A lady requires the assistance of a gentleman. If any gentleman of honour, discretion and chivalry will venture to answer this notice and despatch a reply to Lady Incognita at the Bell and Steelyard Inn, Woodbridge, Suffolk, then he shall have no reason to repent his generosity.

A small smile curled Lord Richard’s mouth as he considered the identity of Lady Incognita. Could she be none other than the utterly infuriating, utterly entrancing Deborah Stratton? And if so, what assistance did she require from her discreet gentleman? Richard’s mind was positively boggling.

There was only one way to find out, of course. Richard went across to the inlaid cherry-wood desk in the window and extracted a pen and an inkhorn from the top left-hand drawer. Sitting down, he pulled the paper towards him and started to write.


‘Mrs Lester tells me that the cellars have flooded again,’ Mrs Aintree said, over breakfast that morning. ‘One of the hams your brother-in-law sent over is quite ruined and the case of wine you laid down is under water.’

‘The duck decoy must be blocked again,’ Deb said. She was eating a buttered egg with one hand and turning the pages of the Suffolk Chronicle with the other whilst she scanned the advertisements. ‘I will go and take a look after breakfast.’

‘Could you not send to Marney for the gamekeeper to come?’ Mrs Aintree suggested, the very slightest edge to her tone. ‘It is scarce appropriate for you to be grubbing about in the undergrowth; indeed, it could be positively dangerous.’

Deb laughed. ‘Dangerous? The duck decoy? I doubt there is more than a foot of water in it and the ducks are scarcely threatening creatures.’

‘That was not what I meant,’ Mrs Aintree said severely. ‘When are you going to stop behaving like a hoyden, Deborah? Although your father is quite wrong to try and coerce you into marriage, I do believe that the fundamental idea might be of value. With a proper home and family of your own-’

Something like a shaft of pain wedged itself in Deborah’s breast and she pushed the remains of the egg aside. ‘I have a home here, Clarrie,’ she said. She folded the newspaper and stood up. ‘Pray excuse me. I shall take a quick look at the pond to see if the sluices are jammed and then I shall send to Ross for assistance.’

As a concession to propriety, Deb went to fetch her bonnet and spencer before venturing out. Neither was strictly necessary in the functional sense, since no one was going to see her and the weather was still mild. She eschewed wearing gloves, but made sure that she tucked her hands out of sight as she passed the breakfast room window. She did not want Mrs Aintree ringing a peal over her for inappropriate dress.

It felt pleasant to be out in the fresh air. Deb had not slept particularly well for the last few nights, the ones that had followed the musicale, and she did not wish to dwell on the reasons why. When Mrs Aintree had mentioned marriage and a home of her own, Deb’s thoughts had-ludicrously-swung to Lord Richard Kestrel for a brief moment before she had depressed her own hopes and dreams stillborn. That way lay madness. She had no wish to remarry and, even if she had, her choice would scarcely fall on a man whose reckless charm reminded her all too forcibly of her first, perfidious husband. It was yet another reason why she required a temperate, biddable man to be her pretend fiancé. She was done with rakes.

The duck decoy was tucked away at the bottom of Mallow’s overgrown garden near the bridge across the track to Midwinter Bere. Deb knew that Olivia shuddered each time she saw the runaway shrubbery and neglected flowerbeds, but Deb had no money to spare for luxuries such as gardening and too much pride to ask Ross to fund anything other than the most basic of maintenance. The previous owner of Mallow had been a keen sportsman who had even imported a specially trained dog from Holland to hunt ducks with him. He had kept the decoy in good condition, but these days the traps were broken and the bushes that had been planted to shield the pond from the wind had all but gone wild. The ducks splashed happily in the decoy, knowing that they were safer there than on the river. When Deb arrived on the bank they set up a loud squawking and scattered into the undergrowth.

Deb pushed her way through the tangle of shrubs and reached the end of pond, where a sluice gate was supposed to regulate the flow of water out under the bridge and into the Winter Race. Two years before, the sluices had blocked during heavy rains and it was then that the problem with the cellars had first become apparent. In this instance it seemed more a case of neglect than anything else. Deb could see that, during the past summer, grasses had seeded themselves around the sluice gate and the overhanging twigs and branches had grown through the gaps, completely jamming the gate. She pulled half-heartedly at some of the deep-rooted grasses. A little of the soil tumbled from the bank, but the weeds refused to shift. Gardening was not Deb’s occupation of choice, so she dusted her hands down on her skirts and straightened up, almost banging her head on an overhanging branch. She would have to ask Ross to send the Marney gardeners over to clear the decoy before the whole area became choked with weeds and the first proper rains of the winter caused more damage. Sometimes she hated to be dependent on Ross’s charity, but it could not be helped. She could not do the work herself.

