The Proposal: Number 1 in series (Survivors’ Club)

Gwendoline Grayson, Lady Muir, hunched her shoulders and drew her cloak more snugly about her. It was a brisk, blustery March day, made chillier by the fact that she was standing down at the fishing harbor below the village where she was staying. It was low tide, and a number of fishing boats lay half keeled over on the wet sand, waiting for the water to return and float them upright again.

She should go back to the house. She had been out for longer than an hour, and part of her longed for the warmth of a fire and the comfort of a steaming cup of tea. Unfortunately, though, Vera Parkinson’s home was not hers, only the house where she was staying for a month. And she and Vera had just quarreled—or at least, Vera had quarreled with her and upset her. She was not ready to go back yet. She would rather endure the elements.

She could not walk to her left. A jutting headland barred her way. To the right, though, a pebbled beach beneath high cliffs stretched into the distance. It would be several hours yet before the tide came up high enough to cover it.

Gwen usually avoided walking down by the water, even though she lived close to the sea herself at the dower house of Newbury Abbey in Dorsetshire. She found beaches too vast, cliffs too threatening, the sea too elemental. She preferred a smaller, more ordered world, over which she could exert some semblance of control—a carefully cultivated flower garden, for example.

But today she needed to be away from Vera for a while longer, and from the village and country lanes where she might run into Vera’s neighbors and feel obliged to engage in cheerful conversation. She needed to be alone, and the pebbled beach was deserted for as far into the distance as she could see before it curved inland. She stepped down onto it.

She realized after a very short distance, however, why no one else was walking here. For though most of the pebbles were ancient and had been worn smooth and rounded by thousands of tides, a significant number of them were of more recent date, and they were larger, rougher, more jagged. Walking across them was not easy and would not have been even if she had had two sound legs. As it was, her right leg had never healed properly from a break eight years ago, when she had been thrown from her horse. She walked with a habitual limp even on level ground.

She did not turn back, though. She trudged stubbornly onward, careful where she set her feet. She was not in any great hurry to get anywhere, after all.

This had really been the most horrid day of a horrid fortnight. She had come for a month-long visit, entirely from impulse, when Vera had written to inform her of the sad passing a couple of months earlier of her husband, who had been ailing for several years. Vera had added the complaint that no one in either Mr. Parkinson’s family or her own was paying any attention whatsoever to her suffering despite the fact that she was almost prostrate with grief and exhaustion after nursing him for so long. She was missing him dreadfully. Would Gwen care to come?

They had been friends of a sort for a brief few months during the whirlwind of their come-out Season in London and had exchanged infrequent letters after Vera’s marriage to Mr. Parkinson, a younger brother of Sir Roger Parkinson, and Gwen’s to Viscount Muir. Vera had written a long letter of sympathy after Vernon’s death, and had invited Gwen to come and stay with her and Mr. Parkinson for as long as she wished since Vera was neglected by almost everyone, including Mr. Parkinson himself, and would welcome her company. Gwen had declined the invitation then, but she had responded to Vera’s plea on this occasion despite a few misgivings. She knew what grief and exhaustion and loneliness after the death of a spouse felt like.

It was a decision she had regretted almost from the first day. Vera, as her letters had suggested, was a moaner and whiner, and while Gwen tried to make allowances for the fact that she had tended a sick husband for a few years and had just lost him, she soon came to the conclusion that the years since their come-out had soured Vera and made her permanently disagreeable. Most of her neighbors avoided her whenever possible. Her only friends were a group of ladies who much resembled her in character. Sitting and listening to their conversation felt very like being sucked into a black hole and deprived of enough air to breathe, Gwen had been finding. They knew only how to see what was wrong in their lives and in the world and never what was right.

And that was precisely what she was doing now when thinking of them, Gwen realized with a mental shake of the head. Negativity could be frighteningly contagious.

Even before this morning she had been wishing that she had not committed herself to such a long visit. Two weeks would have been quite sufficient—she would actually be going home by now. But she had agreed to a month, and a month it would have to be. This morning, however, her stoicism had been put to the test.

