He placed one booted foot against a stool and gazed gloomily at the high gloss of the black leather. Women had always been the bane of his life. His own mother! He had vague memories of her. He believed that she must have given him much attention. The memories mostly involved her leaning over him with a gentle smile-whether to soothe away a headache, or to admire a daisy chain, or to bid him good night, he could not clearly recall. But he had loved her, trusted the permanence of her love. She had run away with the curate of a neighboring village when he was seven, leaving him behind. He had suffered cruelly from his sense of loss and rejection and from his father's drunken rages.

And then there had been Rachel, his father's second wife. She had been Edward's governess for three years, and all the while had been sweet and attentive. She had seemed to devote herself entirely to the lonely child, and he had gradually allowed himself to love and to depend upon another human being again. He had felt deeply shocked, even betrayed, when he knew that she was to marry his father. How had she been able to get to know him when she spent all her time with the boy? But he had talked himself into accepting the marriage. After all, it would be infinitely better, more permanent, to have her as a mother than merely as a governess.

It was only six months after the wedding when Edward, exploring the upper hallway as he often did when playing imaginative games, opened the door to a room that he knew was not occupied by any of the servants, and found two people threshing around on the bed. They both turned alarmed faces at the sound of the opening door. The woman with her head on the pillow was Rachel. The man on top of her was his father's head groom. There were no covers over them. They were both naked.