“This is the worst plan I have ever heard,” Constance said across the parlor from where Amarantha sat at a little writing desk. “And I have been involved in some very poorly conceived plans.”

“That is true,” her husband murmured. Saint Sterling reclined in a plain wooden chair as comfortably as though it were a satin bench. Lean and muscular and sharply attractive, he had an air of sublime sangfroid so utterly unlike Gabriel’s aura of virile power that Amarantha could not fathom how Constance had welcomed the courtship of two such different men.

“It must be done.” Scratching her name at the bottom of her letter to Emily, she took up the sealing wax.

“Won’t you allow us to do something?” Constance said. “Immediately, that is?”

“I cannot. Not yet. And I could never put you in danger at this crucial time—any of the three of you.” She gestured to Constance’s belly. “Anyway, if you became involved now Mr. Tate would realize that you also know information about the duke that must be concealed, and he would blackmail you too.”

“But we don’t know any information.” Constance slid Saint a glance that suggested there was more to her words. But Amarantha hadn’t time for their secrets. She had enough of her own to conceal.

“That is for the best,” she said.

“Tate could not blackmail anybody if Saint were to stick him through with a sword,” Constance said. “Miserable little mushroom of a merchant.”

“There now,” the master swordsman said. “My brother was a merchant, albeit a scurrilous one. So in that, I suppose, Torquil was quite like Tate.”

The knots in Amarantha’s stomach tightened.

So many secrets to conceal.

Thomas had begged her to tell him the truth about the duke. She had said that if he did not believe they would suit, she would withdraw. He had insisted that he would do anything to protect others from his uncle’s villainy in which he had played a part, but that he could not wed a woman obviously in love with another man. He begged her to wait until she had spoken with the duke before they bowed to his uncle’s wishes.

But Mr. Tate could at any moment publicly reveal the community at Kallin. And, frankly, she feared her resolve would dissolve if she saw Gabriel before the deed was done.

“With your clever mind wrapped around this too,” she said to Constance, “and with Emily’s and our fathers’ help when they arrive, we will devise a long-term solution to silencing Mr. Tate. For now, this short-term plan must suit.”

“Amarantha, you simply must not go through with this false marriage.”

“Temporary marriage.”

“To petition for annulment, Mr. Bellarmine will be obliged to accuse you of adultery. Does he know that?”

“He has agreed to it.”

“Your reputation will be destroyed.”

“It hardly matters. I have no intention of marrying again.”

“Then here is a thought: what if once Tate is bested, Mr. Bellarmine decides that he is happy with you as his wife and will not grant you an annulment after all? What if Parliament will not grant it?”

“Then I will be married.” She stood up. “Now, I must—”

“This is no minor subterfuge you intend to engage in.”

“You should know,” Saint said with a lifted brow.

“I do!” Constance agreed. “And I know your family will be horrified, Amarantha. Emily would—”

“Stop, I beg of you, Constance. I am grateful for your help. Indeed, I depend on it to ruin Mr. Tate’s plans. But this—in fact this is tearing me apart and I cannot—You do not understand all that is at stake. Believe that I am doing what I must to ensure the safety of many more people than he alone.”

The azure eyes popped wide. “More people than the duke?”

“Please.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Constance nodded.

Amarantha took up the letters to her sister and father. “I must go to post these.”

“It will be dark within the hour. I will send a footman—”

“I would rather go myself.” If she had to sit any longer enduring her friends’ compassionate disapproval while she waited for the morrow she would go mad.

“I will call a carriage for you.” Constance moved toward the bell.

“I will walk.” She had walked across this city before, anonymous—she understood now—so that she could find him without again letting him into her world—without again losing her heart to him.

That, obviously, had not gone according to plan.

The afternoon was cool, clouds of mingled white and gray clustering about the blue and casting the cobbled streets, austere façades, and bare tree branches into dappled brilliance.

She posted the letters and turned away from Constance and Saint’s house. Exhausting herself seemed the only solution to the anxious misery wound so tightly in her chest, as it had once been the solution to her restless discontent in her parents’ home—her antidote to uselessness. She had run and run and run across fields and over hills simply to find a purpose that had some meaning to it. She understood this now, finally.

When the sun fell and she passed a lamplighter going about his task, she turned back.

Dinner.

Tea.

Sleep if possible.

She was always best when she had a plan.

As she neared Constance and Saint’s residence, she entered an arched alleyway and checked her stride when a mounted rider passed into the shadows at its opposite end. With a muted clicking of hooves, the horse halted and the rider dismounted.

His wide shoulders silhouetted by the lamplight beyond the mouth of the alley, even the manner in which he set his hat atop the saddle, filled her at once with peaceful pleasure and the most horrid agitation.

