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The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.

“ T unning! What are you doing here?” Atheridge softy screeched, looking about nervously. He hated these woods at night, when every shadow held imagined menace and terror. He wrapped his arms around himself as much to ward off fear as cold.

“I’ve come to settle a score with that trollop,” Tunning ground out, his dark presence looming like some monster of the night.

“The Viscountess?”

“Yes.”

“No, no, Tunning, I can’t let you do that!” Atheridge backed away.

Tunning grabbed him by his coat lapels and hauled Atheridge’s face within inches of his own. “Listen, you maw worm, you’ll help me or St. Ryne will know you were active in bilking the servants of wages and taking payments from merchants for buying shoddy wares at premium prices.”

“But that was you ,” protested the quaking butler.

“Yes, with you turning a blind eye at first then taking your own cut. You want the fine Viscount to know that? I have a ledger that details it all, and if it were to come into his hands ...” he trailed off, dropping his hands from Atheridge’s coat.

“No! No,” he faltered weakly. “What is it you want?” His shoulders drooped.

Tunning laughed crudely. “You’re going to help me kidnap her.

I’ll make that hoyden whimper while I await a handsome ransom from her husband.

Who knows, he may consider himself well rid of her, and then I’ll just have her for my own bit of fun.

Either way, she’ll pay for her disrespect towards ol’ Tom Tunning. ”

Atheridge licked his lips nervously. “W—When are you going to do this?”

“Tonight. You’ll leave the front entrance open, and signal an hour after everyone’s abed by waving a lit taper from the gallery windows.”

“And that’s all?”

“You will of course help me tie up our dear Viscountess and carry her out. I’ll have a carriage waiting. That is unless you would like to have a turn with her, too,” Tunning suggested, leering.

Atheridge shuddered.

“I thought not,” he said with another laugh, “but you’ll be missing a prime bit of fun. I’m looking forward to riding that one and taming her to my bridle.”

“Where will you take her?” Atheridge asked timorously.

“The old Havelock Manor.”

“I thought that was gutted by fire?”

“The west wing’s still intact and has its own entrance.” Atheridge nodded in understanding. Suddenly an owl hooted from somewhere deep in the woods, and he jerked spasmodically. “I must get back before I’m missed.” His words came out in a rush, his eyes darting.

“Yes, do that,” drawled Tunning, amused at his cohort’s apprehension. “But remember, one hour after all is quiet, or the ledger goes to St. Ryne.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll remember,” he vowed, casting one last fearful glance around before scurrying back toward the lights of Larchside.

“Oh, mistress, the Lunnon staff were all at sixes and sevens this morning, running around, tripping over each other to get out of my lord’s way.

And he, my, he was bellowing like a stuck pig, then holding his head in his hands.

” Ivy lifted a dress out of the trunk and shook it out, clucking her tongue at its wrinkled condition before hanging it in the wardrobe.

“Mr. Cranston,” she continued, turning back to the trunk, “he tried to lay a cool cloth on his head, but he wouldn’t have none of it and fair knocked Mr. Cranston senseless. It were all truly comical.”

She scratched her head through her mobcap a moment and sobered.

“You know, it occurred to me—and please don’t get angry, because people is people, rich or poor—anyway, it did seem to me that his lordship was truly aggrieved to find you’d gone, and very worit, too.

” Ivy placed her hands on her hips and sternly eyed Elizabeth, sitting on the daybed indulging in a fit of sullens.

“Fact is, he seemed like a man with a broken heart, he did.”

“Ha!” Elizabeth bit out. “The only thing broken was his head.”

Her maid went back to work, her voice airy. “Kept mumbling on, saying things like, ‘oh, my love, where are you?’ and ‘love, forgive me.’”

“I’m sure his word stemmed merely from habit.”

“Strange habit for a man to develop, I say, unless he meant it. Most men find the words just sticks in their gullet and most nearly needs to be pried out.”

Elizabeth laughed mirthlessly. “His is a glib and well-oiled tongue.”

Her maid shrugged. “He weren’t too happy with me for not telling him you’d up and left, but he were relieved to find Thomas accompanied you, saying at least someone in his household showed sense.” She shook out another dress.

“You know, beggin’ your pardon, my lady, but I think you’re being just a mite too hard on his lordship.

Oh, I’m not saying he didn’t do wrong, he did you mortal wrong.

