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  “What about…oh…the events of the estate?”

  “I tell him what he needs to know.”

  Perhaps Garth had justification for worry. Perhaps Lord Rand had slipped into a decline of sorts. She assessed Jasper again. “So he depends on you completely. You care for him when he has no nurse in residence. Tell me about his condition.”

  “He can’t walk.”

  Jasper’s bluntness bordered on rudeness, but Sylvan wasn’t offended. If he had been at Waterloo, then he’d treated the wound that downed Lord Rand, and he knew more about his state than anyone else. Jasper had already proved he felt protective of the family. Perhaps the tale of the ghost had been nothing but a fiction to scare her away.

  “What’s that?” She pointed at a smudge of dark smoke that rose along the horizon.

  “The mill.”

  “What mill?”

  “The cotton mill.”

  “On Clairmont lands?” She stared at the smoke, tracing it until it dissipated in the high winds that tore the clouds to tatters. “Impossible. Dukes don’t indulge in trade.” Surely not the pleasant, handsome Garth. “Only merchants do. Then they buy a barony and put their daughter on the marriage mart, seeking a title to match their fortunes.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, miss. I only know about His Grace.”

  What a clam! she thought in exasperation. She might as well have indulged in curiosity. Jasper wouldn’t tell her a thing.

  The gig rattled along the rutted track. They drove through a cultivated hollow where men plowed the soil and pressed seed in place, then into a pleasant country village with a few shops and homes. It looked clean and prosperous, the kind of place Sylvan had imagined existed but had never seen.

  The blacksmith examined her as they drove by, then raised a hand in welcome, and she waved back.

  A homecoming.

  “We’re starting the ascent to the manor.” Jasper pointed with his whip. “If ye’ll look up as we go around this corner, ye’ll catch yer first glimpse.”

  She did, and no etiquette could stop her exclamation of “Mercy!”

  The house straddled the rocky hilltop like a Gothic battleship defying the elements. Each succeeding duke evidently had a different idea of style and good taste, and some of them must have been, as Jasper claimed, mad. The hodgepodge of chimneys, windows, and carvings tried but could not distract from the exterior jumble of gray stone, sandstone, and marble.

  “It looks,” Sylvan said in wonder, “as if a giant child kicked over its blocks, then tried to reassemble them.”

  “Most visitors are in awe.” Jasper’s spine straightened beneath the black coat.

  “In awe.” Immense stands of horse chestnut and mountain ash whisked past, then the hedges. They rounded the bend and the house showed itself in its full glory. Nothing about it resembled her father’s new house, which had been designed and decorated by the finest craftsmen in England, but somehow Clairmont Court welcomed her—her, the daughter of a merchant. They pulled up to a series of broad steps that led to the terrace and then into the house, and she stared at the towering structure. “I am in awe. I have never seen anything remotely resembling this. It’s chaotic. It’s barbaric. It’s—”

  A wooden chair crashed through a tall, narrow ground-floor window and skidded across the terrace.

  “Likely to get worse,” Jasper finished for her. “He must have heard you were coming.”

  Boys ran to the horses’ heads while a deep voice raged from within the house. “A woman? You got me a hen-hearted woman?” A glass statue followed the chair, but through a different window, and shards sparkled like rain on a cloudless day.

  Jasper leaped from his perch and ran up the steps, forgetting his duty to Sylvan, but she didn’t mind. All the better to get a grasp on the situation.

  Bracing herself, she descended from the carriage. She pulled off her gloves and her cornet bonnet, ran her hands through her hair, and fluffed it out.

  The ragged edges of one window broke in a series of shattering protests as a stick, probably a cane, punched it out. “What the hell do you think to accomplish with a woman?”

  “Give me that!” The sound of a scuffle carried clearly through the open window.

  “That’s right, steal from a crippled man.”

  “If you’d wait to meet her…”

  Sylvan recognized Garth’s voice, but more than that, she recognized the other voice. When she had known it before, it had been lightly contemptuous, unwillingly attracted. Now the tone had changed, but she remembered it from her experience on the battlefield and in the hospital. She’d heard it in every soldier’s voice as he was carried, screaming, to the surgeon for amputation.

