Chapter One

T he door of Verwood Hall, an old house of buff-colored Bath stone, built in the baroque style of Wren, stood open, admitting a sharp gust of wind which tugged at the hem of Lady Cassandra Lavenham's plain brown cloak. Through the open door, Cassie could see dark clouds rolling in above the chestnut trees lining the carriage drive. She accepted an umbrella thrust her way by William, Verwood's remaining footman and gathered her cloak about her.

Just as she prepared to step out, her aunt Honoria called down to her from the landing above the entrance hall. "Cassie, you'll be soaked to the skin before you're home again."

"Very likely, Aunt, but I won't mind. You do want your package, don't you?"

"Oh yes, I've been waiting so long." Honoria, her lace cap rakishly askew over graying red-gold curls, twisted the ends of a lovely, blue East India shawl draped over her shoulders. "Couldn't we send William or one of the lads from the stables? I'm certain that if we stressed the… delicacy of the situation, William would be discreet."

"No doubt, Aunt, but then, I'd miss my walk, and you know how unreasonable I become when I've had no proper exercise in a day."

"You are never unreasonable, love, except in your deplorable tendency to self-reliance. Can you manage all that way? Your foot will hold up?"

Cassie smiled up at her worried relation. "My half boots are quite sturdy, and William has provided me with an umbrella."

"You will return in time for our meeting, won't you? I cannot manage the property agent alone."

"If I get behind hand, I'll stop at the Crown and get them to bring me in their gig. Don't worry. I will be here."

"Oh, good thought. The inn gig will be perfect for your foot."

Cassie offered a cheery wave to Honoria, and stepped resolutely through the door. As soon as it closed behind her, her spirits lifted. She managed the front steps as she had learned to do and headed up the carriage drive. She judged that she had two hours at least for her errand in the village before the rain truly set in. The property agent was expected in the afternoon, so she would have time to change and put herself to rights before meeting with him.

Of the three women living at Verwood, Cassie, at twenty-four was the youngest. She judged that she had the easiest means of escape from the demands of managing a large household on somewhat straightened means. She rarely let weather interfere with her daily walks and felt no need to conceal them from her neighbors, however eccentric such solitary rambles might appear. Cassie could lose herself in woods and sky for an hour or more each day and return to Verwood refreshed in spirits. Miss Honoria Thornhill was Cassie's mother's surviving sister, a single lady of some fifty-odd years, whose escape was writing novels, an occupation which she concealed from Cassie's grandmother on her father's side. Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Verwood, the third member of their female household, had no tolerance for women scribblers as she called them. And so, once again, today, Cassie had been dispatched to the village to retrieve the first copies of her aunt's latest book Audacity and Ambition .

A particularly strong gust caught her, and she quickened her steps, turning off the drive to strike out on a well-worn path through the woods. With any luck she would not only beat the rain, but when she returned, she and Honoria would secure a tenant for the house. It had become necessary to let the house due to Cassie's grandmother's passion for horses. At seventy-nine, Her Grace remained a remarkable horsewoman, and a demanding employer. No trainer satisfied the dowager's standards, and no Verwood horse had raced in three years, nor had any of their neighbors sent horses to be prepared at Verwood. With Verwood no longer functioning as a stud, the staggering costs of maintaining a score of horses in the style her grandmother considered worthy of Verwood Hall was draining their resources faster than Cassie's current allowance from her trustees or the proceeds from Honoria's pen could provide.

Cassie had high hopes for the afternoon's meeting with the property agent. His letter assured her that his wealthy client was determined to find a suitable house in the neighborhood for immediate occupancy. In Cassie's mind the deal was as good as done. Verwood was the only house for let in the area. True, the house had a few shortcomings that perhaps made immediate occupancy not quite practical, a leak in the library, a hearth in the best bed chamber that smoked when the wind was northerly, but she was sure that a properly eager tenant would see that such difficulties could be overcome. First impressions mattered, so they were to meet in the red drawing room with an excellent tea prepared by Cook, another woman who knew how to manage on slender means.

*

In the private dining room of the Crown in Wormley, Sir Adrian Cole leaned one elbow on the sill of the old diamond-paned bay window and regarded his property agent, Jacob Trimley. Cole was becoming used to his new name and title, both of which had inspired the landlord of the Crown to put forth considerable effort to please. To those who truly knew him, he retained his boyhood name, Raven.

The Crown, where Raven and Trimley had taken refuge during an earlier deluge, served a decent roast fowl luncheon, the remains of which lay on the table next to the open O RDNANCE S URVEY map, sheet N UMBER 86.

