The inn was so small that it didn’t have a private parlor, but it had a coffee room with a low, beamed ceiling and a sturdy trestle table and a scattering of stools and chairs. It appeared that the locals preferred ale to coffee; Georgie had the room to herself. She paced, trying not to wring her hands, while outside the sky darkened.

When her father entered the room, she practically pounced on him. “How’s Vic?”

“He’s . . .” Her father hesitated.

“What?” she said, alarmed. “He’s not hurt, is he?”

Her father laughed and pulled her into a quick hug. “Relax, love. He’s not hurt. He’s just . . . unhappy. Confused.”

“Confused? About what?”

Her father hesitated again, and then said, “He has some decisions to make.”

The door opened. A serving maid entered and set to work laying the table for dinner. To Georgie’s dismay, only two places were laid. “Vic’s not dining with us?”

Her father shook his head.

Georgie bit her lip, waiting impatiently for the maid to leave. As soon as the door had closed again, she burst out, “Is it because of this afternoon? Because I don’t care about that! As if I would!”

“I’m pleased to hear it, my dear. But I think you’ll find that Alexander does care about it. It’s no easy thing to have one’s weaknesses exposed.”

“He’s not weak!” Georgie said. “He’s not. And if anyone dares to say that about him, I’ll . . . I’ll make them eat their words!” She stamped her foot.

Her father laughed. “Sometimes you remind me very much of your mother.”

“It’s not funny,” Georgie told him, managing not to stamp her foot again. She crossed her arms instead. “Vic isn’t weak.”

Her father sobered. “No, it’s not funny. And you’re right: he’s not weak. But—”

The door opened again: the serving maid bearing platters of food. She set them down on the table and departed.

“But?” Georgie said.

“But what?”

“You were going to say something.”

“Was I?” Her father shook his head. “I can’t remember what. Sit down, love. Have some dinner.”

“I’ll go and fetch Vic. He should eat with us.”

Her father shook his head again. “He wants to be alone now.”

“But if he’s unhappy, then now’s exactly when he should be with us.”

“He’s also a little foxed,” her father said.

“Foxed?” Georgie stared at him, astonished. “Vic is foxed?”

“Just a little. Sit down, love. Eat.”

Georgie sat, still astonished. Vickery was foxed?

The words Vickery and foxed didn’t go together at all, any more than Vickery and angry. Vickery got drunk as often as he lost his temper, which was never.

Georgie served herself at random and ate without paying attention to what she was putting in her mouth. Her thoughts kept returning to Vickery as she’d last seen him, flushed and damp-eyed and distraught. She wanted to throw down her cutlery and run upstairs and tell him that she didn’t care that he was afraid of the dark.

But Vic cares. He cares a lot.

She sorted back through the events of the day, not just the cutting, but what had happened before that. She remembered Vickery reading the entries in the parish register, a solitary figure in the empty church, remembered him standing alone at his family’s grave, remembered him walking blindly away from old Bill Kernow’s cottage—and she wanted even more urgently to run upstairs to him.

Today’s been awful for him.

She wanted to help him, but she didn’t know how to.

Georgie looked down at her plate and remembered kissing Vickery yesterday, remembered his exhilarating response—the passion and the urgency—and remembered what had come afterwards: his obvious shame. She sighed, and put down her knife and fork. “Papa? You said Vic’s confused. What about? Is it something I can help with? Something I can find for him? A person or a place?”

Her father looked across the table at her, and then he, too, sighed, and laid down his cutlery. “Sweetheart . . .”

“What?” she said, alarmed by the gravity of his expression.

“Alexander is trying to decide what to do next. He’s thinking of giving up his dukedom.”

Georgie stared at him. “But he can’t, can he? I mean, he can’t prove he’s Charley Prowse. No one can. It’s unprovable.”

“Which he’ll realize himself once he’s had time to think about it.” Her father smiled faintly, wryly. “No, Alexander is stuck with his dukedom, whether he wants it or not.”

Georgie thought about this for a moment. “Does he not want it?”

“I think part of him is very tempted by Charley Prowse.”

“If he wants to eschew public life, I don’t care,” Georgie said stoutly. “It’s Vic I want to marry, not a duke.”

Her father looked down at his plate and pushed it to one side. “Sweetheart . . .”

Georgie felt a prickle of foreboding. “What?”

“Alexander feels that he can’t offer for you right now. Not while everything is so . . .” Her father searched for a word and came up with: “Messy.”

Georgie stared at him, unable to speak.

Her father reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. “Alexander’s life has been tipped upside down; he needs time to adjust. I hope that once he has, he’ll make his offer. He assures me his feelings for you are unchanged.”

There was a cold, numb sensation in Georgie’s chest. “Is this because of what happened this afternoon? Or because of his parents?”

“Both, I imagine.”

“But I don’t care about either of those things. We’d be happy together, I know we would!”

