Chapter One

      Jasper, fifteenth laird of Glendir, looked through the trees at the white shape running towards him and frowned. What on earth was this? He moved forward slowly, the shadows wrapping around him like a cloak, well used to the art of subterfuge. As the shape grew closer, he saw it was a young woman, her hair flying behind her. The white, he realized, was her shift. At first thinking, due to her partly undressed state, that she must be fleeing from some attacker, he reached for the dagger he kept hidden in his belt then paused as she neared him enough that he could see the expression on her face. It wasn’t fear he saw but rather a childlike joy that made him smile himself. Neither could he fail to notice the perfect lines of a womanly body beneath the thin material of her shift. Curious and more than a little intrigued, Jasper waited for the mysterious young woman to reach him. The way she was running, she looked likely to tumble straight into him.

      * * *

      With the cool night breeze kissing her cheeks and lifting tendrils of hair around her face like a lover, Amelia threw her head back in exhilaration, breathing in the crisp air as she ran. After a lifetime of being trussed up and paraded about like a show pony to be sold to the highest bidder, of trying hard to do and be everything her father expected of her, she was free. Although she knew being alone in the grounds at this time of night was foolish, it had been an impulsive urge. Coupled with the inability to sleep Amelia couldn’t resist getting up and slipping out of the house. Her house, and for the next few days at least, her bolt-hole.

      Trevan House, the home of her maternal family, passing to her aunt and now to her, was smaller than the grand house and London lodgings she was used to, but it was hers. The last link to a mother she could barely remember and an aunt she hadn’t seen since childhood. It had been expected—or certainly her father expected it—that she would sell the house, and she had never thought to see it again. Had never in truth been particularly interested in this little wild corner of the world. Yet now it had become her temporary refuge while she considered her suddenly uncertain future.

      And so here she was. She wondered how long it would be before her father came after her. Or if, shamed by her actions, he would leave her alone for a while. No doubt Lord Horatio Winters, the man her father was intent on marrying her to, would turn his attentions to someone more willing.

      Amelia suddenly shuddered with more than the chill of the night air as she raced barefoot through the gardens. If that was an appropriate name for the acres of land that surrounded Trevan. There was a gamekeeper with his own little cottage, she knew, and had a vague memory of her mother showing her a deer at the edge of the woods. An owl hooted, making her jump, and she smelled the salt on the wind that blew in from the nearby coast, rumoured to be dotted with smugglers’ caves, some of which supposedly led into Trevan’s lands. Her lands, at least for the moment. Trevan House itself may not be much, but the grounds and surrounding countryside had a wild beauty that had taken her by surprise. She ran until she was out of breath and nearly into a thicket of trees parallel to her grounds, and then, feeling a stitch in her side, slowed down, rapidly coming to her senses as she realized she had strayed too far, and she was alone.

      Or perhaps not.

      Turning back towards the house she walked right into a thickset man, who promptly grabbed her and thrust a hand over her mouth before she could scream. Amelia struggled, terrified and wondering for one horrible moment if Horatio had sent someone after her. When the stranger merely gazed down at her with an inscrutable expression, her struggles not moving him in the slightest, Amelia saw red. Twisting half out of his grasp and biting down on his hand, she screamed for help at the same time as she began to hit him around the head. The man let her go and backed away a few steps, hands raised for appeasement, but showed no signs of leaving. She could see little of him in the moonlight other than that he was tall and well built, with wild hair around a face hidden in shadows, apart from piercing eyes and what looked to be a fine jaw.

      ‘How dare you!’ she raged, ‘to trespass on my lands and put your hands on me so! I will have you dragged before the law!’

      The man raised an eyebrow, giving his features in the dim light a mysterious expression. ‘I’m afraid, my lady, that it is you, not me, that is the trespasser here. It would appear you have wandered onto my land.’

      In spite of the Scottish burr, the man’s voice was clipped and well-spoken. Amelia felt her heart sink. Her land bordered on that of Lord Glendir’s, she knew, but surely he was about eighty?

      ‘Jasper