She quailed, melting beneath the heat of his possessive jealousy. Nothing mattered now, nothing of the world in which she had hidden herself. Not even his secrets. On the edge of falling, she cared only for the arms of this most unlikely man that might catch her.

She could not tell him the truth, that it had only been Lambert. She was not such a fool as all that.

If he imagined he was unsafe from permanent entanglement with her, she must convince him that he could not get her with child. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted the man to whom she had given her innocence. But she knew how to play games of falsity too.

So it must be. Farewell grace. Farewell hoped-for joy. Grim pretense must suffice once again. Her hungry heart, it seemed, could manage nothing nobler. But at least for a short time, for perhaps only tonight, she might feel an echo of happiness.

“Oh,” she forced through her lips, “I daresay at least a dozen.”

She laughed, a sad, sweet sound of regret, and Leam was lost. Lost in a place he had vowed never to enter again. He pulled her tight to him, and willingly she gave him her mouth, her hands, and the soft slope of her neck dipping to her breasts. His heart, thick in his chest, pounded as her questing hands sought.

The tip of her tongue slipped along the edge of his ear and she whispered, “Make love to me, Leam. Save me from this need.”

Save me.

Save me, Leam.

He dragged her off him, thrusting her away, memories crashing to the fore. Blue eyes pleading, then weeping, tears soaking his skin, jealousy and rage tearing through him. His brother’s crumpled body, blood on the earth. Skirts clogged with river filth and a betrothal ring dulled.

He didn’t even want me. He didn’t want me.

Leam stumbled to his feet, pulling in breaths, and swung around. Five and a half years of impotent fury and grief surged forward.

“No,” he choked out, his stomach cramping, head whirling. “No. Kitty, I beg—I beg your pardon for this. For all of it. I cannot.”

Without looking back, he fled across the moonlit garden.

Not waiting for dawn, Leam gathered his belongings and escaped Willows Hall, casting off temptation beyond his ability to withstand. Pressing his horse and the hounds, he rode east, then north.

North to Alvamoor where his wife and brother awaited him in entombed peace, safely beyond the tumult in his soul they had created. North, where if he was very lucky he would entomb himself as well in a place where that soul could never be tempted again.

Chapter 15

Leam met his sisters on the terrace, the elegant mass of Alvamoor rising up behind him in crenellated red sandstone glory. The park stretched out across slopes to fallow brown fields and misty sheep pastures bordered with serpentine walls of rock. Beyond the stables below, the forest that had given name to his ancestors descended as a great dark shadow down the hill, as though mocking the formal gardens and park close to the house. It was wild Scottish nature and elegant English order combined, and he had missed it.

Wrapped in furs and mufflers, Fiona and Isobel took tea in the brilliant sun. His younger sister leaped up from the table, a graceful sylph of pinstriped muslin, red cloak, and dark curls flying across the terrace. She flung herself upon him and he caught her up.

“You are here!” Her slender arms squeezed. He bent to buss her upon one cheek, then the other.

When their mother died in Leam’s fifteenth year, Fiona had been a wee one. Now on the verge of eighteen she was a beauty, tall like Isobel yet still slender as a reed. “We thought you would never come!”

He smiled into her laughing eyes. “I began to believe I never would either.”

“What delayed you?”

“A snowstorm in Shropshire.” He took her hand and led her back to the table. “What are you doing out here? Haven’t you a place to enjoy tea within where it is warm?”

“I could not resist the sunshine. It is the first in weeks of gray, which makes perfect sense now.

Nature knew you were coming home today.” Her smile danced.

“What were you doing in Shropshire?” Isobel did not rise or even offer her hand. In five years she had not forgiven him as Fiona and their brother Gavin had. None of them had ever spoken of it, but Leam suspected Gavin understood, and Fiona had never cared much for James. As a child she’d made Leam her favorite, and her character was steeped in loyalty—much as Leam had pretended for years to society concerning his wife. But Fiona’s unshakable affection was real.

She squeezed his hand and hung on his arm.

“Yes, do tell us. I wish to know every little bit of everything you have done since we saw you last Christmas. Oh, but it is a terrible shame you missed it this year. Jamie and I made a croque-en-

bouche.”

“Should I know what that is?”

