Page 17 of One Night of Scandal (Fairleigh Sisters #2)

How could my treacherous flesh crave the touch of a murderer?

HAYDEN STIFFENED IN SHOCK AS LOTTIE’S lips brushed his jaw, scattering soft kisses all along its rigid curve. He closed his eyes, a muscle working in his throat, as her lips sought the corner of his mouth. But it was the bold flick of her tongue against that vulnerable spot that made him groan, coaxed his mouth into melting against hers, no longer able to resist the carnal innocence of such a kiss.

Wrapping his arms around Lottie, Hayden slanted his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue deep into the silky heat of her mouth. Her tongue curled around his, maddening him with its wordless promise of pleasure. Pleasure he had denied himself for far too long. Somewhere in his mind, love and loss had become inextricably intertwined. But Lottie was seeking to give, not take, and he was powerless to resist such a generous offer.

Until he glanced up to find Justine laughing down at him, mocking him for succumbing to the very temptation that had once proved his ruin.

Hayden thrust himself away from Lottie, struggling to catch his breath. If he dared to look at her in the moonlight with the spun gold of her hair tumbling down her back, her lush lips moist and swollen from his kisses, her misty blue eyes imploring, he knew they’d both be lost. He’d have her beneath him on the divan, her nightdress rucked up around her waist, before she could draw another breath.

“I already told you once,”

he said, his voice so harsh he barely recognized it himself.

“I neither want nor deserve your pity.”

“Is that all you think I have to offer you—pity?”

Hayden closed his eyes, steeling himself against the husky catch in her voice.

“I’m sure you have much to offer, my lady. But I have nothing to give you in return.”

“Because you gave it all to her.”

Even as his silence condemned him in her eyes, Hayden could not resist stealing one last look at Lottie.

Although her eyes glistened with unshed tears, that stubborn little chin of hers had lost none of its determination.

“Then I hope the two of you will be very happy together. I’m beginning to believe you deserve each other.”

With those words, his wife turned and walked stiffly from the room, much as his daughter had done earlier in that cursed day.

Biting off an oath, Hayden swept one of the porcelain shepherdesses off the mantel and hurled it at Justine’s portrait with all of his might. The figurine shattered against the canvas without leaving a single mark on her angelic face.

The next morning Lottie sat on a rock near the edge of the cliff, the hem of her skirts whipping in the wind. She wanted to cry, but she knew the wind would only snatch the tears from her face before they could fall. So she simply gazed out to sea, her heart aching and her eyes burning with unshed tears. She wondered if Justine had ever sat in this very spot, gazing down upon the jagged rocks that would end her life.

Lottie was beginning to realize just what a colossal fool she had been since coming to Oakwylde. She had thought to banish all the ghosts from the manor, never taking into consideration that it wasn’t Hayden’s house that was haunted, but his heart. Despite all of her bravado, she did not know how to fight an enemy she could not see.

Watching the breakers swirl around the rocks, she wondered how it must feel to be loved with that kind of all-consuming passion. How could a man destroy something he loved so much? But passion and jealous rage often went hand in hand, she reminded herself. The hunger to possess was all too often coupled with the drive to destroy what refused to be possessed.

“Justine,”

she whispered bitterly, searching the cloudswept sky.

“Why did you have to take all of his secrets to your grave?”

She closed her eyes, wondering if she was imagining the faint hint of jasmine that perfumed the wind.

When she opened them, Allegra was standing there, clutching Lottie’s doll in her arms. As usual, she didn’t bother with pleasantries, but simply blurted out.

“Father says I’m to be allowed into the music room to practice the piano whenever I like.”

Although her expression was no less dour than it normally was, the girl somehow managed to look as happy as Lottie had ever seen her. Perversely enough, it was Hayden’s kindness, not his rebuff that finally prompted the tears in Lottie’s eyes to well over.

“That’s marvelous,”

she said, dashing away a tear before Allegra could see it.

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Then why are you crying?”

the child asked, creeping nearer.

“I’m not crying,”

Lottie insisted.

“The wind just blew a speck of dirt in my eye.”

But to her dismay, the tears began to spill down her cheeks faster than she could dash them away.

“No, it didn’t,”

Allegra said accusingly.

