But he was the grand Duke of Strachen, while she was no more than an invented girl named Corinthia, not even real. Her sole purpose in being here in this house—and only from purest luck at that—was to be pleasing enough that the duke would think kindly toward whatever scheme Rob would decide to invent. Tonight’s moonlight would never matter as much as the money—a loan, an investment, or a gift—that Rob would coax from the duke’s pocket, especially not after she and Rob vanished one morning, off into the next set of false names and identities.
No, better to smile than to dream, and far, far better to keep her wits sharp and keen than to go longing for something that couldn’t be changed. The moment she began thinking with her heart, instead of her head was the same moment the luck would end, and she and Rob would find themselves taken up and tried as common criminals, with transportation or the gallows as their final reward.
That is, if Rob ever did return to find her….
“You are cold,” the duke was saying with concern. “You’re shivering.”
“No, Your Grace,” she said quickly, forcing her smile to be winning even as she began inching back toward her window. If she’d shivered, it had been from the reminder of the gallows and her fears for Rob, not a common chill, and certainly not from anything that he could remedy. “Only…only more weary than I first thought.”
He took a step toward her, his hand gallantly outstretched to offer support. “Then let me guide you back to your rooms. There are, you know, easier paths than hopping through the window.”
“The window does well enough for me, Your Grace.” Tonight she was the one running away, not him, but it was the wisest course—the only course, really—before she blundered and said or did something that couldn’t be undone. Far better to retreat now, until morning, when she could meet him with a clear head in the bright, unmagical light of day.
Lightly she pulled herself up onto the windowsill before he could stop her, the coverlet billowing around her bare legs.
“You were right before, Your Grace,” she said breathlessly. “We should say good evening now and part. Good night, and pleasant dreams. Good night!”
Chapter Four
B rant rode slowly through the misty rain, his collar turned up and his hat pulled down against the damp, the two dogs loping along ahead. This was the other side of June mornings, with the green grass blurring in a hazy mesh with the gray sky, soft and wet and peculiarly English, and usually as irresistible to Brant as a bright, cheerful dawn. While his brothers might have sailed as far as they could across the world and away from these fields, to him there could never be a more lovely place in every season and weather than the rolling lands around Claremont Hall.
At least that was how he’d felt on every other morning before this one. Now the clouds could part before the most beautiful rainbow in all creation, and he’d scarce notice in his present mood. The girl had been under his roof for only the briefest time, yet already his entire household was in a blasted turmoil of distraction.
A branch of wet leaves slapped across his cheek and he muttered an irritated, halfhearted oath at his own inattention. And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? If he were honest—which, as a gentleman and a peer, he generally aspired to be—his household was functioning perfectly well, the way they always did. He was the only one who wasn’t. The girl smiled, she wept, she sighed, she sunk languidly back against her pillows with her hair in childish pigtails, she flashed him a glimpse of a charmingly plump calf gleaming silver-pale in the moonlight, and now he was a hopeless, useless muddle of inattention.
Inattention to everything reasonable and productive, that is. To her, this lost country waif without a memory, he was attending all too well.
He’d told himself sternly that it wasn’t the girl herself, but the mystery she represented. He didn’t like mysteries. He liked things ordered, arranged, neat in their proper places, the way he’d remembered them to be. He took it as a personal, rankling challenge that this girl didn’t seem to belong anywhere. He wasn’t even convinced that Corinthia was her true name, and she didn’t seem to be, either. And Brant didn’t like guessing games. He needed to know.
Which was why he was now heading toward the squat Norman tower of St. Martin’s, and the rambling timbered cottage nestled beside it that served as the parsonage. While his father had neglected the church just as he had everything else, Brant’s luck and success had provided a new roof that didn’t leak, new bellows that didn’t wheeze for the small pipe organ, even new leading for the windows so the wind wouldn’t whistle through the cracks during the psalms every Sunday. He’d even granted the living to a local man from the county, instead of to one of the better-connected applicants.
It wasn’t that Brant was particularly pious, or eager to make a great show in this life with an eye to the next, especially not here in the country. Rather he assured himself that such improvements were simply one more responsibility of his title that had been neglected too long by his father, and another way to help keep his tenants happy and, ultimately, the estate happily profitable, as well.
Ordered, arranged, neat, with everything exactly as it should be: it all made perfect sense, didn’t it?
“G’day, Your Grace,” called the oldest Potter boy, racing from the house, not bothering with a coat as he hurried to take the reins of Brant’s horse. Jetty and Gus bounded around the boy, their tails whipping as they snuffled happily at the interesting new smells on his trousers.
“And a fine, wet morning to you, Simon. Is your father at home?”
“Aye, Your Grace, that he is.” With open admiration the boy stroked the white blaze on the horse’s long nose as Brant swung down from the saddle, and the horse whinnied contentedly in return. “Shall I put this fellow in the stable for you, Your Grace? If it pleases Your Grace, I can rub him down proper, too, and give him a bit to eat.”
Brant nodded. A sympathetic appreciation for horse-flesh was always a fine quality in a boy, especially if the horse agreed. “Let him drink first, Simon, and let these two rascals have a sip, too. But mind you, if you spoil Thunder—that’s his name, you know—if you spoil Thunder too much, he won’t want to carry me back home.”
“Oh, no, Your Grace,” answered the boy so solemnly that Brant chuckled. “Thunder will be ready the minute you call for him, and Jetty and Gus, too. You can rely on me, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Simon. I shall.” Brant turned toward the house so Simon wouldn’t see his smile. Yes, all was well with the world, so long as the bond between boys and horses and dogs remained this strong. Too bad that wasn’t what had brought Brant here; his grin had disappeared by the time he reached the parsonage’s heavy oak door.
He’d scarcely begun to knock before the door flew open, with Mrs. Potter herself eagerly waiting on the other side. Clearly, Simon hadn’t been the only one to see him arrive.
“Do come inside, Your Grace, do!” she ordered, bustling aside with a harried curtsy. She was a county girl herself, the daughter of one of his tenant farmers, and even her giddy rise through the social ranks to become the reverend’s wife hadn’t given her airs or changed her cheery good nature. With four children of her own and a good many more from the parish running in and out, she was everyone’s mother, her thick sandy hair always slipping from beneath her starched cap and small sticky handprints pressed perpetually into the hem of her apron. “I won’t have it said that I’ve let His Grace the Duke wait outside on my step in the muck and the wet!”
“As you wish, Mrs. Potter.” Obediently, Brant stepped inside, shaking the raindrops from his hat before he let her take it. “Simon told me your husband is at home.”
“Of course he is, Your Grace!” She beamed, neatly smoothing the damp beaver felt of Brant’s hat with her sleeve before she set it on a chair with the greatest care possible. “He’s