It’s just that that’s the way of men. They gets a bee in their bonnet like, and hangs on to it for no reason.

And truthfully, ma’am, they’re all like babes and need to be led by us, and just as tykes do mischief and need punishing, they also need forgiveness or the misdeeds just get worse. ”

Elizabeth lifted her head, carefully regarding her maid. “What did you just say?”

“About what, ma’am?”

“That last bit, about children doing mischief,” she said impatiently.

Ivy looked bewildered. “I just said as how children that’s been bad need love as much as punishing.”

“Yes, or the misdeeds just get worse—” Elizabeth finished for her, trailing off.

She closed her eyes, remembering her own childhood with her struggles for love, how she’d turned to misdeeds and adopted a vinegary tongue to try to gain some form of attention.

Were she and St. Ryne doomed to repeat the errors of her youth?

No! They were a grown man and woman, with the intelligence to rise above such pettiness—they had to be.

“Ivy!” she cried, bounding off the bed to hug her maid. “Repack everything. We’re returning to London tomorrow!”

“Oh, my lady, are you sure? Yes, yes, at once!” the little maid happily exclaimed. She didn’t rightly know what she’d said to turn about her mistress’s expression, but happy she was to see it. “And afterwards, I’ll tell Thomas to have the carriage ready first thing.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Good, but don’t tarry too long, for you’ll have to be up betimes in the morning.”

“My lady, as if I would!” Ivy disclaimed, though she blushed furiously.

Elizabeth lay on her bed, nestled among soft pillows, her eyes open, though staring unseeing at the gray and black forms and shadows of the room in the night.

Idly her left hand stretched out across the expanse of empty bed next to her and a small smile curved her lips.

Her eyes drifted shut, imagining—as she had in the past—the wonders to be learned from sharing the bed with her husband.

The difference now was her intention, for she vowed to herself she’d be the Viscountess St. Ryne in more than name, even if she had to seduce Justin.

A blush, lost in the dark yet warming her skin, crept up her neck and cheeks.

Tomorrow she would return to London to forgive and cry quit to the comedy they played, and perhaps to ask for a drama instead, a drama of their making together without secrets and subplots.

She would not repeat the errors of her childhood nor willingly throw away a chance for happiness, no matter how tenuous the chance.

How many chances was a person given in life?

Too few, to judge by those she saw in society.

If she turned her back on St. Ryne in pique, then she was no better than those she would disdain.

Worse, she could be called a fool, for only the fool denied the heart for hollow pride.

It was cold comfort, not a warm bedfellow.

Sighing, she pulled the covers higher, then turned on her side, curling to hold in the heat of her body. Her mind clear, her plans made, she drifted to sleep while a small smile hovered on her lips.

An odd, high-pitched creaking woke her. In the night stillness it raked her nerves. She listened, noting that it bore an almost measured cadence.

Puzzled, she rose from her bed and shrugged on a wrapper, pulling it close about her, then slipped on thin slippers.

She rounded the bed, stopping again to listen.

It was getting louder, and with it could be heard a faint clump; then whispering, indistinct and rapidly hushed. Someone was creeping through the manor.

Elizabeth’s hands reflexively clenched in anger.

The Atheridges, she thought with disgust. No telling what manner of mischief they could be about.

She grabbed a candlestick from the bedside table, taking it over to light by the fireplace, then glided to the door.

The furtive sounds were getting louder, like they were nearly outside. She yanked open the door.

“Atheridge!” she scolded, spotting his spindly frame by the light of her wildly wavering taper. “What are you doing about?”

He gaped at her, then stuttered soundlessly, looking back over his shoulder.

A hulking black shadow, like a feral animal, separated itself from the shadows by the wall to come toward her and the circle of light she held.

“You.” The single word pushed past her lips on an expelled breath. “What do you want? What are you doing here?” Her words were high, strident—and superfluous, for with gut wrenching clarity, she knew why he was here. Her eyes opened wide with knowledge. She turned to flee.

He lunged, knocking her to the ground, the candle spinning out of her grasp, its light dying, plunging them into darkness.

But not before she saw his leer, a demon with revenge reflected in his eyes.

She twisted wildly under his weight, her nails seeking skin to gouge.

A scream died in her throat, and she choked and gagged when he stuffed a handkerchief into her open mouth.