Chapter One
Lady Charity Pemberton breathed deeply of the crisp wintry air.
There was a touch of the scent of the sea to it, for Oakmoor Chase was close to the coast, a vast estate of forest and moor, which ran from rolling hills to dramatic sea cliffs.
It was beautiful, in a stark kind of way.
Above her, sea birds wheeled through the clouded sky, crying their mournful cries.
She felt a kinship with them, as if they cried for what they would never have, as she had often done.
She shook her head. She should not be maudlin – the day was beautiful, she had already found a number of wonderful feathers, and it was nearing Christmas.
The fact that she was at a Christmas House Party, where she knew no one else, and at which her mother desperately hoped she would attract the attention of the Duke strongly enough to get him to court her, should not be allowed to spoil her pleasure in the day.
Determination filled her. She would do her best. She needed to marry well, if she possibly could, for her family was, although titled, rather poor.
Still, the thought of conversing with the Duke sent chills through her.
She was hopeless at acceptable social conversation – she was far too honest, too blunt, too prone to answering questions before considering what would be the most polite thing to say.
And, whilst she was by no means ugly, she was not beautiful – she was, instead, ordinary, and only stood out in company because of her dreadful dark red hair.
She pushed those thoughts aside with a sigh – there was nothing she could do to change any of it.
Both sides of the lane she was walking down were lined by high hedges of holly bushes, blocking the view of the fields beyond.
The ground beneath her feet was crusted with frost, which crunched at every step, but there had been no snow for days.
Ahead of her, she could see that the lane turned, but she could see no further than that bend.
She would, she supposed, discover what was there, as soon as she reached that spot – but right now, she stopped – for, caught in the prickly leaves of the bushes, high up, was a magnificent, brilliantly white feather – from a gull, she suspected.
She carefully set down her small, covered basket, and stepped as close to the hedge as she could, without suffering too many pricklings from the leaves, and reached up for the feather.
She was too short. Her fingertips were still inches below it.
She tried jumping, but her pelisse snagged on the leaves, and she nearly fell.
Carefully untangling herself, she tried again.
She still failed to capture the feather, but this time, as she dropped back towards the ground, she collided with something, hard.
*****
Rafe had risen before dawn, and slipped out of the house to walk across the fields, and along the cliffs.
The crisp air shocked him fully awake, and sight of the dawn above the sea was familiar and reassuring, reminding him that beauty still existed, naturally.
A reminder he needed when he currently had a house full of young ladies whose beauty was so artificial as to seem almost theatrical.
Now, he was striding down the lane, going back towards the house.
If he was not visible in the breakfast room soon, his mother would nag at him again.
It was his own fault, he supposed – he had vowed to her that he would find a woman to marry by this Christmas, but the year had gone by alarmingly fast, and here he was, still not betrothed, and therefore holding this damned house party.
Just the thought of it ruffled the calm he had achieved. He walked faster, almost charging around the bend in the lane – and ran straight into something – someone… instinctively, his arms went out, to catch whoever it was.
And that made it instantly apparent that it was a woman.
Her back was to him, and his arms had ended up around her waist. The front of the skirts of her pelisse seemed to be entangled in the hedge, and her rather plain bonnet was askew on her head.
That fact revealed a mass of curling dark red hair which was quite magnificent. Which also tickled his nose.
He moved, carefully adjusting his grip on her, and reached out with one hand to untangle her skirts from the hedge. Thus released, she turned in his arms, which meant that she was almost pressed against him, face to face.
Deep violet toned eyes met his. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. There was nothing artificial about the face before him. No cosmetics enhanced it – it was perfect, just as it was.
Her lips, as naturally dark red as that hair, parted in surprise, and she blushed. He should release her – such an intimate hold on an unchaperoned young woman he did not know was well and truly beyond the bounds of propriety.
But he did not. Instead, he had the shocking urge to kiss those lips which were so very close to his.
“I… I’m sorry… I was… I fell…”
Her voice was as natural and beautiful as the rest of her. But it jolted him out of his daze, and he rapidly released her, first making sure that she was stable on her feet.
He stepped back a pace, putting a safe distance between them. A tiny frown crossed her brow, as if she had not wished him to move – but that was a silly conceit – no woman would want to be unceremoniously manhandled in a country lane.
“There’s no need to apologise. I was thinking, walking too fast, and not looking where I was going. I am sure that you would have been quite all right if I had not collided with you.”
