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Kenton. You must have noticed how her exuberance has dimmed during his absence—not to mention how she’s loathed every aspect of her first three Seasons.”
    “And you think Quentin’s homecoming would lift her spirits?”
    “Don’t you? If anyone can reach her, he can.”
    “They haven’t seen each other for four years, Pamela. Brandi was a child when Quentin went to war.”
    “Was she?” Pamela mused aloud. “I wonder.” Lovingly, she squeezed her husband’s forearm. “I’d best pack.”
    Kenton glanced at his timepiece and nodded. “Ardsley should be here any minute.”
    “Have Bentley fix him a drink. I’ll be ready straightaway.”
    An odd sense of trepidation pierced Kenton’s consciousness. “Pamela …” He put out an instinctive hand as if to protect her—from what, he wasn’t certain. “Maybe it would be best if you remained at Colverton.”
    “No.” Pamela caught his hand between both of hers. “ ’Twould be best if I accompanied you. You see, darling, as I recently explained to Brandi, I love you. Our destinies are entwined. And whatever the future holds in store, we’ll confront it together.”
    The trepidation vanished as quickly as it had come, annihilated by fate’s iron will.
    Forty minutes later, the imposing carriage bearing the Steel family crest rounded Colverton’s winding drive and disappeared through the dense woods surrounding the estate.
    Only the lone figure watching from a shadowed grove of trees by the roadside knew that the Duke and Duchess of Colverton and the Viscount Denerley would never arrive in London.

Chapter 2
    Q UENTIN PAUSED AT THE grassy threshold of Colverton’s peaceful, deserted burial site. Rain pelted him relentlessly, but he scarcely noticed. He was too consumed by the finality he would momentarily be forced to confront; a finality he hadn’t yet accepted.
    His parents were dead.
    Slowly, he moved forward, his boots sinking into the soggy ground, guiding him, of their own accord, to his destination.
    He saw the burnished head from fifty feet away, lowered as it had been the day he’d left her. Shoulders shaking, she knelt before Kenton and Pamela’s gravesides, raindrops drenching her as she buried her face in her hands.
    She must have heard him approach, for her back stiffened and her head whipped around to see who was intruding on her pain.
    “Quentin …” She came to her feet, taking an instinctive step in his direction, then halting. Conflicting emotions warred on her beautiful, transparent face—joy at seeing him, anguish at the reason for his return, uncertainty as to how she should behave. Quentin could read her indecision clearly: After four years, did she greet him with the utmost propriety or with the impulsive abandon of the past?
    Reaching out his hand, he took the decision away from her. “Hello, Sunbeam.”
    “Thank God you’re home.” She closed the remaining distance between them, seizing his hand and gazing up at him with a lost, haunted look in her dark eyes. “They’re gone, Quentin.”
    Without a heartbeat of hesitation, Quentin enfolded Brandi against him, as comforted by the act as she. “I know, sweetheart.” He felt her delicate body begin to shudder with long-suppressed sobs.
    “Their carriage went off the road … that sharp turn near Oxford … the family who found them said they died instantly …” Brandi gasped fragmented details against Quentin’s military coat.
    “My message said only that it was a carriage accident,” he replied, determinedly reserving his myriad questions for later. “And that there were no survivors.”
    “Papa’s body was dashed on the rocks,” Brandi was continuing, desperately trying to bring herself under control. “And Pamela and Kenton were crushed beneath the weight of the carriage. Desmond tried to keep the specifics from me. But I didn’t want to be protected. I needed to understand. Yet I can’t accept the fact that I’ll never see them again. Oh, Quentin, I