County Durham

31 October 1812

Catherine Williams gazed down the empty drive of her uncle’s house, watching through her bedroom window for a rider she knew would never arrive. She had done the same nearly every evening since Nicholas had left for the Peninsula to join his regiment, tall and handsome in his officer’s uniform. She had wanted them to marry before he left, even wept and clung to him, but Nicholas had stood firm—they would marry when Napoleon was defeated, and not one moment sooner.

Once the news had come from Badajoz, she had made a feeble attempt to break the habit of watching for him, but still she found herself sitting at her window night after night, long past the time when hope that the report of his death was wrong should have faded.

The setting sun turned the landscape a fiery orange as thick fog rolled in from the distance, swallowing the bare trees one by one. It was perfect for All Hallows’ Eve, when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest.

But still the fog crept closer and closer, blotting out any path for Nicholas to return to her even if he had still been alive. She envisioned it smothering the sharp flare of her grief in a chilly blanket that would help her get through the evening without him, and all of the other evenings that would follow.

A brisk tap on her door made her jump and turn to see her aunt Lavinia enter the room. Lavinia stopped and clucked at Catherine, the plumes rising from the older woman’s headdress only enhancing her resemblance to a particularly fancy breed of hen.

“Why are you still staring out that window? Your grandmama is asking to see you.”

“Yes, Aunt Lavinia.”

Catherine held back a sigh and rose from her seat, glancing at the empty drive one last time. Soon it would be filled with the carriages of the local nobility and gentry arriving for the annual All Hallows’ Eve ball, even though the lady in whose honor it was being held was laying in her bed close to death herself. Grandmama had insisted that they hold the ball one last time, though no one’s heart was really in it but hers.

Catherine straightened the harness that supported her feathered wings and followed her aunt down the corridor to her grandmother’s room. The silver-gilt halo on Catherine’s head bobbed with every step, but a quick check with her hand showed that it was securely fastened to her braided hair.

Outside Grandmama’s bedroom door, Lavinia scanned Catherine with a critical gaze. “Pinch some color into your cheeks. You look like a ghost, not an angel.”

When Catherine didn’t move, Lavinia reached up and did it for her.

“Ow!”

“Not much better, but it will have to do. And smile, girl. Remember, we announce your betrothal at midnight.”

Catherine wished she could forget that, but Lavinia was already knocking softly on the bedroom door. It was opened by Grandmama’s longtime lady’s maid, Yarrow, who was nearly as ancient as her mistress but whose frown was still a formidable weapon.

“Her ladyship is resting.”

“She asked me to bring Catherine so she could see her in her costume.”

Yarrow looked around Lavinia and spared a tiny smile for Catherine. “Very well. But only for a minute.”

She stood aside, and Catherine followed Lavinia to her grandmother’s bedside.

“How are you feeling today, Lady Margery?” Lavinia asked her mother-in-law in a voice that fairly dripped treacle.

“I’m dying,” the old woman said. “How do you think I feel?” She looked beyond Lavinia and her drawn face lit with a smile as she saw Catherine. A faint echo of her once legendary beauty still shone through the lines of her pain-drawn face. “Come here, child.”

Catherine approached the bed and bent to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. The skin was as fine and frail as a piece of parchment. “Are you in much pain, Grandmama?”

“It’s not so terrible today,” Lady Margery said. “But I won’t have to wait much longer now. John has come for me.”

Both Catherine and Lavinia glanced at the large portrait that hung opposite Lady Margery’s bed. A lighted candle on each side made the image shimmer in the darkened room as if the man portrayed there still breathed. He looked down his nose at them, but behind the haughty expression, his brown eyes were lit with humor. The scandalous romance between Lady Margery, the impoverished daughter of an Irish peer, and the Earl of Westcott had been one of the most celebrated of its day with its rumors of duels and elopements, but after their scandalous marriage, the couple had settled into a cozy domesticity that produced six healthy children before Westcott’s untimely death. Lady Margery had never remarried, keeping faith with her late husband for over thirty years and guiding her children as best she could, including Catherine’s mother. When Catherine’s parents had died of a fever when she was only twelve years old, Lady Margery had insisted that Catherine come live with her at the dower house and had enfolded her orphaned granddaughter in her loving, if sometimes acerbic, warmth.

Now her grandmother was nearly gone, too, and Catherine wondered if she would ever find love in this world again.

She looked back at Lady Margery and realized that her grandmother was not looking at the portrait at all. Instead, the old woman’s hand gestured to the most shadowed corner of the room.

