Claiming the Ashbrooke Heir. Mary Nichols

mothers from their children, brothers from sisters, and they all looked listless and downbeat. He left and returned to the street, glad that he would never have to enter such a place, but wondering where to go next.

      Standing on the pavement with his back to that forbidding building, with the sun beating down on him, he was transported back to Spain, to the last time he had seen his brother. When the command had come to move out of their winter quarters and pursue the enemy, the troops had marched with a will. None more so than himself. He hadn’t been able to wait to get at the enemy. His quarrel with them was more than a soldier’s duty, it was personal. He blamed them for the death of his wife and baby son nearly four years before, notwithstanding they had been safe home in England at the time. He had convinced himself that if he had been with them, if he had been at home and not waging war hundreds of miles away, they might have lived. He had been so ridden with guilt over it the burden had become intolerable. It had eased it to take his venom out on the enemy, and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, who had started the conflict. He had vowed he would not rest or go home until he had seen him beaten.

      It was a vow he had been obliged to retract when Jeremy had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Vittoria. His brother should never have been sent to war; he had not been soldier material and he cursed the unknown girl who had made it happen. He had known his father and stepmother would take the news very hard, and he could not let them learn it from an impersonal letter. He had seen his brother decently buried and come home.

      He had been right; his father was wretched and his stepmother could do nothing to help him. Jeremy, the golden boy, had been his father’s favourite, and he was dead. Charles knew he ought to go to Brookside, the country house he had shared with Arabella, but he could not bring himself to do so. It was not only that he could not bear to be reminded of her, but because he did not like to leave his father, who went about the estate with hardly a civil word to anyone and, when at home, sat in his chair in the library and brooded.

      ‘I wish I could do something for him,’ he had told his stepmother. ‘He needs something to occupy him and take his mind off it.’

      ‘You could furnish him with a legitimate grandson.’

      ‘I could, but to do that I must marry again.’ He remembered pausing, because her use of the word legitimate had made him think. ‘I am hardly likely to come up with an illegitimate one, Mama.’

      ‘No, but I think Jeremy has.’

      They had been breakfasting together at the time, and he had put down the piece of toast he’d been buttering and stared at her. ‘Tell me about it.’

      And so she had told him about Annie, the nursery maid. He’d listened, remembering his conversation with Jeremy. ‘He told me about her,’ he said when she finished. ‘But he said it was only a romp and he had not got her with child.’

      ‘He did not know. I sent him away. I feel dreadful about it now. Not about the girl—because Jeremy was only doing what hundreds of other young men have done, trying out his manhood. It is up to the girls to stop them if they do not like it—but because I sent him to his death.’

      Charles did not agree with her about the girls. Her attitude, and that of his brother and other aristocratic youths like him, was careless in the extreme, but he did not say so. Instead he asked what had become of the nursery maid.

      ‘I have no idea. Does it matter?’

      ‘I think it does. I think I should try and find her.’

      ‘You never mean to bring her back here?’ She was horrified at the idea.

      ‘No, of course not. It would not do. But I can at least make sure she is not in want. If there is a child, she is not going to find life easy, is she? She might need help.’

      ‘She should have thought of that before …’

      ‘Mama, can you not find it in your heart to be charitable? After all, Jeremy must share some of the blame. If he had lived, I am sure he would not have let her starve.’

      The trouble was that no one at Riseborough Hall knew where Annie had gone. She had not mixed with the other servants and had kept herself to herself. ‘Too high and mighty for her own good,’ Miss Burnley had told him.

      He had found out quite by chance when he’d visited Becky, something he always did when he was at Riseborough. After their mother had died, giving birth to Jeremy, she had been the only mother they had known until his father had married again, and by that time they’d been grown up. Becky had always been a safe haven whenever they needed one.

      She had been distressed on learning of Jeremy’s death, and had spent several minutes talking about him and the mischief he’d used to get into. ‘When you were at home you would always haul him out of his pickles,’ she said, dabbing at her tears. ‘But you weren’t here that last time.’

      ‘You mean the business over the nursery maid?’

      ‘Yes.’

      It was then, after a little hesitation, that she told him of Annette’s stay with her and gave him the direction of her sister. And after all that Annette had moved on and his journey had been in vain. He turned on his heel and went back to his room at The Maid’s Head. He had tried and there was little else he could do; the girl had gone, obviously intent on not being found.

      And then he thought of the woman with the parcel. Could it have been Annette? She had had no child with her, but she could have left it somewhere—farmed it out, had it adopted. The idea did not sit well with him at all, and he knew he had to find her if only to confirm she was not the woman he sought.

      Annette, taking the sewing back the following day, had the uncomfortable feeling she was being followed. She tried dodging down side streets, but still she felt that shadow behind her. She could not think who would want anything from her. Her purse was empty and the parcel she was carrying contained nothing of any value, though she knew people had been attacked and even murdered for less.

      She hurried on, turning left before she reached the castle. It was a forbidding building which housed the city’s prison population, and she always passed it as quickly as she could, as if afraid that she might be drawn into it for some misdemeanour she was not even aware of. It was then she saw him—the man she had stumbled into the day before. If he was her follower, he must have turned down a side street to come at her from a different direction.

      She put her head up and made to pass him, but he barred her way and doffed his hat. ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We meet again.’

      Could it be coincidence? Why would he remember meeting her, of all the hundreds of people that thronged the city’s streets? ‘Good morning, sir,’ she said, wishing he did not look so much like Jeremy. It was unnerving—more so when she carried on walking and he dropped into step beside her.

      ‘I was hoping you might help me,’ he said.

      ‘Help you? If you are looking for directions, then you have asked the wrong person. I have not long lived in Norwich …’

      ‘Did you, by any chance, once live in Riseborough in Suffolk?’

      The shock made her stumble, but she quickly recovered her balance and began walking again, faster than ever.

      He was easily able to keep up with her. ‘I think from your reaction I might be right. Is your name Annette Ryston?’

      She had been expecting the next question and was ready for it. ‘My name is Mrs Anstey.’

      ‘Ah, then I am right. Becky said that was the name you intended to use.’

      ‘Becky? I do not think I know the lady.’

      ‘Oh, Annie, you know her very well, and so do I.’

      She stopped suddenly and turned towards him. ‘Who are you?’

      ‘I am Major Charles Ashbrooke.’

      She should have known; his likeness to Jeremy was uncanny. It was a likeness that