Chapter One
London, 1820
It was far too early in the day for anyone to be wandering the London streets. Such activities spoke of poor regard for health, a lack of social engagements, or a loss of ambition, and was undoubtedly a precursor for certain ruin. It was not a wise notion for any sensible creature of Society.
It was even worse when that person was Colin Gerrard. He couldn’t bring himself to care, whatever statement it might make about him, should he be seen.
When one is woken from a nightmare, the screams of his name still ringing in his own ears, there was nothing else to do but wander in the hopes of clearing his head.
Colin had been more than familiar with that particular dream in the past, unfortunately. But it had been at least ten years and he’d thought himself long past it.
If only it had been just a dream.
If only it hadn’t been a memory.
He remembered all too well standing there in the middle of the road that rainy day in Seabrook, listening as the love of his life told him she was leaving, and worst of all, she was getting married. His family was not proper, she’d said. She had no choice, she’d said.
This was where his dream had varied from reality. In his dream, she had started to cry, had kissed him with all of the passion her innocence could conjure up, clinging to him. She’d been torn from his embrace and hauled away by her family, who had found Colin beneath their precious station. He was always unable to move, incapable of getting to her, as her screams of his name reverberated all around him.
He growled in irritation. He had no desire to dream of her; not now, not ever.
What a fool that seventeen-year-old had been.
She had not been taken from him.
She had walked away.
Head high, no tears, no dramatics. Just walked out of his life to marry someone else. Someone she wouldn’t identify.
Susannah Merritt, as she had been then, had been the love of his youth.
And had taken his heart with her that day.
Oh, he had known his little flirtations since that time, had made himself quite the catch for Society. It had taken a lot of work, for him and for Kit, to undo the damage their family’s reputation had suffered over the years. No one even thought of it now, because Colin distracted them too much, and Kit… well, Kit had his own troubles with reputation and rumors, but there was nothing he could do about that.
But it was all for show.
He grunted and shook his head, the limp form of his loosely tied cravat dancing against him. He had not bothered with a waistcoat and jacket, just his greatcoat, as the morning was chilly.
Besides, it was early in the day, too early for many people to be out and about, and if they were, he would only stir their imaginations with his appearance.
Was he up all night doing scandalous things? Had he been in a drunken brawl? Had he been in late meetings with ambassadors and foreign kings? The possibilities were endless and far-fetched, but he had heard them all before. Wherever he went and whatever he did, he attracted attention and tales.
He did that on purpose.
It was all a distraction.
Pretending at disreputable yet charming behaviors was easier than letting anyone see inside of him. Even his friends had no idea of his past. Oh, they knew a good deal, he had been friends with them for years and years. They knew him better than anyone else outside of his brother.
But they were not here.
And life in London was unbearably dull without them.
He wandered the London streets silently, nodding at those who recognized him, smirking at their whispers as he passed. He could not say his life was bleak. In fact, he had quite a good life, when he thought about it, at thirty-two years of age, considering his fortune and good looks were still intact.
But there was one thing he had admitted to himself recently that he never thought he would: he was lonely.
Colin Theodore Sebastian Albert Gerrard was lonely.
Worse than that, as shocking and miserable as that alone was, he was lonely and bored. He had never suffered from such an ailment in his entire life, and, as usual, he was not in the least to blame. His friends had rudely abandoned him without so much as a “fare thee well”.
His four best friends had all married now, or in Derek’s case, revitalized his marriage-in-name-only to a real one, and were all in various stages of matrimonial bliss. Two had recently partaken yet again in the ill-advised state of fatherhood, one had married and was enjoying attempting to join the others in the aforementioned ill-advised state, and the other… Well, he was still acting a newlywed and Colin was pleased to be rid of that lovesick lunatic. His nausea was only now just beginning to fade.
And so it happened that Colin found himself in this rarest of states, without even his twin for entertainment. Kit was rarely in London anymore, and never home when he was. He could hardly blame him, with all he had to be getting along with.
With absolutely nothing to do and absolutely nobody to do nothing with, he ventured to do something he had not done in nearly ten years, and never of his own free will and volition: he went calling. But so out of practice was he, and so early was the hour, and such was the sad state of London in the early weeks of autumn that, after much deliberation, he only called upon one person the whole of the day. And when that person was Lady Raeburn, the eccentric aunt of his good friend Duncan Bray, the toast of Society’s older set, the wealthy widow of at least three men he knew of, and the single most terrifying woman on the planet, one person was quite enough to be getting on with.
