It was no wonder he hadn’t recognized her outright, though some instinct deep within him had sensed…something.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

Thick russet lashes lifted and he questioned how he’d ever thought she was male. Even with smudges of dark ink on her chin and cheeks, she was comely. Too much so. Courtland shrugged. The now defunct mustache, obviously fake, had been a damned convincing touch.

But now, he couldn’t stop thinking of her as a woman—scrutinizing each of her features—including those copper-bright eyes and the rosy pout that he hadn’t noticed before. The meddlesome, nosy little Lady Ravenna had grown up to be a beauty, one whom gentlemanly suitors in London drawing rooms would have been fawning over.

Speaking of, why wasn’t she married? Was she married? He was only two years older than she was, so she should be three-and-twenty or thereabouts. Long past marrying age.

“Why are you here?” he asked, enunciating each word.

“My grand tour?” she replied. “A pleasure trip?”

He couldn’t help noticing that the huskiness in her voice stayed that way. Put together with the fact that she was female, the raspy just-waking-up-after-hours-and-hours-of-sex sound of it shaping the word pleasure arrowed straight to his groin. Scowling at the reaction, he moved behind his desk. “Women don’t do grand tours.”

“Hence my ingenious disguise,” she said. “At least until today.”

“You would have been found out eventually. Be glad it was by me and not someone else.” He cringed to think that he’d nearly sent her to a public jail. “So I take it Embry doesn’t know you’re here then.”

Courtland wasn’t close with the duke though they were close in age. The sons of the Duke of Embry had all gone to Eton when he’d been fighting for his life at Harrow. Even in Antigua, however, he’d learned about the tragic fire that had made the youngest Huntley duke, and then the news had come four years ago about the duke’s shocking nuptials with an Anglo-Indian princess. Good for them, he remembered thinking.

If only the marchioness and his own brother had been that accepting, the path his life had taken might have been vastly different, though the final destination had turned out to be inevitable. While his grandfather had written steadily over the years, always knowing exactly where he was—first in Spain, and then Antigua—they hadn’t cared.

Courtland had received all of the letters, but had refused to read them. He’d instructed Rawley to dispose of them. If he was being summoned to Ashvale Park, he didn’t want to know. He had no intention of going back to England.