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William glowered. After a beat, he dropped his napkin on the table and hobbled over to the window. Henry noticed his face was still mangled, the bruises taking on a greenish sheen; a flush of red marred one of his eyes.

Whatever happened on that ship that night in the Docklands, it was clear William had come very,
very
close to losing everything—including his life.

The earl turned the knob, bolts clicking out of place.

“I’ll get it,” Henry said, and bent to open the window.

“You know,” William said, ducking out into the morning,
“the last time you snuck into my house, I challenged you to a duel. And here you are again, asking for more.”

Henry ran a hand through his hair. His heart tripped inside his chest; God, but he was nervous. “I was hoping we could talk. I didn’t want to wake her ladyship your sister; she cannot know I came to see you.”

The earl cocked a brow. Henry waited, breathless. He wouldn’t blame William for turning him away, telling him go to go to hell. The earl adored his sister, and only wanted what was best for her.

A one-eyed Viking with a penchant for violence—well, no one wanted his sister to end up with the likes of Henry Beaton Lake.

But Henry had to try. He wouldn’t let Caroline go without a fight. And he was determined to do things the proper way this time around—no sneaking about, no secret weddings.

He would do right by Caroline, even if that meant losing her all over again.

“Fine,” William ground out. “You have five minutes before Avery returns with my papers.”

He turned and hobbled back to his seat, settling his napkin into his lap. As was his usual habit, he did not invite Henry to sit.

Henry ducked into the breakfast room, done up in vibrant shades of plum. The strong morning light flooded the room in pale yellow beams, illuminating motes that danced high above the earl’s head.

William sipped at his coffee, and looked up at Henry, expectantly.

Henry cleared his throat and drew his hands into a tight knot at the small of his back. Rocking back on his heels, he said, “I’ve come to ask for your sister’s hand in marriage.”

The earl let out a small scoff. “That’s easy. My answer is no.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Then why, Mr. Lake, have you come at all, if you knew what my answer would be?”

Again Henry cleared his throat. His face felt hot; doubtless his whole person was one shade of red or another. “Because I was hoping to convince you that I’m worthy of her. That I could make Lady Caroline happy.”

“Do you believe her to be
un
happy, Mr. Lake?”

“I think we both know she’s been unhappy for some time, my lord.”

The earl’s face fell at that; he knew it was true. He focused his gaze on his coffee; Henry noticed the neat, black stitches that held together his left eyebrow.

“Caroline is a private woman,” William said softly. “She does not share much with me. I confess she has worried me these past years. I remember coming home that summer from Eton—I was, what, fifteen then? Anyway. She was different. Sad. She’d changed.”

Henry squeezed his hands so tightly, the knuckled snapped and popped.

“She’s been that way ever since. Until—” William’s gaze flicked to meet Henry’s. He let out a long sigh of dismay. “Until you came along, I suppose.”

Henry ignored the pulse of hope that leapt inside him. “Don’t sound so excited about your sister falling in love.”

“I know what you are, Lake. What you do. And men like you don’t marry ladies like Caroline. What will you do, take her to live in a filthy garret in Paris?” The earl rose suddenly, the napkin falling from his lap as he made his way to the window. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “She loves children, you know. Wants to have a few of her own.”

The words came before Henry could stop them. “And I want to have children with Caroline. More than anything, that’s what I want. To be with her, make her my wife. Make a home together.”

“And how, Mr. Lake, do you propose to do that, with a soldier’s wages?”

Henry stepped toward the earl. “Through a variety of unlikely and frankly preposterous circumstances, I have secured a decent income. It’s small—but it’s mine, and I want to share it with Caroline. I’ve retired, you see—”

The earl whirled about, face screwed up with disbelief. “You? You’ve retired from whatever sinister games you play?”

“Trust me, no one is more shocked than I am. I took a quick inventory of the terms of my income, visited Mr. Hope at the bank. He helped me draw up a few documents—”

“What do they say, the documents?”

Henry looked down at his boots, scuffed, worn, smudged with dirt. “That I can afford to buy a new pair of boots. Hoby’s
this time, maybe they’ll last a bit longer. New boots, and perhaps a manor. A small one. But it will be ours.”

Lord Harclay paused, and then: “That doesn’t change the fact that you lied for a living.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Henry replied steadily. “But I don’t anymore. I intend to become a perfectly boring gentleman farmer.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Henry set a finger on the table. “Forgive me, my lord, but I bloody do mean it. With all my heart. Question me on everything else, on my past, my family, my occupation. But don’t question my intentions, for they are good.”

The earl looked at Henry for a long time, sizing up the truth of Henry’s claim. All the while Henry’s pulse skipped and jostled; the room felt warm suddenly, the sun beating down upon him. The anticipation was killing him; he felt a burn crawling up from his stomach into his throat.

“No,” William said at last, gaze trained on a spot in the garden outside the window. “You cannot have her.”

Henry felt as if he’d been delivered a blow. Panic threatened; he gritted his teeth, and willed himself to press forward.

“Please,” he said. “I love her.”

“Is that the spy talking, or the boring gentleman farmer?”

Henry slammed his fist into the table. The china and silverware jumped, falling back to the table with no small clatter. Damnation, he hoped he didn’t wake Caroline; his temper was getting the better of him.

“I’ll beg, and I’ll grovel,” Henry growled. “And if that doesn’t work, I will leave your house, and I’ll leave your sister alone. I won’t do this without your blessing, not—” Henry stopped just short of saying
not this time
. “But Christ in Heaven, my lord, put your sister and me out of our shared misery. I want to ask Caroline to be my wife. I want to ask her to marry me.”

