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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Macon GA 31201

Aphrodite’s Brew: Tales of the Laughing God Book 1
Copyright © 2008 by Delle Jacobs
ISBN: 1-59998-883-6
Edited by Jennifer Miller
Cover by Anne Cain

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2008

www.samhainpublishing.com

Aphrodite’s Brew

Delle Jacobs

Dedication
There is only one True Hero in the world. His name is Jeff and I’m married to him. I feel bad for all you other wonderful women out there, but I’m afraid you’re all out of luck.

Prologue

Wiltshire
, England
, August 1812

The Earl of Vailmont sat in his breakfast room and held his coffee cup before his face, savoring the heady aroma and wishing his mother in the South of France.
That was not kind of him. There was a war going on, after all. Deepest Africa would have to do.
Val was a good son, devoted to his estate and family. He did his best to listen to his mother’s infernal prattling. But the incessant sound of her voice, which could neither keep his attention nor entirely be shut out, was driving him mad.
This morning, the countess was in rare form. And Val, in his usual fashion, picked up his newspaper and sought blessed oblivion in the written word.
His ears pricked suddenly to attention. Something was different. No, it was too much the same, and it waved in his mind like a red flag before a bull. He lowered his newspaper and cast a glance at her, catching a sly gleam in her eye. The gleam suddenly vanished, replaced by vapidity.
He set down the newspaper. “Pardon me, madam, what did you say?”
The countess graced him with a smile that might have made him doubt her intelligence if he did not know her better. “Lady Ernwhistle’s letter, of course, dearest. You know, it has been the longest time since we have seen each other and we were bosom bows…”
Val’s mind instinctively started to wander. With a snapping blink of his eyes, he brought it back.
“…time passes us by, but one can do nothing…”
His eyes narrowed. Oh, no. That was not what she had been saying. He frowned, fighting his fading concentration. But now she was on her guard. Val raised the newspaper again and resumed his inattentive slouch.
“…but Cratchit was just saying this morning, my hair is not as gray as one might expect for my age…”
Frowning, he fought the urge to imagine himself in the north of Scotland shooting grouse.
“…retained my figure, unlike poor Lady Willett, who is twice as round as Lord Willett, who is round enough for two barrels but their lovely daughter has not taken after either of them and is so slim…”
Daughter. Bad word. Danger sang around him like whistling balls from a line of muskets, but he held his newspaper still as if he had noticed nothing.
“Now, the Misses Barton have their mother’s unfortunate shape and hawkish features, but I suppose one cannot blame the children for…”
Val suppressed a groan and silently begged God to prod her to the point. But as he had always observed, God had a very practical tendency to help those who helped themselves. Val looked for another way to display his lack of interest, and his eyes caught an article in the newspaper. “Frederick Watson is declared bankrupt,” he said, rapidly scanning. “I suppose his cattle will come up for auction. Good horseflesh.”
“…when she visits, but then she has been through three husbands and heaven knows how she has managed…”
Visit. Another bad word. Significantly more dangerous when coupled with the previous bad word. Val folded the newspaper and set it on the table. “What visit?” he asked.
The countess’s lyrical tones bounced around the room in aimless fashion, as if Val had not even spoken. “…says it has been so trying, although her last husband went aloft quickly, but it was so difficult with the first two…”
Reality slammed into him like a hammer hitting his head. By damn, so that was what she was doing! Sneaking in one word at a time amongst all the others in that sing-song voice she knew he did not hear, until she had them all in and could in complete honesty claim she had told him every word. She was definitely up to something.
“What visit, mother?” Val repeated.
The countess batted her eyes and her vacuous smile spread brightly over her face. She was caught out and she knew it, but Val was willing to bet she would not admit it.
“Of course I have told you, dearest, Lady Ernwhistle, who has been my bosom bow since we were girls together in Lancashire, has been so very blue-deviled, all alone in the dower house since her husband’s passing last May, and I have been so looking forward to seeing her…”
His nostrils flared. “And just when will Lady Ernwhistle be arriving?”
Mama’s delicate brow arched. “Why, this afternoon, dearest, as I have already told you.”
Val groaned. No doubt she had. But he should have known from the way the servants were polishing the woodwork to a high gloss.
His jaw tightened. “Naturally, Lady Ernwhistle has a daughter.”
“Oh, there is pretty little Grace, who is quite a taking thing, and you did agree…”
Val buried his face in one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose as he dragged in a breath that seemed to scorch his lungs. That, too, he should have known, by the way she had suddenly stopped nagging him to remarry. She was once more setting out to provide him with a bride of her choice.
“I did agree, madam?” he growled. “Precisely what words did I use to express my agreement?”
“Well, you did not disagree and she is considered quite the diamond, and…”
He thought briefly of pointing out to his mother that he had never heard her request in the first place, but he knew that was futile. The Dowager Countess of Vailmont knew no wrong, and she was relentless in her determination to choose her son’s second wife, just as she had the first.
Angry memories splashed over him like cold slop tossed from a window in one of London’s seediest streets. He knew how this coming event would play out if he let it. As host, he would have no choice but to welcome the visitors, who would have been led by his mother to have expectations of him. Even with the greatest of caution, he was sure to do or say something that would be seen as particular interest in the girl, and the two mothers would exclaim over the betrothal even before he could find breath to deny it.
Only scandal would save him from a marriage he didn’t want, and his mother knew he would never again let that happen. The first time, he’d admit, he had been too naive, too confused, too stricken with grief and guilt from his father’s death to fight it. He’d been little more than a boy then.
By damn, she would not do it again. But he would not let her provoke him into a temper, either. Val took a deep breath and set his back ramrod straight as he laid his napkin on his plate. “Do enjoy your guests, Mother,” he said with something that only remotely resembled a smile. “A pity I shall not be here.”
Horror flickered on the countess’s face, but it slid so quickly back behind her treacle sweetness, he almost doubted he had seen it. The countess cocked her head coyly and batted her eyes. “Do be a dearest, Vailmont. Lady Ernwhistle is so looking forward to meeting you, and as you are their host, you cannot insult our guests…”

The devil, he would. If there ever was to be another wife, and that was as likely as angels visiting Hell, he would make his own choice. He stood, pushing the chair back with his knees so forcefully, it tipped. “You invited them, Mother. You entertain them. I shall not remarry, and you know it.”
The countess’s lips thinned, yet continued to curl upward like the ends of a silly moustache. “Of course, they are only coming to visit, as you know, Lady Ernwhistle is my dearest friend and has never visited in all these years, but it is only a matter of finding the right woman for you this time, and naturally, you must have an heir…”
Val strode from the morning room.
His mother’s voice trailed along behind him, its yammering in a pattern with her pitty-pat steps. “Vailmont, you know your obligation, your father, bless his soul, would never have disregarded his duty as you do… I simply cannot understand you, Vailmont…”
Praying God might strike him deaf, Val marched on. Of course she did not understand him. She would have to hear him first. And if there was one thing the Countess of Vailmont did not do, it was hear any voice but her own.
“I cannot imagine what I shall tell them, Vailmont, as you did not object and I had every reason to assume…”
“You will think of something.” He dashed down the marble corridor to the staircase and took the stairs two at a time. Disgust lodged in his throat like a stuck bone. It was his own damned fault. If he’d been paying attention, he could have nipped her manipulation in the bud. And now he was stuck with a solution that forced him out of his own house, just as the harvest was about to begin.
With an uncouth shove against his chamber door, Val rushed in and slammed it. He threw his weight against the door and turned the key in the lock, debating the effectiveness of pushing furniture against the door for added protection. Outside, his mother’s whine battered at the barrier, its pitch rising high, and Val caught himself checking the floor as he imagined her voice seeping through the cracks, oozing beneath the door to form a puddle around his feet that would rise up to engulf him. And it damn well would if he let it.
“Pack,” he growled to his valet.
Clarence stood slack-jawed by the bed, his eyes wide and round as a bug’s, the clothes brush in his hand halted in the midst of a stroke. “Pack, my lord?”
Val opened the clothes press, dragged out stacks of garments and tossed them to the bed, where they toppled like a badly built house of cards.
“But sir, pack for what? Where?”
Val sneered at the mess he was making and dashed to the clothes press for another stack of shirts. “If I tell you, you will waste no time in confiding in that sweet chambermaid of whom you have become so fond, who will run immediately to my mother and tell her everything. Pack, Clarence. Be ready within the hour, or I shall leave you behind. You know what that will mean.”
Clarence blanched. Clarence packed.
The Earl of Vailmont was a reasonable man, a man who loved above all else the hall and lands into which he had poured all his enlightened knowledge and diligence. But having carefully assessed the precariousness of the crisis suddenly thrust upon him by his own inattentiveness, he did what any rational man would do.
He ran away from home.

Chapter One

Bath
, England
, September 1812

“Play, Val.”
Startled, Val shook himself out of the fog of his thoughts and back to the card room. The faint trilling of violins floated in from the distant Assembly Room and mingled with wisps of cheroot smoke as Whitby, Latimer and Val’s cousin Pinkerton peered over the tops of their cards.
Val blinked. He had let his mind wander back to the golden fields of The Vale and the harvest he had missed to escape his mother’s plots. By damn, it rankled him, but he was not going to let her get away with it. With unusual haste, he plucked the queen of hearts and laid it down, regretting the play the instant the card touched the green baize.
Whitby’s boyish grin spread wide, showing all his straight, white teeth, further confirming Val’s certainty that he had made a bad play. To Val’s chagrin, the freckle-faced fop plopped down his king and took the trick. Devil it! He should have known Whitby had the king! What the deuce was the matter with him that the game didn’t keep his attention? He couldn’t even claim to be foxed. He never drank more than a single brandy when he played.
“Ain’t seen you so distracted in an age,” Whitby said, sweeping up the cards.
Val straightened his waistcoat. His gaze roamed over the gentlemen who huddled in the cardroom, safely secluded from the adjacent ballroom full of lace fans and giggles. “Stoddard was supposed to be here. Where the devil is that looby?”
“You ain’t heard?” Whitby cocked his head as he raked in the pot, then shuffled the cards. As Whitby dealt the next hand, Val spotted a trace of apprehension lurking beneath the amusement in the lad’s eyes.
“Headed for Gretna Green in the middle of the night,” said Pink, his eyes following the cards being dealt.
Val sat up straight and stared at his cousin. “Stoddard? Eloped? An improbability if I ever heard one.” Doubly odd, for both Wallingford and Dinglebury had succumbed to the disease of matrimony only a week ago.
“Why the devil Gretna?” Whitby asked, laying down a club. “Dinglebury at least had the good sense to head for Town for a Special License.”
Pink spread his hand, focusing amber eyes on his cards. Unlike Whitby, nothing in his expression betrayed his thoughts. “Gretna’s faster, if you take my meaning,” Pink said. “Two days’ hard driving, and they can be married over the anvil as soon as they arrive. It would take five days by the time they got to London, got the license, found a vicar and got the job done.”
Val frowned and tried to concentrate on his less-than-promising hand, with its odd mix of suits and not a single card higher than a ten. “You don’t suppose the darling bride is in a delicate condition?” he asked.
Pinkerton’s gaze shot up. “You really don’t know, do you?”
What the devil? “In a word, no.”
“Thought not. Can’t imagine you saying something like that about your own cousin. Glad she’s related to you on the other side of your family.”
Val felt the blood drain from his face. His ape-leading cousin with the propensity for stumbling over both left feet? “Stoddard married Portia?”
“Yes, I believe we could say he didn’t know,” Pinkerton drawled, and played a low club.
Latimer turned pale, and his chin began to tremble. “They say it’s a love potion,” he said. “They say we’re all doomed. Nothing we can do.”
Val snorted. “That’s nonsense.” But Stoddard and Portia? The man must have been knocked cold and dragged off. He could picture Portia doing that.
Whitby played an eight. “Can’t imagine anything else that would make Stoddard look her way. Your pardon, Val. Don’t mean to insult your family.”
Val shrugged, but his pulse raced. Portia had been in Bath last week, he knew that much. He’d encountered her at Lady Marston’s rout. He drew in a slow breath to recapture his composure and chose a card. “Love potions are nothing but superstition,” he responded, laying down the card with a snap.
“You ain’t got anything but hearts, Val?” Whitby asked.
Val frowned at the played card. It wasn’t even a legitimate play, and they all knew it. He grimaced and replaced the heart with a three of clubs. What the deuce was Stoddard thinking?
His three compatriots groaned together. He could have taken the trick with his ten, and they all probably knew that, too.
“You ain’t with us, Val,” said Whitby. “Sorry to throw the news at you that way. Must be a shock. You’re not thinking of going after them, are you?”
Val shook his head. “Portia is old enough to know her mind.” And if there was anything his bluestocking cousin was not, it was hare-witted. “Feel sorry for the chap, though,” he added. “The girl has a tongue that can slice turnips.”
Pinkerton nodded and folded his hand. “I say we call it a night. It’s not much of a game when Val isn’t up to snuff.”
Thin-faced Latimer shuddered. “And do what? Go back in there?” The lad glanced over his shoulder through the haze of smoke toward the bright chandeliers, clutching his brandy in his slender hand as if it were a shield. “I ain’t setting foot in a ballroom with a love potion about. Never know what some bran-faced chit’s mama will do. I ain’t never taking another drink in public again, either.”
Val smirked, trying to imagine the day Latimer turned down a drink. “You’re worrying over nothing, Latimer. I tell you, there’s no such thing as a love potion. It’s impossible.”
Latimer gulped the brandy and coughed, then gulped again. “Ain’t you the one who caught your cousin fooling around with drinks at Lady Marston’s just last week?”
Val’s jaw dropped open. He’d forgotten that. On Wednesday last he’d found Portia, a little blue bottle in her hand, so intent on her activity, she hadn’t heard him approaching. She’d nearly fainted when she spotted him, and stammered something incomprehensible about improving a bad drink. But since Portia was always doing something incomprehensible, he hadn’t thought much about it. He’d been chary of her, true, but that was because the scheming chit had such a close relationship with the countess.
He shook his head against the illogical thought that was forming. “No, think on it, gentlemen. It makes no sense at all. How the devil could any conniving chit be sure the drink affected the right man? And it would be bound to wear off. Any man who’s ever been in his cups knows that. It would require magic, and any man of science will tell you there is no such thing.”
Then he remembered the rest. When he’d asked to taste it, Portia had turned as pale as a sheet set out in the sun to dry, and had bolted the entire contents of the glass herself. No. Couldn’t be. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Everything could be explained if one looked long enough and hard enough for the answer. He had to put a stop to this nonsense.
“The world is full of fools,” he argued. “The lackwits have talked themselves into their own mousetrap.”
Pink snickered. “You mean, they think they’ve fallen in love because they think they drank a potion they think exists?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I ain’t taking chances,” said Latimer, his weak chin trembling. “’T’ain’t fair to trap a man like that.”
“Then don’t talk yourself into it,” Val replied.
Pink rubbed the crisp edge of his cards over his chin, his brows in a frown. “I could see Dinglebury falling for something like that. But Stoddard’s no fool. He’s been slipping out of the noose for years.”
Whitby nodded, his face as grim as a vicar at a funeral. “Notice the faces of the biddies, lately? Remind me of dogs after the fox. They’re up to something, and we’re the prey.”
“We always have been.” But blood raced in Val’s veins. He’d seen it too, a sharpness in their eyes that reminded him too much of his mother, but he’d thought it only his own sensitivity to the marital noose. Yet if Portia was involved, then likely Val’s mother was too, for they were as close as sisters when it came to baiting the mousetrap.
Whitby shivered. “All the same, I’d rather avoid them. Just getting over Miss Southworth as it is.”
Tapping fingers on the green baize cloth, Val studied the anxious faces and counted to himself. Wallingford, Dinglebury, Crewes, Smith. Five men, counting Stoddard.
Perhaps something was afoot. It could be merely an elaborate trick that played on the superstitions of men like Latimer and Whitby, possibly some opiate that could sap a man of his resistance, or make him put himself in an awkward position that forced compromise. Or perhaps worse.
Val sniffed and stared at the cards that held no interest for him. What he really needed was to go back to The Vale, but he’d bedamned if he’d do that until he knew Lady Ernwhistle and her daughter were gone.
What he needed was a challenge, something to occupy his interest until he could return.
No, what he needed was to stop this nonsense before it got out of hand. He glanced at Pink, whose amber eyes reflected a trace of wry amusement, the only hint of anything in an otherwise impassive face. Whitby’s eyes, by contrast, looked like two enormous blue China plates, and Latimer could be dropping from fright at any moment.
Val grinned and slapped the table with both hands as he rose. “Gentlemen, we shall be dancing tonight.”
“The devil!” cried Latimer, gasping for breath. Val wondered if he was going to have to borrow a bit of hartshorn from one of the ladies.
“Dancing! Why, Val?” asked Pink. But by the sly gleam in his eyes, Val guessed he was quickly figuring it out.
“To meet the new arrivals, of course.”
“To meet—I ain’t, Val!” Latimer cried, chin trembling.
“Your problem, gentlemen, is that you don’t know how to negotiate the threads of society without becoming entangled in its webs. Bath is the place to learn it, and Pink and I are the ones to teach it.”
Moving slowly out of his chair, Whitby shot a strained frown at Val. “Um, not sure I want to learn, Val,” he said. “Sounds too dangerous to me.”
“What with the love potion and all,” Latimer added. He grasped the back of his chair, white-knuckled, gasping now like a stag hounded by dogs at the end of a chase. Hartshorn was beginning to sound like a very good idea if Val intended to continue keeping company with the man. A lot of men didn’t want to marry, but Latimer had gone to the extreme of fear. If anyone needed help, Latimer did.
“Like handling a gun,” Val said. “The more you know of how to do it, the less likely you are to shoot your toes off. Mostly old women in there, anyway.”
“Old women have daughters,” Pink replied.
Val returned a hard look.
“And granddaughters, nieces, cousins…” A flicker of mischief sparked in Pink’s eyes, utterly belying the rest of his face.
“So they do. And none of them have ever snagged you. Nor will they snag me. What we have to do here is teach these young chaps how it’s done. Into the lion’s den we go.”
“But Val!” said Whitby. “Right in the midst of the lions? That’s where you go to get eaten alive.”
The wicked idea continued to build in Val’s mind, and he grinned. “It’s a sport, Whitby. You simply have to learn how to play it.”
Val headed out the door of the card room and strode toward the Assembly Room with its whining violins and distinctive perfume of lavender and smoke, noting Latimer kept coming, even though he all but dragged his feet.
As if a drum beat the cadence, Val marched up to the enormous blue cavern of a room lit by the diamond sparkle of crystal chandeliers.

* * *

Sylvia stretched up onto her tiptoes and craned her neck to peer around Sir Ralph Rayburn’s enormous height, but he shifted in front of her. She sidled closer to Elizabeth, just as Sir Ralph, utterly unaware of her consternation, turned to face Mrs. Keys and bowed deeply, once again putting himself between Sylvia and what she so desperately sought to see.
“If you stretch your neck any further, you will turn into one of those strange African giraffes,” said Elizabeth.
Sylvia smiled sheepishly back. “I should like to see how she is getting on.” She caught a rare glimpse of Amalie, cavorting with a bit too much abandon down the center of the set with young Mr. Ponsonby. Sylvia’s smile twisted into agony.
Elizabeth’s mouth pursed, caught between humor and disbelief. “You need not worry. He has not made for the French windows with her just yet.”
“I know.” Sylvia would block them at the door if he’d tried.
“It has not been so many years since my Catherine made her bows, you know,” said Elizabeth with a serene smile that said she could have never experienced such distress. “She was quite the thing that year, and gave me many a false start.”
“But Millie is such a green girl. She could so easily come to disaster. I should not have let her run tame about Willow Combe for so long.”
“You deal with yourself too harshly, my dear. Many a woman would have left the stepdaughter behind when the father died.”
A shudder ran down Sylvia’s spine. It was her most frightening nightmare, that Amalie’s true guardian would find some excuse to snatch the girl away.
“Perhaps she will find a suitable match here and save you an expensive Season.”
Sylvia tightened her lips against an answer. She could afford more than she was willing to let Elizabeth know. She craned her neck around Sir Ralph’s shoulder. Greenlings and young girls who surely should not be out of the schoolroom formed the set, gentlemen and girls hopping about with toes pointed like fairy children prancing about a maypole.
“There are so many unscrupulous men,” Sylvia said.
Elizabeth nodded knowingly. “That is why young girls have mothers.”
Elizabeth’s calmness had the gentle comfort of a warm blanket in winter. Sylvia had to remind herself she was not the first mother to fire off a daughter. And Elizabeth, more than fourteen years Sylvia’s senior, had gone through it twice.
“Perhaps she could be less lively,” Sylvia said.
“I believe they will all suffer the indignation of their mamas when they are done.”
Sylvia glanced around. Mr. Ponsonby’s mother, in fact, was glaring as if Sylvia were personally responsible for the boisterous infraction. But she didn’t care. Millie’s dreams would come true, no matter what it took.
She sighed, relieved at the eventual end of the country dance, and Mr. Ponsonby, color high in his cheeks, escorted Amalie back to Sylvia’s side. Amalie, too, was flushed from the exertion, and her guinea gold curls had sprung loose from the headband of gold and pink silk.
Sylvia tried to frown, but gave it up in the face of Millie’s sunny smile. “I trust you enjoyed the dance,” she said, and not even the acid tone she had intended came across. She supposed she could explain later that one did not dance until one’s chest heaved like a horse after an Ascot run. Amalie was so naive about such things.
“Oh, indeed, Mama.” Amalie’s light blue eyes gleamed. “Mr. Ponsonby has promised to introduce me to all of his friends.”
“It is not at all the thing, Amalie,” said Elizabeth, although she, too, could not manage a frown. “You must not allow just anybody to make introductions.”
Amalie’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Aunt Elizabeth. But I am sure Mr. Ponsonby would not present anyone who is unacceptable.”
“It is not for you to decide,” Elizabeth replied. “It is your mama’s prerogative.” Elizabeth looked up and smiled. “But look, here is Lord Albert Pinkerton approaching with his friends. I vow I am surprised. They rarely attend assemblies.”
Sylvia turned to see four young men approaching. In the lead, Lord Albert, who she had met once in her own Season.
Pinkerton bowed low and took Elizabeth’s hand in the elegant fashion that was so well suited for the atmosphere of Bath. “Ah, Lady Lyndonbury, it has been an age. I hope you have been well.”
“Then time has flown faster than I would wish it,” Elizabeth answered, smiling. “You have been well, I trust?”
“Indeed. Might I present my friends?”
Pinkerton stepped aside and brought forth his friends. Sylvia assessed each man carefully, lest something slip by that could make a disaster for Millie later on.
Without warning, a man stepped up before Sylvia, dark eyes flashing like shining swords in bright sunlight. Sylvia caught her breath as Pinkerton’s voice faded.
“…Earl of Vailmont,” said Lord Albert in a voice that seemed to float in from somewhere afar.
Her pulse throbbed in her ears. His eyes, a dense color as dark as the sea, elaborately fringed with the longest, straightest lashes she had ever seen, held her captive with a piercing gleam so enigmatic, she could not tell if he admired her or accused her of some great evil.

Val stared, as agog as a country gapeseed at the strangest eyes he had ever seen, silvery green like the palest jade. His soul swirled, as if she gained some mesmerizing power over him merely by looking into his eyes, sending his insides tumbling about like leaves in a windstorm.

Witches have green eyes.

He stiffened and all but leapt back.
Witches, magic, love potions? Nonsense! Figments of superstitious minds. He was a rational man. He wholeheartedly disavowed superstition, a blight on the intelligence of society. But here he stood, gaping like a country bumpkin, all the while knowing he was being sucked into a maelstrom.
Man of reason or no, he had the sudden sinking feeling he had just come eye to eye with a witch.

Chapter Two
Val forced his dangling jaw to close. “Your servant, ma’am,” he said, taking a deep bow that gave him the chance to conceal his face and compose himself. It would have worked, had his eyes not trailed over the golden fabric of her dress and caught the subtle trace of an exquisite body thoroughly concealed by bulky and unflattering fashion.
By damn, but it was exquisite! That tiny waist was not held in by whalebone! She moved like an agile cat. And damned if those breasts weren’t the most perfect size and shape he could ever remember! If the woman had worn something with even reasonable fashion, some airy, flowing thing like the lady beside her, he’d be as hard as a rock by now.
Never mind. The thought did it for him. Val glanced back at the halflings in his company, who were quaking like shimmering leaves. Escape was not an option. They were depending on him to show them how to navigate the dangerous waters. Hell, but he’d never thought them perilous before.
Straightening, Val resolved to keep his gaze safely on her face. He flexed and clenched his hands, then forced them to relax. But his heart continued to pound as if a drunken drummer controlled its pace. Why the devil was she so disconcerting?
Val forced a smile, but the moment his eyes found her pale jade eyes again, his stomach turned to flummery. Voices hummed around him like the din of a distant crowd, but he hadn’t the faintest idea what was being said, and didn’t care. He was being bewitched!

There are no witches. Be rational. Consider the problem, not those outrageously bewitching eyes or luscious curves.

Women were a devious lot, ready to snag any man with title or money by any means possible.
“Cat got your tongue, Val?”
As Pink’s honey-edged voice broke through the haze, he jerked out of the reverie. “Oh? Only thinking of these lovely ladies, Pinkerton. Shocked that you have not made us known to them before this.”
Pinkerton’s golden brows rippled as he cocked his head. “Just met them myself. Told you that.”
“Indeed, so you did. Have you been in Bath long, ma’am?” he asked, too stumble-tongued to think of anything else.
Miss Bibury let out a titter and hid her mouth. Val gathered that had been mentioned, too.
“Not even a week, my lord,” said the jade-eyed lady, one delicate brow arched high as she tilted her head. She must think him deaf. Or daft.
Val rummaged about in his mind for some banality that would demonstrate he retained the ability to converse. “Ah, then you have much to see,” he said. “Bath has many delights. The shops, the assemblies and balls. What is your pleasure, Lady Ashbroughton?”
The lady flushed. Perhaps he should not have put it quite that way.
“I have a fondness for gardens and walking,” she replied. “And a fine book. My needs are rather simple. My daughter, on the other hand, seems to have acquired a taste for dancing.”
“And may I, Mama?” asked the golden-haired girl beside her. “Mr. Whitby has been so kind as to ask me.” Miss Bibury’s eyes fluttered as she searched out every freckle in Whitby’s face, who was, damn his worthless hide, agawk at the girl and blushing like a new bride. Love potion, indeed. The green lad could swallow water and think himself in love from it.
Apprehension surfaced in Lady Ashbroughton’s eyes.
“Go on, dear,” said Lady Lyndonbury. “I am sure he is perfectly acceptable if Lord Albert has seen fit to make him known to us. Is he not, Lord Albert?”
“Quite,” said Pink, drawling in his bored sort of way. But Pink’s amber gleam sparkled with secret laughter.
Lady Ashbroughton cleared her throat. “Well then, of course you may, dear.”
As Val’s rational mind finally began to slip back into his braincase, he noted how quickly the lady’s eyes turned to follow her charge. A perfect opportunity to demonstrate his noose-slipping techniques to the green lads. He reached out a hand to the lady with silver-green eyes. “Perhaps you would do me the honor, Lady Ashbroughton.”
She startled. “Oh, I have not come to dance, sir, and obviously, I must chaperone my daughter.”
“What better way but to dance in the same set? Don’t you agree, Lady Lyndonbury?”
Lady Lyndonbury’s brown eyes gleamed, but her lips pouted very properly. “Indeed. Do go on, dear. I believe I see Lady Rayburn by the mantelpiece.”
“Nonsense,” said Pinkerton, and held out his hand. “I shall partner you.”
“Don’t be absurd, young man. The young ladies would welcome your attentions.”
“Indeed,” answered Pinkerton. “But I shall ask none of them until you have danced with me, dear lady.”
Val didn’t snicker. But Lady Lyndonbury’s nostrils thinned at the obvious blackmail before she gave in. Latimer and Whitby gaped in awe of Pink’s smoothness.
But they still needed the fourth corner for their set. Val narrowed his eyes at Latimer. The lad squirmed. Val sent him a lethal smile. Ashen faced, Latimer gulped and dragged himself toward the Master of Ceremonies who paired him with a whey-faced girl whose long, narrow nose and pointed chin more than made up for Latimer’s lack. The girl’s face reddened like ripening fruit, then turned sheet-white.
Val groaned. Of all possible choices, the very worst for Latimer. Miss Jonquil Newberry, Mr. Robert Newberry’s daughter, whose parents were approaching desperation in their hopes of marrying her off. Val sent up a quick prayer that Latimer and the trembling chit would make it to the floor in a respectably vertical fashion and join the set without depleting the entire assembly’s supply of hartshorn.
Miss Newberry caught the hem of her dress in her heel and stumbled. Latimer leapt to the rescue, grabbing her arm to brace her. Whatever the lad said, she managed a trembling smile, and they joined the set as the fourth couple. Bless him! He could see beyond his own discomfort after all! Lesson one accomplished.
The partners bowed, then bowed to their corners. Lady Ashbroughton’s lips quivered in a nervous smile. Her charge was safely close by and bubbling with delight. But Whitby could hardly take his eyes off the girl. Val felt something in his gut tighten. If he were Miss Bibury’s mama, he’d be worried about the looby, too. Whitby was the heir presumptive of a viscount and not entirely unacceptable, but the girl would surely aim higher.
Ah. That would be what the lady wanted. A catch for her daughter from the crème de la crème. Perhaps the same for herself. No widow intended to remain a widow long. Very important to figure out what the ladies want. That would become lesson three, but he would hold that for later. Perhaps for tomorrow.
He took her hand as the set circled and a static spark flashed between them. Her eyes caught his, tangling like a snare. Swiftly, he shifted his gaze downward to take in the bounce of her perfectly rounded breasts, and his body heated all over again. Fighting off a grimace, he found and put on his mask of charm instead. No wonder they said witches had green eyes.
His spine stiffened. Devil it! He would not be caught in a twist by pretty eyes that were so pale they seemed to demand filling with some deep color, or hair as dark and sleek as a fine black cat. He’d had mistresses equally well-endowed. She was merely a woman, and if he should seek another mistress, she would be from the world of the demirep, not a potentially dangerous widow.
What the devil was he thinking? He had no designs on the woman. None. None of any kind. He intended only to have a dance or two, leave her charmed, and go about his business. A perfect example to Whitby and Latimer.
No, he’d best be very careful how he went about it if he didn’t want to find himself accused of showing her particular attention.
Bedamned if he’d ever do that again.
Val turned a very deliberate smile on her, and the strangely colored eyes changed to quicksilver. His throat tightened. He thought of the delicious curves of her breasts fitting into the cups of his hands, her sleek, dark hair flowing loose.
No. It was just the effect of the thousand candles glittering on the crystal chandeliers. He was ruled by his intellect. He was not a man to be controlled by beguiling eyes.
It was time to take control again. Take the offensive.
Holding her hand to step to the center, he leaned toward her ear and let his voice drape over her. “She takes after you.”
Startled, she almost lost her step. “But she’s not—”
“I know,” he said, feeling the glimmer of wickedness dancing in his own eyes. “Yet she does take after you.”
Lady Ashbroughton cocked her head as she stared. Then an odd little smile played on her lips.
A direct hit. He smiled at his success, although it was pure truth, not flattery. “She has taken many things from you,” he added. “Even the way she points her toe. She must admire you greatly.”
Her pale eyes turned on him, suddenly so solemn and deep that Val thought he could see into her soul. “She is the light of my life,” Lady Ashbroughton said.
Val nearly jerked to a halt. He knew instantly it was so. Even if he had never experienced such a love personally, he knew some mothers did have such feelings, and not for a moment did he question that she loved this girl as if they shared the same blood.
“For one who decries the art, you dance finely, Lady Ashbroughton,” he said.
Her dark, sleek eyelashes fluttered and she suddenly looked away. “I like dancing. It is only that it seems to belong to the young.”
“In Bath, everyone must dance. The Master of Ceremonies requires it. And I confess, madam, I do not believe you are old enough to be mother to a girl ready to come out.”
A pink flush crept onto her cheeks, and her jaw jutted a little. “Well, of course I am not. Amalie is my deceased husband’s daughter by his first marriage. But I assure you I am sufficiently ancient to provide her with proper guidance.”
“So she lives with you and not her guardian.”
“Most would agree a female is best raised by a female, sir.”
He could not deny that. But he’d bet a stack of guineas she was not more than ten years Miss Bibury’s senior. As Whitby and Miss Bibury stepped to the fore, he returned them to their corner, and they stood quietly watching. “She is a diamond, as brilliantly lovely as you.”
Her blooming flush turned to brilliant crimson. Lady Ashbroughton snapped open her fan and waved it vigorously at her heated face.
Damn his worthless hide! He was flirting like a green bumpkin. He’d find himself on the marriage block by morning if he couldn’t be more prudent. She was just the sort to take him there, with any opportunity. She might send his blood racing, but he’d best not let her know it.
Yet he needed her to demonstrate his lessons, to prove the notion of a love potion was idiocy. How could he do that without crossing over the line and appearing to romance her? Attention to her daughter would be even worse. Nor could he play up to Lady Lyndonbury, who would recognize a bam immediately.
But that was exactly what he had to do. Show how one could successfully invade the lioness’s den and survive.
However, he had been considering taking a house at Henrietta Street on Laura Place, and he happened to know Lady Lyndonbury lived there. And a gentleman did have an obligation to be neighborly.
Val took Lady Ashbroughton’s hands to swing her around, feeling the lightness of her response to his tacit commands. He forced a pleasant smile. “Are you staying with Lady Lyndonbury in Laura Place?”
She nodded. “We have come for a few weeks only.”
“We are to be neighbors, then, for I am taking the house at Henrietta Street.” He felt that hesitation in her step again. She was a cautious one. A change of tactics was in order.
He turned to watch the movements of Latimer and the Newberry chit as they led the square with more aplomb than he would have expected.
“Until November,” he added. “When the owners return.”
“How very pleasant for you. Surely an improvement over temporary lodgings.”
“I confess I prefer the comfort of a home.”
“Where is home for you, Lord Vailmont?”
He had not meant it to sound quite that way. Had his longing for home been all that transparent? Or had the lady already investigated him?
Val snorted. Of course she had. A week was more than enough time for any husband-hunting mama to check out every eligible bachelor in residence. Very much the way he had been trapped into a marriage with Anne…
Damn, but he was not going to think about that Jezebel.
“The Vale, in Wiltshire,” he said. The ugly growl in his voice surprised him.
She winced and drew back.
He clamped his teeth at his mistake. She did not deserve to be snapped at.
As she executed a turn, the aroma of roses and something spicy wafted toward him and conjured up images of soft, bare flesh. Gritting his teeth, Val reminded himself to control his thoughts by thinking of something else. For the rest of the set, Val centered his mind on the dancing, and made of it an intellectual exercise.
He was almost sorry as the violins scraped their last strains. He bowed to his partner, then his corner, Miss Newberry, whose sudden blush spotted her face as she curtsied, and once again she lost her color so quickly, Val feared she would faint. But Latimer claimed the girl’s hand and buoyed her up. Val stopped holding his breath. Both the girl and Latimer had not only survived the dance, but acquitted themselves well. No one would point the finger at Val for being the cause of their mutual demise.
As he offered Lady Ashbroughton his arm, another static shock bounced between them. She jumped. He laughed. “Shocking, you are, madam.”
She laughed back. “No, Lord Vailmont, ’tis you who is shocking.”
It was a happy laugh, no longer nervous, one that infected him, making him feel suddenly and suspiciously joyous. It made him wonder even more about her.
He was getting carried away again. From his experience, the only women who possessed any genuineness were plain as a stone wall, for they had no wiles to use to manipulate men.
God, when had he become such a cynic? But he knew the answer.
Val led his partner to the chairs lining the room, to rejoin her friend and her charge. Lady Lyndonbury’s color was high and her breaths deep, but the lady was no more done in than a girl fresh from the schoolroom.
“So Lady Lyndonbury,” he said, half laughing. “You can no longer claim to be in your dotage, for I have seen you dance, and your secret is revealed in your youthful step.”
“Spanish coin, sir,” Lady Lyndonbury replied between deep breaths. “It has been years, and I vow if no one can see it, I can feel it. No more dancing for me for the night.”
The value of Spanish coin. That would be lesson two. He smiled, and looked about to see if the young lads had noted. But Latimer, sweat dotting his brow, seemed to have no inkling of anything beyond his successful escape from the Newberry clan. And Whitby seemed to have no inklings of any kind, other than Miss Bibury. If anyone was at risk of leg-shackling, it would be Whitby. At least Latimer comprehended his shortcomings.
Now it was time to play the trump. He would take his frightened friends into the very maw of the lioness. “Lady Ashbroughton and I have discovered I am about to become your neighbor, as I am taking the house at Henrietta Street. So I shall claim the privilege of placing myself at your disposal, should you or your guests require my services.”
“Indeed?” said the lady, giving him an elegant smile. “How charming.”
“And if you and your guests are willing, we shall delight in calling upon you Wednesday morning for the breakfasting at Sydney Gardens.”
Lady Lyndonbury glanced at her guest, but made the decision herself. “We shall be pleased, Lord Vailmont.”
Shortly after the dancing stopped at eleven, Val and his friends strode out of the Upper Assembly into the golden glow of gas lights, turned a few corners and walked down Milsom Street toward the White Hart.
“What the deuce are you up to, Val?” asked Pink as the four men strode down the hill.
“Looks more like you intend to marry us off, Val,” said Whitby.
Val let a smirk play on his lips and kept walking. “Two lessons tonight. Didn’t you pay attention?”
“What?” asked Latimer, his eyes suddenly bright and focused on Val.
“How to give the ladies what they want without getting caught in the snare. Distance, my good fellows. It’s all in maintaining the perfect distance.”
“I don’t get it.”
“How can you say that, Latimer, when you gave a superb performance tonight?”
“I did?”
“Indeed. As good as I’ve ever seen. Perfectly solicitous to the lady’s needs. Helped her when she tripped, made it look almost as if it was your fault—”
“It was, actually. M’big foot got in her way.”
“But you made good on it. The whole point is, give them the attention they want, and do it with a flair, a flourish, so to speak. But do it from the exact distance society prescribes. Neither too close nor too far away, then they can’t complain either of too much attention or too little. Lesson number two: the value of Spanish coin. Pink showed you that. It appears to be worth nothing, but in fact it is your most valuable asset. Not a lady in the world won’t know the flattery is false, yet she wants it anyway.”
“Gives me the shivers,” Latimer replied, shaking to match his words.
Poor Latimer. He’d jump at his own shadow.
“Don’t let it worry you, Latimer,” Val replied, sauntering along with a peculiar lightness in his step. “I told you there are no love potions. But just to be on the safe side, I wouldn’t drink anything if I were you. You didn’t drink anything did you? No doubt, you’re safe as long as you don’t touch a drink. In fact, just to be sure, you shouldn’t touch a drink anywhere after this. You should probably keep your gloves on, too. I hear some poisons can absorb through the skin.”
Latimer stopped cold, his bulging eyes like great blue saucers as he stared at his hands in their meticulously fitting white gloves.
“You didn’t take them off, did you?” Val asked, boring a frowning gaze at Latimer.
“Only one. I had to—”
“But you didn’t touch anything, did you?” Pink asked dryly.
“Well, I—”
The smirk toyed with the corner of Val’s mouth, forcing him to turn away and start walking again to hide it. “But you’re not feeling anything? No sudden throes of passion for that silly miss, what’s her name?”
“Miss Jonquil Newberry. God help me—”
“Deuce take it!” Whitby said, facing Latimer. “You ain’t thinking of taking up with her!”
“No, can’t say I’ve— Just danced with her, that’s all. Val made me—”
Val clapped a hand to Latimer’s shoulder. “Then you’re probably safe. It would probably hit right away if it were going to work at all. I’d think so, anyway. Of course, we don’t really know. We must not allow ourselves to be taken up by silly rumor. Stick to the facts. I’d say you’re safe. But keep your gloves on from now on.”
Latimer shook like a leaf in a stiff autumn breeze. “It ain’t safe here. A man ought to be able to live without fear of being poisoned.”
“You don’t see the rest of us all aquiver, do you, Latimer?” Pink asked. “Just stay away from the drinks and keep your gloves on, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“So you say.” Latimer gave his gloves an extra tug. “Think that’s the trick, do you?”
“Must be,” Pink replied, again giving a reassuring pat to Latimer’s shoulder. “I kept mine on, and nothing happened to me. And you know how those milk-and-water misses and their mamas fawn over me.”
“Well—”
“There you have it. Just follow our lead. It’s the other fellows who will be in trouble.”
“Ain’t worth it,” Latimer objected. “Too dangerous.”
“What if it’s true, Val?” Whitby’s brow wrinkled in genuine worry. “If there’s a potion, ain’t none of us safe. Not even you.”
Val frowned back. If any of them had something to worry about, it was Whitby. Perhaps the boy was finally comprehending his vulnerability. But one needed balance. Perfect distance balanced by vigilant awareness. Too much fear could disrupt both sides of the equation. Something had to be done.
Reason said the love potion was either non-existent or a fraud. But proving it was another thing. This was just the sort of challenge he most enjoyed, one that called upon his reason and knowledge to dispel the absurd but incredibly persistent medieval superstitions of the past. Val was just the man to ferret out the truth and stop this nonsense before these hare-witted gallants gulled themselves right into the parson’s mousetrap.
His heart and mind raced together as the idea formed. “My money says it’s a fraud,” he pronounced.
“Then what was your cousin doing to the drinks?” Latimer tugged his gloves again.
He didn’t know. And certainly he wouldn’t find out from Portia, who was as devious as every other female in his family. That, however, only made it more interesting.
“A hundred guineas says I’ll prove it a fraud or find who is responsible and put a stop to it.” Val paused to assess his companions. “Only one condition. Each of you shall be at my disposal to assist me whenever I ask.”
Pink snorted. “Work against our own wagers, Val?”
“If I’m to save your skinny legs from the shackles, yes.”
The wry edge of Pink’s lips formed almost a sneer. “Done.” They rounded the corner and the White Hart came into sight. “Everything you ask and I’ll still take your blunt.”
Val studied his sardonic face. Like Val, Pink was no superstitious fool. Unlike the other gay blades who put their trust in their capricious sweetheart, Lady Luck, Pink won his hand at whist by simple mathematics and memory. Pinkerton would never find himself besotted over a female, by his own will or otherwise. But he knew as well as Val how hard it would be to prove something nonexistent didn’t exist.
“Taken,” said Latimer. “But you got to move fast, Val. I ain’t wanting to be dragged off to the altar against my will, especially not if it’s what I think I want when I don’t.”
“Six weeks. No, better, I’ll have the solution by Michaelmas.”
Latimer nodded, his eyes huge and round. Val knew what it was like to be the object of unwelcome pursuit, one more reason the wager appealed to him. And if nothing else, the prospect of having to pay up three hundred guineas would keep his interest.
They reached the White Hart and walked beneath the stone arch of the entrance. Inside, Latimer eyed the gentlemen lounging in the common room and his chin began to tremble again. Instead of taking his usual brandy, he dashed up the stairs toward his rooms, followed by Whitby.
“Cruel of you, Val,” Pink drawled as they seated themselves at a table.
“The lad drinks too much. Do him good.”
Val studied his cousin as they sat together, quietly sipping their ales. They had been lifelong friends, and spent their childhoods together in Eton and Oxford. Silence was as much their companion as conversation.
“I understand why you won’t tell the greenlings,” Pink said, “but you ought to let me in on your plans. You can’t expect I shall always be able to pick up the thought. What is it about this Lady Ashbroughton that has your interest? Other than the usual things?”
Val took a sip and nodded to acknowledge the unusually fine ale. “Lessons for the green lads,” he said.
“Sure that’s your only interest in her?”
Val caught the wickedly accusing glint in Pink’s eyes. “I won’t be stumbling into the parson’s mousetrap, if that’s what you mean. I noticed you bravely chose the older widow to partner.”
“No trap there. Sorry.” Pink set his tankard down on the table. “I don’t take chances with women. This plan of yours seems to involve some rather close contact with two very eligible young ladies. Rather risky, don’t you think?”
“Perfectly safe. Distance, my good man. Perfect distance at all times. Not up to the risk, are you?”
Pink narrowed a look at him and lifted his pewter tankard to his lips. “If anybody falls into the man trap, it will be you, not me. Or Whitby. Only a good dose of common sense can save him, and I don’t see that in bottles on the chemist’s shelf.”
Val drained his tankard, and the two of them headed off to their rooms. He shut the door behind him.
He was a man who loved a challenge. There was no place in the modern world for superstition, and he delighted in proving it. But now that he had made the bet, how was he to do it? Questioning the ladies was a waste of time, for in the battle between the sexes, no woman played fair. However, if there was a potion, real or fraud, somebody had to be making it, and somebody selling it. That meant it could be traced. And George Boothe Wyndham, Earl of Vailmont, happened to have in his possession that very same empty blue glass bottle his flustered cousin had abandoned in Lady Marston’s anteroom.

Chapter Three

Oh, my heavenly stars! Sylvia’s pulse still pounded in her veins.
“There, Mama, I told you, you are not so old yet,” Amalie said, giggling and whirling around as if she still spun about on the ballroom floor. “He is taken with you, I vow.”
“I am not at all sure I like him,” Sylvia replied as the butler removed her cloak. She smiled blandly, hoping she hid the way her heart was flopping about. Lord Vailmont was not a man to be trusted. He was altogether too charming, too intent on using his charm to get what he wanted. Whatever that was. It would not be her, of course. But what if he had his mind set on Amalie, who was so lovely and had a sizeable enough portion to interest such a man?
“How can you not like him, Mama? He is surely the handsomest of all men here. Save Lord Albert Pinkerton, perhaps.”
“Handsome is as handsome does, and I am not at all sure that one does handsomely.”
Sylvia sat in the drawing room after Amalie and Elizabeth had gone to bed and sipped at her tea that had long since gone cold. Yet it was oddly comforting.
The vision of those dark eyes of a color she could not quite define, one moment murky and piercing as if driven by an angry hammer, yet the next, as he smiled, lit by sparkling stars. He was like Cousin Ralph, who had caught her up in young foolishness and she had believed she loved him. He was like Ashbroughton, wooing her with his charm until once again her foolish heart gave way and opened to a man who only pretended interest to get what he wanted, a respectable wife and mother for his child so he could return to his carousing in Town. But this man was even more dangerous.
Just the man to strip her down to her bare secrets and leave her exposed to the world. Exposed for the fraud she was.
Tensely, Sylvia hugged her arms about her chest. She knew that darker side of herself all too well, the one so easily turned topsy-turvy by a handsome man. And this man left her breathless.
She had things to do, and this man would get in her way. He was handsome to the point of being irritating.
She took a last sip from the cup and set it down on the tray, and smiled. Irritating. That’s what he was, the way he deliberately maneuvered his charming self to ooze over a woman’s senses like sweet honey.
He was not so much a handsome man as he was a dangerous one, unsettlingly so. Taken one by one, his physical traits were not all that marvelous. Now she thought of it, he was flawed.
Quite flawed. She simply had to change the way she thought about him. If she were at home at Willow Combe, she would make herself a charm.
Like a feather, a smirk tickled her lips. A charm against charm. There was a spell in the old books…
But she did not use spells, nor believe in them, and in any case, it was not kind to wish such things on those body parts men so treasured.
But she did not need a real spell or charm. She didn’t have the right ingredients for the original recipe, and she could not remember it, anyway. She was not even sure where to find it if she should go back to look. But she only needed what would work for her. Something practical.
Sylvia set down her green teacup, took up her candlestick and rushed up the stairs to her chamber on the second floor. Violet bounced up from the chair out of a light sleep and hurried over, mumbling apologies. But Sylvia had long since stopped caring about Violet’s little slips, and her mind was already roaming far ahead of the mundane task of undressing. Sylvia forced herself to stop tapping her fingers. It was hard to be patient enough for Violet to finish getting her into her dressing gown so the maid would leave her to her privacy.
At last it was done, and Violet, stifling a yawn, withdrew to the little chamber she occupied in the top floor, one she had made sure Sylvia understood was inadequate.
Sylvia pulled up a chair to the Chippendale writing desk and dipped the silver nib of the quill. First, she would make a list of all his flaws, then decide which ones the charm should contain.
She should begin with his hair, for that surely was the most irritating part of him. It was an odd sort of color, like rich honey or dark amber, but streaked by the sun. Overly long, it had the most bothering way of dangling ent— Oh, glorious heavens, no, it was not enticing. It was unkempt. And it was brown, plain brown, not honey or gold. Brown. And straight. And hung in his eyes like the rags of a mop.

Hair. Too long, brown, streaked, dangles. Unkempt.

Eyes. The second thing on the list, and definitely a fault. They could hardly be called pretty, for they were too intense and glowering, like great, dark clouds from which she expected thunderbolts. A handsome man would have a nice, pleasant blue color to his eyes.

Dark, piercing, glowering.

No, call them murky. Certainly, they were too dark to distinguish any color.
She scratched out dark and wrote murky.
And his skin. Unlike his cousin Lord Albert, or any other gentleman she could recall, it had the golden glow of a tan. How utterly unfashionable! Of course, as the most unfashionable person inhabiting Bath at the moment, she supposed she should not complain on that account. But the purpose was to list his flaws, not hers.

Skin. Tanned. Unfashionably.

He had a nose with a decided bent to it, and cheekbones that looked chiseled from stone, not to mention a strong, square jaw that had the most unusual cleft she had seen in some time. It was not at all attractive. Much too…unsettling. And despite the lightness of his hair, the shadow of his beard was so deep, it gave the impression he had not shaved in hours. But she could not quite decide how to write that down.

Looks unshaven.

