“I like to walk when I cannot sleep.”
“I can’t fault that, as I do the same. Why can’t you sleep?”
He didn’t think she would answer such a personal question, but then she said quietly, “I believe you also lodged at Blackwood Hall like my brother, my lord?”
This time it was Jamie who had no wish to answer, but he did, with just one word. “Yes.” Suddenly, he was tense again.
“And did you have… was Mr. Kenneth Jackson your housemaster, Lord Stafford?”
Hearing that name always sent him back there, to the screams, the pain, he and his friends begging for mercy as they were plunged into hell. It had been prolonged and vicious, orchestrated by a man who took pleasure in it.
“Yes,” Jamie rasped.
She turned then, twisting her body to look at him. “My lord, are you all right?”
“We are here,” Jamie said, urging his horse down the drive and into the courtyard of her father’s estate. “Good evening, Lady Alice,” he added, lowering her to the ground. “Don’t walk again at such an hour. Next time, the man you come across may not be a gentleman.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Jamie had turned his horse and fled into the night.
Chapter Two
He reached hisestate and rode into the stables. It was as he dismounted that he saw the flutter of white. Bending, he picked up the handkerchief. Raising it to his lips, he caught Lady Alice’s scent—soft and subtle, with a hint of rose. Tucking it into his pocket, he went through the motions of removing Archie’s saddle and rubbing him down. After ensuring the horse was fed and watered, Jamie left the stables and headed back to the house.
His boots crunched on the shells his youngest sister, Briar, had insisted would be “just the thing” to lay there. Jamie had given in, because that particular sister was not one who took no for an answer.
Landerly, his estate, was large and built of pale cream stone. To the left and right of the grand columned entrance stretched two wings. The right reserved for his sisters, their husbands, and children when they visited, and the left for him. Jamie walked along his side to the rear and found the door leading into his library. It was the easiest way in and out without alerting anyone—not that anyone but he was in residence at present.
Taking the stairs up, he passed portraits of his ancestors and the treasures his mother had once collected before she died and headed for his rooms. Opening the door, he closed it behind him and leaned against the solid wood.
Safe. The thought came as the soft lamplight reached every corner of the room. Here, he could be himself, though if he werehonest, he had been himself on that road as well, at least until he’d encountered Lady Alice Smythe.
Taking out the handkerchief, he studied it. The top right corner bore her initials in elegant lettering, the thread a soft lilac.
Placing it on his bedside table, Jamie went to the brandy decanter and poured himself a measure. He swallowed it in a single gulp, and then another. As the liquor burned its way down his throat, he stripped off his clothes and washed in the cold water his valet had left. He extinguished the lamp and climbed into bed. He loathed wearing nightshirts; any restriction could have him waking in a cold sweat, or worse, in the throes of a nightmare.
I let it define me, but no more, Jamie. You have to free yourself.
Those words had come from one of the only two men he respected in England. The two who had entered Blackwood Hall alongside him. Peers who had not been protected by the power of their birth when the doors to that place had shut. Toby and Anthony were his brothers in every way but blood. Unlike him, they’d found love, and peace from the demons that had once chased them.
Good women too, whom Jamie now called friends.
Rolling onto his side, he stared into the darkness. The flash of white returned to his mind, and he reached for the handkerchief. Pressing it to his lips, he closed his eyes.
*
A week later,Jamie entered the Barrington ballroom, every inch the gentleman he had been raised to be. Cool smile in place, and clothing exquisitely tailored to fit his broad frame.
“My lord,” Lady Blanchard said with a smile. “How lovely to see you back with us.”
Her husband had recently taken another mistress, which left her free to do as she pleased. Society, Jamie thought, liked to present itself as proper and its members titled, noble, and dignified. Men and women whose greatest daily challenges were what to eat or what to wear. Yet beneath that polished veneer simmered an underbelly of affairs and secrets. Most acted with impunity, confident their birth would shield them from consequence.
“Thank you, my lady.” Jamie walked in the opposite direction.
“That’s a happy look on your face,” a familiar voice said moments later.
Smiling, Jamie turned to find one of his oldest friends. Holding out his hand to Lord Tobias Corbyn, they shook.
“Where have you been? I know you’ve been back in London a week, yet neither Anthony nor I have seen you,” Toby demanded.
