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The very broadness of it captivated in the same moment it dazed. It was no more than a field, really, a pasture—but so vast a field. Up and down it went, like the surface of a churning sea. The green was endless and occurred in every shade, from the paleness of a caterpillar’s belly to the deep emerald of a pine bough.

“Stunning,” Piety whispered, drifting toward the hedge that separated the garden from the rising landscape.

“The paddock?” Jocelyn asked, passing with two hand-held traveling cases.

Piety nodded, not taking her eyes off the landscape.

“Not half bad, I suppose.” Jocelyn laughed. “I shouldn’t jest. No proper Englishwoman would diminish the beauty of the Berkshire green. It warms me that you are impressed.” She stepped beside Piety and breathed deeply. “Does it remind you of home?”

“Not at all. America is beautiful, certainly, but the landscape and vegetation is very untamed. Savage in comparison. This looks peaceful. Was it cultivated to sprawl in such an orderly rectangle, or is this the hand of God?”

“The land was cleared centuries ago, I’m sure, for crops and livestock.”

Piety nodded. “I’ve never seen so much green.”

They both laughed, and Jocelyn tucked her hand around Piety’s waist, “What a sweet girl you are. England would be glad to have a flower such as you to liven up our greenness. Ah, but here is the marchioness. She will expect a fuss about the house and certainly the gardens. Let us not forget to carry on.”

“The house is lovely, too, of course,” Piety said, looking at the stark façade of the imposing building. “I cannot believe she owns all of this and yet she rarely visits. London is delightful, but this rivals even the loveliest park or mansion in town.”

As country homes went, Jocelyn informed Piety, the manor itself was not overly large. But to Piety, the Palladian-style house was every inch as solid and austere as a gothic castle. Piety’s childhood holidays had been spent at the family’s estate in Rhode Island. The Summer House, as they called it, was known up and down the East Coast for its towers and turrets. It made an impression, certainly, but remembering it, Piety thought how grandiose and almost garish it seemed compared to stately, stoic Garnettgate.

“How lovely your home is, my lady,” Piety told the marchioness, trailing behind her to the front door. “Like a storybook castle.”

A footman raced to beat them to the door but failed.

The marchioness harrumphed. “With useless storybook servants.” She waited impatiently for the darting footman. “Did a groom not ride ahead to alert them of our arrival? And here I stand, knocking on my own front door like a peddler!”

She squinted at Piety. “Never you worry. I’ll have the lot of them whipped into line by the time the Americans arrive. Livery. A proper receiving line along the carriage drive. Standards flying. It is nuisance to reach the country, but I’ve stayed away too long, and now look at the state of things. I do hope Miss Baker is up to the task of advising me as we set things to rights.”

“It already appears perfect to me,” said Piety.

“Yes, but you live in a slum, so how could you possibly . . . Ah, here we are!” she said, as the door creaked open to a herd of wide-eyed, scrambling servants.

B
y early afternoon, they had settled into comfortable rooms, and Piety indulged in her first warm bath since she’d sailed from New York. The marchioness housed Jocelyn in a small guest room adjacent to Piety’s, a true generosity, considering there were ample rooms for staff.

Tiny was given a large suite of rooms near the marchioness, and the two older women were immediately swept up in the business of haranguing the staff, ferreting out oversights in the housekeeping, and revising the proposed menus.

It was Piety’s plan to explore the courtyard and gardens, and she urged Jocelyn to rest. While she walked, she composed letters in her head, which she would never send. Things she would never say aloud. All of it to Falcondale, a man she would never see again. When had she become such a fool?

It is lovely here in Berkshire,
she would write.

We made it safely, if not comfortably, in her ladyship’s dim, airless carriage, but the chamber I’ve been given is large and bright.

The Garnettgate kitchen garden produces all its own vegetables.

There are rabbits outside my window and fish in the fountain.

The village is charming. The crofters are welcoming.

Tiny has been put in charge of the menus.

Miss Breedlowe is teaching me the names of native birds.

We are keeping warm, even in the drafty house.

I miss you.

And wasn’t that the silliest sentiment of all?

