A Bride by Moonlight by Liz Carlyle

to keep her name from the witness list. But he did not doubt Lazonby’s threat; the man would have mired the Napier name in mud forever, and ruined his father’s legacy.
    That, however, had hardly been the deciding factor. Napier truly had no wish to involve Anisha. Oh, he no longer thought of her as anything save a dear friend; the whole of his attention was subsumed by this case.
    And by the lady in gray.
    Good God. He tried to shove the thought of Elizabeth Ashton away again.
    But even now he could feel her cool eyes cutting into him. Could feel the heat of her hand in his as he’d settled her back onto the bench. She was as different from Anisha as the moon from the sun.
    “Oh, well,” said Sir George worriedly. “It would have been ideal, of course, to take a prospective bride to visit your grandfather.”
    “A bride?” Napier retorted. “I’ve rarely time for breakfast, let alone a bride.”
    “Well, nothing less, I fear, will put Lady Hepplewood off her notion.”
    “Lady Hepplewood’s notions are no concern of mine,” said Napier.
    “Hmm.” Sir George looked worried. “We shall see about that.”
    But the talk of Lady Hepplewood’s scheming had stiffened Napier’s resolve. “No, we shan’t see,” he answered. “I haven’t the time to traipse off to Wiltshire to dance attendance on an old man and his whims.”
    At last irritation sketched over Sir George’s face. “Royden, for God’s sake, be reasonable,” he hissed beneath the clamor of the room. “When Duncaster dies, what then? Do you think for one moment Commissioner Mayne will keep you on at Scotland Yard? Or will even want you? And I shan’t force him, I tell you. One cannot simply give up estates and titles. One is expected to do one’s duty to the Crown.”
    “I did not ask for this,” Napier muttered. “Good God, I never even dreamt it!”
    “No one did,” said Sir George grimly. “But far better you go now and make something like peace with Duncaster—and learn a bit of how things go on. For if you wait until he dies, my boy, you’ll be viewed as nothing but a neophyte to be taken advantage of by the staff, the estate agents, and that wheedling pack of granddaughters. You’ll be utterly ignorant—and you’ll be hated in the bargain.”
    Napier shrugged. “Already they regard me as nothing but a burr under their proverbial saddles.”
    At that, Sir George’s mouth quirked. “Well, then,” he said, flicking the letter across the table. “It will be just like a day at the office for you, won’t it?”
    T he rain clouds that had visited Hackney in the wee hours of the morning had apparently taken a long-term lease. By early afternoon, the traffic passing by Elizabeth Ashton’s tidy cottage had winnowed away to an occasional carriage clattering past, and a farm cart with an ancient driver wrapped in a damp brown blanket who, hunched miserably as he was, greatly resembled a drowned rat.
    With the tip of one finger, she leaned into the parlor’s bow window and pulled back the light underdrapes to look out for about the fifth time at her small but sodden front garden. The gutters around the house still rumbled and rain still bounced off the flagstone path like pea-gravel flung from the heavens. Elizabeth dreaded going out into it. And yet she had to resist the almost overwhelming urge to do just that.
    To run. No, to flee .
    To rush headlong into something, anything, that might take her away from here.
    Or away from herself, perhaps.
    Refusing to wring her hands over her plight, she clenched the ends of her shawl in one fist instead. Wherever she was to go, she could not go today. It had taken the past several days to summon her solicitor and tidy her affairs. Still, she had a little time yet; a very little, perhaps, but Elizabeth had become adept at calculating risk and opportunity.
    Dropping the drapery, she turned from the glass and considered ringing for a fire to be built up. But the cold she felt, Elizabeth