Chapter One

      Suffolk—spring 1816

      His ears still ringing from the impact of the fall, Dominic Fitzallen Ransleigh levered himself to a sitting position in the muddy Suffolk lane. Air hissed in and out of his gritted teeth as he waited for the red wave of pain obscuring his vision to subside. Which it did, just in time for him to see that black devil, Diablo, trot around the corner and out of sight.

      Headed back to the barn, probably, Dom thought. If horses could laugh, surely the bad-tempered varlet was laughing at him.

      It was his own fault, always choosing the most difficult and high-spirited colts to train as hunters. Horses with the speed and heart to gallop across country, jumping with ease any obstacle in their paths, but needing two strong hands on the reins to control their headstrong, temperamental natures.

      He looked down at his one remaining hand, still trembling from the strain of that wild ride. Flexing the wrist, he judged it sore but not broken. After years of tending himself from various injuries suffered during his service with the Sixteenth Dragoons, a gingerly bending of the arm informed him no bones were broken there, either.

      His left shoulder still throbbed, but at least he hadn’t fallen on the stump of his right arm. Had he done that, he’d probably still be unconscious from the agony.

      Resigning himself to sit in the mud until his muzzy head cleared, Dom gazed down the lane after the fleeing horse. Though the doctors had warned him, he’d resisted accepting what he’d just proved: he’d not be able to control Diablo, or any of the other horses in his stable full of hunters, with a single good hand.

      Sighing, Dom struggled to his feet. He might as well face the inevitable. As he’d never be able to ride Diablo or the others again, there was no sense hanging on to them. The bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, he told himself he would look into selling them off at Tattersall’s while the horses were still in prime form and able to fetch a good price. Sell the four-horse carriages, too, since with one hand, he couldn’t handle more than a pair.

      Thereby severing one more link between the man he’d been before Waterloo, and now.

       Jilting a fiancée, leaving the army, and now this. Nothing like changing his world completely in the space of a week.

      Could he give it all up? he wondered as he set off down the lane. Following in his hunting-mad father’s footsteps had been his goal since he’d joined his first chase, schooling hunters a talent he worked to perfect. Before the army and between Oxford terms, he’d spent all his time studying horses, looking for that perfect combination of bone, stamina and spirit that made a good hunter. Buying them, training them, then hunting and steeplechasing with the like-minded friends who called themselves ‘Dom’s Daredevils’.

      Stripped of that occupation, the future stretched before him as a frightening void.

      Though he’d never previously had a taste for solitude, within days of his return, he’d felt compelled to leave London. The prospect of visiting his clubs, attending a ball, mixing with the old crowd at Tatt’s, inspecting the horses before a sale—all the activities in which he’d once delighted—now repelled him. Sending away even his cousin Will, who’d rescued him from the battlefield and tended him for months, he’d retreated to Bildenstone—the family estate he’d not seen in years, and hadn’t even been sure was still habitable.

      He’d sent Elizabeth away, too. A wave of grief and remorse swept through him as her lovely face surfaced in his mind. How could he have asked her to wait for him to recover, when the man he was now no longer fit into the world of hunts and balls they’d meant to share?

      Ruthlessly he extinguished her image, everything about her and the hopes they once cherished too painful to contemplate. Best to concentrate on taking the next small step down the road ahead, small steps being all he could manage towards a future cloaked in a shifting mist of uncertainty.

      Fighting the despair threatening to suck him down, he reminded himself again why he’d left friends, fiancée, and all that was familiar.

      To find himself...whatever was left to find.

      Wearily he picked up his pace, his rattled brain still righting itself. He traversed the sharp corner around which his horse had disappeared to find himself almost face to face with a young woman leading a mare.

      They both started, the horsing rearing a little.

      ‘Down, Starfire,’ a feminine voice commanded. Looking up at him expectantly, the girl smiled and said, ‘Sir, will you give me a hand? I was almost run down by a black beast of a stallion, which startled my mare. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying enough attention, and lost my seat. I’ll require help to remount.’

      His mind still befuddled, Dom stared at her. Though tall enough that he didn’t have to look down very far, his first impression was of a little brown wren—lovely pale complexion, big brown eyes, hair of indeterminate hue tucked under a tired-looking bonnet, and a worn brown habit years out of date.

      The unknown miss didn’t flinch at his eye patch, he had to give her that. Nor did her eyes stray to the pinned-up sleeve of his missing arm—the sleeve now liberally spattered with mud and decorated with leaf-bits, as was the rest of his clothing. Heavens, he must look like a vagrant who’d slept in the woods. It was a wonder she didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction.

      His lips curved into a whimsical smile at the thought as her pleasant expression faded. ‘Sir, could you give me a hand, help me remount?’ she all but shouted.

      Dom flinched at the loud tones. She must think me simple as well as dishevelled. As his mind finally cleared and her request registered, his amusement vanished.

      The images flashed into his head—all the girls he’d lifted in a dance, tossed into saddles...carried into bed. With two strong arms.

      Anger coursed through him. ‘That would be a bit of problem.’ He gestured to his empty sleeve. ‘Afraid I can’t help you. Good day, miss.’

      Her eyes widened as he began to walk past her. ‘Can’t help me?’ she echoed. ‘Can’t—or won’t?’

      Fury mounting, he wheeled back to face her. ‘Don’t you see, idiot girl?’ he spat out. ‘I’m...impaired.’

      Crippled would be a better description, but he couldn’t get his mouth around the word. He turned to walk away again.

      She hurried forward, the horse trailing on the reins behind her, and blocked his path. ‘What I see,’ she said, her dark eyes flashing, ‘is that you have one good arm, whether or not you choose to use it. Which is more than many of the soldiers who didn’t survive Waterloo, including my father. He wouldn’t have hesitated to give me a leg up, even with only one hand!’

      Before he could respond, she shortened the lead on the horse’s reins and snapped, ‘Very well. I shall search for a more obliging log or tree stump. Good day, sir.’

      Bemused, he watched the sway of her neat little bottom as she marched angrily away. With well-tended forest on either side of the lane—deadfall quickly removed to provide firewood for someone’s hearth—he didn’t think she was likely to find what she sought.

      Turning back towards Bildenstone, he set off walking, wondering who the devil she was. Not that, having spent the last ten years either with the army, at his hunting box in Leicestershire or in London, he expected to recognise any of the locals. That girl