With a startled gasp, Eleanor stepped back, away from his sight, her heart pounding. Quickly, she recovered her composure and stepped back up to the window. The dark form was gone.
She glanced up and down the street, staring intently into the darkness, but she could see no sign of him. Had he been watching her house? Or was it only happenstance that she had looked out just as hehad glanced up? Eleanor would have liked to believe the latter, but there had been something about the way he was standing, a stillness in his body, an intensity in his face, that hinted that he had been there some time. And he had left as soon as she saw him. That in itself indicated that he had not been there for a legitimate purpose.
Eleanor frowned. She was not usually the sort to worry. But she could not help but remember the odd incident a week or so before she had left Naples, when the house seemed to have been entered—things shoved out of place, a lock broken on one of the windows. Nothing had been taken, which in itself seemed strange. She had dismissed it, but now she could not help but wonder. Why would anyone be watching her house?
A little shiver ran down her spine. There was no reason to be afraid, she told herself. And yet, she realized, she was.
ELEANOR SPENT THE NEXT DAY settling in. She told Bartwell to make sure that the locks on all windows and doors were engaged, and that the house was secured at night. Then, having taken precautions in her customary way, she put the thought of the man watching her house out of her mind. Instead, she concentrated on the myriad details concerning her business that had sprung up in the days she had been out of reach on board the ship, as well as the small but necessary items that were involved in getting the household running again. She penned a note to her friend Juliana to let her know that she was once more in town.
Juliana had been her closest friend for over ten years, from the time they had met at school. Eleanor’s widowed father, with whom she had been very close throughout her childhood, had remarried when she was fourteen, and Eleanor’s stepmother, jealous of the bond between them, had convinced Eleanor’s father that only a finishing at a refined young women’s academy would turn Eleanor into a proper and marriageable young lady. The girl’s willful nature, she had assured him with a soft, dimpling smile, would doom her to a life of unhappy solitude if he did not make a push to change her. So Eleanor had been shipped off to the school in England, a desperately lonely girl in a foreign land.
Eleanor had found herself an outcast at school, ostracized for her American accent, odd ways and, most of all, lack of English lineage. Her loneliness had ended, however, when she found Juliana. Juliana, too, had been snubbed by the other girls, because it was well known that even though her birth was impeccable, her father had died when she was young, leaving her and her mother penniless. They had lived ever since on the generosity of their relatives, and Juliana was at the school only to look after her cousin Seraphina.
Eleanor and Juliana had quickly found in each other a similar streak of independence—even, at times, of rebellion—as well as a common sense of compassion and a lively sense of humor. They had become inseparable, and in the years since they had left school, they had maintained their friendship, despite periods of separation. Juliana had stayed with Eleanor now and then; Eleanor would have welcomed her to live in her household, but Juliana had been too proud to accept Eleanor’s generosity. Instead, she had worked as a paid companion for several years. Then, six months ago, just after Eleanor and Edmund had gone to Italy, Juliana had married Lord Barre. Eleanor had met Lord Barre, and though she did not know him well, she liked what she had seen of him. She was looking forward to seeing both of them again soon.
After she wrote to Juliana and sent the note off with a servant, Eleanor started on the mail that awaited her. As she was working, one of the footmen brought in a piece of paper, folded into a square and sealed with the wax imprint of some sort of heraldic device, just delivered, he explained, by a liveried servant.
Eleanor’s eyebrows went up. Her friends and acquaintances were generally less formal—and less monied—than the sort who sent liveried servants with missives. Moreover, it seemed strange that anyone could know that she was once again in residence. Juliana had known that she was returning at some point, but even she would not know that Eleanor had actually arrived until she received the note Eleanor had only just now sent her. It seemed unlikely, if not impossible, that her friend could have already received it and sent her a reply.
She took the envelope from the silver salver that the footman extended to her and broke the seal. Her eyes went immediately to the signature at the bottom, a bold scrawl that took her a moment to decipher. Anthony, Lord Neale.
Eleanor set down the piece of paper, startled. She felt suddenly flushed, and her pulse sped up. The reaction irritated her, and she grimaced. Just the sight of a person’s name should not affect her so, she told herself. Other people had been rude and condescending to her—she had, after all, dealt with the English ton since her days at school—and she had learned to shrug off their snobbish attitude. Besides, she was quite aware of the fact that the man’s dislike of her stemmed from his own self-interest. He was Edmund’s uncle, Lady Scarbrough’s brother, and Eleanor suspected that he had relied on Edmund’s generosity to supplement Lady Scarbrough, so he could maintain a hold on his own fortune for his own amusements, whatever they might be. Or perhaps, even worse, he, too, had lived off Edmund’s fortune and had intended to use Edmund’s own money to bribe her. It was little wonder that he had reacted poorly to the news that Edmund had married Eleanor.
When he had come to see her a year ago to forbid her to marry his nephew, she had been disappointed. Until that point, she had harbored some hope that Lord Neale would welcome her to the family. After all, Edmund obviously admired his uncle and had assured her that Anthony would like her. But when she saw Lord Neale waiting for her in the entryway, she had quickly relinquished all such illusions.
He was, she had been surprised to see, not the older gentleman she had expected, but a tall, virile-looking man no more than a few years older than she was. Obviously, he was the much younger brother of Sir Edmund’s mother. He was not what one would call handsome, exactly; his face was too square, his features too hard, for that. But there was a strength in him that drew her gaze and held it. His brows were straight, dark slashes across his forehead, and the eyes beneath them were cool and gray, defined by thick dark lashes.
In other circumstances, Eleanor would have labeled his face compelling, and she had felt a startling and distinct attraction to him, a reaction so unusual and so unwanted that she had come to a sudden halt, feeling oddly girlish and unsure. But then she had noticed the cold, polite set of his attractive face, and she had known that this man was her enemy. She had seen the expression on his face too many times before—the cool hauteur of an English gentleman, convinced of his own superiority over everyone else in the world. She had known that he would not be pleased at the idea of his nephew marrying an American who could not trace her ancestors back to the Norman conquerors, and even less pleased at the idea of her putting an end to Edmund’s easygoing habit of giving money to his relatives.
She had been right, of course. Lord Neale had told her bluntly that she must not marry Edmund, and she had been pleased to inform him that his was a lost cause, as she and Edmund had married the day before by special license. This last announcement had come after a sharp exchange of words during which Lord Neale had accused her of being a fortune-hunting harpy. By the time he left, Eleanor had been trembling with fury and filled with a deep, passionate dislike of Lord Neale.
Clearly, she thought, a year’s absence had not lessened that feeling. Just remembering their meeting filled her with a nerve-jangling irritation. Taking a calming breath, she began to read. His note was short and peremptory, a terse request to call upon her to discuss matters.
Eleanor’s mouth twitched with the beginnings of a smile. She had a good idea what “matters” the man wanted to discuss. Edmund, despite his love for his mother, was well aware of her spendthrift qualities, and he had