From the book

1

Demon plane of Oblivion, City of Ash
Year 192 in the Rule of the Dead

"Do we go to our death--or worse?"

Malkom Slaine gazed over at his best friend, Prince Kallen the Just, wishing he had a better answer for him, anything to ease the apprehension in Kallen's eyes.

As the vampire guards shoved them along, deeper into their stronghold, Malkom suspected death might be welcome before the night was out.

"The rumors are likely untrue," he lied, putting up a renewed resistance as the dozen guards forced them down a flight of stone steps. But his bonds were mystical; Malkom was unable to teleport or break free.

At the base of the stairs lay a subterranean chamber with an ornate throne on a dais. Though the floor was of packed earth, the walls were hung with rich silks and tapestries. Rare crystal and glass adorned the room.

At once, Malkom began analyzing every inch of the area for an escape. Ahead, a pair of winded demon slaves stood beside a freshly dug grave. More guards lined the walls, with swords at the ready. In the back, a black-robed sorcerer worked at a vial-cluttered table.

Gods, let the rumors be untrue ... those whispers of the ScÂrba--the abominations.

Kallen muttered, "Can you see a way out of this?"

Normally, Malkom could. Without fail, he figured his way out of seemingly impossible predicaments. "Not as of yet."

The guards shoved Kallen and Malkom to their knees before the grave.

"Ronath will pay for this once I get free," Kallen grated. Ronath the Armorer was a seasoned warrior, the strongest demon after Malkom. He'd once been Kallen's favored commander. "The traitor will not see another night."

'Twas Ronath who'd turned Malkom over to the vampires. Disastrous enough. But without Malkom's unwavering defense, Kallen's fortress had fallen just a week later. The Trothans' beloved prince had been captured.

Blinded by his hatred for Malkom--a slave turned commander--Ronath had unwittingly doomed Kallen and all the Trothans.

Malkom had already planned his own revenge. As he was neither noble nor good like Kallen, his retribution would be far more vicious than the prince could ever envision.

Without warning, a vampire traced into the room, teleporting directly onto the throne. Clad in costly silk robes, the male was pallid, his skin untouched by Oblivion's blistering sun. His eyes were wholly red, his visage twisted by madness.

The Viceroy.

When the vampires had conquered Oblivion and turned it into a colony, they'd dispatched the Viceroy, their most malicious leader, to act as ruler of the plane.

"Ah, my two new prisoners," he said in Anglish.

Though Malkom and Kallen both were fluent in the language, they refused to speak anything other than their native Demonish--even as the use of that tongue was now punishable by death.

The vampire rubbed his narrow, clean-shaven chin. "At last, you have both been captured."

Malkom and the prince were the leaders of the rebellion, and to break them would be to break the resistance. The vampire overlords had searched for them relentlessly.

When the Viceroy snapped his fingers, the two slaves exited the room, returning moments later with an unconscious demon boy. One of their own, handed over for a vampire's refreshment. A leisurely repast.

Malkom started sweating. He strained even harder...

May, 1873

When Micky Miranda was twenty-three his father came to London to buy rifles.

Senor Carlos Raul Xavier Miranda, known always as Papa, was a short man with massive shoulders. His tanned face was carved in lines of aggression and brutality. In leather chaps and a broad-brimmed hat, seated on a chestnut stallion, he could make a graceful, commanding figure; but here in Hyde Park, wearing a frock-coat and a top hat, he felt foolish, and that made him dangerously bad-tempered.

They were not alike. Micky was tall and slim, with regular features, and he got his way by smiling rather than frowning. He was deeply attached to the refinements of London life: beautiful clothes, polite manners, linen sheets and indoor plumbing. His great fear was that Papa would want to take him back to Cordova. He could not bear to return to days in the saddle and nights sleeping on the hard ground. Even worse was the prospect of being under the thumb of his older brother Paulo, who was a replica of Papa. Perhaps Micky would go home one day, but it would be as an important man in his own right, not as the younger son of Papa Miranda. Meanwhile he had to persuade his father that he was more useful here in London than he would be at home in Cordova.

They were walking along South Carriage Drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The park was thronged with well-dressed Londoners on foot, on horseback or in open carriages, enjoying the warm weather. But Papa was not enjoying himself. 'I must have those rifles!' he muttered to himself in Spanish. He said it twice.

Micky spoke in the same language. 'You could buy them back home,' he said tentatively.

'Two thousand of them?' Papa said. 'Perhaps I could. But it would be such a big purchase that everyone would know about it..

So he wanted to keep it secret. Micky had no idea what Papa was up to. Paying for two thousand guns, and the ammunition to go with them, would probably take all the family's reserves of cash. Why did Papa suddenly need so much ordnance? There had been no war in Cordova since the now-legendary March of the Cowboys, when Papa had led his men across the Andes to liberate Santamaria Province from its Spanish overlords. Who were the guns for? If you added up Papa's cowboys, relatives, place men and hangers-on it would come to fewer than a thousand men. Papa had to be planning to recruit more. Whom would they be fighting? Papa had not volunteered the information and Micky was afraid to ask.

Instead he said: 'Anyway, you probably couldn't get such high-quality weapons at home..

'That's true,' said Papa. 'The Westley~Richards is the finest rifle I've ever seen..

Micky had been able to help Papa with his choice of rifles. Micky had always been fascinated by weapons of all kinds, and he kept up with the latest technical developments. Papa needed short-barrelled rifles that would not be too cumbersome for men on horseback. Micky had taken Papa to a factory in BirmingJ1am and shown him the Westley-Richards carbine with the breech-loading action, nicknamed the Monkey tail because of its curly lever.

'And they make them so fast,' Micky said.

'I expected to wait six months for the guns to be manufactured. But they can do it in a few days!.

'It's the American machinery they use.' In the old days, when guns had been made by blacksmiths who fitted the parts together by trial and error, it would indeed have taken six months to make two thousand rifles; but modern machinery was so precise that the parts of any gun would fit any other gun of the same pattern, and a well-equipped factory could turn out hundreds of identical rifles a day, like pins.

'And the machine that makes two hundred thousand cartridges a day!' Papa said, and he shook his head in wonderment. Then his mood switched again and he said grimly: 'But how can they ask for the money before the rifles are delivered?.

Papa knew nothing about international trade, and he had assumed the manufacturer would deliver the rifles in Cordova and accept payment there. On the contrary, the payment was required before the weapons left the Birmingham factory.

But Papa was reluctant to ship silver coins across the Atlantic Ocean in barrels. Worse still, he could not hand over the entire family fortune before the arms were safely delivered.

'Go over it again,' Papa said. 'I want to make sure I understand. this.

Micky was pleased to be able to explain something to Papa. 'The bank will pay the manufacturer in Birmingham. It will arrange for the guns to be shipped to Cordova, and insure them on the voyage. When they arrive, the bank will accept payment from you at their office in Cordova..

'But then they have to ship the silver to England..

'Not necessarily. They may use it to pay for a cargo of salt beef coming from Cordova to London..

'How do they make a living?.

'They take a cut of everything. They will pay the rifle manufacturer a discounted price, take a commission on the shipping and insurance, and charge you extra for the guns.

Papa nodded. He was trying not to show it, but he was impressed, and that made Micky happy.

They left the park and walked along Kensington Gore to the home of Joseph and Augusta Pilaster.

In the seven years since Peter Middleton drowned, Micky had spent every vacation with the Pilasters. After school he had toured Europe with Edward for a year, and he had roomed with Edward during the three years they had spent at Oxford University,. drinking and gambling and raising Cain, making only the barest pretence of being students.

Micky had never again kissed Augusta. He would have liked to. He wanted to do more than just kiss her. And he sensed that she might let him. Underneath that veneer of frozen arrogance there was the hot heart of a passionate and sensual woman, he was sure. But he had held back out of prudence. He had achieved something priceless by being accepted almost as a son in one of the richest families in England, and it would be insane to jeopardize that cherished position by seducing Joseph's wife. All the same he could not help daydreaming about it.

Edward's parents had recently moved into a new house. Kensington Gore, which not so long ago had been a country road leading from Mayfair through the fields to the village of Kensington, was now lined, along its south side, by splendid mansions. On the north side of the street were Hyde Park and the gardens of Kensington Palace. It was the perfect location for the home of a rich commercial family.

Micky was not so sure about the style of architecture. It was certainly striking. It was of red brick and white stone, with big leaded windows on the ground and first floors. Above the first floor was a huge gable, its triangular shape enclosing three rows of windows – six, then four, then two at the apex: bedrooms, presumably, for innumerable relatives, guests and servants. The sides of the gable were stepped, and on the steps were perched stone animals – lions and dragons and monkeys. At the very top was a ship in full sail. Perhaps it represented the slave ship which, according to family legend, was the foundation of the Pilasters' wealth.

'I'm sure there's' not another house like this in London,' Micky said as he and his father stood outside staring at it.

Papa replied in Spanish. 'No doubt that is what the lady intended.'

Micky nodded. Papa had not met Augusta, but he had her measure already.

The house also had a big basement. A bridge crossed the basement area and.led to the entrance porch. The door was open, and they went in.

Augusta was having a drum, an afternoon tea-party, to show off her house. The oak-panelled hall was jammed with people and servants. Micky and his father handed their hats to a footman then pushed through the crowd to the vast drawing-room at the back of the house. The french windows were open, and the party spilled out on to a flagged terrace and a long garden.

Micky had deliberately chosen to introduce his father at a crowded occasion, for Papa's manners were not always up to London standards, and it was better that the Pilasters should get to know him gradually. Even by Cordovan standards he paid little attention to social niceties, and escorting him around London was like having a lion on a leash. He insisted on carrying his pistol beneath his coat at all times.

Papa did not need Micky to point Augusta out to him.

She stood in the centre of the room, draped in a royal blue silk dress with a low square neckline that revealed the swell of her breasts. As Papa shook her hand she gazed at him with her hypnotic dark eyes and said in a low, velvet voice: 'Senor Miranda – what a pleasure to meet you at last.' .

Papa was immediately entranced. He bowed low over her hand. 'I can never repay your kindness to Miguel,' he said in halting English.

Micky studied her as she cast her spell over his father. She had changed very little since the day he had kissed her in the chapel at Windfield School. The extra line or two around her eyes only made them more fascinating; the touch of silver in her hair enhanced the blackness of the rest; and if she was a little heavier than she had been it made her body more voluptuous.

'Micky has often told me of your splendid ranch,' she was saying to Papa.

Papa lowered his voice. 'You must come and visit us one day..

God forbid, Micky thought. Augusta in Cordova would be as ouit of place as a flamingo in a coal mine. 'Perhaps I shall,' Augusta said. 'How far is it?' 'With the new fast ships, only a month..

He still had hold of her hand, Micky noticed. And his voice had gone furry. He had fallen for her already. Micky felt a stab of jealousy. If anyone was going to flirt with Augusta it should be Micky, not Papa.

'I hear Cordova is a beautiful country,' Augusta said. Micky prayed Papa would not do anything embarrassing. However, he could be charming when it suited him, and he was now playing the role of romantic South American grandee for Augusta's benefit. 'I can promise you that we would welcome you like the queen you are,' he said in a low voice; and now it was obvious that he was making up to her.

But Augusta was a match for him. 'What an 'extraordinarily tempting prospect,' she said with a shameless insincerity that went right over Papa's head. Withdrawing her hand from his without missing,a beat, she looked over his shoulder and cried: 'Why, Captain Tillotson, how kind of you to come!' And she turned away to greet the latest arrival.

Papa was bereft. It took him a moment to regain his composure. Then he said abruptly: 'Take me to the head of the bank.'

'Certainly,' Micky said nervously. He looked around for Old Seth. The entire Pilaster clan was here, including maiden aunts, nephews and nieces, in-laws and second cousins. He recognized a couple of Members of Parliament and a sprinkling oflesser nobility. Most of the other guests were business connections, Micky judged – and rivals, too, he thought as he saw the thin, upright figure of Ben Greenbourne, head of Greenbournes Bank, said to be the richest man in the world. Ben was the father of Solomon, the boy Micky had always known as Fatty Greenbourne. They had lost touch since school: Fatty had not studied at a university or done a European tour, but had gone straight into his father's business.

The aristocracy generally thought it vulgar to talk about money, but this group had no such inhibitions, and Micky kept hearing the word 'crash'. In the newspapers it was sometimes spelt 'Krach' because it had started in Austria. Share prices were down and the Bank Rate was up, according to Edward, who had recently started work at the family bank. Some people were alarmed, but the Pilasters felt confident that London would not be pulled down with Vienna.

Micky took Papa out through the french windows on to the paved terrace, where wooden benches were placed in the shade of striped awnings. There they found Old Seth, sitting with a rug over his knees despite the warm spring weather. He was weak from some unspecified illness, and he looked as frail as an eggshell, but he had the Pilaster nose, a big curved blade that made him formidable still.

Another guest was gushing over the old man, saying: 'What a shame you aren't well enough to go to the royal levee, Mr Pilaster!'

Micky could have told the woman this was the wrong thing to say to a Pilaster.

'On the contrary, I'm glad of the excuse,' Seth harrumphed. 'I don't see why I should bow the knee to people who have never earned a penny in their lives.'

'But the Prince of Wales – such an honour!'

Seth was in no mood to be argued with – indeed he rarely was – and he now said: 'Young lady, the name of Pilaster is an accepted guarantee of honest dealing in corners of the globe where they've never heard of the Prince of Wales.'

'But Mr Pilaster, you almost sound as if you disapprove of the royal family!' the woman persisted, with a strained attempt at a playful tone.

Seth had not been playful for seventy years. 'I disapprove of idleness,' he said. 'The Bible says, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” St Paul wrote that, in Second Thessalonians, chapter three, verse ten, and he conspicuously omitted to say that royalty were an exception to the rule.'

The woman retired in confusion. Suppressing a grin, Micky said: 'Mr Pilaster, may I present my father, Senor Carlos Miranda, who is over from Cordova for a visit.'

Seth shook Papa's hand. 'Cordova, eh? My bank has an office in your capital city, Palma.'

'I go to the capital very little,' Papa said. 'I have a ranch in Santamaria Province.'

'So you're in the beef business.'

'Yes.'

'Look into refrigeration.'

Papa was baffled. Micky explained: 'Someone has invented a machine for keeping meat cold. If they can find a way to install it in ships, we will be able to send fresh meat all over the world without salting it.'

Papa frowned. 'This could be bad for us. I have a big salting plant.'

'Knock it down,' said Seth. 'Go in for refrigeration.'

Papa did not like people telling him what to do, and Micky felt a little anxious. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Edward. 'Papa, I want to introduce you to my best friend,' he said. He managed to ease his father away from Seth. 'Allow me to present Edward Pilaster.'

Papa examined Edward with a cold, clear-eyed gaze. Edward was not good-looking – he took after his father, not his mother – but he looked like a healthy farm boy.

muscular and fair-skinned. Late nights and quantities of wine had not taken their toll- not yet, anyway. Papa shook his hand and said: 'You two have been friends for many years.'

'Soul mates,' Edward said.

Papa frowned, not understanding.

Micky said: 'May we talk business for a moment?'

They stepped off the terrace and on to the newly-laid lawn. The borders were freshly planted, all raw earth and tiny shrubs. 'Papa has been making some large purchases here, and he needs to arrange shipping and finance,' Micky went on. 'It could be the first small piece of business you bring into your family bank.'

Edward looked keen. 'I'll be glad to handle that for you,' he said to Papa. 'Would you like to come into the bank tomorrow morning, so that we can make all the necessary arrangements?'

'I will,' said Papa.

Micky said: 'Tell me something. What if the ship sinks. Who loses – us, or the bank?'

'Neither,' Edward said smugly. 'The cargo will be insured at Lloyd's. We would simply collect the insurance money and ship a new consignment to you. You don't pay until you get your goods. What is the cargo, by the way?'

'Rifles.'

Edward's face fell. 'Oh. Then we can't help you.' Micky was mystified. 'Why?'

'Because of Old Seth. He's a Methodist, you know. Well, the whole family is, but he's rather more devout than most. Anyway, he won't finance arms sales, and as he's Senior Partner, that's bank policy.'

'The devil it is,' Micky cursed. He shot a fearful look at his father. Fortunately, Papa had not understood the conversation. Micky had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Surely his scheme could not founder on something as stupid as Seth's religion? 'The damned old hypocrite is practically dead, why should he interfere?'

'He is about to retire,' Edward pointed out. 'But I think Uncle Samuel will take over, and he's the same, you know.'

Worse and worse. Samuel was Seth's bachelor son, fifty-three years old and in perfect health. 'We'll just have to go to another merchant bank,' Micky said.

Edward said: 'That should be straightforward, provided you can give a couple of sound business references.'

'References? Why?'

'Well, a bank always takes the risk that the buyer will renege on the deal, leaving them with a cargo of unwanted merchandise on the far side of the globe. They just need some assurance that they're dealing with a respectable businessman.'

What Edward did not realize was that the concept of a respectable businessman did not yet exist in South America. Papa was a caudillo, a provincial landowner with a hundred thousand acres of pampas and a workforce of cowboys that doubled as his private army. He wielded power in a way the British had not known since the Middle Ages. It was like asking William the Conqueror for references.

Micky pretended to be unperturbed. 'No doubt we can provide something,' he said. In fact he was stumped. But if he was going to stay in London he had to bring this deal off.'

They turned and strolled back towards the crowded terrace, Micky hiding his anxiety. Papa did not yet understand that they had encountered a serious difficulty, but Micky would have to explain it later – and then there would be trouble. Papa had no patience with failure, and his anger was terrifying.

Augusta appeared on the terrace and spoke to Edward. 'Find Hastead for me, Teddy darling,' she said. Hastead was her obsequious Welsh butler. 'There's no cordial left and the wretched man has disappeared.' Edward went off. She favoured Papa with a warm, intimate smile. 'Are you enjoying our little gathering, Senor Miranda?'

'Very well, thank you,' said Papa.

'You must have some tea, or a glass of cordial.'

Papa would have preferred tequila, Micky knew, but alcoholic drink was not served at Methodist tea-parties.

Augusta looked at Micky. Always quick to sense other people's moods, she said: 'I can see that you're not enjoying the party. What's the matter?'

He did not hesitate to confide in her. 'I was hoping Papa could help Edward by bringing new business to the bank, but it involves guns and ammunition, and Edward has just explained that Uncle Seth won't finance weapons.'

'Seth won't be Senior Partner much longer,' Augusta said.

'Apparently Samuel feels the same as his father.'

'Does he?' Augusta said, and her tone was arch. 'And who says that Samuel is to be the next Senior Partner?'

Hugh Pilaster was wearing a new sky-blue ascot style cravat, slightly puffed at the neckline and held in place with a pin. He really should have been wearing a new coat, but he earned only £68 a year, so he had to brighten up his old clothes with a new tie. The ascot was the latest fashion, and sky-blue was a daring colour choice; but when he spied his reflection in the huge mirror over the mantelpiece in Aunt Augusta's drawing-room he saw that the blue tie and black suit looked rather fetching with his blue eyes and black hair, and he hoped the ascot gave him an attractively rakish air. Perhaps Florence Stalworthy would think so, anyway. He had started to take an interest in clothes since he met her.

It was a bit embarrassing, living with Augusta and being so poor; but there was a tradition at Pilasters Bank that men were paid what they were worth, regardless of whether they were family members. Another tradition was that everyone started at the bottom. Hugh had been a star pupil at school, and would have been head boy if he had not got into trouble so much; but his education counted for little at the bank, and he was doing the work of an apprentice clerk – and was paid accordingly. His aunt and uncle never offered to help him out financially, so they had to put up with his looking a little shabby.

He did not much care what they thought about his appearance, of course. It was Florence Stalworthy he was worried about. She was a pale, pretty girl, the daughter of the Earl of Stalworthy; but the most important thing about her was that she was interested in Hugh Pilaster. The truth was that Hugh could be fascinated by any girl who would talk to him. This bothered him, because it surely meant that his feelings were shallow; but he could not help it. If a girl touched him accidentally it was enough to make his mouth go dry. He was tormented by curiosity about what their legs looked like under all those layers of skirt and petticoat. There were times when his desire hurt like a wound. He was twenty years old, he had felt like this since he was fifteen, and in those five years he had never kissed anyone except his mother.

A party such as this drum of Augusta's was exquisite torture. Because it was a party, everyone went out of their way to be pleasant, find things to talk about, and show an interest in one another. The girls looked lovely and smiled and sometimes, discreetly, flirted. So many people were crowded into the house that inevitably some of the girls would brush up against Hugh, bump into him as they turned around, touch his arm, or even press their breasts against his back as they squeezed by. He would have a week of restless nights afterwards.

Many of the people here were his relations, inevitably. His father, Tobias, and Edward's father, Joseph, had been brothers. But Hugh's father had withdrawn his capital from the family business, started his own enterprise, gone bankrupt, and killed himself. That was why Hugh had left the expensive Wind field boarding school and become a day-boy at the Folkestone Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; it was why he started work at nineteen instead of doing a 'European tour' and wasting a few years at a university; it was why he lived with his aunt; and it was why he did not have new clothes to wear to the party. He was a relation, but a poor one; an embarrassment to a family whose pride, confidence and social standing were based on its wealth.

It would never have occurred to any of them to solve the problem by giving him money. Poverty was the punishment for doing business badly, and if you started to ease the pain for failures, why, there would be no incentive to do well. 'You might as well put feather-beds in prison cells,' they would say whenever someone suggested helping life's losers.

His father had been the victim of a financial crisis, but that made no difference. He had failed on 11 May 1866, a date known to bankers as Black Friday. On that day a billbroker called Ovcrend and Gurney Ltd had gone bankrupt for five million pounds, and many firms were dragged down, including the London Joint Stock Bank and Sir Samuel Peto's building company, as well as Tobias Pilaster and Co. But there were no excuses in business, according to the Pilaster philosophy. Just at present there was a financial crisis, and no doubt one or two firms would fail before it was over; but the Pilasters were vigorously protecting themselves, shedding their weaker clients, tightening credit, and ruthlessly turning down all but the most unquestionably secure new business. Self-preservation was the highest duty of the banker, they believed.

