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Regency Romance: The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 3

C H A P T E R    1 3

Delia felt as if she had been awake for months. In truth, however, she was only missing two nights' worth of sleep, and it wasn't as if she had anyone to blame but herself.

“You can go to bed if you like. I will watch over her. The doctor said she would be fine.” Kieran's words were curt, hard enough to strike flint.

Ever since Alice had woken up, there was a distance between them again, something that was somehow worse than their first fight. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was a barbed kind of silence, something watching and waiting.

She could hear Kieran trying to bring some dark beast inside him under control, but perversely, she could not let it be either.

“I'll sit with you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, and if one of us falls asleep, the other will have the watch.”

“I am not going to fall asleep.” Kieran hesitated. “But thank you.”

The two of them sat by Alice's bedside, one on either side of the little girl. The doctor had been and gone, leaving behind some drops for her splitting headache but saying that she did not require so much as a stitch for the gash.

“Truly, she will be worn out. If she turns away food that she enjoys or if she complains of an unbearable pain, send for me again, but most likely, she will only need time and quiet to heal.”

Kieran had frowned at that, but Delia was inclined to trust the man. She and Lissa had picked up their share of childhood bumps and contusions, and in the end, rest was the best healer that could be found.

Time passed in a kind of haze for the three of them, broken up only by Alice waking up and demanding food. She tried to play games, but she tired so quickly that it was hardly worth it to try. Instead, she slept, and on either side of her, Kieran and Delia watched.

Sometime on the second night, it occurred to Delia that she needed to go retrieve her bag from where she had stowed it in the back hall. It contained all of her fresh clothes, but it also contained the enameled snuffbox, and she needed it back in her possession.

How bizarre. In the middle of all of this, I had forgotten about it. I never thought that I could forget something like that.

“I am going to fetch some water and then I think I will take a nap. As long as you are all right here?”

Kieran shot her a look but only nodded, returning his gaze to Alice's face. Delia felt another pang for him. She knew he was still blaming himself, but in the end, the only thing that would fix that was time.

There was something almost frightening about Brixby Hall on a dark, stormy night. It turned all of the halls that she had come to know stark and strange, and they all seemed longer than she thought they should be.

To Delia's relief, she found her bag where she had left it, and she smiled a little.

I should have a word with Kieran about the servants in this hall. It was to my advantage, but really, in truth, they should not be letting strange bags go unnoticed.

With her bag in hand and with Kieran so distracted, she thought she should not have too many troubles sneaking it back into her room before he noticed it. For a moment, she was troubled by how she was taking pains to stay rather than to leave, but she dismissed them.

Well, I can hardly leave when Alice is doing so very poorly.

It was an excuse, and one that she would have to answer to sooner rather than later, but at the moment, all she needed to do was to get back to the nursery undiscovered.

It really is surprisingly creepy when the thunder and lightning are flashing.

She was just turning the corner when a flash of lightning illuminated a large man's form standing in front of her. For a moment, she could almost discern his features, but then he lifted up some kind of thick and stifling cloth bag and threw it over her head. As Delia shouted in surprise, a hand came down to cover her face through the bag, cutting off her airflow even as another arm came down and wrapped around her body.

Oh, my god, he's so strong!

Her first instinct was to freeze, but the idea of a man in a place that she had worked so hard to make safe for a little child freed her. She could not get the breath to scream or shout, but she flailed out with her hands and feet. She felt a vicious sort of satisfaction as she landed a kick on the man's shin, and he swore.

Suddenly, an image came back to her of the hall that they were in, how there was an old vase set on a pedestal in the corner. She could only be a few feet away from it, and in a desperate gamble, Delia went limp in the man's arms, making him loosen his grip for just an essential moment. He cursed, and she threw herself backward, not caring if she wound up on the floor.

Her grasping fingers found the mouth of the vase, and after that, it was only a small amount of pressure to topple it entirely. The old porcelain hit the polished marble floors with a deafening smash, and for a moment, her attacker froze. Then he cursed, dropped her, and as she was trying to get her breath back, his footsteps faded in the distance.

Just as she tore the bag from over her head, she saw light coming from either end of the hall, servants awakened from their slumber, and oh, thank goodness, there was Kieran, marching toward her like a general on campaign and straight behind him, amusingly enough, his valet, bearing a candelabra as if it were a club.

“Delia! What in the world has happened?”

Despite her frightening ordeal, Delia spared a moment to think what bad form it was to call a governess by her first name. It would surely set the gossips' tongues to wagging.

“A man attacked me! He put this... this bag over my head, I tipped the vase over...”

The valet went slightly pale, and he turned to Kieran. “My lord, there was a window open in the hall we just passed...”

Kieran swore and turned to the butler, who had appeared in a striped nightshirt but looked for all that ready to serve. “Send every footman out into the rain. If there are tracks, I want to find them. And send a groom for the doctor.”

Delia started to protest that she was fine, but then Kieran scooped her up in his arms, and she looked down at her bloody hands blindly. She had cut her palms when the brute had dropped her among the sharp broken shards of the vase, and she was still bleeding.

“Kieran...”

“Shush. We will see you mended soon enough.”

“I do not need—”

“Hush. Do not force me to be derelict in my duties twice in so short a span of time.”

She could feel the rage and guilt radiating away from him, and with a soft sigh, she relaxed in his arms. Now that the excitement was over, a strange lassitude came over her, as if she was seeing everything through a thick pane of glass.

Can it really be him? The man who carries me so gently and who is so worried about me now, could he truly have seduced my sister and then abandoned her on the road to die?

C H A P T E R    1 4

Kieran wasn't sure he had ever been so very tired in all of his life, and yet at the same time, he didn't think that he would ever sleep again. He had spent most of the day wishing that Alice would only open her eyes and ask to paint again, but right now, he blessed the fact that she slept like the dead.

At first, Delia protested everything, his carrying her, his call for the doctor, even being taken to one of the guest rooms close to his own chambers instead of her own small place by the nursery. So quickly, however, it seemed as if she wearied, and before he had even put her in the bed, she curled up his arms as if she had been lost all her life.

Can't protect my daughter, can't even protect the woman who... the members of my household. What the hell good am I?

Kieran knew that the servants were staring, and he knew that there would be a great deal of talk regarding what he and Delia were to each other. He couldn't bring himself to care about that, even a little. He would deal with the matter when it arose.

He had a guard posted at the nursery door, and he prowled the fitfully drowsing Delia's room like a ghost himself. One by one, the footmen returned to report their failure, and then the doctor came by, much put out to be drawn to Brixby Hall on such a terrible night.

He was gentle at least when they woke Delia, and that kept Kieran from wanting to strangle the man. He checked her over with a calm care, and in the end, concluded that it was only a lack of sleep and the shock that had left her in such bad shape.

"Some rest, some safety, that will see her to right."

Kieran promised him triple his usual fee and a bed until the storm lessened, and then he was alone with Delia again. Now, however, she was sitting up in the bed, and he could feel her eyes on him, weighing him, judging him.

"I'll go, if you want. While you recover, you should stay in this room. It is more comfortable than your own."

"Will you stay with me? Just for a short while?"

"The doctor said you should get some sleep."

Delia's laugh was tired, but there was a liveliness to it that comforted him. If she was laughing, surely that meant she would heal from tonight's events.

"Honestly? I never want to sleep again. But if you wish to get back to Alice, I understand."

Kieran came to sit next to the bed, shaking his head. "She's dead to the world, and I have a guard on her door."

"That is good. I didn't even think she could come to harm in all of this."

"She shouldn't, but better safe than sorry, I suppose. I am so sorry that you came to harm in my house."

Delia was silent for a long moment, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. She was smaller than she seemed when she faced him in the study or even when she played with Alice in the nursery. Kieran wanted to destroy anything that made her look that small, that afraid.

"Do you remember what I told you about my sister?"

"Yes, that the man who seduced her had gotten her killed. I remember. But why are you bringing that up now?"

"Because I want to know, Kieran, was that man you?"

For a moment, he had no understanding of what she had said. It made no sense at all. He scowled at her.

She looked back at him with a kind of desperate calm. Her face was paler than it was when he'd found her in the hall, and her eyes were so dark, the silver only a rim around the black.

"What are you talking about Delia?"

"When the man attacked me, I was retrieving a bag from the rear hallway. It might lie there still. Would you please send someone to find it?"

The doctor had said that Delia was fine, but now Kieran wondered if she had suffered some kind of blow to the head.

"Delia, this may be something that we need to talk about when you are well enough—"

"No!"

Her voice rang out like a shot, and Kieran thought that there was nothing servant-like about it at all. There was something strangely imperious in her attitude, as if she were a lady who was well-used to being obeyed, and now he looked at her more carefully.

"No?"

"No. Send for the bag. At once. It may have been taken to my rooms, but have it brought here."

Kieran weighed his options and then nodded. If this was some kind of fever fancy of hers, it would be better for it to be played out instead of fighting her and having her work herself up.

"All right. I will send for the bag. Will you stay in bed as I do so?"

She shot him an impatient look. "I am not some sick child that you have to coddle. I will not fall and break my head open simply because you have taken your eyes off of me."

That, despite the seriousness of her condition, made him smile, and he bowed his head briefly.

"All right."

He rang for a maid, instructing her to look for a bag in the hall, and then he returned to Delia's side.

"That’s done. Now, tell me what this is all about."

"I'm not Delia Jones at all."

Kieran frowned. "Should I get the doctor back? You seem to have taken a rather queer turn."

"Believe me, I am as clearheaded as you are. I am not Delia Jones, I'm Delia Scarborough, daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury."

Kieran stared at her. "The Marquess of Winsbury, that's Almford Scarborough?"

"Yes, that is my father's name. I came here to get revenge on you for my sister's death."

"Delia..."

Something in her face cracked, and tears filled her silver eyes. He thought for a moment that she must have come to her senses, that she would realize how foolish all of this was and how she really was just Delia Jones, but she shook her head.

"My sister died on the road to Gretna Green! She had been seduced and led away for marriage, but in the dark and the spring storms, there was a carriage accident. The driver died, she died, and the man who had shared the carriage with her disappeared, leaving her in the cold and the dark and... and..."

She sobbed once, a sound that tore across Kieran's heart. When he reached for her to try to keep her calm, she pulled away. The small defiant act made her gather herself up again, however, and she sat up straight, her gaze steady even if her eyes and the tip of her nose were red.

"In her hand was a handkerchief, one embroidered with your crest and your initials, edged with charcoal-gray thread."

Kieran frowned and went to his dresser drawers, where he removed a handkerchief just like the one she mentioned.

She nodded.

"Yes, just like that."

"And so... you came here?"

She gave him a ghost of a smile. "Yes. To find proof. A single handkerchief would not have convinced anyone that you had seduced and caused the death of an innocent girl. I needed more."

It should have been nothing more than a flight of fancy. It should have been a joke. However, there was a ring of truth to her words, and as she spoke with him, he became more and more aware that she spoke not like a servant, but like a lady.

"And did you find it?"

"I was in your study. I looked in your daily log. You were in Anniston at the right time... and then entries after that were empty. It was, I thought, damning.”

"You were snooping in my study? Is that what you were truly doing?" His own blindness stunned him.

"It was. But why were those entries missing?"

"Because I had forgotten my journal on that trip. I had notes that I meant to transcribe... wait, they're right here."

From his travel bag, he withdrew a few sheets of paper, where his brief accounts of those days were carefully recorded. He handed them to Delia and he watched as her eyes trailed over them.

"You were truly there, but if these accounts are to be believed, you never left the Caster residence."

Kieran nodded. "You may ask them if I need a better alibi. I stayed at the Caster residence, and when I had need of something in town, I sent my man to the shops for me, or the Casters' footmen ran the errand."

She was still for a long moment, staring at the papers. He thought that he should have felt furious after all that had happened, but instead, he only felt exhausted.

"And on the basis of a handkerchief I might have lost anywhere, and a few missing journal entries, you convicted me in your heart of causing your sister's death?”

Her head shot up. "Yes... no! There was also the snuffbox."

"What snuffbox?"

"The one in my bag! It contained Lissa's things."

Before Kieran could respond, there was a shy knock at the door, and when he opened it, there was a maid standing there with her hands twisted in front of her.

"What is it, Daisy? Do you have Miss Jones' bag?"

"Er, no, your grace. I could find neither hide nor hair of it. I went to her room, too, to see if someone had put it up after her misfortune, but it wasn’t there."

Kieran wasn't sure what he wanted to feel when he turned back to Delia. All he knew was that her look of complete despair at finding him innocent was heart-wrenching.

C H A P T E R    1 5

"No, that cannot be! Did you look along the edges of the hall or under the bed?" Delia cried.

The maid shot her a look that was confused and fearful at once, and Delia realized with a pang that she must sound like a madwoman.

"Please..."

"I did check, Miss Jones. Believe me, please, I walked up the hall twice, and then I looked all over the nursery. I saw no sign at all of the bag. Was it possible the burglar took it?"

"That's enough."

Kieran's voice cut through like a scythe through wheat.

"Kieran..."

He nodded curtly at the maid to dismiss her, and now her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Delia thought that this would be all over the servants' hall by noon, and she winced. Kieran waited until the door had shut behind the maid to return to her.

"Delia. enough. You are addled, and your head has been jumbled by what happened to you. If I hadn't seen the open window, I might have wondered if you simply fell and came up with... all of this."

She looked at him with an emerging horror.

"You don't believe me. You don't believe any of this."

Instinctively, she reached for him, only to have him draw back. The look he gave her was so cool that it froze something in her right to the core.

"I believe that you are Delia Scarborough. I believe that you have come to my house under some mad errand of folly to avenge your sister. I had heard that she died after a long illness, but I can see that is far from the truth."

"We saved her reputation as best we could..."

"Yes. You did well there. However, your scandal might be harder for your family to bear, and the stress of your sister's death will only cover it so far."

She stared at him as if he had suddenly started speaking a different language.

"What are you talking about?"

"I am talking about this mad escapade, Delia! You came here, you faked your way into my household as a nurse, you went looking for evidence that you fabricated."

"It was there! I had my bag with me, and the burglar must have taken it!"

"And what was your proof? What proof did you have in that bag that tied me to a woman that I have never met?"

He was enraged, she realized belatedly, fury birthed out of worry and fear and the realization that he had let a faker this close to his daughter, this close to the heart of his home.

"There was a snuffbox, full of Lissa's things. A lock of her hair, a button from her dress, lover's tokens..."

"And where is your proof now?"

"I told you, it disappeared with my bag."

"It is nowhere, Delia. You imagined it, or you are simply a terrible liar who sticks with a lie long after others would have dismissed it. You are a fool, or you are addled, and frankly, I'm not even sure which reflects the worse on me."

"This isn't about you! This is about my sister's death, and I'm telling you, I had proof!"

He gave her a look that chilled her to the bone. "And now you don't have it. And pardon me if I have some doubts about your entire scheme, given how hot you were in my arms these last few weeks."

Delia felt as if she had been slapped. She stared at him with wide eyes, and it felt as if her heart might beat through her chest.

"Don't say that to me!"

Just a moment ago, he had looked as if he might walk away and leave her in disgust. Now he stalked back to her side of the bed, towering over her. She refused to cower, even if there was a small part of her mind that told her she was entirely within his power in his household, entirely at his mercy. He could choose to have the constables called, he could choose to lock her up in this room if he wished to do so.

When Kieran spoke, his voice was barely above a hiss. "Why shouldn't I? I did not ask you to be my mistress for no reason. Were you trying to seduce me to see if it would enable you to find more of this mythical proof, or did you become so confused that you thought you wanted to experience what you thought your sister had?"

His words were so coarse and foul that Delia almost wanted to cover her ears. She lurched out of the bed, throwing the covers back, still fully clothed underneath.

"I am not going to stay here and listen to this."

"Wrong."

Kieran threw his forearm across her chest, pressing her back against the bed and looming over her. With one knee on the bed next to her body, he could hold her there until doomsday if he wished to do so.

"Kieran..."

"You have lied to me with every breath you took."

