"Nothing has happened," Jo lied. "I think the pastries we ate aren't sitting well. Pray let's go home and come back another day."
Millicent's gaze moved to the doorway into the salon. Jo thought for a moment she'd need to stop her from going in and demanding to know what happened and who was responsible.
"Please, Mother. I'd like to go now."
"As you wish."
Lady Aytoun acquiesced, but her dark frown reflected her true feelings as they left the shop. Her family, and now Wynne, wanted to protect her. But Jo couldn't bear the humiliation of a public confrontation. There could be no victory. She couldn't change the circumstances of her birth.
Settling into the carriage, Jo took a few steadying breaths to calm herself.
All the gossip amounted to nothing, she told herself for the thousandth time. The past didn't matter. Wynne had chosen her. He'd asked for her hand in marriage, knowing full well of her parentage. Her future with him didn't need to include the likes of Lady Nithsdale. She closed her eyes and tried to think only of him. Of their future together, away from London's ton.
Phoebe and Millie's chatter was a welcome distraction, and it served to keep Lady Aytoun from asking any more question on their way back home.
By the time their carriage rolled to a stop in front of the mansion facing Hanover Square, Jo had buried the incident at the dress shop deep with all the others. A footman in gold-trimmed livery greeted them as he opened the door. Another servant escorted them up the wide marble steps to the front door.
Inside the mansion's entrance hall, Jo stopped to remove her gloves and hat, and her gaze was drawn to the semicircular alcove at the far end of the hall where she could hear men's voices.
"Hugh is back!" Phoebe shouted gleefully, running in that direction with Millie on her heels.
Jo smiled at their mother, feeling the same exuberance as the two younger ones over the arrival of their brother. Only a year apart in age, Hugh and Jo had been inseparable since childhood, until his schooling required that he stay away for much of the year. And now he was serving as a cavalry officer for the king.
"I'm happy to see your upset stomach is already improving." Her mother smiled, heading toward the open set of doors.
Before Jo could follow, an elderly footman approached with a letter. "While you were out, m'lady, Lieutenant Melfort left this for you."
"Did he say anything?" she asked.
"Only that he was sorry you weren't at home to receive him."
"Thank you," she said, breaking the seal.
She wanted to see Hugh, but Wynne was not one to write her letters. She wondered if this had anything to do with this coming Thursday. His parents and brother were to join them for dinner.
She paused at the entrance to the alcove. The letter was brief. The lines danced before her eyes, but certain words and phrases came into a sharp focus.
. . . wedding arrangements . . . I foresee a life of misery for both of us . . . we must break off our engagement entirely . . . Ever your servant . . .
"No." The room tilted. Her body became numb as she reread the words in a rush of denial. Wynne's face appeared in her mind. The moments they spent together were lies. His affection, his declaration of love, all lies. Jo's dream of her future vanished like a drop of a rain on parched ground.
As her tears stained the letter, a strong hand took hold of hers, steadying her. Looking up through a blur, she recognized her brother Hugh's worried face.
* * *
To the east above London's steeples and rooftops, the sky glowed blood red, denying any promise of the sun's appearance. The green meadows and woods of the park remained vague, indistinct, reluctant to emerge into the murky dawn light. Nothing stirred, not even the low-hanging cloud obscuring the Serpentine. Hyde Park was quiet at this hour. Deadly quiet.
The stock of the dueling pistol felt smooth and cool in Wynne Melfort's hand. Tearing his gaze from the weapon, he looked across the dewy ground at the red-coated foe standing in the mist, silent and still, twenty paces away.
Hugh Pennington had come to kill him.
Wynne couldn't blame him. He was Jo's brother, and he was a man who would always defend her honor.
"Take your places, gentlemen."
The notion ran through Wynne's mind that neither of them should be here. He shouldn't have let it come to this.
But how else could he have made her understand? His orders had arrived yesterday. His ship was leaving for Newfoundland.
He loved Jo, but if they wed, what kind of life was he leaving her to? His parents would provide a place for her, but their claws weren't any less sharp than the rest of the ton.
Wynne couldn't marry her because he couldn't protect her.
"When I drop my handkerchief . . ."
Too late for that now, he thought. Honor. Jo's honor was at stake. And Wynne knew what he had to do.
When the handkerchief fluttered to the ground, the two men raised their pistols. In the distance he heard the bell tolling in the tower above St. George's Chapel.
Wynne shifted his aim, and the muzzle of Hugh Pennington's pistol flashed in the morning mist.
* * *
The readers of the Tittle-Tattle Review, scouring the rag for gossip, found confirmation of what was already common knowledge in London. The third entry referred to the duel between Hugh Pennington and Wynne Melfort:
It has come to our attention that on Saturday last, two well-known gentlemen faced each other with pistols in the misty dawn light beneath the tall and ancient elms in the northern environs of Hyde Park. Captain H.P. shot Lieutenant W.M. over a matter of family honor. W.M. was carried from the field. At the time of publication, it is unknown whether the wounded gentleman would survive the night.
Chapter 1
Western Aberdeen
The Scottish Highlands
April 1818
With the mid-morning sun warm on his back, Wynne Melfort nudged his chestnut steed to a canter, following the grassy cart path along the banks of the River Don. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the strange, coconut scent of the brilliantly yellow gorse as his gaze was drawn along the sparkling waters to the crystal-blue backdrop of the round-shouldered Grampians to the west.
"Fine day to be out," he said aloud, expecting no answer from his horse.
When Wynne retired from the Royal Navy two years ago, he and his friend Dermot McKendry, who'd served as surgeon on his ships for almost a decade, had turned their steps toward this idyllic place in the Highlands. The majestic mountains and the mysterious lochs and the stretches of untamed coastline couldn't have been more different from the wide-open sea, or the lush green islands of the West Indies, or the crowded bustle of London and the West End. No place he'd ever been matched the beauty of the Highlands.
Not a mile along the river, Wynne turned his mount northward and rode up the rising tract through the newly tilled fields and stone-pocked grazing lands. Before long, the grey tower of the former Clova Abbey came into sight. Now known only as "the Abbey," the vast estate-with its farms and forests, mill, and fish ponds-belonged for centuries to Dermot's family, but the place had become the property of the Crown during the troubled times of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The McKendrys had a penchant for choosing the noble-and often losing-side of things.
The Abbey had offered the perfect situation for the two men. The good doctor, having inherited the wrecked estate, wanted to rebuild it and start a hospital-a licensed private asylum for those suffering from mental disorders caused by injury or disease. Prior to his years sailing with Wynne, Dermot had worked in an asylum in Edinburgh. Whatever he'd experienced there, it had been enough to drive the man to do this-to try to improve on treatment he found greatly flawed.
For himself, Wynne wanted a place to settle, so he put up his money in return for a portion of the estate lands. Now that his son had joined him here, Wynne's investment was even more important. Years from now, when he was gone, the tower house he was rebuilding and the land around it would provide a legacy, a home that Andrew Cuffe Melfort could call his own, with obligations to no man.
It was a sound partnership. Dermot served as director of the hospital, handling the medical side of things; Wynne served as governor, managing the business affairs.
Passing the fields that Dermot's aging uncle-known to all as "the Squire"-had designated as his golfing links, he soon reached the house. As he rode by the courtyard formed by two wings extending out from the main section of the building, he saw a number of patients and handlers taking advantage of the sun. The ground floor of a north annex, built by the army as a barracks during the campaigns to subdue the Highlands, now served as the ward for patients they were already treating.