Size. Yes, it was probably his size that most annoyed her. He was so tall, she had to look up to him, and Sylvia was a woman who could look most men in the eye. But despite his size, she knew those shoulders must surely be padded, for no man could be so broad across the shoulders, and still be reasonably narrow on the hips. And his legs were so muscular, she had no doubt he resorted to downy calves and thighs to achieve the look. She never could stand that falseness in a man.
Sylvia resolutely printed each flaw onto the paper and sat back to examine it. It seemed too short. She could note his generous mouth with its convoluted curves that was not at all the way a gentleman’s mouth ought to look. Far too sensual.
Perhaps she shouldn’t mention that. It was not wise to think of this man’s lips. Just the thought provoked images that threatened her serenity.
But she could note his personality, the utterly false way he smiled, exuding charm that was meant to manipulate, to win his way. Yes, by all means. Charm. Manipulative charm. Yes. Completely, utterly manipulative. No doubt the man always got what he wanted from women.
No, best not go there. Stick with manipulative charm.
Her lips drew into a narrow line. He was not so handsome after all. It was merely a matter of the way one looked at him.
In the tiniest script she could manage, Sylvia copied her list, tore away the excess paper, and folded the remains four times. For the proper herbs, she substituted her lavender powder, which she rubbed into the paper, then dropped on four drops of her restorative tonic. She crammed the charm inside the paste coral-studded pinchbeck locket that had belonged to her mother and slipped the chain about her neck.
It might not be a proper amulet, but it would do the job. All she would have to do was touch the brass and she would remember he was a man of flaws.
Merely a man, after all.

* * *

Val had barely moved himself and his friends into the house on Laura Place at Henrietta Street, when he abandoned them to begin his sleuthing. With the blue bottle tucked into the slit pocket of his coat, he set out on foot, hunting out the apothecaries of Bath.
The first question was simple enough, and all of them had the same answer. Yes, they recognized the blue bottle. A perfectly common one, blown by a glassblower in Bristol. But no, they didn’t know what it had held. It might have been anything. The bottles were cheap and altogether too common.
And no, none of them had the faintest notion what he was talking about when he asked about a love potion.
On King Street, he stopped at the last shop on his list, smaller than most, a terribly medieval place with tiny whorled glass window panes in an odd assortment of colors. The first floor above teetered so precariously, Val almost considered not entering for the sake of his safety. But he was no coward, and he had a mission.
Inside, the ancient wood plank floor was worn to a smooth gloss, where it was not cracked and dried from age. Only a small, wizened old man, bent at both knees and back, moved about the shop, slowly removing one bottle after another from its shelves, wiping it with a cloth, and setting it back. Ignoring Val’s entrance, he squinted at the bottle he had just set back, and squared it so that it aligned perfectly with the others on the shelf.
Val cleared his throat.
The old man gave a half nod, but did not turn. He wiped the last bottle on the shelf, then turned and in his slow shuffle, made his way back to the counter where Val stood. He adjusted his bent spectacles and squinted again, but this time at Val.
Val set the little blue bottle down on the oak counter. Bushy white brows lifted as the man peered over the top rim of his spectacles, but he said nothing.
“Can you tell me what it is?” Val asked.
“A blue bottle,” said the chemist.
Val tried to find a smile that did not look too pained. He knew that. “And?”
“Comes from Bristol. Buy some myself, from time to time. You’d be wanting some?”
“Not the bottle. I want to know what was in it.”
The old man’s creased lips pursed, and he picked up the bottle and sniffed. “Can’t say I’d know. Label’s gone. A hint of lavender to it, maybe. Could’ve been anything.”
Val felt his heart sink into his stomach as his last hope faded. His great lead was worthless, after all. “It’s said to be a love potion,” he said.
“Ah.” The old fellow straightened visibly. “Now, there’s a thought. Wouldn’t think a healthy young fellow like you would need that sort of thing.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Val snatched back the bottle. “There’s a rumor going around about a love potion and I’m trying to find out where it started. A number of gentlemen are concerned about being caught up by the idea.”
“Ah. Imagine they would be. No such thing, though, you know.”
Val grumbled to himself. Of course he knew that. However, proving it was turning out to be another matter entirely.
“You don’t want an apothecary, lad. You want a witch.”
“There are no witches,” Val growled back.
“No, no. Of course not.”
“Thank you for your help,” Val said, and turned back toward the door.
“Used to be a family of them up in the Cotswolds, though.”
Val turned back and responded with a patient nod.
“Used to be known for just this sort of thing. Herbs and potions. Love potions and the like, was their specialty. Wilburmartins, I recall. One of them even burned at the stake, some time back.”
With a sigh, Val reminded himself he was the one who wanted information, so the least he could do was to be polite enough to hear it. “Who are these Wilburmartins?”
“Oh, don’t think there are any Wilburmartins left.”
Val’s jaw tightened, and he shoved back the stray lock of hair that flopped down over his forehead.
“Last one married a Bibury. Viscount, I think he was. Hear she’s quite an herbalist. Finest gardens in the whole of the Cotswolds.”
Val perked up. “Bibury? That wouldn’t be Viscount Ashbroughton, would it?”
The old man cocked his head as he frowned. “Could be. Yes, think so. Queer folk, all of them. Descended from Druids, they say. Women are priestesses or some sort of thing. Strange rituals, potions, cures. Then that business about the witch. ’Course, there’s no such thing now. But makes you wonder, don’t it?”
Lady Ashbroughton? The perfectly demure lady who hid her beautiful body beneath the ugliest garments he had ever seen? Who turned crimson at the mere mention of the word “pleasure”? Making love potions?
It was all Val could do to nod pleasantly and thank the man for his information. With a deep breath to control his rising anger, he forced himself to walk out of the shop like a civilized man. Devil it! And she had played such an innocent! Nothing more than the step-mama attempting to fire off her daughter, was she? Damn, but he couldn’t believe he’d let a woman fool him again!
But wait. Taking brisk strides and breathing in the evening air, he let his anger cool. He was a man of logic, not one to let himself jump to conclusions over old wives’ tales. Just what did this prove? So she grew herbs and had beautiful gardens. Did that make her a witch? Or even a purveyor of potions? Many women enjoyed gardening. Even his own mother was known to putter about from time to time, as long as her hands did not actually touch the soil. It was hardly grounds to proclaim the lady a witch because some ancestor of hers had a six-toed cat. Or green eyes. It was probably the green eyes, if they were anything like Lady Ashbroughton’s.
And besides, there were no witches!
Val dragged in another deep breath as he headed down the hill. He turned onto Argyle Street, and crossed the Pulteney Bridge to Laura Place. There was still the glassblower in Bristol.
The following morning, he mounted a hired chestnut gelding and set out at a canter on the Bristol Road. He quickly found the glassblower, whose blown blue glass bottles were widely known, and at the shop, Val dismounted and entered, all but knocked over by the suffocating blast of overheated air pouring from the blowing room. He set the little blue bottle down on the counter.
Less than an hour later, Val stomped out, his face heated like fire, sweat pouring off his brow and stinging his eyes. It ran down his neck and soaked his collar, and streamed down his chest, drenching his shirt.
His face burned fiery red, but not from the heat of the glass furnaces. His fists clenched like iron bands around a barrel. The sticky air of a hot summer day should have been like a refreshing breeze after the glassblower’s workshop, but it didn’t cool him down. He threw himself up into the gelding’s saddle and goaded the beast to a trot.
By God, she was not going to get away with this!

Chapter Four
As the bright rays of morning sun flowed through the southern window and illuminated Elizabeth’s golden hair, Sylvia watched her friend set down her green Meissen chocolate cup. One golden eyebrow lifted to a delicate peak.
“They say he murdered his wife, you know.”
Sylvia choked on her chocolate and pressed her napkin to her mouth. There was some unfathomable darkness in Lord Vailmont’s eyes, but surely he had not stooped to murder.
“Of course I do not believe it,” Elizabeth continued, setting down her cup. “Yet there is something a bit havey-cavey about him.”
“Do at least tell me whether his wife is alive or dead,” Sylvia replied between coughs.
Elizabeth smiled, or perhaps it should be said, almost smiled, for she seemed to be frowning at the same time. “Oh, she is quite dead. But they had separated quite abruptly. I believe there was some talk about a divorce, when she died quite suddenly. I am sorry I cannot recall. I tend not to pay close attention to such things, you know. I shall have to find out for you.”
Oh, no, Elizabeth did not pay close attention to gossip. And pigs flew. “Oh, really, Elizabeth, I have no interest in the man, except as how he might assist Millie in finding the husband of her heart.” But Sylvia felt her heart thudding inexplicably.
“All the more reason to pay careful attention. You would not want an improper association. I fear my memory is lax, but I do remember there was quite a scandal only a few years back. A pity you hide yourself in the country, or you would undoubtedly know of it. And I cannot say I quite trust him. Certainly, I have no confidence in his mother, but of course one does not say such a thing in company.”
“What is wrong with his mother?”
Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully. “Mmm, I cannot quite say. There is something a bit unsettling about a woman who prates incessantly about nothing as if she has not an actual thought in her head, but narrows her eyes like sharp daggers when she thinks no one is looking.” Elizabeth waved to a footman to remove the chocolate tray. “Well, my dear, it is time to tear young Amalie away from her dressing table. Might you wear that divine new sea green dress today instead of your brown?”
Sylvia winced, looking down at her perfectly serviceable brown silk. “Violet said it had some mud on the hem, but perhaps she has brushed it off.”
“Surely, by now.” Elizabeth started for the stairs. “I cannot imagine where you might have found mud, since you wore it but an hour before you had it off for that black monstrosity. And you might make use of my dresser to style your hair. She did a fine job for you before the assembly.”
Sylvia shook her head. “It is quite enough for her to manage one lady. Violet can do my hair.” Sylvia neglected to mention Violet’s skills were so utterly lacking that Sylvia took care of her own hair. “As I have no aspirations to marriage, I cannot see what reason I might have to dress myself up like a young girl coming out.”
“Don’t be silly. Your consequence and Amalie’s are utterly tied. It will appear you have gone shabby because you cannot afford to dress the both of you. And whether it be truth or no, you cannot allow it to be thought.”
Sylvia tightened her lips. The more she dressed herself up, the less matronly she looked. If only she didn’t look so much younger than her years. It was bad enough that she was not quite ten years older than Amalie.
At the top of the stairs, Sylvia turned toward her chamber, trying to find a smile for her friend, whose devious intentions were not all that obscure. She could excuse Elizabeth, whose own marriage had been a passable one. But Sylvia’s had not. Oh, she could not say it had been bad. It was simply not an experience that bore repeating.
But already she heard the butler’s voice in the foyer below and recognized the lion-purring voice of the gentleman she had found so unsettling the night before. She sighed. There was no time now to change from the mud brown silk into that dress Elizabeth called the divine sea green. Sylvia gathered Amalie from her chamber, smiling at the girl’s beguiling beauty. Millie was too trusting, but then, as Elizabeth had said, that was why girls had chaperones. And Sylvia would tear the eyes out of the man who tried to hurt her beloved stepdaughter.
What about the other three men below? Was Mr. Whitby, who appeared so innocuous, secretly a cold and callous rake? How was one to tell? Sylvia was but six and twenty, and suddenly that no longer felt old, but far too young.
Then, looking over the top of Millie’s guinea gold curls as she descended the stairs, Sylvia caught the dark gleam of Lord Vailmont’s eyes and felt her throat close down.
She forced a breath, clutched the banister and hunted up one of those vapid smiles that said nothing at all. With each step downward, she felt her pulse go wilder. Vailmont’s eyes seemed to impale her, that enigmatic look of his that was half frown, half something she couldn’t interpret, and all charm, all at the same time. Something seethed beneath the surface, she was sure, and every fiber in her body screamed to her to turn and run, run back up the stairs and bolt herself in the safety of her chamber.
She kept going down. Step, step, by step. Squaring her shoulders and holding her head high, wishing she had some of Elizabeth’s marvelous aplomb. But this time she would outwit her weakness, for she wore her mother’s locket on a chain around her neck. She would need only to think of the secret list inside it, or merely whiff the aroma of lavender that wafted up from it, and she would be immune to his handsome charm.
The four men waited in the inner entrance in ill-concealed tension. Poor Mr. Latimer was breaking out in a sweat. Mr. Whitby clenched and released his fists repeatedly. Lord Albert, on the other hand, merely let his mouth take a sardonic twist as he bowed low over each lady’s hand.
She nodded to the gentlemen. Then she caught Lord Vailmont’s stabbing gaze again. A shiver ran down her spine. Did he never look away? Or blink? No matter. Her fluttering eyelids were blinking enough for both of them.
Abruptly, he smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. But then the hardness returned. Sylvia glanced down at her plain brown silk dress, and wished she had worn the divine sea green, after all.
But no. She did not want to please him. It was just the murky darkness of his intense, unsettling eyes. One of those things on her list. Possibly the one she held most in dislike. After that stray lock of honey-colored hair that insisted on slinging itself most inappropriately over his forehead.
The earl jerked his head, blinking suddenly, which surprised her. He bowed slightly and once again put on that false charm that so annoyed Sylvia, while it sent Elizabeth and Amalie into spasms of delight.
“The morning is bright but cool, ladies,” he said in that pleasant voice of his that was such a sham of good manners. “We must take advantage of the fine weather, for it will soon be gone.”
“Indeed,” said Elizabeth. “The leaves are turning early this year.” She slipped a sky blue pelisse over a darker blue dress, then frowned expectantly at Sylvia and nodded pointedly at a footman who held out Elizabeth’s green pelisse for Sylvia to don.
Sylvia sighed and slipped off the brown shawl she had knitted herself. As she donned the green garment, even she could see in the mirror that her skin took on a rosier hue. Oh, that was not what she wanted at all!
They stepped out onto the street with its golden paving stones. His arm linked in hers, he walked in silence beside her, down Great Pulteney Street toward Sydney Gardens, their footsteps whishing like whispers in the cool morning air. The clink of hooves from the occasional carriage rang on the cobblestones, and sedan chairs whisked by. The crowd walking toward the Gardens chittered like excited starlings searching the grass for insects after a rain, yet over their noise she could hear the quiet rhythm of his breathing. He was like a giant, filling up all the space.
Why could he not have paired himself with Elizabeth? It certainly would have been more proper, for his was the superior rank among the men. The tips of her fingers ran over the smooth merino fabric of his coat, almost as if they could feel its intense blue color.
It was her failing that she liked handsome men altogether too much. But this one, she had decided she would not like at all. Because he was not really handsome.
No, she preferred a man whose face might be found on an angel in the stained glass windows of the cathedral. No painter of the Heavenly Host would have ever chosen this man as his model, with his rakish hair, devilish eyes and face as rugged as a mountain cliff. Not to mention a body more befitting a common laborer than a gentleman of the ton.
She breathed more easily and caressed the smooth brass of the locket. Yes, she would be safe.
Seated at the long table in the tavern, with sun cutting shafts of light through the French windows, the party took on the air of gaiety. Sylvia focused on her plate, yet saw nothing on it. Yes, not looking at him was a decidedly good idea. Lord Vailmont sat beside her and joked pleasantly with Elizabeth, threaded a teasing compliment to Amalie, but said nothing to her. Yet every now and then, some compulsion forced her to look his way, and his eyes were always fixed on her, amused, annoyed, accusing, demanding. Always that charming glimmer that made her melt inside.
She could not tell. She could not read the man. He seemed clothed in darkness. Yet something told her he was angry beneath that smile. Very angry.
Not at her, surely. She hadn’t done anything to him.
The clarinets and horns began the music, a bright and lively country dance. Mr. Whitby leapt up from the table, the first to seek Amalie’s hand, and with his eager eyes, he sought Sylvia’s approval. Uncertainty hit her, and she both nodded and shook her head at the same time. The freckle-faced young man took it as permission and dashed off, Amalie skipping happily along.
It seemed barely months ago that Millie was a little girl. Sylvia could still see the morose child with skinny arms and tousled white-blonde hair in a white dress that was too small as she peeked around the newel post of the floor above, then vanished the moment she realized she had been spotted by the new, strange woman in her life. How different that child had become, and in such a short time.
And how hard it would be to let her go!
“I confess I find dancing at breakfast a bit daunting,” Sylvia mumbled, almost hoping she was not heard.
“I would rather walk in the garden,” he replied. “Will you join me, Lady Ashbroughton?”
His voice was so sweetly pleasant and proper. But from the darkness in his eyes, something wild and dangerous was flashing. Sylvia’s eyes darted back in Millie’s direction. The two skipped and bounced along the walk in their eagerness to join the dancers. Which was worse, watching Millie launch herself into her new life without her step-mama? Or turning away and walking into the garden in the company of a man whose very presence signaled danger?
“Oh, do go on, dear,” said Elizabeth. “I shall stay with the young people. I do not mind the breakfast dances, but then I have become accustomed to them over the years.”
Sylvia gritted her teeth. Undercut again. Did Elizabeth have any notion how much she was overset by this gentleman whose essence seemed to boil just beneath his skin?
Probably.
She sighed and gave up her arm for escort.
Leaving the boisterous music behind, they followed the stone path away from the pavilion that threaded in desultory fashion through the green park. She paused beside a terraced pool where a flower bed was slowly giving up its ghosts to the encroaching autumn. A sigh sneaked out beneath her breath.
“It does not please you,” he said. His voice broke the silence between them and startled her.
“Oh, it is quite nice. But this is a garden that is best enjoyed in spring or summer. It does not have much to recommend it in autumn. It is a pity to have a garden that can only sometimes be enjoyed.”
“Have you ever seen Stourhead?” he asked. “You would find it beautiful any time of year. I have a fondness for autumn, and few places show it as well as Stourhead.”
“Indeed. I should like to see it sometime.”
“Perhaps I shall take you.”
She glanced up at him. Odd, that he did not ask, nor even state. For a fleeting moment, a warm gleam adorned his dark eyes, then vanished as once more the hardness, like cold steel, invaded. She saw the thick muscles in his jaw tighten. Whatever was going on inside him, she did not like it.
“Are you enjoying your stay in Bath, Lady Ashbroughton?”
“Bath has its delights. But I am a country girl.”
“Then why are you here? Not just to visit with your friend?”
“No. I confess I would happily let Lady Lyndonbury do all the visiting, but Amalie is to come out soon, and she has need of a bit of bronze before going to Town.”
“Ah. A matchmaking mama.”
“Indeed. That is my formidable task.”
“Why bother with Town, then?” She saw again that accusing light gleaming in his eyes. “Perhaps you are looking for a suitable parti here?”
She attempted a smile, then found she did not want to bother, and let her eyes stab back, directly into his. “Bath is passé these days, Lord Vailmont. I shall not find a suitable match for her here.”
The golden eyebrow rose again over narrowed eyes.
“Do you fear for yourself, Lord Vailmont? I assure you, you are much too old for her.”
“Am I? Many a maneuvering mama would consider an earl of any age suitable for her daughter.”
“Not I. Let the others maneuver for your favors. I suspect they shall not find them.”
“Indeed, they shall not.” He stopped and folded his arms and slanted his head at her in a particularly suspicious way. “Do you really wish to tell me you would pass up a title for your daughter?”
“Not the title, my lord,” she replied. “The man. You are clearly a most charming man, Lord Vailmont.”
He startled, and his sharp gaze slid sideways at her again, swinging like the slash of a scythe.
Sylvia stiffened her back even more, as if she expected an assault from which she would not flinch. “However, I cannot help but think you are not fond of women.”
He took two more steps and stopped. His turn toward her was slow and his gaze dragged over her as if he assessed a horse at Tattersall’s, expecting it to be found wanting.
He folded his arms. “I’m not.”
“I suspect you do not actually like them at all.”
He nodded again, his jaw set hard, yet she thought something sparked or twinkled in his eyes. “I do not.”
“I must say then, I do not understand why you choose to waste your charm on me.”
One corner of his elegant mouth turned up in a wry twist, and with it, one honey-colored brow arched. “Perhaps I did not realize it was wasted.”
“Were I a gentleman, I would tell you to stubble it.”
He nodded. “Touché.” He laughed, short and cut off. Then, before she could stop him, he gripped her elbow and steered Sylvia down the path to the labyrinth, through the entrance between the tall hedges with their glossy, dark green leaves clipped to precision into tall, perfectly vertical walls.
Scurrying along, she glanced his way quickly, then down. “I really do not wish to take the time to investigate the labyrinth today, my lord.”
“It is not difficult, madam. If you do not wish to go all the way through, we may simply turn around and go back.”
“And suppose we become lost?”
She wondered if he had heard her. He stopped, saying nothing, only searching her with those intensely deep eyes. His tongue licked over the surface of his lower lip, leaving a sheen. The pit of her stomach did a twist as she pictured those lips with their elegant twists and curves touching hers.
Nonsense! She did not wish to be kissed by him! She fingered the pinchbeck locket and recited in her mind the list of his faults. Yes, that lock of golden hair bleached by the sun still dangled down before his eyes in its provoking way. His dark gaze with its indeterminable color and unsettling intensity still…unsettled her. And those lips. Oh, heaven help her, it was best not to think about those delicious lips. Yet the thought would not go away.
He stared too long. The tremor in her heart pulsed in her throat. Then, as if taken back out of a daze, he jerked his head and canted it toward the entrance in the hedges. “Labyrinths are simple enough. Almost all mazes and labyrinths have a right-hand bias. Therefore, one merely places one’s left hand against the hedge to one’s left, and keeps walking, always with one’s hand touching the hedge. And if one wishes to go back the way one came, the process is simply reversed. So you see, we may return at any time you wish.”
With a wary breath, Sylvia walked through the entrance between the tall laurels that formed the walls of the labyrinth, grazing her fingers along its shiny leaves. For a few moments, only their footsteps crunching on the gravel made any sound. He had a clean, earthy scent to him, like the depths of a forest after a rain.
“You are a gardener, are you not, Lady Ashbroughton?” he asked.
“I enjoy gardening, yes.”
“I have heard you have one of the loveliest gardens in the Cotswolds, with as fine a collection of herbs as can be found.”
Whatever was the havey-cavey fellow getting at? She inclined her head for a narrow look at him. “Who might have told you that, Lord Vailmont?”
“An apothecary, actually.” Lord Vailmont fixed his gaze ahead, where the path between the hedges appeared to come to an abrupt end. “An old man who knew a story about a family with unusual knowledge of herbs and cures. And a woman who was once burned at the stake for witchcraft. The Wilburmartins of Willow Combe. Your family, is it not?”
“It is.” She drew out her words slowly, as they reached the bend and went to their left. A few feet farther on, an opening appeared on their left, and he instructed her to follow along it, always with her hand against the hedge. She smiled at him in a way that reflected a great deal more patience than she felt.
“Lucy Wilburmartin was my ancestor.” Sylvia drew another breath, forcing calmness on herself. “That was nearly two hundred years ago. The Wilburmartins have always been herbalists. Lucy made the mistake of curing the wrong person, and for that was condemned as a witch. Since then, we have been more careful to keep our knowledge to ourselves.”
“Do you keep it to yourself, Lady Ashbroughton?”
She stopped cold and turned a hard glare on him. “Make your point, Lord Vailmont.”
The glitter in his eyes turned to steel, gleaming and cold, as the thick muscle in his jaw worked. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew the little blue glass bottle. “Do you recognize this?”
She gasped. Fear pierced her like a shaft of ice.

He knew.

Sylvia held her breath and gripped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “It is a blue glass bottle.”
“How enlightening.”
“It is the specialty of a blower in Bristol. I can provide you with his name if you wish it.”
“I have it. That is not my concern. I am more interested in your connection to this particular bottle.”
She could feel her pulse speeding up. “I cannot imagine how it concerns you, Lord Vailmont.”
The darkness in his eyes grew dusky, as malevolent as a dragon bearing down on her with the intent to consume her whole. “Ordinarily, it would not, if it were not for the way this bottle came into my possession.”
Sylvia arched a brow but said nothing. Her hands gripped into fists.
“I found it in the possession of my cousin, who was surreptitiously slipping drops of an unknown substance into a glass of punch.”
Her jaw gaped. She clamped it shut.
“Shortly afterward, the gentleman who drank the drink, who was a friend of mine and as avowed a bachelor as I have known, eloped with her to Gretna Green.”
Her throat constricted. Her breath caught in her lungs and would not be forced out. It couldn’t be!

No. Compose yourself. Sylvia took a deep breath and slowly let it go. “Do you mean to intimate a connection?”
“The word among the bachelors of the ton is that a love potion is being used.”
Her eyes snapped suddenly wide, and her fear drained away just as suddenly as it had come on. A laugh burst from her before she could stop it. He knew, but he didn’t know! He was off on the wrong trail!
But he knew enough to ruin her, so she’d best be careful. “Do you believe in such things, my lord? I am appalled! If a love potion existed, it would quickly become the most popular concoction known to man. I daresay your victim merely drank too much of some alcoholic beverage, and seeks to lay the blame for his actions elsewhere.”
“Quite frankly, I thought the same. I am a man of logic, and am not easily persuaded. However, in the past two weeks, seven gentlemen have married unexpectedly.”
“Appalling, I’m sure. Gentlemen do marry, however.”
“Not these gentlemen. All confirmed bachelors, intent on remaining so.”
Sylvia snickered and held her hand to her mouth to keep from bursting into a full-blown laugh. The man was serious! But the more she laughed, the more he glowered.
“And so,” she replied, suppressing giggles that somehow refused to be squelched, “rather than accept the possibility that some affirmed bachelors might have actually found bliss in marriage, it has been decided to place the blame on a liquid in a blue bottle. A love potion. Really, my lord, how many drops do you suppose it takes? Two? Three? Perhaps the entire contents, dosed out over a week?”
“You would not think it so funny if female freedom were at stake.”
“Oh, but females are expected to give away their freedom as a matter of course, give up any right to ownership of property or even right to make their own decisions, and that is of no concern to men.”
“On the contrary, madam, females do not have the capacity to make their own decisions with any reliability. And they rarely own property to give up, except what is given to them in the first place, so that is a moot point. And it is my experience that manipulative females engage in deceitful and devious behavior to control their households, despite their husbands. It is no wonder to me, men wish to avoid the parson’s mousetrap, for it is indeed a trap.”
Sylvia’s nostrils flared. “Bitter, are we?”
His eyes flashed like sabers in the sun. Sylvia lurched back, suddenly ruing her sharp tongue.
“You may be sure, madam, I am. Experience has taught me well. So I advise you strongly, do not try your potions or wiles on me. They will be wasted. And do not deny to me that this bottle comes from you.”
At his first remark, fury rose in her like gorge, but she tamped it down. She had brought it on, after all, with her haughty retort, and she might as well accept responsibility for it.
Sylvia took a deep breath and clasped her hands before her, with a stern promise to herself to mind her manners better. “Your hounds are off the scent, Lord Vailmont. That is naught but a tonic for women. It has nothing to do with men.”
“You are, nevertheless, engaging in commerce.”
She sneered. “Surely a crime worthy of deportation.”
“Come now, Lady Ashbroughton, you are not so ignorant. Ladies of your class do not soil their hands with trade.”
That did it. Her cheek hot as fire, eyes blazing, she drew up as tall as she might. “I should not expect you to understand, Lord Vailmont, and I see no reason to discuss it with you further.” Sylvia spun around and strode away from him, back down the path they had come.
“The best of reasons, Lady Ashbroughton,” he called after her. “You do not want me to tell.”
She halted abruptly on the gravel path, gripping her fists in her determination not to turn back to him, for if she did, surely one of her hands would fly loose and clip him in the jaw. Gravel crunched behind her as he caught up. As he stepped alongside her, Sylvia fixed her vision on the tall hedge of the labyrinth at her opposite side and quickened her steps. She would not turn to face him. Would not.
Lord Vailmont surely stood a full head taller than she. His shadow fell across her, as intimidating as the man himself. Sylvia grasped the locket in her fingers. Of everything on her list, surely his great height was his most annoying feature, which he did not fail to use to her disadvantage. But he could not intimidate her with his imposing size if she did not look at him. And she needed no amulet to protect her from such atrocious behavior. He was repellant enough, without any help.
“You have a part in this, Lady Ashbroughton,” he said, his voice almost a growl. “And you do not want it known among the ton that you are naught but an herb-monger, if not an actual quack.”
“How dare you?” she seethed. Ladybug on the branch. Look at the ladybug. Don’t look at him. Her hand on the locket tightened into a fist as she gave thought to unclenching it and sending the hand flying at his face. But she had never hit a person in her life, and reminded herself sternly she would never do so. Not even now.
“My friends are being tricked into marriages they otherwise would not want. Why are you doing this, Lady Ashbroughton?”
Rage stinging her eyes like sparks from a fire, she whirled on him. “I am doing nothing to hurt your friends, sir. I make a potion, discreetly, sir, in my own home. Lady Aphrodite’s Restorative Tonic for Women is an effective receipt known to my family for many generations. I market it, also discreetly, since, as you say, a lady must not dabble in trade. I am supporting my daughter in the only way I can, and preparing her for the come-out her guardian cannot bother to finance.”
He blinked and stepped back as if she had shoved him. Sylvia’s nostrils flared. She rather wished she had. Perhaps it was not too late.
“Do you mean to intimate her guardian is not obligated to support her?”
“Do I intimate? Then I have not spoken strongly enough! It is an obligation he chooses to ignore and I choose not to press if I wish him not to take her from me. What can you know about it, sir? You hold in your hand a common blue bottle, yet from it you make of me a vile purveyor of false and impossible potions. It is clear to me the welfare of your lack-witted friends whose silly superstitions rule them is more important to you than the welfare of a kind and innocent girl. You may do as you will, Lord Vailmont. I will not be held hostage by your threats.”
This time she spun around and kept on going, turning the corner in the laurel hedges of the labyrinth back toward the entrance to the hedge, ignoring him as he called after her, until she reached the next turn.

Which way? Sylvia chose right. It made sense, didn’t it? If she had been turning left, all the way in, then right would take her out of here. Wouldn’t it? The next turn seemed miles away, but she sprinted along, hearing his rapid footsteps rushing up to her. By Heaven, she wished he would just stomp off instead!
“Lady Ashbroughton, do slow down. I did not wish to insult you.”
When Heaven fell to earth, she would. “Your words were clearly aimed to insult. Do you not have control of them?”
“Perhaps I should have chosen other words,” he replied. “I admit, the mere use of a bottle does not incriminate you.”
Sylvia clenched her teeth. Maybe she should have slapped him!
She reached the turn. Lord Vailmont stepped in front of her, blocking her path and forcing her to a halt just before she collided with his blue coat.
“Lady Ashbroughton, do forgive me. I find you brave. Not many women would undertake the task you have. Most would cry helpless.”
“I would rather die.” She folded her arms with a jerk, studying both sides of him for a way around.
His dark eyes swam with some indefinable emotion. “Yes, I can see that.”
She took a step left, but he shifted in front of her, still blocking her passage. She stepped right, and he shifted again. She glared.
His eyes deepened in their intensity as he grasped her arms. “Lady Ashbroughton, I realize I have offended you—”
“And you offend me more now, sir. Please remove your hands from my person.”
To her surprise, he huffed and dropped his hands, and she slipped past him, to continue striding as fast as she might toward her freedom from this imperious fool.
“Lady Ashbroughton, it is in your best interests to work with me on this matter.”
“Oh, indeed.” If she could walk faster, she would, not that it would do the least bit of good since he obviously could also walk faster. But if she could just get back to where there were other people, he would not dare continue his molestation of her good name.
Ahead of her was the end of the last turn before the entrance. She was sure of it. She strode on, Lord Vailmont crunching gravel right behind her, as she rounded the turn.
It was a dead end.
One large, solid, blue-sleeved arm shot out in front of her all the way to the hedge and he gripped a leafy branch. She backed up. The other arm pinned her from behind.
“Lady Ashbroughton,” he said in a low voice as smooth as dark, wild honey.
“Sir,” she growled back as she edged backward into the laurel.
“You’re going the wrong way.”

Chapter Five
Sylvia backed up against the hedge, as far from his overwhelming presence as she could get. “It cannot be the wrong direction unless you have given me false directions in the first place,” she said.
“But you have failed to follow my directions. You made a right turn instead of a left twice, and missed another entirely.”
“I am sure I did not. And in any case, you told me I should go right instead of left if I were going back the way I came.” But she looked at her left hand, which was located more or less beneath the arm that was pinning her, and not particularly easy to see, and realized she had forgotten entirely to keep it against the hedge.
“However, like most women, you have no sense of direction. You have gone the wrong way in the first place, madam.”
“I am sure I did not.”
One golden eyebrow glinted in the sunlight as it rose like the sharp point of a Gothic arch.
“Then just how are we going to get out of here?”
He cocked his head. “A very good question.” He leaned closer. Sylvia could feel his warm breath grazing across her ear, for she had just turned her face away from him, rather than see the exquisite curves of his lips as they came much too close to hers.
“I rather think,” she said, feeling her breath quicken, “it would be nice if you were to step back perhaps a pace or two.”
“Do you?” She felt the tip of a gloved finger catch up a dangling strand of hair and tuck it back behind the ear. “You have rather nice hair, Lady Ashbroughton. Despite that incredibly ugly bonnet.”
She gasped. Her pulse was pounding in her ears. She thought of shoving his hand away and fleeing, but there still was that small problem of where to go. She pushed against his chest. His narrowed eyes merely grew more smug.
“The leaves are healthier on this side of the hedge,” she said. “Darker, brighter green. They get more sunlight.”
“An excellent deduction. You now know north from south. How will that help you get out?”
Great Heavens, she didn’t know, but she had to think of something. “The entrance of the maze is on the north side, so we shall simply keep going in that direction as much as we might, and it will eventually get us there, I am sure.”
“Are you sure, Lady Ashbroughton?” he purred. “Or perhaps we should simply wander until we find the exit.”
Sylvia felt a sneer coming on.
“Or perhaps you would care to follow me. Come.” He held out his hand in such a magnanimous gesture, she gave great thought to slapping it.
But she didn’t. Her nose wrinkled up in disgust instead. “Why?”
“I know the way.”
“And of course you do, with every path looking exactly like every other.”
“To any man, Lady Ashbroughton, it would be obvious. Any man would have paid attention and used his superior reasoning ability. But perhaps you wish to spend the day wandering instead of returning to your charge to see if Whitby has made off with her to The Bear and hopped the next coach to Gretna Green.”
Once again he extended the finely gloved hand.
Her face warped in a stifled growl, Sylvia slowly reached out her hand. He snatched it and with an imperious grin began to tug her along the narrow gravel path, Sylvia stumbling with his speed.
Insect. And she had thought him charming?
“Come along, Lady Ashbroughton. We need only to use our rational minds, and follow my original instructions.”
“Well, that might have worked before, but as you have pointed out, we have made several false turns already.”
“You made them, my dear. I merely followed. But no mind. The same instructions will apply.”
“How do you know?”
“I tested my theory last week. Right hand on the hedge, now. And let us begin.”
“Not left?”
He grasped her hand and placed it against the glossy leaves. “You will recall, we have gone the wrong direction. You need not fear me, my lady. I do not wish to harm you.”
Not harm her? The man utterly reeked of danger! Not to mention disgusting, imperious, toadlike qualities!
Like a proper gentleman, and Sylvia had to concede he did have the ability to behave like one when he chose to do so, Lord Vailmont took her arm on his as he continued at a slower pace that was almost dignified. She supposed there was little else to do but go along and hope he was not merely blowing smoke, as she suspected he was perfectly capable of doing.
“I only seek your cooperation. I shall avoid exposing you to ridicule. I know altogether too well the slings and arrows of scandal, and I would not wish that upon anyone else.”
At that, she paused, eying him warily. That probably was about the best he could do for an apology, and arrogant though it was, it was still somewhat better than most men might manage. She licked her lower lip, pondering her next step. After all, what did she have to lose? She had never been one to mince words.
“Not altogether surprising,” she said, “as I have heard it said you murdered your wife. Although the strangling of one’s wife is such a petty faux pas compared to the taint of commerce.”
His head jerked up in surprise. “Murder? I assure you, I did no such thing.”
She shrugged. “Ah, those slanderous gossips.”
For a moment, he said nothing. She might have thought she had won a point, with his gaze suddenly fixed straight before him. But then she watched him slowly swallowing. The tip of his tongue grazed slowly across his lower lip.
“She died in childbirth. That can hardly equate with strangulation.”
She winced, as if she had viciously drawn blood. “I am sorry,” she said, suddenly unable to meet his gaze, and fixed on the gravel path that crunched beneath her slippers. “It was perfectly awful of me to insult your grief in such a way.”
“You see?” he replied softly. “I know the power of slander. I would not wish it on anyone. I suppose you want to know the truth, then.”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I have always made it my business not to know such things.”
“Yet you seem to have heard it somewhere. And I know such things about you.”
She shrugged warily. The hedge came to an end, and Sylvia followed it around to its opposite side, back in the direction they had just come, westward, for she was paying careful attention now. Not far away, she could hear the chime of voices, but the dense thicket of dark leaves prevented her from seeing the people who were speaking.
His jaw was as tight as a vise, and for a moment, she wondered if he would say nothing more. He did not seem to her like the sort of man who would share his pain, or even admit its existence. But he expelled a rather loud breath and began. “No, Lady Ashbroughton, I shall demonstrate to you my good faith, and tell you what you may hold against me as assurance that I will not vilify you. My wife did die, and you may be sure I thought of violence. But by that time, she was out of my reach. You heard of the divorce, too, I presume?”
“I-I did not know about that.”
“There was none, but there would have been. She died in childbirth, so it became moot. But obviously that has only added fuel to the fire of gossip.”
“Murder by childbirth. That would be difficult. You have a child, then?”
“More or less.”
She frowned. “How can one more or less have a child? Ah, so that is the scandal.”
The arm that was locked in hers stiffened, and his jaw jutted. Sylvia felt her heart beginning to soften. How terrible she had been! She had never suffered through any such pain. How could she attack him so?
“A very pretty little girl, so they say.”
It seemed to be hard for him to look at her, and even in the corner of his eye that she could see as she walked beside him, she saw pain.
“You have not seen her? Is she not yours, then?”
“So said my wife. But as there was no divorce, nor even a legal separation, she remains legally mine. She lives with the man who is said to be her father.”
“You still could have filed a crim. con. suit.”
“To what purpose? To bastardize a child? She is not a son, in line for the title. Some things are best left as they fall.”
She nodded, fighting down the impulse to touch his hand. “Yes. Life will hurt her enough as it is.”
“And, madam, it has now been said. It does not bear repeating. We will not discuss it again. But as you see, Lady Ashbroughton, I have reason enough not to hurt you.”
“Yet you do, my lord, if you believe I am a threat to the realm’s last bastion of bachelorhood. And I vow, I did perceive a threat in your words.”
He looked away, and Sylvia felt a sudden stab of guilt, then frowned at her own silliness. She had done nothing more than defend herself. Yet the odd look on his face twisted her heart in ways she had forgotten since the days of Amalie’s childhood had come to an end. But however good the man might be at card-playing with his friends, he did not hide his thoughts all that well. She knew what he was doing now. She could see by the way his mouth twitched on one side and moved about, he was swallowing his own guilt and searching for that lost smile of charm that would bring their disagreement to an end.
He found it. Sweet in a way she never thought a rogue like him would ever manage. Her heart turned to soft, pooling butter.
“And here we are, madam, as promised.”
Once again they turned around the thick hedge, and found themselves in bright sunlight. Vailmont’s eyes crinkled at their corners as if in genuine affection, and though she knew better, something in her heart longed for that to be true.
But it wasn’t.
“Since it did not take us all day to escape the maze after all, let us walk a bit longer and let that flush fade from your cheeks,” he said, “else the gossips will decide I have assaulted you. Perhaps even attempted murder, since they appear to think that is my wont.”
Try as she might, she could not quash the smile that wriggled about on her lips. “As you are thought to murder only wives, I believe I am safe.” She allowed him to hook his arm in hers again, and the last of her heated flush began to cool as they walked.
“I really do need your help, Lady Ashbroughton,” he said. “It is quite a mystery, and I have only the month to unravel it. There is a wager. A very substantial one.”
She smirked. So he was already back to charming her. “And I have my own obligations. I have come here to see my daughter acquire a bit of bronze before her Season. I could not abandon that responsibility for a mere wager, despite its importance to you.”
He returned to silence as the path angled back toward the parade grounds.
“I can help you,” he said. “I can offer your daughter an entry into society even beyond Lady Lyndonbury’s connections.”
Sylvia’s mouth pursed and wobbled all over her face. Just how hard would he try to win her over? “So far, you have presented us with Mr. Whitby, merely the presumptive heir to a viscount who is more than likely to produce an heir apparent, Mr. Latimer, who quakes like a leaf at the mere sight of a woman, despite his more than reasonable expectations, and Lord Albert, both a second son and the most unmarriageable, shallow rake I have yet to encounter.”
“And myself,” he added with a twinge of a smile, “suspected murderer and also not in the matrimonial line. But I have access to all the best homes. Miss Bibury could not do better.”
“Still, I cannot imagine how I may help you.”
“It is your potion that is being used. Surely you know to whom it has been sold.”
“And you wish to track down every bottle that has been marketed? Absurd. I tell you, sir, the potion has never been used for men.”
“Then how do you know how it would affect a man?”
She faced him and steepled her fingers before her lips. “I suppose we might try it on you.”
He jerked back.
And she laughed, laughed so hard she had to hold her hand before her mouth to stop. He looked like a little boy caught kissing the cowherd’s daughter. Her breath caught. “Ah. You are afraid you might be right, after all.”
“Not precisely,” he replied with a discomforted frown that made her want to laugh all over again. “Nevertheless, I have no intention of being trapped.”
“So it is really for your own sake that you seek an answer,” she replied, and freed her smile to express the odd warmth she felt. “I suppose you are a great catch, scandal or not.”
Something about the murky dark eyes deepened, and tiny sparks flashed in the sunlight, so that she caught the color in their depths. They were not brown, as she had thought, but a deep, deep violet. Deeper than indigo, the most heavenly color she had ever seen.
He chuckled briefly. “I could be Bluebeard and they would still pursue me.”
And well they might! If she laughed, it was because she understood that all too well, for she had not forgotten the pleasure of being with a man, and could not be in his presence without remembering. It was a good thing her fingers were safely encased in gloves, for they fidgeted with the desire to touch the shadow on his jaw, to see if it was as bristly as it looked.
“Well,” she said, “if you are not willing to test it, I cannot imagine how you will ever find the truth. I am very sorry, sir, but I cannot help you.”
He let out a heavy sigh.
“I fear I must tell you,” she said. “Your blue bottle is a very common one. The glassblower ships his bottles all over the country. They are quite inexpensive, you see, and the blue color preserves the quality of the contents.”
“I know that. I’ve been there. I also know he ships them in quantity to you.”
“And mine are labeled, Lord Vailmont. The bottle you have is plain. So you see, you have no connection between me and this supposed love potion, after all.”
“The bottle had a label, madam. A touch of the paper remains.”
“Well, when you find a bottle with my label on it, then perhaps we can talk.”
The labyrinth path joined the main path. With a nearly inaudible grumble, he turned them back, and they came in sight of the parade grounds.
“Is that not Mr. Whitby coming up?” she asked, frowning at the approaching figure with his copper hair glowing in the bright sun. “He seems agitated.”
Lord Vailmont looked up from his concentration and frowned. “Perhaps the dancing has ended. We were to ride this afternoon.”
With reddish curls bobbing on his forehead, Whitby dashed up and came to an abrupt stop before them. “Val, glad I found you. Forgive me, Lady Ashbroughton, for disturbing your walk.”
“We were returning,” she said. “In fact, I can see the dancing from here. Do go on with your friend, Lord Vailmont. I shall make my own way back to the Tavern.”
“Of course you shall not,” Lord Vailmont said. “I shall not leave a lady in my charge unescorted. What is it, Whitby?”
“Latimer.”
“Is he ill?”
“Of a sort, you might say. There he is, with Miss Jonquil Newberry.”
They followed the direction in which Whitby was looking, and saw Latimer standing in the garden before the Tavern in close conversation with the young lady. More than just close. Mr. Latimer looked, in fact, as if any second he would sweep the young lady into his arms and make off with her.
“Oh, isn’t that sweet,” Sylvia said.
“Sweet?” echoed Mr. Whitby and Lord Vailmont together.
“Why not? And they only met last night… Oh, dear.”
“Precisely what I have been trying to tell you, Lady Ashbroughton,” Lord Vailmont said. “Latimer is the least likely of all my acquaintances to become enamored with a woman. He is the least likely, in fact, to even hold a conversation with one.”
“I would have thought so. Yet there he is, doing quite well in that regard.”
“Wallingford, Dinglebury, Crewes, Smith, Stoddard, Ashford, Northwood, and now Latimer?” said Mr. Whitby with an anxious frown. “You don’t suppose there’s something to your glove theory, do you?”
“No, if anyone would be poisoned by ingesting liquid, it would be Latimer. I have no doubt he provided the opportunity.”
“And how do either of you know he is not simply enchanted with the girl? He is quite shy and so is she. Perhaps they have merely discovered they have something in common.”
Sylvia cringed, all but withering under their glares.
“Well, he looks happy,” she retorted. “Can that be so terrible?”
“Lady Ashbroughton, you clearly do not know Latimer. The man will drink himself into a stupor at the mere thought of an encounter with a person of the female sex.”
“And suddenly he doesn’t have to.” She pursed an imperious smile at him. “Goodness. A fate worse than death.”
“And just what will happen when the effect wears off?”
Sylvia lifted her narrow nose to just the proper angle and let her haughty gaze slide down it. “Well, Lord Vailmont, I believe you have been presented with the opportunity to test your theory.”

Chapter Six
Val kept his mask in place until the door of Lady Lyndonbury’s townhouse shut behind the men and they started across the square. Devil it. She was not a witch. She was a virago! A viper-tongued harpy!
The men walked in silence, but their footsteps rushed over the cobblestones. The very air seemed tight with foreboding. He measured his steps, mentally calculating the three men would reach his door in less than two minutes, at which time everything would explode.
Yet, he had to be fair. As a rational man, he was bound by his own code to seek objectivity and reality. Fairness was innate in the code. And he had to admit, it was also to be expected that excitable creatures such as females would become overset when confronted with opinions less than favorable to themselves.
But no, he had to be fair in recognizing he was probably in error about her. It might not be to society’s taste that the lady had chosen trade to support her daughter, but to Val’s mind a commendable action. Most unladylike, but praiseworthy, nonetheless.
No sooner had they passed through the outer entry of the house at Henrietta Street, when Pink turned on Val with a frown so deep it almost made Val jump.
“What the devil are you doing, Val? Latimer, I’ll take as a looby, and Whitby here, who knows. But you?”
Whitby grimaced. “Just following Val’s directions,” he said. “Spanish coin and all that. Just danced with her is all.”
“Three times.”
“Well, so did that Ponsonby chap. Once, anyway. If you’re going to worry about anyone, worry about him.”
“That rattle-pate can see to himself. You, on the other hand, need a nursemaid. What’s your excuse, Val?”
“I told you. Information. And I found it. I am certain Lady Ashbroughton’s potion is what Portia put in Stoddard’s drink. The lady denies any knowledge of it, and likely that’s true. But I shall reserve final judgment.”
“Didn’t look to me like you were reserving anything,” said Pink.
Val sneered at him. “It doesn’t mean there is a potion or is not, or, if there is one, that it has any effect. We have to talk to the victims. Therefore, the next step is to look for them and hear what they have to say. Pink, you see what you can find out about Stoddard. I’d as soon avoid my cousin if I can, but you’ll be safe around her now. Whitby, I hear Smith and Crewes are back. You check them out, since they’re right here in Bath. I’m going after Wallingford, down in Wells. Where’s Latimer, anyway?”
Whitby looked like someone had hit his nose with a shovel. “He said he’d be back tonight. Some promise to the Newberry chit’s mother.”
“He’s lost, Val,” said Pink.
Val shrugged. The devil of it was, he’d never seen Latimer smile like that.

* * *

Sylvia went home with a headache, which was not at all helped by the way Amalie bounced about as if she were still dancing with Mr. Whitby on the parade grounds of Sydney Gardens. Nor was it helped by the quizzing she received from either Amalie or Elizabeth about her lengthy absence while in the company of the roguish earl.
“We made a wrong turn in the labyrinth,” she said. And she put a smile on her face. She had a mask of smiles that was every bit the equal of Lord Vailmont’s mask of charm.
She spent the remainder of the day pretending she felt just fine and had not a care in the world. But that night, following an extra glass of claret, she took to her bed with a cloth soaked in lavender water on her forehead.
What was she going to do? It wasn’t real. It simply could not be. There was no such thing as a love potion, and in any case, Lady Aphrodite’s Restorative Tonic for Women was not one. She knew every ingredient in it, and nothing was out of the ordinary. Not the herbs, which were exactly the ones that had been used in the family receipt for hundreds of years, and certainly not the sugar she had added for no reason but to counter the bitter taste.
There was the other one, though— But that was utterly impossible, because it was a fake to begin with. She had made only two bottles, anyway, the second one even more a fraud than the first.
But any way she looked at it, she had to admit it was a fraud. A definite deception for the purpose of obtaining money. Nothing could be more fraudulent than that. And if it had not exactly made her rich, it had at least provided for Amalie’s coming Season.
What if he found out? It was not at all the same thing as indulging in a bit of trade. If he kept asking questions, there was no doubt. He would.
Yet, what else could she have done? If that woman hadn’t been so demanding, Sylvia certainly would never have come about it on her own. If she hadn’t needed the money so desperately, she would never have done it. Sylvia squeezed her eyes tightly, trying to shut out the image of the pair of blue cut-crystal, obelisk-shaped perfume bottles that had once graced the top of her bureau. Oh, why had she done it?
Worse, on a whim that could be called nothing but pure arrogance, she had even made up a hand-lettered label. Given it a name.

Lady Aphrodite’s Invigorating Elixir for Men.