“You don’t need to convince me, sweetheart. I know you and Alexander are well suited. I’ve known it for a long time. The person who’ll be difficult to convince is Alexander.”

* * *

Georgie thought about what her father had said as she readied herself for bed. She knew where Vickery was, her gift told her that, but it couldn’t tell her how he felt.

Her maid, Geddes, helped her to undress. Georgie donned her nightgown, brushed her hair, plaited it, and worried.

She imagined Vickery in his bedchamber, struggling with his decisions. And then she imagined talking those decisions through with him, helping him choose the best way forward, finding the solution that would make him happiest: Alexander St. Clare or Charley Prowse.

She thought about it for a long time, while Geddes tidied away the clothes and bade her good night, while the inn quietened around her. She thought about it until her thoughts were going round and round in fruitless circles—Should I? Shouldn’t I?—and then she decided to stop thinking and just do.

Georgie picked up her chamberstick and let herself out of her room. The corridor wasn’t completely dark. A thin crack of light showed beneath one of the doors. Vickery’s door.

Georgie took a deep breath and tiptoed purposefully down the corridor. She knew that what she was doing was very wrong, but she also knew that it was right. She knocked quietly, a light rap of her knuckles, and opened the door. “Vic? May I come in?”

Vickery was sitting up in his bed, reading a leather-bound book. There were two candles burning on his bedside table, three more on the dressing table, and a cluster on the mantelpiece.

He looked up at her entrance. His mouth dropped open in shock.

Georgie closed the door behind her. “Is that one of your father’s diaries?”

Vickery put the book down hastily. “What are you doing here?” The collar of his nightshirt was unbuttoned. Georgie saw his bare throat, saw the strong lines of his collarbones.

“Are you trying to decide what to do?” she asked.

Vickery hauled the bedclothes up almost to his chin. “Get out of here!”

“I thought we could talk,” she said. “It helps to talk about difficult decisions.”

“Not in the middle of the night, it doesn’t!” His voice was low and urgent. “Jesus, Georgie, get out! If anyone finds you in here—”

“We’re going to get married, Vic. So it doesn’t matter whether I’m in your room now or not.”

“We are not getting married,” he hissed at her.

“Why not? Because you’re Charley Prowse? Or because you’re afraid of the dark?”

Vickery stared at her, as if shocked by her bluntness, and then a blush rose in his cheeks. He looked away from her.

Georgie interpreted that blush as embarrassment over what had happened that afternoon, or perhaps even shame.

“I don’t care about either of those things,” she told him. “What I care about is you.” She put her chamberstick on the dressing table. “Father says that you’re thinking of giving up the dukedom. So I thought we could talk about it. It helps to talk, you know. Especially when things are complicated.” She climbed up on the very end of Vickery’s bed and settled herself there.

His gaze jerked to her. “Get off my bed!” he said in a fierce whisper.

“Once we’ve talked,” Georgie said.

Exasperation crossed Vickery’s face. He flung back the covers and made as if to get out of bed.

“The only way you’re getting rid of me is if you pick me up and carry me,” Georgie told him firmly.

Vickery froze.

Her words seemed suddenly very provocative, which hadn’t been her intention. Georgie felt a flare of awareness—awareness of Vickery, awareness of herself. How naked she was beneath her nightgown. How naked he was, wearing only a thin, linen nightshirt.

Her heart beat a little faster and her breath came a little shorter. She stared at Vickery, at his tousled hair and exposed throat. She wanted to touch him. Wanted to touch that vee of bare skin, wanted to run her fingers through that untidy dark hair, and she wanted him to touch her, wanted him to kiss her as he’d kissed her yesterday, with passion and urgency.

“You’re welcome to try,” Georgie said softly, and this time her words were deliberately provocative.

Another blush swept across Vickery’s face. He stopped trying to get out of bed. He held the covers before him like a barrier. “What do you want, Georgie?”

To touch you, she almost said.

But that wasn’t why she’d come here. She was in Vickery’s room because he was unhappy and confused. “I want to talk.”

“We can talk tomorrow,” Vickery said, in a quelling tone. His gaze wasn’t quite on her; he was staring determinedly past her shoulder, as if trying to pretend that she wasn’t sitting on the end of his bed wearing only a nightgown.

“Would you rather be Charley Prowse?” Georgie asked quietly.

There was a long moment of silence, then Vickery’s gaze came back to her. Those striking eyes, one blue, one green.

“Talk to me, Vic.”

He exhaled, and the sound was a sigh. “I don’t know what I want, Georgie. I just don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.” He sounded tired and defeated.

“I don’t think you legally can become Charley Prowse,” Georgie said. “You could tell everyone in England that you think you’re Charley Prowse, and there’d be a great uproar, but you’d still be the Duke of Vickery at the end of it because you can’t prove it.”

