William didn’t need to think about it. He nodded. What did it matter, after all? His heart was already broken, his marriage was over, so it made no difference to him where he nursed his wounds.
As he got into his coach, Peter asked, “What did he want?”
“To discuss those consequences you mentioned, and no, it’s too late to ask what that duel was about. It’s just as well you don’t know.”
Chapter One
VANESSA BLACKBURN SAT ONthe edge of the cliff overlooking the North Sea. It was a chill spring day in the Scottish Highlands, but she was bundled in her fur-lined winter coat as well as a thick tartan that she could use as a hood if the wind picked up. She wasn’t Scottish—well, she was a little. Her great-grandfather Angus MacCabe had been a Scotsman, but his youngest daughter had married an English earl, a Blackburn. Vanessa’s father, William, was their only surviving son.
There was an old campfire pit nearby, which she and her father lit in the winter on clear nights when they would sit out here to watch the most bizarre display of lights that filled the sky to the north. She was going to miss that amazing spectacle. She was also going to miss riding across the hills and dales, fishing, helping her father with the cattle and horses, all the things she could only do here. She would be leaving soon.
She didn’t want to go. The freedom she’d enjoyed here was addictive. She didn’t want to give it up, but she knew she would have to, at least for a little while when she visited her mother, Kathleen. She was already dreading the arguments and rows they would have when she reached Dawton Manor in Cheshire. She hadn’t forgotten for a minute how adamant and determined her mother was about serving up three absolutely perfect daughters to theton. Her mother had already put her and her twin sisters through a grueling regimen of the do’s and don’ts of a lady’s proper decorum. Her father called it being turned into a puppet, and it had felt that way to her more often than not. He had taken a different approach to educating her when they arrived in Scotland, hiring all sorts of tutors for her and not one of them had mentioned etiquette to her.
She would never forget the traumatic day their lives had changed when she was thirteen. There had been yelling. Her parents had gone outside to do it so no one would hear them, but even from a distance it was obvious they were yelling. She’d watched from an upstairs window with her sisters, the twins in tears. None of them had ever seen their parents fight.
Later that day she was surprised to find her father in his room packing, gathering up everything in the room that was his.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Away.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
“Why?”
“Ask your mother.” His tone had been angry, but he’d glanced at her then, seen her tears and held out his arms. She ran into them, refusing to believe it might be the last time he would hug her, but he confirmed it when he added softly, “I’m sorry, darling girl, but I can never come back here.”
She ran out of the room to confront her mother, who was in tears, too, but they were angry ones. Still, Vanessa asked, “Why is Papa leaving?”
“Because he has to. There’s no choice, and that’s all you need to know.”
“He said to ask you!”
“Yes, of course he would. And I answered. Now go away. I’m too angry to deal with you girls today.”
Vanessa cried for the rest of the day until she decided to sneak away with her father. She even left her mother a note:You drove Papa away. I hate you, you’ll never see me again!
William was leaving that night in a coach with his belongings piled high on top of it. She left with nothing. She jumped up on the back of the vehicle and climbed carefully to the top, putting a finger to her lips when the driver saw her up there. She revealed herself to her father the next night, only when she got too hungry to hide any longer. Papa was going to take her back immediately. She promised she’d run away again. She swore she wouldn’t live at Dawton Manor without him, that she hated Mama for fighting with him and forcing him to leave. He tried to tell her it was nothing like that, that it wasn’t Kathleen’s fault, yet from his tone and his expression she knew it was a lie. He finally agreed she could stay with him until he got settled, but then he’d have someone take her back. He even arranged that night for a letter to be delivered to Kathleen informing her that Vanessa was safe with him. Her father’s plan hadn’t come to pass, though every six months he asked her if she was ready to return home. Her answer was always an emphatic no.
He couldn’t go back himself. For the longest time he wouldn’t tell her why, and she’d asked often, but his answer was always the same: that she wouldn’t understand because she was too young. The only thing he would tell her was that before he’d left home he and her mother had come up with a story to account for his departure from England—he’d gone to the West Indies to oversee some of their investments and was in no hurry to come home to dreary, damp England.
When she turned seventeen, she pointed out she wasn’t too young anymore. He sat her down to tell her the sordid tale, and that was when she started hating the Rathbans, the odious family who had threatened her father’s life and split up her family. An indiscretion led to a duel, which he’d won, with a nobleman named Henry Rathban. His opponent’s family had been enraged over the outcome and had promised to ruin him and his family in scandal if he wasn’t punished. They’d lost a member of their family that day; his family had to lose a member, too. Him.
“Exile from England was the Rathbans’ choice,” her father explained. “It was more lenient than ‘an eye for an eye.’ It could have been much worse. They accused me of deliberately committing murder. Albert Rathban, the eldest, is an earl, but the family is descended from dukes. They are powerful enough to have filed those murder charges against me or just killed me themselves and gotten away with it. You and your sisters would never make good matches if that scandal broke. And my marriage was over anyway, so I didn’t mind leaving to protect our good name.”
“It wasn’t your indiscretion, was it?”
It didn’t look as if her father would answer that. A few minutes passed while she waited, but then he said, “No.”
Well, that said it all, and she was so glad that she’d never chosen to go home. She had been missing her sisters—and occasionally even her mother—but not anymore. But she and her father had always agreed that once she was of age, she would return to England.
But she loved living with her father in the Highlands. He bred stock, both horses and red-haired cattle, just to keep busy here. It kept her busy, too, since he let her help. The two shire horses he’d taken north with them, he’d mixed with Scottish mares from Clydesdale. Most of the offspring didn’t end up as tall as the shires, but one white albino did. Vanessa claimed that one for herself and named him Snow King. At least Snow would be leaving with her. But maybe she didn’t have to leave. . . .
She ran her fingers through her copper locks, which she’d cut short for the journey because she refused to ride in a dress and didn’t want people staring at her in disapproval when they saw her in britches. She saw the shadow approaching. It had to be her father. The two servants who lived with them, a married couple, never came near the cliffs. She turned and saw him, his dark red hair, which had grown long in recent months, whipping in the breeze. There was a merry glint in his pale blue eyes, the same color as hers.
“It’s Thursday,” William said. “Do we fish today—one last time, Nessi?”