“I will make it clear,” he said, walking in purposeful strides toward her. “I’ll no’ allow this happenstance meeting in the dark to have the same ultimate outcome it did five an’ a half years ago.”

“What? What are you—”

Then he was upon her.

“I’ve no intention o’ sailing away on a ship tomorrow, an’ I’ll no’ be convinced o’ anything by you, especially if it has to do with another man or letters or propriety or reputations or—”

“You are insane.”

“Always when you are involved. Why did you leave Kallin?”

“You must have found Cynthia Tate and brought her here, or you would not have come.”

“No.”

“Oh. No. But perhaps they are already settled somewhere safe. But you must go and find them.”

“Why did you leave Kallin?”

“Didn’t Cassandra give you my note? I wrote to you that I—”

“That you’d pressing matters to attend to elsewhere. Aye. I read the note. All thirty-six words o’ brevity. Meriwether wrote longer prescriptions for the chemist.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Amarantha.” He bent his head and scraped his hand over his jaw. When he raised his eyes to hers again his features looked harder. “Tell me what is amiss. Just tell me. I’ve no’ the heart for foolish misunderstandings this time.”

Hot emotion was flooding her chest.

“I do have matters—a matter—to attend to here. Gabriel—”

“Gabriel?” He frowned. “’Tis about to be serious.”

“Yes. It is.” She stepped back from the lure of his body. “But now it is late, I am tired, and I would like to return to Constance and Saint’s house. Perhaps, if you wish, you might call tomorrow afternoon.”

“I dinna wish it. I’ve just been there searching for you, woman. An’ we’ll speak here. Now.”

“Here? In this alley? In the dark?”

“With no more delay. Now say what you’ve to say an’ then I’ll tell you why you are wrong.”

“I am sorry that I misled you.”

He tilted his head. “Misled?”

“I fear that I led you to—that is, I know that with my actions the last few days at Kallin I led you to believe that I . . . that I—”

“That you want me. You didna lead me to believe that. ’Tis simply the truth.”

“Of course there is quite a lot more to being with a man than wanting him.” She forced out her confession. “I am marrying Thomas.”

His features transformed. “Marrying? Bellarmine?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes. Tomorrow, in fact.”

“No.” He came toward her. “Never.”

“Don’t. Please, don’t.” Throwing up her palm, she backed away and let the prepared words fall out. “He is a good man. Intelligent. Kind. Decent. Hardworking. Not at all indolent like the men my mother has suggested I wed. And he is charming and mild tempered. I have grown ever so fond of him over the last few months, you see. Before I went to Haiknayes—” Her throat caught. If she spoke only truths perhaps she would come through this. “That very night in the Assembly Rooms, before I saw you, he spoke to me of his feelings. Seeing you again, that is, remembering the past so vividly confused me a bit, and I admit that I got somewhat carried away—”

“Carried away? Is that what you call it?”

A shiver of perfect cold slid up through her. She pulled her hood tighter around her face.

“I am not that girl any longer. I tried to tell you that, but you have not listened to me.”

“I have listened to every word. I have memorized every syllable. I know you now as I knew you then.”

“A fortnight does not suffice to gain a thorough understanding of another person.”

“You said that you dinna wish to marry. You said it. Three days ago.”

“I don’t. I did not, that is. But my parents wish it. They have grown adamant, in fact, and I find that I can no longer deny them.”

“Then marry me.”

“I . . . I cannot.”

“You love me.” His jaw was taut, his shoulders rigid, yet the heat in his eyes wrapped her in intimacy.

“I cannot deny that there was once something between us.”

“There will always be something between us, princess.”

“You mustn’t speak like that. It only serves to remind me of the pain of the past.”

“’Twasn’t all painful.”

“Perhaps not for you, sailing about the world on heroic missions. But I have told you what my marriage was, how in the thrall of emotion I made a terrible mistake.”

“I wasna your mistake, Amarantha.”

“I don’t trust you!”

He remained silent, a wall of man a mile away.

“I wanted to,” she said, the false words tasting peculiarly honest. “I thought perhaps I could. But when Jane told me of the marriage contract, the signed contract, I—”

“A fabrication, designed by Tate to force my hand.”

“I believed it. Only for a moment. But a moment was sufficient to show me my mind.”

“Your mind?”

“I have poor judgment in men. I have proven it. So this time I am allowing my parents to make the decision for me.”

“You are lying.”

Desperation filled her. She could only shake her head.

He came forward. “What are you doing, lass?” he said quietly.

“Planning my future.”

“With another man you dinna love.”

“Thomas is a very different sort of man than Paul was.”

