Legacy of Secrets. Sara Mitchell

at a place she wanted them to regard as home.

      Home.

      Gray rolled and sat up, fighting the ever-present discontent with his life. Nothing assuaged the malaise, not women nor drink nor even a couple of shooting competitions where he’d reaped adulation and medals for pretending every shot he fired was aimed at Kevin Hackbone’s heart. Sumner—no, it was not Sumner anymore. Now his only refuge from a stifling lifestyle was a school for females. Life was full of bitter irony.

      Gray shuddered.

      Why did Aunt Bella have to pick this particular day to hare off to Berryville?

      He’d arrived an hour earlier, eager for a much-needed visit with the only female left on earth whose presence he could tolerate longer than twenty-four hours. Growing up, Gray spent miserable hours wishing Isabella was his mother, instead of the sweet but overprotective woman who refused to let Gray become a man. Even now, on his visits home, she treated him as though he were a perpetual three-year-old toddler. At fifteen, he finally rebelled and ran. Aunt Bella was the only family member with whom he’d stayed in touch. Understanding soul that she was, she’d waited out a year; when he turned sixteen she calmly told him to take his sorry carcass back home and mend fences, or she’d write his mother herself. And send Gray’s two older brothers to fetch him.

      A smile tweaked the corner of his mouth, remembering that first reunion. Aunt Bella had been spot on, of course.

      He flicked open his watch, to discover only seven minutes had passed since he checked the time. Swearing beneath his breath, Gray stood up, scanned the winding drive again. It was going on five, dusk not far away. Why weren’t they back home? He needed to talk, needed to hear her advice, soak up the love offered without chains.

      When he heard the faint but piercing sound of a whistle, he whipped around, hand automatically going to the butt of his gun. Across the lawn, Mr. Pepperell had also straightened. He dropped his tools, his head swiveling back and forth as he, too, scanned the estate’s southern woods. Gray loped over.

      “What is it? Who’s ruining the peace and quiet by blowing a blasted whistle?”

      “I—oh, my, it most likely is Miss Shaw. She told me she was going for a walk.” He paused to wipe a shaking hand across his brow. “I don’t know precisely what—that is to say, I hadn’t expected…”

      “Why is she blowing a whistle?”

      The gardener swallowed several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Instead of a dapper gentleman politely sharing botanical tidbits, now he resembled an old man on the verge of collapse. “Distress.” He peered dazedly up at Gray. “It’s to be used only as a call for help. A—a safety measure, if you will. All students wear one when out of sight of the main house. They’re most of them young women from towns and farms, not used to the country.”

      Clumsily he began untying his gardener’s apron. “I must go. I’m the only one—”

      “No, you’re not,” Gray interrupted. “I’ll go see what the problem is. You stay here, alert the household to be prepared with bandages or whatever might be required.”

      Ignoring the gardener’s halfhearted protests, he took off at a run in the general location of the last whistle call. When he reached the woods he paused, rapidly searched and discovered a path of sorts. Good. Jaw set, Gray plunged into the shadowed forest.

      Chapter Three

      Within two minutes, Gray was forced to slow his pace. Wet shrubs newly leafed slapped his sides; low-hanging branches tried to gouge his face, and he slipped twice on the narrow path that seemed to delight in its number of twists and turns.

      After ten minutes he stopped completely. He swiped at his face, then tugged off his jacket and hung it on a dead branch. Irritation boiled through him. This whole day had been nothing but one infernal nuisance after another. And some timid female who couldn’t find her way out of a potato sack…Well, this was just what he needed, tearing through unfamiliar woods like some stupid Galahad, only to wind up more lost than the equally stupid female. And she wasn’t helping much at all.

      “Where are you?” he roared. “Blow the whistle again!”

      He waited, yelled again. Nothing. Very well. Stay lost, then. A chilly night in dark woods would teach a valuable lesson.

      The whistle blew.

      Gray ignored the quick tug of relief, turned on his heel, plunged off the narrow path and fought his way through yet another thicket of wet leafy shrubs, only marginally pacified when the whistle continued to blow at regular intervals. The young miss deserved a blistering lecture for getting herself lost—and he deserved to deliver it.

      Of course, a remote possibility existed that she actually had hurt herself, along with getting lost. Aunt Bella needed to apply a firmer hand with her students, since these woods doubtless were home to bears, maybe even a wildcat or two. Trespassing hunters…

      The skin at the back of his neck tightened. No matter how helpless or irrational a woman behaved, she never deserved to be mistreated. If this one had been harmed in any manner, or even frightened by some wandering weasel, Gray would track the vermin down and teach him a few manners.

      He burst into a small clearing, and a feminine voice called loudly, “Halt this instance! You’ve been shooting at me, not a deer or a…bear!”

      What—? Gray swiveled toward the voice, which emanated from behind a large two-trunk oak. “Shooting at you?” he shouted back, marching across the glade. “Stop spouting nonsense and show yourself.” With an effort he moderated his tone. “You’re safe now. I’m here to guide you back. You’ve nothing to fear.”

      He reached the tree, peered around, and barely avoided getting brained with a dead tree limb.

      “I don’t need a guide. And I don’t believe you.” A bedraggled moppet with curly brown hair and snapping brown eyes brandished the limb in his face. “Who are you? You’re trespassing, and furthermore hunting is forbidden on this land.” Her irate gaze fastened on Gray’s revolver. The flushed cheeks paled.

      Gray propped his shoulder against the tree trunk and crossed his arms over his chest. Her head scarcely reached his chin; she’d gotten herself lost, and she was alone in the middle of the woods with a man she’d never met. Yet she stood there, taking him to task without a shred of awareness of her helplessness. “Your stick wouldn’t deter a tabby cat, much less a man with a gun. Even a man without one,” he drawled, palm itching to slip the weapon from its holster to scare a modicum of common sense into her.

      For a second the girl stared at him wide-eyed. Then she popped the whistle back in her mouth and blew. The sound at close range shrilled into Gray’s unprotected ears, and he covered them in a reflexive action worthy of the greenest tenderfoot.

      “Mr. Pepperell will be here any moment,” she confidently stated after trying to deafen him. “Also a very husky Irishman. They won’t take kindly to a trespassing hunter. You could have killed someone through your carelessness.”

      Disbelieving, for the first time Gray studied the woman objectively, without the haze of resentment fogging his mind. At first he’d pegged her for one of Isabella’s youngest students, too naive to grasp her circumstances. Upon closer examination he realized she had to be in her early twenties, possibly a few years older. The wild tangle of curls and guileless eyes were nothing but a smoke screen.

      She might be orphaned now, but he’d wager she’d had siblings at one time, all of them younger, poor saps she ordered about with the same officious superiority his sisters had inflicted upon his own miserable childhood.

      “For your information,” he finally said, mildly enough considering his mood, “I happen to know that your husky Irishman is only an inch taller than you, say, five feet six inches? And he’s about as husky as a plucked rooster. As for Mr. Pepperell, he’s nearing seventy. Had he come hunting you down, by now he would have expired from heart palpitations.”

      He