Well, I'm a Pilaster, too, Hugh thought. I may not have the Pilaster nose, but I understand about self-preservation. There was a rage that boiled in his heart sometimes when he brooded about what had happened to his father, and it made him all the more determined to become the richest and most respected of the whole damn crew. His cheap day school had taught him useful arithmetic and science while his better-off cousin Edward was struggling with Latin and Greek; and not going to university had given him an early start in the business. He was never tempted to follow a different way of life, become a painter or a Member of Parliament or a clergyman. Finance was in his blood. He could give the current Bank Rate quicker th;m he could say whether it was raining. He was determined he would never be as smug and hypocritical as his older relatives, but all the same he was going to be a banker.

However, he did not think about it much. Most of the time he thought about girls.

He stepped out of the drawing-room on to the terrace and saw Augusta bearing down on him with a girl in tow.

'Dear Hugh,' she said, 'here's your friend Miss Bodwin.' Hugh groaned inwardly., Rachel Bodwin was a tall, intellectual girl of radical opinions. She was not pretty she had dull brown hair and light eyes set rather close together – but she was lively and interesting, full of subversive ideas, and Hugh had liked her a lot when he 'first came to London to work at the bank. But Augusta had decided he should marry Rachel, and that had ruined the relationship. Before that they had argued fiercely and freely about divorce, religion, poverty and votes for women. Since Augusta had begun her campaign to bring them together, they just stood and exchanged awkward chit-chat.

'How lovely you look, Miss Bodwin,' he said automatically.

'You're very kind,' she replied in a bored tone.

Augusta was turning away when she caught sight of Hugh's tie. 'Heavens!' she exclaimed. 'What is that? You look like an innkeeper!'

Hugh blushed crimson. If he could have thought of a sharp rejoinder he would have risked it, but nothing came to mind, and all he could do was mutter: 'It's just a new tie. It's called an ascot.'

'You shall give it to the boot-boy tomorrow,' she said, and she turned away.

Resentment flared in Hugh's breast against the fate that forced him to live with his overbearing aunt. 'Women ought not to comment on a man's clothes,' he said moodily. 'It's not ladylike.'

Rachel said: 'I think women should comment on anything that interests them, so I shall say that I like your tie, and that it matches your eyes..

Hugh smiled at her, feeling better. She was very nice, after all. However, it was not her niceness that caused Augusta to want him to marry her. Rachel was the daughter of a lawyer specializing in commercial contracts. Her family had no money other than her father's professional income, and on the social ladder they were several rungs below the Pilasters; indeed they would not be at this party at all except that Mr Bodwin had done useful work for the bank. Rachel was a girl in a low station in life, and by marrying her Hugh would confirm his status as a lesser breed of Pilaster; and that was what Augusta wanted.

He was not completely averse to the thought of proposing to Rachel. Augusta had hinted that she would give him a generous wedding present if he married her choice. But it was not the wedding present that tempted him, it was the thought that every night he would be able to get into bed with a woman, and lift her nightdress up, past her ankles and her knees, past her thighs.

'Don't look at me that way,' Rachel said shrewdly. 'I only said I liked your tie.'

Hugh blushed again. Surely she could not guess what had been in his mind? His thoughts about girls were so grossly physical that he felt ashamed of himself much of the time. 'Sorry,' he mumbled.

'What a lot of Pilasters there are,' she said brightly, looking around. 'How do you cope with them all?'

Hugh looked around too, and saw Florence Stalworthy come in. She was extraordinarily pretty, with her fair curls falling over her delicate shoulders, a pink dress trimmed with lace and silk ribbons, and ostrich feathers in her hat. She met Hugh's eye and smiled at him across the room.

'I can see I've lost your attention,' Rachel said with characteristic bluntness.

'I'm most awfully sorry,' Hugh said.

Rachel touched his arm. 'Hugh, dear, listen to me for a moment. I like you. You're one of the few people in London society who aren't unspeakably dull. But I don't love you and I will never marry you, no matter how often your aunt throws us together.'

Hugh was startled. 'I say –' he began.

But she had not finished. 'And I know you feel much the same about me, so please don't pretend to be heartbroken.'

After a stunned moment, Hugh grinned. This directness was what he liked about her. But he supposed she was right: liking was not loving. He was not sure what love was, but she seemed to know. 'Does this mean we can go back to quarrelling about women's suffrage?' he said cheerfully.

'Yes, but not today. I'm going to talk to your old school friend, Senor Miranda.'

Hugh frowned. 'Micky couldn't spell “suffrage” let alone tell you what it means.'

'All the same, half the debutantes in London are swooning over him.'

'I can't imagine why.'

'He's a male Florence Stalworthy,' Rachel said, and with that she left him.

Hugh frowned, thinking about that. Micky knew Hugh was a poor relation and he treated him accordingly, so it was difficult for Hugh to be objective about him. He was very personable, and always beautifully dressed. He reminded Hugh of a cat, sleek and sensual with glossy fur. It was not quite the thing to be so carefully groomed, and men said he was not very manly, but women did not seem to care about that.

Hugh followed Rachel with his eyes as she crossed the room to where Micky stood with his father, talking to Edward's sister Clementine, Aunt Madeleine, and young Aunt Beatrice. Now Micky turned to Rachel, giving her his full attention as he shook her hand and said something that made her laugh. He was always talking to three or four women, Hugh realized.

All the same Hugh disliked the suggestion that Florence was somehow like Micky. She was attractive and popular, as he was, but Micky was something of a cad, Hugh thought.

He made his way to Florence's side, feeling thrilled but nervous. 'Lady Florence, how are you?'

She smiled dazzlingly. 'What an extraordinary house!' 'Do you like it?'

'I'm not sure.'

'That's what most people say.'

She laughed as if he had made a witty remark, and he felt inordinately pleased.

He went on: 'It's very modern, you know. There are five bathrooms! And a huge boiler in the basement warms the whole place with hot-water pipes.'

'Perhaps the stone ship on top of the gable is a little too much.'

Hugh lowered his voice. 'I think so too. It reminds me of the cow's head outside a butcher's shop.'

She giggled again. Hugh was pleased that he could make her laugh. He decided it would be nice to get her away from the crowd. 'Come and see the garden,' he said.

'How lovely.'

It was not lovely, having only just been planted, but that did not matter in the least. He led her out of the drawingroom on to the terrace but there he was waylaid by Augusta, who shot him a look of reproof and said: 'Lady Florence, how kind of you to come. Edward will show you the garden.' She grabbed Edward, who was standing nearby, and ushered the two of them away before Hugh could say a word. He clenched his teeth in frustration and vowed he would not let her get away with this. 'Hugh, dear, I know you want to talk to Rachel,' she said. She took Hugh's arm and moved him back inside, and there was nothing he could do to resist her, short of snatching his arm away and making a scene. Rachel was standing with Micky Miranda and his father. 'Micky, I want your father to meet my brother-in-law, Mr Samuel Pilaster.' She detached Micky and his father and took them off, leaving Hugh with Rachel again.

Rachel was laughing. 'You can't argue with her.'

'It would be like arguing with a dashed railway train.'

Hugh fumed. Through the window he could see the bustle of Florence's dress as it swayed down the garden beside Edward.

Rachel followed his eyes and said: 'Go after her.' He grinned. 'Thanks.'

He hurried down the garden. As he caught up, a wicked idea occurred to him. Why should he not play his aunt's game and detach Edward from Florence? Augusta would be spitting mad when she found out – but it would be worth it for the sake of a few minutes alone in the garden with Florence. To hell with it, he thought. 'Oh, Edward,' he said. 'Your mother asked me to send you to her. She's in the hall.'

Edward did not question this: he was used to sudden changes of mind by his mother. He said: 'Please excuse me, Lady Florence.' He left them and went into the house.

Florence said: 'Did she really send for him?' 'No.'

'You're so bad!' she said, but she was smiling.

He looked into her eyes, basking in the sunshine of her approval. There would be hell to pay later, but he would suffer much worse for the sake of a smile like that. 'Come and see the orchard,' he said

Augusta was amused by Papa Miranda. Such a squat peasant of a man! He was so different from his lithe, elegant son. Augusta was very fond of Micky Miranda. She always felt more of a woman when she' was with him, even though he was so young. He ,had a way of looking at her as if she were the most desirable thing he had ever seen. There were times when she wished he would do more than just look. It was a foolish, wish, of course, but all the same she felt it now and again.

She had been alarmed by their conversation about Seth. Micky assumed that when Old Seth died or retired, his son Samuel would take over as Senior Partner of Pilasters Bank. Micky would not have made that assumption on his own: he must have picked it up from the family. Augusta did not want Samuel to take over. She wanted the job for her husband Joseph, who was Seth's nephew.

She glanced through the drawing-room window and saw the four partners in Pilasters Bank together on the terrace. Three were Pilasters: Seth, Samuel and Joseph – the early nineteenth-century Methodists had favoured Biblical names. Old Seth looked like the invalid he was, sitting with a blanket over his knees, outliving his usefulness. Beside him was his son. Samuel was not as distinguished-looking as his father. He had the same beak-like nose, but below it was a rather soft mouth with bad teeth. Tradition would favour him to succeed because he was the eldest of the partners after Seth. Augusta's husband Joseph was speaking, making a point to his uncle and his cousin with short jabbing movements of his hand, a characteristically impatient gesture. He, too, had the Pilaster nose, but the rest of his features were rather irregular and he was losing his hair. The fourth partner was standing back, listening with his arms folded. He was Major George Hartshorn, husband of Joseph's sister Madeleine. A former army officer, he had a prominent scar on his forehead from a wound received twenty years ago in the Crimean War. He was no hero, however: his horse had been frightened by a steam-traction engine and he had fallen and banged his head on the wheel of a kitchen wagon. He had retired from the army and joined the bank when he married Madeleine. An amiable man who foll~wed where others led, he was not clever enough to run the bank, and anyway they had never had a Senior Partner whose name was not Pilaster. The only serious candidates were Samuel and Joseph.

Technically, the decision was made by a vote of the partners. By tradition the family generally reached a consensus. In reality, Augusta was determined to have her way. But it would not be easy.

The Senior Partner of Pilasters Bank was one of the most important people in the world. His decision to grant a loan could save a monarch; his refusal could start a revolution. Along with a handful of others – J. P. Morgan, the Rothschilds, Ben Greenbourne – he held the prosperity of nations in his hands. He was flattered by heads of state, consulted by prime ministers, and courted by diplomats; and his wife was fawned upon by them all.

Joseph wanted the job, but he had no subtlety. Augusta was terrified that he would let the opportunity slip through his fingers. Left to himself he might say bluntly that he would like to be considered, then simply allow the family to decide. I t might not occur to him that there were other things he should do to make sure he won the contest. For instance, he would never do anything to discredit his rival.

Augusta would have to find ways to do that for him. She had no trouble identifying Samuel's weakness. At the age of fifty-three he was a bachelor, and lived with a young man who was blithely referred to as his 'secretary'. Until now the family had paid no attention to Samuel's domestic arrangements, but Augusta was wondering if she could change all that.

Samuel had to be handled carefully. He was a fussy, finicky man, the kind who would change his entire outfit of clothes because a drop of wine had fallen on the knee of his trousers; but he was not weak, and could not be intimidated. A frontal assault was not the way to attack him.

She would have no regrets about injuring him. She had never liked him. He sometimes acted as if he found her amusing, and he had a way of refusing to take her at face value that she found deeply annoying.

As she moved among her guests, she put out of her mind the irritating reluctance of her nephew Hugh to pay court to a perfectly suitable young girl. That branch of the family had always been troublesome and she was not going to let it distract her from the more important problem that Micky had alerted her to, the threat of Samuel.

She spotted her sister-in-law, Madeleine Hartshorn, in the hall. Poor Madeleine, you could tell she was Joseph's sister, for she had the Pilaster nose. On some of the men it looked distinguished, but no woman could look anything but plain with a great beak like that.

Madeleine and Augusta had once been rivals. Years ago, when Augusta first married Joseph, Madeleine had resented the way the family began to centre around Augusta – even though Madeleine never had the magnetism or the energy to do what Augusta did, arranging weddings and funerals, matchmaking, patching up quarrels, and organizing support for the sick, the pregnant and the bereaved. Madeleine's attitude had come close to causing a rift within the family. Then she had delivered a weapon into Augusta's hands. One afternoon Augusta had stepped into an exclusive Bond Street silverware shop just in' time to see Madeleine slipping into the back of the store. Augusta had lingered for a while, pretending to hesitate over a toast rack, until she saw a handsome young man follow the same route. She had heard that the rooms above such stores were sometimes used for romantic rendezvous, and she was now almost certain that Madeleine was having a love affair. A five pound note had persuaded the proprietress ofthe shop, a Mrs Baxter, to divulge the name of the young man, Viscount Tremain.

Augusta had been genuinely shocked, but the first thought that had occurred to her was that what Madeleine could do with Viscount Tremain, Augusta could do with Micky Miranda. But that was out of the question, of course. Besides, if Madeleine could be found out, the same could happen to Augusta.

It could have ruined Madeleine socially. A man who had a love affair was considered wicked but romantic; a woman who did the same was a whore. If her secret got out she would be shunned by society and her family would be ashamed of her. Augusta's first thought was to use the secret to control Madeleine, holding over her head the threat of exposure. But that would make Madeleine forever hostile. It was foolish to multiply enemies unnecessarily. There had to be a way she could disarm Madeleine and at the same time make an ally of her. After much thought she had evolved a strategy. Instead of intimidating Madeleine with the information, she pretended to be on her side. 'A word to the wise, dear Madeleine,' she had whispered. 'Mrs Baxter cannot be trusted. Tell your viscount to find a more discreet rendezvous.' Madeleine had begged her to keep the secret and had been pathetically grateful when Augusta willingly promised eternal silence. Since then there had been no rivalry between them.

Now Augusta took Madeleine's arm, saying: 'Come and see my room – I think you'll like it.'

On the first floor of the house were her bedroom and dressing-room, Joseph's bedroom and dressing-room, and a study. She led Madeleine into her bedroom, closed the door, and waited for her reaction.

She had furnished the room in the latest Japanese style, with fretwork chairs, peacock-feather wallpaper and a display of porcelain over the mantelpiece. There was an immense wardrobe painted with Japanese motifs, and the window-seat in the bay was partly concealed by dragonfly curtains.

'Augusta, how daring!' said Madeleine.

'Thank you.' Augusta was almost completely happy with the effect. 'There was a better curtain material I wanted but Liberty's had sold out of it. Come and see Joseph's room.'

She took Madeleine through the communicating door. Joseph's bedroom was furnished in a more moderate version of the same style, with dark leather-paper on the walls and brocade curtains. Augusta was especially proud of a lacquered display cabinet that held his collection of jewelled snuff-boxes.

'Joseph is so eccentric,' said Madeleine, looking at the snuff-boxes.

Augusta smiled. Her husband was not in the least eccentric, generally speaking, but it was odd for a hardheaded Methodist businessman to collect something so frivolous and exquisite, and the whole family found it amusing. 'He says they're an investment,' she said. A diamond necklace for her would have been an equally good investment, but he never bought her such things, for Methodists considered jewellery to be a needless extravagance.

'A man should have a hobby,' Madeleine said. 'It keeps him out of trouble.'

Out of whorehouses was what she meant. The implied reference to men's peccadilloes reminded Augusta of her purpose. Softly, softly, she said to herself. 'Madeleine, dear, what are we going to do about cousin Samuel and his “secretary”?'

Madeleine looked puzzled. 'Oughi'we to do something?' 'If Samuel is to become Senior Partner, we must.'

'Why?'

'My dear, the Senior Partner of Pilasters has to meet ambassadors, heads of state, even royalty – he must be quite, quite irreproachable in his private life.'

Comprehension dawned, and Madeleine flushed. 'Surely you're not suggesting that Samuel is in some way ... depraved?'

That was exactly what Augusta was suggesting, but she did not want to say it outright, for fear of provoking Madeleine to defend her cousin. 'I trust that I shall never know,' she said evasively. 'The important thing is what people think.'

Madeleine was unconvinced. 'Do you really suppose people think. . . that?'

Augusta forced herself to have patience with Madeleine's delicacy. 'My dear, we are both married women, and we know what men are like. They have animal appetites. The world assumes that a single man of fifty-three living with a pretty boy is vicious, and heaven knows, in most cases the world is probably right.'

Madeleine frowned, looking worried. Before she could say anything else there was a knock at the door and Edward came in. 'What is it, mother?' he asked.

Augusta was annoyed by the interruption and she had no idea what the boy was talking about. 'What do you mean?'

'You sent for me.'

'I most certainly did not. I told you to show Lady Florence around the garden.'

Edward looked hurt. 'Hugh said you wanted to see me!' Augusta understood. 'Did he? And I suppose he is showing Lady Florence the garden now?'

Edward saw what she was getting at. 'I do believe he is,' he said, looking wounded. 'Don't be cross with me, Mother, please.'

Augusta melted instantly. 'Don't worry, Teddy dear,' she said. 'Hugh is such a sly boy.' But if he thought he could outwit his Aunt Augusta he was also foolish.

This distraction had irritated her, but on reflection she thought she had said enough to Madeleine about Cousin Samuel. At this stage all she wanted was to plant the seed of doubt: anything more might be too heavy-handed. She decided to leave well enough alone. She ushered her sisterin-law and her son out of the room, saying: 'Now I must return to my guests.'

They went downstairs. The party was going well, to judge by the cacophony of talk, laughter, and a hundred silver teaspoons clinking in bone china saucers. Augusta briefly checked the dining-room where the servants were dispensing lobster salad, fruit cake and iced drinks. She moved through the hall, speaking a word or two to each guest who caught her eye, but looking for a particular one – Florence's mother, Lady Stalworthy.

She was worried by the possibility that Hugh might marry Florence. Hugh was already doing far too well at the bank. He had the quick commercial brain of a barrow-boy and the engaging manners of a card-sharp. Even Joseph spoke approvingly of him, oblivious of the threat to their own son. Marriage to the daughter of an earl would give Hugh social status to add to his native talents, and then he would be a dangerous rival to Edward. Dear Teddy did not have Hugh's superficial charm or his head for figures, so he needed all the help Augusta could give him.

She found Lady Stalworthy standing in the bay window of the drawing-room. She was a pretty middle-aged woman in a pink dress and a little straw hat with silk flowers all over it. Augusta wondered anxiously how she would feel about Hugh and Florence. Hugh was no great catch, but from Lady Stalworthy's point of view he was not a disaster. Florence was the youngest of three daughters, and the other two had married well, so Lady Stalworthy might be' indulgent. Augusta had to prevent that. But how.

She stood at Lady Stalworthy's side and saw that she was watching Hugh and Florence in the garden. Hugh was eXplaining something, and Florence's eyes sparkled with pleasure as she looked at him and listened. 'The careless happiness of youth,' said Augusta.

'Hugh seems a nice boy,' Lady Stalworthy said.

Augusta looked hard at her for a moment. Lady Stalworthy had a dreamy smile on her face. She had once been as pretty as her daughter, Augusta guessed. Now she was remembering her own girlhood. She needed to be brought down to earth with a thump, Augusta decided. 'How quickly they pass, those carefree days..

'But so idyllic while they last.'

It was time for the poison. 'Hugh's father died, as you know,' Augusta said. 'And his mother lives very quietly at Folkestone, so Joseph and I feel an obligation to take a parental interest.' She paused. 'It is hardly necessary for me to say that an alliance with your family would be a remarkable triumph for Hugh.'

'How kind of you to say that,' said Lady Stalworthy, as if she had been paid a pretty compliment. 'The Pilasters themselves are a family of distinction.'

'Thank you. If Hugh works hard he will one day earn a comfortable living.'

Lady Stalworthy looked a little taken aback. 'His father left nothing at all, then?'

'No.' Augusta needed to let her know that Hugh would get no money from his uncles when he married. She said: 'He will have to work his way up in the bank, living on his salary .'

'Ah, yes,' said Lady Stalworthy, and her face showed a hint of disappointment. 'Florence has a small independence, happily.'

Augusta's heart sank. So Florence had money of her own. That was bad news. Augusta wondered how much it was. The Stalworthys were not as rich as the Pilasters – few people were – but they were comfortable, Augusta believed. At any rate, Hugh's poverty was not enough to turn Lady Stalworthy against him. Augusta would have to use stronger measures. 'Dear Florence would be such a help to Hugh. . . a stabilizing influence, I feel sure.'

'Yes,' said Lady Stalworthy vaguely, and then she frowned. 'Stabilizing?'

Augusta hesitated. This kind of thing was dangerous, but the risk had to be taken. 'I never listen to gossip, and I'm sure you don't either,' she said. 'Tobias was quite unfortunate, of that there is no doubt, but Hugh shows hardly any sign of having inherited the weakness.'

'Good,' said Lady Stalworthy, but her face showed deep anxiety.

'All the same, Joseph and I would be very happy to see him married to such a sensible girl as Florence. One feels she would be firm with him, if. . .' Augusta trailed off.

'I ...' Lady Stalworthy swallowed. 'I don't seem to recall just what his father's weakness was.'

'Well, it wasn't true, really.'

'Strictly between you and me, of course.'

'Perhaps I shouldn't have raised it.'

'But I must know everything, for my daughter's sake. I'm sure you understand.'

'Gambling,' Augusta said in a lowered voice. She did not want to be overheard: there were people here who would know she was lying. 'It was what led him to take his own life. The shame, you know.' Pray heaven the Stalworthys don't bother to check the truth of this, she thought fervently.

'I thought his business failed.'

'That, too.'

'How tragic.'

'Admittedly, Joseph has had to pay Hugh's debts once or twice, but he has spoken very firmly to the boy, and we feel sure it will not happen again.'

'That's reassuring,' said Lady Stalworthy, but her face told a different story.

Augusta felt she had probably said enough. The pretence that she was in favour of the match was wearing dangerously thin. She glanced out of the window again. Florence was laughing at something Hugh was saying, throwing her head back and showing her teeth in a way that was rather. . . unseemly. He was practically eating her up with his eyes. Everyone at the party could see they were' attracted to one another. 'I judge it won't be long before matters come to a head,' Augusta said.

'Perhaps they have talked enough for one day,' Lady Stalworthy said with a troubled look. 'I had better intervene. Do excuse me.'

'Of course.'

Lady Stalworthy headed rapidly for the garden.

Augusta felt relieved. She had carried off another delicate conversation. Lady Stalworthy was suspicious of Hugh now, and once a mother began to feel uneasy about a suitor she rarely came to favour him in the end.