She sat up quickly, making her head pound again. She propped her elbows on her knees and held her face in her hands. Just thinking of it made her white with shame. Or red with embarrassment. Or both. She was probably as blotched as if she had the pox.
She had laughed at him, at the utterly absurd idea that men could be duped by an aphrodisiac. But she could only get away with laughing at his ideas for so long. Lord Vailmont was far too clever. And far too close to the truth, no matter that he was headed in the wrong direction. And regardless of what he said, she could not trust him to keep her secret. He was a man who relied too heavily on charm, and charm in itself was a form of falsehood. She had learned that all too well from both Cousin Ralph and her husband. In her estimation, gentlemen did whatever it was they chose to do, whenever they chose, regardless of their promises.
If he discovered the real truth, the scandal would be enormous. Far worse than mere titillating suggestions of murder. Commerce was the least of worries for someone who had committed fraud. She would be ruined. Even Elizabeth would despise her. She would be more than ruined. Perhaps imprisoned.
Could they transport dowager viscountesses? She shuddered. Perhaps Australia might be preferable to the treatment she would receive if she remained at home.
But she’d had no other choice. She had barely been able to keep them comfortably fed, and a warm fire in each room. She could not ask Millie to forego her Season, not when she wanted it so much.
However, as close to discovery as Lord Vailmont was, he was indeed looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps she should help him. Help him on his way down the wrong path. At the very least, she would know what he was doing, perhaps even find a way to deflect him.
Sylvia tucked an extra pillow around her aching head and tried to sleep. But her dreams seemed ever to wander to mysterious twilight eyes somewhere between indigo and violet, that hid great, dark, unwelcome secrets. She saw the strong arms clothed in blue encircle her, hold her with a strength she could not resist.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond was a very pretty little girl with dark ringlets and dark, dark eyes who had lost her father and didn’t know where to look for him.
She woke repeatedly, and in the morning when she finally rose, she reminded herself that he was not to be faulted for the child he had not fathered. He had not asked for the wife to desert him, nor bear a child that was not his. It was the rare man indeed who felt any obligation to a child not of his blood. She supposed she should put it to his credit that he had chosen not to dishonor the girl by repudiating her. But did he, like Amalie’s guardian, not even concern himself with the child’s welfare?
What a strange story it was! What would bring a woman to run away from a husband who was handsome, wealthy, titled, what most women sought above all other things? To ruin herself bearing an unwanted child? Was the explanation hidden in the dark, dusky depths of Lord Vailmont’s eyes? Had he done something unforgivable?
A shiver ran up her spine, and she clutched the pinchbeck locket so tightly, she felt the paste coral stones pressing into her skin. How very fortunate she was that she had already made her decision not to remarry, considering the way her heart fluttered when he looked at her with those intense eyes. Not that it mattered anyway, for a handsome earl with an even handsomer purse would only toy with a viscount’s all but impoverished widow. He would be looking for a pretty, young girl with immaculate connections, perhaps even the daughter of a duke or marquess.
Not a woman who had committed fraud.
Sylvia sat on the edge of the bed and squinted her eyes closed against the harshness of morning sun that insisted on pouring in the window. The only wise decision she had made in her entire life was that she would not remarry. For when it came to quality in men, Sylvia could not trust her ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. She had failed on both occasions. Cousin Ralph had turned out to be as useless as tits on a bull. Fortunately, Ralph had spurned her love, or more accurately, never even noticed it, to marry a lovely heiress, and in two years had managed to bankrupt himself anyway. Heartbroken, Sylvia had too easily accepted her father’s choice for a husband, thinking Lord Ashbroughton to be everything her feckless cousin Ralph was not.
Compton Bibury, Lord Ashbroughton, had been steady, she’d give him that. She quickly learned what to expect of him. Nothing. And he had left her with Amalie, who had been a frightened nine-year-old hungry for love.
But oh, had he been a passionate lover. If he had done nothing else right on those short, infrequent visits home, he had taught her the thrill of passion. The trouble was, he was too soon off again, and paid them scant attention for the next two years until he died.
She should not complain. Many women received much worse in their lives. And shortly after Ashbroughton’s death, Sylvia had inherited Willow Combe from her father, giving her the freedom to leave Ashbroughton Hall with Amalie, leaving the new viscount, Compton’s venomous younger brother, in control of both her widow’s portion and Amalie’s trust. In six years, she had never received a farthing, and would never ask for it. As long as she had Willow Combe and Amalie, she didn’t care. Who knew what that man might do to Amalie, whose heart was so tender?
Headache still clinging, Sylvia dressed and went down to breakfast, to find Amalie bouncing about like a young puppy, eager for the shopping trip they had planned. She didn’t know whether to smile or frown, for she had always loved Millie’s exuberance. Yet it would not serve her well in society. Somehow, Sylvia had to tame that very energy and love of life she loved so much in Amalie.
“Whatever has you so excited this morning, Millie?” she asked. Sylvia put on a mask of austerity, but she knew by Amalie’s smirk, the girl was not fooled.
“Oh, I do love Bath, Mama. Surely London cannot be so fine. There is so much to do, and we have met so many fine people. Do you not think Lord Vailmont’s friends are so very charming? And so very handsome.”
“Mr. Whitby? I suppose he is.”
“Oh, he is a child, Mama. I suppose he is handsome enough if one does not mind freckles.”
Sylvia arched a brow. “Is that not a sprinkling of freckles on your nose, my dear?”
“Well, it is hardly the same thing. But yes, he is fine looking.”
“And Mr. Latimer?”
“Is he not so very sweet? Now that he has found Miss Newberry, and along with her, his tongue.”
Sylvia acknowledged with a nod that she considered it sweet. No matter what Lord Vailmont and his friends, or indeed, all the gay blades of the ton might think.
“But Lord Vailmont is quite handsome, don’t you think, Mama?”
A hard lump stuck in Sylvia’s throat, half fear, half something else she couldn’t define. “He is much too old for you, Amalie.”
“But not for you, Mama.” Millie fluttered her golden eyelashes.
Sylvia groaned.
“Then there is Lord Albert. I do think he is the handsomest of them all. Don’t you agree, Aunt Elizabeth? He is so—”
“Old,” said Elizabeth, not looking up as she quietly stabbed her needle into her embroidery.
“Oh, of course he is not old, Aunt Elizabeth. He cannot be much older than Mama.”
Sylvia cleared her throat. “I rather think he is in great favor with himself. He is also much too old for you. You are but seventeen, Millie, and you have your Season still before you.”
Millie’s blue eyes twinkled. “How very sad. I suppose I must jilt them all, then.”
“Silly Millie,” Sylvia grumbled. Oh, how easily Millie pulled her into her jokes and trapped her! Surely, after all these years, Sylvia should have recognized another one of Millie’s bams.
“Is that not the oddest locket, Mama? Where did you get it?”
Sylvia fingered the case, rubbing to polish the brass. “Something of my mother’s I found just before we left.”
“Oh!” Millie cooed. “May I see it? Does it have a picture in it?”
Sylvia jerked back. “Um, no. No picture, I mean.”
“But may I see it, Mama?” She reached again.
Again Sylvia stepped back, her hand encasing the brass locket. Oh, goodness! She’d never thought anyone would want to see it. No one ever made mention of her jewelry. “Um, it’s very fragile. A weak hinge.”
Millie dropped her hands, her bright smile sagging as if Sylvia had blatantly said she did not trust her. Elizabeth’s brows lifted. Sylvia swallowed the guilt that seemed stuck in her throat. But the last thing she wanted was for anyone to see the contents of the locket. Especially Millie. She could never explain it.
“It is a rather strange piece,” Elizabeth said. “An old poison locket, is it not?”
“I rather think so,” Sylvia replied, feeling an explanation coming at last. “I brought it to have it repaired. I would like to have a miniature of Amalie painted for it.”
Amalie’s face turned so sour, Sylvia might have sworn she had been eating alum if she didn’t know better. “I rather think I would like to have my portrait in something a bit more charming, Mama.”
Elizabeth hissed. “Surely it will clean up nicely enough. It is a keepsake, after all.”
Millie pursed her lips and tried to look pleasant. “Well. I am going up to dress now, Mama.” She turned toward the breakfast room door.
Sylvia eyed the pretty blue dress with all the frills a young girl could want. “You’re not dressed?”
The child smiled patiently, that look that made Sylvia feel as if she had one foot in the grave, and then she bounced down the corridor. But Elizabeth was blessedly quiet as Sylvia ate her coddled eggs and toast, and gratefully took an extra cup of coffee. Within the hour, the trio of women stepped into the foyer.
“We must have a new dress made for you, Mama, something exciting and bright,” Amalie said, whirling about before the pier glass when she donned her pelisse. “I vow, he has a tendre for you.”
Sylvia harumphed her best, not even bothering to ask to whom Millie referred. “Gentlemen do not develop tendres for older women, Millie.”
“Oh, and you are so old, Mama.” Millie swayed about as if she were dancing. “I vow I see crow’s feet forming. And is that not a gray hair? You shall surely have a head of silver before the year is out.”
“Don’t tease your mama, Millie,” said Elizabeth with a mock frown. “You will not think her crow’s feet so funny when you have some of your own.”
“I do not have crow’s feet.” Sylvia shoved her nose into the air. “And I plucked out all the gray hairs this very morning, so I am quite sure you are mistaken.”
Sylvia set her favorite and most serviceable straw bonnet on her head and tugged on her best fawn gloves, noting they were beginning to stretch a bit too much on the fingertips. Perhaps later, she would order some new ones. After they were back at Willow Combe.
They stepped out into Argyle Street to cross the bridge. Millie giggled and hooked both Elizabeth’s and Sylvia’s arms, her bouncing step affecting both women. What a joy the girl was!
And how empty Sylvia would feel when Millie left her step-mama behind for a new marriage. But that was the way life was. And she would always have Willow Combe for her own. The place where she belonged.
Perhaps a new dress was in order. Something a bit less matronly than her usual brown. Perhaps a nice tan or fawn color to match her gloves. Or gray. A dove gray would do nicely.
She shook her head at the absurdity. That was exactly what she didn’t need.
At the bow front window of Baker’s Print Shop, Millie paused and peered at the engravings put up on the window panes, a collection showing the fine architecture of Bath. It was not to Sylvia’s taste, and she thought the linework a bit coarse, but she was aware that Amalie needed a passing understanding of columns and the like if she were to become conversant among the ton. “Let us see what Mr. Baker has today,” she said.
Millie groaned, anticipating the coming lecture, but followed into the shop, which was arranged like a small, tasteful gallery. On one wall hung a variety of landscapes taken from paintings, which Sylvia thought creditably reflected the styles of the original artists, or at least the ones whose works she had seen in Town over six years ago. And opposite, the newest architectural collection. Her nose wrinkling, she skirted past the sketchily drawn cartoons with their bitterly vicious humor that made her cringe.
Elizabeth held a reserved frown on her face as she studied the landscapes. “I should rather have the original, I think,” she said, “but when one cannot, I vow these make a reasonable substitute. I’m told Mr. Baker makes use of the skills of ladies of impoverished circumstances for his coloring.”
“Does he?” Sylvia replied. “That is kind of him.”
“Hm,” said Elizabeth, her lips drawn tight, leading Sylvia to speculate about the wages paid those poorer ladies. It could not be much, considering the low prices he charged for his prints.
Displayed on easels were his newest works by his artist, Trimstone, and Sylvia turned to inspect them. Millie had already discovered them, and had one in her hands.
“Mama,” she said, an unsure waver in her voice.
Sylvia peered over Millie’s shoulder at a sketch in sharp, clean lines. It was one of those cartoons she hated so much. But it was indeed puzzling, for it was clearly the Upper Assembly Room where they had just been a few nights before, yet it was made out to be a garden in one corner, full of people who looked like misshapen plants, flowers, toadstools.
“Mama, do you suppose that is Miss Newberry?” Millie’s eyes looked strained.
Sylvia looked. Sylvia gasped. A stalk flower dressed in a sickly yellow gown that looked suspiciously like a jonquil with long, slender leaves that waved about, had a horror of a face that was clearly Miss Newberry, exaggerating her overlong nose and prominently pointed chin. Behind her, feet like roots planted in muddy soil, grew two large mushrooms with faces like sharks, drooling saliva and blood.
Sylvia glanced at Elizabeth and saw incensed fire gathering in her friend’s eyes.
Sylvia snatched the horrible thing from Millie’s hands and slapped it back on the easel. “I’ll not have you looking at such filth,” she said. “Come along, Amalie, Elizabeth. We have better things to do.”
“Might I be of service, my lady?”
Sylvia turned to see none other than Baker himself standing behind her, a moderately sized man, as immaculately dressed as any gentleman in a fine black tailcoat with striped gold vest and a stiffly starched and snowy white cravat.
“Indeed, you are responsible for this?” she asked.
“Mr. Trimstone’s latest,” Baker replied with a nod that made Sylvia feel a little bit sick. “We take pride in providing the best engravings in the City of Bath.”
“Do you?” Sylvia felt the heat of indignation rising in her cheeks.
“Sylvia, dear, perhaps we should just leave,” said Elizabeth, placing a hand over Sylvia’s.
Sylvia pulled away, seething. “Politicians, dukes, admirals, I could understand, Mr. Baker. But how dare you ridicule a sweet young lady like Miss Newberry?”
“Sylvia, let’s go,” said Elizabeth, tugging her hand.
“Perhaps, Lady Ashbroughton, you would find something else to your taste,” said Baker.
“Oh, I think not. And just how is it you know my name, Mr. Baker?”
Baker’s eyes took on a strange gleam, and Sylvia knew immediately where Trimstone had found his model for the shark’s eyes. “Oh, it is my business, Lady Ashbroughton. I know everybody, my lady.” The gleam sharpened murderously. “Everybody.”
As Sylvia stared at the malevolent eyes, shock reverberated down her spine. Elizabeth pulled hard on Sylvia’s hand. “We shall be going now. Thank you, Mr. Baker. It was—pleasant to see you again.”
She tugged so hard, not even Sylvia in shock could ignore her, so Sylvia allowed Elizabeth to lead her out the door.
“Come along. Hurry,” Elizabeth said, and rushed down the street.
“Hurry? What is this about, Elizabeth?”
“Didn’t you see what he did to the Newberrys, Sylvia? That man is dangerous. Let us hope he did not take great offense.”
“Oh, he would not dare.”
“Of course he dares. Trimstone is known for his poison pen drawings, and they are wildly popular. Baker makes a fortune off lampooning people. Anyone. And he does not lie. He does know everyone, and sooner or later, he learns all their foibles. The Newberrys are fortunate to be depicted as mere mushrooms.”
Sylvia glanced back at the print shop that was fading into the distance behind them as they hurried away down the pavement of Milsom Street. She shuddered.
Could Baker possibly find out about her? How could he?
But she had no more appetite for shopping, and not even the soft beige silk shown to her by the dressmaker could regain her attention.
She did not see Lord Vailmont again for three days. His friends were about, Mr. Latimer most in evidence, seen mooning over Miss Newberry who responded with equal gushing, and appeared unaffected by the awful engraving in Baker’s shop. Perhaps the whole of Bath had conspired to hide the evil thing from the innocent young girl.
But she knew better. More likely, they chose to giggle behind her back.
Often as not, both Mr. Whitby and Lord Albert Pinkerton watched the couple in horror as if they were impotent to prevent some great disaster.
What utter nonsense it was! If superstition were enough to persuade a man to marry, all womankind would have known that secret for centuries.
But these men obviously believed it.
Just to be sure things were not as havey-cavey as Vailmont insisted, Sylvia made some discreet inquiries about both Miss Newberry and her besotted sweetheart. Mr. Latimer, while not at all the sort she would choose for Amalie, was not a bad catch. In fact, despite being the third son of an earl, he had a quite satisfactory income. And Miss Newberry did have a most reasonable portion. Her only flaw was a pervasive giggle that accompanied her unusual shyness. And an unusually long nose. But Latimer had neither adequate nose nor chin, whereas Miss Newberry had quite enough for both of them. She supposed Mr. Latimer’s family might object to the obscurity of the Newberrys’ social standing, but it seemed not to bother the young man.
Whatever was Vailmont’s objection? They seemed a perfect match to her.

* * *

Lord Vailmont did not appear again for one more day. As they were beginning a walk they met the three gentlemen coming out of the house at the corner of Henrietta Street. His eyes caught Sylvia’s in a knowing way that both captivated her and made her cringe. He was up to something again.
“How fine to see you and your guests again, Lady Lyndonbury,” said Lord Vailmont, sketching a bow. “We were just on our way to ask if you would join us.”
Elizabeth answered with a nod. “We have it in our mind to take the waters, then afterward climb Beechen Cliff, Lord Vailmont, but I am sure no one would mind if you join us. Where is Mr. Latimer?”
Vailmont slanted a glance at Sylvia. “I fear he does not find our company as pleasant as that of Miss Newberry. He has paid his addresses to her father and sought a license. They are to be married in two weeks.”
Amalie shrieked with glee.
Sylvia clasped her hands. “Oh, how lovely!”
Vailmont narrowed his eyes at her. Well, if he could not see how perfectly the two were matched, then surely his eyes were swollen shut. And she would not accept the blame, no matter how hard he glared.
And he did glare. His eyes took on that murky look that left her wondering whether it was man or beast behind them. She warded off a shudder by stiffening her spine.
“But we would be happy to join you ladies,” he said. “Perhaps I can have my man bring a picnic to the top of the cliff, where we might share it.”
Everyone agreed they would all be quite hungry and thirsty after such a climb. Vailmont hurried off to instruct his butler to send a picnic via a footman, and caught up with them again as they entered the Pump Room.
As his gloved hand touched her arm to escort her into the crowded room, Sylvia felt that same crackling spark run through her. It was as if a stroke of lightning warned her of the man’s dangerousness. As if she needed warning. She nodded and smiled to those acquaintances they passed, but her mind would not let go of the overwhelming presence of the tall man walking beside her. There was a sense about him, as if he wore his maleness like a heady aroma that filled the air around him. She thought of gathering her skirts and fleeing.
But she would not run. Not from any man.
She gulped. Perhaps that was merely because no man had ever made her feel like fleeing before.
“The room is terribly crowded this morning,” he said. “Perhaps we should bring the waters to the ladies.”
Sylvia shook her head. “It is said one must drink them as soon as possible after they are poured for the greatest effect.” Yet she did not know why she objected, for his unsettling presence would be removed if she allowed him the task.
“You are not ill, are you, Lady Ashbroughton?”
“Not at all, thank you. But if one must drink the stuff, one should do it effectively.”
So the gentlemen acceded and escorted the ladies through the crowd to the pump. Lord Vailmont paid the pence and handed her a glass, mischief dancing in his dark eyes.
Sylvia took a breath and sipped. “Truly I would rather gulp it and be done with it, if gulping were not so impolite.”
His dark eyes gleamed beneath a wickedly warped brow. “If you will gulp, I will gulp.”
“Very well, let us be rag-mannered together.” They raised their glasses in mockery of a toast, and guzzled. Sylvia managed to down the entire glass without gagging, and she breathed out a huge sigh of relief. She laughed.
“Surely it must be good for a person, since it tastes so terrible,” he said. The other men laughed halfheartedly.
“It need not be so,” she answered. “At Willow Combe we have a spring that has been known since ancient times for its health-giving properties, and it does not taste foul. I drink it often, and find it has very little flavor.”
“And does it keep you healthy?”
“I cannot say. But then I am never ill.” She smiled. “But I fear no one would believe its efficacy, for people have become accustomed to believing in bitterness as an essential property of medicines.”
Lord Vailmont’s eyes turned dark, assessing, and she fidgeted beneath their power. She tore her gaze away and studied the wainscoting, which had all the charm one could usually expect of wainscoting.
“Now that we have done our duty to our health, shall we tackle the climb?”
Sylvia felt her heart flutter. This was one more thing she would do for Amalie.
He leaned over her and whispered, “Go with me to Stourhead.”
She gulped. Her eyes must be as big as saucers. “Why?”
“A matter of mutual interest,” he replied. “A…young couple.”
Sylvia dragged her eyes away from his, all the way down past his elegantly curved lips and the early shadow of beard already forming. Thinking of what the lips would feel like in a kiss, and running her fingers over his chin, and would the blue shadow of a beard be already rough, even though it could not be an hour since he shaved?
Down past his perfectly tied, simple cravat, starched and white, and begging to be untied. The blue and gold-figured waistcoat, with its Baroque gold buttons that needed to be undone, and those tight inexpressibles that molded like gloves over his muscular thighs…
She slammed her gaping mouth shut.
“No.”

Chapter Seven
Fortunately for Sylvia, Lord Vailmont let the subject drop. But it took several minutes before her trepidation eased and her heart stopped pounding.
From their first crossing of the bridge, the road rose steeply before the massive cliff face, on its way out of Bath toward Wells. The summer had been dry, and dust rose at their feet, turning Sylvia’s half-boots from brown to gray. Lord Vailmont took it upon himself to walk beside her, and she supposed she should feel grateful. She did not want him showing particular interest in Millie.
But what was his interest? Was it simply that silly love potion?
For a brief moment, Sylvia considered telling him the truth. Oh, there was a potion, but not the one he sought. And only she knew why it could not possibly work. But the conscience that prodded her toward the truth could not overcome the dangerous reality. It was not a secret she dared share with anyone. Not even Millie knew.
“You are a bit quiet,” he said as he trudged up the steep hill beside her.
“Concentrating on the climb,” she replied.
“Shall we stop and rest? But I vow, you do not seem winded.”
“I am a country girl, my lord. The hills of the Cotswolds are steeper than this.”
The dark eyes assessed her briefly and turned away. He was, she guessed, a man who did not accept anything a woman said at face value. And she supposed she could not blame him. But it was hardly her fault he had spent his life around the wrong women.
Where the Wells Road reached the top, they stopped. There, Lord Vailmont’s footman awaited with a little gig and the promised basket of fine edibles. Sylvia smiled at him, grateful, for he was right. After that climb, she was truly thirsty, and she did not mind a bite to eat as well. The footman spread out a blanket for the ladies, and the gentlemen sat at its edges, helping them to a fine claret and thin slices of salty ham, cheese and crumbly bread. Fresh pears finished the repast.
Sylvia leaned back against a large rock, utterly satisfied, as if she had just finished a banquet set to celebrate the arrival of the queen. Lord Vailmont reached into the basket left by the footman and produced a brass tube.
“Oh, look, Mama! A spyglass!”
Sylvia nodded at the obvious as Lord Vailmont extended the tube to three times its former length.
“Oh, may I see it?” the girl asked, bouncing as if she were a small puppy jumping for tidbits. Sylvia gritted her teeth as Lord Vailmont handed over the expensive instrument. Silently, she regretted the presence of the gentlemen, which prohibited her from correcting Millie’s childish behavior. She settled for a frown, which went utterly unnoticed.
“Lord Albert, do come with me,” Millie said, “and Mr. Whitby, too. We can scan the far horizon and pretend we are French spies surveying the City of Bath for a place to attack.”
Mr. Whitby jumped to his feet. Lord Albert lifted a golden eyebrow. “She is imaginative,” he said, and unfolded his long legs to rise and follow Millie’s bouncing step.
“Millie, you can hardly go traipsing about…”
“Oh, you needn’t come, Mama,” Millie said, her mouth puckering in her most charming simper. “Stay with Lord Vailmont. I vow, you look tired from the climb.”
Elizabeth stood. “I shall join the youngsters, Sylvia. You needn’t worry. I shall not let her fall off the cliff.” A sardonic twist launched itself on Elizabeth’s lips. “And you do look a bit weary. Do rest a bit before we start back.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. She watched with Lord Vailmont as the foursome disappeared in the trees along the path to the crest of the cliff.
“Lady Ashbroughton, I do believe they are matchmaking,” he said.
Sylvia glowered at him. “An inconceivably hopeless endeavor, as we have nothing whatsoever in common.”
The luscious curves of Lord Vailmont’s elegant lips wriggled about like—like a worm on a hook. She touched the locket. She’d have to add that to her list of his flaws. Wormy lips. Wormy, squirmy lips.
“You don’t look at all tired to me,” he said. “But if you are of a mood, you may stretch out and rest your weary bones.”
Sylvia started, and stared at the mocking, dark glint in his eyes. “I shall not, thank you,” she replied. “It is all in your power to stop, you know. They would not have such ridiculous notions if you did not come around.”
“Perhaps I enjoy your company. Or perhaps I enjoy your daughter’s company.”
Like a gunshot, Sylvia jerked up away from the rock she had been using against her back. He laughed. She leaned back again, her head against the rock and eyes closed, but her jaw as tight as a fully wound watch spring.
“Or perhaps I have other interests.”
“Your silly love potion.”
“I am a man of reason, madam. And superstitions are the bane of the modern world.”
“Then perhaps you should go solve your little problem and leave me to mine.”
The mask of charm slipped back into place. “But for that I need your assistance, so I must, alas, pretend I like you.”
She allowed her nostrils to flare just the least little bit and squeezed her eyes closed again, as they kept popping open in spite of herself. It was too hard to watch those lips that invited kissing and hear the smooth honey of his voice, all at the same time.
“She worries you.”
“Indeed. It is my responsibility to worry about her. A young girl requires a great deal of guidance.”
“But for the moment, Lady Lyndonbury can manage it. I must admit I find it fascinating, how much you care for a child who is not of your blood.”
“Not surprising. It is something few men would comprehend.”
He picked up the bottle of claret, poured two more glasses, and handed one to her.
Expelling a hard breath, Sylvia realized she had let her eyes open again, for she was watching every move he made. She accepted the wine and sipped quietly.
“She is a lovely girl,” he said. “And she will do you credit. What is it that worries you?”
She took another sip and watched the rosy liquid catch the bright sunlight. “I thought it was the right thing to give her the freedom of her own mind, but now I can see I did her no favors. I did not mold her enough. And she will suffer for it.”
“She will make mistakes, but she will do well. She has a good teacher.”
Sylvia frowned at the wine.
“What is it you want, Lady Ashbroughton?”
“Want?” Her eyes rounded. The thought almost made her giggle.
“You find that amusing?”
“Yes. I am trying to remember if a gentleman has asked me what I wanted before.”
“You are being coy.”
“I think not. However, I am not sure if I wish to answer.”
“So it is a matter of trust.”
“Perhaps…yes. But to be truthful, sir, I am so unaccustomed to being asked what my will is, I have not thought out the answer. In truth, I cannot think of anything I wish, beyond Amalie’s happiness, and once she has found it, that I return to my estate and gardens, where I may live peaceably.”
The corner of his mouth turned down. “You are still quite young and attractive. Many a widow in your position would be seeking another husband, perhaps might be thinking of rising a step higher.”
“I cannot think why, unless she is impoverished. I suppose a woman might wish to be saved from poverty, yes. I am not a wealthy woman, but my land is my own, and it produces well. There are no holes in my roof.”
“Status, then.”
Sylvia turned her head away, for she could hardly pretend disinterest when she stared at him so greedily. But then she let her gaze slide sideways through tiny slits, hoping he could not tell, and watched as he stretched his long body over the length of the Welsh plaid blanket. So long, his legs hung over into the grass. She studied his calves beneath his tall boots, wondering if when he wore fine silk stockings, the telltale straps holding the downy pads would be visible. She’d bet they were. Men often had attractive, muscular legs, but not like his. She let her hidden gaze follow up his body. They had to be padded.
She blinked and jerked her head. The man was— But no, surely it was just the bags of cloth— No, it wasn’t. His inexpressibles were quite a snug fit.
Sylvia squeezed her eyes closed again and fought her brain for the last thread of conversation. Oh, yes. Status.
“That is worthwhile to some. I find the cost too high.”
“What possible cost can there be?”
“Surely you are not so naive? If I marry again, everything I own will be no longer mine. I should have to trust myself completely to another human being who may or may not be worthy of the trust. And it has been my experience that men are not always what they seem to be during courtship. I do not trust to my ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
The earl leaned back, his hands folded behind his head, and his lips warped in that odd smile he had that seemed both happy and sad at the same time. “The same has been my experience with women. Perhaps we have altogether too much in common, Lady Ashbroughton.”
She knew she should not look at him overlong, yet she could not stop it. She could not stop wondering what went on inside that twisting, turning mind of his, what made him probe her for things beyond what she should tell him. What did he want? In an odd sort of way, she felt as if she were an ugly heiress being romanced by a fortune hunter. But she was no heiress, had nothing special to offer anyone, and if not precisely pretty, certainly was not ugly. What did he want?
Sylvia frowned at him. “I cannot help but think, the way you stare at me, you have something you wish to say.”
“Do you think so?” He smiled lazily.
“Well, you may say what it is or not, as you choose. I have not found myself overly fond of the things you say, anyway.”
“You are not? You still think me a rudesby?”
“A proper gentleman does not stare at a lady, sir.”
“Hmm. That is true. But you are right. Madam, I believe we have something to discuss. I have been to see a friend, Lord Dinglebury, and his new wife, Jane.”
He sat up and fished about inside the slit pocket of his coat until he pulled out the small blue bottle, which he handed to her.
Oh. The potion again. “I have already seen your blue bottle, sir.”
“Not this one. This one has a label. Lady Aphrodite’s Restorative Tonic for Women.”
Her nostrils flared. As if she needed him to tell her what her label said.
“Lady Dinglebury appears to be one of your customers.”
“Many women of all classes use the tonic and find it helpful. If you make a search of ladies’ boudoirs, I imagine you will find women all over the Isle who could be accused of your crime. But I rather imagine they prefer to use the tonic for themselves.”
“Indeed. Lord Dinglebury wonders why his wife chose to add a touch of it to his nightly whiskey.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. But she was trembling inside. “Lord Vailmont, the potion is naught but simple herbs that grow in any English garden, herbs that have been used for hundreds of years and are commonly employed in cooking.”
“And nothing just a little bit shady?”
“Whatever do you mean, sir?”
Vailmont reached across her lap and touched his fingers to her cheek, turning her head to face him directly. He leaned closer. “I am not at all sure,” he said. “But there is something very different about you. Something far more than the most unusual color of your eyes.”
Her spine turned to solid ice, freezing her where she was, as he leaned closer. A smoky haze darkened his unfathomable gaze. He was going to kiss her, and she could not even make herself move.
“Sir—” Sylvia managed to get her hand to his shoulder, but could not force herself to push him away, no matter that she knew she must. The faint but deeply male scent invaded her as her fingers curled into the fabric of the coat and her senses became aware of touching hard muscle, not wads of felt. Her pulse began to quicken. Against her will, she licked her lips.
Vailmont suddenly jerked back, blinking, as if he had been jolted awake. He rose to his knees and with a sharp tug, straightened his waistcoat. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, Lady Ashbroughton. I cannot think what came over me.”
She felt like she had been poked in the chest and had the wind knocked out of her. But of course, she did not wish to be kissed by him, so why it should bother her that he did not, she could not imagine.
“And here comes your lovely daughter with Lord Albert.”
It was Sylvia’s turn to jerk. “Not with him, surely?”
“Most definitely with Pinkerton.”
Sylvia jumped to her feet. “He is not at all suitable! What can Elizabeth be thinking?”
“And you think Whitby is?”
“Of course not. She is much too young and innocent to be left in the company of any man.” Sylvia brushed off her skirt as she turned around. Seeing Millie escorted by Lord Albert, but followed up by Elizabeth and Mr. Whitby, her heart quit its silly pitter-patter. She glared at Lord Vailmont for deliberately misleading her, but he merely grinned back. The man was annoying. She was certainly glad he had not kissed her. She knew what men of his kind wanted of widows.
“As you see, all is well, my dear,” he said.
Her eyes shot daggers at him. “I am not your dear. I shall allow Lord Albert to escort me down the hill, and you, sir, may escort my daughter. Walking ahead of me.”
Vailmont snickered, and rose, and took Millie’s arm, nodding with ceremonious exaggeration.
The company departed the hill in pairs, with Elizabeth and Millie laughing gaily. Sylvia tried to keep up a pleasant front, but their cheer only worsened her mood. She had a headache again by the time she reached Elizabeth’s home in Laura Place.
“Do have a glass of wine and rest your eyes, dear,” said Elizabeth. “It has been an exhausting day.”
But Sylvia waved away the wine. Another glass was hardly what she needed.
“I am certain he is taken with you, Mama,” Amalie said.
Sylvia wanted to cringe. To scream. But she could do neither. She also could not summon up a smile. “I am sure he is not. He is simply one more bored gentleman seeking to amuse himself.”
She wished he would go away. He was going to ruin everything with his foolish notions about her tonic, which could not possibly have the properties he claimed. The recipe had been about for centuries, and the only thing she had added was sugar to counteract its bitter taste. But if he kept nosing about, he would draw attention to her. And once one person knew the truth, everyone would know. She would be ruined, and Amalie along with her.
But that evening he called again, knowing there was to be no assembly, and asked to escort them to the Gardens for the fireworks. Elizabeth declined, claiming exhaustion from the earlier climb up the hill, and Amalie avowed that she was of a mood only to read a book quietly.
Sylvia rolled her eyes and huffed. Perhaps it would be just as well to go. She needed to put an end to his meddling in her life. Perhaps the only way to do that was to give him what he wanted.
So Sylvia donned her best matronly pout along with her brown pelisse, the one she knew he found particularly distasteful, and allowed the gentleman to take her arm.
“I suspect I am not in your good graces this evening, madam,” he said as they walked down Great Pulteney Street to the Gardens. “In fact, I suspect you do not like me, do you?”
“No, Lord Vailmont, I do not.”
“Then we are equally matched, for I do not like you, either.”
“Indeed. And in fact, I believe you merely have an interest in achieving your own end, which I may say is the silliest of endeavors.”
“Ah.” To his credit, his mouth did not wobble about as it habitually did when he suspected her of flim-flam. “Perhaps you are right, then, and we shall simply have to tolerate each other until we solve this puzzle.”
“You may solve the puzzle. I have a daughter to raise.”
“And a worthy endeavor that is. However, if we do not find who is using your tonic soon, the word will begin to leak out, and I fear you will be caught in the middle of an imbroglio. Quite honestly, Lady Ashbroughton, I should hate to see that.”
Sylvia grumbled beneath her breath. That was exactly what she feared, and he knew it.
“Regardless of the validity of the reasons, we do have a problem in common. Clearly you cannot allow the discovery of your commerce if you are to succeed in firing off Miss Bibury, yet it was all too easy for me to learn of it. And if you do not care if you risk yourself, I know you care deeply about Miss Bibury’s welfare and future.”
The evening was darkening in deep streaks of twilight blue and yellow gold. Lord Vailmont directed them toward quieter sections, with walkways lit by tiny lanterns. Few people walked now, for the music had begun, and the dancing would continue until the beginning of the fireworks. Quiet, dark places where she would be alone with him, with no one to say she should not drink in his scent that was like the deep, dark earth of the downs, that smelled of strength and power.
Shuddering, Sylvia stuffed the betraying thoughts deep down inside her where she hoped they would not find their way back out. It was time for her to pose her own questions.
“What is it you want, Lord Vailmont?”
One dark brow rose in a pointed arch. “I thought I made it clear. I want your help.”
“But you have not made it clear what it is you want me to do.”
“Perhaps because that will depend on what we discover. For example, I want to know about your potion, how you make it, and to whom it has been sold. I want to know about your family. I know they have been growing herbs for centuries. Tell me about the witch.”
“She was no witch. I thought, Lord Vailmont, you decried such superstitions.”
“I do. And I agree, she was probably but a victim of hysterical times. But I want to know, for we may find some clue in your history.”
Sylvia lowered her lashes, for she was aware he read what he saw in her eyes too well, and he could do that, even in the dimming light. She was altogether too aware of the clue in her family history, but she had no intention of sharing it with him. Nevertheless if she wished to keep him from ruining her, she had to tell him something.
With a sniff, she began. “Lucy Wilburmartin was my many times great-grandmother. She was burned as a witch in the time of Henry VIII. There have not been many burnings since then, I think, and I rather suspect the people of the town regretted their accusations, for they had no one to minister to their needs, once she was gone.
“Lucy had a number of potions which have been handed down, and she was meticulous in recording their use and the results. I often wondered if the volumes of her writings were really what raised suspicions against her, for not many women could write in those days. But since her day, her descendants have taken care to record and study all aspects of their herbs. We are simply much more careful about what we share with others. So you see, sir, there is no witchcraft about it. Even Culpeper made use of our studies. I suppose if we were men, like Culpeper, we would have been revered as scientists.”
“I’m impressed. So you write about them, too?”
“Yes. My great-grandmother, who was much too close to the soil for my father’s comfort, taught me all the secrets, and I have many generations of journals to tell me about them. Many of them have turned out to have little or no value, so I do not use them, but I do record them. But if you are in pain, I can give you a potion that will almost certainly relieve it, and that is something most doctors and apothecaries cannot do. Perhaps, then, it would be called magic, because they have discounted the same potion without ever trying it.”
“Tomorrow, then, let us drive down to Willow Combe. I should like to see these books.”
She almost gasped. Suddenly again she saw him as he would be in a darkened room, his broad shoulders and rugged planes of his chest bare, urging her to touch him, with that devilish lock of hair falling before his eyes, bending for a kiss. No! She shouldn’t be worried about that! “Why?” she asked, and her voice almost squeaked.
“Show me your books. There may be a clue there.”
“I cannot think what.”
“I have trained my mind to seek truth, following logical patterns, madam. I should not expect the same of you, who have not been trained.”
“Well, I cannot imagine what you would find.”
“What about your tonic? How do you know it is effective?”
“I am not at all sure about the medical theory of body humors but there is certainly something that is affected. A woman’s body seems sometimes to become out of balance on a, shall we say, monthly basis. The tonic seems to restore energy and strength. Since men do not have the same experience, it is not useful for them, so I cannot see why anyone would apply it to them.”
“But what if it has an entirely different effect on men?”
Snideness tripped and twisted at the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps it makes them more like women. If that is the case, then I shall approve of its use.”
Vailmont stopped walking and folded his arms. His eyes bore down on her like a leopard sure of its helpless prey. “Ah. You not only dislike me, you dislike men as a whole.”
Sylvia tossed her head and laughed, but she felt little humor in her thoughts. “When women are unhappy, they eat or talk. When men are discontented they start wars or bully women.”
“Really.” His jaw set as stiff as a ring fighter. “You paint a skewed picture. Few men of my acquaintance have started any wars. My experience is that unhappy men drink, play cards or ride horses to escape the discontented women who are seeking out men to make miserable. If it were not for manipulative women, I would be contentedly at home managing my crops and livestock and improving the park and tenants’ homes.”
“Indeed?” She cocked her head. “You have allowed a woman to chase you from your home?”
“Women. Plural. My mother’s guests, intent upon turning me into a bridegroom, happy or otherwise. And I have not been chased. I have deliberately exited to foil their schemes.”
“Why didn’t you just say no and send them on their way?”
“For precisely the reason I stated. One does not say no to the Dowager Countess of Vailmont. She would find a way to proclaim my agreement to the marriage, completely unconcerned about my feelings in the matter. She will have me marry by her choice, not mine, just as she did the first time.”
“Lord Vailmont, I vow I am surprised. You are the earl, are you not? You bully me with impunity. If you are manipulated by her, I suggest it is because you are allowing it. Can you not just refuse?”
“She will set it up to create a scandal if I do not agree.”
“And you are that afraid of scandal? Does she not think she will damage herself by damaging you?”
“She knows I cannot let it go that far. I could never let it happen again. Nor could I allow myself to be the cause of a young lady’s ruin.”
“Just tell her no. Refuse to have the guests. Surely you are not afraid of her.”
He turned away, looking out over the horizon. In the dim light of the tiny lanterns, Sylvia could see the muscles of his jaw working, his massive shoulders square and taut.
“Are you afraid?” she asked quietly.
She could barely see the minute shake of his head, yet he frowned as if he were not sure.
“You pose the most ridiculous questions, Lady Ashbroughton.”
No. She was not going to let him lead her astray. Something was going on inside his head, and it needed to come out. “Are you afraid?” she repeated.
“But what if she died?” he said.
Sylvia frowned. “I don’t understand. What has that to do with it?”
The puzzled wrinkling of his brow suddenly matched her own. “I don’t know,” he said. His breaths were deep and long. “But yes, I do. My father died. We had fought fiercely over something I refused to do. The marriage, in fact. He raged for days, drinking himself almost into a stupor, then went out on a wild ride. He tumbled from his horse and broke his neck.”
“Ah. So in remorse for having precipitated his death, you agreed to the marriage, which you have given me to understand was a disaster. But surely your mother would not wish to repeat such a mistake.”
“The countess does not make mistakes. Other people make mistakes. And her son is incapable of making his own choice of a bride.”
She could feel the deepness of his breathing and hers began to keep pace with him. Sadness clutched at her heart. Perhaps she should not feel anything for this arrogant, overbearing fellow, yet there was something of the little boy in him. The wounded child who had not been healed. That was the way men were. They blamed themselves for what they could not have prevented. But pity would not help him. It would be rejected.
“Oh, do give over, Lord Vailmont. You did not cause your father’s death. He made his own choice to ride when totally sotted. I presume you did not love your wife, then?”
“Why should that be important? I provided adequately for her, and did not mistreat her in any way.”
“But some women wish to be loved. Perhaps she was one, if she left a man who provided well for her, who had title, money, consequence.”
“Then she should not have married me.”
“Agreed. But that is not the question. Sir, I cannot speak for her, for I did not know her. But I can say for myself that sometimes women enter marriage without understanding just what it is to be about. And I think sometimes women seek a sort of companionship with their husbands that many men do not value or even expect to find in a wife. It is not that they are misled. I think they simply do not know where they are going and mistake the route. But she did betray you, that is obvious, and for that, I am sure you have the right to your anger.”
He stiffened despite his smile. “What makes you think I am angry?”
“You bristle like a hedgehog at the very subject.”
Surprise arched his brows as he cocked his head to the side. “Do I?”
“Indeed you do. I rather suspect you are wise to forego marriage until you have quizzed this out for yourself.”
“I see. Of course, that is precisely what I am doing. Figuring it out. I am the earl, as you say, and of course I do not intend to be controlled. So until I have puzzled it all out I shall not return to the domain where I am vulnerable.”
With what seemed almost a laugh, the earl took her arm and led her deeper into the gloom. The music was so faint, she almost could not hear it.
“There, now, you see, I have said it aloud, if that pleases you. And what, madam, is your excuse?”
“Excuse?” she echoed, feeling the prickles rise in her.
“Excuse, madam. Come now, you have admitted you do not hold men in high esteem, and place the prospect of remarriage considerably lower.”
“Purely a practical matter, Lord Vailmont. I simply do not wish to give away what is mine. Surely as a man of property, you can comprehend that. My property is not protected by trust, and if not for the fact that my husband preceded my father in death, it would now be in the hands of that worthless reprobate of an heir—”
Sylvia gasped and clamped her lips shut.
“Said too much, have you?” His voice had the soft quality of a cat’s purr, but so low and deep, it rumbled in her chest. “What did he do to you, Lady Ashbroughton?”
Sylvia locked her jaw tight, promising herself she would divulge no more secrets to this prying meddler.
“It is now your turn to give over, my dear. Whatever he did to you was worse than anything your husband did, wasn’t it?”
Shame rose up in her with such sudden ferocity, she thought it would overwhelm her and flood out in a rush of tears. She wanted to break and run away, but that would only betray her, perhaps even more than a spate of tears. She would do neither. She would not cry, nor run. She hardened herself as rigid as a tree—stiff, firm, unbending.
Lord Vailmont tugged on her arm, turning her, forcing her to face him, but Sylvia could not make herself look into his eyes and let the confounded moisture in her eyes give her away.
With a gentle fist, he lifted her chin. Fear coursed through her like a chill, fear that he would sense her pain, find her vulnerable spot as she had his.
“Never mind. The music is playing. Can you hear it? It’s a waltz. Dance with me.”
Her heart pounded. “Dance? Here? There is no room.” All she wanted to do was run, run all the way back to Laura Place and slam the door behind her.
“We shall confine our steps. Dance with me.” The hand he put to her waist seemed to burn all the way through the brown pelisse, her dress and shift, as if he touched bare skin as he tugged her closer into a proper dancing position.
Sylvia put her hand to his shoulder and tried to push him away, but her hand felt as weak as a starving kitten against his hard determination. It was dark. No one was around to protect her. Yet she felt something… It was not danger, for she felt far too safe with him, and if anything was dangerous, trusting in the untrustable was just that.
Sylvia leaned her brow against his lapel, knowing she should not, yet she bent to that hungering need within her, hearing his quiet humming, feeling the gentle, sensual rhythm swaying, not quite dancing.
“This is not at all a dance,” she protested, knowing her objection was futile. The wayward hand that could not push him away rested upon his shoulder, touching the longish hair that draped over the edge of his starched cravat.
“We shall contrive,” he replied in a husky whisper.
The tickle of his words grazed across her ear. Her body tensed, sensing danger as if she could smell it. He was danger itself. How could she think him otherwise? He made things happen within her, twisting and turning like ribbons writhing in the wind. Yet something felt so safe.
“I am his brother’s widow, for heaven’s sake.” Oh, why had she said that? He was so very good at picking out the truth from fragments. She didn’t want to tell him of the new Ashbroughton’s passes, leers, innuendoes, and finally, the threats, the wagers with his cupshot friends. How she packed for herself and Amalie through the night and slipped away before dawn while the brutes he called friends were sleeping off a night of drinking and carousing in the drawing room, their bodies spread over chairs and carpets like slop tossed into a pigsty.
“And he found you attractive? Perhaps he was as mesmerized by your unusual eyes as I am.” He went back to his humming, and she could feel it vibrating within her.
Sylvia’s stomach twisted. “That excuses nothing. And I am not attractive. You know very well—”
He chuckled and squeezed the hand he held, and his cheek rested atop her head. “Oh, madam, you may have a horror of a wardrobe, but it does not hide the most enchanting things about you. But you are quite right. It explains, perhaps, but does not excuse. Dance, Lady Ashbroughton.”
She had stopped. Lost in the moment with him. With a twist to her lips, she gave in again to the soothing motion, letting it eat away at the horrid memories. He had a scent of bay rum that clung to him, mingling with the strange sense of danger and excitement that was almost an aroma in itself. Yet he was warm and comforting, like a rough, wooly brown blanket on a stormy night, sitting before a fire.
“It is easy to see why the waltz is so scandalous,” she said, her words almost whispered. “It is so close. A hair’s breadth away from an embrace.”
“Or a kiss,” he said.
And he was so close, so very properly embracing her for the dance, yet their feet no longer moved. His eyes grew hazy in the moonlight, and a distant lantern lit the outline of his face. The deeply incised curves of his lips softened as if he meant to touch them to hers.
She could feel herself yielding to the subtle pressure of his hand behind her waist, and she let herself arch into his body, absorbing the feel of its hardness beneath the garments. The locket pressed between them, leaking its pungent tang of lavender that mingled with his bay rum, reminding her of the list within it. Unsettling dark eyes that were lost in the darkness of night. The overbearing tallness that seemed suddenly so protective. Oh, it was not working.
How would the kiss feel? A kiss with perhaps some meaning, some longing behind it. Did he mean to kiss her, or was he merely toying?
Only the slightest movement in the corner of his mouth spoke of something else as he licked his tongue along the lower lip, leaving a sheen barely traceable in the moonlight, and slowly his lips broadened to a gentle smile. So. He would not kiss her. And she could not help but wonder why.
“The music has stopped,” she said.
“Hmmm. So it has.” Yet he did not release the waltz embrace.
Confusion bunched up inside her chest, thick and stuffy, like a head cold. He did not want her. Yet she did not want to be wanted, so why should she object? Was it but an oblique way to show his pity? But she did not want pity. Why had it felt so good, so safe, when it was not? Stiffness built in her arms, in her spine, resistance, armor against an assault that was not an assault, yet had so easily scaled her defenses. Once again her body screamed its need to flee.
“Then, sir,” she said, pushing against his shoulder, “as we have established that you do not like me and I do not like you, perhaps it would be advisable to separate your person from my person.”
For an answer, he released her and stepped back, leaving Sylvia feeling suddenly empty. He sketched a bow that was arrogantly formal. “Your servant, madam. Thank you for the dance.”
Sylvia smiled. Perhaps she could not find the words to explain it to herself. Perhaps it was simply a thing of feeling, not of intellect. She was often slow to understand those things. But it was beautiful. Beautiful in a way words could not explain.
“I thank you, Lord Vailmont. It was a beautiful gift.”
She slipped her arm onto his, and he rested a hand atop hers. As she turned back to the macadam path, she caught sight of a tall, slender gentleman leaning against a tree, arms folded.
Lord Albert Pinkerton.
“Good evening, Lady Ashbroughton, Lord Vailmont,” Pinkerton drawled. “Do say you will join us for the fireworks.”
At least it was dark. But the fire in her cheeks felt so hot, Sylvia thought she must glow like a beacon.
Sylvia went home after the fireworks and in the secrecy of her chamber pried open the locket and removed the wisp of paper within it. Hastily, she unfolded the paper and dipped her pen. She pressed the nib so hard against the paper, the nib fractured, but in her anxiety, she could not make herself stop to trim it, and scrawled the letters at the bottom of the list.

Wormy, squirmy lips.

Chapter Eight
“Devil it, Val, what do you think you are doing?”
Val watched the door of Lady Lyndonbury’s home close behind Lady Ashbroughton as Pink’s words attacked his ear. He was not sure he had an answer.
“Every time you are alone with her, I find you an inch away from a kiss. Are you hunting for a love potion or a bride?”
He certainly was not looking for a bride. And the thoughts he was having about her were certainly not the thoughts a gentleman ought to be having about a lady. They were dangerous ones, likely to lead him straight into trouble. The very sort of trouble he most wanted to avoid.
“Tell me you’re only romancing her to get the potion.”
“I am not romancing her at all, Pink. We were dancing.”
“In the dark. Stubble it, Val. Has she slipped a dose on you?”
Had she? Was that why his thoughts were so confusing? But that would presuppose an effective potion, and that was an utterly unscientific notion. “She wouldn’t do that. She has no wish to marry.”
“Have you gone queer in the nob, Val? All widows are looking for husbands. Don’t tell me I have to look after you as well as Whitby, and never mind Latimer, who is past praying for.”
As they reached the house at Henrietta Street, he turned back to his friend, and saw in Pink’s eyes genuine worry, if not fear. “Come into the parlor for a drink,” he said.
Inside, Val dismissed the sleepy footman and entered the parlor, where he poured each of them a stiff brandy. He stood by the struggling fire, rolling the snifter between his hands, watching its strange golden gleam where it clung to the glass, then slipped slowly down to join the mahogany pool with its fiery bite.
“She doesn’t want to marry because she will lose her property,” he said.
“Oh, of course. A poor trade to become a countess, with how many acres did you say you possess?”
“Eighty or so thousand, but that is not the point. She would lose her independence, which she prizes.”
With slow, precise movements, Pink set the brandy down on the mantle then plopped himself in a chair and dropped his face into his hands. “I thought so. She’s dosed you.”
“That’s absurd. I would have known. And you needn’t worry about Whitby, either. He falls in love every week. Too inconstant to ever make it to the altar.”
“One mistake and he’ll be there, like it or not. And it’s the widow’s daughter that has his attention at this moment. And you don’t think I should worry? Of course, I expect it of him, but you, Val…it’s appalling.”
“Nothing is going to happen. We do not, in fact, even like each other. But we have a common interest in uncovering who or what is really behind this plot. I have in mind taking her to her home tomorrow to go through her books. It’s only a few hours away.”
Pink groaned. “If she has any sense, she’ll recognize the threat to her reputation and turn you down. On second thought, if she has any sense, she’ll recognize it as the perfect opportunity to nail both of your shoes to the chapel floor, right in front of the altar.”
There was no persuading Pink otherwise. With a sigh, Val picked a letter out of the tray on the writing desk, noting that it had come through The Vale. He felt his hackles prickle as he turned it over. But of course, his steward knew where he was, and no doubt the old boy thought it important enough to forward. Val lifted the already split wafer.