William turned away from the window.

To Henry’s very great relief, his lordship was smiling.

“Ow,” William said, gently fingering his stitches. “Smiling hurts my face.”

“I’m—sorry, I suppose?”

“Don’t be,” William stepped toward Henry, and held out his hand. “Yes. My answer is yes.”

As if in a daze, Henry allowed the earl to take his hand and pump it thoroughly. “But I—um—don’t understand. What—how—?”

“Appealing to the vanity of a man like myself is not a clever move, but it is a smart one,” William replied. “I needed to hear you say you meant to do this honorably, besides. The bit about not marrying her without my blessing—well, be still my beating black heart. Get your affairs in order, and then you have my permission to ask Caroline to marry you.”

The earl was a man transformed, his dark eyes warm, lips trembling as he fought back that painful smile.

“I’ve caused my sister an awful lot of pain these past weeks,” William continued. “I owe her—and you—an apology. The duel . . . well, that was not my finest hour.”

It wasn’t much, but Henry knew it was no small thing, for the Earl of Harclay to admit wrongdoing. William eyed Henry, waiting for his absolution. Oh, how Henry would love to toy with him, give the blackguard a taste of his own medicine, but alas, he was not willing to risk his hard-won victory.

And so he gave his lordship’s hand one final squeeze, pulling away.

And in his empty palm, Henry placed the French Blue.

William started with such surprise that he nearly dropped the stone.

“Now it’s my turn to ask why,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“You’re trusting me with her ladyship your sister,” Henry replied, and nodded at the diamond. “And in return, I’m trusting you to do the right thing.”

“The right thing?” William looked up from the French Blue. “You mean give it back to Hope. But why don’t you—?”

“Because Thomas Hope will appreciate the poetry of it—the man who stole from him, returning what he stole. I’m sure you’ll come up with some ridiculous plan or another.

“Oh,” Henry said, “and one more thing. D’you happen to know where your sister hides things? You know, her version of your sock drawer. I need you to find something for me.”

Forty-five

A Few Days Later

The Earl of Harclay’s Residence, Hanover Square

S
tepping into the cool dimness of the entry hall, Caroline wiped her brow with her sleeve. She tugged the gloves off her hand and shook them out over a potted palm.

Goodness, but the July heat was terrible. She couldn’t remember a day as warm and bright as this one; a poetic counterpoint to the heavy chill that permeated her being.

But Caroline was in no mood for poetry, not even that rascal Lord Byron’s feisty verse. The only thing that helped her cope with the loneliness, the sense of uselessness, was working in William’s garden.

She worked all morning, well into the afternoon. The peonies she’d planted with Henry had grown riotously, and while she cut back the rest of the garden, she could not bear to trim them. In fact, she could hardly bear to look them, or even be near them, their fresh scent a poignant reminder of the manure Henry had shoved down her back.

Henry
. Caroline had expected the pain to hit her in a few
weeks’ time, when the reality of his absence set in. She was not prepared for the immediate onslaught of grief; it greeted her the moment her eyes fluttered open that morning in the folly. She was naked and sore and somehow aroused. She’d reached for Henry, but he was gone.

For the second—and last—time, he’d left her.

Even now, three days after the fact, Caroline struggled against the burn of tears. She was a widow; now she had the solitude, the space to do as she pleased. She was alone. It was exactly what she wanted all these years.

She had never been unhappier. Without Henry she felt lost, and more than a little bored. If men were forced to live the lives available to women, Caroline mused darkly, no doubt they’d start a revolution.
Liberté
,
égalité
, and a little excitement, for God’s sake.

A little more freedom, to have a little more fun.

Not that Caroline would have any more fun, if she were possessed of more freedom. There was no fun to be had, not without Henry.

Again tears threatened. She was about to give in to them when she caught sight of the brass salver, placed on the edge of a nearby table.

It was Avery’s salver; he used it to deliver correspondence and calling cards to Caroline and William.

Only the square package resting on the salver was most conspicuously
not
a letter, or a calling card.

Curiosity prickled at the back of her neck. The package was small, the size of Caroline’s fist; wrapped in brown paper, it bore no stamp, no mark.

She lifted it from the table and turned it over in her hands. The wrapping was sloppy; aside from that, the package offered no clues.

“Avery?” she called. “Avery, are you there? What’s this package on the table? Is it for William?”

No answer. The house was quiet. William was still unwell; he’d dismissed half his staff to the family seat in the country, so this quiet was nothing out of the ordinary.

Still, Caroline had the funniest feeling about this package.

She started at a rustle, over there by the drawing room door. Was that a footstep, a sigh, the curtains moving in a breeze?

“Avery,” she tried again, peering past the door. “Is that you?”

She waited for an answer, but none came.

She looked down at the package in her hands, hesitated. Her curiosity was tempered by the knowledge that William probably ordered all manner of illicit objects. Perhaps she didn’t
want
to know what was inside.

Oh, who was she kidding.

Of course she wanted to know.

Caroline tore at the paper, crumpling it in a ball and dropping it onto the salver. The box was red leather, its edges boasting tiny designs embossed in gold leaf.

A jeweler’s box.

Her pulse leapt.

She glanced about, guiltily, as if she were a child again, daring a foray into cook’s biscuit tin.

She flipped the tiny latch with her thumbnail. Her heart turned over in her chest.

There, nestled in the blue satin inside the box, was a piece of tattered green ribbon, tied in a circlet.

“Marry me.”

Caroline turned at the sound of a familiar, rumbling voice.

Henry emerged from the shadows of the hall.

Henry.