She looked around and spotted Beatrice Pilaster, another sister-in-law. Joseph had had two brothers: one was Tobias, Hugh's father, and the other was William, always called Young William because he was born twenty-three years after Joseph. William was now twenty-five and not yet a partner in the bank. Beatrice was his wife. She was like a large puppy, happy and clumsy and eager to be everyone's friend. Augusta decided to speak to her about Samuel and his secretary. She went over to her and said: 'Beatrice, dear, would you like to see my bedroom?'

Micky and his father left the party and set out to walk back to their Iodgings in Camberwell. Their route lay entirely through parks – first Hyde Park, then Green Park, and St James's Park – until they reached the river. They stopped in the middle of Westminster Bridge to rest for a spell and look at the view.

On the north shore of the river was the greatest city iq the world. Upstream were the Houses of Parliament, built, in a modern imitation of the neighbouring thirteenth century Westminster Abbey. Downstream they could see the gardens of Whitehall, the Duke of Buccleuch's palace, and the vast brick edifice of the new Charing Cross Railway Station.

The docks were out of sight, and no big ships came this far up, but the river was busy with small boats and barges and pleasure-cruisers, a pretty sight in the evening sun.

The southern shore might have been in a different country. It was the site of the Lambeth potteries, and there, in mud fields dotted with ramshackle workshops, crowds of grey-faced men and ragged women were still at work boiling bones, sorting rubbish, firing kilns and pouring paste into moulds to make the drain-pipes and chimneypots needed by the fast-expanding city. The smell was strong even here on the bridge, a quarter of a mile away. The squat hovels in which the workers lived were crowded around the walls of Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, like the filth left by high tide on the muddy foreshore. Despite the nearness of the archbishop's palace the neighbourhood was known as the Devil's Acre, presumably because the fires and the smoke, the shuffling workers and the awful smell made people think of Hell.

Micky's lodgings were in Camberwell, a respectable suburb beyond the potteries; but he and his father hesitated on the bridge, reluctant to plunge into the Devil's Acre. Micky was still cursing the scrupulous Methodist conscience of Old Seth Pilaster for frustrating his plans. 'We will solve this problem about shipping the rifles, Papa,' he said. 'Don't worry about it.'

Papa shrugged. 'Who is standing in our way?' he asked. It was a simple question, but it had a deep meaning in the Miranda family. When they had an intractable problem, they asked: Who is standing in our way? It really meant: Who do we have to kill to get this done? It brought back to Micky all the barbarism of life in Santamaria Province, all the grisly legends he preferred to forget: the story about how Papa had punished his mistress for being unfaithful to him by putting a rifle up her and pulling the trigger; the time a Jewish family opened a store next to his in the provincial capital, so he set fire to it and burned the man and his wife and children alive; the one about the dwarf who had dressed up to look like Papa during the carnival, and made everyone laugh by strutting up and down in a perfect imitation of Papa's walk – until Papa calmly went up to the dwarf, drew a pistol, and blew his head off.

Even in Cordova this was not normal, but there Papa's reckless brutality had made him a man to be feared. Here in England it would get him thrown in jail. 'I don't anticipate the need for drastic action,' Micky said, trying to cover his nervousness with an air of unconcern.

'For now, there is no hurry,' Papa said. 'Winter is beginning at home. There will be no fighting until the summer.' He gave Micky a hard look. 'But I must have the rifles by the end of October.'

That look made Micky feel weak at the knees. He leaned against the stone parapet of the bridge to steady himself. 'I'll see to it, Papa, don't worry,' he said anxiously.

Papa nodded as if there could be no doubt about it. They were silent for a minute. Out of the blue, Papa said: 'I want you to stay in London.'

Micky felt his shoulders slump with relief. It was what he had been hoping for. He must have done something right, then. 'I think it might be a good idea, Papa,' he said, trying to hide his eagerness.

Then Papa dropped his bombshell. 'But your allowance will stop.'

'What?'

'The family can't keep you. You must support yourself..

Micky was appalled. Papa's meanness was as legendary as his violence, but still this was unexpected. The Mirandas were rich. Papa had thousands of head of cattle, monopolized all horse-dealing over a huge territory, rented land to small farmers and owned most of the stores in Santamaria Province.

It was true that their money did not buy much in England. Back home a Cordovan silver dollar would get you a slap-up meal, a bottle of rum and a whore for the night; here it would hardly stretch to a cheap meal and a glass of weak beer. That had come as a blow to Micky when he went to Windfield School. He had managed to supplement his allowance by playing cards, but he had found it hard to make ends meet until he befriended Edward. Even now Edward paid for all the expensive entertainments they shared: the opera, visits to racecourses, hunting and whores. Still, Micky needed a basic income to pay his rent, tailor's bills, subscriptions to the gentlemen's clubs that were an essential element of London life, and tips to servants~ How did Papa expect him to find that? Take a job? The idea was appalling. No member of the Miranda family worked for wages.

He was about to ask how he was expected to live on no money when Papa abruptly changed the subject and said: 'I will now tell you what the rifles are for. We are going to take over the desert.'

Micky did not understand. The Miranda property covered a big area of Santamaria Province. Bordering their land was a smaller property owned by the Delabarca family. To the north of both was land so arid that neither Papa nor his neighbour had ever bothered to claim it. 'What do we want the desert for?' Micky said.

'Beneath the dust there is a mineral called nitrate. It's used as a fertilizer, much better than dung. It can be shipped all over the world and sold for high prices. The reason I want you to stay in London is to take charge of selling it.'

'How do we know this stuff is there?.

'Delabarca has started mining it. It has made his family rich.'

Micky felt excited. This could transform the family's future. Not instantly, of course; not soon enough to solve the problem of how he would live with no allowance. But in the long term...

'We have to act fast,' Papa said. 'Wealth is power, and the Delabarca family will soon be stronger than we are. Before that happens, we have to destroy them.'

Sam Cooper's stomach grumbled at the sight of the blue-and-yellow umbrellas shading his favorite hot dog stand from the blazing sun. Fresh from a boring press conference, where the mayor and police commissioner had announced the long-awaited wrap-up of a string of apartment burglaries on the Upper West Side, Coop had his digital recorder in one pocket and cash in another.

The aroma of New York's finest hot dog had his mouth watering. "Hey, Dom. How's business today?" he asked the owner.

"Can't complain. Busy lunch crowd. Slow now but it'll pickup again during the commute." The older man, tanned from his days outside, lifted the metal lid, revealing Coop's belated lunch. "The usual?"

Coop nodded. "The works. Actually make it two. I haven't eaten since breakfast."

He glanced at his watch. Nearly 3:00 p.m. Enough time for him to eat and get his story in before heading home for the day.

While Dom placed his hot dogs in their buns and began loading them up, Coop glanced around his city. On a hot August day like this one, few people wandered around outside. The smart ones hightailed it out of town, heading for the ritzy Hamptons or the Jersey Shore. Others holed up inside, with their AC blasting.

Coop's favorite hot dog stand was located on the corner of 47th Street and Park Avenue. A people watcher by nature—part of what led him to become a reporter, he supposed—Coop always studied the stores and buildings in the vicinity, and the people entering and exiting each.

As usual, the Vintage Jewelers caught his eye. Unlike most of the upscale stores in the area, it was rather ordinary. As if to compensate, the window changed often, rotating gaudy, elaborate pieces almost daily. Usually only women frequented the establishment—no big surprise—but today a man wearing a sweatshirt, hood over his head, stood inside.

"Strange," Coop muttered. The heat from the sun had him sweating in his shirt and the steam coming off the sidewalk blistered the soles of his shoes.

"Dogs are ready," Dom said, distracting Coop's attention.

But not before Coop caught sight of what looked like a gun in the man's hand. Coop's adrenaline kicked in and he focused on the store. There were two females behind the counter. If he barged in, he risked the guy shooting someone.

Inside the store, the man turned to leave.

Coop glanced at Dom. "Don't ask questions, just call 9-1-1," he said as he grabbed the metal lid off the cart and swerved back to face the store.

As the man exited, Coop acted on instinct. He stuck his foot out, tripping the guy before he could run. The man staggered but regained his balance and straightened up. Coop drew a deep breath and bashed the man in the head with the aluminum hot dog cover. His hood must have cushioned the blow or else the guy had a thick skull because he struggled to stand up a second time. Coop swung harder and the guy fell to the sidewalk, moaning in pain. The jewels spilled from his pocket onto the ground.

Before the other man could recover, Coop grabbed the gun from inside his sweatshirt and waited for the cops to arrive. His heart still beat hard, roaring in his ears as the sirens alerted him to the arrival of the police and the cops quickly relieved him. While one cuffed the criminal and hauled him into their car, another took Coop's statement.

As he replayed the events in his head, Coop was almost glad his torn rotator cuff had forced him to quit the police academy and he had a newfound respect for his father and older brother, both career policemen. Wouldn't they get a laugh when they heard about his exploits. They'd rib him...

Chapter One

Yarrow House,
the residence of Mrs. Mariana Daltry, her daughter Victoria,
and Miss Katherine Daltry

Miss Katherine Daltry, known to almost all as Kate, got down from her horse seething with rage.

It should be said that the condition wasn’t unfamiliar to her. Before her father died seven years earlier, she found herself sometimes irritated with her new stepmother. But it wasn’t until he was gone, and the new Mrs. Daltry – who had held that title for a matter of mere months – started ruling the roost, that Kate really learned the meaning of anger.

Anger was watching tenants on the estate be forced to pay double the rent or leave cottages where they’d lived their whole lives. Anger was watching the crops wilt and the hedges overgrow because her stepmother begrudged the money needed to maintain the estate. Anger was watching her father’s money be poured into new gowns and bonnets and frilly things…so numerous that her stepmother and stepsister couldn’t find days enough in the year to wear them all.

It was the pitying glances she had from acquaintances who never met her at dinner anymore. It was being relegated to a chamber in the attic, with faded furnishings that advertised her relative worth in the household. It was the self-loathing of someone who can’t quite bring herself to leave home and have done with it. It was fueled by humiliation, and despair, and the absolute certainty that her father must be turning in his grave.

She stomped up the front steps girding her loins for battle, as her father himself would have said. “Hello, Cherryderry,” she said, as their dear old butler opened the door. “Are you playing footman now?”

“Herself sent the footmen off to London to fetch a doctor,” Cherryderry said. “To be exact, two doctors.”

“Having a spell, is she?” Kate pulled her gloves off carefully, since the leather was separating from its lining around the wrist. Time was when she might have actually wondered if her stepmother (known to the household as Herself) was malingering, but no longer. Not after years of false alarms and voices screaming in the middle of the night about attacks…which generally turned out to be indigestion.

Though as Cherryderry had once commented, one can only hope.

“Not Herself, this time. It’s Miss Victoria’s face, I gather.”

“The bite?”

He nodded. “Dragging the lip down, so her maid told us this morning. There’s a swelling there as well.”

Sour as she felt, Kate felt a pulse of sympathy. Poor Victoria didn’t have much going for her outside of her pretty face and prettier frocks; it would break her stepsister’s heart if she were permanently disfigured.

“I have to talk to Herself about the vicar’s wife,” she said, handing her pelisse to Cherryderry. “Or rather, the former vicar’s wife. After his death, I moved the family to the far cottage.”

“Bad business,” the butler said. “Especially in a vicar. Seems that a vicar shouldn’t take his own life.”

“He left her with four children,” Kate said.

“Mind you, it’s not easy for a man to get over the loss of a limb.”

“Well, now his children have to get over the loss of him,” she said unsympathetically. “Not to mention that my stepmother sent an eviction notice to his widow yesterday.”

Cherryderry frowned. “Herself says you’re to dine with them tonight.”

Kate stopped on her way up the stairs. “She said what?”

“You’re to dine with them tonight. And Lord Dimsdale is coming.”

“You must be joking.”

But the butler was shaking his head. “She said that. What’s more, she’s decided that Miss Victoria’s rats have to go, but for some reason she banished them to your chamber.”

Kate closed her eyes for a moment. A day that had started out badly was only getting worse. She disliked her stepsister’s pack of little dogs, affectionately or not so affectionately, known to all as the rats. She also disliked Algernon Bennett, Lord Dimsdale, her stepsister’s betrothed. He smiled too easily. And she loathed even more the idea of sitting down to dinner en famille.

She generally managed to forget that she had once been mistress of the household. After all, her mother had been bedridden for years before she died, and sickly most of Kate’s life. Kate had grown up sitting opposite her father at the dining room table, going over the menus with Mrs. Swallow, the housekeeper… She had expected to debut, and marry, and raise children of her own in this very house.

But that was before her father died, and she turned into a maid-of-all-work, living in the garret.

And now she was to come to dinner, in a gown that was out of date, and endure the smirking pleasantries of Lord Dimsdale? Why?

She ran up the stairs with a sickening foreboding in her stomach. Kate’s stepmother was seated at her dressing table, examining her complexion. The afternoon light fell over her shoulder, lighting her hair. It had a glare to it, that hair, a fierce yellow tint as if the strands were made of minerals. She was wearing a morning dress with a pleated bodice of lilac net, caught under the breasts with a trailing ribbon. It was lovely…for a debutante.

But Mariana could not abide the fact that she was no longer in her thirties. In fact, she had never really accepted the loss of her twenties. And so she dressed herself to create an approximation of Mariana-at-Twenty. One thing you had to say for Kate’s stepmother: She had a reckless bravery, a kind of fierce disregard for the conventions governing women’s aging.

But of course if Mariana’s costumes were the outward expression of her ambition, they were also the refuge of the failed. For no woman yet has appeared twenty in her forties, and a deliciously sensual gown cannot restore youth.

“I gather you finished your peregrinations amongst your friends and bothered to come home,” Mariana said acidly.

Kate took one look around her stepmother’s boudoir and decided to remove a heap of clothes from what she was almost certain was a stool. The room was mounded with piles of light cottons and spangled silks; they were thrown in heaps over the chairs. Or at least where one presumed chairs to be. The room resembled a pastel snowscape, with soft mountains of fabric here and there.

“What are you doing?” her stepmother demanded as Kate hoisted the gowns in her arms.

“Sitting down,” Kate said, dropping the clothing on the floor.

Her stepmother bounded up with a screech. “Don’t treat my gowns like that, you stupid girl! The top few were delivered only a day or two ago, and they’re magnificent. I’ll have you ironing them all night if there’s the least wrinkle, even the least.”

“I don’t iron,” Kate said flatly. “Remember? I put a scorch mark on a white gown three years ago.”

“Ah, the Persian belladine!” her stepmother cried, clasping her hands together like a girlish Lady Macbeth. “I keep it… there.” She pointed a long finger to a corner where a towering mound of cloth went halfway to the ceiling. “I shall have it altered one of these days.” She sat back down.

Kate carefully pushed the stack of gowns a little further away from her foot. “I must speak to you about the Crabtrees.”

“God, I hope you managed to shovel the woman out the door,” Mariana said, lighting a cigarillo. “You know the bloody solicitor is coming next week to assess my management of the estate. If he sees that scrapheap of a cottage, he’ll make no end of fuss. Last quarter he prosed on and on till I thought I’d die of boredom.”

“It’s your responsibility to keep the cottages in good repair,” Kate said, getting up to open a window.

Mariana waved her cigarillo disdainfully. “Nonsense. Those people live on my land for practically nothing. The least they can do is keep their own houses in good nick. That Crabtree woman is living in a pigsty. I happened by the other day and I was positively horrified.”

Kate sat back down and let her eyes wander around the room. The pigsty of a room. But after a moment she realized that Mariana hadn’t noticed her silent insult, since she had opened a little jar and was painting her lips a dark shade of copper.

“Since her husband died,” Kate said, “Mrs. Crabtree is both exhausted and afraid. The house is not a pigsty; it is simply disorganized. You can’t evict her. She has nowhere to go.”

“Nonsense,” Mariana said, leaning closer to the glass to examine her lips. “I’m sure she has a bolt-hole all planned. Another man, most like. It’s been over a year since Crabtree topped himself; she’ll have a new one lined up by now. You’ll see.”

Talking to her stepmother, to Kate’s mind, was like peeing in a pitch-black outhouse. You had no idea what might come up, but you knew you wouldn’t like it.

“That is cruel,” she said, trying to pitch her words so that she sounded like the voice of authority.

“They have to go,” Mariana stated. “I can’t abide sluggards. I made a special trip over to the vicarage, you know, the morning after her husband jumped from the bridge. Bringing my condolences.”

Mariana preferred to avoid all the people working on the estate or in the village, except on the rare occasions when she developed a sudden taste for playing the lady of the manor. Then she would put on an ensemble extravagantly calculated to offend country folk, descend from her carriage, and decipher in her tenants’ startled expressions their shiftless and foolish natures. Finally she would instruct Kate to jettison them from their homes.

Luckily, she generally forgot about the demand after a week or so.

“That woman, Crabtree, was lying on the settee crying. Children all over the room, a disgusting number of children, and there she was, shoulders shaking like a bad actress. Crying. Maybe she should join a traveling theater,” Mariana said. “She’s not unattractive.”

“She –”

Mariana interrupted. “I can’t abide idlers. Do you think I lay about and wept after my first husband, the colonel, died? Did you see me shed a tear when your father died, though we had enjoyed but a few months of matrimonial bliss?”

Kate had seen no tears, but Mariana needed no confirmation from her. “Although Mrs. Crabtree may not have your fortitude, she has four small children and we have some responsibility to them—“

“I’m bored with the subject and besides, I need to speak to you about something important. Tonight Lord Dimsdale is coming to dinner and you shall join us.” Mariana blew out a puff of smoke. It looked like fog escaping from a small copper pipe.

“So Cherryderry said. Why?” She and her stepmother had long ago dispensed with pleasantries. They loathed each other, and Kate couldn’t imagine why her presence was required at the table.

“You’re going to be meeting Dimsdale’s relatives in a few days.” Mariana took another pull on her cigarillo. “Thank God, you’re slimmer than Victoria. We can have her gowns taken in quite easily. It would be harder to go the other way.”

“What are you talking about? I can’t imagine that Lord Dimsdale has the faintest interest in eating a meal with me, nor in introducing me to his relatives, and the feeling is mutual.”

Before Mariana could clarify her demand, the door was flung open. “The cream isn’t working,” Victoria wailed, hurtling toward her mother. She didn’t even see Kate, just fell to her knees and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

Instantly Mariana put down her cigarillo and wrapped her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. “Hush babykins,” she crooned. “Of course the cream will work. We just need to give it a little time. I promise you, Mother promises you, that it will work. Your face will be as beautiful as ever. And just in case, I sent off to London for two of the very best doctors.”

Kate was beginning to feel a faint interest in the matter. “What kind of cream are you using?”

Mariana threw her an unfriendly glance. “Nothing you would have heard of. It’s made from crushed pearls, among other things. It works like a charm on all sorts of facial imperfections. I use it myself, daily.”

“Just look at my lip, Kate!” Victoria said, popping her head back up. “I’m ruined for life.” Her eyes glistened with tears.

Her lower lip did look rather alarming. There was an odd violet-colored puffiness around the site that suggested infection, and her mouth had a slight, but distinct, list to the side.

Kate got to her feet and came over for a closer look. “Has Dr. Busby seen it yet?”

“He came yesterday, but he’s an old fool,” Mariana said. “He couldn’t be expected to understand how important this is. He hadn’t a single helpful potion or cream to offer. Nothing!”

Kate turned Victoria’s head to the side so that the light fell on it. “I think the bite is infected,” she said. “Are you sure this cream is hygienic?”

“Are you questioning my judgment?” Mariana shouted, standing up.

“Absolutely,” Kate retorted. “If Victoria ends up with a deformed mouth because you sloshed on some quack remedy you were swindled into buying in London, I want it clear that it’s your fault.”

“You insolent toad!” Mariana said, stepping forward.

But Victoria put out an arm. “Mother, stop. Kate, do you really think there’s something wrong with the cream? My lip throbs terribly.” Victoria was a tremendously pretty girl, with a beautiful complexion and wide, tender eyes that always looked a bit dewy, as if she had just shed a sentimental tear, or was just about to. Since she shed tears, sentimental and otherwise, throughout the day, this made sense. Now two tears rolled down her face.

“I think that there might be some infection inside the wound,” Kate said, frowning. “Your lip mended quickly, but…” She pushed gently, and Victoria cried out. “It’s going to have to be lanced.”

“Never!” Mariana roared.

“I couldn’t allow my face to be cut,” Victoria said, trembling all over.

“But you don’t want to have a disfigurement,” Kate said, schooling her tone to patience.

Victoria blinked while she thought about that.

“Nothing will happen until the London doctors arrive,” Mariana announced, sitting back down. She had a wild enthusiasm for anyone, and anything, from London. Kate suspected it was the result of a childhood spent in the country, but since Mariana never let slip even a hint about her past, it was hard to know.

“Well, let’s hope they arrive soon,” Kate said, wondering whether an infected lip created any risk of blood infection. Presumably not… “Why do you want me to join you for dinner, Mariana?”

“Because of my lip, of course,” Victoria said, snuffling, like a small pig.

“Your lip,” Kate repeated.

“I can’t go on the visit, can I?” Victoria added, with a characteristic, if maddening, lack of clarity.

“Your sister was to pay a very important visit to a member of Lord Dimsdale’s family in just a few days,” Mariana put in. “If you weren’t so busy traipsing around the estate listening to the sob stories of feckless women, you’d remember that. He’s a prince. A prince!”

Kate dropped onto her stool again and looked at her two relatives. Mariana was as hard and bright as a new ha’penny. In contrast, Victoria’s features were blurred and indistinct. Her hair was a delightful pale rose color, somewhere between blonde and red, and curled winsomely around her face. Mariana’s hair had the sharp-edged perfection of someone whose maid spent three hours with a curling iron achieving precisely the look she wanted.

“I fail to see what the postponed visit has to do with me,” Kate said, “though I am very sympathetic about your disappointment, Victoria.” And she was, too. Though she loathed her stepmother, she had never felt the same hatred for her stepsister. For one thing, Victoria was too soft-natured for anyone to dislike. And for another, she couldn’t help being fond of her. If Kate had taken a great deal of abuse from Mariana, the kind of affection that her stepmother lavished on her daughter was, to Kate’s mind, almost worse.

“Well,” Victoria said heavily, sitting down on a pile of gowns about the approximate height of a stool, “you have to be me. It took me a while to understand it, but Mother has it all cleverly planned out. And I’m sure my darling Algie will agree.”

“I couldn’t possibly be you, whatever that means,” Kate said flatly.

