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"King Edward was murdered here by his stepmother Elfrida in 978," Penelope said as they passed through the arch in the crumbling curtain wall and beheld the hill upon which the ruins of the castle stood. "It was probably just a hunting lodge here at the time. But it was a castle when King John starved twenty-two French nobles to death in the dungeons. It's haunted, you know, by a headless woman in white who floats down the hill and then disappears."

"Who is the ghost?" Vivian asked.

Richard gri

"Some say it is Lady Bankes. She valiantly defended the castle during the civil war, but a member of the garrison betrayed her and let in the parliamentarians. It was they who tore the walls of the castle down, out of pure spite."

"That doesn't account for her losing her head," Richard said. "And I don't know what good it would do to float down the hillside every now and then. Seems a waste of effort, for a ghost."

"Maybe it is Elfrida, then, doomed to roam the scene of her greatest sin," Penelope amended.

"Or maybe it is fog of an evening and a drunken fool. That seems the better explanation, albeit less thrilling."

"Ow!" Penelope exclaimed, stumbling.

Vivian caught at her cousin, helping her keep her balance. "What is it? Are you all right?"

"My ankle. I've twisted it. Help me to that stone over there," the girl said, pointing to a convenient resting place not three steps away.

"Does it hurt? Can you stand?" Vivian asked as she lowered Penelope to the stone.

"It's minor. Just a momentary twist. If I rest here for a spell I should be fine."

"We should take you back to the grange."

"No, no. You and Mr. Brent go up to the ruins. When you return, I promise I shall be quite restored."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! Go!"

Vivian frowned at her cousin, then turned to him. She raised her brows in question, and he smiled and shrugged, offering his arm. Penelope's acting would never win her a place on the stage, and it was not difficult to see through her little ploy.

Vivian took his arm, and they started up the narrow, muddy track through the grass. The sky was heavy with clouds, the sun occasionally breaking through in pale yellow, and there was a damp breeze from off the sea a few miles distant. The few remaining segments of castle wall stood like towers against the turbulent skies, and bore the pockmarks of the parliamentarians' destructive forces.

"It's a pity they destroyed it," Vivian said, after they had left Penelope out of earshot on her rock. "It must have been lovely."

"They probably had fun doing it. Boys and men, they both are forever looking for something they can blow up."

"You, too?"

"When I was a boy. My friends and I made a ca

"What happened?"

"Damn thing exploded," he said, remembering with a laugh. "The whole ca

"Good heavens!"

He shrugged. "Typical for boys. Just as my sister and your cousin are being typical for women, with their matchmaking," he said, taking a risk and wanting to see her reaction.

She gaped up at him.

"Come now, Miss Ambrose. You ca

"No," she admitted.

"Did you encourage Miss Twitchen, or was it her own idea?" he asked, breaking all the rules of romantic fencing, and knowing it was unfair of him to do so. He should not ask such a thing without stating his own wishes first. She would be within her rights to abandon him here and go back to rejoin her cousin. Still, he was interested to see if she were as daring as he hoped. He waited to see what she would do.

"What a question!" she said, looking away from him, her bo

"Even on such brief acquaintance as we have, you must know that I am not one for veilings of the truth. Will you answer?" he asked, pushing her.

"And leave you with no mystery to solve?" she asked.

"I don't play games," he said, knowing it for a lie, for what was he doing now, if not trying to trick a confession from her?

"I do not think it is a game for a woman to protect the secrets of her heart," she said.

"So you have secrets?" he asked, not believing it, and yet hoping it was true.

"As do you, apparently."

"You think so?" he asked, suddenly feeling exposed. If he said he wanted to know much more about her, if he said he was attracted to her and enjoyed her company, if he was as forthright in matters of the heart as he made such an issue of being in other aspects of his life, would she run or would she stay? "I may have a secret or two," he admitted.

"I have heard hints."

"You have?"

"Of your former wife…"

"Wife? I have had no wife," he said, taken aback by the unexpected turn in conversation.

She stopped and looked to him, confusion in her expression and her tone. "But Sara and William? They are yours, are they not?"

"They are, but I have had no wife." He sighed, feeling his hopes once again draining away. It should get easier to accept rejection over time, and yet it never did. He had attempted to court a handful of women over the past few years, and when they heard what he was about to tell Vivian, they had all turned from him and made it clear that pursuance of his suit would not be welcome. "I thought someone would have told you-last night, surely, if not before."

"You are worrying me, Mr. Brent."

"My children's mother and I were not married. She was my mistress."

"Oh," she said softly, and he saw the hurt of disappointment in her eyes.

"The situation was nothing unusual, I am sorry to say. I am hardly the first man to sire children out of wedlock." The words sounded a miserable excuse even as he said them, as if he were trying to weasel out of his own past. "Sara and William are my heirs. They bear my name, and any woman I marry would have to raise them as her own, beside any children we might have together."

It was that last point that was so unpalatable to gently bred women. Bastards beside their own offspring? Bastards, heirs along with their own children? He could hardly berate them for following dictates of society in which they had been schooled since birth. They could not help their inability to accept bastards into their care.

And he, loving Sara and William as he did, could not accept a woman as wife who would not love his children.

"What of their mother?" Vivian asked softly.

"She is somewhere in London, with a new protector. She broke off our affair shortly after William was born, and did not protest when I demanded the children." He shrugged, begi

"Did you love her?"

"I thought so for a time, but it was based on illusion. I saw her beauty and her charm, and nothing of who she truly was. I was young and stupid, but I would not have Sara and William pay any more of the price for my idiocy than they already must."