Spring, 1813 Lord Clairmont was the most perfectly handsome man Serena had ever seen. Pulse racing, she forgot everything, mesmerized by the smile in his glittering black eyes as he lifted her right hand to his lips. Already, she was head over heels in love with her brother's newly arrived houseguest. His glance flicked down and then froze. How could she have forgotten? Pulling away from him, she fought the urge to hide her shriveled left hand in the folds of her skirt. "Pray excuse me, Miss Warren," he muttered, bowing formally and turning away to speak to her brother. Squelching the sudden lump in her throat, Serena glared at his powerful figure, disappearing with Tom through the doorway. She drew back her shoulders and took a deep, steadying breath. Her face grew hot. She had the urge to do something outrageous, something that would give the disdainful Lord Clairmont a jolt. Force him to confront the real Serena Warren. Springing up from her seat at the window of the drawing room she hurried up the stairs to her bedchamber, not bothering to control her limp even though Tom and his guest stood in the hallway. "I'm going out riding, Mary," she told her maid. "Help me get changed." Scarcely waiting for Mary to fasten the last button of her dark green riding habit, Serena flew down the stairs, down the long wide hall and out through the entrance leading to the stables. " Get Taurus ready for me as quickly as you can, Wilf," she told her groom, panting a little from her headlong rush. Brushing aside Wilf's proffered hand, she clambered up onto the mounting block near the stable door, gathered the reins into her good right hand and directed Taurus out towards the front lawns. There he was, conversing with her brother, Tom. Like some immaculately dressed Greek God with curly black hair, Clairmont lounged beside a small table set with teacups. Perfectly chiseled features. Smug with the conviction of his own masculine attraction. Well, she would soon do something about that! Turning Taurus in the direction of the two men, she urged him on a course straight towards them. Clairmont looked up. Good, he had seen her. And she would soon wipe that supercilious look off his face. Serena knew exactly how to do it. She had practiced many times, after reading about the knights of old and their jousting. First, gathering speed towards the enemy. Then a slight swerve to avoid a collision. Then drive your lance through his heart and send him crashing to the ground. She saw Clairmont's expression change from one of boredom to an awareness of danger. His eyes widened. His elegant eyebrows shot up. She laughed and kept right on towards him. At the very last moment she swerved Taurus aside and swept around her adversary. But not before he had leaped up, scattering plates and scones in all directions. Brown tea stains spattered down the front of his pale linen shirt and over the cuffs of his tightly fitted blue jacket. Serena wanted to scream with laughter. She wanted to stay and watch as he dabbed ineffectually at the spreading brown river on his cream buckskins. Dismiss her, as though she were some loathsome creature, would he? Well, now she had given him something else to think about. She wasn't supposed to be capable of sitting a horse. She with her thin withered leg. And she wasn't supposed to have the strength to control a horse with her crippled left hand. But her right hand was strong enough for two.

One glimpse over her shoulder at the discomfited young dandy and the shocked face of her brother, and she spurred Taurus towards the woods bordering Bundle Hill, the family's home since the time of Queen Anne.

Once between the trees, far out of earshot of anyone back at home, she slowed Taurus to a walk, panting as much with triumph as with exertion. She had wiped that expression off his face. She had shown him that she was a real person with feelings. Feelings that could be hurt. She was sick of idiots like William Clairmont who obviously did not have a sensitive bone in his body.

Then why did she feel so bad? Why was she leaning over her horse's neck with tears coursing down her face? Were they tears of humiliation? Of rage?

It was a long time since she had felt this way. And never before had she behaved in such a wild fashion.

"The woman is mad," Clairmont said. He hurled his tea stained napkin in a gesture of frustration at the servants who came running to assist him. The expression on Tom Warren's face was one of frozen shock and surprise.

"I say, old man, I am most terribly sorry," Warren said. "I have never seen my sister like that before. I cannot think what prompted her to such an action."

"Thank God your other sisters do not behave in such an outrageous fashion," Clairmont spluttered. "I must go inside and change at once."

"Yes, of course, old man." Tom Warren's face was a study in puzzlement. Clairmont could see that his sister's attack had been as unexpected to Warren as it had been to himself. Whatever had got into the strange creature?

It didn't bode well for the rest of his visit here, Clairmont reflected, if there were to be any repeats of the elder Miss Warren's behavior. She surely must be affected in her mind as well as crippled in her body. He would have to remain on guard for the rest of his stay here.

Pity really. Her face was actually quite stunningly beautiful.

***

"Whatever came over you, Serena?" Lady Warren asked, coming into her daughter's room later that day.

Serena sighed as she faced the worried expression on her mother's plump face. How could she ever explain, even to herself, the wild impulse that had driven her to behave in such an outrageous way. It had been the look on Clairmont's face. He hadn't seen her as a person. To him she was just a thing, without feelings that could be hurt.

