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  Prologue

  THE TWO COACHES FOLLOWED the rider out of London to a secluded glade where shots wouldn’t disturb anyone. The length of the ride was meant to give the duelists time to change their minds. That rarely happened.

  William Blackburn was maintaining silence on that ride, though his friend Peter wouldn’t stop listing all the reasons why the duel was a mistake, mentioning more than once that the Rathbans were too powerful to suffer any sort of challenge, a duel wouldn’t be the end of it for them.

  “Just strike Henry Rathban and claim satisfaction,” Peter counseled. “As long as no blood is spilled, you can both walk away without further consequences.”

  “Perhaps you should be riding in the Rathban coach instead of mine.”

  “I’m here to help you see reason, Will.”

  “No, you’re here to assure all the rules are followed,” William countered. “Are you ready to hear why I’ve challenged Henry Rathban?”

  “Don’t say it. I’m to remain impartial. If the insult was too great, I’d want to shoot him m’self, so it’s better I don’t know.”

  “Yet you aren’t being impartial a’tall when you sound like their bloody arbiter.”

  “I just want you to be able to walk away from this without further consequence.”

  “Assuming I won’t be the one dead, the consequences are already upon me,” William said. “This duel just deals with my rage. Nothing will fix what brought it about. That I will have to live with.”

  “I’m not asking why! Stop tempting me.”

  “Then a little silence might be helpful, since we’ve arrived.”

  William stepped out of his coach first. Peter followed with the small box that held the matched pair of dueling pistols. William would offer one to Henry Rathban if Henry hadn’t brought his own, or accept one of Henry’s if offered; he didn’t care which pistol he used. It wasn’t as if he had a favorite weapon or had ever dueled before.

  Henry hadn’t brought an impartial second with him, he’d brought both of his brothers instead. Highly irregular, but again, William simply didn’t care. The rider who had led them here was apparently a physician who had come to this spot before.

  Henry’s eldest brother, Albert Rathban, wanted a word with him, another irregularity, but William stepped aside to listen to the older man. “This shouldn’t have gone this far. You were asked to recant the challenge. You will shoot at the ground and be satisfied this matter is settled, or I promise you will regret it. Don’t cross me on this, Blackburn. I’m not willing to lose a brother over this sordid business.”

  “Then you should have kept a better leash on your younger brother, or at least warned him not to cuckold other men,” William said before he turned away to assume his position for the duel.

  It was there again in his mind, the image of his wife naked in their bed, and Henry Rathban just as naked, crawling into it with her. He never would have known of their affair if he hadn’t decided to surprise her by joining her in London. She went there occasionally without him, while he stayed in Cheshire with the children. She loved spending a few weeks socializing with her friends during a high Season. He preferred the country. Not once did he ever suspect she was carrying on illicitly while away from him.

  Of course he’d recognized Henry that night. The man had been one of Kathleen’s other suitors the year William had won her hand. But apparently Henry hadn’t lost after all. He’d still gotten the spoils, just without the ring.

  William had run to fetch his pistol that night, so blinded by rage he would have killed Henry on the spot. But by the time he loaded it and returned to the bedroom, Henry was gone and Kathleen was in tears. She swore she was innocent. She swore Henry had blackmailed her into compliance. Then why hadn’t she brought the matter to him so he could deal with it? He believed nothing except what his eyes had seen.

  He’d felt so betrayed, so utterly furious, it was a wonder he didn’t point the pistol at her that night. He kicked her out of the house instead while he drafted the challenge to Henry Rathban. And there had indeed been two missives from Henry’s brothers that week demanding he desist from pursuing an innocent man. Calling that blackguard innocent had added fuel to the fire. He’d sent back a note explaining exactly why he couldn’t recant and had heard no more from the brothers after that.

  Henry did look afraid when they faced each other on the grassy field, turned, walked the requisite paces, and turned again before they both fired their weapons. William didn’t aim at the dirt. Henry collapsed where he stood. The physician ran over to examine him and with a shake of his head pronounced Henry dead. William bent down to confirm it, hearing the physician’s gasp of shock that he would do that. Henry was indeed dead, it just didn’t ease William’s rage or his pain.

  Peter tried to pull him back to their coach so they could leave quickly, the remaining Rathbans looking furious now. Albert suddenly pulled him in a different direction. William put up a staying hand toward his friend, who seemed ready to fight to free him. But Albert wasn’t dragging him to the Rathbans’ coach, just out of anyone else’s hearing.

  The eldest Rathban was in such a rage now, William thought he might issue a challenge of his own. But Albert kept his voice low as he hissed, “You made up an excuse to kill my brother!”

  “I caught your brother in bed with my wife!”

  “Then maybe you should have dueled with your whore of a wife instead of our innocent brother. You don’t get to walk away from this smiling, Blackburn. You will leave England, permanently, never to return, or we will ruin your family with this sordid affair.”

