"An ideal brother."
"Perhaps, but not an ideal parent, you understand. And after this happened . . ." He waved a circle to encompass the tragedy. "He was concerned for her. She was not really herself, and even a duke could not make it right."
"No, I suppose not." Collin thought of the stiffness in her face when he'd wounded her.
"So you may look at her and see a hoyden, an unnatural girl who works her brother's estate and attracts scandal like a magnet, but she is more than that. She is . . ." He waved again, frowning as he searched for words.
"George. You don't have to defend her. I won't deny that I thought little enough of her when I arrived here, but you're right. She's young. She did not mean to injure John."
"No. No, I can assure you of that. She's a kind girl and always has been. A bit spoiled, mind you, but we're all to blame. Motherless child and all that."
He smiled at the gruff love in George's voice. "I should like to see a portrait of her as a child."
"By God, I'm sure I have one around here some-where." George turned to scan the dozens of bookcases lining the long wall, relief sinking his shoulders. "Somerhart must have sent us a new miniature every half-year."
Collin smiled as he recalled the great Duke of Somerhart—an icy, intelligent man with a razor-sharp wit. Who would have thought the duke such a soft touch for an orphaned child?
The real Alexandra Huntington made her debut in the formal dining room. Here was the confident woman who'd enchanted the ton; the sparkling, dark beauty the men spoke of, some with wistful looks, some with lust. Collin had not fully understood their admiration, not until this night.
She flushed a little as they greeted each other, but with each course that passed over their plates, Alexandra relaxed a fraction more. She did not seem selfish or thoughtless. She did not even seem particularly spoiled. And she had freckles on her nose.
Ridiculous, of course, but as Collin sat there in the yellow-walled dining room, eating goose and salmon and Yorkshire pudding, he stared at her—at her wild, dark curls and big eyes and those nearly invisible freckles sprinkled across her nose—and he realized: This woman is no whore.
And more surprising than that? He wanted her.
Impossible. She was only nineteen. She was English. And the sister of a duke. Practically a damned English princess, for God's sake. Regardless of her past, she was not a woman to have a tryst with. She was royalty.
His torturous thoughts were interrupted by George's sigh. "Women and their money talk. It quite makes my head spin."
Alexandra stopped her chatter about expenses and grinned at them, wrinkling her nose at her cousin before she turned back to Lucy. "And Hart has given permission to expand his stables, so I'll no doubt spend some time at the horse fairs this summer."
"Perhaps Collin can assist you."
Collin caught the confused glance she threw in his direction.
"He breeds horses," Lucy added helpfully.
"Oh, I didn't realize. Blackburn?" Brow furrowed in thought, she looked again to Collin. "I don't think I've heard of you."
George chuckled, obviously enjoying Collin's anonymity. "Collin does not use his title. He is Baron Westmore."
"Oh? Oh, of course!" Her face brightened. "The West-more stables. Your horses are coveted."
He smiled at the sheer regard in her voice. "They are fine animals."
She nodded at that, but her grin faded, the frown returned. Collin could almost hear the click of her mind turning over some troubling detail. "Your surname is different than John's . . . I'd assumed you had a different father, but you said something—"
"I'm a bastard."
Her eyes widened at the blunt words, and Collin caught George's cringe at the edge of his vision. He waited to see what the duke's daughter would think of dining with a bastard. Blue eyes narrowed and Collin felt his eyes narrow in turn, but then she smiled—a smile that widened as the seconds ticked past.
"Oh, my. A bastard. However did you become a baron?"
"My father purchased a Scottish barony in a fit of guilt. I'm not the least bit respectable."
"Well, you are in good company then. A bastard, a harlot, and a witch. I'm afraid that George is the only truly respectable one at the table."
Lucy tried to smother a laugh and snorted instead.
Collin raised an eyebrow at the indiscreet sound. "Cousin, I had no idea you were a witch." Lucy's eyes flew wide and her husband's chuckle ended on an alarmingly choked cough. Collin's brow tightened at the feeling he'd misstepped.
Dessert arrived in the form of glazed berries and cream. The servants retreated. Silence hung heavy over the room.
Then Alexandra smiled sweetly across the table, adding to Collin's unease. "Now, my dear Lord Westmore," she said, hands spreading to gesture around the table, "whoever said that I was the harlot?"
The air grew stifling and drew heat that spread in a tingling burn over his cheeks. Christ, he'd just called the woman a whore at the supper table. His mouth fell open of its own accord; nothing emerged. He closed it, tried to think of something—anything—to say. Alexandra's mask of innocence suddenly dissolved into a fit of laughter.
Lucy snorted again. "Really, Alex, that was quite cruel."
"His face." She gestured toward Collin.
Surely he couldn't get any more red. The heat spread to his ears. "I suppose I deserved that."
"Oh, you did!" she laughed, leaning toward him. Despite everything, the shadow of her cleavage still caught his attention. He clenched his teeth, wondered if it would be bad form to flee the room as he'd fled her bedchamber. He grabbed his wine instead and raised the glass toward her before draining it.
"Oh, that was well worth any grudge you may hold against me now."
"No grudge," Collin conceded. "What I implied was inexcusable."
George's smile was sympathetic if a little weak. "These two are too quick for the male mind to follow, but really, you waltzed into that one."
Collin tipped his head in agreement, gave a helpless shrug. "Well, Cousin, whether you are a witch or a harlot, I would hear the story."
"I am the witch, or was. But there is no harlot here, and I will hear no more talk of it." Alexandra rolled her eyes and grinned. "When George and I married, Alex was only eight—"
"Nine!" she called.
"Pardon me. Lady Alexandra Huntington was a mature young woman of nine."
