The Wrong Door 

by

Mary Balogh

Without a doubt it was the most stupid thing he had ever done. He had spent the last ten years of his life being daring, rash, even unwise. But this was plain stupid. And the outcome was that he was in grave danger of having acquired a leg-shackle for himself.

He had always intended never to take on a leg-shackle despite the fact that he already had a viscount’s title and would one day acquire that of a marquess, if he outlived an elderly and infirm uncle, and it was expected of him to marry and produce an heir. Now he would no longer have to worry about disappointing those expectations. He was in more than danger. He was on his way to the altar as surely as if the offer had been made and accepted already.

Alistair Scott, Viscount Lyndon, had been invited to the seaside home of his friend, Colin Willett, for the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Colin’s grandmother. Elmdon Hall was within a day’s ride of Brighton and the viscount had pictured himself and Colin riding there frequently, it being summer and the fashionable time to be in Brighton. He had not fully realized until it was too late that it was a full-fledged house party to which he had been invited and that he would be obliged to stay at Elmdon to participate in the celebrations. The house was filled to the rafters with family members and family friends.

It was not at all the viscount’s type of entertainment. There were altogether too many sweet young things obviously on the lookout for a husband, some of them with a certain air of desperation since the Season in London was over and they were still unattached. Viscount Lyndon was not interested in sweet young things since he could not bed them and had discovered no other pleasurable use for women in his thirty years.

It was to avoid one persistent miss, who distinctly reminded the viscount of a horse, that he attached himself to Lady Plumtree, a widow, during an afternoon ride on the first full day at Elmdon. And then led her in to dinner. And took her as a partner at cards during the evening. And made an assignation with her for that night. It was a very stupid thing to do. Although he had a passing acquaintance with the lady from town and although it was clear that she understood the rules of the game of dalliance and would provide a delightful diversion during what promised to be a rather dull week in the country, nevertheless it was not the sort of party at which one indulged in affaires de coeur.

If everything had proceeded smoothly, of course, the chances were that he would never have felt a pang of guilt over the tastelessness of his behavior. Or over its stupidity. But things did not proceed smoothly. The third door on the left of the inner corridor of the east wing, Lady Plumtree had told him, dark eyes peering up at him through long lashes as she issued the invitation. He would be there, he told her, hooded blue eyes gazing back into hers.

But later that night, walking unfamiliar corridors without a candle or the help of moonlight through windows, it was not quite clear which was the inner corridor and which was the outer. And did the doors on the left include the small door, clearly belonging to some sort of cupboard, that was a mere few inches from the beginning of the corridor? He did not feel these doubts at the time, of course, or perhaps he would have been saved from disaster. It was only later that he realized how carelessly stupid he had been.

How disastrously stupid.

Lady Plumtree was small and slender, quiet and elegant. She was, in fact, the picture of respectability to anyone who did not know that she liked to collect lovers as other ladies collected fans or jewels. One would not expect her to behave like any vulgar courtesan. The viscount merely smiled, then, when he stepped inside her room and closed the door soundlessly behind him to find that she was lying quietly in bed, pretending to sleep. Novelty was always welcome to someone with appetites as jaded as his.

“Laura?” he said, his voice low.

No answer. He smiled again as he drew his shirt clear of his pantaloons and off over his head. He pulled off his pantaloons and stockings and stood naked close to the bed, looking down at her slight form, curled invitingly beneath the covers. Her blond hair was spread about her on the pillow. Not that he could see either her form or the color of her hair with any clarity. Although the curtains at the window were drawn back, it was a very dark night.

He drew back the covers slowly and almost chuckled. She was wearing a nightgown, a very virginal one, covering her from neck to ankles by the look of it. And she still pretended to sleep. She was not a particularly good actress, though. Her breathing was too quiet to be convincing. But there was something very alluring about the appearance of innocence she had chosen to portray and about the stillness of her body. The woman knew how to entice. He lay down beside her carefully and drew the covers back up over them.

He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. She was lying on her side facing him, her hair covering the part of her face that was not buried in the pillow. He wished he could see her more clearly. With one finger he lifted aside a heavy lock of hair, lowered his head, and touched his lips to her cheek. Warm and soft. He breathed in the smell of soap. Clever. It was more enticing than perfume.

“Mmm,” she said with studied drowsiness, bringing back his smile, and she turned her head sufficiently that he could move his mouth to hers.

He touched it first with his tongue, running it lightly along her upper lip before letting his parted lips rest against hers. Warm and soft again, betraying her wakefulness by parting very slightly to mold themselves to his.

“Lyndon,” she said, a mere breath of sound against his mouth.

Firm breasts, small waist, nicely rounded buttocks— there was something surprisingly erotic about letting his hand roam over them, a layer of soft, warm cotton between his hand and them. More erotic than nakedness at this stage of the game. The woman was an expert.

Perhaps too expert. He was almost painfully aroused. He liked a great deal of foreplay. He liked lengthy play inside his women’s bodies too, but he always felt cheated of some pleasure if circumstances forced him to an early mount. He liked his women hot and panting and pleading before penetration. This woman was trying to cheat him, even if she did not realize it.

He began to undo the buttons at the front of her nightgown, waiting for her to raise her arms. She did not do so. Perhaps she intended to carry through the charade to the end. Perhaps she would feign sleep even after he had entered her and while he worked in her. He smiled down at her darkened form and felt his breath quicken. There was something almost unbearably alluring about the thought. He hoped that was her plan.

He slid his hand beneath the nightgown along her shoulder and down over one breast to cup it in his palm. He felt her stiffen slightly as his thumb rubbed against her nipple. He took it between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing lightly, willing her to relax and feign sleep again. He set his mouth to hers once more, opening it with the pressure of his lips, and slid his tongue slowly into her mouth, as deeply as he was able. She swallowed and he moaned.

And then all hell broke loose. He found himself fighting a hellcat, who was twisting and punching and scratching and kicking and biting and panting beneath him on the bed. For one moment—and one moment only—he thought that she had suddenly and quite deliberately changed tactics. And then he realized the truth. Too late. Far too late. She had not screamed and there was perhaps the glimmering of a chance that he would be able to get himself and his garments from the room without her seeing the identity of her attacker. But then even the glimmer was snuffed.

There was a light suddenly before he could break free of the unknown woman who was so fiercely defending her honor. And a loud, shocked, scolding voice. A maid, he realized when rationality began to return and he turned his head sharply. A large, very angry maid, who must have been sleeping in the adjoining dressing room. She was carrying a candle in one hand.

“Oh, the devil!” he said with a groan, turning his head back to look down at the woman in the bed, who had stopped struggling. She stared back at him from huge eyes, her face flushed, her auburn hair in wild disarray about her shoulders and over the one exposed breast. She was the prettiest of the sweet young things, he saw. He could not remember her name.

But before his mind could even begin to grapple with the impossibility of saying anything that might ease the situation, the maid was beating him about the head and shoulders with one large fist and he leapt out of bed in sheer self-defense.

The maid shrieked.

The sweet young thing dived beneath the bed covers.

“Oh, Lord,” the viscount said, grabbing his pantaloons and dragging them on and then reaching down for his shirt and stockings. “I do beg your pardon, ma’am. Wrong room. I thought it was my own. I must have taken a wrong turn. I am so sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

He left the room just as the maid was recovering from the shock of being subjected to the sight of a naked aroused man and was setting down the candle, the better to use both fists. She did not come after him.

He regained his own room with ungainly and unwise haste, though he met no one on the way from the east wing to the west. He hurled his shirt and stockings to the floor of his bedchamber and swore fluently enough to have made even the most seasoned soldier blush.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did he know of inner or outer corridors? Or of third doors or fourth doors? What did he know of Elmdon Hall that he had thought he could go creeping about it in the dark and find unerringly the widow of easy morals who was panting for his body?

Perhaps what he should have felt first was embarrassment. But Viscount Lyndon was no fool, even if he sometimes behaved with incredible stupidity. He knew immediately that any embarrassment he might feel was as nothing to the consequences of his deed that were facing him. He could not remember who the girl was, though he had been presented to all the other guests on his arrival. He could not remember who her father was. Was she Brindley’s sister? Yes, he rather believed she was. But one thing he knew for certain. He was going to be seeking out that father or brother as early in the morning as he was to be found—before the father or brother could find him, in fact. He was going to be making his offer for the girl before the father or brother had a chance to blow out his brains on some field of honor. Or perhaps the man would not even consider him worthy of a field of honor. Maybe he would just organize a company of thugs to horsewhip him and render his face unrecognizable before hurling him off Elmdon property.

Perhaps that would be the better alternative too. He would recover from a thorough drubbing. He would not recover from a leg shackle. Except that honor was at the stake, of course. The girl had been compromised. Quite spectacularly compromised. She must be offered for.

If there was any obscenity or blasphemy that the viscount had missed in his first tirade, he certainly made no such omission with the second.

The rest of the night did not bring him a great deal of sleep.

At first Caroline Astor tried with great earnestness to persuade Letty never to say anything about the night’s proceedings. It would be their sworn secret, she said, clutching the blankets to her bosom and feeling rather as if she were trying to lock the stable doors after the horse had bolted. The buttons of her nightgown were still open to the waist. After all, Viscount Lyndon himself was not likely to go about boasting of the episode.

But she flushed at her own words. Would he? He was known, and well known at that, as the most dreadful rake. Perhaps it had been deliberate. Perhaps he made a habit of invading the rooms and the persons of unsuspecting females. Perhaps if Letty had not appeared when she had, he would have ravished her. Caroline, that was, not Letty. Letty planted her fists on ample hips. “Lord Brindley is to know it for sure, mum,” she said. It was pronouncement more than statement. “Right this minute.”

Caroline ventured a staying hand from beneath the blankets. “Oh, not tonight, Letty,” she said. “He will be remarkably cross if we wake him. And it is quite unlikely that Lord Lyndon will return. Is there a lock on the door?”

“There is not,” Letty said. “I shall sleep at the foot of your bed, mum. Let him just try to get past me.” 

“I am sure he will not,” Caroline said.

“First thing in the morning,” Letty said. “I shall summon your brother here, mum, and you can tell him or I will. It is all the same to me.”

“I shall tell him,” Caroline said, licking dry lips. “But it was all a dreadful mistake, Letty. He mistook my room for his. You heard him say so.”

“Does he have a wife that he mistook for you?” Letty asked with a theatrical sniff. “I think not, mum. He is a bad one, that. And he was not dressed decent even for his own bed. He was—” Her bosom swelled with the memory of the indecency of the viscount’s dress or lack thereof.

“Yes, he was,” Caroline said hastily, remembering the glimpse she had had of magnificent naked maleness before she had dived beneath the covers. And the glimpse of the splendid and terrifyingly large part of his anatomy to which she would blush to put a name even in her thoughts.

Letty strode off to drag her truckle bed in from the dressing room. She set it across the foot of her mistress’s bed and lay on it like a large and fierce watchdog. Caroline blew out the candle.

And stared upward into the darkness, knowing that she would not have another wink of sleep that night. She should have been hysterical. She should have been rushing to the comfort of her brother’s protective arms. She should have woken the whole house with her screams. She certainly should not have been making excuses for Viscount Lyndon to Letty. Doubtless she would not have done so had she not been very foolishly in love with him since she first set eyes on him months before.