“He says it’s time for me to go, but I have one last thing to do. Yes, I’ve become a stubborn, interfering old woman, my dear, just as you warned I would.” This was addressed not to Catherine, but to the corner, and Catherine realized her grandmother was talking to her long-dead husband as though he were really standing there. The shadows moved as the candles flickered, and Lady Margery laughed a low laugh, as though she had heard a response.

Instead of being frightened, it made Catherine… envious. “I wish… I wish I believed I would see Nicholas again the way you believe you will see Grandpapa again.”

Her grandmother pulled her gaze away from the corner and patted Catherine’s hand. “I have no doubt that you will, my darling. Love makes everything possible.”

Catherine tried to smile, but tears trembled at the edges of her eyes. Even if she did see Nicholas again in the afterlife, how long would she have to wait until that happened? Years? Decades? Would she even remember him, or he remember her, after such a long parting? Who would she become if she forgot him?

A man cleared his throat behind them, and Catherine braced herself before she turned to greet her almost-betrothed, Richard, Lord Maybourne. His smiling parents, the Marquess and Marchioness, were ranged behind him like a pair of mismatched gargoyles. Catherine curtsied to them, and they each returned a formal nod to their future daughter-in-law.

“Good evening, my dear,” Richard said, and took her extended hand in his as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She flinched back involuntarily, and he squeezed her hand, frowning.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. No, nothing’s wrong.”

There was nothing wrong with Richard, really. He was good-looking, in a bland, blond sort of way. Most of Catherine’s friends were envious of her luck at catching the attention of a future marquess, and she, too, had been flattered at first. And too numb with grief to resist her aunt and uncle’s arguments that there was no point in mourning Nicholas for too long when she wasn’t getting any younger, and did she really want to be a spinster? Not to mention that it would be quite a feather in her aunt’s cap to marry her orphaned niece off to a marquess’s heir rather than a mere third son of a baronet like Nicholas had been.

Richard squeezed her hand again, his hand clammy through his fine evening gloves, and Catherine thought ungraciously that spinsterhood was looking more attractive after all. His one concession to the evening’s revelry was to throw a black domino over his impeccable evening clothes, which made Catherine’s silver-gilt angel’s dress shine like a star against the endless night sky. A black half-mask dangled from his pocket, to be put on at the last moment.

“The guests are beginning to arrive. We should be downstairs and ready to greet them.”

Catherine pulled her hand from his and turned back to the bed to kiss her grandmother’s cheek one last time. “I wish you were able to join us tonight.”

“Life is full of surprises, my dear. We shall see how I feel after taking my medicine.”

Catherine squeezed her grandmother’s frail hand gently and let go. “I will see you in the morning, Grandmama. I love you.”

Her grandmother smiled and squeezed back, but her eyes were already closing. “Until later, my dear.”

Catherine turned and took Richard’s extended arm. He looked back over his shoulder as he led her away. A frowning Yarrow chivvied Lavinia and Richard’s parents from the room and closed the door with a heavy thud.

“I do hope she doesn’t die in the middle of the ball,” Richard said. “It would cast such a pall over the evening.”

“Really, Richard.” There were several retorts that Catherine wanted to make, but she knew it was no use. He would never change, she feared. And she was beginning to fear who she might become if she were to marry him.

But what other choice did she have? To become a spinster relative living under her aunt and uncle’s roof? To watch her cousins’ children grow up, perhaps to make herself useful until she was aged enough to be allowed to rent a cottage with a companion and raise cats? If she was going to have to live her life without love anyway, wasn’t it better to do it in a mansion than in a cottage? Marriage at least held out the prospect of children that she could shower with love and who would, she hoped, love her back. But was that really enough to sustain her for a lifetime?

Catherine mentally shook her head. Now was not the time for that debate with herself. It was the night of the All Hallows’ Eve ball, and she was going to dance like it was her last night on earth, before the walls of matrimony and a world without Nicholas closed in on her.

As she and Richard descended the stairs, servants bustled around the front hallway to open the door for the early arrivals. The overnight guests descended the stairs in their own costumes or dominos, and Catherine smiled and chatted with them as they waited for her aunt and uncle to arrive so the formal receiving line could form. Nicholas’s family would not be there, of course—it would not be appropriate for them to attend a ball during their mourning year. Catherine felt the lack of Nicholas’s mother’s presence as part of what was missing tonight. She and the rest of his family had welcomed and enfolded Catherine almost from the moment they had met her, long before she and Nicholas had become engaged, and she missed their unruly warmth almost as much as she missed Nicholas himself.