Miss him? Of course she missed him. She had allowed herself to fall in love with him, what else was there to do? If she hadn’t realized her love over their daily chess, or when he evicted Eddie, or in the solarium . . . well, certainly she knew it now. It seemed as if missing him had always been a part of loving him. Even when they were together, he held himself apart.

And now, a lifetime of missing him stretched ahead of her. This trip to Berkshire was only the beginning of day-to-day diversions that they would never share.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
revor had every intention of handing over Piety’s stairwell to the new man and walking away.

He’d found an architect quickly enough: an eager young man, fresh out of school, who seemed hard working and bright. Better still, he was available to begin work immediately, which meant Trevor could wash his hands of stairwells and passages and the all-consuming force that was Piety Grey.

And yet . . .

Day after day, he found himself drifting from his own library to Piety’s now-vacant house. Sometimes, he went in search of Joseph. Piety had left her housemaid, Marissa, behind to receive deliveries. Judging from the amount of time Joseph had gone missing, she was receiving the boy as well.

Sometimes, Trevor found himself seeking out Mr. Burr and his crew to share their midday meal.

Other times, regrettable times that he could not explain, some memory of her would compel him to amble across their two gardens and simply
stand
in the house she had inhabited for her short but disruptive tenure in the street, to be among her possessions and her half-completed repairs and the trail of tiny footsteps she’d left in the sawdust.

Two days after she’d gone, he noticed a lathe among the tools on Mr. Burr’s cart, and he’d bade Joseph to drag it into the garden. There it remained, tempting him, for another day and night. At the end of the first week, he found himself seated at the thing, his foot on the pedal, tinkering with designs for the balusters on her stairs. He worked hours shaving sculptural shapes into sticks of wood. The finished form, realized after hours of work, was elegant but unique, progressive, like Piety herself. She would like it, he’d thought—one of a thousand thoughts he had of her on any given day.

When he’d shown the baluster to Spencer Burr, the carpenter assured him that his crew could replicate his design, but Trevor persisted, returning to the lathe again and again to fashion the balusters himself. Considering the curve and height, Piety’s stairwell would require dozens of them, and he put off his own work to craft another, and another, and another.

Just three more,
he’d say, taking up the next stick of wood.
It’s the least you can bloody do
.

And so he was at the lathe when Piety’s mother and stepbrothers arrived in London and descended on her house. He heard them before he saw them: a jumble of footsteps and indistinguishable grumbling wafting through the open window. He paused. The voices grew closer, then angrier—loud enough to be heard over the pedal of the lathe.

Trevor silently laid the baluster in his hand on the ground.

“I asked for water,” said a man’s sharp voice.

Trevor stared at the kitchen window, trying to place the voice.

The reply was fearful. “Yes, sir.” This voice, Trevor knew; it came from Joseph’s sweetheart, the maid Marissa. “But this is what I brought you ’tis water, sir.”

“English water tastes like swill,” said the man. “Take it away.”

Next, he heard the clatter of a brass tankard hitting the stone floor. Marissa gasped and cried out. He heard scrambling and cruel laughter. Marissa cried again.

Trevor swung his leg over the lathe.

There was more tussling, and then Marissa screamed.

Shoving up, Trevor crept, low and silent, to the kitchen door.

He saw the man first. He was big and fat, finely dressed—too fine, certainly, for the middle of the day—with lace cuffs and a suffocating cravat. His back was to Trevor, blocking his actions, but Marissa’s skinny arm thrashed into view. The man had her pinned against the counter.

Trevor swore and took up an iron-nosed sledgehammer propped by the steps. He stepped through the door. Before he could sneak up behind them Joseph burst in, coming off the bottom step of the servants’ stair like a shot.

The boy hurled himself and collided with the man’s shoulder. The man let out an
oof
and thudded back. Joseph darted in front of Marissa and sunk into position, ready to fight.

“Joseph, wait,” Trevor said, wanting to interrogate the man before Joseph beat him to a pulp. They both turned, but the man saw Trevor’s hammer, saw he was outnumbered, and he used the distraction to swing at Joseph. Trevor winced, but Joseph reacted just in time, dodging right. The punch missed his chin and glanced his neck below his ear. Joseph growled and pounced.

