Why, you little thief.

Though Ash had to admit—as thieves went, this was a deuced pretty one.

His morning had been filled with dreary correspondence. Once he’d sent off a contract to the solicitors for yet another revision, Ash had gone in search of luncheon. Then he’d returned to his library—only to find his wife ransacking his bookshelves.

Apparently the volume in her hands was sufficiently absorbing that she hadn’t noticed his presence. As he stood in the doorway watching, she tucked a stray wisp of dark hair behind her ear. Then she licked her fingertip and turned the page.

His knees buckled. In his mind, he scrambled to piece that half second into a lasting memory. The crook of her slender finger. The red pout of her lips. That fleeting, erotic glimpse of pink.

She did it again.

Ash gripped the doorjamb so hard, his knuckles lost sensation.

He wanted her to read the whole cursed book while he watched.

He wanted the book to have a thousand pages.

She closed the volume and added it to a growing stack on the chair. Then, turning her back to him, she stretched on tiptoe to reach for another. Her heels popped out of her slippers, revealing the arches of her feet and those indescribably arousing white stockings.

God’s blood. A man could only take so much.

“Don’t move.”

She froze. Her arm remained lifted; her hand was still poised to take a green volume from its shelf. “I only wanted a book.”

“Don’t,” he repeated, “move.”

“A novel, poetry. Something to pass the time. I thought perhaps I’d even try some Shakespeare. I didn’t mean to disturb—”

“Stay. Just. As. You. Are.” He approached her in slow, deliberate paces—one step for each low, deliberate word. “Not one finger. Not one toe. Not one tiny freckle on your arse.”

“I don’t have freckles on my . . . Do I?”

He didn’t stop until he stood directly behind her. He reached to cover her raised hand. With a flex of his fingers, he tipped the green book into place.

“I’ll leave you to your work.” She moved to lower her hand.

He pinned her wrist to the shelf. “Not just yet.”

She sucked in her breath. He knew her well enough to recognize that sound. It wasn’t fear, but excitement.

Good. Very good.

“Do you know,” he said in an idle tone, stroking his thumb along her delicate wrist, “I’ve been thinking.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Oh, it is.” With his free hand, he cupped the swell of her breast, stroking her softness through the muslin. “The object of this marriage is to get you with child.”

“Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I seem to recall that was our bargain.”

Her head tilted to the side, and he ran his tongue along the elongated slope of her neck. She tasted both tart and sweet. Delicious.

“So if we do this twice a day,” he murmured, “that would make our objective twice as likely.”

“I . . . I suppose it would.”

“No supposing about it.” He tweaked her nipple. “It’s simple mathematics.”

After a pause, he heard a little smile in her voice. “Is it, my fawn?”

Saucy, impudent wench.

The race was on. She helped him hike her skirts to her waist. He stroked the seam of her cleft, tracing it until he found that essential spot at the apex. She gasped with pleasure, gripped the bookshelf with both hands. He couldn’t unbutton his falls fast enough.

After what seemed an epoch of fumbling with garments, they finally pressed flesh to flesh. His hard, aching need against her wet, ready heat.

“Now?” He growled the word.

Her reply was breathless. “Yes.”

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

The dalliance in the library was the first of many daytime trysts. Now that Ash knew her to be game for unconventional bedsport, his imagination knew no bounds. His stamina was nowhere near depleted, either. Making love unclothed in full daylight still felt like too great a risk. When they were that close, that intimate . . . he hated the idea of pity intruding into moments when he ought to be strong. He worried that if she touched him, he might snap back.

And there was always the other risk: Repulsing her completely.

How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?

No, he couldn’t chance it. However, with a willing, adventurous partner, there were ways around the hurdle. Pleasure needn’t be confined to fumbling nighttime encounters.

Emma did not object, he found, to being bent over the nearest sturdy piece of furniture. The billiard table made for one particularly enjoyable liaison. He pulled her into shadowy alcoves and deep closets and took her propped against the wall in the hot, musky dark. They discovered all manner of accoutrements—cravats, sashes, handkerchiefs—could be pressed into service as blindfolds.

No matter what he suggested, she never told him no.

She always said yes.

She said “yes” and “yes” and “more” and “please.”

As always, those little sighs and moans sank straight to his cock, urging him closer to release. But as their passionate afternoons melted into weeks, her words found deeper targets. He even came to adore her endlessly absurd pet names. They pierced through his scar tissue, battered at the bony cage around his heart.

Ash struggled to rebuild that barricade daily.

Don’t make too much of her willingness, he scolded himself. She was a passionate woman by nature. No doubt she wanted this child-getting business over and done with, too.

And yet he could not stay away from her, could never satisfy his desire. There was no floor to the chasm inside him. It wasn’t only her body he craved, it was closeness. Acceptance. The feeling of being wanted, and never turned away.

Yes.

She always said yes.

Until the night she didn’t.

One evening, Emma failed to appear for dinner. Her maid delivered a message to the table. Ash sipped a brandy as he unfolded and read the note written in his wife’s hand.

She was indisposed, it read, and she suspected a few days’ time would pass before she felt fully restored. With apologies, she could not welcome his visits at present.