Tibby was rather like Colin, when one looked at it objectively. Showy, bold, brazen, but still so respected and admired that nobody thought anything ill of them at all. It was a fine line between being the brunt of Society’s mockery and the height of its eccentricity. Both of them had learned to balance it quite precariously, but with such flourish that no one could tell what was truth and what was fiction.
And that was just how they liked it.
He had always gotten along rather well with her, even as a boy. As his family consisted of himself and his brother, and a host of faceless relatives in various places who would not claim them, she had rather become his aunt too.
She certainly scolded him like an aunt would.
And if the look on her face at this moment was anything to go by, he was about to be scolded again.
Tibby looked radiant for being roused from sleep. Or, he strongly suspected, being forced to get out of a bed she had been wide awake in for several hours. She wore an elegant day dress of the old French style, her fiery red hair still in curlers and set beneath a cap that did not suit her temperament, but made him smile.
“Don’t you smile at me like that, Colin Gerrard,” she snapped, though her lips quirked. “Calling before breakfast is abominably rude, and I am quite determined to toss you out of the house at once.”
He pouted. “But Tibby, you have such a lovely house. The renovations are so delightful, it would be a shame to waste them by not admiring them as grandly as I can.”
She pursed her lips, her eyes twinkling. “Yes, well, if you had come three months ago when I reoccupied the place, I might have given you a tour. Now it is far too late.”
He clasped a hand to his heart as if in agony. “Oh, my heart. Tibby, I am an abominable rogue, but you must know I never attend when I ought. Lateness is my way, and I could hardly disappoint you by being unexpectedly early. People might think I’ve turned respectable.” He shuddered at the thought.
She laughed merrily and grinned at him, holding out her hand with a wink. “You darling idiot. Have you had breakfast?”
He grinned and kissed her offered hand. “No, my lady, I have not.”
“You will join me.”
“Of course.” He offered her his arm, then frowned. “I have no idea where we are going, but I will escort you anyway.”
She rolled her eyes and directed him towards her new breakfast room, where they sat together and enjoyed some truly delicious food. She asked after his brother, he asked after Marianne, and they both pointedly ignored the fact that the two were somehow inexplicably connected.
They had asked no questions about it, and neither of the persons in question had ever volunteered any information.
The two of them chatted aimlessly for a while, and then Tibby sat back, pushing her plate aside and letting a servant take it. “Colin.”
“Yes, Tibby?”
She smirked at his cheeky response. “You are making small talk with me at an early hour on a Thursday in autumn.”
He frowned, unsure where she was heading with her comments. “So I am…”
“You do not make small talk. You do not do early hours. And you hate autumn.”
“I do not,” he said with a snort.
She gave him a look that wiped away his amusement. “You have not been in London in autumn for the last three years in a row. I have not your gossip sources, but I do know quite a bit. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Colin…”
“No, I mean it,” he said, letting earnestness shine through. “I am doing nothing. There is no one to see and nothing to do. I… I feel rather pointless, actually.”
Tibby made a clucking sound and put her hand over his. “I think you need to find a wife, Colin.”
He withdrew his hand and shook his head. “No, I think not. They can hunt all they like, but there will be no wife for Colin Gerrard, I can promise you that.” He rose and gave her a smile, grandly picking up her hand and kissing it. “Thank you for breakfast, Tibby. I shall call on you again soon, at a more reasonable hour.”
“Who broke your heart, Colin?” she asked softly, her eyes searching his. “What happened to you?”
He stiffened briefly, and stepped back, trying to find his usual façade. “You know me, Tibby,” he commented drily, his tone very off indeed. “I have no heart.” He bowed and turned from the room.
“Not true,” she called after him. “I know it, and you know it.”
He did not reply, and left the house.
The neighborhood was much more populated than it had been when he had arrived, and he wished he’d had the foresight to dress better. Now the comments would be aplenty, and he’d have to create something to talk about because of it. Not that it was uncommon; he was really quite good at making up stories about himself.
After all, he’d convinced the entire world he was a reckless bachelor who thought of nothing serious and had no thought but fun and laughter.
No one knew there was a darker truth.
His eyes glanced over the faces of the people passing him, not really marking any of them, when suddenly his heart leapt into his throat and he whirled around.
