Matthew took a nip of lovely whisky and passed the flask back. “For the present, at least, I am not suitable company for fashionable beauties, and with one possible exception, there are no beauties who interest me.”

His Highness tucked the flask into an inner pocket of his shooting jacket, shouldered his piece, and sighted down the barrel as they walked along. “Do you know, Mr. Daniels, that though there is war brewing here and there about the realm, and the condition of our cities is a daily disgrace, and the nonsense that goes on at Westminster is without end, the only thing that truly can disturb me is difficulty between me and my wife? She is my exception, and I flatter myself that I am hers. One does well to pay attention to the exceptions.”

“My past—” Matthew fell silent. He wasn’t going to complain, for God’s sake, not to the Prince Consort.

“If she’s truly exceptional, that will not matter—if it even comes up. Would you like to give this gun a try? It’s heavy, but flatters my vanity, and the aim is excellent. It was a gift from my wife.”

Matthew accepted the fowling piece and spent another hour tramping about the woods, shooting twigs and branches of His Royal Highness’s choosing, and telling himself his past really ought not to matter to Mary Frances.

Provided all she wanted from him was oblivion and desire.

***

“The hell of it is, Gordie really had asked me to marry him.” Mary Fran made this disclosure to Matthew—he was no longer Mr. Daniels, even when they were in company—while they strolled the gardens after dinner. The men had abandoned their port and cigars by mutual agreement, leaving a surprised Mary Fran to accept an invitation to enjoy the flowers.

“Were you going to take him up on his proposal?”

She peered over at her escort. The night was warm enough that he’d shed his jacket and carried it over one arm as he walked beside her. He wasn’t touching her, and she… missed him. Missed the touch of him, missed the greater proximity necessitated by walking with arms entwined.

“I don’t know if I was going to accept. I’ve puzzled over it. Gordie was the marquess’s spare, and an earl’s daughter would be considered acceptable in his family, even a Highland earl’s daughter. I’m fairly certain I chose him because he was not acceptable to mine.”

“Because he was English.”

Matthew spoke the words softly, though in the dying light, Mary Fran felt the frustration in him.

“Any Englishman would have annoyed my family, but we did marry, didn’t we? Gordie was as much a Lowlander by breeding as English, though English alone does not cast a man from my family’s favor.”

“Then what was his besetting sin?”

His curiosity seemed genuine, and she ought to tell him, but even after all she had told him, the words didn’t come easily.

“Let’s sit a bit.” She glanced around for a bench, until Matthew took her arm.

“Up the hill, we can watch the stars come out.”

She was a widow, they were in full view of the house, and Matthew was damnably proper with her at all times. “To the pines, then.”

They walked in silence. Even when he switched his grip and held her hand—fingers laced, no gentlemanly pretense of guiding her along involved—Mary Fran didn’t comment on it.

Didn’t comment on the simple, profound, and rare pleasure of merely holding his hand.

“This will do.” He’d chosen a spot partway up the last slope before the woods took over the park, a place where young evergreens surrounded a shallow bowl and the sod was covered with thick grass.

He spread his coat on the ground, and when Mary Fran lowered herself to it, she realized they weren’t in view of the house after all, not when they were in the grass. A soldier would have known that when he’d chosen their location. Matthew came down beside her and settled back to brace himself on his hands.

“You were going to tell me the rest of it, Mary Fran. The part about why Gordie was such an ideal choice for mischief and a bad choice as a husband.”

Plain speaking, indeed. She plucked a little white clover flower from the grass, then another.

“He was a tramp, you see.” She spoke lightly, so the words wouldn’t stick in her throat. “I knew it, knew that’s how he’d come by all his flirting and flattery. He was experienced, and I was eighteen and so wicked smart.”

“I was eighteen once too.”

“But, Matthew, were you such a calculating little baggage you essentially tossed yourself under the regimental tomcat because you thought surely, a man that naughty would know how to look after you your first time?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, from rising up the back of her throat as she spoke. “I was wrong, though.”

He moved closer while she systematically plucked hapless clover flowers from the grass.