“You’re crying.”

No longer able to dispute the obvious, Lottie buried her face in her hands to muffle her sobs.

She was startled to feel the weight of a small hand on her shoulder.

“Why are you crying?”

Allegra asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Was someone mean to you? Someone besides me?”

That earned her a strangled hiccup of laughter. Lottie lifted her head, smiling at the child through watery eyes.

“No one was mean to me. I’m just feeling a little sad today.”

“Here.”

Allegra shoved the doll at Lottie.

“When I’m sad, sometimes I squeeze her very tightly and it makes me feel better.”

Caught off guard by the child’s unexpected generosity, Lottie took her old doll and gave it a wary squeeze. Surprisingly enough, she did feel a little better. But not nearly as good as she felt when Allegra slipped one small hand into hers.

“The two of us were just about to have breakfast,”

Allegra informed her.

“Why don’t you join us? Unless you’re too sad to be hungry, that is.”

Lottie stared at their joined hands. Hayden might not have need of her, but perhaps his daughter did.

Wiping away the last of her tears, she allowed Allegra to tug her to her feet.

“Don’t be silly,”

she said, swinging the girl’s hand in hers as they started for the house.

“I’m never too anything to be hungry.”

Hayden St. Clair was being haunted.

This spirit was much more tenacious than any found between the pages of a Gothic thriller. It didn’t wail like a banshee or shine mysterious lights from the window of some deserted chamber. It never rattled chains after midnight or drifted up and down the corridors of the manor in the moonlight with its severed head beneath its arm. Nor did it play ghostly melodies on the piano in the music room or wake him out of a sound sleep with a whiff of fragrance that should have dissipated years ago.

On the contrary, it haunted his every waking moment, boldly laying claim to each room of his home until there was nowhere he could flee to escape it.

He had his first inkling of its presence a few days after his moonlight encounter with Lottie in the music room. He was passing by the drawing room when he heard a most astonishing sound. He froze in his tracks, cocking his head to listen. The sound wasn’t completely foreign to him. He had heard it many times before, but so long ago that it was like a song remembered from a dream.

His daughter was giggling.

Unable to resist the siren lure of the sound, he retraced his steps and warily peered around the archway that framed the drawing room door.

Lottie, Harriet, Allegra, and Lottie’s scruffy old doll were all gathered around a teak-inlaid table, partaking of afternoon tea. They each wore elaborate hats festooned with a colorful array of feathers, ribbons, flowers, and cobwebs. Hayden did a double take when he spotted the stuffed parrot perched on the shoulder of Lottie’s doll. The mangy bird perfectly complemented both her eye patch and her leering smirk. The doll required only a cutlass in her dainty little hand and she would be ready to sail the bounding main.

Even Mirabella wore a hat—a baby bonnet of ivory lace, its satin bow tied beneath her furry chin. Allegra held the squirming kitten in her lap to keep it from bolting, giggling every time the creature reached up to bat at the ribbons dangling from her own hat.

Apparently, Hayden was the only one who hadn’t received a formal invitation to the tea party. Three of the kittens Lottie had given him stood on the table, lapping cream from a china saucer, while their yellow sibling chased its own tail around a table leg.

As Allegra added a ruffled petticoat to Mirabella’s elegant ensemble, Pumpkin and Mr. Wiggles went streaking past Hayden, obviously fearing they were in danger of being subjected to similar indignities. Hayden knew he would be wise to follow. Yet still he lingered, reluctant to abandon the charming chaos of the scene.

He hadn’t counted on the yellow kitten spotting him. Before he could slip away, it came trotting toward him, mewing at the top of its tiny pink lungs.

“Traitor,”

Hayden muttered, nudging it away with his foot.

But it was too late. The smiles had vanished. The merry chatter had ceased. Miss Dimwinkle looked as if she were trying to choke on a mouthful of scone. If she succeeded, Hayden assumed he’d be required to add the burden of another untimely death to his conscience.

Lottie blew a wayward feather out of her eyes, surveying him coolly and looking every inch the lady of the manor in her tulle-and-cobweb draped hat and her fingerless lace mittens.

“Good afternoon, my lord. Would you care to join us?”

