At dawn, Susan York was abruptly awakened from a perfectly beautiful dream. Her youthful self had been holding hands with the young man she’d loved all her life and the two of them were strolling through a lush and overgrown garden.

The bees were buzzing and she heard the sound of singing, making her wonder who was serenading them. She was turning to say something to the man she loved when her youngest granddaughter grabbed her hand and anointed it with tears.

She blinked up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what was happening.

Josephine was sobbing, her face buried in the mattress at her side.

“Oh, Gran, I’m so sorry. I made such a mistake.”

What had Josephine done now?

What a pity Josephine couldn’t join her mother in France. Unfortunately, she didn’t hold out much hope for that happening. Her granddaughter was a beautiful girl. Marie was an aging woman who was as vain as Josephine. She suspected the last thing Marie would want around her was youthful competition, even if it was her daughter.

“I was a fool, Gran, but he was so persuasive. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

There was nothing else to do but to wake up and face this newest catastrophe, whatever it was.

Slowly, Susan sat up, rearranging her pillow behind her.

Josephine was seated at the side of her bed, weeping.

“I didn’t mean to, Gran. It was a terrible mistake. A terrible mistake. Now I don’t know what to do. What will happen if I’m with child?”

Now she was definitely wide-awake.

“What are you talking about, child?”

“The duke. He seduced me.”

Hopefully, Amy would be bringing her strong black tea shortly, the better to cope with this situation.

“You had better begin at the beginning, Josephine,” she said, feeling a sense of dread probably not out of proportion to the circumstances.

Josephine’s eyes were red, her hair askew. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a mark on her face Susan remembered from her days of being kissed senseless by her night-bearded husband.

In short, her granddaughter looked as if she’d been engaged in pursuits designed to better occur after marriage than before it.

She wasn’t a fool. She knew quite well that couples occasionally made it to the bridal bed before the minister said the vows. On a few shocking occasions, the bride was even pregnant before the ceremony.

She had her suspicions about Josephine. The girl seemed a little more knowledgeable than she should have been. Plus, she didn’t hesitate in trying to charm every man she saw, from the stablemaster to any number of shopkeepers who visited Griffin House.

At the moment, however, it didn’t matter how much she’d flirted. If the story she was telling was true, they had an enormous problem on their hands.

Had the duke truly seduced her?

“Go to your room,” she said now.

For the past several years, ever since coming to live at Griffin House, she’d watched Josephine carefully. If she had a choice between a falsehood or the truth, all things being equal, her granddaughter sometimes chose to lie.

Had she lied about this?

“What are you going to do, Gran?” Josephine asked.

She didn’t know. Dear heavens, she didn’t know.

“Go to your room right now. I will think on it.”

“What if I’m with child?”

“Shouldn’t you have considered that earlier, Josephine?”

The girl smiled, an expression out of place for this moment and her earlier tears. She wasn’t entirely certain she believed her granddaughter, but she had to act on the information regardless.

She watched as Josephine left the room. When Amy arrived with her tray, Susan swung her feet over the side of the bed and addressed her maid.

“We have a problem, Amy. A problem I hadn’t anticipated, but I think it’s going to change everything.”

Jordan had a blinding headache on waking, but that was often the result of taking Dr. Reynolds’s elixir. The concoction might ease the pain in his leg, but it left him with wild dreams and a morning headache mimicking the worst hangover he’d ever had. He was also nauseated but that symptom eased once he had something to eat.

Something else was wrong. Not pain, exactly, because his leg always felt better after taking the elixir. This was a sensation almost like a mental itch, reminding him of something he needed to remember, a feeling that things weren’t right.

He’d never experienced it before, but then he’d never seen blood on his sheets, either. It corresponded to a memory cloaked in a grayish white shroud. His dream lover had been a virgin.

But she hadn’t been a dream.

He pulled the sheets from the bed and shoved them into the bottom of the armoire, then pulled them out and stared at the pile of linen. He’d never felt the burden of his dukedom as much as he did now, wishing to dispose of the evidence he’d deflowered a woman he couldn’t remember. His servants would find the sheets, talk among themselves. He might even be visited by Mrs. Browning who would want to know why he’d accosted one of the maids.

What the hell had he done last night?