She had turned down two perfectly eligible marriage proposals, much to the puzzlement and chagrin of her brother, because of that stupid infatuation. In love with London’s worst rake, indeed! It was about the only foolish thing of which she could accuse herself in three-and-twenty years of living. She had been remarkably sensible all her life. The normal Caroline would have accepted the first of those offers during the Season with pleased satisfaction. She would not have dreamed of love and forever after in the arms of a handsome libertine.

Her heart and her stomach—all her insides—had turned several complete handsprings when she had found out that he was a guest at Great-Aunt Sabrina’s birthday party. He was so very gloriously handsome with his tall, slender, well-muscled frame and handsome features that happened to include two slumbrous and very blue eyes. And then there was his hair, dark and thick and shining, dressed in the latest style.

Any other woman but Caroline, feeling as she did about him, might have been sighing all over him and making cow eyes at him as that silly Eugenia had been doing all day. Caroline had done just the opposite and behaved as if she had not noticed his existence—just as she had behaved at every ball and other entertainment during the Season where both he and she had happened to be.

After all, there was no point in trying to attract his interest, was there? Rakes wanted only one thing from a woman and even that for a very short time. Rakes did not deal in love and marriage and forever after. Caroline prided herself on her good sense. She might secretly sigh over the man, but she knew that he could only make her desperately unhappy even if he deigned to show an interest in her. She was going to accept the very next proposal she received—provided the man was eligible, of course. And provided he was at least moderately handsome. And amiable.

Caroline turned over onto her side and curled up into her favorite position for sleep. Could she smell him on the pillow beside her? What an absurd idea. She could not remember how he had smelled, and the pillow smelled like—well, like pillow.

The stupid thing—the really stupid thing—was that she had thought for some time that she was dreaming. It had seemed like one of those dreams in which one knows one is dreaming and is willing oneself not to wake up. She had known that she was dreaming about him and she had wanted the dream to continue. She had liked feeling the weight and heat of his body beside her in bed and the touch of his hand moving back her hair so that he could kiss her cheek. She had moved her head so that he could kiss her lips. Actually, she might have known then that she was not really dreaming. She had never thought about a tongue being involved in a kiss. But it had been delightful to feel his moving across her upper lip. And then to feel his hand moving over her body, lightly exploring.

It was only when he started to open her buttons that she had realized that she could no longer hold on to the dream. She was waking up with the greatest reluctance—only to find that she was not after all leaving the dream behind. Only to find that she had not in fact been dreaming at all. And then his hand had been inside and touching her breast, bringing a strange aching sort of pain as he pinched her nipple. And his tongue had no longer been tracing her lips, but sliding deep into her mouth.

That was when dreams and reality had finally parted company and she realized not only that she was not sleeping, but that she did not know the identity of the man who was sharing her bed and who seemed intent on sharing her person too. That was when she had gone berserk.

And all the time it really had been he. The Viscount Lyndon. That was how rakes touched women, then, and how they kissed. And how they looked. Or that was how he looked, anyway. Oh, mercy, she had had no idea ... It must hurt dreadfully, she thought. Or else be unbearably pleasurable. Or perhaps both.

Her cheeks burned and she tried not to listen to Letty’s snores. What would Royston do tomorrow? she wondered. Whisk her away back home? Challenge the viscount to a duel? It was clear what had happened, of course. He had spent the whole day with Lady Plumtree, understandably since the lady was both beautiful and not all she should be, if gossip had the right of it. And Lady Plumtree was in the room next to Caroline’s. He had mistaken the room, all right, but not because he had thought Caroline’s room to be his own. He had been going to spend the night with Lady Plumtree. He had been starting to make love to her, Caroline, thinking she was Lady Plumtree.

What would have come next? she wondered and grew even hotter at the imagined next stages of what he had started. How long would it have been before . . .

Caroline sat up sharply and thumped her pillow as if she wished it were Viscount Lyndon’s face.

Or Lady Plumtree’s perhaps.

Royston Astor, Lord Brindley, was in a bad mood, having quarreled with his wife again that morning. And again over Caroline. There was no one particularly eligible at this party, she had pointed out. They were wasting a whole week, when they could be in Brighton or somewhere else where Caroline could meet someone suitable to marry.

It had been in vain for him to remind Cynthia that family duty dictated that they put in this appearance at Elmdon Hall and that Caroline had met and rejected two quite eligible gentlemen during the past few months. She was three-and-twenty, Cynthia had said with that slow distinctness she always used when trying to make a particularly telling point, and had only just made her come-out. That was not his fault either, he had said, grumbling. First Caroline had not wanted a come-out and Papa had not fought against her wishes. Then Grandpapa died, plunging them all into mourning, and then Papa.

Caroline was not in her dotage after all, he had pointed out. Cynthia had given him a speaking glance as if to say that yes, indeed, she was. To give her her due, Cynthia’s preoccupation with marrying Caroline off was motivated more by affection than by the desire to get rid of a superfluous sister-in-law.

Lord Brindley’s neckcloth would never tie neatly when he was in a bad mood. He had noticed it before. There was a tap on his dressing room door and he turned to scowl at his valet as if the man were personally responsible for the uncooperative neckcloth. But he had merely come to announce that Viscount Lyndon would be obliged for a few minutes of his time.

Lord Brindley frowned. Lyndon? He had been annoyed, to say the least, to find that that irresponsible ass, Colin, had invited a man like Lyndon to such a respectable gathering. One did not feel that one’s women were safe with such a libertine in the house. Cynthia he could protect very well himself. But Caroline? She should have been put in a room next to theirs, he had complained to Cynthia on their arrival. He had at least insisted that his sister’s maid sleep in her dressing room at night. One never knew with someone like Lyndon.

“Me?” he said to his valet. “You are sure he said me, Barnes?”

Barnes merely coughed discreetly, and Lord Brindley realized that the viscount was standing behind him, outside the door. What the devil?

“Come inside, Lyndon,” he said ungraciously. “I am getting ready for breakfast. Disgusting misty morning, is it not? I was unable to go riding.”

Viscount Lyndon stepped inside and succeeded only in making Lord Brindley feel dwarfed. His mood was not improved.

“I am afraid I have a matter of some delicacy to discuss,” the viscount said.

Lord Brindley met his eyes in the looking glass and stopped fidgeting with his neckcloth, which was doomed to looking lopsided anyway no matter what he did with it. He raised his eyebrows and turned to face the room.

“I feel constrained to ask for the honor of making a marriage offer to your sister,” the viscount said.

The baron snapped his teeth together when he realized that his jaw had been in danger of dropping. “Eh?” he said. “Is this some kind of joke, Lyndon?”

“I wish it were,” the viscount said, his initial unease seeming to disappear somewhat now that he had launched into speech. “I can see that she has not said anything to you yet.”

“Eh?” Lord Brindley realized that his response was not profound, but really what did one say to such unexpected and strange words?

“I am afraid,” the viscount said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a wry smile, “that I compromised Miss Astor last night. Rather badly, I am afraid.”

Lord Brindley’s hands curled into fists at his sides. To do him justice, he did not at the moment think of the vast difference in size and physique between the other man and himself.

“I mistook her room for, er, someone else’s,” the viscount explained. “Her virtue is intact,” he added hastily, “but not, I am afraid, her honor. I beg leave to set matters right by offering her the protection of my name.”

“Your name?" the baron said, injecting a world of irony into the words and using some of his wife’s slow distinctness.

“I beg your pardon,” the viscount said stiffly. “Is my name sullied and I know nothing of it? I have the name and the position and the means with which to provide for Miss Astor for the rest of her life.”

“I would rather see her thrown into a lions’ den,” Lord Brindley said. “You did not take her virtue, you said?”

“No,” the viscount said. “She awoke in time to fight me off, and her maid arrived to champion her cause.” 

Caroline and Lyndon? Lyndon touching Caroline? And thinking to marry her? It was perhaps a good thing that none of Lord Brindley’s gloves were in sight. Perhaps he would have slapped one in the viscount’s face and been precipitated into a dreadfully scandalous situation with which to celebrate his great-aunt’s birthday.

“I will make my offer this morning,” the viscount said. “With your permission, Brindley. I cannot think you mean what you just said about lions.”

“What you will do this morning,” Lord Brindley said, his hands opening and closing at his sides, “is pack your belongings, order your carriage around, and take yourself off with whatever plausible excuse for leaving you can contrive in the meanwhile. I will give you one hour, Lyndon, before coming after you with a whip. I trust I make myself understood?”

The viscount pursed his lips. But before either man could say another word, there was a second tap on the door and it opened to reveal a pale Caroline. She glanced at Viscount Lyndon, blanched still further, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

“Barnes said you were in here, Royston,” she said, looking directly at him and ignoring the viscount just as if he were not even there, “and not to be disturbed. But I could not wait. There is going to be a duel, is there not? It will not do. For one thing the whole matter will be made dreadfully public, and for another, you are expert with neither a sword nor a pistol. He is, so I have heard. I will not have you killed for my sake.” 

“Caroline—” her brother began, but she held up a firm staying hand.

“It must not happen, Royston,” she said, lifting her chin and looking at him with a martial gleam in her eyes, “or I shall reveal the full truth to everyone.” There was a flush of color in her cheeks suddenly.

“The full truth?”

“That he was in my room by invitation,” she said. “That if he compromised me, then I also compromised myself. A duel would be quite inappropriate, you see. You will withdraw the challenge, will you not?”

The viscount, Lord Brindley saw in one quick glance, was standing looking back at him, his expression utterly blank. If the baron could have throttled his sister at that moment and remained within the law, he would have done so. The minx. The slut. He had thought her sensible despite her strange rejection of two chances of an advantageous match during the Season. And yet she had given in to the damnably improper advances of a rake just like the most brainless of chits. Well, let her take the consequences.

“There will be no duel, Caroline,” he said. “Leave us, please. Viscount Lyndon and I have certain matters to discuss.”

She looked at him a little uncertainly, then seemed about to slide her eyes in the direction of the viscount, changed her mind, turned, and left the room. The viscount had stood still and quiet throughout her visit.

“Well,” Lord Brindley said briskly, “we have a marriage contract to discuss, Lyndon. Have a seat. There is no time like the present, I suppose, despite the fact that we may miss breakfast.”

Viscount Lyndon took a seat.

If he could do anything he wanted to the girl with utter impunity, Viscount Lyndon decided as he returned to his own room a considerable time later, he would throttle her. No, she was not a girl. He had seen that as soon as he had had a good look at her. She was past girlhood. She was three-and-twenty, according to her brother. Thank goodness for that, at least. If he must marry—he winced—then let it at least be to a woman and not a girl straight from the schoolroom.

He could cheerfully throttle her. He had been so close to getting himself out of the most damnable mess he had been in in his life. So close to freedom. His mind had already been inventing an aged relative at death’s door and a few other fond relatives who had written to beg his immediate presence at the event. He had already in his mind been away from a potentially dull house party and away from a dreaded marriage.

Until she, the sweet young thing, Miss Caroline Astor, had come along with her noble lie to save her brother from having a bullet placed between his eyes or a sword sheathed through his heart. If she had only known it, it was the exact midpoint between her eyes that he had pictured for one ungallant moment with a blackened hole through it.

