Page 1 of A Lady of Conscience

Prologue

Beasley Park

Somersetshire, England

January 1844

Hannah Heywood slipped out the kitchen door of Beasley Park, her hooded velvet cloak drawn up over her head against the winter chill. There was a full moon tonight. It shone, luminous as a pearl, in the midnight sky above, shimmering over the snow that covered the empty stable yard. She raised the small oil lantern she carried in her gloved hand, lighting the way to the stone stable block beyond.

After an evening of dancing and merriment, she’d been too restless to sleep. It didn’t help that she hadn’t successfully settled into her room. Her first night as a guest at the grand West Country home of the Earl and Countess of Allendale had been marked by much tossing and turning, and this night promised to be no better.

She was missing her pets, of course. Hannah supposed it was to be expected. This was the first time she’d left them⁠—or her parents—for any length of time. Worries had begun to plague her from almost the first moment she and her older brother, Charles, had departed Heywood House. Thoughts about Evangeline, her three-legged spaniel, refusing to eat, or about Tippo, her aged pug, whining at the door of her empty bedchamber for hours on end, waiting in vain for his young mistress’s return.

They weren’t overly sentimental imaginings. They were rational fears motivated by fact. Hannah knew her pets. She knew they would be pining.

But it was only for a day longer. She and Charles were traveling back to Heywood House in the morning, their brief stint as the guests of the vivacious Lady Kate Beresford, daughter of Lord and Lady Allendale, at an end.

Hannah was eager to return home. In the meanwhile, her restlessness was best assuaged by checking on the only animals of hers that were still readily within her control.

She let herself into the darkened stables. Her family’s team of carriage horses—Dandy and Walter—had been housed inside since Hannah’s arrival three days ago. Along with Evangeline and Tippo, they’d never been far from Hannah’s thoughts during her stay. She made a point of personally looking in on them every day.

Each time she’d visited, it was always the same. They’d been comfortable, well-fed, and contented. It was no different on this occasion. Entering the stable, she found them dozing peacefully in their looseboxes, settled in for the night on thick beds of fresh straw. She was moving toward them, their names on her lips (“Walter! Dandy!”), when a sound arrested her step.

There was someone else in the darkness of the stable. A gentleman stood in front of one of the looseboxes at the end of the aisle, his tall, broad-shouldered frame just visible in the glow cast from her lamp.

Hannah’s heart leapt into her throat. She recognized that icy blond profile. That height, those shoulders, and the adamantine firmness of that uncompromising chiseled jaw.

It was James Beresford, Viscount St. Clare.

Lord St. Clare was the eldest of Lady Kate’s three older brothers. He was also, quite possibly, the handsomest gentleman Hannah had ever beheld. So disturbingly handsome that, from the minute they’d been introduced to each other, Hannah had found it difficult to look him in the eye.

It was childish, really. He’d been nothing but civil to her. Coldly, excruciatingly, civil.

But she’d felt his penetrating gray gaze on her at the dance this evening—both during the giddy, stomach-fluttering moments when they’d waltzed together, and during those moments when she’d been dancing with someone else.

No doubt he found her an oddity. Her mismatched blue and brown eyes were often an arresting sight to strangers, and her extreme shyness frequently put them off. Even the warmest people sometimes found it trying to converse with her. And Lord St. Clare was the very opposite of warm. He didn’t laugh or jest like the rest of the Beresfords. Indeed, he rarely spoke at all except when absolutely necessary, and then only with the strictest formality.

But there was nothing formal about him now.

He was in his shirtsleeves; absent the impeccably tailored evening coat and elegant black silk cravat he’d worn when he’d waltzed with her earlier that night. His golden-blond hair was mussed, his mouth curved in something like a scowl. He was out of countenance, possibly even angry—the tight hold he kept over his emotions temporarily relaxed because he’d believed himself to be alone.

She lowered her lamp, instinctively shrinking back into the shadows. There was little worse than intruding on a person’s private moment, especially if that person was a frost-hearted viscount who prided himself on his unrelenting sense of control. He wouldn’t thank her for having spied him without it. Quite the reverse.

But there was no hiding. Not now he’d seen her.

“Miss Heywood,” he said coolly. He bowed to her in the darkness.

Hannah swallowed hard. Stiffening her spine, she made herself step forward, revealing her face to his view. “Lord St. Clare.” She dropped a reflexive curtsy. “Good evening.”

Unsettling as his presence was, it behooved her to stay on good terms with him. She doubted this would be her last visit to Beasley Park. Unless she was very much mistaken, her brother Charles was halfway to being in love with Lady Kate. Which meant that, eventually, the two of them would marry. It also meant that very soon Lady Kate’s three brothers would be as good as family to Hannah.

One brother in particular.

Lord St. Clare came down the aisle to join her. “Dare I ask what you’re doing out here at this time of night?”

I might ask you the same, Hannah nearly replied. But she wasn’t one to banter. Neither was she an accomplished flirt. Her shyness prevented all but the barest conversation with strangers. Unless, that is, she was talking about her animals.

“I’m looking in on my horses before retiring,” she said.