What the hell was he going to do now?

He dropped the sheets back on the bed. If anyone asked—and they wouldn’t—he’d simply tell them he had a restless night. And the blood? The blood wasn’t necessarily a sign he’d bedded a virgin. He could have cut himself somehow when he was under the effects of the drug.

Good God, he was now lying to himself. Practice for lying to the world, no doubt.

What the hell had he done last night?

“It was bad, then?” Reese said when he joined him for breakfast.

Although he valued Reese’s friendship, he didn’t want to see the compassionate look in the other man’s eyes. He didn’t need anyone’s pity.

“Manageable,” he said, smiling lightly.

He had every intention of going to the boathouse, but the Yorks’ maid was suddenly standing in the doorway.

“Your Grace?”

“Yes? What is it?”

Had Mrs. York’s condition worsened? That’s all this ruination of a morning needed.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but Mrs. York would like to meet with you on a matter of some urgency.”

His first thought was that she’d decided to leave. If so, she’d take Martha with him. Where had that sudden regret come from?

“Tell her I’ll call on her within the quarter hour.”

The maid nodded, performed a slight curtsy and disappeared, leaving him sitting there, his appetite suddenly gone.

Perhaps they would be leaving today. Or perhaps she simply wished to convey her thanks to the staff. Or request a certain meal to tempt her appetite. Nothing about the request should have summoned a sour feeling in his stomach or a dread making his extremities feel suddenly cold.

Standing, he placed his napkin beside the plate, nodded to the maid who entered the room with a fresh teapot, and made his way up the stairs.

The journey was, as it had been for the past year, a slow one and more than a little awkward. Yet each week brought about progress. He was at least able to mount the steps without assistance. He no longer needed to be conveyed about on a stretcher.

At the top of the staircase he took a few minutes to steady himself, annoyed to discover his hands were trembling. An effect of the exertion, and one he hoped would ease in time. Or maybe it was just simply the anticipation of the meeting to come.

The dread was increasing, coupled as it was with the discovery he’d made this morning. Something had happened last night. Something that hadn’t been a dream, a hallucination, or an effect of the elixir. Something was terribly wrong and as he turned left, heading for Mrs. York’s room, he felt as if he was walking to the gallows.

She wanted to see him on a matter of some urgency.

He’d bedded a woman last night. A virgin.

His memory strained to recall how she’d spoken. Was she well educated? He couldn’t remember. Was she quick-witted? Had she amused him? He couldn’t recall. Had they spoken of anything other than their base needs, some conversation to give him a clue to her identity?

Who the hell had she been?

A woman had been in his room and he’d taken her to his bed. He hadn’t been capable of convincing her, so she would have come of her own accord. Why had she even been in his room?

Was it Martha?

His honor would demand that he do the right thing. Perhaps, at the base of it, that’s why he hadn’t sent her away. Maybe his drugged mind had realized what it meant to take her to his bed. She understood his work. She had a fascinating mind. There was something about her that was arresting, some ability she had to summon his gaze. It was the way she spoke. He liked watching her lips enunciate the words. Or perhaps her expressive eyes. He suspected that if Martha thought you were an idiot, she’d leave you with no doubt of it.

She didn’t think he was damaged.

She had a quick wit, was loyal and kind.

He could do worse for a wife. In fact, considering that she was an heiress, he couldn’t think of another candidate for the position who would be so ideal.

She had, even virginal, been eager to explore passion. He’d been caught up by her, enchanted, and nearly overwhelmed.

Would she want him? He had a suspicion she didn’t give a flying farthing if he was a duke or a footman. Would she be miserable if her grandmother forced her to marry him?

The next few minutes would tell, wouldn’t they?

He made his way down the corridor to the guest chamber and knocked on the door. The Yorks’ maid opened it and stood aside for him to enter.

Mrs. York sat up in bed, commanding the room with the aristocracy of the queen. Josephine sat on the chair beside the bed.

Martha was nowhere in sight.

He nodded to Mrs. York.

“Are you feeling well?” he asked.

“No, Your Grace, I find I’m not. In fact, I’m feeling disturbed and disappointed.”

That comment put to rest any thought that this meeting might be for an innocuous reason. No doubt the tension in the room was natural, given the circumstances.