Allegra buried her sullen face in Mirabella’s fur as if she could care less whether or not he accepted Lottie’s invitation. Hayden was the only one who knew it hadn’t been an invitation, but a direct challenge— one Lottie obviously expected him to refuse.

He returned her mocking gaze with one of his own.

“You won’t make me wear a bonnet, will you?”

“Not unless you choose to.”

Lottie drew the only remaining stool up to the table and poured him a cup of tea. Hayden dutifully sat, but bounded quickly back to his feet when the stool let out a protesting yowl. Gritting his teeth, he swept the yellow kitten off the stool and onto the rug. It immediately clawed its way back up his leg, snagging his doeskin trousers, and curled up in his lap, purring madly. Hayden draped a napkin over it and tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

The stool was far too short for him. Every attempt he made to fold his long legs beneath it failed miserably. He finally had to content himself with stretching his legs to the side, which brought them in dangerous proximity to Lottie’s trim ankles. Her shapely limbs might be swathed in layers of petticoats, pantalettes, and stockings, but that didn’t stop him from imagining how sleek and warm they would feel wrapped around his waist.

“Would you care for some cream?”

Lottie asked.

Jerking his gaze away from the curve of her calf, Hayden eyed the cream pitcher askance. The black kitten was teetering on its lip. Even as he watched, it lost its balance and went plunging into the milky froth. Before Allegra could rescue it, it scrambled back out and gave itself a dazed shake, scattering drops of cream all over the front of Hayden’s waistcoat.

“No, thank you,”

he murmured, watching it lick its whiskers clean with fastidious care.

“I believe I shall pass.”

“We borrowed the hats from the attic.”

Lottie offered him his teacup, her haughty tone all but daring him to protest.

“I hope you don’t mind. Allegra said they belonged to her mother.”

“Not all of them.”

Hayden pointed to the lace-trimmed bonnet framing Mirabella’s cantankerous little face.

“If memory serves me correctly, that one once belonged to me.”

Allegra cupped a hand over her mouth to suppress an involuntary giggle.

“You wore a bonnet?”

“I most certainly did. But it wouldn’t have been so mortifying if your grandmother hadn’t insisted on having my portrait painted in it while she dandled me on her knee. I must confess that at the time I had curls that would rival your own.”

Allegra looked doubtful.

“I’ve never seen such a painting.”

“Nor will you,”

Hayden assured her, taking a sip of his tea.

“I ‘accidentally’ spilled some lamp oil on it and set the hateful thing afire when I was around your age.”

“That was quite clever of you,”

Allegra blurted out. Ducking her head so that her hair shielded her face, she returned her attention to stuffing Mirabella’s hind legs into a pair of doll’s pantalettes.

“Have you any other youthful indiscretions you’d care to share with us?”

Lottie asked, her blue eyes all innocence as she pinched off a bite of scone and tucked it between her lips.

Hayden fought the overpowering urge to lean over and lick away the dab of clotted cream at the corner of her mouth.

“One doesn’t have to be a youth to commit indiscretions,”

he replied, refusing to surrender her gaze.

“Some temptations, however foolhardy, only sweeten with age.”

Blinking at them both from behind a pair of oversized spectacles loaned to her by one of the servants, Harriet snatched up a handful of iced tea cakes, obviously hoping that if she kept her own mouth full, Hayden wouldn’t address her directly.

“So tell me, Miss Dimwinkle,”

he said pleasantly after she’d crammed them all in her mouth.

“are you enjoying your stay in Cornwall?”

Harriet lowered her tea, her hand trembling so violently that the cup rattled against the saucer.

“Oh, very much, my lord,”

she mumbled around a mouthful of cake.

“I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am to you for writing my parents and asking them to allow me to stay on here as a companion to Lottie. Why, if you’d have sent me packing back to Kent, I would have simply di—”

Harriet stopped talking and chewing at the same time, her expression horrified.

“Died?”

Hayden gently offered, hoping to help her swallow before she did just that.

From out of nowhere, Allegra suddenly said.

“Lottie’s mama died when Lottie was only three. She burned up in a fire. Lottie doesn’t even remember what she looked like. Isn’t that sad?”

Hayden stole a look at his wife. She looked as puzzled as he felt.