Not that Richard’s parents had been unwelcoming. Not precisely. But they held themselves to a higher standard of formality than Catherine had been raised with. She knew they were a little shocked that she addressed their son by his Christian name in public, not his title, as they felt was more proper.

Richard pushed his way through the chattering crowd and tugged at her elbow. “Over here.”

She followed him to the doorway of the ballroom. Inside, the quartet hired to play the evening’s music was tuning up. The occasional screech of a mistuned string through the closed door jangled her nerves even more.

Richard placed her between himself and his mother, possessively placing her hand on his arm, and nodded to Catherine’s uncle at the head of the receiving line. At her uncle’s signal, the impassive butler flung the doors of the ballroom open. Catherine was pleased to hear the gasps and murmurs of the waiting guests as they got their first glimpses into the room. It had taken her and the maidservants hours to place the vases full of fall leaves and hothouse flowers around the ballroom. Rich, dark red velvet curtains framed the windows, brought down from the attic for just this occasion. Chandeliers blazed with candles, but Catherine knew that the room would feel cozy and shadowed once the crowd was inside, just as she had intended.

She nodded towards the room and whispered to Richard, “What do you think?”

He gave it an indifferent glance. “Very nice. Oh, here come Lord and Lady Whitmore.”

Catherine shook off her disappointment with Richard and turned to the first guests to arrive. The greetings began, with Catherine nodding and curtseying and smiling until she thought her head was going to fall off her neck and roll down the hallway. She supposed that, if it did, Richard would simply scoop it up and tuck it under his arm so she could continue to greet people until it was proper for them to join the rest of the party.

At long last, the tide ebbed, and she had a moment to look into the room. It was nearly full, and she blinked back another set of tears. Everyone in the county knew that this would be Lady Margery’s last All Hallows’ Eve ball, and they had come to celebrate with her one final time. If only her grandmother had been strong enough to come downstairs and see that everyone had turned out for her favorite night.

“Shall we, my dear?”

Catherine took Richard’s arm and allowed him to lead her out to open the evening’s dancing. She felt as though every eye in the room was on her and every tongue whispering about her. She held her head high, trying to ignore an unseen gaze that seemed to burn into her back. After all, it was unexceptionable for them to dance the opening set together. Richard was nearly her betrothed—everyone in the county knew that the engagement was to be announced and toasted at midnight tonight. He had wanted to marry before All Hallows’, but she had put him off, saying that her grief for Nicholas was still too fresh. Now, as she smiled and curtsied to him and he bowed in return, she wondered how she could back out entirely without ruining her own reputation.

Her uncle nodded to the musicians, and they started playing a lively tune. Catherine pasted a smile on her face and moved through the dance, bobbing and nodding at the other dancers as they traded places. She concentrated on her steps and movements, losing herself in the music and the motion until it all came to an end and she dipped a curtsey to Richard.

As she straightened, from the corner of her eye she saw a tall figure in a blood-red domino cross the edge of the room with a determined step, and her heart skipped a beat. She turned to look, but the man had already vanished into the crowd.

No. Of course not.

She smiled up at one of Lord Whitmore’s sons as he claimed her hand for the next dance. Richard joined the same set with his own partner, and Catherine wondered if he was going to dog her steps all night. It deflated a bit of her enjoyment, but she put a smile back on her face and threw herself into her dancing.

With her next partner, she tried to slip into a different set but, sure enough, Richard followed her there as well. This time his partner was the local squire’s wife, a comfortable middle-aged lady incongruously dressed as a shepherdess. When she saw they were joining the same group as Catherine, she playfully tapped Richard on the arm with her crook.

“My dear sir, you seem to be doing all in your power to stay close to Miss Williams tonight. Are the rumors true?”

Catherine blushed painfully red and looked away as Richard stammered through a reply, giving her an agonized look as though he wanted her to rescue him from his own folly. She supposed that she ought to get used to him wanting to be constantly by her side if she was really going to marry him.

