Gemma, alone in her claustrophobic little bedchamber in Yew Manor, set her candle on her nightstand and sat on the edge of her bed. She smoothed the rich, red leather cover of the volume of sonnets with tingling fingertips.

Who was Mr. Lysander Worthington really? What did she know of this stranger she wanted so badly to help?

And why did she feel compelled to?

Who better than you? You were there.

Yes, I was there.

By the time Gemma and Edmund had returned from the war, Edmund frail and recovering far too slowly from a fever, Gemma's father had died quietly in his sleep. The newly appointed head librarian had taken up residence in her father's house, which was owned by the University. Gemma was saddened by the loss but after so much horrible death all around her, she was grateful that her papa's end had been so painless.

And she wasn't really alone, for she'd had Edmund. Except, as she discovered in the following years, only a portion of her husband had returned from the war.

Gemma decided to select a random page, deciding with a rather depressed whimsy that it would hold the answers. The volume fell open to Sonnet 25.

"The painful warrior famousèd for worth,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honor razèd quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled."

Well, goodness. How fitting. A valiant soldier had returned from a terrible war, only to be considered mad and dangerous. How do you know he is valiant? Perhaps he is a coward. Perhaps that is what he flees from.

Recalling the ridiculous battle with the ram, and his reckless disregard for his own safety as he flung her far from danger, Gemma found it hard to imagine Mr. Worthington bolting from a mere human adversary. She would wager her entire stillroom that he'd fought bravely and well against the enemy.

Gemma thought of Mr. Worthington's dark eyes. She remembered his sculpted chest gleaming in the sun. She closed her eyes and replayed his deep erudite voice speaking verses of passionate love to her. She allowed the image of him half-naked the sunlight to roll across her inner vision. The muscles that laced tightly around his narrow waist. The way his trousers clung to his athletic buttocks. His large hands sweeping the water from his skin. She imagined them on her skin instead and a deep ache pulsed within her.

She didn't realize that her hands trembled as they lightly rested upon the book in her lap.

"Then happy I am that I love and am beloved

Where I may not remove nor be removed."

CHAPTER 15

Chapter 15

LONDON STILL SMELLS LIKE London. With the familiar scents of coal soot, carriage horse urine on the cobbled street and something gone bad at the butcher down the road, came so many memories.