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Taz chuckled. ‘Right enough, m’lord.’ Then he continued in his rough voice, ‘I read ye as well as the prancers. As tricky ye are too. Bin watching ye. Ye’re out of sorts.

’ He expertly weaved the vehicle through a knot of carriages without slowing his speed, hailing the other grooms as he went.

‘These past weeks ye be gnarly as a bull who’s lost ’is knackers. ’

‘I do hope not, Taz. I don’t like the thought of that at all.’

‘Well, ye have. And all I can think is it’s because Miss Gray’s gone.’

Lord Purfoy’s narrow eyes widened but he did not show the jolt that name gave to his heart. Instead, he said in his droll way, ‘But Taz, you think women are the cause of every problem and the solution of none.’

‘True enough, m’lord, but that’s yer usual female.

Complicators, complainers, sticklers for troublous rules, quenchers of every lark.

But ye know how I rate Miss Corinna; well I ken Miss Gray as fine.

Never seen a rummer rider, better even than ye, m’lord, as she proved.

’ He sneaked a sidelong glance at his master’s stony profile.

‘Now you really are speaking out of turn, Taz. Don’t try my patience.’

Taz laughed at the rebuke. The horses had quickened their pace as they approached Brook Street and home. In a throwaway manner he said, ‘Anyhow, guv, I think ye should do summat about ’er.’

‘Well, thank you, Taz, for your unsolicited advice. I think you should stick to horses where your instincts and skills are unrivalled and leave matters of my heart to me.’

Taz drew the horses to a halt outside the Purfoy mansion and leapt down to take their heads. He watched his master with knowing eyes. By his weary mien he knew his words had hit their mark.

Raven Purfoy entered his house. A single candelabrum burned in the hall.

It was two o’clock in the morning and everyone had gone to bed except for his valet, John.

This young man rose sleepily from the chair in the hall to greet his master and taking up the candlestick, lighted the way to his bedchamber.

Lord Purfoy had been distinctly out of sorts, as Taz had said, but now he felt even more disturbed.

Why was everyone so keen on his marrying this wild young woman who had alighted in their lives from nowhere, and so disrupted his?

John pulled off Lord Purfoy’s boots while he sat on the edge of the bed, then divested his master of his pantaloons and whisked off his shirt.

His lordship walked through to the dressing room and had a quick wash in the water that remained in the pitcher brought up that morning.

He felt his spirits temporarily lift with the astringent chill.

‘Thank you, John. You need your sleep, as do I.’ He dismissed his valet and walked through to his great four-poster bed dominating the middle of the room.

There he lay, unable to sleep. It was entirely due to his reckless driving that Miss Gray’s fate had collided with his own, never to be entirely disentangled.

He was alarmed at the emotional turmoil he felt, this longing for her presence, the soft gaze of those extraordinary eyes settling on his face, his hunger for her touch.

He was familiar and at ease with the appetites of the body but had long armoured himself against the snares of love.

Miss Gray, however, had arrived like a thunderbolt that prised open the iron palisades of his soul.

She had stolen in and settled there, embedded in his heart.

He could not bear this old vulnerability of spirit, his whole being hostage to another.

The spectre of the death of his sister rose in the dark to torment him.

Once more, guilt and despair threatened to eclipse all hope, all comfort, lost as he had been in the labyrinth of grief.

Eliza’s current favourite reading matter, The Corsair, came to mind:

In helpless – hopeless – brokenness of heart.

How well that captured the powerlessness of love, an emotion he never wished to endure again. Now he could only return to the regulated constraints of the time before Miss Gray, to regain control of his life, to steady the ship, to muffle the insistent pulse of his heart.

Lord Purfoy blew out the candles and sank back into his feather bed. He knew sleep would erase the trials of the day, but then replace them with the strange phantasms of dreams, and his dreams were full of her.

* * *

The morning sun had evaded all attempts to keep it out and had slipped through a gap in the curtains, as persistent as love itself, illuminating all in its path with its spangled light.

Raven Purfoy awoke in a drowsing half-sleep, still entrapped in the cobwebs of his dream.

