A Lady's Wish Read Free

war, but he missed the weight of his rapier at his hip and pistol beneath his arm. An unarmed man was a man who could be wounded.
    Are you capable of wounding a man?
    I should hope not!
    Excellent. Then I have nothing to fear.
    He commanded a knife from a footman and slid the letter open. A single sheet of foolscap unfolded, another paper within it bound with brown string.
    24 February 1816
    Paris, France
    Captain Nikolas Acton
    c/o Farthings & Cholm Solicitors
    Oxford Street
    London, England
    Dear Nik,
    I trust you are well. I have been ordered by the general to set off at once for Calcutta and am pressed with last-minute preparations. I write in haste before departing with a commission for you. In truth, I trust only you to accomplish this task.
    A close companion of my early years on the Peninsula—a gentleman I believe you met on one of your brief sojourns on land with us—discovered a treasure of great worth while there. He is no longer in a position to retrieve this treasure. Now, heading East, neither am I. Because of previous instructions left by my friend, however, the treasure will not remain long in its present location in England. In short, it could easily be lost.
    I now put into your hands the map my friend fashioned. You must retrieve the treasure before 15 March of this year.
    Yours &c.
    Colonel John “Jag” Pressley Grace
    Nik unbound the map. He nearly laughed in relief. No dotted line wended its way about the paper, no X marked the spot. The “map” was rather a list of inns, posting houses, villages, and rivers. All the places were familiar enough, running from London northwesterly toward Wales. He knew that countryside well, indeed. He had spent a year scouring it, searching for a girl. And he had begun his search in that very village at the end of the list where Jag’s friend had buried the treasure.
    He sipped his brandy slowly. Jag was an honest man. Nik hadn’t any doubt the treasure was above board.
    His gaze shifted across the chamber. As a younger son without prospects, profession, or wealth, he had not been welcome at clubs like this. Now he had the funds to match men like Alex Savege at the gaming tables any day he wished.
    He did not particularly wish it. And he did not wish a wife, either. Not yet. Not until he finally rid himself of asinine memories and foolish regrets. Ashford’s offer was preferable to enduring his six-month-long furlough in the state he’d spent the past fortnight. The viscount had named an April 1 sailing date. Nik would accept that offer. Until then this treasure hunt would fill the time.
    The fifteenth of March. Less than a fortnight. And the destination—the Shropshire Hills—where, on a sparkling May Day he had met a girl whose name he never learned. A girl he had laughingly called Isolde, after the heroine in the medieval play performed that day at the festival. Foolish devil-may-care youth that he had been, he’d told her to call him Tristan.
    Tristan and Isolde, lovers who defeated all obstacles to be together until fate tore them apart.
    Now, still he could not forget her. And again it was driving him mad.
    He drew a long breath. He must move on with his life. Perhaps a visit to that place after so long would serve him as eight years upon the ocean had not. Perhaps seeing that tiny village again in the gray dripping rain of March rather than beneath the early summer sun would knock him into finally admitting that she had in fact been what he always feared.
    Simply a dream.

Chapter Two
    T he prong would not budge.
    Lady Patricia Morgan pressed her ribs into the edge of her worktable and squinted her eyes in the lamplight, as though such wiggling would make the tiny metal protrusion obey. Her breaths came tight and focused, her brow creased. But no matter how she prodded with the tip of the needle-thin pliers, the filigree of gold would not move across the tiny diamond’s girdle.
    “You wish to remain in that little divot of a flaw I did not see until