Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Thanks

The Duchess War: Excerpt

Other Books by Courtney Milan

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Copyright

For OuiOui. With a kiss on the cheek, perhaps a little too close to the ear.

Chapter One

A small village in Kent, Spring, 1845

SIMON DAVENANT HAD JUST three days to woo and marry a woman.

Not just a woman—the woman.

Right now, the only things standing between him and the object of his affections were an exuberant field of colored tulips, a walkway of white crushed stones, and seven years of pointed silence on his part.

It had been that long since last he’d set foot in Chester-on-Woolsey—seven long years in which he’d buried himself in his work, trying to forget dark hair and darker eyes, the feel of her skin, the sound of her laugh.

It hadn’t worked. Everything he’d done had reminded him of this place.

Simon had walked to Barrett’s Folly—the little property she had inherited from her aunt—from the railway station three miles distant. He’d diverted from his destination only long enough to leave his valise at the inn in town. The man who had assigned him his room was new to the area; he’d not even blinked in recognition when Simon gave his name.

At that early hour, only the bakery had been open. He’d stopped for a bun, but old Mrs. Brandell hadn’t remembered him, either. There was no reason the little village should recall him. He’d merely spent his childhood holidays here.

Nevertheless, it seemed unfair that he should have thought so often of Chester-on-Woolsey, while its inhabitants scarcely gave him so much as a backward glance. Still, he reminded himself as he watched the tulips wave before him, he’d come here for one reason, and one reason only. And she was in the house now in front of him.

The first glints of morning sunlight spangled off windows that needed washing. Barrett’s Folly had never been more than a cottage, but it seemed even tinier than he remembered. It had been just large enough for an aging woman and her scapegrace niece. He’d only been here twice over Easter, but both times he’d been struck by the effect of the tulips: two full acres, blooming in a riot of pinks and golds and reds.

One didn’t think of tulips as having an aroma—not like roses or gardenias. But massed in the tens of thousands, he could breathe in their scent: subtle and green and new, a smell that made him remember a time when he’d had nothing but hope for the world. It curled around his heart like a fist, that awakening nostalgia.

But even if he’d had the inclination to indulge in memories that had grown rather more bitter than sweet, he didn’t have the patience. He certainly didn’t have the time.

Simon adjusted his cravat, which was made of the finest, purest linen, and arranged his cuffs, which were held together at the wrists by gold links set with onyx stones. For richer or poorer, for better or worse, Virginia Barrett—no, damn it, Virginia Croswell—was finally going to be his.

He grabbed hold of his determination, ignored the faint protestations of his irrelevant conscience, and strode forward.

It took several minutes for someone to come when he rapped the knocker smartly. When the door finally opened, the person behind it was a maid-of-all-work, her apron layered with coal dust and white flour alike. She took one look at Simon—at Simon’s cuff links and Simon’s cravat—and frowned in puzzlement.

“Eee,” she said. “You’ll be having the wrong house, then, sir. The Granthams are two miles down, yet.”

So it was the Granthams who had purchased his parents’ old home. He didn’t care.

Simon took off his hat and brushed past her into the entry.

“I am precisely where I intend to be. Go fetch Mrs. Croswell, will you?”

The maid glanced at him, standing uninvited in the entry. Her gaze marched up the shiny gold-plated buttons on his navy coat, and settled on his unsmiling countenance.

“Yes, sir,” she finally said, and ducked back through another door.

She wasn’t a very good maid. And given the time it had taken her to respond, he suspected she was the only one. Curious, that.

He set his hat on a side table, and then his gloves. The same mirror from seven years ago sat in its fading false-gold frame on the wall; when he checked his reflection, he noticed that the edges had begun to spot with age. In the corners of the entry, dust had settled. Simon shook his head.

A door opened, and he turned from his inspection. The maid came through first. Behind him, he could hear a woman speaking.

“...very well,” she was saying. “But I don’t believe—”

The woman marched through the door, swiping flour-dusted hands over an apron. She saw him and stopped midstride.

He had envisioned this moment a thousand times. Sometimes, she threw herself at him. Sometimes, she flushed and looked away. He usually imagined her as she stood in his memory—a young, slim maiden, dressed in demure, light-colored muslins. Often, he’d thought of her in less. Far less.

But in all his imaginings, he had never pictured her as she was now: features made severe by the dark gray of half-mourning. The possibility that she’d be clad in widow’s garb should have occurred to him. Given the reason behind his swift decampment, it seemed idiotic not to have imagined her in somber colors. Maybe, deep down, he had refused to accept that she had married another man.

The years had changed her. They’d carved little laugh lines into the corners of her mouth. She’d rounded out comfortably, her hips and breasts fuller, her arms pleasantly plump.

The discontinuity in his expectations jarred him. She’d been in his thoughts so much over the years that it was disconcerting to discover that she’d existed outside them.

But of course.

She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead, leaving a trace of flour above her eyebrow. “Mr. Davenant. Why, how lovely to see you.” She gave him a faint, patronizing smile—the sort one might grant to an old acquaintance, long forgot. It might have worked, without that streak of flour.

He crossed his arms. “Are you not going to ask why I’m here?”

She flicked her gaze behind her. “Alice,” she said to the maid, who stood near the wall, “if you’ll finish putting the bread away, I’d be most obliged. Mr. Davenant and I are old friends. We’ll visit in the parlor.”

“Old friends,” he repeated in disbelief.

“We grew up alongside one another.” She was speaking to her maid, but her eyes had not left Simon’s. “At one time, we were quite inseparable.”

“I would not have put it that way,” Simon said, not quite as mildly as he’d intended. “Inseparable means unable to separate. The last seven years suggest something rather different.”

“Oh.” Alice glanced between them, perhaps catching a hint of a dangerous undercurrent. “Shall I bring some tea, ma’am?”

Ginny pursed her lips. “Yes,” she finally said. “That will do nicely. And some of the new bread. And butter. And the raspberry preserves.”

“The, um—” The maid blushed, and glanced at Simon.

“The good raspberry preserves,” Ginny said sweetly. “Not the ones we use when the vicar comes calling.”

Simon scarcely muffled a smile at that. She had not responded to his accusatory tone. She’d always been stubborn—damned stubborn. That, apparently, hadn’t changed. It was what he’d liked best about her.

He waited until they were seated around a table, tea steeping beside them in a chipped china pot, before he spoke again. “How long has it been since last we spoke?” he mused.

She met his eyes levelly. “You know perfectly well, Simon.”

“True.” He picked up his teacup and swirled the dark liquid around. “It was seven years, two months, and three—” He cut himself off. “No. It was four days, not three. That last time we saw each other, you refused to speak to me altogether.”

She hadn’t even blinked at the precise nature of his recollection. “Of course I did.” She took a sip of her tea and smiled, as if that final, bitter argument had become nothing but a fond memory to her. “Can you blame me?”

“No,” he admitted.

In the corner, a clock ticked. He counted off the beats, watching her. Waiting for her to break the silence.

But if the tapping of his fingers unnerved her, she did not show it. Ginny rarely let her emotions show. She simply set down her teacup and turned her saucer precisely. “Sometime in the last seven years, you might have apologized.”

“Unfortunately, no. I could not have done.” He lifted his head. “What I said to you then... It was rude and unpardonable. And yet there has not been a moment between now and then when I could have truthfully taken it back. You see, I meant every word. I still mean it.”

She blinked at him. The long column of her throat contracted in a swallow. It was the first unguarded reaction he’d drawn from her. “Oh,” she said quietly. “That’s interesting.”

“Indeed.” He was watching her very closely. But other than that initial reaction, she betrayed no other response. Not even a twitch of her lips.

“You must be here for a good long while, then,” she said.

“Three days. I’ve urgent business back in town after that.”

“You’ve allotted three days to accomplish all your threats?” Now she did smile. “My. You’ll be working quickly. When last we spoke, you said that if I married Mr. Croswell, I’d regret it.”

“I don’t believe I used quite those words. But yes, you’ve got the general gist of my sentiment.”

She put her head to one side, looking off into the distance. “You claimed that when he passed away, you’d seduce me, and once I’d fallen in love with you, you’d stomp on my bleeding heart and leave me weeping.” She recited those words as sweetly as if she were discussing a favorite recipe for plum preserves. “Oh, don’t give me that freezing look; I’m just trying to make sure our memories are in accord.”

There was only one thing for it. He was going to have to lie.

He reached across the table and took her hand. “You’ve got one thing wrong, Ginny. I didn’t just claim that I’d do those things. I promised I would.” He stroked his thumb across her palm. “And you know I always keep my promises.”

His heart was racing. It was just like one of their old games—this time with a touch more bitterness, and with stakes so high he was afraid to breathe. Her hand was cool against his. Another woman might have taken him at his word and pulled away. But after all these years, Ginny still knew him, heart and soul.

She curled her fingers around his. Not in surrender; Ginny never surrendered.

“Goodness,” she said, a faint smile touching her lips. “You think you can accomplish all that in seventy-two hours?”

He drew a little circle on her wrist. “I know I can. You have no idea how these last seven years have honed my instincts.”

That was how they’d always played the game. He made some arrogant claim of utter balderdash in an attempt to provoke Ginny into an uncharacteristic response. She, in return, tried to flummox him with her restraint.

She beamed at him as if all those bitter years between them had come to nothing. “How lovely. Would you know, I’m twenty-five years old, and I’ve not once been seduced? All I’ve been exposed to thus far is the regular sort of marital intercourse. I am positively looking forward to the experience. I trust you’ll do a creditable job?”

God, he had missed her. There was a reason that no other woman had ever taken her place. He’d tried, damn it, he’d tried. But everyone else simply found him...intimidating. Announce to any other woman that you planned to seduce her, and she’d slap your face. Ginny, on the other hand, brought him to life.

He stifled a grin. “I can hardly stomp on your bleeding heart if I make a hash of your seduction.”

“Good,” she said. “Then I look forward to the…attempt.” There was a slight emphasis on that last word. That small pause, the rise in her voice…

She might as well have thrown down a gauntlet. She pulled her hand away and took a long, lingering sip of tea. As she did, she glanced at him through her eyelashes. “But you know, Simon, informing me of your plans was always your downfall. It makes you so much easier to thwart.”

“What can I say? I’m a gentleman. I have to give you a sporting chance.” He paired those words with an indulgent smile. But inside, he was grimacing. Not this time. This time, he’d lie to her, deceive her. Whatever it took to have her, he was going to do it.

“Poor Simon,” she said. “You’re checkmated already, did you know that?”

He shrugged once more, cheerful despite the wretched events of the last few weeks. He’d been right to come here—right not to wait until her mourning had passed. “So long as it’s you who mates me,” he said breezily, “I’ll have no complaints.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. No, despite what he was going to do to her, he couldn’t make himself regret it. This time, she was going to be his.

HE WAS HERE. He was here! He had come. He had come!

Ginny wasn’t sure how to say the words, how even to think them with the proper emphasis. She was all tangled on the inside—tangled and confused and scared and giddy—and she hadn’t felt that way in seven years. On the outside…

She was walking sedately down a track that cut through the pale spring meadow grasses, still scarcely high enough to tickle her ankles. Her fingertips rested on Simon’s elbow; his hand, encased in soft, fine leather, covered hers. It was all very proper, if one happened to observe the two of them from thirty yards’ distance.

If one were closer…

Simon wasn’t just covering her hand with his. He was stroking her fingers. Even through their gloves, his caress sent a light, excited pulse through her body.

Her body, it turned out, had taken one good look at him and blithely dismissed all need to contemplate their past history. Her body would have been perfectly content to skip right past the arguments and the hurt they’d imposed on each other, and get straight to the seduction. Given the way he was touching her, he felt the same way.

Alas. That light, sensual caress only meant she had his attention. The martial set of his jaw suggested that she had a long way to go to win his approval.

And she wasn’t even sure she wanted it.

The tips of his fingers brushed her wrist and then slipped beneath her sleeve. She held her breath when he touched her bare skin—but he stopped walking and pulled her hand closer.

Her gloves had been white once, but an unfortunate spill had left one discolored. The edges of her sleeve were fraying. She’d have to turn the gown again in a few months.

“Well,” he said, the first word he’d spoken since they’d left the house. “I can see it didn’t turn out as you expected, marrying a rich man.”

Simon had never been one to let old wounds heal. No; he’d jab at them repeatedly with a sharp stick. “Mr. Croswell left me nothing to complain about.” Ginny squared her jaw. “I tell you, Simon, I’ll not hear you speak ill of the dead.”