“Neither o’ them are me. An’ you want me. You have always wanted me.”

She moved away from him. “I must go.”

“You’ve learned o’ Tate’s villainy,” he said. “How?”

She pivoted to him. “How, exactly. For you did not see fit to tell me. You wonder that I do not trust you? There is your answer.”

“Is Bellarmine”—his voice was gravel—“forcing you somehow?”

“No. Thomas is above reproach.”

“I willna pretend to understand how you believe this will hinder Tate. But you are doing it for me. For Kallin. You must be.”

“I am doing it for me. This is what I want.”

He seized her waist in his hands, pulled her against him, and covered her mouth with his.

He did not allow her to resist and she did not wish to. Sliding her hands over his shoulders and to his neck, she tasted him a final time and touched him. She could kiss him forever, allow him full ownership of her mouth and body and heart, and never have her fill of the glorious strength and tenderness of him. Then he was wrapping her in his arms and she was clinging to him, her fingertips burrowing beneath his coat, impressing the sensation of him upon her skin and senses.

“Marry him,” he said harshly, his hands holding her tightly to him. “Marry anyone you like. But then allow me to be the man your fears fashioned, no’ a maiden’s chivalrous fantasy, but a man who takes what he desires when an’ where he likes, who cares only for pleasure. I’ll have no trouble being that man, Amarantha Vale. Before I met you, I had plenty o’ practice at it.”

Lit with black anger, his eyes raked her face and to where her breasts pressed against his chest. Dragging her hood down with one hand he lifted her face, his gaze hungry on her lips. Then, ducking his head, he brought his mouth against her throat.

His kiss was hot, urgent, a thorough, consuming possession and swiftly descending, his hands pulling her body up to him, making her back arch. Bending, he opened his mouth over her breast. Her gown was no protection: it gave way to his fingers, then his lips. Banding her arms about his neck, she let him have her, groaning when his tongue took her nipple, then his teeth. She felt it like a shock between her legs. Her cry echoed along the archway.

Lifting her, he set her back against the stone and his command came against her neck: “Your skirts.”

“My—?”

“I burn for you, woman. I have always burned for you. Now lift your skirts.”

She obeyed, pulling up the fabric and letting him push her knees apart and trap her against the wall.

Reaching between them, swiftly she unfastened the fall of his breeches with shaking fingers. His eyes shone darkly. Then he was grabbing her up, hitching her thigh over his hip, and making her take him.

She moaned, pulling him in until he was seated so deep she could feel him in her belly.

“This,” he said thickly against her cheek, his voice rough. With a hard thrust, he drove deep. “No fences. No walls.” And again, harder. “No barriers.” His hands moved her on him, the heat and friction of him filling her. “You need this.”

She sank her hands into his hair.

“I have dreamed this,” she whispered.

For a moment there was no movement. Then he bent his head and took her mouth beneath his. When he drew away from her lips, holding her tight, commanding her body with his hands and arms, he did not take her as he had warned. He gave. He made love to her. In an alleyway. In the semidarkness of mingled moonlight and lamplight, as though he had hours to please her—as though no one could see or was likely to see—as though if anyone passed by he would merely say, “Move along, nothing of note here” and continue to make her strain to him. She came in sharp, sudden contractions. They seized her entirely as his muscles beneath her hands hardened. She reached between them and touched him, as she had not even had courage to do at Kallin. His shout of release filled the archway with a man’s pleasure.

She kissed his lips, his cheeks, the whiskers on his jaw, his eyes and abrupt brow and the bridge of his nose, and then his mouth again. The ache inside her was so powerful, she could draw no words from the darkness. Within she was all fire and light and broken desperation. For the first time in years she felt like that girl again, the girl who had fallen in love with him so thoroughly, without fear.

“Dinna allow yourself to be caged, wild one,” he said roughly, his brow against hers. “No’ for me. No’ for any reason.”

Turning her face away she pressed her palms against his chest.

He released her, drawing away and fastening his breeches as casually as though it were the most usual thing in the world to make love to a woman in an alleyway. As she smoothed her skirts and tugged her hood over her hair, he watched her.

There was, of course, nothing more to be said.

She started off.

He grasped her hand.

“Amarantha, I—”

“Allow me to do this. For, God help me, I cannot grieve your death again.” She tugged free and hurried past his horse and away.

When she returned to the house, Constance told her that word had come from Castle Read: her father, the Duke of Read, was in London, but she had already sent a swift rider there. He should arrive within days.

At dinner her hosts asked no more questions, and afterward Amarantha went to her bedchamber, washed her body of the remnants of her adventure in the dark with a beast who was nothing of the sort, and pretended to herself that she felt nothing. She had plenty of experience doing that, after all.