She had received a letter from her mother, who lived at the dower house with her, and in it her mother had recounted a few amusing anecdotes involving Sylvie and Leo, Neville and Lily’s elder children—Neville, Earl of Kilbourne, was Gwen’s brother and lived at Newbury Abbey itself. Gwen read that part of the letter aloud to Vera at the breakfast table in the hope of coaxing a smile or a chuckle from her. Instead, she had found herself at the receiving end of a petulant tirade, the basic thrust of which was that it was very easy for Gwen to laugh at and make light of her suffering when Gwen’s husband had died years ago and left her very comfortably well off, and when she had had a brother and mother both willing and eager to receive her back into the family fold, and when her sensibilities did not run very deep anyway. It was easy to be callous and cruel when she had married for money and status instead of love. Everyone had known that truth about her during the spring of their come-out, just as everyone had known that she, Vera, had married beneath her because she and Mr. Parkinson had loved each other to distraction and nothing else had mattered.

Gwen had stared mutely back at her friend when she finally fell silent apart from some wrenching sobs into her handkerchief. She dared not open her mouth. She might have given the tirade right back and thereby have reduced herself to the level of Vera’s own spitefulness. She would not be drawn into an unseemly scrap. But she almost vibrated with anger. And she was deeply hurt.

“I am going out for a walk, Vera,” she had said at last, getting to her feet and pushing back her chair. “When I return, you may inform me whether you wish me to remain here for another two weeks, as planned, or whether you would prefer that I return to Newbury without further delay.”

She would have to go by post or the public stagecoach. It would take the best part of a week for Neville’s carriage to come for her, after she wrote to inform him that she needed it earlier than planned.

Vera had wept harder and begged her not to be cruel, but Gwen had come out anyway.

She would be perfectly happy, she thought now, if she never returned to Vera’s house. What a dreadful mistake it had been to come, and for a whole month, on the strength of a very brief and long-ago acquaintance.

Eventually she rounded the headland she had seen from the harbor and discovered that the beach, wider here, stretched onward, seemingly to infinity, and that in the near distance the stones gave way to sand, which would be far easier to walk along. However, she must not go too far. Although the tide was still out, she could see that it was definitely on the way in, and in some very flat places it could rush in far faster than one anticipated. She had lived close to the sea long enough to know that. Besides, she could not stay away from Vera’s forever, though she wished she could. She must return soon.

Close by there was a gap in the cliffs, and it looked possible to get up onto the headland high above if one was willing to climb a steep slope of pebbles and then a slightly more gradual slope of scrubby grass. If she could just get up there, she would be able to walk back to the village along the top instead of having to pick her way back across these very tricky stones.

Her weak leg was aching a bit, she realized. She had been foolish to come so far.

She stood still for a moment and looked out to the still-distant line of the incoming tide. And she was hit suddenly and quite unexpectedly, not by a wave of water, but by a tidal wave of loneliness, one that washed over her and deprived her of both breath and the will to resist.

Loneliness?

She never thought of herself as lonely. She had lived through a tumultuous marriage but, once the rawness of her grief over Vernon’s death had receded, she had settled in to a life of peace and contentment with her family. She had never felt any urge to remarry, though she was not a cynic about marriage. Her brother was happily married. So was Lauren, her cousin by marriage who felt really more like a sister, since they had grown up together at Newbury Abbey. Gwen, however, was perfectly contented to remain a widow and to define herself as a daughter, a sister, a sisterin-law, a cousin, an aunt. She had numerous other relatives too, and friends. She was comfortable at the dower house, which was just a short walk from the abbey, where she was always welcome. She paid frequent visits to Lauren and Kit in Hampshire, and occasional ones to other relatives. She usually spent a month or two of the spring in London to enjoy part of the Season.

She always considered that she lived a blessed life.

So where had this sudden loneliness come from? And such a tidal wave of it that her knees felt weak and it seemed as though she had been robbed of breath. Why could she feel the rawness of tears in her throat?

Loneliness?

She was not lonely, only depressed at being stuck here with Vera. And hurt at what Vera had said about her and her lack of sensibilities. She was feeling sorry for herself, that was all. She never felt sorry for herself. Well, almost never. And when she did, then she quickly did something about it. Life was too short to be moped away. There was always much over which to rejoice.

But loneliness. How long had it been lying in wait for her, just waiting to pounce? Was her life really as empty as it seemed at this moment of almost frightening insight? As empty as this vast, bleak beach?

Ah, she hated beaches.

Gwen gave her head another mental shake and looked, first back the way she had come, and then up the beach to the steep path between the cliffs. Which should she take? She hesitated for a few moments and then decided upon the climb. It did not look quite steep enough to be dangerous, and once up it, she would surely be able to find an easy route back to the village.

