“Filip…I mean…wait…” Tor paused, frowned. “Yes, I have it.” He clicked his fingers. “Duke av Slåssørn of Hamar, I present to you my niece-by-marriage, Miss Ann Louise Thomsett of Northallerton and London. I commend her to you as a fine young English lady. Ann, you are in the presence of Filip Sørensen, Twenty-fifth Duke av Slåssørn of Hamar, and my cousin.” Tor cleared his throat. “Did I cover everything?”

  “Adequately,” Filip Sørensen said. His voice was a pleasant tenor, with a strong accent. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Ann.”

  “Miss Thomsett,” Tor corrected. “Ann has an elder sister.”

  Ann nearly winced at the reminder. She kept her pleasant smile in place.

  A footman cleared his throat softly beside her and when she looked, held out a tray of champagne glasses.

  “Oh, no, thank you,” Ann said quickly.

  The footman bowed and moved away.

  “You do not drink, Miss Ann?” Sørensen asked, his tone curious.

  A polite prevarication was in order. Ann cast about for an explanation which would be socially acceptable and not leave the Duke with the impression she did not wish to drink with him.

  She realized she had let the silence stretch too long, so settled for the blunt truth, which was far easier to deal with. “I am afraid that if I take a glass, I will spill it all over my dress. As I am already the least formal lady in the room, a wet stain would be a disaster.”

  Sørensen laughed, then caught it back and pressed his lips together. He could not prevent himself from smiling, though. He held out his own glass, which was neither champagne nor sherry. It looked like brandy in color. “Perhaps sipping from another’s glass would be safer?”

  Ann’s cheeks grew very warm. “I…um…thank you, but no.”

  “Now you’ve flustered her, Filip.” Tor shook his head. “He has a habit of disconcerting ladies, Ann. Although you should be grateful—if I told you what he asked me before you came over, you would be even more unsettled.”

  Ann gripped her hands together and wish she’d brought her gloves down with her. “Then it is as well I could not hear you.”

  Sørensen considered her, his amusement fading. His gaze was steady. “I asked my cousin to introduce us immediately. I also said that if I was not seated beside you at the dinner table tonight, I would return to Norway at once, for there would be no point in suffering through a future without you in it.”

  Ann’s lips parted, but no words came to her.

  “See?” A resigned note sounded in Tor’s voice.

  Sørensen’s expression was merely polite, as if he was not aware of the shocking implications of his declaration.

  Ann considered him. “You do not know me, Your Grace. You would not care to sit beside me if you knew I had been employed as a butler only a short while ago.”

  Sørensen’s brows lifted. His lips parted. Genuine surprise made his jaw sag.

  Tor laughed and thumped his chest with the side of his fist to recover from attempting to breathe in his sherry.

  Still Sørensen stared at Ann.

  Ann stared back, making herself look him in the eye.

  “A butler?” Sørensen repeated.

  Ann nodded.

  “You did such…work?”

  “I did.”

  “Service is something of a family tradition,” Tor added. “My brother served as butler for a while, when he retired from the British Army.”

  Sørensen drained his glass, put it on the table where Tor had rested his sherry glass a short while ago, then tugged his gloves back into place and turned to Ann. “I am even more certain I must sit beside you. I would know everything about your employment and how you came to it.”

  The gong sounded for dinner and Sørensen raised his elbow to Ann.

  He had not been repulsed by menial paid work as she had expected him to be. Disconcerted, she made herself rest her fingertips on the inside of his elbow and let him lead her into the dining room.

  Sørensen sat beside her at every dinner after that.

  He sought her out after breakfast each day, too.

  They walked the snowy trails through the forests around Silkeborg in the mornings and lingered in the town in the afternoon to drink schnapps and browse through the little stores, while shopkeepers bowed and curtsied and rushed to bring their Archduke’s cousin the best of their wares as possible Christmas gifts.