It was as Deb was struggling back towards the path, her skirts snagging on brambles and the low branches snatching at her hair, that she trod in something soft and squelchy that the ducks had evidently left behind.

‘Ugh!’ Her foot slipped from beneath her and then she was tumbling over in the soft grass of the bank, her skirts ripping on one of the broken duck traps as she fell through the undergrowth and into the shallow pond below.

It was only about a foot deep, as Deb herself had told Mrs Aintree earlier. Unfortunately, that foot was comprised of slimy green water choked with duck weed and dead plants. Worse, when Deb tried to wrench her skirts free of the broken trap, she found the material stuck fast. She wallowed in the water, tugging on the fabric until something ripped.

‘Hell and damnation!’

‘You do indeed look like something conjured from the deepest halls of Hades,’ an amused male voice confirmed from the bank.

Deb was so taken aback that she lost her footing in the muddy depths of the pond and sat down with a splash.

Lord Richard Kestrel-unforgivably-laughed. ‘Is this the latest fashion?’ he continued. ‘A gown with duck-weed trimmings?’

Deb gave an infuriated snort. Of all the undignified situations in which to be found! It would have to be Lord Richard Kestrel, of all people, who was the last man on earth she wanted to see her at a disadvantage.

‘You are trespassing,’ she said haughtily.

‘I am.’ Richard eyed her with deep amusement. ‘Would you like me to assist you, Mrs Stratton?’

‘No, thank you,’ Deb said, struggling to find her feet on the slippery mud of the pool. ‘I would like you to go away.’

Lord Richard ignored the request and came forward and offered a hand to her anyway. Deb ignored it.

‘Do accept my help,’ he encouraged. ‘It will save you much trouble in the long run.’

Deb gritted her teeth. ‘I would not dream of inconveniencing you.’

‘Please have no scruples about that. As I am here already, you may as well take advantage of me.’ He grasped her flailing hand and pulled hard, dragging her from the grip of the mud. Deb’s ankles came free with a squelching sound and she cannoned into him. They both ended up amongst the bushes, Richard’s body breaking Deb’s fall. She lay still for a moment, completely winded.

‘There was no need to take me quite so literally.’

Deb opened her eyes to look down into Richard’s laughing face. With horror she realised that she was lying on top of him, her breasts squashed against his chest and one of his hands curved around her buttocks. Just as she realised this, she felt Richard’s hand slide with leisurely intimacy over her body and she gave a horrified gasp and rolled off him. Richard sat up.

‘Please do not worry,’ he said, scrupulously polite. ‘Whilst you have a figure that looks most alluring in a dampened gown, the sight-and the smell-of that mud is enough to kill any ardour stone dead.’

‘I am glad that there is something that puts a rein on your rakish habits,’ Deb snapped. She pushed a piece of weed out of her eyes and examined her torn skirts. There was a jagged rip down the left-hand side that was quite irreparable and showed far too much petticoat.

‘What were you doing in there?’ Richard enquired. He seemed genuinely interested. Deb glared. ‘I was trying to free the sluice gate,’ she said. ‘If it comes to that, what are you doing here? As I have pointed out already, you are trespassing.’

Richard lay back in the grass, his hands behind his head. ‘I was riding past when I heard a splash and a shout. I was afraid that someone might have had an accident.’

He turned his head and looked at her. ‘You are not very grateful, Mrs Stratton. I begin to wish that I had left you to your watery fate.’

Deb looked at him and, most unexpectedly, felt an urge to laugh. ‘I am sorry about your clothes,’ she said, her lips twitching as she took in the mud that was beginning to dry on his pristine hunting jacket. ‘I dare say you looked quite nice when you started out. And I am sorry that I interrupted your ride.’

Richard stood up and helped her to her feet.

‘Would you care to make up for it by riding out with me later?’ he asked abruptly. ‘When you have had the opportunity to change into dry clothing, of course.’

Deb hesitated, surprised by a strong urge to accept. She knew that it was madness to consider it, but when had common sense had anything to do with inclination? Yet today she had promised herself would be the beginning of a new, more sensible approach to life in general and Richard Kestrel in particular. She had to extricate herself from this growing attraction before it was too late. She fought a short, sharp battle with herself and shook her head.