“I was so bloody, blasted wrong.”

The sound of ripping grass filled a small silence.

“He hurt you.”

She nodded and forced her hands to stop their pillaging. “He hurt me two ways. First, he was not considerate, and then he was not discreet. The second injury was far worse than the first.”

A hand landed on her shoulder, warm and solid. The night wasn’t cold, but the warmth of that hand felt divine. She forced herself to continue with her confession despite the comfort Matthew was offering. “I think Gordie was trying to make me scream. Insurance, in case I wasn’t going to accept his proposal. We were at the regimental ball, a throng of people right out in the corridor.”

He drew in a breath, as if the words gave him pain. “You didn’t scream.” His hand slid across her shoulders to wrap her in an embrace. “You didn’t scream, you didn’t run to your brothers, you didn’t ask for mercy or quarter, but you would not allow your child to be born a bastard.”

“I might have.” She turned to press her face against the side of his throat. “I might have cursed my child that way, except Gordie bragged to his fellows about his latest conquest. His own officers were so disgusted with him that somebody got word to my menfolk, and then six weeks later there were documents executed and the handfasting became official. Ian and Asher promised me Gordie would be sent to Canada, and I’ve wondered if Asher wasn’t the one who made sure I was widowed. I was so stupid.”

“You were so young.”

His thumb traced up the tendon in her neck, a little nothing of a touch, but it eased her soul. He did it again and again, until Mary Fran began to cry.

“I didn’t come out here with you to blubber and carry on like some—”

He slid his hand gently over her open mouth and left it there, giving her a place where she could finally let the screams go. As his arm closed around her more snugly, she keened into his splayed fingers, her fists clutching his shirt in a desperate grip.

“It shouldn’t still hurt like this…” She shook with the remembered indignity, with the hopelessness and pain of it. She cried for a stubborn young girl with too few options, and for a sad, tired widow who had even fewer. She wept for her daughter, for all the daughters, and even for the family whose love and respect she’d betrayed.

And when the tears finally, finally subsided and Matthew’s thumb was brushing gently over her damp cheeks, still she stayed wrapped up in his embrace.

“I am so ashamed. Bad enough I must comport myself like a strumpet, even worse I should seek pity for it.”

Matthew snorted at that pronouncement. “If an eighteen-year-old virgin can behave like a strumpet—which premise I do not concede—then you should forgive her for it. Look around at your housemaids, Mary Fran. They don’t know the difference between proposition and flirtation, not unless they’ve been in service since childhood. You were even more protected than they, more sheltered, and your grandfather very likely was overbearing and old-fashioned. Have you ever discussed this with your brothers?”

“The shame of it…” She started to pull away, needing to use her hands to better express herself, but Matthew bundled her closer.

“Spare me your Highland drama. I don’t mean you need to review all the specifics. Simply ask your brothers if they ever discussed it with your grandfather. My guess is they feel even more ashamed for letting you slip the leash than you do for taking up with a man who was likely lying in wait for you, grooming you for his own ends, did you but know it.”

“Grooming me?” She hated the term, because it brought to mind a pony standing docilely in the cross ties, preening at the attention given to mane, tail, hooves, and tack, never noticing the fellow in the corner strapping on roweled spurs and flexing a stout whip.

“Setting you up,” Matthew said, “leading you on, getting his hands on the dowry your family worked so hard to save for you, beating out all the other fellows to the prettiest young lady in the shire, the most highly titled…”

She subsided against him, considering his words. He did not have the right of it, but for the first time in eight years, Mary Fran considered that perhaps she didn’t entirely have the right of it either. Gordie could be charming and tolerant, but when he’d pressed his body to hers, the gleam in his eye had been not merely possessive, but smug.

Smug, like a man whose plans have played out exactly to his liking.

“I can hear the compression building in your mental engines, Mary Fran. The night’s too pretty for that.”

“You’ve given me much to think about, Matthew Daniels.”

“Let me give you a little more to think about.” He shifted her so she was on her back, the fine silk lining of his coat between her and the fragrant grass.