He remembered now. There had been an eccentric Viscount Cordell of the Regency era who had come to Cartref with his bride for their wedding trip and had never returned to England. They had lived here until a ripe old age, the two of them, with their children. He could not remember the exact date of their deaths and he could not remember how many children they had had. But he could remember one other thing clearly-two things.

That viscount had been John. His wife had been Adèle.

John Chandler, Viscount Cordell, certainly had not died of consumption within weeks or even months of his wedding.

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It seemed to her that she had loved him all her life. When he had lifted her down from that stile, he had lifted her into his life. He had always included her, guarded her, listened to her, and talked to her after that, though a mere four-year-old girl had seemed nothing but a nuisance to her brothers and sisters and to his and to the other children with whom they had played. He had seemed so grown-up, so tall, so handsome, so-oh, so wonderful to her infant's eyes. And he had remained so ever since.

She had loved him with a woman's love for years and years. She had resisted all of her parents' attempts to find a suitable husband for their youngest child. If she could not have John, she would have no one. She had decided that when she was sixteen, perhaps earlier. If he had not cared for her, perhaps she would have forced herself to turn her eyes, if not her heart, elsewhere. But she had always known that he loved her. There was a special gentleness, a special tenderness in his treatment of her.

Not that he would have married her. She was a dreamer with a streak of realism. He was an older son, heir to a viscount's title and fortune. More important than that, she knew that he did not love her as she loved him. He loved her, but she was not that one love of a lifetime, of an eternity, as he was to her. He loved her, perhaps, as he would a beloved sister. Maybe a little more than that. He had kissed her on her seventeenth birthday…