She hesitated for only a heartbeat. “I could help, if you like. I used to help my parents with their accounts.”

He held her gaze but she could read nothing in his eyes. Then his lips compressed, and he shook his head and rose. “No. It’ll be easier if I do them.”

She plastered on a bright smile-too bright, too brittle. “Well!” Pushing away from the table, she rose and led the way from the room. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

He hesitated, then followed her out.


If she wasn’t allowed to help with the estate’s affairs, she would go and talk with his mother. Who would probably wheedle the whole story from her and then commiserate, which would make her feel better and more able to shrug the incident aside.

It was early days yet; Lady Elizabeth and Henni had warned her she’d need to be patient.

Patience was not her strong suit.

“What a dolt! He hates arithmetic-always did,” was Henni’s opinion.

“Actually, I think it’s encouraging.” Lady Elizabeth looked at Francesca. “He thought about it, you say?”

“For all of one second.” Arms tightly crossed, Francesca paced the Dower House parlor. The walk through the park had invigorated her, and awoken her mind to a different tack. When it came to contributing to their shared lives, she had numerous options, after all. “Tell me about the family. The Rawlingses.” Stopping by an armchair, she sank into it. “From all I gathered over the wedding, the clan, as it were, seems fragmented.”

Henni snorted. “Fractured’s more like it.” She considered then added, “Mind you, there’s no real reason that’s so. It just happened through the years.”

“People drift apart,” Lady Elizabeth said.

“If no effort is made to hold them together.”

Lady Elizabeth eyed her shrewdly. “Just what do you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure. I need to know more, first, but I am, after all, the…” She searched for the word. “Matriarch, am I not? If Gyles is the head of the family and I’m his countess, then it falls to me to draw the family together. Doesn’t it?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard it put so directly, but yes.” Henni nodded. “If you want to expend the effort, that is. I have to tell you it won’t be easy. The Rawlingses have always been a fiercely independent lot.”

Francesca studied Henni, then smiled. “The men, perhaps, and the women, too, to some degree. But women are wise enough to know what strength lies in banding together, no?”

Lady Elizabeth laughed. “My dear, if you’re willing to supply the energy, we’ll be happy to supply the knowledge. What say you, Henni?”

“Oh, I’m all for it,” Henni averred. “It’s just that I’ve spent years in the company of male Rawlingses, so the family’s disjunction seems normal. But you’re quite right. We’d all be better off if we knew each other better. Why, we barely know all the names!”

“No, indeed! Do you remember that dreadful Egbert Rawlings who married that little slip of a thing-what was her name?”

Francesca listened as Lady Elizabeth and Henni climbed about the family tree, pointing to this limb, then that.

“There’s a partial family tree in the old Bible in the library,” Lady Elizabeth said when, exhausted, they finally sat sipping tea. “Just the principal line but it’ll give you-and us-a place to start.”

“I’ll find it and make a copy.” Placing her empty cup on the tray, Francesca stood. “I’d better get back. It’s cold once the sun goes down.”

She kissed their cheeks and left them, knowing they’d spend the next hour speculating on all she hadn’t said. Setting that and the sprawling Rawlingses aside, she gave herself up to the simple pleasure of walking through the great park with the sun slanting through the trees, lighting drifts of leaves and sending the scent of autumn rising through the still air.

It was quiet and peaceful. Free, her mind wandered-to that other treed place she’d loved, the New Forest. From there, it was a hop and a skip to Rawlings Hall, to those living there. To Franni. Her own not-quite-happy state pricked and prodded, pushing her to consider how to reassure herself that Franni hadn’t been hurt by the events leading to her marriage.

The solution, when she thought of it, was so simple.


He saw her walking through the golden splendor of the trees, through his park, coming home to him. The urge to go to her, to meet her and draw her to him was so strong, he felt it like a tug.

She’d gone to the Dower House. He’d been pacing by the windows for the last half hour, knowing she’d return soon, knowing from which direction. He’d been trying to concentrate on his ledgers all afternoon, telling himself it would have been worse if he’d let her help. Yet she’d still inhabited his mind, flirting like a ghost in the dim corners, waiting to lure him into daydreams at the first lapse in his determination.

