One solitary night had slipped into a provocative, bliss-filled morning. Even by his standards. They had spent their time together the very model of lovers, secluded in the cottage past dawn, unmolested by the outside world, unmoved by obligations, but not unaware that a dozen people were probably looking for them. He'd missed his appointments with the project manager and Marrow. He'd put aside the fact that he should have been in Dublin today and needed to be back in London by midweek. Ryan hadn't awakened until ten in the morning.

He'd awakened alone.

Tossing the towel into the sink, he turned to face his brother. He didn't need David to review his indiscretions or to judge Rachel's. Nor did Ryan want to be reminded of her reasons for racing back to Dublin before him. In fact, when he put his mind to the task, there was only one topic that remotely interested him.

"Do you want to tell me what you thought you were doing last night?"

"Protecting two people I happen to care about very much." The white clerical collar pulled against his tanned throat, but David looked far removed from humble as he leaned his backside against the settee. "Rachel isn't speaking to me."

"Imagine that."

Joining Ryan in the small alcove that served as the kitchen, David withdrew a folded sheaf of paper from inside his jacket. "I took the liberty of detailing the laws on handfasting for your solicitors to digest and mourn." He carelessly dropped the paper on the table, where it slid across an air current onto the floor at Ryan's feet.

His jaw tight, Ryan picked it up, skimmed the contents, and raised his gaze. His mood was surprisingly level, considering the fact that it was all chicanery. "Rachel read this?"

"Her reaction was more succinct than yours. She laughed, then ripped it up and threw it in my face. I won't even tell you what she said about you."

David's dark eyes bore a hint of amusement. Hell, he was enjoying this. "She needn't have bothered." Ryan dropped the sheaf on the table in flagrant disdain. "English law won't recognize this."

"You weren't married in England. You were married in Ireland. Handfasting is permitted under the ancient Brehon law here and falls under the jurisdiction of common not canon law," David added. "But for the legal naysayer, I decided this morning after leaving Rachel to go one step further." He gave Ryan the special license secured from a magistrate. "Civil ceremonies are legal."

Ryan suddenly felt as if he were watching himself fall out a very high window only to be stopped by the pavement. The door opened, and Ryan looked up. "Are you bloody telling me Rachel is my legal wife?"

David settled his hat on his head. "She does not yet know just how completely. I'll leave it to you to explain."

If David had wanted to punish him for whatever sin he'd committed by leaving the Church, Ryan was positive the joke couldn't get worse. "This is laughable if not outright criminal."

"I'll be bidding you a fare thee well. It's been entertaining." His brother stepped out of the cottage and shut the door.

"I'm getting married in ten weeks!" Ryan shouted. He yelled something else a lot worse, caring little whether his arrogant ass of a brother heard him or not.

Scraping a hand through his hair, Ryan looked around him, impotent with incredulity, then padded barefoot across the floor and flung open the door. He wasn't going to let David ruin his entire life. "Where did you say you took Rachel?"

David turned in the grass. He'd reached the trees and shaded his eyes against the sun. "The train depot."

"I thought the floods wiped out the tracks around Rathdrum."

"She didn't leave from Rathdrum."

"You mean there's another train depot not far from here?"

"About an hour. Nearer to the coast."

"Bloody hell." Ryan's fist gripped the door latch. He'd been told in Dublin that there was no through train to Rathdrum until the repairs to the bridge were finished. To think he could have saved himself the torture of traveling over a rough water-bound macadam toll road better suited for victims weaned on the Inquisition. "How long ago did she leave?"

"The train was due into the depot at noon." David pulled out his watch fob and flipped open the lid. "That means it should get to there around three."

A long whistle screeched through the outdoor station, jerking Rachel out of her nap and nearly causing heart failure. Elsie occupied the window seat facing hers. By the look of the pages read in the book since they'd sat down, Rachel had not been asleep for long. People continued to loll in the aisles, shoving belongings on the upper rack above the crowded seats. Someone had brought chickens inside the coach car. Now conscious of the noise, the unpleasant smells, and her own unfamiliar emotions, all gathering in her head, her vacant composure cracked.

Rachel pulled her watch fob out of her skirt pocket. Brushing a feather from her emerald velvet traveling costume, she was tempted to go outside on the platform and shout at the conductor to get the train moving. "We are already three and a half hours late, for God's sake!" She snapped her fob shut.

Rachel needed to get to Dublin.

Needed to get in touch with her London solicitor and seek legal counsel before she confronted Ryan again.

And Lord in heaven, how did one go back to yesterday after an experience like last night?

