With a sag of his shoulders, he looked away, not wanting her to see the grief in his eyes. “It was Stephen’s burden to bear, not mine.”
“Your brother never considered it a burden. He saw it as his heritage.”
“I’m a soldier.” He shook his head. “This life was not meant for me.”
“But it is your life now. Dear boy, you can spend all your time trying to convince yourself that you are still an army colonel, but you are not.” A deep sigh escaped her, not of pity or mourning, but one borne of a wish that he could accept his new place as she had. “And you will never be just Edward.”
With a soft kiss to his cheek, she left the room.
For several moments, Edward simply stared after her, unable to gather enough emotion inside him to be angry or hurt at her words. But he felt nothing. He leaned a tired arm across the mantel, too apathetic even to refill his glass and drink himself into oblivion.
As the second son, he was raised to make his own way in the world, and he had gladly done just that by purchasing an officer’s commission when he finished university. On the battlefield, it mattered nothing that his family was one of the most powerful in England. What signified was character. His ability to carry out orders with an unfailing dedication to his men set him apart. And he excelled at it, earning himself four field promotions.
Then, in a cruel twist, fate stripped away all he’d worked so hard to achieve. The moment he inherited, his life as Colonel Westover disappeared, as if he had also died that day in the carriage accident that killed his brother and sister-in-law. He had been forced to step into his brother’s life and carry on. As if his own existence up to that point hadn’t mattered.
Legally, he was now Duke of Strathmore with titles and properties scattered across England, but he deserved none of it. By rights, he should still be fighting on the Continent, and Stephen should still be alive.
With Jane.
Even now, his chest tightened at the thought of her. The night Edward met her, when she’d entered the ballroom for her debut, he’d been mesmerized. With her dark hair and brown eyes, she wasn’t a typical English beauty, but she had a vitality that drew him, a charm that the stiff rules of English society hadn’t yet forced from her. He’d somehow managed to secure a waltz, and by the time the orchestra sent up its final flourishes and he whirled her to a stop, laughing in his arms, he was lost, despite knowing she wasn’t meant for him.
The daughter of an earl, she was born to be the wife of a peer, and her future—and choice in husbands—had never been her own. And in truth, she’d never made any commitment to him.
Still, he pursued her in that reckless manner he possessed when he was younger, with the devil and his consequences both be damned. But he’d been too young, too inexperienced with women and the world, and far too arrogant to realize there were some things he’d never be able to have. No matter how much he wanted them. And he’d wanted her, not just for an affair but for the rest of his life, yet he never suspected she didn’t share the same desires for a future together. So one warm afternoon as they lay tangled in the sheets of an unused guestroom at Hartsfield Park, he told her he loved her.
His eyes pressed shut against the memory. From ten years away, he could hear the sound of her nervous laughter and stunned voice as clearly as if she were still in the room with him…
Love? At least she’d had the decency to cover her mouth with her hand in apologetic shame as she murmured, Surely, you cannot seriously think that I could ever marry an army officer—oh, Edward, no…Her wide-eyed disbelief melted into a soft expression of pity. I thought you understood…
Apparently, he hadn’t understood at all.
One week after that, he left for war, to put as many miles as possible between them, with no intention of ever returning.
And two months later, his brother Stephen, Duke of Strathmore, announced his engagement. To Jane.
Despite the fires of war and his anger at her betrayal in marrying his brother, it took several years to purge her from his mind. He’d led reckless charges into battle and offered to take the place of men of lesser rank in dangerous missions, not because he had a death wish but simply because he no longer cared what became of him, if he lived or died. Eventually, he purged her from his body, too, with a string of nameless women.
All of this he kept from his brother, who had once been his best friend and closest confidant. At first, he was too ashamed to share with Stephen how he’d fallen for a woman he should have realized all along could never be his. Then, when he learned of the engagement, this second, deeper humiliation by the woman who became his sister-in-law changed everything between the two men, and Edward knew he would never be able to tell him. The confidence they’d shared in each other since they were boys had been irrevocably destroyed, costing him not only his heart but also his brother.
The result, he calculated, was a distinguished military career and an immeasurable distrust of women. He would allow himself to enjoy their flirtations and attentions and gladly take whatever pleasures they willingly gave, but he would never again trust one with his heart.
Then, in an instant, his world ended.
Stephen and Jane had gone to London to celebrate the long-awaited news that she was with child. But drunk and angry from a night losing money at cards, Phillip Benton raced his phaeton through the narrow streets, blindly speeding around a corner and into the oncoming carriage. The two teams collided in a mangle of wood and metal, blood and flesh. Stephen and Jane were cut down in the prime of their lives, while Benton walked away without a scratch.
Edward had been a country away when it happened, oblivious to the horrific and monstrous changes that fate had flung at his family.
The full weight of the Strathmore legacy descended upon him like an avalanche, ripping him from his command and forcing him back to England and into a life he’d never known nor wanted. Overnight, he’d become one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, responsible for estates and all their tenants and employees, bank accounts worth small fortunes, a seat in Parliament, and the private confidences of the Prince Regent himself.