"I don't know, Mama. I suppose I just wanted to show him…"

Lady Warren raised a quizzical eyebrow. "I believe I can understand, my dear. However..." she shook her head.

It seemed to Serena that her mother understood better than she did herself, because she had no idea what had provoked her to charge her horse full tilt at anyone, especially a man like Lord Clairmont.

"All the same, my dear, I think you must apologize to the gentleman. After all, he is our guest as well as Tom's."

Serena sighed. She never wanted to see 'the gentleman' again, but since he was apparently here to stay for three weeks, she could hardly avoid meeting him. Not that he would take the slightest notice of her, of course.

But he had been forced to take notice of her this afternoon. She felt a glow of grim satisfaction. Not so grim, really. She felt full of mischief and self-righteousness. No hint of her earlier remorse could she conjure up.

"If you wish, I could send him a written apology, Mama."

"Good girl." Her mother patted her arm and smiled, leaving Serena to take her seat before her writing desk.

I'm twenty four and she still calls me 'Good girl.' Serena sighed again. Tom was but twenty-two, Louise nineteen and Fanny, the baby of the household, was fifteen. Only her brother Gilbert, at twenty-seven, was older. Perhaps Lady Warren thought of all her daughters as girls. But Serena knew that, unlike her sisters, there were no plans to find her a husband. With so many young beauties to be had, how could someone like herself ever expect to be married?

She didn't want to be married. She didn't want to have children. There would be enough joy for her in playing aunt to the children of her sisters and brothers, when the time came.

She was lying.

***

Clairmont received the letter while his valet was arranging his cravat, shortly before it was time to go down to dinner. Flicking the seal off with his thumb he opened the sheet, smoothed it flat and read:

Most Elegant and Godlike Sir:

From your exalted position of perfection, pray accept the apologies of the most abject and imperfect of beings for believing for a fleeting moment that she should inhabit this earth, thereby spoiling the level of visual beauty to which you are accustomed.

Lady Warren has instructed me to offer you apologies, to which end I send this letter.

I remain, your imperfect, unrepentant but joyous servant,

Serena Warren.

The creature was mad as well as crippled. What execrable manners. He should go home without delay.

Why was he getting himself in a lather over such an ugly creature? Well not ugly. Come to think of it, her large brown eyes and demure mouth gave her small round face an expression of serenity. But certainly that left arm, so thin below the elbow and with fingers that didn't open out-and that limp! Goodness knows what deformity must be hidden beneath her skirts.

And nothing could excuse or forgive her monstrous behavior. This letter made the situation worse. The chit was flouting her mother's instructions to apologize. Tearing the note into little pieces, he threw them into the fireplace and willed himself to remain calm.

Clairmont had always striven for physical perfection. His strong shoulders and well-developed legs attested to the many hours spent in boxing, fencing and riding, which had produced the gratifying results he admired in his looking glass. Now his unruffled demeanor must give Miss Warren no clue to the upsetting effect she was having on him.

"My cravat looks like a scullery maid's rag," he roared at his valet, and the surprised man hastened to adjust the offending object.

Descending with great dignity to the drawing room, Clairmont engaged young Louise in spirited conversation and offered her his arm when it came time to walk into the dining room. Of her elder sister there was no sign. He was just allowing himself a silent congratulation that she was afraid to face him when she limped into the room.

"So sorry to be tardy, Papa and Mama," she said, settling herself in the space directly across from him without any apparent trace of remorse. She flashed a smile at her father, seated at the head of the table and then glanced briefly at Clairmont.

Was that defiance he saw in her eyes? Or amusement? Whatever it was he braced himself for the pity he was about to experience, since he would have little choice but to witness her attempts to feed herself with that claw hand of hers.

But her left hand remained invisible in her lap and, to Clairmont's relief, she did a creditable job of cutting and conveying her food to her mouth with her good right hand. If he hadn't known about the claw and the limp, he could imagine for a moment that he was facing a normal person. Her auburn hair, arranged into curls that framed her pale round face, shone in the dancing light of the candles and there was a corresponding gleam in her very large brown eyes, framed by brown lashes and straight, no nonsense reddish brown eyebrows.

Although smaller than both Louise and young Fanny, the crippled one had skin that was creamier than either of her sisters. Clairmont wished she was not seated opposite to him. He could not forget that her limbs were deformed, even though they were not in evidence.

He would find some excuse to leave tomorrow. Although he and Tom Warren had been close friends during their days at Charterhouse School, and then at Cambridge, this was Clairmont's first visit to the Warren home at Bundle Hill and he felt ill at ease. Better go back to face his father's aloof censure in Shalford, or perhaps he would set himself up in a London residence.