“Yes, you can,” Mariana said. She had finished her cigarillo and was lighting a second from the first. “And you will,” she added.

“No, I won’t. Not that I have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Be Victoria in what context? And with whom?”

“With Lord Dimsdale’s prince, of course,” Mariana said, regarding her through a faint haze of smoke. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“You want me to pretend to be Victoria? In front of a prince? Which prince?”

“I didn’t understand at first either,” Victoria said, running her finger over her injured lip. “You see, before Algie can marry me, we need the approval of some relative of his.”

“The prince,” Mariana put in.

“He’s a prince from some little country in the back of beyond, that’s what Algie says. But he’s the only representative of Algie’s mother’s family who lives in England, and she won’t release his inheritance without the prince’s approval. His father’s will,” Victoria confided, “is most dreadfully unfair. If Algie marries before thirty years of age, without his mother’s approval, he loses part of his inheritance – and he’s not even twenty yet!”

Very smart of Papa Dimsdale, to Kate’s mind. From what she’d seen, Dimsdale Junior was about as ready to manage an estate as the rats were to learn choral music. Not that it was her business. “The doctors will take a look at you tomorrow morning,” she told Victoria, “and then you’ll be off to see the prince. Rather like the cat looking at the queen.”

“She can’t go like that!” Mariana snapped. It was the first time that Kate had ever heard that edge of disgust applied to her daughter.

Victoria turned her head and looked at her mother, but said nothing.

“Of course she can,” Kate stated. “This sounds like a fool’s game to me. No one will believe for a moment that I’m Victoria. And even if they did, don’t you think they’d remember later? What happens when this prince stands up in the church and stops the ceremony, on the grounds that the bride isn’t the bride he met?”

“That won’t happen, if only because Victoria will be married directly afterwards, by special license,” Mariana said. “This is the first time Dimsdale has been invited to the castle, and we can’t miss it. His Highness is throwing a ball to celebrate his betrothal, and you’re going as Victoria.”

“Why not just postpone your visit and go after the ball is over?”

“Because I have to get married,” Victoria piped up.

Kate’s heart sank. “You have to get married?”

Victoria nodded. Kate looked at her stepmother, who shrugged. “She’s compromised. Three months’ worth.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Kate exclaimed. “You hardly know Dimsdale, Victoria!”

“I love Algie,” Victoria said, her big eyes earnest. “I didn’t even want to debut, not after I saw him at Westminster Abbey that Sunday back in March, but Mother made me.”

“March,” Kate said. “You met him in March and now it’s June. Tell me that darling Algie proposed, oh, say three months ago, just after you fell in love, and you’ve kept it a secret?”

Victoria giggled at that. “You know exactly when he proposed, Kate! I told you first, after Mother. It was just two weeks ago.”

The lines between Mariana’s nose and mouth couldn’t be plumped by a miracle cream made of crushed pearls. “Dimsdale was slightly tardy in his attentions.”

“Not tardy in his attentions,” Kate said. “He’s seems to have been remarkably forward in that department.”

Mariana threw her a look of dislike. “Lord Dimsdale very properly proposed marriage once he understood the situation.”

“I would kill the man, were I you,” Kate told her.

“Would you?” She gave an odd smile. “You always were a fool. The viscount has a title and a snug fortune, once he gets his hands on it. He’s utterly infatuated with your sister, and he’s set on marrying her.”

“Fortunate,” Kate commented. She looked back at Victoria. She was delicately patting her lip over and over again. “I told you to hire a chaperone, Mariana. She could have had anyone.”

Mariana turned back to her glass without a comment. In truth, Victoria probably wasn’t for just any man. She was too soft, too much like a soggy pudding. She cried too much.

Though she was terribly pretty and, apparently, fertile. Fertility was always a good thing in a woman. Look how much her own father had despaired over his lack of a son. Her mother’s inability to have more children apparently led to his marriage a mere fortnight after his wife’s death…he must have been that anxious to start a new family.

Presumably he thought Mariana was as fertile as her daughter had now proved to be. At any rate, he died before testing the premise.

“So you’re asking me to visit the prince and pretend to be Victoria,” Kate said.

“I’m not asking you,” Mariana said instantly. “I’m commanding you.”

“Oh, Mother,” Victoria said. “Please, Kate. Please. I want to marry Algie. And, really, I rather need to…I didn’t quite understand and well…” She smoothed her gown. “I don’t want everyone to know about the baby. And Algie doesn’t either.”

Of course Victoria hadn’t understood that she was carrying a child. Kate would be amazed to think that her stepsister had even understood the act of conception, let alone its consequences.

“You’re asking me,” Kate said to her stepmother, ignoring Victoria for the moment. “Because although you could force me into the carriage with Lord Dimsdale, you certainly couldn’t control what I said once I met this prince.”

Mariana showed her teeth.

“Even more relevant,” Kate continued, “is the fact that Victoria made a very prominent debut just a few months ago. Surely people at the ball will have met her – or even just have seen her?”

“That’s why I’m sending you rather than any girl I could find on the street,” Mariana said with her usual courtesy.

“You’ll have my little doggies with you,” Victoria said. “They made me famous, so everyone will think you’re me.” And then, as if she just remembered, another big tear rolled down her cheek. “Though Mother says that I must give them up.”

“Apparently they are in my bedchamber,” Kate said.

“They’re yours now,” Mariana said. “At least for the visit. After that we’ll –” She broke off with a glance at her daughter. “We’ll give them to some deserving orphans.”

“The poor tots will love them,” Victoria said mistily, ignoring the fact that the said orphans might not like being nipped by their new pets.

“Who would accompany me as chaperone?” Kate asked, putting the question of Victoria’s rats aside for the moment.

“You don’t need one,” Mariana said with a hard edge of scorn, “the way you careen about the countryside on your own.”

“A pity I didn’t keep Victoria with me,” Kate retorted. “I would have ensured that Dimsdale didn’t treat her like a common trollop.”

“Oh, I suppose that you’ve preserved your virtue,” Mariana snapped. “Much good may it do you. You needn’t worry about Lord Dimsdale making an attempt at that dusty asset; he’s in love with Victoria.”

“Yes, he is,” Victoria said, sniffing. “And I love him too.” Another tear slid down her cheek.

Kate sighed. “If I am pretending to be Victoria, it will create a scandal if I appear in a carriage alone with Dimsdale, and the scandal will not attach to me, but to Victoria. In short, no one will be surprised when her child appears on an abbreviated schedule after the wedding.”

There was a moment of silence. “All right,” Mariana said. “I would have accompanied Victoria, of course, but I can’t leave her, given her poor state of health. You can take Rosalie with you.”

“A maid? You’re giving me a maid as a chaperone?”
“What’s the matter with that?” Mariana demanded. “She can sit between you in case you lose your head and lunge at Lord Dimsdale. You’ll have the rats’ maid as well, of course.”

“Victoria’s dogs have their own maid?”

“Mary-Downstairs,” Victoria said. “She cleans the fireplaces, but she also gives them a bath every day, and brushes them. Pets,” Victoria added, “are a responsibility.”

“I shall not take Mary with me,” Kate stated. “How on earth do you expect Mrs. Swallow to manage without her?”

Mariana just shrugged.

“This won’t work,” Kate said, trying to drag the conversation back into some sort of sensible channel. “We don’t even look alike.”

“Of course you do!” Mariana snapped.

“Well, actually, we don’t,” Victoria said. “I – well, I look like me and Kate, well…” She floundered to a halt.

“What Victoria is trying to say is that she is remarkably beautiful,” Kate said, feeling her heart like a little stone in her chest, “and I am not. Put that together with the fact that we are stepsisters related only by marriage, and there’s no more resemblance between us than any pair of Englishwomen seen together.”

“You have the same color hair,” Mariana said, dragging on her cigarillo.

“Really?” Victoria said doubtfully.

Actually, Mariana was probably right. But Victoria’s hair was cut in pretty curls around her head, in the very newest style, and fixed with a delicate bandeau. Kate brushed hers out in the morning, twisted it about and pinned it flat to her head. She had no time for meticulous grooming. More accurately, she had no time for grooming at all.

“You’re cracked,” Kate said, staring at her stepmother. “You can’t pass me off as your daughter.”

Victoria was frowning now. “I’m afraid she’s right, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.”

Mariana had a kind of tight look about her eyes that Kate knew from long experience signaled true rage. But for once, she was rather perplexed about why.

“Kate is taller than I am,” Victoria said, counting on her fingers. “Her hair is a little more yellow, not to mention long, and we don’t have the same sort of look at all. Even if she put on my clothing—“

“She’s your sister,” Mariana said, her mouth tight, as if the copper pipe had been hammered flat.

“She’s my stepsister,” Kate said patiently. “The fact that you married my father does not make us blood relatives, and your first husband –”

“She’s your sister.”

CHAPTER ONE

The man above Marissa York groaned loudly, his breath shuddering over her cheek. She turned her head and frowned at the wall as the room spun slowly around her. Goodness. This wasn’t going well at all. Thankfully, it seemed it was nearly over.

After an endless summer of pretending to look for a husband in London, Marissa had thought to treat herself to a night of forbidden pleasure. It was her family’s first house party of the hunting season, after all. Everyone else was having a rollicking good time, and Marissa had thought to find some fun too. But instead she’d found clumsy fumbling, not to mention a bit of discomfort and lots of grunting. Perhaps this was why girls were ordered to keep themselves pure for marriage. No matter how unfortunate the consummation, there was no turning back afterward.

“My love,” Peter White sighed into her ear. “My sweet, sweet Marissa. That was beautiful. Perfect.”

“Perfect?”

“Oh, yes.”

She stretched her neck, trying to ease the strain on her back. “Um, could you please... arise?”

“Of course, I’m sorry.” He pushed up to his elbows. Unfortunately, though this eased the weight on her chest, it pushed his bottom half more thoroughly against her. Everything down there felt rather... squishy.

“Mr. White, please? Get up?”

He gave her a sly grin. “Don’t you feel silly calling me Mr. White right now?”

“No.”

“When we are married, I hope you will call me by my Christian name, at least in--“

“Pardon?”

He leaned down to press a kiss to her nose. Marissa wiped it away.

“I’ll speak to your brother tomorrow,” he purred.

“You will do no such thing! Now get off. It’s taking you more time to dismount than you spent riding.”

Finally, the stubborn fool seemed to sense that she wasn’t limp with gratitude at his rutting. He drew back, squishing even more firmly into her.

“Oh, just get off me, you great dolt!” she cried.

He gasped, “Marissa!” and stared, shocked horror clear on his face, even in the dim moonlight that slanted through the drapes..

And that was when she heard the footsteps in the hall. Her eyes went wide. She pushed at his chest. And the door opened. Marissa held her breath. It was dark. The light from the hallway might not have reached them. If they just kept quiet...

Peter White cleared his throat. “If you would close the door, please. We require privacy.”

Before her shock could twist into anger, the figure in the door shifted. “Pardon me?” Her brother’s voice.

Oh, no. Not her brother.

The door flew fully open, and Marissa had to squint against the light from the hall, so she could only assume they were now visible. Her heart sunk down to rest on her spine. “No,” she breathed.

“Marissa Anne York!” her brother bellowed. Then the shadow of his head shifted and he lunged for the man atop her.

Mr. White was finally off her, but she could hardly summon a feeling of thankfulness. The shadows of the two men merged into one large beast that lurched into the darkest corner of the room. Vases shattered. A table crashed into the wall.

“Stop!” Marissa screamed, hoping her shout would put an end to the fight and stop time as well. If she could only go back to a half hour earlier when she’d finished that last glass of wine and then let Mr. White coax her into this room...

Tempted to jump up from the sofa and sprint to her chambers, Marissa instead chose the more daunting path. She tugged her skirts down and pushed unsteadily to her feet to face her brother. “Edward! Stop. Please.”

“You foul bastard,” her brother’s voice huffed.

A loud thump of flesh on flesh made Marissa flinch. The chaos ceased, and suddenly only the sound of the two men panting emerged from the dark. She could do nothing but stand there and shake.

“Edward?” she breathed.

Broken glass shifted against the wood floor. One of the shadows rose up and started toward her. Marissa backed away, afraid of her brother, only because she couldn’t see him. He would never hurt her, no matter what she did. But he looked like a goblin coming at her from the dark.

Or perhaps it was Mr. White, and her brother lay unconscious on the floor. “Edward?”

The shadow shifted at the last moment, her brother’s snarling face finally coming into the light, and he moved past her. Glass rattled. A match struck.

Light swelled slowly over the room. When it reached the farthest corner, she saw that Mr. White wasn’t unconscious at all, but sitting up with a hand pressed to his eye. At the sight of him, Marissa had to tamp down an urge to fly at his face and do further damage. Easier to be furious with him than with herself.

A shadow cast itself from the hallway, and Marissa glanced up to see her Cousin Harry standing there.

“What in the world is all the ruckus?” Harry asked. Oh, this was only getting worse. How many others had heard?

“Marissa,” her brother said, that one word full of worry and hurt and confusion and fury.

She wrapped her arms around herself and turned slowly toward him. “I apologize.” Her voice was steady, just as she wanted it to be. “I did not mean for you to see that.”

“See it?” he barked.

A maid appeared at Harry’s side, her apron clutched in her hands.

“Harry,” Edward said carefully. “Please wait for me in the study. And close the door.”

This situation would have to be handled very carefully. Her family was not known for coolness or rationality. Impetuousness flowed in their veins like blood, and she’d clearly gotten her own share of it. But now she’d need to chose her words carefully. “Edward. I’m sorry. Obviously, I acted as... I was not--“ She was interrupted by the worst possible statement.

“We shall marry immediately,” Mr. White said.

Her brother was already nodding.

Marissa shook her head to counter him. “We most certainly will not. I have no intention of marrying Mr. White. None at all.”...

# # #

“Did I thank you yet for the invitation?” Jude Bertrand asked half-jokingly as he followed Aidan York down the curved staircase.

Aidan tossed a sardonic glance over his shoulder and said nothing.

Jude had, in fact, thanked him several times already. For some reason, being on the York estate filled Jude with buoyancy. The house was large and airy, the windows looking out onto wild meadows and swaths of forest. The land enchanted him, and the family... Well, oddly enough, the family reminded him of his early childhood. Decidedly strange, as his early years had been spent in what had essentially been a French whorehouse.

Smiling at the odd comparison, Jude ran his hand down the banister, remembering his stay here last year and a certain strawberry-haired hoyden’s slide down the wood. She’d thought no one else awake at that early hour, and Jude hadn’t disabused her of the notion. He’d simply watched her slide down the banister and then he’d continued on his way, marveling that no one else seemed able to see the wildness inside her.

He was greatly anticipating seeing her again.

When they reached the first floor, Aidan York nodded to a few of the guests, but continued on toward his brother’s study. Jude followed. The door was closed when they reached it, and raised voices could be heard vibrating through the wood, but Jude felt no surprise. The York family was surprisingly dramatic for such an established peerage.

Aidan didn’t seem surprised either. He simply gave a perfunctory knock and walked into chaos.

The dowager baroness had draped herself across the settee and was weeping loudly into a lace handkerchief. The baron, Aidan’s older brother, paced in front of the fireplace, his red face giving him away as the source of the shouting. A cousin was there too. Harry, maybe? He looked decidedly morose.

Jude raised a hand in greeting to the mob.

“Aidan,” said Edward. “Thank God you’re here!” Then his gaze shifted to Jude. “Jude, you can’t be here. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. All right then.” He had spun halfway back toward the hall when Aidan’s hand stopped him.

“Don’t be melodramatic, Edward.” His dry voice was a direct contrast to his brother’s. “Of course Jude can stay. Now, what seems to be the latest crisis?”

Edward shook his head. “You don’t understand. This is serious. And a very private matter.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with the upstairs maid?”

The baroness finally roused herself. “Aidan! Don’t be disrespectful.” She cocked her head toward Jude, and he offered her a small bow while she studied him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bertrand, but you’ll have to...” She stopped and frowned. “Then again, perhaps Mr. Bertrand could be of use to us. He does bring a certain... perspective.”

Jude raised his eyebrows at that, wondering what she could mean.

“Yes!” the cousin exclaimed. “His mother!”

Ah. Jude nodded. His mother. Had Edward gotten a mistress pregnant? “If I can assist you in some way, I’d be happy to. And I was raised from the cradle not to tell tales, of course.”

But Edward was shaking his head. “The matter is too sensitive.” He tossed a glare in his mother’s direction. “As you all know.”

Aidan rolled his eyes and crossed the room to the brandy decanter. “This is ridiculous. I’d trust Jude with my life. If he can help you, just spit it out, old man.” He collapsed into a chair, so Jude wandered toward the sidebar and poured himself a drink as well. He should have left, perhaps, but he was more than a little curious now.

He supposed Edward’s whisper was meant to be discreet, but it easily filled the whole room. “It’s about our sister!” he hissed.

Jude froze and spun back to face the York family. “Marissa?” he asked.

All eyes turned toward him. ...

By coincidence it was Timothy Peel who first learned that the stranger had returned to Cornwall. He made the discovery shortly before midnight on a rain-swept Wednesday in mid- September. And only because he had politely declined the persis­tent entreaties from the boys at work to attend the midweek bash at the Godolphin Arms up in Marazion.

Today was the day Olivia Dupree was going to meet the only man on the planet who saw life the way she did—as one long series of disappointments, as a perilous journey best navigated entirely solo—for the very first time, and she didn't have a thing to wear.

Not that what she wore really mattered. She wasn't that sort of fan. Not only didn't she think he would care what she looked like, but she would also be extremely disappointed if he did.

And yet she'd given in to the inner idiotic teenager that had never been her and stood on her bed, so she could gauge her appearance in the big mirror that was part of her dresser. She didn't own a full-length mirror. She'd never thought she needed one and still held that opinion. Her ordinary style was pretty basic. For work she wore skinny, knee-length pencil skirts with matching blazers when it was cool, and sensible pumps with two-inch heels. She kept her dark hair in a tight bun and applied her makeup in the same minimalist fashion every weekday. College English students didn't really care what their professor looked like, after all. And she wasn't out to capture the attention of anyone who might.

On weekends, she traded the suits for jeans, the bun for a ponytail and the makeup for sunscreen.

Now she needed something in between. Something relaxed but attractive. Not seductive, just attractive. She was not a doe-eyed, adoring fan. But she'd never met Aaron Westhaven before, and she wanted to make a good impression.

Nothing more.

Freddy, her very best friend in the entire world—and the only specimen of the male gender, canine or otherwise, she trusted with her heart—tipped his massive head from one side to the other as he watched her standing somewhat unsteadily on the mattress. Standing was not what the bed was for, he seemed to be thinking.

She glanced down at him. "It's okay, boy. I'll get down momentarily. And standing on the bed is still verboten when it comes to you, okay?"

He heaved a giant sigh and lowered his two-hundred-pound, brindle-patterned bulk to the floor. He was only average size for an adult male English mastiff, but even she had trouble believing how big he was, and she'd had him for three years.

She hoped Mr. Westhaven didn't have an aversion to dogs. He hadn't written dogs into any of his novels, so she couldn't be sure, but she suspected he would love Freddy. Because anyone with a heart would love Freddy, and Westhaven certainly had a heart.

She felt as if she knew him well. The reclusive author's heartbreakingly tragic novels lined her shelves and spoke to her soul. They were her own guilty little secret. But they so reflected the way she felt about life and love. You really couldn't depend on anyone but yourself. He seemed to understand that. God knew she did.

And now she was about to meet him—right here in Shadow Falls, Vermont.

She glanced at the combination she now wore, a pair of dressy black trousers and a lavender button-down blouse with a black blazer over it. Too stiff. She unbuttoned the blazer and thought she still looked too formal. Then she took it off and thought she looked too casual.

Frustrated, she threw the blazer down by her feet. Big mistake. Freddy saw that as an invitation, sprang upright and bounded onto the bed with a giant "woof" that reverberated through her chest. The mattress sank, the box springs squeaking in protest.

"I couldn't see anything from the waist down," she explained, as she tried to keep her balance. He bounced in response to her...

Chapter One

Flames raced up the walls to spread across the ceiling.  Orange.  Red.  Alive.  The fire was looking right at her.  She could hear it breathing.  It rose up, hissing and spitting, following her as she crawled across the floor.  Smoke swirled through the room, choking her.  She stayed low and held her breath as much as possible.  All the while the greedy flames reached for her with a voracious appetite, licking at her skin, scorching and searing, singeing the tips of her hair.

Chunks of flaming debris fell from the ceiling onto the floor and glass shattered.  A series of small explosions detonated throughout the room as lamps burst from the intense heat.  She dragged herself toward the only exit, the small doggy door in the kitchen.  Behind her, the fire roared as if enraged by her attempt to escape.
           
The fire shimmered like a dancing wall.  Her vision tunneled until the flames became a giant monster, reaching with long arms and a ghastly, distorted head, crawling after her on the floor, its hideous tongue licking at her bare feet.  She screamed, but the only sound that emerged, was a terrible choking cough.  She turned to face her enemy, felt its malevolence as the flames poured over her, trying to consume her, trying to devour her from the inside out.  Her scream finally broke past the terrible ball blocking her throat and she shrieked her terror in a high-pitched wail.  She tried to call out, to beg for water to come to her, to save her, to drench her in cool, soothing liquid.  In the distance the shriek of the sirens grew louder and louder.  She threw herself sideways to avoid the flames…
           
Rikki Sitmore landed hard on the floor beside her bed.  She lay there, her heart racing, terror pounding through her veins, her mind struggling to assimilate the fact that it was just a nightmare.  The same old, familiar nightmare.  She was safe and unharmed—even though she could still feel the heat of the fire on her skin.
           
“Damn it.”  Her hand fumbled for the clock-radio, fingers slapping blindly in search of the button that would stop the alarm that sounded so like the fire engine of her dreams.  In the ensuing silence, she could hear the sound of water, answering her cry for help, and she knew from experience that every faucet in her house was running.

She forced herself to sit up, groaning softly as her body protested.  Her joints and muscles ached, as if she’d been rigid for hours.
           
Rikki wiped her sweat-drenched face with her hand, dragged herself to her feet, and forced her aching body to walk from room to room, turning off faucets as she went.  At last only the sink and shower in her bathroom were left.  As she went through the bedroom, she turned on the radio and the coastal radio station flooded the room with music.  She needed the sea today.  Her beloved sea.  Nothing worked better to calm her mind when she was too close to the past. 
           