His gaze was on her face.

“You’re always going to have to be a duke, Vic, but you could retire from public life if you want to. Only . . . is that what you really want? If you’re active in the House of Lords, you can push your cause. But if you’re not then you can’t.”

Vickery stared at her silently.

“So I think that’s what you need to decide first. Whether you want to keep campaigning or not. And if you don’t, then you can hand the running of your estates over to your men of business and deputize someone to cast your votes in Parliament and just . . . step back.”

Still Vickery said nothing. His gaze was on her, unwavering.

“But I can’t see you being happy doing that, Vic. Can you?”

He looked away from her. After a moment he shook his head.

“I think you’d be happier as the Duke of Vickery.” Georgie hesitated and bit her lip, and then said, “Don’t you?”

He shook his head again. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be a lie. Because I’m not the duke and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I’m not.”

He sounded so trapped and unhappy that Georgie scrambled up from the foot of the bed to sit beside him. “Vic . . .”

Vickery stiffened and tried to draw away.

“Stop it,” she said. “I’m not going to ravish you. I just want to hold your hand.”

He stopped trying to pull away, and when she took his hand, he didn’t jerk it free.

His hand was large and warm and tense. Georgie held it in both of hers and rested her head against his shoulder. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.” But it shouldn’t surprise her that Vickery had, because his integrity was one of the reasons she loved him so much.

After a moment, Vickery sighed. “I have,” he said. “Over and over.”

They sat silently together. Georgie heard Vickery’s soft breathing, heard his words echo in her head. Living a lie.

There was a way through this. She knew there was. She just had to find it.

She thought about the old duke, Leonard St. Clare. And she thought about the Joe Prowse that Bill Kernow had described. Vickery was the son of two very different men, but even if he couldn’t remember Joe Prowse, he’d been shaped by him, just as surely as he’d been shaped by the old duke. He had Joe Prowse’s good heart and Leonard St. Clare’s strong sense of honor.

Georgie thought about this for several minutes, and she thought about what Vickery had said. Living a lie. Pretending to be someone he knew he wasn’t. Then she drew a breath and said, “Do you remember how Bill Kernow described your father? Born sweet. Never out of sorts. That’s you, Vic. You’re his son. But you’re the duke’s son just as much. He taught you about honor and he taught you how to manage the estates and how to give speeches in the House of Lords. He raised you to be the Duke of Vickery.”

She paused, but Vickery said nothing.

“He thought the world of you, Vic, and I think that if he’d been allowed to choose anyone in England to succeed him, anyone at all, he would have chosen you.” She bit her lip for a moment, and then said quietly, “Do you not think so?”

Vickery sighed. He disengaged his hand and reached for the book he’d been reading. He opened it, found a page, and handed it to her.

January 25, 1806, Georgie read. Alexander is twenty-one today. Perhaps it’s a father’s partiality, but I truly believe there’s no finer man in England. It’s a comfort to know I can pass the dukedom to him. He’ll bear that burden far better than I have.

Georgie glanced at Vickery. He was frowning down at his hands.

She looked back at the diary. Perhaps it’s a father’s partiality, but I truly believe there’s no finer man in England. The words made something squeeze painfully in her chest. How had Vickery felt when he’d read them? She exhaled a shallow breath, touched the sentence with a fingertip, then closed the diary and looked at Vickery. “I think there are two things that are true about you, Vic. One is that you’re Joe and Martha Prowse’s son, but the other is that you’re Leonard St. Clare’s son. I think you’re his son just as much as you’re the Prowses’, and I think that if you choose to be the Duke of Vickery it won’t be pretending or lying; it’ll just be you being who you are.” She handed the diary back to him. “But it’s your choice and you’re the one who has to live with it, so choose what will make you happiest.”

Vickery took the diary and looked down at it. She saw indecision on his brow and tension in the tightness of his lips.

“I’ll stand by you whatever you choose,” she told him.

He glanced at her, and his eyes were so troubled that it hurt—Georgie felt it in her chest, a physical pain—and in that moment she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. “Vic?” she said. “Will you please marry me?”

He stiffened, almost a flinch. Shock chased the indecision from his face. He looked away from her. “I can’t marry you,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Surely you must see that.”

“Marriage isn’t just about the good times, Vic; it’s about the tough times, too.” She stroked the back of his clenched hand. “I want to be your wife when you’re worried and unhappy and things are hard for you. I want to be your wife now. Unless . . . you don’t wish to marry me?”

Vickery squeezed his eyes shut. “You know I do,” he whispered.

Four little words. Four short, ordinary words that she wanted to catch in her hands and hold forever. You know I do. You know I do. Georgie couldn’t breathe for a moment. All she could do was listen to the echo of those words while joy expanded in her chest—and then the ability to breathe returned and she inhaled deeply and said, “Then will you please marry me, Vic?”