“Nothing to complain about?” He raised one eyebrow. “It looks like he left you nothing at all. No fine house in Anniston. One maid, if I’m not mistaken. Old mirrors and old furniture and dust in the entry. It wasn’t even this bad when your aunt was among the living.” He slid his finger over her fraying cuff.

“There have been some expenses since his death,” she admitted. “But I’ve managed to meet them all.” Barely.

His mouth formed a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Poor Ginny. Maybe you should have married me after all.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad as to drive me to wish that,” she said, as breezily as she dared. “I have enough, and this is really only a temporary shortfall.”

His false friendliness faded into an altogether more believable frown.

“You see,” she added, “having enough is superior to marrying a man still in university, one whose parents promised to cut him off if he married that dreadfully impecunious Virginia Barrett.” She was very proud of the fact that her voice didn’t shake. After all these years, she scarcely felt anything at all when she uttered those words. She’d buried that pain too deeply to be hurt by it.

He pulled away from her, his movements stiff. “Damn it.”

“Your language hasn’t improved any, I see.”

He looked relieved at the change of topic. Anything to spare themselves from revisiting that old argument.

“If anything, it’s grown worse. I spend all my time around men, more than half of them laborers.” His hand drifted to the top button of his jacket, and he undid it. “When there are no women about for miles, they say the most amazing things. You would bloody love it.”

She couldn’t pull her eyes from his fingers. It wasn’t as if he were actually disrobing—he had a shirt and a waistcoat on underneath. Still, he was slowly and methodically unbuttoning his coat. Unsettled as she was, she still found herself watching those buttons with far too avid an interest.

He undid another button and tilted his head down the path. “You see that bench there?”

“Yes?”

He popped the next button, and glanced over at her. She colored and looked away. A loss; he had always tried to get a response out of her. But then, it would have been an equal loss if he’d noticed how she’d been staring.

And perhaps he had noticed anyway, because he smiled faintly—a real smile, this time.

“I’m going to race you there.” He continued undoing his coat. “And I’m going to win.”

He probably would. She had, in a fit of vanity, donned half boots that had a hint of heel before they had left. But that arrogant assertion put her back up.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. “The lady always wins.”

“Ha.” He undid the last button on his coat and rolled his shoulders, finding his range of motion after confinement. “If memory serves, the lady always blusters.”

“By all accounts,” Ginny continued, ignoring him, “you’ve been slaving away, burning the midnight oil and all that. How fast can a man run, when he spends his days trapped behind a desk? It’s a wonder you haven’t gone to fat.”

“I’ll have you know, I spend long days in the field—” He stopped before he could truly start his tirade, and shook his head ruefully. “Ah. You almost had me there.”

“I’m going to have you again,” Ginny said, and took off running.

She could scarcely breathe with the boning of her corset bound tightly around her. Her shoes kept sinking into the new spring ground. He passed her easily. By the time she came to the bench, he had positioned himself behind it, one hand leaning on it casually. He did a creditable job of disguising the fact that he was gasping for breath.

“It’s not really fair,” she pointed out. “I’m wearing stays. And heels.”

“I’m not playing fair, Ginny,” he responded. “Most especially not about you. When you jilted me—”

“I never jilted you! How could I have? I never agreed to marry you in the first place.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” he shouted back. “Who else were you going to marry?”

“I think that is rather obvious. I was going to marry Mr. Lionel Croswell.”

He growled at that—actually growled, like a dog. But he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he ran his hands through his hair and spoke in a lower voice. “Maybe what I meant was—who else was I going to marry?”

It was, perhaps, the first honest thing they’d said to each other since his arrival. He said it with such bitterness in his tone that he almost broke her heart. She could feel his pain like a sharp knife, could feel her own remorse at a decision made long ago. The years of their separation had cut them both equally.

He folded his arms and frowned into the distance.

“I didn’t care,” he said eventually. “I didn’t care if my parents disowned me. I didn’t care if I had nothing. I only ever cared about you.”

“That was always the problem.” Ginny shook her head slowly. “I did care. I wasn’t going to marry a poor man. Especially not one who had no trade.” The weight of that worry had nearly suffocated her back then. “Only the wealthy have the luxury to claim they care nothing for money. You’ve never been poor. You don’t know what poverty would mean.”

He straightened and jerked away from her. He didn’t meet her eyes; he just started to button up his jacket once more. Maybe it was her imagination that his cuff links—were those really gold?—glinted at her.

“Well,” he finally said, when he had restored himself to proper order. “I’m not poor any longer.” And with a final challenging look, he held out his arm to her.

Ginny hesitated. So many years. So much pain they’d caused each other. A fortune or two couldn’t paper over all of that. But when he gestured, she went to him and took his arm.

Chapter Two

SIMON’S MAN WAS WAITING in the inn’s common room. Andrew Fortas had not ordered so much as a glass of beer; he looked uncomfortably out of place, sitting ramrod-straight in the rustic wooden chairs and gawking about, as if he’d never been anywhere so backward as Chester-on-Woolsey. He had a stack of papers with him, tied up in blue cotton tape. They were turned facedown on the counter. His fingers played a silent rhythm on the arm of his chair.

Simon came and sat in the wooden stool next to him. “I came here regularly as a child, you know, and nobody ever tried to kill me.”

“Yes.” Fortas glanced briefly at him. “I do know that.”

Of course the man knew. He knew everything; it was his job. Still, he looked as he always did anytime they had to venture out of the metropolis. London born and bred, Fortas always peered about the smaller towns in distrust, as if he suspected the residents secretly indulged in human sacrifice and cannibalism. Fortas was even more awkward than Simon was, and that was saying a great deal.

Simon sighed. “So, those shares.” No point in beating about the bush. “Ridgeway’s got them, then?”

Fortas simply steepled his fingers. “Some of them, certainly.” He glanced suspiciously about again, as if Ridgeway—the owner of most of Prince’s Canal—might have spies even in this inn. But there was nobody in earshot; the innkeeper stood on the other side of the room, wiping glasses down with a clean towel.

Simon met the proprietor’s eye across the room and held up two fingers.

Fortas waited until the man drew the beer, and then stared in his unnerving way, challenging the fellow as he crossed the room. He did not speak until the man had moved away. Then, and only then, did he turn over the papers he had brought with him.

“This details the disposition of the shares of the Long Northern Railway.” His meticulous handwriting covered the page in crisp, clear columns.

“Two thousand shares issued.” Fortas tapped one column. “Of those, you retained four hundred and ten, and have repurchased five hundred and seven, making your ownership in the company slightly more than forty-six percent.”

“I know my own shares,” Simon said mildly.

Fortas ignored this. “As you suspected, Ridgeway has been quietly buying the remainder. His solicitor was in the company office yesterday, just after you left, perfecting the transfer of nine hundred shares to his name.”

Simon had prayed it wasn’t so bad. He’d feared it was worse. He took a swallow of tepid beer. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to wash away the thought of what Ridgeway would do, if he got a clear majority. “Nine hundred. Good God.”

“That leaves one hundred eighty-three shares outstanding. Of the shares that I have not yet accounted for, there are Calloway’s original seventy-five.”

Simon nodded. “You bought them. Tell me you bought them.”

“He, ah...” There was a long pause. Fortas sighed. “He rejected our offer.”

“Did he, then. Did you offer more?”

“Couldn’t. Don’t look at me like that—I really couldn’t. You’ve already extended yourself to the very edge of solvency. I offered all that I could. Ridgeway offered more, and Calloway sold to him. The sale’s not recorded yet, but it’s a matter of time.”

“Damn him. That puts him what, twenty-something shares from control of the company?”

“Twenty-six.”

Simon bit his lip. Most of the railways that had been built so far were short, stubby legs, connecting one city haphazardly to the next. The line he’d planned would have connected London with Castingham. It would, in one stroke, have united iron manufacturers and coal mines with the heart of commerce. There would have been no need to send everything by water. Just one simple intercity railway. He’d have made a profit almost overnight. All he had to do was lay the final miles of track.

But Ridgeway owned half of the meandering canal line that provided transport between the two cities. If Simon had succeeded, he would have diverted an enormous amount of business, and the man hadn’t been about to surrender without a fight. Ridgeway had tried to bribe him to give up the idea six months ago. When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to get Parliament to dissolve their corporation. And when that hadn’t worked, he’d resorted to brute force: outright purchase of the shares of their stock.

If he scraped together ownership in a majority of the company, Ridgeway wouldn’t just take the profits. He’d take control. And to protect the money he was already making, he’d shut the line down before it even began.

“Where does all of this leave us?” Fortas asked.

Simon reached out and flipped through a few of the pages. He found the accounting. He didn’t say a word, just inclined the page so that it could be easily read. “See this?” he said, “Everything else I have is mortgaged for this, and with the cloud over the railway line, I can’t get a cent more for it. You tell me where that leaves us.”

Fortas whistled slowly. “We’re standing in a storm of piss.”

“With shite for an umbrella,” Simon agreed.

Your vocabulary isn’t getting any better, he heard Ginny chide. Yes, he wanted to answer her, and neither are my finances.

Building a railway wasn’t cheap. He’d leveraged every asset that he had for this. In his desperate attempt to purchase shares before Ridgeway could, he’d even mortgaged his interest in the estate he would inherit from his parents, something he hoped they would never discover. It would have been worth it, too—if he’d succeeded. It all would have been worth it.

“Ah, well.” He tried to keep the despair from his voice. “There’s still hope, isn’t there? He doesn’t have those last twenty-six shares, and he can’t stop us without them.”

Fortas glanced away. “Hm,” he said, which was not promising at all.

“Damn it, Fortas. Tell me he doesn’t have them.”

“We have been in contact with the remaining shareholders,” Fortas said slowly. “We told them that if they sold to Ridgeway, the venture would be over—all progress would be completely halted—and they all agreed that they wouldn’t sell to him.”

“So they’re holding, then.”

“I thought so at first. Ridgeway made an offer, and was rebuffed.”

Maybe all was not lost.

“But it’s hard to convince men to hold when someone is trying to stop all operations. The shares will be worthless if Ridgeway succeeds. Nobody wants to be left holding nothing but liens.”

Simon blew out his breath. “Who sold?”

“Carter and Phillip. One hundred and thirteen shares in total.”

Simon shut his eyes. “Christ, that’s it. That gives him his majority. I’ll have their livers for going back on their word.”

“Technically, they’re within their promise. Ridgeway did not buy the shares himself. He sent a solicitor—one Mr. Bagswin—who claimed to be unconnected to Prince’s Canal.”

“Lying bastard.” Of course. If Ridgeway couldn’t buy the shares directly, he’d have set his solicitors to creating a fiction that could do so indirectly. Nothing for it now but to take another long swallow of beer. “And when will this Bagswin present the deeds to the company secretary?”

“Three days from now, on Thursday. Perhaps not by chance, the timing of that arrangement coincides with the timing of your meeting with Ridgeway.”

Simon tapped his fingers on the table. It was precisely as he’d feared. He was about to lose everything that he’d worked for. He’d built his success up piece by piece, starting with his first foray into railways—a small line connecting a coal mine in Wales to the coast. Over the years, he’d become more aggressive. This last project, though… In order to make it happen, he’d borrowed against all his assets, and then he’d borrowed against the assets he’d purchased.

“Ah,” he said. “Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Et cetera. Insert whatever other platitudes you can recall; I can’t be bothered. The payroll is safe, at least. Please assure the men of that.”

Fortas gave him a reproving look. “With all that about to fall on your head, you’re really going to spend the next handful of days here, in—in—Chester-on-Bloody-Who-Cares?”

“With all that,” Simon said quietly, “this is my only window of opportunity. Once this becomes public...”

In his mind, it was simple.

He loved her, and she’d married someone else.

For years, Ginny had been utterly impossible to him. And then her husband had died. It was awful to rejoice in another man’s death…but then, Simon had always been aware that he bordered on the awful. He had at least planned to wait until her year of mourning had passed before presenting himself on her doorstep. But Ridgeway’s machinations had changed everything.

I’m not poor anymore, Simon had told her. But what he hadn’t said was this: I’m about to be.

He knew from painfully bitter experience that Ginny wouldn’t marry a poor man. She hadn’t done it seven years ago, and she wouldn’t do it today. Once his ruin became public, she’d turn from him once more. This time, when she married someone else, it might not be a man with a heart complaint. This time, she might pick someone hale and hearty, someone who would live forever.

If he didn’t marry her in the next three days, he might never have her. The last seven years had been hell enough.