“Yes, it is,”

he agreed with utter sincerity.

“Terribly sad.”

Still refusing to look at any of them, Allegra rocked Mirabella in the crook of her arm like an ill-tempered, overdressed baby.

“Lottie said I should be thankful that I remember my mama.”

Hayden felt his throat tighten.

“And so you should,”

he finally managed to choke out, speaking of Justine to his daughter for the first time since her death.

“She loved you very much.”

Awkwardly shoving back the stool, he stood. The yellow kitten rolled to the floor, shooting him a wounded look.

“If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have business I must attend to. I’m sure you’ll be eager to get back to your lessons after tea.”

Hayden didn’t linger long enough to deter-mine who looked guiltier at his mention of lessons—Allegra or Lottie. His only thought was of escape. But as he strode down the long corridor that led to his study, the merry music of their laughter pursued him more surely than any phantom.

Hayden soon learned that there was nowhere he could go to elude their happiness. In the days that followed, it echoed from the schoolroom in wild bursts as poorly muffled as the mysterious thumps that preceded it. It drifted through the open window of his study at dusk as Lottie and Allegra chased the kittens through the garden. It came rippling out of the drawing room after supper as Lottie read aloud from one of her treasured Gothics, her dramatic delivery generating more giggles than shivers. When Hayden caught Meggie and Jem lurking behind the drawing room door, hanging on to her every word, he didn’t even have the heart to rebuke them. Especially not since they’d stolen his own hiding place.

Even more haunting than the laughter was the music. Now that the doors of the music room had been thrown wide open, Hayden never knew when it would come spilling through the house, shattering the walls of silence he’d spent the last four years building around himself. It was the one manifestation he could not endure. Whenever Allegra played, he would find some task to take him from the house, whether it was striding to the village on some poor excuse of an errand better suited to his steward or driving his bay across the moor at a breakneck pace.

Although it was a joy to watch his child blossom beneath his bride’s attentions, their growing bond only made Hayden feel more isolated. He sought refuge in the library one damp, rainy evening only to encounter a sight he’d never witnessed before—his daughter…reading.

Allegra was curled up in a large leather chair before the fire in stocking feet, her nose buried in a book and Mirabella dozing on her lap.

Hayden hesitated in the doorway, unable to resist taking advantage of the rare opportunity to study her. If Allegra knew he was there, she would doubtlessly bolt.

Her face had lost its sallow cast. Her daily romps with Lottie and Harriet had coaxed a flush of color into her cheeks, while their elaborate afternoon teas had begun to ripen the flesh on her bones. A blue velvet ribbon held her glossy mane of dark hair out of her eyes. He’d seen Lottie tending to it before the fire in the drawing room each night, chattering away as she dragged a brush through the stubborn tendrils until they crackled and shone.

As startling as those changes were, the greatest transformation had taken place in his daughter’s expression. Her eyes were no longer shadowed by wariness, her lips no longer pinched in a sullen pout.

As Hayden traced the purity of her profile, he shook his head ruefully, realizing that he would soon have a young beauty on his hands. He had always believed she would never marry, when in truth, he might have to beat off her suitors with a stick.

Although Hayden’s first instinct was to back out of the room before she saw him, some curious impulse made him clear his throat.

Allegra jerked her nose out of the book, her eyes widening and a guilty flush staining her cheeks.

“Father! I didn’t hear you come in. I was just…studying my lesson for tomorrow.”

As Hayden approached, she attempted to slide the book behind her back.

Before she could succeed, he plucked it neatly from her hand.

“What are you studying? History? Latin? Geography?”

He held the book up to the firelight, recognizing the thin paperbound volume as one of the cheap chapbooks sold by vendors on the street corners of London. They’d succeeded in introducing the wicked pleasures of the Gothic to impoverished readers who couldn’t afford genuine novels.

“The Spectre of the Turret, eh?”

He thumbed through the pages.

“Kidnapping, murder, ghosts, nefarious doings. It sounds very enlightening to me. And what’s this?”

he asked, spotting another volume tucked between cushion and chair arm. He picked up the book and flipped open the cover, studying a hand-colored engraving of a swordsman dressed as Death offering a severed head to his opponent.

