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Perhaps not. Perhaps he could have escaped without extending a helpful hand, always a hazardous action, but surely there could be no threat to his defences from this pitiful drowned rat of a woman who peered at him through the gloom and whose answer was uttered so low he had to stoop to catch it.

‘I admit I’d rather not linger in this storm for very much longer, and to see your mother again would be a rare treat. But—’ She broke off, shame stealing into her expression it took him a moment to understand. ‘I’m already remarked on quite enough. I can only imagine how much more people would talk if they were to see me alone, on the arm of a strange man...’

Spencer stared at her for a moment, taking in the flare of colour that gleamed on her pale cheeks.

That’s her fear? That people might think badly of her? Evidently I’m not the only one behind on current events, although how she could have failed to have heard I don’t know.

Grace was clearly ignorant of the mutters Spencer now drew whenever he stepped out of doors, tales of his behaviour the first night he had returned to Lyme Regis already spreading like wildfire throughout the town. A small flicker of guilt rose to nag at him at the memory of his mother’s face that evening: concern, distress and—worst of all—disappointment crossing it as he had stumbled up the front steps, still with a bottle in his hand and his knuckles bruised and swollen. He should never have allowed himself to lose control of his temper, answering some drunkard’s challenge in the tavern with his fists... If he’d only been able to douse the flames that leapt inside him he might have avoided ending his evening in a pointless brawl that now everybody—barring Grace, apparently—seemed to have heard of, sealing his reputation as uncouth, ungentlemanly and almost certainly dangerous. Society gossips hadn’t given a fig that he’d acted in self-defence, exaggerating and expanding the story until it had become a lurid tale Spencer barely recognised.

‘If anybody were to whisper, it wouldn’t necessarily be about you. You might consider pulling your bonnet a fraction to conceal your face, however, if you’d rather avoid my scandal as well as your own.’

The complete lack of understanding in Grace’s eyes was almost touching, a welcome change from the judgement he saw in those that had looked up at him since his return. ‘Why would they be whispering about you?’

That wasn’t a question he particularly wanted to answer. ‘I’m sure my mother will tell you soon enough. In the meantime, I suggest we leave at once. Watch your step on this wet ground.’

He slipped his hand beneath her elbow, feeling at once how she stiffened and seemed to curb the instinct to flinch away. It was hardly a surprising reaction, he supposed, given her prim propriety in stark contrast to his own unconventional manners, but there was still something decidedly unpleasant about her recoil from his fingertips.

Spencer felt once again that unwelcome sensation of something he couldn’t explain, a dangerous intruder into the usual indifference he so carefully cultivated. The opinions of young women—and the rest of society—as to his looks, conduct or any other part of him were worth less than nothing, so there was no obvious reason for her apprehension to disturb him. It should have been a relief that she didn’t giggle, or simper, or slide an appraising eye towards him when she thought he wasn’t looking as so many ladies of her type did, or had in York at any rate; but then there was something that set her apart, some flicker of suffering in her face that spoke to him like for like and forced him to pay attention. He wanted to disregard her and her quiet pain as he would anyone else, yet with another flare of discomfort he found he couldn’t turn away so easily.

His mother was the single person he usually felt it necessary to in any way consider and for her sake alone he did his best to conceal the melancholy that dogged him day and night that her rapidly failing health only added to. The one other he had held in such high regard was cold in his tomb and with him in the silence of the grave lay Spencer’s ability to see the world with anything other than a weary disgust now so deep it was etched on to his soul.

With a grim scowl of effort he pushed aside the icy creep of guilt and grief that attempted to rise up within him, driving the images that threatened to accompany it back with savage force.

Now is not the time. Later, with a glass in your hand, is when you can do battle with the past.

The wraithlike, damnably disturbing Miss Linwood was still standing close to him, his hand still cupping the delicate bend of her slight arm, and he nodded at her with a forthrightness he only half felt.

‘You needn’t worry about propriety, truly. Anyone with sense is indoors, so we shouldn’t be observed.’

