William woke to a room lit by moonlight. He drew in a deep breath, aware each of his new stitches, but less pain. An apparition rose from the chair near the open window and glided toward the bed.

“You’re awake,” Lanora said. She lay a cool hand on his forehead. “You don’t feel warm. Lady Cecelia said I must wake her if you have a fever.”

William caught her hand and caressed her soft skin with his thumb. “I’m well. I’m strong.”

“Fortunately.” She perched on the edge of the bed “What were you thinking, jumping over a desk with a bullet wound in your side?”

“I was thinking that Lethbridge might be fool enough to take you from me and I would do anything to prevent that.”

“Oh.” Even in the dim light, he could see her smile.

“Bullet wound?” he repeated, her words registering. “Cecelia told you?”

Lanora shook her head. “No, but I believe I’ve finally figured you out, William Greydrake.”

“What gave me away?”

“Aside from the bullet hole? Which, you should know, Dodger mentioned to Mrs. Smith as belonging to Lord Lefthook.”

“That’s my fault. I told him to trust you.” Because he did.

“Lethbridge gave me the final clues.” Her voice was midnight soft. “There was the way you grew up, but also the writing tools. He placed them on the left side of the desk. That’s why the second will wasn’t knocked off. It was all to the left, as if that was the hand he knew you would use to sign. Then I recalled your signature below the list, smudged, as if signed with your left hand.”

She pulled her hand from his, but only to reach across him for the other. His knuckles were a blur in the moonlight, but he knew they bore evidence of being buried in Lethbridge’s face. She ran gentle fingers across them. “And you hit him with this hand.”

William shifted, and wondered if she understood the effect of her fingers on his body. He was in no state for antics of any sort, and Cecelia would kill him if he tore his stiches again, assuming he didn’t die doing it. Which seemed more and more worth the risk with each stroke of her fingers. He drew in a long breath and forced calm.

Lanora raised wide eyes to his. “Are you in pain?” Her hand went to his forehead again. “Shall I wake Lady Cecelia?”

He chuckled. She had no notion of the effect she had. He would educate her, once they were properly wed. “I’m well enough. There’s no need for Cecelia.”

“You’re sure?” Lanora dropped her gaze. She pressed her lips together, as she did when she wasn’t sure if she wished to voice her thoughts.

He brushed his fingers across her cheek. “What is it?”

She shrugged, her gaze on the coverlet. “You and Lady Cecelia seem very close and she is, well, rather perfect. And terribly kind. It’s difficult for me to believe…that is, if you say it’s all in the past, I’ll believe you. I should never hold your past against you, William. Not that there’s anything wrong in it,” she added.

“Lanora, there’s nothing between Cecelia and I save friendship, and never has been.” Gently, he placed a finger beneath her chin and tipped up her face so that she was forced to look at him. “She is all the things you describe, but she was never for me. I’ve been in love with another since I was a boy, and she was but a girl. I’ve been reading Darington’s stories of his daughter, somewhere in the countryside in England, for half my life. I was too entranced by her to ever look at Cecelia that way. I love Darington’s daughter and I always will.”

“Oh. I see.” She jerked her chin away and started to stand.

William caught her hand. Fool that he was, he’d left out a rather important piece of information. “I mean you, Lanora. You’re Darington’s daughter. I’ve loved you for years.”

She stared down at him, face crumpled with hurt. She pulled free. Tears glittered in the moonlight. “You are fevered. I should fetch Lady Cecelia.”

He started to sit up. He’d made a muddle of things. “No, you don’t understand. There is no Darington.”

Lanora was at his side. She pressed him back down to the bed. “You’ll hurt yourself. Don’t get up. I’ll return, but let me fetch her. You worry me.”

He captured her hand firmly in one of his, for fear she would go, and used his other to smooth tears from her cheeks. “You don’t need to fetch Cecilia, or to cry over me. I’m a fool. Let me begin again.”

Lanora offered a smile that trembled at the edges.

“There is no Mr. Darington. There never was. Your father invented him.”

“You’re unwell. It’s the bullet wound.”

“That’s why they have the same handwriting. They are the same man. When your mother died, your grandfather wouldn’t fund your father’s expedition to Egypt. The marquess did, in exchange for a story that would explain where I’d been for ten years.”

“My father invented Mr. Darington?”

William nodded.

“And he’s been writing to you about me for years?”

“Yes.”

“You swear that’s the truth?” She sounded stunned.

“I swear on my honor, my heart, anything and everything. It’s the truth.”

She looked away from him, stared at nothing, her eyes bright in the moonlight. “I was never sure if he read my letters.”

“He must have.”

“But, all the things Mr. Darington has done. The adventures. The exploits.”

“Your father.”

“I can hardly believe it.” She sounded as if she did not.

