Chapter 1

1

AUTUMN 1816, A FEW WEEKS EARLIER

He'd seen her at last. Met her again, when he had least expected it. Leo was presented to Lady Ashby directly after his arrival in London, and he feared he'd gaped at her in sad confusion for a long moment before he gathered his scattered wits and greeted her, but if his reaction had been odd, it seemed nobody had noticed. She certainly hadn't. If she had the slightest recollection of ever having laid eyes on him before, let alone been introduced, dancing together, she showed no sign of it, so in common courtesy, he had no option but to do the same and greet her as a stranger.

Good God, he discovered now to his astonishment that she was a sort of connection of his – her late husband, whom he remembered perfectly well, had been the younger brother of the rather intimidating Duke of Northriding, who was now married to Leo's own madcap cousin Georgiana.

Setting aside this unexpected family connection, there was not the least reason why he should be surprised to see her – it wasn't impossible or even unlikely, after all, that a young lady once encountered in society in Brussels just before Waterloo, when the city had been full of British soldiers of high rank and their families, should be met again eighteen months later in London. It might even be considered inevitable, the world of the haut ton being so small and he in some sense a part of it now.

Leo had tried, over the last year or more, to tell himself that he had no hope or expectation of ever setting eyes on her again. He'd known that it would be both wrong and useless to wish to do so, because she was happily married, and he was not the sort of man who pursued a married woman or pined after her like a mooncalf. He'd never done such a thing in his life and he had no intention of starting now. If he had dreamed of her – when he had – he had told himself sternly that he had no business permitting himself such a shocking liberty.

Their acquaintance had been so very brief, barely deserving the name, though he could not deny that it had assumed a greater importance in his mind, both at the time and afterwards. He'd been at a loose end during the summer of 1815, his ship Paris undergoing long-overdue repairs in the naval dockyards, and an unusual spirit of restlessness had seized him. Bonaparte had escaped from Elba and was rallying his scattered legions for what must surely be his final throw of the dice; Britain and its allies were assembling to meet him. It seemed tame to sit at home when such momentous events were unfolding just across the Channel. His estate was in good order, and his widowed mother was spending the summer at some seaside resort with his orphaned young cousins. He felt a little guilty leaving her to it, but all at once it was unbearable for a man of spirit to spend his precious free time bear-leading three wild young cubs and attempting to keep them out of mischief when he could be witnessing history in the making.

He'd crossed to the Continent almost on impulse on a crowded packet-boat and found cramped lodgings in a Brussels inn, then, along with the rest of Europe, he waited to see what would happen, with Bonaparte in Paris making his plans and the Allied armies gathering here, a scant two hundred miles away.

He'd not expected the summer to consist chiefly of balls, picnics and parties rather than military alarums, but so it had proved, at least at first. There was a sort of hectic excitement in the air, a sense of imminent danger that gave spice to the most ordinary of events, and Leo found himself caught up in it. Though he had no intimate friends in the town, he'd introductions aplenty, as half his naval shipmates seemed to have brothers or cousins serving in Wellington's army. They were welcoming and friendly, albeit very ready to mock a member of the senior service and call him all sorts of unflattering names, but since they were about to risk their lives in battle and he currently wasn't, he could hardly argue and must smile at their roasting and retaliate in kind, calling them Hyde Park soldiers. Friendship, even intimacy, seemed to blossom quickly here, as the normal rules of society had not broken down, but certainly had eased. And this was how he found himself dancing, one warm summer evening, with a young lady with dark blonde hair and big brown eyes. He didn't know her name, and he'd go bail she didn't know his. It was most unusual, even irregular. But in this time and place it didn't seem to matter.

He'd been presented to her in a scrambling sort of fashion by one of his new military friends, but the young lieutenant was slightly foxed already and besides the large inn's assembly room was crowded and very noisy, so that he hadn't caught the casual words properly. Lady A something – Lady Anne? Lady Alice? A woman of high rank, then, the daughter of a nobleman, but she didn't seem like it, putting on no die-away airs but only smiling at him in an open, friendly way as he bowed over her hand.

The scraping of fiddles resolved itself into an actual tune, a country dance, and the sets formed up in somewhat chaotic fashion. There was little room to turn and step, it was not at all convenient, but most of the dancers were young and in giddy, infectious high spirits, and they were smiling as they made their way up and down, trying and not always succeeding to avoid bumping into others. Nobody seemed to mind. Soon he was laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it, and so was his partner. She had a lovely laugh, free and unaffected – enchanting.

And she was lovely, all in blue, her hair shining in the candlelight. She wasn't delicate and willowy and disturbingly fragile-seeming like many of the other young ladies he'd danced with here, nor was she elegant and remote; she was real. She was short, voluptuous, all soft womanly curves. Her hair was a rich honey-blonde, long and straight, worn braided around her head, and even as he danced he experienced a sudden strong forbidden desire to undo the braids, shake it free, run his fingers through its silkiness, then bury his face in it. He imagined it would smell wonderful, and he'd love to have a chance to find out. Her eyes were a deep brown, very large and expressive, and it seemed to him that she looked at the world with a frank, level gaze that he was beginning to find enormously appealing. They spoke a little, breathlessly, as they whirled, and she did not chatter or flirt or giggle shrilly but was direct, matter-of-fact, her face flushed with honest enjoyment. It was a brief moment, and he couldn't fool himself, then or later, that they'd established any sort of special connection – but how he'd have liked to. He'd not previously been aware of loneliness among so many people, but now oddly he was.