The moment she crossed the threshold of her bathroom, cool sea colors surrounded her with instant calm.  The green slate beneath her feet matched the slate sea turtles swimming through an ocean of glossy blue around the walls. 
           
She always showered at night to wash the sea off of her, but after a particularly bad nightmare, the spray of the water on her skin felt like a healing wash across her soul.  The water in the shower was already running, calling to her and she stepped into the stall.  Instantly the water soothed her, soaking into her pores, refreshing, her personal talisman.  The drops on her skin felt sensual, nearly mesmerizing her with the perfection of shape.  She was lost in the clarity and immediately zoned out, taken to another realm where all chaos was gone from her mind.

Things that might ordinarily hurt—sounds, textures—the everyday things others took for granted were washed away with the sweat from her nightmares or the salt from the sea.  When she stood in the water, she was as close to normal as she would ever get and she reveled in the feeling.  As always she was lost in the shower, disappearing into the clean, cool refreshing pleasure it brought her, until, abruptly the hot water was gone and her shower turned ice cold, startling her out of her trance.
Once she could breathe without a hitch, she toweled off and dragged on her sweats without looking at the scars on her calves and feet.  She didn’t need to relive those moments again—yet night after night—the fire was back, looking at her, marking her for death.
           
She shivered, turned up her radio so she could hear it throughout the house, and pulled out her laptop, taking it through the hallway to her kitchen.  Blessed coffee was the only answer to idiocy.  She started the coffee while she listened to the radio spitting out local news.  She dropped into a chair, stilling, to concentrate when it came to the weather.  She wanted to know what her mistress was feeling this morning.  Calm?  Angry?  A little stormy?  She stretched as she listened.  Calm seas.  Little wind.  A freaking tsunami drill?
Not again.  “What a crock,” she muttered aloud, slumping dejectedly.  “We don’t need another one.”
           
They’d just had a silly drill.  Everyone had complied.  How had she missed that they had scheduled another one in the local news?  When they conducted drills of this magnitude, it was always advertised heavily.  Then again…Rikki sat up straight, a smile blossoming on her face.  Maybe the tsunami drill was the just the opportunity she’d been looking for.  Today was a darned perfect day to go to work.  With a tsunami warning in effect, no one else would be out on the ocean, she would have the sea to herself.  This was the perfect chance to visit her secret diving hole and harvest the small fortune in sea urchins she’d discovered there.  She had found the spot weeks ago, but didn’t want to dive when others might be around to see her treasure trove. 
           
Rikki poured a cup of coffee and wandered out to the front porch to enjoy that first aromatic sip.  She was going to make the big bucks today.   Maybe even enough money to pay back the women who’d taken her in as part of their family for the expenses they’d incurred on her behalf.  She wouldn’t have her beloved boat finished if it wasn’t for them.  She could probably fill the boat with just a couple of hour’s work.  Hopefully the processor would think the urchins were as good as she did, and pay top dollar.
           
Rikki looked around at the trees shimmering in the early morning light.  Birds flitted from branch to branch and wild turkeys were walking along the far creek where she’d scattered seed for them.  A young buck grazed in the meadow just a short distance from her house.  Sitting there, sipping her coffee, and watching the wildlife around her, everything began to settle in both body and mind.

She’d never imagined she would ever have a chance at such a place, such a life.  And she never would have, if not for the five strangers who’d entered her life and taken her into theirs.  They’d changed her world forever. 

She owed them everything.  Her ‘sisters’.  They weren’t her biological sisters, but no blood sister could be closer.  They called themselves sisters of the heart and to Rikki, that’s exactly what they were.  Her sisters.  Her family.  She had no one else and knew she never would.  They had her fierce, unswerving loyalty.

The five women had believed in her when she’d lost all faith, when she was at her most broken.  They had invited her to be one of them, and although she’d been terrified that she would bring something evil with her, she’d accepted, because it was that, or die.  That one decision was the single best thing she’d ever done. 

The family—all six of them—lived on the farm together.  One hundred thirty acres which nestled six beautiful houses.  Hers was the smallest.  Rikki knew she’d never marry or have children, so she didn’t need a large house.  Besides, she loved the simplicity of her small home with its open spaces and high beams and soothing colors of the sea that made her feel so at peace.

A slight warning shivered down her body.  She was not alone.  Rikki turned her head and her tension abated slightly at the sight of the approaching woman.  Tall and slender with a wealth of dark wavy hair untouched by gray in spite of her forty-two years, Blythe Daniels was the oldest of Rikki’s five sisters, and the acknowledged leader of their family. 

 “Hey you,” Rikki greeted.  “Couldn’t sleep?”

Blythe flashed her smile, the one Rikki thought was so endearing and beautiful—a little crooked, providing a glimpse of straight white teeth that nature, not braces, had provided.

“You’re not going out today are you?” Blythe asked and nonchalantly went over to the spigot at the side of the house and turned it off.
           
“Sure I am.”  She should have checked all four hoses, darn it.  Rikki avoided Blythe’s too-knowing gaze.
           
Blythe looked uneasily toward the sea.  “I just have this bad feeling…”
           
“Really?” Rikki frowned and stood up, glancing up at the sky.  “Seems like a perfect day to me.”
           
“Are you taking a tender with you?”
           
“Hell no.”
           
Blythe sighed.  “We talked about this.  You said you’d consider the idea.  It’s safer, Rikki.  You shouldn’t be diving alone.”
           
“I don’t like anyone touching my equipment.  They roll my hoses wrong.  They don’t put the tools back.  No.  No way.”  She tried not to sound belligerent, but she was not having anyone on her boat messing with her things.
           
“It’s safer.”    

Rikki rolled her eyes.  How was having some idiot sitting on the boat, not diving alone?  But she didn’t voice her thoughts, instead, she tried a smile.  It was difficult.  She didn’t smile much, especially when the nightmares were too close.  And she was barefoot.  She didn’t like being caught barefoot and in spite of Blythe’s determination not to look, her gaze couldn’t help but be drawn to the scars covering Rikki’s feet and calves. 
Rikki turned toward the house.  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
           
Blythe nodded.  “I can get it, Rikki. Enjoy your morning.” Dressed in her running shoes and light sweats, she managed to still look elegant.  Rikki had no idea how she did it.  Blythe was refined and educated and all the things Rikki wasn’t, but that never seemed to matter to Blythe.
           
Rikki took a breath and forced herself to sink back into the chair and tuck her feet under her, trying not to look disturbed at the idea of anyone going into her house.
           
“You’re drinking your coffee black again,” Blythe said and dropped a cube of sugar into Rikki’s mug.
Rikki frowned at her.  “That was mean.”  She looked around for her sunglasses to cover her direct stare.  She knew it bothered most people. Blythe never seemed upset by it, but Rikki didn’t take chances.  She found them on the railing and shoved them on her nose.

“If you’re diving today, you need it,” Blythe pointed out.  “You’re way too thin and I noticed you haven’t gone shopping again.”

“I did too.  There’s tons of food in the cupboards,” Rikki pointed out.
“Peanut butter is not food.  You have nothing but peanut butter in your cupboard.  I’m talking real food, Rikki.”

“I have Reeses pieces and peanut butter cups.  And bananas.”  If anyone else had snooped in her cupboards Rikki would have been furious, but she just couldn’t get upset with Blythe.

“You have to try to eat better.”

“I do try.  I added the bananas like you asked me.  And every night I eat broccoli.”  Rikki made a face.  She dipped the raw vegetable into the peanut butter to make it more edible, but she’d promised Blythe so she faithfully ate it.  “I’m actually beginning to like the stuff, even if it’s green and feels like pebbles in my mouth.”
Blythe laughed.  “Well thank you for at least eating broccoli.  Where are you diving?”

Of course Blythe would have to ask.  Rikki squirmed a little.  Blythe was one of those people you just didn’t lie to—or ignore as Rikki often did others.   “I’ve got this black out found and I want to harvest it while I can.”

Blythe made a face.  “Don’t speak diving.  English, hon, I don’t have a clue what you mean.”

“Urchins, spine to spine, so many, I think I can pull in four thousand pounds in a couple of hours.  We could use the money.”

Blythe regarded her over the top of her coffee mug, her gaze steady.  “Where, Rikki?”
She was like a damn bulldog when she got going.  “North of Fort Bragg.”
 “You told me that area was dangerous,” Blythe reminded.

Rikki cursed herself silently for having a big mouth.  She should never have talked about her weird feelings with the others.  “No, I said it was spooky.  The ocean is dangerous anywhere, Blythe, but you know I’m a safety girl.  I follow all dive precautions and all my personal safety rules to the letter.  I’m careful and I don’t panic.”

She didn’t normally dive along the fault line running just above the Fort Bragg coast because the abyss was deep and great whites used the area as a hunting ground.  Usually she worked on the bottom, along the floor.  Sharks hunted from below, so she was relatively safe, but harvesting urchins along the shelf was risky.  She’d be making noise and a shark could come from below.  But the money….  She really wanted to pay her sisters back all the expenses they’d covered for her, helping her with her boat.

Blythe shook her head.  “I’m not talking about your safety rules.  We all know you’re a great diver, Rikki, but you shouldn’t be alone out there, anything could go wrong.”

“If I’m alone, I’m only responsible for my own life.  I don’t rely on anyone else.  Every second counts and I know exactly what to do.  I’ve run into trouble countless times and I handle it.  It’s just easier by myself.”  And she didn’t have to talk to anyone, or make nice.  She could just be herself.

“Why go north of Fort Bragg?  You told me the undersea floor was very different and the sharks were more prevalent there and it kind of freaked you out.”
Rikki found herself wanting to smile inside when just seconds earlier she’d been squirming.  Blithe saying ‘freaked out’, meant she’d been spending time with Lexi Thompson.  Lexi, the youngest of their ‘family’.

“I found a shelf at about thirty feet covered with sea urchins.  They look fantastic.  The fault runs through the area so there’s an abyss about forty feet wide and another shelf, a little smaller, but still packed as well.  No one’s found the spot.  It’s a black out, Blythe, uni spine to spine.  I can harvest a good four thousand pounds and get out of there.  I’ll only go back when no one’s around.”

Blythe couldn’t fail to hear the excitement in her voice.  She shook her head.  “I don’t like it, but I understand.”  And that was the trouble—she did.  Rikki was both brilliant and reclusive.  She seemed to take her talents for granted.  Blythe could ask her to program something on the computer and she’d write a program quickly that worked better than anything else Blythe had ever tried. 

Everything about Rikki was a tragedy and Blythe often felt like holding her tight, but she knew better.  Rikki was very closed off to human touch—to relationships—basically to anything that had to do with others.  She had allowed each of the other five women into her world, but they could only come so far before she shut down.   She was haunted by her past—by the fires that had killed her parents and burned down her foster homes.  By the fire that had taken her fiancé, the only person Rikki had ever let herself love.

“You had another nightmare, didn’t you?” Blythe asked.  “In case you’re wondering, I turned off the three others hoses around your house. 

She didn’t ask how the water had gotten turned on.  The entire family knew water and Rikki went hand and hand and strange things happened when Rikki had nightmares. 

Rikki bit her lip.  She tried a causal shrug to indicate nightmares were no big deal, but they both knew better.  “Maybe.  Yes.  I still get them.”

“But you’re getting them a lot lately,” Blythe prodded gently.  “Isn’t that four or five in the last few weeks?”

They both knew it was a lot more than that.  Rikki blew out her breath.  “That’s another reason I’m going out diving today.  Blowing bubbles always helps.”

“You won’t take any chances,” Blythe ventured.  “I could go with you, take a book or something and read on the boat.”

Rikki knew she was asking if there was a possibility she would get careless on purpose, that maybe she was still grieving, or blaming herself.  She didn’t know the answer so she changed tactics.  “I thought you were going to the wedding.  Isn’t Elle Drake getting married today?  You were looking forward to that.”  Another reason why the ocean would be hers and hers alone.  Everyone was invited to the Drake wedding.

“If you won’t go to the wedding and you need to go to the sea, then I’ll be happy reading a book out there,” Blythe insisted.

Rikki blew her a kiss.  “Only you would give up a wedding to go with me.  You’d throw up the entire time we were out there.  You get seasick, Blythe.”

“I’m trying ginger root,” Blythe said.  “Lexi says there’s nothing like it.”

“She’d know.” 

Lexi knew everything there was to know about plants and their uses.  If Lexi said ginger root would help, then Rikki was certain it would, but Blythe was not going to sacrifice a fun day just because she feared for Rikki’s safety.  Rikki’s life was the sea.  She couldn’t be far from it.  She had to able to hear it at night, the soothing roll of the waves, the stormy pounding of the surf, the sounds of the seals barking at one another, the fog horns.  It was all necessary in her life to keep her steady. 

Most of all, it was the water itself.  The moment she touched it, pushed her hands into it, she felt different.  There was no explanation for it.  She didn’t understand it, so how could she explain it to someone else that when she was in water, she was at peace, completely free in her own environment.

“Blythe, I’ll be fine.  I’m looking forward to going down.”

“You’re spending too much time alone again,” Blythe said bluntly.  “Come to the wedding.  All of the others are going.  Judith can find you something to wear if you’d like.”

Rikki had a tendency to go to Judith for advice on what to wear or how to look if she was going to anything where there would be a large group of people and Blythe obviously mentioned her on purpose in the hopes that Rikki would change her mind.

Rikki shook her head, trying not to show a physical reaction, when her entire body shuddered at the horror of the thought of the crowd.  “I can’t do that.  You know I can’t.  I always say the wrong thing and get people upset.”

She had met Blythe in a group grief counseling session and somehow, Rikki still didn’t know how or why, she’d blurted out her fears of being a sociopath to the others.  She never talked to anyone about herself or her past, but Blythe had a way making people feel comfortable.  She was the most tolerant woman Rikki had ever known.  Rikki wasn’t taking any chances of doing anything that might alienate her or any of her other sisters. And that meant staying away from the residents of Sea Haven.
           
“Rikki,” Blythe said, with her uncanny ability that made Rikki think she read minds.  “There is nothing wrong with you.  You’re a wonderful person and you don’t embarrass us.”
           
Rikki tried desperately not to squirm, wishing she was already at sea and as far from this conversation as possible.  She adjusted her glasses to make certain she wasn’t staring inappropriately.  Sheesh.  There were so many freakin social rules, how did people remember them?  Give her the ocean any day.
           
“And you don’t need to wear your glasses around me,” Blythe added gently.  “The way you look at me doesn’t bother me at all.”
           
“You’re the exception, then, Blythe,” Rikki snapped and then bit down on her lip hard.  It wasn’t Blythe’s fault that she was completely happy or completely sad, utterly angry or absolutely mellow.  There was no in between on the emotional scale for her, which made it a little difficult—whether Blythe wanted to admit it or not—for her to spend time with other people.  Besides, everyone annoyed the hell out of her.
           
“I’m different, Blythe.  I’m comfortable being different, but others aren’t comfortable around me.”  That was a fact Blythe couldn’t dispute.  Rikki often refused to answer someone when they asked her a direct question if she didn’t feel it was their business.  And anything personal wasn’t anyone’s business but hers.  She felt her lack of response was completely appropriate, but the individual asking the question usually didn’t.
           
“You hide yourself away from the world, and it isn’t good for you.”
           
“It’s how I cope,” Rikki said with a small shrug.  “I love being here, with you and the others, I feel safe.  And I feel safe when I’m in the water.  Otherwise…” She shrugged again.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’m staying out of trouble.”
           
Blythe took a swallow of coffee and regarded her with brooding eyes.  “You’re a genius, Rikki, you know that, don’t you?  I’ve never met anyone like you, capable of doing the things you do.  You can memorize a textbook in minutes.”
           
Rikki shook her head.  “I don’t memorize.  I just retain everything I read.  I think that’s why I seriously lack social skills.  I don’t have room for the niceties.  And I’m not a genius, that’s Lexi.  I’m just able to do a few weird things.”  

“I think you should talk about the nightmares with someone, Rikki.”

The conversation was excruciating for her and had it been anyone but Blythe, Rikki wouldn’t have bothered making an effort.  This conversation skirted just a little too close to the past—and that was a place she would never go.  That door in her mind was firmly shut.  She couldn’t afford to believe she was capable of the kind of thing others had accused her of—setting fires—killing her own parents—trying to hurt others.  And Daniel… 

She turned away from Blythe feeling almost as if she couldn’t breathe.  “I’ve got to get moving.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful.”

Rikki nodded.  It was easier than arguing.  “You have fun at the wedding and say hello for me.”  It was so much easier being social through the others.  They were all well liked and had shops or offices in Sea Haven—all a big part of the community.  Rikki was always on the outside fringe, and was accepted more because she was part of the Farm than for herself.  The residents of Sea Haven had accepted the women of Rikki’s makeshift family when they’d moved here just a few short years earlier, all trying to recover from various losses.

She forced a smile because Blythe had been the one to give her a place to call home.  “I really am fine.”

Blythe nodded and handed her the empty coffee cup.  “You’d better be, Rikki.  I would be lost if something happened to you.  You’re important to me—to all of us.”
Rikki didn’t know how to respond.  She was embarrassed and uncomfortable with real emotion and Blythe always managed to evoke real emotion, the heart-wrenching kind better left alone.  Rikki felt too much when she let herself feel, and not enough when she didn’t.  She pushed out of her chair and watched Blythe walk away, angry with herself for not asking Blythe why she was out running so early in the morning—why she couldn’t sleep.  Instead, she knew she’d hack into Blythe’s computer and read her personal diary and then try to find a way to help her.

Rikki didn’t mind invading privacy if she thought she had good reason.  The fact that she was inept at meaningful dialogue with those she cared about gave her all the reason in the world.  Blythe, of all the women, was an enigma.  Rikki was an observer and she noticed how Blythe brought peace to all of them, as if she took a little bit of their burdens onto herself. 
           
Rikki sighed and threw the rest of her coffee out onto the ground.  Sugar in coffee.  What was up with that?  She glanced up at the clear sky and tried to concentrate on that, to think of her sea, the great expanse of water, all blues and grays and greens.  Soothing colors.  Even when she was at her stormiest and unpredictable, the ocean brought her calm. 
           
She went back into her house, leaving the screen door closed, but the back door wide open so she wouldn’t feel closed in.  She polished the cupboards fast where Blythe had touched them leaving undetectable prints, washed the coffee mugs and carefully rinsed off the sink around the coffee pot.

She hummed slightly as she packed a lunch.  She needed high calories, lots of protein and sugar.  Peanut butter sandwiches, two with bananas, even though there was an old saying that bananas were bad luck, and a handful of peanut butter cups and two bags of Reese’s pieces would keep her going.  Her job was aggressive and hard work, but she loved and reveled in it, especially the solitary aspects of being underneath the water in an entirely different environment—one where she thrived.
           
Extra water was essential and she readied a cold gallon while she prepared and ate a large breakfast—peanut butter over toast.  She might not like sugar in her coffee but she wasn’t stupid enough to dive without taking in sufficient calories to sustain her body functions in the cold waters. 

She ate, toast in hand—she didn’t actually use her dishes.  Her sisters had given her the most beautiful set with seashells and starfish surrounding each plate.  She carefully washed the entire set on Thursdays and her wonderful set of pots and pans on Fridays—but she always had them displayed so she could look at them while she ate her sandwich.

She’d washed and bleached her wet suit the night before and made certain that her gear was in repair.  Rikki repaired all her own equipment religiously waiting for that one moment when all her senses would tell her there’d be a calm and she could go diving.  Her gear was always ready and stowed at all times so the moment she knew she could make a dive, she was ready.
  
Her boat and truck were always kept in pristine condition.  She allowed no one else to step on her boat except the women in her family—and that was rare.  No one but Rikki touched the engine.  Ever.  Or her baby, the Honda driven atlas Copco air compressor. Important)   She knew her life depended on good air.  She used three filters to remove carbon monoxide which had killed two well known locals a few years earlier.

She knew the tides by heart thanks to the northern California Tidelog, her bible.  Although she’d committed the book to memory, she read for fun daily, a compulsion she couldn’t stop.  Today she had minimum tide ebb and flood with hopefully no current, optimum working conditions where she wanted to dive. 
Despite Blythe’s concerns, Rikki really did consider safety paramount.  Rikki stowed her wet suit and gear in the truck along with her spare gear—divers—especially Rikki—generally kept a spare of every piece of her equipment on hand just to be safe on the boat in an air tight locked container which she checked periodically to make sure it was in working order.  Moments later she was driving toward Port Albion Harbor, humming along to a Joley Drake CD.  The rather famous Drake family lived in the small town of Sea Haven.  The Drakes were friends with her sisters, particularly Blythe and Lexi, but Rikki had never actually talked to any of them—especially not Joley.  She loved Joley’s voice and didn’t want to chance making social mistakes around her.

Strangely, she’d never been bothered by other’s opinions of her.  Friendships were too difficult to manage.  She had to work too hard to fit in, to find the right things to say, so it was easier just to be herself and not care what people thought of her.  But someone she admired—like Joley—she was taking no chances.  Better to just keep her distance entirely. 
           
Rikki sang along as she drove down the highway, occasionally glancing at the ocean.  The water shimmered like jewels, beckoning to her—offering the peace she so badly needed.  She’d had a few months reprieve from her nightmares but now they were back with a vengeance, coming nearly every night.  The pattern was familiar, an affliction she’d suffered many times over the years. The only thing she could do was weather the storm.
           
Fire had destroyed her family when she was thirteen.  Definitely arson the firefighters had said.  A year and six months later, a fire had destroyed the foster home she was staying in.  No one had died, but the fire had been set.

The third fire had taken her second foster home on her sixteenth birthday.  She had awakened, her heart pounding, unable to breathe, already choking on smoke and fear.  She’d crawled on her hands and knees to the other rooms, waking the occupants, alerting them.  Everyone had escaped, but the house and everything inside had been lost. 
           
The authorities wouldn’t believe she hadn’t started any of the fires.  They couldn’t prove it, but no one wanted her after that.  No one trusted her and in truth she didn’t trust herself.  How had the fires started?  One of the many psychologists suggested she couldn’t remember doing it, and maybe that was the truth.  She’d lived in a state run facility, apart from the others.  Fire-starter, they’d called her, the death dealer.  She’d endured the taunts and then she’d become violent, protecting herself with ruthless, brutal force when her tormenters escalated to physical abuse.  She was labeled a troublemaker and she no longer cared.
           