His brother and Jane had been killed, but Edward had been sent to hell.
CHAPTER TWO
Brambly House
Sussex, England
Katherine Benton slowly reached the spoon toward the bowl poised precariously over the lamp, careful not to jostle the contraption as she gently stirred—
“Miss Kate!”
Her hand jerked. A gasp tore from her throat as she helplessly watched the tripod tumble over, smash against the stone floor, and splatter the dish’s contents down the front of her dress in a brown, stinking mess.
“Blast it!” The unladylike curse flew out before she could stop it.
She blew out a frustrated breath, then bent to pick up the pieces of her ruined experiment. Her entire day’s work¸ wasted.
Sunlight slanted through the window into the laboratory she’d created in the old smokehouse where she worked her experiments and mixed her medicines, and as a bonus—usually—where she had a quiet place to work, keep her most important books and notes, and tend to the villagers’ minor wounds. For graver injuries, she went to them, usually on foot because Brutus, the last of the farm’s horses, never moved faster than a spine-jarring walk.
As she reached for the leather-bound journal where she recorded her notes, she wiped away a clinging glob of goop from her forehead.
First attempt unsuccessful, she scratched out, then wiped a glob of brown goop from the page and flicked it onto the floor. Will make second attempt tomorrow under more controlled circumstances.
“Miss, come quick!” Dorrie’s shrill voice pierced the quiet afternoon. The cook, whom Kate kept on at Brambly because she could barely boil water and so couldn’t find employment anyplace else, was better than a church bell when it came to getting attention. “A visitor! An important visitor!”
“Coming.” With a sag of her shoulders, she extinguished the lam
p, closed her journal, and headed across the yard toward the house.
Brambly House was beautiful in the afternoon, especially on early spring days like this when the sunlight shined golden and warm on its walls. Its façade marked five expansions in the past, each a different size, so the house appeared more like a series of interlocking blocks positioned randomly next to each other rather than a house with a planned architectural footprint.
But its asymmetry only added to its charm as far as Kate was concerned. She loved every mismatched inch of it.
It wasn’t only the house that gave her a sense of pride. Brambly’s owners had also earned a respectable reputation over the years as caretakers for the village, and Kate hoped to do the same. The village did not have a doctor; the nearest man who could claim any sort of medical training lived ten miles away in Oxbridge, and she wouldn’t have trusted that incompetent drunkard with a dead cat. So when she’d been just seventeen, she stepped in with her homemade medicines and bandages to do the best she could. It was a calling borne of need, but in it, she’d found a purpose for her life and a deep love of medicine, right down to the tiny bottles in her laboratory that held her most precious mixtures.
Further, the villagers all knew her and trusted her. She’d practically grown up in the village lanes, a child who was more than a handful for Mrs. Elston, the woman who had been hired as her governess when Kate unexpectedly lost her mother when she was only twelve. Likewise, they all knew that Brambly had fallen on uncertain economic times and that she’d done what she could to cut expenses.
But these days, she worried even that might not be enough.
While the land generated revenue, there was never enough to pay for repairs, restock the barnyard, pay the servants’ wages…the expenses never ended. So she fixed the worst of the buildings, kept a handful of animals, and maintained a subsisting, if sparse, existence in the home she loved with the servants who had become her family.
All of it was hers alone to manage. Sometimes, the responsibility worried her into sleepless nights, but she would never part with the farm. She held Brambly in her own right, by special entailment from her maternal grandparents to keep it out of their son-in-law’s hands. Phillip Benton had never won over their hearts the way he’d won their daughter’s. Her grandparents were right to worry, and Kate agreed with their caution. Although it broke her heart to acknowledge it, her father had never been dependable. His selfishness had led to angry arguments and harsh accusations against her mother, and later, when Kate took over the farm, to more hard times and tears than she wanted to admit.
But the problem her grandparents hadn’t foreseen was her mother’s death before Kate could marry and Brambly could come under the protection of her husband.
Because Kate was an unmarried woman, her father held all responsibility for her under the law. So while the land belonged to her, the meager profits it generated belonged to her father, along with the household furnishings, farm tools, and livestock, right down to the last little piggy. Whenever Papa visited, some of it always left with him…ivory candlestick holders, a silver teapot, a keepsake box—all carried back to London and sold. Even now a pang of bitter sadness rushed through her at the thought of all she’d lost since her mother’s death. And along with the anguish came helpless anger that Papa kept putting worthless business schemes above his family’s security.
There had been some awful arguments between them since her mother’s death, in which he’d demanded the property outright, but she’d always refused and always would. Brambly was her home, and she would never part with it.
But she did help him however she could. Oh, Phillip Benton certainly wasn’t a saint, but he was still her father and the only relative she had left, so she couldn’t simply abandon him, even if she rarely saw him. And a part of her still clung to the hope, however small, that someday he would find the right business investment and earn enough money to take care of her and Brambly.
Although—she bit her lip as she thought sadly of the empty larders and barren rooms—if she had to wait much longer, would there be anything left to save?
“Miss Kate!”
She rolled her eyes. “Coming!”
