Prologue

15 July 1754
Farendon Estate
Huntingdonshire, England

Nicholas Clayton pressed from the bed where his ankle was shackled to the frame as two coaches approached his home.

The guard across his room straightened to right his pistol at Nicholas’s chest. “Get yerself back there.”

In the event he overcame this guard, there was another outside his chamber door.

Dropping to the chair next to the bed, Nicholas scoured a palm over his shorn hair. In his twenty years, he had never raised a hand to anyone or anything. His father, the Marquess of Eastwick, said he was the straight arrow. The good boy, his mother called him. He thought on everything he said before he said it. And his older brother, Edmund, the heir to the marquessate, had never thought.

Edmund was dead.

Coach wheels slowed in the distance. Springs groaned to a halt. Gravel crunched and masculine voices conferred. The west portico door thumped shut.

Two coaches had arrived. One to take him to London to stand trial. He saw the backing of a prosecution with William St. Clair’s relentless wealth. The trial. The hanging. His hanging.

Oliver St. Clair, his close friend since Eton, nephew of William St. Clair, marched into the room and jabbed at the guard. “You. Out.”

“I got me orders—”

“Get. Out. Or I’ll shove that pistol down your throat.”

The guard measured Oliver, a stout and fiery young politician in wrinkled grey suiting and a crooked brown wig, and vacated his post.

Oliver dragged Nicholas to his feet and hugged him hard. “Christ, Nick.”

“I’m not dead,” Nicholas said, his grin arising from somewhere dark. ‟Yet.”

Half a foot shorter, Oliver stared up, his mouth agape.

“Has Edmund been laid to rest?” Nicholas asked.

“Yes, laid to rest. And no one was surprised. Sad but not surprised.”

Edmund was a libertine.

No, Edmund had been a libertine, just like their father. His golden looks and charming veneer had gotten him to his twenty-fifth year before someone had put an end to his gaming and drink, his appropriation of other men’s wives, his love of jests at others’ expense.

What had Edmund done the day Nicholas had found his brother dead in St. Clair’s billiard room? The last Nicholas had seen, Edmund had been emptying William St. Clair’s pockets by the thousands. Had Edmund been foolhardy or drunk enough to cheat the man who collected the rents of almost every family within twenty miles? With estates in five counties, two homes in London, and businesses as far as Ireland?

Nicholas knew in his bones William St. Clair had killed his brother.

“Your family believes you, Nick,” Oliver said. “They know you would never harm a soul, let alone your brother.”

“Then they will make excellent witnesses at my trial.”

Oliver stepped wide, swiping away a tear with his sleeve. “There will be no trial.”

Nicholas lunged forward, halted by the shackle. “Are they releasing me?”

Oliver shook his head.

Of course not. Nicholas had been discovered in the billiard room, clutching his dead brother to his chest. William St. Clair and a crowd of servants had gaped. All of them had looked Nicholas over, the blood on his hands, on his forehead, on his coat.

No. Of course they would not release him. But his father would never allow a hanging, even if the marquess was an unreliable sot. His mother would never, even if she spent more time with her lovers.

“I’ve negotiated an agreement,” Oliver said, traversing the room and halting at the window. “The agreement is amenable to your father, my uncle William, and the law. You’re going to America, Nick. Pelham’s agreed to allow you in a regiment. It satisfies the law. And Pelham assures me he’ll find you a nice, comfortable post where you can serve a colonel.”

Oliver’s words faded into the grey morning. He was going to war? What did he know about war? Less than a month ago, he trained his prize racehorse for the October Newmarket meeting.

Oliver pulled down his waistcoat over his growing middle and drew out a roll of parchment. “This satisfies William.”

Nicholas unrolled the documents offered.

I, Henry Percival Howard Fordyce Clayton, do freely grant and convey unto William St. Clair—the parcel detailed herein—the lands and real property of Farendon Estate…

Nicholas ceased reading. He threw the parchment to the counterpane and forced back expletives which would serve no one. “I will not surrender Farendon to William St. Clair. It is all I have.” Along with his dreams. And the horses he had nurtured, trained, and raced. 

“It is not yours to give up,” Oliver said. “You’re not in majority.”

“I must speak to the marquess.”

“It is already done.”

“I will fight it.”

Oliver fixed him with a squint. “You can stand trial and hang, or it can be a damnable mishap between brothers. You looked like hell when they found you. Think, Nick. Just like a man who had beaten his brother to death.”