  Rage and pain, disgust and fear.

  She didn’t want to face those raw emotions again. She’d spent the last eleven months trying to forget, while knowing she never would.

  Run away! her mind urged. Run before your foolish compassion traps you here.

  But her feet moved forward.

  Call Jasper and tell him you’ve changed your mind. Run away!

  Slowly, she mounted the stairs, and all the while Rand’s voice raged and Garth admonished. A vase full of flowers flew out the window and broke so close the water wet her shoes and splashed her dress. Lord Rand must have seen her and was aiming now.

  It was a clear sign she should leave, but instead she picked up one of the fragrant wild roses and walked on, hiding her apprehension with a calm expression. The expression she had perfected on the battlefield.

  At the door, Jasper gestured heartily. “Come in, miss. Hurry! I’ve never seen him like this, and maybe when he realizes what a lovely lady ye are, he’ll remember his society manners.”

  Sylvan could have laughed at Jasper’s naïveté, except it showed how little the invalid was understood.

  Her appearance wouldn’t calm the beast, it would provoke him, for no man liked to be weak and helpless before a woman.

  She really ought to leave before she stepped inside the house, but as she hesitated, she again experienced a moment of warmth, of homecoming. Clairmont Court sucked her in, and she stepped across the threshold.

  “Take your outer garments, miss?” A broad-beamed maid bobbed a curtsy as Sylvan removed her pelisse and handed over her gloves and hat.

  “Thank you,” Sylvan said. The wide marble entry stretched all the way to the stairs, and doors opened onto it. One doorway seemed to bulge as two men and three ladies peered at her. Sylvan’s dragging feet slid to a halt.

  An attractive woman of perhaps fifty years complained in high-pitched exasperation. “I told Garth this was a bird-witted idea. I don’t know why he doesn’t listen to me.”

  “Perhaps, Mama, because he’s the duke and you’re only a duke’s sister-in-law.”

  Sylvan glanced sharply at the young man who stood patting his mother’s hand as they stood in the doorway of a salon.

  He grinned and winked. “James Malkin, at your service, and my mother, Lady Adela Malkin.”

  “Why shouldn’t he have a nurse?” Sylvan asked the lady.

  “We don’t need a female nurse,” Lady Adela corrected. “You’re no doubt sweet-natured and gentle, but all the other nurses have treated him tentatively, when what he needs is some sense knocked into him.”

  “He’s not a bad boy. He’s just having trouble adjusting.” The whispery voice belonged to a soft-faced, silver-haired woman dressed in the height of fashion.

  Another roar of animosity blasted down the hallway, and Lady Adela flinched. “If he doesn’t gain control, he’ll have to be put away.”

  “Put away! Oh, Adela, how could you?” The second woman—Rand’s mother, Sylvan surmised—lost the battle for composure as two large tears rolled down her face.

  “Is that really likely?” Sylvan asked James, rather than the two ladies.

  “Not at all,” James said stoutly. “But I have to agree with m’mother. We’ve all tried kindness and he just gets angrier. Perhaps a bit
of a jolt would help.”

  A bit of a jolt. She thought about that and started walking again. Jasper’s boots clomped on the polished floors, leading her to the corridor that turned to the left, then to a door that looked as if it belonged to a study—a study that had been converted into a downstairs bedroom. Taking an audible breath, he opened it and held it wide.

  The door. When she entered, she would be committed. As she hesitated, a candle hit the edge of the door, followed by a barrage of six more that bounced off the opposite wall. Jasper dodged while counting, then pronounced, “That’s all on that candelabra, miss. Ye’re safe for the moment.”

  So Sylvan sailed in.

  She ignored the books on the floor and the shelves that showed broken-tooth gaps. She ignored the overturned furniture and the remnants of every ornament that had formerly decorated the shattered room. She ignored the red-faced duke of Clairmont, who held a cane clutched in his fist and muttered apologies. She looked only at the occupant of the chair with wheels.