  “And ruin your own in the process?”

  “Hardly. Henry was innocent in all this, and you knew he wasn’t a marksman of any distinction.”

  “I knew nothing of the sort—!”

  Albert cut in. “But you still forced this duel, thinking you could get away with murder, when all he did was succumb to your wife’s seduction. That wasn’t worth dying for, and you don’t get to kill him and not suffer for it. You were even warned, given every opportunity to recant your challenge, and yet you still killed him. So absolute exile from England, Blackburn, or your family will pay the price for what you did here today.”

  William didn’t need to think about it. He nodded. What did it matter, after all? His heart was already broken, his marriage was over, so it made no difference to him where he nursed his wounds.

  As he got into his coach, Peter asked, “What did he want?”

  “To discuss those consequences you mentioned, and no, it’s too late to ask what that duel was about. It’s just as well you don’t know.”

  Chapter One

  VANESSA BLACKBURN SAT ON the edge of the cliff overlooking the North Sea. It was a chill spring day in the Scottish Highlands, but she was bundled in her fur-lined winter coat as well as a thick tartan that she could use as a hood if the wind picked up. She wasn’t Scottish—well, she was a little. Her great-grandfather Angus MacCabe had been a Scotsman, but his youngest daughter had married an English earl, a Blackburn. Vanessa’s father, William, was their only surviving son.

  There was an old campfire pit nearby, which she and her father lit in the winter on clear nights when they would sit out here to watch the mo
st bizarre display of lights that filled the sky to the north. She was going to miss that amazing spectacle. She was also going to miss riding across the hills and dales, fishing, helping her father with the cattle and horses, all the things she could only do here. She would be leaving soon.

  She didn’t want to go. The freedom she’d enjoyed here was addictive. She didn’t want to give it up, but she knew she would have to, at least for a little while when she visited her mother, Kathleen. She was already dreading the arguments and rows they would have when she reached Dawton Manor in Cheshire. She hadn’t forgotten for a minute how adamant and determined her mother was about serving up three absolutely perfect daughters to the ton. Her mother had already put her and her twin sisters through a grueling regimen of the do’s and don’ts of a lady’s proper decorum. Her father called it being turned into a puppet, and it had felt that way to her more often than not. He had taken a different approach to educating her when they arrived in Scotland, hiring all sorts of tutors for her and not one of them had mentioned etiquette to her.

  She would never forget the traumatic day their lives had changed when she was thirteen. There had been yelling. Her parents had gone outside to do it so no one would hear them, but even from a distance it was obvious they were yelling. She’d watched from an upstairs window with her sisters, the twins in tears. None of them had ever seen their parents fight.

  Later that day she was surprised to find her father in his room packing, gathering up everything in the room that was his.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Away.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask your mother.” His tone had been angry, but he’d glanced at her then, seen her tears and held out his arms. She ran into them, refusing to believe it might be the last time he would hug her, but he confirmed it when he added softly, “I’m sorry, darling girl, but I can never come back here.”

  She ran out of the room to confront her mother, who was in tears, too, but they were angry ones. Still, Vanessa asked, “Why is Papa leaving?”

  “Because he has to. There’s no choice, and that’s all you need to know.”

  “He said to ask you!”

  “Yes, of course he would. And I answered. Now go away. I’m too angry to deal with you girls today.”

  Vanessa cried for the rest of the day until she decided to sneak away with her father. She even left her mother a note: You drove Papa away. I hate you, you’ll never see me again!

  William was leaving that night in a coach with his belongings piled high on top of it. She left with nothing. She jumped up on the back of the vehicle and climbed carefully to the top, putting a finger to her lips when the driver saw her up there. She revealed herself to her father the next night, only when she got too hungry to hide any longer. Papa was going to take her back immediately. She promised she’d run away again. She swore she wouldn’t live at Dawton Manor without him, that she hated Mama for fighting with him and forcing him to leave. He tried to tell her it was nothing like that, that it wasn’t Kathleen’s fault, yet from his tone and his expression she knew it was a lie. He finally agreed she could stay with him until he got settled, but then he’d have someone take her back. He even arranged that night for a letter to be delivered to Kathleen informing her that Vanessa was safe with him. Her father’s plan hadn’t come to pass, though every six months he asked her if she was ready to return home. Her answer was always an emphatic no.

  He couldn’t go back himself. For the longest time he wouldn’t tell her why, and she’d asked often, but his answer was always the same: that she wouldn’t understand because she was too young. The only thing he would tell her was that before he’d left home he and her mother had come up with a story to account for his departure from England—he’d gone to the West Indies to oversee some of their investments and was in no hurry to come home to dreary, damp England.