“Joseph, I said hold!” Trevor shouted, but Joseph fought on, catching the man’s arm and forcing it in a twist behind his back.

“Leave him, Joe,” Trevor said. “See to the girl.”

Reluctantly, the boy complied, releasing the man with a shove. Marissa flew at Joseph, and he gathered her up. Trevor jerked his head to the garden, and the boy hustled her outside.

When they were gone, Trevor turned on the man panting in the center of the kitchen. “Who are you and what is your business in this house?”

“I could ask the same thing of you.” The man eyed him up and down, rubbing his shoulder.

The accent hit him.
Piety’s family.
Trevor took a step closer, trying to recall her description of this family and square it with the swollen, sweating man before him.

Before either of them could speak, a clatter of footsteps could be heard descending the servants’ stairs. Four more men filed in, followed by a middle-aged woman and Spencer Burr.

“We heard shouts,” the woman said, her eyes darting wildly around the kitchen. She glared at Marissa’s attacker. “Have you found her?”

The fat American was silent.

She nodded to Trevor. “Who is this man?”

“Who, indeed,” Trevor said coldly, settling the sledgehammer on the stone countertop with a loud
plunk,
“Trevor Rheese, Earl of Falcondale. I own the home next door and employ the servants who were attacked by this man.”

“His boy attacked
me
!” countered the fat brother.

“Silence, Ennis!” The woman stared at Trevor.

It was Piety’s mother—really there could be no doubt. The resemblance was unmistakable, although she was brittle in every way that Piety was soft. And Piety’s face was warm and approachable, beautiful in a sunny way, while her mother’s beauty was cool and preserved. Her hair was much darker; she dyed it, he’d wager. The shiny blackness was a stark contrast to her tight, pale face. She scowled, he thought, as much as Piety smiled.

“May I impose upon you to restate your name, sir,” she said, “as well as your business in this house?”

“This is the neighbor I was telling you about, madam,” said a short brother, the one Trevor remembered as having interrupted their chess.

“Ah,” said the woman, “so here is the English lord who has taken such a hospitable interest in our Piety.” With cautious movements, she extended a hand.

Trevor made a barely perceptible nod over her fingers, not taking his eyes from her face.

“Edward has told us that the two of you are . . .
familiar
,” she said. “I did not realize you’d been given leave to walk into her very kitchen unannounced.”

“I could say the same of you.”

The woman studied him. “I am Piety Grey’s mother, Mrs. Idelle Grey-Limpett, and these are my stepsons. We’ve traveled from America to reconvene with Piety.”

“Hmmm. More’s the pity. She appears to be out.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Trevor considered this. He played dumb and looked to Spencer Burr, leaning against the rear wall. “Where is she, Mr. Burr? Surely you’ve been told.”

“Aye, my lord,” said Burr, “Miss Grey left a letter; Marissa gave it to this lot straight away. I’ve told them myself she’s traveled to Berkshire.”

“That’s right,” Trevor said, “Berkshire. I believe she was to be a guest at the country estate of another neighbor, the Marchioness Frinfrock.”

“How informed you are, Lord Falcondale.” Idelle turned to the brothers and flicked her wrist. “Let me see the letter again.”

Still another brother stepped forward. “Now, Mother,” he said soothingly, “let us not trouble the earl with our misplaced sister. Not after he’s suffered an attack on his servant.” He smiled a peddler’s smile. “My apologies, my lord. My brothers are barbarians—a sad circumstance, the consequences of which I have explained to them, repeatedly, but to no avail. I hope you’ll allow me to offer to pay for any medical attention the boy may require. I’m Eli Limpett, by the way.” He handed Piety’s letter to her mother.

Trevor nodded. This brother was less over-done than the others, more guarded; his eyes were, well, if not clever, then sharp.

“Save the medicine for your associate,” Trevor said. “Joseph is a skilled fighter. My concern was for the intent.”

“Intent.” Piety’s mother laughed, looking up from her letter. “Then you really will have to forgive us, my lord. My stepsons are not accustomed to the docile ways of the English. Regrettably, we Americans rely on muscle and might to forge our way, as we always have.”