Vailmont:

I must ask you to attend to me very soon, concerning the welfare of your daughter.

Ryder

Val dropped the letter as if it were afire and singed his fingers. Ryder! How did he dare? So now the girl was Val’s daughter?
“Something wrong, Val?” Pink asked as he bent to retrieve the folded foolscap. He held it out for Val to take back.
Val shook his head. “Read it,” he replied.
Pink skimmed it quickly, then went back and read again, his golden brows arching even higher. “The devil! What does he want, do you think?”
“Money,” Val growled. “I thought he might try something like this someday. He knows how I detest a dust-up, and he plans to use it against me. I suppose I should count myself grateful that he has not hit me up before.”
“You should have repudiated the girl when she was born. Anyone would have backed you.”
Val knew that. The bishop had come to him personally to question if he accepted the child. And every logical thought in his mind had demanded he repudiate her. She was not his, and even Anne had admitted it. But he could not. He could not imagine a little girl having to live with the label of bastard. So now he would pay.
Val took the letter back from his cousin and closed it, sharpening the creases between his fingernails. He laid the letter back on the tray and pressed hard against the wax wafer as he expected it by some strange mechanism to reseal itself. But the letter was mere paper and ink. It responded to the natural laws of the universe and rebounded where it lay, like a partially open blossom.
“What are you going to do, Val?”
Val stared at it for a minute. “Think on it.” He turned his back to the writing desk.
With a sigh, he closed his mind to the letter and trudged with his cousin up the stairs toward their rooms on the second floor. Leaving Pink at the door to his chamber, Val continued down the corridor, turned the handle to his own chamber, and dragged himself in.
As Clarence removed the coat from Val’s shoulders, Val caught the sharp scent of lavender that still clung where she had rested her cheek against his shoulder.
Devil it! What was he doing? Pink was right. A widow might be safer territory than a sweet young innocent, but he was swimming in very dangerous waters. And this was the very woman who secretly made potions that she sold to apothecaries and who knew where else.
But there was something afoot, no matter how unscientific it seemed, and it was something that affected the way a man thought about women. Particular women. Whatever it was, it turned confirmed bachelors into besotted bridegrooms overnight. If he hadn’t been convinced before, the incredible transformation in Latimer ought to persuade him.
Deny it as she might, there was something she wasn’t telling him, and he had to find out what it was. He needed to see those journals she kept, and the only way was to persuade her to take him to Willow Combe. And that meant finding a way to escape the narcotic charm of her silver-green eyes. Get out from under her spell while he still could.
She wouldn’t have dosed him. Would she?

Chapter Nine
At Elizabeth’s pointed stare, a hot blush crept into Sylvia’s face once more, as if Elizabeth could see through her skull to read her memories of Wednesday night in the garden. She grew even hotter, remembering the passionate thoughts she had not been able to contain. She was going to have to do something about her new problem with blushing. One more reason for a quick dash back to Willow Combe. Somewhere, if she could just remember where, she was sure to find the remedy in Lucy’s book.
Elizabeth gave her that cynical smile that clearly said she would not ask questions for which she did not wish to hear the answer, and she rose to walk out of the breakfast room and down the corridor.
Wincing from her guilt, Sylvia followed. But she had to go. And there was no way to explain it to Elizabeth without telling her about her slightly illicit potion business, and she did not want to do that. It was bad enough dealing with Elizabeth’s curiosity, as it was.
“Are you quite sure, my dear?” Elizabeth asked.
“We shall be there in less than two hours, Elizabeth, and Lord Vailmont is most interested in viewing my botanicals. He is a man of science, you know.”
“Is he? Well, I am sure you know best.”
“We shall be back before nightfall. That is why we are getting an early start. I have sent word to Bickley to expect us, so there will be no unexpected delays.”
“Well, it is certainly early enough. I vow, the sun is barely over the horizon.”
“It is already half past seven, Elizabeth, and the sun has been up for hours. In any case, we shall return before nightfall, I assure you. We shall have our noon meal at Willow Combe, and be on our way back as quick as that. Really, the road is quite well maintained these days. There should be no trouble.”
“None at all, I am sure. But an open carriage, my dear, with no top, and weather is so unpredictable… Do take an umbrella, will you?”
Sylvia frowned. She could hardly say no to that.
“And might you wear your new green pelisse instead of that brown thing? Perhaps it would mitigate that odd locket a bit. Or another thought—you could leave the locket at Willow Combe. I am sure you have some nice pearls that would be lovely with your ivory skin.”
“It brings back memories of my mother,” Sylvia replied, gritting her teeth. At least Elizabeth could not possibly guess Sylvia’s real reason for going with Vailmont to Willow Combe. While he was poring over her journals hoping to find what she knew he wouldn’t find, she would be rapidly snatching up the herbs that she should have used in the charm in the first place. If only she’d had them before! Maybe she’d be immune to him now, instead of giving into him at every turn. She was going to need all the help she could get.
With a reluctant nod, Sylvia conceded to the umbrella, but announced the brown pelisse was much more suitable for traveling. Elizabeth was worried about more than the weather, she knew. But they were going straight to Willow Combe and straight back. Willow Combe was her home, for heaven’s sakes. She certainly would be safe there. And it was quite clear to her Lord Vailmont had no more than fleeting interest in her, no doubt from boredom. They didn’t really like each other. But perhaps once he had seen her journals and gardens, his accusations and fears would be allayed. He would drop the absurd matter of the love potion and that silly wager.
That’s all she had to do, persuade him to give up chasing a superstition. Find a way to convince him everyone was doing precisely what they were doing, talking themselves into nonsense. Before he found the real connection to her. Before he stirred up things enough that people began to look her way. Once the word was out, not even Lord Vailmont could save her. Sylvia did not care much for herself, for she would simply go back to Willow Combe and the gardens she loved. But Millie’s dreams would be no more.
Sylvia would die before she’d let Millie’s dreams be trampled into the earth.
Elizabeth’s butler introduced Lord Vailmont. Sylvia’s heart gave a lurch as Lord Vailmont stepped into the parlor. She sighed. It would be nice if her adversary were a little less handsome. She would far prefer to be able to despise the person who placed her in such precarious circumstances. It would also be nice, in fact, if she could simply get this very unsettling gentleman out of her life entirely so she could go back to her comfortable existence at Willow Combe.
Her smile to him was probably about as attractive as a limp carrot.
“How lovely you look today, Lady Ashbroughton,” he replied as if he hadn’t noticed her lack of enthusiasm.
Sylvia recognized the bam for what it was, and let her lip curl in a minute sneer. “Not one of my horrid dresses, then?”
Vailmont’s fathomlessly deep eyes sparked wickedly. “Brown, still, but at least not the brown of a mouse’s back.”
“Really. And what color would you have me wear, sir?”
The spark brightened, as if it suddenly came from deep inside him, from that depth that made her shiver, the part of him she didn’t want to know. “Green,” he said, his voice humming with that resonating purr. “Dark green, to set off your eyes. Deep colors always, ma’am.”
With a decided wrinkle of her nostrils, Sylvia turned away to the footman. So he wanted dark green, did he? Thought she had no taste? “Johnson, I believe I should like my new pelisse. The corbeau.”
Johnson paled. “My lady?”
“The dark green, Johnson, with brown trim.”
“Yes, my lady.”
As the tight sleeves slipped over her arms and Sylvia fastened the frogs, Vailmont gave her a smug nod of approval. Sylvia tossed her head and picked up her new bonnet with its collection of fruit and leaves. Vailmont winced. Well, she did not care what he thought of her taste. She thought it quite…delicious. She tied the green ribbons beneath her chin and proceeded out the door, leaving Vailmont and the footman to carry out all the items, including the large carriage umbrella Elizabeth held out to Vailmont in an insistent way.
The caned whiskey gig was hardly a country vehicle, and the high perch felt decidedly too high for Sylvia’s sensibilities, but she was not about to say so. Nor would she be deterred by the heavy clouds lurking along the horizon.
But the sun stayed bright and the sky a wonderful autumn blue as they drove, and the Cleveland Bays pulling the light, springy whiskey pranced as if their strength were boundless. The breeze was brisk in spurts and felt cool like spring water against the unusual warmth of the sunshine. A gust caught the heavy bonnet and blew it back.
“Leave it,” he said, his eyes laughing at her.
“Absurd, sir,” she replied. “A lady does not go about with her bonnet dangling down her back.”
“That is not a bonnet, it’s an orchard.”
She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at the impudent man. “Nonetheless, it is a head covering, and as such, necessary.”
Yet Sylvia let the bonnet hang behind her shoulders, enjoying the freshness of the breeze in her face that blew about the stray strands of her dark hair. She rarely wore anything but a simple straw poke when at home, so she was glad to be free of the heavy weight on her head. Not until they approached Upper Chalton did she tie it back on her head. But she was known there. She was not at all keen to be thought utterly beyond the pale.
As the whiskey drove along the graveled lane up to Willow Combe, a surge of pride rolled through her. This, her home, was a place of beauty as well as a productive manor, and Sylvia had made it that way. She had brought more prosperity to it than the manor had known for a hundred years.
Vailmont halted the whiskey and gazed up, surveying the old golden-gray stone manor and its steep slate roof and high-peeked gables. It would be nothing like the home of an earl, which must surely rest in Palladian splendor on a lush green park of many acres, landscaped to appear beautifully natural, yet entirely the work of man. She had lived in such luxury when she was married. But this, Willow Combe, was hers. It bore her touch and that of her ancestors from time beyond the memory of man. Nothing could compare with that.
Odd, she thought, as she led him through the ancient oak door with deeply split cracks traversing carvings of shepherds and flocks and florals only she would recognize, and into the old entryway with its dark wooden floors and paneled walls silvered by both lime and time. She would never think of saying such a thing out loud to anyone else. Yet something told her this man, despite his imperious male arrogance, would understand.
“What a wonderful old place,” he said, a huskiness in his voice as he looked around.
And she knew. He did understand.
His eyes seemed to glow with warm acceptance as she showed him through the house.
She did not have a long gallery, as finer houses of the same age would boast, and the paintings of her ancestors hung about the house wherever a wall could be found to hang them. Vailmont walked into the great hall, circled slowly, eyes taking in blocky tables with crudely turned legs, square, straight-back chairs, carpets with pile more worn than she had remembered, although she had been gone scarcely weeks. Catching one painting in his gaze, he strode across the room.
“Lucy,” he said.
The portraits were not named. How could he know?
“Yes.”
“I knew she would have eyes like yours.”
“How could you possibly know that, sir?”
He shrugged. “I supposed it isn’t logical, is it?”
“Because you think her a witch, and her eyes were very green.”
Vailmont turned back to her, slowly regarding every inch of her face, and Sylvia thought she should feel discomfort beneath a gaze that burned as if coals glowed in the eyes. Yet she felt only a welcome warmth, something magical that pulled her to him as surely as a magnet was drawn to true north.
“I do not believe in witchcraft, madam, nor in witches. But the color of her eyes might well have contributed to her downfall.”
A smile would have been false, and she felt none coming. Saying nothing more, she gave a signal to Bickley to bring tea and led Vailmont to the withdrawing room. He studied all the old paintings of her ancestors, many done in a stilted, primitive style, yet he might have been looking at fine pieces in a museum.
“They are not an illustrious group,” she said quietly, yet she felt pride surging in her, warming her. “Simple knights and baronets, rather ordinary country folk. The Wilburmartins have always been close to the land.”
“There is nothing wrong with that, Lady Ashbroughton,” he replied, and his voice took on a ragged strain that recalled the gentleness of two nights past. “It is the land that nurtures us all. We are nothing without it.”
Something made her heart lurch again. Sylvia stepped back. It was too easy to feel close to this man. She knew enough about men to know a man like him would seek a widow out for only one purpose. Yet she wondered…
Would it be so terrible? Widows had discreet relationships. Especially widows like her who wanted, needed some physical companionship, but nothing more.
Her throat tightened. She was foolish to think such a thing. He was distracting her from her goal. Perhaps in some future year when Millie’s prospects were safely assured, but not until then.
Yet the smile of politeness she tried to give to him wobbled uncertainly. So she looked away, and showed him to the little parlor she used for an office, with the French doors she had installed to lead out onto the balustraded terrace, then down to the gardens.
Sylvia drew the draperies to let the brilliant light of the warm day flood the room, and heard a hum of surprise from him as he scanned about, taking in the walls of books and massive old cabinets full of journals. Bickley arrived with the tray of tea, and Sylvia poured a cup for each of them.
“Where do you wish to start, Lord Vailmont?”
“I have no notion,” he said. “I had no idea so many books could be crammed into one room.”
“Oh, this is not the library. These are just the journals and books pertaining to land management.”
He pulled a book from the shelf, opened it and carefully turned its pages, for it was very old. He put it back, then chose another, and another. “Then, madam, I may ask sometime to come to your home to study.”
“You may borrow any book you choose, sir, except the journals. They cannot be replaced.”
“And I see you are right, they are far more extensive than I ever imagined. Then show me how you keep your records.”
Sylvia nodded. She had nothing to fear, really. The answer he sought would not be found in the journals. He could read any number of them without finding it. Only she knew where the real secrets of Willow Combe were hidden. But the journals might convince him of the legitimacy of the Willow Combe gardens. So she brought out her current books.
“I have been compiling all the work of my ancestors in an orderly fashion,” she said as she pulled the journals from the shelves. “But each one had her own style, some much more random than others, and it requires some sorting out. I have been confining my work to the efficacy of specific cures and potions. Again, it seemed so random that I finally made up a book for each potion or herb, and as I come upon an account, I copy it into the journal that is most appropriate.”
Sylvia handed him her latest journal. “Perhaps this one is of most interest to you. It is the journal of the restorative tonic.”
Vailmont took the journal to the window and sat down in the light in her favorite overstuffed wing chair. He crossed his legs and leaned back to read, pausing now and then for a sip of the cooling tea then returning to his task, holding the journal at just enough distance that she guessed in some future years he would be in need of spectacles. She tried to imagine gold rims and smudged lenses perched on his nose, expecting the image to be ridiculous, but instead she found it endearing. She could see him, comfortably ensconced in a favorite chair by the fire, absorbed deeply in some book of scientific importance.
She blinked at a sudden addition, a child with dark curls tugging at his sleeve, and a loving smile spreading over his face as he scooped the little girl up into his arms.
No. She blinked again and repressed an unladylike snort. If anything was ridiculous, that thought was. That was not Vailmont. It would never be, for he had foresworn the life of a loving father. The man was about as endearing as a rampaging dragon.
Sylvia eased a small book off the shelf and tucked it into the folds of her skirts. Vailmont buried himself so deeply in his reading, he hardly acknowledged her as she excused herself for necessary matters. She smiled and slipped out quietly, skittering up the old, squared staircase with its fanciful carvings of deer and horses and into her chamber. She shooed off the puzzled chambermaid and sat on the bed, thumbing through Lucy’s book of spells and curses.
“Blushing. It’s here somewhere.” She turned the brittle pages with care, but hurriedly until she found the formula.
“Saffron!” How in heaven could Lucy have gotten her hands on saffron? A spoonful? “What do you think I am, Lucy? A nabob’s wife?”
How in the heavenly stars was she going to get a spoonful of pollen from a flower that only blossomed in Portugal in the springtime? And cost a veritable fortune to import?
With a huff, Sylvia decided it was less expensive to keep on blushing. Try to control it herself, somehow. But surely she could find a charm to control those lustful feelings that were swiftly slipping with her down the road to ruin. She thumbed through the pages, looking for something on controlling passion.
“Keeping a Man Away from a Daughter. That might work.” Sylvia squinted at the handwriting that had faded to a soft shade of sepia. “May it dry up like wood and become like a rag upon the manure pile.”
Oh, heavenly stars, she didn’t want something like that! Frantic, she turned more pages. Lots of spells for attracting. Nothing for repelling.
She closed the book, sighing. Lucy had never failed her before. So there was nothing but the common herbs for courage, remembrance and the like. She’d have to find an excuse to go to the drying house.
Sylvia opened the armoire and tucked the book beneath the stack of winter clothing. It was unlikely anyone in the household would look there before she returned from Bath, and Vailmont would certainly not find it here. She hurried down the stairs wearing a pleasant smile that said nothing at all.
Lord Vailmont looked up with a smile as vague as hers and returned to his reading. She called for Bickley to bring refreshments, then busied herself finding other journals that might be of interest to him. When the whim struck her, she wiped the dust off the bindings, every now and then glancing back at him and forcing herself to take a deep, slow breath to remind herself she had nothing to worry about now.
“Do you have a journal for every potion?” He did not even look up as he asked.
“No,” she replied as calmly as she could. “I am studying only ten items at the moment. Others I merely list in order by date in a separate book. Perhaps someday I will get to them, too.”
He grumped quietly and continued reading. Sylvia sat down to search diligently through the stack of journals she had selected for his interest. She was safe in assisting him to the utmost. He would not find what he sought.
“How far back do the journals go?” he asked, still focused on the old book in his hands.
“The earliest written record I can read is 1549. But there are some in very sad decay that I think may go back centuries before.”
“Sad to lose them. But even that is not the beginning of the family knowledge, I suspect.”
She watched him trace a finger over the page and frown. She had done that many times herself, trying to decipher script that was often ragged and sometimes faded almost to the color of the ancient parchment itself. She smiled as she watched his elegant lips moving silently in the formation of words no longer spoken aloud.
“The knowledge of herbs is ancient, Lord Vailmont,” she said. “Many of the old chants no longer resemble any language known to man.”
“Chants? Magic?”
“Probably not, although they must sometimes sound like it. Think of a world where people had no way to record their thoughts or beliefs of discoveries. They used chants, rhymes, and the like to remember formulas, directions, portions. Of course, there was much that was fanciful about their medicine then, you know, because they did not know what we know today. There is still a many a naive belief that sounds much like magic.”
“People need explanations,” he said. “They will accept a fanciful one over none at all.”
“Hence the love potion,” she offered.
“Or perhaps it has a narcotic effect,” he replied. “Men can be surprisingly compliant when well sotted.”
“Or they can be at their most evil. But if it is a narcotic effect you seek, then you should study wild lettuce, or perhaps nightshade or aconite, although both of the latter are quite dangerous.”
He sipped at the tea, which must surely have cooled, and set the cup aside.
“A nice tea,” he observed.
“Oolong. I do not have many nice things, but I will have my tea.”
“What is in your potion, Lady Ashbroughton?”
“Nettle, rue, pennyroyal, yarrow, lavender, borage, hyssop, angelica. A few others, some of which will only grow wild. No narcotics. And sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“My addition. Because it is so bitter.”
“And what makes you so sure it works?”
The corner of her lip curled. “As you can see, my studies show each of the ingredients has some benefit to offer. And the numbers show it is effective.”
“But would the same women have done as well without it?”
“I cannot say. I can only say the women I studied did not suffer from many ailments common to women. And it did them no harm.”
His dark eyes that seemed to her so dense and fathomless bored into her as if he meant to draw out her secrets, and she felt that pull that compelled her to come to him, give to him whatever he desired. But that was her notion, not his. She hid the tremor that went down her spine, and with a worthless smile, looked away. He returned to his reading. Aimlessly, she wandered about the room, dusting the precious volumes, staring out over the terrace at the gardens she loved, that would soon be laid to rest for the winter.
At length, he closed the journal and handed it back with a gesture that was almost reverent, and she returned it to its place on the shelves. He stood and crossed the room to her, and again she caught that scent that seemed so uniquely his, a touch of bay rum mingled with the hint of fields and pastures and ancient woods. It did not come from soap or lotion, or anything made by man. It was the essence of who he was, one that whispered of excitement, danger, intrigue. Power and passion. An intriguing contradiction to the objective man of reason he purported to be.
“Show me where you brew your herbs,” he said, but his tone was soft and quiet. His hand touched the back of her waist as she turned. She felt a sudden longing to lean back, accept his arms about her as they had been when they had walked in the darkness of the garden.
Instead, Sylvia scanned her mind for anything incriminating that might have been left in her herb room. But there would be nothing. She led him out to the terrace to the stone building that had been used for centuries for drying herbs.
As they stepped through the open door, the mix of scents assaulted like a strong wind. She drank in the headiness, letting it fill her with the joy of the earth. Inside, the bunches of herbs hung from overhead racks, the last of those she had not used before leaving for Bath. Sylvia pulled down a bundle of her favorite lavender and held it up to his nose.
He closed his eyes and let its sweet tang of ecstasy flow through him as if it curled deep inside him, enveloping him, the way the sensual pleasure of a woman’s touch excites a man.
She went weak in the knees.
He walked about, running his fingers over the shiny copper of her vats for distilling lavender, her table with its mortars and pestles, even the crates of blue bottles of varying sizes. His eyes, nose, fingers absorbed everything.
“Looks to be a profitable enterprise,” he said.
She released the breath she had been tightly containing.
“But hardly enough to support a Season in London.”
The tightness in her chest came back just as quickly as she had let it go. “Sheep,” she said. “Wool is our main concern.”
His brows lifted then relaxed. But she knew how poorly the wool industry was doing. That also would not support a Season, and he had to know it.
She wished she had never told him Ashbroughton withheld her portion. A man of reason could without a doubt add up the numbers and realize something huge was missing. But Sylvia hid her dismay behind her mask of politeness and hoped unreasonably to distract him.
“I have had Bickley set us a luncheon on the terrace.”
He nodded and followed her back to the stone terrace that overlooked the gardens, and as the servants set out the light meal, he stood at the stone balustrade and surveyed the gardens beyond. His mysterious eyes matched the seriousness of his face, betraying nothing, yet he seemed deeply lost in whatever thoughts were troubling him.
“Lord Vailmont,” she called.
He jerked back from his inner depths, and with a smile that was almost wistful, turned her way. “I’ve never seen anything like this place,” he said, and sat at the table.
It was as perfect a day as she could imagine for a meal on the terrace. The dark clouds still lingered on the distant horizon, but the sun shone brightly in a brilliantly azure sky full of puffy clouds that reminded her of soft down pillows. The breeze cooled the heat of the sun, stirring her hair and sending the first fallen leaves of autumn dancing in little whirls beside the stone balusters.
He ate in silence, seeming to enjoy the simple meats and fruits, now and then looking up at her with an odd frown. Then he would smile and go back to consuming his meal. How odd he could be, at times.
“Did you find anything useful?” she asked.
“Hm? Well, a scientific approach requires examining all the evidence, not simply what one wishes or expects to see.”
“Nothing to advance your theory, then.”
“Nothing to discount it, either. Perhaps I should consult your man of affairs who distributes for you.”
She bristled. “You’ve seen my accounts. Why would you need to know more than that?”
He cocked his head and one dark brow shot up, the way he looked when he sensed something slightly askew. She cringed. He was far too good at filling in the missing pieces. She wished she had some sort of charm that would turn his blasted scientific brain to plum jelly. There was probably something in Lucy’s books that would do it.
“Who might that elusive man of affairs be, my dear?”
Sylvia narrowed her eyes and looked at him squarely.
“Me.”

Chapter Ten
The long, straight wisps of her hair danced in the breeze like dark fairies with shimmering wings. Val stared as he tried to imagine her disguising herself as a man to manage her own affairs. Impossible. Everything about her said woman, from the gentle curve of her cheekbones and slender wrists to the supple waist he couldn’t resist touching.
“Do you mean to tell me, you go about as a man?”
Her nostrils flared. “No need, Lord Vailmont. I do all my business by correspondence. A few trusted servants manage deliveries for me. Anonymity is too important.”
He sat back. Yes, he could see that. In his mind, he put together the pieces to see how it could be done and still conceal her identity. But that meant he would have to see her list of customers, and that meant stirring up a hornet’s nest, with the lady in the middle of the maelstrom. So that was why she was bristling like a hedgehog.
How could he take this investigation any further? But he had to. Honor demanded that he not besmirch the lady’s name. But honor also demanded he put an end to the flim-flam that was causing such havoc among his friends.
Val folded his arms. “I can see you are not the one behind the scheme, Lady Ashbroughton. Your potion is simply what it is purported to be. But that means someone else, someone in the middle, must be adding something that makes it work.”
She stiffened so minutely, he almost didn’t see the gesture. “Assuming it does work,” she said. “One minute you decry it, but the next you seem to believe it entirely, as if you think some witch has come along and waved a wand over your head.”
His eyes locked with hers, and he felt himself snagged and pinned, and spinning again, like the center of a whirlwind. Or was it the world spinning around them? All he could see was her, his body taut and hungry, his mind dissolving into a hot pool of dusky red lust.
She was speaking, yet her voice seemed muffled by clouds and far away. He forced himself to hear.
“But perhaps there are things that cannot be explained,” she said.
Val stiffened and blinked. What the devil was this? Had he just made the worst mistake of his life? Was this the very heart of the mysterious power that had overwhelmed his friends, and he had just put himself in the very middle of it?

Devil it! His whole body tightened, all the way to rock-hard fists. There was no magic. She was right, like a perfect idiot, he had himself half believing. He had to keep his mind focused on what was real. If someone had dribbled a poison into the bottles of elixir, that he understood. But not magic. Not witches, nor wizards, nor incantations. Green eyes were just pretty green eyes, not maelstroms of power. He took several deep breaths to clear his head.
“No, madam, of course you are right. It is absurd to even consider. Any man of science will tell you people who believe in the supernatural are infantile and foolish.”
A strange gleam, like a sort of unearthly pale green light, seemed to shine in her eyes. His imagination. No. The maelstrom was pulling on him again, whirling, he and she, spinning within the force. Sharpening, the quickened breeze flicked her hair in streamers like ancient banners flying from a castle’s parapets, and behind her, gray clouds bunched against brilliant blue. A thin bolt of lightning signaled a storm in the far distance.
Swallowing hard, Val forced his gaze to the clouds behind her. Weather. Yes. The weather was always a safe subject. Growing a bit, he thought. Yes. Pay attention to the weather. It could be turning on them.
The pale jade eyes shifted and changed to silver. “Yes, I saw the clouds,” she said. “The wind is picking up. We may be in for a bit of a spell.”
He grabbed a breath that felt like the first one he had taken in hours. Again he breathed, but raggedly. Some semblance of rationality seemed at last to be coming back to him.
“Give me the names of your customers near Bath,” he said, hoping she didn’t notice that husky sound in his voice. “I’m sure I can find a way to investigate them without involving you.”
“No.”
Something he could only call green fire blazed in her eyes. Uh oh.
“Lady Ashbroughton, you have my word—”
“It is not your word that concerns me. I have no intention of violating the confidence of those who have trusted me. And I have no faith that your measures, however well-intentioned, could avoid stirring up curiosity that will lead to me. I have not helped you, sir, to have you bring harm to me and those I love, nor those who have trusted me. You will have to find another way to win your prize.”
Only moments ago she had seemed to flow with the wind, and now she seemed as formidable as a stone wall. He knew a stone wall when he saw one, and common sense dictated he should not ram his head against this one. Val folded his napkin and laid it on the table. He’d have to find another way to get the information, but it was clear now was not the time to ask.
“Very well,” he said. “It would probably lead to nothing, anyway. I suppose we must be starting back soon. But I should like to see these gardens that are famed throughout the Cotswolds.”
The green fire banked and began to look more like steel slivers.
“It is not gammon, Lady Ashbroughton,” he said. “I have been looking out at the prospect. It is truly not like any I have ever seen before. It has a magnificence all its own. I would very much like to see it.”
“I cannot imagine that it could be as fine as the gardens you possess, my lord.”
“I have a fine master gardener, it is true. But his touch is not like yours. Please show me your garden.”
The little smile began to play on her lips again, and Val remembered the way she had spoken of her stepdaughter as the light of her life. She cocked her head a bit to one side and started down the terrace steps. The breeze blustered again, once more sending the long dark strands of her hair on their fairytale dance. Val felt a sudden urge to grasp the tendrils, to feel their silk in his hands, to use them to pull her to him, drown himself in the luscious warmth of her body. He forced a laugh, while she looked at him oddly. A gentleman did not grab a lady’s hair!
But he wasn’t feeling particularly like a gentleman at the moment.

The gardens. Pay attention to the gardens, not the lady. Yes, that would do it. Get his mind and his body back under his control.
The gravel path was narrow and wound down the steep hill, here and there becoming a series of steps. Val let his gaze roam, taking in gnarled oaks and rowans that thrust their twisted limbs and tangled their roots among the limestone. On the slopes, patches of varying shades of green tucked around the rocks. The bright yellow of late summer blossoms, many-petaled like daisies, dotted themselves among the gray and green. He recognized tall parti-colored hollyhocks among scatters of tiny white flowers that spread like patches of snow.
“I have four gardens,” she said, her voice soft and mingling with the wind. “For different seasons, different purposes. The largest is the green around the house. This one is my hillside garden. It is most beautiful in the summer, but it is my most difficult one. Not many plants grow well on such a steep slope with such shallow soil, but it faces the sun, and is the first spot to bloom in spring.”
But it had her mark on it. He could picture her amongst its blooms, bending, kneeling to tend its hardy species with an ethereal litheness like the grain swaying in the wind, her body sighing with its caress. She would be like that beneath him.
He grew suddenly hard.

The flowers, you fool. Think of the flowers.

Her footsteps crunched the gravel as they followed the path down the hill, around twists and turns, past a sudden level circle encompassing a knot garden in purples and grayed green, with a mesh of shrubs in tight, interlocking squares surrounding it. Beyond the shrubs, the steep slope continued as the path meandered toward the valley, where the slope again gentled and the ground opened into pasture. At another bend in the path, she stopped abruptly. Before her, he saw a low, unmortared wall of rough, unhewn stones, from which ran a trickling spring. And in the center atop the wall, a stone head the size of a man’s head, its grotesque features either carved or weathered in a coarse parody of a laugh.
“This is the Spring of the Laughing God,” she said.
Val stared. Of that, he had no doubt. He bent to touch his fingers to the water, which was cold and clear.
“Some say the spring was sacred to the ancient Celts,” she added. “It’s one of many on this land, but only this one has any special markings. My family has kept it just as it has always been. I use the water in my potions because it is the purest water in the valley.”
Val cupped his hand for the water and raised it to his lips. Cool, odorless, tasteless, yet in that indefinable way water had, it was the seemingly nothingness that was everything. It rolled through his mouth like the finest wine, but sweet and fresh. It was water at its perfection.
With a smile, he turned his head to look up at her.
The world spun behind her, around her, dark strands of her hair flying and her dress dancing in the sudden wild wind. Time and place vanished in the whirlwind, and she was the center of all, the mother goddess, the earth itself. He felt as if he spun with her, his mind flowing freely, as if he spanned all seasons, all years, and she floated through it all, a lady in her Celtic Eden over the eons, ever changing, ever the same.
He staggered to his feet, struggling for reality, anything solid. He saw her everywhere. In the last fading roses he could imagine in their full bloom. In the ancient vines, thick and twisted, with their last leaves mottled gray and green and russet as they climbed and wound over the clumsy lace of stone balustrades. In the paved terraces and unhewn limestone walls. The gray stone manor with its steep slate roof that almost hid sleepy gabled windows seemed a timeless reflection of her.
He shook his head to chase away the bizarre images that could not be real. Yet it was as if she had been here even when those ancient Celts carved the head of some forgotten god and left its image to give the spring its name.
He had always thought her beautiful, even beneath her mouse-brown frumpy clothes. But here, among her growing things that were being put to rest for the winter, the brown and rust, and silvery backs of mice and spent twigs that had already lost their summer leaves, she became a part of the whole. Something mystical, eternal.
Here, she was like a goddess. The essence of life.

Stubble it, Vailmont. You’re letting the bats into your belfry.

God, what was the matter with him? He didn’t believe in that stuff. He was a rational man. Fools, drunks and madmen saw things that were not there.
She had already turned and continued down the path. Val straightened the waistcoat that had shifted when he bent over. He took a deep breath and followed.
She stood beside a pool that must have been built long before the Tudors, who had a passion for such things. It was precisely square, its old stone fountain of a naked maiden eroded and long past use. Steam vaporized in the air above warm water that was transparent, yet had the patina of aged copper.
“The bathing pool,” she said. “The pool and the wall behind it were probably built by the Romans, but the spring is probably much older. The ancients must have bathed here.”
Along the far side, a tiny stone shelter built into the cliff opened onto the pool. He imagined nymph-like beauties leaping into the steamy water, satyr-like men with eyes big as saucers peering from behind the brush.
“It’s a hot spring,” he said as he stifled the strange images.
“More a warm one. Not as hot as the spring at Bath.”
He frowned. “It doesn’t seem geologically possible to have a hot spring so close to a cold one.”
With one eyebrow cocked into a high, pointed arch, she regarded him solemnly, then shrugged. “This one’s hot. That one’s cold.”
He cocked his head in an imitation of hers. He had to admit, there was a certain indisputable logic in what one could feel with one’s own hand, whether or not it meshed with scientific knowledge.
“Have you ever used it?” he asked.
“When we were children. Mama always said it was unhealthy.”
“Not since then?”
The light eyes flashed at him and quickly looked away, and Val began to realize just how often he did or said something a bit outrageous just to catch another glimpse of their exotic beauty.
“Once a year,” she replied, almost smiling. “On the Eve of Samhain.”
Val felt his body go hard.
She was not even looking at him, but she sensed it. He could see it in the stiffening of her back.
He spun around. His throat went dry and gravelly. “Are you a witch?”
Lady Ashbroughton wrinkled her nose, and she laughed. “Are all the cups in your cupboard cracked?”
Val clenched his fists, but not in anger, for his hands seemed compelled to reach out, to touch the dark hair that glistened in the sunlight. And he knew if he let them, they would draw her body against his.
Those lips, so ripe for kissing…
Good God, he had to stop this!
Belatedly, he laughed. “But if you lived in your ancestor’s time, you surely would have been burned with her.”
The light green eyes widened, just the way he had hoped they would. “Why?”
“Because you are so extraordinary. Unusual women were always thought to be witches.”
“Really, Lord Vailmont. Sometimes you frighten me.”
He frightened her? Did she have an inkling of what she did to him? Witch, sorceress, enchantress. Whatever it was, he could feel the pull like the strength of a magnet. She dangled a lure before him that he was losing the power to resist. Yet she had done nothing he could identify. She did not glance at him provocatively. Her posture was perfectly proper, her garments far from alluring, chosen to repel, not attract.
“Samhain?” he asked.
“All Hallows’ Eve. It’s called Samhain in the old tongues.”
He saw her descending the stone steps, the long, dark strands of her hair trailing into the water, the thin cotton of her shift wet and clinging to her flesh, breasts full and firm.
“Out here?” he asked, and his voice sounded like he was choking.
An overly wise smirk danced on her lips. “You needn’t worry, Lord Vailmont. Nobody comes here. They think it’s haunted.”
He believed it. And she was the one haunting it. “Why?”
“We tell them it is.”
He choked, coughed. “No wonder they think you’re a witch.”
It was the wrong thing to say, or perhaps the right thing. She whirled around, her back to him, and Val felt his breath coming back to his chest. But foolish though it might be, he had to get out of here. And away from her.
“Those clouds look rather dark,” she said. “I think we’d best be on our way, or we could get a soaking.”
“We could stay here.”
The silver eyes darkened and narrowed. “I promised to return by nightfall,” she reminded him.
Val gave out a sigh. At least one of them was in control. For an answer, he tilted his head in the direction of the stone stairs that led back to the house and stables where the whiskey and its team of chestnuts awaited, fed, watered and brushed to a gleam.
Shortly, they were on their way back. Val felt enveloped in a sadness, the way he supposed an old man must feel, knowing he was so near the end of his life. But Val’s life was not approaching its close. This was merely a pleasant day in pleasant company. Yet it was with a sigh that he cracked the whip over the bays’ backs and started the whiskey down the dirt lane toward the road to Bath.
By the time the whiskey’s yellow-spoked wheels were rolling over the road, the clouds had turned dark and threatening. Lady Ashbroughton pulled the umbrella from the baggage. Val urged the horses to a faster pace.
The rain hit in a sudden, heavy sheet, drenching them before the umbrella could be raised. The wind roared, gusts slamming at them as if it meant to push them back all the way to Willow Combe. Holding her breath against the wind, Lady Ashbroughton held the umbrella before them so that he almost could not see the road.
He almost could not, anyway. The narrow, winding lane turned to muck, the wheels dug in deeper, the horses tugging the whiskey uphill against the icy, driving rain. Val glanced briefly at his charge, but hell, he didn’t dare take his eyes off the road. Her ugly orchard of a bonnet drooped. Colored dyes seeped through the brim from the fading fruit and streaked down the sides of her face. The dark green pelisse looked as sodden as he felt, as if she had worn it in a dip in her bathing pool. She shivered and stiffened to conceal it, but he knew how cold she was.
Val hadn’t seen rain this cold or hard since last midwinter. It was too much for her, for the horses, even for him. He had to get them out of the weather, before she caught a chill. They’d stop at the next inn and dry out.
If they could get there.
The wheezing bays halted, dancing skittishly as a ford appeared suddenly before them, rushing with murky water. Just hours before, it had been nearly dry.

Chapter Eleven
Val jumped down and took the lead horse by the bridle. “Hold the reins,” he said. “I’m going to walk the team through it.”
She grabbed the ribbons, her wide eyes surveying the rushing water. “How deep is it?”
“Just a few feet. But if we don’t go now, it will be too deep.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
But behind them were two fords that would be even worse by the time they reached them. Her eyes said she knew it.
“Take off your boots,” she said.
He nodded. He’d be glad to have them dry, on the other side. Val pulled them off and handed them to her. She stuck them behind the whiskey’s seat.
With a hand on the halter, Val tugged the lead horse into the water. The tired animal balked, but calmed under Val’s gentling words and firm hand, and stepped into the swirling water, the current surging against his ankles. Walking almost backward, Val sang a soothing banter as he fought their stubborn fear with all his strength and will. The water swept at his calves, then his knees, frigid and hard, driving against every step he took.
The whiskey rolled up to its axles, but still going as they approached the middle of the ford.
Lightning cracked the sky, earth-shattering bright, its thunderous shock throwing him back. The horses reared, screaming. Val threw his weight against the harness, a pittance against a ton of horseflesh. They bolted through the raging water, dragging him.
He stumbled, twisting as he fell onto his back. Water, stinging cold, closed over him. Val pushed against the rocky bottom of the ford, shoving himself back up to air again.
A hoof came straight down at his head.
He was going to die. Funny how he felt no fear.
He rolled away, into the water. Face down, awaiting death as he scrambled against a torrent that fought his every move. Arms thrashing, he found the bottom, forced his head again above it, as the rushing water carried him down and the bottom slipped away again. He had to get on his feet. But the fierce current caught him in its pull, dragged him from the bottom away from the gig.
He could hear her screams, yet they were muffled like some distant battle. Then he surfaced and heard them split the air like thunder. He gasped in a breath.
Terror struck at last. Lady Ashbroughton! Had she been swept away? Stockinged toes groped the pebbly bottom for footing, and he forced himself to his feet in the frigid force of the flood. But he stumbled and fell again to his knees and hands, slipping against the current.
“Vailmont!” she screamed. Her hand lashed out and snagged his wrist in a grip solid as a rope.
Cold water streamed from his face as Val found his footing at last and followed the pull.
She stood ankle-deep in the water, one hand latched onto him, the other holding the reins of the frightened beasts which were still at her harsh command. He shuffled through the roiling, dark water, drew closer to the whiskey and grabbed the wobbly wheel.
Val straightened and laughed to himself as he held on to safety, her wild eyes searching him until she finally felt he was safe enough and turned back to controlling the horses. He saw in her eyes a certainty. If the stream had taken him, she would have come after him.
His Lady Witch. How the devil had she done that? Had she calmed the horses all on her own? No one else was there to do it. How had she done that, yet grabbed his arm at the same time? He could not see how it was possible. He had long since realized she was no soft lady. Still, the iron grip she’d had on his arm was the grip of a man.
He was supposed to be saving her. Not the other way around. But somehow it felt good to know.
“I’m all right, Lady Ashbroughton,” he said, chest heaving as he swiped at the sodden hair that dangled in his eyes and sent icy streams pouring down his face. “You shouldn’t have done it. I could have managed.”
“Of course. But you know what a managing female I am.”
“Yes. A successful one.” Val slogged in his sopping stockinged feet through the last of the shallow water to the bank, taking the team out of the water to the somewhat more solid mud of the road.
Lightning flashed all around them in bolts and sheets. The jittery horses bucked and danced in the traces. They dared not trust the poor beasts not to take off again.
“You are a sight, Lord Vailmont,” she said, and she chewed on her lip.
“I am in good company, Lady Ashbroughton.”
She studied the hem of her new Corbeau pelisse that was now as mud brown as the one he despised so thoroughly, and sighed at the mess. “Yes, I would say this poor rag now contributes to my horror of a wardrobe.”
“Entirely unworthy of your beauty, ma’am.”
“What a bouncer. If you take off your stockings, your feet could be fairly dry inside your boots.”
Val suspected he’d better do that, for they could have a long walk. He didn’t trust the horses. If they should bolt again, he did not want her to be in the gig. The umbrella had vanished, probably washed into the swollen stream, but better it than them. “I trust you are familiar with this road?” he asked. “How far is it to the next inn?”
“We are in luck, sir. Just over the next hill or so, I believe.”
Val pulled the boots out from behind the whiskey’s seat and tugged them on his frozen feet. Another time, he might have thought the leather strange-feeling against his bare skin, but his feet were too cold to feel anything at all. For a while, they just stood quietly, waiting for the horses to calm and giving them all a few minutes of rest, even though the driving rain still soaked them. But as the lightning moved on, the rain slacked to a roar, and Val decided to give the whiskey another chance at its task.
“The hill is a bit steep, and they are all but blown. Let’s walk them to the top of the hill. Perhaps we can ride down.”
She nodded, giving him one of those smiles that was meant to reassure but betrayed its owner’s truer thoughts.
Such was not to be. At the crest, Val looked down the road to the village below at yellow squares of light so dim, they flickered through the sheeting rain. The narrow lane was far too winding, too muddy and slick, to trust to gig and horses. With a shrug, he started down the hill, Lady Ashbroughton walking beside him in her drenched green pelisse, with the torn hem of her brown dress sagging beneath it.
She was a game goer, no question of it. And Val had never felt more like a bounder. He could only take comfort in knowing the way down was not as hard as the way up had been, although the muck seemed twice as deep.
It seemed a frozen eternity before they finally reached the little inn. A coach boy ran from the shelter of the eave to take the tired beasts to their rest.
Val stepped into the common room and let his gaze sweep around to assess just what sort of mess they had got themselves in now. But it was neat as his own great hall at The Vale, with floors clean and sanded. The kitchen was visible, with its copper pots hanging gleaming from the bright fire in the hearth. The small, round fellow who greeted them sported an apron of pristine white. Val breathed a sigh of relief.
“’Tis a nasty day out, sir,” the innkeeper said. “Not thinking we’d have more guests, with a storm like this.”
And dark as it was outside, it was only the middle of the afternoon. But they were still some distance from the turnpike. A last hard shiver coursed down his spine. Val was grateful there was any inn at all.
“I am Vailmont,” he said. “My—wife and I have taken an excursion out from Bath and were caught unawares by the storm. Nearly swept downstream at the ford. We require a suite, with a very cozy fire. If you can find my—wife a dressing gown or something of the sort that she can wear until her garments dry out, it would be most appreciated.”
The innkeeper’s eyes blinked wide. Obviously, Val didn’t look particularly lordly at the moment, and no doubt the quality of his garments could not be discerned beneath the soggy mud, but his voice, shaky though it was, seemed to have carried the day.
“Yes, my lord, of course, anything you wish. Clean sheets, too, my lord. M’wife prides herself in them. Cleanest linens for miles.”
Val glanced at the lady he had just called wife. He’d never seen the silver eyes look so wide and wary. He tried to return some reassurance.
“Have some claret brought up. We’ll have a bite later when we have warmed a bit. Extra blankets may be in order.”
“Yes, my lord. As you wish.”
He was never so glad for anything as when they reached the suite and the door closed behind them, leaving them alone in the sitting room beside a freshly stoked, blazing fire.
“Lord Vailmont, why did you say such a thing?”
“Terribly sorry,” he said, tugging off his soggy pigskin gloves and setting them beside hers on a small table, where the four gloves curled like impotent fists. “It was the only thing I could do. They might not have let us stay if they knew the truth. I did not ask for someone to assist you for fear they might recognize you here.”
“I have never stopped here before, not even in the village. But that is not the point. Now they will expect—”
“We’ll only stay long enough to dry out and warm up.” Val looked at her face, striped in colored rivulets like crinkled ribbons from the flattened papier-mache fruit on her sodden bonnet.
He repressed a smile. “You must remove your bonnet, Lady Ashbroughton. It has utterly failed you in its duty.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
He gave a tug to the ribbons, grinning as he lifted the ruined bonnet from her hair and surveyed the damage more thoroughly. The stripes ran over her cheeks and down her neck, where they puddled into some indescribable color that stained the neckline of her dress. He chuckled. “I believe I should call you Lady Rainbow.”
Lady Ashbroughton ran for the looking glass and gasped. “Oh! How terrible! You must think me the worst of frights!”
“We share the title, I am afraid. I did not like it anyway. I have never been fond of edible garments.”
“My hair is as wet as if I had taken the dunking instead of you. Oh, I am so sorry, Lord Vailmont, you are the one who must be so very cold and wet. I should be thinking of you instead of myself.”
Cold as he was, something warmed him, and it came from her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and keep her there. But he just smiled instead. “The rain was as cold as the stream, so there is really no difference. Come now, my dear, let me help you with your pelisse.”
She had unfastened the frogs on the pelisse, and he lifted the garment, heavy with water and mud, from her shoulders and hung it on a peg. Sudden terror struck him in the gut. He had not realized. It was so heavy from the water it had absorbed, it would have drowned her, had she fallen into the stream.
“A pity,” he said, as calmly as he could. “It was the only garment you possess that I like.” At last, he removed his own thoroughly soaked coat and found a peg for it. Clarence would be in a peeve for weeks when he saw it.
“And now it is as wretched as the others.” She scrubbed at the streaks with a wet cloth.
Then she fumbled with the tapes on her mud brown dress, which in the scheme of things had at least not much changed its color, for all that it clung to her like another skin, and gave him images he hoped to remember sometime later when he was not so soaked and cold.
“Just when you were making some progress. Allow me, madam. Then I’ll go into the sitting room.”
Wincing, she turned her back to him and Val pried the rain-swollen knots loose with his fingernails. “There,” he said. “I shall go down and have an ale in the common room, perhaps see the ostler about giving the horses an extra measure of mash. They earned their keep today. I shall return in an hour to see how you are doing.”
As she held her dress front to her body, she nodded, furrows of anxiety on her brow. But of course she would be concerned, with her reputation on the line.
He went to the stable and saw to the horses. The exhausted team would not travel farther tonight, but he had known that, and already arranged to change teams. He was just glad they had not suffered too badly. Nor was the whiskey any worse for all the weather. He returned to the little sitting room, where he stripped off his coat and boots, then the mud-streaked shirt and the breeches that had once been a fine doeskin. The boots were ruined anyway, and it did not matter if they stiffened, so he set them as close to the fire as he dared. Not even his cravat was salvageable, and wherever his stockings had gone, he had no notion. The innkeeper’s wife had produced a silk banyan, a regal blue and red brocade stripe that floated as he walked.
An hour had passed, and he knocked on the door. She did not answer. Val knew he shouldn’t, but then he had said he would check on her in an hour.
He turned the handle and peeked in, waiting for a sodden half-boot to bounce off his nose.
The room was strewn with feminine garments, over chairs, on pegs, draped over tables and bedposts, spread out in odd fashion for drying. The lady lay curled up on a fainting couch pulled before the fire, wrapped in a blanket, a pillow beneath her head where it rested on the couch’s high arm, and that strange locket dangling against her extended arm. Her dark hair had been brushed upward and let to cascade over the sofa arm, straight down, touching the floor in a flowing sheen like gleaming, polished ebony.
Val caught his breath. His body hardened. If he had even a grain of sense, he would leave. Now.
But she slept on. He eased into the chair across from the fainting couch and settled into its comfortable cushions, just to watch her. Silk the color of the half-consumed glass of claret enhanced the ivory delicacy of her skin, colored her cheeks and lips with rose, made him ache to touch the glorious fall of hair. He could almost feel its sleekness slipping through his fingers. He wanted to run his fingers over her cheek, catching the edges of the silken crescents formed by her dark eyelashes. He had never noticed her lashes before, so mesmerized had he been by her wonderful pale jade eyes.
His lurid thoughts spiraled downward, down, into the dismal pit of sexual desire, thoughts deserting rationality, that didn’t care if she was a lady or not, thoughts demanding fulfillment and would not go away, would darken until they took control, until they got what they wanted.
He was a man who was always in control, who managed his life within a hair’s breadth of a second. He should stop it. Must stop it. Yet he could feel his control slipping away like a slide down an icy slope, first creeping, then escalating to a hair-raising, scream-making ride into Hell. And there was nothing in his will, his power, not even his desire, he could muster to change it.
There was no question. He was bewitched.

