she’d grabbed her shawl before she’d left her room, and now she wrapped its enveloping folds tighter around her body, awash in conflict. She wanted nothing more than to run back upstairs, which was out of the question. Her hair, always the bane of her existence, had dried into a mass of uncontrollable curls, her feet were cold, and she wore nothing but the very thin shift beneath the shawl, leaving her self-conscious and vulnerable. She could turn and stalk away in dignified silence, expressing her displeasure, but already her heart was pounding, twisting inside her. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. He was nothing to her, she reminded herself. She was hardly going to change her plans because of him.

So she was silent, heading toward the kitchen door, averting her gaze and pulling her skirts away from him, though they were scarcely close. A detached, clinical part of her catalogued his appearance—she could appreciate beauty wherever she found it, she hoped. Brandon Rohan was most definitely beautiful. He was lounging back in the chair, his long legs propped on a chair in front of him, no stockings or shoes, just long, narrow feet. One wouldn’t have thought feet could be beautiful, but his certainly were. The loose, open-necked shirt revealed far too much of his tanned, muscular chest, an arresting sight when she was accustomed to seeing him so thin and pale, and his breeches seemed too tight for comfort, but she wasn’t going to think about that. His hair was long and loose, and the unblemished side of his face was presented to the fire, not to the world at large. If she tried very hard perhaps she could think of him as some monster, some gargoyle. . .

Even in her dreams that felt horribly petty and disloyal, if not to him then to the countless other visibly wounded patients she’d dealt with. His scars had nothing to do with his perfidious soul—in fact she was perverse enough to imbue them with their own kind of beauty. No, she would simply have to accept the cruel vagaries of fate. Not only was there only one man on the face of this earth who had the power to move her past her anger and fear, but he was so far above her in station, above even the proper young girl she’d once been, and if he hadn’t suddenly seemed to despise her, that nothing. . .

“You’re not speaking to me,” he observed before she made it through the door. “I can’t say that I don’t blame you. What I said was inexcusable, no matter what the circumstances.”

She stopped where she was, then pivoted to face him. “If that constitutes an apology, you should endeavor to refrain from throwing in a new insult. Your new wife will not appreciate it.” She said it to goad him—most men would be appalled that she dared to even mention his wife.

That didn’t seem to bother Brandon, to her regret. He was watching her warily. “What are you doing up?”

“If you remember, Lord Brandon,” she said spitefully, “I have trouble sleeping.”

“I do. We first met when you were wandering my brother’s house in the middle of the night.”

“That’s not when we first met,” she said, and he looked suddenly arrested.

“It isn’t?” he said, his eyes sharp and searching.

“Of course not. We met at the church. You drove me back to Starlings.”

For some reason he looked disappointed. “So I did. I’d forgotten. How very odd of me—I usually have a stellar memory.”

She wanted to hoot with laughter at the thought. He’d managed to forget her quite handily. “Do you? I rejoice to hear it.” She started for the kitchen once more.

“What about your memory, Mrs. Cadbury? Do you find yourself forgetting important things?”

She narrowed her eyes. “My memory is equally stellar. In fact, I might be bold enough to suggest that my own recollections far exceed yours.”

“Do they indeed?” There was a silky undercurrent to his voice, and she stared at him. She was no fool. Was it possible he’d finally remembered her, and was now somehow furious with her for nursing him back from death?

But surely if he remembered her at all it should probably be with the same affection she had felt. They had been friends. They had hovered beyond friendship. If he disliked the fact that he’d once seemed to harbor tender feelings for her, he could hardly blame her for it, could he?

In her experience men could do all sorts of heinous, irrational things, but looking into Brandon Rohan’s cool eyes gave her no hint. There was no reason for him to dissemble—if he remembered he would say so.

She straightened her back, keeping the shawl wrapped tightly around her. “I’m going to avail myself of a mug of warm milk and then I plan to return to bed. Doubtless you’ll have retired by then, so I wish you a good night.”

Where had that sardonic expression come from? It was nothing she remembered from those weeks so long ago. “Are you offering me a mug of warm milk, Mrs. Cadbury?”