She’d been there. Right in front of him. He’d barely glanced at her as she’d walked by, but then recognition set in, and fifteen years was not so long as to change her so.
He would have known her anywhere, at any age. He’d known her since he was eleven, had seen her every summer between then and that fateful day… He knew her, even now.
But looking around, he could see nothing that resembled her. Not a single woman met her size or stature, no shade of hair was hers.
Susannah Merritt.
Or whatever her name was now.
Could she be in London?
“Someday we’ll meet in London, and I’ll be a fine lady, and you a gentleman. And we’ll take the place by storm, Colin. Just you wait.”
His panicked breathing began to calm, and he shook his head frantically, desperate to wipe the memory from his mind, from existence. Her sweet little voice, echoing in his ears, sent his heart racing just as madly as seeing her face had.
Or thinking he’d seen it.
She could not have been here.
She’d never come yet.
Frustrated that he still apparently looked for her, he whirled on his heel and made for home quickly. He would need to soak his head for a while. Perhaps he’d had too much to drink last night, or the breakfast at Tibby’s was not sitting well with him, or he was taken ill. Perhaps he was ill. That would do it. He would call for the doctor immediately; he undoubtedly had some deadly, incurable illness that was making his past flash before his eyes as if it were the present. He was feeling things and thinking things that he’d spent years burying, and that had to be a curious symptom for anyone to suddenly suffer from.
He hoped he wouldn’t die unexpectedly next week. There was much he needed to do, and Kit would not take kindly to having to deal with the funeral arrangements.
Now he was being ridiculous. One step in front of the other; hurry home, and go back to bed. Or perhaps drink. A good drink could drown out anything. He hadn’t really done that in years, he’d rather lost his taste for strong drink, but if it could take her away, he’d become a raving drunkard.
So intent was he on the path before him that he hardly noticed the butler as he entered his house. It wasn’t until he was halfway up the stairs that it occurred to him that he was being addressed.
He frowned, and turned back. “I’m sorry, Bartlet, what were you saying?”
His butler, a rather stout man with no emotions, looked positively ghost-like and appeared to have developed a tremor.
“Good heavens, Bartlet,” he said in a rush, hurrying down. “Are you ill? Is someone dead? Where’s Kit?”
Bartlet shook his head, his thinning hair slicked against his skin with perspiration. “No, sir. I am well, no one has died, and Master Christopher is still unaccounted for, but his valet has sent for some things.”
Colin sighed just a touch, but looked at the man carefully. “So what ails you, man? Pardon me for saying so, but you really look like death.”
Bartlet swallowed hard. “Forgive my lack of composure, sir, but…” He gestured towards the morning room, and Colin turned.
The door was wide open, and a man in a rather common ensemble stood there, looking fatigued and grumpy, watching them.
“Can I help you?” Colin asked, not at all caring for the sudden gleam in the man’s eye.
“Are you Mr. Gerrard?” he asked in a rough, foreign accent.
“One of them.” He was in no mood for impertinence, which was why he would be impertinent. It was always so worthwhile and stirred up the most enjoyable scuffles.
The man’s thick brow lowered. “Which one?”
Colin snorted. “Samuel.”
The foreign frown deepened. “Are you Colin or Christopher?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Colin, for pity’s sake. What do you want?”
“So you are the second son of Lord Loughton.”
Now Colin was taken aback and actually staggered sideways a little. Not many people knew that, except the oldest families and his friends. His father had not lived in England in twenty some odd years, and that was just barely long enough for the family legacy to have been wiped from memory. Nobody remembered they were technically in the aristocracy, though only just, and Loughton had nearly stripped the family of any shred of respectability they might have had.
If he knew that…
Colin swallowed. “I am. What do you want?”
The man heaved a massive sigh that sounded suspiciously like relief. “Then these are under your care now. Farewell.” He inclined his head and left.
These? These what?
Colin warily approached the room, noticing his butler remained where he was. He peered cautiously into it, then suddenly jerked with such force that he slammed back against the doorframe, and the sound echoed through the house.
Three small girls in travel-worn clothing stood in the room, the youngest barely older than a toddler, and the other two looking quite terrified. They all stared at him with the same wide, blue eyes.
And all three looked unnervingly like him.
He swallowed his shock, blinked a few times, and when they still stood before him, watching him, he spoke the one concise thought that had entered his mind:
“Damn.”