And so here he was, a betrothed man in effect if not quite yet in reality. The formal offer was still to make, though the contract had been discussed and agreed upon. But if the girl—woman—had such an enormous dowry, the viscount thought, frowning, why the devil was she still unmarried at the age of three-and-twenty? And she was admittedly pretty too. What was wrong with her? Something must be—a pleasant thought to lie in one’s stomach in place of breakfast.

If he made his offer with great care, he thought, throwing himself down on his bed and staring upward . . . If he made himself thoroughly disagreeable . . . But no. Honor was involved. If it were not, he would not even be making the offer. He grimaced.

She had not even looked at him after that one glance before entering the room. She had not even named him. She had referred to him only as “he.” And she had lied through her teeth, not to protect him, but to save her brother’s hide. And she had looked thoroughly humorless and belligerent while she was doing so. She had red hair—well, auburn anyway. She was bound to be a bad-tempered shrew. That was all he needed in his life.

A damned attractive shrew, of course. His temperature slid up a degree when he remembered . . . But not attractive enough to make a leg-shackle seem any better than a life sentence. The woman did not live who was that attractive.

Damn!

Perhaps after they were betrothed. The viscount set one arm over his eyes and thought. He could make himself extremely obnoxious if he tried. Gaze admiringly at himself in looking glasses and windows when he ought to be complimenting her on her appearance. Talk incessantly about himself. Boast about some of his conquests. Sneer at anything and everything he found her to be interested in. Within the week he could have her screaming to be released from her promise.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and ran his fingers through his hair. Gad, but it went against the grain. All his attentions toward women were usually designed to attract, not to repel. However, it would be in a good cause. Good for him and good for her too. If she only knew it, he would be doing her the greatest favor in the world. He would make the world’s worst husband. The woman would be miserable within a fortnight of marriage.

He got resolutely to his feet. He had arranged with Brindley to talk with her before luncheon. He was suddenly eager to get the thing over with so that he could proceed to the serious business of freeing both of them again. He wondered if he could charm any of the female servants into serving him a late breakfast. He did not fancy making a marriage proposal on an empty stomach.

Not that he really fancied making one on a full stomach either, of course.

He was going to make her a marriage proposal. And it seemed that everything had been arranged already. The proposal itself and her acceptance of it were to be a mere formality.

It had never struck her. Not through a largely sleepless night—she would have said it was entirely sleepless except that there were memories of bizarre erotic dreams. And not through an anxious early morning. She had visualized public denunciations and duels and horrible embarrassment. She had pictured all kinds of punishments that might be visited upon Viscount Lyndon, almost all of which would undoubtedly harm Royston more than the real culprit. But she had never imagined that anyone would consider marriage between the two of them necessary.

And yes, of course she must listen to the offer, Royston had said in a coldly furious voice when he had finally appeared in her room and dismissed a grimly vigilant Letty. And accept it too. He did not know what had come over her. Did she have no pride in herself or her family name? Did she not know Lyndon’s reputation? Did she think any but the most unprincipled rake would have agreed to meet her in her bedchamber at night?

She had been unable to defend herself. After all she was the one who had said the viscount was in her room by her invitation. She had merely muttered something about love and romance and just a very few minutes during which to say a private good night.

“Love,” her brother had said with the utmost contempt. “Romance. With someone like Lyndon, Caroline? Well, you will have them for what they are worth for the rest of your lifetime. I wish you happy.”

She could have him for the rest of a lifetime. Caroline sighed. She could marry him. She could be his betrothed within the coming hour. Viscount Lyndon, over whom the romantical and foolish side of her nature had sighed from afar for months while the sensible part of herself had assured her that it was as well that she admired only from afar. That it was as well his eyes had never alighted on her.

She was to meet him on the terrace half an hour before noon. She wandered there five minutes early, well knowing that it would have been far better to be five minutes late. She smiled cheerfully at five of her young relatives, who were embarking on a walk to the woods half a mile distant, and expressed her regrets at being unable to go with them.

“I am meeting someone,” she said.

“I hope he is tall, dark, and handsome,” Irene said with a laugh.

And then he was coming through the double front doors and down the horseshoe steps and along the terrace toward her. Toward her. And looking at her. She had never been this close to him before—except last night, of course, and briefly this morning in Royston’s dressing room. He had never looked at her. He was indeed very tall and dark. And handsome. And if she was not careful, she was going to be sighing and making cow eyes and be no better at all than Eugenia.

“Good morning, my lord,” she said and listened with approval to the coolness of her voice.

“Miss Astor.” He inclined his head and extended one arm. “Shall we walk?” He indicated the formal gardens before the house and the lawn that sloped beyond it toward the distant beach. The driveway and the road were behind the house.

She took his arm and glanced along it to a strong, long-fingered, well-manicured hand. The very hand that had come inside her nightgown and fondled her breast. She felt as if she had just been running for a mile uphill but quelled the urge to pant.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I have caused you a great deal of distress, ma’am, both last night and this morning.”

The best way to cope with her very schoolgirlish reactions, Caroline decided, was to withdraw into herself, to keep her eyes directed toward the ground before her feet, and to keep her mouth shut as much as possible.

“You must allow me to make some reparation,” he said.    '

They were strolling past brightly colored flowerbeds. All the flowers were blooming in perfect symmetry, she thought and wondered how the gardeners did it.

“It would give me great satisfaction if you would do me the honor of marrying me,” he said.

Caroline Scott, Viscountess Lyndon. One day to be a marchioness. Wife to such a splendidly gorgeous man. Mother to his children. The envy of every woman of the ton. And the proud owner of their pity too as her husband philandered his way through the rest of their lives. Ah, it was such a dreadful pity. And it was taking a superhuman effort to put common sense before inclination. Perhaps she would wake soon from the bizarre dream that had begun some time the night before.

“I am sorry,” he said, bending his head closer to hers and covering her hand on his arm with his, “you are quite overwhelmed, are you not? I am more sorry than I can say to be the cause of such bewilderment. Would you like some time to consider your answer?”

“No,” she said, her voice as calm as it had been before and quite at variance with the beating of her heart, “I do not need any longer, my lord.”

“Ah,” he said, his tone brisker, “then it is settled. You have made me very happy, ma’am.” He raised her hand to his lips.

She spoke with the deepest regret. “I am afraid you have misunderstood, my lord,” she said. “My answer is no.”

“No?” He stopped walking abruptly in order to stare down at her. Her hand was still clasped in his.

“I will not marry you,” she said, “though I thank you for the offer, my lord. It was kind of you.”

“Kind?” he said, a new sharpness in his voice. “I believe you are the one who does not understand, Miss Astor. I compromised you last night. I must marry you.”

Ah, romance, Caroline thought with an inward sigh. Whenever she had daydreamed about him, he had been gazing at her, eyes alight with admiration and passion. His eyes up close were even more beautiful than she had dreamed of their being, but they were frowning down at her as if she were a particularly nasty slug that had crawled out onto the path after the early morning mist.

“It seems a singularly foolish reason for marrying,” she said. “Nothing really happened, after all.” She willed herself not to flush, with woeful lack of success.

“Miss Astor,” he said, “not only was I alone with you in your bedchamber last night, but I was also naked in your bed with you.” Caroline would not have been surprised to see flames dancing to life on her cheeks. “We were seen together by your maid with the result that the story is by now doubtless common knowledge belowstairs. I admitted the truth of what happened to your brother with the result that a considerable number of people abovestairs probably know by now. And you even confessed to having invited me into your bed.” 

“Into my room,” she said. “To say good night.” 

“Inviting a man into your room at night,” he said, “is the same thing as inviting him into your bed, ma’am. And saying good night under such circumstances is the same thing as making love. It seems that your education in such matters is somewhat lacking. We have no choice but to marry, Miss Astor.”

“Letty will have said nothing,” she said, “and neither will Royston unless he has unburdened his mind to Cynthia. She will not spread the story. The idea that we must marry is ridiculous.”

He had released her hand to clasp his hands behind him. He regarded her in silence for a while. She looked up into his face, memorizing its features, in particular the rather heavy-lidded blue eyes. She tried to memorize his height and the breadth of his shoulders. She knew she would dream of last night and this morning for weeks, perhaps months to come. And she knew that a part of her would forever regret that she had not seized the moment and made herself miserable for the rest of her life.

“You know nothing about me. Is that it?” he asked. “Your brother is satisfied that I will be able to keep you in the kind of life to which you are accustomed, Miss Astor. I have estates and a fortune of my own. I am also heir to a marquess’s title and fortune. Is it your ignorance of these facts that has made you reluctant?” 

“I knew them,” she said. “You are not exactly an unknown figure in London, my lord, and I was there for the Season this spring.”

“Were you?” he said, looking her over in a way that confirmed her conviction that he had never knowingly set eyes on her before this week. “Your objection to me is more personal then?”

Her mouth opened and the words came out before she could check them. All she would have to say was that she objected to being forced into marriage because of a mere mistake in identifying a room. But that was not what she said.

“You have a reputation as perhaps the most dreadful rake in England, my lord,” she said.

“Do I?” His manner became instantly haughty. He looked twice as handsome if that were possible. “I thought women were supposed to have a soft spot for rakes, Miss Astor. You are not one of them?”

“Not as a husband,” she said. “I would be a fool.”

“And clearly you are not,” he said. “So I am being rejected because I like to bed women and have never made a secret of the fact.”

She thought for a moment. Yes, that was it exactly. Alas. “Yes,” she said.

“And you would not like to be bedded by me, Miss Astor?”

Yes, she had been right to describe his eyes secretly to herself as slumbrous, Caroline thought. They were exactly that and his voice low and seductive. And then the meaning of his words echoed in her ears.

“No,” she said. “When I marry, my lord, I want to know that I am everything to my husband. I want to know that I am the only woman in his life and always will be.”

“If you—and your maid—had awoken just a few minutes later last night,” he said, “you might have been singing a different tune this morning. The bedding process had barely begun and yet your body was responding with pleasure. There was a great deal more to come. A very great deal.”

“Do you mean,” she said, beginning to feel indignant, “that I would have been begging for more this morning? Begging even for marriage so that the pleasure could be repeated?”

“I could make you fall hopelessly in love with me in no time at all,” he said, reaching out one long finger and carelessly flicking her cheek with it.

“Poppycock!” she said, now so thoroughly angry that she totally forgot that she was in love with him already.

“I would wager my fortune on it,” he said. “One day is all I would need.”

She drew breath audibly. “The assumption being,” she said, “that there is everything to fall in love with in you and nothing in me. I would fall in love with you in the course of a day, but you, of course, would remain quite immune to my charms. You are a conceited, a-a conceited—”

“Ass?” he suggested, raising his eyebrows.

“Fop, sir,” she finished with a flourish. She was glad all this had happened. Oh, she was glad. The scales had fallen from her eyes and she could see him at last for what he was—not so much a charming rake as a conceited ass. She wished she had had the courage to say the word aloud.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps we should make a formal wager, Miss Astor, since we seem not about to make a formal betrothal after all. Twenty-four hours. At the end of it if I have fallen in love with you I lose my wager of—shall we say fifty pounds? If you have fallen in love with me, you lose yours. If we both win or both lose, then we end up even. Agreed?” He stretched out an imperious right hand toward her.