Before she could answer him, his mouth swooped down, hawk-like, over hers, and he took the kiss as savagely as a highwayman would his prize. There was an edge of cruelty to the kiss, but underneath it, there was that same honey-dark passion as well, burning hot enough to wipe out everything else.

At that moment, no matter that the kiss was meant to be a punishment, there was a pure honesty between them. It didn't matter where the kiss came from, Delia couldn't stop herself from lifting her face to him, from opening her mouth and drinking him down as if he were the finest wine.

I need him just as he needs me, and oh, this will be the ruin of both of us.

Despite the tumult of their emotions, she knew he felt this as well, and when he pulled away, there was something wild in his eyes. Delia's hand flew up to her mouth, which felt bruised and oh so lovely after his kiss.

"I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

His voice was so sane that Delia wondered if he might be willing at last to sit down, to talk with her and to believe her.

"No. You didn't hurt me."

"Good. That was not my wish or my intention. No matter what, it never has been."

He lowered his head for a moment, as if ashamed of himself or deep in thought.

"Delia?"

"Yes?"

"You are going to stay in this room until you leave Brixby Hall. I am going to my study now, and I will write a letter to your father, letting him know where you are and what you have been doing. Then I will await instructions from him. He is your guardian, and that seems only appropriate."

"Kieran, no!"

"I will suggest that he take you abroad, far away from what happened to your sister. That is a terrible thing, but you have manufactured blame where there was none, and you have disrupted my household entirely."

He paused, and she sagged against the headboard. It felt as if she was being taken apart bit by bit. When she came to Brixby Hall in disguise, she had never thought that this was how it would end.

"I am never going to set eyes on you again. I can't bear it. And you will never, ever be allowed to speak to Alice again."

"You can't!"

"I can. I will tell her that you were called away, that you found some family, perhaps, who wanted to meet you immediately. Some pretty lie that a child will believe, because it will be a long sight better than telling her what you really are. A crazed woman, a liar."

The tears she had been holding back for so long started to spill down her cheeks, and Kieran turned and walked away, never looking back. The click as he locked the door from the outside was the loudest thing in the room.

* * *

Somehow, she slept. There was nothing else to do. She fell into a restless slumber, but her feelings of anger and helplessness followed her down into sleep. She had failed, and now there was nothing left to her. She passed by the people she loved, her sister, her father, Alice, and Kieran, and they never looked twice at her.

I'm here, I'm here, oh, please, I am here...

She woke up to the door unlatching, and she sat up blearily.

I suppose I am enough of a lady that I do not wish the servants to see me such a wreck...

As the dark form crossed the floor toward her, she realized two things. The first was that it was still pure dark, long before dawn. The second was that she remembered that form from earlier.

She opened her mouth to scream, but then there was a soaked rag being smothered over her nose and lips. She smelled the thick scent of ether, and in the space of a dozen heartbeats, her struggles weakened, and she went still, darkness edging out her vision.

C H A P T E R    1 6

After his devastating final conversation with Delia, Kieran thought that he would return to his own bed. He felt as if there was nothing he wanted more than to sleep out the rest of the century. There was a stone where his heart should have been, and brutally enough, there was still a small voice in his head telling him that he was wrong, that Delia would never lie to him, would never think him such a monster.

I cannot think of her anymore. It will destroy me if I do.

He entered his bedroom, but instead of undressing or even lying down for some sleep, he paced back and forth. He went over the events of the night over and over again, until he thought he might be sick, and each time, he came back with no more knowledge, no more wisdom than he had ever had before. Finally, he turned away from it, leaving his room again. Kieran walked to the nursery, where he curtly dismissed the footman standing guard and walked in.

Before he came to Alice's bed, he was consumed with a sudden and sharp-edged terror that she would be missing, taken by some malevolent force while the household was in disorder. Instead, she was sleeping peacefully, and he sighed, pausing to drop a kiss on her forehead before he sat back down next to her.

As he did so, however, Alice's eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at him with a soft smile that filled his heart with sweetness.

"Hello, sweetheart. Go back to bed, it is still night."

She shrugged her tiny shoulders. "Grandmother and grandfather stayed up all night at the inn. With the guests."

"Well, you do not live with them anymore, and besides, they should never have allowed you to stay up so late."

She shrugged again, as if she were willing to take his word for it, and then she frowned, glancing over at the empty chair on the other side of her bed.

"Papa, where's Delia?"

"She's gone."

Alice looked at him as if he had said the sky had fallen down while she slept, and he cursed himself.

It would have been just as true to say that she had gone to sleep. Alice has already suffered a terrible upset in the past few days, why does she need another?

"Where has she gone to? Papa, you must get her back!"

The lies were right there. He had told Delia what he would say to Alice, and though it might take time, he knew she would believe it. She was only three; in even a few years, Delia would be some memory no more vivid than her time with her birth mother or her grandparents. Why did something in Kieran roar against that?

"She... she must return to her family. She is preparing now. We will not see her again."

Alice's shriek caught him by surprise. It was louder than it had any right to be, and the pure grief in it made his blood run cold.

He reached for her, hoping to comfort her at least in some way, but to his shock, she leaped from the bed and dashed to the door. Kieran was so exhausted and so very stunned that she got past it without a moment of pause, and then he was dashing after her.

For such a little thing, Alice was shockingly fast when she wanted to be, and she was halfway down the hall before he caught up with her, sweeping her up in his arms. His heart was beating fast, and for some reason, he felt as if he had to keep her safe, had to keep her close. The last few hours had been a special kind of horrible, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if anything happened to Alice, he was going to perish.

"Delia! Delia! Where are you, Delia!"

"Alice, stop this at once!"

"I won't! I won't! I want Delia! She can't go like Mama! I won't let her!"

Alice's body felt like wood as she stiffened in his arms, trying desperately to pull away from him. Her face was red and flooded with tears, and she pounded on him with all of her strength.

With a sinking heart, he realized that Alice was losing Delia just as she had lost her mother, as far as she was concerned. One day there was a loving presence caring for her, and the next day, she was gone.

There was no sense to it. They were right next to the door to Delia's room. He supposed he might have thought that Delia would quiet the child, or even that they would be allowed to say goodbye.

Perhaps it was only that he wanted to see Delia again, because he also couldn't stand the idea of never laying eyes on her after this night.

Juggling Alice in one arm, he reached for the doorknob. He realized in a moment that the latch had been thrown. It was unlocked, and with his heart in his throat, he cracked the door open.

"Delia?"

No words, not timorous or strident, greeted him. Alice must have picked up something in his tone, because she went quiet in his arms, hugging on to him with a child's frail strength.

He threw the door open, and a terrifying sight met his eyes. The covers had been pulled from the bed as if in a struggle, and the small table by the door had been knocked over. The window was closed and with a sinking feeling in his throat, Kieran came to two conclusions.

The first was that whoever had taken her had stayed in the house after his first attempt. The second realization was that whoever it was had no reason and no interest in Delia's safety or life at all.

He nearly tore the bell to the servants' quarters off of its rig, and then he was striding back into the hall, shouting the house awake.

"Papa, Papa, what about Delia?"

"I am going to find Delia, I promise, Alice. But I need you to stay in your room until I do, all right? No wandering. No running. I must be able to rely on you."

She looked fearful, but she nodded, and he passed her to the first maid he saw.

"Take her back to her room and stay with her. Do what you need to do to keep her calm. I'll send some men to watch the door. Do not let anyone in unless it is me."

The maid shot him a nervous look, but he waited until she disappeared into the nursery to turn to the servants who were already rushing toward him.

"Get everyone out on the front lawn. I want every damned human in this place accounted for, even if you have to pull them kicking and screaming from their beds."

To his grim satisfaction, the servants, who after all, had already had one wake-up call this evening, did as he said without a word.

He strode into his room for his riding boots, and then he headed down to the lawn, where the servants were already milling around. The sun was just beginning to paint lighter streaks of blue across the black, and the rain had stopped an hour ago.

He smiled savagely. He would find Delia, and then he would deal with the man who held her.

Delia, please, please just hold on.

C H A P T E R    1 7

Delia came awake sometime later, aware that the ground underneath her was wet, soaking through to her skin. For a moment, she was convinced that she had somehow slipped back in time and fallen asleep in the small wooded grotto behind her family's manor, and that her father would scold her for spoiling her dress.

Then she woke up a little further and realized that her situation was far more dire.

She was tied up, resting on the mossy ground, and not far away from her, a man she recognized as Kieran's valet was tying a noose. His fingers labored over the knot, the rope came undone, and then he tried wrapping it again.

To her shock, he was crying as he did it, and she felt all of the pieces come together in her mind. At that moment, she decided to speak, rather than pretend to remain unconscious.

"You must let me go. If you do right now, they will be merciful on you, or perhaps you will even get away. If you do this terrible thing, you will surely hang."

He looked up at her, and Delia flinched from the darkness in his eyes. He was a surprisingly handsome man, fine-featured, but there was something unbalanced him, something teetering on the edge of sheer madness.

"Do you think that I haven't been in hell ever since that carriage crash, Lady Delia? I have been, and the most terrible thing is that it is a hell without Lissa."

Somewhere behind the wall of fear that threatened to overwhelm her, it occurred to Delia how strange it was to hear someone use her proper address.

"I'm sure that Lissa would not want you to suffer like that. She cared for you very much."

The man's face crumpled, and to her relief, he lowered the rope slightly. "I know she did. We spoke so often of the life we would have. How happy we would be. You must believe me. I loved her, Lady Delia. I loved her so very much."

"So much that you wanted to impress her, didn't you?"

Delia knew that her words might drive him to a pure rage, but she couldn't stop herself from getting the truth now, not when she was so close.

The valet, John, she remembered Kieran calling him once, made a terrible keening sound.

"It was only meant to be a lark, you see. One of Casters' men dared me to do it, to dress as the lord, to go into town for a pint one afternoon. It wasn't supposed to be anything bad!"

"And there you met Lissa, didn't you, John?"

If he was startled to hear her say his right name, he did not show it. He was a man who was eaten alive with guilt, but that did not make him less dangerous. She slowly started to flex her wrists where they were bound in front of her. The ties might come loose if she worked at them.

"I did, I did, Miss Delia, and she was like the light of the sun itself. No one was as beautiful as she was."

"No, I loved her very much, and I can see that you did as well."

She hesitated for a moment. "She would not like what you are doing here, you know, John. She would not want you to kill me."

"But I have to, Lady Delia. Else they'll find me and hang me for stealing my master's clothes, for seducing a noble girl, for leaving her to die… They'll kill me dead."

And would that be worse than what has happened to you here?

"They may not. I would plead for you, John. I'm Lissa's sister, after all. I would not want her love wasted."

Something about her words seemed to enrage him. "You're not her! She loved me! You were going to find me! You found the treasures she gave me. You were going to expose me!"

She remembered with a pang how he was the one who had directed the search for the supposed burglar out the window. How easy it must have been for him to find her bag and whisk it away.

"Please, John, I do not want to die. Do not do this."

It seemed as if he had not heard her. "You have to die. You know too much, and the duke thinks you are a liar. So sad you came here to hang yourself, to finally do away with the sin of what you've done. And no one will know what I have done, and no one, no one will know..."

His hands returned to the rope, but then they both heard the sound of movement in the lightening woods.

To Delia's shock, Kieran broke from cover, a pistol in his hand.

"Let her go, and you may yet be spared!"

Instead of surrendering, John took two steps to where Delia lay, grabbing her up in front of him.

"I have a pistol! I will kill her if you do not leave right now!"

Kieran hesitated, but Delia's hands finally came loose from the bonds. Her hands scraped bloody against the coarse rope, but she managed to bring one elbow hard against John's chest, ramming it against the hard bone of his sternum. He let her go with a cry of pain, she dove to the ground, and in the crisp dawn air, a shot rang out.

Delia cringed on the ground away from the falling man, but then Kieran was off his horse and grabbing her up in his arms.

"Are you all right? Did he hurt you? I swear, I will never let him lay a hand on you again..."

For a moment, she simply let herself sit in the safety and comfort of Kieran's arms, Kieran, who she thought she would never see again. Then, still shaking a little, she pushed him away and turned back toward John.

Kieran had shot clean and true; the wound in the valet's chest must have killed him immediately. The look on his face was oddly peaceful.

"How did you find us?"

"The rain had stopped. There were tracks, and you were on foot. I knew he could not have taken you far."

She looked around on the ground, and it only confirmed what she had suspected.

"He had no pistol."

"Do not tell me I should not have shot him. That was a foregone conclusion after he took you."

"I will not. But I have a feeling it was what he really wanted anyway.”

Well, Lissa? Is this an ending? Is your spirit satisfied?

She let Kieran boost her up on his mare, and as they rode back to Brixby Hall, she wondered if her sister had ever craved vengeance. If all along, it had only been Delia herself who needed it.

Right now, she felt nothing.

* * *

Kieran settled her in one of the guest rooms again, this time as a guest. For a few hours, all she could do was sleep, completely worn out by what had happened.

Around noon, a girl appeared with some dresses ready made from town. They were less lovely than the dresses she was accustomed to wearing at home, but far more luxurious than her governess's drab linen.

The maid treated her with a cautious deference, and Delia supposed it must have been strange for her, to have a single woman go from governess to madwoman and liar to marquess's daughter all at once.

In clothes she was more accustomed to, Delia felt calm, almost tranquil. If she closed her eyes, she thought of John and of Lissa, and how tragic and foolish it all was, but even that was taking the dimmer air of memory. It was all over now.

Perhaps he will let me say goodbye to Alice before I leave. Surely, he cannot think I am a liar after all this.

Dinner time came, and instead of a maid with a tray, it was Kieran and Alice instead, Kieran with a tray full of food, and Alice carefully carrying a little tart.

"Hello, Delia! Papa and I brought you dinner!"

"I can see that! Thank you so much, Alice."

Kieran tugged one of the tables over to the window, and in the gleaming summer light, the three of them ate. It occurred to her that the storms were over.

Kieran only had a few bites before he turned to Delia, who had only picked at her food.

"Delia."

"Yes, Kieran?"

"I have written to your father and sent the letter by personal messenger. He will likely be relieved to the point of death to find out where you are."

"I left him a note, not telling everything I was going to do, but yes, I imagine he is worried."

Kieran shook his head. "My goodness. You truly are a bad influence on little girls if you think a note was all that was necessary before you go haring off across the countryside. You must know that you can no longer be Alice's nurse."

"Technically, I was hired as her governess, but yes. I can see that."

"So, that's done. You are formally released from my employment. Despite everything, I will see that you get a good reference."

Delia almost choked at his words, and a smile curled her lips. What they had been through was terrible, but perhaps they could be friends.

"Well, thank you, my lord, I am sure it will make finding my next job very easy."

"Well, as to that, I might have a position that you could take."

She looked at him in surprise.

Kieran looked deep into her eyes, the green in his gaze verdant and alive. He took her hand, and she could feel him shake a little.

"I would like to take you on as my wife. I believe you are completely suited for the position due to your spirit, wisdom, humor, and beauty, and while I do warn you that the position can be trying at times, it is for life."

"Kieran..."

He continued, his voice unsteady. "I cannot get over how close I came to losing you, and now, I never want to let you out of my site. Delia, be my wife, and I swear, I will make your dreams come true. I love you, I have loved you since I laid eyes on you, and it doesn't matter if you love me or not, I will wait, I will say sorry for this entire affair for the rest of our lives if you wish it..."

"I love you, Kieran."

He left the table to sweep her up in his arms.

"Say it again."

"I love you. I will marry you."

He pulled her in for a deep hard kiss, and she felt something in her spring free. She was free, and suddenly, she felt as light as air, as fresh as sunlight.

She pulled back and glanced down at Alice, who was gazing at them both disapprovingly.

"You are both being silly."

Kieran grinned. "May you never be as silly as your Mama and Papa, Alice."

E P I L O G U E

One Year Later

Spain

The villa in Spain was still in some ways like a dream to Delia. On the shores of the blue Mediterranean waters, there was a quality of light all around that made England's dreary skies seem like some kind of distant dream.

