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“I did hear that.” He angled a sympathetic gaze down at her. “I also heard your father pushed her. To be quite honest, neither would have surprised me. Lochaber is . . .”

He understood, somehow. Saw, somehow, her father’s nature from what few glimpses he must have had over the years. Rowena nodded. “Aye. He is.”

With a pat on her hand, Whitby supported her on the stairs, never asking about her slow pace. Just matching it. “It’s good you’ve come to us. And I don’t say that lightly—I far prefer the quiet months with no one but my staff, my daughter, and her husband. But I pray that the moors and the sea and the security of my home can provide for you what it always has for me.”

She didn’t ask what that was. Didn’t need to. Even so . . . this was just a place she was visiting, and she didn’t even know for how long. It wasn’t a home for her, wasn’t her destination. Just a stop along the journey to someplace she’d never been.

Ten

A
re you ever going to say anything, or just stand there with that glower of yours?”

At Brice’s question, Stafford exchanged his glower for a sigh and looked off into the distance. They hadn’t budged from the end of the drive. Once they started up it, they would have only so many minutes of quiet.

Stafford sighed again and patted his horse’s neck. “It is a less than ideal way to embark upon marriage, Nottingham.”

“But you understand why I did it. Don’t you? You would have done the same in my shoes.” After a week of fearful silence from his wife and the constant watchful gaze of Geoff Abbott, he needed to know
someone
out there was behind him.

“If the Lord had made it so clear to me, then absolutely. Yes.” Yet Stafford’s expression didn’t ease. “But if your instincts are right . . . if this Kinnaird fellow attacked her as you suspect . . . You’ve considered the implications, haven’t you? The questions? Do you know when, or if . . . if she might be . . .”

Brice passed a hand through his hair. “Of course I’ve considered it. I don’t think it’s . . . That is, they said . . . Not that she’s spoken of what happened or not, but . . .” He felt his cheeks heating, and his friend didn’t have the grace to hold back a laugh.

Brice let out a sigh. “From what I can gather, timing of certain things preclude it, and I pray it’s so. At the moment, however, I’m more concerned for
her
. And for the fact that with every day that goes by, she seems to retreat from me more and more. I never imagined having a wife who all but hated me.”

This time Stafford’s snort of laughter bespoke normality. “I like this girl already.”

He had little choice but to administer a good-natured shove to his friend’s shoulder.

With another chuckle, Stafford turned toward Whitby Park. “I suppose this changes everything. You can hardly move forward with your plans for Lady Pratt now.”

“Nor can I leave it undone. I need this finished.” He, too, looked toward the house. “Now more than ever. This marriage is going to require my full attention, and at the moment—”

“At the moment, we speak of the devil and she appears.” Stafford, having glanced back at Brice and hence the road, nodded beyond him.

Brice turned just in time to see the Pratt Benz round the turn. A chauffeur was at the wheel, but there was no mistaking the gleaming golden curls of Catherine, Lady Pratt.

He still found it odd how much like Brook she looked on the surface—when underneath they couldn’t have been more different. “Do you think she’s spotted us, or can we hide behind the hedgerow?”

Lady Pratt leaned forward to give some directive to her chauffeur and lifted a hand in greeting.

“That answers that. Though I could be back on Alabaster and to the house in half a beat.”

Brice took the liberty of gripping Alabaster’s bridle—just to guarantee a bit of loyalty.

The Benz came to a halt, its brakes squealing in protest. Lady Pratt ignored her cousin’s husband entirely, aiming the full force of her smile upon Brice. “Nottingham, what a pleasant surprise! I didn’t think you were due back in Yorkshire for another week.” She made a show of looking around. “Did you walk all the way from Scotland?”

He didn’t know what to do but play the game. Grin. Shove his free hand into his pocket and be who he had always been. “Your cousin just liberated my car is all, my lady.”

One needn’t have any great skills in observation to note the flash of ice in her eyes, the way her smile edged toward a sneer. “Charming as always, isn’t she?”

“Quite. Never a dull moment with Brook around.”

“Yes.” She shifted and renewed her smile. “I was so pleased to see that you and your party accepted the invitation to my little gathering, Duke. We’ll have a smashing time. I’ve a ball planned, a fox hunt, a new baritone everyone’s been going on about . . .”

She prattled on, but Brice’s ears twitched toward Stafford and his soft, “You did
what
?”

He had to give his friend credit—he managed to ask the question without a single shift in his expression, hissing the whole thing from between teeth clenched in a neutral smile.

Brice ignored him for now. “It all sounds lovely, my lady. I’m sure we’ll enjoy ourselves immensely—though I do have one favor to ask. I’m afraid whatever arrangements you’ve made for our rooms will have to be adjusted. I married while in Scotland, and my wife is, of course, traveling with us now.”

“Your wife.” Something flashed through her eyes, so quick and sharp that Brice had to wonder what
her
plans had been. Had she adopted her late husband’s hopes to marry into the Fire Eyes rather than steal them?

Perhaps it was good his plans for flirting her into a corner had been thwarted. He may have found her far too ready to strike. For now, he opted for a bright smile. “Indeed. A sweet, charming young lady. I’m sure everyone will love her.”

A chill swept up his spine at the smile she returned. “Oh, Duke, I’m sure.” She shifted her gaze, finally, to Stafford. “I hope your cousin will still come too, sir. I daresay he could use the distraction.”

