Her house!

It was his!

Dash it all, it was harder than he thought to change his way of thinking. Sidley had been his mother’s domain since her marriage. And though it had been his property for twenty-three years, for eighteen of those he had been a minor and it was only natural that his mother remain in charge.

Why the devil had he not told his uncles and his mother when he turned twenty-one that he was far too young to think of marriage but that he was at exactly the right age to take over the running of his own life and home and estate? It would have been easy then. It would have been the natural thing to do. It was what everyone had surely been prepared for.

Or why, when he had decided not to marry, had he not told his mother quite firmly that she was going to have to find somewhere else to live than the main house at Sidley?

But of course he had been too young for all of it. His life had been effectively lived for him for twenty-one years. How could he have developed the wisdom overnight to act as he ought?

He called one day at Fincham and was delighted to find Theo at home. Edith was no longer there, of course. She had married Lawrence Morley two years ago and now lived in Gloucestershire with her husband. Lady Markham was currently there with her, lending her support after the recent birth of Edith’s first child.

Peter called several times after that first visit and sometimes went riding with his longtime friend. On one of those occasions he asked the same question he had raised with his mother.

“Do you remember Osbourne?” he asked.

“ William Osbourne?” Theo asked. “My father’s secretary, do you mean?”

“I rather liked him,” Peter said. “He always had time for us, if you remember. It was a pity about his death.”

Theo leaned forward out of his saddle to open a gate into a field so that they could ride across country instead of having to keep to the dusty lane.

“It was a tragedy,” he agreed. “Avoidable too, as such deaths always are. Though I do not suppose he saw it that way, poor fellow.”

“He could have avoided it?” Peter asked.

“Easily,” Theo said dryly, as he shut the gate behind them. “By not putting that bullet through his brain.”

“He killed himself?” Peter’s hands tightened so suddenly upon the reins that his horse reared up and he had to struggle to keep his seat and bring it back under control.

“You did not know?” Theo was frowning when Peter finally looked back at him. “No one told you?”

“Only that he had died,” Peter said.

“Hmm.” Theo continued on his way across the field. “That makes sense, I suppose. You were always sheltered from any unpleasantness, weren’t you? What put you in mind of him now, anyway?”

“I ran into his daughter this summer,” Peter said.

“Susanna?” Theo said. “I was under the impression she had fallen off the ends of the earth, poor girl-though I suppose she is a woman now. Edith was inconsolable, apparently, when she ran off, and my mother was frantic. Fortunately I was away at school and missed all the drama. I was sorry about Osbourne, though. He was a decent fellow.”

“ Why did he kill himself?” Peter asked.

“All sorts of unlikely possibilities were suggested to me when I asked the same question at the time,” Theo said. “Either no one knew the real reason or else everyone was being very cagey about it. He had to be buried in unconsecrated ground-which probably did not matter much to him but would have been hard on Susanna if she had stayed for the funeral. Apparently she did not. Anyway, should we change the subject?”

They did not refer to it again either on that afternoon or on any subsequent occasion. But Peter was left wondering what the devil could have been so dire in Osbourne’s life that he had put an end to it despite the fact that he had a daughter to support. Her running away was a little more understandable now, though. Her father had committed suicide-a nasty sin according to Church doctrine. Poor child-running off to London and trying to find employment there. If Lady Hallmere was indeed responsible for sending her to Miss Martin’s school in Bath, then he would forever feel kindly toward her.

But he still tried hard not even to think of Susanna Osbourne-or of what he had done to her the day before she left Barclay Court.

He spent some time out on the home farm, though not as much as he would have liked. The harvest was almost all in and it would have seemed mildly ridiculous to jump in to help now, all energy and enthusiasm, when there was very little left to do.

He spent some time with his steward and went over all the books with him, despite the fact that he carefully examined each monthly report that was sent him. But Millingsworth had been appointed by Peter’s guardians when he was a very young child. The man was organized, efficient, knowledgeable, and experienced and looked upon Peter-or so it seemed-as if he were still a boy whose presence in his domain was a slight nuisance that had to be endured only because he was the official employer.

When he was in the house, his mother hovered over him, worried that he was not eating properly or dressing in a manner appropriate to the weather or giving serious enough thought to his future-to marrying well and setting up his nursery, that was. She was careful to see to it that the servants answered his every summons promptly, that his every whim was catered to, that he was served the very best of everything at mealtimes even if the portion in question had already been set on her plate. She came close to tears if he ever decided to set foot outdoors when it was raining or damp or when the wind was blowing at any force above the merest breeze. She even appeared in the library doorway one night well after midnight when he was reading to ask him if he did not think it was time he went to bed as he knew how easily he got a headache the next day if he stayed up too late at night.

It was all horribly irksome. Perhaps he would have faced it all and dealt with it all if he had not been so mortally depressed. But despite the enthusiasm with which he had jumped from his carriage on his arrival, he could not shake off the gloom he had carried with him from Hareford House.

Everything seemed somehow ruined.

Finally, after a few weeks, he thought to himself-and his reasoning seemed quite sound-that he might as well leave until the new year when he could be present for all the upcoming spring planning. A new year would be a better time-the perfect time-for starting the new life he had promised himself. He might even go back for Christmas. Some of his sisters were sure to be there, and he was fond of them-and of his numerous nieces and nephews.

And so he drifted off back to London, using as an excuse the fact that he needed to visit his tailor and his bootmaker. There he lived a life of increasingly busy idleness as he searched out one diversion after another. It was surprising how many could be found even during such an unseasonable month as October.

There was a comfortable familiarity about such a life.

Except that diversions did not always divert.

Activities that had always amused him well enough before suddenly seemed to have lost their power to distract his mind from his overall dissatisfaction with the way his life was proceeding.

His mother’s letters informed him that the new paintings had arrived for the drawing room, which was now looking so much lovelier than any other room in the house that she was considering making changes to the dining room next.

Good Lord, he was going to have to do something to stop her.

Barbara, his eldest sister, who happened to spend a few days in London with her husband during the autumn, mentioned Christmas.

“You will be at Sidley, I hope,” she said. “Clarence and I will be there with the children, and it will be too, too dreary if you are not also there, Peter. Besides, Mama is inviting other guests, and it is only right that you be there as host.”

“Other guests?” He grimaced. “Who is she this time?”

Barbara clucked her tongue while Clarence waggled his eyebrows at his brother-in-law and held his peace.

“I have no idea,” she said. “But there will be someone, of course. Mama is concerned about you, Peter. She wants to see you well settled. It is foolish of you to be stubborn merely because you did not like Bertha Grantham five years ago and did not admit it until the last possible moment.”

None of his sisters had any idea what had happened on that occasion, and he had no wish to enlighten any of them.

Peter met his brother-in-law’s eyes again and watched one of them depress in a slow wink.

“I’ll choose my own bride in my own good time, Barb,” he said. “I’ll think about Christmas.”

But thinking about brides made him feel more wretched than ever. In the almost two months since he had left Somerset, he had still not recovered from his terrible sense of guilt.

Good Lord, he had debauched an innocent!

There were no excuses. None.

He felt sick whenever he thought of that afternoon on the wilderness walk. And it was almost impossible not to think of it at least a dozen times every day.

It seemed somehow worse to have learned that her father had killed himself. Not that that sad event was in any way his fault or linked to the events of the summer, but even so…He had liked Osbourne. He liked the daughter.

Whenever such thoughts threatened to cause his head to explode, he went out again in search of another entertainment to take his mind off things.