* * *

A hot breeze touched her face. Sylvia blinked awake. It was his breath as he knelt before her, only a kiss away from her lips.
“Tell me to go away,” he whispered. But his eyes, dark, so dark she could not find his soul in them, begged something different.
“Tell me to leave.”
Sylvia couldn’t move. She could only gaze into the unfathomable depth of the eyes with their indefinable darkness, black or charcoal, or something darker than the midnight sea, yet with a fire that burned with lustful longing. From somewhere she found the strength to lift her hand, to touch that shadowed roughness of his cheek that had so intrigued her.
“Slap my face, Sylvia. Make me leave.”
But she was helpless. He lit fires inside her she had nearly forgotten could exist. She wanted to feel the lips that changed from harsh to gentle, that flexed with sensuality. She slipped her hand behind his neck.
His lips found hers, touched in aching tenderness, then touched again, harsher, demanding, powerful, suddenly deeply invading. She gasped and hungrily met kiss for kiss. Eagerly tasting. Eagerly returning his invasion.
He leaned over her, the blue and red striped silk falling open. She slipped her hand beneath the sensuous fabric, her fingers threading through crisp hairs, tracing muscles on his chest, and up to expose thickly muscled arms. It glided away to the floor like falling water, baring skin tanned golden to his waist. With a growling moan, his hands plunged beneath the blanket and bunched up the red banyan above her thighs, up and over her head. He slid atop her, hands once more cupping her face, running down beyond her shoulders to her breasts.
“Witch,” he said, mumbling into her mouth as he drew her into another deep kiss.
“No—I’m not,” she murmured back. But the words were lost in the rush of wild passion flowing through her, igniting flames that shot through to her core.
“Sorceress. You’ve bewitched me,” he replied.
“I think you’re afraid, Vailmont.”
“No.” He kissed her again as if he meant to devour her.
“I’ll make you a potion,” she gasped between his kisses. “Angelica and hyssop. To ward off witchcraft.”
“Nothing could ward you off.”
It had been so long. She had forgotten more than she realized. The taste of the kiss of passion, so rough yet so tender, so hungry and demanding. Its heated dominion took over her being. The feel of his body atop hers, more than passion, warmth, was a need too long unfulfilled. Too long it had been since a man’s hands had worshiped her body, and none had ever touched it like this, a caress so demanding, she had to fulfill its promise. Nor had hers explored and found the rugged beauty only a strong and handsome man could have, the rasp of masculine cheeks unshaven since the morning, hard muscle rippling with power. Something in her yearned for what had never been hers, the touch of a man who truly desired her, yearned to touch the man she truly desired. Sylvia let her heart go, let her body go, let the fire spark and tell dreams to her awakening soul, let the roaring storm sing songs her heart had always hungered to hear, let his body give to hers this moment of loving she would treasure forever.
She lost herself as the violent rush of passion eclipsed her soul, draining and filling her at the same time. And found herself in the blatant lust that grew like a raging fire with each stroke into her body, the great strength of his body powerfully filling her, driving her to a higher peak than she had ever felt before. She imploded, trembling in the parti-colored ripples of ecstasy.
In the afterglow, she dozed, his tired body resting quietly on hers. She began to breathe again, slowly, as if breathing itself were new. Like the earth after a freshening rain.
She jerked suddenly, like awakening from a dream.

Oh, my heavenly stars!

What had she done?

He felt the jerk of her body beneath him and snapped awake.

Devil it!

What had he done?
It wasn’t a dream this time! He’d actually made love to her! In spite of everything he had known, about her, about women! Where had his mind gone?
Val stared at the woman beneath him, who was staring back at him, eyes wide with horror. Or certainly it appeared to be horror. If she didn’t have an expectation of him now, then she was the dullest brained woman he had ever met.
And she certainly was not that.
Val pushed himself off the lady, off the fainting couch. Devil it! What had he done? This was utterly unlike him. Or more to the point, what had she done to him?
Bedamn, was this how the other men had been trapped? Seduced?
And here, he’d always thought seduction was a male prerogative.
He glanced back at her as she righted herself and grabbed for the red silk at the same time, averting her gaze. He’d better think of something fast, because he could all but see those machine-like cogs working in her brain.
Belatedly, he realized he had left his garments strewn all over the sitting room. He scooped up the blue striped banyan from the floor and threw it on his naked body. “You needn’t look so horrified, Lady Ashbroughton. It was only a moment’s passion. It means nothing.”
Her jaw dropped open, then snapped shut. Ha. He’d cut that little scheme short. But for a passing second, he thought he glimpsed something else in her eyes, the sting of betrayal. Oh, no, he’d not fall for that one. She had lured him, but he was not obligated to languish in her trap.
“Do not delude yourself that I shall be making any trips to the altar.”
“Noth—” she said, her mouth suddenly gaping again. She gasped. “You think I did this to trap you?”
Sylvia bolted from the couch, fumbling about with the dressing robe, her exquisite body completely bare below as she jerked it over her head and tossed it to the fainting couch, but it slid like flowing water to the floor. “This was your doing, sir. I did not ask you to come into this chamber, and certainly not to kiss me while I slept.”
“You were awake.”
“Entirely beside the point, as you woke me. And for that matter, I did not ask to stop at this inn, and certainly did not ask you to call me your wife.” She whirled about, scooping up her garments from tabletops and pegs and grabbed her half-boots from the hearth.
“Sylvia, what are you doing?” Val tied the sash of the banyan.
“Lady Ashbroughton to you, sir. I am getting dressed. And I am returning to Willow Combe if I have to walk there, since Bath is obviously too far.”
With her arms full of soggy, limp garments, she fumbled for the door handle and threw open the sitting room door.
“Oh!” She slammed it shut. Val got a glimpse of servants moving inside the room and guessed they were setting up their supper on the most reasonable assumption that the earl and his supposed wife would still want to eat. And that was where all his clothes were. And she was between him and them.
She spun back around and, with eyes narrowed to the width of a dagger blade, tossed her head at him, black hair shimmering in the firelight as it flew through the air. Val watched, fascinated. Stockings rolled up and secured to garters faster than he’d ever thought possible.
“Sylvia, you can’t go anywhere. The rain is still pouring down.” She wouldn’t, would she? But only one look told him she would do anything to escape his company.
“I’ll find a way.” She snatched up her shift that was still nearly transparent from its dampness, glancing up at the sheets of rain streaming down the window panes. The look on her face changed first to despair, then to grit-hard determination. “I’ll take the post back to Bath.”
“Not ’til tomorrow. I already asked.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
God, no, he couldn’t let her do that. But everything about her, from tight jaw to ramrod back and rigidly squared shoulders, said she would do just that. She glanced again at the window and the deluge outside.
“Your only hope is to stay with me.”
“Oh, is it? Not when there’s a lock on the sitting room door.”
“On this side only.”
“Then get yourself on the other side and stay there.”
Sylvia glared and snatched up the bedraggled shift. She jerked it over her head and jabbed her arms through the armholes, catching the chain of the locket between her wrist and elbow. The fabric caught around her neck as it twisted in the chain, and hung, mercilessly trapped in its own tangle.
Val snorted and tightened the banyan sash around him. Typical of a woman. Catch her in her manipulation, and she’ll lose her temper, turn the blame.
He stomped past her toward the door, headed for the sitting room where he could at least roar at the servants and chase them away.
Ah, hell. Guilt dropped on him with the swiftness of the trap door beneath the hanged man. She was right. Maybe she was trying to trap him, but he was the one who had created this brangle. He could have stayed in the sitting room until she came out. He could have stopped the kiss. And if he’d really used his brain, like the rational man he considered himself to be, he could have found another solution besides planting the two of them in the same room at the same time, in the middle of a storm that stuck them there together.
And if he really was a rational, reasonable man, he’d admit it. He’d apologize.
Val gritted his teeth. “After we eat,” he said, and hoped she’d accept that.
The way her nostrils flared, like a bull seeing red, told him there wasn’t much chance of that. She wiggled and twisted, fighting the tangled fabric. “You cannot think I wish to eat with you. Out. Now.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then I shall leave. Alone. Without you. And you may be sure, one way or another, I will get there.”
Guilt lodged in his throat like a hard, immovable lump. “I’ll leave if you’ll eat with me.”
Val groaned. He knew what he had to do. But damn, it was hard. Who knew what she’d do with it? He could be on his knees the next minute if he wasn’t careful. And leg-shackled the minute after that. Especially with her gyrating like a dancer, her only clothing either caught up by garters or wrapped around her neck.
Val stepped toward her to help. She backed away, glaring and waving elbows in a formidable way he’d never seen before.
His jaw as tight as a vise, Val squeezed his eyes closed and bit out the words. “You’re right. The fault is mine. I’ll go into the sitting room and have your meal sent to your chamber for you. And you may throw the bolt.”
There. It was easily the most graceful apology he’d ever made, if for no other reason than it was the only one he could ever remember making. He held his breath and waited for his reward.
“It most certainly is. Out.”
“Sylvia—”
“Lady Ashbroughton, if you will.” She braced her fists on her bare hips, her firm breasts poking out beneath the shift that was still tangled about her neck. The little dark triangle at the juncture of her legs riveted his gaze.
He swallowed hard as his shaft got harder. “Doesn’t that seem a bit stiff, since we have just made love?”
“Since we never will again, I see no difficulties with it. Please leave, Lord Vailmont.” Her arms writhed and hips wiggled as if she danced barefoot on an anthill.
“Val,” he muttered, trying to get words past his thick tongue, while building lust filled his mind like sticky syrup. “My friends call me Val.”
“Then you will not mind if I address you as Lord Vailmont.”
Not precisely the reward he had in mind. He should have known better. Repressing an undignified snarl, Val started toward the sitting room door.
So much for love potions.

Chapter Twelve
Val glanced back as he shoved down on the door lever. There she stood in nothing but her garters and white silk stockings, with the shift wrapped around her neck like a lopsided Elizabethan ruff. A blazing fire lit the ice in her green eyes, coal-dark hair streamed down over her shoulders with both breasts with their pert nipples poking through, and baring her all the way down to her triangle of curls. He might have laughed, but his rational mind was slipping away fast, down that greased slope into the Hell-pit of witless lust, and the only thought it would stick on was dragging her back to the bed for another go at it.
“Devil it.” His striped banyan flung open and rippled along his sides like fluttering flags as he strode across the room. Both arms scooped her up and he kept on going.
“Vailmont! Put me down!”
He did. On the bed. Himself on top of her.
She squealed inelegantly. “Vailmont, stop this!”
“Oh, is that what you want? Say it again.” He shifted up higher on her body.
“Vailbb—” He caught her mouth and closed it with his, burying his tongue deeply.
She moaned, her elbows wagging beneath the tangled cloth.
“Is that what you want, Sylvia? Say it.”
“No-o-o-o,” she moaned.
“No, as in, you want me to stop? Or are there other things you want?” He pinned her arms and slid downward over her sleek, white belly until his nose landed in the forest of curls, fraught with the scent of lovemaking, and into her cleft.
She whimpered and writhed. He slid lower until he could taste the sweet-salt of her moistness mingled with his seed. Wild hazy-brilliant colors flamed and swirled in his head, his shaft harder, swollen and demanding, every inch of his skin afire with tingling awareness.
“Vailmont!” she whined, a strange sort of cry from a woman in ecstasy.
“Witch. What do you want?”
“I’m not a witch! Help me!”
“Certainly. Anything you want.” He stroked over her nether parts with his tongue.
“I’m caught!” she cried between moans.
“You most certainly are.”
“No, I mean it, Vailmont! I’m caught.”
With a groan, he looked up.
“I’m tangled! My shift is caught in my necklace.”
He grumbled. He’d forgotten about that. So was her arm. He sat up on his knees, straddling her, and fumbled through the thin cloth, looking for the place it was hung up. He tugged, but it didn’t give.
“Raise your arm,” he said.
But she couldn’t. Her hand was caught on the downstroke, while her elbow was trapped from going up.
The devil, but he didn’t have time for this. Val grabbed two handfuls of the thin cambric at the neckline and yanked. The fabric gave way in a sickening rip, and that battered locket that looked like she’d unearthed it from some old Roman ruin dropped back to her chest. In a swipe, he swept the shift over her head and sent it flying through the air toward some unknown destination.
“Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t be helped.”
Only one look at her newly bared body and he resumed, as heated as he’d been before. On his knees, still spanning her, he backed downward, trailing hot kisses over her, stopping to swirl his tongue around her nipples, then on across her pale belly as his hands cupped her buttocks and lifted her to meet him. He buried his face in her crotch, once more taking in the heady, sexual scent, and with thumbs, parted the lips that obscured her hot core.
As his tongue touched her, she cried out and arched, and her fingers laced through his hair.
Damn but he wanted her, to stop and bury himself in her, but even more he wanted her to want him. Hot as Hades itself, he fought for control that was fast slipping away, probing with his tongue and rolling her taut nipples with his thumb and finger. Her cries grew desperate. Her hips rocked wildly. Val fought himself to the last inch, bringing her to an even higher peak as he sucked the little shaft between his teeth, still stroking over it with his tongue. Her hips danced about, gyrating in rhythm with her cries.
She exploded with an abruptness that almost took him with it, and he wanted suddenly what he had been denying himself, to be within her when she reached her peak.
“No,” she said, pushing against him, and what little comprehension he still had warned him she had become too sensitive to touch. He pulled back, watching as she took two or three pants, and her eyes opened again, glazed with a slowly waning haze.
She shoved him away from her. Startled, Val sat away. Had he not pleased her? Perhaps violated her ladylike sense of propriety? But she sat, grabbed his shoulders, and in a quick jerk, tossed him on his back. Val grinned. He could have fought, but what little logic his brain still possessed saw no purpose in it.
“You don’t have everything to say about it, Vailmont,” she said.
Straddling him as he had her, she pushed his hands back when he reached out to touch. She slid down as he had, her aggressive fingers seeking out every crevice along his chest, across his abdomen, down following the line of dark hair and encased his shaft with their blazing heat. He gasped as passion sucked the breath from him.
Her lips touched his swollen tip and he nearly bucked out of the bed. Hot colors rolled violently inside him, twisting him in exquisite pain as she engulfed him.
“No…” He staggered a breath. “Not this time. Wait… I can’t contain it.”
“Safer that way.”
Ah Hell, let it go. Nothing said he had to be in control all of the time. And this was every bit as good as what he’d had in mind.
Stroke after stroke, she took him in, her tongue slipping down and back over his shaft in a rhythm of its own. Hotter, harder, slipping through the ecstasy of her moist mouth, Val lost himself in the wildness, the mindless nothingness of everything all at once, buried deeply in the moment of eternity, his mind imploded while his body exploded into release.
He lost the sense of time, of place, lost everything except the passion that smoothed into floating peace.
As he regained his senses, it occurred to him that an argument had been going on, and he’d been on the losing side of it. Maybe she had forgotten.
He supposed that was about as likely as persuading her to stop wearing that funny locket or her ugly brown dresses. But for now, perhaps they would have a few moments of blissful serenity.
For once, she did not protest and curled up against him. She simply lay down quietly in his arms. Val snuggled her close to him.
As far as he had ever experienced, that was not the lovemaking of a lady. He liked it that way.
The rain softened to a drenching downpour. They would have to be moving on soon. Sylvia rose from the bed and picked up her shift, grimacing at the rip made by her locket when he had tugged too hard to free it.
“Don’t dress yet,” he said. “Just the banyan, and let your clothes dry some more.”
“No, I believe I shall dress,” she replied. “As I suspect you are perfectly capable of repeating the last two performances.”
“Perfectly.”
Sylvia bent, twisting away from him to hide her silly grin, and took the brown dress from the back of the chair where she had left it a few hours before. “I should like to eat sometime,” she added. “I am rather hungry.”
The interlude was over. With an odd emptiness inside him, Val pulled on the red and blue striped banyan and went through the door.

Sylvia watched the door shut behind him. A lump as big as a balled up stocking formed in her throat, and it tasted just as bad.
Heavenly stars, what had come over her? Not once, but twice! And not with just any handsome man, no, she had to pick the one who could turn her upside down and bounce her on her head for the next century.
She certainly knew how to judge men, didn’t she? Three men had been in her life, and all three never should have been let in her front door.
Sylvia plopped down on the fainting couch, head in her hands. But a quick sideways glance at the couch’s gold brocade spurred her to her feet again. Her gaze spun around, back to the closed door, and emptiness rushed in, overwhelming her. Everywhere, everywhere she looked, the room seemed full of him. She pinched her eyes closed, as tight as she could, but the memories only seemed more vivid.
She had found the most glorious moment of passion in her life. A moment she would remember all her life. And it was nothing to him. Nothing! Exercise. Like riding a horse.
Typical man. A perfectly glorious passion, but it was just another event to be repeated with whatever female could next be persuaded.
Seduced. She huffed. In her case, not even seduction had been necessary.
Well, he had apologized.
But he hadn’t meant it. On the other hand, that probably was about the best he could do. An earl was not, by his very position, accustomed to apologizing to anyone. However, in her mind that was a very good reason why no thinking woman should consider marrying an earl.
She bit her lip. She had certainly not been very gracious, either. Sylvia planted herself before the looking glass, holding to her body the rumpled brown dress that he had never liked in the first place. With her hair streaming wildly over her shoulders, it was hard to imagine why the man had even bothered with her.
What a fool she had been, to put herself in such jeopardy, just because a handsome man showed her some attention. Just because she wanted…wanted something or other she couldn’t quite define. She’d made a muddle of it all. She could hardly blame him for being what he was.
He had said from the beginning he would not marry again. He made it clear he did not even want a mistress. Not that she wanted to be either of those things to him. Or any man.
But what did she want? That was the first question he had asked her. And she still didn’t know. Men were too troublesome to bear wanting, she knew that. But she was not all that keen on a life alone, either.
She wasn’t? Sylvia scrutinized the mirror, as if the odd reflection were someone she no longer knew.
But if she didn’t want him and he didn’t want her, whatever could be her problem? She had no excuse for not accepting his apology, however supercilious it was. That was not well done of her.
It was, nevertheless, hard.
But necessary. Sylvia sighed. Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, she pulled that perfectly serviceable if ugly brown dress over her head and knocked on the door. Hearing his gruff reply, she entered.
He scowled at her as he settled his mud-streaked coat on his shoulders.
“I am afraid I cannot manage my tapes,” she said.
“I was of the impression you did not wish for me to touch you, Lady Ashbroughton.”
She swallowed and made another attempt. “I have decided you may call me Sylvia.”
“I am honored, madam.”
“Please do not growl at me, sir.”
“Val,” he said with a pointed stare.
“Very well. Val. May I have your assistance with my tapes? Val?”
She supposed she should feel grateful that he did not slap down his gloves or stomp about, as men in ill humor were wont to do. Nevertheless, it was still in evidence in the very precision with which he executed every move. As she turned her back for his assistance, she could feel his frustration lapping over her shoulder like hot breath. She knew each pair of tapes would be perfectly tied, in not a fraction of a moment longer than it was necessary to accomplish the task.
Without looking, she knew the exact instant he stepped back. She made no attempt at a polite smile, knowing she’d make a mull of it all.
“Thank you, sir. Val.”
He turned away and walked to the window, staring out past the grid of mullions and the gray streaks of water running down the panes. “You cannot go anywhere, Sylvia,” he grumbled. “The storm and the flooding make it much too dangerous.”
“I am aware of that. And I do understand you only wish to protect me. If I have been somewhat prickly, well, you have my apology.”
“Reluctantly so, of course.”
“No more so than yours. But as we have agreed we do not like each other, I suppose it is the best we can do.”
He waved her toward the table, where they ate a perfectly adequate meal in perfect silence. The tension between them felt so thick, Sylvia wished she could use the table knife to cut it. Except that the table knife was not sharp enough to cut the meat. Vailmont seemed to be having no trouble in that regard, but she had no intention of asking for assistance. So she forged on, stubbornly shredding it instead.
“There is that small matter of getting back to Bath,” she said, as if the last several moments had passed in conversation instead of silence. “I wonder if we shall make it at all, or if my reputation will be a shambles by the time we do.”
Vailmont glowered.
She winced. She shouldn’t have mentioned her reputation. “You need not fear, Vailmont. I shall not marry you under any conditions, so you have no need to ask. No man is worth giving up Willow Combe.”
“If you did not wish it to go to a husband, why is it not in trust?”
She shrugged as she made folds in her napkin. “My father was never one to get around to small details. When Ashbroughton died, Father had no more incentive, and of course he did not anticipate his own death so soon afterward.”
“Who will be your heir, then? Won’t it be lost to the next generation?”
“Amalie, of course, as I shall not have other children.”
“You delude yourself. You will marry. Women always do if they have the opportunity.”
“As opposed to making the opportunity?” she answered, her nostrils flaring. “You are being kinder than usual.”
“Madam, you cannot deny that something is affecting the ton’s bachelors, and one way or another, there is a connection to your potion.”
“Perhaps it is the borage. It is said to incite courage.”
“Really. No spells or curses?”
“You keep mentioning that. I rather suspect it is you who are deluding yourself. But you may cease your dithering. Yes, I believe I shall concoct a potion just for you. Angelica and hyssop to ward off witches, perhaps with the borage to bolster your courage in your battle against the forces of evil.”
She smiled sweetly at the way his eyes narrowed into little slits.
“Do not mock me, madam.”
“Mock you? No more than you mock me.”
His glower faced her down. Sylvia winced and returned to sawing at the beef in her plate.
“I cannot comprehend any woman wishing to be tied to property.”
“You do not? Would you give up The Vale for the privilege of marriage?”
“Of course not, and all the more so since marriage has not the slightest appeal to me. But it is not at all the same. It is my duty. I am the descendant of men who have held that responsibility since the days of the Conqueror.”
“I daresay my people have been at Willow Combe far longer than that.”
“Druids? Priestesses? Witches?”
“You should not ridicule what you do not know.”
“If you were a primitive, madam, I would allow you your ridiculous superstitions, and merely smile. But you are an educated woman. You should be using your knowledge to further the science of horticulture.”
Sylvia stiffened, head to toe, and set down her fork. “No.”
A dark brow arched. “You have much to contribute. Why withhold it?”
“The Wilburmartins do not subject themselves to ridicule. You seem to have forgotten I am a woman.”
“I assure you I have not forgotten your sex for a single moment.”
“Neither will they.”
Sylvia looked down at her lap, where her hands crushed the napkin into a wad.
“Sylvia,” he said, and he laid his fork across his plate.
She looked up, adjusting a miserable imitation of a smile on her face.
“Let us cry friends. Perhaps we have made a mistake, but I should still hate to lose you. As a friend.”
She nodded. She hadn’t really wanted to look at it as a mistake, but she supposed that was what it was.
“The worst of the storm is over,” he continued. “We can be on our way soon. Once we reach the turnpike, we shall probably have no more risk of flooding.”
“Yes, of course. I did promise to be back before nightfall. They will worry.”
Soon, in the darkness of an evening sky, they set out again for Bath. Sylvia had a borrowed umbrella and two blankets, which they wrapped around their shoulders, for their garments were still not quite dry. A second light rain hit, forcing them to continue with the umbrella raised. They found little to say to each other, noting only the particulars of the journey itself and the countryside over which they traveled. They did not pull up before Lady Lyndonbury’s home in Laura Place until shortly before midnight.
As Johnson opened the door for them, Amalie came running up, still wearing her pale blue evening dress that showed some hours’ wear.
“Oh, Mama, what has happened?” She threw her arms around Sylvia.
“Oh, my dear, we were that worried!” Elizabeth cried.
Val grimaced and stepped back as if he considered making a run for it.
Johnson lifted away Sylvia’s pelisse with delicate fingers, holding it away from himself as if it might impart its filth on his pristine black coat if he were not careful. Elizabeth gasped.
Sylvia winced and glanced at Val. “I am sure we could not look worse for wear if we had swum all the way back,” she said. “And I fear Lord Vailmont very nearly did that. It was a most terrible storm that all but swept us off the road at a ford. We were forced to stop for a while… At an inn… And I lost your good umbrella, Elizabeth. Please do forgive me.”
“It is of no importance. Come, let us warm you both up by the fire. Johnson, see to some tea right away.”
“Not for me, thank you, Lady Lyndonbury,” said Val. “I must be getting on home. Good night, Lady Ashbroughton. I am glad all has ended well and you are safe at last.”
“And you as well. Thank you for all your kindness.”
Val nodded, but his bow seemed a bit stiff. He turned away rather abruptly.

* * *

Tired as he was, Val did all the things a responsible man should do before taking his ease. The horses were well settled into the mews, and he had sent the footman on to bed. He threw some extra coals on the fire, poured himself a glass of brandy and settled back into a well-stuffed chair, wondering if he would ever feel warm again. He tried very hard not to wonder what Sylvia thought of him or the debacle he had made of things.
“Oh, there you are, darling. I had rather wondered when you were going to return, or if you had perhaps decided to go wandering off somewhere again.”
He groaned, and wondered if life as he had known it was over entirely.
“Good evening, Mother.”

Chapter Thirteen
Val pinched the bridge of his nose. He had no difficulty quizzing out how his mother had found him. Clarence had probably written off to his beloved chambermaid the moment they stepped foot in Bath. And if not he, then certainly Portia would have told her. The two were close as glove and hand.
But he hadn’t really thought the countess would go to all the trouble of following him. She was persistent by nature, dogged, it could be said. But normally not this much.
“How lovely of you to take a house in Laura Place, although I would have preferred the Crescent,” she babbled. “Heaven knows why men choose to stay in those awful inns, but…”
At the first sign of prattle coming on, Val felt his mind starting to shut down. He forced himself to concentrate. If she’d gone to this much trouble, she was definitely up to something. He took an inelegantly large swig of the brandy to brace himself.
“…I could never abide in such a place…”
Naturally not. Val wished he’d never left the White Hart.
“…certainly a bit more suitable for guests than the usual…”
Guests. Bad word again. He was getting rather good at spotting them, ever since he had realized bad words were to be unearthed from their inconspicuous positions in the middle of her rambling sentences, rather than at the points of emphasis where most people would place a word of importance. But then, his mother hid them specifically because she didn’t want him to find them. Val took another gulp of brandy, silently wishing this were one of those rare times when he could allow himself to get good and drunk. Shamefacedly jug-bitten. But he reminded himself how ill such behavior had served his father. And unlike his father, Val was a proponent of rational choices. Although his own decisions of late had been sadly lacking in that particular quality, he nevertheless realized a rational man did not ignore danger.
Devil it all. He was thinking again instead of listening.
“…but you know how rarely one finds a person of true quality among the sort that…”
Nothing in there. But, maybe. Who would be the person of true quality, or perhaps the person lacking in true quality? But it would take too much distracting thinking to puzzle that one out. Setting his jaw firmly, he returned to filtering her words, but swirled his snifter as if his mind had floated off somewhere in its usual fashion.
“…I hardly think that Sir Ralph has the slightest sense about him…”
He didn’t even recall who Sir Ralph was, so that was probably just prattle meant to distract him. Filtering continued. He swirled some more, slumping deeper into the chair, listening when he appeared not, calling himself back again and again when he wanted nothing in the world more than to escape. It seemed hours passed and he was not picking up any more bad words. He was about to say he was going abovestairs to take his bed.
“…a small party…dinner…”

Aha. Val closed his eyes as if he were nodding off, but focused harder. In truth, he had to fight the desire to drop off to sleep right where he was, for the only thing keeping him awake was the assiduous picking up of clues. Now, who were to be her victims?
“…the last letter, but…Lady Ernwhistle…arriving…”
Her again. With daughter in tow, no doubt. When?
“…Wednesday…take the waters, of course…supper, which I am given to understand…”
“Guests for supper Wednesday night, Mother? But I have not had time to invite anyone.”
Mother’s head reeled back several inches as if a shot had hit her forehead.
“But no matter,” he said, vaguely smiling. “A marvelous idea. I am sure my friends will be most happy to oblige. Thank you for coming, Mother. So much more pleasant to have you arranging things. I shall go up to bed now. I am quite weary. Long day, you know.”
Her gasp could be heard all the way across the room. “Vailmont, how can you… I did not say— But I have already planned— And you know I cannot—”
“Add five to your list. Three ladies, two gentlemen. I shall give you their names tomorrow morning. Good night, Mother.”
He had been bone tired only minutes before, but now he took the stairs two at a time, grinning. Twice in a row, George Boothe Wyndham, Lord Vailmont, had gotten the best of the dowager countess.
“Not that Ashbroughton woman,” his mother called after him. Brittle ice edged her voice.
Val stopped at the landing, frozen inside. Then irritation suddenly growled inside him. Already, she knew about Sylvia? Then she was truly determined to pick a wife for him. Fortunately, prudence and rationality overcame the tendency of his tired body and mind to snap back.
“Lady Ashbroughton,” he responded as evenly as he could manage. “Lady Lyndonbury’s guest. You do remember the Dowager Marchioness of Lyndonbury? As she is our neighbor, it would not do well to snub her. Or her guests.”
“That woman is completely beneath you, Vailmont.” The vapid voice that had been blithely bantering just moments before became hard and sharp. “She has been utterly independent all these years, and who knows what she has been doing? I will not have her in my house.”
Independence. Val smiled at the thought. Odd, how he’d taken a liking to her independence, something he’d always detested in a woman. “My house, Mother,” he corrected gently. “Add Lady Lyndonbury and her guests, Lady Ashbroughton and Miss Bibury to the list. And my friends Lord Albert Pinkerton and Mr. Marcus Whitby.”
“Really, Vailmont, is that the best that you can do?”
Val marveled at the sudden change in her speech and demeanor. This was a side of his mother he did not often see, rarely enough that it was easily forgotten. Yet it was one he knew to be quite hazardous to his welfare.
“As they are my friends, I suppose that is true,” he replied, once more starting up the stairs. “You may, of course, invite your own friends, Mother. We shall discuss it further in the morning.”
“Vailmont! How dare you talk to me that way! You have no sense of what is in your best interest and…”
The rest he closed out as he scampered up the second flight of stairs toward his chamber.
At the second landing, Pink awaited, hanging his head in a way Val had never seen before. “Sorry, old chap. No way to warn you.”
Val shrugged and plodded on, almost wishing Pink had chosen to go to bed instead.
“Expected you back sooner.”
“Expected to be back.”
“You didn’t do anything foolish, did you?”
Val paused in his step. Did it show? But no, it was just Pink fretting. He hadn’t seen the man truly fret in years. “There was a storm, Pinkerton.”
“True. But—”
Val frowned at his friend’s unusual agitation. “Out with it, Pink.”
“Things have been happening. Albemarle’s been snatched up. And they say, Currier.”
“The devil. Where’s Whitby?”
Pink nodded toward the door at the end of the corridor. “In his chamber, with his head in his hands. Or perhaps more truly, his tail between his legs. He blurted out a declaration of love to Miss Bibury, and I’m afraid she didn’t take it well. Called him inconstant.”
“Inconstant?” Val’s lip curled as he started toward Whitby’s chamber. “He’s been faithful to her for better than a week. Can’t imagine how she could want more.”
Val rapped on the door. No answer.
“Give over, Val,” Pink replied as Val rapped again. “He hasn’t taken it well.”
“He usually doesn’t.” Val pressed down the handle, and the door squeaked as it swung open. There lay Whitby, splayed on the bed like the spokes of a cartwheel, in full but frazzled dress, a brandy glass still in his hand. The flagon on the table was nearly empty. Carefully, so as not to startle the fellow, Val lifted the glass from his hand and set it on the bedside table next to the flagon. He checked Whitby’s pulse, just to make sure, but he knew the probable answer, and was proven right. He let the limp hand drop to the bed. Whitby didn’t move, beyond the odd gyrations of his mouth that accompanied an unbecoming snort.
“Drunk as the entire House of Lords,” he pronounced. “Where’s his valet?”
“Whitby ordered him out. I have no idea where the man went. May be the last we see of him.”
Val frowned and summoned a sleepy footman from the dim corridor to put Whitby to bed more properly. Utterly unlike the even-tempered Whitby he knew so well to be this foxed. What the devil was going on? With a nod toward his door, he summoned Pinkerton to follow him into his chamber.
Clarence met him at the door and whimpered quietly at Val’s sartorial distress. Val thought he saw a tear gleaming in the man’s eye as Clarence removed Val’s coat. It had once been Clarence’s favorite, the one he called The Celestial Blue. The poor valet merely gaped at Val’s inexpressibles, which were stained by so many different colors of mud, they could only be called mottled. The cravat would probably next be seen in use to polish Val’s boots, although certainly not this pair of boots, which if Clarence had his way would never be allowed to grace Val’s feet again.
“I do hope no one saw you like this, my lord,” said Clarence, his voice vibrating slightly.
“No one who mattered, Clarence.” What else could Val do except reassure the man, whose entire life seemed to be wrapped around his reputation as Val’s valet? “Go on to bed. There is nothing to be done tonight.”
Clarence closed the door behind himself with nary a sound.
“You look like you fell in a river, Val,” Pink said.
Val would have expected something a bit more sardonic from his unflappable friend, so he supposed he should feel grateful. “I did precisely that. Horses bolted when lightning struck, and knocked me into the water. Lady Ashbroughton pulled me out. Kept the horses from trampling me.”
The golden eyes narrowed warily. “Hope she doesn’t look as bad. Lady Lyndonbury could come calling on you in the morning with a brace of pistols.”
Ah, that was the old Pink, with his wit intact, after all.
“She looked worse. The fruit on her bonnet ran their colors down her face, and she ruined her new pelisse. But she was quite magnificent, standing there with the storm battering her, above her knees in roaring water, with an iron grip on my wrist. And damned if she didn’t have those horses under control at the same time. You should have seen her.”
“Glad I didn’t. Wish you hadn’t been there, either.”
“You needn’t worry. The lady has no inclination toward marriage.”
Pink sniffed. “You’re a fool to think so. They all do. Val, we’ve got to find out how they do this.”
“You, of course, do not believe there is a potion.”
Pink’s normally placid amber eyes went a little wild. “Albemarle’s sixty if he’s a day.”
“He’s rich.”
“Currier’s not. And he’s old, too.”
“He’s got a title, and he needs a son. Perfectly normal reasons for marrying, Pink. Probably has nothing to do with any potion. Currier was already casting around for a bride. He simply hadn’t found one rich enough.”
“Well, now he has. But she’s so ugly, if she stood up beside your cousin, Portia would be instantly declared a diamond.”
“And here you sit, Lord Albert Pinkerton, known everywhere as The Pink of the Ton, unchosen. Surely you would be the first to go.”
Pink winced. “It’s not funny, Val. If I don’t know what to avoid, I could end up like the rest of those loobies. Fourteen of them now, Val. Maybe fifteen, counting you. Look at you! Use your head.”
Val turned on his cousin, impatiently frowning. “I am using my head, Pinkerton. If you will recall, it is my penchant for logic which got me into this ridiculous wager in the first place. But I assure you I have no designs on Ashbroughton’s widow or any other woman, and I shall not be marrying, despite my mother’s best scheming efforts.”
Pink stepped back a pace.
“Sorry,” Val said. “It’s been a bit of a wearing day.”
“No harm done. I’m just worried about you, Val. Not that I’d object if you really meant to marry, but the thought that you might be tricked into it…”
Was he? Given the opportunity, Val guessed he’d repeat this afternoon’s event in the flash of a moment. Without the lightning and flood, of course.
Had she dosed him? But why do that, then oppose marriage so vehemently? Was that a sham? Was Miss Bibury playing the same trick on Whitby? To oppose marriage in order to make the besotted swain more determined? Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
He’d seen her books. And something was not quite right with them. She might have a livable income, but she didn’t have the blunt to support Amalie’s coming Season in London. And where would a widow look if she were in need of more money? A new husband.
Perhaps Pink had been right when he hinted Sylvia would willingly trade her meager property for a countess’s title and the wealth he possessed. Yet he couldn’t lose the image of her standing beside that enigmatic ancient pool, a goddess who bloomed like a Venus in that very spot. If anyone belonged to a piece of land, it was Sylvia, wedded more to Willow Combe than she ever might be to any man.
“Let’s forget the wager,” said Pink. “I’ll concede. Whitby will too, I think, and Latimer has already. Just find out how they’re doing it.”
Val sighed as he sat to pull off his boots, revealing bare toes, since his stockings had vanished somewhere. “All right,” he said, running his fingers through his hair to push back his wayward forelock. “But I need you to do something for me.”
Pink raised almost eager eyebrows.
“Find Ryder. Find out what it is he wants.”
“Anne’s lover?”
Val tensed from neck to toe at Pink’s plain speech. “I have no intention of seeing the fellow. Much less meet him on his own turf. Offer him fifty pounds and nothing more. And be back by Wednesday night. Mother has a dinner party planned and I’ve invited you.”
“I heard that. And the ladies.”
“Protection, Pink.”
Pink started out the door, then turned back. “Something’s happened to you, hasn’t it? You aren’t the same.”
Val glanced at his banyan, laid out with Clarence’s customary precision on the bed. Green silk instead of blue and red stripe.
Horror sketched onto Pink’s face, his amber eyes wide. “You did, didn’t you?”
Val froze. He looked away.
“Hell,” said Pink. “I’m going to be the last bachelor in all England.”
Head hanging, Pink slunk to the door and closed it behind him. Down the empty corridor, Pink’s footsteps echoed like the forlorn drumming of a royal execution.
In the dim chamber lit only by the sparse fire, Val undressed, removing the last of the garments that had been so badly abused earlier in the day. He wrapped himself in his green silk banyan and stoked the fire, for he had not quite shaken the chill from his bones.
He stretched out on his bed, his hand stroking over the smooth silk. Soft, like her soft skin, like the flowing sleekness of her glistening dark hair hanging over the arm of the chair and gleaming in the firelight.
He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the image. Best not to think about that. He had a worse problem right now, anyway.
George Boothe Wyndham, Seventh Earl of Vailmont, enlightened and rational man, owner of vast estates in three shires, was known to all as a man who sought to improve his farms, promote scientific endeavors, a man who loved his lands and his horses and funded the learning of talented but less fortunate souls. He went to church every Sunday and took good care of his tenants. He was a man who always did his duty, who had married as his parents had chosen, accepted a child who was not his in order to protect her from derision, and did his best to contain a scandal he had not caused, for the sake of his family. He had never been known as a stubborn, willful, selfish man.
Was it too much to ask that he follow his mother’s wishes once again?
He let out a huge sigh. It most certainly was. About this, if nothing else, he would remain firm. He had been certain his mother would give up her latest scheme once she realized she had been outwitted. But her appearance in Bath told him this time was different. She had picked out Lady Grace Twitt for him, and meant to pursue her goal to the bitter end.
God. He had never even met Lady Grace, but he knew enough about his mother’s tastes and what she wanted in a bride for her son that the girl could not possibly be the wife for him.
But was there a wife for him?
No. And if he ever did marry again, it would be a wife of his own choosing. He would not have a Grand Passion for a marriage, which would be just another mistake. But he would at least have someone he liked. Someone like…
Val jerked out of his reverie. Oh, no. Not her. He had learned the hard way, a woman of independent thoughts made for unsavory consequences. Besides, they were agreed, they would be friends, not lovers. Most assuredly not spouses. They had made a mistake and agreed they would not repeat it.
Yet…
Val sat up again, on the edge of the bed and rubbed his temples. If he meant to outwit his scheming mother, who had never played a straight hand in her life, he did need Sylvia’s help, especially if he meant to upset Mother’s plans without creating unpleasantness. He snorted. After this disastrous day, he could see no reason why she would.
But if Mother had the potion, which she almost certainly did, and if the potion was as effective as he had come to believe, then he was indeed in dire trouble. He would soon be finding himself desperately desiring what he in truth did not want.
It did not matter if the potion was real or existed only in the imagination. Either way, it led to the same result. He did not intend to let it happen to him.
Val lay down again and slept, too weary to do otherwise. But through the night, haunting images crept into his dreams. Thunder, lightning, blindingly bright and deafening, gusts of soaking, driving, freezing rain. Rushing water flooded over his face as he thrashed and thrust his hands against the moss-slick bottom, fighting to hold his breath, fear thrumming in his veins like pounding blood.
The shod hoof came down straight at his head. He shot up from the bed, jarred wildly from his sleep. But as he once again lay back down, he was already seeing in his bed beneath him, a silver-green-eyed sorceress who drove his passion beyond his wildest dreams.

* * *

Amalie adjusted the delicate string of graduated pearls at her neck so that it centered precisely on her throat, and patted at her pile of golden curls. “Really, Mama, do not concern yourself. We quite understood. Of course you could not make it back through such a storm. Aunt Elizabeth and I had a quiet evening in.”
“I do hope you will not mention it to anyone,” Elizabeth said. “About the inn and all.”
The fiery blush climbed up Sylvia’s neck and spread rapidly through her face. “Oh, no, certainly I would not. They might think—things.”
“Yes, they might.” Elizabeth’s eyes matched the solemn line of her mouth, taking in everything, and only making Sylvia blush more deeply. “But you need not fear anyone noticed. I vow, it was so frightful last night, no one was about. Except that Lord Albert and Mr. Whitby came to keep us company for a bit. Naturally, we did not wish to go to the theater. We would have arrived as bedraggled as—”
“As I?” Sylvia replied. Odd, that she felt as bedraggled today as she had looked the day before.
Elizabeth’s brow wrinkled in a pained wince. “A pity about the pelisse. It did look so lovely on you.”
“Yes, Lord Vailmont did say it was an improvement over my usual dowdy weeds.”
“Oh, surely he is not such a rudesby.”
“He was merely attempting to persuade me to dress better. And I suppose he is right.”
“Perhaps you might,” Elizabeth answered.
Millie pouted impatiently. “Mama, you are much too pretty and young to play the matronly widow. Can you not see, Lord Vailmont is taken with you?”
Was. No, not even then. He was taken with winning a wager and using her to do it.
“We are friends, nothing else.” If even that, now. She supposed she would be fortunate if he even tipped his hat to her.
“Mama,” said Millie with a wispy smile as she held her hands behind her back, “we have something for you.”
With a swoop, the girl swung her hand out, producing a tiny velvet box, which she handed to Sylvia. Her blue eyes were shining with love and pride in just the way that pulled at Sylvia’s heartstrings and made her wish she could keep everything as it had been these past nine years, keep the child forever young and safe, not let Millie go off into a dangerous and uncertain future.
Sylvia took the box and lifted the lid, and a tiny sigh escaped. “Oh, how lovely, Millie!” The shiny oval, gold locket was rimmed with real seed pearls to delicately frame a glass-encased silhouette of Amalie in its center. Tears brimmed in Sylvia’s eyes.
Oh, no! She would have to wear it. Not wearing it would hurt Millie terribly. But that meant removing her only protection from Lord Vailmont. And just last night, she had replaced the lavender with all the right herbs.
But maybe, after yesterday, she wouldn’t need it. He knew her worst secret now. She would never be a lady in his eyes again.
“We thought it was so much more suitable for her portrait,” Elizabeth said, her brows in an odd twist of a frown. “Since you seemed so determined…”
Oh, heavenly stars, how was she going to explain this one?
She couldn’t put her little charm inside it because it wasn’t big enough. Or maybe she could make it even smaller. Yes, she’d do that tonight.
She pasted on a thin smile. “Thank you. It is lovely. Now I must remember to take this one to a jeweler.”
“And a dressmaker for a new pelisse,” Elizabeth suggested.
“Well, I dare not ask to have a new Corbeau made. I fear the question might come up about the last one. Perhaps a nice gray.”
“I shall not allow it. I vow, Sylvia, Vailmont is right. I do believe you are deliberately playing the dowd.”
Sylvia winced. “Well, I have no wish to find myself married again. At any rate, I should far rather have been here playing Casino with you last night.”
“Never say it, my dear, when you can be off traipsing about the countryside with a handsome young man.” Suddenly beaming, Elizabeth laid down the embroidery she had just picked up. “Oh, how nice. He has come to see you.”

