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“Why? I married one instead.” He shoves me and I laugh. “I just want to read it while we’re skin to skin. Is that weird?”

He kisses my cheek, his lips as soft as a butterfly on my skin. “I feel the same,” he whispers.

I arrange myself with my head on his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat while he holds the book on his flat belly and reopens the diary.

5th October 1802

I have been a poor diarist over the past few months. I would make a pretty apology, but I do not think my diary will mind. It knows that my father is dead and how much I loved him.

I am resolved to be better—an entry every day even if it is tedious. And it will be tedious. No more London for me. No more parties and wild carousing. No more days at the races and nights at my club. I am buried in the Cornish countryside and here I will stay until I die. Just as my father did.

I felt him today. I stood in the library and felt a draft of air push past me. It ruffled my hair the way he did when I was a small child. And I missed him so much that my bones ached. I missed his mischievous sense of humour, and his slightly wicked way of looking at the world. My father was never a rule follower, so Cornwall suited him and he suited Cornwall.

Tonight is the dinner party. It is being held to introduce me to the local gentry and men of business. As if they did not know me already. I grew up in this house and played at the feet of my father while he conducted estate business. I know all the secret passages although they have been closed for such a long time. This house is in my bones and my blood, and sometimes I wish it were not so.

What if Catherine had been the elder child rather than a cherished younger sister? What if she had been a boy? What then for me? I think I would have travelled. The world has always seemed an enticing place, but one that will not be in my reach again because of my obligations. What a fearful word, obligation. There is no joy in it. Just a sense of weary inevitability. Or is that just my opinion?

I can hear the carriages coming up the drive. The torches are lit and the house is filled with a sense of anticipation. The servants are happy too. They have led a quiet existence over the last couple of years of my father’s illness.

Soon, Matthias will reel into the library to inform me that I should be ready to receive the guests. He thinks I do not know how his key to the wine cellar has made him believe it is his own personal fiefdom, and that the brandy contents have lowered dangerously at a time when the taxes make it more expensive than ever. I will smile and say thank you. Then I will straighten my clothes, check that my cravat is tied and that my hair is neat, and I will try to ignore my father’s voice echoing in this room about how I have inherited the intractability of the St Claires even down to my hair. Then I will go out and I will smile and smile until my face aches. I will listen to their complaints and their praise, and I will keep my thoughts behind my mask. The way I always do.

Mayhap I will write later. In fact, I plan to do so. This diary is now my companion, the one whose ears I will pour my voice into. And then I will seal it away because no one would want to know the truth about me.

It was an interesting evening. If interesting were a lightning bolt landing amidst a village green. I shall try to set it down in this diary, for it felt to me like swimming in the cove as a child when the current would suddenly spring up invisible and yet powerful.

At first, it was a night like any other. I quickly lost track of the people who were there—a couple of local squires, their faces reddening as they discussed horses and drank my brandy. I am definitely going to have to relieve Matthias of the key to the wine cellar. The magistrate for the area arrived swollen in his own self-importance and with his young wife who seemed already accustomed to maintaining silence while he talked. Local gentry rounded out the group—families eager to see inside the hall. As I could have predicted, they brought their daughters for a first peek at the new lord. I wish I could tell them that it was all a waste of time and that their daughters could not catch my eye. Or is it really so impossible? Many men such as I marry and have children, and I will be expected to do the same. Before tonight, I would have gone along with that, content to live just to ensure the survival of the St Claires.

But now I know differently. Now I know him.

I always thought that big changes in our lives are telegraphed way ahead of time. I knew my mother was dying even as a small child. My father was also ill for a long time, so his death, although sad, was still expected. Now I see what a fool I was. I had no inkling, no gift of foresight to know that Branok was going to be here, that I would turn around and meet the catalyst of change in my life.

I was talking with the magistrate, or rather, listening while he talked to me as he obviously prefers it. I felt a draft of cold air, and I heard Matthias clear his throat.

“Captain Richmond, my lord.”

I had been waiting to meet the man behind the name since I read my father’s last letter to me, and so I turned eagerly. The world seemed to stop for there he was. Branok Richmond. Even now, I say that name slowly and out loud in the quiet study, lingering over the syllables in my mouth.

I saw a man who some would not consider to be handsome. His face was too craggy, his hair too long, and his nose had obviously been broken before. But despite that, he took my breath away. I saw the length of his legs, his wide shoulders and wind-ruffled hair, and something inside of me said, “Oh there you are. I have been waiting for you.”

I know the silence lasted a jot too long. I felt other people looking at us and wondering why I did not speak. They would put it down to my being a snob at meeting a retired navy man who was not of the aristocracy.

But he knew. I saw the change in his eyes, the way they flashed briefly down to my lips, and I knew with a deep thrill and a sense of odd foreboding that he was the same as me. He took my hand and I felt the brush of his thumb on my nail as if he had touched my groin. It made me shiver like a wet dog.

I remember taking my seat at the table and my surprise when I found him next to me. That was not the arrangement. I might be sometimes absentminded, but not so much that I didn’t know that he should have been near the bottom of the table. And yet there he was looking at me with one eyebrow raised wickedly over his blue eyes. They were as bright as cornflowers.

I think I covered up my surprise, although I know he sensed it and was amused. And then I had to sit at the table feeling the warmth of his leg against mine. It had come to rest there at some point, and when I made no demur, he left it there. I felt the tingles in my skin throughout the meal.

And no one knew. No one saw. They thought I was listening intently to the magistrate as he expounded on his favourite subject—himself and his judgements—while his wife drained her wine glass in an increasingly desperate fashion.

The subject the magistrate had decided on was smuggling. It is apparently his obsession.

“A pernicious trade,” he boomed, holding his glass out for more wine, his cheeks glowing red and his bulky figure looking uncomfortable in his tight clothes. “Thieves and varlets, my lord.”

I had found the supper menu earlier and rolled my eyes. I saw no need for such formal fancies, but my housekeeper had been firm. Branok had turned to his other side and was talking with every sign of enjoyment to the local vicar, so I had occupied myself by pretending to take notes on the menu of what the magistrate was saying. In fact, I was writing fairly scurrilous commentary on the guests.

There was a pause and then the magistrate said, “My lord?”

I looked up. “Eh?”