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Pembroke tapped Drew’s arm. ‘We are here, Framlington.’

Drew must have fallen asleep.

He straightened up, both feet settling on the floor, his heart thumping as hope breathed heavily inside him.

The carriage raced along a broad avenue, and as the avenue swung to the right Drew caught his first glimpse of Pembroke Place. The Palladian property sat like a beast on a ridge in the landscape, dominating the land about it.

He knew Pembroke was wealthy but he had not imagined this. Drew had housed Mary in a two-room apartment in St James. He would lay odds on the fact her bedchamber here was the size of his whole apartment.

The horses’ hooves and the carriage wheels crunched in the gravel as the carriage stopped in front of the ostentatious mansion. A broad portico, with long shallow steps and tall stone columns, fronted the property. A set of doors suitable for giants opened inwards.

Drew’s stomach dropped and his heartbeat became erratic.

A dozen men in Pembroke’s livery hurried towards the carriage. They must have seen the carriage coming from a distance.

A flutter of pink muslin caught his eye. Mary had run from the house.

‘Mary.’ He opened the door before a footman could and jumped down without the step.

She raced down the shallow steps, decorum forgotten.

He raced to her too, met her midway and as she flung her arms about his neck with a fierce cry of joy, he hugged her middle and lifted her off the ground. He hugged her hard, with relief. He thought he would never hold her again. His cheek pressed against her hair as the embrace of her arms wrapped about his soul too, and her head rested on his shoulder.

‘I am sorry,’ she said.

She had lost weight, he could feel her spine and her ribs beneath her gown.

His fingers splayed in her hair. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. I am sorry. I could not bear for you to see the real me. I thought you must hate me. That you could never love me. I pushed you away to avoid the pain of you choosing to leave me. I regret it.’ He pressed a kiss on the crown of her hair.

She stepped back, her arms lowering. There were tears on her cheeks.

He smiled as tears clouded his vision too.

‘You are not hurt,’ she said. She ran her hands across his chest, as though she could see through his waistcoat, looking for wounds.

‘No.’ His fingers lifted her chin, raising her gaze to his face. ‘Mary, I am fine. No holes.’ He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. Then smiled as her fingers wiped his cheeks dry. ‘I have been an ass. Caro told me so too.’

He held Mary again, absorbing the scent of her, and pressed another kiss on her hair. Then he met Pembroke’s gaze.

Pembroke stood a few feet away, watching with that hint of a smile.

Drew took a deep breath. It would not be easy to let her family see who he really was. It would make him vulnerable. Yet, he had to. Mary’s family were important to her and she was important to him, he had to trust in that.

They were devoted to Mary, and so was he. If she loved and trusted these people with her life and happiness, it would be crass of him not to trust them too.

He left one arm about her shoulders and nodded at Pembroke as they walked towards the house, ignoring the discomfort flooding his veins.

The Duchess slipped an arm about Pembroke’s midriff, and they walked together too.

‘Shall we stay outside for a while and talk?’ Mary said.

‘If that is what you want to do, sweetheart.’

‘Dinner will be served at six. You do not need to dress. It is just the four of us,’ the Duchess advised.

Mary lifted Drew’s hat off his head and held it out. ‘Please take this and Lord Framlington’s gloves inside,’ she said to a servant.

Smiling, Drew pulled off his gloves and handed them over.

‘Let us walk to the lake.’ She caught his hand and pulled him onwards, leaving the Pembrokes and their multitude of servants behind.

‘Is this where you grew up?’ he asked.

‘No, my father has an estate, but it is nothing like this. Papa’s property is a small manor house with farmland. We used to come here once or twice a year to stay when grandfather was alive, but never for long because Papa and Mama didn’t like him very much. But since John has owned Pembroke Place, we come often. I love the grounds. In the summer when all the family are here it is fun.

‘How is your sister?’ she asked.

He had doubted her belief in him from the moment Marlow had found them at the inn; thought her incapable of loving the damaged man he was. Yet when rumour had him at his lowest – incestuous – without any moral fibre at all, Mary believed him innocent.

Drew glanced back, looking at the house. Pembroke and his staff had gone.

He stopped walking, tugging their joined hands and smiling as he pulled her closer. Then he kissed her. A long deep kiss, weighted with feeling, love gripping at his heart.