Some mornings, Delia took her sketchbook to the beach to draw while Alice ran along the shore collecting shells, and some mornings, she and Alice and Kieran all took a barouche down to the small town nearby, all of them having developed a taste for the beautiful fruit, bold flowers, and strange sights of the market.

Today, however, she simply sat on the balcony above the water, taking in the sunlight and the blue sky and bluer sea. Something in her was healing in Spain the way it never could in England, but she sensed that sooner rather than later, she would want to return home.

A sound made her turn, and she smiled to see Kieran appear. He was browner from the hot sun, and he carried with him a handful of letters.

“Did Alice have a good time fetching the post from town with you?”

“So good a time she is exhausted and napping now.”

“Good girl. What have you there?”

Kieran came to sit next to her and showed her the wedding invitation they had received.

“My goodness, Neil Marsh is getting married? I would hardly have thought it of him.”

She could still vividly remember the handsome young man who had helped Kieran interview her for the position of Alice's nurse. He had danced at their wedding six months ago, and she had a soft spot for him.

Kieran frowned. “It hardly fits. He's marrying some chit named Sarah Lister. Didn't her brother try to kill someone last year? I wonder if he got her in a family way, and they're smoothing things over.”

Delia coughed. “Speaking of 'in a family way.' perhaps there is something we should discuss.”

Kieran turned wide eyes to her, letting the invitation fall out of his hand. “What? That is, are we? Are you…?”

She laughed. “No. Not yet. But I think, sooner rather later I might be. And when that time comes, I want to be in England, closer to my father, to where our new son or daughter might be raised.”

“You think we should return?”

She took a deep breath. “I do. I think I'm ready.”

Kieran gave her a tender look and planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

“All right. Let's go home.”

“I'm with you and Alice. I'm always at home when I am with the two of you.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

Hi lovelies! Thank you for reading The Lady's Masquerade.

If you have enjoyed reading this standalone novella, I believed you would appreciate much more when the story is in a series and is a full-length novel.

I've had an AWE-some new series – Valiant Love series. If you have not check out yet, I believe you will love it even more! Just scroll down below for the synopsis of Book 01 in Valiant Love series…

Synopsis:

She is willing to give up her love for his honor …

He is willing to give up his honor for her love …

Lady Beatrix Gillingham ran from her duty years ago…

Giving up her family’s status and childhood dreams. 

No one would suspect the barmaid is an earl’s daughter. 

She’s learned to work hard and make her heart even harder. 

But … in one night, everything changes.

She saves a life. 

Who knew that life would be the son of one of the oldest titles and most honorable homes in England?

The Curbains 

And to a man who’s just as valiant as his name suggests. 

General Hero Curbain has fought England’s greatest enemies. 

As the son of a duke, he’s faced his own challenges but never had he expected the challenge of Lady Beatrix. 

In thanks for her kindness, he offers her the chance of a lifetime:

1- One Season. 

2- One opportunity to restore her name.

3- One chance to find love.

However …

As secrets spill and the truth of Beatrix’s past is revealed, she’ll have to decide the best course of action.

Fight for the man she loves or run away from her dreams once again?

What happens when Hero discovers Beatrix is not the perfect lady he envisioned?

Can love live in a society founded on duty?

For fans of regency romance, THE PERFECT LADY is an absorbing and gripping story that will tug at your heartstrings. 

See how the story unfolds. Get the story HERE

[deborahwilsonbooks-blog]

Regency Romance: The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 2

C H A P T E R    0 7

Kieran shut his eyes against the pain that was beginning to arch across his skull. It had been a trying few days, and he had barely had any time to spend with Alice and Delia at all. He was nearly ready to set the Marseilles branch of his quarrying company on fire, and it didn't help that the man in charge there did not speak English or even French but some obscure Occitan dialect. All of their conversations took place through a barely literate translator, and the whole thing was finally culminating in an actual headache rather than just a metaphorical one.

It was late by the time he made it back to Brixby Hall, and instead of going to bed, he found himself in his study again. He pulled one of the cut crystal decanters from the alcove in the wall and sipping at the good port, he thought of what had happened the last time he had been in here with Delia.

She had been everything he had hoped for and more when he had hired her on. His daughter seemed to be thriving under her care, and Delia seemed to care for Alice as well, treating her as sweetly and as gently as she would her own child.

Of course, it wasn't Alice that we were thinking about when she was here last.

The memory of their kiss, bright and almost incandescently sensual, came to surprise him from time to time. Sometimes, Kieran thought he would go mad with how vivid that memory was and how it could come to him in the most unsuitable of moments.

She is too good with Alice. I can't risk more of that. She deserves so much better than what I could offer her. She's too fine, too pure for the thoughts that I can't seem to help but entertain when she is around.

Even as he told himself that, however, he wondered. She had felt like pure fire in his arms, and he had known with an instinctive truth that she felt the same thing that he had.

Where does a modest and virtuous governess get that kind of fire anyway?

He took another sip of the port, letting his eyes drift closed. Yes, it was completely beyond the pale to imagine a night like this one, where he was tired to death and where life seemed at its dullest, that he might hear her light step in the hallway and know that she was coming to relieve some of that ache.

Kieran's eyes snapped open. It wasn't his imagination. There were steps in the hallway, and somehow, he knew that it was her. He

made his way to the door, opening it just in time to see her go past.

Delia yelped, her face turning white and then red as she rounded on him.

"What in the world do you think you are doing, Kieran?"

He grinned, liking the roses in her cheeks. "I feel like I should be asking you that same question. I am in my own study having a good drink. You are the governess who is sneaking through the dark halls with only a candle, as if you were hunting for some hidden treasure in a Gothic novel."

She scowled at him. "You nearly scared the life out of me."

"Would you prefer I go the Gothic route and creep up on you in the darkness? I could wrap my arms around you from behind and whisper some dire prophecy in your ear before I disappear into the mists."

"No, I would certainly not rather you do that! And if you are going to be reading Gothics, please do not mention them around Alice. She has a vivid enough imagination without having you fill it full of ghosts and monsters."

"If I promise I won't, will you come and sit with me for a moment?"

She hesitated. He could almost see her consulting some inner catalog of proper governess behavior, and he guessed that the answer should absolutely be a no when the lord of the manor asked her in for a private audience in the middle of the night. To his surprised pleasure, she nodded and stepped into the study.

"You're wearing a wrap tonight over your shift. Did you decide that our last meeting here was too chilly?"

"I decided that I had apparently better protect my virtue when I was going to get some water in the middle of the night, yes."

Kieran laughed at her arch words. "Believe me, if I had designs on your virtue, that wrap would not be a sufficient barrier to much of anything."

Delia turned even redder, but she lifted her chin in what was certainly a very un-governess-like defiance. "I am not here to discuss virtue, Kieran. What was it you wanted?"

Kieran clutched his heart as if she had wounded him to the core. "Harsh, Delia. I suppose I just wanted to ask after you to see how you are doing. You have been at this posting for some few weeks now. Is it what you were hoping it would be?"

Delia hesitated. At that moment, he felt from her a kind of reticence, a kind of inward thought that felt oddly clouded to him. It could simply be a servant's reluctance to speak truthfully to her master, but he wondered if that was all there was.

"It is... surprisingly good. I feel as if I fit here at Brixby Hall, and I did not expect that. Alice is charming and surely the sweetest child I have ever had the opportunity to teach."

"But still something troubles you?"

She lifted her head, her gray eyes flashing to silver behind her spectacles. "The only thing that troubles me is this."

"This?"

"You and me. Like this. Surely, this is closer than a servant and her lord should be."

"And yet you came into my study of your own free will, didn't you?"

He had no idea what he would do if she said no, die of shame most likely.

Instead, she lowered her eyes.

"I did."

Kieran laid his port aside and leaned back against his desk, his long legs spread in front of him and braced on the floor. "Will you come here, Delia?"

At that moment, he would wager Brixby Hall itself that there was no coercion there. Delia came of her own free will, and when she hesitated just a little beyond him, he gestured her closer until she was standing between his legs.

"If you need me to stop, tell me so. But Delia, until you do, I will not."

She opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to question, but then she was pulled against his body, her hands coming up to his shoulders to pull him closer, her head thrown back.

She might have been wearing a wrap, but he could feel her warmth right through the fabric, as warm and soft as a summer night, and he had no idea where they might stop if she didn't halt things. All that mattered was the sweetness of her lips, the softness of her body, the quiet and incredibly needy sounds she made as she pressed against him for more.

There were no words there, nothing necessary beyond their mouths so hungry for each other. Delia made a soft sound as his mouth moved from hers to the point of her jaw and then to the soft tender skin of her throat. Kieran pressed his lips against the vein there that throbbed with life and heat.

She's so beautiful. So perfectly alive and here with me.

The thought sent a kind of warmth through him that had absolutely nothing to do with the sensuality of the moment.

Delia made a soft broken sound that seemed to go straight through him, but instead of pulling away as he thought she might, she pressed closer. He knew that she could feel the arousal of his body now, feel how much he wanted her, how much he needed her, but at the bottom of it all, there was this incredible feeling of care and sweetness.

It wasn't until his mouth pulled from her throat, seeking the sensitive skin of her ear, that Delia gasped. She pulled back, and when she looked up at him, her eyes were wide.

"Delia..."

"We cannot do this. We should not do this."

Kieran knew he had said he would let her go if she asked to be released, but there was something in her voice that made him pause.

"Do you want me?"

Her eyes were stormy. "Of course, I do. But this cannot be. This will not be. I am going to my room now."

She turned on her heel and walked away, closing the door behind her with a final click.

Kieran let out a breath and a curse.

She was right. He knew she was right. That fact did not lessen the pain of it, however, nor did it quiet the passion that roared through him, wanting nothing more than Delia next to him again, so close to him that it seemed as if they must become one.

C H A P T E R    0 8

Delia returned to her room, checking on Alice one more time before she went to lie down. The little girl slept the sleep of the innocent, face softly flushed on her pillow, completely innocent of the things her father and her governess were doing.

The very people trusted to care for her. Delia's thoughts were guilty, and then she reminded herself that that was not what she was there for at all.

In her own room, the summer air had left the chamber stuffy, so she went to the tiny window and opened it, letting in the summer breeze.

I must go to bed, or I will be good for nothing at all in the morning.

Still, she knelt at her window, elbows on the sill, looking up at the dark summer sky.

What am I doing?

Her cheeks were still flushed from the sheer thunderous heat of being so very close to Kieran, and her body was filled with sweetness from his kisses and his touch. She should have refused to enter the study again at all, but yet she had.

I am lucky that he did not realize what I was truly doing.

Every night that Kieran was meant to be out of the house, she had started wandering the manor. As the governess, she did not have ridiculously early hours, nor did she have other servants working with her. She could seek as she pleased, and this time, she had been in his bedchamber.

I suppose I am lucky that he did not find me there.

The shiver that shook her body at that thought was not entirely fear. He might have decided that she was a thief and that the constables needed to be called in, but she didn't think so. Instead, what had happened in the study would have happened there instead, and in that wide bed...

With a soft sigh, Delia lay down in her own narrow bed, oddly grateful for the plain sheets and hard mattress. It reminded her of the real world, where the midnight whispers and sinfully pleasurable touches that Kieran gave her were unthinkable.

Her mind drifted as it had almost every night to the day that she'd wept in the meadow. The look of compassion and kindness on his face was real, she knew that, but could it possibly mean that she was wrong? Could he be innocent of the crime of seducing her sister?

Sometimes, Delia thought that she would surely perish under the pressure of discovering the truth. She had thought that the truth would free her, but now she wondered if it was only a slightly more cunning chain.

* * *

The next day dawned bright and lovely, and as Delia had promised Alice, they went out to see the horses.

Brixby Hall kept a fine stable with some bloodstock that was fit for the finest hunts in the land. However, far more numerous were the matched carriage horses that commanded an incredibly high price at Tattersall's and the stocky carthorses that saw to the hall's needs for food and material.

"Now you must remember to hold my hand, Alice. The horses may be very beautiful, but they are very large, and they can be careless of little girls."

"Grandmother and Grandfather had horses in the yard, but they weren’t so pretty."

The exercise yard was a busy place, with the stable master overseeing the careful chaos and self-important young boys exercising the horses and putting them through their paces.

After checking to make sure that the rail was strong enough, Delia lifted Alice up to balance on the fence, so she could see her favorites go by.

That's the dapple-gray team that Kieran uses for most of his business travel. I wonder if those were the horses he took to Denby.

It felt sometimes as if she had searched every nook and cranny of Brixby Hall, looking for some sign of Kieran's affair with her sister. Sometimes, she wondered if she was going mad and there was no evidence to be found.

She smiled as one of the boys, a tall teenager with a splatter of dark freckles over his fair face, came closer to them, leading a gentle-looking older gelding.

"With your permission, Miss?"

When Delia nodded, he brought the gelding closer, making Alice gasp with delight.

"He's gentle enough, if you want to pet his nose, little lady."

Under Delia's careful eye, the little girl stroked the placid horse's velvet nose, laughing when he whiffed at her hands looking for a treat.

When the boy showed Alice how to give the horse a few cubes of sugar hidden in his pockets, he glanced up at Delia.

"There's a children's saddle in the tack-room, miss. If the little lady cares to go for a ride, I could put Hector up for a moment and saddle him up for her."

It seemed a shame to pull Alice away from her new friend even for a moment, and the young boy looked likely enough.

"If you'll only make sure that she does not fall, I will go fetch the saddle. Just tell me where."

Following the boy's directions, Delia picked her way to the shed he had indicated. It was tidy and densely packed with tack, and it smelled pleasantly of fresh hay and the ointment that the grooms used to keep the leather soft and pliant. The saddle was hung neatly up on the wall, and even though it was clear that it had not been used in some time, she could see that it had been well taken care of.

Pulling the saddle down was a little difficult, as whoever had hung it had been taller than she was. Delia stood on her tiptoes to tug it down, and then when it started to fall, she uttered a most unladylike curse as it tumbled through her fingers. As it came down, it displaced a few boxes of loose tack, and with a frown, Delia set the saddle aside to replace the spare traces and straps that had fallen out.

One item that had tumbled out stood out for her. The enameled snuffbox did not belong in the stable at all, and such a beautiful thing could never have belonged to a groom. She turned it over in her hands, feeling something like dread washing over her. There was a hunting scene depicted on the front, and when she flipped it over, she saw the initials KD in scrolling script along the bottom. Kieran Dearborn.

I don't want it to be him. I don't want him to be the one who got Lissa killed.

She suddenly wanted nothing more than to shove the box back where she had found it. It wouldn't be true if she didn't look at it, if she didn't find it. Then perhaps at some point, she would only go home and leave all of this behind her.

Delia took a deep breath, because there was no way in the world she was going to do that. With trembling fingers, she righted the box and undid the latch.

For a moment, she wondered if she would only find snuff in the box, a rebuke to all of her fears, but it was nothing of the sort. There were a few small items in the snuffbox, and with a deep sinking in her stomach, she recognized them all.

That's a green glass button from her favorite spring dress, the one that's still hanging in her closet at home. That's her handkerchief, the one she so carefully embroidered. I still remember her tearing out the red flowers over and over again until she got them right. And that is a lock of her hair.

Delia was almost overwhelmed with grief, holding a small remnant of her dear sister's life in her hands. She thought there was a chance she might simply sit down and start to weep into her hands. Then they would find her and her plans for revenge, however unformed, would be at an end.

Somehow, Delia got her emotions under control. She bit the inside of her lip until she almost drew blood, and then she tucked the latched snuffbox into the inner pocket, hanging from her stays.

I must be normal. I must act as if there is nothing wrong. After all, as far as anyone is concerned, nothing has changed.

She picked up the saddle and carried it back to the yard, where Alice and the stable boy were laughing at some joke.

"Here's the saddle. Please be careful with her."

The boy took the saddle, but something in her face made him stop.

"Is everything all right, miss?"

"Yes, of course. It is only that some of the boxes fell over when I was fetching the saddle."

He frowned.

"Should I run back quickly and see to them? John Coachman will be in a proper state if aught is out of place."

"Oh, no, it should be fine. I made sure to put everything back where it belonged."