  Four days later, on Christmas Day morning, Sørensen seated Ann upon the window seat in the upstairs sitting room. Instead of giving her a Christmas gift, he offered her a sapphire and diamond ring which was, he told her, a family heirloom. He had carried it with him for years, for it had been his mother’s engagement ring.

  “I would be most pleased and proud if you accept my proposal,” Filip added. “We are not so unlike, you and I. We would make an excellent pair. Everyone in Norway would adore you, for they are honest folk, just as you are.”

  Ann’s heart would not stop leaping about. “My family…”

  “Are of indisputable quality,” he replied firmly.

  “Are you aware of the scandal which stains my reputation?” Ann asked, her voice strained. The collapse of the Darnell & Sattler Banking Company of Bournemouth and London had sent tendrils of gossip around the world.

  “It is not you who stole the money,” Filip said, his tone dismissive. “To my mind, and I am sure to my family’s mind, it merely makes you more interesting. We are adventurers, Ann. A few centuries ago, we were Vikings, traveling the seas. We have not lost that taste for novelty.”

  In a voice without body, Ann said yes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The crowds lining the streets of Silkeborg and throwing petals at the glass carriage had grown as the carriage drew the closer to the cathedral. Ann glanced away from their shining, happy faces, her heart thudding. Her gaze fell upon the sapphire and diamond ring on her left hand.

  At first, Filip had placed the ring on her right hand. “It is the right hand in Norway,” he told her, when Ann held out her left.

  “It will not feel as though I am properly engaged, on that hand,” Ann said. “And I already feel an overwhelming sense of unreality, Filip.”

  He nodded. “Then, the left hand it is,” he declared.

  The sapphire was the most enormous and flawless blue gem she had ever seen. It was perfectly round and the facets glittered in the light coming into the carriage.

  Why had she said yes to Filip?

  Their engagement had thrown all of Silkeborg into a great panic, as the town and the duchy turned their hands to hosting a royal wedding. Suddenly, more people than just Filip inserted themselves into Ann’s life.

  Her father sent a return wire assuring her that everyone who could manage it would be in Silkeborg in June to see her married, and he would be proud to walk her down the aisle. The wire had reassured Ann that she had not lost all sense by accepting Filip’s rushed proposal.

  Bronwen directed that three ladies-in-waiting, her most trusted aides, turn their full attention to preparations for the wedding. Inger, Isabelle and Kathi had become fixtures in Ann’s days.

  Shortly after the Christmas proposal, Ann met Harry Dahl. Dahl had sailed across the Jutland water to Denmark as soon as Filip told him the news. He was Filip’s private secretary and was also Filip’s complete opposite in nature. Filip loved adventure and novelty. Dahl was a stickler for tradition, habit and custom.

  Ann suspected Dahl had been employed precisely for his unvarying ways, to offset Filip’s constant reach for the unconventional. Dahl had not just instructed her on what flowers she could carry before and after the wedding, he had also dictated the color of her gown and the arrangement of her hair. She was dismayed to learn that her sisters and cousins could not be her bridesmaids. “That honor is for the daughters of the nobility in Denmark and Norway,” Dahl said, his tone firm.

  Ann stared down at the ring, remembering that unpleasant moment. There had been other unpleasant moments beside that one. Each time Ann was faced with a decision about the wedding and the marriage, Dahl would take the decision away from her.

  She swiftly came to understand that there were even more customs and expectations which covered every aspect of her life once she was married to Filip.

  Why had she said yes to Filip’s proposal?

  Ann reached for the answer this time, instead of letting the question slide in her mind. It suddenly felt terribly important that she understand why she was in this situation, to gather the courage to go forward into the future with Filip. Time was running out. She could see the cathedral, just ahead. There were hundreds of people gathered about the steps and the wide plaza in front of the grand building.

  Why had she said yes? What had passed through her mind in the still, astonished moments when Filip had first held out the velvet lined box, with the ring sparkling in the candlelight?

  Ann frowned, staring at the ring.