"Pardon, mum?" Elsie shut the book in her lap. "Are you well?"

Rachel flicked a sideways glance at poor Elsie, who looked anxious, especially after Rachel's blasphemous verbal encounter with David that afternoon. She softened her expression. "I wanted to thank you...for what you did for me last night."

"Oh, mum." Elsie folded her hands over the book. "If only I did do you a favor."

"Elsie"-Rachel gently squeezed the girl's wrist-"you did do me a favor."

Pressing her pretty lips together in a tight line, Elsie drew nearer until her mouth touched Rachel's ear. "I forgot to tell you something important."

"About what?"

"I forgot to tell you that you're supposed to soak the...you know...what I gave you in lemon juice first."

"Lemon juice?" she rasped.

"I'm sorry, mum."

The very idea sounded as shocking as the intimate image of Ryan performing the detailed task of insertion, taking her easily to heights of sybaritic bliss with his tongue. He'd known how to touch her. Known things about her body that she'd never imagined. What would he have said if she'd tasted like lemonade?

She turned her face toward the large window.

Her cycle was always timely as clockwork, and she was sure her flow would start soon. Yet, as much as she sought to escape Ryan and the devastating effect he had on her, she had to force herself to consider the very real possibility that she might actually be his wife.

Another long whistle sounded from the engine up ahead. The train wheels squealed, then jerked forward, the sudden momentum sending items crashing from the shelf above everyone's heads. Elsie jumped out of her seat with a terrified shriek. Passengers sprang into action. Rachel caught Elsie's carpetbag, filled with books, before it hit the floor.

Her arms outstretched, she stood on the balls of her feet as she tried to readjust the items on the shelf. She was wearing full travel regalia including a bustle and jacket that restricted her reach. "Elsie...help me, please."

A pair of gloved hands came over her shoulders and took the bag from her grasp, easily inserting it onto the shelf above her head. "Ryan!"

The train lurched again in an explosion of steam and cranking wheels, throwing her backward against him. "Rachel..." he said against her hair.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, beneath her breath.

Shaded by a hat worn low over his forehead, the steel in that gaze didn't escape her any more than the familiar warm scent of him flooding over her to bring the night rushing back in an inescapable flush. "We need to talk." His urbane tone did nothing to soothe her. "I think you know why."

He released her, and she whirled to face him, wobbling with the train's movements. "We've nothing more to say to each other, Ryan Donally."

"I'll move, mum." Elsie jumped out of her seat and collided with Rachel. "It will be no trouble for me to find another seat."

Catching her balance on her faux husband, Rachel pulled Elsie to the seat next to hers. "You're not going anywhere alone on this train." Not with the scurvy men she'd seen board earlier. "Sit next to me on the aisle. And don't listen."

"Yes, mum."

Without a word, Ryan removed his hat and sided past her toward the window seat facing hers. His height obliged her to lift her chin, his size impinging on her space before they both sat across from the other. Tugging off his gloves with his teeth, he removed each one, something in the manner of his movements revealing a barely contained violence.

That fast, her levity faded. David had told her she and Ryan were truly married, which she didn't for one moment believe. She had thought last night would have ended her obsession with Ryan, but it had only sharpened her desire and made her dislike him even more for his deception.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"Why did you leave this morning without talking to me?"

They'd both spoken at the same moment.

Rachel was aware of an ink stain on her sleeve and folded her hand over the ugly mark. Today everything was supposed to have gone back to the way it was between them, and the fact that it hadn't alarmed her as much as her cowardice.

"We had an agreement for one night. You aren't supposed to be here."

The train grumbled over the tracks, the sound of the engine vibrating the walls of the coach. "Don't you think current circumstances trump all other agreements?" His words were spoken softly, his tone inflexible, yet she glimpsed a perceptible softening in his gaze as he read the panic in hers.

"What circumstances?" She glared with stormy eyes. "Or maybe you're incapable of honoring agreements that entail no profit."

His eyes grew equally stormy. "I forgot how well you know me, Rache."

Recognizing that it would be imperative for her to remain unemotional, Rachel folded her hands in her lap. He had always guarded his family dignity with an iron fist and would want to keep everything as circumspect as possible.

She forced her gaze out the window. The tracks had begun to dip, and already the trees were thinning as the train neared the coast.

Secretly, she wanted to thrive on Ryan's dilemma. If her own dilemma were not worse. "I release you of any responsibility that you think you might owe this unforeseen occasion," she quietly said. "I don't recognize any marriage between us."

"Thank you, High Justice Bailey." Ryan leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. "But I doubt very much you have that kind of judicial power."