The boy nodded, and as Alice watched with rapt fascination, he showed her how he secured the small saddle to the horse's back. The children's saddle, in addition to being smaller than that designed for an adult, had a pronged horn for Alice to grab on to, and there were straps that secured her to the horse's back.

She crowed when she was boosted onto the patient gelding’s back, and she could barely wait for the boy to buckle her in before she wanted to ride.

"She'll be a right little horsewoman in a few years, won't she, miss?"

Delia smiled, because he wasn't wrong, but when she found that small box, it was as if a thick pane of glass had dropped down between her and everything else in the world. Nothing, not the sun on her head nor Alice's delighted laugh, could reach her now, and she had to decide what would happen next.

C H A P T E R    0 9

Kieran was seeing to business in Dorchester, the next town over from Brixby Hall, when he realized that in some strange way, Delia had ruined him for other women. Things had conspired to keep him in Dorchester far too late for him to sensibly go home, and he had ended up at the White Hart, a decent inn.

It was a cheerful enough place, with meat turning on the spit and an impressively good applejack at the tap, but Kieran couldn't find it in himself to enjoy it.

Neil had just sent him a message from London, asking where in the hell he was. The last few weeks after Parliament was done with and before the Season properly ended was always a prime time to carouse, to visit the gambling hells, and to see what new wonders the circuses, the theaters, and the brothels could dream up, but none of that sounded in the least enjoyable to Kieran.

Alice and Delia are certainly more fun than any company I could scare up in London.

He smiled at what a homebody he had become, and one of the barmaids, a buxom girl with hair the color of butter, thought that was meant for her. She smiled at him, a slow and sensual thing, and when she set down his tankard of applejack, she offered up a sweet smile and a view down her low-cut kirtle.

"Well, my lord?"

"Well, what, lass?"

"Well, I was thinking that if you were staying tonight, I could come up to your room. You understand, of course, that room service at this inn is not common, but exceptions can be made for a gentleman as fine as you."

For a moment, Kieran only stared at her, and then he laughed. He had been so occupied with thoughts of home that the girl's offer had confused him at first. She looked offended at his mirth, but a generous tip mollified her, and Kieran shook his head at his own mistake.

All right, either the mental ravages of age arrive far earlier than I thought they would, or finding out I am a father and inviting the world's most lovely governess into my home was enough to addle me. Somehow, I am going to assume that it is the later.

He drained the last of his drink and stood to go upstairs. There was really no point in staying up, and if he got up earlier, he would be home to see his two favorite girls all the sooner.

Before he could sleep that night, however, Kieran found himself tormented with less than pure visions of Delia. Delia smiling at him, Delia's mouth all red from kisses, Delia in her shift, Delia out of her shift. It could drive a man to distraction, and somehow, deep in his soul, he knew it was driving her to distraction as well.

Sometime in the small hours of the morning, he gave up on sleep and ended up at the window of his room, watching the sky lighten toward dawn. It occurred to him absently that the paleness of the sky, when it was pewter, before it was properly blue, reminded him of Delia's eyes.

This can't go on. I need to do something about this.

* * *

Kieran came home the next day, still pondering the issue. The worries and troubles that had seemed so very important while he was on the road dissolved to nothing when he entered the nursery in the middle of lunch and Alice sprang from her place at the table, pelting toward him with a cry of delight.

Just as she got to him, she tripped, and he swept her up in his arms.

"What a bright and brilliant girl! Did you miss me?"

Alice threw her arms around his neck, babbling happily, and Delia rose from the table by the window. Kieran started to smile at her, but then looked twice and put Alice down.

"I would love to see your drawings, darling. Will you put them in order for me while I have a word with Delia?"

As Alice scampered off, Kieran came to stand by Delia at the window. He wondered if she flinched a little from him, and he frowned. He touched her chin with his fingertip, urging her to look at him.

"What's the matter? You look pale. Are you getting sick?"

"No, I'm feeling fine. I suppose I have not been sleeping well lately."

Kieran thought for a moment, and then he pulled her close, ignoring her slight murmur of protest. There was a moment of surprise, and then she softened against him. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms, but he remembered that he had had something else in mind before that.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, holding her still for a short moment, and then he let her go.

"You don't feel hot or feverish to me. Perhaps you have taken a bit of a chill and it has stopped you from sleeping. Shall I send for a doctor?"

She looked surprised at his words. "No, not at all. I tell you, I am fine."

Kieran smiled a little at her shock. "I should not want anything to happen to you. Just as you are taking care of my daughter, I must make sure that you are well taken care of as well."

"Is that what you want, to take care of me?"

Kieran thought for a moment, and it was as if someone had lit a candle in his mind, making way for all the things that he had never quite recognized before.

"Yes, I suppose that is something I want to do."

When he reached for her this time, she did not flinch, and instead of bringing her in for a passionate kiss, he simply held her for a moment. Somehow, it was so easy to forget how small Delia really was. Right now, she felt like a starved winter sparrow in his arms, all bones and skin.

Perhaps it would not be such a terrible thing to call for a doctor after all. Better safe than sorry.

Before he could press the matter again, however, Alice dashed back, her drawings arranged in careful order for his perusal. Glancing at Delia, Kieran took a seat at the window, allowing Alice to show him what she had been up to for the last little while.

They'd apparently kept quite busy with him gone, and Kieran thought again that it might be better to bring his business to him rather than chasing it across the country. He dutifully looked at pictures of Alice riding, of the meals she had shared with Delia, and then he stopped her at the last one.

"And who's in this picture?"

Alice grinned. "It's you, and me, and Delia!"

The blobs were barely recognizable as people, all enclosed in a box that Alice proudly called Brixby Hall, but Kieran found himself oddly touched by the fact that all three blobs were holding hands. Alice, smaller and topped with golden hair, stood in the middle.

"Alice, may I have this one?"

Alice said he could, and with a slightly sheepish smile, Kieran folded the picture and tucked it into his pocket.

"It's a curiously affecting work, wouldn't you say, Delia?"

For just a moment, the strangeness that had seemed to infect her since he'd returned dropped, and she smiled at him, warm and sweet as honey.

"Very much so, Kieran."

C H A P T E R    1 0

Delia thought that she would be torn in two. She had wondered if things would get better when Kieran returned from his trip, if seeing him after her discovery would change everything and make her realize that beneath his handsome face and heart-stopping smile that he was truly some kind of serpent in human form.

Before he had returned, she had all but stopped sleeping. After retrieving the enameled snuffbox full of her sister's effects, she made a small slit in her pillow and pushed the box in, sewing the slit up again neatly. It seemed to have bled into her dreams, and when she could sleep at all, her dreams pursued her with a kind of relentless fury.

In her dreams, her sister came to her, as sweet and lovely as she had been in life, and in the middle of some mundane errand, would ask with sorrow in her voice why Delia did not miss her.

"Why are you spending all your time mooning over him? Don't you remember what happened to me? I thought you were meant to be the smart one."

No matter how Delia protested, Lissa's recriminations became louder and more furious, and slowly, Delia would remember that Lissa was dead.

She woke up in a cold sweat, and sometimes, the only thing that would calm her was going to Alice's room and matching her breath to Alice's.

She had expected to see a monster when Kieran returned to Brixby Hall, but instead, for a single moment when he entered the nursery, she forgot all about her sister and only saw the man who made her heart beat faster. His smile made her insides melt, and when he came to speak with her, she almost swayed toward him before she remembered herself.

I have enough information. I could go with it to the constables. I could go right into London and demand satisfaction in front of the entire world. I can tell them where I have been, and I can show them the handkerchief I have found. It could ruin him.

And it would ruin Alice as well.

The thought sent such a pain through her heart that she thought she might fall down to her knees. The little girl had never figured into her plans for vengeance, and now she could see what a fool she had been.

It took everything she had to behave normally throughout the rest of that day and the next, and then, shortly after she had put Alice to bed, a soft knock sounded on the nursery door. When she answered it, she was not sure if she was surprised or not to see Kieran there, his jacket and waistcoat removed, his cravat discarded somewhere and his shirt open at his throat. For a moment, she could not tear her eyes away from the V of bronzed skin there.

"Kieran. What are you doing here?"

She wondered briefly how after everything that had happened that she could still call him Kieran.

"I was hoping to speak with you."

"Here?"

"Well, Alice might wake up if we're speaking in the nursery, and your room is hardly appropriate. Would you walk with me back to the study?"

"There is very little about anything that we do that might be considered appropriate, but all right."

He rewarded her with a bright smile, and he led the way back to the study.

I could confront him now. I could tell him about all the proof that I have discovered, and I could demand... what? What in the world could I demand that would be equal for what was taken away from my family? I am not a man who can demand satisfaction in a duel, and if he tried to offer me money, I believe I might kill him.

In his study, Kieran closed and locked the door behind them.

Delia raised an eyebrow.

"You are being very cloak and dagger tonight."

"I suppose I am. There is a reason for it, I promise you.”

He went to his desk, rummaging in the drawers for a moment. Outside, Delia heard the distant boom of thunder.

There had been a true summer storm threatening for some little while now, something that would shake the ancient oaks around Brixby Hall and bow them low.

The summer air was heavy with the promise of the storm, and Delia had heard more than one servant praying for it to come if only so the anticipation would end. She thought she knew how they felt.

"Come here, Delia, I want you to see this."

Delia came closer, and he pressed a soft vellum envelope in her hands. It was surpassingly fine, something used to hand down edicts from on high, and she glanced at him nervously.

"Open it."

She pulled a fine sheet of paper from the envelope, and in the light of the candelabra on the table, she saw that it was a deed.

Offers the undersigned the property known commonly as Plum Cottage in perpetuity for all their living days on this earth...

Her eyes skipped down to the signature line, and to the left of it, written out in plain text, was the name Delia Jones.

For a moment, she had a terrible urge to tell him that that was not her real name at all, that she was someone else entirely, but then she realized that the cottage was hers.

"Plum Cottage? Kieran, what is all of this?"

"It's a rather well-sized cottage on the other side of town from Brixby, about an hour's easy ride. Not far at all. I want you to have it."

"Why? Kieran, you may be generous, but generous men do not simply... hand out cottages to their governesses!"

"But men do offer them to their mistresses."

The silence that stretched between them was so sharp it could have cut stone.

Delia found her voice first.

"Kieran... you can't be serious."

"Why can't I be? I know how I feel when I touch you, and I believe I have a good idea of how you feel as well... Curse it, I'm doing this all wrong."

Kieran shook his head, and then he reached down to take Delia's hand.

"I know that I am not alone in what I feel when we are together. It feels too good, like it might be the most real thing in the world. it is something that we cannot let pass us by, and we cannot have what we want while you are at Brixby Hall as the governess of my child."

"And what is it that we want?"

Her voice was sharp, and the moment the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if it would make Kieran lose his temper at her. Instead, he looked at her with a warmth in his gaze that made something inside her open up. It was as if she had waited her entire life for someone to look at her like that.

"We want each other. Tell me it is not true, Delia, and I will send you back to the nursery if you wish, and we need never speak about this again. Can you say it is not true?"

She couldn't respond to that. It felt as if there was a great stone in her throat, something rough and chalky. She could not talk. She could barely breathe.

"I want you to be my mistress. I will offer you Plum Cottage free and clear, and you will find me generous in all other ways as well as time goes on. We spoke of protection yesterday and care, and Delia, I have discovered that all I want in life is to protect you and to care for you. This is the best way for me to do that."

She found her voice. It was only a croak, but it was hers. "And what of Alice?"

"She can come visit you as often as she likes. As I said, it is not far. We shall have to find her another nurse, but that might be for formality's sake... Believe me, Delia, this can happen, and everything will be for the best. You will no longer court scandal by being the governess in a house with a lord who cannot take his eyes off of you..."

"That is not my fault!"

Her voice snapped out like a whip.

Kieran drew back as if she had struck him.

"Delia?"

"It is not my fault where your eyes wander, and I will never be your mistress! I may be poor, and I may come from a family of no account, but I will never lower myself to bed with you in some... some pretty cottage that you have given me in order to buy my services."

"That's not what the cottage is for."

She shot him a scornful look. "Is it not? How much of it have I paid for already with the kisses we have shared? How much is there left to pay you?"

"Delia, you cannot be serious."

"Oh, but I am. And let me be perfectly clear. I am not some trifling girl you can promise to marry and then abandon. I am a woman of honor and dignity, and I will not be bought as if I am a horse, even if that coin is... is passion and desire."

"Delia!"

She couldn't stand to hear him talk. She drew her hand back and slapped him with all her strength. She felt the jolt of the blow travel all the way up her arm and the sound of it was a shot in the still room.

“Well. You have made your point of view very clear, Delia.”

Despite her own rage at his offer, at the parts of the situation he did not know about, and everything else in the world between them, Delia felt horrified, both at Kieran's reddening face and at the iciness in his voice. She had never heard him sound like that before, never heard the man who had proved to be a loving and caring father sound so very dead.

“Kieran...”

Without thinking, she lifted her hand to his face again, wanting to touch where she had slapped him, almost as if she were trying to reassure herself that what was happening was not real. His hand came up so quickly she gasped, taking her own in a hard grasp.

“Make up your mind, Delia. Stay with me here or return to the nursery. You cannot have it both ways.”

It was too easy to see that he was right. In the end, all Delia could do was bow her head, turn, and leave the room. Mercifully, the tears did not start until she was locked in her own room again, and when they did, they refused to stop.

I cannot do this. I can't.

The thought came to her hours later, while she was still nursing her broken heart late into the night.

Feeling as I do, for him and for Alice, can I even do what needs to be done for Lissa any longer?

To her shock and fear, she didn't know what the answer was, and she sat up in her bed, clutching her pillow to her chest for a kind of meager comfort.

C H A P T E R    1 1

Kieran paused outside the door of the nursery, taking a deep breath and then another. There was a small and cowardly part of him that wanted nothing more than to stay away, to do as so many men of his class did and simply watch his daughter grow from afar.

He couldn’t do that, not after already missing the earliest parts of her life, and he was going to have to face Delia at some point. In the small hours of the morning, he had even considered letting her go. He would provide her with a generous sum, enough to keep her for at least a year, but surely what had happened last night meant that they could no longer live under the same roof, didn't it?

If she wants to leave, I will not stop her, and I will certainly pay her what she’s due. However, I am not sure I can order her to leave myself. I won't do that to Alice, and I will not do that to myself.

He knew that at the bottom of it was something terribly desperate. If he could not have Delia as his mistress, he still wanted her around, no matter what capacity it came down to.

Kieran entered the nursery quietly, and for a few moments, he watched Delia and Alice, their heads bent over a primer and Alice sounding out the letters with a dubious look on her face.

His daughter was charming, but it was Delia's face that captured Kieran. It was relaxed and sweet, a gentle smile on her lips as she oversaw Alice's education. She encouraged Alice when she faltered, and when the little girl succeeded, she made soft exclamations of pride.

Kieran might have stood there watching her forever if Delia hadn't noticed him across the room and straightened up.

“Kieran.”

Some part of him was pathetically, desperately grateful that she had not retreated into calling him by his title. He was not sure that he could have borne that.

“Delia. What is the lesson today?”

He sounded, even in his own ears, terribly stiff and stilted, but Alice looked up with a grin on her face, ready and eager to show him what they had been working on. She was delighted to be given a challenge, and she rewarded Delia's efforts by reading back the first five pages of the primer in a stuttering but increasingly confident voice.

“That's very good, Alice. Thank you for sharing with me. I only wish that I could stay longer...”

Alice's face fell. “I want you to stay, Papa!”

Kieran started to make up some excuse, but then Delia was there, rising smoothly to her feet and turning to Alice.

“Poppet, will you please go set up your painting and drawing supplies? Go find them in the box. I think we have had enough of reading and we should go to drawing next.”

Alice looked as if she would like to argue, but with a dark frown, she stomped to her drawing supplies, pulling out the tools she liked best. Kieran wondered if Delia was giving him a chance to make a graceful exit, but then she turned to him.

“Don't.”

Kieran felt a spark of that cold rage fly through him again, the same anger he had felt when she told him no to being his mistress. “You seem very happy to tell me what I need to do, Delia. Do you need to be reminded that I am the lord here?”