The moment she turned eighteen she was gone.  Running.  And she hadn’t stopped until she’d met Daniel.  He’d been a diver too.
           
Rikki turned her truck down the sloping drive leading to the harbor, inhaling the fragrance of the Eucalyptus trees lining the road.  Tall and thick, the trees stood like a forest of sentinels, guarding the way.  The road wound around and the Albion Fishing village came into view.  She drove on through to the large, empty, dirt parking lot and then backed up to the wooden guard in front of the Gang way connecting to the dock.
           
As she unpacked her gear, the last remnant of her nightmare faded.  Now, here, in the daylight beside the calming influence of the ocean, she could almost be grateful for the nightmares.  They always heightened her awareness of safety on the farm and the recent spate reminded her it was time to check all the fire alarms, sprinklers and extinguishers on the farm.  She could never risk growing complacent again. 
           
Even if she was not the one who somehow started the fires, someone else had.  It seemed clear to her that someone wanted her and everyone near her dead.  She’d almost run from Blythe and the others in order to protect them, but she’d been so beaten down, so close to the end of her rope, she couldn’t have survived without them. And despite everything, Rikki wasn’t ready to die.  Thankfully her newfound sisters had realized how important fire safety was to her and they had spent the extra money on everything she’d asked for. 
           
Rikki walked along the dock until she came to her baby—the Sea Gypsy.  She didn’t buy clothes or furniture.  Her home was stark, but this—this boat was her pride and joy.  She loved the Radon, all twenty-four feet of her.  Everything on her boat was in impeccable condition.  No one touched her equipment but her.  She even did her own welding, converting the design of the davit to make it easier to haul her nets on board.
           
The river was calm and the boat rocked gently against the bumpers, a soothing mixture of sounds, water lapping and birds calling back and forth.  There was one lone camper trailer in the park and no one in sight.  The harbor was nearly deserted.  She went through all her checks and started the engine.  Rikki untied the lines and cast off.  A familiar eagerness raced through her veins as she pushed the Sea Gypsy from her dock.
           
For Rikki, no feeling on earth matched the thrill of standing on the deck of her boat, the powerful engine, a 454 Mercruiser with Bravo 3 outdrive and two stainless steel propellers, rumbling under her feet and the river stretching out in front of her like a wide blue path.  The wooden bridge, with metal spanning the river, stretched above her, sandbar and rocks to the sides, was her gateway to the ocean.  The channel was narrow and impassable in low tide or heavy swells.  With the wind on her face, she maneuvered the boat out of its slip, kept a low throttle as she moved along the channel.  The sandbar to her right could present problems and she kept to the center as the Sea Gypsy swept around the curve to enter the actual sea.
           
Double-crested cormorants vied for space on the closest sea stack, a small island made of rock where the birds nested or rested.  She sent them a smile as she judged her mistress.  She never fully trusted the weather reports or tide books, she had to see for herself exactly what mood the ocean was in.  Sometimes, in the protection of the harbor, the sea felt and looked calm, but the waters beyond the land mass could betray her angry mood.  Today, the ocean was calm, the water smooth and glistening.
           
The Sea Gypsy swept out into open water and Rikki relaxed completely.  This was her world, the one place she was truly comfortable.  Here, she knew the rules, the dangers, and understood them, in a way she could never understand social situations and human interactions.  The sky overhead was blue and clear, the surface as smooth as the California coast ever managed to be, as the boat rushed over the water.  She had a great engine, built for speed—a gift from her sisters and one she could never begin to thank them for.
           
She rushed passed caves, sea stacks and cliffs—from here the coast appeared a different world altogether.  Pelicans, cormorants and osprey shared the skies with sea gulls, sometimes diving deep, their bodies sleek and stream-lined as they plummeted into the depths after fish.  Little heads popped up here and there as a seal surfaced close to shore, hunting for a meal.  Two seals played together somersaulting over and over in the water.
           
Spray burst up the cliffs in a display of power as the sea met land.  She lifted her face to the salt air, smiling at the touch of water on her face.  She began to sing, one hand weaving a dancing pattern in the air as she maneuvered the boat with the other.  It was almost a compulsion, each time she found herself alone where no one could see or hear her.  An invitation.  A language of love.  The notes skipped over the surface to the side of her boat as she rushed over the water.
           
Tiny columns began to form, sparkling tubes that danced over the surface like mini cyclones.  The sun gleamed through them, lending them colors as they twisted and turned gracefully.  Some rose high, leaping above the boat in thin rainbows to form an archway.  Laughing, she shot through it, the wind and water on her face and ruffling her hair like fingers.
           
She played with the water, out there in the safest place she knew, the shore in the distance and the water leaping all around her boat, drawn to her in some mysterious way she didn’t understand, coming when she beckoned, saving her life numerous times, making her feel at peace when everything and everyone she loved had been taken from her.  Under her direction the water plasticized, forming shapes.  The joy bursting through her there on the water where she was so alive, could never be duplicated on shore where, for her, there was only vulnerability and emptiness.
           
She anchored the Sea Gypsy just off the shelf, but gave herself plenty of scope just in case a large wave did come at her out of nowhere.  She checked her equipment a final time.  Eagerness rose inside her unmarred by any hint of fear.  She loved to be in the water.  Being alone was an added bonus.  She didn’t have to try to adhere to conventional social customs.  She didn’t have to worry about hurting someone’s feelings, embarrassing her chosen family or having people make fun of her. 

Out here, in the water, she could be herself and that was enough.  Out here she couldn’t hear the screams of the dead, feel the scorching heat of a blazing fire, or see suspicion on the faces around her.
           
After rubbing herself down with baby shampoo, she warmed her suit by pouring hot water from the engine in it before putting it on.  Once again, she checked her air compressor—her lifeline.  She’d spent a great deal of money on the Honda 5.5  horsepower engine and her Atlas Copco 2 stage air compressor with the three extremely expensive filters, two particulate filters with a carbon filter on top.  Divers had died of carbon monoxide poisoning and she wasn’t about to go that way.  She had a non-locking Hanson quick release on her end of the main hose so she could detach quickly if necessary.  She carried a 30 cubic feet—small bail-out—her back-up scuba tank on her back.  Some of the divers dove without one, but since she usually dove alone she wanted the extra protection.  Rikki didn’t care to be bent by an emergency assent.  She wanted to always be able to come up at the proper speed should anything happen such as a hose getting cut by the boater who did not see her dive flag.   
           
Donning her weight belt and then bailout, she put on the most important instrument, her computer to keep track of her time so there was no chance of staying down too long.  She had a compass to know where she was and where she wanted to go.  Grabbing her urchin equipment, she slipped into the water, taking four five hundred pound capacity nets with her.

The massive plunge felt like leaving earth and going in to space, a monumental experience that always awed her.  The cool liquid closed around her like a welcome embrace, bringing with it a sense of peace.  Everything inside of her stilled, made sense.  Righted.  There was no way to explain the strange sensations others obviously didn’t feel when being touched.  Sometimes fabrics were painful, and noises made her crazy, but here, in this silent world of beauty, she felt right, her chaotic mind calm. 
           
As she descended, fish circled her curiously and a lone seal zipped past her.  Seals moved so fast in the water, like small rockets.  Normally, they would linger, but today apart from a few scattered fish, the sea seemed empty.  For the first time, a shiver slid down her back and she looked around her at the deserted spot.  Where had all the fish gone? 
           
The San Andreas fault line was treacherous, a good nine hundred feet deep or more, a long black abyss stretching along the ocean floor.  At around thirty feet deep, a high shelf jutted outward, the extensive jagged line of rock covered in sea urchins.  The drop off was another good thirty feet across where a shorter shelf held an abundance of sea life as well. 

Rikki touched down at the thirty foot shelf and immediately began to work.  Her rake scraped over the urchin-crusted rocks along the shelf wall, the noise reverberating through the water for the sea creatures to hear.  She worked fast, knowing that below her, sharks could hunt her, where normally, when she worked on the floor, she wasn’t in as much danger.
           
The feeling of dread increased with each stroke of her rake..  She found herself stopping every few minutes to look around her.  She studied the abyss.  Could a shark be prowling there in the shadows?  Her heart rate increased, but she forced herself to stay calm while she went back to work, determined to get it over with.  The sea urchins were plentiful and large, the harvest amazing. 

She filled her first net in a matter of twenty minutes and as the weight increased, she filled the float with air to compensate.  In another twenty minutes she had a second bag filled.  Both nets floated just to one side of her while she began working to fill the third net.  Because she was working at thirty feet, she knew she had plenty of bottom time to fill all four five hundred pound nets, but she was getting tired.
She hooked the bags to her hose, and stayed on the bottom while she let the bags go to the surface, holding the hose to slow the urchins assent and so the air didn’t leave the float once it reached the surface.  She climbed her hose a foot a second until she hit ten feet where she stayed for five minutes to be good and safe before completing her assent.
           
Working in the water was exhausting, with the continual flow of the waves.  The wash could push forward and back against a diver and exposed as she was, having to be careful not to fall into the abyss, harvesting the urchins had made her arms feel like lead.  At the surface she hooked both bag lines to the floating ball and climbed onboard to rest and eat two more peanut butter sandwiches and a handful of peanut butter cups, needing the calories.
           
The strange dread that had been building in her seemed to have settled in the pit of her stomach.  She sat on the lid of the urchin hold and ate her sandwich, but it tasted like cardboard.  She glanced at the sky.  It was clear.  Little wind.  And the sea itself was calm, yet she felt threatened in some vague way she couldn’t quite comprehend.  As she sat on her boat, she twisted around, looking for danger.  It was silly, really, the feeling of impending doom.  The day was beautiful, the sea calm and the sky held no real clouds.
           
She hesitated before she donned her equipment again.  She could pull up another two nets filled with sea urchins, bringing her total to four thousand pounds, enabling her to pay a good amount of money toward the farm.  She was being silly.  This part of the ocean had always given her a bad feeling.  Resolutely, Rikki put on her weight belt and hooked her hose to her belt before reaching for her tank. 
           
The air around her suddenly changed, charging, pressure pushing on her chest.  She turned, still reaching for her tank when she felt the tremendous swell building beneath her. Rikki turned her head and her breath caught in her throat.  Her heart slammed against her chest as she stared at the solid wall of water rising up out of the sea like a monstrous tsunami, a wave beyond anything she’d ever witnessed.

Chapter One

On a chilly morning in February with a misty rain shuttering the windows, Devin and Rosie Cauldwell made slow, sleepy love. It was day three of their week’s vacation—and month two of their attempt to conceive a second child. Their three-year-old son, Hugh, was the result of a long weekend on Orcas Island in the San Juans and—Rosie was convinced—a rainy afternoon and a bottle of Pinot Noir.

They hoped to repeat their success with a return visit to Orcas, and happily applied themselves to the mission at hand while their toddler slept with his beloved Wubby in the next room.

It was too early in the day for wine, but Rosie took the quiet rain as an omen.

When they were snuggled up together, loose and warm from sex, she smiled.

“Who had the best idea ever?”

Devin gave her ass an easy squeeze. “You did.”

“Hang on, because I just had another one.”

“I think I need a few minutes, first.”

She laughed, rolled and propped herself on his chest to grin at him. “Get your mind off sex, Sleazy.”

“I think I need a few minutes for that, too.”

“Pancakes. We need pancakes. Rainy morning, our cozy little house. Definitely calls for pancakes.”

He squinted at her. “Who’s making them?”

“Let the fates decide.”

She scooted up, and in a long-standing Cauldwell family tradition they let the balance hang on Rock, Paper, Scissors—best two out of three.

“Damn it,” she muttered when he crushed her scissors with his rock.

“Superior skill wins out.”

“My ass. But fair’s fair—and I have to pee anyway.” She bent down to give him a smacking kiss, then jumped out of bed. “I love vacation,” she said as she dashed into the bathroom.

She especially loved this vacation, she thought, with her two handsome men. If the rain kept up, or got heavier, they’d play games inside. But if it let up, maybe they’d strap Hugh in the carrier and take a bike ride, or just go for a long hike.

Hugh just loved it here, loved the birds, the lake, the deer they’d spotted and of course the rabbits—all brothers to his faithful Wubby.

And maybe he’d have a brother of his own in the fall. She was ovulating— not that she was obsessing about getting pregnant. But counting days wasn’t obsessing, she thought as she caught her sleep- and sex-mussed hair back in a band. It was just being self-aware.

She grabbed a sweatshirt and some flannel pants, glanced back at Devin, who’d gone back to snoozing.

She really thought they’d hit the money shot.

Delighted with the idea, she pulled on heavy socks, then glanced at the watch she’d left on the dresser.

“Gosh, it’s after eight. We must’ve worn Hugh out last night for him to sleep this late.”

“Probably the rain,” Devin mumbled.

“Yeah, probably.”

Still, she turned out of their room for his, as she did every morning, at home or away. She moved quietly, content to let him sleep—a bonus if she could grab her first cup of coffee before she heard the first Mommy of the day.

She peeked in, expecting to find him curled up with his stuffed bunny. The empty bed didn’t bring panic. He might’ve gotten up to pee, just as she had. He’d gotten so good with his potty training.

Even when she didn’t find him in the little bathroom off the hall, she didn’t panic. Since he was habitually an early riser, they’d encouraged him to play for a bit before waking them. She usually heard him, talking to his toys or running his cars, but she’d been a little distracted having vacation sex.

God, she thought as she started downstairs, what if he’d looked in when they were doing it? No, he’d have walked right in and asked what game they were playing.

With a half laugh, she turned into the pretty living room, expecting to see her little boy on the floor surrounded by the toys of his choice.

When she didn’t, the first fingers of unease tickled up her throat.

She called his name, moving quickly now, sliding a little on the hardwood floors in her socks.

Panic struck, a knife in the belly.

The kitchen door stood wide open.

***

SHORTLY AFTER NINE, Fiona Bristow pulled up at the pretty vacation house in the heart of Moran State Park. Rain fizzed along the ground more than pattered, but its steadiness promised sloppy tracking. She signaled her partner to stay in the truck, then got out to approach one of the local deputies.

“Davey.”

“Hey, Fee. You got here fast.”

“I didn’t have far to go. The others are on their way. Are we using the house for base camp or do you want us to set up?”

“We’re using it. You’ll want to talk to the parents, but I’ll give you the basics. Hugh Cauldwell, age three, blond and blue. Last seen wearing Spider- Man pajamas.”

Fiona saw his mouth tighten a little. Davey had a boy about the same age as Hugh, and she imagined he had a pair of Spider-Man pj’s, too.

“The mother first noticed he was missing at about eight-fifteen,” Davey continued. “Found the back door open. No visible signs of forced entry or an intruder. The mother alerted the father. They called it in right away, and they ran around, calling for him, looking in the immediate area.”

And tracked up the place, Fiona mused. But who could blame them?

“We did a house-and-grounds search, to make sure he wasn’t just hiding.” Davey turned back to Fiona with rain dripping off the bill of his cap. “He’s not in the house, and his mother says he has his stuffed bunny with him. He sleeps with it, carts it around habitually. We’ve got rangers on the search, McMahon and Matt are out there,” he added, referring to the sheriff and a young deputy.

“McMahon cleared me to call in your unit, and assigned me to base.”

“We’ll set up and get started. I’d like to interview the parents now, if that’s good for you.”

He gestured toward the house. “They’re scared, as you’d expect—and they want to go out and look for him. You might help me talk them down from that.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Thinking of that, she went back to the truck, opened the door for her partner. Peck hopped out and walked with her and Davey to the house.

At Davey’s nod, Fiona crossed to the couple, who rose from their huddle on the couch. The woman clutched a little red fire engine.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cauldwell, I’m Fiona Bristow with Canine Search and Rescue. This is Peck.” She laid a hand on the head of the chocolate Lab. “The rest of my unit’s on the way. We’re going to help look for Hugh.”

“You need to go. You need to go right now. He’s only three.”

“Yes, ma’am. The rest of my unit will be here any minute. It would help us if I get some information first.”

“We told the police and the rangers everything.” Devin looked toward the window. “I need to go out there, look for him. We’re wasting time here.”

“Believe me, Mr. Cauldwell, the police and the rangers are doing everything they can to find Hugh. They called us because finding him is everyone’s priority. We’re trained, and your little boy is our only focus now. We’re going to coordinate with the police and the park rangers. I need to make sure I have all the information so we optimize our resources. You realized Hugh was missing about eight-fifteen, is that right?”

Tears swam fresh into Rosie’s eyes. “I should’ve checked on him earlier. He hardly ever sleeps past seven. I should’ve—”

“Mrs. Cauldwell . . . Rosie,” Fiona corrected, using the first name to comfort. “You don’t want to blame yourself. Little boys are curious, aren’t they? Has Hugh ever left the house by himself before?”

“Never, never. I thought he’d come down to play, then I couldn’t find him, and I went back to the kitchen. And the door . . . the door was open. Wide open. And I couldn’t find him.”

“Maybe you could show me.” Fiona signaled to Peck to follow. “He’s wearing his pajamas?”

“Spider-Man. He’ll be cold, and wet, and scared.” Her shoulders shook as they moved back to the kitchen. “I don’t understand what you can do that the police can’t.”

“We’re another resource, and Peck? He’s trained for this. He’s been on dozens of searches.”

Rosie swiped tears off her cheeks. “Hugh likes dogs. He likes animals. If the dog barks, maybe Hugh will hear and come back.”

Fiona said nothing, but opened the back door, then squatted down to take in the view from the level of a three-year-old boy. Likes animals. “I bet you can see a lot of wildlife around here. Deer, fox, rabbits.”

“Yes. Yes. It’s so different from Seattle. He loves watching out the windows, or from the deck. And we’ve taken hikes and bike rides.”

“Is Hugh shy?”

“No. Oh no, he’s adventurous and sociable. Fearless. Oh God.”

Instinctively Fiona put an arm around Rosie’s shaking shoulders. “Rosie, I’m going to set up here in the kitchen, if that’s okay. What I need you to do is to get me five things Hugh wore recently. Yesterday’s socks, underwear, shirt, like that. Five small items of clothing. Try not to handle them. Put them in these.”

Fiona took plastic bags from her kit.

“We’re a unit of five. Five handlers, five dogs. We’ll each use something of Hugh’s to give the dogs his scent.”

“They . . . they track him?”

Easier to agree than to try to explain air-scenting, scent cones, skin rafts. The boy had already been gone more than an hour. “That’s right. Does he have a favorite treat? Something he likes especially, something you might give him when he’s been good?”

“You mean like . . .” Pushing at her hair, Rosie looked around blankly. “He loves gummy worms.”

“Great. Do you have any?”

“I . . . yes.”

“If you could get the clothes and the worms,” Fiona said with a smile. “I’m going to set up. I hear my unit, so I’m going to set up.”

“Okay. Okay. Please . . . He’s just three.”

Rosie dashed out. Fiona shared a brief look with Peck, then began to set up operations.

As her team came in, human and canine, she briefed them and began to assign search sectors while poring over her maps. She knew the area, and knew it well.

A paradise, she thought, for those looking for serenity, scenery, an escape from streets and traffic, buildings, crowds. And for a lost little boy, a world filled with hazards. Creeks, lakes, rocks.

More than thirty miles of foot trails, she thought, over five thousand acres of forest to swallow up a three-year-old and his stuffed rabbit.

“We’ve got a heavy drizzle, so we’ll keep the search grids close and cover this area.” As field OL—operational leader—Fiona outlined their sections on the map while Davey listed data on a large whiteboard. “We’ll overlap some with the other teams, but let’s keep good communications so we don’t step on our own feet.”

“He’s going to be wet and chilled by now.” Meg Greene, mother of two and recent grandmother, looked at her husband, Chuck. “Poor little guy.”

“And a kid that age? He’s got no sense of direction. He’ll wander anywhere.” James Hutton frowned as he checked his radio.

“He might tire out, just curl up and sleep.” Lori Dyson nodded toward her German shepherd, Pip. “He might not hear the searchers calling for him, but our guys will sniff him out.”

“That’s the plan. Everyone has their coordinates? Radios checked, packs checked? Make sure you set your compass bearings. With Mai in emergency surgery, Davey’s solo base OL, so we’ll check in with him as we cover our sectors.”

She stopped as the Cauldwells came back in.

“I have . . .” Rosie’s chin wobbled. “I have what you asked for.”

“That’s great.” Fiona crossed to her, then laid her hands on the terrified mother’s shoulders. “You hold good thoughts. Everyone out there has only one thing to do, one thing on their mind: find Hugh and bring him home.”

She took the bags, passed them out to her unit. “Okay, let’s go get him.”

With the others, she walked outside, hitched on her pack. Peck stood by her side, the slight quiver in his body the only sign he was anxious to get started. She and the others spread out to take their assigned sectors, and like the rest of her unit, she set her compass bearing.

She opened the bag holding a little sock, offered it to Peck’s nose.

“This is Hugh. It’s Hugh. Hugh’s just a little boy, Peck. This is Hugh.”

He sniffed enthusiastically—a dog who knew his job. He glanced up at her, sniffed again, then looked deep into her eyes, body quivering as if to say, Okay, I’ve got it! Let’s move!

“Find Hugh.” She added her hand signal, and Peck lifted his nose in the air. “Let’s find Hugh!”

She waited, watching him scent and circle, let him take the lead as he prowled and paced. The thin, steady rain posed an obstacle, but Peck worked well in the rain.

She remained where she was, giving him verbal encouragement as he tracked the air and the wet pattered on the bright yellow of her windbreaker.

When he moved east, she followed him into the thickening trees.

At five, Peck was a vet, a seventy-pound chocolate Lab—strong, smart and tireless. He would, Fiona knew, search for hours in any conditions, over any terrain, for the living or for the dead. She had only to ask it of him.

Together, they moved through deep forest, over ground soft and soggy with needles shed from the towering Douglas firs and old-growth cedars, over and around clumps of mushrooms and nurse logs coated with rich green moss, through brambles edgy with thorn. While they searched, Fiona kept an eye on her partner’s body language, made note of landmarks, checked her compass. Every few minutes, Peck glanced back to let her know he was on the case.

“Find Hugh. Let’s find Hugh, Peck.”

He alerted, showing interest in a patch of ground around a nurse log.

“Got something, do you? That’s good. Good boy.” She flagged the alert first with bright blue tape, then stood with him, scanning the area, calling Hugh’s name. Then closing her eyes to listen.

All she heard was the soft sizzle of rain and the whisper of wind through the trees.

