"Well, yes I can," said Diana in her usual calming voice. Sometimes Cedric wondered if anything ever got to her. "Your father was a very old fashioned man, so I'm not surprised. Look, I'm sure no one will expect you to force this lady.... Whoever she is... To marry you. So why don't you meet her, and decide for yourself if you would like her to be your wife.... If not, or if she says no, then you can start searching for someone else."

"Fine," Cedric agreed and hung up. As far as he was concerned, he and his father were very different people who agreed on nothing, and they certainly wouldn't agree on who he was going to marry. He'd meet this lady, just for the sake of doing so, and then since he had to, he'd find himself a wife of his choosing. To hell with what... Or who Magnus Blackwood wanted.

-----------

A Week later, Anna was upstairs in her father's office giving it a good dusting. It was a small but cozy space at the back of the house, overlooking the little rose garden that she tried to maintain herself since her father hadn't been able to care for it following his stroke. It didn't look like much of a garden now, as she knew next to nothing about caring for roses. But she couldn't afford to employ a gardener, so it was that or nothing.

She had dreams every so often, of going to university and doing a science degree, studying Biology and Natural Sciences, but of course that was impossible. Not when she barely earned enough to cover her and her father's existing expenses and maintenance for the old cottage, let alone for university fees. And then there was the ongoing issue of care for him. She could leave him alone for the day while she worked, but not longer than that.

She definitely wasn't able to leave him while she undertook a degree, though study by distance might be an option. But still there was the issue of fees. It was a situation that both her and her father were unhappy with, but both of them were trapped in it and there wasn't much to be done.

She couldn't leave him alone. He was her father, and she owed it to him. Not only because he'd had to give up his career as a surgeon after his stroke, but also because he'd brought her up after her mother died, and that hadn't been easy. She'd been a difficult child, hard to manage even for the nannies he'd employed. Eventually he'd been forced to bring her up himself, which had greatly impacted on the career he'd wanted for himself-as he'd never ceased to point out to her.

It wasn't his fault that they had no money and the cottage was falling down around their ears. It wasn't his fault that he was limited in what he could do because she wasn't able to help him physically the way he needed her to. It wasn't his fault that she'd basically ruined his life.

Anna knew all that. Just as she knew it was her job to fix it. She frowned ferociously at her duster, her brain sorting through various money-making scenarios. The extra shifts she'd picked up at the cafe would help, but they weren't a good long-term solution. No, she was going to have to think of something else.

Her phone in her jeans pocket buzzed.

She took it out and glanced at the screen, and saw a text from her father:

Come down to the sitting room.

Since his stroke had left him unable to walk with any ease, he'd taken to texting her when he needed her to do something for him. It was a system that worked very well, except when she was in the middle of doing something and he was impatient. But luckily those instances were few and far between.

The Hall was where he usually was, sitting in his old armchair near the brick fireplace when she got downstairs, his handsome face drooping slightly on one side due to the effects of the stroke. He'd always been a stern, serious man who'd never had much time for humor, and today he seemed even more serious than usual.

"Sit down, Anna," he said in sententious tones.

Anna checked-surreptitiously, because he hated it when she fussed-that he had what he needed on the table beside his chair, then sat in the armchair opposite. "What is it, Dad?" she asked.

"I have some news." Anna couldn't help but notice that he seemed agitated, which was very unlike him. "Something that I haven't told you and should have."

A curl of foreboding tightened inside her, but she ignored it. If her father hated her fussing, he hated her worrying more. In fact, he hated all excess emotion, and so Anna had spent many years curbing her wayward feelings and getting them under control.

"That sounds... Serious," she said.

"That's because it is." Her father gave her his usual repressive stare, as if he expected her to start screaming or weeping or performing any other such unwanted emotional display.

When she said nothing, he gave an approving nod. "Well, you recall Magnus Blackwood, don't you? Who died a couple of months ago?"

Anna knew who Magnus Blackwood was. He was the Duke of Springbrook, who owned Haerton and with whom her father had once been friends years earlier. He'd been a virtual recluse for the past two years before he died, and coupled with her father's physical limitations, had meant it was a friendship very much in the past tense even before he died.

Reminded suddenly of Haerton, Anna caught her breath as yet again the memory of what had happened just over a week ago rushed to fill her head. Of the beautiful man coming out of the lake and of the way he'd touched her.

Heat crept into her cheeks and she had to pretend she was examining a loose thread on the edge of the sofa cushion to hide it. The memory of that wretched encounter kept creeping up on her whenever she least expected it, no matter that she'd put the entire incident from her mind the instant she'd fled. And there should be no reason to think of it now. None at all.

"Yes, I remember Magnus Blackwood," she said, forcing the memory away and trying to bring her attention back to her father. "I think I only met him once...Several years ago."

"Yes. You are right. But the Duke and I talked often, or rather we used to."

