she went back to Ravenspur's in the evenings and remained there. Absently rubbing his fingers, he

watched a pair of mismatched pigeons bobbing about the granite ledge outside the window.

"Where are we on the French deal?" he asked after a moment.

"Brendan sent a missive back from Paris two days ago. Valmonts' board is balking. But then that was to

be anticipated. They'll go with Ore Industries' offer because no one else is going to bail them out of theirfinancial predicament. They want to speak with you.""Tell Brendan that they'll accept the deal. The terms are not negotiable.""I already told him, sir. They will close the deal with you."Ryan stopped the man at the door. "You did the initial assessment on that company," he said, shrugging into his coat. "They are bankrupt. What are they fighting so hard to keep?"

"Does it matter, sir?" The question clearly baffled Sir Boris. "We are not in the business of saving companies."

"No, I imagine we are not," Ryan said, with such ambivalence that Sir Boris didn't recognize Ryan's mood.

"Are you going somewhere, sir?"

Just some of his own business to attend to. "Cover my meeting at four. I'll be back in the office tomorrow."

Booths of sweetmeat-sellers, toymakers, and hucksters surrounded the fairground. Rachel tented a hand over her eyes and watched a raucous puppet show entertain a group of sticky-faced children. Every afternoon, she took a hansom to the outskirts of London to eat at a quaint inn where her father used to bring her as a girl. The family she once knew no longer lived there, but the inn still served the best shepherd's pie and ale she'd ever tasted.

There was plenty to entertain the idlers: jugglers, acrobats, fire-eaters, and fortune-tellers. She avoided the latter as she stopped in front of a stall selling lady's hats. Beautiful, stylish hats with fans of many designs to match. Rachel was not a collector of such feminine accoutrements, but her gaze kept going back to the frilly hat with a dainty brim and yellow ostrich feather that would lie just so over the cheek.

"It is of fine quality, oui?" the bald vendor asked.

"It is very beautiful," Rachel agreed.

"You have been eyeing this hat many days now." He smiled slyly, holding it out to her for further examination. A chilly wind gust caught her skirt, tugged, then slowly ebbed. "I will give it to you for a good price."

But she would not purchase it. They had this discussion every time she passed the booth, she thought as she moved down the aisle. To own something she'd never use seemed frivolous.

Finding an abandoned bench, Rachel opened her reticule and carefully unwrapped a piece of bread left over from her lunch. She tossed the crumbs over the grounds. Pigeons bobbed at her feet and fluttered around the tree branches behind her. She was aware, as the temperature wavered on the chilly side, that it looked like the morning's cloudburst was about to be joined by another. She wore no cloak.

Neither did she have a companion with her and knew she could never dally long near the riverfront before men began to call out to her. But she carried a reticule filled with rocks and a sturdy parasol. She didn't want to return to D&B just yet.

Dusting off her hands, she looked out at the ships on the river-and directly into Ryan's eyes. Wearing a long coat, he was leaning against the stone break-wall on the other side of the walkway, his gloved palms braced behind him as he watched her, the force of his presence filling the air like the thunderclouds gathering above her.

Yet, her heart did a flip-flop. She had not seen him since the train depot.

"You possess a remarkable ability to find peace in the most unremarkable places," he said, as if he'd been watching her a long time. "What exactly about this location do you find appealing?"

"Simplicity?" she said, calmly challenging him to argue the quiet charm of the secluded spot. "How did you find me?"

"Stewart told me where you spend your afternoons. Once here, all one need do is follow the trail of men in your wake. You glow."

She glanced down at her apple green jacket trimmed in black cording that she considered extremely conservative in cut, and saw nothing wrong with her clothes. "I've seen you with women dressed in far less than I'm wearing." Brushing a gloved hand over each sleeve, she lifted her chin. "Who was that countess?" She rolled her eyes at the photograph taken at the Ascot races only last summer. The woman had fairly spilled out of her bodice. "I won't even go into Lady Gwyneth. You're too easily seduced, Ryan."

The tension that lay between them was tangible.

Clearly, he knew that she was purchasing company stock. Maybe even that she'd visited Lord Bathwick.

His eyes also told her that she was his wife.

Before he cloaked the Irish predator behind a bland expression and smiled. "My carriage is waiting for us. You and I need to talk."

A flurry of sensations streaked through her. Fear. Panic. Lust.

And rebellion against all those emotions. She stood. "You knew we were irrevocably wed when we left Ireland," she accused him.

"David told me what he had done. But I had to make sure myself."

"You could have told me."

Neither of them expanded on what they were going to do about undoing their vows. "Aren't you worried that someone might spill the news that you're wed? See us together?" She spread her arms and turned in a circle. "Ruin all of your plans?"

"But then if everything became public, that someone would no longer be a major shareholder in her precious D&B." He crossed one ankle over the other, his eyes amused as they swept her. "Ahhh, the dilemma with which we're both faced."

"Which one of us would lose the most, do you suppose?"

She knew she was an amateur playing a dangerous game. But she wasn't so weak-willed she'd fold and give him everything.

"I know what's important to your little mercenary heart, Rache." Raindrops plopped on the ground. "To play this dirty game of blackmail, you'll have to be willing to lose everything. Are you?"

Wishing to wipe that confident smirk off his handsome face, she folded her arms. When next she peered in his direction, his eyes were still on her, and dark. Hooded like a hawk's. He raised a brow at her. "Ooops. It looks as if blackmail is out."

He looked at her lips, lower to her breasts, until she felt the subtle shift of his eyes back to hers. He could touch her anywhere, and her senses responded. She took an unconscious step backward. "I imagine that we have much to discuss," she said.

He stood. "I imagine so."