“I had it from the marquess’s mouth moments before he died.”

“Would he have lied? To trick you?”

“Not this time. He was overjoyed to impart the news. He thought it would turn me against your father.”

She turned back to him, worried. “Did it?”

“No.” William understood. He sympathized with Duke Solworth’s need to run from his pain, and wouldn’t let a single, simple lie tarnish their friendship.

“I’m sorry your father died,” Lanora said, her voice soft.

“I’m not.” William didn’t hide the bitterness in his tone.

She considered that. “Lethbridge said he knew about your brother.” Her tentative tone made the statement a question.

William closed his eyes for a moment. She had a right to know. He wanted her to. Someone must, aside from the dead marquess and Lethbridge. Even Cecelia didn’t know. “When I was four, the marquess beat my older brother, Charles, to death, because he was afraid of horses. Charles was six.”

Lanora gasped.

“He’d always been violent, but he’d never gone that far. My mother took me, and she ran. She didn’t take much with her, for she made her escape quickly. She had nowhere to go he couldn’t find her. A man has all legal right to his wife and child. We disappeared into the streets of London. She worked as a washwoman.”

William’s mind filled with images of that life. The cold winters. Hunger a daily companion. Learning to defend what was his, little though it was. “It wasn’t a bad life. It wasn’t a good one, either.”

“You were so young,” Lanora said. “Your poor mother.”

“There was happiness. We had a slate. She taught me to read, to speak Italian and French. My figures. She made stories of history and the classics. Likely, I learned more at her side than I ever would have from some dry tutor.”

“How did he find you?”

It was the question, the memory, he dreaded. He swallowed. “When we left the marquess, she didn’t tell me why. I didn’t know Charles was gone, only that we had to leave. When I was fourteen, she fell ill. I did all I could for extra coin, to buy treatments from that hack of a doctor who keeps shop at the edge of the borough.” He took another breath, aware his words were torn with anger, guilt and grief.

“You don’t have to tell me.” Lanora’s voice was gentle, a soothing balm. “I don’t need to know your past, only the man you’ve become.”

He squeezed her hand tighter in his. “Every man is his past. I want you to know.” He gathered calm to him. “She grew so ill, she became delirious. I knew the tonics weren’t helping. I had vague memories of the marquess, the staff. Clean rooms and beds. I went to find him. It didn’t take long. He knew me the moment he set eyes on me. He seemed...happy. The happiest I’ve ever known him to be.”

William stared toward the dark ceiling. He could picture it all clearly, even after a dozen years. “I took him to her. Even delirious, she knew him. She screamed. He had her taken away. I went to his home. He said he was having her taken care of. I begged to see her. Finally, I was allowed.”

A servant had taken him in a rented hackney, but had been told not to enter. No one was to know who William visited that day at the prison. A jailer who wasn’t told his name brought him to his mother, huddled on a cot in a cell. “I wasn’t allowed in the cell. She was too ill to come to the bars. That’s when she told me why we’d left, what happened to Charles. She told me, too, to do as the marquess asked. Always. She said a man filled with so much hatred couldn’t live long, and then I would be free of him, but for now I must not anger him.”

He shook his head, trying to scatter the memories. Her tears as she said she loved him. The hard knowledge, as the jailer returned, that he would never see her again.

He cleared his throat. “The marquess never told anyone. The world thought my mother had gone mad, and then died. Madelina doesn’t know she was born out of wedlock, and her mother never knew she wasn’t legally married to the old man. Not that knowing would have saved her when he pushed her down the stairs.”

“Pushed her down the stairs?” Lanora repeated, her voice as dazed as her dimly seen expression.

“There’s no proof. He said she fell.” Another surge of guilt welled in him. “I knew he beat her. I should have intervened.”

“You were a boy.”

“I was seventeen when she died.” Old enough to act.

“So when he married Cecelia, you hid her?”

William nodded. “I did.”

He leaned his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes. All of the memories he kept hidden, all spilled from him in so short a time. God help him, he was tired.

Lanora withdrew her hand. He realized he’d been holding it too tight. Her weight shifted. He kept his eyes shut, not wanting to see her go, even though he hoped she would return. She was Lanora, Darington’s daughter. She would forgive all, understand, and love him. That was how it must be. Still, it hurt when she stood to leave.

The bed shifted. Warmth spread along his right side. Lanora took his arm, wrapping it about her shoulders as she snuggled against him. Her head settled on his chest. She put an arm about him, careful to avoid his stitches.

William kept his eyes closed, not wanting vision to ruin this dream. The honeysuckle scent of her enveloped him. He could almost believe they were in the country, far from London, at peace. That peace stole through him, easing muscles tensed by the anguish of the past. His arm about Lanora, William drifted to sleep, knowing this was how he wanted to spend every night, for the rest of his life.