The final gusts of the passing storm fluttered the frayed curtain at his elbow, and it occurred to Raven that the luncheon delay suited Trimley. There was something his agent wasn't telling him about the estate Raven intended to buy.

"You haven't made them an offer, have you?" he said.

The comment caught Trimley with his fork in the air. He stabbed a last bit of boiled potato, put his fork down, and raised his napkin to his mouth. From behind the cloth, he mumbled, "An offer to purchase would not be accepted."

"Why not? You told me the place has been advertised for months without drawing any takers. By now the owner must be in dire need of funds."

"They may have set the asking price a trifle high." Trimley reached for his tankard of the landlord's home-brewed.

"Why is that? I wonder." Raven raised a brow. He thought the asking rate rather low. "What are you not telling me, Trimley?"

Trimley took a swallow of his drink. "Well, it's possible that the place wants some attention."

Raven sat up. "You mean it's a bleeding ruin?"

"Nothing of the sort. Keep in mind, Sir Adrian, the location." Trimley set down his beer and tapped the map. "You will not find another property as good, or one nearer Lord Ramsbury's seat. The Verwood estate has a small park, to be sure, a thousand acres, but it's well laid out. The lake is lovely, and the house sizable, just right for your purpose I should say."

Raven looked at the map. In December he had marked out Lord Ramsbury's estate and instructed Trimley to find a property in the neighborhood suitable for a newly knighted, obscenely rich gentleman. Proximity to Ramsbury's estate was the key to Raven's hopes and plans. Now, when an available property had been found, Raven wanted no delays. "That's not the usual size for a duke's principal seat, is it?"

"Well, no," said Trimley.

The waiter entered and began to clear the table, and Trimley launched into a history of the dukes of Verwood, explaining how the title had passed from the last duke to his younger brother rather than to the son who had died in the Anglo-Burmese War.

Raven half listened as the waiter did his business. The leaded diamond panes of the window told the long history of the inn, the oldest panes made of broad glass, thick and uneven with surface scars from being ironed and a green tint from iron oxide, the newer panes with the smoother surface but the tell-tale concentrate ripples of crown glass. A freshening breeze through the open casement brought the sounds of ostlers tending to the horses of patrons impatient to be underway. Raven, too, was impatient, with dead dukes and their living offspring whose inability to hold onto a fortune now obliged them to let Verwood Park.

Raven knew toffs. He'd dealt with them in London and studied with them briefly at Cambridge. They'd been unavoidable in the few terms he'd spent at college. His tutor there, Mr. Clumber, an old fellow, had stretched his income by taking on private pupils preparing for a tripos or honors.

Raven had studied with those young men, ridden with them, drunk with them, and bowled them out on the cricket pitch. He had thought himself one of them until Mr. Clumber explained that there would be no tripos or honors for Raven. I daresay you're a clever lad, Cole, but you're sadly out of place among your betters at college, boy. There's an order to be preserved after all. Raven had been busy overturning the order of things ever since.

Only one of Clumber's pupils had remained a sort of careless friend over the years. Chance meetings with Ned Farrington in town had twice improved Raven's luck. Once when Ned told Raven to stay in the funds during a mild banking panic in London, and again when Ned had taken Raven to a rout party at Lord Ramsbury's London house to celebrate the knighthood his fire engine had earned him. A Cole-designed engine had been one of the engines deployed to save Westminster Hall from the October fire that had consumed the palace where Parliament met.

Trimley wrapped up his history with an explanation of how the unentailed property around the original site had been sold off, while the remaining thousand-acre estate had been preserved as a residence for the late duke's mother.

"She must be an ancient specimen. Make her an offer."

"Oh, she's an octogenarian to be sure, but it won't do to disturb the dowager. It's a matter of proceeding with some... delicacy and discretion. These old families, you know, they can't be seen to need to... retrench."

"Trimley, with whom are we actually dealing?"

Trimley shuffled some papers on the table. "We deal with C. J. Lavenham, who represents the dowager. A servant will meet us at the porter's lodge and escort us to the house. Where, I dare say, Lavenham will meet us."

A disturbance outside the window drew Raven's gaze. He glanced down into the courtyard, where a fine chestnut gelding whinnied piteously. A gentleman in a caped greatcoat and beaver hat at the horse's head handed the animal into an ostler's care and turned to a tall, sturdy youth in rough country dress, his hands outstretched in an apologetic manner. Every schoolboy who ever had a tyrant for a master knew that gesture, knew the stinging rebuke about to land on the youth's outstretched palms. Raven came to his feet without thinking.