There’d only ever been one way to win with Ginny: to confuse her as to what the game was. So long as she believed that he was intent on her seduction, all her efforts would go toward resisting the wrong thing. If she thought he only intended to have her in bed, she’d think herself the victor when he changed it all to marriage. And by the time she found out the truth…

She would hate him at first. He didn’t care. It would be too late by then. At least he’d have her, hatred and all. He’d win her back—eventually—and remake his fortune.

“I would have thought,” Fortas was saying, “that you would do anything to save your future.”

It had never been the money he cared about—not for himself. It had always been Ginny, even when he wished it hadn’t been.

Simon pressed his lips together. “You’re quite right about that,” he said. “I will do anything.”

“SO,” GINNY SAID, when Simon appeared on her doorstep the next morning. “You have only two days to seduce me. How ever are you going to accomplish that?”

She felt better this morning. She’d let him unnerve her yesterday; a good night’s sleep had restored her serenity. The truth was, no matter how much they might have hurt one another in the past, Simon wouldn’t find it difficult to seduce her. He’d meant so much more to her than those final acrimonious weeks.

He looked as handsome as ever. More handsome, in fact; his boyish features had hardened into strong, masculine lines. His eyes had always seemed roguishly blue; now, when he looked at her, they made her think of outright wickedness rather than mere mischief.

“I had hoped,” he said, “that I would just dazzle you with my wealth.” So saying, he yawned, covering his mouth. Something sparkly at his wrists flashed at her.

Ginny stepped forward. “Are those diamonds on your cuff links?” she asked, caught halfway between horror and wonder.

He grinned. He always smiled any time she betrayed emotion. “Pretty, aren’t they?” He took one off and threw it to her.

She caught it automatically. “Oh my Lord,” Ginny said. “You’ve become one of those dreadful nouveaux-riches that I’m always hearing decried in the papers, flashing your money about.” But she opened her hand to look at the little gold piece that he’d tossed her way. When she did, her breath caught. “It’s a beetle,” she finally said. “A gold beetle with diamond eyes.”

“I had them made four years ago.” He didn’t quite look her way. “I have fond memories of beetles.”

From any other man, this statement would have been odd. From Simon…

It had all started with a beetle. Ginny had been ten years old, and she’d only come to stay with her aunt two months before. But summer had come, and with it, the Davenants. Mr. Davenant was a famous London barrister who took his family to the country when the law courts shut down out of term-time. The other inhabitants of Chester-on-Woolsey were far less exalted personages, and they’d held the family in collective awe.

His son, Simon—eleven years old, and already a student at Harrow—had known it. He had sauntered by Ginny, where she played at spillikins with two of her new friends.

“Be careful,” Emily whispered, gesturing toward him. “He’s a regular beast.”

Simon noticed them looking, and he’d come over.

“You’re new,” he said to Ginny.

“Yes.” And then, because he was taller than her and looking her over with an imperious demeanor, she added: “Sir.”

He opened his fist to reveal a great big fat beetle—one with a brilliantly iridescent carapace. “I’m going to put this down your dress,” he announced.

Ginny had already known one important truth: The only way to silence a boy who was trying to disgust you was to refuse to admit that he’d succeeded.

So she reached out and plucked the beetle from Simon’s hand. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “How beautiful! You picked her because she was beautiful, didn’t you?”

“I did not!” He stepped back, insulted.

“I’m going to call her Mrs. Rainbow,” Ginny cooed.

“It’s a boy beetle! His name is Mr. Slugfit!” When neither of these pronunciations drew a response, he tried again. “I got it off a dead body!”

“Oh, no,” Ginny said, running a finger lightly along the beetle’s back. “Poor Mrs. Rainbow. What a dreadful ordeal. You’re safe now.”

She’d ignored Simon’s gagging noises all afternoon, and taken Mrs. Rainbow to tea. And that was how the game had begun—with a beetle and a casual announcement. Over the course of that summer, they’d made their way from “You can’t catch a fish,” to “I’m going to beat you to the top of that tree.” They’d become friends—friends who would never have admitted their friendship, of course, but fast friends nonetheless.

To find that he’d made cuff links of beetles… Ginny sighed and turned over the trinket. “Are you filthy rich, then?”

He held her eyes, his face somber. “I positively stink with wealth,” he said. “And if you don’t mind, I’ve only got forty-eight hours to seduce you, now. I was hoping to convince you to walk with me to the oak today.”

“Am I supposed to be so overcome with nostalgia when you bring me there that I succumb to your most desperate overtures?”

“My irresistible overtures,” he said confidently. “And yes—you’ve got the general idea.”

Ginny let herself appear to think this over. “Well. I’m overcome with the need to fetch my bonnet.”

But she didn’t go. Instead, she stepped forward and took his wrist. She heard the slight intake of his breath as she examined his hand—a man’s hand, big and broad, with a callus on his thumb and index finger where he’d wielded a pen. Little nicks marred his skin, ones that hadn’t existed seven years ago.

She turned his hand over.

“On second thought,” he said. “We could adjourn to your bedchamber now.”

Ginny undid the backing of his cufflink and slipped it into place. “Poor Simon,” she said, making sure the little diamond-eyed beetle was secure. “Do you want me very, very badly then?”

His other hand touched her face. Slowly—almost unwillingly—she let him raise her chin from contemplation of his wrist. His eyes seemed dark, and they glittered with some unspoken emotion. “Yes,” he said. “God knows I’ve wished it otherwise over the years. But yes. I have wanted you since I first knew what want was.”

Under the rules of the game, she should make light of that admission. She needed to say something to defuse those words of their latent power.

But she could not make herself do it. Some things were too true to dismiss.

He leaned down and ever so lightly brushed his lips against hers—so softly, it was as if their breath kissed, rather than their mouths.

“Go get your bonnet,” he told her.

Chapter Three

THEY DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING for the first minute of their walk. Then he noticed the men working in the field and he turned to her in shock.

“They’re cutting your tulips,” he said. “Why are they bloo—I mean, why are they cutting your tulips?”

Ginny sighed. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “Because Mr. Redright is paying me twenty pounds for them.”

“But—”

“Maybe twenty pounds is nothing to a man with diamond cuff links, but it’s a great deal to me at the moment.”

He scowled. “God, Ginny, I—”

“Don’t worry about me.” She patted his hand. “I’m just showing my foolhardy Barrett blood after all these years.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I hate it when you talk that way about yourself. I hated it when my parents did it. I hated it when anyone else did it. So you weren’t as well-off as my people. What does that matter?”

He had always been hotheaded and ill-mannered. Her other friends had never been able to understand why she enjoyed his company. But the other side of his total disregard for etiquette had been an utter indifference to the disparity in their stations.

True, he’d never treated her like a lady. He’d treated her like an equal instead, and that had seemed far more precious.

“Simon,” she said slowly, “I was—I am—a Barrett.”

“So?”

“So, we’re not just polite folk who quietly run a little out-of-pocket from time to time. Barretts are the most foolish of any fools who have ever had pretensions to gentility. Just look around us.” She spun, indicating the acres of tulips. “Where do you think these came from?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t care. I thought they grew because your aunt liked them.”

Ginny let out a shuddering laugh. “Two acres of tulips? No. They’ve been here for centuries. Old Farwell Barrett was a modest tradesman who thought to make his fortune on one simple gamble. So he sold his fine home, and a good bit of land beside. He sunk the entirety of his funds into an investment that—he was sure—could not lose: tulip bulbs. Which, at the time, were selling for an ungodly sum of money, the price going up on a daily basis.” She laughed again, and wished she could feel the humor. “Six weeks later, everyone realized how ridiculous it was to go mad over tulips, and the price plummeted. In a fit of pique, he planted every one of those bulbs here. And that is why the cottage is called Barrett’s Folly.”

“Hm,” he said, sounding unconvinced.

“Marrying you would have been the sort of thing that a mad Barrett would do. Trading on hope and delusions. If I had married you, your parents would have been right about me. I’d have been a foolish, impecunious schemer, just like my forebears. I told you I wouldn’t marry a poor man.”

He leaned forward and touched one finger to her chin. “And what do you think of me now, then?”

“You’re every bit as bad as you were before.”

“Yes, but…”

“If I had somehow missed your fashionable hat and your cunning cuff links, I would have noticed your pronouncement yesterday. Also, I do read the newspapers, and from time to time they make comments about wealthy, eligible bachelors. Come, Simon. You did not use to be so gauche as to wear jewels simply to impress a woman.”

He colored faintly, but leaned in. “Maybe it’s because nothing else about me ever impressed you enough.”

Even after seven years, Ginny recognized that this was one of those things that Simon said, hoping to be contradicted. So she simply furrowed her brow. “True.”

His eyes narrowed and he started toward her. “Why, you little baggage. I ought to—”

She shook one finger at him. “You’ve only got two days, Simon. You can’t afford to waste a single hour remonstrating with me.”

He didn’t stop. Instead, he took her arms and pulled her close. “And what did you think I was threatening to do?” Her belly fluttered. He reached up and set his thumb against her lips. “I know all too well I can’t argue with you. You’d never admit it when I won.”

“That’s not true.”

“All I can say is that you are not a mad Barrett. You are the most—”

“I am mad,” Ginny told him. “I am just like them. Oh, God, Simon. These last weeks… I’m selling my tulips, that’s how close things have come.”

His arm settled around her and he pulled her close. “Shh,” he said. “Shh. It will all come out right.”

“I know that,” Ginny said, her voice muffled by his chest. “I know that now. But for a while there, before you came… You have no idea how much I risked. It was close. I thought I might have to sell Barrett’s Folly, too.”

It was the height of foolishness to let him hold her. To let the warmth of his arms come around her and to draw strength from him. But then, for all the pain that he’d caused her once, he’d also been her best friend. Her only true confidant. There had been a time when his embrace would have healed any wound. They’d had games and they’d had Simon’s brash arrogance. But she’d loved him most for this—for this certainty that everything would come out right, so long as he was near. She’d missed him.

He gently stepped away from her. “We haven’t come to the oak yet,” he said. “I’m on a schedule. I’m not supposed to kiss you until we reach the oak.”

Ten years ago, when she was fifteen, everything had changed. By that time, they’d been friends for years, and—as his parents had realized with dawning horror sometime during the first week of summer—they were rather too old to be wandering about alone. Why, anything could happen!

They had talked with Ginny’s aunt. It had been agreed by all the adults that they weren’t to see each other unchaperoned any longer. But Simon had pooh-poohed the very idea. What, he had said scornfully, were those old biddies imagining? Really?

What indeed? she had echoed, just as scornfully. But inside, she’d cringed just a little. She had just begun to imagine things that brought a blush to her face.

They’d become rather adept at sneaking out. Just to fish, he’d said. And climb trees. And walk. But over the course of the summer, Ginny had fallen secretly, passionately, horribly in love with him. She didn’t dare mention it—she was sure he would have laughed at her, if he’d known. She’d kept the emotion to herself through their morning walks and their dares. She’d not said anything, not even when they met late one night to watch a meteor shower.

Until Simon had turned to her one August evening, shortly before he was scheduled to leave. And in that peremptory, arrogant manner that he had, he’d announced, “I’m going to kiss you tomorrow.”

Ginny had flushed all over. Her lungs had burned. Simon was older—a full year older. He was on the verge of attending university. She’d imagined him with other girls, walking the streets of Cambridge. Those other women would be pretty and soft and ladylike. They were all well-to-do, just like him. And they’d be beautifully dressed in clothing that was all lace and flounces and kid leather.

At his proclamation, she’d burst into flame, a riot of innocent expectation.

“Well?” he’d demanded. And that was when she’d realized that he was nervous about how she might respond.

“No,” Ginny had said, her mouth dry.

“No?”

“You’re not going to kiss me tomorrow,” she’d managed to get out.

He had taken one step toward her.

“You’re going to kiss me right now,” she finished.

“Oh, God,” he’d said. “Ginny. Ginny.” And he had leaned in and kissed her, the dark green leaves of the oak shielding them from the summer sun.

After that, he’d made his way to Chester-on-Woolsey whenever he could, telling his parents he was visiting friends. They had kissed and held hands and talked and planned. They’d argued and schemed, too—and the game they’d made of arrogant assertions coupled with dares had become all the more exciting.

They’d had two years of stolen visits. All the while, Ginny waited for him to realize that she wasn’t what his parents would call the “right kind of people.” Ginny knew too much of the world to believe that a boy like Simon would marry a girl like her. He was talking about taking articles, becoming a barrister like his father. She was turning her gowns for the third time, and hoping that nobody noticed how badly the pattern had faded. Still, she’d been too much in love to put him off.