"Why do you want to know if I remember him?"

Her father's dark eyes were still sharp and they gave her a very direct look. "We made a certain...gentleman's agreement one night. It was a long time ago and I forgot about it. Especially when he broke off all contact. However..."

Uncharacteristically, her father paused, seeming hesitant. "I got a letter yesterday from the Duke's office, reminding me of the agreement and asking me to honor it."

Anna frowned, unsure of where her father was going with this. "What agreement? Please don't say it concerns money, because you know-"

"It's not about money," Luke interrupted, his voice flat.

The foreboding that she'd forced away earlier crept back, though she fought it down. "Then what is it about?"

Her father's fingers picked at the edge of his blanket, yet more signs of an agitation that wasn't like him at all.

What have you done now? Anna wondered. The foreboding gripped her tighter, even though she hadn't done anything that would cause her father grief, not recently at least. Maybe it was about that man she'd met a week ago. She swallowed. No, surely not? Who would have told him? No one else had been at the lake, she was sure of it. And anyway, what did that have to do with the Duke of Springbrook?

"Magnus and I went to university together," her father said. "After his divorce from his first wife, he remarried and his new wife was pregnant. They knew it was a boy. We were celebrating and he suggested that if I was to ever have a daughter, then she could marry his son, who would be the next Duke of Springbrook. I...confess I'd had more than a couple of pints and I was a little worse for wear. I agreed that it was a fine idea and so we shook on it. He never mentioned it again and neither did I, and soon I forgot about it."

Anna blinked in surprise. She couldn't imagine her father drinking let alone being 'a little worse for wear'. He was famously abstemious and hated rowdiness of any kind. He also wasn't the type to indulge in drunken gentlemen's agreements either.

"I see," she said, puzzled. "So why are you mentioning this to me now?"

"Because the Duke of Springbrook's son, now the current Duke of Springbrook, has asked me to make good on my promise."

Anna's surprise deepened. An arranged betrothal between the children of two friends lost in the mists of time? The idea was so ridiculous, so utterly preposterous, it had to be a joke. "Dad, are you sure this isn't a scam? Is the letter legitimate?"

"Yes, of course it's legitimate and I know a scam when I see one." His mouth thinned. "The son you were betrothed to is dead, but it doesn't matter. His first son, the new Duke, wishes to see you tomorrow night at Haerton so he can put his proposal to you."

Anna opened her mouth. Shut it again. She didn't know whether to laugh at the insanity of the situation or be outraged by it. But, since she didn't display any extremes of emotion these days, she settled on a tight smile. "I appreciate the invitation obviously, but he can't possibly think that I'm going to agree to it."

But her father only stared at her. "He has offered certain...financial incentives."

Oh. No wonder her father was taking this so seriously. She was very conscious all of a sudden that her palms were damp and her heartbeat had quickened.

"What kind of financial incentives?" she asked, pleased by how level she sounded.

"I don't know," her father said, his gaze still sharp and direct. "His letter was very brief. I assume he'll tell you more when you meet him."

She stiffened. "What do you mean, "when"? I'm not going to Haerton-"

"I want you to hear him out, Anna," Luke said flatly. "We can't keep going on the way we have."

"But I've taken on extra shifts-"

"That's not going to help either of us and you know it." Her father's expression became hard, the way it always did when he thought she was disobeying him.

"The house needs to have money spent on it, or we need to sell it. I've been looking into treatment for myself too. There are a couple of options that would improve my quality of life immensely, but they're expensive. And I'm tired of waiting. This could be the answer, Anna."

It was true. Depending on what kind of 'financial incentives' the Duke was offering, it could mean the solution to all their difficulties. And all she'd have to do was marry a complete stranger.

You wanted to fix this. You're the reason you're in this mess in the first place, after all. That was also true. Her father might have been a world-renowned surgeon if her mother hadn't wanted a baby and hadn't talked her father into it; he hadn't been keen on the idea. And if her mother hadn't then died six months later in a car accident, leaving her grieving father to bring up a child he hadn't wanted in the first place. An overly emotional, stubborn and headstrong child, whom her reserved and self-contained father had no idea what to do with. And whose behavior had been a contributing factor in the stress that had triggered his stroke.

She swallowed down the guilt, forced it aside along with all the other unwanted emotions that still seethed inside her, no matter how many years she'd spent ignoring them. Once, she'd thought that they'd go away altogether, or at least she wouldn't feel them so very deeply, but that day hadn't come yet.

When she'd been very young and her father's disapproval and cold distance had been too much for her, she'd used to escape into the woods and the Haerton estate, where she could shout and sing and even scream to herself and no one would tell her to be quiet or to go away, or that she was a damn nuisance.

But she didn't go into the woods often these days, because these days she was much better at controlling herself. She wasn't that difficult child any more.