“I am not. You seek out your own means of procuring sleep and I will attend to mine.”

“I can only think of one way to ensure a good night’s sleep, and I doubt you are about to offer it to me.”

To her absolute shock, her face warmed. When in her life had she been so missish as to blush at the suggestion of sex? She fought back the only way she knew how. “I’m not about to fuck you so you can rest comfortably. Your hand will have to suffice.”

He looked neither shocked nor angry—in fact she thought she spied a trace of reluctant amusement before she whirled around and stormed away. She didn’t want to think about it. She slammed the kitchen door behind her, not caring if she woke the household, and leaned against it, her heart hammering. She needed to get away from the man, more desperately than she’d ever had to escape anything, even her coerced presence at Mother Howard’s establishment. Nothing had been able to tap her deeply sealed vulnerability like Brandon Rohan.

The room was shadowed, dim light coming from the cast iron stove, and her eyes adjusted quickly. It would suffice—she was feeling admittedly low in spirits and sitting alone in the dark suited her very well indeed. She would simply wait until he left.

She found the milk in the larder, scooped herself a tin cup of it, and set it on the warm stove. It wouldn’t take long to heat, and she found a seat nearby, her toes curling in the delicious warmth. She had no choice—she was alone in the dark with nothing but her thoughts and the object of them just beyond the door. She hated him. She truly hated that man, more than she hated her holier-than-thou father, the vicious vicar in Melisande’s parish, or the group of men who’d paid Mother Howard to take their turn with her during her first drugged night in the brothel. None of them had ever been able to touch her soul.

Brandon had. The heart that she had managed to wall off had somehow developed cracks that first night at his bedside, when she thought he was dying, and perhaps therein lay the explanation. The young man who lay in the darkness would be gone before her sudden affection could grow troublesome.

But he hadn’t. He’d pulled back from the abyss, and she’d found herself kissing him, the first kiss she’d ever given or taken despite her years in men’s beds, and it was too late.

She closed her eyes in the darkness, accepting the miserable fact that she’d denied so long. She’d fallen in love with him that first night, when she’d been so certain that she had no heart. She’d loved him, and it had been her own, personal disaster.

At least she was quit of it at long last. Each time she thought she was free something had reminded her that she wasn’t, not quite. Something kept pulling her back to him, like a homing pigeon or a faithful dog.

That was at an end now. Tomorrow he would leave her and disappear, and whether she liked it or not, and she liked it very well indeed, she would never see him again. He would avoid her even more assiduously than she would return the favor. It was going to be just fine.

So why wasn’t she feeling happier? Oh, there was the small problem of three attempts on her life in the last four weeks, something she’d been paying far too little attention to. Now that she could dismiss Brandon from her thoughts it shouldn’t take long to discern whether it was merely a series of unlikely coincidences or someone truly trying to harm her. Now that she would no longer be distracted, it shouldn’t take long to find out what, if anything, lay behind it all.

She drained the milk, shuddering slightly, and then rose. He’d had to have gone up to bed by now—he had no more desire to be around her than she did, and while she hadn’t heard him leave she could be relatively certain she was safe. There was no way he could still be waiting for another confrontation with a woman he despised.

He was tired of this. Brandon paced his small bedroom at the inn, trying to stretch his cramped and aching leg. If he were home in the Highlands, and God knows he would have given anything to be there and never to have left—he’d go swimming in the coldest water he could find, never a difficult feat in that climate, and then lie by the fire with his spaniel Tammas stretched out beside him, and by the next day he’d be capable of anything.

But down here he had to improvise, and he’d discovered the best he could manage was to try to walk it off, ignoring the pain that sliced through his knee and thigh as he’d been ignoring it for years. And so he paced.

He’d wanted to follow Emma into the kitchen, grab her and make her tell him why she’d lied. It was the one thing he couldn’t abide, and by doing so she’d betrayed his returning memory of the Harpy who’d saved his life.

Then again, she’d already betrayed him when she’d disappeared. He’d waited, day after day, for her to return to his side, so that he could tease her, flirt with her, continue with that deep, soul-shaking kiss. But instead she’d run away, and the sister in charge of the ward told him that she had no idea where his Harpy had gone, or even if she would return—that was the way of things, and so finally, reluctantly, he’d told them his name.

