It was what she wanted for Luke, for all her children. A love to last a lifetime.
She pulled the covers around her and tried to sleep.
Luke and his friends had returned from the war heartsick and weary, yet imbued with a restlessness that caused them to perform feats of wild recklessness that were enough to make a mother’s hair turn gray. Grayer.
Oh, Luke tried to hide them from her. He took care never to do anything in front of her that she might worry about, but still, she’d heard.
Luke’s father had been just as wild as a young man, so she tried to be patient with her son and his friends. And when Luke and Rafe had those shocking curricle races, driving at those frightful speeds, she reminded herself to give thanks that at least they’d returned safely from the war. Even if they seemed bent on breaking their necks at home.
But one by one Luke’s friends had married and, oh, it had done her heart good to see the lonely, unloved boys she’d once known grow to manhood and each fall in love with a woman who adored him in return. She’d watched as a deep inner certainty, a profound happiness, replaced their former restlessness.
She’d wanted desperately for her son to find the same.
But eight years ago one good deed had shackled him forever to a strange foreign girl; a girl who wanted to be married to Luke no more than he wanted her.
For her sake, and perhaps for the sake of this unknown girl, Luke had put the best possible face on it, but it was justlike his racing. She knew he hadn’t told her the whole story.
She had the deepest misgivings about this marriage.
Something dreadful had happened to Luke in Spain when he was a young lieutenant. His denial hadn’t convinced her that it wasn’t connected with this girl.
Her son was very good at hiding his feelings. Luke would make sure that no one—not his mother, nor his sisters, nor even his friends—would suspect a thing.
Gallant to the bone, he was, and proud, just like his father. He would rather die than let anyone know this foreign girl had—wittingly or unwittingly—trapped him in a loveless marriage. And that he was desperately unhappy.
Lady Ripton grieved.
Two
Spain 1811
The trouble, when it came, was not what Luke had expected. He’d been on the lookout for the enemy—the French—and also for Spanishguerrillerosand motley bandits, for the mountains harbored many, and sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference. They were allies, the English and theguerrilleros, but a lone man on horseback was easy pickings for desperate men, and the mountains were full of desperate men.
This trouble was a scream quivering faintly on the wind. High and light. A woman, or a child.
Luke Ripton, newly commissioned lieutenant in His Majesty’s Territorial Army, hesitated. It would not be the first time a woman had been used to bait a trap, but he’d fulfilledhis mission. He carried no secret messages or gold on him now.
The scream came again, shrill and filled with real terror. Luke plunged his horse down the steep slope toward the sound, weaving through the pine and beech forest.
Through a gap in the trees he saw a stocky, thickset man hunched over a small, slender female. She was tied at hands and feet, but she writhed and bucked, struggling like a fish caught on a hook.
Luke drew his pistol, but he couldn’t get a clear shot through the trees. Besides, he didn’t want to hit the girl. He urged his horse toward them.
The man opened his breeches and threw himself roughly on her. The girl twisted and smashed her bound fists hard into the man’s face. He yelled and fell back, cupping his face. His hands came away red. He grabbed her wrists and forced them back. She bit his hand, and he cursed and gave her a backhander across the face.
Blood blossomed on her face, and she fell back, stunned, and the man threw himself again on her supine body.
Shouting, Luke leapt from his horse and raced toward them. It took an agonizingly long time. Intent on his prey, the attacker seemed not to hear.
With a roar of rage, Luke lunged across the last few yards, grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him bodily off the girl.
He went sprawling in the dust several feet away, rolled, and came up with a pistol in his hand, firing at Luke before he even got to his feet.
Sudden heat seared Luke’s neck, as though a hot poker had been touched to his skin. The man rushed at him. Luke fired.
The man jerked and staggered back, as if hit, but remained on his feet. “The jewels are gone,” he growled in a coarse dialect that Luke only just managed to follow. “And the girl is mine.” He wore the ragged remains of a uniform. His nose was a mess of blood, and his cheeks were raked with fresh livid scratches.
Deserter, Luke thought. A man with nothing to lose.