Grace flicked a sideways glance up at him, apparently on the verge of saying something at the edge he knew she would have heard in his tone. Instead she dropped her eyes at once from his darkly questioning look, wincing with the swift turn of her aching neck, and allowed him to guide her away from the sea that could so easily have claimed her.

Chapter Two

If anybody had told her the strange turns this day was going to take, Grace thought dazedly as she hurried to keep up with Spencer’s long strides, she wouldn’t have got out of bed that morning. How she found herself lurching from her solitary heartbreak to being marched along by a silent Captain Spencer Dauntsey she still couldn’t say, the firm—and distracting—pressure of his hand on her arm the only real proof she wasn’t trapped in some hideous dream.

The idea that she could wake from this living nightmare was so tempting—to find herself in her own bed with Papa reading in his library and a note from Henry on the post tray—but a sudden slip of her foot on the wet cobbles jolted her from her fantasy, grim reality flooding back in to replace it, and Spencer’s grip was the only thing that kept her from sprawling into the gutter. At least the storm meant the streets were deserted and nobody would see the highly inappropriate sight of her scurrying along after dark on the arm of a man who would apparently set tongues wagging about her even more than they were already.

‘As I said. Mind your step.’ Spencer didn’t slow his pace, his head bent slightly against the chill of the wind that flung icy rain into their faces. ‘We’re almost there.’

Grace squinted through the gloom, attempting to ignore the altogether too-absorbing sensation of the hand on her elbow that sent strange prickles down her arm and made it oddly difficult to focus on anything else. They were drawing into a crescent of magnificent houses, tall against the dark menace of the stormy sky and set around a small park of landscaped trees that bent and shook with the wind through their branches. It was too dim to see clearly, but Grace thought she saw a curtain move slightly at the downstairs window of one of the largest houses—the next moment a grand front door was flung open and candlelight spilled down a set of iron-railed steps, illuminating a gravelled path that gleamed wetly in the orange glow. Spencer ushered her towards it and before she had a moment to consult her thoughts on the matter Grace found herself standing in a bright entrance hall, her head spinning and her soaking cloak dripping on to a polished parquet floor.

She looked about her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the warm light thrown out by numerous candles. There were candelabras set around the space, their flames dancing in the draught that accompanied Grace and Spencer into the house, and painted portraits smiled stiffly down from the walls to watch as she hesitated, unsure of what to do next. She’d been too distracted to give much thought to anything other than getting out of the rain and now she stood in the unfamiliar territory of Spencer’s luxurious house she felt a thrill of some strange anxiety flutter through her nerves.

He’s a stranger, really. I barely recognise the man he’s become.

Dimly she heard Spencer speaking to somebody behind her, too low for her to catch the words, but it would hardly have mattered if he had been shouting in her ear for all her attention was fixed on the uncertainty circling in her stomach. Perhaps to take his offer of sanctuary had been a mistake. He only seemed to have offered under some kind of duress and it was with mounting unease she waited for her unwilling host to decide what to do with her now she had followed the lion into its den.

‘May I take your cloak and bonnet, ma’am?’ A maid materialised as if from nowhere, making Grace jump with her murmured question.

‘Have them dried, please, Thorne.’ Spencer glanced at Grace as he removed his own soaking outer things and handed them to another waiting servant. ‘It will take a short while to ready the carriage. You might want to sit before the fire, warm yourself a little.’

Grace turned away from him quickly, mumbling her thanks. The heavy rain had penetrated the costly material of Spencer’s coat, dampening the shirt beneath; it clung to his broad frame a little too lovingly for comfort, the soft white outlining a landscape of muscle that made Grace’s pulse skip more than a fraction faster. Alarm swept through her, wrinkling her brow: Spencer’s masculine physicality, so different from Henry’s slim elegance, surely shouldn’t even register with her. It was an irrelevant detail, no more to be noticed than the fact he had two eyes and a nose on his stern face.

She frowned, trying to silence the troubling thought. After Henry’s thoughtless rejection and the suffering that even now churned within her like a stormy sea, any strange reaction of her unconscious to Spencer’s admittedly impressive musculature should be dismissed without hesitation. It was laughable, the very notion of Spencer provoking her interest, and surely only a nostalgic shadow of the partiality she’d felt for him as a girl—she could almost have smiled at her momentary folly if the unhappiness in her chest hadn’t been weighing her down like a stone. She would never allow herself to surrender to such weakness again and certainly not in favour of a man so apparently aloof as Spencer now was. Not even she, with her admittedly poor record of good judgement, would ever be quite that foolish.