He tried not to watch as Serena Warren twinkled a smile at her father, revealing small white teeth between full moist lips. Keeping his expression neutral he conversed politely with his hosts and Fanny and Louise, seated on either side of him.

"I have never seen you look so glum, old man," Tom said, when the ladies had retired and Sir Piers Warren passed him the port decanter.

"I think I am not cut out for country life," Clairmont found himself saying. "With all due respect to your hospitality, I believe I shall go up to London tomorrow and see about getting a place of my own."

Why did it feel as though he was running away? If he left now, the crippled one would think she had scored some kind of triumph.

And why should he care what construction Miss Warren might put upon his early departure? Devil take it, his comings and goings were nobody's business but his own.

He would leave first thing in the morning.

***

Clairmont nudged his heels into the shiny black flanks of his horse. Behind him, his valet, a much less accomplished rider, puffed and struggled to keep up but Clairmont gave no thought to the man. Perhaps it would have been preferable to let the fellow ride with the luggage, but Clairmont firmly believed that his servants should keep themselves in top physical condition like himself. And riding was an important part of his daily regimen.

He felt cross and dissatisfied with himself, although he couldn't pinpoint the cause of his unease. Well, he should not perhaps have left his friend's home so precipitously. He had seen the puzzlement in Tom's eyes. Tom had wondered aloud whether his sister's rash action had caused his friend distress and Tom had apologized once more.

Of course he shouldn't have allowed Serena Warren's foolish act to upset him. But all the same he had felt ill at ease, and he was relieved to get away from Bundle Hill.

He stopped for the night at the Cock and Bull, where the noise and bustle of the popular inn and the pungent smells of the London streets convinced him that a steady diet of the city was not for him. Next morning he continued to his father's estate at Shalford, some thirty miles to the south.

His father was getting very gray and stooped. Clairmont vowed that he would never let himself get stooped like that when he became the Earl of Shalford. Too much time spent as a hermit, he thought. And too little time in healthful pursuits like riding and fencing.

The old earl greeted him without much warmth. Since the death of his wife when Clairmont was ten years old, he had taken little notice of his son. Clairmont couldn't forget the gloomy holidays spent in the cavernously empty rooms at his boarding school. Like two or three other unfortunate youths, he'd been condemned to stay at Charterhouse, under the eye of a junior master assigned to chaperone them, until the start of the next school term.

"When are you going to make something of yourself, William?" his father demanded, regarding him beneath eyes half hidden by the gray hairs that spiked and curved downward from his brows.

What could he reply? He should have some kind of goal, but what could it be? Apart from keeping his well-muscled body in perfect shape and displaying it to its best advantage with the clothes he wore, his efforts didn't appear to be needed.

"I thought perhaps I might be of assistance to you in the management of the estate, father," he said. Surely the old man couldn't find fault with that.

"Nonsense." The scraggly brows drew together. "I have the best steward in the whole of England, just like his father and his grandfather before him. They know more about their business than you ever will. Leave it to them."

Clairmont swallowed the bitter lump of rejection in his throat. "But I could learn, sir."

"You'd just be dabbling. You've never done anything serious. Leave it alone." His father motioned towards the door of his library. "Run along and find something useful to occupy your time."

At twenty-two, Clairmont felt like an unwanted schoolboy all over again. He must get away. If not to London, then where?

He conceived the idea of building himself a gymnasium on the vast grounds of Shalford Park and luring one of the best of London's trainers to come and work with him. The idea gave such a lift to his spirits that he penned an invitation to his friend, Tom Warren, to come and give his opinion.

Less than a week later, Warren answered his invitation in person. He came galloping up the long driveway, reddish-brown hair flying in the breeze. All the members of his family seemed to have a reddish tint to their hair, Clairmont thought, although none rivaled the flame-like hue of the disabled one.

Warren's eyes glowed with enthusiasm when he heard the bold plan. "Capital idea, old chap. Trust you to come up with a scheme like that."

Clairmont broached the idea to his father that evening after dinner. The earl frowned and gave a short bark of a laugh.

"Ridiculous idea! But no more than I might expect from a young cub, still wet behind the ears."

Clairmont felt his face burn. No matter what he did, his father would regard him as a child, and one, moreover, without a brain in his head. He had to bite his lips to hold back a retort.

Warren gave him a look of sympathetic understanding, which somehow added to Clairmont's discomfort. He hated being held up to such belittlement in front of his friend, to whom he had always acted as staunch protector against the bullies of their boarding school days.

"There surely must be some endeavor I could undertake, sir, that would prove to your satisfaction I have reached a sufficient degree of manhood to warrant your confidence."

He felt his father's speculative gaze on his face and watched the eyebrows twitch while the old gentleman pursed his lips and flared his thin nostrils.

"Find yourself a suitably high born wife and get her with an heir, so I can see that my family name is to be properly continued," he said, deliberately. "Give up this puerile obsession with your clothes and your perfect body. It's unhealthy."