“I’ve been forced to ask you to attend me because of your behavior and that of my granddaughter.”

Was that why Martha wasn’t in the room? To shield her from any humiliation? If such was the case, why was Josephine here? As an unmarried woman, it was hardly proper for her to be present at this meeting.

“Josephine has confessed all,” she said.

He stared at the woman.

He was having trouble marshaling his thoughts, no doubt a residual effect of the elixir.

“What?” It was, in his defense, the only word he could think of to say.

“My granddaughter has told me you’ve taken her virginity, Your Grace. Do you deny it?”

He looked at Josephine, trying to reconcile her image with the one he’d already formed in his mind. His waking dream had been Martha. Hadn’t it been her?

He’d threaded his fingers through her hair, marveling at how it had curled around his hand. He’d kissed her lips, lips that were fuller than Josephine’s. Her breasts had filled his palms. He’d heard her soft, throaty voice in his ear.

Or had it all been wrong, his mind’s wish to make less of a disaster of the circumstances? Because that’s what this was, a bloody, undeniable catastrophe.

“Do you deny it, Your Grace?”

Josephine suddenly gave out a sob, then dabbed at the corners of her eyes. He’d never before caused a woman to weep. Or if he had he was unaware of it.

Words were impossible. They would simply not make the journey from his brain to his lips. He felt as if he was still under the effects of the elixir, the room hazy and not entirely in focus. Sunlight streamed in through the window and it was too bright, almost glaring. His thoughts were chaotic, unformed: the only word making itself known was simple and declarative. No. No. No.

He looked at Mrs. York, caught by her sharp gaze, held aloft by the strength of her will.

When he’d first surfaced after his accident, he’d been told he’d broken his leg and pelvis. He’d never be the same. He would never walk again. He would be in constant pain. His life, as he’d always known it, was over. He’d heard those words with the same disbelief he now heard Mrs. York’s.

His concept of himself, whole and unbroken, had had to endure a new birth, one taking place over months of learning to walk again, pushing himself from one milestone to another.

This transition—a new birth as well—took only minutes, but instead of hope he felt something in him die. An excitement, an enthusiasm, a need he’d not even known was there.

Martha wouldn’t be his wife. He wouldn’t make her the Duchess of Roth. Instead, his lust, his weakness, his need for the elixir had done the worst thing, delivered up to him a hideous choice: to defy his honor or take as his bride a woman he distrusted and disliked.

“Your Grace? Are you going to say anything?”

Josephine’s weeping intensified.

“Yes,” he said, the word forced from his mouth and coated with reluctance.

“Yes, what?”

He was being upbraided as if he was in short pants, except his sin was one of a mature man. He shouldn’t have bedded her. He should have called for Frederick or Mrs. Browning or summoned one of the maids or a footman or two and had her summarily ejected.

He shouldn’t have taken Dr. Reynolds’s preparation. His damnable leg had led to all of this. And his pride had led to the injury to his leg. In other words, the responsibility for last night led straight back to him.

Her look was impatient, but it didn’t matter. Not when he was having to extract every syllable from his lips with a pincer.

“Evidently, given the evidence, I seduced your granddaughter.”

Only it wasn’t Josephine. In his drugged state he’d replaced her with another woman, one he’d wanted. One he respected and admired. One, if the truth served any purpose at all at this moment, he felt as if he’d known for years.

“What do you suggest we do about the situation, Your Grace?”

The point of his honor sharpened, spearing him to the wall.

“There’s only one thing to do, isn’t there?” he said.

No, there were several things, none of which would serve him well. He could banish all the York women from his home. He could explain about the elixir. He could take himself off to Italy, like his brother did whenever anything difficult happened.

Or he could simply bow to circumstances.

“Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, Miss York?”

There, honor was satisfied. Nothing else mattered, did it? Not even this horror filling the whole of him.

He heard her answer from far away, said something else in response to her grandmother’s words, managed to act in a semicoherent fashion until it was done, over, complete, only the details to be arranged.

When it was finished, when the noose was laid around his neck and he was led to the gallows—with instructions to step lively, man—he left the room knowing that, once again, his life had changed. Only there was no hope this time.

Regardless of what he did, he could never make this situation bearable.