Her disquieting host was running his hand through his short crop of dark hair when Grace dared look towards him again, raindrops glinting in the candlelight as he brushed them from his head. Now they were away from the grey shadows of dusk Grace could see the warm brown of his eyes more clearly, and the fine lines, which on anybody else she would have suspected were caused by smiling, that bracketed them at the outer corners. Surely this dour man could never now get enough use out of a smile to make such lines, she thought privately as she watched him straighten his cravat, his brows drawn together in the near-permanent scowl she had already realised he seemed to wear unconsciously.

‘Rivers will see you through to the parlour.’ Spencer gestured to the servant who bobbed a neat curtsy beside him. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

He turned abruptly to leave, moving towards one of the doors leading from the hall with long strides Grace couldn’t help but follow with reluctant—but uncontrollable—interest. Before he could reach it, however, it opened quietly on well-oiled hinges and a woman appeared on the threshold.

At first Grace struggled to place her; until with an unpleasant start she realised the gaunt figure barely able to stand was Spencer’s formerly vivacious mother. The change was so alarming Grace felt all words flee from her as she took in the drastic alteration in the woman she remembered: just like her son the difference from eight years ago was staggering, as though some malicious enchantment had been cast over the Dauntsey family to curse both their bodies and their minds.

‘I thought I heard you arrive home.’ Mrs Dauntsey came towards Spencer slowly, although her pale face broke into a smile that took the edge off her otherwise painfully fragile appearance. Her skin was so papery every line of bone was clear beneath its thin cover and her hair had the dull tinge Grace had seen only once before, on her grandmama after she had been taken ill with the bad chest that had killed her.

Spencer swiftly reached out a steadying hand as the newcomer swayed on her feet.

‘Why are you up? Doctor Sharp was quite insistent you shouldn’t be walking about.’

His tone changed abruptly from the brusque manner of moments before, now edged with an undercurrent of worry, but it wasn’t just the transformation of his voice that made Grace blink in sudden confusion that grew to join that already holding court in her chest.

The frown had left his brow, his features smoothing out into a look of concern that wiped the displeasure from his face and enhanced the comeliness of his already eye-catching features tenfold. He looked younger, closer to his real age of twenty-five rather than the years his scowl advanced him to, and even the brutal edge his broken nose lent to his appearance diminished with the alteration in his expression.

Grace swallowed down a small sound of dismay as she took in the drastic change in the man who mere moments before had looked as though he might take on a bear and win. Far from shrugging off her unnerving reaction to the glowering Spencer, this new display of tenderness only made it return—with a displeasing vengeance. When he wasn’t looking as though all the world was his enemy Spencer’s face was as handsome as it had been as a youth, and when it softened further into palpable concern it was uncomfortably similar to the countenance that had so intrigued her all those years ago.

She twisted her fingers together, startled by the unconscious response of her body. Perhaps she had caught a chill, standing out on the slippery Cobb in a growing storm? There could no other cause for her cheeks to flush so in Spencer’s presence, or for her heart to flutter at the gentleness with which he supported his mother—only silly girls with romantic fancies would think anything otherwise and thanks to Henry’s cruelty she would never again be one of those.

‘Please don’t fuss.’ Mrs Dauntsey swatted at Spencer with a feeble hand. ‘I heard you come back and wanted to be sure you were well. Whatever can you have been thinking of, going walking in such—oh!’ She broke off abruptly as she caught sight of Grace standing awkwardly in Spencer’s wake. ‘I didn’t realise you’d brought company with you.’

Grace dipped a respectful greeting, wishing with all her heart she hadn’t left a trail of dirty rainwater on her unwitting hostess’s pristine floor. Now Mrs Dauntsey’s attention was focused fully on her she saw some faint traces of the woman she had once known: a refined jaw and delicate nose giving an air of sophistication despite the waxy sheen of her skin and mauve shadows beneath eyes that glittered with sudden wonder.

