She broke away. Their breaths hot and mingling. Why had he capitulated so easily to her? "Do you have a fever?"

She felt his mouth curve into a smile. "Probably."

He pulled back and his eyes narrowed. "Did you really believe that I could have an affair with Lady Gwyneth after all the work it has taken me to get you to this point?"

"I had never felt the way I did when I saw the two of you together," she said. "I never want to feel thathelpless again. I'm in love with you, and I'm terribly jealous of any other woman with whom you've everspent time. I didn't think I would ever feel the way I do about you." Like she wanted to crawl inside hissoul and stay forever.

"Thank you, Rache. Your words are poetry to my ears."

She held her palms against him. "When did you decide there would be no merger?" she whispered.

His lips caressed hers, lingering to taste and suckle. "In Paris."

"You did?"

He lowered his gaze from her eyes to the bow of her lip, and there was intensity in his eyes. "I did. But you put forth a compelling argument," he breathed against her mouth.

"I did?"

"You did." He reached behind her and locked the door. "And my only regret is that it has taken me so long to reach this point with you."

As soon as his lips touched hers, the world tilted, stopped spinning, and Rachel swayed. She moaned deep in her throat, all of his temperament and allure coalescing her desire in a hot pool between her thighs. Suffering the final departure of her will, she stretched her arms over his shoulders, her loss of objectivity resembling that of inebriation. Everything was becoming a blur.

Then she felt his hands shift, as if he were remembering where his palms had been headed when she'd broken away. His fingers eased down her spine, over her bottom, and back up the curvature of her waist, working the long row of buttons on her jacket. His palms were suddenly past her jacket and waistcoat and flat against her breasts. She closed her eyes. And simply merged with him as she breathed him deep into her lungs and became aware of her arms looped around his neck. Time slowed.

She wanted to stop it forever and ever. "Oh, Ryan"-her head drifted to the side when his mouth trailed down her throat-"this is not behaving with discretion."

Someone had to be the voice of reason.

Ryan pushed her jacket from her shoulders. His voice was hot and breathy against her ear. "I already sent everyone home. Except the night watchman, of course." Unhampered by any moral scruples, he encircled his hands around her waist. She'd never felt quite so petite, so feminine the way she did when his fingers enclosed her. "You should definitely refrain from screaming." He lifted her easily, swung her around, and sat her on the shiny, rosewood conference table behind him.

This was their office, after all, she told herself.

Their conference table.

His mouth returned to her lips. To the wet fullness of her lips. The kiss was hotter and, in an instant, everything in her world changed. His hands moved to her knees, and he pushed her legs apart. He slid his palms up her calves, traced the stockings on her legs to her thighs. Even higher, above the cinched garters, his thumbs stroked the split in her drawers. They stroked her and touched the damp apex of her thighs.

Her reaction was instantaneous. She grabbed his hands through her skirt and held them. "Ryan-" She was breathing hard.

So was he.

Their eyes held.

"What?" his voice rasped, when she didn't say anything.

Tears filled her eyes. She wanted to ask about Devonshire. But then he took her face in his hands and traced his thumbs over the delicate bones in her cheeks, and everything faded in the desire she saw in his eyes.

"You're not going to cry again?" He pressed his lips to her cheeks, her nose, and the space between her brows. "I'm apt to begin feeling inadequate. The only time you weep is when we make love."

She gave him a watery laugh. "I'm not crying." Her gaze briefly touched the transom; then her trembling fingers went to her waistcoat. "But maybe we should hurry."

"I don't want to hurry." He stepped between her legs and replaced her hands with his. "This is one conference this week I intend to take slow and enjoy."

But Rachel paid little heed as he removed her shirtwaist and blouse. She was soon lost to the scratch of his beard as he suckled her breasts. Her palms slid beneath his shirt and stripped him of the garment, sending it to the floor along with her skirt. Her tongue discovered the sculpted heat of his flesh. He tasted salty and sensual, and she soon relished her own unhurried find. Dark hair lightly covered his chest and angled downward into a V, disappearing beneath the waist of his trousers. Her lips tracing the corded delineations across his ribs, she dipped her hands beneath his waistband. A rasp of breath rewarded her study.

He tightened his hands in her hair. He was hot and pulsed with life in her palm. She stroked, caressed, and finally unfastened his trousers completely and freed him into her hands. Her finger encircled the milky bead that pearled at the tip of his sex, and she lapped it up with her tongue, her mouth needful, her body drugged with her own desire. His body coiled and tensed. Held by her need as she took him into her mouth and gave herself up to the wonder of discovery.

A low, anguished groan escaped his throat. "Jaysus, Rachel." He clasped her wrists.

Slowly raising her gaze, she looked up at him from beneath lowered lids, her mouth wet from her explorations. His breath came in pants that made his chest rise and fall. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead. Wrapping her legs around his thighs, she guided him inside her wet warmth, felt the swelling pressure of his probing entrance, the thrill of him filling her.

With an oath, he followed her down to the table and caught himself on his palms above her. His eyes opened. Raw, hot lust shone down at her, and they shared a charged moment, an intimate flash of helpless wonder. A declaration.