When he ended it, a wide smile parted her lips.

He walked on, her hand in his. ‘Caro is shaken and afraid. It took an enormous amount of courage for her to leave. It will take her considerable time, I think, to feel safe and settled. She is scared Kilbride will find her. If he ever did, I would be frightened for her. He beat her on the last occasion, because she miscarried his child.’

‘Where is she?’

‘If I tell you, it puts you in danger. Kilbride’s cronies might hurt you for the information.’

‘You think I would tell…’ She looked hurt.

‘No, Mary. But I do not want to endanger you any more than I would risk him finding Caro. But if you must know, she is not far from here.’

‘I would like to meet her.’

‘Not any time soon, sweetheart. I am not going near her for a long while, just to be safe. Kilbride is like your brother, he has money and men everywhere.’

For a moment the only sounds were the swishes of the long blades of grass giving way beneath their feet as they walked on.

The hill flowed down to an ornamental lake in the distance.

‘I am sorry,’ Mary said. ‘I overheard you talking to Lord Brooke. I thought you had a mistress. You were not coming to bed and…’

Drew did not care to think of the agony she must have felt. ‘I responded ridiculously to your dance with Peter, and there you were thinking I had done far worse.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘The Duchess told me what you heard and what your aunt said. I do not blame you for thinking it, I should have told you.’

‘You were not talking to me then.’

‘No, as I said. I was an ass.’

‘You are friends with Peter again…’

‘He came that night, he knows my tendency to sulk and stew, he gave me time to get over it. Your sister-in-law found me at Peter’s.’

His fingers wove between hers as they walked on.

The heads of clover they disturbed among the grass sent sweet perfume into the air.

When they reached the lake, they walked along the shore a little way.

The water was as still as glass, a mirror reflecting the summer sky, until a pair of swans with trailing signets glided across it, sending out fans of ripples on the surface.

‘I feel like I have walked from a nightmare into a dream.’ He looked at Mary. ‘Did I fall asleep at Peter’s?’

She lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss on the back of his. ‘I am real.’

Drew remembered their last morning with painful guilt. ‘Why did you let me make love to you that morning? I thought…’ A lump constricted his throat at the memory. He coughed and began again. ‘I thought you forgave me. Then… I did not like myself when I found you gone. I dreaded that… Did you feel forced ? ’ His fingers touched her cheek. ‘You broke my heart.’

‘My heart broke too.’ Her fingers slipped from his and she walked ahead of him. ‘I love you; just one last time I wanted to pretend you loved me too.’

‘You stupid girl.’ He rushed her, to break the melancholy, grasping her from behind, trapping her in his arms and lifting her off her feet. ‘If I am an ass, you are a fool. I was not pretending. I adore you, woman. You may get that into your silly head, if you please.’

She was laughing breathlessly when he set her down.

‘Let us sit for a while,’ he suggested.

While he unbuttoned his morning coat and shrugged it off, she picked a single buttercup and spun the stem between her fingers. He lay his coat on the ground for her to sit on, ignoring the fact he had no valet to repair any damage.

She swept her dress beneath her and sat among the long grass. If he was a painter, he would paint her portrait just like this.

Drew lay down, stretching out beside her, on his side, his head supported on his palm. The nonchalant pose denied the raging melee of emotions in his chest.

‘Why did you act so differently towards me after we visited your parents?’ she asked, as she looked at the lake.

His view was her profile, against the blue sky. ‘My parents are an untouchable subject. Peter will tell you not to converse on it.’

She looked at him. ‘Andrew…?’

‘Mary.’ He broke off a stem of long grass and brushed the tip across her nose. She made a face which said, tell me .

‘So, you insist I go there even though I said I hate the subject.’

Her arms wrapped about her knees, her vulnerability showing through, the buttercup bobbing in her hand. ‘Are we going to argue, when we have only just been reunited? If you tell me, I will not need to ask again.’

‘If you meet Caro, she will tell you about our parents.’ Emotionally naked, he took her left hand from its grip about her knees and held it up between them. His thumb pushed up the third finger that bore his ring, with the little leather cord wrapped about it to hold it in place. ‘You asked about this, and I told you T R, whoever he is, is my father. Caro and I are products of my mother’s peccadillos. Moments she would like to pretend never occurred. However, when wailing children arrive nine months later, they are rather hard to hide. I suppose I should be glad the Marquis named me Framlington and did not leave me in a basket to die somewhere. But when I said I was an evil bastard, I truly am. Sins of the parents and all that.’