  Rand’s eyes gleamed with demonic intensity as he examined her. His black hair stood in clumps over his skull, as if he’d been tearing at it. The wheeled cane chair must have been built especially to fit his wiry frame and long legs.

  She knew they were long, because he wore a black silk robe. A robe hemmed so it wouldn’t drag on the floor as he wheeled himself around. A robe that tied at the middle and revealed, only too clearly, that he wore trousers and nothing else.

  He flaunted himself. One side of the robe had slipped over his shoulder, showing the development of a man forced to use his arms constantly. His chest was similarly muscular, and when she jerked her gaze back to his face, she found him maliciously laughing at her.

  Did he think she’d never seen a half-naked man before?

  “By Jove, Rand, cover up.” Garth rushed forward and tried to adjust Rand’s robe over his chest.

  Rand shoved him away, still challenging Sylvan with his gaze. Only his hands betrayed his true agitation, for they gripped the two large hardwood chair wheels with white-knuckled dedication.

  She had no attention to spare for Garth. She had no attention to spare for anyone but the man who rejected himself by rejecting her. Handing him the prickly stemmed rose with a flourish, she said, “For a cripple, you’re not a bad-looking fellow.”

  He accepted it, then flung it away. “For a nurse, you look almost normal.”

  She grinned.

  He grinned back.

  She wondered which of them bared their teeth with more challenge. “What obnoxious behavior,” she marveled. “Have you been practicing it long?”

  His smile dipped a little. “No doubt I shall perfect it in the short interval of your visit.”

  “This is not a visit,” she said crisply. “If I wished to visit, I would stay with someone of breeding and good manners. Instead, I am an employee, and as such must earn my wages.”

  His nostrils flared, his mouth compressed. “I dismiss you.”

  “You cannot. You did not hire me.”

  In one violent motion, he picked up a book and sent it flying out of an upper window. It crashed. She flinched, and he chortled. The sound irritated her and confirmed her tentative evaluation. Adela was right. This man needed something. Something different. Something besides tender care and gentle handling, and if he didn’t behave, she was the woman to give it to him.

  In blatant challenge, Rand threw another book out an upper window, and this time part of the pane exploded into the room. Garth cursed and jumped backward. Rand shook it off like a dog shaking off water. Shards rained into Sylvan’s hair, and when she brushed it with her fingers, one came away bloody.

  “Oh, Miss Sylvan.” Garth stepped forward, his boots crunching the glass into bits, his expression a mixture of mortification and disappointment. “Let me have Betty look at that.”

  “No!” By Rand’s smirking face, she knew Garth was giving up already. “I just didn’t realize what Lord Rand desired. Now I do, and I will never forget.” She had the satisfaction of seeing Rand’s smile slip. “Lord Rand, if you wanted fresh air, you had only to ask. Breaking out the windows seems excessive, but it makes my duties easier when you express yourself so eloquently.” Determined, she walked toward him.

  Warily, he backed up.

  She effortlessly circled him and grasped the handles of the chair.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he said with a snarl.

  “Taking you out for air.”

  “Madam, you are not!”

  He clutched the wheels with determination, but she jerked backward, then forward.

  “Ouch!” He looked at his palms.

  She pushed him toward the door, bumping over the books and crunching pieces of glass to dust. “You’ll survive.”

  Grasping the wheels again, Rand held tight. The chair slowed to a crawl, but the spokes stubbed his fingers and the friction warmed his lacerated palms.

  He couldn’t believe that the woman would do this. He hadn’t been outside for months. The doctors had suggested he should go out. His mother had coaxed, Aunt Adela had nagged, Garth and James had teased. But no one had dared treat him with such impunity.

  Now this wisp of a woman pushed him out into the hall where everyone could stare at him. He clutched the wheels again, and they almost stopped. He could hear her panting behind him as she fought his strength. He could feel her warm breath in his hair and her chest against his back as she pressed her whole body against the chair, and he gloated.

  She was failing. He would win, and the first battle counted most.

  Then the chair jerked forward so hard it threw his hands into the air, and he slewed around.

  Garth stepped away and dusted his fingers. “Go outside, Rand,” he said. “I wish I’d thought to do this myself.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” The woman pushed him forward.