She chuckled, the sound brushing Collin's spine. "She had a rather fierce crush on George—"
"My grown cousin!"
"—and she found it difficult to like me. In fact, I believe to this very day that she plotted my murder."
"Not true. I only wanted to run you off."
"Well, thankfully I'd said my vows just before I met her, or I may very well have abandoned him." Lucy flashed her husband a tender smile that belied her words.
"So what did you do, Lady Alexandra?" Collin asked. Her naughty smile made him want to groan.
"I only played a prank. Lucy didn't find it amusing."
"She put a mouse in my bridal bed!"
Alexandra and George collapsed into laughter.
"You should have seen her, Collin," George gasped. "So delightfully shy and pink, then shrieking about the room without a stitch, all modesty out the window!"
"George!" But his wife laughed too, and Collin couldn't help but chuckle.
"That must have been a sight for a new bridegroom."
"Oh, it was. I was so enthused that she accused me of planting the rodent myself. I will say I wasn't quite as upset with Alex as I should have been."
"We didn't know who'd done it, of course, or even if it'd been happenstance . . . until our farewell breakfast the next morning. In walks little Alex, looking quite pleased with herself, until she spots me and howls, 'Why are you still here?'"
"Oh, I'd convinced myself she'd hie back to wherever she'd come from, and I'd have George all to my own again."
"Well, I knew immediately it was her, and I dragged her by her ear out to the garden to give her a stern talking to. The girl never even blinked. She had no fear."
Collin wasn't surprised. She'd likely never been denied a thing in her life. "So you told her you were a witch?"
"I did." Lucy still looked smug, ten years later. "I was only seventeen, you know. But you'll remember my family, Collin. Children crawling from every nook and cranny. I knew I had to put a fear in her. So I told her I'd already roasted the mouse and cut off its tail and ears. Told her all I had to do was mash them up with a little blood of a bat and slip that into her porridge . . . She'd turn into a mouse before the next full moon."
"And what did you say, Lady Alexandra?"
She turned pink when his eyes locked with hers. "I told Lucy to eat horse dung and ran to find my nurse." Her smile went naughty again, tightening the muscles of his stomach. "Then I decided that George was not my true love after all."
"I made an impression on her. She didn't come near me for two years."
George reached out to pat Alexandra's hand with a proud smile. "Not the most trouble you've ever caused, but—" As soon as the words left his mouth, his face paled. "I meant. . ."
"Come now, George," Alex murmured. "None of that. Not among friends." She raised her glass of wine. "A toast. To memories of old times!"
Lucy laughed and drank with her. "She says that so convincingly for a girl no more than nineteen."
"To memories," George added, slanting a sly grin at his wife.
Collin raised his glass and smiled at Alexandra's hearty, "Here, here!" Her eyes sparkled with laughter and her cheeks were flushed from the wine. She glowed.
She glanced his way and he watched her eyes dart away from his stare. But only a heartbeat passed before they slid back to him. Her mouth smiled a softer smile. He drank in the sight of her pink cheeks and pinker lips. He watched her gaze fall to his mouth and felt his blood rush low in response. Not good. Not good at all.
George cleared his throat, jerking Collin's eyes away from her lovely face to meet the speculative look. Collin shifted, coughed, tried not to feel guilty.
"When are you returning home, Collin?" Lucy asked with a lightness he didn't trust.
Unsure of the answer, he shrugged. "Within a few weeks. I still have some business here in England."
A movement drew his eye back to Alexandra, and he found her stiff now, the smile fading from her face. "What kind of business?"
"Oh, various things. As manager of Somerhart, you must understand how tedious these matters can be."
She watched him carefully for a moment, then seemed to blink away her suspicions. "Yes, but I don't find the work tedious at all. I find it invigorating."
He couldn't help a disgusted grunt. "I would rather work the horses."
"Well, we all have our passions, I suppose."
His eyes locked with hers, seemed to draw the color back to her cheeks. "Aye," he agreed finally, and wondered why she was becoming one of his.
Alex stepped into the dim morning light of the courtyard, announcing her arrival with a wistful sigh. She'd hung about in the breakfast room for almost an hour, straightening at every sound that filtered in from the hall. She'd even trailed about the library for a while, hoping to run into Collin Blackburn.
The man had disappeared early last night, staying no more than half an hour in the drawing room before murmuring his goodnights. He hadn't appeared since.
Lucy claimed not to know where he'd hidden himself and had found her own words oddly amusing. Alexandra decided on a tour of the horse yard. At worst she'd walk off some tension. At best, she'd run into him.
Hurrying toward the stables, she chastised herself for this sudden tendre she'd developed. She hardly knew the man. And what he knew of her, he didn't like.
The hazy light of the stable enfolded her as she stepped through the door, an apple held idly against her skirt. The golden dance of dust motes caught her eye first, then a slow movement in the closest stall. . .
Alex's muscles locked, her heart stopped beating, her mind creaked to a shuddering halt. Here he was. Collin Blackburn. Right under her nose and wearing nothing more than breeches and boots.
She devoured the sight of his naked back as he groomed a pitch-black horse. Muscles tightened and bunched and stretched as he brushed. Drops of sweat gathered like liquid crystals at his neck, then dripped in a warm slide down his spine, tracking a path to the waist of his tight gray breeches. She watched each drop dissolve into damp fabric.
Surely she'd never seen anything so lovely in her life. Her fingers curled into the palms of her hands and her lips went so dry she had to lick them. Oh, she'd seen men remove their shirts before, laborers and noblemen alike, but nothing had ever moved her like this. Nothing had set her nerves to a hum.