“I did not kill my brother.”

Oliver drew back. “Go to the stand looking like that, and they’ll hang you right there.”

Nicholas sucked in a breath.

“That doesn’t help either. The servants claim you were arguing with Edmund.”

Nicholas closed his eyes, tried to find calm when he had never, never had to find what was, before now, the basis of his very existence. “Because he was drunk.” And cheating, yes. Edmund had likely been cheating. “I wanted him to leave.”

Oliver grabbed Nicholas by the arms. “Listen to me. I know, your family knows, you did not kill Edmund. I promise on my daughter’s life, I will do everything possible to get it back for you.”

“And what of Caroline?” Nicholas had made love to Caroline the afternoon Edmund had been murdered. Before Nicholas had found him. He had proposed to Caroline. And the girl he had loved since his fourteenth year had accepted. “How am I to support your sister, without Farendon, on regimental pay?”

Oliver winced.

Of course. Oliver didn’t have to tell him. Caroline had not answered his letters. Her parents would never allow her to marry a murderer. Dropping to the bed, heat stung his eyes. He stared at his hands, his throat too tight to speak. Where was God in all this?

“Nick,” his friend said with a gentle grip on his shoulder. “The war will be over soon and I will get your home back. And your horses.”

“How?”

Oliver shot up a brow. “I am the executor of my uncle’s will.”

“Your uncle is not dead.”

Oliver waved him off. “A formality.”

“Is he dying soon?”

“He can’t live forever.”

Nicholas couldn’t either, and with a war in the colonies, likely wouldn’t outlive William St. Clair.

Minutes crawled by in silence as numbness settled over him. Somewhere in the north pastures, horses whinnied and hooves thundered over the turf. He was the arrow and an arrow went where it was aimed. To the colonies. To war. Without Farendon. Without Caroline.

Oliver shouted for the guard to unlock the shackle as Nicholas gained his feet. He packed a small trunk and gathered his hat. His coat. His money in hand.

Oliver ushered him out of the room, onto the drive, and there, Nicholas gazed north to the stable yard where his heart lay. His hand went to his chest, where underneath his coat rested the medallion commemorating his victory at Newmarket less than a year before.

One afternoon had changed his life forever.

He surveyed his home one last time. The vast green fields dotted with marsh reeds and pastures. It wasn’t his anymore.

Wild Squire, the bay stallion on whom Nicholas had won the Newmarket Plate, emerged from the block with a skinny boy riding him bareback. The boy held the reins with nervous hands. His face shielded by a cocked hat, the boy looked down, unfamiliar with holding such sleek, muscled supremacy.

William St. Clair, tall, lean, clothed in black, strutted up to the boy. Already taking over Nicholas’s home. Because Oliver had known Nicholas was not really a man. That he would show a weakness for living. Didn’t have the courage to die by the noose.

Wild Squire bolted from the yard with the boy miraculously seated over his churning hooves and rolling back.

Give me something. A sign that what I’ve done is right.

Wild Squire veered left. The boy hooked a firm leg to avoid being unseated. The stallion kicked out his rear legs and sent the boy flying. His skinny body slammed into the grass, sucking for air.

Maybe there is a God.

Nicholas warmed at the sight of the boy’s pain as he struggled to his feet. Too bad he still had use of his limbs.

The boy stuffed his hat back on his tie wig, straightened his coat, and limped across the lawn to where Wild Squire tore a chunk of grass from beneath the ancient copper beech. He gathered the reins, and in one smooth motion, mounted Nicholas’s horse. His horse no longer.

Satisfaction turned to white-hot anger. Nicholas clenched his fists. “Who is the boy?”

“Georgiana.”

“Who?”

“William’s daughter. She’s a good girl, Nick. A trifle odd but—”

“Shut up.”

Georgiana St. Clair. The name burned in his brain. His fingers dug into his palms. “What satisfies my father?”

“Hmmm?”

“You said your negotiations satisfied my father.”

“You’re in remainder,” Oliver said, with a note of smugness. “You’ll be the seventh Marquess of Eastwick one day.”

“Ah. Well, that’s encouraging.”

“And your father insisted that you have the right of first refusal if William St. Clair chooses to ever offer Farendon for sale.”

If Nicholas survived. He had to survive. No matter what faced him, he had to survive.

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