She was very aware of Richard’s scrutiny as she danced a few couples away from him. She could all but hear the criticism before it started. It was always very mild—a critique of the way she smiled, or the way she held a partner’s hand for a moment too long—but it always gave her a dreary feeling of not quite measuring up to the standard of a future marchioness, especially when he started his little speeches with the dreaded, “My mother says…”

Richard claimed her hand for the next dance, and she cringed inwardly as the rest of the set smirked at them. She knew they made a fine-looking couple, but knowing that she was the center of attention always made her more than a little uncomfortable. If only she could be known for something more important than her graceful dance step or her unexceptionable conversation. Already, she could feel Miss Catherine Williams fading from public view, replaced by The Future Marchioness, her every word and step and action scrutinized and criticized by the audience that would always surround her. She already felt half-suffocated by them, and it would only become worse once she and Richard were married and they all lived under the same roof.

As she and Richard took their places in the set, Catherine saw a small ripple of startled conversation move through the crowd.

Lady Margery… Lady Margery…

“It can’t be!”

At Richard’s exclamation, Catherine turned to see a small, wizened figure enter the ballroom, leaning on a cane on one side and on her uncle Peter’s arm on the other. Catherine rushed over to them, leaving Richard to follow behind.

“Grandmama? What on earth are you doing?”

The emerald green hood of the older woman’s domino was drawn over her head, putting her face into deep shadow, but her voice had its familiar sharpness. “You didn’t think I would miss my own ball, did you, gel?”

“You should sit down!” Catherine tried to guide her grandmother to the nearest chair, one next to the dance floor, but the old woman resisted with surprising strength and used her cane to point to a settee in a shadowed alcove.

“No. That one.”

“But…”

It was too late—her grandmother was already stumping towards her preferred seat while her son tried to guide her without success. The rest of the family could only trail in her wake, as always. Catherine darted ahead to plump up the cushions and help her grandmother sink onto the seat. Even through their gloves, she could feel how cold the older woman’s hands were.

“You shouldn’t have gotten up, Grandmama!”

“Don’t fuss at me, child. Now, go, go enjoy yourself.” With a motion of her hand and her cane, she shooed Catherine away. Richard turned with her, and Lady Margery said sharply, “Not you, Lord Maybourne. You sit down.” She pointed to the empty spot on the settee next to her with her cane. “Sit here. Let us converse.”

Richard gave Catherine an agonized look, but obeyed Lady Margery, settling into the seat beside her with ill grace.

“May I have this dance?”

Catherine turned and smiled at the local squire, a round-faced man a few inches shorter than she was. “Thank you, I’d love to.”

She was aware of Richard’s eyes burning into her back as she turned away. She could all but feel his frustration at being left alone with Lady Margery and hid her smirk with her fan.

A swirl of dances and dance partners followed, combined with perhaps a bit more wine than she usually allowed herself to drink, but the warm fuzziness it brought was almost able to overcome that strange sensation of being watched. Not by Richard—though he was watching her—but by someone else. Someone whose eyes seemed to burn into her skin, though she could not determine where the gaze was coming from. Every time she turned to look, it seemed to move again.

The room grew warmer as the footmen moved to close the French doors against the creeping fog. Tendrils pushed through the small cracks they left, the fog so thick that it was nearly impossible to see to the edge of the veranda outside.

Catherine danced more and more frantically, laughing with her partners, feeling on the verge of hysteria as the room whirled around her. Out of the corner of her eye, she kept feeling that she saw the tall man in red, but he had moved every time she looked in his direction. A sudden gust of wind blew the doors open and the candlelight flickered and went dim before the footmen were able to wrestle them closed again. The dancers crowded closer and closer to each other in the darkness until Catherine could scarcely see who the other people in her figure were.

Suddenly, he was there, her partner in one of the figures of the dance, his arm around her waist and one of her hands held in his. A shock went through her whole body at the familiarity of him, though the man’s face was covered with a demon’s mask and shadowed by the blood-red hood drawn over his head.

Nicholas!

The moment was over before she could croak out his name, and he vanished back into the crowd before the quartet had played the last measures of the dance, abandoning his confused partner to find her own way back to her mother’s side. Catherine recognized her as one of Sir Randolph Perry’s younger daughters, barely seventeen but allowed to practice her manners and dancing at this country party before her official come-out next spring. Catherine caught at the sleeve of the girl’s Turkish costume, and she turned.

“Who was that man you were dancing with?”

The girl frowned in puzzlement. “I don’t know. He was wearing a mask even with his hood up. But he was a wonderful dancer, wasn’t he?”

Nicholas had always loved dancing, almost as much as she did. They had joked that he would find his way onto Wellington’s staff in short order by impressing the general with his dance skills.

It was impossible. Nicholas was dead.

But… it was All Hallows’ Eve.