The stones on the slope were no easier underfoot than those on the beach had been; in fact, they were more treacherous, for they shifted and slid beneath her feet as she climbed higher. By the time she was halfway up, she wished she had stayed on the beach, but it would be as difficult now to go back down as it was to continue upward. And she could see the grassy part of the slope not too far distant. She climbed doggedly onward.

And then disaster struck.

Her right foot pressed downward upon a sturdy looking stone, but it was loosely packed against those below it and her foot slid sharply downward until she landed rather painfully on her knee, while her hands spread to steady herself against the slope. For the fraction of a moment she felt only relief that she had saved herself from tumbling to the beach below. And then she felt the sharp, stabbing pain in her ankle.

Gingerly she raised herself to her left foot and tried to set the right foot down beside it. But she was engulfed in pain as soon as she tried to put some weight upon it—and even when she did not, for that matter. She exhaled a loud “Ohh!” of distress and turned carefully about so that she could sit on the stones, facing downward toward the beach. The slope looked far steeper from up here. Oh, she had been very foolish to try the climb.

She raised her knees, planted her left foot as firmly as she could, and grasped her right ankle in both hands. She tried rotating the foot slowly, her forehead coming to rest on her raised knee as she did so. It was a momentary sprain, she told herself, and would be fine in a moment. There was no need to panic.

But even without setting the foot down again, she knew she was deceiving herself. It was a bad sprain. Perhaps worse. She could not possibly walk.

And so panic came despite her effort to remain calm. However was she going to get back to the village? And no one knew where she was. The beach below her and the headland above were both deserted.

She drew a few steadying breaths. There was no point whatsoever in going to pieces. She would manage. Of course she would. She had no choice, did she?

It was at that moment that a voice spoke—a male voice from close by. It was not even raised.

“In my considered opinion,” the voice said, “that ankle is either badly sprained or actually broken. Either way it would be very unwise to try putting any weight on it.”

Gwen’s head jerked up, and she looked about her to locate the source of the voice. To her right a man rose into sight partway up the steep cliff face beside the slope. He climbed down onto the pebbles and strode across them toward her as if there were no danger whatsoever of slipping.

He was a great giant of a man with broad shoulders and chest and powerful thighs. His five-caped greatcoat gave the impression of even greater bulk. He looked quite menacingly large, in fact. He wore no hat. His brown hair was cropped close to his head. His features were strong and harsh, his eyes dark and fierce, his mouth a straight, severe line, his jaw hard set. And his expression did nothing to soften his looks. He was frowning—or scowling, perhaps.

His gloveless hands were huge.

Terror engulfed Gwen and made her almost forget her pain for a moment.

He must be the Duke of Stanbrook. She must have strayed onto his land, even though Vera had warned her to give both him and his estate a wide berth. According to Vera, he was a cruel monster, who had pushed his wife to her death over a high cliff on his estate a number of years ago and then claimed that she had jumped. What kind of woman would jump to her death in such a horrifying way, Vera had asked rhetorically. Especially when she was a duchess and had everything in the world she could possibly need.

The kind of woman, Gwen had thought at the time, though she had not said so aloud, who had just lost her only child to a bullet in Portugal, for that was precisely what had happened a short while before the duchess’s demise. But Vera, along with the neighborhood ladies with whom she consorted, chose to believe the more titillating murder theory despite the fact that none of them, when pressed, could offer up any evidence whatsoever to corroborate it.

But though Gwen had been skeptical about the story when she heard it, she was not so sure now. He looked like a man who could be both ruthless and cruel. Even murderous.

And she had trespassed on his land. His very deserted land.

She was also helpless to run away.

Hugo had gone alone down to the sandy beach below Penderris after breakfast, the rain having stopped during the night. He had been teased about it. Flavian had told him to be sure to bring his future bride back to the house so that they could all meet her and decide if they approved his choice.

They had all made merry at his expense.

Hugo had informed Flavian where he could go and how he could get there, though he had been immediately obliged to apologize as he had used a soldier’s language in Imogen’s hearing.

The beach had always been his favorite part of the estate. In the early days of his stay here, the sea had often soothed him when nothing else could. And more often than not he had come down here alone, even then. Despite the closeness and camaraderie that had developed among the seven members of the Survivors’ Club while they were all healing and convalescing, they had never lived in one another’s pockets. On the contrary, most of their demons had had to be faced and exorcised alone, and still did. One of the main attractions of Penderris had always been that it offered more than enough space to accommodate them all.