And then his parents had found out they’d been seeing each other in secret.

Ginny sighed and shook her head, pushing away those old memories. He was too old to be disciplined by his father now. Simon was watching her carefully, as if no time at all had passed since their clandestine meetings so many years ago. They came up under the oak and stopped, turning to one another.

The leaves were the light green of spring. Everything was different from the day of their summer kiss all those years ago. Almost everything—there was still that sense of charged expectation, that tingling in the palms of her hands.

She had to say something. “You never did become a barrister.”

He shrugged. “Ginny, I’m rude and arrogant. Half the time, I forget myself and curse, and never mind the company. Do you know what would happen if I did that before a judge?”

She couldn’t help herself; she smiled.

“Besides, my father would have expected me to work with him, and after what happened with you…”

“He wasn’t wrong.”

“Devil that,” Simon muttered.

“Your father was right,” Ginny repeated. “When I knew you would be destitute, I told you I was marrying another man. A wealthy man. You can’t argue with that, Simon. It’s a fact.”

Telling Simon he couldn’t argue with something was, she remembered, an exercise in futility. He could argue with a deaf chicken. But this time, even though he glowered, he managed not to say anything back. Finally, he looked heavenward and tried something else. “So. How did marriage suit you?”

“He was a good man,” she told him.

“Old, though.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Thirty-three when I married him. Were it not for his heart, he would still be alive.”

He looked up once more. “God help me for asking this, but…he treated you well?”

Ginny sighed. “He did. He was a good companion.”

His voice lowered. “Was he anything else?”

“If he’d wanted a chaperone,” she said tersely, “he surely would have advertised for one. I was his wife. In every way. And one cannot spend seven years with a man, through sickness and health, without coming to care for him. He was a good friend. He didn’t ask for my love when we married, but he needed my loyalty. You know what his nearest relations were like.”

Simon scowled and kicked up leaves underfoot. “Lovely,” he said.

“But then, that is not what you were asking. What you really want to know was whether I missed you. And I missed you every single day. I tried not to—I didn’t want to be unfaithful in my marriage, even if it was only inside my skin. Nonetheless, on the days when I didn’t think your name, there was an unfillable void inside me. I kept hoping that you would marry so that I would know that what had been between us was over and done. But you didn’t. I went on for years, trying not to think of you.”

He didn’t say anything at all. But he reached out and took her hand, pulling her to him. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest.

“So there you are,” she said, as calmly as she could manage. “That’s the first part of your promise, already come true. I can’t make myself regret those years. But I regret your absence more than you can ever know.”

He was holding her, but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he examined the leaves above them. “I’m going to seduce you today,” he announced.

The game had never had this edge before—this crackling sense of both bitterness and arousal. But no matter how quickly her pulse beat, Ginny made herself speak calmly. “I thought you had granted yourself three days for that. Accelerating the schedule, are you?”

He frowned up at the branches. “No. I need that last day to stomp on your bleeding heart. Don’t forget that.”

“Of course. You need time to properly revel in my abject misery.”

He should have agreed.

Instead, he reached out and laid his fingertips against her cheek. She knew what he’d claimed at the beginning. But what she saw in his eyes…

Simon never did anything by halves. He brought every bit of his bristling, awkward intensity to any task worth doing. And now, he ran his fingers lightly along the curve of her face.

“Come here, Ginny,” he said in a low, laughing tone, “and let me kiss you.”

Her breath seemed too hot for her lungs. His hand left a trail of sparks along her face. She took one step forward, and that was enough for him. His mouth sought hers. She had a moment—so small—to savor the smell of him, before his lips came down on hers and drove all other thoughts away.

There was only Ginny and Simon, and a kiss that had been seven years in the making.

The last time they’d kissed, they’d both been virgins. Eager, willing, lustful virgins, yes—but virgins nonetheless. Even their most heated kisses had been innocent.

There was nothing innocent about the way Simon touched her now. He set his hand in the curve of her spine and pulled her forward until her skirts molded against his legs. He slid his fingers down, down, until he cupped her buttocks, and then he leaned into her and nipped her lower lip.

Ginny let out a gasp, but no sooner had she opened her mouth then his tongue met hers, tasting her, taking her.

He knew just how to touch her this time—one hand pressing her body flush against his, the other drifting up her ribs to settle against the side of her breast, a warm weight not so much giving her pleasure as promising that it was certain to come.

This was a man who knew what he wanted. This was a man who knew what she wanted. And yet there was still a rough edge of irascibility in his kiss. He held her just a fraction too tightly; he scarcely let her breathe. She could almost sense him exulting in her shivers. See, his kiss seemed to say, this is what you missed, all those years.

She’d missed it dreadfully. She’d missed him.

He deepened their kiss, pressing her against the trunk of the oak. Bark met her back; he leaned the weight of his body against her and then kissed his way down her jaw. His fingers, cupping her breast, made little circles. And his form… God, he was a delight, slim and yet muscular. The hard ridge of his erection pushed against her.

“God, Ginny,” he growled against her skin.

She put her hand on his chest and pushed him away—only an inch, but enough to let the cool air flow over her skin, enough to take a deep breath, to try to cleanse her whirling thoughts.

“Don’t even argue,” he said. “I’m having you in my bed tonight.”

She could scarcely think. She was certain—almost certain—that his claims of stomping on her heart were pure balderdash. He had really only ever seemed brash and arrogant on the outside. But she knew him. The more he swaggered, the more uncertain he was feeling.

And the truth was, he had the power to stomp on her heart even if she didn’t take him to bed. She’d proven that to herself seven years ago.

Maybe she was mad. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe it was simply that she couldn’t imagine that a man who had made cuff links in her honor four years past would ever hurt her. She gave him her most brilliant smile. “If you have just forty-eight hours to seduce me, we had better spend as much time as we can in bed.”

Chapter Four

BY THE TIME SIMON crashed through the front door of her house, he was wild with desire.

He didn’t care who saw them—he only knew he wanted her, and he was finally going to have her.

But she conducted him into the front parlor where they’d had tea before. Somehow, she managed to look untouched by lust. Only the sparkle in her eyes and the rough redness of her lips where he’d kissed her gave any hint that she had said they would go to bed.

Would it be churlish to demand that they make their way there now?

She walked to the window and looked out at the tulips. Half the field was denuded now; another wagon was being driven away. She shook her head sadly.

He should have comforted her. He should have reassured her. But truth was, he had nothing to reassure her with. Instead he crossed to the door behind her and locked it.

She must have heard the sound of the key turning, because she smiled. She didn’t protest or turn to him. She drew the curtains, hiding the disappearing flowers behind folds of crepe. And then, slowly, she turned to look at him.

They were both still fully clothed, and yet he felt flushed and exposed. Do this right, his better self admonished. But the rest of his body thrummed in an insistent counterpoint: Do this now.

He closed the distance between them, but she touched him first—setting her hands on his face and pulling him down to her. If there was any more powerful aphrodisiac than the fact that she wanted him, it was her scent, that subtle indefinable sweetness that marked her out among all other women. He kissed her, hard.

Her mouth opened to his with a practiced fluidity. Their kisses had stopped being just kisses; they were promises now, initial payments made on expectation. Her lips bruised his. And her hands on his jaw unleashed a deep-seated hunger: not just for sex, but for her. He felt as if he’d been famished all his life, and had been dropped in the midst of a feast. He wasn’t sure what to try first.

And he wasn’t alone. She undid the buttons of his coat, and then slid her hands around his waist.

It had never been like this when they were younger. He’d wanted her, of course, but her innocence had made her shy, and his had made him awkward. More awkward, at any rate.

There was no shyness in her now. She knew what her body was for, and what a man might do for her. When he slid his hand up her ribs, she sighed and turned her head. When his palm cupped her breast, she exhaled and kissed him harder.

She melted into him as he slipped his thumb beneath her neckline, sliding between her skin and her corset. He found the hardened tip of her nipple, and shivered at that simple, undeniable proof of her arousal. He rolled that nub between his fingers, and she let out a shuddering sigh, pushing against him.

Somehow, over the years, she’d grown comfortable with her own body, with her own pleasure. He wasn’t going to think about how that had happened. It was all the better for him. For them.

For now, he kissed her. Lust built between them, sure and steady, stoked by touch after steady touch. Her hips pressed against his. The curve of her waist fitted into his palm. She belonged there, her legs between his, her arms around him. He wanted it all—the gasp she let out, the tilt of her chin.

God. This should have been his—all his—these past years.

He pulled away from her, but only so that he could reach around to undo her gown. It was held together in back with little hooks and eyes.

“You do that awfully well,” she murmured.

“Hmm?”

“Undoing the back of my gown without looking at what you’re seeing.”

“Do you suppose I was celibate all these years?”

She shook her head.

He’d only been celibate this last year, once he’d heard her husband had died. “I’ve done this before. Often enough that I’ve learned how to take a woman apart.”

Her eyes shivered shut. “Oh, you could do that back then, too.”

“I was referring to your clothing. I didn’t get to do that. Just your stockings, that one time.”

“Mmm.” The last little clasp gave way, and he slid her gown down her shoulders. Her corset was fastened in the back; he undid the laces, and pulled it out of the way. “There we are.” Her chemise clung to her skin, outlining full, sweet breasts. He could see the dark hint of her nipples through the sheer cloth.

He’d never seen her naked. They’d kissed—and more—but they’d stayed on the frustrating side of chaste. Her doing, really; he’d certainly made no great efforts on that front. For all her talk of being a mad Barrett, she’d always been the practical one.

The most he’d managed to see was her legs, and once—on that memorable occasion when he’d removed a stocking—her thighs. Now he wanted everything. Not just her sex, slick and waiting for him, but her breasts, her buttocks, the dimple of her navel, the curve of her spine. He wanted to taste her all over.

And then, as if she knew how best to torment him, she pulled her shift over her head, and let it fall atop the rest of her clothing. His mouth dried. Her nipples were erect; he leaned forward and traced a finger lightly in a circle around one.

She was even more beautiful than he’d imagined. His hand cupped her hip, exploring the curve of her body. The triangle of dark, coarse hair between her legs begged to be touched. Tasted. By dint of pure will, he managed to hold himself back.

“This is some kind of diabolical plan on your part,” he said. “To drive me mad with lust, and then walk away, leaving me in dire pain.”

“Wouldn’t that be perfect?” she responded with a smile. Her eyes shivered shut as he played his fingers up her ribs. “You’ve said that you’ll seduce me and stomp on my heart. Instead, I bring you to the point of begging. Then I walk away, declaring myself the victor.”

His heart almost stopped beating. “Are you going to do that?”

She looked up to the ceiling. “Oh, I’m sure I will,” she said, with an air of unconcern that was rather belied by the flush in her cheeks. “That would be an excellent dastardly plan for me. But it’s all too easy to thwart. You could drive me so mad with desire that I forget to deny you.”

His mouth dried at the image that conjured up. Ginny, spread before him, begging for his touch…

“That would be clever of me,” he managed to get out.

“It would be sneaky and underhanded,” she said. “No, Simon, I’m sure of it now. You have only one chance to rob me of my plan to foil your dastardly revenge.” Her skin was pink and flushed, and her breath had grown quick.

“Quite right,” he said. “I’ll have to bring you unending pleasure. Alas.” He set his hand to his forehead for melodramatic emphasis. “It is the only way.”

“I suppose I must gird myself to suffer through an orgasm for the sake of revenge.”

“Faugh.” Simon traced a sinuous line down her belly. “Who said you’d have only the one?”

Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other in brilliant understanding. The moment stretched.

“Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to start...foiling my foiling of your revenge?”

“No,” he said. “I cannot foil your foiling until you have attempted to foil in the first place. First, you make me beg. Then, and only then, does it make sense for me to make you scream and forget your own name.”

Her eyes grew dark at those words.

“Here’s the thing.” Simon set his hand just below her breast, and leaned in to whisper into her ear. “I’m still wearing all my clothing.”

“Heavens. How remiss of me.”

She set her hands on his wrists and guided him until the back of his legs met the edge of the divan. Her fingers whispered along his cheeks, fluttering down his neck, to touch his lapels.

Simon made a low noise in his throat and reached for her, but she simply shook her head and slowly, slowly stripped his coat off him, pulling his hands far away. Her breasts danced inches away from him—full, tantalizing globes, begging for his touch. It was a Herculean task to keep his hands at his sides, to stay still as she reached down and undid his waistcoat. As she did, her fingers slid across his abdomen—lower, lower, in gentle little caresses. His stomach muscles tensed under her touch, and his member strained against his trousers.

