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With all that she’d experienced, she must surely realize—deep down—that it was better this way. That fantasies and romantic dreams were dangerous delusions, a trap for the unwary.

Life was grim, and looks could—and did—deceive. Bad things happened, even to people who didn’t deserve it. Especially to people who didn’t deserve it. She must know that.

And if she didn’t, Luke would set her straight. Because life wasn’t a fairy tale.

“Lord Ripton?”

Luke turned. “Reverend Mother?”

“Isabella is ready to talk to you now.”

H e found her sitting on a stone bench in a small courtyard.

“I’m sorry you were upset,” he told her. “I didn’t realizeyou hadn’t understood about the annulment. It wasn’t a secret.”

“I know,” Isabella said in a small, stifled voice. Her face was turned away.

“It was no reflection on you.”

“I know. Reverend Mother explained it to me.”

Luke nodded. He felt awkward, because she was obviously still distressed, but he was determined to say his piece.

“But just because it hasn’t ended up the way we planned it doesn’t mean it won’t work out well in the end.

As long as we know what to expect.” He took a breath and added, “And what not to expect.”

She said nothing, and taking her silence as assent, he continued. “For instance, it would be foolish for either of us to expect love of the sort that poets write about. Ours will not be that sort of marriage.”

Still she said nothing.

“But I hope we will become friends,” he said.

“Marriage is a partnership, and if we work together we can have a life of…” He paused, searching for the right word.

“A life of solid contentment, even happiness. Is that not a worthy goal?” She didn’t respond, and he touched her shoulder. It was rigid. “Isabella?”

She finally turned to face him, her eyes drowned and burning.

Her elaborate hairstyle was a mess, and her painted face, a travesty.

Strangely it recalled to him the bruised, battered face of the little girl he’d married, and without thinking he slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“There, there, my dear, it will not be so bad, I promise you. I’ll take good care of you. You must not worry.”

“I won’t,” she said stiffly, scrubbing at her cheeks. Her hands were slender, brown, and ringless. Luke fingered the ring in his pocket. His mother’s ring. Despite her misgivings about the marriage, she’d asked him about a ring, and when he looked blank, she’d given him hers.

He took Isabella’s hand. “I’ve brought you a wedding ring.”

“But I still have the ring you gave me.” She pulled it from the neck of her dress, his old signet ring tied onto a worn ribbon. He remembered now he’d given it to her when the priest has asked about a ring. It was too big for her then and still was now.

“This one will fit better.”

“Do you want this one back?” Her fist closed possessively around his signet, giving him his answer.

“No, you keep it.” He reached for her hand again and slipped the golden wedding ring onto her finger, and then, on impulse, he kissed the hollow of her palm.

She shivered and snatched her hand back. “You don’t even know me.”

“And yet we are married.”

“Many marriages begin thus,” said her aunt from the entrance to the courtyard. “Your own parents’ marriage, for instance, Isabella.”

“This is different,” Isabella said.

“Indeed it is,” Luke agreed. “It is our marriage, and we will make of it what we will.” He patted her hand and left.

I sabella knuckled her eyes fiercely. He’d been so kind . So understanding .

She’d rather he’d beaten her. It would have been easier to bear than this…

Humiliation scalded her.

All her own fault. Because Isabella Ripton was stupid, stupid, stupid! Dreaming silly schoolgirl dreams instead of paying attention to what was really happening.

She wished he hadn’t been so kind. It would have been so much easier if she could be angry with him, blame him. But he’d given her the protection of his name for the last eight years, and now it was time for her to pay that debt.

He’d offered her a life of security, of contentment, and Reverend Mother was right—it was more than that. She’d take her place in English society. She’d have pretty dresses and go to parties and…

She bit her lip. She didn’t care about dresses and parties.

But that didn’t matter, she told herself. It was wrong for her to be sitting here filled with self-pity because she was married to a kind and handsome man, when poor Alejandra might be forced to marry a horrid old poxed vizconde . And the others might never marry at all.

She was lucky. There were so many reasons why sheshould feel deliriously happy that Lord Ripton had come for her.

A single tear rolled slowly down her cheek. She dashed it away. She was her father’s daughter and she would not weep over what could not be changed.

She was not a child anymore to rail at fate. She was a woman and she would make her own happiness.

T he small, scruffy boy appeared from nowhere again, as the convent gate shut firmly behind Luke. “You want your horses now, senor ?”

Luke considered it. “How far is it to the village?”

“Just a few steps,” the boy assured him.

“Is there an inn?”

The boy laughed heartily at the idea. “The nearest inn is more than ten miles away, senor . But if it is a drink you want… or a bed for the night?”

“A bed.”

“Then you must stay at my home,” the boy said. “I am Miguel Zabala, and I am the man of the family.”

He was small and skinny and barely ten years old, but Luke didn’t laugh. “Take me there and we’ll see,” Luke told him.

He soon learned Miguel’s “few steps” were the estimate of a large-minded spirit, but Luke didn’t mind the walk down a narrow, dusty track.

The boy skipped along beside him, chattering incessantly, part travelogue of the places they could see from the road, and part his views on life and the various people he’d known.

Luke listened with half an ear.

Isabella’s reaction to his arrival had been a little disturbing. It was clear to him that she wanted the marriage as little as he had. A situation that could not be allowed to continue.

His title hadn’t impressed her in the least. Well, she was the daughter of a conde .

She’d seen through him at once. He did need an heir. There was no shame in that. It was his duty to his family name. Bearing an ancient name herself, she should understand that.

And if nothing else, duty would have been drummed into her at the convent. Particularly the wifely duties: to love, honor, and obey.

They were stuck with each other and would have to make the best of it. He needed to reconcile her to their situation, and quickly. He had no intention of putting up with tantrums from a reluctant bride.