Miss Gray was in his arms. He knew not how or where but could smell her skin, her hair and feel her soft breasts pressed against his chest. She seemed to be floating with him through space with only the moon and stars for company.

His conscious self was still sleeping and he luxuriated in his sense of the rightness of things; this was where he belonged, where she belonged – through the chaos of his doubt she burned a constant flame that lighted his path.

Then, with growing wakefulness, the sorrows that darkness hid began to surface.

With a plunge of spirit Raven sat up in bed.

He needed company. This melancholic version of himself was so far from the heroic Corinthian he liked to project; he could not countenance the vulnerability that accompanied desire, need or fear of loss.

For this reason alone, Miss Gray had to be banished from his life, eradicated from his thoughts.

Without even bothering to put on a gown he strode naked to the door and bellowed, ‘John!’

Within an hour, Lord Purfoy, immaculately shaven, dressed, cravat tied and booted in the shiniest Hessians, had strolled into the Wolfes’ breakfast room next door.

His friends were as late rising as he and he was gratified to see Ferdy Shilton’s angelic face somewhat blurred with sleep.

Alick, always so calm and authoritative, was carving a leg of gammon and laughing at some comment about the previous night’s play.

Life for Lord Purfoy suddenly seemed to have slotted back into place.

He hailed his friends, took a cup of coffee and picked up The Sporting Magazine , as he always did.

But the exploits in the field no longer amused him.

He read on, looking for something diverting in the reports of games and gambling bets and exploits of gentlemen of the hunt or shooting range.

Stories of duels bored him and the fixtures for the illegal boxing matches out of Town barely elicited a ripple of anticipation.

He sighed as the paper fell from his listless fingers.

‘What’s up, Rav? You look a little devil-tossed to me.

’ Ferdinand Shilton’s mood never seemed to change from one of sunny optimism that warmed all in his orbit; he was a gilded youth indeed, gifted by nature with the most fair, blue-eyed beauty and by family, one of the great fortunes based on coal and land.

Adored from the cradle, how could he not exude charm and generosity of spirit?

Nothing grievous had ever happened to him and probably never would.

‘I haven’t been sleeping well these last weeks.’ Raven Purfoy was disinclined to be more specific about his distemper of mind.

Alick looked up and said, ‘Corinna’s been having the same broken nights. Now that the baby’s grown so big, she can’t get comfortable.’

‘Well I assure you, that’s not my problem.’ They all laughed. Then Lord Purfoy asked, ‘Where is she?’

‘In her studio. She’s finishing a portrait of some dandy. Some vain fool, but he’s paying her a vast fee.’

‘Would she mind my interrupting her?’

‘I think she’d be glad of the diversion.’ Alick smiled, more than willing to share with his friends his own good fortune in having such a wife.

Raven Purfoy knocked on the studio door and hearing Corinna’s voice, entered.

The room was lit with a hazy light filtered through the great copper beech tree in the garden.

On her easel was a three-quarter length portrait of a smug young man.

She looked up, paint on her apron and a smudge across her nose.

‘Oh Rav! I’m so pleased to see you. I’m struggling with his hands.

Can you come and stand just there.’ She pointed to a place on the other side of the north-facing window.

‘Now splay your right hand fingers on your left arm. Perfect.’

Raven stood there with this unnatural pose as she squinted at his hands and dabbed paint on the canvas. ‘I need your advice, Cory.’ He was surprised that he had said the words.

‘Of course. Just let me get this finger right first. Yours are much more elegant than his, but perhaps he’ll be pleased to have your beautiful hands rather than his bunches of sausages.’ She laughed as she added the last brush-stroke of paint. ‘Right, the hand’s done. You can now relax and talk.’

Lord Purfoy subsided into the chair and crossed his legs, staring towards the window in abstracted thought. Corinna was watching him with an amused expression. ‘You know, Rav, you really are almost indecently handsome. If only you’d smile a little. It so elevates the mood.’

He turned his eyes to meet hers and smiled. ‘My dear Cory, if I were married to you, I’d be smiling all the time.’