The gentleman shouted, and raised his driving whip when a woman stepped between the two men. She spoke in a voice too low for Raven to hear. The whip remained raised. Raven tossed his purse on the table and headed for the door. "Pay the shot, will you, Trimley? I'll be in the yard."

In the courtyard the ostlers had stopped their work to gawk at the little drama underway. The angry gentleman in the greatcoat, flapped his whip arm up and down, ranting about his curricle. According to him, the vehicle had been reduced to a pile of kindling in a ditch and his horse irreparably injured through the boy's stupidity.

The youth was taller and more broad-shouldered than his accuser, but his posture was cringing, as if he would shrink into himself if he could. Raven guessed his age to be eighteen. At that age Raven would have knocked his opponent down and walked away, but the lad said nothing in self-defense as the gentleman's tirade blasted over him.

The boy's champion was a straight, slim woman in a plain brown cloak, her hem six-inches deep in mud, her face obscured by the brim of a serviceable country bonnet, a closed umbrella hooked over one arm, and a brown paper package clutched to her bosom.

"Are you quite finished, now, Hugh?" she asked the gentleman. Raven immediately revised his estimate of the woman's age and condition in life. He had assumed that she must be the boy's mother, but the voice was young, and the cool tone, unmistakably well-bred. He should walk away. A public row between a pair of strangers was no business of his. But the youth's anguished gaze, shifting back and forth between the two speakers held him there.

"What, are you his dry nurse, Cassie?" the angry gentleman continued. "The stupid lout is a menace. His people need to keep him confined at home. He has no business being on the public road, and you have no right to defend him."

"He's the best farrier in Wormley, Hugh, as you well know. He's on the road because his work is in demand. His cart is belled as a signal to other drivers, and, I dare say, with a little caution, you could have avoided the accident."

"I could have avoided? The great hulking slow top is supposed to pull aside for his betters. He can't even manage his donkey. The damned beast brayed at the worst possible moment."

"And Prince took exception to the donkey, did he? Let Grandmama look at him. I'm sure she has a poultice for that foreleg to keep Prince from being scarred." The woman stepped forward and laid a hand on the horse's nose, offering a soothing stroke.

"Damn your grandmother's poultice. It's compensation I want, and I'll have it, too. That rig was London made."

The woman's head came up. "Very well, Hugh, produce a witness to the event."

Raven shifted his position to see the lady's face, but the bonnet still hid her from him.

He had to admire the bold tilt of her head. She would not back down.

"What?" Hugh cried. "Are you doubting my word as a gentleman?"

"And your sense of fair play. If Dick Crockett truly is at fault in the affair, then of course, compensation must be made."

"You're not listening, Cassie. You can tell old Crockett his son has cost him sixty guineas. If he can't pay for the damages, he'd best keep the idiot off the road."

"Hugh, stop calling him an idiot, for he is nothing of the sort."

The gentleman looked over her head at the youth. "I'll call the bacon-brained slow top what I like. He can't hear a word, can he?"

"Not with his ears, but he hears you. Make no mistake about that."

Raven glanced at the youth again. The intense concentration in the anguished face made sense now. The lad might not understand the words, but he knew Hugh was a threat. An argument between a pair of toffs, who appeared to know each other well, might be none of Raven's affair, but he didn't like a man who would callously reduce another man to beggary.

He stepped forward. "Sixty guineas, did you say?"

The gentleman and the woman turned to him. Raven caught his breath at the face previously hidden by the bonnet. The voice had prepared him for youth and refinement, but he'd had only a vague expectation of genteel womanliness. Now he saw smooth, rounded cheeks, above a wide bow of a mouth. Expressive gray eyes looked at him frankly from a countenance made uncompromising by a pair of definite dark brows.

"Who the devil are you?" the gentleman asked.

"A traveler delayed by your quarrel." Raven reached into his coat and produced a wad of Bank of England notes. He counted out sixty guineas and held the notes aloft. "Yours," he said to the gentleman, "immediate compensation for your inconvenience…on one condition."

"Condition?" Hugh sneered, but his gaze remained locked on the notes in Raven's hand.

"Apologize to the lady and to her companion." Raven smiled at the gentleman, aware of enjoying himself for the first time since he and Trimley had left London. He might appear to be Sir Adrian Cole, newly knighted by his majesty, but inside he was his old self, Raven.

"Apologize!" Hugh raised his whip hand.

Raven lunged for Hugh's arm, grabbing it and twisting it behind his back. He wrenched the whip from Hugh's hand and with a shove sent Hugh staggering across the courtyard. Clumsily regaining his balance, Hugh turned to regard Raven with intense malice.