The ledgers were only half-done. He glanced at them, lying open on his desk.

Determination be damned-he had to get out. Stretch his legs, draw the crisp air into his lungs.

He passed Wallace in the hall. “If Gallagher calls, I’ve left the estimates on my desk.”

“Very good, sir.”

On the porch, he paused, searched-and spotted her climbing over the stile into the orchard. Descending the steps, he strode for the gap in the low stone wall that separated the Italian garden from the acre filled with old fruit trees. Most were laden with ripening fruit. The heady scents wreathed about him as he walked beneath the groaning branches.

The sun was low in the sky, its light golden. Francesca stood in one beam, surrounded by a nimbus of shimmering light. No angel but a goddess-an Aphrodite come to tame him. Her head was tilted back; she was looking up. He slowed, then realized she was talking to someone in a tree.

Edwards. Spotting his head gardener perched on a branch and wielding a saw, Gyles halted.

Francesca saw him-she glanced his way, then Edwards said something and she looked back at the tree.

Gyles walked nearer, but kept at Edwards’s back. If Francesca was working her wiles on the old codger, he didn’t want to be appealed to for help. Finding Edwards in the orchard was no surprise-the orchard contained trees. In all the years he’d been head gardener, getting him to acknowledge the existence of plant life smaller than a sapling had defeated Gyles, his mother, and even Wallace. If Francesca had any chance of succeeding, Gyles had no intention of queering her pitch.

He waited while she listened to a gruff explantion of why that particular limb in that particular tree needed to come off. Listened to her laugh, smile, cajole, and finally get Edwards’s grudging agreement to consider the state of the flower beds before the forecourt.

The flower beds before the forecourt were empty, had been for as long as Gyles could recall. They resembled miniature barrows, mounds covering the dead remains.

Gyles shifted, impatience growing as Edwards began another long ramble. Francesca glanced his way, then looked up at Edwards-a minute later, she smiled, waved to Edwards, and started toward him.

About time, said his mind. At last, said his senses.

“I’m sorry.” Smiling, she joined him. “He’s very long-winded.”

“I know. He relies on the fact to drive off anyone thinking to give him instructions.”

She looped her arm through his. “Have you finished inside?” She looked down, shaking leaves from her hem.

“I was just out for a walk, to get some air.” He hesitated. “Have you been to the folly?”

She lifted her head. “I didn’t know there was one.”

“Come. I’ll show you.”

He turned her toward the river, the man within ridiculously pleased to see her eyes light with the expectation of pleasure, with anticipation over spending time with him.

“Before I forget.” She glanced briefly at his face. “I wanted to ask if you would mind if I invited Charles and Ester, and Franni, too, for a visit?”

Francesca looked down as she descended the steps to a flagged walk above the river, grateful for the support of Gyles’s hand and the fact he was watching her steps, rather than her face.

“For how long?”

His tone suggested he didn’t really care.

“A week. Perhaps a little longer.”

It was the obvious solution to her worry over Franni. She would write to Charles and insist he read her invitation to Franni. She would make it clear that if Franni didn’t wish to come, she’d understand.

And she would. Franni had enjoyed traveling in the coach. The only reason she’d refuse another journey would be if she had indeed been upset by Gyles marrying Francesca, having imagined that he was interested in her.

“I thought I’d write tomorrow, then they could come up in a few weeks.”

Gyles considered, then nodded. “If you wish.”

He didn’t wish, but voicing his reasons for wanting to keep her to himself, keeping others at bay, was beyond him. And the last thing he wanted was to disturb the moment, having successfully escaped to spend some time alone with her, away from the house, away from his responsibilities, and hers, away from their servants and all other interested eyes.

Time alone with her had become precious.

“This way.” He turned her sharply, to where another path joined the one they’d been following.

“Good heavens! I would have walked right past and not known this path was here.”

“It was created like that. The folly’s hidden, very private.”

They descended a series of steps traversing the bluff. The stone steps were clear of leaves courtesy of the army of undergardeners, all more attuned to their noble employer’s wishes than Edwards. The path led to a wide ledge jutting out from the bluff, much closer to the river than the top of the bluff yet still well above the flood line.