She blushed again, and turned her eyes away from him for a moment.
“If I had not been distracted, I might have seen you coming, rather than being in a position to be collided with.”
He looked at her – distracted? What did she mean? What had she been doing? There was nothing here but the frosted ground of the lane, and the high hedges bordering it.
“Distracted? What were you doing, that distracted you, and got your skirts caught in the hedge?”
She blushed again, a deep red, seeming intensely embarrassed, then lifted a hand to point upwards. At first, he had no idea what she was pointing at – then he realised that there was something white, stuck amongst the leaves, quite high up.
“I… I was trying to reach the feather. Sadly, I am too short to do so – and being holly, it’s not the sort of hedge I can scramble into…”
Rafe felt his eyebrow rise – why would she want a feather? But he did not ask – it was none of his business, and if the Lady wanted a feather, there was no reason she shouldn’t have it. He reached up, carefully extracted it from the prickly leaves, and presented it to her with a bow.
She took it with a curtsey.
“Thank you. I… I’ll be on my way now. I am sorry for disrupting your walk.”
She scooped up a small, covered basket, which he had not noticed until that moment, slipped the feather into it, and set off down the lane. He stood and watched her go, bemused, and more than a little intrigued.
She rounded the bend and disappeared from his view.
He had no idea who she was. And suddenly, that felt like a bad thing.
He shook his head, and set off again, walking as fast as he could, but now paying far more attention to his surroundings.
*****
Charity stopped as soon as she had gone a little way past the bend in the lane.
She was shaking.
That had been… she was almost certain that had been… the Duke. The man whose house party she was attending, with her mother. The man her mother hoped would find her so attractive that he would want to marry her.
And he had discovered her leaping about in a country lane like a small child, chasing a feather. She was mortified.
It was bad enough that she was plain, that they couldn’t afford a better quality of gowns for her, that she was awkward in social situations, but now, she’d made the kind of first impression on a man which almost certainly guaranteed that he would find her laughable.
No one understood why she collected feathers – in fact, almost no one knew that she did.
Nor did they know what she did with them.
For what she did was perilously unrespectable, for it amounted to partaking in trade. The fact that the money she made from it was necessary to their survival at times did not make it any better. In the eyes of the ton, if it became known, she would be a pariah.
Once the shakes settled, she walked on, taking her time before returning to the house, lest she come across him again.
At least he had not mocked her for her childishness in seeking a feather, or her foolishness in getting herself caught on the hedge.
And he was, of a certainty, the most handsome man she had ever seen.
His attire had been of the best, yet simple, of plain colours and sturdy construction. And that moment when his eyes had met hers, as she stood in the circle of his arms - just the memory of it made her blush again.
He had looked at her as if he found her desirable. Which was quite the most wonderful thing which had ever happened to her.
She laughed at the thought. It had been disastrous, and wonderful, all at the same time. But she had best make sure that she was perfectly presented this afternoon, that she pretended their meeting had never occurred, and that she prayed he did not tell others of it, as an anecdote to laugh about.
That thought made her shiver with fear.
Her family depended on her – she had to marry well, and soon, or, after two years of poor crops, their crippling debts would become impossible.
Her father was far older than her mother, and an invalid – if she did not marry before he died, she was not at all sure what would become of them.
Yet… most men frightened her, in one way or another.
Some were overbearing, arrogant and domineering, others were foppish, strange in their habits, and quite disturbingly odd.
She needed to find a man who was not only someone she could countenance spending time with, but one who would not mind the near vanishing smallness of her dowry, and one who might help support her mother, when her father’s inevitable death arrived and his title, as well as all but a few properties, went to her uncle.
She turned, and made her way back in the direction of the house, finding another three feathers along the way, and determinedly set her mind to forgetting all about being held in the Duke’s arms.
*****
The breakfast room was full. He felt as if his mother had invited every unmarried woman in the ton to this House Party.
They fluttered about, all watching for any chance to place themselves in his path.
Their mothers and fathers watched them, hopeful.
The other men who attended – mainly brothers of the women, and a few who were actually his friends – watched the women, attempting, he suspected, to ascertain which ones Rafe wasn’t interested in, so that they might consider them for themselves.
It made eating a peaceful breakfast an impossibility.
There was no way to eat even something so simple as toast and marmalade, and still carry on vaguely polite conversation.
So he said as little as possible – let them think him rude – and escaped to his study as soon as he could, despite the glare his mother gave him as he left the breakfast room.