When he nudged her, Fiona took the sock out of her pocket, opened the bag so Peck could refresh the scent.

“Find Hugh,” she repeated. “Let’s find Hugh.”

He moved off again, and in her sturdy boots, Fiona stepped over the log and followed. When Peck angled south, she called her new position in to base, checked in with her team members.

The kid had been out for a minimum of two hours, she thought. A lifetime for worried parents.

But toddlers didn’t have any real sense of time. Children of his age were very mobile, she mused, and didn’t always understand the concept of being lost. They wandered, distracted by sights and sounds, and had considerable endurance, so it might be hours of that wandering before Hugh tired out and realized he wanted his mother.

She watched a rabbit skitter away into the brush. Peck had too much dignity to do more than spare it a passing glance.

But a little boy? Fiona thought. One who loved his “Wubby,” who enjoyed animals? One his mother said was fascinated by the forest? Wouldn’t he want to try to catch it, probably hoping to play with it? He’d try, wouldn’t he, to follow it? City boy, she thought, enchanted with the woods, the wildlife, the other of it all.

How could he resist?

She understood it, the magic of it. She’d been a city girl once herself, charmed and hypnotized by the green shadows, the dance of light, the sheer vastness of trees and hills and sea.

A child could so easily lose himself in the acres and acres of parkland.

He’s cold, she thought. Hungry now and scared. He wants his mother.

When the rain increased, they continued on, the tireless dog, the tall woman in rough pants and rougher boots. Her tail of pale red hair hung in a wet rope down her back, while lake-blue eyes searched the gloom.

When Peck angled again, heading down a winding slope, she drew a picture in her mind. Less than a quarter of a mile farther, if they continued in this direction, they’d come to the creek that marked the southeast border of her sector. Chuck and his Quirk searched the other side. Fast water in the creek this time of year, she thought, cold and fast, the verges slippery with moss and rain.

She hoped the little guy hadn’t gone too close or, worse, tried to cross it.

And the wind was changing, she realized. Goddamn it. They’d adjust. She’d refresh the scent again, give Peck a quick water break. They’d nearly clocked two hours in the field, and though Peck had alerted strongly three times, she’d yet to see a sign of the boy—a bit of cloth on a bramble, a print in the softened ground. She’d flagged the alerts in blue, used orange tape to mark their progress and knew they’d cross-tracked once or twice.

Check in with Chuck, she decided. If Peck’s on the scent and the kid crossed the creek . . .

She didn’t allow herself to think fell in. Not yet.

Even as she reached for her radio, Peck alerted again. This time he broke into a run, shooting her the briefest of glances over his shoulder.

And she saw the light in his eyes.

“Hugh!” She lifted her voice over the now pounding rain and whistling wind.

She didn’t hear the boy, but she heard Peck’s three quick barks.

Like the dog, Fiona broke into a run.

She skidded a little as she rounded the turn on the downward slope.

And she saw near the banks of the busy creek—a bit too near for her peace of mind—a very wet little boy sprawled on the ground with his arms full of dog.

“Hey, Hugh, hi.” She crossed the distance quickly, squatted down, pulling off her pack as she went. “I’m Fiona, and this is Peck.”

“Doggie.” He wept it into Peck’s fur. “Doggie.”

“He’s a good doggie. He’s the best doggie ever.”

As Peck thumped his tail in agreement, Fiona pulled a space blanket out of her pack. “I’m going to wrap you up—and Wubby, too. Is that Wubby?”

“Wubby fell down.”

“So I see. It’s okay. We’ll get you both warm, okay? Did you hurt yourself ? Uh-oh.”

She said it cheerfully as she draped the blanket over his shoulders and saw the mud and blood on his feet. “Ouch, huh? We’re going to fix you all up.”

His arms still around Peck, Hugh turned his cheek and sent Fiona a pitiful, bottom-lip-wobbling look. “I want Mommy.”

“I bet you do. We’re going to take you to Mommy, me and Peck. Here, look what Mommy sent you.” She pulled out the little bag of gummy worms.

“Bad boy,” Hugh said, but he eyed the candy with interest while he clung to Peck.

“Mommy’s not mad. Daddy’s not either. Here you go.” She gave him the bag, pulled out her radio. When Hugh offered a worm to Peck, Peck gave Fiona a sidelong glance.

Can I? Huh? Can I?

“Go ahead—and say thank you.”

Peck took the candy delicately from the boy, gulped it down, then thanked him with a sloppy kiss that made Hugh giggle.

With that sound warming her heart, Fiona contacted base.

“We’ve got him. Safe and sound. Tell Mom he’s eating his gummy worms and we’ll be on our way home.” She winked at Hugh, who fed the filthy and wet stuffed rabbit, then popped the same candy into his own mouth. “He’s got some minor cuts and scrapes, he’s wet, but he’s alert. Over.”

“Copy that. Good work, Fee. Do you need help? Over.”

“We’ve got it. Heading in. I’ll keep you updated. Over and out.”

“Better wash those down,” she suggested, and offered Hugh her canteen.

“Whazit?”

“It’s just water.”

“I like juice.”

“We’ll make sure you get some when we get back. Drink a little, okay?”

He did what he was told, sniffling. “I peed outside, like Daddy showed me. Not in my pants.”

She grinned at him and thought of Peck’s strong alerts. “You did good. How about a piggyback ride?”

As they had at the sight of the candy, his eyes brightened. “Okay.”

She wrapped the blanket securely around him, then turned so he could climb onto her back. “You call me Fee. If you need something, you just say, Fee, I need or I want.”

“Doggie.”

“He’s coming, too. He’ll lead the way.” From her crouch she rubbed Peck, hugged him hard. “Good dog, Peck. Good dog. Return!”

With the pack slung over her shoulder and the boy on her back, the three of them began the hike out of the woods.

“Did you open the door by yourself, Hugh?”

“Bad boy,” he murmured.

Well, yeah, she thought, but who wasn’t bad now and then? “What did you see out the window?”

“Wubbies. Wubby said let’s go see the wubbies.”

“Uh-huh.” Smart kid, she thought. Blame it on the rabbit.

Hugh began to chatter then, so fast and in the toddlerese that defeated her on every third word. But she got the gist.

Mommy and Daddy sleeping, bunnies out the window, what could you do? Then, if she interpreted correctly, the house disappeared and he couldn’t find it. Mommy didn’t come when he called, and he was going to get a time-out. He hated time-outs.

She got the picture because even saying “time-out” made him cry with his face pressed against her back.

“Well, if you get one, I think Wubby needs one, too. Look, hey, Hugh, look. It’s Bambi and his mom.”

He lifted his head, still sniffling. Then tears were forgotten as he squealed at the sight of the fawn and doe. Then he sighed, laid his head on her shoulder when she boosted him up a bit. “I getting hungry.”

“I guess you are. You’ve had a really big adventure.” She managed to dig a power bar out of her pack.

It took less time to hike out than it had to search through, but by the time the trees began to thin the boy weighed like a stone on her back.

Revived, rested, fascinated with everything, Hugh talked nonstop. Amused, Fiona let him ramble and dreamed of a vat of coffee, an enormous burger and a gallon bucket of fries.

When she spotted the house through the trees, she dug out another gear and quickened her pace. They’d barely cleared the line when Rosie and Devin ran out of the house.

Fiona crouched. “Off you go, Hugh. Run to Mommy.”

She stayed down, slung her arm around Peck, whose entire body wagged with joy.

“Yeah,” she murmured to him as Devin beat his wife by a couple lopes and snatched Hugh up. Then the three of them were twined together in a tangle of limbs and tears. “Yeah, it’s a good day. You’re the man, Peck.”

With her son safe in her arms, Rosie hurried toward the house. Devin broke away to walk unsteadily to Fiona.

“Thank you. I don’t know how to . . .”

“You’re welcome. He’s a great kid.”

“He’s . . . everything. Thank you so much.” As his eyes filled, Devin wrapped his arms around Fiona and, much as Hugh had, dropped his head on her shoulder. “I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t have to.” Her own eyes stung as she patted his back. “Peck found him. He’s the one. He’d be pleased if you shook his hand.”

“Oh.” Devin scrubbed at his face, drew in a couple steadying breaths. “Thank you, Peck. Thank you.” He crouched, offered his hand.

Peck smiled as dogs do and placed his paw in Devin’s hand.

“Can I . . . can I hug him?”

“He’d love it.”

On a deep, shuddering sigh, Devin hugged Peck’s neck, pressed his face to the fur. Over the man’s shoulder, Peck sent Fiona a twinkling look.

Wasn’t that fun? he seemed to say. Can we do it again?

Excerpt from "The Surgeon"

PROLOGUE

Today they will find her body.

I know how it will happen. I can picture, quite vividly, the sequence of events that will lead to the discovery. By nine o'clock, those snooty ladies at the Kendall and Lord Travel Agency will be sitting at their desks, their elegantly manicured fingers tapping at computer keyboards, booking a Mediterranean cruise for Mrs. Smith, a ski vacation at Klosters for Mr. Jones. And for Mr. and Mrs. Brown, something different this year, something exotic, perhaps Chiang Mai or Madagascar, but nothing too rugged; oh no, adventure must, above all, be comfortable. That is the motto at Kendall and Lord: "Comfortable adventures." It is a busy agency, and the phone rings often.
It will not take long for the ladies to notice that Diana is not at her desk.

One of them will call Diana's Back Bay residence, but the phone will ring, unanswered. Maybe Diana is in the shower and can't hear it. Or she has already left for work but is running late. A dozen perfectly benign possibilities will run through the caller's mind. But as the day wears on, and repeated calls go unanswered, other, more disturbing possibilities, will come to mind.

I expect it's the building superintendent who will let Diana's coworker into the apartment. I see him nervously rattling his keys as he says, "You're her friend, right? You sure she won't mind? 'cause I'm gonna have to tell her I let you in."

They walk into the apartment, and the coworker calls out: "Diana? Are you home?" They start up the hall, past the elegantly framed travel posters, the superintendent right behind her, watching that she doesn't steal anything.

Then he looks through the doorway, into the bedroom. He sees Diana Sterling, and he is no longer worried about something as inconsequential as theft. He wants only to get out of that apartment before he throws up.

I would like to be there when the police arrive, but I am not stupid. I know they will study every car that creeps by, every face that stares from the gathering of spectators on the street. They know my urge to return is strong. Even now, as I sit in Starbuck's, watching the day brighten outside the window, I feel that room calling me back. But I am like Ulysses, safely lashed to my ship's mast, yearning for the sirens' song. I will not dash myself against the rocks. I will not make that mistake.

Instead I sit and drink my coffee while outside, the city of Boston comes awake. I stir three teaspoons of sugar into my cup; I like my coffee sweet. I like everything to be just so. To be perfect.

A siren screams in the distance, calling to me. I feel like Ulysses straining against the ropes, but they hold fast.

Today they will find her body.

Today they will know we are back.

_____________________________________

CHAPTER ONE
One year later

Detective Thomas Moore disliked the smell of latex, and as he snapped on the gloves, releasing a puff of talcum, he felt the usual twinge of anticipatory nausea. The odor was linked to the most unpleasant aspects of his job, and like one of Pavlov's dogs, trained to salivate on cue, he'd come to associate that rubbery scent with the inevitable accompaniment of blood and body fluids. An olfactory warning to brace himself.

And so he did, as he stood outside the autopsy room. He had walked in straight from the heat, and already sweat was chilling on his skin. It was July twelfth, a humid and hazy Friday afternoon. Across the city of Boston, air conditioners rattled and dripped, and tempers were flaring. On the Tobin Bridge, cars would already be backed up, fleeing north to the cool forests of Maine. But Moore would not be among them. He had been called back from his vacation, to view a horror he had no wish to confront.

He was already garbed in a surgical gown, which he'd pulled from the morgue linen cart. Now he put on a paper cap to catch stray hairs, and pulled paper booties over his shoes, because he had seen what sometimes spilled from the table onto the floor. The blood, the clumps of tissue. He was by no means a tidy man, but he had no wish to bring any trace of the autopsy room home on his shoes. He paused for a few seconds outside the door and took a deep breath. Then, resigning himself to the ordeal, he pushed into the room. The draped corpse lay on the table -- a woman, by the shape of it. Moore avoided looking too long at the victim and focused instead on the living people in the room. Dr. Ashford Tierney, the medical examiner, and a morgue attendant were assembling instruments on a tray. Across the table from Moore stood Jane Rizzoli, also from the Boston Homicide Unit. Thirty-three years old, Rizzoli was a small and square-jawed woman. Her untameable curls were hidden beneath the paper O.R. cap, and without her black hair to soften her features, her face seemed to be all hard angles, her dark eyes probing and intense. She had transferred to Homicide from Vice and Narcotics six months ago. She was the only woman in the Homicide unit, and already there had been problems between her and another detective, charges of sexual harrassment, countercharges of unrelenting bitchiness. Moore was not sure he liked Rizzoli, or she him. So far they had kept their interactions strictly business, and he thought she preferred it that way.

Standing beside Rizzoli was her partner Barry Frost, a relentlessly cheerful cop whose bland and beardless face made him seem much younger than his 30 years. Frost had worked with Rizzoli for two months now without complaint, the only man in the unit placid enough to endure her foul moods.

As Moore approached the table, Rizzoli said, "We wondered when you'd show up."

"I was on the Maine Turnpike when you beeped me."

"We've been waiting here since five."

"And I'm just starting the internal exam," Dr. Tierney said. "So I'd say Detective Moore got here right on time." One man coming to the defense of another. He slammed the cabinet door shut, setting off a reverberating clang. It was one of the rare occasions he allowed his irritation to show. Dr. Tierney was a native Georgian, a courtly gentleman who believed ladies should behave like ladies. He did not enjoy working with the prickly Jane Rizzoli.

The morgue attendant wheeled a tray of instruments to the table, and his gaze briefly met Moore's with a look of, Can you believe this bitch?

"Sorry about your fishing trip," Tierney said to Moore. "It looks like your vacation's cancelled."

"You're sure it's our boy again?"

In answer, Tierney reached for the drape and pulled it back, revealing the corpse. "Her name is Elena Ortiz."

Though Moore had been braced for this sight, his first glimpse of the victim had the impact of a physical blow. The woman's black hair, matted stiff with blood, stuck out like porcupine quills from a face the color of blue-veined marble. Her lips were parted, as though frozen in mid-utterance. The blood had already been washed off the body, and her wounds gaped in purplish rents on the gray canvas of skin. There were two visible wounds. One was a deep slash across the throat, extending from beneath the left ear, transecting the left carotid artery, and laying open the laryngeal cartilage. The coup de grace. The second slash was low on the abdomen. This wound had not been meant to kill; it had served an entirely different purpose.

Moore swallowed hard. "I see why you called me back from vacation."

"I'm the lead on this one," said Rizzoli.

He heard the note of warning in her statement; she was protecting her turf. He understood where it came from, how the constant taunts and skepticism that women cops faced could make them quick to take offense. In truth he had no wish to challenge her. They would have to work together on this, and it was too early in the game to be battling for dominance. He was careful to maintain a respectful tone. "Could you fill me in on the circumstances?"

Rizzoli gave a curt nod. "The victim was found at nine this morning, in her apartment on Worcester Street, in the South End. She usually gets to work around six a.m. at Celebration Florists, a few blocks from her residence. It's a family business, owned by her parents. When she didn't show up, they got worried. Her brother went to check on her. He found her in the bedroom. Dr. Tierney estimates the time of death was somewhere between midnight and four a.m. this morning. According to the family, she had no current boyfriend, and no one in her apartment building recalls seeing any male visitors. She's just a hard- working Catholic girl."

Moore looked at the victims' wrists. "She was immobilized."

"Yes. Duct tape on the wrists and ankles. She was found nude. Wearing only a few items of jewelry."

"What jewelry?"

"A necklace. A ring. Ear studs. The jewelry box in the bedroom was untouched. Robbery was not the motive."

Moore looked at the horizontal band of bruising across the victim's hips. "The torso was immobilized as well."

"Duct tape across the waist and the upper thighs. And across her mouth."

Moore released a deep breath. "Jesus." Staring at Elena Ortiz, Moore had a disorienting flash of another young woman. Another corpse -- a blond, with meat-red slashes across her throat and abdomen.

"Diana Sterling," he murmured.

"I've already pulled Sterling's autopsy report," said Tierney. "In case you need to review it."

But Moore did not; the Sterling case, on which he had been lead detective, had never strayed far from his mind.

A year ago, thirty-year-old Diana Sterling, an employee at the Kendall and Lord Travel Agency, had been discovered nude and strapped to her bed with duct tape. Her throat and lower abdomen were slashed. The murder remained unsolved.

Dr. Tierney directed the exam light onto Elena Ortiz's abdomen. The blood had been rinsed off earlier, and the edges of the incision were a pale pink.

"Trace evidence?" asked Moore.

"We picked off a few fibers before we washed her off. And there was a strand of hair, adhering to the wound margin."

Moore looked up with sudden interest. "The victim's?"

"Much shorter. A light brown."

Elena Ortiz's hair was black.

Rizzoli said, "We've already requested hair samples from everyone who came into contact with the body."

Tierney directed their attention to the wound. "What we have here is a transverse cut. Surgeons call this a Maylard incision. The abdominal wall was incised layer by layer. First the skin, then the superficial fascia, then the muscle, and finally the pelvic peritoneum."

"Like Sterling," said Moore.

"Yes. Like Sterling. But there are differences."

"What differences?"

"On Diana Sterling, there were a few jags in the incision, indicating hesitation, or uncertainty. You don't see that here. Notice how cleanly this skin has been incised? There are no jags at all. He did this with absolute confidence." Tierney's gaze met Moore's. "Our unsub is learning. He's improved his technique."
"If it's the same unknown subject," Rizzoli said.

"There are other similarities. See the squared-off margin at this end of the wound? It indicates the track moves from right to left. Like Sterling. The blade used in this wound is single-edged, nonserrated. Like the blade used on Sterling."

"A scalpel?"

"It's consistent with a scalpel. The clean incision tells me there was no twisting of the blade. The victim was either unconscious, or so tightly restrained she couldn't move, couldn't struggle. She couldn't cause the blade to divert from its linear path."

Barry Frost looked like he wanted to throw up. "Aw, jeez. Please tell me she was already dead when he did this."

"I'm afraid this is not a postmortem wound." Only Tierney's green eyes showed above the surgical mask, and they were angry.

"There was antemortem bleeding?" asked Moore.

"Pooling in the pelvic cavity. Which means her heart was still pumping. She was still alive when this ... procedure was done."

Moore looked at the wrists, encircled by bruises. There were similar bruises around both ankles, and a band of petechiae -- pinpoint skin hemorrhages -- stretched across her hips. Elena Ortiz had struggled against her bonds.

"There's other evidence she was alive during the cutting," said Tierney. "Put your hand inside the wound, Thomas. I think you know what you're going to find."

Reluctantly, Moore inserted his gloved hand into the wound. The flesh was cool, chilled from several hours of refrigeration. It reminded him of how it felt to thrust his hand into a turkey carcass and root around for the package of giblets. He reached in up to his wrist, his fingers exploring the margins of the wound. It was an intimate violation, this burrowing into the most private part of a woman's anatomy. He avoided looking at Elena Ortiz's face. It was the only way he could regard her mortal remains with detachment, the only way he could focus on the cold mechanics of what had been done to her body.

"The uterus is missing." Moore looked at Tierney.

The M.E. nodded. "It's been removed."

Moore withdrew his hand from the body and stared down at the wound, gaping like an open mouth. Now Rizzoli thrust her gloved hand in, her short fingers straining to explore the cavity.

"Nothing else was removed?" she asked.

"Just the uterus," said Tierney. "He left the bladder and bowel intact."

"What's this thing I'm feeling here? This hard little knot, on the left side," she said.

"It's suture. He used it to tie off blood vessels."

Rizzoli looked up, startled. "This is a surgical knot?"

"Two-oh plain catgut," ventured Moore, looking at Tierney for confirmation.

Tierney nodded. "The same suture we found in Diana Sterling."

"Two-oh catgut?" asked Frost in a weak voice. He had retreated from the table and now stood in a corner of the room, ready to bolt for the sink. "Is that like a -- a brand name or something?"

"Not a brand name," said Tierney. "Catgut is a type of surgical thread made from the intestines of cows or sheep."

"So why do they call it catgut?" asked Rizzoli.

"It goes back to the Middle Ages, when gut strings were used on musical instruments. The musicians referred to their instruments as their kit, and the strings were called kitgut. The word eventually became catgut. In surgery, this sort of suture is used to sew together deep layers of connective tissue. The body eventually breaks down the suture material and absorbs it."

"And where would he get this catgut suture?" Rizzoli looked at Moore. "Did you trace a source for it on Sterling?"

"It's almost impossible to identify a specific source," said Moore. "Catgut suture's manufactured by a dozen different companies, most of them in Asia or India. It's still used in a number of foreign hospitals."

"Only foreign hospitals?"

Tierney said, "There are now better alternatives. Catgut doesn't have the strength or durability of synthetic sutures. I doubt many surgeons in the U.S. are currently using it."

"Why would our unsub use it at all?"

"To maintain his visual field. To control the bleeding long enough so he can see what he's doing. Our unsub is a very neat man."

Rizzoli pulled her hand from the wound. In her gloved palm was cupped a tiny clot of blood, like a bright red bead. "How skillful is he? Are we dealing with a doctor? Or a butcher?"

"Clearly he has anatomical knowledge," said Tierney. "I have no doubt he's done this before."

Moore took a step backwards from the table, recoiling from the thought of what Elena Ortiz must have suffered, yet unable to keep the images at bay. The aftermath lay right in front of him, staring with open eyes.

He turned, startled, as instruments clattered onto the metal tray. The morgue attendant had pushed the tray next to Dr. Tierney, in preparation for the Y incision. Now the attendant leaned forward and stared into the abdominal wound.

"So what happens to it?" he asked. "Once he whacks out the uterus, what does he do with it?"

"We don't know," said Tierney. "The organs have never been found."

All content copyright 2007 tess gerritsen. all rights reserved.

Chapter One

Cornwall, 1816

She was to be given to him as a gift--a plaything for some powerful, dark stranger. How her life had come to this, Kate Madsen could barely comprehend, but her rage at this horrifying fate was muted by the drug her kidnappers forced down her throat.