“Lovely,” he said, shutting his eyes. “I feel my revenge foiling already.”

“Foiling is such a limp word.” Her fingers brushed the seam of his trousers. “It makes me think of soft things that collapse. You don’t feel foiled at all.”

“No?” She was undoing his trouser buttons, one by one. He didn’t dare open his eyes. He wasn’t sure he could take in the view. But the lack of sight only heightened his other senses—her light touch against his smallclothes, the brush of fabric as she pulled those down, and then cool air against the head of his cock. “I feel foiled. I feel as if I stand on the very brink of it.”

He kicked off his shoes as he spoke. Ever so slowly, she pushed on his shoulders until he lowered himself onto the divan directly behind him.

“Well.” She arranged herself to sit on the floor in front of him. “I’ll have to see if I can hurry it on.” He wasn’t sure what she had in mind. But he shivered at the brush of her hair against his thighs. He gasped when her breath warmed the head of his penis. Then her mouth closed around him, hot and perfect, and he could not think at all. Her tongue stroked the underside of his erection, and the lust that he’d been holding back could no longer be denied. He reached out to take hold of her shoulders.

“God,” he said. “Ginny, for the love of God.”

She looked up. “What?”

“Don’t stop.”

She didn’t. She was damned good with her mouth, her tongue. Every stroke sent pleasure spearing through him. He had no mind, no nothing, just the sensation of her—her mouth on him, the curves of her shoulders under his hands, the spill of her hair tickling his thighs, and most of all, the moist heat enveloping his cock.

She lifted her head for a moment. “You taste lovely.”

“Nnng,” he managed, before she dipped down and took him again.

“What was that?” came her indistinct murmur.

“Nnng,” he repeated, this time more loudly.

“Come now.” He could feel her lips form the words around the head of his member, whispering them like a kiss. “Surely you can say more than that. I can enunciate, and”—he could scarcely understand her, speaking around him—“my lips are otherwise occupied.”

He gave out a half laugh, half groan. “Talking with your mouth full,” he managed. “In this case, it’s excellent manners. Ah, damn, Ginny. So bloody good. Why did we never do this before?”

She raised her head. “Because I was too good to volunteer, and you were too dumb to ask.”

That about summed everything up. Her hair hung around her shoulders, utterly disheveled. Her mouth was wet and bruised. She was so beautiful, so completely wicked. She leaned down to take him in her mouth again. He stopped her, setting his hand on her chin.

“Ginny,” he said.

“Mmm?” Her eyes were wide, her pupils dark with lust.

“Enough of this talk of revenge and foiling. I just… Can I please make love to you?”

She shifted back an inch. “Simon.”

“I know what I said and I know what I did, but it’s always been you, Ginny.” He loosened his shirt, the only garment she’d left to him. “I want to make love to you. No more pretenses.”

Some part of him waited for her to walk away, to leave him again. He couldn’t bear it if she did. He’d beg, if he had to. But she leaned forward and slid her hands up the muscles of his abdomen, up his chest. Her hands brushed his nipples, and he let out a gasp.

“Oh, Simon,” she whispered. “You’ve never been a pretense.”

He wasn’t sure how they got his shirt off. He wasn’t sure if he pushed her down to the divan, or if she pulled him on top of her. He wasn’t even sure how he got inside her—if it was his impatient thrust or her guiding touch. He only knew that they both wanted it, that they needed it. Then she was clasped around him, and he—after all these years—was seated in her. There was no revenge to it. Just Ginny, giving herself to him freely.

Finally.

She pushed up on her elbows and nipped his shoulder, and he began to move. She was warm. Soft. The intensity of the moment threatened to overwhelm him in a haze of pleasure. She was everything he had ever hoped for. He could feel her clenching around him. Her hips ground against his. He leaned down and took her nipple in his mouth, just to feel her muscles tighten involuntarily about him. And he pushed into her again and again and again, until she cried out, her whole body shaking around him. After that, he took her harder still, thrusting into her until he found his own ecstasy. It burned him to pieces, and he didn’t care.

Afterward, he was almost afraid to break their silence. He played his hand along her face, caressing her cheek, fingering little wisps of her hair. His lips found her jaw, her temple. It seemed almost sacred, this moment—like the first rays of a spring sun hitting the top arch on some pagan monument.

“Look,” he finally said, “as it turns out, I have a special license in my coat pocket.”

She drew in a breath, buried her face in his shoulder and laughed. “Of course you do.”

He stroked her hair. “I have to go back to London in the morning. Will you marry me first?”

“And of course it has to be tomorrow. Not Thursday or Friday, nor a week from now. You never were good at waiting.”

“I’ve waited seven bloody years. I’m done waiting. Marry me.”

She didn’t say anything. He could feel her muscles go from relaxed to tense as she considered the matter.

“And what about revenge?” she finally asked. “I don’t think that was entirely a jest on your part. You’re still unhappy with me.”

“I can’t pretend there is no lingering bitterness.” He reached up and touched her lips gently. “I can’t pretend that I’m not furious about those years I lost. But I wouldn’t be so angry if I didn’t love you so well. I can’t let you walk away again. Not for one day more.”

He shut his eyes. It was true—all of it. He wanted her. He needed her. He wasn’t going to let her go. But his gut clenched with what he wasn’t saying. If he waited any longer, she would find out the truth of his finances. She wouldn’t marry him.

Oh, she’d be furious when she discovered his lies. But at least she’d be his. And just as he knew he’d let go of his own lingering animosity, he knew he could coax her out of hers.

“You came here with a special license,” she said.

He nodded.

“This is madness.”

He nodded.

“If this is madness,” she said, “let nobody ever accuse me of sanity.” And finally, finally, she broke into a grin. “I’ll do it. Oh, Simon,” she said, nestling against him. “I’ve missed you so much. You forgive me?”

“Do that again,” he said, “and I’ll forgive you anything.” But even though he smiled at her, his stomach turned. In a few days, he’d be the one begging her. But for now, she didn’t know.

She simply smiled up at him brilliantly. “Then let’s scandalize Alice,” she said. “Take me up to bed.”

Chapter Five

GINNY WOKE IN HIS ARMS the next morning. He’d been caressing her as she slept—a gentle, sweet rhythm. When she opened her eyes, she was almost surprised at the look on his face: somewhere between stunned and solemn.

“Good morning,” she whispered. It wasn’t just a good morning: It was a great one, great and terrible. She’d agreed to marry him in a matter of some hours.

“See here,” he said. His mouth curled down with the look of a man who had been planning a speech for a while. “I have to say something. I know you don’t love me as much as I do you, but I’m going to change all that. I don’t care how long it takes.” He leaned in and rested his forehead against her shoulder. “You are going to love me.”

For the first time since they’d kissed yesterday, a cold chill ran through her. “You think I don’t love you?”

He snorted. “For Christ’s sake,” he muttered into her shoulder. “You married someone else. What was I supposed to conclude?”

She turned away from him. “That I didn’t want to be poor? That you were threatening to cart me off to Gretna Greene, no matter what I said? I didn’t know how else to stop you. I was in a panic.”

“I wasn’t threatening!” he said. And then, as if he remembered how hot his temper might have run, he threw out: “At least, not seriously. If you loved me enough, the money wouldn’t have mattered!”

He’d said that so many times, and every time, she’d felt a burden of lead collect in her belly. It was an old argument, this one. “I have a horror of being poor,” she said. “It wouldn’t have mattered how much I loved you. It wouldn’t have mattered how much you loved me. Only saints can love through hunger, and neither of us is a saint.”

He sat up, resting on his elbow. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know how I feel. If you loved me the way I loved you—”

She heard herself make an inarticulate cry, and she batted at his questing hand. “No. You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever really been hungry. You’ve never eaten bits of coal out of the refuse pile just to have something in your belly. You’ve never been so cold that you couldn’t sleep at night, and yet hadn’t the strength to shiver. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone. If you’ve not got enough, you resent every scrap that they have and you do not.”

He frowned at her. Her breathing had grown faster; her heart was racing. “We weren’t so poorly off when I was first born. But Papa lost everything, betting on the ’Change when I was eight. And after that… I remember ripping a crust of bread from my elder sister’s hands one time. I was practically an animal.” She shut her eyes. “When she died of diphtheria, I was sad. But part of me, some horrid part of me deep down, thought—‘Good. That means more for me.’”

He was staring at her in consternation now. “You were a child,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the same, now.”

She shook her head and drew her knees up, to curl into a ball. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come to my aunt because my father died, you know. He kept trying to win his money back, and it kept going more and more wrong. At the end, just before I left, a man came one night. I heard him tell my father that he would settle it all if he could just borrow me for a week.” She could feel those old shivers taking her now. “I was ten, but I knew what he meant to do with me. So I left. I slipped out the window while they were arguing, before my father had time to consider how many debts he might put to rest with a ten-year-old’s virtue. It took me two weeks to walk the sixty miles to my aunt’s house. When I arrived, I begged her to take me in. That’s what it means to be poor. I shouldn’t have had to doubt whether my own father would sell me. But love is not stronger than fear.”

She drew a deep breath and looked at him. His eyes were round, fixed on her.

“It doesn’t matter. Just thinking about that—it still makes my stomach hurt. I told you I had a horror of poverty. I didn’t mean that I required silver-plated spoons and liveried footmen. I meant that I fear it, with every part of me. I have an absolute horror of it.”

“You’re shaking.” He put his arms around her. “God,” he said. “You’re cold. You’re so cold.”

His arms were warm. And perhaps he was not the only one who had stored up bitterness, because her next words spilled over from some wounded place, buried deep in her heart.

“You could have waited,” she said. “I asked you to wait. Wait until you had a trade of your own, until you could provide for us without begging your parents. But no. It always had to be now—today, and not tomorrow; this month, and never next year. Don’t tell me I didn’t love you. You weren’t willing to hold off a few years for something that mattered so deeply to me.”

He had grown utterly still as she spoke.

She drew another shuddering breath. “It was not all my fault. It wasn’t.”

“Oh, Ginny.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was just…used to pushing at you. I thought it was just another aspect of the game we always played—my insisting on one thing, and your demanding another.”

“I loved you,” she said. “Just because I knew it was impossible didn’t mean I loved you less. And I hated you for forcing me to choose.”

He was wrapped around her, warm and solid. Their breaths combined in a ragged symphony. As much as it had hurt, it had felt good for Ginny to let out that tightly-controlled emotion, to release it into the air. Every breath she took was charged with the pain she’d buried for so long.

But his arms around her told another story. Yes, they’d hurt one another. But he could still make her feel better.

And then he took a deep, shuddering breath.

She opened her eyes. “But here we are,” she said. “After all these years. Maybe it can still be possible.”

“No.” His voice was quiet. Too quiet. “It can’t. It bloody well can’t. I can’t do this to you.”

She tilted her head. His mouth was set in a grim line; he’d made fists of his hands.

She had been so certain that he’d been joking in the beginning. When he’d threatened to hurt her—he’d never meant it. She gave him a watery smile. “Is this the part where you rip out my heart and stomp on it?” she asked.

“No.” He let out a long, slow breath. “This is the part where I rip out my own. I told you I was a wealthy man. It was...not exactly a lie. But, you see, I’ve made an investment. I’ve mortgaged everything I have to finish a railway line. We’re weeks from completion. If I’d managed it, it would have created a direct line from London to Castingham, the first ever. I would have been richer than I’ve ever dreamed.”

She looked down. “I knew that. I’ve followed your company’s progress in the papers.”

“Ha. There’s something you should know that is not in the papers. There’s a canal owner who wants to stop me. He’s bought a majority of my company. Tomorrow, he’ll record the transfer of shares, and after that, he’ll call a special meeting of the shareholders. It’s only a matter of time until he stops work altogether. I have liens on everything—my home, my business, even my expectations from my father. All of my debts are about to come crashing down on my head. I’ll have to sell my damned cuff links just to make the final payroll. When everything has settled, I’ll be destitute.”

She didn’t know how to describe the emotion that filled her—hard and impossibly prickly. She hadn’t known the extent of his debts. And…he’d believed that he had nothing, and he hadn’t told her?

She was still reeling from this when he spoke again. “That’s why I had to marry you today,” he said flatly. “Not tomorrow or next week. Because if I’d waited even twenty-four hours, the news would have become public. And you wouldn’t have married me.”

She’d buried all her worries next to her heart for so long that they’d become second nature to her. This time, she wasn’t going to let them fester. She didn’t try to hold back how upset she was, didn’t try to smooth it into calm politeness. “You knew I had a horror of poverty, and you were going to trick me into it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s awful.” She was crying, now. She didn’t care if he saw it—she wanted him to know, this time, how furious she was.