She thrust her chin up at him, the gesture at once defiant and oddly heart-warming. “Believe me, Kieran, I never forget that. If you want me to start calling you by your title again, I can certainly do that.”

Before he could make a response to that, she shook her head.

“This is not how I wanted things to go, and I am sorry for that.”

“Sorry means very little to me right this moment, Delia. Tell me what you want to tell me and have done with it.”

Her answer, when it came, surprised him, though he knew that it should not have done so.

“I want you to forget about whatever lies between us. You cannot allow any problems between you and me to be cast on your daughter. She is very young, and as such, her understanding of things is far from perfect. It is too easy for her to think that things that adults do are actually her fault and her responsibility.”

Kieran waited, but it seemed as if Delia was done. She stood in front of him, her hands clenched tightly into fists, and she refused to break her gaze from his.

God, but she has guts. Why the hell couldn't she be born a lady?

“Was that all?”

For just the barest split second, he could see her hesitate. It wasn't as if he didn't understand. It felt as if there were a thousand unanswered questions between them, and at the end of it, none of them mattered.

“No.”

“All right.”

“And?”

Kieran's eyes narrowed. “All right, I will not put my daughter into a tug of war between the two of us. No matter what you might believe, I am not so wretchedly a poor parent as all of that.”

Delia flinched. “That wasn't what I meant.”

“Then you should say what you mean.”

Kieran knew that he was being churlish at this point, but the rejection from the night before was too fresh. He shook his head.

“Alice, come, set that drawing away. I shall take you for a ride on horseback.”

Alice looked at him with some consternation. “But Delia said that we were going to draw.”

“Things change. Come on.”

To Kieran's irritation, Alice looked at Delia for confirmation.

Delia stepped forward, not looking at Kieran at all.

“It shall be a wonderful time for you, poppet, and we can draw later today or after dinner if the ride lasts for some time. Do not worry. Come, I will get you dressed, and we can leave all of your drawing things right here.”

Alice's green eyes were troubled, and she hesitated before stepping toward her governess.

“You come, too?”

“No, dear, but I will wait here for you, and you may tell me all about your ride when you return, how's that?”

The idea seemed to comfort Alice, or at least she kept quiet when Delia took her off to dress her for the day outside. As Kieran waited for them to return, he paced through the playroom, wondering at the way life turned out sometimes.

He and Delia had had their disastrous conversation just the night before, but only a short time before that, they had been so close. It felt as if everything had turned on a dime, and he had no one to blame for that but himself.

All I can do is move forward. That's all anyone can do I suppose.

It didn't explain Delia's harsh reaction, especially after everything that they had shared together, but at the end of it, all he could do was accept it. He refused to be one of those men who went pawing after women after they said that they were not interested.

He frowned out the window, momentarily distracted by the dark and gathering clouds. It had been such a cold and wet summer. He wondered if it would rain again before nightfall.

Delia returned with Alice in hand. The little girl was decked out in an attractive velvet riding outfit, and when he complimented her on it, she smiled bashfully, giggling.

“Delia helped me choose it!”

“Delia has a good eye.”

He took Alice's hand, but before he could leave with her, Delia laid a hand on his arm. The sensation of her touch hard on the heels of her refusal sent a deep shock through him, and before he could quite realize what he was doing, he shook her off hard.

Despite the sudden violence of his reaction, Delia only looked at him calmly.

“I was only going to say that you should be careful, Kieran. It looks as if it might storm dreadfully soon.”

Kieran hesitated, but then rather than saying all the things he wanted to say, only shook his head and tugged Alice out of the nursery.

Hours later, when he returned with Alice's limp form in his arms and a slash across his own head, Kieran found himself wondering if anything would have changed if he had waited. If he had stopped to listen to Delia.

C H A P T E R    1 2

When Kieran left with Alice, Delia put away the primer that they had been working with, and as she had promised, she left Alice's art supplies right where she had pulled them out.

I don't think Kieran knows that children require a great deal of preparation and a routine if they are to be at their most comfortable.

She shook her head in some despair at her own thoughts. She had come here to be a spy and a saboteur, not a real governess. Still, she could no more stop herself from caring for Alice anymore than she could stop herself from smelling an apple that had been cut up and laid on the table in front of her.

When she returned to her room, Delia realized that this was the best opportunity she had to simply leave. With the storm coming up, her departure would not be easily tracked, and since Kieran was with Alice, she did not even have to worry about the little girl getting hurt before her absence was noted.

This is the most perfect opportunity I have to leave. It should take advantage of it.

She went to her room, and it took her less than half an hour to gather up her things. The precious enameled snuffbox she slid to the bottom of her valise, one of her extra night shifts wrapped around it. Before she was even done, fat drops of heavy rain were hitting the windowpane outside. Though she knew that time was of the essence, she couldn't stop herself from coming to the window for a moment.

It is a good thing I am leaving now. This storm feels like one that will last, and it could churn the roads into impassable mud.

As she made her way down to the rear doors, where she could slip out without anyone being the wiser, Delia heard a sudden commotion from the front of the house. Several housemaids dashed by her, panic on their faces. For a moment, she almost dismissed it, but when she heard a bellow, two things struck her with the force of the thunder rolling outside.

First, she realized that it was Kieran who was shouting, and that he sounded as if he were in pain. The second thing she realized was that he was crying her name.

Oh, no, something has happened to Alice!

She had just enough presence of mind to stash her bag behind a stand of decorative plants in the hall, and then she was pelting for the front foyer, where the noise was steadily increasing.

“Damn you, get off! Get Delia!”

The servants were milling around Kieran as if he were a bear at bay. Drenched and with blood flowing from a cut to his forehead, he looked like some kind of monster entering a decent residence. He held a terribly still Alice in his arms, and even when a maid came timorously to help him with the little girl, he drew away from her with a terrible snarl on his face.

Oh, no, Kieran...

Taking a deep breath, Delia walked into the fray. She caught one of the footmen by the arm, pulling him around so she could look him in the eye.

“Go to the stables, make them give you a horse, and ride for the doctor.”

“But...”

“No buts. I promise you there will be no repercussions for following my orders, but there will certainly be problems if you choose to disobey them. Make sure he comes at once, do not return without him.”

To her relief, the footman did not challenge her authority but instead left with alacrity. Good. That was one thing taken care of. Now she simply had to care for the rest.

She grabbed one of the maids, who gave her a suspicious and uncertain look. Governesses were suspended between their noble employers and the general servants of the house, never allowed to settle with either one.

Delia gave the maid a very stern look.

“Go to the kitchen, and have them send up hot water, enough of it to make a bath. Then go to the linen drawers and bring up enough fabric for bandages.”

The maid went off quickly enough, and she supposed with that that she must be content. That only left Kieran, who was still backing away from his own servants as if they wished to murder the child in his arms.

“All right, the rest of you, clear out! Go back to your stations! If you are needed, you will be sent for!”

They dispersed, and Delia let out a sigh of relief. There was a chance that they would refuse to listen to her, and then who knew what she would do. All she really understood was that she would not allow further harm to come to Alice or Kieran at that moment.

She turned to Kieran, and all of the anger and animosity that had hung between them melted away.

The moment he saw her, something wild went out of his gaze.

“Delia?”

“Kieran, it's going to be all right.”

“The storm came up so fast, and—”

“Shh, no one is going to blame you. We need to help Alice now. Will you follow me to the nursery?”

He nodded, and she was relieved when he fell into step with her. This close, she could tell that Alice was breathing strongly, even if she did not stir, and that there was a great deal of blood on her small face.

Oh, poor little mite.

She couldn't let her emotions get the better of her. She had been running her father's household ever since her mother died years ago, and she knew that grief and worry could always take place after the action.

By the time they reached the nursery, Kieran looked almost calm, and he laid Alice on her bed, as Delia directed.

“Kieran, do you wish to stay? I will take care of Alice—”

“I want to stay. Show me how I can help.”

“All right.”

She and Kieran stripped the unconscious Alice to her skin, and Delia took it as a great good thing that once or twice, Alice made a sound that resembled protest.

“That's good, that's very good. It's only if she does not respond that we have to worry.”

“You are very good at this.”

“I've had cause to be.”

Just then, someone from the kitchen arrived with hot water and the maid returned with linens. While she sponged the blood and dirt from Alice's body, Delia checked her over for other injuries and was relieved to see that there were none besides the bump on her head.

“Good. With any luck, she'll wake up, and she'll just have a headache.”

“She told me twice that she was worried about the storm. She didn't sound really afraid though, almost excited. I had her riding in front of me, as I thought it would be safer than having her on her own pony.”

“Well, in most circumstances, you would have been right. Did she fall from your arms?”

Kieran laughed, a harsh bark of a sound that even to Delia's ears was full of self-hate and recrimination.

“She didn't. By the time we started back, the winds had kicked up. I held on to her tightly, because I was not going to let her fall from my arms. Hell, it might have been better if she had. The wind came up strong, and we were riding on the river road back to Brixby Hall. A thick bough was swept from a tree close by, and before I could swerve or draw the horse away, it fell straight onto us, first me and then her.”

Delia and Kieran fell silent, drying Alice and dressing her in a soft nightdress. With the blood washed away, it was easy to see the large bump on the side of her skull, and the thin gash at the center of it. Beyond that, however, her color was good, and Delia was relieved to see that she was breathing easily and normally.

“All right, Kieran. Now we need to see to you.”

Kieran scowled at her reflexively. “I am not leaving Alice.”

“No one is saying we have to. But you are going to give the doctor quite a fright when he comes here looking like that.”

Kieran started up from his chair in panic. “The doctor, I never called—”

Delia held up her hand. “Calm down, please. I sent the footman for the doctor and told him he was not to return without the man. All right? We have done everything that we can do, and Alice will not feel better if you sit there with blood in your face.”

For a moment, she was afraid that Kieran would simply roar at her and send her away, but then it was as if some kind of tension finally drained from him. He nodded at her, and hesitantly, she pushed him toward a chair in the corner. He sat down as if he had been awake for a fortnight, and he gave no reaction when she approached him with a basin of warm water and a clean cloth.

At first, it was fine. She was only washing his face and cleaning his wound, which she suspected might actually be more severe than the one that had stunned Alice. For a while. Delia was occupied with dabbing at the fresh blood and cleaning away the dried blood on his face. She could smell the rain on him and feel how cold he had been in the wind.

Kieran winced a little as she cleaned his wounds, but it wasn't until she was almost done that she realized he was looking at her.

“You came.”

“What?”

“When I called. You came. I had no idea what was happening, and all I could feel was this terrible fear. All I knew was that we both needed you so very much. Alice and I both.”

“Of course, I came. There was no question I would.”

In the dim light of the nursery with the storm slashing outside, Delia could see Kieran's green eyes cutting into her. It felt as if he could see every corner of her.

He looks like a man bedeviled. Is this enough for you, Lissa, if he loses his daughter like I lost you?

The thought almost made her sick, and she pushed it away. It did not bear thinking about, and no matter what, she knew in her heart that you could not exchange one life for another and pretend to call it fair.

“Things are very strange between us right now. I do not know how to proceed with you,” he said softly.

“There's no reason to proceed any way at all. We shall continue as we are. You are the lord of the manor, Alice is your beloved daughter, and I am her governess.”

Delia started to move away from Kieran, but instead, he grabbed her wrist, making her cry out. His grip was powerful, just short of pain, but she thought wildly that she had a better chance of breaking granite than she did of breaking his grip.

“Kieran!”

“There is nothing simple about the two of us, Delia, nothing at all. I want you, and I know that you want me.”

To her shock, he stood up, sending the basin that had been on the table clattering away in a vast splash of water. In the dark, he should have been terrifying, but something in her cried out for him. They weren't meant to be apart. He was the one who could call that intense heat from her body, the one who could make her feel as no one else could. When he pulled her to him, she went, and when he lowered his lips to hers, she opened her mouth for more of him.

The heat that passed between them made her think of a forge's fire, where steel and iron were tempered. It was creating something new and wild between them. His body was hot against her, and she smelled the rain, his soaked clothes, and somewhere underneath that the healthy smell of his skin. She wanted nothing more than to be wrapped up in that scent, in Kieran himself.

There was no telling at all what would have happened if they hadn't both heard a soft cry from the bed.

“Papa? Delia?”

They froze, and then as one, they dashed back to the bed, where Alice was sitting up with a surpassingly cranky look on her face.

“My head aches!”

Kieran gathered her close to him, gently after her first squawk of protest. “I'm sure it does, little one. I'm so sorry, I did not mean for you to get hurt.”

It was a private moment between father and daughter, but Delia couldn't stop herself from reaching for Alice's hand. The moment Alice felt her touch, the little warm fingers wrapped around Delia's, and Delia felt a rush of deep relief flood through her.

She's going to be all right. Oh, thank goodness, she is going to be all right.

Another bolt of lightning lit across the sky, and the rain came down even harder. It was a deluge, and from the way it was carrying on, Delia could tell that it was not going to stop any time soon.

Well, so much for my plan to leave.

To be continued … FIND OUT MORE ON THE NEXT POST -

The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 3

[deborahwilsonbooks-blog]

Regency Romance: The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 1

Hey there, my name is Deborah Wilson, an author of regency romance. I have a short novella to share with you guys. ☺

If you’re looking for gentle, yet a undemanding sort of romance in the charming depiction of the Regency and Victorian period era, this novella could very well fit the bill nicely.

Synopsis:

Lady Delia Scarborough will not let her sister’s murderer go free. Every clue points to Kieran Dearborne, the Duke of Cowanfield. But their mutual attraction throws her plans into chaos. 

Can Kieran’s love save Delia from danger, or is her fate already sealed?

Check it out below ...

P R O L O G U E

May 1805

The storm had been threatening for days. Later, they would say that it was one of the worst storms of the last decade. The road would have been inky black, with nothing to mark the perilous turns. Were the driver and team reliable? Was Lissa afraid?

Probably not, Delia decided. Her little sister might have been dreamy, and perhaps she was inclined to leap before she looked, but no one would ever have called her a coward.

The storm would have broken quickly in the night, rolling down on the carriage like an ancient and terrible wrath. The horses ran along the road, eager for shelter, but then a thunder clap deafened them. One reared, taking its mate with it, and the carriage tilted on two wheels. For a moment, just a moment, there was a chance it would right itself. But no.

The horses, the slick road, the darkness… It was all too much. The carriage rolled, the wooden shell cracking like an egg, the timbers as sharp as teeth and—

"And as she was loved, so she will be loved, and as she wept, so now she brings tears..."

Delia realized that she must have made some kind of sound. All around her, bonneted heads turned toward her subtly, some in concern, some for gossip's sake, and all unwelcome.

Behind her black veil, Delia lowered her eyes, mutinous until she felt her father's hand fumble for hers. There was a palsy to his grip that had gotten worse when the news came to them of Lissa's death, and she squeezed his hand hard, wishing she could give him some of her strength.

She was Delia Scarborough, the daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury, who had fought at Marseilles and even farther afield. She was the descendant of eight generations of noblemen who had all served their country, loved their families, and died doing what they knew was right. She would not disgrace herself at her sister's graveside, no matter how hot her eyes felt or how thick the lump in her throat.

She almost made it. It was only when they began to lower her sister's casket into the ground that a small voice piped up in the back of her mind, a dusty memory.

Delia, it's so very dark, can I sleep with you?

Suddenly, it was as if the very air had been knocked from her lungs. Delia wavered, and for a moment, she was certain she would simply faint from the weight of the grief that dropped upon her.

She had a sudden mad impulse to insist that they stop. Lissa hated the dark; she hated the crawling things that burrowed through the earth. They could not do this.

The only thing that kept her back was the sight of her father, positioned in his elegant wheeled chair at the head of the grave. The marquess's sorrow ravaged him, left him a frame of a man rather than the full one he should have been, and Delia took a deep breath.

I will survive this. This is as hard as it ever gets. I will walk through this, and on the other side, I will have vengeance for Lissa.

