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Anne had won these two young men over completely.

And why shouldn’t she? She’d been bred to be a gentleman’s match.

He saw it in the smooth grace of her manner, the conscious economy of her movements, the straight bearing in her shoulders and the modulation of her voice.

Women who followed men who followed the drum were loud and bald about the expression of their feelings and desires; women who serviced sailors on leave didn’t mince their ways either. Anne was cast of a different mold.

“Promised to your brother, I heard?” Allard asked, so casually that at first Hew almost missed his remark. He lifted his hands when Hew swung on him with surprise. “Thought your mother told mine.”

An unseen hand clamped around Hew’s windpipe. “Did she say? Tonight?”

This was Calvin’s world. Calvin knew how to hunt like a gentleman, shoot like a gentleman, dance and flatter a lady as a gentleman did.

Hew was rough-edged and scarred in mind and body, accustomed to employment, activity, danger.

These gentlemen standing with him were the matches Anne Sutton was meant for. Not Hew.

Hew’s hands sweated in his gloves, aching for action. He could not give her up to one of these men. Not now that he had tasted her.

“Heard different from her brother. Said the lady don’t consider herself bound to Calvin.

” John Jones strolled up to them with his pampered, arrogant air.

His blue evening coat sported a high velvet collar, his neckcloth was an artful rumple of chalk-white linen, and his hair piled thickly across his brow.

His dark eyes, and his lips, held a smirk. “Sutton said his sister’s been making sheep’s eyes at you instead, Vaughn.”

“Sutton said that?” Hew’s voice came out hoarse, strained by the sudden lack of air. A red-black haze darkened the edge of his vision. That this jackanapes should even say Anne’s name.

Jones wouldn’t have a single scar on his body beyond the badge of a childhood prank. His easy, elegant grace said he didn’t. His back wasn’t a mass of scars he wore like a hair shirt beneath his fashionably cut coat. He was the one who wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails; he didn’t bear the marks.

Allard and Hawkins wore the look of men who’d been forced out of duties to stand in line and watch one of their fellows stripped for the whipping, a lesson and a warning to all of them. Green around the gills at the thought of carnage, but unable to look away.

“As much as hinted you were playing a game of beggar-my-neighbor. Or you’re the sort of brothers who share and share alike?” Jones wore a thin, malicious smile. “Interesting chap, that Sutton. Full of ideas.”

Daron was spreading tales about Anne. His own sister. What did he mean to accomplish, other than ruin and discredit her?

Lady Vaughn called for music and ordered the footmen to set out chairs before the spinet and the Welsh harp. With a nod of her pointed chin, she tried to direct Hew to take one of the front seats. Put him front row to the charms of the other woman, as if he weren’t bound to Anne.

Hew shook his head. Anne wanted to be free of him.

But he didn’t want to let her go. That night, when she’d come to him as pure and clean as a moonflower touched with dew, he’d looked ahead and saw a dream of a future where she came to him willingly, smiles on her lips and a flush on her cheeks and her hands reaching for him.

A future where she chose him. Wanted him.

But then he’d sprung his trap. She would never trust him now.

Daron Sutton didn’t take a seat, either. He leaned against a chaise that had been pushed to the side of the room. He took out his watch and studied the face as if he had better things to do with his time and was only here, a guest of the Vaughns, lodging and dining at Greenfield, on sufferance.

What did it gain Daron Sutton to poison opinions about Anne?

Unless he wanted to make it impossible that Hew could claim her. Unless he wanted to leave her nothing but Calvin, in line with whatever devil’s bargain her brother had made with Hew’s. The very bargain Anne had sought to escape by turning to Hew.

A man who stole his brother’s bride was the worst sort of rascal. Little wonder his mother didn’t want to allow the idea, much less condone a change in Anne’s affections.

But a man who let a beautiful, vulnerable woman fall into the clutches of a rake who wouldn’t value her—what was the name for a man who allowed that?

Margaret Griffith seated herself at the spinet and began the musical entertainments with a sepulchral rendition of “Tom Bowling,” the lament for a sailor lost at sea. The prickle rose beneath his Hew’s collar.

The sentiment of this song made him furious.

Of course death was a glorious rest when one’s life was rope burns and splinters, sea spray crusting the skin, rum and hardtack rotting the innards.