Some age-old instinct warned her to keep her tongue to herself, and the temptation to know more of his thoughts abetted that instinct. She was willing to indulge him in some form of negotiation, but on her own

terms, standing in the office at D&B.

They needed to decide how they were going to dissolve their vows. At least in that quarter they were united.

Weren't they?Raindrops fell faster and pebbled on the bench."Why didn't you buy that hat in the booth?" he asked.Caught as much by the strange tenor in his voice, she took another step backward, embarrassed that he would have seen her fawning over something so useless. "How long have you been watching me?"

He followed her retreat. "Long enough to know that you spend a lot of time alone."

When she realized she was retreating from him, she stopped abruptly. "I don't need anyone to make my

life content."

"Your work is your only lover then?" His urbane tone mocked her.

"Yes."

He knew that she'd lied. He'd been her lover.

She put aside the fact that he was her husband.

And that every fiber in her being hummed with awareness of him.

The wind billowed beneath her skirts, but she did not take notice of the chill or the rhythm of rain against

the leaves. He'd set his palm against the tree that was suddenly at her back. "Someone will see us,

Ryan."

Recognizing the primal force of his thoughts aimed at her, she knew he was going to kiss her. Worse, she knew she would let him. She raised a hand to his chest. Felt the thump of his heart against her palm.

"Damn you, Ryan."

"Aye, damn me as you will, Rache." His fingertips came alongside her cheek and, exerting only the slightest pressure, he tilted her head to meet his gaze. "I have no doubt that my unfortunate trip to Ireland will cost us both, one way or the other."

Rachel's gaze held Ryan's, stormy dark in the rain.

It always seemed to be her fate to appear in front of him at a disadvantage. Rachel was conscious of an entirely irrational feeling of annoyance. Somehow, she summarized in an equally irrational response, that

everything happening to her was his fault-including her craving for him. How could she maintain control over her life, if she could not even control her carnal desires?

He turned as if he were looking for someone. A man stood discreetly just at the edge of the trees, facing

another direction. "I've had the carriage brought to Whiteside Street. It borders this walkway. It's closer

than traipsing to the mews."She watched as he walked toward the man, obviously someone in his employ by the way the man's spinesnapped upright at Ryan's approach. Panic infused the uncertainty riding her heartbeat, and this time she could not pull it back or rein it under control. Realizing that she was no longer safe from herself or the hazardous affair of her feelings whenever he was about, she was suddenly prepared to flee. The rain began to fall in buckets. Then she felt him at her back, and he pulled her beneath his coat.

They took the dirt path back toward the aisle of tents that backed against the walkway. Vendors were lowering their tent flaps, mothers gathering children. Rachel gripped her reticule as Ryan hurried her into a run. She saw that he carried her parasol, the tensile strength of his hand at odds with the feminine accoutrement.

"You may take me to D&B," she managed over her breath when they reached the carriage.

He bent and hoisted her into the carriage. "Get in."

Her slippers were ruined. He climbed in behind her and shut the door. Curtains covered the windows. Cold seeped through her soaked clothes to her drawers.

The carriage jolted forward. She sat on one side shivering and Ryan on the other. Her hair was disheveled beneath the hat she wore. He laid his long coat over her, enveloping her with his earthy scent. Almost reluctantly, Rachel lifted her gaze to his.

"Are you going to blame me for the rain, too, Rache?"

"Not at all." She clenched her jaw in a smile to keep her teeth from chattering. "You've enough delusions of grandeur, Ryan."

"Thank you for reminding me that I am merely human."

He hunched forward, rubbing his hands together for warmth. From her corner, Rachel watched him shift to find warmth and surrendered to the inevitable. "Why do m-men give their coats to women, and freeze?" she asked, burrowing beneath the wool.

"Isn't that what gentlemen are required to do?"

"The implication being that w-women are frail and helpless?"

"Or witless for leaving without a cloak in the first place." Ryan leaned forward. "Are we going to have an honest-to-God argument over this, Rachel?"

Her lips curved into a frown, but she couldn't argue with logic. "Only if you expect me t-to take your coat while you freeze." Reluctantly, she lifted the edge of the coat. "Can we call a truce? At least until we get warm?"

Ryan shifted seats and joined her beneath the coat, where he brought it up to her chin. He laid his arm across the back of the seat. They sat in silence.

"We can have a truce longer if you choose," he said.

She pulled back, unconvinced of the possibility. Her head pressed into the crook of his arm. "W-what are your terms?" Her teeth chattered.

"Quit purchasing stock." He tempered his concession with a subtle move of his body, encompassing more of her against him. "Both companies have too much at stake to drain resources in a public confrontation neither of us wants. We wait until Johnny returns."

She didn't want a public confrontation either. They had enough that was private between them to occupy her time. "What if I can get Johnny to take the company?""He won't do it. He likes the creative end of the business too much to give up his independence.""But what if he does?""I'll wager the company he won't."His confidence miffed her. "Why is Johnny in Scotland?" she asked after a moment."Why do you think? He's inspecting sites."She rested her head against his shoulder. "So this has nothing to do with the fact that your entire family seems to be in collusion to throw us together?"

He gently nudged her face. "Did you get that feeling as well?"

"Will you allow me access to the company records, Ryan?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." Locked to a sense of contentedness by his camaraderie, she burrowed against him. "Why is it you

're always so warm?""I'm a male. One of those nonhelpless creatures.""Truly, Ryan"-she smiled against his shoulder-"you are conceited.""I thought I was an ogre."She closed her eyes sleepily. "Did you keep the dog?""What do you think?""I think that you're a lot softer than you let on, Ryan."His mouth a fraction from her hair, silence hung in the moist air between them like a living, breathing thing.