She felt him watching her leave. A woman could burn forever in the banked passion of those cold gray eyes. That was another part of the problem.

She'd endured much in her life and she knew she was strong. She mightn't have beauty, but she had strength. Nothing and no one could break her spirit-not even this man.

But he could easily break her heart. And he would, when he found out what she'd done-birthed an illegitimate daughter whom she loved more than life itself.

When Harry Morant, who'd spent his life living down his own birth, discovered that, he would turn away from her. And that would break her heart.

If it wasn't already broken . . .

Until now, Nell hadn't ever thought of herself as a coward, but as she marched away from Harry Morant, her head held high so he wouldn't imagine she cared the snap of a finger for what had just happened, she had to admit it: she was a coward through and through.

Four.

Nell sat squashed between a large man who smelled of cloves and another, even larger, who reeked of onions. She felt a little queasy. It wasn't their combined smell though; it was that she was leaving her home forever.

Her home, and all her girlhood dreams.

They weren't anything special, her dreams; just a man to love and horses to breed. And babies . . .

Torie . . .

She faced the back of the coach. Through the window of the coach she could see the village getting smaller and smaller, until at last she could only see the church spire. Then, finally it was gone.

The stagecoach lumbered along the muddy road, swaying and jolting. It was marginally faster than the dray she'd arrived in and a great deal warmer and drier.

Her two neighbors had spread themselves comfortably, knees planted wide apart and arms relaxed comfortably, while she was wedged in tightly. Two couples sat opposite, the men taking up twice the space of their wives, even though both women were comfortably built and one of the men was positively skinny. Why was it that men always took up more than their fair share of space? At least they kept her warm, she told herself, albeit in a clovey, oniony way.

And she was on her way to London, not directly, but soon. The arrangement was to meet her new employer in Bristol, then she and Mrs. Beasley would travel to London.

And then . . . then she would resume her search, her search for her daughter. For Torie.

She ached at the thought. Her breasts throbbed. She should have removed the bandages that bound them before she left. Her milk was long gone.

But, oh, how she ached for her baby, for her precious, tiny daughter. She'd kept the bandages on, reluctant to lose even that, a frail, tangible link, to the child that was . . . somewhere.

Lost. Stolen away.

Victoria Elizabeth . . . Torie, after Nell's mother.

Nell folded her arms across her breasts. She ached with unanswerable questions. Who was feeding her little Torie now? Was anyone? Oh God, let her be alive, she prayed.

That torment was always with her, like a coal burning through her consciousness, day and night, the fear that like everyone else in her family, Torie might be-no! She couldn't think like that.

Papa was misguided, but he wasn't evil.

But he'd had no right to take her baby from her, no right to steal her away in the night. If only she'd divined his intentions . . . but he hadn't breathed a word. If she'd known, she would have fought tooth and nail for her daughter.

Guilt wracked her. She should never have let herself fall asleep. Only, after the birth she'd had a touch of fever and she was so tired, so tired . . .

What had Papa done with her daughter? Where had he taken her?

They'd found him dead at the crossroads, on the way back from London. Dead, and the whereabouts of her baby gone with him.

Dead men tell no tales.

She knew why he'd done it. He'd told her when he first came to see her after locking her away for nearly six months. For her own good. To save her reputation. So she wouldn't have to suffer for his bad judgment . . .

But she'd told him no. That she wanted to keep her child. That she loved Torie.

He'd assured her she wouldn't have to live with the results of his mistakes. That she could make a new life, put it all behind her, forget . . .

As if Nell could ever forget the baby she'd carried beneath her heart all these long months. In Nell's mind and heart, her little Torie had no connection with the events that had started it all, for which Papa blamed himself so deeply.

It was true that when she'd first discovered she was pregnant, she'd started off despising "it," hating "it," wishing "it" had never been conceived, but then . . . the first time she'd felt that tiny flutter of life in her womb . . .

She'd never felt anything like it.

She remembered placing her palm over the spot, and waiting, breathless, until she felt it again. And then, suddenly, she didn't have a "thing" in her belly, she had a baby. A tiny, innocent baby.