Despite the thick fog that enveloped the house on all sides, making the ballroom a small oasis of light and warmth in the darkness and mist, Catherine swore that she saw the flash of a red domino outside on the veranda, standing just outside the door. The featureless hood tilted her way, gazing directly at her. Across the room, she could see Richard still planted in his seat next to Lady Margery, his head tilted attentively towards the older woman. He was courteous on the surface, but boredom all but radiated from him in waves. For a moment, he seemed to realize that Catherine was looking at him and turned his head in her direction, but Lady Margery pointed in the opposite direction with her cane, distracting him.

Before she could stop to think, Catherine plunged through the nearest door, past a startled footman, and outside onto the veranda. She hesitated for a moment before she descended the stairs into the garden.

The night was chilly and damp, but she was warm from dancing and wine. Servants had lit the oil lamps that dotted the garden paths before the fog had rolled in, but it was so thick that they were only occasional golden halos in the mist.

It didn’t matter. She knew the way.

Gravel crunched under her dancing slippers as she followed the garden path from memory, heading for the place she knew he would be: the rose bower where they had met surreptitiously so many times that summer before he had left for the Continent.

Her steps slowed just before she turned the last corner before the bower. She was being foolish. Nicholas was dead, killed in the siege of Badajoz. His commanding officer had written a condolence letter that she kept folded into the Bible next to her bed.

It was impossible that he could be waiting for her.

She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and turned the corner.

Someone was there. She felt his presence even before she could see the edge of his blood-red domino in the dim light from the lamps hung at each edge of the trellis that framed the bower. As she moved closer and closer, she felt more and more certain, but more and more uneasy. His cloaked figure loomed on the bench in the rose bower, an outline in the darkness. She could feel his gaze on her, burning into her.

She stopped in front of him, just out of arm’s reach, suddenly frightened. She was close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his body, defying the chilly fog that enveloped them. If she was wrong, then she was alone in the darkness with a complete stranger. If she was right…

She swallowed, and stretched her hand out to him. He hesitated, then took her hand in a warm, hard, achingly familiar grip. Her heart broke and refilled all at the same moment, making her dizzy.

“Nicholas! Oh, God, Nicholas.”

She flung herself into his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck, burying her face in the hollow between his neck and his shoulder, pressing her body to his. His scent filled her nose, familiar and dear. Impossibly, it was him. He was warm, and here, and alive.

Unable to stop herself, she began to weep, her heart overflowing with joy and relief and love. “You’re here. You’re here. I can’t believe it.”

His arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, and she molded herself against him even more closely.

“Yes, I’m here,” Nicholas said. His voice had a strange hitch to it that hadn’t been there before, but it was unmistakably his voice. Shaking, her hands ran over his shoulders, his arms, his chest, proving to herself that it was really him. Her betrothed, the man she loved. He was stronger than before, more muscled—a full-grown man now, not a boy.

“But how? A letter… we received a letter from your commanding officer…”

A harsh chuckle rasped in his chest. “There was a mix-up between me and another officer on the battlefield. By the time I was well enough to tell them who I really was, my commanding officer had died.”

It was him. He was here. He was alive.

She wanted to ask him a million questions, tell him all the things she had missed telling him while he was away, find out how he could be here after all. But instead, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him, and all of her questions went away in the joy of the moment.

He was here. He was alive. And she wanted to celebrate that.

Determined, she hitched her narrow skirt above her knees to straddle him. He gasped a strangled laugh and turned his head away.

“Cathy, love, no, we need to talk…”

She grabbed his head between her hands and turned him back to face her. Beneath her, she could feel the growing evidence that he had missed her, too, even through his evening breeches. She pushed her hips down to rub against him, and he bit back a gasp.

“I don’t need to talk. I need you.”

She kissed him again, the way he had taught her—the way they had taught each other, that summer before he left. With a groan, he surrendered to her, and for one perfect moment, everything was healed. He was here, and he was alive, and he was hers.

Every moment of that summer came back to her as they pressed together, tongues tangling, his hands cupping her bottom as he rubbed against her. They hadn’t wanted to risk an illegitimate baby when he was going to have to leave to join his regiment at a moment’s notice, but had discovered to their delight that there were many ways to please each other without taking that risk. She felt his cock surge against her through his breeches and her hand itched to undo his buttons, to feel his length in her palm again and hear his groan as he strained against her and she gloried in her power to please him.

The edge of his demon’s mask scraped against her cheek, and she frowned and pulled back. There was no need to keep up the masquerade any longer.