Spencer nodded in Grace’s direction; a little unwillingly, she saw. ‘Mother, I’m sure you recall—’

‘Grace Linwood!’ The stiff introduction was cut off by a gasp of delight. ‘I’d know you at once, although I can scarce believe how you’ve grown!’

Her reaction was far more gratifying than Spencer’s had been, Grace thought privately as she felt a glimmer of warmth touch her otherwise chilly insides. His mother had always been such a kind woman, it was a relief to find at least that much unchanged.

‘Mrs Dauntsey, it’s so wonderful to see you again!’

There was a split-second of alarm as the older woman almost overbalanced in her eagerness to grasp Grace’s hands and Grace had to lunge forward quite inelegantly to stop her from falling. Mrs Dauntsey peered into her face, drinking in the sight of her with happiness so genuine it almost made Grace forget the tide of varied emotions causing chaos in her stomach.

‘Little Grace, quite the grown woman—and the very image of your dear mama! I’d thought to surprise her with my return to town, but as I’m sure you can see I’ve been a trifle too ill to pay any calls. I should have sent a note, I know, but I’m afraid I was determined to see her shocked face when I appeared on your doorstep!’

Spencer’s mother laughed, a thin peal so unlike the hearty sound she might have made eight years ago before her husband had died and her sons had whisked her away, only one of them now left to stand behind her like an unsmiling guard. Spencer’s formerly stern expression was already beginning to set in once again, obscuring the openness of moments before like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Perhaps he only allowed himself one moment of levity a day, Grace just had time to wonder briefly—with another unpleasant jolt of recognition that brooding could still be very attractive indeed—before Mrs Dauntsey laid one skeletal hand on the damp sleeve of her gown.

‘My dear, you look absolutely chilled to the bone. Won’t you sit with me before the fire and take some tea?’ She cocked her head, the sparkle never leaving the brown gaze so like the colour of her son’s. Out of the corner of her eye Grace could have sworn she saw Spencer stiffen, but there didn’t appear to be any question of refusal as the older woman gestured towards the door she had appeared through with a welcoming smile. ‘Do come through to my sitting room. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to see you again after all this time!’

Mrs Dauntsey cast a quick glance up at Spencer, apparently trying to read something in his face, although what she could have seen in the straight set of his lips Grace could only guess. Certainly to her there was nothing to be seen but faint displeasure, almost bordering on discomfort, and it was a relief to follow the slow progress of his mother away from his disturbing presence in the direction of her warm and comfortable sitting room.

‘Do sit down.’

Mrs Dauntsey waved a hand at an enormous chair drawn up to the fire. The flames cast Grace’s shadow long across the carpeted floor as she sank into it, her body leaning instinctively towards the hearth as though longing for its heat. She hadn’t realised how cold she had been; distress had numbed her senses, and it was only when her fingers tingled painfully she saw the blueish hue that tinged them.

There was a bell on a table next to Mrs Dauntsey’s overstuffed armchair and she lifted it with a small sound of effort.

‘There. Tea will be along in a moment. If I remember correctly, you always liked it sweet with plenty of milk.’

For the first time since Henry had thrust his fateful letter into her hand Grace felt a tentative upward tug at her mouth. Despite her fragility and in startling contrast to her glowering son, Spencer’s mother radiated warmth, her memory of the preferences of a child oddly touching.

‘That’s right. I’m afraid I still use rather too much honey.’

‘I’m not sure there’s any such thing.’

Mrs Dauntsey settled herself against her cushions and regarded Grace keenly, apparently hungry for every detail of her face and windswept hair.

‘Let me begin by apologising for my silence the past couple of years.’ Her voice held soft regret, real feeling that Grace knew was sincere. ‘We moved around so often after we left Dorset, even living in Scotland for a time, that inevitably some of my effects were lost between houses. Among them was my writing case, containing—as I’m sure you’ve guessed—not only all the correspondence from your mother, but also my little book of addresses. I thought I’d committed yours to memory, but when my letters were returned as misdirected I realised I must have been mistaken.’

