Chapter One

      Meet me at our place.

      G.

      The Earl of Ashenden crumpled the note in his long slender fingers, his nostrils flaring with distaste.

      Meet me at our place, indeed.

      No signature. No polite salutation. After all these years of silence, just five words and her initial.

      She hadn’t even bothered to state a time. Not that there was any need. If they were to meet, it would be when they’d always met, at first light, before anyone else was about.

      If they were to meet? Good God, the woman had only to crook her finger and he was actually contemplating trotting along to see what it was she wanted.

      He flung the note into the fire, braced his arm on the mantel and watched with satisfaction as the flames devoured her summons.

      Did she really think he’d respond to a missive like that? After she’d turned her back on him when he’d needed her the most? Tossed aside their friendship without a second thought? And then greeted his return to England with an indifference that hadn’t wavered in all the years since?

      And yet...

      He braced one booted foot on the fender stool. If he didn’t go, he’d always wonder what could have made her break through that wall of silence and reach out to him.

      Which was probably why her note had been so brief. He ground his teeth. She knew him too well. Knew that its cryptic nature would rouse his curiosity to such a pitch that he’d find it hard to rest until he’d discovered exactly what lay behind it.

      He wouldn’t put it past her to presume that he’d feel guilty, too, if he ignored her note. Because she’d remember the promise he’d made: if ever she needed help, he would give it. Not that she’d actually stated she was in need of help. No, she’d been too cunning for that. She’d merely teased him with five words that could imply anything.

      Edmund bent to take the poker from the stand and slashed it through the charred sheet of paper, scattering its ashes across the hot coals until there were no visible remnants.

      But it didn’t make him feel any better. On the contrary, it only reminded him that ash was all that was left of a friendship that had burned so brightly for him, he’d believed he’d be able to warm himself at it his whole life.

      He stared into the flames, remembering. How she used to pull faces at him over the top of the pew, from her side of church, once the dullness of the sermon had put most of the adults in the congregation to sleep. How she’d walked three paces behind his mother, mimicking the way she stalked down the aisle with her nose in the air.

      How she’d rubbed her ear the day Blundell had clouted her for trespassing on to the Ashenden estate, but refused to leave until she’d found her dog, which had wriggled through a boundary hedge in pursuit of a rabbit. How she’d then charmed the gruff gamekeeper into letting her join in his fishing lesson. And subsequently returned the next day. And the one after. How she’d dared him to climb every tree on the estate. Demanded he teach her to fence and box and—

      A reluctant smile tugged at his lips as he recalled her fury at the way his gangly arms always kept him out of reach of her fists. The wild way she’d swing at him after every time he got in a blow—until she’d learned to keep up her guard. After that, though she’d still never been able to land a punch on him, he’d not been able to break through her defence.

      His smile faded. He turned his back on the fire. The uncomfortable truth was that the only good memories he had, from his childhood, centred on Georgiana. She hadn’t just been his best friend. She’d been his only friend. His mother hadn’t wanted him mixing with children from the village. Nor had she thought him strong enough to send away to school. And his father hadn’t cared enough to intervene. He very rarely visited Fontenay Court and when he did, he’d seldom done more than cast a jaded eye over his only surviving child, and perhaps taken a pinch of snuff, before ‘toddling off’ back to London, or the races, or whatever house party would provide him with the most ‘sport’.

      Edmund went to the desk, sat down and laced his fingers together on the blotter as his memories carried him back to the winter he’d almost died. Or so his mother had always maintained. She’d kept him not only indoors, but in bed for what had felt like months on end. Even when spring sunshine had started to lengthen the days, he hadn’t been permitted out of that room. She’d come to inspect him every morning, wrung her hands and then, like as not, launched into one of her diatribes against his father.

      ‘You’d think he’d care that his heir is wasting away—but, no! Too lazy even to bother to reply to any of my letters, let alone actually tear himself away from his latest lover.’

      A shuddering breath escaped him. His father hadn’t cared enough to visit him, even when his mother had written to inform him his only son and heir was at death’s door. But he couldn’t say that his mother’s obsession with keeping him alive at all costs stemmed from maternal love. She just couldn’t bear the thought of having to do her duty by a man she’d come to heartily detest. She’d blurted out that little gem whilst in the throes of yet another rant about his father’s failings, apparently forgetting that her audience was a product of doing that very distasteful duty.

      Nobody had cared about him, not really him, rather what he represented.

      Except Georgiana.

      She’d been the only one to care enough to flout his mother’s embargo on visitors. And she’d done it by climbing up the drainpipe at the corner of the house and inching along the crumbling brickwork to his window.

      The very last time she’d managed to get in to see him, she’d done it with half-a-dozen jam jars strung round her neck. Jars that had been full of the butterflies she’d spent all day collecting. For him.

      ‘I wanted to bring you something to cheer you up,’ she’d said with that impish grin of hers as he’d hauled her in over the windowsill. ‘It’s such a lovely day and it must be rotten being stuck indoors when all the world’s bursting into life out there.’

      She had certainly been bursting with life. There had been bits of twigs and moss caught in the cap of black curls that crowned her head. Her nose had been sunburnt, her arms and legs scratched from briars and mottled where nettles had stung her.

      ‘I know how interested you are in all sorts of bugs,’ she said, her dark eyes turning serious. ‘So I thought of bringing you some beetles to add to your collection. Only then I thought I’d be bound to bring the wrong ones. Ones you’d already got, like as not. But then I thought these would be better. And anyway, they’re more cheerful, aren’t they?’ And then she’d grabbed his hand and drawn him over to his bed.

      That was probably the moment he’d fallen in