He’d thought he didn’t care. Over the years in the army, he could not remember experiencing homesickness. A fierce desire at times to be away from war, a longing for peace and England, but not homesickness for this place.

It was a shock, therefore, to be falling in love like this. No, not falling. It was as if an unrecognized love had leaped from the shadows and sunk in fangs.

Hawk in the Vale. Hawkinville Manor. He reached out to lay his hand on the oak doorjamb around the front parlor door. The wood felt warm, almost alive, beneath his hand.

My God, he could be happy here.

If not for his father.

He pulled his hand away. Bad luck to wish for a death, and he didn’t actively do so. But he couldn’t escape the fact that his dreams depended on stepping into a dead man’s shoes. There’d be no happiness for him here as long as the squire lived.

He went up the stairs—too narrow for a gentleman, his father had always grumbled—and rapped on his father’s door.

The valet, Fellows, opened it. “The squire is preparing for bed, sir.”

“Nevertheless, I must have a word with him.”

With a long-suffering look, Fellows let him in. God knows what the squire told his man, but Fellows had no high opinion of him.

“What now?” the squire demanded, his slightly twisted mouth still making the words clearly enough. Perhaps it was the damaged mouth that made him seem to sneer. But no, he’d sneered at Hawk all his life.

The seizure had affected his right arm and leg, too, and he still had little strength in either, but at a glance he did not appear much touched. He was still a handsome man in his late fifties, with blond hair touched with silver and the fine-boned features he’d given to Hawk. He kept to the old style, and wore his hair tied back in a queue. On formal occasions he even powdered it. He was sitting in a chair in his shirtsleeves now, however, his feet in slippers. Not particularly elegant.

Hawk was blunt. “Is Slade planning more building here?”

His father twitched, then looked away. “Why?”

Guilt, for sure.

But then the squire looked back, arrogance in place. “What business is it of yours? I still rule here, boy.”

Eleven years in the army teaches self-control. A number of those years spent working close to the Duke of Wellington perfects it. “It is my inheritance, sir,” Hawk said, “and thus my business. What is Slade planning, and why are you permitting it?”

“How should I know what that man intends?”

“ ‘That man’? You had him to dinner two nights ago.”

“A politeness to a neighbor.” He didn’t look away again, but Hawk had questioned more skillful deceivers than his father, and he could see the lie behind it.

“I was told that there were men here who sounded like surveyors studying the area along the river and that they later spoke to Slade. What interest could Slade have down here? There is no available land.”

His father glared at him, then snapped, “Brandy!”

Fellows rushed to obey, protesting all the while that brandy was not allowed. The squire took a mouthful and said, “Very well. You might as well know. Slade’s planning to tear down this place, and the cottages too, and build himself a grand riverside villa.”

Hawk almost laughed. “That’s absurd.”

Into the silence, he added, “He does not have the power to do that.”

Doubt and fear stirred. His father, for all his faults, was not a fool, nor had his illness turned him mad. “What have you done?”

The squire took a sip of brandy, managing to look down his long, straight nose, even in the chair. It was posing, though. Hawk could see that. “I have gained a peerage for us.”

“From Slade?” Hawk couldn’t remember ever feeling so at a loss.

“Of course not. You are supposed to be clever, George. Use your wits! It is a title from my own family. Viscount Deveril.” He rolled it off his tongue. “It was thought to be extinct when the late Lord Deveril died last year, but I proved my descent from the original viscount.”

“My congratulations,” Hawk said with complete indifference, but then his notoriously infallible memory threw up facts. “Deveril! By God, Father, the name’s a byword for all that is evil. Why the devil would you want a title like that?”

The squire reddened. “It’s a viscountcy, you dolt. I’ll take my place in Parliament! Attend court.”

“There is no court anymore. The king is mad.”

Like his father?

The squire shrugged. “I am reverting to my rightful family name as well, of course. I am now John Gaspard, soon to be Viscount Deveril.”

“Are you also leaving here?” Hawk asked. He kept his tone flat, but it was hard. Unlikely sunshine was breaking in. My God, was all he wanted about to drop into his hands?

But then he remembered Slade.

“What has Slade to do with this? You can’t—” Words actually failed him for a moment. “You aren’t allowed to sell the estate, Father.”

