She braced herself for the question about his father’s identity that was surely going to come next. But it seemed there was a more important question to ask first.

“Did he love me?” he asked, his eyes like two large bruises in his pale face. “Did he do things with me?”

“Oh, my sweetheart,” she said, setting the backs of her fingers against his cheek, “he would have loved you more than anyone else in the world. But he died before you were born.”

“How could he have been my papa, then?” he asked her, frowning.

“He had…given you to me before he died,” she said, “and I kept you safe until you were born. I will explain to you one day when you are a little older. But right now you are having a hard time keeping your eyes open and tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Wriggle under the sheets now and I’ll tell you a story and tuck you in and kiss you good night.”

Ten minutes later he looked up at her with sleepy eyes-and then smiled with pure mischief.

“I am glad you did not come to the castle,” he said. “Now I get to tell Mr. Keeble and Matron and Miss Martin all about it myself.”

She laughed softly. “And about cricket and boating and playing pirates and painting,” she said. “I promise to let you tell it all. It will be good to see everyone again, will it not?”

“Mmm,” he said.

And just like that, in the way of children, he was asleep.

Anne sat beside him until Davy and Alexander came tiptoeing in a while later.

One day soon David was going to think of the questions he had not asked tonight, and she was going to have to give him answers. She was going to have to tell him about Albert Moore. His father.

She shivered.

Glenys, sniffling just as if they had been mistress and maid for years, had insisted upon doing her packing for her. There was nothing to do now, then, except go downstairs to the drawing room to be sociable for an hour or two. And sociable she must be. No one must suspect that the visit to Ty Gwyn had been anything more than a pleasant afternoon’s outing.

But just so many hours ago-she counted them off on her fingers-she had lain with Sydnam Butler and it had been good. She knew it had been good. Perhaps if it could just have happened again her body would have known that as well as her mind.

She ached with a sudden longing to have it happen again.

Was she quite, quite mad to have refused his offer of marriage?

But how could she have said yes? What did she have to offer him?

And what did he have to offer her but a dutiful willingness to take the consequences of what they had done?

If you wish, Anne, we will marry.



“This really must be one of the loveliest places on earth,” the Duchess of Bewcastle said with a contented sigh, tipping her head sideways to rest on her husband’s shoulder. “You were quite right about that, Wulfric. The sight of the moon on the water like this makes me almost weep with awe.”