‘Do not?—’

‘It is understandable,’ he stopped her protest, ‘that the Marquis hates me. What I have never been able to accept is that my mother hates me with equal wrath. I am a constant reminder of her shame, an embarrassment, nothing more, as is Caro. Their manner of resolving the issue is to ignore our existence.’

‘I am sorry.’ Mary unravelled from her self-protective pose.

‘Why? It is not your fault, and I did not ask for your pity.’

She lay down beside him, mimicking his posture, her head on one palm as her free hand settled at his waist.

He closed his eyelids. ‘If I see pity in your eyes, you will make me intensely angry again.’

‘What about love? Can I look at you with love? It is not pity I am offering, it is love. If you are hurting, I hurt. I care. Is care allowed?’

Opening one eye, Drew gave her a crooked smile. Her eyes shone with concern, but mirth caught there too.

He opened his other eye and she laughed.

‘Very well, I will accept care and raise it. I admit, I want to hate her, and I tell myself I hate her, and the rest of them – but I still desperately want to belong among them – and now you know I am not an evil bastard but a bitter unwanted child.’

‘Not unwanted.’

Damn it. Her eyes glittered with pity. It pricked like a thorn in his side.

No. It is care. Someone cares for me. Warmth not anger stirred in his chest.

Mary threw away her buttercup and wrapped her hand about his, the one that still held the strand of grass. ‘You are wanted.’ She kissed the corner of his lips, then rolled onto her back and looked up at the sky.

She was so beautiful. He brushed the tip of the grass about her cheek and down her neck. ‘But not by them; it is a hard lesson, well learned. I steel myself by saying I do not give a damn for their opinion, or anyone else’s for that matter. But then I met you and I care for yours. You wished to meet them and for some ridiculous reason I thought perhaps, just perhaps, my mother would like you and be proud of me. I should not have taken you there.’

‘You should have told me why you did not want to go. Had you said, I would not have persisted. The moment we walked in the door I knew it was wrong. But how could I have imagined that?—’

‘When your family all adore you.’ He grazed the tip of the grass along the skin above her bodice. ‘The Pembroke lions prowl and protect, preventing scandal or harm attacking their pride. Did you realise your womenfolk have been waging a subtle war against me, while your menfolk scowl?’

She smiled. ‘You do not expect me to pity you for that, I hope? You chose to take them on.’

‘And I have had my money’s worth.’

‘My money. And you chose to fight. Instead of making friends with them, you made them enemies.’

He dipped the tip of the grass into her cleavage, smiling. Pink stained her skin from her bodice upward. She was modest even now. A Pembroke to the heart. She would never cuckold him.

‘Old habits die hard, darling. I do not trust people, especially families. I am judged by my birth and if the issue is their ignorance, why should I defend myself?’

‘So now we are at the crux.’ Her gaze gripped his. ‘You do not like to be rejected, but you say you do not care and try to mask it.’

Drew threw away the piece of grass and instead picked a head of clover. ‘I made up my mind, the afternoon you were ill and I saw how much I hurt you, that I was going to declare my love for you in your brother’s drawing room.’

She laughed. ‘Then, if they did not believe you, you would have told them all to go to hell.’

Drew laughed too. ‘I suppose so…’ He smiled wryly.

‘Then my father would have told you to go to hell.’

‘Careful, if you get a taste for foul language I will divorce you. You may like your men spirited. I like my women staid.’ His gaze fell to the smile hovering on her lips as he placed the stem of the clover into her bodice and left the flower there. ‘I do love you.’

When his gaze met hers, her emotions shone vividly for him to read, I love you more than anything. How long had he not seen that and hurt her regardless?

His hand cupped her breast over her bodice and he kissed her.

Her tongue played with his as her fingers combed into his hair.

He longed to lift her dress and take her here in the long grass. But this was about building better foundations for them – they had never had a problem with their physical bond.

He ended the kiss, his mouth hovering just over hers. ‘I will be different now.’