That night, after the mourners had been seen off, the curate paid, and her father seen to his bed, Delia retired to her room earlier than usual. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to crawl off to her familiar bed, placing her round spectacles in their accustomed place, and hope she dreamed of Lissa in some happy land.

Instead, she carefully laid her black crepe gown over the top of her chair for her maid, and she went to her closet where she removed a gown of drab serviceable gray linen. It was one of four, the other three already packed in her small worn bag. They were identical to one another, and only the excellent fit saved her from looking like a servant who worked below stairs.

Dressed in the gray gown, Delia pulled her brown hair down from its fashionable braids and pulled the fine strands straight back from her face, scraping it all into a large bun at the nape of her neck.

When she examined herself in the mirror, she found no trace of a marquess's daughter, not even the eldest bookish girl who had few marriage prospects and little interest in looking for one.

I look like a governess. The thought satisfied her, and again, she glanced at the white handkerchief that she had seldom let out of her sight since she had received it from the wreckage.

It was clutched in Miss Scarborough's hand, Miss Delia. She hung on to it so tight, we could barely pry it out.

Her baby sister had held on to it as she lay dying on a lonely road heading north. Their driver was killed in the same accident, but of the man in the carriage with her, the one who had booked it, who had held her sister's arm as if they were already married, there was no trace.

The inn where they had spent the previous night had thought they were husband and wife, and if they had made it to Gretna Green, they would have been.

Delia's thoughts were ice-cold.

Imagine. In another world, I would be scolding Lissa for her insane recklessness and meeting my new brother-in-law. I would have no idea that he was the kind of blaggard who would seduce a girl and leave her to die in a wrecked carriage.

She wondered if Lissa would have called for him in her last moments, if she would have brought the handkerchief to her lips in prayer, listening for his return.

It didn't matter now. Her sister was dead, and the man who had caused her death was still alive. He was missing a handkerchief, however, and that was careless of him, especially as the initials on the corner and the meticulously stitched crest identified him as swiftly as an actor's spotlight on Drury Lane.

Delia slipped out of the home she had lived in all her life, avoiding the creaky floorboards and the reluctant doors. There was a note for her father left folded on his bedside, and there was a man in the village who was willing to take her to Hove, where she could find her way onto the Royal Mail coach.

Folded tightly into a tiny package at the bottom of her bag was the damning handkerchief, and as she made her way into the night, Delia's thoughts were grim.

You are going to pay for what you did to my sister, my lord Duke of Cowanfield.

C H A P T E R    0 1

"All right, that one was worse than the first. Cross her off the list."

"Before I do, exactly what reason can you give for your dislike? She had excellent references, and she wasn't so hard on the eyes either.”

Kieran Dearborn, twelfth Duke of Cowanfield, glared at his best friend, who was seated at the secretary with his quill held imperiously over a list with a diminishing number of unrejected names. Hiring a governess was woman's work, but where he could find a woman to do this for him, he had no idea.

"I didn't like the look of her. She looked shifty, as if she might give Alice laudanum on days where she was feeling too tired to deal."

Neil Marsh, the Earl of Cottering, raised an eyebrow. "Really? You've been reading too many of those lurid broadsides. They do that in the slums, not in the finer houses."

"Oh, yes, and I'm sure that all London gentlemen are the pictures of restraint when it comes to the gambling table and all London ladies are as faithful to their husbands as old dogs are to their masters."

Neil laughed. "Well, I suppose that you know something about that, don't you, Cowanfield?"

"Shut your mouth about that. We don't talk about that in front of her."

They both glanced at the divan set alongside the window, where Alice Dearborn slept as deeply as it seemed only a three-year-old could. She had pale blond hair, as unlike Kieran's own dark hair as possible, but the moment he had seen her green eyes, twin to the ones he saw in the mirror every morning, there was no doubt in his mind that she was his.

Along with that realization had come a sudden rush of desperate and protective love unlike anything he had ever felt in his dissipated thirty-two years. She was his; he had to protect her, nurture her, and see her grown... and he had no idea at all how to do it.

The governess had been something that finally occurred to him after Alice had cried herself out on her first night at Brixby Hall, the ancestral home of all Dearborns. The little girl had fallen asleep in a pile of tears and wails, and still, Kieran couldn't leave her alone. He sat in the darkness of the nursery, holding her tiny soft hand, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Neil, when next he spoke, was more sympathetic, but his voice was firm. "She is a child, not some rare and delicate bird from the southern lands that will die if she is splashed with cold water. She needs to be cared for, and unless you are hiding depths of which I have been heretofore unaware, you need to find someone to do it. I suggest that the next woman who comes in, as long as she does not have an obvious affiliation with a London street gang, should do the trick."

Kieran started to snap something that Neil probably did not deserve at all, but they were saved by the butler coming in and announcing the next woman on the list.

Well, she's definitely not affiliated with any London street gangs.

As a matter of fact, she embodied the very spirit of a governess, perfectly erect in carriage, her brown hair scraped back into an unworldly bun and a pinched look to her face as if she never smiled.

The spectacles gave her an owlish look, and Kieran might have laughed out loud at how perfectly a governess she looked before he met her eyes. They were a pale gray that flashed with a kind of silvery light he had never seen before. For some reason, looking into her gaze soothed something in him he had never before known was jagged.

Well, hello, beautiful, something in him whispered, and then, almost against his will, he noticed her lush figure under the painstakingly fitted but plain gown she wore. It was hard to imagine a pin out of place on her, and briefly, Kieran wondered what it would take to make her look unsettled or even in the least rumpled.

At Neil's polite cough, Kieran looked up to see that the object of his attention was giving him a rather stern look. If she had felt that brief electric shock between them, she gave no sign, and he hastily sat up straighter.

"This is Miss Delia Jones, late of Hove, aged twenty-two years. She has served as a governess in a single home since the age of eighteen, the residence of Lord and Lady Heatherford, overseeing the needs of their three daughters."

Neil looked up briefly from the sheet he read from, fixing Kieran with a sharp eye. "Her reference looks beyond reproach to me, Cowanfield."

Kieran glared at his friend, and then turned back to the young lady in gray. Delia seemed too fanciful a name for such a stern creature, or at least it did if you discounted her extraordinary eyes.

"Well, Miss Jones, what have you to say for yourself?"

"I say that I hope very much I will be suited to the post you offer, your grace. I know that every situation is different, but given the nature of your advertisement, I have some hope that we may suit."

Her voice was pitched lower than he had expected. The slightly husky timbre gave her an air that was at once grave and oddly sensual, and he shook that thought off in a hurry. It had apparently been too long since he had gone carousing in London if he was entertaining a fascination with a governess.

"And why do you think that you might suit?"

"You were looking for someone who would broaden your child's horizons in the ladylike arts. As you can see from my character, I have instructed the Wembly sisters in history, deportment, dance, penmanship, French, and art. They are well-launched into Society, and the only reason I left was because their youngest was a son, and therefore had his own tutor."

"And it has nothing to do with the 200 pounds a year that I am offering."

It was a ludicrous sum to offer a governess, who might ordinarily make a tenth of it, but Kieran had thought it would bring out the best. Instead, it had brought out a mix of real candidates and fortune-hunters, and he was beginning to be jaded about the whole thing.

Instead of being flustered or offended, Miss Jones only inclined her head slight.

"Of course, it does. I can see that you are willing to pay into the idea of giving your daughter the best foundation on which to base her life. I am confident that you will be satisfied with my work and that you will not have cause to regret that sum."

She was so self-possessed that she made Kieran feel oddly ashamed of himself. It was hardly a feeling he enjoyed, and so he shrugged it off.

"You're very assured for one so young."

"If I were not, I would not be here applying for this position."

Neil laughed, a bright sound in the quiet tension of the room. "Well, she is certainly fit to instruct you, Cowanfield. That's obviously clear."

Kieran glared at his friend, but he could hardly argue with him. He searched for some reason to deny her, something that he didn't like, something that would make him toss out her application just as he had all the women who had come before her.

There was nothing there, and that in its own way was shocking. He nodded, almost reluctantly.

"All right. I'm willing to see how you do with Alice."

Miss Jones nodded, looking at him expectantly. "I would like to meet her and to ensure that we are a good fit, my lord."

He nodded toward Alice, who was still sleeping in a sprawl of limbs and silk on the divan. He supposed she was easy to miss, given the fact that she looked like nothing so much as a frilled pink cushion.

"There she is."

For the first time, Miss Jones looked surprised. Her gaze traveled from the toddler to Kieran and back again.

"My lord, how old is Alice?"

"I suppose I should have said in the paper, but she is three. Is there some problem?"

Miss Jones pursed her lips, as if she were fighting with herself on some inward matter. "She is terribly young for a governess. At her age, children are still inclined to be with their nurses."

Kieran scowled, already not relishing the idea of interviewing yet more women.

"What is the difference?"

Miss Jones shot him a particularly scathing look. "Your grace, my repertoire includes French and dance. Miss Alice very much seems as if she needs to be taught how to handle stairs and how to play with a kitten."

Kieran tilted his head at her. "Are you trying to talk yourself out of the job?"

For the first time, Miss Jones looked disturbed. She seemed so diligent that he wondered if there was a chance she would give up the job simply because she was not the best person for it. Somehow, it made him want to hire her all the more.

"I am not, but—"

The topic of all the talk had apparently had enough sleep. All three adults in the room turned when she uttered a small cry, and then, to Kieran's shock, she tumbled straight off the side of the divan. Alice hit the ground with a surprisingly loud thump. For a moment, she simply sat in her own surprise, and then her round pink face screwed up for a scream.

Kieran was ready to rush over and to scoop her up to make sure she was not injured, but Miss Jones got there first. Kneeling down by the weeping child, she assessed her with a cool eye.

"All right, Alice, let's look you over and see if you are hurt. Stand still please."

The woman's cool and firm tone stopped Alice's tears dead in their tracks, and she looked up at her new governess with surprise.

In return, Miss Jones gave her a sunny smile and though Kieran knew he should be more worried about his daughter, he found himself drawn to the sheer sweetness of that smile, the way it made the stern young governess look positively pretty.

She's not such a long way off from beauty, truly...

Alice stood still, hiccupping a little as Miss Jones checked her for any bumps or injuries.

"Well, there we go, my girl. You're just fine, nothing but a bit of surprise to worry about."

Alice looked uncertain, but Miss Jones reached out and tapped her nose gently.

"Wouldn't you rather play than worry about crying?"

That elicited an immediate grin from Alice. "Can we go outside?"

Her voice was soft and babyish but clear, and Kieran felt a tug at his heart.

Miss Jones rose from the floor, turning toward Kieran with a slightly hesitant look on her face.

"She wants to go out. Is that something you—"

"You can do it. You're her governess now."

Miss Jones looked at him, that same slightly flushed expression on her face. "Your grace—"

"It's decided. She may be too young to have a governess, but call yourself whatever you want. You will be taking care of her."

C H A P T E R    0 2

Later that afternoon, Delia unpacked her meager belongings into the governess's bedroom and wondered what in the world had happened.

I thought I would be working with an older girl, one closer to thirteen or fourteen. I had not expected such a little child.

The advertisement, she now realized, was placed not by a woman who would know such things but by a man who had no clue how a nursery was run.

It was mere chance how she had found the advertisement in the first place. She read the paper every day, but it was the address that had leaped out to her. She had spent every day since discovering the handkerchief from her sister's death researching the Duke of Cowanfield. His country address at Brixby Hall had lunged out at her like a tiger from the page.

From there, the references were forged, rather expertly if she said so herself, and then she had made her way to Hove to travel out to Brixby Hall.

Now that she was assured the job, she had to wonder at her reluctance to take it. She had put a great deal of time and effort into coming to Brixby Hall specifically for this reason, but now that she was here, her feet were getting increasingly cold.

Alice is simply so little. Where in the world is her mother?

Her gaze darkened as she thought of the man she had met that afternoon seducing Lissa while he had this little girl at home. Had Lissa known about this child or who her mother might have been? Surely, the mother was dead, or was she simply gone?

Delia shook her head, willing to put her questions aside for now. The important thing was that she was where she needed to be, and soon enough, she would be free to do the investigative work that she needed to do.

She was still lost in thought, however, when a humble little knock came at the door that connected her small suite to Alice's far larger bedroom. She looked up, and then crossed over to open the door.

Alice looked up at her hopefully, her small hands clasped in front of her. "Do you want to draw?"

Despite her resolution to stay detached and to only use her position to investigate, Delia could feel herself melt a little looking at Alice. There was something at once so hopeful and so very lonely about her that it broke Delia's heart.

"Of course, poppet. Why don't you show me where your pencils are kept?"

Alice guided her to a drawer full of scrap paper and lead pencils. Delia would have been pleased enough to watch her, but the little girl pressed paper and pencil on her as well.

Well, I suppose if I keep her entertained and cared for, I will not ruin her.

Alice was concentrating so hard on her drawings that the tip of her tongue protruded from her mouth, and when Delia looked down at her paper, she could see the little girl was drawing distinctly human shapes.

"Can you tell me about your drawing, Alice?"

Alice smiled at her shyly and pointed at one figure, blond and floating close to the top of the page.

"That's Mama. Mama lives in heaven now. We used to live in Shefford, but then Mama got sick and left."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

Alice nodded, and even if there was a troubled look in her eyes, she moved her finger to another figure, this one wrapped in a bubble of some sort with what looked like stick ponies in front of it.

"After Mama went to Heaven, Grandmother and Grandfather talked about sending me to a workhouse or to an orph'nage."

"I see..."

"And then Papa came and took me away in a carriage. He yelled at Grandmother and Grandfather for a long time, and then we came here."

Her finger traced a rectangular structure Delia assumed was Brixby Hall, and she went on to make little lumpy shrubs all the way around it.

Workhouse? Orphanage? What kind of grandparents would think of such a thing when a child was so young and her mother so newly dead? Delia had heard some people were simply so poor that there was no other recourse than to farm the children out, but somehow, she did not think that Alice's parents were in that number.

"I'm glad your Papa came to get you, Alice."

"I am, too! We went into his carriage, and sometimes, he let me pet the horses."

Her obvious awe for the carriage horses made Delia smile. She wondered, just a little wistful, if there had ever been a time in her past when everything could be fixed by petting a carriage horse.

"Well, thank you for telling me that, Alice."

"S'okay."

"I did not yell a lot at your grandparents, Alice."

Delia jumped a little, looking up in alarm. The duke leaned against the door jamb, casual in shirtsleeves and trousers. He watched them both with a considering look in his eyes.

"You did, Papa. You yelled a lot."

"Hm. Perhaps I did, darling, but that was only because I was so concerned for you."

Again, Delia felt that uncomfortable surge of attraction for this man, the one who had ruined her family. It had first struck her in their strange interview, but now she felt it again.

In another time, another place, she might have passed him the street without thinking anything except how handsome he was. He was as dark as his daughter was fair, but his eyes gleamed green like those of some large stalking cat. He was tall and lean with a natural athleticism and grace, and obviously, he could walk as quietly as a cat when he wished to do so.

Belatedly, Delia realized that she was a servant in the presence of her lord, and she rose up before dipping in a curtsy. "Your grace."

The duke waved her off, coming into the room to stand behind them at the table. "Don't bother with that sort of thing while you're in the house. No one has the time for that nonsense."

Delia frowned. "It is hardly appropriate for Alice to allow servants to become so very familiar with her and her family."

The duke gave her a slow lazy smile that made her stomach do a slow roll, and alarm bells went off in her head. Was this how it had been for Lissa?

"And I say it is fine. You're her governess or her nurse or something like that. You'll be taking care of her. The only way it would be a problem is if you intended to abuse her trust. You don't intend to do that, do you?"

"Certainly not, your grace!"

Alice looked up at the pair of them, a tiny wrinkle between her fair brows.

Kieran looked down at her fondly.

"What's the matter, Alice?"

"Why's... why's Miss Jones calling you that? Does that mean she doesn't like you? Grandmother and Grandfather called you that."

Kieran grinned. "And they certainly didn't like me. I don't know, Alice, maybe it does mean that Miss Jones doesn't like me."

He turned to her with a surprisingly innocent look on his face. "Is that what you are saying, Miss Jones?"

