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“L aurence,” Alice said softly, unlike the occasional peevishness from her tone at their last meeting two hours earlier. This time, her husky, tremulous voice contained a thread of joy.

He recognized it all too easily because he’d heard it so many times before. He knew what made her smile. Painting. Horses. Teasing him and vexing her brother.

And in this instant, she felt joy at his being here.

Would she feel that same way if she were to know what truly brings you here?

Muscling aside an overwhelming sense of guilt, Denbigh forced a crooked smile.

“We meet again.”

A twinkle lit Alice’s breathtaking eyes.

“I’m beginning to believe this is no coincidence. Two run-ins after all this time apart? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were stalking me, Laurence.”

The grin froze uncomfortably on his face. His muscles felt like they formed something more of a grimace.

Alice’s gaze grew startled.

With a teasing laugh, she swatted his arm. “I’m jesting, Laurence. Have you lost your humor since we last saw one another?”

He had. Not completely, but he definitely laughed less with her gone. Now, the relaxed joy that came from her presence felt undeserved because of his intentions and his absolute determination to get her out of here.

“Forgive me, it is just…” He searched for words to explain how it felt being with her now.

“It feels different, doesn’t it? Uncomfortable, and yet foreign, and yet at the same time, nothing’s changed.” Alice aptly summed up everything he hadn’t been able to and couldn’t.

She turned the subject. “I take it these rooms will be yours?”

“I will be residing here as soon as they’re available and for the foreseeable future,” he said.

He’d stay as long as it took to get her out of here.

“I’d seen them once before, but the Earl of Wakefield informed me that new renovations were taking place, and I took it upon myself to visit and see what changes were in progress.”

“I didn’t know you would be here.” Yet another lie he gave her.

“Lord Wakefield will not be happy with you coming here without permission,” she murmured. “None of the proprietors will. They protect the people here.”

Denbigh stiffened.

“Not that I am saying I am at a risk, or that you pose any danger to me or any of the other women here,” she said on a rush. “Just that—”

He cut her off in quiet tones. “I am not worried about myself, or being discovered here, or the wrath of any of the proprietors here, Alice.” Denbigh looked her squarely in the eyes. He willed her to see the passion and full force of his emotions.

“I chafe and tense with outrage and dread for the peril you could find yourself in with other patrons here. The men who are not me. The ones who will see you and put you at risk.”

With every reality uttered, images paraded in his mind.

Of men, unscrupulous ones; all the blackguards and bastards he’d never kept company with, stumbling upon Alice.

With every horrifying possibility, fierce rage rose up inside him.

All guilt at his purpose for being here melted into nothing as the fear of what faced her here dominated everything.

“Alice, surely you see that you are at risk being here. I understand you love to paint,” he said imploringly, “but you must understand—”

His words were stopped by the delicate touch of her fingertips against his lips.

They were more calloused than he remembered, but still paint-stained.

Never, however, had he felt those fingertips against his mouth.

A shameful surge of lust bolted through him.

A hungering to know her mouth in ways he shouldn’t and couldn’t.

“Laurence,” she said softly, gently. “I am happy. I am safe. Here, I am at peace.”

The primal thoughts and urges he had vanished in a flash. Rage rose up again.

“Safe?” he asked, emphasizing that word. “Safe,” he repeated. This time he forced out a harsh, ugly, mocking laugh. “Do you truly believe you are safe—?”

“I wanted to paint too!” A wilting child’s voice piped in. “You were supposed to be painting with me, M…” A little girl registered Denbigh’s presence. “Miss Killoran.”

With a feeling of being yanked mid-gallop from his horse and hurled to the ground, he whipped around and faced the intruder.

He stared blankly at the child.

A little over three feet tall and possessed of long, slightly tangled golden curls, the little girl bore a familiar look. A strange feeling settled inside him as, under Denbigh’s feet, the Earth’s axis shifted, leaving him struggling for balance. Those curls. He knew those eyes even better.

My God .

He had always possessed a way with words.

They’d never eluded him. From his father, he’d inherited an ability to charm, disarm, and a way with and around words.

But unlike his profligate father, Denbigh had never used them as a weapon against innocent ladies.

Words had never failed him. Until now. Fortunately, the impish, bright-eyed, dimple-cheeked, adorable little girl had words for all of them.

“Hello.”

Hello . It was just that one word, a greeting, and from it, she gave Denbigh a roadmap to follow.

“Hello,” he murmured.

At his side, Alice stood stiff, her face whitewashed, unbending and afraid.

She was afraid. And within him, with every breath he inhaled and every beat of his heart, he hated that she should be afraid in this instant.

My God, she has a daughter . There were a thousand—no, a million questions he had.

There had been a man, one who had not done right by her.

The rage at that and the desire to hunt down and kill the bastard, however, would wait for later.

Right now, he need only be present in this moment with this pair.

The little girl looked up at him with the biggest, widest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Who are you?” she asked with all the truthful innocence and directness only a child could manage.

