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baroness just looked at him, unwilling to share her sources. Then she lifted her newspaper again and turned the page.
    Nick snorted under his breath and turned to stare out the window at the landscape again. He soon became absorbed in it, his very soul starved for the autumn beauty that unfurled before him.
    Sun rays angled through a moody sky and lit up the sweeping green valley below, dotted with woolly white sheep.
    The woods around the edges of the valley were clad in all the colors of autumn: the ash trees golden, the oaks maroon, chestnut trees a glorious orange; and on the distant brow of the next emerald hill, the sad medieval ruins of an abbey with its scattering of ancient gravestones lying all around like broken teeth.
    The carriage rumbled on, winding through a quaint stone hamlet. They passed through the angled shadow of a weathered stone marker at the cross, then out the other end of the little village, taking a country road.
    It followed the ridge he had seen from the last highway, out into the countryside. From there, they climbed a hill. The tired horses slowed a bit.
    “Here we are,” Lady Burke murmured when, at last, the carriage turned in through a pair of towering wrought-iron gates and proceeded up the wooded drive to the stately manor house ahead.
    The grounds of her estate struck him as especially beautiful.
    Everywhere he turned his gaze, the landscape seemed carefully orchestrated to delight the eye and inspire the soul. Either Capability Brown had created a masterpiece here, or Nick had merely been imprisoned too long.
    Then he frowned, wrinkling his nose. “Bloody hell, that smells worse than I do. I think you’ve got a dead deer out there somewhere in the park.”
    “No, that’s the odor from the hot springs on the property. It’s in a limestone cave, over there.” She quickly pointed out the mossy and mysterious opening of a cave in the wooded hillside as they drove past. “I’m told the water contains sulfur, iron, magnesium. Bathing in it has been known to cure all sorts of ills. Everything from gout to infertility.”
    “Really?” he murmured in surprise as the cave mouth disappeared behind the trees. “Rather like the waters at Bath, then?”
    She nodded. “There are several such springs throughout the area. I’m just lucky enough to have one on my property.”
    “Except for the smell.”
    “You get used to it. Smells like home to me.” She chuckled at his skeptical glance. “My husband’s ancestors discovered it in the late 1500s. You are welcome to take the waters if you like, before we set out on our mission.”
    “Not if I come out smelling like that.”
    “I daresay it would be an improvement to how you smell right now, my lord,” she said dryly.
    He scowled at her.
    She laughed. “You should try it. It’s good for you! Besides, it feels wonderful.”
    “I see.” He eyed her in guarded amusement. “So you got me out of the dungeon to bring me to a health spa. Not bad. Not bad a’tall.”
    They drove on toward the house.
    Nick was glad to note that, thankfully, her husband’s ancestors had had the good sense to set the mansion far enough away from the “healthful” odors of the sulfur spring.
    When the coachman brought the weary horses to a halt in front of the house, Lady Burke turned to Nick with an earnest, searching gaze.
    “I’d like to take the shackles off you if you give me your word that you won’t run.” Her neatly manicured fingertip came down to rest on the chain between his wrists. “I know it hurts your pride, and I have no desire to subject you to anything worse than you’ve already been through. So can I count on you to honor our agreement and not try to escape?”
    He looked into her eyes. It had been a long time since anyone had put any value in his word of honor. “Of course,” he mumbled. “You have my word, of course, my lady.”
    Where else would I go?
    He had no family, other than a mother who had always had better things to