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mist spread like a blanket across the rolling landscape. Only hilltops and the bare treetops of the forest were clearly visible, though Jamie thought he could make out the shapes of hedgerows and tenant cottages in the distance.
    Strangely, something about this country, so foreign to him, reminded him of his home in Virginia. Perhaps it was the open and untamed feel of the land. Despite the patchwork of fields and low stone walls that crisscrossed the countryside—proof that people had worked this soil for centuries—it seemed wild, unspoiled. He patted Hermes’s neck with a gloved hand. The stallion’s breath lingered in clouds of white, slowly rose, and dissipated in the chill air. Jamie was grateful for the thick warmth of his woolen greatcoat, which kept out both wet and cold. Winter was coming, and fast from the feel of it. For the first time since he’d come to Ireland, he felt the tension begin to drain from his body. It felt good to be outdoors. He’d spent the past five days arguing with Sheff in the manor that served as Sheff’s hunting retreat. The board had been lavish, the wine excellent, the company insufferable.
    Although Sheff had welcomed Jamie openly, he was not the man Jamie remembered. Where he’d once been a bit arrogant, he was now pompous and cruel. His skin wore a sickly pallor, and he drank far more than was good for him. There was a sharp edge to Sheff now, a darkness. Jamie had felt it immediately.
    The sound of hooves approached from behind, slowed, stopped beside him.
    “You call this hunting?” Jamie’s tone was light, but his disdain was not entirely feigned.
    “It is what gentlemen call hunting.” Sheff retrieved a small flask from a pocket inside his greatcoat, pulled out the cork, drank deeply.
    “The hounds do the actual hunting, whilst we gentlemen ride along, talk politics, and drink, then shoot whatever the dogs drag down. Hand me that, will you?” Jamie accepted the flask and drank. The liquor scorched a path to his stomach, warmed him. “To whom will the trophy belong—us or the hounds?”
    “I had forgotten you had a red Indian for a nurse. I suppose you think it more manly to crawl through the muck on your belly clad in animal hides with a knife between your teeth.”
    Jamie handed the flask back to Sheff. “I don’t know about the knife between the teeth, but the rest of it sounds good.”
    “You are a savage, Jamie, old boy. Whatever shall I do with you?”
    Servants hurried past them on foot and on horseback, barking commands to the hounds, which bayed and strained against their leashes, already hot on the scent. A ruddy-faced man with broad shoulders rode up to them. “This seems as good a place as any to release them, my lord.”
    “Very well. Get on with it, Edward.”
    Sheff’s father had passed on only two months before. With his father’s last breath, Sheff had become Sheffield Winthrop Tate III, Lord Byerly, an earl with a host of estates and titles. Though Jamie had known his friend would one day assume his father’s noble titles and lands, he was still entertained by the stiff formality that made up Sheff’s existence. He was, after all, still Sheff. Jamie had known him since their college years at Oxford, where they’d drunk too much, lost immoderately at cards, and spent innumerable nights between the thighs of lovely courtesans.
    It was Sheff who’d taught Jamie the joys of debauchery when Jamie had been nineteen and new to England. Though Jamie had already discovered the pleasures of a woman’s body, there had been much about life he hadn’t known. England had seemed a different world from his tobacco plantation on the banks of the Rappahannock River. Sheff had introduced Jamie to that world, and the two had become friends despite the fact Sheff was the heir to an earldom and Jamie merely the well-to-do heir to a tobacco plantation.
    Six years had passed since they’d completed their studies at the university. Jamie had spent those years