“Oh, Ginny.” His thumb traced the tear down her cheek. His hands were still warm.

She still loved him. She could have forgiven recklessness on his part. But to deliberately imply an untruth about the one thing that he knew would matter to her? He’d intended to put her back in the hell she’d gone through before—only this time, he would have bound her into it with matrimony, swallowing any chance of escape. She loved him, but right now her love seemed a painful thing.

“I’ve bungled this so badly,” he said. “God. I’ve made a mess from the start. I wish I’d—I wish I’d done anything except hurt you.”

But he had. He’d hurt her seven years ago, when he’d not listened to her protests. And he’d hurt her again now.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

He’d hurt her, but still he held her through her tears. He held her until her sobs faded to sniffles.

“I’ve made one fortune,” he finally said. “I can make another.”

A new wave of anger hit her, and Ginny looked up. “You still think this is about nothing more than the money? I was crying because my best friend in the entire world lied to me and admitted that he was planning to defraud me. I was crying because I am afraid that I’ve found you only to lose you again. It’s not just about the money. It’s about the fact that you think you can push me into doing whatever it is that you want by any means necessary.”

“It has to be about the money!” he protested. “I can figure out how to make money. I can’t figure out how to make this right.”

She took that in silence, waiting for him to hear what he’d said.

It took only a few heartbeats for his cheeks to grow pale. Then she spoke. “You can’t tell me I don’t have a problem simply because you can’t figure out how to solve it.”

“I know. I know.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I know it all. And I have to go back to London this morning. My things are all at the inn.” He let out a shaky laugh. “I have a fortune to lose on the morrow. I can’t be late. But I can’t leave you like this.”

“Yes,” Ginny said stiffly, “you can.”

He winced, and then stood on shaky legs and took two steps toward the door.

She sniffed. “Put on trousers before you go.”

He stopped, turned, and crossed the room to where his clothing lay in a heap and shook out his shirt. He didn’t say anything as he dressed, but his jaw was squaring once more, with that familiar determination. When he’d pulled his coat on, he turned to her.

“So this is what I have to do. Obtain a massive fortune. Figure out how to stop being such a damned beast, when I’ve been one my whole life.” He nodded. “It basically seems impossible.”

Ginny sniffled again.

He crossed the room to her and then knelt beside her. “I love you,” he said. “And I may have a bloody stupid way of showing it, but I will fix this.”

“It’s not a thing to be fixed,” she said. “Don’t you see?”

He shook his head. “It will be,” he said grimly. “Once I’m done with it.”

He snapped on his ostentatious cuff links. He shouldn’t have looked so handsome in a rumpled cravat and a wrinkled coat. But he did. Her heart hurt, deep inside her.

“You’ll see,” he repeated doggedly. “I’m not sure how, but…” And on that note, he sketched her a short bow and left.

Her whole body seemed to ache in time with the sound of his retreating footsteps. She could run after him, but…

Her bedroom door opened, and Alice bustled through. She stopped at the sight of Ginny, still unclothed, nestled in the sheets. Ginny wiped frantically at her eyes, but the telltale ruddiness in her cheeks gave everything away.

“Well,” her maid said. “That did not go quite according to plan, did it?”

“I was improvising.” Ginny scrubbed at her eyes. “Circumstances rather demanded it.”

Alice frowned. “Are you still going, then? After he made you cry?”

Ginny looked up at the ceiling. All that pain was fading to a dull throb, settling into numbing disbelief. He’d hurt her. He’d made her cry. If he had actually trapped her into marriage under those circumstances, she wasn’t sure if she could ever have forgiven him. But he hadn’t done it.

He’d just wanted to.

But no matter how her mind circled, no matter how her heart ached, she would find no answers sitting in this house waiting placidly for his return.

Ginny let out a resigned breath. “I’m going. How long do I have?”

“If you still mean to board at Anniston, rather than Chester? You’ll have to be out of the house in thirty minutes. Charles is coming with the cart.”

Ginny got out of bed, and Alice came to help her dress. “My valise?” she said, as Alice tightened her corset.

“Is packed downstairs.”

“And the tickets?”

“In the front pocket of the valise, along with your tulip money.”

Twenty pounds. Barely enough to cover the cost of the trip and the deed-stamps.

“Good,” Ginny said. “I’ve got one impossible thing to do. The rest, I suppose, will be up to him.”

Chapter Six

SIMON’S HEAD WAS STILL POUNDING by the time he entered the corporation’s office on Thursday morning. His train had arrived in London late on the previous night, and he’d not been able to sleep until just before dawn. He’d managed a few hours. He could have stayed in bed for days.

But there was nothing to be done for it. He had an appointment with Ridgeway, and if he had to beg the man, he’d beg. Which was why he found himself half tripping over his feet, scarcely awake, and wishing he could be anywhere else. Ridgeway had already arrived. He sat on a bench opposite Simon in the receiving room, arms folded, legs crossed, a glower on his face.

“You always thought you were the clever one,” Ridgeway said. “So. What is it you have to say—”

He squinted up at Simon’s face, and a look of revulsion passed over him.

Simon had no idea how he appeared. He hadn’t cared to look at himself in the mirror. He was sure his eyes were red from lack of sleep.

“Out late last night?” the other man asked caustically.

“Obvious, is it?”

“It must have been quite the celebration.” There was always something angry about the man’s tone—understandably so, as Simon had threatened his profitability. But today, that cranky note seemed all the more heightened. And when he talked of celebration, he hadn’t seemed to mean it sarcastically.

Simon was just beginning to wonder what Ridgeway meant by that when a door opened down the hall, and the company secretary stepped out, followed by Andrew Fortas. Simon stood, but Mr. Teller didn’t look for him. Instead, he turned back into the room, speaking to someone Simon couldn’t quite see. It didn’t make sense; he’d supposed that Ridgeway would already have transferred his shares. If he had, who was that in Teller’s office?

“I’ll get the gentlemen, then?” he heard Teller ask. Fortas went back into the room.

An indistinct response came in reply, and then Teller turned and motioned to the two men. Simon stood and walked toward him, all the more confused. He was scarcely aware of Ridgeway following behind him.

When he turned into the room, his whirling confusion came to a standstill. All emotion seemed to wash from him, leaving him a vessel empty of everything except stunned surprise.

“This,” Mr. Teller was saying, “is Mr. Bagswin, and his client, Mrs. Croswell. Mrs. Croswell, Mr. Bagswin—these are the other main shareholders of Long Northern, Mr. Davenant and Mr. Ridgeway.”

Simon swallowed. “Ginny,” he said. “I mean—Mrs. Croswell. What the devil are you doing here?”

The secretary frowned at his language.

But a small, sad smile played across Ginny’s lips. She looked down and examined her gloves. She seemed quite proper at the moment: respectable, and altogether demure. That, more than anything, convinced him that something was afoot.

“Well.” She brushed some unseen piece of dirt from her gloves and raised her eyes to his. “As you know, Mr. Davenant, I am newly widowed. Having liquidated most of the assets left to me by my husband, and then some—”

He made a choking sound.

“I did tell you of that,” she said innocently. “In fact, you remarked on it yourself. Well, never mind. Having liquidated the assets left by my husband, it seemed prudent to invest. I have always had an interest in railways. And so my solicitor, Mr. Bagswin—”

“Your solicitor,” Simon repeated stupidly.

“My solicitor,” she repeated, “purchased one hundred and thirteen shares of the Long Northern Railway on my behalf.”

“Oh, you little minx,” he said, startled. “You bought my company?”

“Come, Mr. Davenant. You cannot be angry with me. I did tell you when you arrived at my house that you were already checkmated. It is not my fault that you didn’t believe me.”

Angry? It wasn’t anger that made his hands shake. He was just beginning to be able to think, to understand what this all meant. Ridgeway hadn’t wrested control of his company from him. She’d bought enough shares to prevent his ever obtaining a majority. Simon wasn’t ruined.

And that made no sense. “Those shares were purchased before I went to Chester-on-Woolsey. How—why—”

“It was really quite simple.” She looked away from him. “I told you I was still a Barrett—given to mad, foolish financial gestures. I’ve been following your company quite closely. I knew what Mr. Ridgeway was doing. I have a horror of poverty.” She raised her eyes, dark and liquid, to his. “How, then, could I see you in it?”

It took him a moment to comprehend what she had said. Without hope of return, she had sold everything she had to keep him safe. He found himself blinking furiously. Dust. There was too much dust in this damned office.

He crossed the room, ignoring her solicitor and his secretary, and knelt before her.

“You ridiculous creature,” he said. “You—you—”

Her hand ruffled his hair. “The word you are looking for is ‘darling,’” she supplied.

“Yes, that.” He took her hands in his and clasped them hard. He was almost afraid to look up, scared that if he did, he would discover it all to be a lie. He pressed his lips to her palm. “And this one,” he whispered into her fingers. “Sweetest.”

He was dimly aware of her solicitor, gathering everyone up and herding them outside. The door closed and they were alone.

“I’m not certain you deserve it,” Ginny said.

“I’m certain I don’t.”

She smiled at that, but he hadn’t intended it as a jest. He finally understood the truth of it. He’d wanted her—desperately—but his had been a selfish love. He’d wanted her more than he’d wanted to make her happy. All these years, he’d foolishly imagined that he’d loved her better simply because he’d loved her louder.

She’d been right. It wasn’t a thing to fix. There was nothing he could do to make it better. It was a question of who he had to become. Obtaining right-of-ways and the approval of Parliament seemed easy next to this.

He raised his head. “I never wanted to spend all those years yearning for you. But every time I tried to fit some other woman in my heart, I failed. There was no room for anyone else. You were already there.”

Her hands compressed around his, and her eyes shone. “Idiot,” she said with a little sniffle. “You’re going to make me cry. I wasn’t supposed to cry in your corporate office. I had planned to savor my victory.”

“Savor as much as you like. I’m on my knees.” He set his hand against her cheek and rubbed away a tear.

A woman didn’t save a man’s fortune and then lean into his touch without feeling a certain amount of affection. If he wanted, he could have her now for the price of an abject apology. A mere twelve hours ago, he would have grabbed at the chance and not let go. He would have pulled out his special license—somehow, it was still stowed safely in his coat pocket—and suggested they head for the nearest bed, diverting only long enough to get the vicar’s approval.

But he didn’t want her to marry the person who would do that to her.

He couldn’t bear it if Ginny married a man who took her love for granted, who saw her sacrifice as nothing more than proof that he could grab an advantage. That person would hurt her, and hurt her again.

He’d left her crying once. He wasn’t going to let it happen a second time.

“Ginny,” he said. “I want to ask you a question. A very important question.”

She nodded and straightened expectantly.

He adjusted her hands in his, and looked up into her face. “Ginny,” he repeated, “will you do me the very great honor of…”

She had begun to smile. “Of?”

He let out a deep breath. “Of letting me prove that I’m worthy of you.”

Chapter Seven

Another small town, five weeks later

TODAY WAS THE FIRST DAY that Simon had seen Ginny in colors.

She stood almost fifteen feet in the air on a scaffold erected for the occasion, the full yellow skirts of her day gown rippling behind her in the breeze. One of the white ribbons that ringed her fitted sleeve had come untied; it flapped merrily in the wind, in cheery counterpoint to the murmur of the crowd.

Even from twenty feet away, she drew his eye. And it wasn’t just Simon who looked at her. The crowd was massed in the hundreds, and not a one of them was gawking at the steam engine that she was about to christen. They were all watching her.

And no wonder. The sun glinted off her dark hair, framed by her straw bonnet. The rays twinkled against the bottle of champagne that she held over her head. She smiled, and the entire throng seemed to hold its breath alongside Simon.

She was beautiful, lovely, charming, and the wealthy partial owner of the newest direct line to London.

And that was only what one could glean from the surface.

“I hereby declare this line open,” she said. She didn’t speak loudly, but her voice carried over the waiting masses. She smashed the bottle atop the train, and cheers washed over them. Behind them, the engineer gave a long blast of the whistle.

“God,” Andrew Fortas said beside Simon, with a shake of his head. “That woman.”

“That woman,” Simon agreed happily.

One of the many men who was nearby offered her a hand as she descended the scaffolding. No; not just one; four of them held out hands, practically falling over themselves to help her.

“Was that your idea or hers?” Fortas demanded.

Simon looked up. “The champagne was my idea. The rest of this was hers.”

“She’s a holy terror.”