Of course he’d remembered it early on, remembered his adoring, ramshackle family including his tempestuous sister Miranda, stuffy Charles, and irascible, impossibly caring Benedick, not to mention his beloved parents. They didn’t need a hideous shell of a man who’d broken every law of decency, even by Rohan standards, and the more time he spent with his Harpy the less tempted he was to confess his background.

He’d had no illusions. He knew the kind of ruined women who came and worked in the hospitals. They were soiled doves, abandoned wives, even criminals. It had been easy enough to know what she was—no man would ever be fool enough to abandon her, and with her looks she’d never have to resort to crime. She was a whore, plain and simple, though there had been nothing plain or simple about her, and he didn’t care. She had become his reason for living, and he didn’t even know her name.

When she’d abandoned him without a word she’d taken that reason with her. He’d had foolish fantasies about carrying her off, finding a place in the countryside where no one knew them and marrying her. Everything had been hazy and completely impractical, but he’d had nothing else to do while he lay in bed but build castles in the air. Those castles tumbled into dust when she disappeared.

Her crimes were manifest—not only had she vanished when he’d needed her, after her implicit promise of . . . what? She’d never promised him anything, and yet he couldn’t let go of his fury. She’d spent days in his company that week and never uttered a word, as if they’d never seen each other in their lives. If he hadn’t actually. . . cared for her then the betrayal wouldn’t feel as deep. Snapping at her was accomplishing nothing. He needed to confront her, have it out, and then he could abandon her once they reached London.

Couldn’t he?

He’d been so lost in thought he hadn’t heard the furious muttering or the stomped footsteps on the creaky old floor, but there was no missing the way his door slammed open, and Noonan stood there, his wispy gray hair straight on end, creating an unlikely halo around his face, his eyes ferocious. “What the bloody hell has got into you, if I may ask? I spend the whole bloody day in the bloody rain because you’re so bloody determined to get away from that place and then when I try to get even an hour’s sleep you bloody well stomp around your room, muttering to yourself! What’s gotten into you, you bloody pissant?”

It was enough to startle Brandon out of his brooding, and he even cracked a smile. “That’s more ‘bloodies’ than I’ve ever heard in one speech. I’m impressed, old man.”

“I’ll impress me bloody boot into your bloody backside,” Noonan snarled. “It’s that woman, isn’t it? She’s leading you around by the cock hairs and you’re like a randy boy with his first taste of quim. Get over it! Take her or don’t—I don’t give a royal fuck. Just get it out of your system so life can get back to normal. No piece of scrumhole is worth this much fuss.”

“Don’t talk about her like that!” Brandon snapped before he could stop himself.

Noonan looked at him with a combination of affronted dignity and pure pity. “By the cock hairs,” he repeated. “I’m sleeping in the stable.” The door slammed behind him.

Brandon stood in the center of the room, frozen. He’d actually considered hitting Noonan at his coarse term for Emma. The old man was right—he had lost his bloody mind.

He stalked back across the room, looking out into the courtyard. The moon had set, and everything was dark and deserted. He was alone in the main part of the inn with the woman he’d wanted so badly it had kept him alive.

He still wanted her.

He tried to remember the aphorisms his nanny had drilled into him. Beauty is only skin deep, pretty is as pretty does, looks fade but character persists. Nanny had had to deal with the way-too-beautiful Rohans, whose looks and wildness touched every generation. Emma’s loveliness hadn’t faded in the years since he’d last seen her—if anything she looked even more luminous, and she would be beautiful, to him at least, when she was seventy years old.

He heard her soft footsteps on the stairs. She’d been barefoot again, he’d noticed, despising the fact that he found her long, perfect toes erotic. She was as quiet as a mouse creeping around, but she was far from mouse like. She would be hoping he would be in bed by now, and that was exactly where he should be. He should let her float silently by his door, up the narrow stairs to her bedroom. It would be best for both of them.

It wasn’t going to happen. He moved to the door.