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At midday as the battle raged, Rifleman Crawley came upon his friend Don Adeo holding off a fierce French officer with a bristling mustache. Blood flowed from Don Adeo’s sword arm. The noble Portuguese officer stood before his fallen steed.

“You must pay me sixty gold coins,” the Frenchman cried, “or I will slay your horse.”

“Never,” cried Don Adeo. He staggered and fell to one knee barely able to parry his enemy’s blows.

Rifleman Crawley, seeing his friend’s distress, leapt into the fray, driving the French officer back from the fallen Don Adeo. The Frenchman retreated under the fury of Crawley’s blows, leaping up upon a tall boulder, and shouting down, “Hugh the Horrible will have his revenge!”

Tim jumped up on the bench, struck a pose, then dropped down on the other side, and disappeared into the hedge. The boys looked to Raven, while he stood rigid with comprehension. He realized that it was his part to applaud. He clapped, even as his mind, stuck on the name of the French officer and the sum of sixty gold pieces.

“Thank you, lads,” Honoria said. “You’ve played your parts quite well. Now, I’m sure, Sir Adrian has need of you. Let me have those costumes, and I’ll leave you to get on with your work, or journey, or whatever you have planned.” She collected her bonnet and pencil case.

The boys squirmed out of their borrowed clothes without a word, looking from her to Raven. Raven motioned them to sit upon the bench and took up the pile of clothes. “Don’t move until I return. I’m walking Miss Thornhill to the dower house.”

He offered his arm. She hesitated, giving him a beseeching look, but he didn’t budge. At last, she took his arm. They began to walk. “I do apologize,” she said. “I should have asked your permission to involve them. Sometimes they get quite in the way of the work going forward with Hermes.”

“I imagine they do,” said Raven mildly, as they turned into the path that led to the dower house. He meant to keep his temper in check until he understood what he’d seen.

“Cassie asked me if I could keep them occupied this morning, and they do like to be active.”

Cassie. The name distracted him for a moment. She wasn’t Lady Cassandra or Bluebell. She was Cassie.

Honoria Thornhill looked up at him, and he went back to his questioning. “So, you write stories.”

Her hand on his arm twitched. “Fictions,” she said firmly.

“But they aren’t entirely fiction, are they?” he persisted.

“Well, writers do take inspiration from the … scenes around them, but then imagination takes over. A local bully becomes a French officer.”

“You don’t fear that the local bully might recognize himself in your work?”

“Never,” she said. “No one connects my stories with … me or with this place.”

“You publish anonymously then?” he asked. They had come within sight of the dower house.

Honoria released his arm, and faced him squarely, her notebook clutched to her chest with her ink-stained hands. “Only Cassie knows about my … work. Lottie would never approve, so, you see, I must remain an unknown author.”

“Won’t the story of Hugh the Horrible threaten that? Am I right in thinking that I’ve met the man who inspired your French officer?”

Honoria blushed. “You needn’t worry. Horrible Hugh is no reader, and he’d never open a novel. He’s a member of the sporting set, follows the races, hunts, rather like his father Lord Ramsbury.”

“Horrible Hugh is Hugh Haydon, Lord Ramsbury’s son?” The knowledge rocked him. One minute he had his balance, the next the ground shifted under his feet. All his carefully laid plans meant nothing. The scene in the inn yard came back to him in vivid detail. How many times had the story been told carelessly since by friends of Dick Crockett? Raven had figured as the hero, defending the vulnerable, but now he saw himself as the fool, the man who unknowingly offended the brother of the woman he loved. Hugh would not forget the slight.

Worse, Raven had compounded his offense with his daily visits to Ramsbury Park. He had accepted the hospitality of a family that would likely turn him out on his ear when they knew what he’d done. He had risked all his hopes and plans without knowing the danger he courted. But one person had known the risk and had not offered a word of warning.

For a week Raven had seen nothing of his landladies, which he had thought for the best. For a week he had congratulated himself on the wisdom of avoiding Lady Cassandra. Cassie. He feared that meeting her, he would betray his awareness of the cruelty she’d endured. He was under no obligation to tell her what he’d heard, or from whom he’d heard it, but he didn’t like the idea of concealing the thing from her. He knew London society loved to mock its own. If Wellington or Melbourne or King William himself could be caricatured in the print shop windows, then no one was safe from society’s barbs. For a week he had been full of sympathy for a woman who had let him make a fool of himself.

At the door of the dower house, he stopped and faced Honoria.

“Miss Thornhill, where’s your niece?” he asked. He handed her the boys’ costumes.

Honoria offered him a pleading glance. He merely raised one brow.

Honoria’s shoulders slumped. “Cassie walked to the village this morning.”

Raven bowed and strode off. He knew a thing or two about heat and how to judge the temperature of a flame from its color. His anger was white hot. His sympathy for Cassandra Lavenham was ash.

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