“Either one of us would be foolish to admit to having fallen,” she said, “when it would mean the loss of fifty pounds and the ridicule or pity of the other.”

“Ah, but we must trust to each other’s honor and honesty,” he said. “Do we have an agreement, Miss Astor? It will mean spending the rest of today and tomorrow morning together, of course. As for tonight, we can discuss that later.”

“What utter nonsense,” she said, staring down at his hand and remembering the strangely pleasurable pain she had felt when two of his fingers had squeezed her nipple. “I have no wish to spend any more time with you, my lord, and as for this wager you suggest, it is stupid. What if one of us does fall in love with the other? What if we both do? Nothing will have changed. It is just stupid.”

“In the clubs of London, Miss Astor,” he said, “it is considered the mark of the most abject cowardice to refuse a wager. A man can easily lose his honor by doing so.”

“I am not a man,” she said.

“I had noticed.”

Again the seductive voice. She did not look up to observe his eyes. She slapped her hand down onto his.

“This is stupid,” she said.

“I take it you are accepting the wager?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said as his hand closed about hers. “But it is stupid.” She looked up to find him grinning down at her. His teeth were very white and even. His eyes crinkled at the comers when he smiled and those lovely blue eyes danced with merriment. Round one to Viscount Lyndon, she thought as her knees turned to jelly. But of course she no longer loved him. She despised him.

“This,” he said, raising her hand to his lips again, “is going to be a pleasure, ma’am—Caroline. The beach for a walk after luncheon?”

What he should do, Viscount Lyndon thought as he changed after luncheon for a walk on the beach, was summon his carriage and have his coachman drive him directly to London and deposit him at the doors of Bethlehem Hospital. He should have himself fitted into a straitjacket. He was clearly mad.

He had had his ticket to freedom again. The woman had refused him though he had made his offer with no attempt whatsoever to repel her. He had even behaved with strict honor by trying to insist when she had first rejected him. He had tried to make her see that she had no choice but to marry him. Still she had refused.

It should have been like a dream come true. He should have left her at a run and not stopped until there were a few hundred miles between them. He should have shouted with joy as soon as he was out of earshot. He had been free again, free of a leg-shackle and free of obligation, his honor intact.

Instead of which ... He scowled at his image in the looking glass and decided against wearing a hat. It would probably blow into the sea anyway on such a breezy day. Instead of which he had taken her refusal as a personal affront and had demanded to know the reason why. And as soon as he had discovered the reason—her aversion to marrying a rake—all his old instincts had come into play. His very self-respect had made him incapable of letting her go unconquered.

Poppycock, she had said when he had told her—quite truthfully but with rash stupidity—that he could make her fall hopelessly in love with him in a day. And so he had set about doing just that. It would be easy, of course. He would not even need the full twenty-four hours. But what was his purpose? If she fell in love with him, she would marry him after all.

What he should do was spend the rest of the day making sure she came to dislike him more than she did already. That after all had been his original plan, when he had assumed that she would betroth herself to him without protest. But now, of course, he was facing the challenge of a wager. And he had never in his life been able to resist a wager.

She was in the hallway, talking with some of the other sweet young things, including the horsey one, who favored him with melting glances as he came down the stairs. The general intention among the young people, it seemed, was to walk down to the beach. Lady Plumtree was in the hallway too, tapping one foot on the tiles and looking grim and haughty. He had had no opportunity to explain to her why he had failed to keep their tryst the night before.

Caroline Astor detached herself from her group and turned to him while the others gaped and Lady Plumtree turned sharply away to smile dazzlingly at Willett’s father.

“Everyone is ready for the walk, then?” Colin called cheerfully from somewhere close to the front doors. He caught the viscount’s eye and winked as he sized up the situation. “Anyone for a bathe?”

The horsey girl shrieked. “But there are waves, Colin,” she said. “And it is cold.”

“Caroline.” The viscount took her hand on his arm and patted it. “Trying to rival the sunshine, are you?” She was dressed in all primrose yellow, a quite inspired color with her auburn hair. She really was remarkably pretty. He was surprised he had not noticed her anywhere during the Season. But then he was not in the habit of noticing any but the beddable females—beddable in fact as well as in looks.

“Oh, and succeeding in outshining it,” she said, smiling at him as dazzlingly as Lady Plumtree had just smiled at Colin’s father. “You must add that, my lord, and I shall be so delightfully flattered that I will fall headlong in love with you and win your wager for you when our day has scarcely begun.”

He was taken aback. He had noticed earlier in the morning, of course, that his first impression of timidity had been wrong. She had shown spirit. Now she had clearly decided to go on the attack. Well, it might be an interesting day after all, though he dreaded to think what would be awaiting him at the end of it.

He grinned at her. “But of course,” he said, “you succeed in outshining the sun. My eyes are dazzled.”

Her mouth quirked at the corners.

“Women who are about to fall in love with me are permitted to call me by my given name,” he said.

“Alistair,” she said. “I suppose it cannot be shortened, can it?”

“The first boy at Eton who tried found himself on his back stargazing with a bloody nose,” he said.

“I’ll not try, then,” she said. “Alistair.”

They followed along behind everybody else, through the formal gardens and across the long lawn that finally mingled with sand and gave place to the open beach. It was a sunny and warm afternoon, though several clouds were scudding across the blue and there was a steady breeze to prevent the heat from becoming oppressive.

“Tell me about yourself,” the viscount said as they walked.

“Beginning at the cradle?” she asked. “Do you have a few hours to spare?”

“I do,” he said, “But let me be more specific. How is it that you are twenty-three years old and unmarried?”

“Because I have been waiting for you?” she said, directing a melting look up at him. Her eyes were not quite green, not quite gray. They were a mixture of both. “How old are you, Alistair? Thirty?”

“Right on the nose,” he said.

“And why are you thirty and not married?” she asked.

“Because I have been waiting for you, of course,” he said, looking directly into her eyes in a way he knew had a powerful effect on women. In reality he wanted to chuckle. She really was a woman of spirit. He rather thought he was going to enjoy himself—if he kept his mind off the consequences.

“Ah,” she said, “and amusing yourself with other women while you wait.”

“Practicing on them,” he said, “so that you might have all the benefit of my expertise, Caroline.”

“Ooh,” she said. “This is the part at which my knees buckle under me?”

“I would prefer that to happen in a more secluded spot,” he said. “Where I could proceed to follow you down to the ground.”

“Then you must not talk yet about your expertise,” she said.

He chuckled suddenly. “Why are you still unmarried?” he asked.

“For a number of reasons,” she said. “At first I did not want to leave the country for all the silly formality of a court presentation and an appearance on the marriage market, even though I could not feel any great attachment to any of the eligible gentlemen at home. Then when I finally decided that perhaps I should make an appearance after all, my grandfather was inconsiderate enough to die. When we were coming out of mourning for him, my father decided to follow in his footsteps. I finally made my curtsy to the queen and got myself fired off this spring at a shockingly advanced age.”

“And no one wanted you?” he asked.

“Would I admit as much even if it were true?” she said. “Actually, it is not. I had two offers, both from perfectly eligible and amiable gentlemen. I refused both.”

“You make a habit of refusing marriage offers, then,” he said. “Why? Were they rakes too? Or do you have your mind set against any marriage.”

“Neither,” she said. “I just have the silly notion that I would like to marry for love. Mutual love. I would find it equally distressing to marry a man who was indifferent to me when I loved him as to marry a man who sighed over me when I could feel no more than liking or respect for him.”

“Which was it with your two suitors?” he asked.

“One of them loved me, I believe,” she said. “With the other, as with you, there was a mutual indifference of feelings.”

“So,” he said, “you are a romantic.”

“Yes.” She looked at him and regarded his smile of amusement in silence for a few moments. “Most people feel great embarrassment about admitting such a thing. Most people go immediately on the defensive. But it is romance that gives life its color and its warmth and its joy, my lord—Alistair. It is romance that lifts life from being a rather nasty accident into being a thing of beauty and meaning. Yes, I am a romantic. And yes, I will marry only for mutual love.”

And so, he thought, he need not worry about the morrow and what it would bring. For even if he won his wager—when he won his wager—she would not marry him. Before she would agree to marry him, he would have to be in love with her too. He was safe. Free. He could enjoy the day, knowing that he would be free at the end of it.

Her cheeks were tinged with color and her eyes were glowing. Her lips were parted in a soft smile. It was an attractive idea—a thing of beauty and meaning. He almost wished for one moment that he was the sort of man who could believe in love and in commitment to the beloved. Instead of which he believed only in lust and commitment to his own pleasures.

“You will die a spinster,” he said, “rather than compromise your dreams?”

Her smile lost its dreamy quality. “Oh, I suppose not,” she said. “I would hate to have to impose my presence on Cynthia and Royston for the rest of my life. And I would hate to miss the experience of motherhood. I suppose that sooner or later I will settle for respectability and amiability if love does not come along. But that will have to be sooner rather than later, will it not? I am almost on the shelf already. It is horrid being a woman and expected to marry so very early in life.”

“Have you never been in love?” he asked. He found himself hoping that she would not have to settle for less than her dream. She wanted to love her husband and be loved by him. She wanted children. It did not seem a very ambitious dream. But she was three-and-twenty and had not found it yet.

“Yes,” she said flushing. “Once.”

“But he did not love you?”

“No,” she said. “And I fell out of love with him, too, once I got to know him better.”

And a good thing too, he thought. The bounder did not deserve her love if he had so carelessly rejected it. She could do better.

“What about you, Alistair?” She was looking up at him again. “Why are you still unmarried?”

“Because I have never felt any inclination to marry,” he said. “Because I do not believe in love. Because my life is too full of pleasure to be given up to the chains of marriage.”

“Pleasure,” she said. “Pleasure without anyone with whom to share it. I cannot imagine such a state.”

“Because you and I are very different,” he said.

“Which is probably the understatement of the decade,” she said. “What you began to do to me last night”—she flushed deeply—“is probably very pleasurable, is it not?”

He could still regret that that experience had not been carried a little further or even to completion. He had rarely felt more aroused by a woman. His eyes strayed down her body and he could remember the soft, warm curves and the unusual eagerness he had felt to cut short the preliminaries in order to sheath himself in her.

“It is the most pleasurable activity in the world, Caroline,” he said, watching her mouth, keeping his voice low.

The tip of her tongue moistened her upper lip with what he guessed was unconscious provocation. “And yet,” she said, “you feel no closeness to the woman inside the body? There is a whole person there experiencing pleasure too—I have no doubt, you see, that you give pleasure to your women as well as to yourself. I had small evidence of that last night.”

“Did you?” Dammit but he was in grave danger of becoming aroused again.

“If those pleasures could be combined and shared,” she said. “If it could be two persons instead of just two bodies making love, imagine what it might be like. The earth would move.”

“They would hear the music of the spheres together,” he said, smiling in amusement. And yet he was not altogether amused. What would it be like? It would, he supposed, be making love, a term he usually used to describe what he did to women with great enthusiasm and great frequency, whereas in reality all he did was— Yes, the obscene word that leapt to his mind was far more appropriate to the type of pleasure he took from the exertions of the bed.