Well, then. It didn’t require much effort to sift through the delicate phrasing. Her monthly courses had arrived. She wasn’t pregnant, not yet.

He ought to have been disappointed.

Instead, all he felt was relief.

She wasn’t with child. That meant he had another month.

Another month of whisking her into dark spaces, turning her face to the wall, and feeling her teeth scrape the heel of his hand when she came.

Another month of “yes.”

Another month of not being alone.

Another month of Emma.

Something in his chest went buoyant with joy.

Ash drained his brandy. Then he propped an elbow on the table and lowered his forehead until it rested against his thumb and forefinger. He massaged the knotted scar on his right cheekbone.

You are a dolt. Ignorant as dirt. This was more than infatuation. He’d allowed a foolish, irrational attachment to develop. Now something must be done about it.

He called for another brandy. And then another. When he’d drained the decanter, he located his cloak and his hat. Then he ventured out into the darkened streets. He’d find some ruffians to menace, or some foxed dandies to scare out of their champagne-polished boots.

This, he told himself with every cringe and wince he inspired, was what sort of welcome the world gave a monster. This was how “accepted” he was by his fellow man.

Perhaps he had another month of “yes,” but he must never forget this: The long, bitter life stretching beyond it would always be “no.”

“Bloody hell. I knew it.”

Ash froze in place, one hand immobile on the gate latch. His other hand tightened on his walking stick. He turned around to view the source of the outburst.

A boy was waiting on him in the alley behind the mews.

Not merely a boy. That boy. The one from before.

“I knew it,” the boy said. “I knew it had to be you.”

God’s lords and his ladies.

Ash collared the youth and dragged him into the shadows. He looked about the alley to make certain no grooms or coachmen lingered close enough to overhear.

“The Duke of Ashbury is the Monster of Mayfair.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Ash said sternly. As if there might be some other scarred man wandering the alleys of Mayfair by night, wearing a cape and carrying a gold-knobbed walking stick.

“I knew from that night—said to my mates, I did—that you had to be Quality,” the boy rattled on. “The rest, I pieced together from the gossip sheets. The Duke of Ashbury came to Town just a few weeks before the first sighting appeared in the papers. Rumored to have suffered an injury at Waterloo. I decided to wait out here just to see if my guess was on the mark. And damn me, here you are.” He smacked his hands together. “Wait until the lads hear this.”

“The lads will hear nothing.” Ash gave the boy a shake. “Do you understand me?”

“You can’t frighten me. I know you won’t hurt me. Roughing up innocents isn’t your game, is it?”

No, it wasn’t. Unfortunately.

Ash released the boy’s collar. “Fine. You’ll have a crown from me, but nothing more.”

“A crown for what?”

“In exchange for keeping your mouth shut. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Starting the blackmail a bit early, I must say.”

“My mum always said I was advanced for my age.” The boy grinned, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “But it’s not money I’m after. My family’s flush with it. My father made a fortune in coal. Name’s Trevor, by the way.”

“If you try to spread this tale, Trevor, no one will credit it. You live in Mayfair; you should already know how the snobbish ton thinks. They won’t take the word of some new-money brat over that of a duke.”

Ash brushed past the boy and started down the alleyway at a brisk pace.

Of course the boy followed.

“You’ve got me all wrong,” Trevor said in a loud whisper, trotting at Ash’s side. “I don’t want to expose you. I want to be your associate.”

That brought Ash to a standstill. “My associate?”

“An assistant. An apprentice. A protégé. You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t.”

“I’m going to join your wanderings at night. Help you mete out justice. Pound footpads and such.”

Ash looked the boy up and down. “You couldn’t pound a lump of bread dough.”

“Don’t be so certain about that. I’ve a weapon. A secret one.” The boy looked both ways before withdrawing something from his pocket and holding it up for Ash to see.

“A sling. This is your secret weapon.”

“Well, you already have the walking stick. And a pistol or blade seemed out of character for us.”

“There is no ‘us.’”

“Too violent, you know. We’re peacekeepers.”

“There is no ‘we,’ either.”

“A sling would set me apart, I reckoned.” The lad plucked a pebble from the ground and fitted it in the leather pocket. “See that crate at the corner?” He flicked his wrist a few times, building momentum, then released the sling.

The pebble smacked into a stable door on the opposite side of the alleyway.

A horse whinnied. From the loft above, a sleepy groom called out in anger, “Oi! Who’s there?”

Trevor looked at Ash. Ash looked at Trevor. They each mouthed the same word at the same time.

Run.

Once safely down the lane and around the corner, Trevor put his hands on his knees and panted. “I’m”—huff—“still working on my aim.”

Ash walked on, hoping to lose the boy while he was winded.

“Next I’ll need a disguise, of course. I’m thinking a mask. Black, or perhaps red. And a name, naturally.”

Ash growled. “There will be no disguise. There will be no name. Do you hear me? Go home before I take you there myself and have a word with your father.”

“What do you think of this? The Beast of Berkeley Square.”

“More like the Pest of Piccadilly.”

“Or we could go with something simpler. Like Doom. Or the Raven.”