Delia felt her face flush with heat. She knew she was being teased, but it didn't seem to matter.

"I'm not saying that I don't like you at all, your—"

"Well, if you like me, then certainly we must find you something else to call me. You ought not use the same terms of address as someone who dislikes me. Alice, don't you agree?"

"Yes, Papa! Miss Jones should call you something else!"

"I see that I am outnumbered, even if this is not at all appropriate!"

For some reason, both father and child seemed to find her comment ridiculously funny. She might have been angrier, but Alice leaned against her sweetly, and she felt her pique run out.

"You could call him Papa."

"Certainly not, Alice. That is a title for the two of you. He is not my papa. I have one of my own far away from here."

"Try Kieran."

She blinked at the mention of the duke's Christian name. Suddenly, what had started off as a ridiculous joke at the governess's expense turned into something else. It was simply not done for a governess to call a duke by his first name. It would not even have been allowed to her as a marquess's daughter, not without a great deal of scandal.

"Yes, call him that! Not your grace!"

Alice seemed so enthusiastic that Delia didn't want to refuse. She turned to the man who was supposed to be her most hated enemy.

"All right. But only in the house and not in front of guests. Someone must teach Alice how to behave in company."

"Whatever you like, of course."

"Well, good. Now that that's settled—"

"I'd like to hear you say it."

"What?"

"My name. I would like to hear you say it."

There was something strangely vulnerable in those green eyes, and again, she felt that strange tug at her heart. How long had it been since he had heard someone say his first name?

"All right. Kieran."

Instead of coming out as brisk and businesslike as she intended, it came out wistfully, almost like a sigh. Even as Delia blushed, Kieran broke out into a smile, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"Well, there, that's fine."

"Papa and Miss Jones are friends!" Alice seemed enormously pleased by that fact, dropping her pencil to clap loudly in delight. Delia wished that her own feelings were that clear.

"I... I suppose we are."

"Well, we will be living with one another for some time, so I should hope we are. We dine at seven in this household. Make sure that Alice is presentable then, and that you are as well."

"Kieran?" How did that name already slip past her lips? Why was she so comfortable using it already?

"I have a hankering to dine in the family style tonight, and of course you will join us... Delia."

It was one thing to be asked to use the duke's first name. She told herself it probably had more to do with Alice's comfort than anything else. It felt like quite another to hear her own name on the man's lips. She wondered if he had said Lissa's name like that, and a chill ran down her spine.

"I did not give you permission to use my name."

Instead of coming out stiff and icy as she intended it to, it came out slightly cross and humorous instead. She almost couldn't blame him if he smiled at her.

"Then it is a very good thing that I am simply going to take the liberty on myself instead. See you at seven."

He was out the door, and Alice was babbling about all the lovely things she had gotten to eat since she came to Brixby Hall, from cakes to toast to cucumbers. Delia listened with half an ear, and she realized that in just a few hours, she would be dining with the man who had abandoned her sister to die on a dark road.

I cannot let him sway me with sweet words. I cannot. I will not.

C H A P T E R    0 3

There was a time when Kieran had eaten nearly every meal out. Brixby Hall kept an excellent cook, but most of the time, the only people she cooked for were the servants. Kieran's lifestyle kept him out on the town at all hours, and he patronized many fine restaurants.

Ever since Alice had come to live with him, however, he never went to restaurants anymore, and he had even come to enjoy the comforts of eating in his own house.

Tonight, he was, strangely enough, looking forward to dining with his daughter and her very odd governess.

She really was a bit of a conundrum, Kieran decided. On one hand, she looked stern enough to keep a battalion of Roman soldiers in line. On the other, there was the look he had seen on her face when she was drawing with Alice. He had listened with a stone in his heart as Alice had described her grandparents. Some part of him had hoped that she was too young to remember the things they had said about her and how she needed to be farmed out.

To hear her talking about it so matter-of-factually was terrible, but then he had heard her speak of him, and well, also of the carriage horses, but he felt ten feet tall.

He had wondered, before entering the room, what Delia had made of all of that. He had been ready to throw her out on her ear if she said anything that made Delia feel the least little bit unhappy, but the soft look on her face convinced him that he had made the right choice in governesses.

A footman announced Miss Jones, and Kieran stood, expecting to see Alice and belatedly mindful of Delia's admonitions about propriety. To his surprise, however, Delia was alone.

"Alice?"

"I'm afraid she rather wore herself out. After you left, we went for a walk in the garden, and she was thrilled dash about seeing and experiencing everything. Just a few minutes ago, she fell into a deep sleep, and I thought it best not to wake her."

Kieran raised his eyebrows. "That's good. She has been up at all hours and sleeping during the day."

Delia gave him a rather severe look, but he supposed that having a toddler up with him at four in the morning was hardly a good impression.

"She should be sleeping at night and awake during the day, your grace. She is a child, not a bat."

"And I asked you to call me Kieran. Maybe you are no better at listening than she is."

To Kieran's delight, instead of looking cowed or apologetic, Delia only tilted her chin up stubbornly. "Alice is incredibly biddable. You only need to ask her to do a thing and she does it. I think the problem must be laid at your door."

"Ah. Well, I will certainly take that into consideration."

She gave him a look that told him precisely what she thought of that, but she nodded.

"I wanted to tell you that, and to bid you a good night."

"Delia. Stay."

She turned to look at him with surprise and a touch of wariness. He realized belatedly that it was certainly a strange situation, a governess being asked to dine with a lord without his child present.

He frowned.

"I'm not going to do anything untoward, I promise you. If you do not like the thought of dining with me, you may leave, but I had thought to talk about Alice."

The moment he mentioned his child's name, her brow smoothed out, and she allowed him to pull out a chair for her. Kieran felt a twinge of guilt, because the offer initially had more to do with enjoying her company,y than it had to do with Alice.

Ah well. I suppose I'm not so virtuous as all that, but it is true; we do need to speak about Alice.

Dinner was a simple meal of roast and boiled vegetables, and after the servants had set the plates on the table, they were alone in the family dining room, a more intimate affair than the grand dining room.

Kieran noticed Delia watching him as she cut into her meat, something wary in her gaze. Still, she had decided to stay when he had given her the option to leave, so he supposed that counted for something.

"I heard Alice telling you about the fight I had with her grandparents."

"She said you yelled a rather lot."

"As a matter of fact, I did. Believe me, I started out reasonably enough. I did lose my temper when they brought up the idea of payment."

Delia frowned. "What?"

"They'd been ready to give Alice to a poorhouse or an orphanage, but when I arrived after discovering that her mother had died, they wanted me to pay for her, as if she were a leg of lamb."

Delia drew her breath in hard, and her silver eyes went ice cold. At that moment, if Alice's grandparents had seen her look, Kieran thought there was a chance they might have just handed Alice over immediately.

"How dare they, that little girl is their own flesh and blood."

"And mine, which I tried to remind them of. In the end, I gave them six hundred pounds and told them never, ever to contact me again or to try to seek out Alice."

"And they agreed?"

"Readily."

Delia shook her head, and she still looked as if she would like to go find those people and wring their necks. "How terrible of them. I am so glad you were able to rescue Alice from those vultures."

"I'm not telling you this to pat myself on the back. I need you to understand how things stand with Alice, and where she came from."

Delia stiffened. Something in her changed, and Kieran could not tell what.

"Your grace—"

"Kieran."

"Kieran, then. I do not need to know about... about your family situation. I am not at all sure that it is appropriate to—"

Kieran's dark look made her stutter to a stop. "I'm afraid you do. Alice is very special to me, and I would not have her harmed for all the world. However, she is a little girl with something of a difficult past, and it would be altogether too easy for someone who did not know to say something hurtful to her. Do you understand?"

Delia nodded, and even if she looked a little nervous still, she seemed to genuinely see why he was telling her all of this information.

"All right. I want what is best for Alice as well. Tell me what you wish."

It flashed to Kieran's mind how very different Delia was from the women he tended to meet. Whether they were debutantes in the ballroom or women in the brothels, they could never ask him enough about himself. They were looking for leverage, for intimacy, for information they could use to better themselves and draw closer to him. Delia was nothing like that, and he had never known that it would be such a relief to be with someone like that.

"I met Alice's mother some years ago when I was out in the country on some business. She worked at the inn in Denby that I was staying at. I was hoping to acquire some property in the area, though I suppose that is hardly relevant."

Kieran paused, thinking that the next part was surprisingly difficult to say. One did not speak of such things with women. He had barely done more than outline the situation to Neil.

"I came back to my rooms one night and found her waiting in my bed."

He glanced up at Delia to gauge her reaction, and he was startled to see not censure nor contempt but instead confusion.

Well, she's been in service for the last five years. She might actually be that innocent.

"She was, er, there to offer me her favors. Do... do you know what that means?"

Delia gave him a narrow look. "Please, Kieran, I am not a child. I have at least a rough idea of why she was in your bed. I have read books."

The image flashed through Kieran's mind of Delia tucked into bed on a winter night, her nose not more than four inches from the page and a becoming blush on her cheeks. He imagined her lips slightly parted, and then he pulled his mind away. He had truly become a lecher sometime in the past few days; that was the only explanation for it.

"Ah, yes. Well. We kept up our assignation for the four weeks I stayed at the inn, and then we left things with a kiss and smile."

Delia's eyebrow raised. "And... she was content with that? That was all she desired from you?"

Kieran shrugged. "We did not speak so very much. She came to my room willingly. I gave her gifts that she did not ask for or turn away. What more needs to be said?"

"A great deal, I would think, but please, continue."

Now he could see a faint blush on Delia's cheeks, but as truly charming as it was, he was not telling this story to titillate a pretty young woman.

"Well, I went back to London and thought no more about it for almost four years. Then I got a letter in the mail from that same girl, telling me that she was dying and I must come and take our daughter."

"You mean she never told you about the fact that she was pregnant?"

"Believe me, if I had known, I would certainly not have left it that long before I met my child. The girl herself was clever and wild, and I could not guess her motives. Perhaps she thought I would not believe her, or perhaps given that her parents owned the inn and had money, she felt secure despite the scandal. I have no idea.

"In any case, I flew back to Denby just as they were putting her into the ground, and there I found Alice."

For a moment, something flickered across Delia's face, anger or grief or something similar. She trembled, and without thinking of what he was doing at all, Kieran reached out to take her hand. She flinched, and then she squeezed it hard before pulling away, the image of a proper governess.

"Please, go on."

"There was no doubt in my mind that Alice was my child after I saw those eyes. They run in my family, and she looks very much like the children of some of my more distant cousins. Even with that, I might have left her to stay with her grandparents, if they were loving caregivers, but—"

"But they certainly were not. Yes."

Kieran sighed. "So, I bought my daughter from her own blood, because I could not do otherwise, and here I am. And I told you all of this because I do not care how competent you are or how good your references, if you make my daughter regret her birth or the circumstances of her coming to live with me for one moment, I will shout you into the street."

He had no idea how Delia was going to react to all of this. It was a strange story, and the potential for scandal was intense. She might have been disgusted with all of it or contemptuous or cowed by his threat, but instead, she only laughed.

The laugh sounded almost reluctant, and it was a lighter sound than Kieran might have expected from her speaking voice.

She looked shocked at her own laughter, raising her hand to cover her mouth, and then she shook her head.

"Rightly so. I would think that any good father would want to protect his daughter the way that you are looking to do."

Kieran tilted his head to look at Delia a little more closely. "You do not have the reaction I thought you might have."

"I did not expect you to be so involved a parent, so I suppose we are even."

Kieran wondered if he should take offense to that but given the parenting he had seen in the ton, where children were left to servants to raise and parents saw their well-behaved and utterly silent children only at mealtimes, he supposed that she had a point.

When Delia spoke next, it was not about parentage or bastardy. Instead, she spoke of getting reading primers from a special firm in London, to see if Alice might be persuaded to read more quickly. Kieran was certainly pleased to discover that she took her position seriously, but still, he was slightly disappointed not to hear more about the reading that she had apparently done...

C H A P T E R    0 4

A week later, Delia collapsed into her bed exhausted, staring up at the ceiling blankly

My goodness, how in the world did my own nurse get on when there were two of us and not just one?

Alice was a lively little girl, and once she had become comfortable with Delia, she never stopped wanting to play with her, to show her things and to simply be with her. Delia guessed that the little girl had been starved for love and attention ever since her mother died, and though Kieran wanted the best for her, he was fairly hapless as to how to handle that.

A real nurse, Delia decided, would have pointedly told Kieran that fathers were an unusual presence in the nursery, perhaps even a disruptive one, but Delia had not had the heart to do so.

After all, I am here to learn all his secrets and to make sure that nothing about his situation escapes my notice. This is a good way to do that.

That was her excuse, but deep in her heart, she knew that it likely had far more to do how Kieran could sit and watch Alice babble for hours and how he took such a serious interest in teaching her to recognize her letters. It was still a work in progress, but Alice's mind was as limber as soft clay, holding all the impressions that Kieran and Delia left on it.

Outside her window, a distant storm rumbled. There was meant to be a soaking rain in the morning, but until then, the air was still and hot.

Today had been especially trying, with Kieran called away for shipping concerns in London and Alice fretful and nervous about the unusual summer weather. More than once, Delia had had to ask her to sit still on a stool, away from her toys and drawing pens, and simply breathe to calm down.

Poor little mite. I want to crawl out of my skin a little bit as well.

Delia made a face, thinking of how little progress she had made. She had come to find information linking the Duke of Cowanfield to her sister, but so far, she had only managed to do an excellent imitation of a nurse.

Well, no time like the present to get to work, is there?

It occurred to her suddenly that on a night like this, most of the servants would have taken to their beds to try to sleep out the heat, leaving the upper portion of Brixby Hall completely empty. Kieran himself—really, when had she started thinking of him as Kieran, even in her thoughts?—was not due back from London until tomorrow afternoon. That meant that this was the perfect time for her to start her investigation.

She rose from her bed, but the idea of reaching for her heavy gown and putting it on again made her despair. It would be fine to go in her light sleeping shift. She could always claim that she wanted a drink of water and was only going to bed, after all.

Delia was careful to avoid the creaking floorboards in her room that might wake Alice up and tell her it was time to play again. They had only recently convinced her that sleeping at night was far superior to sleeping during the day, and Delia was loath to disturb that.

I am not a nurse, I am the daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury. I am here to find my vengeance.

The stern reminder did not prevent her from peeking into Alice's adjoining room to make sure that the little girl was still sleeping, however. Shaking her head at herself, Delia padded to Kieran's study.

Like most of Brixby Hall, the study itself was large, elegant, and to Delia's eye, relentlessly masculine. Dark shelves filled with serious tomes lined the walls, and save for a little ornamentation in the molding and above the door, it was plain, almost stark.

She knew that Kieran kept a journal of sorts on his desk. He noted the events of the day, partially for business, partially as a memory aid, and he had mentioned that he had kept it for years. That meant that there was a chance Lissa was in it somewhere, and it would be a good place to start.

The journal was a handsome thing with an embossed leather cover and crisp thick white pages, and it rested neatly squared up at the corner of Kieran's desk. She noted how it was positioned, and opened it to the bookmark, paging back.

With a strange and almost guilty pleasure, she saw that she and Alice were the primary topics of the past week, and against her will, she smiled at the entry from two days ago.

July 11

-Meals with A & D

-Played at war with A, and D served as my military council

-A shows a talent for strategy and D for treason

Well, perhaps it hadn't been fair to gang up on Kieran with Alice, but in the end, she and Alice had ended up triumphant and claimed a basket of strawberries as their prize. Alice had even proved gracious upon victory and insisted on sharing the strawberries with her father.

What in the world is wrong with me? I'm not looking for pleasant memories with the man.

Determinedly, she flipped further back in the journals. Though she was determined to find evidence of Kieran anywhere near where she and Lissa had lived with their father, she couldn't stop herself from briefly looking over the time he had spent in Denby, convincing Alice's grandparents to give her up. The entries were terse to the point of confusion. Kieran mentioned travel and the address of the inn. Underlined in one entry, without any explanation, was a notation for the sum of six hundred pounds.

