Prologue
The first time Joan Bennet met Tristan Burke, he burst into her bedroom late at night wearing only his trousers and holding a single red rose.
She failed to see the romantic possibilities, but then, she was only eight.
“Where can I hide?” he demanded without preamble, looking frantically around her room.
Joan sat up in bed and stared at him with interest. This must be her brother’s friend, the one who had come home with him on holiday from Eton. They’d been expected around dinnertime, but Joan had been sent to her room without supper for using a naughty word. She hadn’t known it was naughty—she heard her own papa use it often, after all, and even her brother Douglas said it—but apparently it was very bad for young ladies to say it. Papa had sneaked her some rolls, though, which made it all right. And now someone had come bursting into her room late at night, which was very exciting, and thereforequiteall right with Joan. “It depends,” she said. “From whom are you hiding?”
“Douglas!”
She frowned. “Why are you hiding from Douglas? And why do you have a rose? Did it come from my mother’s garden?”
He went still, making furious motions for her to be quiet. Joan closed her mouth and obediently waited. She wondered if Mother approved of this boy; he had long, shaggy dark hair, and was surely almost as tall as Papa, but as skinny as a stick. She could see his ribs, even in the dim moonlight coming through the windows. His hands and feet, by contrast, were too large for his body. He looked rather wild, to tell the truth, and Mother didn’t like wild.
Abruptly he flung himself against the wall, right behind the door. Joan looked at the door, expecting someone else to come bursting through, but nothing happened. The boy stayed pressed to the wall, barely breathing, his eyes also fixed on the door. Joan frowned again. “Who are you?” she whispered. He ignored her. “I think you should leave my room,” she said again, a little louder.
This time he faced her, his eyes fierce in the ill-lit room. Slowly he put a finger to his lips. Joan was more than a little annoyed. “Go away,” she whispered loudly.
Without warning the door flew open a second time. “I caught you, you ruddy thief!” Her brother Douglas charged into the room and stopped cold. He looked around, puzzled. “Joan?” he asked cautiously.
“What do you want?” she snapped. “I was asleep.”
“Uh ...” Douglas backed up a step. “Sorry ... I thought I heard ... Well, you won’t tell Mother, will you—argh!” He jumped, slapping one hand to the back of his neck. His friend had moved out of the shadows, as silent as a ghost, and tickled the rose down Douglas’s back. In a flash the two boys tumbled to the floor, punching each other in a furious tangle of arms and legs. They rolled back and forth, apparently trying to kill each other, until someone’s foot caught the leg of a chair and sent it crashing to the floor.
“Douglas,” Joan tried to say. Neither boy acknowledged her; they continued to pound away. Joan listened again. “Douglas,” she said, a little bit louder. “Papa’s coming!”
That, at least, finally got her brother’s attention. “What?”
“Someone’s coming,” she repeated, leaning over the edge of her bed to see them. “Most likely Papa.” At least, it was usually Papa who came when she got out of bed and into trouble at night. Joan couldn’t wait to move into a proper young lady’s room far from her parents’.
“Bloody hell,” said her brother, looking guilty all of a sudden. He twisted to look his friend in the face, a difficult feat since the boy had his arm around Douglas’s throat. “We’ll be thrashed.”
“Where can we hide?” asked the other boy—for the second time, Joan thought a little peevishly. He and Douglas jumped to their feet, their fight forgotten, and now looking like the panicked twelve-year-old boys they were.
“Why should I tell you?” she asked. “I don’t even know who you are. You’re both going to get me in awful trouble if I help you, and I already had to miss supper, which was all your fault, Douglas—”
“Bother that, Joan,” Douglas interrupted. “Help us this time, and I swear we’ll be in your debt forever.”
“Hmph.” She crossed her arms. Everyone was very busy telling her what to do today. Besides, she knew forever meant less than a day to Douglas. “Under the bed, I suppose. But you’d better be quiet!” she added as they immediately slid under her bed, pulling the dust skirt down behind them. She heard a bare moment of scuffling from the floor, and then the door latch clicked open.
“Joan?” Papa peered around the edge of the door, wearing his dressing gown and old slippers. “Are you awake, popkin?”
“Yes, Papa,” she whispered. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you ...”
He came into the room. “Why are you awake, child?” He saw the fallen chair, and a slight frown touched his brow.
She jumped out of bed and began tugging at it, trying to right it. “I’m sorry, Papa, I knocked it over. I couldn’t sleep, and I was—wasn’t being careful ...”
Papa picked up the chair and set it on its feet. He scooped Joan into his arms and deposited her in bed again, tucking the blankets around her. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
Joan didn’t have to fake the tremble of her chin. “I was a little hungry,” she confessed in a very small voice. She certainly was, now that Douglas and his friend had woken her up and made her think about the missed supper.
Her father smiled, his shoulders relaxing. “No doubt. But you shouldn’t have anything to eat now; a full stomach might give you bad dreams.”
Joan sighed. “I know.”
He kissed her forehead. “Try to go back to sleep. Tomorrow you’ll have a fine big breakfast, and be right as rain again. Agreed?”