“Which way shall we go?” he asked as their progress took them first over the sandy grass at the edge of the lawn and then onto the open beach, which stretched for a few miles in either direction in a wide golden band. “With the others toward the bathing huts? Or the other way, toward solitude?”

“The other way by all means,” she said, immediately resuming the brightly flirtatious mood she had demonstrated at the start of their walk. “How am I to make you fall in love with me if we are distracted with company? How are you to make me fall in love with you?” 

“This direction it is, then,” he said, turning them to their right. “I would have accused you of abject cowardice if you had made the other choice, you know.” 

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Are you in love with me yet, Alistair? I am not in love with you though a few hours of our twenty-four have already passed. My impression of you as a successful rake is fast dwindling. You had better reassure me.”

He chuckled and tucked her arm more firmly through his.

She was actually enjoying herself, Caroline realized in some surprise as they turned away from the direction the group was taking and struck out along the empty beach. Even the thought that she should not be going off alone with him unchaperoned did not worry her. After all, he was supposed to be her betrothed or her soon-to-be betrothed anyway. She had told Royston evasively just before luncheon that yes, indeed Viscount Lyndon had made her an offer but that they had not settled the matter definitely yet. They were to go walking during the afternoon. The implication had been that they were to settle matters then.

She was enjoying herself. There was something wonderfully freeing about being able to spend time with a man without having to wonder if he was trying to think of some way to get rid of her. And to be able to talk on any subject that came to mind because she was not trying to impress him or make any particularly favorable impression on him. They had talked about things she had hardly dared even to think about before—like the pleasure a man and a woman might derive from being in bed together, for instance. Gracious heaven.

And it was fun to be able to flirt without being accused of being fast. It was all for a wager. She was expected to flirt. He would think her a poor creature if she did not. And definitely it was fun to flirt with him. With Viscount Lyndon. Alistair. It was rather like something from a dream. This time yesterday she had been studiously ignoring him because she had been feeling the power of his attractions so strongly.

“Where did you think you were last night?” she asked.

He looked at her sidelong, his eyelids drooping over his eyes. “In heaven,” he said.

“For shame,” she said, checking the laughter that was bubbling up inside her. “Such carnal pleasures would not be appropriate in heaven.”

“Then perhaps it is as well,” he said, “that my behavior thus far in life makes it likely that I am bound for the other place. A heaven without the pleasures of sex would be a dull place.”

She should be outraged. She was not, and she was enjoying the freedom of not having to pretend that she was. “Where did you think you were?” she asked again.

“Never mind,” he said. “That would be telling. Suffice it to say that taking the wrong turnings or opening the wrong doors or climbing into the wrong beds can definitely have their compensations. Though I could wish that this particular compensation had lasted longer.”

“No,” she said. “That is nonsense. I was asleep most of the time. Besides, I know nothing.”

“I believe, Caroline,” he said, again with that sideways glance, “that you are fishing for a compliment.”

She was. She wanted to know why he had wanted it to last longer. She wanted to know what her attractions had been. But even her newfound boldness would not allow her to ask the questions aloud.

“You were warm and soft and shapely and inviting,” he said. “And responsive in a languid, highly alluring sort of way.”

“And yet,” she said, “you thought I was someone else. Is she like that too?”

“Let me just say,” he said, “that I was pleasantly surprised.”

She was pleased. Ridiculously so. She wanted to fish further, but there were limits to her immodesty and she had reached them.

“Are you going to her tonight?” she asked.

“Heaven forbid,” he said. “I might find myself in bed with the birthday lady herself—your Great-Aunt Sabrina.”

Caroline exploded into mirth. The mental picture his words had painted was just too tickling to be resisted.

“Exactly,” he said. “It does not bear thinking of, does it?” He chuckled and then threw back his head and roared with laughter.

They looked at each other and were off into peals of mirth again until he released her arm, took her hand in his, and laced his fingers with hers.

“Caroline,” he said, “you are a shocking young lady. How could you have found that idea funny?”

She laughed again for answer. Walking hand in hand with a man, especially with their fingers laced, seemed far more intimate than walking arm in arm. His hand felt very large and strong.

“How did you like London and the Season?” he asked.

“Oh, very well,” she said, “though all the entertainments can be very tedious, especially the balls. One feels all the necessity of appearing to enjoy oneself when one is without a partner and to be quite bored when one is not. I always felt the perverse urge to do the opposite.”

“And shock the ton, Caroline?” he said. “I hope you never gave in to temptation.”

“Under normal circumstances,” she said, “I behave with the utmost decorum. I always do what is expected of me. That is why you have never noticed me.” If someone would just present her with a pair of scissors, she thought, she would gladly cut out her tongue. What a foolishly revealing thing to say.

“Yes,” he said, “that would have been part of the reason. The other is that even if you had behaved unconventionally you would still have been one of the virtuous women, Caroline. I tend not to notice virtuous women.”

“Because they are dull?” she said.

“Because I cannot take them to bed without marrying them first,” he said.

“Ah, yes, of course,” she said. “So I am not to feel slighted that you did not notice me? I am not to feel forever unlovely and unattractive because the notable rake, Viscount Lyndon, never once allowed his eyes to alight on me? How reassuring.”

“Actually,” he said, “if I had allowed my eyes to do any such thing, Caroline, I might have found myself behaving atypically. I might have found myself in pursuit of a virtuous woman. You are extremely lovely, as I am sure your glass must tell you every time you glance into it.”

“Oh, well done.” She turned her head to look up into his face, allowing her eyes to sparkle, though it was not difficult. The compliment really had pleased her. “Are you now making a concerted effort to woo me? To make me fall in love with you? You came perilously close to scoring a hit that time. Perilous for me, that is.”

His eyes smiled at her. “And your enthusiasm,” he said, “is doing the like for me, Caroline. It is time for each of us to redouble our efforts and our guard, I believe.”

He stopped walking in order to look back over his shoulder. She did the same so that their heads almost touched. There must be almost half a mile of beach between them and the others already. They were clustered about the bathing huts, probably trying to decide whether any of them was going to be brave enough to test the water.

“You tasted particularly enticing last night,” the viscount said, turning his head partway. She did the same so that they were gazing into each other’s eyes, only inches apart. “I wonder if you taste the same this afternoon.”

She could not believe the words that came from her mouth. They seemed not to have passed through her brain for approval first. “There is an easy way of finding out,” she said.

“And so there is.” He had taken her free hand in his and laced his fingers with that too. He took the half step that separated them. “Maybe I should take it.”

“Yes.” She could feel his thighs warm and hard against hers. Her breasts were pressed against his coat. She had to bend her head back in order to look up at him. And she had not been mistaken. There really had been the smell of him on her pillow last night. An elusive smell—soap, cologne, leather, all three, none of the three. A heady masculine smell. She closed her eyes.

His lips were slightly parted when they met hers. They were warm and exploring. She allowed her own to relax beneath them instead of clamping them into a tight line as she had done with the two gentlemen who had been permitted to kiss her on previous occasions. She willed him to touch her with his tongue again and he did, running it lightly along her upper lip and back along the lower until she felt a sharp stabbing of sensation in her breasts. She wanted his tongue in her mouth so that she could discover if she found it disgusting, as she had not the night before when she had been half asleep. But he made no move to put it there.

“Mmm,” she heard someone say. It was a feminine voice and could only have been her own.

“Mmm, indeed.” His forehead and nose were against hers and he was gazing down at her mouth.

She felt foolish. “Well?” she asked. “Do I taste the same?”

“Last night,” he said, “you tasted of bed and sleep. This afternoon you taste of sunshine and sea and beach. And both times of woman.”

He was so much more experienced at this sort of thing than she was. Even the pitch and tone of his voice—

“Oh, dear,” she said, drawing back her head so that she could look into his face without going cross-eyed. And her voice again acted independently of her brain. “I think we should build a sand castle.”

He had the most attractive grin of any man she had ever seen, she decided. Of course, with those teeth and those eyes and the all-over beauty, it was not surprising. She wished she had not said anything so stupid. Whatever had possessed her?

“Or something,” she added lamely.

“What a delightful idea,” he said. “But we have nothing with which to dig except our hands. Are you willing to get sand beneath your fingernails?”

“Yes,” she said. “There is no greater fun than being all over sand.” Or at least there had not been when she was twelve years old or less. But she was twenty-three and he was thirty. How ridiculous he must think her.

He set an arm about her waist and started walking again. She had little choice but to wrap her dangling arm about his waist. “A little farther along,” he said, “where the sand looks softer. But you do not play fair, Caroline. I am used to a different kind of flirtation. I am not sure that my heart is proof against this.”

Which was clearly the most stupid thing either of them had said all day.

He had thought of a digging instrument while they walked and when they stopped, presented her with his quizzing glass with a bow and a flourish. She looked at it dubiously.

“The rim is somewhat blunt,” he said, “but it may help.”

“It may never be usable as a quizzing glass again, though,” she said. “But then perhaps that is just as well. There is nothing more unmannerly, I believe, than quizzing ladies through a glass.”

“But it can be marvelously revealing, Caroline,” he said. “And marvelously intimidating too. There is nothing better calculated to discourage ambitious mamas than a quizzing glass and a haughty stance.”

She set the glass down on the sand while she removed her bonnet. “I would not imagine,” she said, “that there are many ambitious mamas for you to repel any longer.”

“Hm, nasty,” he said. “You would be surprised, Caroline. A title and fortune and prospects cover over a multitude of sins.”

He took off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. And they set to the task of transforming one particularly flat and featureless area of beach into a formidable castle strong enough to withstand the attack of the tide. They worked together for fifteen minutes in near silence until he sat down to remove his Hessians and his stockings.

“There is no point in ruining them as well as a perfectly serviceable quizzing glass,” he said when Caroline paused in her work to watch him. “Besides, I remember from some nameless outing in childhood that there is nothing more delectable than the feel of sand between the toes.”

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “I have been trying to ignore similar memories.” And off came her shoes and her stockings. Some of the pins had come out of her hair so that it looked like an untidy and glorious auburn halo about her head.

Half an hour later, hot, sticky, and sandy, the viscount sat back on his heels to view their creation. He could not recall an hour he had enjoyed more. Which was a strange and absurd admission to make. Caroline was on her knees, one cheek almost resting on the sand as she worked with a delicate finger at the arch of a gateway. One lock of hair trailed in the sand. Her derriere was nicely and invitingly elevated. He could have reached out and patted it, but did not. She was clearly enjoying herself as much as he had been doing.

They had been telling each other, between bouts of quiet concentration, about their childhood. He had remembered incidents and escapades that he had not thought of for years.

He spread his coat on the sand and lay back on it, one arm behind his head, watching her lazily. He had set himself to win a wager. He had twenty-four hours in which to make the woman admit that she had fallen in love with him. And yet he was wasting at least one of those hours building a sand castle with her and exchanging stories of childhood. He must be losing his touch.

But he liked her. He could not remember liking a woman for years. Not to the extent of seeing her as a person anyway and enjoying merely talking and laughing with her. And building a sand castle with her. He pictured himself suggesting such an afternoon’s entertainment to Lady Plumtree and chuckled aloud.