Kate hurried around the garden wall and saw Dorrie waving impatiently from the doorway.
“What is it?” she asked as she stepped inside the house. “Who’s here?”
“In there.” The cook nodded toward the room that had once served as the formal drawing room when her mother had been alive.
“Who?”
“Edward Westover.”
But Kate knew no Westovers, and a quick look around the foyer told her he hadn’t bothered with the formality of presenting either a calling card or a letter of introduction.
Dorrie’s eyes shined. “A duke!”
She caught her breath, surprised and puzzled. Why on earth would a duke come to Brambly?
“The Duke of Strathmore,” Dorrie added with an impressed air, as if the full title made a difference. But Kate wasn’t the kind of person to catch the attention of any peer, for any reason. “He asked specifically for Mrs. Elston, but the ol’ busybody’s gone off t’ the village.”
“Well, then he’ll have to meet with me instead.” Kate reached for the drawing room door. “Let’s not keep His Grace waiting.”
Dorrie shot her a warning look, which Kate promptly brushed away, the same way she’d dismissed the woman’s motherly concerns since she was twelve. Still, she paused for a moment, then threw caution to the wind as she forced a welcoming smile and flung open the door.
The man waiting inside turned toward her, and she froze. Her heart stopped.
Dark eyes landed on her, so dark they reminded her of black velvet, and for a moment, she could only stare back, captured. An unexpected tingle curled down her spine and heated her clear through to her toes. She swallowed. Hard.
This was a duke? Trim and muscular, tall and darkly handsome, with a firm jaw and broad shoulders stretching beneath his jacket…Oh my. Perhaps she’d wrongly underrated dukes.
He frowned, and with horror, she realized she was staring. Dear Lord, she was staring!—and shamelessly.
Before she could tear her gaze away, the careful façade on his face slipped and revealed an expression somewhere between amusement and puzzled surprise. Yet in an instant, the inscrutable mask returned.
“Colonel Edward Westover,” he introduced himself. Then added almost in afterthought, “Duke of Strathmore.”
She gave him a flustered curtsy. “Welcome to Brambly House, Your Grace.”
“Thank you.” He paused, frowning at her. “Are you all right?”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“Are you all right?” he repeated, loudly and slowly. Definitely more impatiently.
“I’m fine.” When his gaze moved to the large, brown splatter across the front of her dress, she realized what he meant. “Oh! I accidentally spilled on myself.”
His frown deepened. “How many times?”
“Just—never mind.” Her cheeks flushed, mortified.
He said nothing, but she could sense the disapproval in him. It was palpable.
Irritation instantly replaced her embarrassment, and she indignantly raised her chin. “My apologies for not being prepared for your unexpected arrival, Your Grace.” She didn’t bother hiding her annoyance. “What brings you to Brambly?”
“Business,” he answered simply.
“Business?” She puzzled at his casual dress of a maroon jacket over a white shirt, tan breeches and matching waistcoat, and worn black boots. He was dressed for a day of riding or hunting, not of conducting business. He wasn’t even wearing a neck cloth, for goodness’ sake! And she certainly couldn’t think of any business that would bring a duke to Brambly.
Then he confused her even more by holding up a doll. “I’m the new guardian of Katherine Benton.”
“What?” she choked. What had he just said?
He stared at her as if she were a bedlamite, then blew o
ut an exasperated breath at having to repeat everything. “I am Miss Benton’s new guardian.”
For a beat, Kate froze in stunned disbelief. Then she laughed, at first the giggles just sputtering from her, then growing until her shoulders shook, her hands trembling so hard she could barely take the doll from his hand.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, checking her laughter. “It’s all just a little…absurd!”
His jaw tightened. “I assure you, Mrs. Elston, my presence here is not absurd.”
“No, you’re correct about that. You are…” Her head tilted curiously as she studied him. “Definitely not someone I would consider absurd.”
Her green eyes swept over him, blatantly scrutinizing the breadth of his shoulders, his chest, which narrowed to a lean waist, the muscular thighs beneath his tan breeches. Wavy, thick black hair accentuated mercilessly dark eyes, so dark they were almost as black as his hair. He was obviously a man used to physical work and outdoor pursuits, nothing at all like the other men of the aristocracy she’d seen, those paunchy fops who flaunted fashion and behaved like spoiled children.
But this one—well, there was nothing soft nor spoiled about this man who filled the room with his presence and wasn’t regal so much as proud, confident…
Dangerous.
She swallowed hard, her earlier amusement evaporating beneath those hard eyes. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.” She held out the doll to return it. “I’m Katherine.”
“You’re Katherine Benton?” His face darkened as he bit out through gritted teeth, “You’re Phillip Benton’s daughter?”
“Yes.” It was her turn to stare as he repeated himself.
“How old are you?” he demanded.
Taken aback by his sudden ire, she wisely decided this wasn’t the time to tell him his question was rude. “Nearly one-and-twenty. And as you can see, I have no need of a guardian.”
Accepting her words as an invitation, his gaze roamed over her, and she shivered, goose bumps forming on her skin everywhere he looked.
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