Grace wiped the rain off her face as she hurried through the house. She’d escaped him again. A coward she wasn’t, though she was certainly acting like one. Her father would be ashamed of her. This was not the way he’d brought her up. These were not the values Daniel Ware instilled in her.

Hugh and her father were so different, and yet so much the same.

This week, during the hours spent with Jo, she’d asked questions of the viscount’s past. His military service. Where he’d served. The positions he’d held. He and her father were both cavalry officers. Grace could count a dozen instances where the two men had fought on opposing sides in the same battle. For more than a few of those, Grace had been traveling with him. She’d been in the French camps, doing what she could to tend to the injured or lend support to the wives who’d followed their husbands on the campaigns.

Jo shook her head as she’d told Grace about Hugh’s wife. She could not understand why Amelia had taken the young child with her to the edge of that conflict. Grace didn’t try to explain, but she understood. She had seen and cared for so many like her, French women who even accompanied their husbands into the smoke and mud and carnage of the battlefields. Love made women do it. One’s own safety mattered very little when the man you cherished was marching headlong into danger.

Grace had become one of those women. Her deepening feelings for Hugh surprised her and taunted her. Thoughts of him filled her every waking hour. She saw him in her dreams. But what tore at her now was the need to tell him the truth. She knew how painful it would be to leave him after.

She stabbed at fresh tears as she ran up the stairs. Stopping at her door, Grace paused and stared down the hallway beyond her own rooms. Amelia’s suite. Jo told her how Hugh had kept those rooms just as they were when his wife and son were alive.

After eight years, he still loved her and preserved her memory. What Grace shared with him was nothing more than a flirtation. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the pounding drum of defeat.

Confessions were only words, she told herself. She couldn’t continue playing this game of fox-and-seek. Perhaps once she told him everything, she wouldn’t have to wait any longer. Hugh would be happy to send her away.

Grace’s gaze was drawn to the closed door of Amelia’s rooms again. She also needed to make peace with a departed soul who was still alive in spirit. Death was never the victor when someone was truly and eternally loved.

Taking a deep breath, she moved down the hall.

* * *

Grace had seen him. Hugh was certain of it. And then she’d run away.

Well, he wouldn’t have it. Whatever sadness had ensnared her, Hugh decided he had a right to help her through it if he could. He wouldn’t have her here under his roof and feeling as forsaken as she appeared. She was a guest at his house, under his protection. He was still responsible for her. He was only interested in her welfare. He could come up with myriad reasons why he would care about her. And common decency demanded that she not run away at the mere sight of him. He’d definitely like an answer for that.

By God, propriety be damned. He’d go to her suite and wait at her door until she gave him one.

As he made his way through the house, Simons waylaid him with some nonsense about breakfast. Hugh’s impatience must have shown, for the butler quickly decided to curtail the report and back out of the way. Passing his study, he was practically tackled by one of his clerks, who’d just begun his morning’s work. The young man, seeing Hugh’s fierce scowl, scurried out of his employer’s path.

He crossed the checked floor and climbed the steps two at a time. Standing at her door, he was about to knock when his gaze was drawn down the hallway. He paused. A door into Amelia’s suite was ajar.

Mrs. Henson saw to it that the rooms were looked after on a regular schedule, but it was still early for the household servants to be cleaning. He walked to the door and entered. The sitting room was empty. But he heard the sound of footsteps from the nursery.

* * *

The little boy sat contentedly in his mother’s lap, his hands tucked between them. His face, cherubic with its halo of dark curls, lay against her breast. It was a portrait of security and peace, and the painter had captured it perfectly. Like a modern Madonna and Child, the serenity it exuded conveyed the trusting assurance that the world he knew would be there tomorrow. That he would be protected from all that was wrong.

But as Grace looked into the faces, she could read the hint of anxiousness in the mother’s mien. Something in the set of the mouth, in the eyes. Amelia knew that life was not the stuff of the child’s dreams. Even in the boy’s face she saw the serious gray eyes that matched his father’s. Averted from the gaze of the painter, they seemed to be looking for something else, for something he’d lost.

Grace’s heart shattered as she stared at their portrait. Two lives lost as a result of a meaningless quest for . . . for what? A child at the beginning of life, his pulse flickering and fading away. For what? A mother, desperate for a husband’s safety, and yet unable to save herself or her son. Suffering and dying alone because he could not get to them. For what?

War. The indiscriminate life-taker. The man-made plague of carnage. For land or riches or power, cities and villages reduced to rubble by the cannon’s barrage. Fields and farmhouses put to the torch to keep anything of value from falling into the hands of a foe. Men of honor turned into raging killers, and boys who should have been in classrooms slaughtered mercilessly.

Grace had seen it. She’d walked through battlefields where a thousand men lay in their own blood, crying out in pain. Or worse, in eternal silence, never to utter another sound. Men and boys whose heads had rested on their mothers’ breasts—like Hugh’s son—not so long before. So many times had she taken an inconsolable woman or child into her arms, knowing there was nothing she could do to bring back their loved one. Grace had gone through it. She’d experienced the ravages of war. It was hell on earth.

Hot tears streaked her face. How could she make peace with this child? Grace stepped toward the mantel and lifted a trembling hand to the portrait, wishing she could change everything. Wishing she could bring them back.

“What are you doing here?”

The stern voice made Grace turn sharply. Hugh filled the doorway. She could not see his face through her tears.

There was no holding back.

“I am Grace Ware, the daughter of Colonel Daniel Ware. The man who fought and stopped you at Corunna. He was the commander of a French cavalry brigade. He was the reason why you were too late reaching Vigo. Too late to get to your family.”

Her breath twisted into a knot threatening to choke her. But she couldn’t stop.

“He’s dead, murdered in Antwerp. But I’m here. His daughter. The woman you should hold responsible for the deaths of your two loved ones. My father’s blood runs in my veins. I am of the same flesh. You can take a sword and cut me down if it will satisfy your need for revenge. You can strangle me with your own hands. I wouldn’t blame you.”

Grace’s hand stretched out toward the portrait above the mantel.

“They shouldn’t have died. They were in the wrong place. But don’t blame them for coming to you. You cannot blame her. They were there in Vigo because of their love. I saw it so many times. Too many times. I’ve been on the killing fields as women rushed from one bloody corpse to the next, searching for their men. I’ve seen what it means to get to a loved one in time, just to hold him as he takes his last breath. I know it is sometimes the difference between wanting to live or wanting to die, for the person left behind.”

She used the sleeve of the dress to wipe the tears from her eyes, but it was no use.

“I’ve seen dying soldiers become madmen, clinging desperately to life. I’ve held them in my arms as they drew their last breath. I still dream of innocent boys, too young to be in war, crying out for their mothers as legs or arms were cut off.”

Grace sobbed. “I’ve seen too much. Long ago, I realized my enemy was not a man who fought on one side or the other. My foe became war itself. I hated the senseless slaughter, the blind merciless taking of lives. I loathed the wave of destruction and death that swept away the innocent and guilty without distinction.”

She fought for a breath. “No word I can say will relieve you of the loss you still grieve. No apology from me will change the hate your carry within you or lessen your desire for revenge. But know this. If I were given a chance—be it on that battlefield or in Vigo or today—I’d give up my own worthless existence if I could give you back the lives of those two innocents. I . . .”

Grace faltered. She couldn’t go on. Pushing past him, she bolted from the room.