He saw the suspicion in her eyes, but grasped her around the waist and lifted her clear of her mount. He held her as a groom would, calmly, impersonal. He did not want her to startle like her skittish little mare.

He gathered the reins of both blown horses in one hand and walked by her side across the sward.

"I rarely find anyone willing to proceed at more than a trot," she said, her eyes twinkling, her cheeks blooming pink from their mad dash.

She looked lovely. As tempting as h.e.l.l on a cold winter"s day. He bit back a curse. "I remember the way you rode the fields around Pentridge. I always expected you to break your neck."

The breeze toyed with the loose strands about her face and she held them back with one hand, her sideways glance full of amus.e.m.e.nt and perhaps even a little misty. "You were just as bad."

He put a hand to his heart, but belied the movement with an ironic twist to his lips. "Where you led, I merely followed."

She laughed as he intended she should, but amid the light tinkling sound he heard a note in a minor key. Sadness? Regret?

Hardly likely.

"How did you know I rode here in the morning?" she asked, gazing out over the Serpentine.

"Common knowledge," he said. "But where is the trusty O"Mally?"

She shrugged. "He wonders at your reason for singling me out, when it is known you display little interest in gently bred females."

"Does he now?"

She nodded. A decisive little jerk of her pretty chin.

They walked beneath the bows of an ancient spreading oak. He stopped to look down at her. "Didn"t you tell him we once were friends?"

G.o.d, it had been so much more than friendship in the end. Or at least he"d thought so, until she ran off to France with another lover.

She shivered. A small little shudder that barely shook her frame. Her violet eyes darkened, like dusk over heather-clad hills, though her lips remained sweetly curved. "Yes, we were friends when we were young." She fell silent for a moment, her eyes distant. "Remember when we found the ruined castle in the woods? You were sixteen, about to go off to school?"

"We called it Camelot," he said, his heart hammering at the recollection. "Romantic nonsense."

"You rescued me from a dragon."

She"d clung to him, terrified, when they heard the noises in the bushes.

"It was a cow."

A smile teased her lips. "And we laughed until we couldn"t stand up."

"I loosed your hair and kissed you because you looked like Guinevere," he said, the pain of it stabbing his heart.

They"d made love many times after that day, but that was the first time. The sweetest time of his life. A myth. Just like their castle.

She raised her gaze and there was a hard light in the depths of her eyes. "I think Miles is right. You are a man who does nothing that does not benefit himself."

A scathing condemnation from one such as her.

He stepped in front of her, the tree at her back, the horses at his heels. He tilted her chin with his free hand. He gazed into her shadowed eyes. She met his searching look without flinching.

"Then we are alike," he said. Shielded by their horses, he dipped his head to claim her mouth. Slowly, gently, he edged her hard up against the knotted bark of the great tree. He plied her lips gently. She welcomed him in. Her avid response fired his blood. He plundered her sweet depths with his tongue, swallowing her soft cries of approval. He braced to steady her soft, pliant body as she melded against his length.

She"d made him laugh and she"d made him hunger. He would have her again.

He thrust his thigh between hers and she parted her legs. He felt her heat and her desire rise to meet his own. Breathless seconds pa.s.sed in a feast of the senses.

Then her hands rose to push against his chest, hard enough to let him know she meant it.

Reluctantly, he drew back and gazed down into her slumberous eyes. "I want you," he said, his voice a low growl.

Her smile hardened. "For you, the price is high."

"Name it."

"Marriage."

The word, spoken with determination and triumph, took him aback. He curled his lip in an amus.e.m.e.nt he did not feel. He shook his head and chuckled. "Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte. You are a wicked tease."

Anger flared in her gaze. Her hand lashed out, but he caught her small-boned wrist with ease. "Let me go," she said on a quick, ragged breath.

He lowered his head and kissed the back of her hand.

She tried to tug it free with a gasp of outrage. "Release me."

He smiled down at her and she stilled. His gaze searched her face. Was this what they had become? Adversaries in games of the flesh? Apparently so. He prised open her closed fist with care and pressed a kiss to her palm, then nibbled at her bare wrist above the glove.

"Don"t," she whispered. "Please."

"You used to like my kisses, remember?" he said softly against her milky skin.

She closed her eyes briefly as if he"d somehow caused her pain.

He knew her too well to believe it. "I see you have a new fly in your web. He pants like a cur after a b.i.t.c.h in heat."

She wrenched her hand free, her colour high. "You know nothing."

She glanced over his shoulder. Her expression changed, became distant and cool. He felt the loss of her anger as he had felt the loss of her body against him.

"Stand aside, sir," she said in chilly accents. "Here comes a true friend."

He glanced back. "Ah, the so trusty O"Mally. Is he your friend? Or another of your lovers?"

She glared at him. "My escort. Sadly, he was a few minutes late or you and I would not be having this conversation."

He couldn"t prevent the surge of jealousy in her trust of the elderly dandy, but he merely bowed. "Allow me to help you mount." He brought her horse around and interlocked his fingers. She stepped up, her small hands on his shoulders, a feather-light grip. He tossed her up into the saddle, helping her settle her knee around the pommel. His fingers curled around her slim ankle encased in leather as he slipped her foot into the stirrup. When he glanced up, she was looking bemused.

He returned her gaze and with effort remembered his purpose. "I will see you this evening."

She twitched her skirts into place and gathered the reins. "No."

"You and I have unfinished business." He glanced at the tree trunk where they had just recently been pressed together.