Caroline turned her head and lifted herself onto her hands and knees. “I am glad I afford you some amusement,” she said. “Lazy workers will not be tolerated, you know. They will be dismissed without reference.” 

“Does that mean I will never be allowed to work again?” he asked. “Do say yes.”

She sat back on her heels and admired their handiwork. “It is rather splendid, is it not?” she said.

“It is indefensible,” he said. “There is no moat.”

She sighed. “Should we dig one?”

“Then we would need a drawbridge,” he said. “Besides, Caroline, it is built of sand. Sand castles are impregnable only in dreams.”

She swished her hands together in a vain attempt to remove all the sand. “But it is a lovely dream castle, is it not?” she said. “Think of all the glorious knights who would ride in and out of my gateway.”

“And all the lovely ladies on my battlements,” he said stretching out one hand toward her.

She set her own in it and gazed down at him. “Was this a silly idea?” she asked. “Do you think me very foolish? Have you been unutterably bored?”

He considered. “No to all three,” he said. “Come here.”

“ ‘Here’ being the sand beside you?” she said.

“Yes.” He tightened his grip on her hand and smiled up at her. She looked remarkably untidy and sandy. She looked delicious.

“It would be very improper,” she said.

“Yes.” He grinned.

She withdrew her hand from his, got to her feet, and then very deliberately sat beside him and lay down, her head on his coat. “I always loved lying down outdoors on a warm day,” she said. “Especially on a beach. Watching the clouds, feeling the sun, listening to the waves breaking, and smelling the salt air. But it was never allowed a great deal. Ladies just do not appear with sun-reddened faces, it seems.”

He raised himself on one elbow and leaned over her. “There,” he said. “I’ll shade you from the sun and the ignominy of a red face.”

He was back in his own area of expertise, of course. It would be the easiest thing in the world now to win his wager. He smiled at her and she looked warily back.

“This is very improper,” she said.

“Yes.” He lowered his head and rubbed his nose against hers. “You may very well have to marry me after all, Caroline.”

“No,” she said.

“What if I tell you tomorrow morning that I have fallen in love with you?” he asked. “And what if you tell me the same thing?”

“But neither of us will,” she said, “because we are both on our honor to speak the truth.”

Gad, but she was damnably pretty. Even when she was disheveled and sandy. He lowered his head and kissed her, preparing himself as he usually did to lose himself in the pleasure of an embrace even if it was one that could not be taken to its logical conclusion. But he lifted his head again after just a few moments and looked down at her.

The earth would move, she had said. They would hear the music of the spheres together, he had said. If two persons made love instead of just two bodies, that was. If the pleasures of a man and a woman were combined and shared. If they were aware of each other as they gave and took pleasure. What would it be like? he had wondered then. What would it be like? he wondered now.

He lowered his head again, opening his mouth over hers, licking her lips until they parted, exploring his way slowly inside. And he thought of the child she had been, much adored as the only girl in the family of men, strictly trained and educated by a much-loved governess. He thought of her in mourning for a couple of years as her girlhood slipped past. He thought of her refusing two offers of marriage just recently because she wanted to both love and be loved by the man she would marry. He thought of her wanting children. He thought of her building their sand castle with energy and enthusiasm.

Caroline. He tested the name in his mind. She was Caroline.

She had her arms about his neck. She was sucking tentatively on his tongue and turning to set her breasts against his chest. He lifted his head and looked down at her again. She was gazing back with luminous eyes. What you began to do to me last night, she had said, is probably very pleasurable, is it not? She had never experienced that pleasure. He could give it to her. All of it. Or enough of it to leave him free when she made her admission the next morning.

He could make her love him. And she would be honest enough to admit it. But he would still be in no danger. She would not marry him unless he could say the same. And so he would leave her hurt. Twenty-three-years old and as far from achieving her dream as ever. And with a bruised heart.

He lay down beside her and stared up at the clouds.

Her hand nudged against his until he clasped it. “I am a dreadful novice, am I not?” she said. “I did not know that people kissed like that.”

“You are supposed to be a novice,” he said. “That is what innocence is, Caroline.”

“Are you concerned for my innocence?” she asked, her voice curious. “Is that why you stopped? How very out of character.”

He surged over onto his side and looked into a flushed face. She had sand in one eyebrow. “Hardly,” he said. “I have never corrupted innocence, Caroline. If I am a rake, I am not also a rogue. I have never deflowered a virgin. Yes, that is why I stopped.” 

“How are you to make me fall in love with you, then?” she asked.

He cupped her cheek with one hand and smoothed his thumb over the sandy eyebrow. “By making you want the rest of it—and me—for a lifetime,” he said. He watched her swallow. “And how are you to make me fall in love with you, my innocent?”

“By making you want innocence and virginity—and me—for the rest of your life,” she said.

His heart did a handstand. And he lost the battle he had been fighting with some success for several minutes. He felt the familiar tightening in his groin.

And then her hand was cupping his cheek with exquisite lightness and her thumb was moving across his lips. “I know you are no rogue,” she said, her voice a mere breath of sound. “I know that you want the one thing you have never had in your adult life—innocence.”

Lord God. Skilled courtesans had whispered marvelous eroticism into his ears to increase his pleasure. None of it had had one fraction of the power of her words. The witch! His body and his heart responded to them even as his mind knew that she was determinedly going about winning her wager.

And then he was kissing her again—her mouth, her eyelids, her ears, her throat. And spreading a hand over her breast, feeling the peaked nipple against his palm. And lowering his head to it, spreading his mouth wide, taking her nipple between his teeth until she whimpered, then licking it with his tongue through the thin muslin of her dress. Her hands were in his hair and she lifted her head to bury her face against the top of his head.

“Caroline.” He rubbed a palm over the wettened peak of her breast and moved his mouth to the other. She was breathing in audible gasps.

He could not wait. He could not take things slowly as he normally liked to do. Even the time it would take to raise her dress and remove undergarments and to release himself from his pantaloons was too long. He wanted to be able to thrust deeply inside her now. Inside Caroline. He wanted to touch her at her body’s core. He wanted to be with her. Part of her. Joined to her. Once it had happened, of course, neither of them would be left with any choice at all. There would be just the special license and the rush to the altar.

To hell with choice, he thought, sliding his hand down over her flat abdomen, curving his fingers into the increased warmth between her legs. He found her mouth with his again and was not sure which of them it was who moaned.

Innocence. She was an innocent. He was no corrupter of innocence, he had just claimed, no rogue. He sat up hastily and scrambled to his feet, ran one hand through his hair, and turned without thinking to stoop over her and scoop her up into his arms. He began to stride away from their castle.

“Alistair?” She looked and sounded bewildered. She looked tousled and thoroughly well kissed. And altogether as aroused as he. “Where are you taking me? Our things. We cannot just leave them there. Where are we going?”

“To the only sensible place,” he said grimly.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, no,” she said, her arms clutching him more tightly about the neck. “No, Alistair, you wouldn’t. Put me down. Put me down."

“We are doubly hot,” he said, striding purposefully toward the sea, which was considerably closer than it had been when they had first set foot on the beach. “With sun and with desire. It is time to cool off.”

“But we have no towels,” she said. “No change of clothes.”

His feet touched water. Cold water. He almost changed his mind. But he was still throbbing for her and her body was still heated with desire. It was either this or take her back to the dry sand and tumble her. His experiences of the last several years had not taught him a great deal of self-control. And clearly she had lost hers.

She shrieked as she felt water splash against her bare arms and legs. And then laughed. And clung more tightly. And pleaded more desperately. He looked down into her face when he was waist deep in water and saw terror and laughter mingled there. He dropped her.

She came up gasping and spluttering as he dived under.

“Can you swim?” he asked, shaking his head to clear the water from his eyes.

“My dress will be ruined,” she yelled at him. “My favorite dress.”

“And you wore it just for me,” he said, scooping water with both hands and dashing it into her face. “Can you swim?”

“Yes, I can swim,” she said. “Can you?” And she dived at him, clasped both hands over the top of his head, and pressed him under.

He caught at her legs on the way down and they came up coughing and laughing.

“You idiot,” she said. “You imbecile.”

“Guilty as charged,” he said, catching her about the waist and dragging her beneath the surface of the waves again, setting his lips to hers as he did so. Which was a foolish thing to do when he considered the reason he had brought her there in the first place.

Her hair was dark and sleek over her head and down her back when they came up once more and found the bottom with their feet. Her dress was molded to her so that she might as well have been wearing nothing. She was laughing, with water droplets dripping down her face. She looked healthy and vital and infinitely desirable.

“You are crazy,” she said.

“Is that a new charge?” He caught her to him and kissed her again, a hearty smacking kiss followed by a grin. “How well do you swim? I’ll wager you cannot keep up to me.”

“A new wager?” she said. “I’ll accept it like an honorable gentleman. What is to be the prize?”

“A kiss,” he said.

“Done,” she said and she was off, swimming with all her energy and with considerable skill and grace parallel to the beach. He swam beside her, doing a lazy crawl, making no attempt to overtake her.

She realized something after a few minutes. “Where does the race end?” she called to him, her voice breathless.

He laughed and swam for a few more vigorous strokes until he was a body-length ahead of her. Then he turned and caught her in his arms. “Here,” he said and claimed his prize without further delay. “Have you cooled off?”

“Cooled off?” she said, panting. “After that swim?” 

“I mean,” he said, “has the sexual heat gone?”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes sliding from his, “that.” 

“Now,” he said, “how are we to saunter back to the house and inside it as if we have been involved in nothing but the most decorous of walks? It is going to be tricky, Caroline.”

“I could have told you that,” she said scornfully, “before you did anything as stupid as this. You did not think, did you?”

“It was not stupid,” he said. “If I had not done it, Caroline, you would have lost both the innocence and the virginity you spoke of earlier. We both know it.” 

“Oh,” she said again, turning to wade toward shore. “Am I to thank you for showing gallantry and restraint, then, Alistair? A rake showing restraint? It seems rather a contradiction in terms, does it not?”

“Perhaps,” he said, striding along beside her, “I am hoping to win your admiration and therefore your love.”

“Poppycock,” she said. “It is cold.”

“You may wrap my coat about you,” he said. “The sun will soon warm us. And dry us.”

“Oh,” she wailed suddenly as they ran up the beach toward their castle and their belongings, “just look at me. No! Don’t look. Oh, goodness me.”

But he could not be expected to have acquired all the gallantry in the world during the course of one short afternoon. He looked—and laughed and whistled. Her dress was clinging to her like a second skin.

“I have never been so mortified in my life,” she said, pulling the muslin away from her in front and making a delicious contour of her derriere. “Stop laughing. And stop looking. I shall die!”

He picked up his coat, swung it about her shoulders, and drew her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and stopped laughing. “I have never seen a more pretty form than yours, Caroline,” he said. “But I promise not to tell anyone else that I have seen it with such clarity. This thin fabric will be almost dry by the time we approach the house. And my coat will cover most of you.”

“I have never in my life known a day like this,” she said against his wet shirt. “I keep expecting to wake up. And all because you opened the wrong door last night.”

“I am becoming increasingly glad I did,” he said. And listening to his own words and considering them, he was surprised—and not a little alarmed—to find that he meant them.