Stafford went stiff as a victim of Medusa. “You’ll not convince Cayton to leave his house.”

Now her smile went downright wicked. “Oh, I’ve found it never takes
convincing
with Cayton. Just the right words whispered at the right time.”

The fool actually started forward, as if he could do anything but make her day by losing his head. Brice gave Alabaster just enough of a nudge to shift her into her master’s path. Stafford, thank heavens, took the hint and came to a halt.

Though his hands were in fists at his side. “Have you no shame? To make such insinuations when his wife is not a fortnight in her grave?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Stafford.” She repositioned her hat, touched the curls spilling from beneath it. “I only know that Cayton was an immeasurable comfort to me after Pratt’s death—they were such good friends, after all—and now I wish to repay him the shoulder to cry on. Is that not merely . . . neighborly?”

“Easy,” Brice muttered. Alabaster’s ears twitched, though it was the man he’d aimed the command at.

This time Stafford held his tongue.

Lady Pratt tapped the seat of the chauffeur. “Do excuse me now, gentlemen—I’ve still much to do before my guests arrive. I’ll see you in a week, Nottingham. And give your new wife my congratulations.”

A dark cloud passed over Brice’s heart, the kind that portended trouble. He let go the bridle and pivoted toward the house, stepping out of the way so Stafford could turn Alabaster around. “I knew she would be ready to pounce. Her mourning is over, society has accepted her again—I even saw her in an advertisement. She has set the stage for herself, now she has only to play her role, she will think, and snatch the diamonds from me.”

But if she were allowed to get away with such a crime . . . No. Too many people had died because of those diamonds, or nearly. The feeling of having a gun leveled at his head still jarred him from sleep sometimes.

It had to stop.
She
had to be stopped, before the violence could follow him home to Midwynd Park.

Stafford grunted. “I don’t like it. I didn’t like it when you came up with this lunatic plan last year, and I don’t like it any more now.”

Aimed now for the house, Brice led their lopsided trio onward, the horse still between them. “Were it
my
lunatic plan, I may take offense. But as I said then, if you’ve an issue with it, take it up with the Almighty.”

“You’re infuriating. You know that, right? It’s no wonder your wife hates you.”

“Not funny, Stafford.” Yet Brice smiled, because it was such a relief to have someone who
wanted
to jest about it with him.

Stafford chuckled. “Oh yes, it is.”

Brice angled a look toward his friend—there was still tension beneath the laughter. “Don’t dwell on Catherine’s insinuations about your cousin. She was only trying to goad you.”

Hands closing tight around the reins, Stafford growled. “But honestly, Nottingham, I’ve no idea what lines he might have crossed. He never loved Adelaide—not as he should have. He wedded her for her money, and everyone knows it.”

“But Brook said he is a wreck now, from her death. If he truly didn’t care for her . . .”

Stafford sighed and shook his head, angling his face toward the sun that broke through a scuttling cloud. “Guilt, I think. He did seem fond of her there at the end—but the whispers have already started that he got her with child on purpose, knowing she wasn’t strong enough to survive it.”

People could be so vicious. “I daresay the gossips will also seize on the fact that the babe is a girl, so he still needs an heir. It will make him all the more eligible, and society will expect him to act quickly, to provide a mother for the little one.”

Stafford sucked in a long breath and released it slowly. “I know. But if you saw him . . . He is devastated. The way he is doting on his daughter, almost fiercely . . . They were married only a year, but it effected a change in him. I think so, anyway. I hope so.”

The stables came into view, and Alabaster pranced as if visions of oats danced before her eyes. But despite the soothing of the salt-laden air, the enchantment of the moors, the pall wouldn’t be easily banished. “I don’t quite understand how a woman comes to be like Lady Pratt. How she can hate so completely, even before she knows a person.”

Stafford handed Alabaster’s reins to the groom who emerged, murmuring his thanks. But he kept his focus on Brice. “You’d better be thinking of how to tell that lovely new wife of yours to be on her guard, if you intend to take her with you to Delmore next week.”

Brice passed a hand through his hair. Returning to Sussex was sounding better and better. Perhaps he could just forget he had the diamonds, forget Catherine, forget it all. Concentrate on convincing Rowena to smile at him now and then.

Protect her.
The command still pulsed, sure and strong, inside him. But how was he to achieve it?

His only answer was a sudden gust of wind from the direction of the sea that made another chill skitter over him.

The book was there on the carriage bench, just as she had left it. But clutching it close did nothing to make the words stop swirling through Stella’s mind like the leaves in the scattering wind.

Lady Pratt. Lady Pratt
.

A name, not a person. Not yet. But a name that bore promise. Whoever this Lady Pratt was, she was to be feared. If the two dukes, arguably among the more powerful men in England, uttered her name with such caution, then she was a formidable enemy.
Their
formidable enemy. Someone, it seemed, who would take issue with this sudden marriage.

Someone
else
, rather.

Stella gripped the book tightly. The cover was worn, the gilt of the title faded.
To Have and to Hold
. The page edges had softened from all the times she’d turned them, reading over and again the adventures of the American, Ralph, and his English bride, Jocelyn. The book had gone with her everywhere these last years, ever since the little celebration her father had thrown for her before she left for school. She had read it so many times she all but had it memorized—nearly as many times as she had flipped it open and read the inscription.