  “But Your Grace, Lord Rand doesn’t want to go outside.”

  Jasper sounded alarmed, and conversely, that made Rand more angry. His dedicated body servant, the man who’d accompanied him into battle, was nothing but an overprotective old woman who thought he could direct Rand’s life.

  Everybody thought they could direct Rand’s life, including his brother and this half-pint nurse. The pressure of her body had been removed from Rand’s back, but Rand knew she was still there, still pushing. Pushing, pushing. Pushing him around the corner and into the main hall. Servants watched, peeking with phony discretion from corners and cubbyholes. His family watched openly, crowding together in the hall.

  “Garth, dear. Rand, dear. Oh, dear.” His mother babbled while smiling valiantly.

  “Good to see you, cousin.” James used that hearty, encouraging voice he’d used since Rand returned from war, a useless cripple. This was the first time Rand had ever disappointed him, and he had disappointed him bitterly. James hadn’t looked Rand in the eye since the battle of Waterloo.

  “Rand.” Aunt Adela’s proper, well-bred tones rang like a church bell pealing over his head. “Cover yourself. You’re indecent!”

  These days, nothing amused him so much as offending his aunt Adela, and her horror restored a bit of his equilibrium. He smirked offensively.

  “There’s no talking to you, I see,” she scolded. “But at least think of Clover Donald and her saintly ways. She’s shocked.”

  Rand saw the vicar’s wife peeking at him from far inside the room. She was a mouse, too timid to do more than catch a glimpse as she stood behind his mother, Aunt Adela, James, and the Reverend Donald himself.

  “She probably hasn’t had such a good time in years,” Rand retorted, and waved. “Greetings, sweetheart.”

  Tall, blond, and dressed all in black, Bradley Donald took his ministry seriously, especially as it concerned his cowering wife. Whirling, he clapped his hand over Clover’s eyes. “Sinful,” he declared.

  Rand relaxed as they wheeled past.

  That had been fun.

  Then he saw Jasper, mouth puckered t
ight, holding the front door wide.

  Dear God, he was really going outside.

  He, who had loved to walk and ride, was going outside in a wheelchair. He was going out with a nurse, like some defenseless worm who needed protecting.

  He, who had been the strongest of the brothers. He, who had been the fastest, the most energetic, the one on whom all familial hopes had been pinned. He was going outside, and everyone was going to see him. Laugh at him.

  “Please,” he muttered, gripping the arms of the chair.

  She wheeled him through the door and into the sunshine as if she hadn’t heard.

  Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe her hearing had saved him from sounding as pathetic as he looked.

  The wind struck him sharply, but the sunshine felt good on his face, not to mention his legs and chest. Two of the hounds rose and stretched, then came forward to snuffle at his hands. Petting them was a forgotten pleasure, for they weren’t allowed in the house.

  And really, how many strangers could see him as he sat on the terrace?

  “Please, bring me my outer garments,” the woman instructed the hovering servants. “Then pick up the chair and, if you would be so kind, carry it down the stairs.”

  He looked around and realized she was referring to his chair.

  “What the hell are you planning?” he said in a snarling tone.

  “I thought we’d go for a walk.” That woman took her bonnet from the maid and tied it under her chin. “I fancy a look at the Atlantic.”

  Garth didn’t blink. He acted as if Rand regularly wheeled himself around the countryside, flaunting his helplessness so everyone could point and laugh. Rand’s beloved brother betrayed him with a gesture to Jasper. “Take him down the stairs.”

  Rand waited for Jasper to object again, but he had the proper respect for the duke of Clairmont.

  Gesturing to two of the footmen, Jasper said, “Each of ye take a wheel.” He leaned forward. “I’ll lift the footrest.”

  Rand knocked him with his fist.

  Jasper landed on his rear on the stone. Rand shot backward from the impact. When he regained control, he saw Jasper clutching his mouth and the two footmen cowering.

  Lowering his hand, Jasper examined his palm and saw blood, then wiggled his two front teeth. “Haven’t lost that punishing right, Lord Rand.”