Clairmont felt his father's words almost as a physical blow. Puerile obsession, indeed. The old fellow had never shown a whit of interest in anything he did, and now he was ridiculing his most exciting plan.

He gazed back at his father's eyes, almost black, like his own, and appearing even darker in contrast to the parchment whiteness of his face. No mistaking the stark challenge there.

Anger rose like a fiery column in his throat. This old man had never cared for him and now had leaped from treating him like a child to demanding that he be hamstrung as a husband, like a middle aged man.

"What's the matter? Are you so self-absorbed that you can't face a challenge, William? Can't think of anyone but yourself?" His father's voice grated hoarsely and distastefully on his ears.

"Your cousin, Blaydon, stands to inherit everything if you should die without an heir. He would jump at the chance."

Clairmont's anger coalesced into a cold determination. Pushing back his chair he stood, tight-lipped before his father. "Where is the challenge, my lord? The country is filled with simpering young women clamoring for a rich, well-born husband."

He tossed his napkin down on the table and bowed without expression. "However, if that is your wish, I shall fulfill my duty to you by arranging a betrothal as soon as possible."

Tom followed Clairmont into the hallway. "You've got yourself into a bit of a jam there, old fellow. Surely you can't mean to tie yourself to a wife this early in the game?"

"I'm sick of being treated like a child, Warren. You belong to a large family and you're not the eldest son. You have an easier time of it. For myself, I want to get the old man off my back."

"And get some Honorable Lady So-and-So onto hers and produce an heir."

But Clairmont hardly heard his friend's sally. He held his body rigid with fury as he laid his plans. He would go about this business in a logical fashion. Only the highest standards of physical beauty would suffice.

He thought first of Louise Warren, with her perfect upright carriage, breasts rounded and shapely, but not too heavy, arms slender and graceful. But the effect of her face, rounded and delicate, was somewhat spoiled by the too generous width of her nose.

Young Fanny was altogether too full of puppy fat to merit consideration, despite her gentle demeanor. Neither young woman had the face of their elder sister Serena, but here Clairmont hastily put a stop to his conjectures. No man would ever consider such an unfortunate creature, no matter how desperate he might be for a wife.

***

Serena ran the fingers of her good, right hand over the keys of the pianoforte. Her eyes were closed and she was imagining a river of cascading ripples to match the one she was producing with her active, supple fingers. She had given up wishing that her left hand could be pressed into similar service, but she had lately discovered she could use the withered hand to produce the occasional note or chord to complement the right.

The cascading ripples slowed into a more plaintive melody. Why was she feeling on edge, when she had just mastered this new technique to use the left hand? She was usually flushed with triumph at each new advance over her disability. Taking both hands onto her lap she used her good, strong fingers to massage the stiffness in her damaged hand.

She shouldn't hate anybody. It was quite wrong. Perhaps it wasn't hate that she had felt for Tom's supercilious guest, although the way he had ogled each of her sisters, as though looking at prize mares, was unpardonably rude.

No, the real cause of the knot that wouldn't dissolve from her stomach was the way he had looked at her, and then averted his eyes immediately with that look, that look that spoke volumes.

She saw few strangers nowadays and those who came to the house were too well mannered to let their feelings be known, if indeed they were affected by the sight of her hand. But he had looked down his long nose, lifted his black eyebrows and favored her with the sight of his aristocratic profile in one swift moment. Not swift enough to hide the recoil of disgust that showed in his dark eyes in that one split second.

Serena crashed her fist onto the keys, provoking Madame Fluff to awake from her snooze on the piano lid and skitter away, yowling her feline displeasure.

"Whatever is the matter, sister?" Louise cried, looking up from her embroidery with a frown. Louise frowned at her altogether too much nowadays, Serena decided. She was acting as though she were the elder of the two. She had definitely shown her disapproval of what she had called Serena's shocking behavior towards Lord Clairmont.

Fanny put down her book and came to whisper in Serena's ear. "He was dreadfully rude, Serena dear. I admire the way you made him pay." She giggled, and her breath tickled Serena's ear. "His face was a picture when you galloped towards him! I wonder if his valet was able to save his jacket."

Serena had a picture of the brown tea spreading over the skintight buckskin that had fitted so snugly over the muscles of Clairmont's thighs. Had the hot tea burned him? What had made her act so wildly? Why couldn't she make herself feel sorry?

Never before had she felt so conscious of her crippled limbs. She had to a large extent been insulated from strangers by the love of her parents. Louise and her older brother Gilbert had sometimes seemed uncomfortable with her deformities but Tom and Fanny treated her as though she were as whole and unblemished as themselves.

As for me, Serena thought, I have only the limitations I allow myself. And she resumed her attack on the keys of the pianoforte with fierce determination.

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