Chapter Fourteen
Sylvia turned around to see Lord Vailmont framed by the doorway into the parlor. She winced. He had heard her. He looked rather like she had slapped him, and she supposed in a way she had. Her thin smile wavered as she stood to greet him.
Vailmont bowed stiffly. “Good morning, Lady Lyndonbury, Lady Ashbroughton, Miss Bibury. I am on my way to take the waters, and dropped by to assure myself Lady Ashbroughton has not taken a chill.”
“You need not worry, Lord Vailmont,” she replied. “I am quite hardy. I never take a chill.”
“I am pleased to hear it. Perhaps you will walk with me to the Pump Room this morning.”
“I had not planned to go this morning—”
His eyes took on a cast of cold, hard fear. “Nonsense. Today of all days, you should take the waters.”
Whatever was the fellow up to? She frowned at him.
“As a reassurance. Of your health, I mean. It is utterly necessary, Lady Ashbroughton.”
Behind her, Millie giggled. Sylvia resisted the impulse to turn and admonish her. But if Val said it was necessary, then that had to mean he had something he had to tell her. She felt her heart race, for the only thing she could think it might be was that their not so proper journey into the countryside had been observed and had become the subject of gossip.
“You may borrow my blue pelisse, my dear,” said Elizabeth with sly glee edging her voice.
“And my bonnet and gloves,” Amalie added, and giggled. “Since yours are so—”
“Ruined,” Sylvia completed for her, pursing her lips.
Johnson held up the blue pelisse with its silver trim. She was vanquished.
“Mama, the necklace?”
Sylvia glanced at Amalie, who looked ready to shed tears. She glanced at Vailmont, who looked…anxious. She took a deep breath. How could she ever manage to be around him without an amulet? Not that it had done much good before. But at least it had the proper herbs now, and she had followed all the proper procedures according to Lucy’s book. She hadn’t believed all that much, but if the love potion worked, then who could tell what else also worked? It was her only hope.
Sylvia took a deep breath. “Yes, of course, this would be a marvelous time to wear my new locket.” She reached behind her neck for the clasp of the poison locket.
“Allow me,” said Vailmont. Standing behind her, he pushed aside her hair and opened the clasp. Her skin tingled where his gloved fingers traced along her shoulder as he loosened the chain and caught the locket in his hand.
Sylvia held out her hand for the locket. Vailmont smiled, shook his head, and stuck it in the slit pocket of his dark blue coat.
“I thought I would take it to a jeweler,” she said. “It needs some repair.”
“We shall do that while we are out. There is a fine one on Milsom Street.”
Oh, heavens. Now he had the locket. That was even worse than Amalie having it. She had to find some way to get it from him. What if the jeweler opened it up in front of him? And he would find the list. She knew him all too well now. His bent toward curiosity would force him to examine the list. And then— Oh, then, what would he think? How could she possibly explain that list?
Sylvia gulped and tried to smile, but all she could do was bite her lip to keep it from wobbling about. She allowed Johnson to help her with Elizabeth’s blue pelisse and she tied on Amalie’s blue bonnet. A glance in the looking glass told her the color enlivened her skin somewhat more than her traditional brown. Her heart took on a rapid tripping like a frantic drumbeat. Suddenly she wanted to go back to the nice, safe brown.
“A beautiful day, after the horrors of yesterday,” he said as they stepped out onto Laura Place.
“Anything short of a gale would be a lovelier day,” she agreed, belatedly tugging on Amalie’s gloves, remembering just how her best ones had been ruined when she jumped into the stream to pull the bolting horses away from him.
Or swim after him, had she needed to do so. But he needn’t know that.
They walked across the bridge between the shops. On the far side, he glanced at her, then cleared his throat, looking away. “I wish to be sure you understand I am heartily sorry for yesterday’s events, Lady Ashbroughton.”
He no doubt was. Most sorry for having taken her to his bed, and put himself at risk of the horror of marriage, which he no doubt felt was worse than being swept away by a raging flood. No doubt thinking how much better it would have been with a woman of more experience.
“As am I,” she replied. “I think it wise to recognize our mistakes and take pains not to repeat them. But we are both agreed that we shall be friends? As neither of us wishes to remarry, is that not so?”
He nodded, again looking out at the tumbling brown-stained water, still so high that it all but obscured the crescent-shaped weir. “Someday you will find a husband that is to your liking.”
“Well then, I am sure you will find a suitable wife, as well.”
“I do not wish a wife, Sylvia, not now, nor ever.”
“I find it odd that you accept your own disinclination to marry, but not mine.”
His gaze continued out over the water. “You are indeed too independent of thought. It is altogether possible you may be right.”
Then he turned to her. His dark eyes grew hazy, stirring in Sylvia that intense hunger she had felt the day before, that had led to such great disaster. All night, she had chided herself, shocked at how easily she had risked everything she valued, just for a momentary passion. But all she had to do was see the passion tumbling about in his eyes and suddenly the hunger wound and coiled deep inside her, all over again.
“I know a place where we could have a very private cup of tea,” he said.
Heart thudding, chest tightening, she thought she would do anything, again and again, to fulfill that promise in his eyes. She stiffened herself against the temptation, remembering it for what it really was to him. Nothing. Mere momentary lust, nothing when it was spent. When she could breathe again, she said, “We are to be just friends, my lord.”
“Val,” he replied with a sigh.
Instead of heading for the Pump Room, Val directed them along the Terrace Walk to a bun shop, and they bought tarts to eat at a little table.
He smiled when she asked if he had perhaps not intended to take her to the Pump Room at all.
“Would you not prefer a jelly or a tart to the acrid waters of the pump? You have said you are in the best of health. But if that is your wish, ma’am, I shall accommodate you.”
Sylvia managed a slight smile instead of the giggle that wanted to come out. “I have heard that jams and jellies and tarts are quite healthful. Better than even the waters of the great spas.”
“A bouncer, madam, but one easily forgiven.” The corners of his dark eyes crinkled in a way that made her want to laugh, or to run giggling over the cobblestones with him.
“That bonnet becomes you. As does the pelisse.”
A bit of a flush warmed her cheeks, the way his charm warmed her wary heart. She secretly wished she had a nabob’s riches, to buy up all the saffron in Portugal, for it was going to take at least that much to keep her from blushing around him.
“I am surprised,” she said. “I always thought sky blue was a color only for blondes.”
“Surely you are ready to admit mouse brown does not flatter anyone. Any other shade of brown would be preferable. Why do you choose to be so unfashionable, Sylvia?”
Sylvia took the last sip of her tea, and held her cup between her hands. “It really is not important, as I have no need to enhance my appearance. But I am terribly young to be a stepmother.”
“You wish to look more the part? Why?”
She swirled the last of the tea leaves in her teacup, still asking herself why she found it so very easy to tell him things she would not say to others. “There are those who think me too young to have the charge of a young girl. I do not want any criticism to mar her coming out next year.”
“So you aspire to be a dowd in order to be a proper matronly chaperone.”
“It is not as if I am in the first bloom of youth, after all.”
“You are too young to be a matron.” He stood and pushed in his chair, then reached out a hand to her. “Let’s go shopping.”
“Shopping? Sir, I cannot allow you to—”
“I do not mean to buy you personal gifts, my dear. Only to see to it that you buy the right things for yourself. Or is it a matter of funds?”
“I am not impoverished, sir. I simply do not see the sense.”
Sylvia had never seen a person smile with disgust before. But he did it rather well. She sighed and threw up her hands. With a throaty chuckle, he dragged her by the hand to the milliner next door to the bun shop. She couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than having a man pick her clothes, but she had to admit she was woefully inadequate for the task.
She fumbled around among the hats and bonnets, trying this or that one. Each time, she turned to him, and each time, he shook his head. Obviously he didn’t think highly of her taste, either.
“No fruit,” he said, when she picked up one that roughly resembled the one lost to the storm. “We have discovered the flaw in that.”
Well, yes, she would not wish to be caught in the rain again with fruit on her head.
The milliner introduced herself as Madame Corbett, a woman of interestingly large proportions and a sculptured face that was equally interesting. “Madam must try the bigger hats, rather than the bonnets, do you not agree, my lord? Something picturesque, perhaps swaggering.”
“Swaggering? I would never swagger.” Sylvia stared in astonishment at the swoop-brimmed hat Madame Corbett held before her, trimmed in deep blue velvet and a dramatic but simple bow at one side. She shook her head.
Madame Corbett lifted her very long Gallic nose in the air, and her lips almost stretched far enough to be called a smile. The moment the hat touched her head, Sylvia saw the difference. Oh, this was not what she wanted at all!
The woman looking back at her was—was—alluring!
She turned to Val and saw the haze of lust forming in his eyes again. The tips of his fingers caressed so very slowly over the crimson velvet pads on the chair arms. She swallowed down the lump that seemed to be clogging her throat.
This would never do!
“Perfect,” Val pronounced huskily. “But I should also like for you to make something up, Madame Corbett. A gray velvet, I think, but it must be the right gray. Silver, I think, or she will believe she is getting away with playing the dowd again. Trimmed in corbeau, or perhaps a touch lighter and brighter shade of green, yet it must be deep and rich. And one of her favorite flower, a rose, rather than a nosegay.”
“Very good, my lord.” Madame Corbett nodded gracefully. “An easy task. I shall have it sent round tomorrow.”
Sylvia knew perfectly well Madame Corbett assumed she was being kept by the earl.
“On my account,” she said.
Madame Corbett winked at Lord Vailmont.
Sylvia blushed again.
“No more,” she said to him as they left the shop. “You know what she thought.”
He chuckled. “Milliners and dressmakers are always dreadfully discreet, Sylvia. They must be, or they would have no business.”
“Not so the ladies and gentlemen who see us entering and leaving. This must stop, sir.”
“Absurd. A gentleman must always be at a lady’s command to assist her when shopping.”
She narrowed her eyes.
He cleared his throat. “Very well, then we will continue later when Lady Lyndonbury and Miss Bibury are with us.”
“Val!”
He flashed that grin that made her wish ladies were allowed to kick gentlemen in their shins. But it was a battle she knew she was losing, for she knew in her heart, the lady in the mirror wanted to be let out. And Val knew it too.
No one had ever read her heart as easily as he did. No one else had ever cared enough.
They wandered onto Milsom Street, where they poked into toy shops and stopped to gaze at the new prints on display in the window of Baker’s print shop. Sylvia held her breath. The smell of printer’s ink would always seem unpleasant now. At least, poor Miss Newberry had been too wrapped up in her new love to pay any attention to the obscure cartoon tucked in the back of Baker’s venomous shop. Perhaps she was simply too unimportant for anyone to notice or care, for to Sylvia’s knowledge, nothing more had been said about the awful thing.
“What sort of prints do you prefer?” he asked.
“The scenic ones,” Sylvia said, pointing to the fine, hand-colored views of Derbyshire and the Dales. “Waterfalls, castles, mountains.”
“Let’s go inside.”
She felt a shudder going up her spine. “No. I do not care for Mr. Baker or his lampoons which hold people up to ridicule. I cannot understand their popularity.”
“There is a certain cruelty to it. But it is a part of human nature.”
“It is a part I do not understand.” But Sylvia supposed she would not understand a large part of human nature anyway. Intentional cruelty was only one of many things that escaped her comprehension. “I should like to have some of the Continent, though. Perhaps Italy, or the Rhine, or the Alps. Heaven knows, I shall never go there, with the war and all.”
“How do you know? The war cannot last forever. Although I admit, a Grand Tour is more commonly taken on by gentlemen. And it is quite expensive.”
“I suppose I would need a companion who is not daunted by such experiences. I should not mind the expense, though.”
“Then you should not discount the possibility.”
“Come now. One minute you encourage me to find a husband to my liking, and the next to tour the Continent. Surely you must realize a proper husband would not approve of such brazen independence.”
“Quite so.” His lopsided grin grew so broad, it showed a dimple she had never seen before. “Then you will become the widow adventuress who floats down the Rhine and climbs the Alps, and never finds a husband who can keep up with her or tolerate her shameless willfulness.”
She tossed her head. “Nor wants one. Why ever would a woman wish to have so poor an excuse for a companion?”
“Why ever would a man seek to have a companion who controverts him at every opportunity? Where will you get the money, my dear?”
“I shall have enough,” she replied. “If I don’t spend it on frivolous pelisses and gowns for occasions which do not appeal to me.”
“Oh, so that is really it. You are saving for your Grand Tour.”
Sylvia puckered her mouth to keep a silly grin from spreading over her face. “A marvelous idea, sir. I believe I shall begin saving my money right now. Let us go tell Madame Corbett the second bonnet will not be necessary.”
She only turned a little ways before he caught her arm. “Oh no. The bonnet is absolutely necessary, madam. I shall buy it to replace the one I ruined.”
“You shall not. And you did not ruin it. The rain did.”
He shook his head. “It is still necessary. And you shall need another supper dress. I know a dressmaker who often has some on hand that are quite nice.”
“Val!” Was the man dicked in the nob? “I don’t need a supper gown!”
“Yes you do. For Wednesday night. You’re going to meet my mother.”
“Your mother! Val!”
He shrugged, looking suddenly the little boy. “She arrived yesterday while we were under the weather, so to speak. And she has already organized a dinner party. I told her you would come with Lady Lyndonbury and Miss Bibury.”
“Without even asking? Val, how could you?”
“I made her promise to send out invitations, but I wanted to talk to you about it first. It’s important, Sylvia. I thought she would give up the idea of marrying me off to her friend’s daughter, but she has followed me to Bath, and Lady Ernwhistle and daughter are not far behind. And if anyone has a love potion, I am willing to bet Mother does.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in those things.”
“I didn’t. But then there was Stoddard. Then Latimer. Fourteen of them now. And Whitby is bereaved at Miss Bibury’s setdown yesterday. It is quite apparent the potion robs a man of his ability to say no, and that is deuced unfair.”
“I assure you, sir, Amalie is not toying with such a thing. Mr. Whitby seems perfectly capable of falling in and out of love daily on his own.”
“Sylvia, this is a serious matter.”
“Just say no, Val.”
“Sylvia, there is a love potion out there. And my mother will stop at nothing this time.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, and folded her arms as she huffed. “And so you want me there to protect you from your mother and her love potion. But have you considered what will happen if the potion misfires? You might end up in love with me, and that would surely be a fate worse than death.”
“I believe I have made myself clear that any marriage would be a fate worse than death, but you may be sure a marriage to you would be far preferable to one of my mother’s choosing.”
“How very flattering. But how do you know? Have you even met the girl?”
“Lady Grace Twitt? What do you think?”
“Oh dear. That is her name?”
“Twitt is the Ernwhistle family name.”
“Then she must surely be looking forward to marriage with great enthusiasm.”
Val took her hands and squeezed them, with an earnest pleading in his eyes that made her heart twist. “Sylvia, you must come. I need you there. I had a terrible row with Mother last night, and I am more persuaded than ever that she means to find a way to trick me into marrying Lady Grace.”
“And you wish to place me in the middle of that? Surely you are bamming me!”
“No, love, she will not be unpleasant before guests, I promise you. Besides, I need you to watch them. To see if you can find out how they do it. A mere male would have no such chance. Please say you will come.”
Sylvia sighed. Somehow, beyond all reason, something in her had wanted this pleasant morning to keep its joy. A time they enjoyed together simply for its own sake. But it had turned out instead to be nothing more than a softening up before he sought a favor. Perhaps that was too much to ask of a man who admitted he had no honorable intentions toward a lady.
She supposed she owed him that much. Anyway.
If it weren’t for his silly obsession with that impossible love potion, he would not have any interest in her at all. But why should she care? She, after all, did not want him any more than he wanted her.
“Come on, let’s go see Madame Latouille. She really is French.”
Sylvia huffed inelegantly, and allowed him to escort her along Milsom Street. She had already heard about Madame Latouille, who actually was French, and unfortunately also very expensive.
And Madame Latouille did indeed have a supper gown, one more elegant than Sylvia had worn even for her own come-out so many years ago. It dripped and draped with strands of pearls over a soft green she knew Elizabeth would call divine, and exposed more of the tops of her breasts than had been seen in public in her lifetime.
It was not at all to Sylvia’s taste. She watched Val’s eyes take on that fathomless cast that set her to wondering if his soul lurked deep within a bottomless pit. Her heart began to race as she remembered the day before. Just the look in his eyes was enough to make her heart beat faster and set passion to curling like rising smoke within her.
So she bought the dress in spite of herself, and they stepped outside the shop.
“I have not spent so much on fashion since my own Season,” she said in a rueful tone.
“No one will be more beautiful than you on Wednesday night,” he replied.
He led her away from Milsom Street down to the river, along the Parade behind the Guildhall. For a few moments, they stood at the stone rail with its chubby stone balusters and watched the brown-tinged water flow, and Sylvia suspected he was remembering the day before.
“It is still quite high,” she said.
He nodded.
She looked into his dark eyes as the horror of that moment returned. Seeing him fall beneath the horses’ hooves, seeing the raging, murky water tear him free, tumble him over, seeing him float, face down in the stream, beyond her reach where she could do nothing. Feeling herself so tight with fear, with helplessness, she could not even scream. How had she grabbed his wrist? She could not even remember doing it, only that somehow she had.
“I thought you were going to die,” she said in a choked whisper.
“So did I.” He gripped her gloved hand where it rested on the stone balustrade. “But I didn’t. And you didn’t.”
Their gazes locked together, sharing again the terror.
Val took her hand and started off, striding along the South Parade until he reached the Whitehall Stairs. Below, at the ferry landing, one of the three pleasure boats was moored on the restless brown water, the others no doubt already hired for the day. The high-prowed wherry was fitted with a tiny house with sash windows, not simply columns and curtains that left it open to the air. Watermen in their red jackets stood by, ready to propel the craft down the river and back, as the passengers dictated.
Sylvia stopped, staring at the water that usually appeared glassy smooth, but now resembled rough cordage with its swift, muddy flow. “Val—”
“That private cup of tea,” he replied, lifting her chin with his fist.
She glanced at the pocket where he had stuffed her locket, her heart pounding in her ears like the thrumming of drums at a military execution. He had the locket. And she felt helpless without it. Sylvia swallowed at the strange lump that was stuck in her throat as she lost herself in the hidden depths of his dark eyes. But no, there was no power in the locket. She knew that. She was the one who couldn’t say no to him, who had been giving in to everything he asked from the first minute she had met him. She was the one who let his charm turn her inside out. She was giving away every part of herself, and soon there would be nothing left that belonged to her. Not Willow Combe, not even her own soul. She had done that before, for a mere pittance of returned affection, and she had sworn never to give up who she was again.
She had to say no. Somehow. She had to.
“But the water…” Sylvia looked from the water that was the color of milk-laden coffee, back to his turbulent eyes. The memories rose again, of the man struggling against the overwhelming force of water, fighting for his life. How could he think of going out on it again, so soon, with the river still high and swift?
But the dark way he studied her, the intensity that bored into her, said logic had nothing to do with it. Not even for the man whose life was dedicated to the force of reason. This had to do with being male. Something he needed to do. No, it was not fear she saw, but the need to show himself the river had not defeated him. Perhaps to show her as well.
“I’m more afraid you won’t go with me,” he said.
She shook her head. She had to say no.
Val skimmed the shell of her ear with his fingertips.

Chapter Fifteen
The door on the little cabin on the pleasure boat barely shut before Val threw the bolt. He rushed to the windows, closed the sashes and drew the curtains.
“They’ll hear us,” she said.
“Then we’ll have to be quiet,” he replied, wickedness gleaming in his dark eyes. “We can do that, can’t we? Be very, very quiet?”
Somehow, she doubted it.
Sylvia fell into his embrace, lush kisses descending on her as her hungry hands slipped beneath his coat, eagerly searching for the feel of his hard body. It was like a mauling match. Her skirts rose without her assistance. She shoved his coat from his shoulders, pulled it off and tossed it, barely hearing the odd clunk as it landed.
“God help me,” he whispered hoarsely, nipping at the sensitive curve of her throat as his hands skimmed up her thighs. “I can’t get enough of you.”
She tugged his shirt free from his breeches and fought the buttons on his falls so frantically she feared she would pop them off, while he untangled his watch fob and chain and set them aside with less delicacy than they required, still tasting her flesh. He slipped her dress from her shoulders and down and had her shift over her head and following it so quickly, she thought it looked like a sheet flowing over a bed being made.
Her pulse pounded as she panted and gasped and grasped and caressed, wanting every inch of his gloriously golden flesh and the hard muscles it covered.
“Damn, sweetheart, but you are in a hurry,” he said raggedly. “Help me with these boots, will you?”
She was bare and he was not, and that wasn’t good enough for her. Sylvia gave him a shove onto the cushions that were strewn over the banquettes beneath the windows, and backed her bare bottom toward him as she straddled his leg and tugged at the boot. She felt his other boot set itself against her backside and hoped he was merely teasing, but with an upward tug, she freed the stockinged foot. Val moved the other leg in place, and she drew off the second boot.
His toes were tickling her bare skin. She whooped as she lurched away, suddenly slapping her hand over her mouth as she looked back at the door.
“Quit worrying. Nothing would surprise them.”
“Easy for you to say. Your reputation would only be enhanced.” But her gaze slid over his naked body, hungrily taking in the muscled thighs and calves she had once dared to presume were padded, broad shoulders and rippling chest, and the magnificent organ that was a perfect match for a physique that would make a Greek god proud. Her hunger for him grew, insatiable. She was doing it again. Giving him everything he wanted. She must not, and she knew it. If she let it begin, she would never be able to stop the flow. She would give and give, and the more she gave, the more he would take.
Vailmont held out his hand. She took a step in his direction. He pulled her into his embrace, fitting her perfectly against him as he leaned down to capture her mouth with his, invading her like a conqueror.

No. Yes.

As if they folded, smoothly like fine linen, he leaned them backwards into the cushions, her back against the soft red velvet as he straddled her with one knee on the cushions and a leg balancing him on the cabin’s floor. Lust hazed his dark eyes.
Lust and possession. She shuddered. She didn’t want to be possessed. Yet she was willingly following where he was leading her.
Sudden panic struck her. Sylvia pushed against his chest. He leaned forward on his hands, her barrier nothing against his strength, yet he came no closer, only skimming her lips with his, a dance of touch and retreat as if they swayed to the tune of some exotic flute.
Sylvia moaned, arching upward, wanting more, yet holding him back. Moving back, gliding with the powerful grace of swans in flight, he let his mouth skim over her heated flesh, down the curve of her jaw, down her throat, over, around the curve of her breast, circled to lick the nipple that tightened fiercely beneath his tongue’s caress.
He drew it into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. A shriek of passion escaped her before she could stop it.
“They’ll hear you, sweetheart,” he said, hardly pausing as he rolled and nipped and sucked, until she wanted to scream from the erotic torture.
She didn’t care. Suddenly nothing else mattered. She dropped the hands that held him back, yet still he held himself off. The delicious agony grew and grew. Sylvia gripped his shoulders and tugged, desperate to feel the hardness of his body against hers. Still he held off, and slipped a hand between her legs, finding the core of her desire, rubbing, sending shock waves through her.
She fought the sounds she made, but they came out before she knew she was making them. She didn’t care. She just wanted more of him. Her hands begged in ways her words could not, clasped around his waist, tugging against the rock hard muscles that refused to bend.
“Devil it,” he growled raggedly.
Then he was in her. Filling her. Flesh to flesh, her nipples abrading on the crisp hairs of his chest. He drove deeply into her as her body thickened and tightened to enclose him, and savored the strokes, long, slow and deep, an upward spiral of tortured passion. She moaned and arched, lifted her hips to him as she clasped his hard buttocks, hungrily begging and demanding as he gave more and more.
With a guttural moan, Val scooped his arms beneath her legs and raised them high upon his shoulders. Ferocity tangled with lust in his wild eyes. His powerful thrusts plunged deeply, each one forcing moans and cries that he caught with his own mouth, each thrust buried into her as if it were the last and deepest one, only to be eclipsed by the next.
He turned rigid, deeply imbedded in her, trembling. Sylvia trembled with him as her body screamed its desperate need, then suddenly, as if exploding in a million pieces, they burst together like the million sparks of fireworks exploding in the night sky. She held him tightly. Tightly. As if he might slip away.
Slowly, the million sparks faded as passion drifted into the clouds. Left behind were the two bodies entwined, the sated sounds of slow, ragged breathing that mingled and quieted to no more than a whisper. Her hands traced the beautiful curves of his back, following his spine where it turned from ridge to valley.
She thought she’d understood passion. But never had she felt it quite like this. Never had she been taken to the top of the mountain and exploded into the stars. Never had she felt so filled, so sated.
And she felt something else. Defeated. Defeated by her own desperate need. Not a need for lust, as she had thought, for she understood now it was not passion she had yearned for so desperately, but love. It was love she had never found with Ashbroughton.
Nor was it something she would ever find with Val. But it was too late. Something, some invisible part of her had entangled itself with him, and she would never have it back. Enmeshed, entwined, twisted. She was caught in the snare.
She had fallen in love. The very last thing she wanted.
He made some sort of mumbling whuff of a sound, and reached down to the cabin floor, to grab the slate blue coat he had been wearing. As he shifted off her, he brought up the rumpled coat and tucked it over her.
“I’m not cold, Val,” she protested. But then the lump that was her locket plopped against her hip.
The locket! She’d forgotten about it! She had to get it away from him somehow. The charm was worthless, true, but if he found the list, no telling what he would make of it. Her mind scanned over the contents of the list. Would he figure out it was about him? Probably. He was far too quick, that way. She didn’t dare take the chance.
Slowly, she let her hand descend, aimlessly aiming for the pocket. She felt its bulge, fingered the pocket’s slit and wiggled her fingers around until they slipped inside it. Yes, there it was. If she could just hook the chain, then find a way to pull it out without…
The locket thudded to the floor. Another stone worked itself free and rolled across the cabin floor. Startled from his daze, Val pushed himself up and snatched it by its chain.
“Devil it,” he said, frowning at the bent metal. “If it wasn’t broken before, it is now. Sorry, sweetheart. I’ll have it fixed for you.”
Sylvia sat up and lunged for the chain that dangled from his hand. “No, don’t worry about it. It’s just pinchbeck and paste. It really isn’t worth anything.”
He tugged back. “But it means something to you, and it’s my fault it’s broken. I should have been more careful. I knew it was in my pocket.”
“No, really. It’s nothing at all.” Again she held out her hand, knowing it was a futile move.
“For something that is nothing, you seem determined to get it back.” He grinned and swooped it out of her reach. “You may treasure odd things, love, but you do treasure them. If it can be fixed, it will be fixed. For you.”
Sylvia suppressed a groan and searched through her entire repertoire of smiles trying to find one that might look genuine. She suspected the one she found looked more like the painted expression of a clown. It was too late. He was already dressing, and he had slipped the locket into the pocket of his waistcoat where she would have no chance of recovering it. But she had to, somehow.
But they dressed and sat by the windows, his arm around her while she leaned back against his chest, and they watched the river and the rocky bluffs that banked it. The locket lay against her shoulder. So close, yet it might as well be tucked up among the clouds. She could do nothing without raising his suspicions.
But if she didn’t get it, he would see the list. And no telling what he would think then.
The pleasure boat reached Saltford, and turned for a much slower trip against the current back to Bath. They opened the windows to let in the cool breezes that flowed over the water, through the valley. Her bonnet dangled behind her shoulders, and the wind twisted her hair, like the tangled strands of her heart. They ate a small repast, cheese from Cheddar, plump puddings and a passable wine. And Sylvia’s brain toiled over a way to regain possession of her locket without oversetting either him or his curiosity.
Nothing came to her. Not then, nor when they tied up again at the Whitehall Stairs, nor in the walk back to Elizabeth’s house. They had been gone most of the day when she said goodbye to him at Elizabeth’s door, wearing her most idiotic smile. And she still had not retrieved her locket. She was immersed in this bumblebroth all the way up to her eyeballs, and had no idea how to get out of it.

* * *

Val started across the square. But one look at the house at Henrietta Street, and he knew that was the last place he wanted to go. He wanted—devil it, he didn’t know what he wanted. He just didn’t want to go there, not to see Pink or Whitby, certainly not to see his mother.
Within minutes, he was instead astride the saddle of his favorite chestnut gelding and riding out, following the road to Widcombe, with no notion of why he was going there. He might have gone anywhere. But he wandered until he reached the junction with the Wells Road, and turned onto it, riding up the hill before the cliff until he found himself overlooking the city of Bath. He had been there before, with her.
Oh, others had been there with them, yet he had been with her. With her alone. No one else had mattered.
Val rode the chestnut to the spot where they had spread the Welsh blanket. There he had stretched out, teasing her, baiting her, every minute of it relished by the hauntingly strange feeling of suddenly being alive again after so long feeling nothing.
He’d watched her blush beneath the subtle, covert scrutiny of the watermen, and chuckled to himself. He loved to see her blush.
Something tightened in his chest. That was not what he loved. The blush was only a tiny part of the whole.
It was the greatest warmth and joy he had ever tasted, and he wanted it to last forever. Yet it was so painfully raw, for it spoke of tomorrow and an everlasting emptiness beyond.
He should offer for her. He owed it to her.
He had not wanted any romantic relationships. He had made that clear. And yet here he was, as entangled as a man could possibly be. Something had a vise grip on his heart and was giving it a twist. He hadn’t needed a love potion to get himself into this mess.
Heaving a sigh, he turned the gelding back down the road that wound around the cliff, toward the city below. The bright blue afternoon sky was beginning to fade, and soon a haze begin to gather along the river as the air cooled for the evening.
Pure logic said he must break this off, get out of Bath and leave her behind. He knew himself, and he knew he had no talent for loving. He could not give to her the kind of relationship a woman desired, so he would be doing her no favor to pretend he could. He needed to do the very thing he had made up his mind to do last night before they reached Bath. Simply go somewhere else, stop calling on her.
Yet pure logic also said he owed her something more than just walking away. He might have been more careful before, but this time he had done nothing to protect her, either from pregnancy or from gossip. He had already been seen in her company far too often, and people would be talking about an expectation.
He should offer for her.
But no, he must not. He must not promise what he could not give.
If he couldn’t even walk down Milsom Street with her without dragging her off to a pleasure boat, what the devil was he going to do next?

Offer for her. Could it be all that bad?

Yet she had made it clear several times, she did not want marriage, would never give up her singular claim to her ancestral home for a mere man.
He reached the bottom of the cliff, but instead of turning onto the Southgate Bridge into Bath, he rode back the way he had come, along the far side of the river where he would continue on alone.
His hand brushed by the lump formed by the locket in his waistcoat pocket, and he smiled. What a strange attachment she had for the ugly thing. Val fingered the chain and drew out the locket. Why a woman would want to wear something so unenchanting, with the gilt wearing off and missing half its stones, he could never guess, but it was so much like her to do that.

Why?

Curiosity started niggling at his brain. He pried open the bent hook and spotted a tiny piece of folded paper inside. A note? Perhaps some memento left from her husband or another lover? He stifled the tightening of jealousy in his chest and unfolded the paper.

Unkempt hair.

Too tall. Padded shoulders. Downy calves.

Murky, piercing, glowering eyes.

Indecorously tanned.

Manipulative charm.

Wormy, squirmy lips.

What the devil? He read it again. No wonder she wanted it back. What was it? A charm? A curse? It said something, and probably something not very flattering.
It wasn’t “nothing”, and he knew it. In fact, he’d be willing to bet it was about him. Many a man might be tall, with dark eyes, although he’d never thought of his eyes as murky. Or piercing or glowering. He supposed perhaps he did glower, though. And she clearly knew he did not pad his shoulders or calves. Manipulative charm, well, yes, he did have that tendency, but so did a lot of men. And certainly his unruly hair was Clarence’s great bane.
But one thing pointed to him and only him. Tanned skin. No other gentleman of his acquaintance possessed that one particular trait.
Setting his jaw, Val folded the tiny paper and crammed it back into his pocket. So, perhaps he had been fooling himself. Perhaps she was not all that enamored with him after all. Well, wasn’t that what he wanted? No entanglements?
He rode back to the mews, still puzzling over the strange list. Some of it made sense, and if not altogether flattering, he was a rational enough man to accept her perception of him. But some of it was nonsense. No, there was no way she could have ever thought he wore downy calves. But yes, it was about him. He’d best accept that.
He yanked the gelding to a halt so quickly, the animal danced in place.
Wormy, squirmy lips?

Chapter Sixteen
Val walked through the inner doors of the house at Henrietta Street into the foyer where Pink stood, his brow tortured into an anxious frown. Around the corner in the parlor, he could see Whitby sitting in the wing chair near the fireplace with his head in his hands, in much the same state he had left the looby, hours before.
“What the devil are you doing, Val?” said Pink, his hands clenched in tight knots. “You’re going to have the whole of rakedom up on the marriage block.”
“Just had a bit of a stroll with Lady Ashbroughton to be sure she suffered no ill effects from yesterday’s storm.”
“Naturally, it would have been ungentlemanly of you not to call. But since nine this morning?”
Val arched an eyebrow at Pink’s sardonic sneer.
Pink pulled a piece of foolscap out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Val. “The guest list,” he said. “Copied it when your mother wasn’t looking.”
Val unfolded the list, scrawled in pencil on the back of a discarded letter. He scanned it rapidly. “Amazing,” he said.
“I take it you noticed you will be seated by Lady Grace.”
“With precisely the right number of guests of the right social order to place Lady Ashbroughton at the far end of the table. All but below the salt. Leave it to Mother to have a second plan in case the first should fail.”
“Val,” Pink said, his usually unrumpled, regal golden brow folded into deep furrows. “She really isn’t all that bad, you know. If one had to have a wife…”
Val stared, wide eyed. “Lady Grace Twitt?”
“Well, no. She’s pretty enough if you like them pale as moonlight. I meant Lady Ashbroughton.”
Val grumped. The man was losing his mind. “I thought you were going to see Ryder for me.”
Pink’s nostrils flared minutely. “I’m going. But I couldn’t leave until you saw the list.”
With a shrug, Pink grabbed up his hat and headed out the door toward the mews. Val headed up the stairs before his mother could catch him at home. Inside his chamber, he opened up the locket again, then quickly closed it.
What the devil were wormy, squirmy lips? Could it really be a curse? He didn’t think he wanted to find out. And that wasn’t the only thing he didn’t want to find out. He was not all that keen on learning what was going on in his own head. Tomorrow was Wednesday, and she would be coming for dinner. Perhaps it was a good idea not to see her until then.

* * *

The door to Val’s chamber opened, and Pink let himself in, already dressed for dinner in stark black with crisp, snowy cravat. Val checked the looking glass and nodded to Clarence, who stepped back, with something between a pained smile and a grimace on his face. As Val turned away from the mirror, he spotted the reason. That offending lock of hair, too bleached out for propriety, too stiffly straight, too much of everything, in fact, had tumbled down over his forehead again. He narrowed his eyes at the valet who was already leaping back to fix it. But he knew there was no stopping Clarence, who would have perfection, at least for as long as Val remained within the valet’s domain.
“You’re back already,” he said.
Pink held up his enameled watch and frowned at the dial. “In time for your mama’s dinner party, as I promised. Although she does not appear all that keen for my presence. Dropped another hint when I returned that I might find the White Hart more to my taste.”
“Ryder accepted the money, then?”
“No.”
Val snorted. “He wanted more? Something else, perhaps? A seat in Commons? The Crown Jewels?”
“He wants you to take the girl.”
Clarence stopped his fiddling and stared even harder than Val. And Clarence wasn’t supposed to be listening.
“The devil I will,” Val growled. “What’s his game? Tired of being a parent already?”
“He’s dying, Val.”
Val’s mouth gaped like a stable door, but he quickly slammed his jaw shut. “I don’t believe that. He’s up to something. There’s something he means to gain.”
“I don’t think so. I remember him from before. Used to be quite a robust fellow. He’s emaciated. Hair’s thinned down to little tufts, and gray as an old man. He can’t last much longer, I’m thinking. You should go, Val.”
His teeth clamped tight. Bedamned if he would. “And now he wants me to raise his child as my own? Why the devil should I take a child who isn’t mine, who he got on my wife before he stole her from me?”
Pink gave a sad shake of his head and walked closer to the looking glass to check his own cravat. “Damned if I know, Val. That’s not for me to say. All I’m telling you is, you should go, see for yourself before you make any decisions.”
“No.”
Val watched Pinkerton’s mouth twist a tiny bit as he cocked his head and shrugged just one shoulder. He wouldn’t push the matter. Pink had done his part, then put the problem back where it belonged, on Val.
Val knew that. He just didn’t want the problem. He laced his fingers through his hair, eliciting a disgusted whimper from Clarence. Val ignored the valet.
“Did you see the girl?” he asked Pink.
“Yes.”
Val hesitated. “Is she mine?”
Pink paused, making Val wonder for an eternally long moment if he might have been mistaken all this time. Then Pink drew in a long breath and huffed it out. “No.”
Something died in Val’s soul. Yet why he should care now, he couldn’t imagine. He had not loved his wife, although he had tried. It had been a dutiful marriage, his penance for his part in his father’s death.
But his penance had failed. Had failed miserably. And its aftermath, instead of a lifetime of emptiness, would be a never-ending hail of grief.
Val’s long-drawn breath was a match for Pink’s. He wished the problem consigned to the far end of Hell. He did not want to go. Did not want to see the child, who it was now clear did not even resemble him, yet bore his name. To take her in would be a reminder forever of his failure, and would make an ongoing scandal that he and the child would never live down. But he was the one who had decided not to repudiate her. Perhaps that, then, was his worst mistake.
“There must be someone—a relative—”
“Apparently not. Ryder burned his bridges, so to speak.”
Val wished the man had burned more than that. Like maybe himself, in Hell.
“I believe we are late for dinner,” he said. “Mother can be unforgiving that way.”
Whining again, Clarence frantically combed at Val’s hair in one last attempt to bring it back from beyond the pale. Taking what felt like his last free breath, Val stepped out into the corridor with Pink, and found Whitby, sartorially correct if forlorn, waiting for them. The three began the journey down the two flights of stairs as if they were on their way to their collective execution.
As he stopped at the last landing, he spotted Lady Grace, standing just outside the drawing room with her mother, triple-chinned Lady Ernwhistle. He recognized her instantly from Pink’s description, pale, a bit like moonlight, as if little light was available to show her colors. But as he started down the last flight, he saw that she had little color to show. She was lovely, in her own way, her slim, blonde elegance producing a cool, regal serenity that would bring many a man to fall helplessly at her feet.
He could see in her posture she clearly understood what she was supposed to do, and went about it with the poise of one with many years of tutoring from the best governesses behind her. It grated on him. Yet in an odd way, he understood. She was who she had to be.
Even as he smiled at her and inclined a slight bow, he knew he would not willingly make a match with her. But the gleam in her parent’s eye suggested he was about to become willing, willing or not.
He took a deep breath and stepped past the mahogany doors into the sunny yellow drawing room that had attracted him to this house in the first place. He was sure of it now. There was a love potion, and he was the intended victim. And if he did not discover what it was and how it worked, and therefore how to rescue himself from it, he was about to become a married man. To another wife he did not want.

* * *

Sylvia stopped before the house at the corner of Henrietta Street and gazed up at the glowing chandeliers visible through the first floor windows. Her pulse was racing. Val was in there, but so was his mother. Two good reasons she should have stayed home.
“I should have said no.”
Amalie giggled. “Oh, Mama, you are just being silly. We shall have a fine time. Lord Vailmont will be there, and Lord Albert, and even Mr. Whitby, although I can’t think I shall be so happy to see him if he mopes about like he did the last time.”
“You did turn down his suit, my dear,” Elizabeth replied, “so I should not blame him overmuch, if I were you. But you are quite right. Just do be careful and don’t say anything unless you must.”
“Precisely my point,” Sylvia said. “I have a terrible feeling about this.”
“Absurd.” Elizabeth took her hand and led her up the steps.
Sylvia lifted her chin and followed the tug on her hand. The butler opened to them and brought them inside, through the foyer. It was a fine home, but just like so many others, built of golden Bath stone, and so like any other in the style of a half-century past, even the striped fabric on the settee beneath the spindled staircase was like many she had seen elsewhere. It was not Val’s home. Only a place where he lived until he could find whatever it was he had lost—or perhaps never had.
Just as they started for the stairs up to the drawing room, an older woman with silver-streaked hair and a trim figure dressed in gold-shot blue silk and enough sapphires for the Empress Josephine, stepped out of the downstairs parlor.
“Good heavens, Ormsley, who is this?” said a purring female voice laced with venom.
Sylvia whirled at the sound of the voice, gawking like a gapeseed. The blood drained from her face. Her throat closed down.

Great heavenly stars! It couldn’t be her!

Chapter Seventeen
Val studied Lady Grace’s carefully prepared smile with a new appreciation of Latimer’s fears of females. Not even the most celebrated beauty of the demi-monde could outshine her beauty. Her pale yellow hair could be likened to moonbeams on gold, her light blue eyes were as pure a blue as he had ever seen, and her cupid’s bow lips a perfect shade of pink. Elegantly tall and willowy slim, every feature about her was as close to perfection as he could imagine.
Val shook his head. So much perfection, and it left him utterly flat. He could as soon imagine making love to a sheet, plain, white, rumpling compliantly at his command, for he was certain she would be just like one beneath him in bed.
Once, he might not have minded. His expectations of a lady wife had been simply procreation and fidelity. And his bitterness at Anne’s betrayal had left him with no desire for even that.
No. He would not marry this woman. He could understand why his mother thought her the perfect bride, and she might be for another man, but not for him.
She smiled, her perfect, white teeth flashing. “Lord Vailmont, at last we meet.”
At last. He would have had it never. Where was Sylvia, anyway? He cast about and saw only Lord and Lady Rasley, Lord and Lady Kelso, and a few others. His mother was not in the drawing room. He frowned, trying to imagine the countess leaving her guests without host or hostess.
The voices coming from the foyer below had a sharp ring to them. Something was not quite right. He recognized the bell-like sounds of Lady Lyndonbury’s voice, and the countess. His long-honed instinct screamed trouble.
“Would you care for a claret, Lord Vailmont, as the footman has just brought a tray?”
It was the pale moon-faced beauty purring in his ear, with a smile like a thin crescent. Startled, he turned too suddenly and jostled the glass held out to him.
“Oh!”
“Val, do be careful,” said Pink as he seized the glass by its stem, saving it from sloshing over Lady Grace’s gauzy white dress. But it splashed Pink’s glove.
An idea flashed like a brilliant light. “Do forgive me, Lady Grace,” he said. “I believe my mother is calling me down to greet the latest arrivals. Lord Albert, will you do me the favor of seeing to Lady Grace’s needs?”
Knowing the absurdity of his claim, which only barely skirted the demands of proper etiquette, he scurried out of the sunny yellow drawing room before either of them could voice a protest, leaving behind the gaping guests. It was, after all, the first task of a host to see all things kept running smoothly.
Halfway down the stairs, he paused, hearing that rare ice-cold tone in his mother’s voice that inevitably spelled someone’s doom.
“So terribly sorry, Lady Lyndonbury, but I believe you have made a mistake. I fear you are not on the list for tonight’s affair.”
The hell she wasn’t. Val had seen the list.
The sudden silence loomed like the heavy air of a pending storm. Val edged down a step, then two.
“We received an invitation from your son for tonight,” said Lady Lyndonbury in a voice so even, Val could hear the many years of carefully practiced propriety.
“Goodness, I cannot imagine how such an error could be made. But of course, at such a late minute, we could not possibly accommodate more guests. Perhaps another night, Lady Lyndonbury.” His mother’s icy smile was something Val could hear.
Val descended the last few steps without a sound, then cleared his throat loudly. Heads snapped in his direction.
“Ah, good evening, Lady Lyndonbury,” he said in his most amiable voice. “So glad you could meet us here. I shall gather Lord Albert and Mr. Whitby, and we can be on our way. I do think we will enjoy tonight’s performance, don’t you?”
Every one of them stared, mouths agape.
He cocked an eyebrow. “It is the theater tonight, is it not?”
Lady Lyndonbury’s brown eyes caught his, glinting with some sort of mixture between confusion and horror.
The dowager countess stiffened. Eyes that had been narrow with malicious triumph sprang wide. “Vailmont, whatever are you saying? Of course you are not going to the theater. We have supper guests.”
Val blinked as if surprised and gave back to his mother a vapid smile that could only have been stolen from her. “Supper tonight, Mother? But it cannot be. Surely your supper party is tomorrow night. We have an engagement with Lady Lyndonbury and her guests for the theater tonight.”
“Vailmont, you know perfectly well it is tonight, and you cannot leave your guests to go off—”
“Your guests, Mother,” he corrected gently. “I believe they are awaiting you abovestairs. I fear I must plead a prior engagement. Well, I shall be collecting Pinkerton and Whitby, and we shall join you ladies in a moment.” He sketched a thoroughly elegant bow, turned on the stairs and started back up at a gallop.
“Vailmont!” she shrieked. She dashed up three stairs and stopped.
“Mother?” he replied, cocking an eyebrow. The war of gazes began.
The Dowager Countess of Vailmont flinched. She gulped. Val watched the change flow through her face, sensing she was beginning to grasp the extent of his determination and her miscalculation of it. She glanced down the stairs and back up toward the drawing room. She gulped again. “Vailmont, you don’t suppose there is an error… You did say to the ladies Thursday night, perhaps?”
“I, mother? Or perhaps, did you confuse your dates? It must be so difficult to keep such a busy social calendar.”
“I? It must be Ormsley’s fault. You really should find a proper butler, Vailmont…”
Ormsley stood at the base of the staircase, his chin held abominably high in proper butler fashion, his gaze as blank as if the countess were talking about violets in the spring and not his professional prowess as a butler.
Val looked at her as kindly as he could, but let the steel show in his eyes. “Perhaps Ormsley’s list includes the ladies for tonight’s supper after all, and you have forgotten, mother.”
Her chin all but wobbled below her tightly pursed mouth as she grabbed for the excuse he had handed her. Or perhaps she would not. Never in his memory had the countess admitted to a mistake. But if she would not do so voluntarily, Val had every intention of walking out. Never would he allow her to demean his friends again.
His glare intensified. The easy way or the hard, humiliating way, Mother. You choose.
As the silly simper rushed back onto her face, the countess batted her eyes. “Goodness, perhaps it is so. Where do you suppose my mind has gone? It is so difficult with the years…yes, I do recall, it is Wednesday night, yes, I believe the ladies are on the list, after all…”
Val smiled quizzically. “Is that so, Mother? Then surely our theater engagement must be for tomorrow night. Was I mistaken about that, Lady Lyndonbury?”
Lady Lyndonbury’s mouth began to open, then abruptly shut. If Val had to guess, he’d say she thought she was observing bats circling his head and flying in and out of his skull.
“Indeed, what a brangle,” he said. “I do apologize, ladies. Let us go up and meet the other guests.”
Val took Lady Lyndonbury’s arm and drew her toward the stairs, cutting off the countess from the ladies before she could intervene. But the fierce gleam in his mother’s eye told him she had conceded a battle, not a war.
“How good it is to see you ladies tonight,” he said, and winked at Sylvia.
Sylvia looked like she had just witnessed a carriage accident. Miss Bibury’s chin quivered slightly. Behind him, his mother’s prattle rattled on, with no acknowledgment of the conflict of a few minutes before.
“I cannot imagine where my mind has gone…”
“It hasn’t gone,” muttered Lady Lyndonbury, just loudly enough for only Val to hear. “It’s as sharp as a snake’s bite.”
“An excellent analogy,” he muttered back, smiling pleasantly through his mask of charm.
At the top of the stairs, he ushered the three ladies into the yellow drawing room, and huffed out a relieved breath to see his mother take a left turn to join Lord and Lady Kelso by the third bay window.
“Val…” Whitby hurried up, his curly red brows rippling in an anxious frown. He cocked his head in the direction of the chimneypiece, where Pink stood with Lady Grace.
“Heavenly stars,” said Sylvia. “Surely that is not Lord Albert.”
There he was. Lord Albert Pinkerton, second son of the Duke of Graffstone, The Pink of the Ton and Rake Extraordinaire, bending to the lovely Lady Grace Twitt and fawning like a lovesick swain.
“Good God,” Val mumbled, then glanced at the ladies, who were apparently staring too hard to notice his rough language. “What happened, Whitby?”
“No idea, Val. He just suddenly got the notion she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Can’t drag him away from her.”
“Well, she is lovely,” said Sylvia.
Val shook his head, his brow as tightly furrowed as Whitby’s. “He’s met her before and had no interest in her then. He was unimpressed just a few minutes ago when I left him to go belowstairs. She couldn’t have become so ravishing in so short a time.”
He exchanged glances with Sylvia, who had already looked as if she expected to be locked in a dungeon by the countess, and he watched the horror of revelation widen her eyes.
“You don’t suppose…” Horror deepened to the look of an execution expected by midnight.
Val nodded. “I do suppose.”
“God help us,” Whitby murmured. “If it’s hit Pink, none of us are safe.”
“As if it would make a difference for you,” Val said.
“Oh, I’m quite over that now, Val,” Whitby said, his lip curling slightly as he glanced at Amalie.
“You didn’t see anything? Did he take a drink? Touch anything?”
Whitby shrugged. “Not that I saw. A drink, maybe.”
Val growled. Sylvia moaned.
Lady Grace threw Val a smile that was half enticement, half heartsick desperation, and started toward him. Pink gulped down his glass of wine and pattered after her. Pink never bolted his drinks. He never chased after a woman.
“Do something, Sylvia,” Val hissed.
“Me? What can I do?”
“It’s your potion. Think of something. Isn’t there an antidote?”
“It’s just herbs, Val. There is no antidote for herbs.”
“A charm then,” he whispered. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about charms. Surely there must be a charm that can stop it.”
“Well, there is one in Lucy’s book, but it would make his most precious body parts fall off.”
Val’s throat felt like it had tied itself in a sudden and very tight knot. “Don’t use that one.”
“I know. We’ll make him drink water.”
“When frogs fly. He never drinks water.”
“Well, something to dilute it.”
Val watched his cousin with another glass, this time ratafia. “He seems to be doing fine in that respect. I don’t think that will help.”
“Val, you don’t believe that’s the problem, surely! You are a man of science! How many times have you told me that?”
Did he? Val shook his head. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. This whole thing is as havey-cavey as a witch’s coven. But there has to be some explanation, and this is the only one I know.”
The little silver supper bell tinkled. Val grimaced as he watched the countess step to the center of the room. Time had run out.
“Well, now here we all are together at last, and I am so pleased you could join us to meet my dear friend Lady Ernwhistle who has been my bosom bow since we were girls together in Lancashire, but of course time has hardly shown its mark on her as we all can see, but let us go down to supper, I think you will enjoy the chef is such a delight with his old family recipes directly from his ancient family home in France…”
The familiar sing-song voice that ran from subject to subject without pause set his mind to whirling. Val pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to force himself to concentrate. Too much was at stake.
“Vailmont, dear, if you will take Lady Ernwhistle down, and Lord Albert, her lovely daughter, Lady Grace…”
Val winced. But of course he’d expected to take the Dowager Marchioness, as the highest ranking lady, and he should be perfectly relieved not to have to escort her daughter. But somehow he had to pry Pink away. Damn the looby. If the man were in his right mind, he would have fled to the Continent in the midst of the war before playing bootlick to the girl.
And that was it. Pink was clearly not in his right mind. Something had deprived him of most of his working brain. But what? How?
He glanced back at Sylvia, her silver-green eyes huge and face ashen, next to last in the pairing, just ahead of Miss Bibury, who had Whitby’s arm. Whitby and the Bibury girl stood as far apart as any two beings could while still having arms properly linked.
What the devil had happened? Was the potion really effective? And why would Lady Grace have given a dose to Pink when it had been Val she intended to snag as a husband? It must have been some sort of accident, because she was hardly the sort who would seek out a man who would never have a title, and had only a passable income.

Devil it! An accident! Pink had caught the glass Val had spilled. Sloshed the claret over Pink’s hand.
Lady Ernwhistle cleared her throat in her habitual way and sniffed into her handkerchief. Her eyes shifted back and forth between her daughter and Val. “Such a pleasure to be in your home at last, Lord Vailmont,” she said. “I have heard so much about you over the years. You know your mother and I have had the fondest connection for so long, and it is such a delight to see our children meet at last. My dear Grace has had such a lovely Season this last year, you know, so many beaus. But she would have none of them, and they were the crème de la crème. Of course, she should have only the best.”
“Indeed,” said Val between his teeth.
Val settled Lady Ernwhistle in her chair and awaited the seating of the other guests, observing Pink from the corner of his eye. As he took his own seat, Pink seemed to be acting more like himself, following the patterns of proper etiquette with precision. Perhaps things would settle down, after all. The menu had been carefully chosen, and the countess was not in error about his fine chef. Perhaps all everyone needed was a chance to sit down and enjoy a good, relaxing meal.
Val released his fists from their tight clench and allowed himself a slow, cleansing breath. Everything would be fine.
Val barely saw what touched his plate, barely noticed his mother’s signals that he should be leading the company. Sylvia kept her eyes on her plate as she pushed her food about, not a single bite making it to her mouth. Amalie simply stared across the table at Pink as if she had just watched her favorite kitten being devoured by a big dog, and Pink ogled Lady Grace like a starving wolf waiting to pounce on said kitten.
“Olives, Lady Grace?” Pink asked, holding the silver bowl a shade too shakily as he gazed with moonstruck eyes at his moon princess.
Lady Grace shook her head, her lovely classically pink lips drawn tight.
Pink downed another glass of wine and stared at his plate. Then he cocked his head, eyes suddenly bright, and turned to mumble something unintelligible into Lady Grace’s ear.
The girl blushed a pale shade that on her looked almost fiery. She leaned away from Pink, closer to Val. Instinctively, Val shoved his chair closer to Lady Ernwhistle on his right.
Pink downed another glass of wine. So did Lord Rasley who sat on the other side of the rigid Lady Ernwhistle. That would be six for Pink and seven for Rasley. The ones Val had seen, that was.
“Salmon aspic?” Pink offered to the lady.
Lady Grace, whose lovely swan neck seemed to grow longer by the minute as she sat ever stiffer and straighter in her chair, did not even turn her head, nor acknowledge Pink. She scooted her chair closer to Val and gave him a smile that looked like it kept her teeth from falling out. “Do you not think it will be a mild winter this year, Lord Vailmont? I have heard it said so, and that will be fine as we will be going to Town early this year. Do you go to Town, Lord Vailmont?”
“Every year. It is my duty, of course.”
“And you are the most dutiful of men, I have heard. I think it is so wonderful when a man does his duty, do you not, Mama?”
Lady Ernwhistle smiled indulgently at her daughter and sighed out a long breath that Val suspected she had been holding far too long.
“I have heard the most marvelous things about you, Lord Vailmont,” said Lady Grace. “Of course I should not dare repeat them to you.”
A hand touched his thigh. Val froze. Rigid as an oak tree. The girl smiled sweetly.
Pink took another glass of wine and downed it all in one gulp. His eyes glazed over like honey turned to sugar. Across from him, Lord Rasley snatched the wine bottle from the footman and poured himself one, which he, too, gobbled down. Lady Rasley hissed something in his ear. He chortled and reached for the bottle again, but his hand went awry and landed in the tray of pickled herring the footman was trying to remove. His nose wrinkled as he wiped his hand on the table cloth and grabbed the bottle by its neck. Another glass of wine went down.
The most elegantly perfect man Val had ever known. Good God, what had happened to him?
Lady Rasley hissed again. Lord Rasley belched and chuckled. His bleary eyes roamed up and down Lady Ernwhistle’s green gown with its encrustation of beads. His double chin bobbing with muttered words, the old goat slid lower in his chair. Lady Ernwhistle bolted suddenly upright, her eyes bigger than the saucers on the table, and her mouth gaping just as wide. Rasley chortled again and whispered something in her ear. She gasped.
Val almost gasped too. Rasley had suggested he send a coach for her at midnight.
Good God, what was going on?
“What we need here is a serenade,” Pink said, sloshing his words, and he pushed back his chair. “Heard one on my Grand Tour, in Venice. Need a mandolin. Got one, Val?”
Val groaned. “No, Lord Albert, I don’t believe we have any musical instruments in this house.”
“’S’all right, don’ need one. Do it myself. Always was good at serenading. Can’t think of a song, though. I know, that Burns fellow, Robert. ‘The Aspen Song’.