When she smiled again it was like a shaft of sunlight in the darkened room. ‘But now I’ve returned to the place I spent my happiest years and the daughter of my dearest friend sits before me. So please—tell me everything I missed!’

Grace hesitated, taking in the vivid interest on the drawn face, but at a loss as to how to reply.

Where should I start? With my jilting, or Papa’s imprisonment?

To her unending horror Grace felt a prickling behind her eyes, the distress of the past few hours rising again at the question. Mrs Dauntsey’s kindness threatened to make a fresh river of tears flow, her innocent enquiry a stark reminder of Papa’s plight and the dizzying turn Grace’s life had taken for the worse—but wasn’t that the truth for her hostess, too? She’d lost a son since she had been in the north and Spencer had lost his twin; and both of them were now so altered it would have been forgivable for even intimate acquaintances to hesitate. So much had happened in the intervening years, including Grace’s new distrust in the word of a handsome man.

Some clue as to the workings of her mind must have shown on her face, for the smile left Mrs Dauntsey’s lips at once, her brow creasing in concern as she leaned forward to look into Grace’s downturned eyes.

‘Grace? Why, dearest, you look so troubled. Is something amiss?’

Her expression was so worried that Grace had to bite her tongue to stop herself from breaking down. It would have taken a heart of stone to resist the pull of that readily offered sympathy: how many times had Mrs Dauntsey soothed Grace’s bumped head or grazed elbow as a child, or passed her a sweet beneath the cover of a card table? Her kindness had always been apparent, but never more than at that moment, her obvious dismay tempting Grace to confess every secret sorrow she’d ever had.

A single impatient sigh from directly behind her chair made Grace start in surprise, the sudden movement once again sending a shard of agony through her injured neck.

He followed us in here?

She winced, twisting to peer at Spencer looming above her and looking for all the world as though she was the bane of his existence. He was close enough for her to have touched the soft fabric of his rich breeches and the very idea of such a scandalous—and tempting—action jolted Grace into speech.

‘Did you say something?’

Spencer folded his arms across his broad chest, the movement causing his impressive biceps to bunch beneath the scant cover of his shirt in a way so damnably interesting Grace felt her face flush scarlet as she hastily turned away again. A flicker of that same sensation she had felt earlier sparked into being within her and she would have given anything for a glass of cold water with which to douse the alarming embers that glowed at his sudden proximity.

When he replied it was directed over her head as though she wasn’t there at all. ‘I found Miss Linwood out on the Cobb in a state of acute distress. As far as I can gather she’s had to call off her engagement this evening, although I haven’t the pleasure of knowing why.’

Grace gritted her teeth, resentment simmering alongside her dismay as the older woman’s brows knitted together further.

As if I needed more proof his good nature has gone for ever, taking with it the boy I thought so highly of.

She could still sense Spencer standing at her back, in all likelihood scowling down at her from his great height, and the knowledge of his unseen closeness stirred the fine hairs of her neck. Irritation at his meddling coursed through her, although another stream of something close to a kind of breathless apprehension mingled with it. His voice was deep and expressionless, yet it possessed an educated cadence so pleasing that even in the depths of her annoyance Grace felt herself give a small shudder when he spoke.

It has to be the loss of William. What else could change him so drastically for the worse?

From his stance behind her chair—his chair, in fact—Spencer couldn’t see the set of his silent guest’s expression, although if the stiffness of her shoulders was anything to go by it probably wasn’t one of delight. Looking down at her from behind only afforded him a view of her blonde ringlets, one escaping from a cluster at the back of her head to snake at the base of her slender neck, but it was enough to make him avert his eyes in sudden discomfort. There was something so vulnerable about that nape, so delicate as it rose out of her lace-trimmed collar, that was deeply unexpected and just as deeply disturbing. It roused something in him, some glint of the weakness he had determinedly suppressed for so long it was a wonder to discover he could still feel it.

Be careful. A sense of danger nagged at the back of his mind, a clear warning against the perturbing turn this sorry business was taking. It must have been the suffering on her face that called to him, holding a mirror up to the pain that so often clouded his own features; but that was not a good enough reason to allow any assault on his restraint and it was with a frown he took in her words as she began to speak.