This, Simon suspected, was as close to a compliment as Fortas would ever deliver.

“I know,” Simon said.

She had clambered down to the ground. He couldn’t see anything of her in the milling crowd—nothing except the bobbing silk flowers that adorned her bonnet. But he could mark her passage: The crowd grew dense around her, and people turned to look at her.

He almost felt sorry for the other men—thinking that Ginny was nothing more than a sweet, kind, lovely, wealthy woman. They didn’t know her strength. They didn’t know her stubbornness. And they certainly didn’t know how dangerous it could be when she smiled. By some obscene miracle, Simon had been given the power to make her smile.

He was never going to take it for granted again.

“She’s having you on,” Fortas grumbled. “It’s been weeks, now. How long are you going to have to court her?”

Finally, he caught a glimpse of her. Ten yards distant, but still surrounded by others.

“If I’m lucky,” Simon said, “the rest of my life. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

GINNY COULD TELL the instant that Simon joined the ring of admirers that surrounded her. He didn’t glower at the other men. He didn’t threaten them. He even greeted two of them by name and exchanged pleasantries. Nothing that he did signaled to the other men that he was in possession of her heart.

It was what she did. She could feel herself turn toward him like a lily seeking the sun, opening up in a broad smile.

He stood a few yards away, adjusting his cuffs. As he did so, the little diamond-eyed beetles winked at her, as if the sun were reflecting a secret between just the two of them.

“Well, Mr. Davenant,” Ginny said bravely. “You look tired. Never say the ceremony has worn you out.”

“Not the ceremony. I was up last night watching for a meteor shower.”

“There were meteors showering last night?” She unfolded her fan and waved it languidly across her face. “I heard of no such thing, and I read the astronomical section of the newspaper with regularity.”

The corner of his lip twitched. “You’ll notice I didn’t say I saw any meteors. I was given false information.”

And what deliciously false information it had been. Come watch the meteor showers with me, her note had said. He’d helped her clamber out of her hotel window, much the way he’d helped her escape her bedroom when they were younger. They’d laughed and he’d taken her up a hill, spread out a blanket for her, and they’d lain next to each other, joined only by their fingertips.

There had been no meteors. They’d not even seen a single shooting star. But he’d held her hand and told her jokes. As they lay in the warm night, she’d breathed out the last of her bitterness. They’d made mistakes. They’d hurt one another. But he was still the man she wanted to hold her hand in the dark of night.

“Entrapped by false reports of incoming asteroids,” Ginny said demurely. “How awful. I hope you hold the fellow who misled you accountable.”

He shrugged. “I hope I do, too. Now, would you be willing to come on a walk with me?” He held out his arm to her.

Only her fingertips touched his elbow. But there was no only to it. He was so warm; he drew her eye. He smiled. She smiled. The whole world could see them smiling at each other.

Well. Ginny curled her fingers into the crook of his arm. If the whole world could see them smiling, it could watch them leave together.

He waited until they’d left the crowd behind, until the cobblestone streets of Chapton had given way to a dusty tree-lined track, before he spoke.

“I’ve sold three of my railway lines,” he said.

“No! But why?”

He shrugged. “They’ve been a fabulous investment. They made me my money back one hundred to one. But anything that fabulous is inherently risky. I started thinking, what would happen if Parliament changed its mind about railways? What would happen if it were discovered that the steam engine had a fatal flaw? What if someone invents some way to transport goods more economically by…by, I don’t know, hot air balloons. All my money would be in trains. And then it would be gone.” He glanced at her. “I procured the buyers over the last few weeks. I put almost half of the proceeds into a tinned-goods manufacturer, and another half into the five percents.”

“The five percents.” She stopped and looked at him. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“Because I wanted you to know.” He set his finger under her chin and slowly, slowly tilted her face up. “When you marry me, I want you to know that your future is secure. Always. It’s what I should have offered you from the start: that if you give your heart into my keeping, I will never let you down.”

Ginny swallowed and leaned into the palm of his hand. It wasn’t just her cheek that he warmed; it was all of her, from head to toe. “We’ve both made mistakes.”

“I made a worse one,” he said baldly. “I was so fixed on how much I wanted you that I never stopped to ask myself what you wanted.”

“Surely, I could have—”

“Goddamn it, Ginny. Stop trying to make me feel better.” He touched his thumb to her nose. “Let me apologize to you as you deserve.” His fingers were tracing her face, as if he could pull the curve of her smile into the palm of his hand.

And then he let go of her and got down on his knees. “Ginny,” he said, “I love you. I have always loved you. By some miracle, you appear to…to not be indifferent to me. If you would trust me with your heart, I promise from this moment forward that I will do my best to deserve it.”

“I—”

He held up one hand. “No,” he said. “Don’t answer yet. There’s something I have to show you. Do you know why I wanted to hold the opening ceremony in Chapton?”

“Because it’s halfway between Castingham and London?”

“No. It’s because my parents own a house here. After my father sold the house in Chester-on-Woolsey, he purchased the one here. My father says he’ll give it to me as a wedding present, but first, he insists on meeting the bride. D’you see that iron gate just down the road?”

She hadn’t seen it until this moment. But there it was—set back amongst the trees. Now that he’d pointed it out, the black metal seemed to loom, dark and cold. He was taking her to see his parents. Even though they were adults, even though they had three fortunes between them at this point, that reminder brought back those days so long ago.

He stood and wiped the dust from his knees. “Don’t look so distressed. Four years ago, my father told me, ‘If I had known you were going to mope over her forever, I’d never have kept you apart.’”

Ginny swallowed. “And your mother?”

“She just bumped him in the arm and said, ‘I told you so.’ They want grandchildren.” He gave her a tight smile. “Besides, they manage to tolerate even me. Once they know you, they’ll adore you. You’ll see. I wouldn’t have asked you to come here if I believed you would be hurt.”

“I’m not scared,” Ginny said brashly.

“Of course you’re not.” He took her hand and swung it in the air. “Come. I have something to show you.”

A path led from the road, through the gate. It traveled over a little wooden bridge, past tuffets of sheep-cropped grass and a ragged copse of trees, before ending in a well-trimmed hedge.

She’d expected a formal garden. But once inside the hedge, she saw only beds of dirt alongside the path, dark and rich and newly turned.

Some twenty yards away was a good-sized cottage; two stories, with neat white shutters over the windows and morning glory climbing up to the eaves. Pink and yellow rosebuds peeked out from glossy green bushes planted near its walls—indications that once there had been gardens here. But all other vegetation had disappeared.

At least it had for the present. A white-haired man sat on a bench beside a trowel and a burlap sack.

“Good morning, Father,” Simon said.

The man turned, and his face creased into a smile. “Simon. You managed to convince her to come. Miss… well, it’s not Miss Barrett any longer, is it? Mrs. Croswell. I would offer you my hand, but…” He held up the trowel, and showed her his dirty gardening gloves. “I was just finishing pulling the last of the primroses.”

He was going to be her father-in-law. She would see him at holidays. It was best if they started off right.

“By the by, Mrs. Croswell,” the elder Mr. Davenant offered, “you can have no idea how terribly sorry I am for what I did. In my defense, I believed it was nothing more than calf-love.”

“From Simon?” Ginny smiled. “Surely you knew that even at nineteen, he was too bullheaded to be a mere calf.”

His eyes twinkled at her. “I was still hoping, back then, that he’d grow past that. If I had known how difficult he would prove to be, I would have shoved him at you straight away and wished you well of him. But then, England wouldn’t have had its finest railways constructed, so I suppose it’s all for the best.”

Their eyes met. They shared a tentative smile. And in that moment, Ginny knew it was going to be well. They could be friends. They could share in a teasing affection.

“What are you planting?”

“Oh, these?” He looked down at the burlap sack. “Well, Simon. You’d better be the one to explain, as you won’t let me help.”

Simon upended the sack and wordlessly let its contents spill across the path. Ginny would have known those smooth, papery roots anywhere. It felt as if a giant fist closed gentle fingers around her heart.

“Tulip bulbs?” she asked.

“There are three more sacks in the carriage house, and what I had to do to find this many bulbs in early summer…” He gave her an easy smile, but there was a flicker of something deeper in his eyes. “I’ve been planting them, these last days.”

She took a breath, but her lungs couldn’t quite seem to contract properly.

He picked up a bulb. “You told me that the tulips at Barrett’s Folly made you think of madness—of money tossed away without thought for the future.”

His voice had grown a touch raspy. She turned to him.

“I was hoping that when you saw these, you would have different memories.” He took her hands in his. “I’m not done with it yet. But I planted every bulb with my own hands. And with every one, I make a promise. I promise that from here on forward, I will guard you from your darkest fears. I will keep you safe. I will hold you dear to me.”

Her eyes stung, and Ginny found herself blinking rapidly.

“You were right,” he said. “The lady always wins.”

“The lady,” Ginny said, reaching out to him, “can share.”

He took her hand. “I know. That’s why you should always win. Ginny, will you marry me?”

The tulip bulbs were strewn around them. Their hands were connected over fertile soil, rife with promise.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. A million times yes.”

Epilogue

ON THE GLORIOUS MORNING three and a half weeks later when Simon finally made her his, he could think of nothing but his bride.

He scarcely noticed the blue and cloudless sky, nor the white stone of the church when he entered. He didn’t take note of the decorated chapel, of the sheaves of tulips that adorned the pedestals, or the petals that had been strewn down the aisles. It was the wedding of the Season, but he barely realized that his guests were streaming in. Instead, he focused on the doors where his bride would enter.

He almost couldn’t quite believe she would be here.

When the organ began playing, and the crowd rose, his whole heart swelled. And when she entered... Ah, sweet Ginny. She wore a gold gown of watered silk, swept up in complicated bows and flounces. She carried a simple bouquet of yellow tulips. And she came down the aisle, slowly, to stand before him.

He could scarcely breathe.

And then, she gave him a smile—a long, slow, mischievous smile that brought him back from the heavens opening up to angelic choirs. By the time the vicar made his way through the meandering ceremony, he’d remembered again and again why he most loved her—why nobody else had ever been able to complete him as she had.

And so when he spoke his vows, he didn’t just blurt them out. Just because the words were part of a sacred ceremony didn’t mean that they couldn’t be part of a game, too.

“With this ring,” he said, as solemnly as he could manage. “I thee wed.”

The emphasis was intentional. He hadn’t consulted her on the ring. He hadn’t even so much as made mention of it, and she’d simply trusted the details to him.

She should have known better. He pulled out a ring with an entirely too-realistic beetle on it, large, ostentatious stones set like bulbous orbs in its head. Her eyes widened.

To give her credit, she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even pull her hand away. She just met his eyes in a silent dare: If you put that thing on me, so help me, I will…

Just because he’d put her first didn’t mean he couldn’t tease her a little. He’d practiced hiding the real ring in the palm of his hand for days. He slipped the weight onto her finger, and when she took her hand from his, she found he’d placed a single, perfect gold band on it instead.

Her only response was a faint, relieved huff and a twitch of her lip.

With one raise of her eyebrow, she let him know that he’d won this round—but that she’d be back for more. A lifetime of more.

Simon could hardly wait.

Thank you!

Thanks for reading The Lady Always Wins. I hope you enjoyed it!

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If you’d like to read an excerpt from The Duchess War, the first full-length book in the Brothers Sinister series, please turn the page.

The Duchess War: Excerpt

The Duchess War

available now

Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last time she was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don’t get trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention.

But that is precisely what she gets…

Excerpt from Chapter One:

ROBERT BLAISDELL, THE NINTH DUKE OF CLERMONT, was not hiding.

True, he’d retreated to the upstairs library of the old Guildhall, far enough from the crowd below that the noise of the ensemble had faded to a distant rumble. True, nobody else was about. Also true: He stood behind thick curtains of blue-gray velvet, which shielded him from view. And he’d had to move the heavy davenport of brown-buttoned leather to get there.

But he’d done all that not to hide himself, but because—and this was a key point in his rather specious train of logic—in this centuries-old structure of plaster and timberwork, only one of the panes in the windows opened, and that happened to be the one secreted behind the sofa.

So here he stood, cigarillo in hand, the smoke trailing out into the chilly autumn air. He wasn’t hiding; it was simply a matter of preserving the aging books from fumes.

He might even have believed himself, if only he smoked.

Still, through the wavy panes of aging glass, he could make out the darkened stone of the church directly across the way. Lamplight cast unmoving shadows on the pavement below. A pile of handbills had once been stacked against the doors, but an autumn breeze had picked them up and scattered them down the street, driving them into puddles.