“Of course I have not sold it,” his father declared haughtily. After a moment, however, he added, “It is merely pledged.”

Hawk put out a hand to the back of a nearby chair to steady himself. He knew every word of the besotted marriage settlement that had given his father power here. His father could use the estate to raise money.

It wasn’t an outrageous provision, since the administrator of an estate might have need to raise money for improvements or to cover a disastrous season. His grandfather had been sensible enough to have it worded so that Hawkinville could not be staked in gambling, or used to pay off gaming debts. Not that that had ever been an issue. His father’s flaws did not include gambling.

“Pledged against loans?” he asked.

“Precisely.”

“I must admit, sir, that I am at a loss as to how you have sunk into debt. The estate is not rich, but it has always provided for the family adequately.”

“It is quite simple, my boy,” said his father almost jovially. It was a mask. “I needed money to gain the title! Research. Lawyers. You know how it is.”

“Yes, I know how it is. So you borrowed from Slade. But surely if you have the title, you have property that comes with it to pay him off.”

“That was my plan.” The squire’s face pinched. “Deveril—rot his black heart—willed most of his worth away.”

“It wasn’t entailed?”

“Only the estate.”

“Well—”

“Which seems unproductive.”

Hawk took a breath. “Let me get this clear. You have mortgaged this estate to Josiah Slade to get money to claim one that is valueless.”

“It’s a title! My family’s title. I would have paid more.”

“Borrowed more, you mean. How much?”

Over the first shock now, Hawk was beginning to arrange facts and make calculations. He had some money of his own. He could borrow elsewhere to pay off Slade.

“Twenty thousand pounds.”

It was like being hit by a pistol ball. “Twenty thousand pounds? No one could possibly spend that much to claim a title.”

The Hawkinville estate brought in only a few thousand a year.

“I have been pursuing Deveril’s money as well, of course.”

“Even so. Your lawyers would have to have been eating gold quills for breakfast.”

“Investments,” the squire muttered.

“Investments? In what?”

“All kinds of things. Slade does well off them. There was a foreigner here a while back—Celestin. He’d made a fortune at it. Then Slade turned up with some good ideas…”

Maria’s dead husband, who had led Van’s father to ruin this way. But Slade—Slade was the active villain here.

“So Slade lent you money and then lent you more to invest to earn it back?”

Twenty thousand pounds.

An impossible sum, and throttling Slade would not fix the disaster.

Hawk forced his mind to look for any possibility.

“How much did Deveril leave that was willed elsewhere?”

“Close to a hundred thousand. You see why I had to have it!”

“I see why we have to have it now. What reason do you have for thinking you can overturn the will?”

“Because it gave everything to a scheming chit he planned to marry, by a handwritten will that was certainly false.”

“Then why don’t you have the money?”

The squire knocked back his brandy and held the glass out to be refilled. “Because the poxy chit has all the Deveril money to pay for lawyers, that’s why! And some plaguey high-flying supporters. Her guardian’s the Duke of Belcraven, no less. The Marchioness of Arden, wife to the duke’s heir, stands her friend. I wouldn’t be surprised if the little whore has the damned Regent in her pocket.”

“It would have to be a very large pocket,” Hawk remarked, his mind whirling on many levels.

Twenty thousand pounds. It couldn’t be borrowed, even from friends. Especially from friends. Even if they could raise it, it would take Hawkinville a generation to pay it off, and only by squeezing the tenants hard.

His father laughed at his comment. “I have to say, you’re taking this better than I expected, George.”

Hawk looked at his father. “I am taking this extremely badly, sir. I despise you for your folly and self-indulgence. Did you ever give a thought to the welfare of your people here?”

“They are not my people!”

“You’ve been pleased enough to call them such for over a quarter century. Families have lived in those cottages for centuries, Father. And do you care nothing for this house?”

“Less than nothing! It’s a plaguey farmhouse, for all you like to call it a manor.”

Hawk wished his father was well. Perhaps then he might feel justified in hitting him. “And Slade will be squire here, since the title goes with the property. You are selling everyone here for your own petty ends.”

His father reddened, but raised his chin. “I do not care! What is this place to me?”