By some miracle Caroline succeeded in regaining her room without being seen by anyone more threatening than a curious footman. Of course, he might decide to gossip belowstairs, but she would not think of that. And of course Letty saw her lank hair and her limp, damp dress when Caroline rang her bell to ask for bathwater.

“It was such a warm day,” she said with a winning smile just as if she owed her maid an explanation, “and the water looked so inviting, Letty.”

“Hmm,” Letty said with a sniff. “If you was with him, mum, then enough said.”

Caroline gathered that he was not very high in Letty’s favor.

Cynthia arrived in her room when she was toweling her hair dry after her bath. Caroline was very thankful her sister-in-law had not come half an hour earlier.

“Caroline,” she said, “is it all now settled, then? Are you betrothed? This is all so very sudden that it is hard to digest. He is very handsome, and I do see how you were tempted. But oh, love, I do hope your rash behavior will not lead you to unhappiness.”

Caroline could not bear to have her sister-in-law think badly of her. “The only rash thing I did was lie to Royston,” she said. “I thought he was going to challenge Lord Lyndon to a duel, Cynthia, and you know as well as I do who would have won.”

“You did not invite him to your room?” Cynthia asked.

“Of course not,” Caroline said scornfully. “He mistook my room for someone else’s. Lady Plumtree’s I would not doubt.” The thought hurt.

Cynthia looked dismayed. “You lied to Roy,” she said, “when he was sending the man away, Caroline? He had ordered him to leave within the hour.”

“Oh, dear,” Caroline said.

“And you are now betrothed?” her sister-in-law said.

Caroline set her towel down and picked up a brush. If she said no, she would be unable to spend the evening with Alistair. Or tomorrow morning. She could return to her usual wise, sensible self merely by speaking the word. It would be dangerous not to say no. Very dangerous. But there was an evening and a morning she could have if she lied. Or avoided telling the truth.

“I am to give him my answer tomorrow morning,” she said. “He has kindly given me a little time since we did not know each other at all, Cynthia.” Oh, it was an outright lie. First Royston and now Cynthia. She never told lies.

“Think wisely,” Cynthia said, her hand on the doorknob. “Perhaps you were compromised, Caroline, but no one need know it but us and I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by forcing you to spend the rest of your life with that man, handsome and charming as he undoubtedly is.” She smiled suddenly. “Why are rakes so nearly irresistible?”

“They probably would not be rakes if they were not,” Caroline said. “No woman would oblige them and allow them to build the reputation.”

Cynthia laughed. “I am sure you are right,” she said. “A load has been lifted from my shoulders. May I tell Roy the truth?”

“After tomorrow morning,” Caroline said and stared at the closed door after Cynthia had left.

She should have taken the way out that had just been presented to her, she thought. She should not have prolonged matters. For she knew now that she was going to get hurt. Dreadfully hurt. She had been in love with him for months—in love with his looks and his reputation. And then for a brief spell this morning she had fallen out of love with him, having perceived him as a selfish and conceited man. Now—well, now she loved him. She had seen warmth and gaiety and charm and tenderness and even conscience in him. He was no longer the handsome rake to be sighed over in secret. He was a person now, someone she had talked with and laughed with and built a sand castle with and swum with. Someone with whom she had known the beginnings of passion.

Someone with whom she would have made love on an open beach without benefit of clergy if he had not exercised unexpected restraint. Someone she still wanted despite the cold ducking in the sea.

What was she going to say tomorrow morning? She was going to lie, that was what. She was going to behave with the utmost dishonor. But then she was not a man. Men had a different notion of honor from women. If she admitted the truth tomorrow morning, he would probably feel obliged to marry her after all. She could not bear to be married to him. Every day would be an agony.

She could have avoided it all if she had told the truth to Cynthia and then gone and told it to Royston. She could have avoided the misery of tomorrow morning. And replaced it with the misery of now. There was to be no winning this battle. Caroline sighed and brushed harder in order to dry her wet hair in time for dinner. He was going to take her in to dinner. He had said so. She would have him to converse with all through the meal.

No, she was not sorry she had told a lie. An evening and a morning were better than nothing.

Eugenia gave her a wounded look as if Caroline had stolen the viscount away from her. Irene and all the other cousins looked at her with interest—and some envy on the part of the girls. Lady Plumtree pointedly and with haughty disdain did not look at her at all. Caroline did not care about any of it.

“Did you escape notice after we parted at the top of the stairs?” she asked the viscount when they were seated at the dinner table.

“Escape?” he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her sidelong with very blue eyes. “You are joking, of course. After my valet had taken one glance at the state of my boots and clothes, I believe he would have bent me beneath his arm and given me a good walloping as my father used to do, if only he had been a foot taller and I had been a foot shorter. How about you?”

“Similar treatment from Letty,” she said.

“The amazon who attacked me last night?” he said. “My sympathies, Caroline. I would guess she is quite large enough to take you over her knee even now for a thorough spanking. A dreadful breed, personal servants, are they not? One lives in fear and trembling of their wrath.”

Caroline laughed and won for herself a puzzled frown from her brother and a sniff from Lady Plumtree.

“There is to be dancing in the drawing room afterward,” the viscount said. “Special request of Colin, bless his heart. It is to be in the nature of a practice for the grand ball in two nights’ time for the old lady’s birthday. Will she dance, by the way?”

“Great-Aunt Sabrina?” Caroline said. “Oh, assuredly. She will expect every male member of the family to lead her out.”

“Will she?” he asked. “Every male member of the family? Not every male in the ballroom?”

She laughed again at the expression on his face. “Are you disappointed?” she asked. “Her card will doubtless be too full for such a lowly mortal as you to find a space.”

“Well,” he said, “what about tonight, Caroline? One is not to be confined to only two dances with the same partner or any such absurdity as that, is one?”

“It is not a formal ball,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “You will reserve the first and last sets and every one in between for me if you please.”

If she pleased? She was absurdly pleased. “This is part of your campaign?” she said. “You are going to waltz me into love with you?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I was thinking more of taking you out for turns on the terrace or perhaps for strange disappearances into the gardens. What have you told your brother?”

She felt her cheeks grow hot. “That we are using today to get to know each other,” she said. “That I am to give you my answer tomorrow morning.”

“Ah,” he said. “That rather plays into my hands, does it not?”

“Into mine,” she said. “There is nothing like darkness and moonlight and music to arouse feelings of romance. I shall have you sleepless with love tonight, Alistair.”

“It sounds distinctly promising,” he said, using that low seductive voice she was beginning to recognize.

“I did not mean it quite like that,” she said hastily, wishing fervently that she could recall the words and reframe them.

“A pity,” he said. “A great pity.”

Great-Aunt Sabrina was being helped slowly to her feet and the ladies followed her at snail’s pace from the dining room, leaving the gentlemen to their port.

Sleepless with love, Caroline thought, her knees feeling quite weak. What an unfortunate thing to say. And what a glorious thing to imagine. Oh dear, she was growing to like him so very much. She had never talked with anyone more amusing. And all she had left was part of an evening and a morning.

“Caro,” Irene said, taking her arm and squeezing it, “what is this? You lucky, lucky thing. He is quite smitten with you. Mama had a fit of the vapors when she knew that Lyndon was to be a guest here this week. So did I, but for a different reason.”

“We are merely friends,” Caroline said.

Irene laughed derisively.

Dancing in a room full of eager, sweet young things and bright sparks and gossiping matrons and older, sober blades had never been Viscount Lyndon’s idea of fun. But this evening was different. He was close to winning his wager, he believed, if it was not won already. She had glowed at dinner and had clearly enjoyed his company.

As he had hers, of course. She was delightful and pretty and desirable. He rather wished that they had set the terms of the wager at one week instead of one day. But he had the evening left. He would make the most of it.

“My country dance, I believe, ma’am,” he said when one of the matrons finally sat down at the pianoforte and began to play sprightly scales to warm up her fingers. He bowed formally over Caroline’s hand and won a dazzling smile from her and inquisitive looks from the young people surrounding her.

“My pleasure, my lord,” she said, dipping into a deep curtsy.

“Was that the one you practiced to deliver to the queen on your presentation, Caroline?” he asked as he led her onto the floor, from which the Turkish carpet had been rolled back. “Your forehead was in danger of scraping the floor.”

She laughed. “It would have been a shame to practice such a curtsy for two full hours daily for six months and use it only once on the queen,” she said.

She danced with energy and grace, smiling at him and at the other partners with whom she sometimes had to execute certain measures of the dance. He watched her the whole while, not even noticing his own temporary partners, and found it difficult to imagine that he could have missed her throughout the Season. Why had his eyes not been drawn to her as to a magnet? She was altogether more lovely than any other lady in the room. More lovely than any other lady he had known.

He frowned at the thought.

“Oh, this is marvelous,” she said breathlessly as he twirled her down the set. “You don’t expect me to appear bored, do you, Alistair, this not being a formal affair?”

“If you dare to look bored,” he said, “I shall twirl you at double speed and then let go of you so that you spin off into space?”

She laughed.

He had always thought of young virtuous women as dull, humorless, timid, unexciting—the list could go on. But then he had not met Caroline Astor until last night.

The country dance was followed by a sedate waltz. He resisted the urge to hold his partner slightly closer than was considered proper. After all, most of the eyes in the room were probably on them—on Caroline, a member of the family, in the clutches of a man they must feel Colin should not have invited.

“Why have I never noticed you?” he asked her.

“Because you never notice virtuous women,” she said. “Because you could not take me to bed without marrying me first.”

“Could I have this afternoon?” he asked her, his voice low.

Her eyes slipped to his neckcloth. “You dumped me in the water instead,” she said.

“But if I had not, Caroline?”

She looked up into his eyes again. “It is pointless to speculate on what might have been,” she said. “The past is the one thing we can never change. But I am not sure that I can be described as virtuous any longer. I have never come even close to behaving like that before.”

“I will marry you, then, and redeem your reputation,” he said. He did not know quite why he kept saying such potentially dangerous things. One of these times she was going to take him at his word.

She smiled fleetingly.

“Come outside with me after this dance,” he said. “We will see what the gardens look like in the moonlight. Shall we?”

“But of course,” she said. “I have a wager to win.” She peeped up at him from beneath her lashes with deliberate provocation and he grinned back at her.

“How are you going to do it?” he asked. “Do you have a plan?”

But she merely smiled.

It was a subtle plan. She strolled quietly along the terrace with him, first with her arm through his, then with her hand in his, her shoulder touching his arm, and finally with her arm about his waist as his came about her shoulders. By that time they had rounded one end of the house and stepped into a type of orchard.

Very subtle. The moonlight and the branches above their heads made changing patterns of light and shade over her face and dress and she lifted her face. Her eyes were closed, he saw when he looked down at her. She broke the silence first.

“Sometimes,” she said, “one feels all one’s smallness and insignificance in comparison with the vastness of the universe. And yet how wonderful it is to exist amidst such beauty. How privileged we are. Don’t you feel it too, Alistair?”

“Yes.” He could not talk on such topics. He had not thought a great deal about the miracle of life and the wonder of the fact that he had one to live. It was a new idea to him. He was wasting his one most precious gift, he thought.

“I am glad we were made to need others,” she said. “Would it not be frustrating to see and feel beauty and have no one with whom to share it? I think we would feel loneliness and even terror instead of wonder.” 