He pushed deeper, shattering the thin emotional barrier of her doubts. His tongue, hot and strong, thrust into her mouth.

Then his kiss consumed her. And she forgot to think at all because he was deep inside her, moving against her, already spurring her toward orgasm. Her hands traveled over his back. Corded, hot skin. She sobbed against the violent crest of her own climax. Cried out against his shoulder. Until he buried his hands in her hair and, with a final, possessive plunge of his hips, surged against her, filling more than her senses.

Her eyes opened, and when he finally raised himself and looked down at her, she smiled up at him wonderingly. For he was beautiful, and she braced her palms against his jaws, pulling him down to her lips, wanting only to tell him she wanted more.

Ryan was also thinking along those same lines that night after he'd brought her to his London residence, carried her over the threshold and up the winding staircase. What they'd begun and finished in the office, they started all over again on his stairway.

Ryan pressed her against the wall. His hands gripped her overjacket sleeves and pulled it off her, dropping it at her feet. Lips locked, she groaned and shoved her hands beneath his waistcoat, sending it the way of his jacket and cravat. They were breathing hard, and he was already stripping her out of her blouse. Her hair fell over her shoulders. Their mouths fused.

For a brief moment of lucidity, he recalled that Mary Elizabeth was still at Brianna's. Boswell had best keep the servants away. He dragged his lips from Rachel's, lifted her again into his arms, and carried her into his bedroom, where he fell with her to the bed. Landing on top of her half-dressed as he was, he caught himself above her and met her gaze, knowing she felt this gripping need inside her as well. Knowing and welcoming the sweet madness for what it was. For if he had lost control of the situation, so had she. Equality took no prisoners tonight.

The Y of his black suspenders lay over his shirt, and she shoved them off his shoulders, letting her fingers linger on his back. "Do you think people will wonder where we are?"

"God, I hope so," he said against her mouth.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back.

He had her trapped between him and the mattress. His breath came heavily against her mouth, her throat, and her breasts. They explored each other. Unfettered by time or interruption. He grabbed a handful of her chemise and stripped it over her head, savoring every inch of her body. She was wet beneath his hand. How much of that was him, he didn't know and, beyond the throbbing, sybaritic lethargy of his own groan as he released himself from his trousers, he didn't care. The blunt head of his erection pressed between her thighs. And only then did he feel the completeness he sought.

He held her still before he came too quickly.

Her legs wrapped around his hips, she opened her eyes.

"Wait," he murmured.

"I've never been in your bed." Her neck arched, she looked around her at the yards and yards of sapphire velvet canopy that draped the bed. "You have always had such beautiful things surrounding you."

"Have I?" Still wearing his trousers, he laid buried inside her, distracted, and did not understand what she saw that he didn't. Or perhaps that he took for granted. For there had never been a clear distinction separating who he was from what he had built.

"Here I was excited over one new dress." The whisper feathered his lips.

"I can buy you more than one dress, Rachel." He laughed shortly. "I wouldn't think any less of you if you took my money."

"And I am not some prize you can mount among your other collections, Ryan."

Breathing the words against his lips, she pulled his mouth down to hers, and he forgot to question the tenor of those words. Forgot everything but his ache to possess her.

His palms slid to her hips, then reverently to the flesh of her bottom. He moved, setting the rhythm. The very air between them crackled, but he made love to her that night in his bed, slow and easy, his gaze locked on hers, the urgency between them more controlled than in the office-but in the end, no less explosive.

Later, before he took his sweetly sated wife back to Brianna's house in his carriage, he told her that he wanted to marry her in a church before he made their vows public. He wanted that legitimacy, but deep inside he knew he wanted more. She'd been shocked when he said he didn't care which church, and even considered attending confession and seeking atonement, so a priest would bless them.

Something was changing inside him, and he wasn't entirely sure he liked the transformation. At least he'd always known where he'd stood with God and the devil. There was no arguing where he'd spend eternity. He could make unpopular and sometimes ruthless decisions in his life with no guilt. Kathleen had always warned him that he was too wild for his own good. Too ambitious. Too cynical. For a while in the beginning, he had wanted to change for her but could not.

He'd been faithful to Kathleen, but he hadn't been faithful to her memory. He'd been with more women than he could count. Beautiful women. Worldly women. Aristocracy or actresses. Most he never saw again. Most he never wanted to see again. He had never lost himself in a woman's body. Never shut his eyes and felt the freedom that came with the loss of his control. Or tasted the possessiveness he felt when he made love to Rachel. When he looked into her eyes and watched her come, knowing that he had done that to her.

And knowing that it was not enough.

He wondered if she would ever allow him to give her more than what she could buy or do for herself, and he felt robbed by her lack of appreciation for everything that he could offer her. No one except his daughter had ever wanted him just for himself. He was not used to the novelty. It left him feeling strangely exposed. Vulnerable. Searching for an identity beneath the trappings of his life.

Ryan, who rarely pulled himself out of bed before noon, was still standing at the window when the sun began to rise, and he watched the day awaken with an amber brilliance that overtook the shadows. There was beauty all around him in places he'd not looked in a long time. He touched the velvet curtains at his side, then turned into his room. He loved his daughter. He'd loved her mother. He'd always believed his heart rationed love like bread crumbs. And that he was not capable of feeling more than he had. Until now, he'd never known his heart had lied. For as his gaze fell on the bed, he thought of Rachel and knew that he had loved her his entire life.