  When she turned seventeen, she pointed out she wasn’t too young anymore. He sat her down to tell her the sordid tale, and that was when she started hating the Rathbans, the odious family who had threatened her father’s life and split up her family. An indiscretion led to a duel, which he’d won, with a nobleman named Henry Rathban. His opponent’s family had been enraged over the outcome and had promised to ruin him and his family in scandal if he wasn’t punished. They’d lost a member of their family that day; his family had to lose a member, too. Him.

  “Exile from England was the Rathbans’ choice,” her father explained. “It was more lenient than ‘an eye for an eye.’ It could have been much worse. They accused me of deliberately committing murder. Albert Rathban, the eldest, is an earl, but the family is descended from dukes. They are powerful enough to have filed those murder charges against me or just killed me themselves and gotten away with it. You and your sisters would never make good matches if that scandal broke. And my marriage was over anyway, so I didn’t mind leaving to protect our good name.”

  “It wasn’t your indiscretion, was it?”

  It didn’t look as if her father would answer that. A few minutes passed while she waited, but then he said, “No.”

  Well, that said it all, and she was so glad that she’d never chosen to go home. She had been missing her sisters—and occasionally even her mother—but not anymore. But she and her father had always agreed that once she was of age, she would return to England.

  But she loved living with her father in the Highlands. He bred stock, both horses and red-haired cattle, just to keep busy here. It kept her busy, too, since he let her help. The two shire horses he’d taken north with them, he’d mixed with Scottish mares from Clydesdale. Most of the offspring didn’t end up as tall as the shires, but one white albino did. Vanessa claimed that one for herself and named him Snow King. At least Snow would be leaving with her. But maybe she didn’t have to leave. . . .

  She ran her fingers through her copper locks, which she’d cut short for the journey because she refused to ride in a dress and didn’t want people staring at her in disapproval when they saw her in britches. She saw the shadow approaching. It had to be her father. The two servants who lived with them, a married couple, never came near the cliffs. She turned and saw him, his dark red hair, which had grown long in recent months, whipping in the breeze. There was a merry glint in his pale blue eyes, the same color as hers.

  “It’s Thursday,” William said. “Do we fish today—one last time, Nessi?”

  Yet another thing she was going to miss, hearing him call her by that nickname. He’d given it to her during their first month here when they’d traveled around the Highlands looking for horses and cattle to buy for breeding and two servants who would be willing to live so far from any towns. One of the towns they stopped in was near Loch Ness. There they heard the legend about a monster that lived in the lake, fondly referred to by the locals as Nessi. They even camped out on the water’s edge for one night to see if they could spot the water dragon so many people swore they’d seen.

  They laughed about it in the morning because the beast hadn’t made an appearance for them, but William teased her with the nickname Nessi after that because she could be as fierce as a dragon at times.

  As for fishing, she answered with a resounding, “Of course! If the boat survived the tides.”

  She grinned as she jumped to her feet. Every week, except in the freezing months of winter, they would take that little boat into deep waters and bring home fish for dinner. They often joked that the little rowboat would get smashed against the cliffs, but it never did because her father staked it down so well. But they did always have to empty it of seawater before they took it out.

  “Let’s go fishing now while the sun is still bright.” As she walked toward the path that led down to the rocky shore, she glanced at her father beside her. “I don’t have to leave this year just because I turned nineteen.”

  He sighed. “I let you get away with that reasoning last year only because
the twins will be having their official come-out this spring, and if that’s something you feel like doing, you’ll probably feel more comfortable doing it with them. D’you really want to hide up here any longer when so many adventures await you in the south? You were eager to spread your wings right up until last spring when it was time for you to go. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you are afraid.”

  She stopped to hug him. “The only thing I’m afraid of is my heart breaking when I have to leave you here alone. It’s been six years, Papa. Maybe the Rathbans have forgotten about you and you can finally return to England.”

  “They lost a brother. That’s not something people ever forget. Even after you girls are safely married, a scandal like that will still hurt you and your new families. I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  “But it was a legitimate duel!”

  “The Rathbans can make it appear otherwise. Besides, I agreed to this.”

  She loathed that family, especially the eldest, Albert, the one who had set the terms of their revenge against her father. There had to be something she could do to get them to agree that her father had suffered enough after six years of exile. Of course, she couldn’t do that until she actually went to England.

  “And besides,” he added with a grin. “If you do end up deciding that you want a husband and children, you don’t want to be labeled an old maid and be ignored by all the best catches.”

  She laughed. “You know that won’t happen. How many times have you told me I’m beautiful? Or were you only teasing? Perhaps I am ugly and that’s why you don’t keep mirrors in the house.”

  He snorted. “You think I didn’t see you admiring yourself in the mirror in that shop in Fraserburgh last month? You know exactly how pretty you turned out.”

  “I was admiring the new britches I just bought.”

  “Ha!”

  She tsked. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so your opinion is biased by love.” She held up a staying finger when it looked like he would argue. “It doesn’t matter, and besides, I’m not interested in marrying now or when I become an old maid.”