“Flow gen’ly, sweeeeet aspen among thy green braes…

“Always thought that was funny, don’t you, Lady Grace? Braes? Means breeches, you know. Couldn’t figure the aspen part…”
“That’s Afton, Pink, it’s the name of a stream. I think maybe you’d—”
“Don’ matter. Need a love song. Let the lady know I love her…”
Lady Grace gasped and shoved her chair almost to Val’s lap. “Mother, do something!”
Sylvia gripped the table with both hands.
Amalie broke into a wail. “Mama!”
The countess turned so pale, Val feared he’d have to pick her off the floor. If her heart didn’t take this particular moment to give out entirely.
“Vailmont, do something!” his mother cried.
With a quick sweep of the chaos, Val stood. “Mother, I believe it’s time for the ladies to retire while the gentlemen enjoy their port.”
The countess stared, frozen in her chair.
Sylvia leapt up. “Oh, yes, Lady Vailmont, I do believe that would be just the thing. Perhaps we might enjoy a bit of tea and a cozy chat in the parlor while the gentlemen, um, get things in order.”
For once in her life, the countess seemed to have words stuck in her throat where they couldn’t escape, but she had the sense to follow Sylvia’s lead and usher the ladies from the dining room. Val closed the door behind them.
“Devil a bit, Val,” said Whitby. “What a brangle! What the devil is going on?”
Rasley let out a loud guffaw and belched again as he slowly slid out of his chair and beneath the table. And the man had to weigh twenty stone if he weighed one.
“Bedamned if I know,” Val answered as he rushed to Lord Rasley’s chair, jerked it back and plopped to his knees beside his prostrate guest. “Help me get him out. Ormsley, get another footman. Send for his coach.”
“Grace, the lovely Grace, as lovely as… What rhymes with moonlight, Val?”
Val cringed and took Rasley by one arm while Whitby pulled on the other one. Whitby groaned. Val felt his vision go dark as his muscles strained. Make that thirty stone. Maybe more. Val heard a sleeve rip as they tugged Rasley out from beneath the table.
Rasley rolled over, face into the fine blue Aubusson carpet and belched again, as Val prayed he wouldn’t cast up his accounts. “Purties’ thing I ever saw,” mumbled Rasley. “Got t’ have her. Dorothea, I love you!”
“His wife?” Whitby asked.
“I believe Dorothea is the given name of the marchioness, not his wife,” Val replied.
“Huh. Hope he remembers tomorrow when he sees his wife’s face. How are we going to move him, Val? He must weigh twenty stone.”
“Feels like thirty. Get him into a chair and tie him on. It’ll give us something to hold on to. We can at least push it if we have to.”
“Moon…moonlight, soft as…soft as silver moonlight… Grace as graceful as the moonlight… No, that won’t work…”
Ormsley set the dining chair on a small carpet. They tugged and shoved until the limp Rasley flopped into the dining chair, legs and arms sprawled and chin dropped down on his chest. He started to slide. Whitby jumped behind the chair and grabbed the portly fellow around his rotund chest.
“’At’s it, my sweet, I know you’d see it my way. Come to make love to me after all, have you?”
“God in Heaven, Val, the things I do for you,” said Whitby, groaning as he struggled to hold onto Rasley.
“Don’t forget the things I do for you,” Val growled back. “How are we going to keep him in this chair?”
“Sir?”
The footman held out a slashed drapery cord in one hand and a carving knife in the other. Val snatched it from the footman, who ran to the window and cut down a second cord. They tied one around the viscount’s middle, to the chair back, and the other around the seat. They slid the chair out the pair of mahogany dining room doors and into the corridor, amidst the gasping ladies.
“Not to worry, ladies,” Val said, searching for that smile of charm he had mislaid somewhere during the evening. “He’s quite all right. Everything’s all right.”
The caterwauling of Pink in his composing mood floated out through the dining room doors.
“Stay with him, will you, Whitby?”
“Almost rather help carry the old goat out,” Whitby said, but with a shrug, he marched through the doors and closed them behind him.
Val saw the viscount out to his coach and helped shove him inside, while the rattled viscountess sniffed in the corner. When she complained that she didn’t know what to do with him once they arrived at home, Val shook his head, and motioned to two footmen to ride along.
The foyer was empty of ladies when he returned, but he could hear their voices in the downstairs parlor. He paused outside the parlor door.
“Well, of course one cannot be blamed for the reprehensible behavior of one’s guests…”
That appeared to be Lady Kelso, who had not suffered quite the way the others had.
“Nevertheless, if we had not been made to suffer the company of those lesser than ourselves, we might have been spared this debacle.” That would be Lady Ernwhistle. He recognized her throat-clearing and honking sniff.
“Well, I tried to tell Vailmont, but he would not listen. Simply had to have those riff-raff friends of his. None of this would have happened, and poor Lord Rasley, I just cannot imagine what they did to him.”
Mother. A growl rose in Val’s throat. Naturally, none of the fault could be hers.
“Really, Lady Vailmont, they are not such awful fellows. They are quite nice, once one gets to know them.”
Val groaned. He’d hoped Sylvia had left.
“Oh, indeed, just your sort, I am sure.”
Val gritted his teeth. But he’d have to leave her to defend herself. He still had another mess to clean up. Val rushed back to the dining room. Whitby had Pink on his feet, but Pink wavered about like a flying pennant in a storm, bellowing some disconnected ballad about Diana and the moon. Val took Pink’s other arm over his shoulder while Ormsley ran to open up the pair of doors. Pink’s feet skimmed over the polished wood floor as they headed for the stairway near the front entrance.
Just as they started up the stairs, the ladies emerged from the parlor. Val gritted his teeth. “Up we go,” he said.

“Grace, graceful as Diana…goddess of the moon… Hair as pale as moooooonlight…”

Lady Grace moaned and hid her face in her hands.
Val wished there were a cork big enough to stop Pink’s mouth.
“Mama!” wailed Amalie and tucked her head into Sylvia’s shoulder.
Whitby’s face screwed up in impotent agony.
“Watch the stairs, Whitby,” Val muttered. “Or we’ll all end up in a pile at the bottom.”
Ormsley deserted them to help with the ladies. Up the stairs, two double flights, to the second floor, and they paused, chests heaving. Pinkerton was no lightweight, even sober, and his dead weight made it worse.
“Where is she, Val?” Pink slurred. “Where’s my true love?” His hand slapped around the bed as if groping for something. Probably another bottle of wine.
“You don’t have a true love, Pinkerton. You have a thick head.”
Down the dim corridor, Pink’s feet still dragging, one occasionally trying to do what it ought, but tripping them up instead. Inside Pink’s chamber, they tossed him on the bed. As they gasped for breath, Pink flopped, spread-eagled over the rumpled coverlet.

“Silver like the moooonlight…goddess of the moon…soon…loon… Can’t find a rhyme for moon.”

“We seem to be uncommonly short of servants tonight,” Val observed, his chest still heaving. “Where’s his valet?”
“Bartlett? Haven’t seen him.”
“Never mind. Go for Clarence. He’ll know what to do.”
Val crammed a pillow beneath Pink’s head and just as he finished tugging off Pink’s highly polished dress slippers, Whitby returned with Clarence. “Here’s your chance to shine, Clarence. Bartlett seems to have gone missing, and half the servants as well.”
“Yes, my lord. They’re uh, uh, busy.”
“Perhaps you’d like to explain.”
“Um, Bartlett’s gone off with, um, her ladyship’s chambermaid.”
“Damn. The stuff’s more contagious than smallpox.”
“The devil, Val! Has the entire household gone crazy?” asked Whitby.
“Only the male half. Something must have happened in the drawing room when I was out.”
“But I was there. Why not me?”
“You’re already in love. Maybe it wouldn’t affect you.”
“Am not. And why not Clarence? If Pink’s valet got the bug, why not him?”
“Clarence has already been dosed. Maybe it doesn’t work the second time.”
Hell, he didn’t know. Not a bit of it made any sense. The minute he thought he had something figured out, something else contradicted it.
He could still hear the commotion downstairs in the foyer, his mother’s whining voice rising in pitch above all the others. “Take over, Whitby. I need to check on something else.”
Val slipped out into the dim corridor, still listening for the voices below, but none seemed to be coming his way. He dashed to the end of the corridor to the chamber his mother had taken and eased open the door. Sure enough, the room echoed its emptiness, for her maid was not where she should be. No doubt off with somebody’s valet. At least, not the chef. The food had been too good for that.
He glanced around, and the first thing that caught his eye was the strangest blue bottle he had ever seen. It was obelisk in shape, cut crystal, and looked very much like a large perfume bottle, but was stoppered with a cork instead of a more appropriate, ground-to-fit glass stopper. It had a tiny label with handwritten letters, too small to see in the dim light. Val scooped up the bottle and dashed back to his chamber.
He drew close to the gaslight and held up the bottle, squinting to bring the tiny letters into focus.

Lady Aphrodite’s Invigorating Elixir for Men.

Chapter Eighteen
Just inside the door of Elizabeth’s townhouse, Millie burst into wails. Torrents of tears rolling down her cheeks, Millie ran up the stairs so fast, she tripped on the ruffle of her dress and tore it.
“Whatever is that about?” Sylvia asked as she and Elizabeth hurried up the stairs in Millie’s wake.
Elizabeth shrugged and shook her head, but something in the tightness of her mouth told Sylvia her friend knew more than she was saying. They both lifted their skirts and scurried along faster. But Millie ran down the corridor, shoved open the door to her chamber and passed through before the maid could open it. With an enormous sob, she flung herself down on her bed, face into her pillow.
Sylvia sat beside her on the side of the bed, rubbing a gentle, motherly circle on her back, glancing back at Elizabeth, who shrugged rather guiltily. Sylvia began to wonder what had been happening while she had been absorbed in such an un-motherly fashion with Lord Vailmont.
When the wails died down she handed Millie a handkerchief. Millie sat up, looked at both of them, then dropped back to the pillow for another wail. Finally, she managed to stay upright long enough to blow her nose.
“Oh, Mama,” Millie sniffed, then wailed again. “He does not even see me!”
“Who? Mr. Whitby? But he shows you the greatest attention.”
“Not him, Mama! He is such a child! Lord Albert. All he can see is that bran-faced Lady Grace!”
Millie blubbered and blew her nose. Sylvia took another handkerchief from Elizabeth and handed it to the girl.
Lord Albert. Sylvia groaned. All this time, she had thought Millie merely joking about the handsome rake. And Pinkerton was the last man in the world she would tolerate for her daughter. “Oh no, my dear. He is not at all suitable. For all that he is handsome, he is utterly shallow. He would never make a lady happy. And he is too old, entirely.”
“But Mama, I love him! There can be no other man for me but him! I wish I had some of that potion everyone is talking about, and I could make him love me.”
Sylvia went still. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You know. The one Miss Newberry used on Mr. Latimer.”
Ice slid down Sylvia’s spine. “Oh, she did not. Surely. Millie, just take a minute to think about it. Mr. Latimer is not all that good a catch. Would she not aim higher if she had a potion that worked?”
“Not if it was Mr. Latimer she wanted,” Millie answered between sniffs, and she dabbed at her eyes.
“It could be obtained,” Elizabeth offered.
Shock felt like a slap in Sylvia’s face. She stared at her friend. “What do you mean, Elizabeth?” Surely Elizabeth would not get involved in such a thing. Hadn’t she thought of the consequences?
“I’ve heard a few things. I believe I could obtain it rather easily. Perhaps it would help you with Lord Vailmont as well.”
Sylvia clenched her hands and stared at the bedpost. If she looked up, surely she would see the world crumbling down around her. And that was not the half of it. The moment she’d heard Lady Vailmont’s voice, she’d recognized it. The veiled widow. The one who had come to Willow Combe and demanded a love potion. The one who had given her the ten thousand pounds Sylvia had carefully hidden away, that would pay for Amalie’s Season. And there was no question the woman recognized her as well. The venom in her eyes said so.
She’d known then her scheme was up, and desperately searched for a minute to speak with Val alone, but found none. Every hellish moment of the supper, she had waited for Lady Vailmont to denounce her before all, and as horrifying as the evening’s chaos was, the antics of the two men had been a relief to her.
But that also meant there was a potion that worked, and it was hers. In Lady Vailmont’s hands, and somehow gone amok. But there couldn’t be. The potion was an utter fraud! It was nothing but water!
But did work. Somehow, it did.
Squaring her shoulders, Sylvia stood. “Elizabeth, I do not want to slip a potion on Lord Vailmont. I do not wish to marry him. Can I not make that clear?”
“Yes. Certainly.” Elizabeth drew her lips in tightly.
Sylvia dropped her face into her hands and rubbed aching temples. Why was it no one in the world could believe a woman might actually voluntarily choose to remain unmarried? Did no one have a grasp of how pleasant life could be without a man ordering every fragment of it, all the way down to what one believed, felt, thought? Elizabeth, of all people, who had maintained her independence in what seemed happiness for over twelve years, had never once expressed an interest in acquiring a new husband. Could she not understand?
Taking a deep breath, Sylvia leaned over and laid a gentle hand on Amalie’s shoulder. “Millie, my dear, you must give this a bit more thought. Perhaps you feel Lord Albert is the finest of all men now, but you are unlikely to see him that way in a year or so. True, he is quite charming and handsome, but he has little interest beyond his own amusement. The man is shallow. And as you saw tonight, inconstant, in a way that makes poor Mr. Whitby look as solid as the Pennines. No woman could hold his attention long. And if you should manage to gain it under such false pretenses as a love potion, in the end he would hate you for trapping him. Marriage is forever, my dear.”
“But I love him, Mama!” Millie honked her nose and wailed again. With a bit too much force, she slapped the soggy handkerchief down on the little Pembroke table next to the bed. She rose, swiped inelegantly at her sniffing nose with the back of her hand, and crossed the room to the window looking out on Laura Place toward the house on the opposite corner at Henrietta Street.
Sylvia took another deep breath and followed her daughter. She placed both hands on Amalie’s shoulders. “Millie, dear, sometimes love is unrequited. And it is terribly painful, but that is the sad way of things. Many sad things happen in life. You should know, for you have lost two parents. But you must never make a marriage based only on your own feelings. You would face a lifetime of regrets.”
“Oh, Mama, it’s so unfair!” Millie leaned her head on Sylvia’s shoulder.
Sylvia slipped her arm around the girl. So many years, she had loved this child, helped her grow, hoped she could save her from painful moments like this. She had hoped somehow her own life would have provided all the painful experiences so that Amalie would not have to live them for herself. Perhaps that was only her own immaturity. She was not, indeed, old enough to be a true mother if she thought that. She had sheltered the girl far too muShe could not grow without pain.
“I know, Millie. That is about the best we can expect of life, that it is unfair. But you are a lovely girl with a wonderfully warm heart, and if you give it time, a most wonderful and deserving young man is sure to find you.”
Once again, the sniffles and tears threatened to take over. Elizabeth held out a third handkerchief, which Sylvia took and handed to Millie.
At length, Millie calmed and decided to take to her bed. A footman brought a glass of warm milk to settle her nerves, and her maid helped her undress and into her nightrail. Sylvia tucked her into bed and blew out the candles.
As she shut the door behind them, Sylvia whirled on Elizabeth, her gaze boring like augers. “What do you know about potions, Elizabeth?”
“Oh, not a lot,” Elizabeth replied, cocking her head. “Not as much as you do.”
“Don’t be coy.”
Elizabeth gave another shrug. “Well, of course, Millie is right about the Newberry girl. And I have heard Lady Rayburn used it for her daughter to snare that delicious young Mr. Ponsonby.”
“And Mr. Smith, Lord Dinglebury, Mr. Stoddard, and the other twelve bachelors?”
Elizabeth winced.
“Where did they get it?”
“Oh, I believe you know, dear.”
Sylvia groaned. So it was her elixir they were using. But there was only the one bottle. Nowhere near enough for the fifteen men Val had mentioned, not even counting these others.
“Who else knows?” she asked.
“About you? No one, I don’t think. Surely you don’t suspect Lord Vailmont would tell.”
Most unlikely, until he had what he wanted, that was. But then, when he had the information he wanted, he would have no other choice but to tell her secret if he meant to win his wager. “He might not. But there is someone who would.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrow arched.
“Lady Vailmont. She is the lady who came to me asking for a potion.”
“Oh, my dear, no! She is absolutely poisonous! She is a snake— No, an unnatural snake, for a snake strikes for food or to defend itself. She strikes because she can.”
“And she wishes to be rid of me because she believes her son has too much interest in me.”
Sylvia turned and strode off to her chamber, where she plopped down in a chair. But within a minute, she popped back up to her feet again, wringing her hands. What in the name of all the heavenly stars was she going to do now?

Chapter Nineteen
Sylvia lay awake most of the night, worry gnawing at her, and finally rose with the dawn, dressed and frittered about. And though it was too early to be calling, she could stand it no more. She ate a quick breakfast before Elizabeth and Amalie were awake, and left the house.
Within an hour, she stood in the lower parlor of the Newberry house on Queen Square. They were a modestly wealthy family, of the minor nobility, Sir Robert being of a fine old family from Chester whose roots were in trade, but somewhere in the recent past, they had managed to gain a knighthood. Sylvia had never heard another word about that awful print in Baker’s shop, and hoped it had remained obscure, and that the Newberrys were unimportant enough that nobody had noticed.
They had come to Bath for reasons similar to her own, to try to accustom their intensely shy daughter to social ways. And, Sylvia had heard, they had very nearly turned around and gone back after only a few weeks, despairing that she would ever manage so much as to say boo to a goose.
That was before she met Mr. Latimer, third son of an earl. The family was ecstatic.
“Oh, good morning, Lady Ashbroughton,” said Mrs. Newberry, her hands clasped prayerfully as she came into the parlor. “We are honored to have you call on us. Would you care for a bit of tea?”
Sylvia fought a blush that wanted to creep into her face. Ever since she and Val had assigned a different meaning to that beverage, she had been having trouble looking at a teacup, full or empty. But Mrs. Newberry could have no knowledge of Val’s secret message. Willing her lips into a proper smile, Sylvia nodded. “Yes, thank you, I shall. But of course, I have come to wish your dear daughter happy in her coming marriage, and to apologize for being so late about it.”
“Oh, no need to apologize, Lady Ashbroughton. You have, of course, been busy with doings of your own.”
Feeling the heat in her cheeks, Sylvia wished once again she could corner the market on saffron before everyone in Bath knew her business.
“It is quite a task to fire off a daughter, is it not?” continued Mrs. Newberry, who was uncommonly attractive for a woman of her age. Sylvia forced her fingers to relax from the tight balls they had formed. Of course the woman did not know her private business. Whatever had made her think so?
“But then, of course, she is your stepdaughter, but the task is still yours, even though you are so very young to be seeing her out. Men simply are not up to such things, I vow.”
“No, they do not seem to be,” Sylvia agreed. “Ah, here is your daughter now. Good morning, Miss Newberry.”
Miss Newberry smiled. It was as if the sun filled a shadow. Limp, plain curls seemed to have turned golden and bouncy, and for once the girl’s trademark yellow dress actually flattered her skin, being of a mellower, more buttery shade than the sharp lemon color she customarily wore.
“Lady Ashbroughton!” Miss Newberry gushed. “How kind of you to come!” She all but threw herself at Sylvia.
Sylvia had to force herself not to retreat. “I am pleased to see you, and come to wish you well in your impending marriage. I thought perhaps you might walk out with me, if your mother approves.”
Mrs. Newberry’s smile bounced around her face, perhaps that she could not believe her great luck to have a viscountess come calling and walk out with her very own daughter. In no time, Sylvia and Miss Newberry were walking down Brook Street, intending themselves for the Gravel Walk.
“How pleased you must be to have found such a fine young gentleman as Mr. Latimer,” Sylvia said.
“Oh, indeed, Lady Ashbroughton.” Miss Newberry’s face shone as she smiled. “He is the finest of men, although I vow I did not think of him at all at first, as he is so very shy. But I should have known, as I am a bit retiring myself, who else could be more suited to me? He is so very kind. I vow I thought I would faint when he first approached me for a dance. But do you know what he said to me?”
Sylvia did not, of course, but needed to only shake her head as Miss Newberry continued.
“He said, ‘Do not be afraid of me, Miss Newberry, for I am as terrified as you are. Perhaps if we help each other, we can contrive to dance.’ You see how fine he is? He did not think of his own discomfort, only mine.”
Sylvia felt something warm in her heart. “Then I agree. It is a fine man indeed who sees beyond his own needs to those of another. But I cannot help but notice he is inordinately fond of you, having known you such a short time. Surely he must see your finer qualities as well.”
“Oh, I really do not have any finer qualities. It is the potion, you see. But he does not mind.”
The chill suddenly returned. “The potion?”
“Yes, the— You did not know about the potion?”
“Well, I had heard—” Sylvia mumbled, feeling as if her tongue had suddenly grown thick.
“Oh, goodness! I thought all the ladies knew! The gentlemen must not, of course, but I am afraid I slipped and told Mr. Latimer. But he is the kindest of gentlemen, as I have said, and he says he does not care, for the potion opened up his eyes, and he would never have noticed me, either, if it were not for the potion that gave him courage. And now, think of it, Lady Ashbroughton! I, who believed I should never find a husband at all, am destined for the happiest of lives!”
“Oh, I do hope you are, Miss Newberry. But can you count on a potion to maintain such bliss?”
“It does not wear off, I am told.”
Sylvia was glad for the wind that picked up suddenly and folded back the brim of her bonnet, for it gave her something to do with her hands instead of wring them with consternation. This was not possible! It just wasn’t! It could not happen any more than one might eat something that would turn one’s skin green, and it would stay that way forever. It had to wear off, and when it did, there would be many a woman with a very angry husband! Even Miss Newberry, who expected a life of bliss, would find herself saddled with eternal misery instead! Even at that, Val had mentioned someone who doctored a drink every night. Was she perhaps not taking any chances it would wear off? But it simply made no sense. None of it did.
But it worked. And it was all Sylvia’s fault!
Sylvia turned her face out of the wind, but as much to hide her shock from Miss Newberry. She had to do something! But what? It was already too late for so many!
She had to know more, and Miss Newberry was eagerly spilling everything. Sylvia stilled her nerves with a deep breath and continued her questions.
“Surely it must be difficult to see that the right man always receives the right dose,” she said.
The girl laughed. “Oh, indeed. And to share my secret with you, Lady Ashbroughton, for I have not with anyone else, I had set my cap for Lord Albert Pinkerton, as he is so very handsome. And when I saw him coming my way, I quickly dabbed on the potion, but then he turned instead to Lady Lyndonbury, and instead it was Mr. Latimer who was introduced to me. I thought I would faint from fright, for I had no plan at all for him to take a sniff.”
“Sniff?” Was that how it was done? Oh, dear heavens. “I have been led astray. I thought the potion was drunk.”
“That is how it was done at first, I understand, but the gentlemen seemed to be catching on. Then someone discovered it only needed to be inhaled. So we dab it in our hair now. It has no odor, so they never know. As they bend to a proper bow, they breathe in. And that is the end of it. And I am so very glad now it was Mr. Latimer who sniffed my hair and not Lord Albert, for I can see now I should never have been happy with such a man, nor do I believe even a potion would cure his wayward ways.”
Tears of fear and pain welled up in Sylvia’s eyes. She wanted to hide her face in her hands. She wanted to dash away, running like the wind back to Laura Place, snatch up Amalie and depart as fast as a coach could carry them, all the way back to the Cotswolds and Willow Combe, to slam the door behind her and never let the outside world in again. Surely it could not be her potion, for it smelled of rosemary and lavender and many aromatic herbs. How could it be?
Suddenly Miss Newberry grasped Sylvia’s arm. “Oh, I have it, Lady Ashbroughton! It is just the thing for you! One whiff and that standoffish Lord Vailmont will fall to his knees, and not even care that you are so long on the shelf! I shall give you mine! Come let us hurry back home right now!”
She thought about shouting out that she did not want to marry Lord Vailmont, but that was only a lie she had been telling herself. She thought about shouting to Miss Newberry that she must not marry a man who would soon be enraged at the trap that had sprung about him, but she knew it to be too late for that. No, she had to play along, and get her hands on that bottle. Perhaps, oh, just perhaps, it would be something invented by someone else, and she would not be guilty of turning the whole of society into a topsy-turvy shambles!
If it were another time, perhaps she might find Miss Newberry’s exuberance amusing. But Sylvia could only slap her false smile on her face and hope against hope as they scurried together along the Gravel Walk back toward Queen Square. Now she found herself both unwilling yet desperate to reach their destination. At the door with its green paint slabbed over many layers of paint before it, she hesitated. But Miss Newberry took her hand, encouraging her in, and Sylvia waited in misery in the downstairs parlor as her new young friend dashed abovestairs.
In what seemed like the lapse of an entire morning, but was by the tall case clock merely minutes, Miss Newberry rushed back down the stairs, cradling in her hands a small blue bottle.
It was one of the two obelisk-shaped perfume bottles she had emptied and refilled with water to sell to the mysterious veiled lady, who had since proven to be Val’s mother. On it was the label she had written herself in tiny letters: Lady Aphrodite’s Invigorating Elixir for Men.
Sylvia went weak in the knees.
The door with its chipping green paint clicked shut behind her, and Sylvia stepped out onto Queen Square, her gloved hand clutching the cut glass bottle.
She lifted her head and squared her shoulders, looking past the row of golden stone houses against a gray autumn sky, and leaves in yellow and tan, caught up in blustering swirls as they drifted down from the trees. She forced herself to plant a smile on her face and make it stay there, to smile and smile at the world. Smile at the dun-colored pug that barked at her. Smile at the horses in the passing mail coach and the coachman who yelled at her to get out of the way. Smile at cracked window panes and wobbly pavement stones, smile and smile and smile, for if she stopped smiling even for a moment, she would collapse to her knees on the pavement squares, tears overwhelming her and dissolving her into a pitiful puddle that would slip between the stones and disappear into the earth.
She had to get to Val. Throw herself at his feet, tell him the truth, beg for mercy. Maybe he could do what she couldn’t, and find a way to stop the madness. He would hate her for her deception, for there was nothing he despised more, but she had to tell him the truth.
Sylvia rushed past the shops on Trim Street, barely seeing anyone among the throng, hoping no one saw her, for she could not bear to look in their faces. She turned the corner and a gust of autumn fury caught her, bending back the brim of her hat and tearing at her skirt. One hand pinned the silver velvet hat to her head, and the other held down the new green pelisse that flapped in the wind. And still she smiled, smiled, smiled. At green-painted ironwork, at leaves tossing about the street in whirlwinds that had ripped them from their branches, at anything, at nothing, for she would not give up her smile.
There, beyond Bridge Street, would be Argyle Street, that would lead her across the bridge and safely back to Elizabeth’s home. It wasn’t so far. She would find him, and through her forced smile explain how she had made such a mess.
But there, at Milsom Street, he came around the corner. She could tell it was he, even from this distance, for no other man had such magnificent legs and wore the deep Bristol blue so beautifully. She hurried toward him, her salvation and her doom.
He stood at the corner, his eyes fixed on her. In one hand, he held a rolled up document, or paper of some sort. She drew closer, but he stood, stock still. Closer, and she could see his face clearly, yet what she saw on it was strangely empty.
In his other hand, he held a bottle. A little blue bottle just like the one she held, the second one shaped like an obelisk. The one she’d hoped he’d never find.

Chapter Twenty
All pretense of smiles and smiling failed. The last hope drained away as Sylvia slowed her pace and came up on Val.
“Val—” Her words caught in her throat, their falseness strangling her.
His jaw was so tight, the muscles worked like steam pistons. His dark eyes smoldered with rage, and the muscles in his jaw tensed like tight ropes. He clutched the roll of paper in one hand and clenched the bottle in the other so tight, she feared he would smash the glass.
“I’ve been to see Miss Newberry and Mr. Latimer,” she said, hoping he didn’t hear the quivering in her voice, but she knew it was unmistakable. “I’ve learned some things you ought to know.”
His lips drew into a tight line as he glared.
“It-it works, Val. The potion does work.”
“So I’ve just learned. But you’ve known all along, haven’t you, Sylvia?”
She swallowed at that horrible lump in her throat, a lump made up of words she should have said many times before, but now it caught in her throat and choked her. “No. No, Val, I didn’t. It wasn’t supposed to work.”
“All this time, there was really another potion, and you knew it.” He lifted the little blue obelisk-shaped bottle to eye level and narrowed his eyes as he read. “Lady Aphrodite’s Invigorating Elixir for Men. Really, Sylvia, do you think you might have been less blatant?”
“But I—”
“Do you think there is any living person in the Isles of Britain who wouldn’t realize what this is?”
“But I—”
“You’re selling an aphrodisiac, Sylvia. Meant to make men ruttish.”
“Ruttish?”
“Lustful? Inflame their passion? Can I be more plain?”
She shook her head as a humiliating fire rushed her face.
“You knew all along what it was. And you just let me go along trying to find something else. You even helped me try to find something else.”
“But I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t?” One corner of his mouth lifted in an ugly smirk. “Let’s examine that logically. You made the formula. You bottled it. You sold it with a label indicating it was an aphrodisiac. And now you tell me you didn’t know what it was? Do you think there is anybody in this world who would believe that?”
Again she shook her head, for, no, she didn’t expect anyone, least of all the world’s most logical person, to believe her. Yet it just couldn’t be. Even she had enough logic in her to see that.
“But it’s just water, Val. Truly, it is! I sold it to a woman who offered me a lot of money for a love potion, because I needed the money for Amalie. But there truly is no such thing, even though she kept insisting she knew my family has had love potions for generations. So I filled the bottle with water. Nothing more. Then she came back and bought some more. But there is nothing in it but water. Truly, I swear to you, Val, there is nothing else in it. And besides, the restorative tonic also works. It’s the one you found first, remember? But the two have nothing at all in common.”
“Except water.”

Oh, dear heaven. Sylvia stared at him, horror constricting her chest like tight bands. She’d forgotten that. She had mixed the herbs with water from the same spring. “Yes.” Her voice squeaked as it came out.
“Tell me, Sylvia, while you were having such fun at my expense, did you also dose me?”
She cringed. She swallowed hard. And she remembered him stooping down to the spring to scoop up a handful of the clear, sweet water, the same spring where she got the water for all her potions, because it was so pure. She had never meant it, because she didn’t know. But it was the same as if she had. How could she ever convince him of that, when she was the one person who knew the spring best?
Worse, if she had known, would she have stopped him? Looking at his distressed face, with his disgust for her dripping from the corners of his mouth, she felt his disdain slicing through her heart. She had known all along how much she had desired him, but only now did she realize how hard she had worked to keep herself from feeling what was truly inside her heart, that she wanted most of all to be with him, to be liked by him. To be loved. By him.
And what he detested most was deceit. Deceitful women. Like her.
For his love, would she have been like all the others? Would she have disregarded his wishes and desires, disregarded his right to choose his own love? Or worst of all, disregarded his right to choose not to love?
The iron-hard band of guilt tightened around her chest as the feared answer sneaked into her mind. She was no different. All of the women wanted what they wanted, and were determined to have it, willingly ignoring the needs of the men they sought to possess.
How often had she blamed men for the way they treated women, as possessions? How much had she feared coming under a man’s control again, losing everything of who she was to a man’s will? Was this any different?
“I didn’t have to dose you,” she replied miserably. “You did it to yourself.”
“What?”
“The Spring of the Laughing God.” She put her hand in front of her eyes.
In the rustle of dry leaves, she swore she could hear the cackle of the Laughing God.
His face turned ashen.
She felt the blood drain from her face too. At last, she understood his real interest in her. He had never truly wanted her. The potion had overcome his normally rational mind and filled him with all that lust and passion. But it had been false. If there had been no potion, he never would have noticed her. There would have been no kind, sweet words, not a bit of tenderness. What she had wanted so deeply in her heart that she had not even been able to admit it to herself, had never been real in the first place.
There had been no love. Only lust. And even that came only from a bottle.
Val frowned at the rolled up paper in his hand. “Well, madam, whatever the power of the potion, you may be sure reason has at last prevailed. I hope you made a good deal of money off your potions. And may some happiness come with it, as well, if indeed you have any interest in anything so impractical as happiness. This is for you.”
Val shoved the paper at her so quickly, she took it in her hand before she realized it. From his waistcoat pocket, he drew out the locket, polished bright and complete with new paste stones. She gaped, stupefied, as she watched the locket and chain ooze from his hand into hers.
He pivoted as sharply as a palace guard and stalked over the cobblestones, across the bridge toward his house on the corner of the square, a trail of dry leaves swirling in his wake.
The first of the tears began to snake down her cheek, and she wiped at them fiercely. With shaking hands, she opened the roll of stiff paper, not surprised to see it was a print from Baker’s Print Shop. She recognized the style of Baker’s cartoonist Trimstone immediately, for the man was surely the best in England at being snide and cruel with pen and brush. Remembering the cartoon of poor Miss Newberry, she began shaking harder.
“Oh!” Sylvia’s knees almost collapsed beneath her. There was Sylvia in the very center, dressed as Aphrodite. It was unmistakably her, no matter how hard she tried to see it otherwise.
Aphrodite held a wad of banknotes in one hand and was counting them with the other. A line of females, similar only in that they all looked silly, were greedily buying all the little blue bottles. In the far corner, triumphant, absurdly smirking females were leading away dazed bachelors with their legs in shackles.
If the cartoonist knew, then all of Bath knew now, too.
Tears streaming down her face, Sylvia rolled up the print and ran along Argyle Street and across the bridge for the safe haven of Laura Place. She rushed on, her blurred eyes seeing only the pavement before her.
“Watch out, there!”
Her shoulder collided with a stocky man. She looked up to see Sir Ralph Rayburn, and beside him his purse-faced wife. “Oh, do forgive me,” Sylvia stammered and tried to find her lost smile again.
Lady Rayburn’s bulbous eyes widened like her snuff-distended nostrils, and as her chin jerked up, she stared right through Sylvia and turned away as if she had seen nobody. Not there at all.
All her life, Sylvia had heard about the cut direct. She had never imagined it could slice like frozen steel. She could not say she cared all that greatly for Sir Ralph Rayburn, yet it hurt. It hurt terribly. If Lady Rayburn knew, then everyone knew. And it did not matter if Lady Rayburn’s silly daughter had just snagged Mr. Ponsonby for a husband, and used Sylvia’s potion to do it. She would disdain Sylvia for her ghastly practice in trade, not to mention the involvement with something as havey-cavey as a love potion.
A new wave of humiliation clutched her throat. Again, she gathered her skirts and dashed on, reaching the door of Elizabeth’s Laura Place home at last.
She saw it on the footman’s face as the door swung open. He knew. And now she was no better than he. Johnson, the butler, wore his aplomb well, yet she could see in his face that he, too, had learned her secret.
“Mama?” It was Amalie’s voice, thin and uncertain.
Would even Amalie turn against her now? And Elizabeth? It was Amalie who would be most damaged, for now she would never find her dreams. And the fault was Sylvia’s. All Sylvia’s.
Amalie ran to Sylvia, tears streaming down her face, and Sylvia folded her into her arms.
“Oh Mama, what are we to do?” Amalie cried.
“Never mind, darling,” Elizabeth said as she emerged from the lower parlor. “We shall contrive.” Elizabeth quietly took them both by the hand, clasping with a firm squeeze as she called to Johnson to bring them some tea.
Contrive. It was not possible. No ruined reputation could ever be repaired. Everyone knew that. Sylvia laid the rolled-up engraving and the blue bottle on the Pembroke table and dropped her face into her hands.
Elizabeth picked up the print and unrolled it. “Hm. I was afraid of this. Well, it certainly is explicit. I doubt anyone would fail to recognize you. I would hazard a guess that Mr. Baker is venting his spleen for your criticism of the drawing of Miss Newberry. I am amazed at how these vicious cartoonists think themselves above reproach.”
“It hardly matters, Elizabeth,” Sylvia said, and she dabbed at her eyes with the lace handkerchief Elizabeth gave her. “By nightfall, there will not be a soul in Bath who will not know about my elixir.”
Elizabeth dropped a gentle hand on Sylvia’s shoulder and patted. “Nightfall will be a bit late, as I gather it.”
“I am terribly sorry, Elizabeth. I did not mean to bring embarrassment down on you.”
“Oh, it is no trouble to me, darling. But I think it might be best if you and Amalie go home for a while. Perhaps I can get Lord Vailmont to help me sort this out.”
Sylvia just shook her head.
“You didn’t dose him, did you? After that terrible lecture you gave Amalie?”
Sylvia lifted her head from her hands. “I didn’t mean it. It was the water from the spring, all this time. I have been drinking the water all my life. Everybody in my family drinks the water.”
“Really. I always thought the men in your family a bit dotty, the way they fawned over their wives.”
Good Heavens. Did this mean even her parents’ marriage, one of the few good marriages she had ever seen, was nothing but a drink of water? It didn’t bear thinking.
“Val drank from the spring,” she replied glumly.
“Oh, dear. And I suppose he is angry with you, like the other men are.”
Sylvia stifled a sniffle. But it simply didn’t make sense. Miss Newberry said the potion never wore off. Yet in Val’s case, it had not outlasted the afternoon. None of it made sense. What had been true in one case didn’t hold in the next.
“Well,” said Elizabeth, nodding wistfully, “I rather imagine he would take it rather harder than most. He has a penchant for truth and loyalty, you know.”
Oh, yes, she knew. If Val hadn’t been so determined to hunt down the truth, the secret probably would never have leaked out. But no, that probably wasn’t so. There could be only so many bachelors suddenly eloping before somebody noticed. And there was no point in blaming it on him, for she was the one who was at fault.
A horrible thought struck her. “Elizabeth, you don’t think he is the one who told Baker, do you?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Engravings can’t be made overnight. Baker is amazingly swift, but not even he can do that. If Vailmont just found out, and I think it’s safe to say that’s so, then he couldn’t have told.”
“But his mother could have.”
“She has not been in town even two weeks.” Elizabeth frowned, and slowly her head began to nod. “Yes, possibly. Perhaps Baker himself set out to find the truth, though. He was not lying when he said he knows everybody. And knows all about them, too.”
She supposed it must be so, considering the man’s hearty dislike of her. “But it matters little now, as it is done. I suppose you are right. I should go back to Willow Combe. Perhaps Amalie could stay here with you.”
“No, Mama. I won’t leave you.”
“But I thought you were so in love with Lord Albert.”
Amalie tossed her head, shaking her golden curls like springs. “I should never have him for a husband, after the way he chased after that moon-faced hussy. And you are entirely right, Mama, I am much too young to tie myself down. There is to be my Season in London next year, after all. And I shall have my pick of the finest young men.”
Sylvia swallowed the horrible-tasting lump in her throat. She did indeed hope so. But after this, she doubted if either of them would ever receive another guest, much less attend balls and routs.
“We can be packed and gone within an hour,” she said. “I am not at all suited to town life. I shall be very glad to be back at Willow Combe in my garden.”
And she would never see Val again.

Chapter Twenty-One
For the entire afternoon, Val rode the chestnut gelding through drizzling showers, from Beechen Cliff to Beacon Hill. Only when the horse’s well-being demanded it did he return to the house at Henrietta Street. Once inside, he slapped his wet coat, beaver hat and kid gloves into the footman’s hands, took the stairs two at a time to his chamber. Then, without a word to anyone, he strode off to the little room on the first floor he used as his private study.
The Earl of Vailmont, the present one, at least, had never been known to drink himself into a stupor. His father had done enough of that to make up for several generations into the future. But Val now sat in the only comfortable chair in this entire rented house and eyed the brilliant mahogany-colored liquid in his glass, which he swirled around and around, watching the strange patterns form on the glass as the slippery brandy oozed back down the sides.
He slumped into his chair and wished he might slip into the oblivion his father had so often chosen to do. But he reminded himself he was a rational man. Even if he had not been behaving like one recently, he intended to return to the habit that had stood him in good stead these last three years. A man of reason did not choose to avoid his problems, and instead, however painful they might be, sought to solve them. Or endure them, if he must.
He had trusted her. He had even gone against his own instinct which warned him against trusting females. But she had betrayed him. She had known all along, and had let him go on chasing after moonbeams, had even let him drink from that accursed spring. She had been planning to trap him into marriage from the very beginning.
She lied even better than Anne.
He supposed in some ways, he couldn’t blame her, for she had only meant to provide for herself and Amalie. A wealthy, titled husband could have solved all her problems. The very first question he had asked himself was, just how low would she stoop for her beloved stepdaughter? Obviously, it was very low, indeed.
What surprised him most was just how much it hurt. He’d thought himself immune to that.
“Oh, there you are, dear.” His mother’s voice floated in like a cloud in the blue.
Val leaned his head back into the stiffly padded wings of the chair and blew out a breath. Here he was. She had clearly known that. But then, logic had never been particularly important to his mother, as it was to him. He responded with the obvious. “Yes Mother, here I am.”
“Oh my, and it is such a fine day today, dear, as the sun is just right, poking between the clouds here and there, and hardly a touch of rain…”
A fine day? Was she daft? He had been out in the rain all afternoon. But no, she was just prattling again.
A newspaper. He needed a newspaper. There had to be one, or a book or something he could hide behind.
But no. He was done with hiding. It had taken him all this time to realize his mother’s maneuvers were far too substantial for him to hide in corners and pretend they weren’t there. He wondered if he could pretend to be very, very drunk. It had worked well enough for his father, who had in fact remained very, very drunk for years.
“…I used to say to your dear father, a little rain never hurt anyone, and he would say, God rest his soul…”
Val had always wondered at what point his father had become a saint. It seemed his mother had completely forgotten her utter loathing of the man before he had taken his last drunken leap over a stone wall and broken his neck.
Val continued his fixation on the swirling brandy, with his ears trained on his mother’s every word. It seemed like hours, an eternity of misery, before the bad words began to poke out again through the densely woven cloth of her scheming. But obviously his drunk ploy was more effective than the newspaper ploy, which clearly no longer worked.
“…I am so glad you find her attractive…”
Mother hadn’t said who was so attractive. He was quite sure. He had to hand it to her for deviousness. She did it well. But then, he was getting pretty good at it, too. He swirled the brandy endlessly, just the way he remembered his father had done.
“…I think November is a good time, but then it can be terribly stormy…”
He was equally sure she had not said just what November was good for. Wearing his most stupidly besotted look, he sipped from the brandy and slid a little farther down in the chair, letting his legs sprawl gracelessly.
“…and she is agreed…as she is fond of you too…willing to accept…your offer…”
How interesting that Mother was intimating he had made an offer. He had entirely avoided any real conversation with Lady Grace. But there was no doubt in his mind Mother referred to her. He let her play it a little further.
“Well, now that is settled, I believe I shall be going up to bed now. Goodnight, dear.”
“Just a minute, Mother.”
“Oh, I know you are tired, dear. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.” The countess gave him a smile that was almost tender.
“No, it can’t. If you tell Lady Ernwhistle or her daughter I have agreed to marriage, I will brand you a liar.”
She blinked. “Now, dearest, you have just said—”
“No, I haven’t. You said everything that was said.”
“Well, you have agreed—”
“I did not agree, and do not agree. I will not marry Lady Grace Twitt.”
The countess graced him with a smile that laid over him like poured treacle. “There, dear, you are just a wee bit foxed, and who can blame you after all that disgusting business about that Ashbroughton woman, you cannot imagine what they are saying. Do you know, she is nothing but a quack who has been poisoning men, and, oh, it is all so very disgusting, but you go on up to bed, and I am sure everything will look so much better in the morning when…”
“By morning, there will be the biggest brangle Bath has ever seen if you so much as hint there will be a marriage between Lady Grace and me.”
“But of course, dear, by morning you will have come to your senses and…”
Enough was enough. Val stood abruptly. “Stop talking.”
The countess didn’t even blink. Val took a deep breath, expecting the battle to become fierce. He suspected she had honed her technique to a fine edge over more years than Val had been alive.
“We shall join Lady Ernwhistle and Lady Grace at the theater tomorrow night and…”
“Stop talking.”
This time, she batted her eyes sweetly. “Really, Vailmont, you should not interrupt…”
“Stop talking.”
“…your mother when she is talking, it is the most disrespectful…”
“Stop talking or prepare to move to the dower house.”
She gasped.
“Just what did you have to do with the gossip about Lady Ashbroughton?” Before she could reply, he pulled the little blue obelisk-shaped bottle from his coat pocket. “I found this in your boudoir.”
Her eyelashes fluttered again. “Well, what is it, a perfume bottle? I cannot imagine how that might have gotten there.”
“I can.” In fact, it all began to make perfect sense to him, as his mind quickly assembled the pieces. “You are the mysterious lady who bought the love potion from her. That would have been just about the time Clarence fell so madly in love with your chambermaid. And when you found out it worked on him, you decided to go back for more. You have been sharing it with all your friends to be sure it worked, haven’t you?”
The countess turned white. It was the first time in Val’s life he could recall seeing her speechless.
“If you wanted it to work on me, though, you should not have exposed your hand by sharing so freely with others.”
“Vailmont, oh, how can you accuse your mother who loves you and is only interested in your welfare—”
“And it was you who slipped the story about Lady Ashbroughton to Baker and Trimstone. You needed to get her out of the way because you feared I would fall in love with her and your scheme would be for naught. In fact, you must have done that the very day you came to Bath, for that is about how long it takes for Trimstone and Baker to do their dirty work. You are the only person who could have known so much.”
There was that patronizingly vapid smile again. “Oh, Vailmont, how can you believe such nonsense? You are just a wee bit in your cups, and I am sure you will see things clearer in the morning—”
“I am not in my cups.” Val set down the brandy glass. He stalked across the room and planted himself squarely in front of his mother. “You knew I was seeing Lady Ashbroughton the very day you arrived in Bath. Or perhaps you knew even before you came, which is what brought you here.”
“Don’t be silly, Vailmont. I was only concerned about your welfare, as you have no sense yourself about these things, and you need somebody to look after…”
Val raked his hair with his fingers. Was there any way to get through to her? She had a ploy for everything he tried. But he couldn’t let her go on like this, making a muck of everyone’s lives. Whatever Sylvia had done, it did not merit the destruction of her reputation. And whatever he had done, it did not merit submitting to his mother’s control, however subtle it was.
Only one thing had even got a reaction from her. He supposed he might as well try it again.
“Stop talking.”
The countess made a noise that sounded like she had swallowed a grape whole.
“Don’t even think of testing me on this, Mother. I will not have you going about mucking in people’s lives anymore. The harm you have done to Lady Ashbroughton is incalculable. Inexcusable. You would have done equally as much harm to Lady Grace as you did to Anne and me.”
“But Lady Grace is perfect for—”
“Perfect for someone, but not perfect for me. There is far more to finding a good mate than her family connections, even her beauty. Lovely though she is, she does not possess a single quality that raises my interest. I will not have another marriage as I had with Anne. She must have been as miserable with me as I was with her, for we did not even want each other in the first place. I will not have that again.”
“Oh, Vailmont, surely I am not too late! Surely you have not fallen under that woman’s spell! Don’t you know what she is? Everyone knows! Can you not see it?”
Val leaned his head back and dragged in a long, deep breath. One way or another, he was going to get through to her, if it did mean locking her in the dower house. Or in the Tower of London, if need be. He remembered Deepest Africa, and wondered if that option might be available yet.
“She’s a witch, Vailmont! She’s cast a spell on you! You could not possibly be in love with her if she had not.”
Val blinked. In love? Was he in love? Or was it a spell? He had never believed in love, or in magic, yet now they both challenged his very being.
“There are no witches, Mother. That is merely medieval superstition carried into the modern day. There is a logical explanation for all of this.”
“All the Wilburmartins are witches, Vailmont, and she is a Wilburmartin on her mother’s side. They always have been. She will destroy you! She will take over you and The Vale, and all you hold dear!”
“Mother, that is utter nonsense.”
“No, it is not, Vailmont. I know!”
Something made his blood chill. Was it her desperation? “What do you know, Mother?”
For the second time that evening, his mother fell silent.
“You’d best explain yourself, Mother.”
“For heaven’s sake, you tell me to be silent, and when I am, you demand explanation. I shall not…”
“That is simply a matter of when I tell you to stop talking you do not, and when I ask for an explanation, you fall silent. I assure you, if I cannot manage your behavior any other way, I shall make certain you are contained in the dower house where you can do no harm. Now, explain yourself, madam. How could you possibly know anything about the Wilburmartins?”
“I was to marry him,” she mumbled.
“Marry who?”
“Oxton Randolph. But she came up with her potion, and all of a sudden he eloped with her. And I had no choice but to marry Winslow, but that was before he became the earl.”
“Who is Oxton Randolph?”
“That Ashbroughton woman’s father. He was heir presumptive to a marquess at the time.” She sniffed and tossed her head. “But he got his comeuppance. The marquess remarried and fathered four sons, and Oxton remained a baron for all his life. And she was no more than a baroness, while I am the Countess of Vailmont.”
Val stared at her as something cold flowed through his heart. It all sounded so shallow, so grasping, as if she had sought nothing in her life but a title. Her family, he recalled, had some of the best connections, including dukes and marquesses, for his mother never let him forget it. But they possessed no titles of their own, being second and third sons and the like.
Yet there was something else in his mother’s half-hidden eyes, a stinging hurt, perhaps long buried, that once again was working its way to the surface like a long-imbedded splinter. His parents had never been happy. He had always known that. But it had never occurred to him that either of them might have wished to marry elsewhere.
Yet four years of his life had been devastated because they had not seen anything wrong in doing the same to him.
Or perhaps it had been wasted because he had allowed it. Never mind that his father had died, and he had tried to make it up by giving in to his mother’s wishes. He had still allowed it.
“What makes you so certain it was a potion, Mother?”
“She bragged about it. She got it from her grandmother, who was the very same woman who taught that Ashbroughton woman all about her herbs and potions. That’s what kind of people they are, Vailmont. They are not even civilized. People say they trace their spells and potions all the way back to the ancient Druids.”
Dear God. Val ran his hand through his hair again. “So when you needed to find a way to persuade me to marry into the Twitt family, you obtained a potion from Lady Ashbroughton.”
“Well, it was obvious you weren’t going to do anything. And Lady Grace is hardly the sort to last another Season. She will be snapped up in no time, and then where will you be? Back with the daughters of barons and country vicars. You owe it to your heritage to do better, Vailmont.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Mother.”
“Yes, I can see it does not. You have not got the sense to elevate yourself properly.”
“If you wanted elevation for yourself, you have achieved it, but you paid a terrible price. You cannot convince me your marriage was a happy one. Too many times I heard you scream in the night. I have seen the bruises on your face, and I know you did not walk into a door.”
She gasped and drew her handkerchief to her mouth. “Your father would never—”
“He was a drunk. A sot. He rarely drew a sober breath. He beat you, and he left the estate nearly in ruins. I do not want a life like that.”
“But that is my point, Vailmont. You do not know anything about that woman. The Twitts are a fine and wealthy family with wonderful connections. I cannot possibly stand aside and allow you to make another mistake like you did the last time.”
His mistake? Val all but swallowed his teeth. That was above enough. He was amazed at her ability to twist history. His fist slammed down on the table.
Mother jumped.
“I have had quite enough of your manipulations. This time, you will cease immediately. If you do not find a way to salvage Lady Ashbroughton’s good name, you will not receive a farthing more from me than is your portion. If you do not believe me, then you may continue to tempt fate. And in the meantime, I shall set about correcting the wrongs we have done to her.”
The countess burst into a wail that brought servants running. Val banished them from the room with a single sweep of his hand.
“But Vailmont, I have had nothing but your best interest at heart, and you cannot see that horrid woman is so utterly beneath your touch, and not at all like Lady Grace who is so lovely, and her father is…”
The muscles in his jaw clenched so tight, he feared he might break a tooth. His reason still inhabited his brain, and his reason told him she was once again about to accuse him of being an ungrateful, undutiful son.
That was the same ploy she had used when she persuaded him to marry Anne. The ungrateful son who had killed his own sainted father.
No. He would not fall for that one again.
“…Because you don’t even care about your own mother who has spent all these years a lonely widow because…”
Val, the reasonable man, refined to himself how strange it was that the color of rage really was red. “Stop talking.”
The countess wailed like a storm at sea, and three servants peeked in again.
“She is not dying, nor am I beating her,” he snapped at them. “Go about your business.”
Three heads vanished as if they had been jerked back on a towline.
“If I marry anyone, it will be Lady Ashbroughton, though it is easy to imagine she will never have anything more to do with me after this.”
The countess raised her clenched hands to the heavens and made a silent mumble in supplication to the Almighty.
“Mother!”
“You said I was not to talk…”
He was a reasonable man, he reminded himself. But no longer would she use his reasonable nature to manage him. “This is not negotiable. And if by some mean chance Lady Ashbroughton should find it in her heart to forgive me, and you, I will not permit you to engage in any acts or speech which will undermine her in any way.”
“I was only trying to help, Vailmont! What’s a mother to do— You would not do your duty— I had no choice—”
“If you are fortunate, you will become a grandmother, and let that keep you busy.”
The countess set up a wail again, but this time remained unaided by servants. Dabbing her soaked handkerchief to her teary eyes, she sniffed inelegantly and stumbled out of the room as if she were about to drop in her tracks from some unseen blow.
Val set down the brandy glass, which oddly contained nearly as much brandy as it had fully an hour ago. Quietly closing the study door behind him, he plodded down the corridor over a faded Turkish carpet to the drawing room and looked out over Laura Place. The rain had stopped, leaving its dribbles on the window’s mullions. In the glow of gas lights, the stone paving of the street glistened like lit candles.
Val stuck his fingers into the small pocket inside his coat, touching for the hundredth time the tiny piece of paper with its cryptic list. This time, he pulled it out and studied it, wondering why, for he had long since memorized its bizarre contents.