A child that had nothing to do with anyone else, that had nothing to do with the ugliness that had preceded it. There was just Nell and her baby.

And in the long, lonely months in the strange house where Papa had taken her, shut away with strangers-kind strangers, but strangers, just the same-she'd fallen more and more in love with the tiny helpless creature growing inside her, moving, kicking, wrapping herself around her mother's heartstrings with every movement.

Nell's baby, Nell's child. Nobody else's.

She would sit for hours in the chair beside the window-they wouldn't let her outside for fear she might be seen-with Freckles snoozing beside her. Freckles was the only friend from home Papa had permitted. He didn't even trust Aggie not to gossip. Nell was to be hidden away with strangers, under a false name. Papa wasn't going to let her suffer for his mistake . . .

As if locking her away from everything she knew and loved-except her dog-wasn't making her suffer. Typical Papa, always locking the stable door after the horses had escaped.

So she sat with Freckles, growing a baby under her heart, dreaming of how it would be and making plans. She would take the baby home to Firmin Court, to where Mama was born, and Nell would teach her everything Mama taught Nell-and more, because Mama had gone and died when Nell was seven.

Her. She'd somehow never thought it would be a boy. But she wouldn't have cared if it was. She only knew that she loved it.

And then the long, lonely labor through the night, as pain after pain shafted through her until she thought she might die of it, as Mama had. And finally at dawn, as the clear, gray, gold light spilled over the horizon, she had her baby.

Her daughter. Her precious, beautiful Torie . . . a tiny, fiercely wailing creature with a red face and gold fuzz and a mouth that was pure, furious rosebud, and tiny little fists with fingers coiled like exquisite, budding ferns.

And when the midwife had put the tiny creature to Nell's breast, and the angry wails cut off in mid-scream and the little mouth suckled, a fierce love swelled up inside Nell until she felt she would burst with love and joy and pride. She had a daughter.

She'd hugged Torie to her and whispered in her miraculous, delicate ear that she'd love her forever and wouldn't ever leave her . . .

But two weeks later Papa came, his first visit since he'd left her there all those months ago, and the next morning he and her baby were gone.

She blamed herself. She should have known, should have thought, should have suspected . . .

But she'd told him she loved her baby. She showed him her beautiful daughter and told him with such pride that she was naming her Torie-Victoria Elizabeth-after Mama.

And Papa had wept and said Nell was his good, brave girl and that Papa would make everything all right.

She hadn't realized what he meant. As far as Nell was concerned, everything was all right. Her childbed fever was passing and she was awash with love for her daughter and for the world. Her baby was strong and healthy and she didn't care about anything else. She didn't care about not being married. She didn't care about people finding out. She only cared about her daughter.

Besides, Papa was always making vague and futile promises to make everything all right. He never kept them, so she'd thought nothing more of it.

And oh, what a mistake that had been.

As usual Papa only saw what he wanted to see. And he could only see Nell's baby as a child of shame, a mistake-a mistake for which he blamed himself.

And so while she'd slept, he'd sneaked into her room at night and removed the mistake, leaving a letter that instructed her to forget all about it . . .

It, not her.

As if she could. As if anyone could, even if they wanted to. And Nell didn't want to. She wanted her baby, her precious, daughter, her Torie.

"Do you mind, miss?" One of the men in the coach-the clove one-addressed her, a little embarrassed.

Nell looked up startled. She'd forgotten where she was. Everyone in the coach was staring at her.

One of the women opposite leaned forward and patted her knee. "You was rocking, miss, back and forth, like you was trying to put a babe to sleep. Only there weren't no baby. It made the gentlemen uncomfortable-like."

Nell looked down. "I'm sorry," she said in a choked voice. "It won't happen again."

What on earth had he been thinking? Making an offer to a girl he'd known a few hours-and an earl's daughter at that.

Mounted on Sabre, his favorite horse, Harry rode slowly, leading a string of horses. Behind him rode Ethan, and several grooms, each of them leading horses. Harry was moving most of his stable from the Grange, his brother's property on the coast, to his own place.