She put her hand on the mask to remove it, and he froze. His hand reached up and pulled hers away from the mask before he turned his head away from her and vented a deep sigh.

“I can’t let you do this.”

“What?” She gazed down at him, confused, straining to see his face in the dark.

He untangled her arms from around his neck, lifted her up, and sat her down on the bench. He rose to stand next to the closest lamp and pulled back the hood of his domino. The fog coiled around him like a snake. She looked up at him, still dazed with passion.

“I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”

He pulled the demon’s mask from his face and she recoiled, her hand going to her mouth to swallow her sudden nausea.

A web of angry red scars marred the right side of his face, and a patch covered his missing right eye. Some of his hair was missing on that side as well, burned away by the exploding shell that had taken his eye. Another set of scars ran down to his mouth and twisted his lips on the right side—no wonder his voice had sounded different when he had spoken earlier. No wonder the other soldiers had not been able to identify him when he was first pulled from the battlefield, unable to tell them who he was.

His one remaining eye saw her reaction, absorbing her shock and horror without judgment, but without hope.

“I can’t let you ruin yourself, Cathy. I’m sorry,” he said, and turned away to disappear into the fog.

She leapt from the bench with a shriek. “No, wait, come back! Nicholas!”

But he was gone, swallowed up by the fog without so much as a glance back.

She took three steps to follow him, to run after him, to explain that she didn’t care, that it was only the shock and the surprise, but her knees collapsed under her and she tumbled to the ground.

He was truly gone now. She knew that his stupid sense of pride would never allow him to come back. She barely felt the sharp gravel under her body, her arms, as she curled into a ball on the ground, unable to stop the torrent of tears that threatened to choke her.

He was truly gone from her this time, because it was by his own choice.

* * *

He never should have come back.

Nicholas’s steps slowed and halted after he rounded the corner, his heart pounding in his chest as the sound of her weeping carried to him, echoing through the fog like the cry of a lost soul. Every instinct he had told him to go back to her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t expect her to be the wife of a crippled, half-blind man, the handsome face she had so admired ruined forever by his wounds. It would be unfair to force her to ignore the whispers behind their backs as members of the ton wondered why she would tie herself to someone who looked like him. He couldn’t bear to have her stay with him out of a sense of misplaced loyalty. She was still young, poised to marry the rich, handsome son of a marquess. With Richard, she would be pampered and safe for the rest of her life, as she deserved. He could not hold her to a promise that she would surely regret sooner rather than later.

This was best for both of them. He would go back to his regiment on the Peninsula, and maybe this time the French troops’ aim wouldn’t leave him alive…

He risked a look back at Catherine, framed by the lamplight and the fog. The storm of tears was over, but she lay curled into herself on the gravel path, her shoulders still occasionally heaving with another sob. The silver gilt of her costume gleamed in the lamplight, but her halo and feathered wings were askew, as though she was truly an angel who had been exiled from Heaven and was lamenting her fate. She would catch her death of cold if she stayed outside much longer. A mischievous voice inside his head urged him to go back to her, to hold her to her promises, even knowing that a woman would only be willing to stay with him out of charity given his wounds.

No. This was better for her. She ought to be a marchioness and have all of the security and beauty she deserved. He needed to fade out of her life and allow her to go on with hers without being held back by an outdated engagement. His own mother had been horrified when she had gotten her first full look at him after he had ridden up to the house this morning and startled the whole family with his unexpected return. They, too, had received a letter from his commanding officer informing them of his death. He had torn himself away from that joyous reunion when his eldest brother had haltingly told him of Catherine’s impending engagement. Despite their reluctance to let him out of their sight, his entire family had urged him to come here and let Catherine know he was still alive before her new engagement was announced.

“Your Cathy’s no shrinking violet, my son,” his mother had said with a laugh. “You need to let her make her own decision about holding you to your promise, or she’ll never forgive you… or herself.”

With a gesture, he blocked out his mother’s advice. No. It was better this way. Better for both of them. He swallowed hard and turned back to the path, ready to sneak out of the garden and return home as though he had never been there. To let his Cathy build a new life without him.

A sharp poke in his back, as if from a cane, startled him. He whirled around and stared into the thick fog.

Nobody there.

A familiar voice spoke in his ear, the sound seeming to come from nowhere.

“Go back to her, you young fool. Don’t waste my time.”

“Lady Margery?” he said aloud, but he knew it couldn’t be her. It was impossible for her to be out here in the garden when she was as ill as she was. She had barely been able to totter into the ballroom.