He had recovered from his own particular wounds—as far as he could ever recover, that was.

If it came to counting blessings, he would need the fingers of both hands at the very least. He had survived his war experiences. He had been awarded the promotion to major he had craved, as well as the unexpected bonus of his title as a result of the success of his final mission. Last year he had inherited a vast fortune and a hugely profitable business. He had family—uncles and aunts and cousins who loved him, though he had largely ignored them for many years. More important, there was Constance, his nineteen-year-old half sister, who adored him, though she had been a mere infant when he went off to war. He had a home of his own in the country, which provided him with all the privacy and peace he could possibly ask for. He had his six fellow members of the Survivors’ Club, who had sometimes seemed closer to him than his own heart. He enjoyed robust good health, perhaps even perfect health. The list could go on.

But each time he made the mental list of his blessings, it became like a two-edged sword. Why had he been so fortunate when so many others had died? More important, had his ruthless ambition, which had brought personal success and rewards that were far in excess of what he had expected, actually caused a number of those deaths? Lieutenant Carstairs would say yes without hesitation.

There were no reasonably personable women strolling along the beach, or any unpersonable ones either, for that matter. He would have to invent a few for the amusement of his friends when he returned to the house, though, and a few stories surrounding his encounters with them. Perhaps he would even add a mermaid or two. He was in no hurry to get back, however, even though it was a chilly day made worse by a rather raw wind.

When he had returned to the pebbled part of the beach and to the foot of the ancient collapse in the cliff face that gave access to the headland and the park of Penderris above, Hugo stood for a few moments and gazed out to sea while the wind whipped at his short hair and turned the tips of his ears numb. He was not wearing a hat. There was really no point when he would have been chasing it along the sand more than he would have been wearing it.

He found himself thinking about his father. It was inevitable really, he supposed, when today was the first anniversary of his death.

Guilt came with the thoughts. He had worshipped his father as a lad and had followed him everywhere, even to work, especially after his mother’s death of some woman’s trouble when he was seven—the exact nature of the ailment had never been explained to him. His father had described him affectionately as his right-hand little chap and the heir apparent. Others had described him as his father’s shadow. But then had come his father’s second marriage, and Hugo, thirteen years old and at an awkward stage of adolescence, had developed a chip on his shoulder as large as a boulder. He had still been young enough to be shocked that his father could even think of replacing his mother, who had been so central to their lives and happiness that she was simply irreplaceable. He had grown restless and rebellious and determined to establish his own identity and independence.

Looking back now, he could see that his father had not loved him less—or dishonored the memory of Hugo’s mother—just because he had married a pretty, demanding young wife and soon had a new daughter upon whom to dote. But growing young boys cannot always see their world rationally. Further evidence of that was the fact that he, Hugo, had adored Constance from the moment of her birth when he might have been expected to hate or resent her.

It was a stage of his life, fairly typical of boys his age, that he might well have outgrown with a minimum of harm to all concerned if there had not been something else to tip the balance. But there had been that something else, and the balance had been tipped irretrievably when he was not even quite eighteen.

And he had decided quite abruptly that he would be a soldier. Nothing would dissuade him, even the argument that he did not have the character for such a rough life. If anything, that argument only made him the more stubborn and the more determined to succeed. His father, disappointed and saddened, had finally purchased a commission in an infantry regiment for his only son, but it was to be the one and only purchase. He had made that clear. Hugo was on his own after that. He would have to earn his promotions, not have them bought by his wealthy father, as most other officers did. Hugo’s father had always rather despised the upper classes, for whom privilege and idleness often went hand in hand.

Hugo had proceeded to earn those promotions. He had actually liked the fact that he was on his own. He had pursued his chosen career with energy and determination and enthusiasm and a driving ambition to reach the very top. He would have reached it too, if his greatest triumph had not been followed within a month by his greatest humiliation and he had not ended up here at Penderris.

His father had loved him steadfastly through it all. But Hugo had turned his back upon him, almost as if his father had been to blame for all his woes. Or perhaps it was shame that made him do it. Or perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of going back home.

And how had his father repaid him for his neglect? He had left almost everything to him, that was what, when he might conceivably have left it all to Fiona or to Constance. He trusted his son to keep his businesses going and to pass them on to a son of his own when the time came. He had trusted him too to see to it that Constance had a bright, secure future. He must have understood that she might have no such thing if she was left to her mother’s sole care. He had made Hugo her guardian.