“I suggest Gnat. Or the Measle.”

“Maybe the Doom-Raven?”

Ash shook his head. “Jove that thunders, you are a menace.”

“Wait. That’s brilliant. I’ll be known as”—he swiped one hand before his face, as if tracing a broadsheet’s headline—“the Menace.”

Oh, indeed you will be.

Ash stopped, turned, and stared down at the boy. “Listen, lad. I am returning to my house. You are returning to yours. And that is the end of it.”

“But it’s not even midnight. We haven’t thrashed any scoundrels yet.”

Ash grabbed Trevor by his jacket and lifted him onto his toes. He bent forward and lowered his voice to a threat. “Consider yourself fortunate I haven’t thrashed you.”

As he strode away, this time he heard no scampering steps in pursuit.

Thank heaven.

“You’re right,” Trevor called after him cheerily. “Tomorrow night’s better. I need time to sort out my disguise anyway.”

Ash tugged down the brim of his hat and groaned.

If this boy was indicative of the next generation, God save England.

Emma tripped down to the servants’ hall, intending to request eggs be added to the evening’s dinner menu. To every evening’s dinner menu. Eggs were rumored to increase the chances of conception, weren’t they? Perhaps nothing but superstition, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

She stopped just outside the door. The servants seemed to be having some sort of a meeting. Khan stood in front of a large slate—the one usually employed for the day’s menus—with the remainder of the house staff huddled around the servants’ long dining table.

She was about turn around and come back later. Then the topic of conversation reached her ears.

“Think hard, all of you,” Khan said. “Swanlea wasn’t enough. We need a new plan.”

A new plan?

Emma wasn’t an eavesdropper by nature, but further “plans” involving her marriage seemed good cause for an exception. She tucked herself in the wedge of space between the open door and the wall. From here, she could not only listen, but peek through the gap.

“Well, it has to be a ball,” Mary said. “Balls are ever so romantic. Surely they’ll receive an invitation to one.”

“The duke would never accept,” one of the footmen said.

“Then perhaps we could host a ball here,” she replied. “As a surprise.”

“Perhaps we could,” said Khan dryly, “if we all wished to be summarily executed.”

Mary sighed. “Well, whatever we do, we must do it soon. Once Her Grace is with child, it will be too late.”

A scullery maid hooted with laughter. “That won’t be long, will it? What with them humping like rabbits all over the house.”

“Not only the house,” a groom said. “The mews, as well.”

Mary hushed them. “We’re not supposed to let on that we’ve noticed.”

“Oh, come on. How could we not?”

Oh, Lord. Behind the door, Emma cringed. How mortifying. Although she supposed it was to be expected. They had polished every stick of furniture in Ashbury House with her hiked petticoats. They weren’t especially quiet, either. Naturally, the servants had noticed. As the groom said, how could they not?

“Ahem.” Khan tapped his chalk against the slate. “Let’s return to the list, please.”

The servants burst out with a flurry of suggestions.

“Set a small fire?”

“Rig one of the carriage axles to break. Accidentally. In a storm.”

“Oh! They could go swimming in the Serpentine.”

Khan refused to even chalk that one on the slate. “It’s nearly December. They’d catch their deaths.”

“I suppose,” Mary said. “But there’s nothing to encourage affection like a good scare. Perhaps we could make one of them just a little bit sick?”

“The duke was bedridden for nearly a year,” the butler replied. “That would be cruel. Though perhaps a minor incident . . .”

The same footman’s hand shot toward the ceiling. “Bees! Hornets! Spiders! Snakes!”

“Frogs. Locusts. Rivers of blood,” Cook deadpanned. “I believe we’ve covered all the plagues, Moses.”

Emma wheezed. She clapped both hands to her mouth.

“She could walk in on the duke while he’s dressing,” Mary suggested.

All the servants perked up at that one. “Oooh.”

Khan apparently agreed. “Now that has possibilities.”

Emma couldn’t remain quiet any longer. She emerged from her hiding place and announced her presence. “That last happened already.”

The assembled staff leapt to their feet, the blood draining from their faces. For a good half minute, the only sounds were anxious gulping.

Mary broke the silence. “And . . . ? What was the duke’s response?”

“The duke’s response was none of your business.”

The footman piped up. “How do you feel about spider bites?”

“What I feel is that this needs to stop. All of it. You must all adjust your expectations. There will be no romance. The duke is not falling in love.”

Emma needed the stern reminder as much as anyone.

It wouldn’t even matter if he did begin to love her. In the end, they would part. He was resolute on the matter, and she needed to be at Swanlea this winter for Davina’s sake. But before Davina could get permission to visit, Emma must convince the duke to move in society—at least a little bit.

“I think,” she said quietly, “he needs friends.”

Khan gave a heavy sigh. “We’re sunk.”

“They all deserted him,” Mary said. “And the few who didn’t—well, he drove them away. His Grace doesn’t have any friends any longer. Not outside this room.”

Emma pondered in the ensuing quiet. If it was true that Ashbury’s only remaining friends resided inside this house . . .

She must convince him to venture outside it.