Christmas at Mulberry Hall. Carole Mortimer

his brother died …

      Gray scowled. Damn it all, he’d had other responsibilities—his duties to the crown to fulfil—without having to worry about something that should have been ably taken care of by the two men he had paid so generously to do it in his stead.

      Which begged the question: if the money had not been paid into the hands of the household and the estate workers, then whose purse had it ended up in? Only his lawyer, Worthington, and the estate manager Sanders had handled the money before it was suitably dispersed to the men and women employed on the estate. As Gray had seen and spoken to Worthington only days ago—the older man had been delighted that Gray was at last taking some interest in his estate—it would appear that only Sanders, the man to whom Gray had written a week ago to inform him of his intention of arriving at the estate some time today, was no longer here to answer any of Gray’s questions …

      His mouth firmed. ‘You did not feel the same need to absent yourself because of the non-payment of your own wages?’

      ‘I, My Lord?’ The woman blinked up at him innocently, instantly drawing attention to the long length of the dark lashes that surrounded those huge blue eyes.

      Deliberately so?

      Gray could not be sure. Nor did he wish to be! From what he had recently learnt he would have more than enough problems to deal with during the next few days, without having to concern himself with the flirtations of a young woman he did not consider fit to take care of one of his horses, let alone the development of his young ward.

      He nodded tersely. ‘You, ma’am.’

      Amelia looked up at him with a frown. She had to admit that Lord Gideon Grayson, with that stylish dark hair and those enigmatic grey eyes set in a face as masculine and perfect as a sketch she had once seen of one of Michelangelo’s sculptures, was one of the most handsome men she had ever set eyes upon.

      Unfortunately, having now met him, Amelia realised he was also the most arrogantly forceful man she had ever encountered, too!

      She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘I do not understand, My Lord …?’

      He eyed her impatiently. ‘I am asking if you love your work here so much that you have been happy to do it all these months without payment?’

      ‘No, My Lord …’

      Really—was Gray to add stupidity to the list of this woman’s character defects? It would be a pity if that were the case; even a woman as beautiful as she would do better in the world if she possessed at least some intelligence. ‘No, you do not love your work here? Or, no, you have not been happy to do it without receiving payment?’

      She gave a tinklingly dismissive laugh, revealing tiny and perfectly straight white teeth between those plump red lips. ‘No, I do not work here at all, My Lord.’

      ‘You—?’ Gray gave an irritated frown. ‘Explain yourself, if you please!’

      ‘I am Amelia, My Lord—Amelia Ashford,’ she added lightly as Gray continued to stare down at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Your step-niece and ward.’

      Gray was too startled—shocked!—by the revelation to even attempt to hide it, and he openly goggled down at her.

      This beautiful and seductively lovely woman—a woman any man would relish taking to his bed—was the daughter of the genteel but impoverished widow his brother Perry had been married to for only months before her death, soon followed by Perry’s own death at Waterloo?

       Chapter Three

      It could not be!

      There had to be an error of some sort. Amelia Ashford was a child—only seventeen years of age—whereas this young woman was—

      Perry’s stepdaughter had been ‘only seventeen’ two and a half years ago …

      Which would now make her in her twentieth year, not her eighteenth!

      Circumstances beyond Gray’s control had meant that he had never met Perry’s wife Celia, nor her daughter Amelia. Perry had written to Gray at the time of his marriage, of course, assuring him of his joy in his wife, and of his delight in becoming stepfather to such a delightful child as Amelia.

      There had not been time for Gray—nor opportunity—to visit the new family at their estate in Bedfordshire before Perry had written to Gray a second time, shortly before he’d had to depart for Waterloo, informing him of his complete devastation at the sudden death of his wife from influenza.

      When the news had reached Gray, only weeks later, of his brother’s own demise during that last bloody battle he had felt absolutely no desire to visit the estate he had just inherited—to be at or see the place where he would be made aware of his brother’s absence the most.

      Instead Gray had put the financial running of the estate into the hands of his lawyer, while concentrating his own energies on his duties in London. His only dealings with Steadley Manor during that time had been the twice-yearly meetings Worthington had insisted upon, so that the lawyer might present Gray with an account of estate business.

      Never in all that time, Gray now realised uncomfortably, had he given even a thought to how Amelia Ashford had dealt with the sudden death of her mother, quickly followed by that of her stepfather. Let alone considered the loneliness of the life she must have led all this time, secluded away in rural Bedfordshire.

      Gray studied her from between narrowed lids now, as he attempted to reconcile his previous image of a young girl on the brink of womanhood with the reality of the beautiful and seductive young woman who stood before him, wearing only her nightclothes. A young and tempting woman, who conjured up images of bedchambers and lithe and naked bodies intimately entwined amongst tangled sheets—

      Damn it, Amelia Ashford was under Gray’s protection, and as such she was the last woman on earth that he should find himself having such intimate imaginings about! The last woman he should have held in his arms.