That's how much Alice's grandparents demanded. Delia shivered as she touched the page and could almost feel Kieran's fury bleeding through the ink and paper.

She went further back and hesitated briefly on June 18th, the day of her sister's funeral. There was nothing there, only some household notes about servants and requests for time away, and she felt a brief stab of the old anger coming up again.

She went back to May, when Lissa would have started the affair, and for a moment, she only sat and stared. The pages carefully pre-numbered for the last two weeks of May were empty, completely empty. Their blank smoothness woke in in her an urge to mar them, to tear them with a pen knife and her own nails until she calmed herself.

Did you not want any memory of her? Did you want to make sure that someday, someone like me wouldn't discover what you had done?

Delia's rage had been blunted over the last few days of watching Kieran act the doting father with Alice and with Alice's own sweetness. For a short while, she had been able to forget her grief and her rage and simply take care of Alice. Now she could see what a fool she had been and how she had been fooled.

What was I expecting? He had an affair with an inn girl and never saw her again. He only knew about his own daughter because he was told in a dying woman's letter.

She paged back to the beginning of the empty entries, and what she saw took her breath away.

13 May

-asked coachman to prepare team for long journey

-sent ahead to secure lodgings in Anniston

-preparations for extended stay

Anniston was the town closest to her father's property. Lissa had gone there frequently for sewing supplies, ribbons, and sweets. Sometimes, she dragged Delia along, and Delia felt a deep pain in her heart, thinking of how impatient she had always been when Lissa insisted on her presence.

Couldn't I have been a little more patient with her? Even a little? All she wanted was to spend time with me.

She stared at the ceiling until her breath came easier. There was no time for grieving now.

She heard the step in the hallway just as she was putting the journal back where she found it, squared up and in the corner. She was just thinking that she should find some dark corner to hide in when the door opened, and in the doorway stood Kieran.

Delia froze, in her shift, a candle in her hand, as guilty as a thief with her hand in the till.

C H A P T E R    0 5

As it turned out, Kieran hadn't had to go all the way to London. The ship's captain had shown up at the halfway point, as he had family in the town, and there they had been able to conduct the pertinent business. Kieran might have been more irritated if it hadn't meant that he would be back home in half the time.

On the carriage ride back to Brixby Hall, Kieran had to laugh at himself a little. There was a time when he wouldn’t have been so eager to return to his ancestral estate in the country. Now, the pleasures of London seemed to pale to bleached white when compared to spending the day with Alice and Delia.

I'm sure that at some point, the newness will wear off, and then I will find myself bored with life in the country and doting on my daughter... but damned if I can tell when that would be.

The only problem was that he was hoping to pick up a decent set of paints for Alice in London, and now he would have to send away for them.

If he were honest, Alice wasn't the only person for whom he had considered purchasing gifts. If there was one thing he was familiar with, it was presents that would delight a pretty girl, but as the carriage had rumbled ever toward London, he’d realized that that expertise was entirely wrong.

Delia had no need for beautiful jewelry or expensive scents from Paris or Milan. She wouldn't thrill to a new hat trimmed with ostrich feathers, and he could see the look she would shoot him over the top of her spectacles at the idea of receiving a pair of leather dancing slippers.

Books then, or perhaps a modiste to come and make her some new gowns. Hers are so very gray.

He was bone tired in the carriage, but when he finally gained the house, Kieran realized that he didn't quite want to sleep yet.

I can read for a little while, perhaps...

He had not expected to see a candle burning in his library, and he certainly had not expected to see Delia, clad in nothing but her shift, standing there holding it, a guilty look on her face.

"And what in the world are you doing here?"

His mind flashed from simple theft to Delia letting in thieves from her London gang to arson and to how grieved Alice would be to lose her, and then sense asserted itself. This was Delia.

"I was on my way back from the kitchen for a drink, and, well, I thought I would get something to read."

"That explains the shift, I suppose."

"You know, a gentleman might not mention it and might allow me to make my way back to my room without any odd or pointed questions."

"Is that what a gentleman would do?"

"I am sure of it!" She spoke with such indignant conviction that Kieran laughed, stripping his own light linen jacket from his shoulders.

She jumped a little when he stepped closer, but after he draped the black jacket around her, she pulled it close with all the dignity of a queen offered her regalia.

Kieran thought abruptly about the time she had mentioned reading before, when they had been discussing what went on between a man and a woman in bed, and he couldn't stop himself from grinning.

"So, you were looking for something to read?"

Something about his tone must have irritated her, because she stood up very straight and glared at him.

"I was, and now I will be returning to my rooms."

"But you have not yet found anything to read. Shall I help you?"

Delia hesitated, looking momentarily unsure, and Kieran closed the study door behind him, setting his own candle in a small depression in the wall. It was cunningly outfitted with mirrors, and the dancing candle flame set a reflection of light throughout the room

"Perhaps I can help you. It is, after all, my study."

"You needn't trouble yourself..."

"I would like to take the trouble. What do you like to read?"

Delia seemed to come to a decision, and she offered him a smile that was small but seemed genuine.

"Truthfully? I like just about everything. I like romances, of course, but I also like adventure novels, of the kind that they write for young boys. I like history and science, and I even like reading about mathematics if the writer is good at what they do."

Kieran laughed with delight at her answer. "Quite the little scholar, aren't you? Have you read all your life?"

To his delight, Delia drifted closer to him, perhaps to hear his quiet voice more clearly, perhaps simply because she wanted to. He abruptly became more aware than ever that she was only in her shift and his jacket; a thin and nearly transparent layer of cotton lawn and another layer of fine linen were all that stood between her soft skin and his hands... or his mouth...

"I have. I'm afraid I wasted many days when I should have been out playing or interacting with others in my rooms with my nose buried in a book. My mother was quite in despair."

The slight hint of melancholy in her tone wiped away Kieran's thoughts about seducing her over one of the books that were kept on the very top shelf, behind a completely innocuous copy of the works of Marcus Aurelius. He coughed slightly, wondering when he had become such a lecher.

"Well, let's see, I have plenty of adventure, not much romance, I am afraid, and plenty of history as well..."

She came closer just as he turned toward the shelves, and somehow, somehow, they ended up standing with less than four inches of space between them, Delia's back to the shelves and Kieran looming over her. He noticed that her hair, usually scraped back in a bun, was in a plait now, and soft wisps escaped to frame her face.

Without thinking, he reached up to tuck one errant lock behind her ear, and then almost as if hypnotized, he cupped her face in his hand. Her skin was terribly soft under his palm, and when she looked up at him, her spectacles slid down her nose, revealing her wide gray eyes.

"Your eyes look darker in this light, like a storm instead of a pool of quicksilver."

"Kieran..."

He wasn't sure whether she meant to urge him on or to push him back. Her voice trailed off, and underneath it, he heard a breath of longing, something with its own gravity, and heedless, he was falling.

The moment his lips touched hers, something in him was set on fire, like a burning beacon. She felt like passion, like life, like a flower blooming alone in an empty desert. He knew, somehow in his mind, that she felt the same thing, that she needed this as much as he did. When he felt her small hand reach blindly up for a handful of his shirt, grabbing the fabric and hanging on, he thought that there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for her.

Kieran wasn't sure which of them deepened the kiss, but then he was tasting her mouth more completely, her head tilted back so he could sweep his tongue between her soft lips. She was perfect... and then she pulled away.

He almost reached for her again, but then, in the candlelight, he could see her spectacles were askew and her eyes behind them were wild.

"We cannot do this! I cannot… Oh. Oh, goodnight, Kieran, I can't..."

He started to ask her what was wrong, but she snatched up her candle and pelted from the room, taking his jacket with him.

Kieran stared after her, every bone in his body telling him to run after her. Then he thought of what it would look like, the lord of the manor racing after the governess in the middle of the night, and he cursed.

C H A P T E R    0 6

Delia came awake to the feeling of little fingers prying at her lips. She sputtered, sitting up, and with confusion, she saw that it was Alice, sitting beside her and looking at her with concern.

"Why, Alice, what are you doing in my room? Did you have a bad dream?

"I'm not in your bedroom. Why are you wearing Papa's jacket?"

Delia awakened all the way, and her memory came back with a rush. Her face reddened when she thought of what had almost happened in the study, what actually had happened. She felt as if she was being torn in a dozen different directions. One part of her was still brutally and terrible enraged by the evidence she had found in Kieran's journal. It wasn't anything a court would accept, and it would prove nothing at all, but it was more proof than she’d had before. It told her she was on the right track and that she had to keep digging.

The fact that she had kissed Kieran, or allowed him to kiss her, was something else.

The other part of her, the part that she couldn't ignore no matter how hard she tried, wanted more of that. The moment Kieran's hands had ended up on her body, all she could think was how right it had felt. He felt warm and sweet and perfect, and it was as if everything in her life had been leading up to this.

She had no idea what would have become of them if she hadn't pulled away, if the realization that she was in the dark with a man she had only met a week ago hadn't struck her like a ton of bricks.

"Er, well, I am wearing your Papa's jacket because I was cold last night. We were talking in the study."

Alice frowned at her. "But it was so warm last night..."

"Temperatures drop in the dark, and I was out of bed, wanting a drink of water. I was being very silly. Not like you, sweet girl, who stayed in bed all night."

Oh, I certainly hope this won't convince her that it is all right to go roaming after dark...

"And it is time for us to get dressed anyway, so I shall put Papa's coat over this chair for him. I shall get dressed, and I shall help you get dressed. How does that sound?"

It sounded just fine to Alice, and by the time Delia was once more securely dressed in drab gray, and she had helped Alice into a sturdy blue dress that she could wear outside to play, Delia was feeling much better. She sent to the kitchen for some breakfast for the two of them, and they were just finishing when there was a knock, and then the door opened.

Kieran looked, Delia thought with some dismay, more handsome than he had any right to after being up as late as he had been. He wore black trousers that clung to his long legs, and the dark gray waistcoat over a gleaming white shirt only served to make his hair look even darker.

"Papa!"

Alice left her breakfast and pelted over to be picked up, and Delia didn't have the heart to tell her that that was far from proper table manners.

"Oof, there's my sweet girl." Kieran hefted her up into the air before bringing her in for a close hug. "I missed you yesterday.'

"I missed you, too, Papa, but Delia let me draw, and we drew you pictures..."

As Alice chattered on about the pictures they had drawn, Delia met Kieran's gaze over Alice's shoulder. If she had guessed what she might have expected after the previous night, she might have predicted glee or triumph, or worse, some kind of terrible secret lust. Instead, Kieran looked as cautious as she felt. Somehow that made her feel a little better.

I am only relieved because he does not expect anything. It is only because I need him to believe that I am nothing more than what I pretend to be.

Eventually, Kieran brought Alice back down to the floor, where she scampered for the drawings that she had made for him.

"I was thinking perhaps we could go for a picnic today."

"A picnic, your grace?"

His title popped out automatically, an attempt, perhaps to put some kind of distance between them, something to remind them both of who they were.

Kieran frowned. "No."

"No?"

"No. You are not going to retreat back to calling me by my title whenever we are uncomfortable with each other."

"Are we uncomfortable with each other?"

"I don't know what to call it. I was hoping a picnic today might clear some things up."

"All right. But please do not bring anything disturbing or inappropriate up in front of Alice."

Instead of being angry at the reprimand, Kieran smiled crookedly.

"Wouldn't dream of it. After all of this, it is still nice to know that you are on the job."

* * *

By mid-morning, the barouche was waiting in front of Brixby Hall, and Alice was eager to go out into the summer day. It had rained hard early that morning, and everything was left gleaming and green. Even Delia, who had felt a certain amount of apprehension about going out with Kieran, felt something in her ease and loosen for being out in nature.

Instead of having a groom drive them, Kieran had stepped up to the driver's seat himself. As Alice chattered about plants and animals, Delia glanced at Kieran's broad back in front of her, wondering what he was thinking.

The picnic was delicious, and Alice was allowed to run and play in the meadow close to the blanket they had spread out if she did not go very far.

"My family came here to picnic when I was a boy. It was something we did quite often in the summer before my mother died."

"I did not know your mother was dead."

"My father as well. I was just barely of age when my father died, and I was given the entire duchy to take care of."

Other men might have been self-pitying when they said those words, but Kieran was matter-of-fact.

"I was ready for the duties, but I do not think I was ready for... for well, the loneliness."

"A loneliness that never dissipates no matter how many people are around you."

She could sympathize. She had felt much the same ever since Lissa had died. Lissa could fill a room with her bright chattering, but whenever someone was in pain, she turned into a stone-silent listener, listening so hard it was almost as if she trembled.

"Are you quite well?"

"Hm?"

Kieran frowned, sliding a little closer to her. She almost pulled back, aware of how powerful their connection could be, but when he laid his hand on her brow, his touch was as kind as hers was for Alice.

"You look slightly unwell."

Delia laughed a little. He had no idea. She shrugged.

"Perhaps I am a little unwell."

"Did my talk of family bring back some bad memories?"

"I—"

It was on the tip of her tongue to simply say of course not, that it was only the heat of the day and the sun that had made her a little distracted. That was the sensible thing to say, after all.

"I... Not bad memories, perhaps, but sad ones."

Kieran hesitated. She thought that he would simply nod and change the subject. Men, even ones as beloved as her father, were not so very sanguine when it came to women's emotions. Instead, Kieran turned to her, and the look in his green eyes was kind.

"Would you like to tell me? Sometimes unburdening yourself can help you heal. I certainly know that Neil had to listen to enough drunken rants from me after my mother died when I was sixteen."

Delia frowned, distracted. "Sixteen is too young to go on drinking binges."

Kieran shrugged. "it is the way of the quality, I am afraid. I do not do so any longer, if that is any consolation, and I certainly will not teach Alice to follow in my footsteps. But you may keep your counsel if you like. I only wished to tell you that if you did not wish to do so, you did not have to."

Again, the smart thing would have been to brush him off or to fabricate some story that he would believe. She knew painfully well that she was in a precarious position, hidden in his household like a spy. However, when she opened her mouth, it was mostly the truth that came out.

"Well, I have... had... a sister. She was only a few years younger than I am, but we could not have been more different. She was brilliant, lively as a cricket, and very beautiful and desired. I was... well, you know me."

Kieran snorted. "The sun and the moon are different, but still no less beautiful than the other. And I think I do know you. Did you get along well?"

"Less well than might be hoped for. I know I was impatient with her from time to time, and I know she was exasperated with my lonely ways. Then, the summer before I went into service, she fell in love."

"I take it from your tone that this was not a happy thing."

"It was for her. For weeks, she was walking on air, happy about everything and smiling as if she had some great secret. Our father was ill often, you understand, and he was not really present to keep her in check. I thought she was going all moon-eyed over some village romance or other, harmless enough because she was a good girl."

"But that wasn't it."

"No. She fell in love with a lord. I did not discover this until much later."

"A lord?"

Delia raised her eyes to look right at Kieran, wondering if she could see the ghost of the night her sister had died in his eyes. Instead, she only saw concern, a slow anger, and a kind of compassion that made her blink.

"Yes. He made her a passel of promises and whisked her away from us. She... she turned up dead, accident and not foul play, but... but she is gone."

Delia had meant to tell her story as coolly and as calmly as possible. However, now she found that where her sister was concerned, there was nothing cool or calm about her. To her horror, the tears came, and after a moment, when they looked like they would not stop, Kieran drew her under his arm.

It was obscene, being comforted by the man who had caused her sister's death, but she couldn't resist giving in to the tears she thought she had so cleverly locked away.

"Is Delia hurt?"

Alice's voice from behind her was frightened, and she felt a wave of guilt come over her for scaring the little girl. Before she could turn around to explain, however, Kieran spoke up.

"Delia's fine, poppet, only a little sad. You can keep playing if you like."

"I don't like it when Delia's sad."

Instead of going back to play, Alice sat on Delia's other side, one chubby hand patting her thigh as comfortingly as the three-year-old knew how to do.

"There, there," she declared, obviously repeating something she had heard someone say once upon a time.

"Thank you, that helps."

Somehow, it did.

To be continued . . . FIND OUT MORE ON THE NEXT POST - 

The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 2