He was making a mess. A goddamned glorious mess. He smiled and tapped the end of his untouched cigarillo against the window opening, sending ashes twirling to the paving stones below.

The quiet creak of a door opening startled him. He turned from the window at the corresponding scritch of floorboards. Someone had come up the stairs and entered the adjoining room. The footsteps were light—a woman’s, perhaps, or a child’s. They were also curiously hesitant. Most people who made their way to the library in the midst of a musicale had a reason to do so. A clandestine meeting, perhaps, or a search for a missing family member.

From his vantage point behind the curtains, Robert could only see a small slice of the library. Whoever it was drew closer, walking hesitantly. She was out of sight—somehow he was sure that she was a woman—but he could hear the soft, prowling fall of her feet, pausing every so often as if to examine the surroundings.

She didn’t call out a name or make a determined search. It didn’t sound as if she were looking for a hidden lover. Instead, her footsteps circled the perimeter of the room.

It took Robert half a minute to realize that he’d waited too long to announce himself. “Aha!” he could imagine himself proclaiming, springing out from behind the curtains. “I was admiring the plaster. Very evenly laid back there, did you know?”

She would think he was mad. And so far, nobody yet had come to that conclusion. So instead of speaking, he dropped his cigarillo out the window. It tumbled end over end, orange tip glowing, until it landed in a puddle and extinguished itself.

All he could see of the room was a half-shelf of books, the back of the sofa, and a table next to it on which a chess set had been laid out. The game was in progress; from what little he remembered of the rules, black was winning. Whoever it was drew nearer, and Robert shrank back against the window.

She crossed into his field of vision.

She wasn’t one of the young ladies he’d met in the crowded hall earlier. Those had all been beauties, hoping to catch his eye. And she—whoever she was—was not a beauty. Her dark hair was swept into a no-nonsense knot at the back of her neck. Her lips were thin and her nose was sharp and a bit on the long side. She was dressed in a dark blue gown trimmed in ivory—no lace, no ribbons, just simple fabric. Even the cut of her gown bordered on the severe side: waist pulled in so tightly he wondered how she could breathe, sleeves marching from her shoulders to her wrists without an inch of excess fabric to soften the picture.

She didn’t see Robert standing behind the curtain. She had set her head to one side and was eyeing the chess set the way a member of the Temperance League might look at a cask of brandy: as if it were an evil to be stamped out with prayer and song—and failing that, with martial law.

She took one halting step forward, then another. Then, she reached into the silk bag that hung around her wrist and retrieved a pair of spectacles.

Glasses should have made her look more severe. But as soon as she put them on, her gaze softened.

He’d read her wrongly. Her eyes hadn’t been narrowed in scorn; she’d been squinting. It hadn’t been severity he saw in her gaze but something else entirely—something he couldn’t quite make out. She reached out and picked up a black knight, turning it around, over and over. He could see nothing about the pieces that would merit such careful attention. They were solid wood, carved with indifferent skill. Still, she studied it, her eyes wide and luminous.

Then, inexplicably, she raised it to her lips and kissed it.

Robert watched in frozen silence. It almost felt as if he were interrupting a tryst between a woman and her lover. This was a lady who had secrets, and she didn’t want to share them.

The door in the far room creaked as it opened once more.

The woman’s eyes grew wide and wild. She looked about frantically and dove over the davenport in her haste to hide, landing in an ignominious heap two feet away from him. She didn’t see Robert even then; she curled into a ball, yanking her skirts behind the leather barrier of the sofa, breathing in shallow little gulps.

Good thing he’d moved the davenport back half a foot earlier. She never would have fit the great mass of her skirts behind it otherwise.

Her fist was still clenched around the chess piece; she shoved the knight violently under the sofa.

This time, a heavier pair of footfalls entered the room.

“Minnie?” said a man’s voice. “Miss Pursling? Are you here?”

Her nose scrunched and she pushed back against the wall. She made no answer.

“Gad, man.” Another voice that Robert didn’t recognize—young and slightly slurred with drink. “I don’t envy you that one.”

“Don’t speak ill of my almost-betrothed,” the first voice said. “You know she’s perfect for me.”

“That timid little rodent?”

“She’ll keep a good home. She’ll see to my comfort. She’ll manage the children, and she won’t complain about my mistresses.” There was a creak of hinges—the unmistakable sound of someone opening one of the glass doors that protected the bookshelves.

“What are you doing, Gardley?” the drunk man asked. “Looking for her among the German volumes? I don’t think she’d fit.” That came with an ugly laugh.

Gardley. That couldn’t be the elder Mr. Gardley, owner of a distillery—not by the youth in that voice. This must be Mr. Gardley the younger. Robert had seen him from afar—an unremarkable fellow of medium height, medium-brown hair, and features that reminded him faintly of five other people.

“On the contrary,” young Gardley said. “I think she’ll fit quite well. As wives go, Miss Pursling will be just like these books. When I wish to take her down and read her, she’ll be there. When I don’t, she’ll wait patiently, precisely where she was left. She’ll make me a comfortable wife, Ames. Besides, my mother likes her.”

Robert didn’t believe he’d met an Ames. He shrugged and glanced down at—he was guessing—Miss Pursling to see how she took this revelation.

She didn’t look surprised or shocked at her almost-fiancé’s unromantic utterance. Instead, she looked resigned.

“You’ll have to take her to bed, you know,” Ames said.

“True. But not, thank God, very often.”

“She’s a rodent. Like all rodents, I imagine she’ll squeal when she’s poked.”

There was a mild thump.

“What?” yelped Ames.

“That,” said Gardley, “is my future wife you are talking about.”

Maybe the fellow wasn’t so bad after all.

Then Gardley continued. “I’m the only one who gets to think about poking that rodent.”

Miss Pursling pressed her lips together and looked up, as if imploring the heavens. But inside the library, there were no heavens to implore. And when she looked up, through the gap in the curtains…

Her gaze met Robert’s. Her eyes grew big and round. She didn’t scream; she didn’t gasp. She didn’t twitch so much as an inch. She simply fixed him with a look that bristled with silent, venomous accusation. Her nostrils flared.

There was nothing Robert could do but lift his hand and give her a little wave.

She took off her spectacles and turned away in a gesture so regally dismissive that he had to look twice to remind himself that she was, in fact, sitting in a heap of skirts at his feet. That from this awkward angle above her, he could see straight down the neckline of her gown—right at the one part of her figure that didn’t strike him as severe, but soft—

Save that for later, he admonished himself, and adjusted his gaze up a few inches. Because she’d turned away, he saw for the first time a faint scar on her left cheek, a tangled white spider web of crisscrossed lines.

“Wherever your mouse has wandered off to, it’s not here,” Ames was saying. “Likely she’s in the lady’s retiring room. I say we go back to the fun. You can always tell your mother you had words with her in the library.”

“True enough,” Gardley said. “And I don’t need to mention that she wasn’t present for them—it’s not as if she would have said anything in response, even if she had been here.”

Footsteps receded; the door creaked once more, and the men walked out.

Miss Pursling didn’t look at Robert once they’d left, not even to acknowledge his existence with a glare. Instead, she pushed herself to her knees, made a fist, and slammed it into the hard back of the sofa—once, then twice, hitting it so hard that it moved forward with the force of her blow—all one hundred pounds of it.

He caught her wrist before she landed a third strike. “There now,” he said. “You don’t want to hurt yourself over him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

She stared up at him, her eyes wide.

He didn’t see how any man could call this woman timid. She positively crackled with defiance. He let go of her arm before the fury in her could travel up his hand and consume him. He had enough anger of his own.

“Never mind me,” she said. “Apparently I’m not capable of helping myself.”

He almost jumped. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected her voice to sound—sharp and severe, like her appearance suggested? Perhaps he’d imagined her talking in a high squeak, as if she were the rodent she’d been labeled. But her voice was low, warm, and deeply sensual. It was the kind of voice that made him suddenly aware that she was on her knees before him, her head almost level with his crotch.

Save that for later, too.

“I’m a rodent. All rodents squeal when poked.” She punched the sofa once again. She was going to bruise her knuckles if she kept that up. “Are you planning to poke me, too?”

“No.” Stray thoughts didn’t count, thank God; if they did, all men would burn in hell forever.

“Do you always skulk behind curtains, hoping to overhear intimate conversations?”

Robert felt the tips of his ears burn. “Do you always leap behind sofas when you hear your fiancé coming?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “Didn’t you hear? I’m like a book that has been mislaid. One day, one of his servants will find me covered in dust in the middle of spring-cleaning. ‘Ah,’ the butler will say. ‘That’s where Miss Wilhelmina has ended up. I had forgotten all about her.’”

Wilhelmina Pursling? What a dreadful appellation.

She took a deep breath. “Please don’t tell anyone. Not about any of this.” She shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Please just go away, whoever you are.”

He brushed the curtains to one side and made his way around the sofa. From a few feet away, he couldn’t even see her. He could only imagine her curled on the floor, furious to the point of tears.

“Minnie,” he said. It wasn’t polite to call her by so intimate a name. And yet he wanted to hear it on his tongue.

She didn’t respond.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes,” he said. “If I don’t see you downstairs by then, I’ll come up for you.”

For a few moments, there was no answer. Then: “The beautiful thing about marriage is the right it gives me to monogamy. One man intent on dictating my whereabouts is enough, wouldn’t you think?”

He stared at the sofa in confusion before he realized that she thought he’d been threatening to drag her out.

Robert was good at many things. Communicating with women was not one of them.

“That’s not what I meant,” he muttered. “It’s just…” He walked back to the sofa and peered over the leather top. “If a woman I cared about was hiding behind a sofa, I would hope that someone would take the time to make sure she was well.”

There was a long pause. Then fabric rustled and she looked up at him. Her hair had begun to slip out of that severe bun; it hung around her face, softening her features, highlighting the pale whiteness of her scar. Not pretty, but…interesting. And he could have listened to her talk all night.

She stared at him in puzzlement. “Oh,” she said flatly. “You’re attempting to be kind.” She sounded as if the possibility had never occurred to her before. She let out a sigh, and gave him a shake of her head. “But your kindness is misplaced. You see, that—” she pointed toward the doorway where her near-fiancé had disappeared “—that is the best possible outcome I can hope for. I have wanted just such a thing for years. As soon as I can stomach the thought, I’ll be marrying him.”

There was no trace of sarcasm in her voice. She stood. With a practiced hand, she smoothed her hair back under the pins and straightened her skirts until she was restored to complete propriety.

Only then did she stoop, patting under the sofa to find where she’d tossed the knight. She examined the chessboard, cocked her head, and then very, very carefully, set the piece back into place.

While he was standing there, watching her, trying to make sense of her words, she walked out the door.

Want to read the rest? The Duchess War is available now.

Other Books by Courtney

The Brothers Sinister Series

The Governess Affair

The Duchess War

A Kiss for Midwinter

The Heiress Effect — mid-2013

The Countess Conspiracy — late-2013

The Mistress Rebellion — 2014

Not in any series

What Happened at Midnight

The Lady Always Wins

The Turner Series

Unveiled

Unlocked

Unclaimed

Unraveled

The Carhart Series

This Wicked Gift

Proof by Seduction

Trial by Desire

Author’s Note

USUALLY I WRITE about real places. But there are no such places as Chester-on-Woolsey, Anniston, Castingham, or Chapton. There is no Prince’s Canal, either. I made up locations because the British railway timeline didn’t fit my fictional needs. I either had to change history or change geography; I chose the latter.

But this story is still based on historical events. The 1840s in England saw fortunes being made (and lost) on railways, and there was a lot of animosity between competing methods of transportation. Canal owners and railway owners clashed, but there was also a good bit of railway-on-railway hostility. (“Railway-on-railway” sounds so dirty.)

In 1846, the railway bubble collapsed. Simon’s decision to diversify came at precisely the right time. But for those who might worry about it, in my version of Britain, Simon and Ginny’s company survived the collapse of the bubble—as did many of the major arterial connections.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Carey (my Carey), Silvs, and the Dog of the Week™, for emotional support and not complaining about all the paper everywhere. Robin Harders and Martha Trachtenberg, thanks for the editing. And Leigh, Tessa, and Carey (Bill’s Carey)—for everything.

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The Lady Always Wins: © 2012 by Courtney Milan.

Cover design © 2013 Courtney Milan.

Cover photograph © Mircea Bezergheanu | shutterstock.com.

Digital Edition 1.0

All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.

Table of Contents

Title Page

-Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Thank you!

The Duchess War: Excerpt

Other Books by Courtney

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Copyright