The tincture of the poppy soon dissolved her will to fight. Within half an hour of being made to swallow it, it had tamed her temper, blurred her mind, quelled the usual sharp-tongued retorts she blasted at her captors, and left her hands limp instead of her usual clenched fists when the smugglers’ wives came in to prepare her for her doom.

Barely two-third conscious, capable only of dull-witted yes’s and no’s, she was uncharacteristically docile as the women washed her roughly and dressed her like a harlot for their lord.

Kate did not know what the smugglers had done to anger the dread Duke of Warrington, but from what she could glean, she was to be the virgin sacrifice by which they hoped to appease his wrath.

His appetite for women was known to be voracious. This, along with his expertise in all manner of violence was, she had heard, why the locals privately called their landlord “the Beast.”

None of it felt real. When she saw her reflection clad in the indecent shred of white muslin they had made her wear, she could only laugh bitterly. She knew she did not have a prayer. Half naked, she shivered uncontrollably--not so much from the cold, but in terror of the night ahead.

Only the sedative offered sweet refuge, carrying her fears away to oblivion, like so much chimney smoke torn asunder by the winter wind that even now was howling through the seaside village.

The women nearly scalped her combing out the tangles in her long brown hair. They sprinkled her with cheap perfume, and then stood back to admire their work.

“Right pretty,” one weathered sea-wife declared. “She don’t clean up too badly.”

“Aye, the Beast should fancy her.”

“Still too pale,” another said. “Put some rouge on her, Gladys.”

It all seemed to be happening to someone else. A slimy daub of pink-tinted cream rubbed into her cheeks none too gently, then her lips.

“There.” This done, they pulled Kate to her feet and started herding her toward the door.

Through her dulled, distorted senses, the prospect of exiting the cramped room that had been her recent prison roused Kate slightly from her stupor. “Wait,” she forced out in a mumble. “I . . . don’t have any shoes.”

“That’s so you won’t try runnin’ away again, Miss Clever!” Gladys snapped. “Here, finish your wine. I’d take it if I were you. He’s like to be rough with ye.”

Kate stared at her, her glassy eyes opening wide at the warning. But she did not argue. She took the cup and gulped down the last swallow of drugged red wine, while the crude harpies cackled with laughter to think they had finally succeeded in breaking her will.

Lord knew, if not for the strong dose of laudanum they had given her, she would have been screaming bloody murder and fighting them like a wild thing, just as she had on the night of her abduction about a month ago.

Instead, she simply finished the cup and handed it back to them with a grim, lost gaze.

The women bound her wrists with some rope, then brought her downstairs to the ground floor of the cluttered little house.

In the room below, grizzled old Caleb Doyle and the other male leaders of the smugglers’ ring were waiting to take her up to the castle. She could not bear to make eye contact with anyone, humiliated by the way they had made her look like a whore--she, who had always valued herself for her brains, not her looks.

Thank God, none of them saw fit to mock her. She did not think what was left of her pride could have borne it.

Despite the heavy, rolling fog that hung over her mind, she noticed how somber the men’s mood was. There was none of the cheerful vulgarity she had come to expect from the citizens of the smugglers’ village.

Tonight she could almost smell their fear, and it multiplied her own exponentially.

Good God, what manner of man were they taking her to, that he could make these rough criminals tremble like whipped dogs at their master’s approach?

“Finally made a lady of the little hoyden, have ye?” old Caleb, the smugglers’ chieftain, grunted at his wife.

“Aye. She’ll show some manners now. Don’t worry, ’usband,” Gladys added. “She’ll soften his anger.”

“Let’s just hope he takes the bait,” Caleb muttered. He turned away, but Gladys grasped his arm and pulled her husband aside.

“You’re sure you want to risk this?” she muttered to him.

He scoffed. “What choice do I have?”

Though the couple kept their voices down, Kate stood close enough to hear their tense exchange--not that she was able to make much sense of it, with her usually sharp wits deliberately dulled, as was no doubt their plan.

“Why don’t you just talk to him, Caleb? Aye, he’ll be furious, but if ye explain what happened—”

“I’m done groveling to him!” her husband shot back angrily. “Look at the answer our fine duke sent back the last time we asked him for help! Coldhearted bastard. Rubbin’ elbows with princes and czars, wrapped up in God-knows-what dark dealings on the Continent. His Grace is too important to be bothered with the likes of us these days,” he said bitterly. “I can’t even remember the last time he troubled himself with a visit to Cornwall. Can you?”

“It’s been a long time,” she admitted.

“Aye, and he only came back this time on account of the blasted shipwreck! He don’t care about us anymore, never mind we’re his own people. You ask me, he’s forgot where he came from. But this little lesson ought to help remind him.”

“Caleb!”

“Don’t worry. Once he’s had the girl, he’ll be up to his neck in this, too, whether he likes it or not. Then he’ll have no choice but to help us.”

“Aye, and if you’re wrong, there will be hell to pay.”

“I expect there will be,” he replied with a hard glitter in his shrewd old eyes. “But look at my choices, Gladys. Better the devil you know.”

“Right, well, if you’re sure, then. Off ye go.” Gladys folded her arms across her chest.

Caleb turned away, his weathered face taut as he gestured to his men. “Come on. Bring the girl. Let’s not keep His Grace waitin’!”

Two of the grubby smugglers took hold of Kate’s arms and, without further ado, ushered her out into the biting cold of the pitch-black January night.

Her brain seethed as she tried to sort out the sketchy information contained in the Doyles’ conversation. This was the first sort of explanation she had heard about what was going on, but with the laudanum working in her blood, her wits weren’t working properly to weigh it all out. She rose and fell on waves between euphoria and dread, and following one train of thought simply took too much effort. It was easier just to drift…

Meanwhile, the smugglers lifted her limp body and deposited her in the second of three battered, waiting carriages. Caleb threw her a flimsy blanket to keep her from catching her death. He locked her in with a wary look, as if he suspected her of eavesdropping.

A moment later, they set out for Kilburn Castle, the ancestral home of the Beast.

As their caravan rumbled out of the wind-whipped village, Kate stared blankly out the carriage window.

Above, the hooked moon tore like a claw through the smoky scattered clouds, revealing pinprick stars; winter constellations marched down over the horizon into the glossy onyx English Channel.

Feeble lanterns on the smugglers’ boats bobbed in the harbor, riding out the frigid night at anchor.

Ahead, the road hugged the hill as their small caravan ascended. And far up on the distant crest, the black tower of Kilburn Castle loomed.

Kate rested her forehead for a moment against the carriage window, staring dully at it. She had already had plenty of time to contemplate what she might find there, for through the window of the tiny bedchamber that had been her prison cell, she had been able to see the stark tower standing alone a few miles away on the bleak cliff-top.

According to local legend, the castle was haunted, its master’s bloodlines cursed.

She shook her head in woozy annoyance. Ignorant peasant superstitions.The Duke of Warrington was not cursed, merely evil, she could have explained to these unlettered brutes. What other sort of man would participate in such iniquity?

From the snatches of gossip she had overheard among the smugglers’ women over the past few weeks, the duke sounded like the very worst sort of aristocrat--rich, powerful, corrupt. Steeped in sheer debauchery. She had also heard the women say His Grace belonged to some unspeakable libertines’ society in London called the Inferno Club.

How he amused himself there made her shudder even to wonder.

Hating him, however, seemed as futile as wondering why all this was happening to her.

She had never really understood from the start why she had been kidnapped. She lived so quietly at the edge of the moors with her books and writings; she kept to herself, never bothered anyone. She had no enemies that she knew of. Nor many friends, admittedly.

But why would somebody target her?

For all her love of logic puzzles since she was a child, she could not riddle this one out, until at length, she had drawn her own conclusions based on the few facts she possessed.

The smugglers dealt in black markets, which, since the end of the war, had ceased to exist. Now that there was peace, there were no more tariffs on French luxury goods.

Lean times had come to Cornwall. Ergo, to make a living, the smugglers must have broadened their interests by venturing into a darker sort of commodity.

Oh, she had read about so-called ‘white slavery’ before. The newspapers spoke of criminal rings that abducted young females without any family, and sold them in secrecy to decadent noblemen and other rich perverts to rape at will, as though inflicting pain and terror was its own expensive form of depraved amusement.

Though she had heard of it, Kate had never dreamed it was anything more than a lurid myth, the stuff of the Gothic novels that were her secret vice. Yet somehow, to her horror, here she was, caught up in it.

It was the only explanation that seemed to fit at all.

The Doyles’ tense conversation of a few moments ago she had overheard offered new bits of insight, but in her current muddled state, she did not have the wherewithal to assimilate it into her working theory. Whatever their words had meant, it did not bode well. But more important than knowing why was figuring some way out of this.

They were getting closer. Her fear mounted with every yard of road the carriages covered. Rallying herself with a mighty effort against the heaviness of the laudanum, Kate sat up and tried the door-handle. She rattled it with some vague notion of escape, but it did not budge.

Even if she could succeed in breaking free, she realized that exposed to the elements, half-naked as she was, the wet, brutal cold would kill her within hours.

She could not even hope for justice someday, she thought in a flood of despair. Everyone knew that a duke was practically immune to prosecution for any sort of criminal barbarity.

Whom would she tell? For that matter, who would believe her? She barely believed it herself.

For all she knew, this man might kill her in his pursuit of twisted pleasure.

No, her only hope at this point was that when he was finally done with her, he might let her live, might let her just go home.

The thought of her cozy thatched cottage at the edge of Dartmoor brought tears of nearly unbearable homesickness to her eyes, all of her emotions intensified by the opiates. By God, if she ever made it home, she swore she would never complain again about her rural isolation out there on the heath. For she had discovered lately that there were worse things in the world than the loneliness.

The hardest part was thinking that stupid O’Banyon had not even kidnapped the right girl!

On the night of her abduction, the ringleader, O’Banyon, kept calling her by the wrong name—Kate Fox instead of Kate Madsen.

Her name was Kate Madsen!

With failing hope, she thought perhaps it might all be an outrageous case of mistaken identity. Perhaps she could convince the duke this was never supposed to happen, not to her. And yet…

A glimmer of a childhood memory, a tiny incident she had almost forgotten poked a hole in her neat little theory of why all this was happening. Indeed, it spawned a fearful bewilderment that shook her to the core.

But there was no time left to ponder the question.

Her fate was at hand. They had come to Kilburn Castle.

Surrounded by a landscape of bleakly frosted rock, its rugged stone face was silvered by moonlight, contoured with charcoal shadows.

Kate turned, looking this way and that as the three carriages pounded over the drawbridge and gusted under the archway of the barbican gate-house, a bristling portcullis hanging overhead. A pair of burly guards there waved them through without stopping them.

So. We are expected.

She stared out the carriage window at the castle’s outer walls. They stretched out on either side and disappeared into the night, like a steely embrace she would never escape.

Her pulse slammed. Escape from here? No. There is no way.Even if she were warmly dressed and in her right mind, there were armed men everywhere.

Why? Why does he keep all these guards?

It seemed to be more evidence that the duke had plenty to hide.

She had already drawn a few conclusions about his dealings with the smugglers.

As the aristocratic patron of these criminals, she had ascertained that the duke allowed the smugglers to operate freely along his coastal lands, no doubt in exchange for a cut of their ill-gotten gains. The smugglers probably supplied the girls that fed the demon appetites of the Inferno Club.

No wonder he kept all these guards, she thought. Even drugged, she could see it was only logical that a wealthy peer who dabbled in the criminal underworld would want to take added measures to ensure his security.

Perhaps he was merely as paranoid as every tyrant in history, she thought, missing her dusty historical tomes. Caesar and his Praetorian Guards— and the modern-day Caesar, Napoleon, with his elite Grand Armee, or what was left of it, after Waterloo last summer.

Lord, if the duke was this paranoid, her situation might be even more dire than she had thought.

Ahead, the Norman keep with its four rounded towers rose against the darkness. The carriages filed into the mighty quadrangle, arriving in a formal courtyard at the center of the inner bailey.

As the horses clattered to a halt, a fresh wave of terror gripped her, any hope of some miraculous reprieve dwindling by the second.

Quickly, the smugglers began jumping out of their three vehicles. The door to the middle one flew open abruptly; a burst of frigid air rushed in.

“Come on,” Caleb ordered gruffly. Reaching into the carriage, the old smugglers’ chieftain pulled her out.

Kate clutched the too-small blanket, trying to protect herself from the elements, but he ripped it away, leaving her exposed again in her harlot gown. “You don’t need that.”

When he set her on her feet, she let out a small cry of pain, for the thin white stockings she wore offered no protection against the coating of frost on the flagstones.

Doyle nodded to a pair of his underlings. “Help her walk.”

“Aye, sir.” The two men grabbed her by her elbows and began steering her toward the yawning Gothic entrance.

Teeth chattering, her body shivering violently, Kate did her best to keep up, but her legs were wobbly with fear, her almost-bare feet smarting with every step.

Still dizzy and disoriented, she thought surely anyone who saw her at this moment would believe she was indeed just a common drunken trollop. Oh, God, her highborn French mama would be turning over in her grave to see her now.

Fortunately, however, the cold served one purpose in Kate’s favor. It cleared away some of her stupor, forcing her to stay relatively alert and aware of her surroundings.

She kept a bleary eye out for any means of escape, either now or in the future. Scanning the smugglers who had come along, she did not see any of the three who had burst into her cottage on the night of her kidnapping.

She especially hated O’Banyon. Filthy, leering brute.

She had overheard the ringleader’s name on the night of her abduction when one of the two younger men had asked him for permission to rob her home after they had taken her captive. O’Banyon had generously allowed his assistants that night to help themselves to whatever money and jewelry they could find. Which wasn’t much, anyway.

The possessions Kate valued most all sat on her bookshelf, but those ruffians were too crude to care about the likes of Aristotle and the Bard.

Just inside the windbreak of the mighty stone entrance, Doyle called a halt. “Untie her hands,” he ordered his underlings.

The men holding her arms looked at their chief in surprise.

“His Grace might not like it,” Caleb muttered. “Let him tie her up himself if that’s how he wants her. Don’t worry, she ain’t goin’ nowhere. Lass barely knows her own name at the moment. Go on, be quick about it!” he ordered, nodding at the ropes around her wrists. “I’m freezin’ me arse off.”

To Kate’s relief, the man he had spoken to obeyed, removing the knotted rope that bound her wrists.

Before moving on, however, Mr. Doyle stuck his finger in her face and issued a dire warning. “Don’t you give His Grace any o’ your lip, my girl, or you’ll wish you was back in that cellar. Ye mark me? He don’t take kindly to insolence. He’s a very powerful man. If you’re smart, you keep your mouth shut and do as he tells you. Understand?”

She nodded meekly, rubbing her chafed wrists.

The smugglers’ chief looked startled by the absence of her usual fighting spirit. The frown on Caleb’s lined face deepened to a scowl. “Aw, don’t look at me like that—some wee lamb brought to slaughter!” he blustered. “Dozens o’ lasses around these parts would give their right arm to spend a few nights in his bed! You’ll live.”

Kate stiffened, but his rough tone had succeeded in chasing off the threat of tears that stung her eyelids and calling up the last reserves of her courage. She steeled herself the best she could and squared her shoulders, determined to survive. By God, she would not go into this already cringing and defeated.

“Come on, you lot,” Doyle muttered to his men, shrugging off her ruin. “Let’s give the devil his due.” With that, he banged on the iron-studded door with the huge metal knocker.

At once, a wiry, black-clad butler admitted them.

“Evening, Mr. Eldred,” Caleb greeted him with all the charm he could muster as they all stepped inside.

The butler bowed like an animated skeleton in black clothes. “Mr. Doyle.” He had shrewd, deep-set eyes, a bony face, and a gaunt, foreboding stillness about him.

Behind his pale high forehead, a storm-cloud of wild gray hair stuck out in all directions at the back of his head. His expression inscrutable, Eldred the butler glanced at Kate, but was apparently too shrewd to ask any questions.

He turned away, lifting his lantern high. “This way, please. The master is expecting you.”

Their whole party followed as Eldred led them down a tall, shadowy corridor, all stone and aged plaster and carved dark wood. Kate stumbled along on her frozen feet, staring all around her. She had never been in a castle before, but it was hard to believe that anyone could actually live in such a place.

It was not a home, it was a fortress, a mighty barracks left over from the days of knights and dragons.

Everything was dark and hard, cold and threatening. Ancient weapons, shields and pieces of armor, tattered battle flags hung on the walls instead of paintings. There was not one cozy thing about it, yet perversely, despite its unwelcoming atmosphere, the castle’s historical significance made her forget her dread for one or two seconds.

Her scholar’s unquenchable curiosity was roused about the place, the battles it had seen, and all the other mysterious things that might have happened here over the centuries.

Then she noticed her captors becoming increasingly nervous.

“’Hoy, Eldred.” Doyle leaned toward the butler as they trudged down a darkly paneled corridor. “How’s his mood tonight?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“The Beast!” he whispered. “Is he in a foul temper?”

The butler eyed him in disapproval. “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

“So, that’s a yes,” Caleb muttered.

Stepping past the screens passage, Eldred led them into a cavernous great hall with a soaring vaulted ceiling.

Darkness clustered thickly between the arching beams. Moldering tapestries draped the side walls here and there, with an empty space for the minstrel’s gallery, a small balcony that jutted out slight from the far wall of the room. Here and there several pieces of thick, ancient furniture hewn from dark wood provided barren comfort.

Two black-clad guards like those stationed at the gate-house were posted in the nearest corners. They stood at attention, as immovable as the ancient suits of armor that adorned the great hall.

The only real sign of life glowed from the blazing bonfire in the yawning fireplace, far away down at the dais end of the hall--and it was there that Kate caught her first glimpse of the Beast.

She knew at once that it was he.

The huge, crackling power of his presence filled the hall before he even turned around. His back to them, the Duke of Warrington stood before the fire, a towering figure silhouetted against the flames.

He was toying with a large, strange weapon with a long, notched blade, some sort of deadly cross between a lance and a sword. Balancing it on its tip, he twirled it slowly in a most ominous fashion.

Eldred announced them with a polite cough. “Ahem, Your Grace: Caleb Doyle and company.”

He lifted the weapon, resting the bar of its long handle on his huge shoulder.

Her heart leaped up into her throat as the iron giant slowly pivoted to face them. He paused, studying them from across the hall with a dissecting stare.

Then he began prowling toward them, his long paces unhurried yet relentless: a medieval warlord in modern-day clothes. Each fall of his mud-flecked boots boomed in the hollow vastness of the chamber.

Kate’s mouth hung open slightly as she stared at him in fear and some degree of awe.

Caleb whipped off his hat and took a couple steps forward, gesturing to his men to do the same.

The smugglers’ party advanced in cringing dread, with Kate in the center.

Her stare stayed locked on the warrior duke as he sauntered closer. She searched in vain for any sign of softness in the man, but instead, a capacity for ruthless force emanated from him. He was hard and dark and dangerous, intimidation incarnate.

It was clear he had just arrived, his wild, windblown mane of thick sable hair tied back in a queue. She studied him, wide-eyed. The dark knotted cloth around his neck was nothing so formal as a cravat. His loose white shirt hung open a bit at the neck, disappearing into a black waistcoat that hugged his lean, sculpted torso.

Rain and sleet still dotted his black riding breeches, while the reddish firelight gleamed on the blade that he wielded so idly as he advanced, as though he’d been born with it in his hand.

Heart pounding, Kate could not take her eyes off him.

He appeared to be in his mid-thirties; she scanned his square, rugged face as he drew closer. He had thick, dark eyebrows with a scar above the left like the mark of a thunderbolt. His skin was unfashionably bronzed, as though he had spent years in sunnier climes. His nose was broad but straight, the grim set of his hard mouth bracketed by lines.

His eyes were terrifying.

Steely in color and expression, they were narrowed with suspicion, their depths gleaming with a banked fury that she realized he was waiting to unleash on the smugglers--and might take out on her, as well, before the night was through.

Dear God, he could kill her easily, she understood at once. The man was huge, nearly six and a half feet tall, with arms of iron, and shoulders like the Cornish cliffs. He looked strong enough to lift a horse, while she only came up to the center of his massive chest.

No wonder the smugglers were terrified of him. A fresh wave of fear left her lightheaded, as well. He had the imposing physique of a conqueror, and all the worldly power of the aristocracy’s highest rank, save the royal family.

She tried to back away as Warrington stalked closer, running a bold stare over the length of her.

“What is this?” he growled softly at Doyle, nodding at her. She reacted instinctively to his notice, pulling against her captors’ hold in panic. She tried to run.

They stopped her.

“A gift, Your Grace!” Caleb Doyle exclaimed in forced joviality.

As the smugglers dragged her over to him, Warrington studied her like a predatory wolf.

“A gift?” he echoed in a musing tone.

Caleb thrust her toward him with a cheerful grin. “Aye, sir! A token of our regard to welcome you back to Cornwall after all this time! A fine young bed-warmer for a cold winter’s night. Right little beauty, ain’t she?”

He was silent for a long moment, perusing her intently. Then he answered barely audibly, his deep voice reverberated like a distant rumble of thunder drawing closer: “Indeed.”

Caught in his stare, Kate could not even move. She was lucky she remembered to keep breathing.

When Caleb laughed again uneasily, the other men followed his example, but Warrington barely took note of them, his stare trailing over her in appreciation.

“Very thoughtful of you, Doyle,” he murmured, taking lecherous note of how the chill effected certain regions of her anatomy.

His brazen stare erased any faint hope in her that he might not be in on it with them. Of course he was.

She was naught but merchandise to him.

“We thought you’d like ’er, sir. We brought a few other tokens of our regard, as well--” Doyle gestured hastily to his followers. “Show him. Hurry!” His men leaped into motion, presenting their lord with a case of premium brandy and a selection of fine tobaccos.

He barely glanced at these offerings, however, still studying Kate with a speculative gleam in his eyes.

She barely knew what to do with herself. She had never been looked at this way by a man before—inspected, nay, devoured.

Warrington’s glance flicked down from her still-damp hair to her stockinged feet, assessing her from top to bottom; then, to her surprise, he stared, hard, into her eyes—but only for a moment.

In that fleeting instant, she was not sure what she read in his penetrating gaze, other than a chilling degree of intelligence, like a man in the midst of a chess game.

“The gift is, er, acceptable, Your Grace?” Caleb ventured in a delicate tone.

The duke flashed a dangerous smile more potent than the laudanum.

“We’ll soon find out,” he said. Never taking his stare off her, he nodded to his silent guardsmen. “Put her in my chamber.”