A shadow moved across a lantern in the distance. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and it wasn’t because of the chilly fog. Nicholas did not believe in ghosts, but three years at war had taught him to trust his instincts, and his instincts were telling him that something was watching them. Something uncanny.

Something not quite human.

He couldn’t leave his Catherine to the mercy of whatever it was that waited in the fog.

Reluctantly, step by step, he walked back to Catherine’s side and stopped. She didn’t move, and he crouched down beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Cathy?”

Slowly, she sat up, her eyes searching his face in the circle of light from the lamp. Even with reddened eyes and bits of gravel stuck to the side of her face, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He tried not to flinch away as she studied his face, her eyes tracing every scar from beginning to end.

Her hand lashed out and cracked against his face.

“Ow!”

“How dare you,” she said in a low voice. “How dare you assume that I am as shallow as you are? How dare you think that your wounds would matter to me when you are alive?

His hand rubbed his stinging face, but Nicholas couldn’t stop the rueful grin that spread across it, even though it pulled at his still healing scars. The pain was mitigated by the lightness that filled his heart. His mother had been right, as always. His Cathy was no shrinking violet, and never had been. He had underestimated her, and he was unwilling to leave her behind a second time.

“I should have remembered what a strong arm you have.”

She turned her head away and struggled to stand up, but was defeated by her tangled skirts. Without looking at him, she extended an imperious hand.

“Help me up. I want to go back inside.”

He stood and grasped her hand to help her up, but when she tried to pull it back once she was on her feet, he instead used it to reel her into his arms.

“Stop it. I’m not speaking to you.” But she didn’t fight him as he drew her close, cradling her head against his chest.

“You don’t have to speak, Cathy. I’ll do all of the talking.”

He leaned down to whisper into her ear, forming the words he knew she needed to hear as carefully as he could. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I was a coward. I’m sorry that I let you think I was dead rather than coming home immediately. I’m sorry. The only thing I’m not sorry about is loving you. I’ll love you until the day I die, Cathy, no matter when that day is. I love you.”

As he cradled her, she began to weep again, but he knew when she raised her face to his that they were cleansing tears of joy and forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait. I should have known you were too stubborn to let the French kill you.”

He hesitated for a long moment. “It’s not over yet, Cathy. We’ve made progress, but the war is still going on, and I’m healed enough to go back to my regiment. I need to return to Portugal in a few weeks.”

She grasped his head in her hands and forced him to meet her eyes, concentrating all of her focus on his remaining eye. “Then I’m coming with you. I’ll follow the drum. It’s what I should have done from the beginning.”

“Cathy, no—“

“Yes!”

“I can’t ask that of you.”

“You’re not asking. I’m telling you. When you return to Portugal, I am going with you, whether we marry first or not.”

He wanted to argue with her, to explain all the logical reasons why it was impossible, to make her see what it was like to live in the mud and the blood and the terror of the battlefield, the harsh life she would have to lead, but when her body pressed against him and her serious eyes bored into his as though willing him to listen, he knew he could not resist her.

“All right, my love. Yes.”

As he leaned down to kiss her, a warm rose-scented breeze swirled around them, and a woman’s voice said, “All right, John, I’m coming. All right, I said.”

Startled, they both looked up, but of course no one was there. All around them, the fog-shrouded garden felt still and quiet, as though no other living being was within reach.

“Let’s… let’s go back inside,” he said, and she nodded in agreement. She shivered, and he unfastened his domino so she could snuggle in close to him as they walked, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist.

“Your aunt and uncle are going to be angry,” he said.

“Let them,” she said. “They already knew where my heart was, and it wasn’t with Richard.”

As they approached the house, they saw a blaze of light on the veranda, and their steps slowed, their arms dropping self-consciously. It was too late—Catherine’s uncle spotted them across the garden.

“There they are!”

What seemed like half of the party’s guests surged towards them. Nicholas instinctively placed himself between them and Catherine, forcing her to peek around his shoulder as the crowd approached. A murmur spread as they recognized Nicholas and reacted to his war wounds. He tried not to flinch under the crowd’s avid gaze as Catherine’s uncle shouldered his way to the front.

“Where on earth have you been?

“In the garden,” Nicholas said.

“Impossible! We’ve had the footmen searching it for almost an hour. Didn’t you hear them shouting?”

Nicholas and Catherine looked at each other, then back at her uncle.

“We didn’t hear anything,” Catherine said.