Chapter 21.

"I t stinks like baby James." Mary Elizabeth held her nose as Rachel lifted her out of the landau in front of the D&B office building the next morning.

"It stinks," her cousin Robert enthusiastically echoed from Elsie's arms.

"That's because the weather has been hot, and we've not had much rain," Rachel said, without launching into the reasons why London could stink so fiercely in summers. She looked up at the darkening sky looming over the red brick building in front of her. "But I think we are about to find relief."

"I wants to go to the park," Mary Elizabeth announced. "Robert gots bread to feed the baby ducks and baby fishes."

Rachel smiled. "We're only taking a detour," she promised her.

"What is a 'tour'?"

Rachel put her back to the heavy door and pushed it open. "It means I am taking the long way from Aunt Brea's house to the park."

"Can Robert come on the 'tour,' too?" she asked, as the boy looked at her, his cherubic expression hopeful.

"I believe we are already here."

Rachel had slept late that morning. She never slept late. She still felt tired and sore in the most indecent of places. Ryan had been by the house earlier and eaten breakfast with his sister. When Rachel had finally made it downstairs around noon, Brianna was already out on her social calls-and she was left entertaining the children after she sent Robert's nanny upstairs to nurse her sniffles. Rachel had been about to venture to the park when she'd received a message from Stewart.

Once inside the building, she greeted the weekend watchman, a wiry former constable with a missing front tooth and eight children to feed. "How are Lara and your children today, Mr. McKinney?" she asked, shifting Mary Elizabeth on her hip, so she could sign the register.

"We enjoyed the fruit pies ye sent us last week, Miss Bailey."

Her gaze skimmed the list and noted Stewart was already upstairs. Johnny wasn't here yet. Upstairs, Rachel greeted Stewart, who was at his desk working over a pile of papers. "I'll only be a moment," she said, taking Elsie and the children to the drafting room in the back. "This is the drafting room," she clarified to the threesome.

She set out paper and charcoal, arranging the sticks in order of size and density. She set out wooden triangles, squares, and rectangles, explaining each piece as she went along. "All ready now." She handed the children a straight edge. Both looked at her as if she'd grown warts on her nose. "Can you draw a castle?" Rachel asked.

"'Course," Mary Elizabeth scoffed. Her younger cousin wasn't nearly so confident. "I'll show you." She patted young Lord Robert on the back in big-sister fashion as Elsie set him beside her on the stool.

Rachel paused briefly in the doorway. Watching the two children, she felt as if she was looking at a rainbow that had materialized out of a stormy sky. It was as if she had breathed those colors into her lungs, and the entire world seemed a brighter place to be.

Outside, the clouds had darkened over the Thames, and a low grumble vibrated the walls and the floor. The ugly sky had no place in her mood.

"I'll see that she keeps the charcoal to this paper, mum," Elsie reassured her, misinterpreting Rachel's reason for remaining in the room. "They will be fine."

"Thank you, Elsie."

Stewart was waiting for her when she returned to the front. "I thought you might be interested in seeing what I'd found, mum. Unless you want to wait-"

"I'm not that patient, Mr. Stewart." Presenting him with a smile, she held out her palm, and he gave her a sheet of paper.

"Mr. Donally asked me for the list of foundries that supply our steel. I could only guess earlier. It has taken me most of the morning to make sure this is accurate."

The room darkened as clouds gathered across the sky. She held the paper to the lamp and read the list, not quite understanding what it was that excited Stewart.

"D&B has had three break-ins, maybe more that we don't know about," he said, his voice excitable. "Nothing of value ever seems to be missing."

"Yet, entire files on our northern sites have disappeared." Her gaze returned to the list of foundries.

"Six foundries supply our steel at any given project. This one"-Stewart pointed to the third name from the bottom-"is a subsidiary of Ore Industries in Wales. Lord Devonshire's domain. The family owns that foundry, mum."

Her gaze paused as her mouth went dry. "Ryan must already know about this."

"I believe that is why he asked for this list, mum. But you see, he stopped all orders from that foundry in May, so I went back through our accounting records. Records not stored in the vaults, at least not until I move them down at the end of the year. Do you know where the last shipment from Wales went?"

"The Forth site in Scotland," Rachel answered.

"Exactly."

"When brittle fracturing problems are not discovered in time, people die," she said, appalled that even his lordship might knowingly hide information of that magnitude. "Someone at the foundry must have discovered the problem. And chose to say nothing."

The implication sent a chill down her spine.

Ryan would ultimately be held accountable if people died. They all would as board members. Maybe even prosecuted. It had happened before to companies accused of negligence where structures had failed and people died.

Stewart retrieved the list. "An accident of any magnitude would be like a tsunami rolling down the chain, crushing every firm involved," Stewart said, having already grasped the implication. "Which would explain Lord Devonshire's pressing interest for a merger with D&B. Our failure would percolate directly into Ore Industries' shares."