  At her first sight of the ring, she had grown still. Her heart had thudded. And…and…

  …your heart’s desire, should you earn it, will always come from a most unexpected quarter.

  The words echoed in her mind, spoken in Adam’s deep, gravelly voice.

  Yes, that was the thought which had struck her most forcibly, while Filip waited for her answer.

  Ann clearly remembered Adam speaking the words, for that conversation was firmly entrenched upon her memory and would never be erased. Her talk with Adam had been responsible for her abandoning her post in London and sailing to Denmark to stay with Bronwen, as far away as possible from her family…and from Elise and Danyal, in particular.

  Ann sighed, as the memory came back to her now.

  It had been September of last year. Great Aunt Annalies had packed up the entire household in London, including all her lady tenants. “You must arrange for a few days absence from your positions, all of you,” Great Aunt Annalies explained one evening when everyone in the house had been at the dinner table—a rare occurrence in that household. “My nephew has invited us to stay at Innesford and the sea air will put the roses back in all your cheeks. Ann, you must see to it, please.”

  Ann worked hard for a fortnight, arranging cabs and train tickets and sending wires to Innesford, confirming numbers. Coordinating all the women in the household and their trunks was challenging work, giving her even greater respect for the butlers of the world who arranged such matters without wincing.

  When they arrived at Innesford, Ann discovered that it was not just Great Aunt Annalies’ household who would be staying in the grand house. Richard and Ève lived at Innesford with their newborn son, which was likely why Cian had invited Ève’s family. All five of the Davies family had sailed across from France.

  “A most unusual event,” Ann heard Ève murmur to her husband as her siblings and parents stepped down from the charabanc, everyone babbling in fast Parisian French.

  “That is your influence at work, my love,” Richard murmured back.

  Yet Ann’s attention was taken up by the last arrivals to step off the charabanc, for they were Elise and Danyal.

  Her heart sank. It wasn’t as if she and Elise were not on speaking terms. Elise wrote to Ann regularly and Ann dutifully replied.

  It was just that…well…Elise was so happy.

  Then, at lunch on the very first day, Elise had shyly announced to everyone in a most scandalous fashion that she was expecting her first child.

  A sharp sensation speared Ann’s chest and made her stomach twist. She had been unable to eat another bite of the delicious roast pork. Even though she raised her glass along with everyone else, she could not sip the wine.

  As soon as it was possible, Ann rose from the table and stepped out through the French doors into the overcast afternoon, her heart thudding erratically.

  “Don’t go too far, Ann!” Eleanore called out to her from inside the dining room. “I know those clouds on the horizon. There is a storm coming!”

  Ann did not acknowledge her hostess’s warning. She didn’t think she could speak. She instead moved alongside the house, her boots crunching in the gravel, until she reached the front entrance to the maze off the east wing.

  She would not go into the maze. If there truly was a storm coming—and the angry, bruised clouds scudding across the sea toward the house seemed to indicate that Eleanore was correct in that regard—then Ann did not want to be lost inside the maze when it arrived. She didn’t know the maze at all. She had only ever explored it once, when she was a child. That had been when family gathers at Innesford were an annual event. It had been years since the last gather.

  Instead, Ann followed the side of the house to the other end of the maze. There, the garden opened up. It had been renovated and beds rearranged since she was last here and now the garden looked very French, with regimented lines and restrained verdure.

  Ann wandered the paths aimlessly, trying to shrug off the unpleasant sensations swarming in her heart and mind. They were not worthy thoughts.

  When she came across the rose bush with blue roses, Ann paused, astonished. She had never seen truly blue roses before. She knew Innesford was the only location in England where black roses grew. Those old bushes were farther into the garden. These blooms were oddities, too. Everyone knew there was no such thing as blue roses, yet she was looking at them.

  Were they perhaps the result of an experiment? She had heard there was a way to breed one color rose bush with another color and arrive at a completely different third color, often a blending of the two.