“Hmm? The Cavern of Horrors. Doesn’t look like a place I’d care to visit.”

Dumping a disgruntled Mirabella to the hearth rug, Allegra scrambled to her feet, snatching both books out of his hands.

“I was just going to return these to Lottie. She must have left them here last night.”

Hayden tucked his tongue into his cheek, silently applauding his wife’s craftiness. If Lottie had left the chapbooks in the library, she had done so deliberately, hoping to whet Allegra’s hunger for the printed word.

“Don’t go!”

he blurted out as Allegra turned away. “Please,”

he added softly to reassure her that it wasn’t a command, but a request.

“I was just looking for a book to wile away a few hours of the evening.”

He held out a hand, nodding toward The Cavern of Horrors. “May I?”

Still eyeing him warily, Allegra handed over the book and sank back into her chair. Hayden settled himself into the twin leather chair opposite hers, kicking off his shoes and propping his own stocking feet on an ottoman. He opened The Cavern of Horrors, pretending not to notice the bewildered scowls his daughter kept shooting him over the top of her own chapbook.

He didn’t have to pretend for long. After only a few pages, he found himself curiously caught up in the convoluted tale of murder and mayhem.

Both Hayden and Allegra were so engrossed in their reading that they never saw Lottie pause in the doorway of the library to study the cozy tableau. With the rain beating against the mullioned windows and the cat dozing on the stone hearth, they could have been any father and daughter enjoying a quiet evening in each other’s company.

Neither one of them heard Lottie go creeping away, still smiling to herself.

Although he didn’t make the mistake of joining them again, not even Hayden’s pride could stop him from wandering past the drawing room each day when Lottie, Harriet, and Allegra were taking tea. No matter how busy he was, he would find some excuse to linger in the doorway and drink in their merry chatter. His daughter might not welcome his company, but she did seem to be growing more accepting of it. She no longer sought to leave a room the minute he entered it.

As he strolled past one afternoon, he was surprised to find the expensive doll he’d had made for his daughter sitting across the table from Lottie’s doll.

Apparently, Allegra was as surprised as he was. She was standing with hands on hips, surveying the new arrangement with an all too familiar scowl clouding her face.

“What’s she doing here?”

“Harriet’s not feeling well this afternoon,”

Lottie informed her smoothly, taking a sip of tea from a bone china cup.

“She has a touch of the ague. We needed a fourth for our table so I didn’t see any harm in inviting our little friend here. She’s been buried in that box ever since she arrived at Oakwylde. I dare say it’s frightfully stuffy in there.”

Allegra slumped into the empty chair, still glaring at the interloper. With her immaculate white gloves and exquisitely coiffed sable curls, the doll appeared to be looking down her patrician nose at them all. Lottie’s doll leered back at her, her eye patch askew.

Hayden continued on his way, barricading himself in his study until curiosity got the best of him. He peered around the drawing room archway a short while later to find Allegra wagging a finger in the new doll’s face.

“I’ll not have you hogging up all the tea cakes, you wicked girl,”

she scolded.

“And any proper lady knows you never wear gloves while you’re eating.”

As Allegra proceeded to peel off the doll’s gloves and thrust a crumbling jam cake into her dainty hand, dripping strawberry preserves down the front of her costly lavender frock, he felt an involuntary chuckle well up in his chest. As Lottie glanced at the door and lifted her teacup to him in a mocking toast, Hayden realized that she hadn’t dug the neglected doll out of its trunk for Allegra.

She had done it for him.

By the next week both Lottie and Allegra had abandoned all pretense of lessons while Hayden had abandoned all pretense of believing they were still having lessons. When they decided to celebrate a rare appearance of the sun one morning by dragging Lottie’s hobbyhorse out to the drive, Hayden lounged on the front stoop of the manor to watch, his eyes shamelessly drinking in his wife’s every move.

The wheeled contraption was designed to be propelled by the rider straddling its wooden frame and taking long gliding strides until the vehicle reached a hill steep enough to coast down. It’s wooden wheels had been fashioned for paved garden paths, not cobbled drives, so at the moment poor Miss Dimwinkle was rattling past at a pace guaranteed to jar her teeth from her head. Lottie and Allegra ran along on either side of her, laughing and shouting encouragement.