She flushed. "Our business was finished years ago."

"I find myself unconvinced," he said, raising a brow.

She flicked her horse with her reins and left at a canter.

Gerard watched her slight figure greet O"Mally.

"Tonight, Charlotte," he promised softly to himself. "And we will both be satisfied."

His body hardened at the thought. But another sensation invaded his chest. One he"d not felt for a very long time.

An ache.

Almost midnight and still no sign of Hawkworth. She should be glad. She was glad. Desperately relieved. He would have spoiled everything and the end was almost in sight. Lord Graves was a hair"s breadth from an offer.

"You waltzed with Hawkworth yesterday," Graves whined.

She resisted the urge to bat him away like an annoying gnat on a summer"s eve. Shocked at the disloyal thought, she smiled at him and replied in soft tones. "His Grace did not take account of my wishes."

The young man stiffened. "If he offered you some insult-"

"Not at all." She lightly touched his arm with her fan. "It was more a misunderstanding. Tonight, I have danced three dances with you, more than with any other gentleman. To dance again would not be seemly." Unless they were married. She let the unspoken words hang in the air.

He wooed her against his family"s objections and she would not provide them with the ammunition of scandalous behaviour. Meeting the Duke in the park could have been a disaster. She"d thought to talk to him as a friend, beg him to leave her in peace, until he"d shown his true colours. l.u.s.t, not friendship, drove their relationship.

And her taunt about marriage had stabbed at the heart of matters between them. A duke could not marry the daughter of a debt-ridden sot, any more than the ducal heir could have. The old duke had been brutally frank. His heir would be more than pleased to set her up as his mistress, but never as a wife. Nothing had altered in the intervening years.

Gerard was no knight on a white charger arriving to save her from her dragons.

"You will let me take you to supper," Lord Graves said, his jaw jutting. "You promised."

More whining. She contained a sigh of impatience and nodded gravely. "I am looking forward to it." It would be different when they were married. He"d be less inclined to remain underfoot. "If you will excuse me, for a moment, I have a torn flounce that needs pinning." And a headache brewing.

The darling boy looked anxious. "Hurry back. I will fetch you some champagne."

Oh how she longed for respite from his constant youthful chatter and jealous eye. Feeling as if she might at any moment die of suffocation, Charlotte fled the ballroom.

It would be fine after they wed, her mind repeated like a mantra as she hurried along the hallway to the ladies" withdrawing room. She would make him a good wife. They would retire to the country. Breed lots of children she could love. And Father would be saved.

An arm shot out from a doorway, curling around her waist and dragging her into a darkened room.

Her stomach jolted. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out when a warm finger pressed against her lips and a familiar voice said, "Hush."

The scent of his bay cologne swirled around her. "Your Grace?"

"Charlotte."

He spoke her name in his deep voice. He cupped her face in his hands. "Have you forgotten my name so soon, sweet?"

The endearment tore at her heart, ripped open the wounds she thought long since healed.

She jerked her head away to no avail. "Let me go."

He sighed. "I wish I could. Say my name."

"Gerard," she spat at him, desperate for release in case she committed the error of this morning. "Let me go, before someone sees us."

He released her. Her cheeks felt suddenly chill. She stared at a face shadowed from her gaze, the shadow of her girlish dreams and the shadow of her lonely nights. "Why are you doing this?"

"This?"

"Plaguing me? Following me?" When you never followed when I most needed you, the broken voice whispered in her head. The voice she usually ignored. She turned away, strode to peer through the gloom at a portrait above the mantel. "Why did you drag me in here?"

The striking of a tinderbox sounded behind her. Candles flared to life, the room, a library, took shape around her as he lit the scattering of candelabra and the sconce between the bow windows.

She swung around. "Why, Gerard?"

He blew out the taper and tossed it in the empty hearth. A wicked smile touched his lips. "Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?"

She tossed her head. "You and a hundred others."

"You"ve grown cruel, Charlotte. The adulation of striplings has gone to your head."

The words were spoken lightly but they lashed like a whip. "You were the same kind of stripling once," she replied, wielding her own lash.

In three strides, he came to stand before her, his body no longer that of a boy but of a powerful male. Large and full of arrogant confidence. He gripped her shoulders, his gaze searching her face, his lips thin, his eyes hard enough to break her. "That boy is gone," he said softly and his mouth descended on hers. Ravishing. Punishing. Blissfully hot. The kiss of a bold, hungry man.

How she longed to yield, to feel again the joy, to relive their pa.s.sion. Her body trembled with eagerness. Pride came to her rescue. She stiffened against his onslaught, fought for command of her traitorous body and heart.

He lifted his mouth, but didn"t release her. "Why?" he murmured against her lips. "Why, Charlotte?"

She shrugged free from the circle of his arms, strode with short impatient steps to the window and shifted the edge of the drape. Outside, street lamps wavered in the mist, blurring her vision. An image of her father languishing in a French debtors" prison hardened her resolve and her voice. "Why what?"

He came up behind her. "Why did you leave?"

She spun around. Incredulous. "Why would I stay?"

His jaw flickered. "And so here you are back again, married, widowed and once more plying your wiles on a green youth."

Pain like a clenched fist in her stomach almost doubled her over. "He is a fine young man."

"And wealthy."

Heat rose to her hairline. He made it sound so sordid. She paced away from him, her silk skirts catching at her legs, her heart beating a retreat. She clenched her fists against the fear. A terrible fear she could deny him nothing. "What makes you think you can once more interfere in my affairs?"