He doubted any tar who’d been impressed into service for poor pay and bad rations, flogged for the slightest infraction, then discharged with no pension when sick or wounded would be remembered for singing mirthful tunes.

Miss Griffith wrung every note of pathos she could, and Mrs. Griffith dabbed her handkerchief at one eye as the last notes hung in the room.

Anne listened with still attention, head slightly bent, hands folded in her lap.

The veil of her hairpiece floated on a draft of air each time someone near her shifted, revealing the white nape of her neck, delicate and tender.

Hew knew the soft skin would smell of meadow flowers. He longed to press a kiss there.

May Powell, not to be outdone, followed with “A Soldier’s Adieu,” a Dibdin tune Hew recognized and had no doubt was meant for him.

Miss Powell had a pretty voice and sang with a slightly melancholy air, accompanying herself creditably on the spinet.

When she finished, her eyes sought Hew’s, and she blushed a dog-rose pink.

Hew suddenly regretted that he’d never had a sister, a friendly and confiding sort of sister, an ally who could offer insight into the inscrutable world of women.

Silence fell as Miss Powell returned to her seat, and Lady Vaughn pointedly did not look at Anne. But Anne rose anyway, her tunic fluttering lightly. She moved toward the spinet, head held high as if she were gliding over water, and settled herself on the bench.

She poised her fingers over the ivory keys, and Hew held his breath.

Then a bright, fast, merry tune spilled from her fingertips, and she broke into the raucous, rousing “The Pedlar,” another Dibdin tune.

She sang with a broad, rough accent, as if she were a traveling man indeed, and instead of singing “Christmas comes but once a year,” she put in “sweethearts come but once a year,” like any merry damsel who was accustomed to men bidding for her hand.

Hew worked to hold in laughter. It was a near thing, given the appalled expression on his mother’s face, and the shades of amusement, puzzlement, and horror ranging over the faces of the matrons as Anne sang of nymphs and shepherds wooing their loves, love-powders that could make any woman a Venus, and taking pleasure’s key to open scenes delicious.

She ended with a resounding flourish, and the reedy tones of the spinet echoed through the drawing room as she drew back her hands.

“La,” said Lady Vaughn, “that was certainly lively. Miss Griffith, would you play for us again?”

Margaret Griffith came forward with an expression that said she had no notion how to follow Anne’s display.

She dithered over sheet music, then resolved on “Robin Adair,” a popular Irish tune that could not fail to please, being so familiar.

She wouldn’t try to outdo Anne; she would, instead, make her feel out of place.

Hew observed the faces of the company. The other young men regarded Miss Griffith with polite interest. John Jones watched Anne, his gaze boring into the back of her head as if he were studying each coil of her styled hair, or attempting to see into the thoughts behind her calm, inscrutable facade.

Daron Sutton circled the room, a silver flask in his hand. The swagger of his gait told Hew the man had been drinking steadily since dinner, if not before, and was more than top-heavy. He stood next to Jones and they whispered back and forth for a time.

Then Jones shifted his gaze from Anne, to Hew, back to Anne. And sneered.

The back of Hew’s neck prickled in warning. These two were up to mischief. He’d place money on it, and he was not a gambling man.

Succeeding in her turn to the burden of impressing the company with her musical accomplishments and ladylike grace, May Powell placed herself again at the spinet.

This time she furnished another popular, familiar Irish air, “Eileen Aroon.” She gave the song a wistful quality at odds with the admiring sentiments of the lyrics.

Her chaperone’s face took on a faraway look, but Lady Vaughn nodded with each measure, smiling with approval.

She would wish a wife like May Powell for Hew, he didn’t doubt.

When May abandoned the spinet, Anne rose again, though their hostess had expressed no invitation. Hew held his breath in anticipation.

She went to the tall Welsh harp standing beside the spinet and seated herself, pulling the instrument against her left shoulder. The melody she began was simple but rippling with melancholy. And then she began to sing.

Hew supposed it was an Italian aria from some opera he didn’t know.

He didn’t care. His chest broke open, his heart beating painfully open to the air.

She was a gorgeous mezzosoprano, her voice rich and velvety, and her voice filled the room, swelling and falling with perfect modulation and control, emotion spilling from every note.