"In that case," she said without inflection, "Of course I'll see him."

Her father gave her another of his sharp, assessing looks, as if he'd somehow picked up a note of protest in her tone, though there hadn't been even the faintest hint of one. "You don't have to marry him, Anna. No one's going to force you. It's not the Middle Ages after all. But the logical thing to do is to get all the information so you can make an informed decision."

She didn't know how he'd managed to pick up on her reluctance, not when she'd barely acknowledged it herself. Or perhaps it wasn't reluctance, only surprise due to the unusual nature of the request.

Whatever, her father was right. She needed to gather all the information before making a decision, in which case accepting the Duke's invitation was the logical thing to do.

Really, she was viewing this with far too much emotion, especially when she didn't even know what kind of proposal the Duke was going to put forward. It clearly wasn't going to be a real marriage, not when they'd never met. Perhaps it was because of some legal difficulty? Not that it mattered. Marriage-whenever she thought of it, which she seldom did-seemed to work well for some people, but it required a certain amount of emotional involvement that she wasn't willing to give.

She would have to inform the Duke of that when they met so he was clear. She certainly wouldn't want to mislead anyone.

"No, you're right," she said in the same cool tone. "You can tell the Duke that I'd be happy to accept his invitation."

Her father was pleased, she could tell, and that gave her a certain satisfaction. And, since she wasn't going to get anything done if she thought about it too much, she put it out of her mind.

__________

The next day came and Anna couldn't put it out of her mind any longer. Today, she had to come up with a way to tell a man that she wouldn't be getting married to him...Or she would be engaged... Depending on what he was offering. Would it be worth it?

She told herself that she wasn't in the least bit nervous as she surveyed her very meagre wardrobe, trying to decide on what to wear. She hardly went out anywhere, except for a few times with her friends, Collins and Sara, so she didn't have a lot of nice dresses. She picked a summery, cotton white one and decided to wear it. She liked the dress, but putting it on made her feel as though she was making an effort and some stubborn part of her didn't want to be seen to be making an effort.

The same stubborn part of her that had refused to look up anything about the current Duke of Springbrook on the Internet. There was bound to be something about him-some photos at least-to give her an idea about what to expect, but something inside her absolutely refused.

She knew that giving in to her stubborn streak wasn't a good idea, since it had caused her problems in the past, but she rationalized it, by telling herself that she didn't want to go to Haerton with any preconceived ideas. Besides, she'd find out about him soon enough, and there was always the possibility that the whole ridiculous situation was a joke. Or something her father had misunderstood, or some other easily explicable thing that would become apparent the moment she arrived.

It wouldn't have anything to do with her actually marrying some man she'd never met, and a duke at that. So she didn't make an effort. Instead, she wore jeans and a serviceable shirt in plain white and she didn't even touch her make-up. She made sure her father had everything he needed for the evening, double-checked his phone was within reach so he could call her if he had to, and then she stepped outside and walked across the lawn to the little path that would take her to Haerton.

It was a beautiful evening, the long summer twilight lying over the moors beyond the woods lighting the gray stone of the large house. Ivy covered the walls, softening the stark, square lines and the austere front entrance.

While Anna loved Haerton grounds-its wild wood and large ornate gardens-she'd never actually been in the house itself. But she'd always been curious about it. Nerves fluttered inside her as she stopped in front of the big front door and pressed the button for the doorbell set in the door frame.

The door was immediately opened by a slightly cadaverous-looking man who was clearly one of the Duke's staff. He greeted her, requested that she follow him, then, without waiting for a response, stalked off, leaving Anna no choice but to do what he said.

She wasn't given time to look around, though she caught a glimpse of high ceilings and ornate plaster-work, and paintings in heavy gilded frames. The floor was worn parquet and her footsteps scuffed as she hurried after the staff member who was obviously doing butler duties.

He opened a door to her left and ushered her into a very comfortable sitting room with a huge fireplace down one end, where a collection of couches and arm-chairs were arranged in front of it. Bookshelves stood against the white paneled walls, piled high and untidily with vast amounts of books. There were occasional tables scattered about and littered with various knickknacks, piles of papers, more abandoned books, plus a few cups and saucers. Old silk rugs covered the floor, softening the stark feel of the place, but nothing could mask the faint smell of must and damp. The scent of an old, neglected house that had been shut up and abandoned for far too long.

Despite that, the sitting room gave the impression of a room well lived-in, and it was warm, and Anna found herself relaxing somewhat.

"The Duke will be with you soon," the man said and left without another word, closing the door behind him.

Anna stood for a moment, the silence of the house settling around her. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a small painting near the fire. She was just starting towards it to have a closer look, when she heard the door open again behind her, then close just as quietly.

And all the hairs on the back of her neck lifted in a kind of primitive awareness.

"Hello Anna," a deep, rich and very familiar male voice said.