His own attraction to her was lukewarm at best—not thatshe’d shown herself to advantage, with that ghastly old-fashioned dress with the frills and flounces, and that hairstyle, and the paint.

But that didn’t matter. He’d give her no cause to regret their marriage.

He’d treat her well and be a faithful husband to her.

And by the time children came along, they might even have found love of a sort. Many people did.

He thought of her odd golden brown eyes staring out from behind the powder and paint like an angry little hawk hidden in a posy. She might have changed out of all recognition, but those eyes of hers were exactly as he remembered, especially when they flashed with temper or were drowning with hurt.

The one part of her that was without artifice, reminding him of the brave little girl he’d married. Change was inevitable, he supposed, after eight years. He would have to get to know the young woman she’d become. And she would have to accustom herself to the man he’d become.

A new start for them both, to begin at dinner.

They rounded a rocky bluff, and a small village came into view: a handful of ragged-looking cottages huddled on the edge of the mountain. Not a prosperous place.

Miguel pointed to the smallest and meanest-looking house of all. “I will tell my mother you are coming,” he said and ran ahead.

Luke resigned himself to a night spent in the company of bedbugs and fleas. He’d had worse during the war.

By the time Luke reached the cottage, the mother was waiting in the doorway.

She was fairly young, not yet thirty. Two small children peered out shyly from behind her skirts.

Miguel, with a freshly washed face, introduced them, then took Luke around the side of the house so he could see what good care he’d taken of Luke’s horses.

They were tethered in a kind of open lean-to shed and had been given clean straw and water.

The tack was hanging from nails driven into the wall, and the horses had been rubbed down.

Luke nodded his approval, and Miguel led him back to the front door of the cottage, stepping aside with a flourish to allow Luke to enter.

The cottage was gloomy inside, but once Luke’s eyes adjusted, he saw that though poor, it was clean and neat. The only smell he could detect was of something cooking, some kind of stew pungent with garlic and herbs. He’d slept in much worse conditions during the war.

“You can sleep here,” Miguel announced, pulling back a curtain and pointing to a pallet on a kind of raised shelf in the corner of the room. It was large enough for two and covered in a handwoven cloth. Luke’s leather portmanteau sat beside it.

He’d been offered the only bed in the house, the mother’s bed. And possibly the children’s, too.

“No, no, I couldn’t—” he began.

“The bedding is clean, senor , just washed today, and dried in the sun, the mattress straw fresh and sweet,” the woman told him. “And the children will not bother you—they will be quiet as mice. Or if you want, we will all sleep outside.” She bit her lip and twisted her hands in her apron.

“There is no better place in the village,” Miguel assured him. Four pairs of big brown eyes watched Luke anxiously.

They needed his money. Desperately.

“Very well,” Luke agreed. “And I wouldn’t dream of putting any of you outside.” He nodded at the two little curly heads peeping out from behind their mother’s skirts, and they immediately disappeared.

Luke pulled out his watch and checked the time. “Would there be any hot water?”

“He will want the hot water to make tea,” Miguel, knowledgeable in the ways of Englishmen, explained to his mother and siblings.

“No tea,” Luke said, running his hand over his chin. “I need a shave.”

An hour later, Luke set out again for the convent, changed out of his riding clothes, freshly shaved and as neat as he could make himself in the limited conditions of the cottage.

His every move had been made under the solemn gaze of two dark-eyed little girls who had no regard for the sanctity of an Englishman’s curtain.

He’d sent the diminutive man of the family off to buy wine, bread, meat, and whatever else he could think of, just to get rid of him and his incessant chatter. The family could do with the food.

But now, as he made his way back up the path to the convent, Miguel joined him. “You look very handsome, senor . And you smell beautiful, too. You are courting one of the young ladies, yes?”

“No,” Luke lied.

Miguel regarded him with astonishment. “But why else would you shave?”

“She is my wife already,” Luke explained.

Miguel squinted up at him. “She is a bad wife?”

“No.”Luke lied.

“Then why did you place her in the convent with the nuns?”

“It’s complicated.”

Miguel walked along beside him for a while. “My father went off and left us when I was small, when the girls were babies.”

Luke glanced at the boy. “He never came back?”

“No.” The boy kicked a stone over the edge of the path and paused to listen to it bouncing down the cliff.

“He was killed?”

“No, he is living in Bilbao. He found another woman heliked better than Mama. Did you find another woman you liked better, senor ?”

“No.” Luke increased his pace. The boy’s innocent chatter was somehow making him feel guilty. Which was ridiculous. He had nothing to feel guilty for.

“So you have come to fetch her and take her back to England with you.”

“Correct.”

“Do I know her, senor ? I know some of the young ladies in the convent. What’s her name?”

He supposed it didn’t matter if he told the boy her name. “Senora Ripton.”

“Isabella Ripton?” Miguel’s face split in a grin. “But she is my friend.” And then his smile faded and he stopped dead. “You put Isabella in the convent and left her? She has lived in that place since before my father left my mother.”

The accusation in the boy’s eyes irked Luke.

Dammit, why was everyone looking at him as if the mess was all his fault?

He was supposed to be the hero , dammit!

First he’d saved her life and then he’d married her.

He hadn’t had to marry her. It had been the only certain way to protect her from a forced marriage to her evil cousin Ramón.

It hadn’t been for his own advantage in the least.

Somehow that had been forgotten and he’d become the man who’d abandoned his wife. And he hadn’t. Or he had, but not intentionally.

Well, yes, intentionally, but it had been for her own good .

But how did you explain that to a ten-year-old boy?

Or, indeed, to a girl of almost twenty-one. He rang the bell at the gate of the convent.