Now his year of mourning, his excuse for inactivity thus far, was over.

He stopped when he was halfway up the slope. He still was not ready to return to the house. He turned off the slope and climbed a short way up the cliff beside it until he reached a flat, rocky ledge he had discovered years ago. It was sheltered from most winds, and even though it cut off any view of the sandy stretch of beach farther west, it still allowed him to see the cliff face opposite and the pebbled beach and the sea below. It was a starkly barren prospect, but it was not without a certain beauty of its own. Two seagulls flew across his line of vision, crying out some piece of intelligence to each other.

He would relax here for a while before seeking out the company of his friends.

He scooped up some small pebbles from the ledge beside him and tossed one in a high arc to the beach below. He heard it land and saw it bounce once. But his fingers stilled around the second stone as a flutter of color caught the edge of his vision.

The cliff on the other side of the pebbled slope curved outward toward the sea. Full tide reached it sooner than it did the cliff on which he sat. There was a way around the base of the jutting cliff to the village a mile or so away, but it could be a treacherous route if one was not aware of the approaching tide.

Someone walked that stretch of pebbled beach now—a woman wearing a red cloak. She had just appeared around the headland, though she was still some distance off. Her bonneted head was down. She appeared to be concentrating upon her footing. She stopped and looked out to sea. It was still some way out and was no imminent danger to her. If she had strolled from the village, however, she really ought to be turning back soon. The only other way back was up over the headland, but that would involve her in trespassing on Penderris land.

She turned her head to look at the steep pebbled slope to the top as though she had read his thoughts. She did not see him, fortunately. He was in the shade, and he sat very still. He did not want to be seen. He willed her to turn back the way she had come.

She did not turn back, however. Instead, she came in the direction of the slope and then began to trudge upward, her cloak and the brim of her bonnet flapping in the wind. She looked small. She looked young. It was impossible to tell how young, though, since he could not see her face. For the same reason there was no knowing if she was comely or ugly or simply plain.

His friends would tease him for a week if they ever found out about this, Hugo thought. He had a mental image of himself jumping down from his perch, striding purposefully toward her across the stones, informing her that he was both titled and enormously wealthy, and asking her if she fancied marrying him.

Though it was not a particularly amusing thought, he had to quell an urge to chuckle and give away his presence.

He stayed very still and hoped that even yet she would turn back. He resented having his solitude threatened by a stranger and a trespasser. He could not remember its happening before. Not many people from outside the estate came this way. The Duke of Stanbrook was feared by many in this part of the country. The inevitable rumor had blossomed after the death of the duchess that he had actually pushed her over the cliff from which she had jumped. Such stories did not die easily despite lack of any evidence. Even those who did not actually fear him seemed wary of him. And his contained, austere manner did not help allay suspicion.

Perhaps the woman in red was a stranger to these parts. Perhaps she did not realize she was climbing directly into the dragon’s lair.

Hugo wondered why she was alone in such a desolate setting.

The loose pebbles gave under her feet as she climbed. It was never an easy ascent, as he knew from experience. And then, just when it seemed she would go safely past and not see him at all, her right foot dislodged a small avalanche of stones and slid down sharply after them. She landed awkwardly on her knee and both hands, her right leg stretched out behind her. For a moment he had a glimpse of slim bare leg between the top of her half boot and the hem of her cloak.

He heard a gasp of pain.

He waited. He really did not want to have to reveal his presence. It soon became apparent, however, that she had done some serious damage to her foot or ankle and that she was not going to be able to pick herself up and go on her way. She was young, he could see. And she was small and slender. Beneath the brim of her bonnet, blond tendrils of hair were blowing in the wind. He still had not seen her face.

It would be churlish to remain silent.

“In my considered opinion,” he said, “that ankle is either badly sprained or actually broken. Either way it would be very unwise to try putting any weight on it.”

Her head jerked up as he climbed down onto the pebbles and made his way toward her. Her eyes widened in what looked like fear rather than relief that help was at hand. They were large blue eyes in a face of exquisite beauty even though she was no girl. He guessed her age to be close to his own thirty-three.

He was irritated. He hated it when people were afraid of him. People often were. Even some men. But especially women.

It might have occurred to him that a scowling countenance was not best designed to inspire confidence, especially in a lonely, desolate setting like this. It did not, however.

He scowled down at her from his great height.