“A French tower of cream puffs, silly!” She pinched his arm. “I read about it in a Parisian fashion magazine and supposed with all your world traveling you must have eaten one before. So we made it for you. It remained upright for nearly an hour, until Mary put it too close to the hearth and the sugar melted. The puffs were still quite tasty, though sticky of course.”

“Of course.”

“We are still waiting to hear what took you to Shropshire, brother.” Isobel’s skin was pale, her cheeks too hollow, her hair severely dressed. She had done this to herself, and he had not stopped her from it.

“Yale asked me to accompany him to the house party of some acquaintances he preferred not to meet alone.”

Fiona’s eyes sparkled. “I wish you had brought him here with you instead.”

“I have no doubt you wish that.” He shook his head. “What will I do with you when I must allow you to enter society this spring?”

“Will you, Leam?” Her eyes brightened for a moment, then her visage fell. “But I will have no one to take me about, for Isa cannot, being unmarried.”

“I shall.” He took a slow breath. “I intend to remain at Alvamoor permanently.”

Her grip on his arm tightened. “Truly?” Hope danced in her eyes.

“You will be eighteen.” For all he wished to remain holed up in his house, come the spring it would be his duty to escort her about the countryside around Edinburgh and make her known to the mothers with eligible sons. Their brother Gavin was too young to see to it, only five-and-twenty, the same age as Leam when he had met Miss Cornelia Cobb at the assembly rooms.

“ I will be eighteen, and you will take me to parties and perhaps even a ball.” She hugged him again.

“Not if you don’t learn a modicum of comportment by then,” Isobel muttered.

Fiona’s arms unwrapped from around him and she suppressed her giggles. “I will behave, Leam. I promise.” She was all smiles. “Have you seen Jamie yet?”

“I only now arrived.”

“He is with his tutor, but I will run and fetch him.”

“No. Enjoy your tea while the sunshine remains. I will go, but I fear you will take a chill if you remain here long.”

Fiona shook her head with a smile, but Isobel offered him an even stare. “You are so rarely in residence, we suppose you don’t care one way or another how we go along in your house.”

“It is your house too, Isobel. For as long as you wish.”

She narrowed her eyes. Fiona fidgeted. Leam cast his youngest sister a smile, then went inside.

He moved across the entrance hall, and the scent of lilies met him like a punch to his midsection.

A bundle of flowers decorated a table. He strode over and snatched the hot-house bouquet from the vase. He turned about and found a footman.

“Dispose of these.” He thrust them at a lad he did not recognize. “Who are you?”

“That’s the new boy.” Leam’s housekeeper strode swiftly into the hall, a bustle of efficiency.

“Come on this last muin.” She shoed away the footman and curtsied to Leam. “Welcome home, malord.”

“Hello, Mrs. Phillips. How are you?”

“Well, sir. A thought as ye might be wanting tae clean out milady’s personal effects so we can use that bedchamber for guests an the like. Nou that ye’ll be staying, that is.”

“News travels swiftly, it seems.” He nodded. “Yes. I shall see to Lady Blackwood’s chambers myself.”

He made his way toward the stair, the lingering scent of lilies sickening in his nostrils. The day of James’s funeral the church had hung thick with the fragrance. Two months later when Leam buried Cornelia, torn between grief and relief, he’d smelled them again. Within weeks of that second funeral he had joined Colin Gray in his new club, and shortly after that met young Mr. Wyn Yale in Calcutta.

He had run away, changing his life, but he had not changed.

Imagining Kitty with other men was enough to drive him mad. Imagining losing his heart entirely to her, only to have her reject it eventually, was even worse. He was the same passionate fool as always, unable to control the depth of his feelings when once he allowed them rein—emotions that would inevitably lead to violence against those he loved, as they had before. The burning within him would never truly be quelled, certainly not when inspired by a woman like Kitty Savege.

Five years of avoiding his own home had not changed him in the least. But at least he had learned how to escape. Recalling Kitty’s shocked face beneath the snowy trees, he knew he was a master at that.

He paused on the landing and looked up to meet his wife’s smiling gaze. The breath went out of him, as always. Even in oil on canvas her golden beauty dazzled. But that no longer affected him. For the past five years, each time he had come home and seen the portrait, only guilt shook him.