Richard pushed his way through the crowd and stopped short when he saw them together. Nicholas glared at him and Richard shrank back a step before he stopped himself and held a hand out in appeal.

“Catherine?” Richard said.

Catherine moved around Nicholas to stand in front of him. She held her head high as she met Richard’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Richard. I appreciate the honor you wished to do me but, as you can see, I am already engaged to be married.”

Richard sighed and rubbed his head as though it ached, dislodging his carefully styled Brutus cut. “Your grandmama would not let me leave her side all night. Every time I wanted to go look for you, she would send me for another glass of ratafia or start another family story.”

“You didn’t leave her alone, did you?” Catherine’s uncle said, and Richard froze.

“I… there was so much excitement…”

The murmuring crowd pushed back into the house in a wave that had Catherine and Nicholas near the crest, just behind her uncle. Catherine’s aunt Lavinia came up on their other side, the plumes on her headdress waving in agitated motion.

Catherine nearly plowed into her uncle when he halted abruptly, and she stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder.

“She’s gone,” Catherine’s uncle said, and every eye was drawn to the empty settee.

“That’s impossible,” Lavinia said, clutching her husband’s arm. “She could barely walk!”

Catherine’s aunt and uncle turned to scold a nearby footman, who shook his head in confusion. To hear him tell it, Lady Margery had been there one moment and gone the next.

Catherine nudged Nicholas’s arm and pointed to the settee. She crossed to it and bent to pick something up from the cushion before returning to his side to show him what she had found. A delicately carved lady’s ring glinted on her palm, worn with age but still sturdy.

“It’s Grandmama’s wedding band,” Catherine said for his ears only. “She never would have left it behind. Unless…”

A pale-faced footman pushed his way through the crowd and bowed to Catherine’s uncle, his formal powdered wig slightly askew. “Milord, you should come quickly.”

“Is it Lady Margery? Has she collapsed?”

The footman paused. “No, milord. I mean, yes, milord. I mean …”

The gathered crowd buzzed and shushed each other as the footman tried to get the words out in front of this unexpected audience.

“I… Yarrow woke up and found Lady Margery sitting up in her bed, milord. Stone cold. She… Yarrow says she must have died just before the party began.”

“That’s impossible!” Richard said, as the crowd fell away around him. “She was sitting… I was sitting…”

Everyone’s eyes went back to the empty settee, and the crowd shrank back as one, breaking into whispering little groups as they looked at each other and at Richard. His parents came to flank him, looking almost as shaken as he did.

Nicholas felt Catherine drift away to gaze out of one of the windows. He crossed to stand behind her. The thick fog was beginning to fade, the lamps in the garden reappearing one by one.

A movement on the veranda caught his eye at the same moment Catherine gestured towards it.

“Look,” she whispered.

At the far end of the veranda, barely visible in the thinning fog, stood a man and a woman dressed in the fashions of an earlier age, their heads close together. The gentleman wore a bronze brocaded coat with a powdered wig and carried an elaborate cane. His companion wore a spectacular panniered gown of teal green satin embroidered with vines and birds. A tall powdered wig balanced on her head, woven with a string of pearls that gleamed in the lamplight.

Even as they watched, the man threw his head back and laughed, and the woman waved her fan in front of her face to hide her own smile. They looked back at Nicholas and Catherine, their faces half-hidden in the fog. The man bowed low to them and the woman curtsied before she took his arm and they turned and glided away out of sight, fading into the fog.

Catherine swayed, and he put a hasty arm around her waist, almost too stunned to speak.

“It was Grandmama and Grandpapa,” she breathed, and he looked around to see if anyone had overheard her. The rest of the crowd was still focused on the settee where Lady Margery had presided over the ball, casting wary glances at the innocent piece of furniture and at a shaken Richard, who was being soothed by his mother.

“That’s impossible, Cathy.” He knew his words sounded forced, because they were.

“Is it?”

She nodded to the wall opposite them, where a portrait hung of a man and a woman dressed in the fashions of an earlier age. Despite the passage of the years and the tall powdered wig that graced her head, the woman was easily recognizable as Lady Margery, and her companion in the portrait was the man from the veranda.

“It’s impossible,” Nicholas said, but his words sounded weak even to his own ears.

Catherine smiled and reached for his hand. Unable to resist, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and, despite the presence of the other guests, he pulled her close, still stunned by the miracle of her acceptance, her steadfast love. She snuggled against him and looked up with a blazing smile.

“Grandmama always said that love makes everything possible,” she said. “I never believed her until tonight, when she brought you home to me.”