"You don't understand. David did what he did because of me." Disgusted by her maudlin yearnings, Rachel blurted everything out. "I went to him and told him...I told him that I was either going to kill you or sleep with you. Maybe both," she said in addendum, finding that her bottom was already sore on the hard seats. Or maybe she was too hot in the airless car. "I asked him to help me. I thought he would do something pious, like pray over my soul. Not handfast me to you."

She looked at the bow of Ryan's mouth, remembered the warmth and taste of him last night. She remembered other things, too. The soothing strength of his arms. The dark intensity of his eyes when he'd watched her release beneath him.

"I believe that we both agree this is not legal," Rachel said in a level tone.

"Hell"-scraping a palm over his jaw, he looked at her-"nothing is ever simple between us. Is it?"

And all at once, her defenses fled. "No one need know what happened between us last night, Ryan."

Casually, he edged his palm beneath her fingers. "A lot happened," he said after a long moment. "I'm just not sure what exactly."

"At least we are of the same mind." She did not attempt to pull her hand from his larger one. Her surrender, fleeting as it was, raised Ryan's head.

He pierced her with those sultry eyes. Turning her hand over in his, he traced a thumb across the veins in her wrist. Skeins of warmth arced up her arm to play havoc with her lungs. "That is a first, I think," he said. "That we share a like mind on something. Even if you believe you hate me at this moment."

Her eyes shot to his.

"You read what was inside my satchel this morning."

Rachel slid her hands from his. "Yes."

"I didn't tell you everything because I didn't want you to be hurt more than you already would be, Rachel. You can believe that or not, but it's the truth."

She folded her hands tightly in her lap to keep from striking him, realizing now that she didn't know if his reasons for being on the train were personal or professional. "Then I should be grateful. Your conquests are not usually so fortunate."

Ryan sat back in the seat.

In the ensuing silence, she stared out the window at the untamed Irish shoreline, unable to speak another word. The land possessed a feral beauty, breathless in its natural element, changed through time only by forces greater than man's will. She had felt the same raw forces last night in Ryan's arms. Forces now restrained by the civil veneer he wore like a cloak around his life.

Rachel was conscious of his knees pressed against hers, of Elsie sitting next to her trying to look uninterested in both Ryan and the conversation. Mostly she was conscious of a sense of disappointment, amplified by an awful loss that grew and grew.

"I am not your enemy, Rachel."

"Then what are you?" She leaped to her feet. She had the feeling that if she tried to hit him now, he wouldn't stop her. "Because you sure as blazes aren't my friend."

Rachel pushed past Elsie and stumbled into the aisle. Her movement drew the startled attention of other passengers as she grabbed the seats and wobbled like a drunk against the train's movement down the passageway.

She threw open the door. The wind and noise sucked a sob from her lungs. She stepped outside onto the metal grate. Below her feet, she could see the tracks whipping past. Rachel stepped forward and clutched the web railing.

Behind her, the door grated open and slammed shut. Her gaze remained focused on a flock of distant seagulls coasting with white-spread wings over the thinning treetops. She could see the coast through the trees. "You came to Ireland to buy me out of the company so you would have no opposition to the merger," she said without turning, her voice raised over the noise.

"That was my intent, yes." His coat flapped against her legs, but he made no effort to touch her as she finally faced him.

"You built Donally & Bailey! You worked hard. I know how hard you worked because I watched you. I watched you fight the status quo. I watched you take jobs no one else would. Plan projects no one else could. D&B wouldn't be what it is today without your dedication." Sounding almost admiring of him, and recognizing the interest sparking in his cool eyes, Rachel reined in her passion. "Where is that man, Ryan?"

He placed his hands next to hers on the rail and trapped her between his arms and his body. "Look closely, Rachel," he said. "I am that man. I haven't changed. Only your perception of me has changed."

Rachel didn't believe him. She remembered a day not so many years ago when he had rolled up his sleeves and walked the city's lower sewer grid in the heat of summer to trace the source of a problem.

He'd never cared about society or the aristocracy or the manner of men the institution bred. Now, he had become the very thing he'd always despised. Her people would lose their jobs. Where was the man who used to care about those who worked for him?

"Need I ask Johnny his opinion on the acquisition? Or is he as powerless as I?"

Ryan straightened. "He knows what has to be done."

The wind pushed at her skirts. "Is that the universal excuse men use to justify inexcusable behavior? It

has to be done because...?"

"Ore Industries will put D&B out of business in less than a year. Taking my offer before the acquisition will benefit you, Rache."

She folded her arms. "If money were everything to me, then being pillaged by you would be more