only through the ringing in his ears. Funny, he thought, grinning. Last time the fever came back to torment him, he’d thought he’d seen angels. Never odd little men in ill-fitting hacking jackets and filthy red waistcoats. He liked the angels better…
“Rafe, answer the man,” Fitz said, shaking him. “Did you hear what he said?”
“Yes, yes. Go ’way. Something in the sea…”
“Shoreham-by-Sea, Your Grace, yes. The late duke’s sister, the Lady Emmaline Daughtry, commissioned me to also deliver personally to you her letter requesting your return toAshurst at your earliest convenience. My condolences, er, and my felicitations,Your Grace.Your Grace?”
Fitz pushed lank strands of damp hair away from Rafe’s face. “I don’t think His Grace heard you, Phineas. But why don’t you tell me more about this dukedom thing, all right? There happen to be any money to go along with all those fancy titles?”
“I’d say the man has fallen into about the deepest gravy boat in all of England—er, that is, His Grace is quite the wealthy man.”
Fitz slapped Rafe on the back. “Did you hear that, Rafe? You’re a rich man, you lucky devil! Wake up and we’ll toast your good fortune. On your coin, of course, since you now have so many of them.”
Rafe didn’t move, even when Fitz took hold of his shoulder and shook him.
“Ah, now would you look at that, Phineas? Poor bastard. All his problems solved, his worries blown to the four winds, and he doesn’t even know it. His Grace is going to be asleep for a while. But he’ll be fine by morning, he always is.”
Phineas nodded knowingly. “Ah. Drunk, sir.”
“No, unfortunately for him.” Fitz winked. “But I’d like to be.”
“Yes, sir, Captain, I quite understand,” Phineas said, hungrily eyeing Rafe’s nearly full bowl. “In that case, as I was told not to leave His Grace’s side for any reason once I found him, would it be an imposition if I were to join you for dinner, Captain? I must say, that stew smells delicious.”
PART ONE
Ashurst Hall, November 1814
Friendship is Love without his wings.
—Lord Byron
Chapter One
CHARLOTTE SEAVERS was on the hunt. And she was in a mood to take no prisoners.
Only scant minutes earlier Charlotte had been comfortably ensconced in the drawing room of her parents’ small manor house, happy in her ignorance, enjoying the sight of a mid-November frost glittering on the newly bare tree branches outside her window while she stayed warm and toasty inside.
But then the housekeeper had brought her one of the letters just arrived with the morning post.
After taking another sip of sweet tea, Charlotte had opened the missive from her good friend, read it in growing apprehension and disbelief until, with her newfound knowledge, her blissful ignorance turned to righteous anger.
“Unrepentant liars and tricksters! Wretched connivers!” she exclaimed, her teeth chattering in the cold, for she’d left the house without taking time to search out a warmer cloak than the rather shabby one she used while gardening that hung on the hook just outside the kitchens. “They’ll be lucky if I don’t choose to murder them!”
She stomped along the well-worn path that led through the trees from the manor house, to end halfway up the drive to Ashurst Hall. “And worse fool me because I believed them!”
What Miss Charlotte Seavers was referring to was her discovery, after months of the aforementioned ignorant bliss, that Nicole and Lydia Daughtry—in retrospect, mostly Nicky, with Lydia only following along because she felt she had no choice—had been pulling the wool over her eyes. Over everyone’s eyes.
All this time, since the spring, when they’d first had word from Rafael Daughtry that he was well and aware of the deaths of his uncle and cousins, Nicole and Lydia had been cleverly putting one over on Rafe, on their aunt Emmaline, on Charlotte.
Oh yes, and Mrs. Beasley. But then again, pulling the wool over Mrs. Beasley’s eyes was no great accomplishment, and the twins had the benefit of years of practice when it came to hoodwinking their governess.
In her haste to confront the Daughtry sisters and verbally rip several strips off their hides, Charlotte stomped on some wet, slippery leaves littering the path, and went down with a startled “Damn and blast!”
She just as quickly scrambled back to her feet, hurriedly looking about to be certain no one had heard her unladylike exclamation, and then brushed at the back of her cloak, pulling off damp leaves and bits of moss.
She took several deep breaths, hoping to calm herself, steady herself. After all, she was supposed to be a well-bred, civilized female, and here she was, racing through the trees like some wild boar.
But then she thought again of how Nicky and Lydia had spent the summer and fall posting letters back and forth, impersonating their brother to their aunt, and impersonating their aunt to their brother. Correspondence Charlotte had seen, had been allowed to read—all while the twins were doubtless laughing behind their hands at her gullibility.
Worse, if Emmaline hadn’t just now written to her privately, her words and her questions contradicting things she had already said in the letters Charlotte had been shown by the twins, she would still be none the wiser.
From the moment she’d begun reading the letter, Charlotte’s suspicions had been raised, as the handwriting was so very different from Emmaline’s letters supposedly posted to Ashurst Hall.
But those suspicions had turned to a cold certainty when she read the words, “Charlotte, I vow I sometimes think Rafe is Nicky in long pants. The girl never could get her mind around spelling any word longer than c-a-t.”
And here Charlotte had thought Rafe, for all his on-again, off-again schooling alongside his cousins, was next door to a yahoo when it came to grammar and spelling.
“They’ll pay for this,” she promised out loud, wiping her hand across her cheek to push an errant chestnut-brown curl back beneath her hood and depositing a smudge of dirt on her otherwise flawless skin.
Poor Emmaline, happy in her newly wedded bliss as she continued her long honeymoon in the Lake District, comforted with the knowledge that Rafe had sailed for home immediately upon receiving the news of his change of fortune.
And poor Rafe, going about his duties on Elba, assured that Lady Emmaline had everything at Ashurst Hall firmly in hand until his mission was completed, including the care of his young sisters.
“And me, duped by two miscreant monsters not yet out of the schoolroom—except that they most certainly did escape the schoolroom with their little trick,” Charlotte muttered, lifting up the hem of her gown even as she stepped up her pace along the path. “Commiserating with the girls about how much they missed their brother…joking with them about how Emmaline seemed to have thrown all sensibility to the four winds thanks to her newfound love. Running tame through the house all these months, leaving the nursery and their governess behind, because their