As they disappeared over a hill, Hayden leaned back on his elbows and turned his face to the sun, basking in its warmth. The fine, windy day seemed determined to prove that spring might come late to this corner of Cornwall, but it was well worth the wait. The air smelled of warming earth and things growing wild on the moor. Tender wisps of greenery were beginning to sprout on the branches of trees one would have sworn were dead only a few days ago. A snowy blanket of hawthorn blossoms draped every hill, while the cliffs were coming alive in a blaze of bluebells, sea campion and gorse. The colonies of young kittiwakes roosting in their sheltering crags heralded spring’s arrival with their chiming calls.

The hobbyhorse reappeared, this time with Lottie astride it and Harriet and Allegra trotting after her. Lottie’s strong, lithe legs soon propelled the contraption into a fast clip. As she reached the top of the hill, she settled her weight on its frame and went sailing down the drive, shrieking with laughter. Her bonnet flew out behind her, bound only by its velvet ribbons. Frowning, Hayden sat up, unnerved by her fearless flight.

Before he could call out a warning, the hobbyhorse struck a rough stone and went bouncing off the drive and into the grass. Lottie’s eyes widened.

As she went hurtling toward a grassy bank, Hayden came to his feet. He was off the stoop and sprinting down the drive before Lottie even hit the clump of earth that sent her flying head over heels through the air.

As he ran, Hayden was nearly blinded by a stark image of Lottie lying utterly still in the grass, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle as the roses faded from her cheeks.

He reached her crumpled form at the same time as Harriet and Allegra. They knelt across from him in a puddle of skirts as he gathered Lottie’s warm body into his arms, gripped by icy panic.

“Lottie! Lottie! Can you hear me?”

Her eyes slowly fluttered open. She blinked up at him.

“Of course I can hear you. You’re shouting directly into my ear, aren’t you?”

As a teasing smile dimpled the downy curve of her cheek, Hayden was torn between kissing her and shaking her senseless.

Keenly aware of Harriet and Allegra’s avid scrutiny, he had to content himself with scolding her.

“You careless little fool, what did you think you were doing? You could have broken your bloody neck.”

Across from him, Allegra’s eyes widened with horrified delight. Realizing it was the first time he’d ever cursed in front of his daughter, Hayden added.

“Damn it all.”

Lottie wiggled to a sitting position in his arms, but made no attempt to extricate herself from them.

“Don’t be silly. It’s hardly the first tumble I’ve taken on this thing. You should have seen poor George the week Sterling brought it home from Germany. He took a dive right into a patch of thistles and couldn’t sit down for a week.”

Hayden hauled her to her feet, still glowering at her.

“If I catch you pulling another stunt like that, you won’t be able to sit down for a week either.”

Harriet and Allegra exchanged a scandalized look.

The hobbyhorse was lying in an ungainly heap a few feet away in the grass. Lottie moved to rescue it.

As she rolled it back toward the drive, Hayden rested his hands on his hips.

“Surely you’re not going to get back on that contraption after it almost killed you.”

“I most certainly am,”

she retorted. Awicked light dawned in her eyes.

“Unless, of course, you’d care to take it for a whirl.”

Hayden couldn’t let such a challenge pass.

“I’ve got an even better idea.”

He marched over to her. She squealed in surprise as he closed his hands around her trim waist and lifted her, setting her sidesaddle on the narrow wooden seat. She clutched at the handlebars to keep her balance. Before she could protest, he threw one long leg over the vehicle’s frame, reached around her to close his hands over hers on the handlebars and began to propel the hobbyhorse forward with long, powerful strides. When they reached the top of the next steep incline, he sank down on the seat behind Lottie and stuck his legs straight out before them, sending the vehicle hurtling down the hill at a breakneck pace.

Lottie’s terrified squeals quickly became screams of laughter. Harriet and Allegra pelted along behind them for several steps before finally giving up the chase. Then there was only the wind in his hair, the sun in his face, and Lottie’s lush, warm body tucked against his.

Hayden had driven his bay across the moor a hundred times since Justine’s death, attempting to outpace the shadows of the past. But with Lottie in his arms, he felt as if he wasn’t just running away from something, but racing toward something.

