For a moment she’d panicked.Years of training enabled her to keep her expression serene, but inside her heart was pounding.
Too late, too late, too late.
There was no boyishness about him now.He was all man, and somehow...beautiful, in a hard-edged, masculine way.Dark lashes fanned over the lightly tanned skin.His eyes were the same light gray.But tonight they seemed cold as well as gray.Icy.
On the boy those eyes had lit with laughter, danced with amusement and sometimes widened in wonder.Now, on the man, they seemed to slice through her.
She ought to have appeared indifferent, uninterested, but she couldn’t prevent the leap of her heart when she realized who he was.And it was only when his gaze softened and he smiled at her that she realized she was smiling at him.
And oh, that mouth.It drew her, like a moth to a flame.Chiseled by a master sculptor, it fascinated her.It was, quite simply, beautiful.She’d never thought of a man’s mouth being beautiful, but his was.Yet there was nothing feminine about it.
But he was not for her.No matter what Edgar said—what anyone said— she would never marry again.She’d had enough of men and marriage.
She grimaced ruefully at her ridiculous presumption, thinking, even for a moment, that this tall, beautiful man, courted by the highest-born, most beautiful, most respectable ladies in the land, might want to marry her.The Ice Widow.Oh yes, she’d heard the name she’d been given.And worse.
She’d tried not to let it upset her.
The carriage rattled on.She gazed out of the window, watching the gaslights in the street glow and fade as they passed.So, Marcus Renfrew was now Lord Alverleigh.She’d wondered about him from time to time, what he was doing, how he’d turned out.
As a naive young girl she’d dreamed of a future with the boy.After school he’d go away to university—Cambridge or Oxford—and four or five years later he would graduate and come back to Alverleigh.
He would be twenty-four and she’d be eighteen.She’d fantasized about how they would meet again as adults.Perhaps he’d come and find her in the forest.Or at their secret pool, where the otters played.Or maybe she’d be out riding and he’d appear silhouetted on the ridge, mounted on his magnificent black stallion, and he’d see her and canter down to meet her.
The very last place she’d expected to see him was at a London party, striding toward her, cleaving through the crowd, his eyes burning.Or staring after her as she left, with unreadable, ice-gray eyes, as hard and cold as if they were carved from marble.
She hugged her shawl around her.She’d put her childish dreams away when she turned sixteen and learned what life was really about.Besides, dreams were too painful.
Too late, too late, too late.
Edgar glanced at her.“Very quiet you are tonight, little sister.”
“I’m tired,” she murmured.It was dark in the carriage, but she could feel his eyes boring into her.And she was weary of arguing with him, going round and around in circles.
“You might not care about what happens to me, but I didn’t think you’d be so indifferent to the fate of Ferndale.”
She turned her head sharply.“Ferndale?What do you mean?”
He shrugged again.“Just that Ferndale is mortgaged to the hilt, and if we don’t pay up, the mortgage holder is threatening to sell it.”
“Sell it?He can’t!Nobody can.Ferndale belongs to me.”
He made an indifferent gesture.“At the moment it does, but if we don’t pay up soon, the mortgage holder has every right to sell it.Effectively the entire estate belongs to him.”
“But itcan’tbelong to him.Ferndale was willed to me by my mother, and by the trust my grandfather set up.Only I can sell it, and I’d never do that—never!”
He shrugged again.“The law is the law.”
Tessa stared at him in frustration, her pulse pounding.“How could such a thing happen.It must be a mistake.”
Edgar simply shook his head and turned away, a signal that as far as he was concerned the conversation was over.
Tessa sat in silence, her thoughts in turmoil.How could Ferndale be sold?It was hers!Who was this man who held a mortgage and was demanding payment?And how did mortgages work?She had no idea.Her father, Edgar and both her husbands would never discuss finance—or anything important—with her.Even though she was the one who saved Papa and Edgar from the violence of debt collectors.
Ferndale...Her beloved home.It was the key to her plan.As soon as she amassed enough money—and she had almost enough to hire a carriage to travel there—she planned to leave London and go to Ferndale and live there in peace for the rest of her life.
But without Ferndale, she would be homeless.And dependent on Edgar for the rest of her life.
“There must be another way,” she told her brother.“You’re always getting loans—why can’t you get a loan to pay off this mortgage?”