The set had barely finished when another fellow claimed her hand in a possessive fashion, a tall, dark man in the gold-laced uniform of a crack cavalry regiment. She knew him well, clearly, and didn't seem to resent his presumption; with a brief apologetic smile at Leo, she allowed herself to be whirled away into the next dance. He was left standing, feeling a little foolish, arms empty, suddenly bereft, and stabbed by a sharp pang of jealousy as ridiculous as it was unwelcome.

He'd hoped to dance with her again – one of the new waltzes would have been perfect – but although he'd looked for her for the rest of the evening he hadn't found her. He could only presume that she'd left; no doubt she had other invitations aplenty. He'd tried to ask his friend Lieutenant Paterson who she was, but the inebriated young idiot had just shrugged and said he couldn't recall introducing Leo to anybody at all.

Leo had seen her again, though. He hadn't passed the last year and more thinking wistfully about a woman he'd danced with once and never set eyes on after; he wasn't quite as bad as that. He spent a great deal of time over the next few days joining the fashionable afternoon promenade in the crowded streets and extensive park of the town, or sitting at outdoor cafes watching the colourful throng pass by, and eventually his perseverance was rewarded. Suddenly, with a little leap of the heart, he saw her in an open carriage, shielding herself with a lacy parasol and accompanied by an older couple who must surely be her parents, so greatly did the lady resemble her in form, feature and colouring.

Daylight did Lady A no disservice. She was every bit as attractive as he'd thought, and as he stood by the roadside, quite close to her barouche, she turned her head and saw him. Could he flatter himself that she blushed just a little? He couldn't be sure. But she smiled at him in recognition, as warm and open as she'd been before, and he smiled too and bowed to her. They were close enough that they could have greeted each other, and he was about to speak. But then the obstruction in traffic that had permitted this tiny, insignificant encounter cleared, and the carriage had moved on before he could utter a word.

It had been the second week in June by then, and the hourglass was running down on the hectic gaiety of the city. But there'd been another impromptu assembly at the same inn just before the end, and this time Lieutenant Paterson was sober and alert – all sorts of rumours were swirling around to the effect that battle might be joined very soon, and every man of Wellington's army must be ready for it – so that when Leo saw the young lady enter with her parents, he was able to say with what he hoped was sufficient carelessness, ‘Paterson, that's the girl you presented me to a few nights ago, but I never caught her name, though I danced and conversed with her. It's cursed awkward, I see her everywhere and she plainly recognises me, but I cannot speak a word to her – could you be a good fellow and tell me who she is?'

Paterson craned his neck and then whistled. ‘The tall beauty with the red hair and painted toenails? Well, I see you navy dogs have dangerous tastes! That's the notorious?—'

‘No, you clod-pole, not her! The shorter woman with the blonde braided hair, in the gold silk.' The gold silk that clung quite charmingly to her frame, Leo couldn't help but notice.

‘Oh, I see her now. You mean that plump little dab of a thing?' he said casually. ‘That's Isabella Richmond – I grew up with her in Harrogate, you know. She pushed me in a pond once, can't recall why.'

‘I thought you called her Lady Something,' said Leo with exaggerated patience.

‘Of course I did. She's Lady Ashby Mauleverer now – married to Northriding's brother, you know, this past twelvemonth. Quite the love match. Don't see her pushing him in ponds.'

‘Married…' said Leo dazedly. It hadn't so much as occurred to him that she could be, though now he didn't know why he'd been so blind. She'd been wearing gloves, of course, so her wedding ring hadn't been visible, and if there had been subtle clues in the way she was dressed to indicate her status and her unavailability, he'd missed them. Perhaps he'd wanted to miss them.

And as he watched he saw that the tall, dark cavalry officer he'd seen with her before was present now too, right at her side, smiling down at her warmly, intimately, and she was smiling up at him with what he could not help but recognise as love written on her sweet face. They looked happy, they were happy, and he felt like an idiot.

Three days later, he now knew, the man was dead and cold, along with so many others on the fields of Quatre Bras, Ligny and Waterloo. His regiment had fought with outstanding bravery and suffered appalling losses, Lord Ashby among them.

Leo had seen those wounded men and would never forget the awful sight, cavalry and infantry and artillerymen, hundreds upon hundreds of them. He had helped carry them into inns and private houses so that they could be cared for, had fetched and carried for the nurses and the surgeons. He'd done what little he could to help, even if that had meant just gripping a frightened boy's hand in futile reassurance and talking to him as he died in agony, screaming pitifully for his mama, or, more mercifully, slipped into a sleep from which he never awoke. He'd had similar experiences at sea, of course – had lost close friends – but the sheer scale of this, not to mention the incongruous domestic setting, was new and horrifying.

Leo hadn't known that at the time, of course, that Lady Ashby's husband had been one of those poor fellows. How could he? He had never seen the notice of one man's death among so many others, and now that he had the information he wasn't sure what to do with it. She was free, but it seemed entirely wrong to be glad of it.