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Chapter One
Southern Coast of England—1856
She had only meant to tug the gate open. Yet here she stood with the old broken latch in her hand and the rotten boards of the neglected little portal collapsed at her feet. She peeked inside. Emily Loveyne could scarcely believe that she, the vicar’s own daughter, was breaking into the Bournesea Estate.
With a disgusted sigh, she raked away enough of the overgrown ivy and morning glory vines to squeeze through. Obviously no one had used this as an entrance or exit for years. She had when she was a child accompanying her father on his Sunday afternoon visits when her ladyship still lived.
The small gardener’s gate had been the nearest way in on their approach from their cottage, and had led them directly past the roses, once inside. Her father did love roses. They still enjoyed the beauties grown from cuttings Lady Elizabeth had given them for their own garden. Good thing, too, she noticed. No one had tended the parent bushes for quite some time. What a weedy, overgrown tangle!
These days she supposed everyone went in and out the front or side entrances. Unfortunately, both of those were closed, their decorative wrought-iron gates locked tight as a sailor’s hitch. Staunchly guarded, too, by burly, bearded ogres she did not know. Judging from their attire, they were clearly seamen.
She shook her head in consternation as she rounded the tall hedges flanking the walls and made for the servants’ quarters. That’s surely where her brother would be, not in the manor house itself. She was infinitely glad she wouldn’t have to approach that place. As familiar as she was with it, she had no wish at all to enter there and risk an encounter with the new earl.
How dare he keep Josh on duty here now that the ship had laid anchor. The double-masted brig had been there, well off the coast, for at least two days before she heard of it or she would have come sooner. Why, she wondered, was it not in the harbor?
Her brother was only thirteen and must be homesick after more than six months away. Their father needed to see his only son, and Emily had missed Josh terribly.
No matter how much she had objected at the time, Father had allowed Josh to sign on as cabin boy with Captain Roland for the unhappy voyage all the way to India. They had gone to inform Lord Nicholas of his father’s death and to bring him home to assume his duties.
Lord Nicholas. He had always possessed the honorary title, of course, since he was the earl’s son. Now he had inherited the earldom and, things being as they were, she must remember to call him lord if she ever saw him again.
But, earl or not, the man had no business keeping her little brother under lock and key in this place, and would do that no longer if she had to bring it down around his noble ears. Why the devil were there guards on the gates? They had told her nothing. They had just stood at a goodly distance behind the lacy ironwork and ordered her away.
She lifted her skirts a bit higher, stepped around the puddles standing in the gardens and made for the door to the outer building adjacent to the carriage house.
Other than the guards she had seen, no one was around, she noticed. Today’s village gossip held that the skeleton staff remaining after the old earl died had been ordered away when Nicholas arrived.
No one in the village had seen him yet. Isolating himself this way seemed to be taking his grief a bit too far, considering the animosity between father and son. Must be Nicholas’s guilt working, she reckoned, and was glad of it. He ought to feel guilty, leaving as he had.
She pushed open the door to the half-timbered, two-story building that she knew was home to the male servants in the earl’s employ.
“Anyone here?” she called hesitantly, ducking her head in all the rooms that stood open. Nothing but dusty furnishings. Then she heard voices down the hallway.
Never a shy mouse, Emily quickly headed in that direction. As she did, she passed a chamber with the door ajar and stopped to peek inside. There on the bed lay her brother, sound asleep. Imagine that, in the middle of the day!
He was not even dressed. His sleeveless undershirt revealed his skinny arms and shoulders. So pale, she noted.
“Josh?” she said softly, so as not to startle him awake. When he didn’t answer, she went straight to the bedside and put her hand on his arm, shaking gently. “Darling? Are you ill?”
His eyes flew open. First he appeared overjoyed, but then his expression turned to one of stark horror. “Em, get out of here!”
“Nonsense, I’ve seen you in your smallclothes before and—”
Two men suddenly rushed in and grasped her by the arms. Without a single word of explanation, they hurriedly dragged her out of the building and across to the manor house.
Terrified that the entire place had been invaded by a horde of pirates and thieves, Emily fought them all the way to the door to the kitchens and across the hall inside the main house. “Let me go!” she screamed, struggling and kicking to no avail.
One let go of her arm long enough to open a door and the other thrust her unceremoniously into the earl’s library.
She grew still when the men no longer held her and looked around.
The man behind the huge cherrywood desk rose. She almost did not recognize him. He looked so much older, so much larger, so absolutely furious that she was here. Blue eyes that had held such warmth seven years ago now rivaled arctic ice its chill. Dark brows lowered, giving him an almost menacing appearance. The beautifully shaped mouth that had once pressed so fondly against her own drew into a firm and disapproving frown. His nostrils flared.
“Nicholas?” she gasped, unable to credit how much he had changed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, his expression promising retribution for her trespass. “Who allowed her in?”
One of the wretches who had dragged her here cleared his throat. “No one admitted her. She sneaked in somehow, milord. We caught her in young Josh’s room out back.”
Nicholas grimaced as if in pain and pressed his temples with a thumb and forefinger. “Damn!” His deep voice grated on the vehement, solitary word.
“Well, damn you, too!” she exclaimed, her own ire rising to meet his. “I had not expected to trouble you with my presence, my lord. I merely came to fetch my brother home. If you will kindly excuse me, I shall do just that.”
“You cannot,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Watch me,” she replied, whirling around to leave. The men blocked the door. “Move aside,” she ordered in her best schoolmistress voice. She had been practicing it for her new position and thought it quite effective. It obviously did not work on adults. They stood firm.
Nicholas had come around the monstrosity of a desk. Emily heard him move and could now feel his presence there, invading the space just behind her. She jerked around to face him.
“Emily, we must talk. Would you please have a seat? Wrecker, pour us a brandy,” he said in an aside to one of the men.
She propped one hand on her hip. The other rested at her throat, hopefully hiding the rapid pulse in her