Wormy, squirmy lips?

Hell.
A coach pulled up before Lady Lyndonbury’s house. Three women came out the front door.
Ah, damnation.
Val shoved the paper back into the pocket, and stomped out of the drawing room, down the stairs and out the door.

* * *

“Never you fear, my dear,” said Elizabeth, gracing Sylvia with one of her rare smiles. “Everything will turn about. You will see.”
Sylvia smiled back as a glow of warmth filled her, like a lovely fire on a chilly day. One more reason to cherish the friendship they had maintained from the first week Sylvia had gone to London for her Season, so very long ago. Elizabeth was a woman who saw past superficialities to the person beneath the silks and laces.
“It is quite all right, Elizabeth. All this has simply persuaded me I must be who I am. And that person belongs in the country. I shall be happy to be home again.”
“Sylvia.”
She jumped at the growling sound from behind her. Val. She turned. She couldn’t quite manage a smile for him. Not even one of those pasted-on sociable ones.
“A word with you,” he said. His brows crumpled fiercely.
Sylvia stiffened her spine, for it felt like it was going to collapse. “I cannot think what we might have to say, sir.”
“Might we use your parlor, Lady Lyndonbury?” he asked. But before Elizabeth could nod, he took Sylvia’s arm and tugged her back up the two steps and in through the doors to the parlor.
“Sir—” she stammered.
He shut the parlor door.
“Really, Lord Vailmont, I cannot imagine what—”
He folded his arms. “I see you are not wearing the locket now, Sylvia. Did it lose its fascination for you, once it was cleaned up and repaired?”
She winced. “I thank you for—”
“What was it Sylvia? A spell? A curse?”
Her throat began to close down. She could feel it tightening as if his hands were choking her. “No— It was nothing—”
“Nothing? Oh, I don’t think so, Sylvia. An odd list, to be sure, but it was about me, was it not? I hardly mind that you think badly of my height, which I admit is excessive, nor that you find my eyes so uncharming and murky. And it is clear to all, I am indecorously tanned, for I have spent a great deal of my life in the fields, unlike most gentlemen. But surely you are aware I do not pad my calves.”
Sylvia pinched her eyes closed. No, and in fact, she would remember his beautiful body and his dark and mysterious eyes that made her feel she was drowning in them, as long as she lived. “No, of course not.”
“Then what the devil is this about? And what the devil does wormy, squirmy lips mean? If that is not a curse, I cannot imagine what it could be.”
She felt the imaginary hands tightening down on her throat. What could she say? “It’s just that, well, when you are thinking something you do not wish to say, they wiggle about—”
“Like worms.”
Her voice stuck in her throat. No. Because they were so beautiful, and all she could think of was how much she wanted to kiss them, and she had so desperately wanted to persuade herself she did not. How wrong she had been about him! And now it was too late to tell him that.
“So it is a curse, then.”
She forced her voice through her throat, and the words came out squeaking. “If I had cursed you, you would have known it.”
“Ah. Then you are a witch.”
“I am not. Just because I know of such things doesn’t mean I use them.”
“It appears to me, you did.”
Sylvia lifted her chin, but it was like lifting a heavy stone. “It appears to me, you have made up your mind and will not see anything but what you believe.”
“Logic is incontrovertible, Sylvia.”
Yes. To him, it was. He would never be able to see those things in the world that logic could not explain. Sylvia could no longer meet his gaze, and let it fall to study the three little sewn tucks on the backs of her gloves. “As you wish, sir.”
“It is also clear, we must marry.”
Her head jerked up at the words that rumbled out of his mouth like distant rolling thunder. “What?”
“My mother is responsible for that engraving, and her unconscionable behavior has caused harm to your reputation. Therefore, since it is my family that damaged your name, I am responsible for rectifying that damage. So we shall marry.”
For a moment, as she watched the powerful muscles working in his jaw, saw anger and anguish fighting in the depths of his dark, dark eyes, she almost let her own desires take over. She wanted to hold him, hold him forever, to somehow ease the pain and sorrow, the loneliness in his life. For a moment, she was tempted.
But she could not fill that void. She saw no love, nor wanting, nor willingness in him. Only that infernal logic of his that said he must sacrifice himself, his happiness, the very thing he had said he would never do again, on the altar of responsibility.
And he would be miserable, as he had been before. And she would be miserable with him. Because she could not make him happy.
“No,” she said, when she could finally make the word come. “No, we must not.”
“You have no choice.”
“I have every choice. I am who I am, Lord Vailmont. And even if that offends society, and you, then so be it. I am sorry for any harm I have brought to you. I will not make it worse by committing to a marriage that can only bring more pain.”
“You are forgetting your responsibility to Amalie.”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “I am not forgetting. But there are other ways, and I shall find them. She will have her Season.”
“Yes, I am sure ten thousand pounds will suffice for that.”
“Do you want the money back?”
“Don’t be absurd. My mother got what she wanted.”
“Then as you see, there is no reason for marriage. I do not value the reputation that has supposedly been ruined. I had not realized how much I value the quiet country life I have chosen to live.”
“The property you will never relinquish for any man.”
Misery swirled around inside her, eddies of gray and red. Yes, for him, she would have given up her right to own Willow Combe. But now it was too late. She turned away, looking out the window at the horses dancing in their traces, eager to start on their journey.
She heard the parlor door shut behind her. Then the door to the foyer. From the window, she watched him skirt around the coach and stalk across the stone-paved street, his coattails flying with each strident step, until he disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

Val collapsed into the chair, his emotions wrung dry. What an ass he was! Whatever her reasons for what she had done, he could hardly have expected her to accept such a cold proposal. And he had been as guilty as she, in his own way. He blamed her for deception, but he’d had no right to the intrusions he had made on her life. Why should she have owed him truth?
She had the right to protect herself and those she loved. And support them.
He had no real hope Sylvia would ever forgive him, and the real fault was his for not keeping his wayward mother under control. And just as much his for casting such a harsh light on Sylvia’s affairs. He could only hope to put an end to the gossip, and lighten the damage done to her name.
The door opened a crack. Val slanted a suspicious eye in that direction, preparing himself for another onslaught of his mother’s wailing.
“Val?” Whitby peeked around the door.
With an abrupt jerk, Val nodded him in. Pink came up behind, and shut the door.
“Well, the two of you appear to be in fine fettle,” Val grumbled.
“Well, yes, I appear to be over the worst of it,” Pink said, his golden brows wrinkled above a sheepish smile. “It does seem to wear off.”
Not so Val could tell.
“Do appreciate your looking after me, though, Val.”
Val just sat in his chair and grumped.
“That was your mother setting up a wail earlier, was it not?” Pink asked. “She had the whole of the household following after her to console her.”
“Let them,” Val grumbled back. “It will do her no good. I suppose you both want to leave now.”
Whitby and Pink glanced guiltily at each other.
“Do what you will, then.”
“Thought you might like to join us at the White Hart,” said Whitby.
“I am through running from women, gentlemen. I’d think you’d feel the same. And I do not wish to take my eyes off my mother, who has caused untold harm because of what she feels are the best of intentions. The print of Lady Ashbroughton was entirely her idea, and worse, she planned it before she even got to Bath. Obviously had some information from someone, and I suspect my own valet, Clarence, as he is enamored with Mother’s maid. Further, the entire potion idea began with her, yet she has set up Lady Ashbroughton to take all the blame. I shall not rest until Lady Ashbroughton’s reputation is cleared.”
“It’s that matter of trade, Val.” Pink helped himself to the brandy. “I don’t see how you can deny that.”
“Not deny it, but mend it. And I’ll need your help.”
Whitby had already finished his brandy before he sat. “Can’t see what we can do.”
“I want statements. We’ll divide up the names of all the men who have married recently because of the potion. From what I can tell, they all claim to have achieved an impossible state of marital bliss. So get them, and their ladies too, if you can, to write out statements about their happily wedded state. And if you can get them to attribute it to Lady Aphrodite, even better.”
“If it will help, Val, but I don’t see how it can.”
“Perhaps. But I suspect it will, once I have my way with Baker and Trimstone. In the meantime, I have another matter it’s time I resolve.”
“Ryder?” asked Pink.
Val nodded. “I’ve let a lot of unpleasant things slip by me because I didn’t want to deal with them. Time to change that. Time to find out what really happened.”

Chapter Twenty-Two
Val halted his chestnut gelding at the foot of the path to Ryder’s manor house, steeling himself as the old reluctance crept up on him again. He wanted, even now, for the whole thing to go away. Every thought of the scandal seemed to bring it back to life again. But it was his avoidance of everything that had turned the world upside down. He had to lay the ghosts to rest, now and forever. Or learn to live with them.
Down the end of this path lay another responsibility for him, he was sure, and not one he wanted to take. He squared his saddle-sore body and set his jaw, then nudged the horse onward with his knee.
It was more a large cottage than a manor house, not at all what he expected from a virile man who had stolen an earl’s wife. In some ways, Val had wanted to see the man as strong, powerful, rich, a man capable of using his power to seduce a woman. But he already knew better. Now, he needed to know what it was Ryder had that he didn’t.
A footman came out of the cottage to take Val’s horse, an odd sign by itself, and tied the animal to a hitching post before hustling back inside. The same footman led him through the house to a central great hall, not much changed in the three centuries since the manor house had been built, with furnishing nearly as ancient, yet decently kept.
Close to a healthy fire stood a thin man on crutches, who looked to be about fifty years old. But as Val approached, he saw that the man was Ryder, his hair gone colorless and sparse, his skin old beyond its years and drawn tight over bones that had lost their thick muscles. Ryder’s jaw was set as stiffly and hard as Val’s.
“Vailmont,” the man acknowledged, his thin voice edged with something as brittle as hard-frozen ice.
“Ryder.”
Val could see the struggle the man had in staying upright on his crutches, for his whole body seemed to tremble. “We could sit,” he suggested.
Ryder shook his head, grimly assessing Val. Then he smiled. “It took me too long to get to my feet, you see.”
“So, it is true, then,” Val said.
“I haven’t a lot of time left. Pinkerton explained things to you?”
“He said you want me to take the girl. Explain to me why I should.”
Ryder’s thinned brows knit deeply, showing a pain that went deep. “It has to be you. She has your name.”
“And while you’re at it, explain that.”
Ryder began to wobble on his feet, but steadied himself. Val checked his urge to reach out to catch him.
“That was Anne’s last thought as she died. I had to honor it. I didn’t want to. I always resented that my child didn’t have my name. But now I think it was for the best.”
“The child will barely live down the scandal as it is, Ryder, and it will be never-ending if I take her. Can’t you see that? As it is, everyone knows the truth, no matter how much we deny it, but that will only exacerbate it. How could that possibly be good for the child? She should go to family who care about her.”
“If there were any. Anne’s family will have none of her, and my family is all gone.”
“There must be somebody. A nanny, perhaps.”
Ryder shook his head, but bored his pleading gaze into Val. “No. She’s yours legally. You’ve got to do it.”
“Papa!” From behind Val, a tiny girl in a simple white dress with pink sash sped past him, her thick dark curls bobbing like springs. She ran straight to Ryder’s legs, unsteadying the man, so that Val had to grab him to keep him from falling. Beneath his grip, the bony arm had the wasted feel of dying flesh.
“Pick me up, Papa,” she said, stretching up her arms.
“Come along, child,” the nanny said, taking the girl’s hand. “Leave your papa alone.”
“No, I want Papa. Pick me up, Papa. I want a hug.”
It was hopelessness Val saw in Ryder’s face. It hit Val like a blow to the stomach.
“Sweetheart, you know Papa can’t pick you up anymore.”
“I want up, Papa.” The little arms reached up, hands waving about to persuade him if she only might figure out how.
“I have an idea,” Val said as he watched the child who ignored his presence as if he had no importance to her. “How about if I pick you up, and then you can give your papa a hug?”
Big, chocolate-colored eyes narrowed at him. Eyes that were like Anne’s. Hair that was Anne’s. Yet there was much about Ryder that he could see, too.

She’s not mine.

Despite all he had believed, the disappointment felt like life draining away. No, he could see it as clearly as Pink had seen it, as everyone would, the child was not his. He had retained the faint hope that somehow, he had at least done that part right. Yet, looking at her, somehow now it no longer seemed to matter.
He reached his hands down to the girl. Her name was Gwenivere, too much name for such a little girl. Too much name with too much remembrance, provoking even the ancient legends to connect her to her mother’s misdeed. He had never thought of her by name before. She had always been “the girl” or “the child”. But seeing her dark chocolate eyes, so solemn, so wary, so curious, he knew he could never think of her that way again.
Suddenly, the little arms shot up to him, and in a flash, Val scooped her up before he even thought about it. He held her close to Ryder, and she twisted in Val’s arms to wrap her arms enthusiastically around Ryder’s neck. Ryder found one free arm from his precarious balance on the crutches and held it around little Gwenivere. He squeezed his eyes tight, but a flood of tears leaked out from the corners, overwhelming him, and he buried his face in his daughter’s shoulder and hair.
“Don’t cry, Papa,” she said. “I didn’t get hurted. Did you get hurted?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m not hurt. You go on with Nanny now.”
Little Gwenivere wiggled in Val’s arms. The odd feel of the life in a child, moving in ways adults could not, felt strange. He was not a man given to emotions, yet something began to tighten his throat, a sadness, a poignancy, something he could not quite define.
She turned her dark brown eyes on him, and he felt himself melt. What would it be like to have a child that was really his?
“Who are you?” she asked, suddenly suspicious again.
Who was he to be to her? How could it be explained? How could he take in a child who would only bring him unpleasant memories? He could not even look at her without remembering the wife who betrayed him.
Best not to say too much. “I’m Val,” he replied.
She studied him for a moment, then without another word, slid down out of his arms. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she ran off after her nanny.
Val smirked. The Earl of Vailmont had been dismissed by a child.
“You haven’t told her anything,” he surmised.
“She wouldn’t understand. She’s only three. She understands that I am ill, that is all. She doesn’t understand why I can’t…”
Val saw the man grew weaker, yet he understood what it was like to hold onto that last bit of pride. “Perhaps you might be kind enough to offer me a chair since we have so much to discuss,” he said.
“Don’t patronize me, Vailmont.” But Ryder’s hands were trembling from the strain of staying on his feet. Ryder sighed. “But perhaps you are right. You know very well I cannot stand much longer.”
“I should hate to have to pick you up off the floor,” Val replied.
Ryder motioned toward two wing chairs that must once have been rich and vibrant with color, near the over-warm fire. Val sat in one of them and waited as Ryder eased himself down slowly into the other one, his difficult breath coming loudly and punctuated by feeble and futile coughs. Val waited until Ryder reestablished his comfort.
“You owe me quite a lot of explanation,” Val said.
“About Anne. Yes.”
The lone footman, the same man who had taken Val’s horse when he dismounted, entered the drawing room with a pewter tea tray. He set a small tea table between them, and on it, two mismatched china cups into which he poured tea the color of dirt. Val sipped at the tea and knew instantly it was old tea, carefully dried to be used again and again until not a hint of the flavor remained. Ryder had indeed fallen far in the world if this was the best he could offer his competitor, despite his deeply rooted pride.
Val thought of himself. What would it be like, to be in pain, knowing life would soon be cut short, long, long before it should? What would it be like, to have to grovel to one’s worst enemy, for the sake of one’s child? To give up the child, knowing there was no other way, knowing only scandal stood before the child? Would he, could he do the same?
Compassion began to seep into Val’s heart, and it hurt like the devil. The last thing he had ever wanted was to feel pain for this man’s sake.
“I loved her,” Ryder said, his voice flat but shaking. “But she was a consummate liar. So I cannot be so sure myself of everything, what was the truth.”
Val nodded, quietly looking away. He had reached the same conclusion, long ago.
“We were lovers even before her marriage.”
“She should have never married me, then.”
“It was her father’s doing. I was a nobody in his eyes, and I suppose to most folk, and he would not have it. She could have refused, though, I agree. Still, she liked the idea of being a countess, and I could not give her the wealth she desired.”
“Then it makes no sense that she left me,” Val replied.
“But she wanted to be loved, or at least to be adored, and you did neither.”
It was Val’s turn to sigh, as he remembered Sylvia’s words about love. He did not believe in love, never had. Or never did before Sylvia. Now…he didn’t know. He only knew something deep inside him hungered after her, wanting to be with her, felt like a deep, empty hole in his soul without her.
“I think perhaps she would have stayed with you,” Ryder continued, “but when she learned she was to have a child, she was certain it could not be yours, for you had not been married long enough. She dithered about it over a month, nearly two, before telling me.”
“She might have passed the child off as mine.”
“She might have. But she knew you would find out. And if she produced a boy, you would be stuck with an heir who was not your child. I doubt if she considered your feelings overmuch, yet I think she did not want to hurt you. She did feel some guilt, knowing you had tried to care about her. But most of all, I think she feared what would happen when you learned the truth.”
“She feared I would hurt her?”
“Perhaps. But no, I think not. She thought you would turn her out, and she would be without home or friend, so she turned to me. And I, being still smitten, took her in.”
“But then when Anne died, you had the child baptized with my name.”
“It was Anne’s last request. I think she hoped you would accept the child and give her the status of an earl’s daughter. I admit that I have lived in fear that you would claim her from me. And now, I have no choice but to hand her over.”
God, but it hurt, thinking about how that must feel. “If I choose to accept her.”
He saw hell in Ryder’s eyes. The Adam’s apple on the emaciated throat slowly rose and descended with Ryder’s swallowing, and his eyes shimmered.
“She will be on the parish,” Ryder said. “She is the sweetest child the world has ever known—” His words broke. “That is why you didn’t repudiate her, so she wouldn’t—”
“Be labeled a bastard,” Val finished. He nodded slowly. He blew out a breath. So, even Ryder had understood Val’s decision. His decision was not a new one to make, but one he had reached three years before when the bishop had offered him his way out. But he had not been able to consign a little girl to such a fate then. He could not now.
Yet, how could he take her in? How could he live with that, day after day?
Didn’t he, anyway?
He didn’t know how to do it. He had no experience with love. He had grown up without it from either parent, with only the affection of nannies and governesses. But when he saw this man, his enemy, with this child, who loved him so very much, it all looked different. So wonderful, yet so terrible. He felt the moisture beginning to form in his own eyes.
It was the same boundless love Sylvia gave and got with Amalie.
Val looked straight into Ryder’s eyes, to the man himself. That was what Ryder had that Val didn’t. He knew how to love. He knew how to accept its pain as well as its joy. And that was what Val most wanted to have, but could not find. He had denied it all his life, hidden his great hunger behind the sensible, cold cloak of rationality. And always, something had been missing.
Perhaps he had no ability to love.
But no. He loved Sylvia. He just hadn’t done it right. He had been too ignorant of it, too closed off, to recognize it when it had come to him. And truth to tell, he had loved his parents as well, but had buried his painful feelings behind a strong armor of anger.
“Perhaps, then,” he said, drawing out his words to keep up with the train of his thoughts, “my choice was not such a bad one, after all. We can do this, Ryder. But we will have to do it my way. There is a cottage on my land, about the size of this house, and it is well-appointed. You will have to come with her.”
Ryder shook his head. “I won’t have your charity, Vailmont.”
“There is no charity to it. She needs her father, for as long as she can have him. It cannot be wise simply to uproot her. If she is to be mine, then I must insist it be done gradually, for her sake.”
Ryder coughed. The fit of coughing racked his body as he fought it, and for a minute, Val thought he would have to carry the man to his bed. The footman peeked his head into the room, but Val shook his head to send the man away. At last, weak gasps took over and the coughing faded.
“Can you love her, Vailmont? She deserves to be loved.”
“To tell the truth, Ryder, I don’t know. I have no experience with love at all, you see.”
But then, there was Sylvia. He had loved Sylvia with all his heart. And always would. He had not known it, but he had. She had taught him the one thing that had always eluded him, that had left his life feeling empty in spite of all he had.
“But no,” he said, “there is a way. Perhaps that is something I can learn from you,” Val said. “And I have learned some things from someone who knows how it is done. Perhaps, if I am fortunate, she will be there to help us both.”
“Someone you love?” Ryder asked.
Val looked into Ryder’s eyes again, and saw they were clear and brilliant blue. He had not seen that before. He had seen only the devastation of the man’s body. But now he saw a man, and the man’s heart and soul. A man who could see his as well.
“Yes,” Val said. “There is someone I love.”

Chapter Twenty-Three
“Mama, it’s Aunt Elizabeth!”
Sylvia straightened her back and looked toward the house where it sat on the hill, darkly silhouetted against the last of the autumn sunset. Amalie ran down the hill, her bonnet strings flying in just the way she had always done.
A deep pride surged through her. She had once thought she had to tame the exuberance that flowed so easily from the girl, fearing her tendency to flit about would ward off potential suitors. But it no longer seemed to matter. Amalie would be who she was, and a man who could not accept her that way was unworthy of her.
“Mama, it’s Aunt Elizabeth,” Amalie said again, catching her breath as she ran up. “Do hurry!”
Sylvia had worked hard in the orchard all day, seeing that the last of the apples were taken in before the frost. She should be tired from the day’s labor, but if she had been, she felt vigor flowing back into her veins.
“Run back and tell her I’m coming, Millie.”
But Millie took Sylvia’s arm and tugged. Sylvia smiled and walked faster up the hill. She pulled off the old straw bonnet that shielded her neck and face from the sun and used her fingers to comb back stray strands of her hair. She wished she had been given some warning, for her plain brown work dress and white apron showed the effects of a day in the fields and orchard. If it were anyone but Elizabeth, she would be embarrassed.
Yet—no. Sylvia had learned it was not such a bad thing to be Sylvia. It was not such a bad thing to work with the soil, to sell one’s goods, to make a decent living. Trade was not such an evil thing. The entire civilized world depended upon trade, and its deprecation was only a piece of snobbery invented by those who had a need to feel better than others. She had no such need.
They followed the stone steps and winding path and crossed through the garden to the terrace. Sylvia sighed. Of all the years she had traversed up and down this path, the one time she would most remember was when she had brought Val—Lord Vailmont—to see her pool. She would always remember it for the moments they had shared together.
She turned to look down the hill to the place where the pool and spring lay hidden beyond the curve, masked in shrubbery and vines in the parti-colors of autumn. She saw his face, the way he had been when he wanted her more than anything in his life. Somehow, it had seemed more than mere passion triggered by a potion.
But she had been wrong. Her own silly desires, her hunger for something she could never have, had led her to believe what she wanted to believe, that passion was love, when the truth was, not even the passion had been real.
What a bumblebroth it had all become.
The disaster had been of her own making, she knew that. Yet in many ways, she did not see what else she could have done. She’d had to try to find a way to give Millie a Season. Even though it had gone astray, she’d had to try. Now, it seemed she had destroyed any chance Millie might have of ever making a come-out.
But it was her honesty which was in question, and it was that for which she felt guilt. If she had not outright lied, she could not deny she had misled everyone, and especially Val—Lord Vailmont. Perhaps she did not care so much about the others, who had been so deeply involved in their own deceitful practices, but he had not deserved it. And she had hurt his ability to trust others, fragile as it already was.
But she would never have a chance to make it up to him now. He was not a man who easily forgave.
Well. Sylvia pulled off her bonnet and gave her head a toss, letting her hair fly free in the chilly breeze. She had to let that go. Because she could do nothing else. She had a new life now. Or the old one, resurrected. Now she would not hide who she was.
Eagerly, she rushed with Millie across the gray stone terrace where Elizabeth stood waiting. They ran together to an embrace.
“I’m sorry to be such a mess,” Sylvia said, “but I did not know you were coming. Come in and let us see you comfortable.”
“Well, it is good to see you doing so well. I am glad that business in Bath has not lingered overmuch.”
It had lingered. But it did no good to say so. “You know I am happiest in the country, Elizabeth. Bath is lovely in its own way, but I must have growing things around me, and there is precious little of that in any city.”
“Even in winter? I seem to remember Willow Combe can receive some awful snows.”
“I love the snow,” Sylvia replied, and grabbed a quick glance over the terrace, down the hill where the spring and pool nestled in the valley, picturing its colored leaves of green, brown, gold and red gone, or still clinging, dusted white by frozen winter. “And there is plenty to do in winter.”
“Well, if you think it best.” Elizabeth gave her a smile as warm as sunshine. “I have brought you something.”
Inside the old stone manor house, Sylvia called for tea, and Bickley took Elizabeth’s pelisse and bonnet, both that lovely shade of blue that made Elizabeth’s skin look so luminous. As the sun went down, the autumn chill was already invading, for the old house leaked the cold air as if it had no panes in the windows. The Aston boy was going about building up the fires. Sylvia led Elizabeth into the parlor, which would be cozy because it was away from the wind.
“Such a chill, so early in the year,” Elizabeth remarked, giving a little shiver.
“It’s just the house. It’s always been a bit difficult that way. But we’ll have your chamber warm for you.”
“Oh, yes, now I remember, that is why I do not care so much for the country. But if it suits you, I’m sure that is fine. This is All Hallows’ Eve, is it not? That thing you call Samhain?”
Sylvia nodded with a tiny smile. She never thought of Elizabeth remembering such primitive things.
“And I suppose you will do that thing you always do.”
“If it bothers you, I shall not. It is not necessary. It is just a tradition.”
“Oh, no, no. It will not bother me at all. It is terribly pagan, though, you know.”
“It’s just a dip in the pool. I’m sure all that is pagan about it has long since been lost.” But Sylvia’s lips thinned. Her friendship with the Laughing God had been sorely strained of late. She had indeed thought of abandoning that ancient custom of honoring the times of the past, or whatever it was. Perhaps somehow it had been that strange connection she had with the pagan past, even though she did not understand it, that had brought about that catastrophe in Bath.
Perhaps she should let it die. If it would.
“Well, come see what I have brought.”
Elizabeth went to the big old oak table that occupied a great deal of the little parlor’s space, where a roll of paper lay on the top. Sylvia felt her chest tighten. The last time she had seen a roll like that, it had been that horrid engraving about her from Baker’s Print Shop. And this one looked exactly the same.
She edged closer, inwardly cringing, and peered around Elizabeth’s shoulder as her friend unrolled the stiff paper. It was, as she expected, another one of that loathsome Trimstone’s works, with all sorts of characters, most of whom were perfectly nice, kind folks, drawn to look irksome and awkward, or waddlingly fat.
A surge of rage flooded through her. But Sylvia tamped it down inside her where she couldn’t feel it. Elizabeth would never deliberately bring her pain.
“Really, Elizabeth, you know I cannot tolerate that man’s hideous cartoons, and after the one he did about me—”
“Of course I know, dear. But you must see this one.”
Sylvia gritted her teeth. She would do many things for her friend, and she supposed this was one of them. She took the roll and walked closer to the three-pronged branch of candles to inspect the engraving.
It was a cartoon, but a strange one, all of its people in couples who leaned lovingly on each other. They surrounded another Aphrodite, obviously Sylvia again, but this time drawn to look almost lovely, seated languorously on a Grecian bench. A man knelt before her. Sylvia held her breath. More slander, no doubt.
It was Val. On his knees. How strange! He was the last man to fall to his knees before a woman. So it must be Val the cartoonist was lampooning.
She skimmed around the multitude of figures in the background and began to recognize the pairs. There, she saw Mr. Latimer and Miss Newberry, who by now was no doubt his bride, and it was a much kinder portrayal of them both. She had to squint a little to read what Mr. Latimer was saying, for the words were crowded together.

“What care I if it’s a potion? Without it, I would have never found my courage, my tongue and my bride.”

How odd! Baker would never say something so nice. Was he making Mr. Latimer look the fool?
She thought the man beside him was Mr. Stoddard, the one who had eloped with Val’s cousin, the man whose action had started the fuss. Yet he now claimed to owe his happiness to Lady Aphrodite.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Can’t you tell?”
“Are they still making fun of me? I should think by now they would have found some other dunce.”
“No, my dear, you are reading it wrong.” Elizabeth swept her hand over the face of the engraving. “These are the people who say they are pleased with the results of your potion. Look at all the people who have found happiness because of you.”
“But they didn’t, really. They found it in themselves and each other.”
“Precisely, as you can see Lord Wallace says. But it needed for your potion to bring them together in the first place. And there’s Val, of course.”
Yes, that was Val. Not even a cartoonist like Trimstone could make him look ugly. But why on his knees?

“Ah, Lady Aphrodite, you are my own true love,” said the cartoon Val. “You must marry me, or I shall be unhappy all my days.”
Sylvia smirked. “Well, that’s something we know Val would never say.”
“Are you quite sure, my dear?”
Sylvia released the paper and let it spring back into its tight roll, and she crossed the room to lay it back on the table. “He cannot deal with dishonesty, Elizabeth, and I was utterly dishonest with him. This is all a nice sentiment, but I fear there is no reality to it. And he will never marry anyone anyway, least of all me.”
“Indeed.”
“And I cannot imagine that Baker and Trimstone would go to so much trouble to say anything nice about me. You know how Baker loathes me. Someone must have paid him…”
Elizabeth arched one golden brow.
Suspicion began to build in Sylvia’s mind, but she could not quite put the pieces together. “Yes, definitely, someone had to have paid him, and it would have been a fair sum to overcome Baker’s antipathy. It was not you, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, most definitely not.”
“Certainly not Lady Vailmont.”
“She will have to grovel, though, I imagine.”
“Grovel? Then it was Val?”
“Unless you think someone took up a collection…”
“But why?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Sylvia frowned and looked at the cartoon again. She pointed to a child, a small girl, beside Val, clinging to his coat. “Elizabeth, who is this?”
“Oh, that is little Gwenivere. She is actually much lovelier than that.”
“Who?”
“Vailmont’s daughter.”
“My heavenly stars! He’s accepted her?”
“Worse than that. He’s taken her in. And her father, too.”
Sylvia’s jaw dropped open. “Vailmont has done that? They will never stop talking! He despises scandal. Surely you have heard it wrong.”
Elizabeth smiled. “He had a choice. Mr. Ryder, her natural father, is dying. The girl might have gone to a loveless home, but been safe from scandal. Better the scandal than to leave a child without love. So he took them both, so little Gwenivere can have her own beloved father as long as she might.”
“Oh, my stars. His mother must be writhing.”
“Perhaps, but she is learning to mind her tongue. It keeps her out of the dower house.” Elizabeth went to the window and looked out through the ancient diamond-shaped panes. “Isn’t the tradition to dip in the pool as the harvest moon turns from gold to white?”
“Well, yes, it is, but—”
“You’re going to be late.”
Sylvia glanced at the window. The moon was just beginning to break the horizon and in minutes would be huge and orange, like an autumn ball of fire.
And only one other person besides Elizabeth knew about her yearly dip in the pool on the night of Samhain, when the old Celtic year ended.
Val.
A strange light of expectancy shone in Elizabeth’s eyes.
“Keep Amalie in the house,” Sylvia said.
She dashed out into the entryway and grabbed her shawl, but turned and pitched it back into the entry as she ran out the door.
Her feet barely skimming over the stone-paved path, she reached behind her back and tugged free the ties of her brown dress. Down the hill, around the ancient pines, she kicked off one slipper, then the other, and stopped only long enough to untie her stockings. Hopping, she slipped the right one down her leg and tossed it at a rhododendron, ran through the knot garden, pulled off the other stocking and flung it over the boxwood. Scrambling through the hedge that arched into a gateway, she yanked her brown dress down off her shoulders at the same time. As she passed the ancient wall with the Head of the Laughing God, she wriggled the dress down around her hips, dropped it to the path, and kept on running.
Just as she reached the dry stone wall that surrounded the old Roman pool, she stopped.
A small fire glowed in the old fire pit inside the shelter, just where she had told him she always built one to ward off the chill when she came out of the water. Silhouetted against the glow was the figure of a man, bending to the stone paving, then rising, his maleness and massively muscular legs silvered by the full moon as it crested the hill, huge and brilliantly fiery. She watched as he descended the steps into the pool, vanishing in the dark shadows where moonlight and fire could not reach.
She thought about mischief. It would be so easy to sneak around behind him and drop herself into the pool like a big, round rock. But she knew what he wanted, and she wanted more than anything to give it to him.
Sylvia stepped into the ancient alcove, a little niche flanked by the remnants of round Roman columns and a far older eroded stone carving. Beside the small fire, she slid her shift from her shoulders and dropped it to the pavement in a careless heap next to his clothing. She smiled at the meticulously folded stack of his garments. His valet would be proud. Her gaze focused on the darkness, seeing the deeper shadow that was the man she loved, feeling the intensity of his gaze burning through her.
Naked in the moonlight, she walked to the pool and the stone steps that descended into the pool. She entered the water, one step at a time until she stood on the bottom, the steamy water enveloping her to her hips and making a mist that rose into the chilly air above it. She could see him now, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. He moved out of the shadows, moonlight silvering the angular line of his cheekbone and jaw, the distant fire lighting a subtle glow on his face. She had always been right about that. He was breathtakingly, masculinely beautiful.
And suddenly she was afraid. Did he want to marry her, as the cartoon suggested? Had she jumped to a conclusion, merely because it was what she had come to want so badly? Trimstone’s opinion was hardly one she trusted.
But there was no going back. She had chosen her course at the top of the hill.
Sylvia pushed through the water, now almost to her waist, the tips of her fingers skimming the sultry surface. Step by slow step, he glided toward her. They stopped. His erection rose above the water like a symbol of something ancient and primal. That much about him she knew was true. He desired her.
She wanted more than passion. But perhaps he could not give it. More than once he had said he did not believe in love. Yet—she chewed her lip.
“You conspired with Elizabeth,” she said.
“We drove up together.” He reached out his hand.
“That was a most unusual present you sent.”
“You don’t believe it? It’s true. Every bit of it.” Val waded closer until he was within touching distance. She had to look up to see his dark eyes. “And you deserved something better than the last one I gave you.”
She winced. She wanted to look away, but she did not. She wanted them to find a way through and past all that, and the only way to do it was to face everything. “I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
“No, that’s my fault, too.” He shook his head and a wistful smile turned up one corner of his mouth. “You had to, Sylvia. I put you in a position that left you no choice.”
“I could have found a way.”
“Perhaps, but I doubt it. You were right all along, you had an obligation to support yourself and your family, and it was not my business to tell you how you ought to do it. I’m sorry, my love. For all of it.”
“I’m not,” she said, and a wicked smirk made her lips dance. “We did have quite a glorious time of it, didn’t we?”
“We could continue that, couldn’t we? Do you suppose it’s possible to make love in a giant bathtub full of warm water?”
“Impossible. Can’t be done.” Her lips puckered oddly at the bouncer he was meant to catch.
“I’ll wager it can.”
“I don’t believe you. You’ll have to show me.”
He cupped her chin in his hands and spread out his fingers to trace over the line of her jaw. She closed her eyes and arched her neck, absorbing the wonderful caress to her throat. Teasing ribbons of warm water cooled as they ran down her skin in tantalizing rivulets.
She understood. He had always said he didn’t want to marry again, and she would not expect it of him. She wanted him, to be with him forever, whether he loved her or not. Just being with him would be enough.
She fell into darkness where his tall body blocked the bright moonlight, and arms wrapped around bodies in the heavy, moist air. She started to speak, but his lips joined hers to close off her words, his kiss deep and hot, and then catching her lips with his own in sensuous nibbles as he clenched her hard against his body.
“Val—”
“Shh.” Val urged her back against the stone wall. “Later. Right now, you’re my pagan goddess, and I can’t get enough of you.” Pulling on her shoulders, he tugged her down to the water as he leaned back into it. They floated side by side, caressing each other, but the pool was too shallow for swimming.
She led him back to the steps where the water was shallower, where they could sit and move about. Where he could prove her wrong, perhaps make love to her all night long in the steaming water.
“You don’t believe in those things,” she said, pulling him toward her into another kiss as she ran her hands eagerly over his smooth skin, the water like an exotic lubricant.
“Why not? The world is full of things that can’t be explained. Like love. Love really makes no sense at all, you know.” His hands slid over the curve of her buttocks and up her back to hold her against him.
“But if it was the potion—”
He nibbled at her nose. “It was your witchlike green eyes that enchanted me. The very moment I met you. And that was long before any potion touched my lips. You are my love potion, Sylvia. I love you. Marry me.”
“You said you didn’t want to marry.”
“I didn’t, until I met you. You changed that. You changed everything.”
Then his brow wrinkled, and her heart did a lurch as his eyes took on that anxiously pleading look that reminded her so much of a little boy. “I can’t do anything about Willow Combe to keep it in your possession. You are right—if you marry, it will become your husband’s property. My solicitor says there is nothing I can do that I could not also undo. And no way to guarantee I would not. I can only ask you to trust me never to take it from you.”
He kissed her again, his kiss as hot as the steamy water around them.
“I know. And I know I can trust you with it. I love you, Val,” she said. “But do you suppose we might dispense with the negotiating now and get about the business of trying out the giant bathtub?”
“Certainly, my love. We’ll arrange the wedding later. But I do have one condition.”
Sylvia leaned her head to one side and rested her cheek on his shoulder, feeling a smile warm her heart. “A condition, is it? Now? Really, Vailmont, what would that be?”
“I get to pick your clothes.”

About the Author
To learn more about Delle Jacobs, please visit www.dellejacobs.com. Send an email to Delle at delle@dellejacobs.com. Delle blogs with the Wet Noodle Posse at wetnoodleposse.blogspot.com and her own blog, Bluestocking Chronicles, at bluestockingchronicles.blogspot.com.

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The Importance of Almack’s

©2007 Denise Patrick

In Regency England, lineage and vouchers to Almack’s are everything, but Pamela Clarkdale has neither. After her father casts her out, she considers herself fortunate to have obtained a position as a companion to an elderly widow.
Kitt Covington has sworn off Almack’s and marriage. Why attend one when he has no interest in the other? Guilt, however, is a powerful motivator. Knowing he caused Pamela to be thrown out of her home, he proposes a sham betrothal between them to ease his conscience.
Kitt’s offer is tempting and Pamela agrees, with the caveat that the betrothal will disappear at the end of the season. But not only is Pamela refused vouchers to Almack’s, her family is scheming to destroy her to protect a secret she doesn’t realize she knows. When the twenty-year-old web of lies and deceit begins to unravel, will Pamela and Kitt discover that Almack’s isn’t really that important after all?

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Importance of Almack’s:
Kitt watched her eat, satisfied with her appetite. His godmother confided in him that she hadn’t eaten much over the last two days. A change of scenery was just what she needed. Although, why he’d brought her here, he didn’t know.
To be sure, he loved this place—as long as he didn’t allow memories of his mother to intrude on his enjoyment. He tried not to think of his mother very often; her defection still hurt despite her death nearly a decade ago. His memories of this place were of wandering the parkland, swimming in the pond and fishing in the stream. By the time he went off to school at nine, he was closer to his governess than either of his parents. Three years later, his mother deserted her husband and son.
“I think my father would have sold it, but he didn’t want to displace his sister.”
“His sister?”
“My Aunt Lydia came here to live shortly before I was sent off to school. She was an invalid due to a riding accident some years before. I believe she and my mother got along quite well, but once I went off to school, I did not see her much. Frisky stayed on as her companion because she had no other family and would have looked for another position once I no longer needed her. When my aunt died three years ago, Frisky was too old to go anywhere else.”
As they finished lunch, Kitt asked Pamela if she’d like to stroll around the grounds. Dorie was summoned and sent for Pamela’s bonnet, then the two of them set off. As landscaping went, it was very simple. The gardens boasted all manner of flowers, climbing vines, small trees, and two fountains. Once beyond the formal terraces, the parkland spread out before them in stretches of grass dotted with wildflowers and clusters of trees. All it needed, Kitt mused, was a woodland nymph or two.
He nearly laughed out loud. When had he become so fanciful? Glancing down at Pamela beside him, he couldn’t see her face because of the brim of her bonnet, but he knew she was taking in everything around them.
“Do you hunt here?”
He shook his head. “No. It was once a hunting lodge, but some ancestor put a stop to it and no one has ever restarted the practice. Why do you ask?”
“I have seen a few deer and wondered if they were here because they felt safe.”
“Possibly.”
They came to the stream. An arched stone footbridge spanned the flowing water. Kitt’s tread was firm over the uneven stones as he assisted Pamela onto the bridge. At its center, they stopped and looked down.
“It’s so peaceful here.” There was a wistfulness in Pamela’s voice. “I could stay here forever.”
Kitt slipped his arms around her, turning her toward him and anchoring her against his body.
“You could,” he said, his fingers coming up to stroke her cheek. “You could come here to live if you wished.”
Pamela raised her eyes to him, reminding him why he felt she belonged here. Her eyes blended with this place. The woodland, parkland and meadows were all reflected in the brown and green of her eyes. She was the nymph this place lacked.
“I could?”
“If I get a special license, we could be married by the end of the week.”
Joy such as she had never known blossomed in Pamela’s chest. Her heart soared on eagle’s wings. Warmth raced through her veins, filling her with happiness.

Yes! Yes! Oh, yes!

The words were on the tip of her tongue but remained unspoken as Kitt continued. “You would no longer have to worry about gossip, or your sister and grandparents. No one would ever snub you again. You would have everything you ever wanted.”
She crashed to earth with a jolt. But what about love?
The question went unasked. For she knew the answer. Kitt felt responsible for her. He felt sorry for her. But he did not love her. He would marry her out of a sense of responsibility, and to protect her. He would throw away his entire future on a misguided notion of honor. She could not let him do it.
“No.” She dropped her eyes to his chest as she spoke, blinking furiously to keep back the tears.
Kitt stiffened. “Why not?” She couldn’t tell from the sharpness of his voice whether he was angry or disappointed. When she remained silent, he asked, “Are you worried about what everyone will think?”
“No! Yes! Oh, I don’t know!” She broke away, turning to stare off down the course of the stream. Kitt moved behind her and his hands slid up her arms, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.
“You shouldn’t care.” His voice was gentle, his breath stirred the tiny wisps of hair at her temple. “I don’t.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back against him. Oh, how she wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe the ton didn’t matter. She wanted to believe his declaration that he didn’t care meant he cared for her enough to brave society’s censure.
But she couldn’t. The ton was a world of its own. If you didn’t play by its rules, regardless of your rank, you were shunned. That was the world Kitt had been born into, the only world he knew. She could not allow him to walk away from it because of her. He would never be happy, and he would eventually come to resent her. It would destroy him.
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t let you make such a sacrifice for me. I’m not worth it.”
She was not prepared for his anger. His hands tightened on her shoulders and he spun her around to face him. “Not worth it?” he thundered. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Pamela would have backed away from him had the bridge wall not been behind her, forcing her to stand her ground. Blue fire blazed from his eyes. Inside, she cringed. Drawing on the courage she had used to face her stepfather, she confronted him bravely. “I will not be a charity case. I might consider your proposal if you loved me, but—”
“Love!” he spat with such vehemence she winced. “What in the name of all that’s holy does love have to do with this?”
“Very little to you, obviously.” Her anger rose to match his. “Nevertheless, I refuse to marry without it.”
Kitt’s mouth worked for a moment, as if he would say something more. Then, with a last blast from searing blue eyes, he spun on his heel and stalked away.

Their wicked desire sparks a game of passion that could claim their hearts. If a killer doesn’t first claim their lives. Sometimes desire cannot be denied…

A Persistent Attraction

©2008 Silvia Violet

Regency Intrigue, Book Two

At first, Amanda Halverston assumes the anonymous extortion letter she’s received is a harmless prank. But the following night she is attacked and nearly killed. Desperate for help in finding her attacker, she turns to the notorious rake she has avoided for the last five months, Rhys Stanton.
Rhys, a confirmed bachelor, hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Amanda ever since he met her while helping her sister uncover a plot to sell young women into prostitution. When the alluring Amanda seeks him out, he offers a bargain. He will help her—in exchange for one chance to seduce her each day.
Despite a wicked desire to explore the heat that crackles between them, Amanda refuses and launches her own search. But the attacker strikes again, and when Rhys is there to save her she decides to accept his shocking proposition.
In the midst of an investigation that could claim their lives, the two begin a dangerous game of passion that could claim their hearts.

Enjoy the following excerpt for A Persistent Attraction:
Rhys ran after Amanda. He wasn’t letting her go until he knew why she’d come. As much as his clouded mind wanted to believe she’d finally succumbed to his sensual lure, he knew better.
He reached her as she started down the steps to the street. He caught her waist and pulled her against him.
Once she caught her breath, she began to struggle. “Let me go.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me why you came.” He fought to ignore the delicious sensations coursing through his body as she writhed against him, rubbing her tight, barely covered derrière against his thighs.
“You are in no condition to help me,” she snarled.
“Stop this before we draw unwanted attention. I’m not letting you go until you agree to talk to me.”
He watched as she glanced from side to side, likely looking to see if they had attracted onlookers. Eventually, her struggles ceased. “Fine. If you promise not to touch me again, I’ll come inside and talk to you.”
“You ask much considering how you are dressed, but nevertheless, I won’t touch you even if you beg me too.”
“You needn’t worry about that.”
“Ever so confident, are we?” he asked, before turning to go back into his house.
She followed him into his study and eyed him closely as he sank into a leather chair.
“Can you possibly be sober enough to comprehend what I’m saying?”
He cursed his stupidity. If only he’d known she was coming, he never would have drunk so much. What had made him want to lose himself in the bottle anyway? The answer nagged at his consciousness, but he couldn’t quite catch it. His mind was filled with base urges that made him want to use Amanda’s body in a way no man should.
Why did she look so angry? Oh, right, she’d asked him a question. What was it? Sober. Was he sober? No, definitely not. Maybe he could fake it. He sat up straighter. “Get on with your story. I’m tired of waiting.”
She looked ready to murder him, but the rapid rise and fall of her chest had him mesmerized.
“I would ask Aunt Claire for help, but as you probably know, she’s been in poor health recently. I refuse to endanger Elise. Mark and Cassandra have enough to think about, and they are too far away. You were the only other person I could think of.”
She said the last sentence as if the very idea of speaking to him disgusted her.
“I’m sorry you are faced with such an odious option. I’m still waiting to hear what this problem is.” He stood and leaned over his desk to grab the whiskey decanter. “Would you like some?”
“No thanks. I prefer not to dull my senses when I’m near you.”
“No, you mustn’t give an evil rake a chance at seduction.”
Her pink cheeks brought him satisfaction.
“I received this note the afternoon before the Leightons’ ball.” She extracted a piece of paper from the waist of her breeches and handed it to him.
It was warm from her body. The feel of her heat made his cock harden instantly. He unfolded the paper and forced his tired eyes to focus on the words.
When he finished reading he was ready to use his bare hands to strangle the man who’d written it. The cold terror that ran down his spine sobered him. “Why didn’t you come to me the day you received this?”
“I thought it was a joke. I figured some man I’d jilted sent it to frighten me.”
“Damn it, Amanda. You were almost killed.”
“I’m fine. But I received a second letter today. That’s why I came. He wants me to meet the same demand in three days.”
“And you want me to help you find him before then?”
“Yes.” She kept her jaw tight as though her response pained her.
An evil idea came to him. He had every intention of finding this bastard and making him pay dearly for harming Amanda, but her situation had given him a wonderful opportunity to toy with her. For just a second, reason broke through his alcohol-laden haze. He knew better, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“I deserve some payment for my assistance, don’t you think?”
“What?” Amanda’s eyes widened.
“Every day that I’m helping you, I will be given one chance to seduce you.”
She shook her head back and forth vigorously. Her fists clenched at her sides. He watched her attempt to get her anger under control. For a few moments, he thought she would send the vase on the table next to her toward his head, but she reined herself in.
“You told me that if I ever needed help, I should come to you. I should have known better than to trust you. Mark may think you have a heart under your detached façade, but he’s wrong.” She stood and grabbed her cloak from the back of her chair. “I’ll handle the problem myself.”
He cursed himself and considered following her once again, but decided against it. Instead he rang for Meadows. When the valet appeared, he said, “I want Miss Halverston followed and guarded. She should be in the sight of one of my men any time she leaves her aunt’s residence.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“No, that is all.” He sat at his desk and proceeded to drain the rest of the whiskey. His last thought before he passed out over the hard wooden surface was that he could never drink enough to forget the feelings Amanda stirred in him. Feelings a man like him should never have.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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