Dominick came awake with a start and lay still for a moment, wondering what had disturbed him. The moon had risen and cool, silvery light illuminated the room. But there was something wrong with the sounds.

After a moment he realized that Roxanne's breathing had changed. No longer smooth, it had become a series of faint sobs.

Stricken, he got to his feet and perched on the edge of the bed. Softly he asked, "What's wrong, my darling vixen?"

"Nothing." She made a choked sound. "Everything!"

He lay down on the bed and gathered her into his arms. Her small, curving body trembled as she hid her face against his shoulder.

"Why did you have to come back?" she said through her tears. "My life wasn't very interesting, but I wasn't miserable. Now I feel like a child pressing my nose to the window of a candy shop, yearning for something I can never have."

"What do you yearn for?"

"F-for love, for happiness, for laughter." She swallowed convulsively. "For you."

"Since you already have me, why are you crying?" he murmured as he smoothed back loosened tendrils of her hair. "I love you. I want to marry you and devote the rest of my life to pleasing you. Why is that such a terrible prospect?"

She began to cry harder. "How can I trust you?" she said haltingly. "You left me once. I'm a very ordinary woman. Once you realize that, you'll leave me again."

He winced. No matter how noble his reasons, he had left her. And once trust was gone, how could it be regained?

Perhaps if she understood why he loved her, she might start to believe in him. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

She gave a small hiccup. "Of course. I was out riding. You were looking for the ruined Roman villa near Maybourne and became lost and wandered onto our land. On that black horse of yours, I thought you looked like a magical druid prince."

He pressed a kiss against her temples. "You never told me that."

With a touch of her usual tartness, she said, "You already had quite a good enough opinion of yourself."

He shook his head. "Not really. It's hard to have a good self-opinion when everyone is convinced that one is going to the devil. My father had gone that way, and it was universally assumed that since I resembled him, I was equally damned. In some circles I was known as the Devil's Spawn." He had meant the words to sound light, but they came out edged with regret.

By her stillness, Roxanne had noticed. "Was your father that bad?"

He shrugged. "Bad enough. He wasted most of my mother's inheritance, had the reputation of a cheat at cards, and kept his word only when it suited him. When I was seven, he eloped to the Continent with a married woman. My mother never really recovered from his betrayal." Dominick took a deep breath. "I could overlook the rest but not that. She deserved better."

Roxanne's arm crept around his waist. "You never spoke of your father to me."

"Ten years ago I couldn't. Because I was young, it was very important for me to appear jaunty and unconcerned. I guess I was successful, but I felt as if there was a hole in the center of my soul. Then I met you. Riding through that clearing, your hair blazing like fire because you hated wearing hats." The image was as sharp in his mind as if it had been yesterday.

He ran one hand down her back. Under the thin fabric her flesh was warm and softly yielding. "I'd always enjoyed pretty girls. Usually I laughed and flirted a bit, then went my way without a second thought. But as soon as I saw you, I felt as if the hole in my soul had healed. I couldn't explain it then, and I can't now. Perhaps love can't be explained."

A little desperately, she said, "I can't help but fear that over the years you have built me into an impossible model of perfection. I'm no paragon, Dominick."

He laughed. "I'm well aware of that. You've a sharp tongue, a stubborn streak, and you see things perhaps a little too clearly for comfort. Yet at the same time, those are some of the qualities I love in you." He kissed her temple again. "Your intelligence." He brushed her lips lightly with his. "Your directness." He laid his hand on her heart. "Your warmth, and if you can come to trust me again, your steadfastness."

He felt the beating of her blood against his palm. "When I saw you today at the inn, I felt exactly the same sensation that I did ten years ago. That you, and only you, can fill the emptiness inside me. No one else has ever affected me that way, so I don't think you can be considered ordinary. Or if you are, perhaps ordinariness is what I need." He took an uneven breath, for honesty was painful work. "Certainly I need you."

There was a long silence before she whispered, "You make it easy to believe." Lifting her head, she touched her lips to his.

He responded with fierce sweetness, murmuring her name over and over as he kissed her. Her breath quickened and she did not object when he joined her underneath the blankets. It seemed so natural to have him beside her, to return his caresses and rejoice in his touch.

As passion claimed her, she forgot the long, empty years and pressed against him, wanting to feel the length of his body against hers. In the dark privacy of the bed, they might have been alone in the world, Adam and Even sampling the forbidden fruit of desire. The large nightgown slipped from her shoulders easily so that his mouth could simultaneously soothe and inflame the ache in her breasts.

Even so, she inhaled sharply when his hand slid beneath her gown and caressed the sensitive flesh inside her thighs. Hearing her alarm, he halted. "I have loved and wanted you so much, for so long, Roxanne," he said huskily. “I don't know if I can bear to wait any longer. If you want me to leave the bed, say so now, before it's too late."

For a moment, fear paralyzed her. She was standing on the edge of a precipice. If she dared to leap off into the abyss, her life would change irrevocably.

To accept him now was also to accept his offer of marriage and his version of the past. It would mean making herself vulnerable to the same kind of pain she had felt ten years ago, but it would be a hundred times worse if she lost him again after they became lovers.

And yet… She thought of the long, lonely years at Maybourne Towers, and had the stark realization that since that was her life, it was high time she changed or she would die without having lived. And he wanted her as no one else ever had. She was not a whim to him but a necessity, just as the memory of him had been necessary to her no matter how she had tried to deny it.

Feeling a deep sense of female power, she ran her fingers tenderly through his thick, silky hair. "You don't have to wait any longer, Dominick."

He exhaled roughly. Then, curbing his urgency, he initiated her into the mysteries of passion with infinite gentleness. She expected pain, and there was some, but there was also rapture beyond anything she could have imagined.

When she fell asleep in his cradling arms, it was with the greatest peace she had ever known.