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She didn’t have the words to capture the cold treh her She settled on “I wish you wouldn’t I wish you would stay”
He tilted his head, just enough to see her over his shoulder For just that one second, he looked at her the way she’d drea, as if she were e license He exhaled and shook his head
“I wish,” he said quietly, “I could, too” And then he turned and left
She wanted to run after hi But what rooted her in place was a realization He was as restless as she’d once been
And she kneell enough that she couldn’t fill that up, not with any nuowns
At least this way he could ihtest by his leaving She’d kept the secret of her attraction all too well, wrapped up in paper
She’d kept all her secrets, and it was too late to explain
CHAPTER ONE
Berkshire, three years later
A SHOULDER-HIGH WALL hugged the dirt road that wound its way up the hill Kate was cliht, when she and the nursemaid had crept by on foot, the dark stones of the wall had seeined Eustace Paxton, the Earl of Harcroft, crouching behind every rock, ready to spit vile curses at her
But through the diffuse rowing between the rocks Even this aging edifice had becoht And Harcroft was thirty miles away, in London, unaware of her involvement in his latest misfortunes She’d won a respite, and for the first time in teeks, she breathed easily
As if to belie her certainty, the plod of horse hooves carried to her on a breeze She turned, her heart accelerating Despite the flush of heat that rose in her, Kate clutched her heavy cloak about her She’d been discovered He was here…
There was nothing behind her but s, to think that Harcroft would have uncovered her secret so quickly She let out a covert breath—and then gulped it back as the creak of wooden wheels sounded once h, it was evident that the noise came from up the road As she peered ahead of her, the dark for up the hill resolved in the mist
The sight was as cal had obscured the sound’s origin The cart ed up the hill, her calves burning with the exertion, she made out s, il she could not o seemed some nondescript color, unidentifiable in the mist From this distance, its coat appeared to be both spotted and striped with light gray It strained uphill, bone andunderneath that oddly colored pelt
Kate sighed with relief The man was a common laborer Not Harcroft; therefore, not someone who posed a threat if he discovered the role she’d played last night Still, Kate pulled her hood up to shield her face The scratchy as the only disguise she had
As if in rehtmare that Louisa had escaped, a whip-crack sounded in front of her Kate gritted her teeth and continued up the hill Half a minute later, and a nuue
She had to be practical Lady Kathleen Carhart ht now Kate rapped in an ill-fitting cloak, and the servant she was pretending to be would keep her eyes downcast A servant would never speak up, not to a man with a horse and a whip He would never believe her the lady of the manor, not dressed as she was
And besides, the last thing Kate needed if she intended to keep her secrets was for society to hear that she’d been skulking about, dressed as a servant As she cliritted her teeth in fury as she drew abreast of the cart Perhaps that hy, at first, she didn’t hear it
Above the co rumble of the cart wheels, the noise had been at first indiscernible But the wind shifted, and with it brought the rhythentle canter to her ears
Kate glanced behind her A horse up the hill
A silih look to boast, over a tankard of ale, perhaps, about seeing a duke’s daughter He wouldn’t recognize her when she athed in a heavy cloak and a working woman’s bonnet
But a ht, in fact, be the Earl of Harcroft, co wife And if Harcroft canized her—he uess the role she’d played in his wife’s disappearance
All he would have to do was trace her path back a few e wasn’t so very far away
Kate pulled the hood of her cloak farther over her eyes and slunk closer to the wall Her hand brushed against grit on its uneven surface Even though she huddled in her cloak, she set her chin She was not about to surrender Louisa to her husband No matter what he said or did
The h thesplashed around his horse’s hooves, like gray, slow-entleray as the wisps of vapor that clung to its legs Not Harcroft’s chestnut stallion, then Reassured, Kate studied the gentleman himself
He wore a tall hat and a long coat; the tails flapped behind him in rhythmic counterpoint to the fall of his mare’s hooves Whoever he was, his shoulders were too broad to belong to Harcroft Besides, this man’s face was covered by a sandy beard Definitely not Harcroft, then Not any nized
That didn’t nize her, or that he wouldn’t carry stories
Slowly she let out her breath and turned to look forward
If she didn’t draw attention to herself, he wouldn’t notice her She looked like a servant; she would be virtually invisible to a man of his class
The ht hoofbeats pattered up the hill It moved in effortless contrast to the other poor ani its Sisyphean burden to the summit But Kate had her own burden to concentrate on Out of the corner of her eye she saw the horseman pull ahead of the cart The tails of his coat flapped briefly across the beast’s blinkered vision A foot or so of fabric; nothing more
The horse pulling the cart, however, stopped and shied, pinning its ears against its head in a gesture of equine distress Kate pressed against the wall as the cart’s wooden shafts creaked Another flap of the coattails in the wind; when the whip cracked again, Kate winced The carter’s horse did htened cry and reared up on its hind legs The cart tilted precariously; the hooves thundered down Kate heard the crashing splinter of wood, and she whirled to face the animal
One of the cart shafts had split down the led in halter and traces, and no htened, horses ran; and when they couldn’t run—
Kate caught a gliainst the long head The horse’s blinkered gaze momentarily fixed on hers Crack went the whip, and the horse reared in response It was so close, Kate could see its iron shoes as it pawed the air above her head She felt frozen in that rass with a hawk pluishly She e, as the hooves descended toward her