Francis glared at her. “Our father is speaking with the duke right now. He’s confident that he can convince the old fool to correct his mistake and make Father’s birth legally valid. And then he will take his rightful place as heir apparent.” He sent a scathing glance over her person, and then did the same to Jasper. “There can only be one true heir.”
CHAPTER1
Nottingham, England
January 1817—Twenty years later
A beadof icy perspiration trembled from the tip of Lady Juliana Sinclair’s nose as she took aim. Her arms shook with fear and hunger, and her raw fingers, numb with cold, wrapped around the loaded pistol’s handle. Tears blurred her vision and her breath hitched, but she sighted her target through the forest’s trees and slowly put her finger over the trigger.
Don’t do this, her mind whispered.Don’t do this, Juliana. You’re not a murderer. Her thoughts rebelled and her stomach roiled with nausea and pain.But I must.I haven’t a choice.
Tears burned twin trails down her frigid cheeks before catching the cold air and sending prickles of pain across her skin. With gritted teeth, she squeezed one eye tightly shut and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Bang!
Her shot went wide, echoing through the forest, and the stag scampered off.
An overwhelming wave of simultaneous relief and regret washed over Juliana, bringing her to her knees on the forest’s damp, spongy ground. And she wept. She’d not wished to harm the beastie, but now, without a source of food, she would surely die. For two days she’d been wandering the forest, and she was certain that she could not survive another night in the cold, covered only by moss that she’d torn from the ground. Her body was too weak, too cold.
Her mind’s eye flashed with the memory of a warm carriage, the jostle, the flip…the searing pain to her scalp, the ear-splitting crack, and the blood. She looked down at her maid’s costume, turned brown, and her body trembled with another shiver. Her pursuit of freedom had certainly come at a price.
* * *
Bang!
Bang!
A curse fell from the lips of Leonard Notley, the Marquess of Livingston, as he lowered his hunting rifle. His two greyhounds, Kitty and Boots, barked and sniffed the air, their ears perked.
His hunt had been foiled. “What the devil was that?” he growled at his best friend and man of all work, Percy Baxter.
The man’s dark, well-trained, and well-practised gaze scanned the forest. “That sounded like a second shot.”
“Onmyland?” Leo’s eyebrows darted up. He’d never dealt with poachers before, and the prospect sent a shiver of dread down the backs of his legs, threatening to buckle them.
“I’ll have a look, shall I, sir?” Percy gestured with his shaggy head of dark hair, a smirk on his lips.
While Leo appreciated his friend’s avoidance of Leo’s reviled title, he detested the unsubtle prod at his discomfort around people.
Leo growled. “Damn you.”
His breath fogged around him, and his boots squished pleasantly into the mossy, silent earth as he marched determinedly toward the source of the other shot. He’d find the poacher, and he’d have the man removed from his land immediately, by God. No one would hunt on his land, andno onewould wander about his estate just to gawk at him.
Noting his lack of a command, his dogs remained at his side, though Leo could sense the tension in the line of their backs, the stiff swing of their tails, and the taut bounce to their step. They were ready to spring into motion the moment he commanded it. He couldn’t risk his dogs’ lives, however, and sending them running toward a poacher was certainly a risk.
Low gasping sounds came from just beyond a curve of trees, and Leo’s heart beat harder as he approached. Mentally shoring up his nerves to deliver a proper verbal thrashing, he scowled, inhaled, and…froze.
Sitting on the forest floor was a woman, her head bowed, her face in her hands as her shoulders shook. Her maid’s uniform was filthy, and her dark, curling brown hair was half-pulled from its chignon. Leo’s heart squeezed, his gaze falling on the pistol that lay on the ground several feet away. His anger evaporated. This woman wasn’t a poacher in the vicious sense. She was merely trying to survive. And clearly losing the battle.
“Excuse me, madam,” he said into the silence.
She gasped, her head snapping up before she scrambled away. Holy hell. The force of her wide, frightened gaze hit him hard in the gut. Her eyes, the colour of wet stone with green around the edges, stood out luminously against her filth-covered skin, and his heart punched once, hard, against his ribs in response.
“I’ll not hurt you,” he vowed, his breath fogging in the air.
The woman’s gaze flicked down to the rifle hanging from his left arm, and he cursed under his breath before turning and handing the damned thing to Percy, who stood silently behind him.