Unfortunately, that something proved to be a ditch.

He tugged frantically at the handlebars, but the hobbyhorse continued to shoot straight for the ditch.

“Why isn’t it steering?”

he shouted, fighting to be heard over the rush of the wind.

“Steering?”

Lottie shouted back over her shoulder.

“What steering?”

Thinking he’d surely misheard her, he tried again.

“How do I steer the confounded thing?”

Given the mounting gravity of their situation, Lottie sounded entirely too cheerful as she bellowed back at him.

“If its inventor had bothered to equip it with steering, do you think I would have crashed the first time?”

There was no more time to debate the inventor’s lack of foresight. The ditch was only a foot away from snagging their front wheel. Wrapping his arms around Lottie’s waist, Hayden launched them both off of the hobbyhorse. As they went flying through the air, he curled his body around hers, determined to bear the brunt of their landing.

The next thing Hayden knew, his head was being cradled against something seductively soft and a woman was crooning his name. He opened his eyes a fraction of an inch only to discover that the something soft was Lottie. He was stretched out across her lap, his head cradled against her bosom. It was such a pleasant sensation he rather wished he could stay there all day.

“Oh, Hayden, I feel terrible! If you hadn’t been so smug, I would have warned you about the steering. I never meant for you to take such a nasty tumble.”

She stroked his brow, her fingers tenderly sifting through the vexatious lock of hair that always hung in his eyes.

“Can you hear me, you poor dear?”

“Of course I can hear you,”

he murmured, gazing up at her through his lashes.

“You’re crooning in my ear, aren’t you?”

She stood up abruptly, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground.

“Ow!”

Rubbing the back of his head, he sat up and gave her a wounded look.

“I’m certainly glad the turf is soft here.”

“So am I,”

she snapped, avoiding his eyes as she brushed tufts of grass from her skirt.

“If you’d have broken your neck, the gossips would have blamed me and I would have been known as the ‘Murderous Marchioness’ for the rest of my life.”

She sniffed.

“Or at least until I found a more affable husband.”

As she turned to march away from him, her skirts swishing with indignation, Hayden sprang to his feet and grabbed her by the hand, tugging her around to face him.

“Nothing’s sacred to you, is it?”

When she realized he was laughing down at her instead of scowling, the wary look in her eyes deepened.

“Only the things that deserve to be.”

As Hayden reached to gently pluck a blade of grass from her hair, he wondered what might have happened in that moment had they been any other man and woman standing on that sun-drenched hill. If they had met under different circumstances in a different lifetime. If he had been allowed to tenderly woo her before making her his bride.

They might have found out if the mayblossom-scented breeze hadn’t carried to their ears the rattle of wooden wheels on cobblestone. Hayden frowned, shading his eyes against the sun’s glare as he peered up the hill. A carriage was just turning into the drive, its lacquered shell gleaming like a raven’s wing.

Visitors to Oakwylde Manor were hardly a common occurrence. He hadn’t extended a single invitation to any of his neighbors since the day Justine had been laid to rest.

The hobbyhorse forgotten, he and Lottie hurried up the hill to join Harriet and Allegra. The carriage was just rattling to a halt in front of the manor. A footman rushed forward to throw open the door and a tiny creature emerged from the vehicle’s shadowy interior, dressed from bonnet to boots in stark, unrelenting black.

Clutching at Lottie’s arm, Harriet let out a strangled gasp. Lottie paled as if Grim Death itself was descending from the carriage.

“Who is it?”

Allegra asked, tugging at Lottie’s sleeve.

“Is it the undertaker?”

“Worse,”

Lottie breathed.

“It’s Terrible Terwilliger herself.”

Hayden might have laughed at their exaggerated reaction to what appeared to be a harmless little old lady if her traveling companion hadn’t stepped down from the carriage in the next moment, his silvery-blond hair glinting in the sunlight.

As their visitor tucked his elegant walking stick beneath his arm, Allegra squinted toward the carriage. Suddenly a sunny smile broke over her face.

“Uncle Ned! Uncle Ned!”

she shouted, breaking into a run.

Hayden could only stand and watch as his daughter went racing past him to throw herself into the arms of another man.