“Yes,” he said. He was very aware of her arm about his waist, his about her shoulders. Holding each other against loneliness and terror. It was a novel idea. He had never thought of needing other people, only of using them. He had never thought of other people needing him. Could anyone ever need him? Was he that important? That privileged?

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “I am glad it has been you with me today, Alistair,” she said. “I am glad it is you out here with me tonight. But I am sorry.” She lifted her head. “I said it would be romantic, did I not? I promised to make you fall in love with me. But all I can do is feel warm and cozy with you. All I can do is babble on about the universe and our human need for others. I have no experience in arousing romantic feelings. You asked if I had a plan. No, I have none. We had better go inside before our prolonged absence is noted.”

The soft wonder had gone from her voice. She sounded sad suddenly, and he knew it was his apparent lack of response that had saddened her. He had made her feel that after all she was alone. But how could he express thoughts that were so new to him that he knew no words in which to frame them?

He tightened his hold on her shoulders and turned her in against him, wrapping his free arm about her waist. She turned her head to rest one cheek against his neckcloth. He held her for a long time, perhaps several minutes, without either talking to her or kissing her. He did not want to kiss her. He did not want to make love to her. There was a nameless and quite unidentifiable yearning in him that took the place of the sexual desire he might have expected to feel.

For some reason that he could in no way fathom he wanted to cry. He swallowed hard several times. She was soft and warm. A buffer against loneliness. A bundle of gaiety and dreaminess, of wisdom and innocence. There was something in her that he wanted, that he yearned for. Something in addition to her woman’s body.

“Alistair.” She lifted her face to him finally and touched her fingertips to one of his cheeks.

He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “Why did you say my name?” he asked her.

“Alistair?” she said, laughing softly. “It is your name, is it not?”

“Lyndon,” he said. “Last night. You called me Lyndon. Before you woke fully.”

She stared up at him, her expression turning quite blank. “I did not,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said, “you did. When I first kissed you. Before there was light. Before you could possibly have known who I was. You called me Lyndon.”

She shook her head slowly and he was sorry suddenly that he had asked. Sorry that he had not kept that particular memory to himself.

And then she pushed violently away from him, gathered up her skirt, and fled back the way they had come.

“Caroline,” he called and took a few steps after her.

But she only increased her pace, if possible. He stopped. For some reason he had embarrassed her dreadfully. She had been dreaming of him? She had thought the kiss part of a dream, and she had identified him as her dream lover? When he was a stranger to her? A stranger she had seen only during the Season even though he had not seen her.

Damnation, he thought, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides.

As he expected, she was not in the drawing room when he returned there and did not reappear for the rest of the evening.

It was half an hour before noon when she had met him the day before. It was a little earlier than that when she came downstairs now, pale from a night of little sleep, nervous at having to carry through this encounter, wishing that she could be anywhere else on earth. For starters, she could die of mortification. She had spoken his name aloud! If only she could have slept during the night, she would have had nightmares over that fact. But that was not the worst of it, of course. She was going to have to face him this morning and bring their wager to its conclusion. And then what?

The rest of her life looked frighteningly blank. Not that it would be, of course. The remnants of good sense in her told her that this heightened emotion would not last forever or even for very long. Soon, or at least in the not too distant future, life would settle back into its routine and she would think of her marriage prospects again. But oh, that was no consolation now. Now it felt as if her life was to end within the next half hour.

If he had come, that was. If he had not hidden himself away somewhere—in the billiard room with some of the other gentlemen, for example. Or if he had not gone away, afraid that after all she would trap him into marriage.

He was in the hallway when she came down and looked as if he might have been pacing there for some time. Had she been able to look critically, she might have noticed that his own face showed signs of a certain sleeplessness too. He had not slept well, if at all, and he was not looking forward to the coming hour. It frankly terrified him. He was not an adventurous man, he had realized during the night. His life had been predictable for the last number of years. He liked it that way. He resented the fact that change was sometimes inevitable.

“Caroline.” He smiled at her, bent over her hand, and kissed it. “Almost exactly on time. Shall we find somewhere private?” His heart was beating in his chest fit to burst through. How many hours had passed since he saw her last? Thirteen? Fourteen? It seemed more like a hundred.

“Yes,” she said.

He led her outdoors and stood looking along the terrace, first one way and then the other, before leading her in the direction of the woods at some distance from the house. There appeared to be no walkers there today.

“Well,” he said, “did your amazon sleep at the foot of your bed last night?”

“Yes,” she said.

He did not attempt more conversation. They walked in silence, her arm through his, until they reached the shelter of the trees and he could release her arm in order to set his back against the trunk of a tree and fold his arms across his chest.

“The moment of truth,” he said. “Do you want to go first, Caroline?”

She turned to look at him in some dismay and down to examine the backs of her hands, spread before her.

“Or would you rather that I went first?”

“No,” she said quietly. “You have not won, Alistair. I am sorry. I enjoyed yesterday more than I can say. I learned to like you. And I learned that you are an attractive man, though I knew it already, and could make me desire you. I will not deny what must have been all too obvious to you on the beach. But that is all. I can feel no warmth of love. You have not won fifty pounds from me, you see.” She looked up fleetingly and smiled briefly. “But then you need feel no obligation either.”

He said nothing for a long while. But she had whispered his name. She had dreamed of him. She had noticed him even when he had not noticed her. And she had dreamed of him. She had desired him. But in her mind, desire and love were not the same thing. As indeed they were not.

Let us be done, she thought. Let him say something. She wanted to be back at the house. She wanted to be a stranger to him again. He was holding something out to her. A piece of paper. She looked at it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A draft on my bank for fifty pounds,” he said. His voice was very soft, but it did not have the seductive quality with which she was becoming familiar.

She looked up into his eyes. They looked steadily back at her.

“You have won it,” he said.

She had won it? Her mind felt sluggish. “How?”

“You have made me love you,” he said. “Take it. It is yours.”

She raised her hand. He released his hold on the paper as she touched it. But she was not gripping it. It fluttered to the grass between them.

“No,” she said, closing her eyes. “No, please. You promised not to lie.”

“And so I did,” he said. “Yesterday was the happiest day of my life, Caroline. Not only that. It changed my life. It made me realize that I have wasted thirty precious years out of a span of perhaps seventy if I am fortunate. It made me realize that I need more than myself and my own pleasure. And it made me realize that I would like more than anything to be needed. By one person. By the same person as I need. You.” 

“No,” she said, looking at her hands again. “You are being gentlemanly. You still think you are obliged to marry me, and you think to persuade me this way. Don’t be cruel.”

Cruel? He felt a stabbing of hope. Cruel? “But there is no question of marriage,” he said. “You do not love me, Caroline. And there has to be love on both sides before you will marry, does there not?”

She looked up at him, her eyes luminous with misery and something else. “No one can change in a single day,” she said. “I would be a fool.”

Hope grew. If so much had not hung on the words they would exchange over the next few minutes, he would have grinned at her and teased her and forced her to tell him that she had lied. But he was too afraid for the fragility of his own heart to believe what his mind told him was the truth.

“No,” he said. “It would take us both longer than a day, Caroline. It would take me many days, I daresay, to realize the wonder of the exchange I had made— numberless women in exchange for you. And it would take you many days, perhaps even a lifetime, to come to trust me and believe that it could happen. But we will never know, will we, if those changes would have been possible. Perhaps it is just as well. The familiar is safer and perhaps cozier than the unknown.”

He watched her lower her arms to her sides and rub her palms against her dress, as if they were damp. Her eyes were on the ground at her feet. And then she stooped down suddenly, picked up his bank draft, and held it out to him, her eyes on the paper.

“It is yours,” he said.

She shook her head and bit her upper lip. “No,” she said. “I did not bring fifty pounds to give to you. If we both won or if we both lost, you said, we would be even. We are even.”

“Caroline?” he said, taking the paper from her hand, folding it, and putting it away in his pocket. He found himself holding his breath.

“I lied,” she said. “I am no gentleman, am I?”

He ran the knuckles of one hand lightly down her cheek and then set the hand beneath her chin to raise her face.

“I lied,” she said again more firmly, a note of defiance in her voice, though her eyes were suspiciously bright. “Now tell me that you did too. Alistair.” Her eyes grew anxious. “Don’t tell me that you lied too. Please?”

“Why did you say my name?” He was looking at her mouth.

“Because I conceived a deep infatuation for you the first time I saw you,” she said. “Because I thought I was dreaming. And I dreamed that it was you.”

“Infatuation?” he said.

“I called it love,” she said, “until yesterday. Now I know that it was not. Only infatuation. I did not love you until yesterday.”

He set his hands on her shoulders. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She patted her hands against his chest.

“I want to build sand castles with you again,” he said, “and swim with you and talk and laugh with you. I want to love you. And make love to you. I want to have children with you.”

She raised her eyes to his. “Oh,” she said.

“I’m glad you agree.” He smiled down at her and touched his forehead briefly to hers. “Will you take a chance on marrying a rake, Caroline?”

“Yes,” she said. “Alistair, I am dreadfully inexperienced. I will not know how to—”

He kissed her firmly on the mouth. “We will teach each other,” he said. “We will go back to school, both of us, for the rest of our lives.”

“Teach each other?” she said.

“I will teach you how to make love,” he said, “and you will teach me to love. Agreed?”

She laughed shakily and relaxed her weight forward against him. “Agreed,” she said. “But I think your classes are going to prove to be more exciting than mine.”

He chuckled. “If you are that eager to start,” he said, “we had better open this school of ours as soon as possible. I will talk with your brother. How does a special license and your brother’s home next week sound?” 

“For a wedding day?” she said, her eyes widening. 

“And a wedding night,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

“You have a lovely way of pronouncing ‘yes,’ ” he said, lowering his head to kiss her throat. “A week is an awfully long time to wait, my love.”

“Mmm,” she said, arching her body against his.

“If it were not for the amazon,” he said, his hands coming up to cup and caress her breasts, “I might be tempted to try a few more nocturnal excursions.” 

“Mmm,” she said.

“We will have to set her at the foot of someone else’s bed next week,” he said, sliding his hands over her waist and hips and around to cup her buttocks and draw her more snugly against the core of his own desire. 

“Mmm,” she said.

He set his mouth to hers again, opened it beneath his own, and thrust his tongue inside deeply, once, twice, before withdrawing it and drawing back his head an inch.

“Caroline,” he said, smoothing one hand over her sun-warmed auburn hair, “it is not just this I want of you, you know. It is you. I have wanted bodies before. I have never wanted a person. I want you. I want to join my body to yours so that we will be closer than close, so that we will share everything there is to be shared. I am on fire for you, as you can feel. But for you, not just for the lovely body that houses you.”

She smiled slowly at him. “Joining your body to mine,” she said. “Do you know how the very thought turns me weak at the knees, Alistair? Don’t expect a shy bride. I am afraid I will be shockingly eager. And the rest of what you said too. Oh, that turns me weak all over. That is how love differs from merely being in love, does it not? Wanting the other’s body and everything else too, right through to the soul.”

“Speaking of bodies.” He grinned at her.

“Mmm, yes,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck and smiling eagerly at him. “What was it you were saying, Alistair?”

“This, I believe,” he said, opening his mouth over hers again.