It was as though that query brought Alice alive in a war. “This is the Earl of Denbigh.” She moved quickly and made to position herself between him and the little girl.

His heart hurt. She sought to hide the girl from him? Did he believe he would judge her?

Laurence dropped to a knee and slid himself in a way that prevented Alice from hiding the girl as she would a dirty secret. Which is what society had forced her to be.

“It is very nice to meet you,” he said softly and gently.

He held out his hand. The tiny child, all too trustingly, slipped her fingers into his and gave his hand an impressively firm shake. She got that from her mother.

“Will you be painting with M— Miss Killoran?” the tiny girl incorrectly surmised.

Had there been men who came to paint here with Alice? The very idea of it knifed at him. Ripe, unrivaled, unceasing jealousy threatened to eat him alive. He reigned those volatile emotions in.

“I fear not, Miss—?”

“Kill’ran,” she supplied. “We’re all Killorans here,” she explained, this time correcting her mispronunciation of the notorious family name.

Killorans.

The hell Alice and her daughter were.

Those were thoughts for a later time.

The child gave his hand a tug. “You may call me Laurel.”

Denbigh went motionless.

“Laurel,” he whispered.

He dimly registered her zealous nod. He was lost. Lost in thoughts of the past; memories of him and Alice.

“…Someday, Laurence, you must name one of your daughters, Laurel…”

“…Oh, I’m having daughters, am I?” he drawled.

“…Five of them,” an impish thirteen-year-old Alice piped in. “Laurel, Laurelia, Laurina, Laurette, Laurelei…”

A claymore to Denbigh’s chest couldn’t have inflicted more suffering.

He felt Alice’s gaze on him.

“Miss Killoran?” Laurel’s worried voice cut across anguished remembrances of simpler times, of how it once was with Alice…and how she’d wanted it to be. “Did I make His Lordship sad?” She didn’t allow Alice to answer; she swung her gaze to his. “Are you sad because you want to paint?”

Get it together, man.

Denbigh cleared his throat of emotion. “Not at all. I am thinking of how honored I’d be to call ‘Laurel’.” He leaned close to whisper. “In truth, I am not much of a painter, Laurel. That skill belongs to your m—”

Alice’s breath hitched noisily.

“Miss Killoran,” Denbigh corrected before he slipped completely.

A tremble racked Alice’s frame. He saw it and he hated it. He hated that she’d adopted a name that wasn’t her own. He hated her fear. Her uncertainty. The secrets. The outright lies. He bloody hated everything about this.

“Do you have a given name?” Laurel asked in her singsong voice. She wrinkled her cute, button, nose. “Or are you like all the toffs and only His Lordship, My Lordship, My Lord.”

“ Laurel .” Alice gave that gentle rebuke.

“No, no,” Denbigh murmured. “It is fine. I have a name.” His voice sounded thick to his own ears. “My name is Laurence.”

Some sort of dawning realization sparked in the child’s blue eyes.

“Laurence?” The child whipped her focus up to Alice so quickly, her tangle of curls bounced wildly around her. She looked to Alice for some sort of confirmation. “ Your friend Laurence ?”

“Yes, Laurel,” Alice said softly. “The very same.”

All the breath became trapped in Denbigh’s lungs.

She’d spoken about him. She’d told her secret daughter about him.

For there could be no doubting the girl belonged to Alice.

What had Alice shared? What stories had she told?

And it seemed so very unfair that he should know absolutely nothing about Laurel, that she should have been a stranger before now.

He wanted to know about her, everything there was, from the moment she’d been conceived to now when she stood before him, a happy, smiling child.

An exuberant, happy meld of a laugh and cry cleared some of Denbigh’s fog. Laurel launched her little arms about his neck and squeezed him tight.

“I am so excited. I never met M-Miss Killoran’s f—” The child caught herself and peeked up at Alice. “ Friends. ”

“Oh?” he said, his voice like he’d swallowed a handful of gravel. “Who are Miss Killoran’s friends?”

“You and Wynn,” she happily prattled, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a girl more babe than child to lie about her connections. “Elsbeth and Caroline.”

Alice’s friends ? His heart, that organ responsible for his life’s blood, seized painfully and viciously.

Alice cleared her throat. “Laurel, let me accompany you back to the nursery.” Her facial muscles were as tight as his own. “I promise this will not be the last you see of Laurence.”

Somehow Denbigh found the strength to stand. Did Alice truly mean that? Did she make Laurel a real promise? He searched for some hint but Alice remained a vault. In their time apart, she’d become adept at concealing her thoughts and emotions.

“Yes,” he murmured. “You may count on us meeting again, Laurel.”

As he watched them go and stood alone in his future—temporary—residence, he made another vow. He’d arrived at Exmoor’s behest. He’d promised to bring Alice home, and he would, but when he left, Denbigh would also be leaving with another person—Alice’s daughter.