‘Thank you, Spencer, for that succinct summary of my misfortune.’

Spencer raised an eyebrow at her frigid tone, but held his tongue. The distress written on Grace’s features had been clear to see and his discomfort grew as he realised how much he disliked the memory. It might even have stirred the remnants of his long-buried compassion had he not been so resolutely steeling himself against the flash of momentary weakness the despondent Miss Linwood somehow already managed to provoke in him.

If Will was still alive, he would have her laughing already. He always knew how to make a woman smile. Then again...

Hadn’t that been the very thing that had come between them, in the end?

Spencer gritted his teeth in instinctive dismay as the question arose, but nothing could stop the relentless march of his thoughts down the one path he would have given anything to avoid.

Not this again. Not now.

He could hardly even recall her face: Miss Constance Strong, the lively, captivating woman both twins had loved—to their everlasting detriment. The image of her beauty was eclipsed by other memories, of how he and the man he’d loved as a second self had argued over her, the only thing they had ever been unable to share. If only he’d let Will win, had stepped back and stopped their quarrel before it was too late—but that was a pointless wish and one that did nothing to erase the guilt that had swirled inside him like an icy storm ever since.

You can’t allow yourself to walk that path again. If you hadn’t been so foolish as to lose your heart to a woman you might still have a brother...not that any woman would want you now.

Alike in so many ways, all traces of the cheerful nature the twins had once shared were now gone for ever: Will’s disappearing in the cold finality of death and Spencer’s snuffed out like a candle beneath the unbearable weight of the shame and remorse that had haunted him since that terrible day two years before. Some pale shadow of his better self lingered for his mother’s sake, a last echo of the person he had once been before tragedy had made him retreat from the world to drown his sorrows in drink, but even that phantom would fade as soon as her sickness overcame her. When that happened, his transformation into a mere husk of a man would be complete.

His mother’s voice jolted him from his maudlin train of thought. ‘Is that true? You’ve had to call off your engagement?’

Even from behind Spencer saw the way Grace’s throat contracted in a dry swallow, the slight curve of her cheek visible to him tight with strain. If she was battling the urge to break down and air her soul, she was putting up a good fight, he thought with a gleam of grudging respect, but nothing could overcome the kind probing of his mother and he at last heard a shuddering sigh escape her that lifted the intriguingly slight shoulders beneath her gown.

‘I...’

Grace stopped at once as the sitting-room door opened and a maid bearing a tea tray appeared, lapsing into tense silence she didn’t break even when the servant retreated once again.

In the ensuing quiet Spencer stepped smartly round Grace’s chair to stand closer to the hearth and table laid out before it. A quick glance in her direction now gave him his first uninterrupted view of her face since she had sat down and he clenched his jaw in sudden horror at the jolt that leapt within him at the sight.

Her lips trembled in obvious emotion and her hands were clasped together tightly on her knees, one finger rubbing at her knuckles in absent-minded distress. She looked so plainly unhappy, so heartbreakingly tiny in his enveloping chair nestled among the cushions like a lost creature in need of a protective arm. The shocking urge to offer that arm was suddenly overwhelming, coming apparently from nowhere, and Spencer shoved it back from the forefront of his mind.

What are you thinking of?

He bent his head lower above the tray, ostensibly stirring the tea leaves while his mind flooded with confusion and the shrill peals of alarm bells rang in his ears.

What is the meaning of this?

It was years since he had resolved to separate himself from the world and all the people in it—both for their sake and his own. Nothing good had come from his weakness for Constance’s charms, her laugh still occasionally punctuating the nightmares that plagued his fitful sleep. Only the death of one he loved and a lifetime of regret had been his reward for believing he might find happiness with another, far too high a price to pay again.

It was easier to turn oneself to unfeeling granite; to care about others was to wear one’s heart outside the body and the world was cruel enough to crush it beneath its boots if given half a chance. If there was something in Grace’s tender vulnerability and guileless face that touched the last shred of humanity he had left, he would fight it every step of the way—anything rather than risk another mistake, another soul-destroying loss; another scar to add to the collection borne by more than just his skin.