  Perhaps the Innesford gardeners had crossed the famous black roses with another color to arrive at this astonishing shade. It was the blue of deep oceans or purest sapphire.

  The flowers were fading, for it was late in the season. Yet a single bud struggled to bloom, the petals still furled in a tight tulip shape.

  Would the bud survive? She doubted it. The nights were too cold, now. Wistfully, Ann stroked the outside of the tight bud.

  At that moment, the sky overhead gave a warning rumble. Ann looked up. The clouds boiled, hanging so low it felt as though she could raise her hand and thrust it within their soft, pendulous surface.

  A sharp crack split the sky, so loud that Ann clapped her hands over her ears with a cry of her own. She heard calls from inside the house and the clatter of the French doors being swiftly closed.

  She did not want to go back into that house with its happy couples and celebrations.

  The rain fell with as little warning as the thunder. One moment the air was clear, the next, great stinging drops hissed through the air.

  A broad petal from one of the overblown roses tore from the bloom and dropped to the earth. Then another.

  Quickly, Ann snatched out her hand, curled it around the little bud, twisted and snapped the thin stalk beneath. Her fingers only received one or two punctures from the juvenile thorns, then the bud was safely in her hand. She picked up her hem and ran around to the front of the house, her other hand over her hair—a very inadequate umbrella.

  When she reached the big front door, it would not open when she twisted the enormous round handle and leaned against it. The door had been barred on the inside. As the staff tended to linger in the back of the house where the family gathered, that made sense. Only it meant Ann could not slide into the house unremarked and move up the stairs to the sanctuary of her room for the afternoon.

  She looked around, wondering if there was any alternative to returning to the back of the house where everyone would see her.

  A soft, stressed neighing sounded through the hissing rain and the rumble of more thunder.

  The stables. There would be straw and perhaps a bale to sit upon and wait out the rain. It was at least a roof over her head.

  She did not debate the thought a moment more. Instead, she again picked up her hems and ran as fast as a tight corset would allow, around to the other side of the house where the big stables sat between the house and the woods to the west.

  A man-sized door was built into the stable wall closest to the house and the path led directly to it. Steep wooden steps rose over the door, leading up to the old, empty stableman’s quarters overhead.

  The door into the stable itself hung open. The interior was protected from the rain by the stairs.

  Ann rushed through the doorway and dropped her hems. She brushed at her gown and her hair to disperse as much of the water as possible, breathing hard.

  The interior of the stable was dim. Farther inside, amongst the stalls, she could see the glow of a lantern, although not the lantern itself. The lamp provided enough light for Ann to see the layout of the stable.

  It was a tidy building, for a stable. Straw lay over the floor and thick hooks projected from every wall. Most of the hooks held harnesses and saddles and all manner of horse-related equipment. There was even a pitchfork hanging between two hooks, instead of being thrust into the center of a convenient hay pile, where all the pitchforks Ann had ever seen until now were usually kept.

  The smell of horses and damp straw was oddly calming. It was not perfume or cologne, or the sharp scent of freshly starched linen.

  Ann paused from brushing herself down when she heard a soft murmur coming from the same direction as the light. Someone else was here, likely a stable boy or hand. She should let him know she was here and intended to stay until the storm had passed.

  She moved down the wide corridor between the stalls, glancing at the horses as she passed. They moved restlessly as the rain hammered against the roof and thunder rumbled, their eyes rolling.

  When Ann reached the stall where the lamplight originated, she paused, for it was no stable boy soothing the horse, but Adam—Uncle Iefan’s oldest son. He had his back to Ann and would not have heard her bootsteps. The pelting rain had increased in intensity since she stepped inside. He stood close to the horse’s head, his hand sliding down the long nose, as he spoke in his low voice.

  “…do not understand the rhythm to such things, do they? Shh, shh…it is just noise, my fine one. See, I do not jump at it. You should be pleased you are not locked inside with the humans, where you would have to suffer through their bad French.”

 

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