In Love With a Wicked Man by Liz Carlyle Page A

the soft, swift sounds of servants’ feet on thick carpet, and to the occasional clack or clatter of a bucket or broom. Such great houses were all very alike at such an hour, he supposed. Except that this, his hostess had said, was a castle.
    Bellecombe Castle. In Somersetshire.
    And apparently, he had ridden here. From somewhere . Edward closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a memory—or at least a notion—of what the castle might look like. Was it massive, ancient, and generously crenellated? Or was it one of those faux castles so favored by the nouveau riche, with outlandish turrets and barbicans built for show?
    No, this was a real castle. He was sure of it.
    And his intriguing hostess, Lady d’Allenay, was a real aristocrat.
    Oh, you would be surprised at what I cannot afford , she had said to him last night.
    It was the mark of a true blueblood, that quiet admission—and an honest one. These monstrous old houses drained them, oftentimes. Or their sons did.
    How did he know this?
    Edward shrugged. He knew it as he knew the sun would inevitably rise. Indeed, it had risen, and was beginning to warm the room now. He looked up at the great black beams of a ceiling that had not, thank God, been covered over with decorative plaster, and at the massive tester bed, almost ebonized with age, which appeared to have been sitting in the same spot since Elizabeth’s reign.
    He liked that. He liked this place. It felt like a home, though he could not have said why.
    Then he tried to think again of what might have brought him here.
    Again there was the flicker of something —something important, or so it felt. He was not witless, he reassured himself. He was fairly certain he was Edward. That he’d come here for a reason—a good reason, he thought. Moreover, his conversations since waking in this room yesterday were quite clear to him.
    Gingerly he sat fully upright, somewhat reassured that the pain was not worse. But he did still feel a little unsteady, as if he were suffering a bad morning after. Good Lord, he had not suffered one of those since . . .
    Since when?
    Since . . . the army?
    Wait. Had he been in the army? He had some notion—some fragment of memory about sitting around a fire . . .
    He gave a bark of laughter. For all he knew he was a cattle drover. Or a shepherd.
    But there it was, that little sliver of memory; a flickering campfire, and a bottle sent around, catching the light as it passed. Then the memory was gone, and Edward was left with the sudden, sinking sensation that he didn’t want it back again.
    That he did not want any of it back again.
    But what a mad notion! What sort of man would not want his life back?
    He was simply unnerved by all the uncertainty. He wished she would knock on his door again. Lady d’Allenay. Kate. The Goddess.
    Except that she was not a goddess, really. She was too tall, with the plainest gray eyes and brown hair imaginable. Colorless, he would have called her.
    Except that her eyes were keen with intelligence and wry humor; one got the feeling Lady d’Allenay laughed often—and frequently at herself. Yes, there was a vast deal of color inside her. And her hair—though it appeared not to have so much as a wave in it, and despite the fact that she had dressed it as severely and plainly as was possible—it had suited her; it had looked efficient and practical.
    But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering.
    The words sprang to his mind unbidden. Why?
    Because it was that sort of hair. The hair of a modest woman, he thought; hair that would fall about her naked form like a silken curtain. Hair that shimmered with deep, mysterious hints of chestnut red, but only when the light caught it.
    Perhaps she was a goddess after all. Not Venus, but Vesta; blazing with the flames of hearth and home instead of a simmering seduction or a facile charm. And yet he found her enticing all the same.
    Good Lord, what fanciful