The negotiations for Firmin Court had left Pedlington wrung out and disappointed and Harry quietly elated. Harry had brought the estate books from the house and had pored over them for several hours with a grim expression while Pedlington watched, getting more and more glum.

And he asked questions that intimidated the agent; savage questions like, "How many local families have starved since your firm took possession of the property?"

In the end, Harry had been so ruthless in pointing out the many severe defects in the property that the agent even expressed surprise that Harry would even take on such an apparently unsatisfactory property.

But Pedlington was a townsman, for whom peeling, faded wallpaper was a defect. He didn't see the property the way a countryman did. Firmin Court had been badly run down, but fundamentally it was everything Harry had ever wanted.

And now it belonged to him. A home of his own.

It was the first part of his dream come true; he should have been ecstatic. He was ecstatic, he reminded himself. It was just that he couldn't get that unnerving moment of madness out of his mind. What ever had possessed him?

You could always marry me.

Fool! He hadn't been thinking, that was the trouble. Or at least, not with his brain.

It had been too long since he'd lain with a woman. That's why he'd acted so uncharacteristically, so impetuously.

It was the only explanation he could think of.

His brain had been so scrambled with desire for Lady Helen Freymore that he'd spoken without thought.

Thank God she'd turned him down.

Of course she had. She was an earl's daughter, a lady. Ladies of the upper crust were out of bounds for the likes of Harry Morant. She might be down on her luck now, but all those born-to-rule instincts were deep within her-look at the way she'd pokered up when Pedlington became too pushy; that graceful spine had stiffened and those soft eyes had spat fire and ice and she'd coolly put the man in his place.

Harry had become more aroused than ever, dammit.

No, he knew the sort of girl he wanted; a quiet, well-dowered, middle-class girl who'd respect him and not make a fool of him. She'd dutifully allow him access to her bed and that would be his problem sorted.

And her eyes and mouth wouldn't turn a man's brains to mush. Or make him blurt out things he didn't mean to say.

"There's a village down there in the valley." Ethan interrupted Harry's reverie. "Will we stop for some lunch?"

They'd set out with a large basket stuffed with food-compliments of Harry's foster mother, Mrs. Barrow, but they'd made it a slow journey and her food was finished.

"No," Harry decided. "Send one of the men down to buy some pies or some bread and cheese and ale. We'll be at Firmin Court before sundown." He'd deliberately chosen the back roads so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was moving so many valuable animals.

It would have been safer to move them quickly, but he'd kept to an easy pace. He was hoping to race several of the horses in the next few months and he didn't want them to lose condition.

From his vantage point on the hill, he watched the villagers moving about their business. Behind the church, a pair of lovers were making a secret tryst; a stocky young man and a young girl, lissome and pretty. Harry watched them for a moment, touching, kissing, murmuring sweet nothings, then he turned his face away.

Young fool. Letting himself get entangled by love.

He hoped the boy survived it.

Y-you can't possibly l-love me. And that damned lower lip of hers had trembled, sending a jolt of raw passion through him. His body stirred at just the memory.

Of course he couldn't love her-he'd only just met her, and he didn't believe in love at all-especially not the at-first-sight sort of nonsense.

What he felt was desire, lust, whatever you cared to name it. His whole body was racked with it every time she was close. And you didn't marry for desire; you took a mistress.

Harry gazed down at the thatched roofs of the village. He needed to make a visit to the city-and soon, if that's where abstinence got him.

Not London. Lady Helen would be in London by now. Being a lady's companion. Stupid job.

He rode on, brooding. A lady's companion should be the same as a man's-a dog. It wasn't a job for a grown woman. She should be married, with a brood of children keeping her busy, not attempting to entertain some rich, bored old lady.

No, he wouldn't go to London. He'd write to his aunt again and remind her she still hadn't found him a likely wife. He needed to be settled, getting on with his life. He needed relief from the tension that kept him like a taut bowstring. Traveling to the city took up too much valuable time, and taking a mistress in the country simply wasn't an option.