The room tilted when Ivy sat up. After an endless, hovering, moment, it righted, but slowly and awkwardly, like a broken toy boat set adrift in a rough pond. Burning waves of nausea rose in her throat. Choking it down with determined swallows, she collapsed against the pillows with a tormented groan.

The silver ballgown lay draped over the back of a chair near the foot of her bed. Her undergarments sat folded and stacked in the brocade seat, her shoes lined up in orderly fashion beneath the chair, as though she had just slipped them off. She ventured a peek beneath the coverlet.

A peach colored nightgown. One she did not recall donning. Nor did she remember removing any clothing to put the flimsy garment on. Mangled white roses lay scattered everywhere; on the vanity table along with the diamond necklace, on the floor, in the bed. The red one was missing, but that was not out of the ordinary.

Pushing her tangled hair back, Ivy probed her temples. Her head throbbed as if a hundred tiny devils beat it with mallets. Wearily, she managed to pull herself higher onto the pillows, and in reward, unrelenting details of the night splashed across her mind.

Ivy swallowed back a sob of misery. She remembered arriving at the ball, men quickly gathering around her. Clayton, Danbury. Brandon Madsen watched with grave concern from the edges. The Earl of Landon held her arm, wishing to take her somewhere. Lady Wesley stopped him.

Lady Wesley? The lady in question had never been complimentary; there was no explanation for her involvement. Pressing her temples even harder, Ivy struggled to dredge forth more. She leaned against a wall, the cold brick soothing to her heated face. There were moments of sickness, dizziness and cursing and Lady Wesley babbling nonsense about French coffee.

Oh, God help me.

Had Sebastian truly carried her, tossing her like so much unwanted baggage into a luxurious coach with cream-hued leather seats?

That particular memory ended in a vague recollection of fighting him in his bedchamber. Thrown onto a huge bed while he loomed over her like a beast guarding a new kill. She remembered tasting blood in her mouth. Did I bite him? It’s all such a blur…

She threw her shoes at him and perhaps a brandy snifter. Or did she? Everything tangled in her mind, knotted in half bursts and blinding flares.

They made love.

Ivy moaned, praying it was a hallucination, a vivid dream brought on by vast quantities of alcohol. Or perhaps a nightmare, if one did not care to place too fine a point on it.

Sebastian’s scent clung to her, an intriguing combination of soap and cinnamon and spice, and something else, something foreign, the smell of sex. The junction of her thighs was too tender, her breasts still tingling from his greediness for any of this to be a fragment of her imagination. Touching her mouth with trembling fingers, she remembered pulling his head down to hers, demanding he kiss her.

“Oh, no.” Erotic fragments of the tattered evening flashed like lightning in her mind. “No, no, no.” She pressed her palms to her eyes. If she rubbed hard enough, maybe she could somehow block it all out. The dark, possessive kisses, whisper-soft caresses. The slide of his body entering hers as she surrendered.

Soft pillows muffled her cries. “What have I done? What have I done?”

She had clutched him to her when she thought he would withdraw, her hips meeting his thrusts with wanton eagerness. Reaching the pinnacle of satisfaction, she moaned his name, once at the tips of his fingers and twice more as he plunged so deep into her very core. For some distressing reason, these particular memories were crystal clear. She could not escape their clarity; they burned like raining hellfire.

Ivy took a shaky breath to calm herself, her eyes slowly adjusting to the morning light. It was then she saw the envelope on the bedside table. A single, wild red rose in full bloom lay atop it. Where, and how, did he obtain a wild rose? The whole of London was bankrupt when it came to red and white roses, courtesy of her awful ritual. With trembling hands, she ripped the envelope open.

Lady Veronica Wesley provided your escort home.

The note drifted to her lap. Ivy possessed no recollection of the time after they made love. Exactly how Sebastian managed to spirit her away from his bed and into her own, with no one seeing or hearing a thing, was miraculous. She ought to be grateful for the alibi, should anyone question her.

Sebastian made love to me, and I loved it…

All of it. Every heart-stopping, terrible, beautiful moment of it…

He covered me in red rose petals and made love to me…

One hand slid to her stomach, fingers wobbly coasting from navel to the curve of her lower belly. Sebastian made love to her. What if…what if…

What if she became pregnant?

Disturbing visions flooded Ivy’s mind. The earl, standing like stone beside his massive bed, while she writhed in silent agony giving birth to his bastard.

Tumbling from the bed, she staggered to the watercloset. She made it just in time.

Her stomach expelled the evils of the previous night into the porcelain washbowl, purging the horror of her own thoughts. When the spell was over, she collapsed against the wood panel wall of the small room. To combat the undulating waves of sickness, she pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped about them as she drew in deep breaths. Tears pricked behind her eyelids but she fought them back.

Her heart, fragile and torn, thumped slow and steady while the scattered pieces were scraped together. She did not know what to do. She could only wait for Sebastian to make the next move.