"I did not, but I can see that you are set on it."

"I am. As to that second illustration, there will be none of that, either."

"With you, you mean."

"What?"

"With you," she repeated. "You cannot dictate that I should never engage in sexual intercourse with another man."

Although West was gratified she was no longer using fornication to describe the intimate activities between men and women, he could not say so without losing the point he meant to make. "Has your thinking on marriage changed?"

"No."

"Then you will not engage in sexual intercourse with any man."

Ria gave this all the consideration she believed it deserved and answered without hesitation. "You mean to be perfectly tiresome about this, don't you?" "And you mean to be deliberately provocative."

The smile she flashed him was rather smug. "Are you certain?"

He could admit to himself that he was certain of nothing where she was concerned, but he would suffer all the tortures of the damned before he'd admit the same to her. "Yes, quite certain. You take fair delight in needling me."

"Perhaps," she said. "But then again, I might only be getting a little of my own back."

"Touche."

The smile she offered him now was faintly rueful. She glanced down at his fingers circling her wrist, then spoke in soft, deliberate accents. "You don't think you're being unreasonable? Whether or not I invite another man to my bed is not something you can decide for me. How can you hope to enforce such a thing? In eight months you will discharge the last of your responsibilities for my welfare, and I will be independent of your influence." She slipped her wrist free of his fingers and teased him with his own words. "You have not developed a tendre for me, have you?"

"No."

"That is good, then. For both of us, I think."

It seemed to him there was but one way of answering, though he was no longer certain of the truth of it.

"Of course."

"Then it is settled."

It wasn't, but he could think of nothing that would make it so. He chose to remind her that he could make his influence felt for the present. "There are still eight months remaining."

"A little less than that now, but I will not refine upon it."

"Naturally," he said dryly. "At the risk of winding you up again, are we done with your questions?"

"Almost. I should like to know if I had the knack of it."

It required a moment for him to understand what she was talking about, and when he did, another moment was required to recover himself. "God's truth, but you say the most astounding things. Do you never temper your tongue, or is your every thought made available to the public?"

She merely regarded him gravely, giving no inkling of the workings of her mind.

"Yes," he said at last. "You had the knack of it."

Ria nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "And at the end... what was it exactly that happened at the-"

West let his head fall back and thump the headboard. He closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath. It occurred to him that he would not be in this position if he had let her drown in the lake twenty years earlier. "Perhaps you regret saving my life," said Ria.

Opening one eye, West regarded her carefully. The suspicion that she could read his mind was finally confirmed. "What happened exactly was that you milked me dry."

This description, both apt and astonishing, made Ria's head snap around. Her eyes were owlishly wide, and her mouth was parted on a quickly snatched breath. She managed to choke out a word. "Milk?"

"That was my seed." He bit off each word with a pause in between for emphasis. "I gave it to the sheets instead of you."

"Then there will be no child."

Sighing heavily, he grabbed the book and opened it. He jabbed his finger at the drawing of the couple on the bed. "This is how a woman is got with child."

Ria was relieved to hear it. "Then it is just the same for us as it is for other animals. I wasn't entirely certain."

"Well, now you can be." He snapped the book closed, almost catching the tip of his finger. This time instead of putting it on the tabletop, he opened the uppermost drawer, dropped it inside, and slammed it shut. When he turned back to Ria, he caught the narrowest glimpse of her smile. "Amused?" he asked.

"Only at your expense."

"Then it is a good thing I can afford it." He pointed to the door. "I swear I will put you out myself if you do not take your leave."

Ria threw off the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She walked around to the other side, found her slippers, and stepped into them, then secured the belt of her robe again. "Good night, Your Grace."

West did not invite her again to address him with more familiarity. He simply nodded and kept his eyes on the direction he meant her to go. When the door closed behind her, he lay back in bed, dragged a pillow across his face, and held it there. His choices seemed clear: he could suffocate himself or die laughing.

West slept late and had breakfast in his room. Finch said nothing about his request for fresh bed linens, but West did not miss the slightly arch look that rose above him in the mirror. After he bathed and dressed, he dismissed Finch and locked the door. From far beneath the bed he retrieved two rolled lengths of canvas and set them on the mattress. He was not satisfied with this hiding place, not with the maids coming soon to put his room in order, and certainly not with Ria inviting herself to visit as the whim struck her. Had she truly taken it in her head to dive under his bed, there was no doubt her curiosity about these items would have caused him considerably more trouble than the damnable book.

He removed the string on one of the canvas cylinders and carefully unrolled it. The colors of the painting were so vibrant as to make him blink. There was the deep sapphire blue of a damask-covered chaise longue and the brilliant metallic gold-and-platinum threads of a woman's hair lying resplendently across its curved back. Rich velvet drapes the color of rubies hung in the background and their heavy folds sweptthe floor. The woman had one slender arm extended toward them as if she might draw them back and let a narrow beam of sunshine enter. It reminded West that there was no source for the light in the room the artist had painted. No lamp. No candles. No fire.

Instead it was the woman herself who was the wellspring of radiance. She was stretched naked along the length of the chaise, one leg raised, an arm flung above her head. Her skin had the luster of mother-of-pearl. Her eyes, slumberously hooded, hinted at the dark glow of polished onyx. Her back was slightly arched, her moist lips parted. The tip of her pink tongue could be seen teasing the ridge of her teeth. Her pale breasts were raised, the nipples puckered. Between her thighs her pubis glistened with the evidence of her arousal and the spendings of the men who had already taken her.

She was not alone in the exotic, jewel-toned room. The artist had placed three men with her. Two stood at the edge of the room with only their naked backs presented to someone studying the painting. The third man stood at the foot of the chaise, his cock rampant, his knees slightly bent as he leaned forward.

In the next moment he would grasp her ankles and pull her toward him, raising her hips just as he fell to his knees. Her long legs would wind around him and he would push himself into her. Hard. Grindingly hard.

West could admire the painting for the artist's talent, but the subject troubled him more than a little. He sat on the edge of the bed and rolled it up, then replaced the string. This was exactly the manner in which he had found it in Beckwith's study, not framed and mounted on the wall-for where could one properly display this art?-but residing in a stand made expressly for the purpose of holding this cylinder upright and a score of others like it. It was no way to store a valued painting, and hairline cracks were already appearing in the brushstrokes. A better method of storage would have been a map drawer, and West wondered what Beckwith would say if he suggested it.

His host of yesterday was probably yet unaware of the things West had taken from his home. With some luck, he would remain in ignorance until they could be returned. It had not been West's intent to remove anything from the private library when he entered it. The idea of actually playing sneaksman and investigating the room occurred to him only after Beckwith made excuses for himself and cut the interview short. Beckwith did not have the manner about him to accomplish the thing smoothly, but West pretended not to notice. He had bided his time, watching the manor from a distance, and observed Beckwith leaving his home on horseback. He had followed for a while, but it was a dangerous and tricky thing to do when he could be so easily spotted. He turned Draco around when he realized that Beckwith's route would take him to Gillhollow. Whether Miss Weaver's Academy was his destination, West could not know, but the man's business in that direction was certainly intriguing.

West had doubled back and patiently waited until nightfall, then let himself into the house and into Beckwith's inner sanctum. Having no clear thought as to what he was looking for, nor for what he might find, West's search was done in the most casual manner, unhurried but thorough, just as the colonel had taught him. He applied mathematical constructs to his work, seeking out the value for the unknown factor that was Beckwith and balancing the equation forming in his mind.

It did not take him long. The desk was a repository for uninteresting documents: letters, bills of sale, estate affairs, inventories, a character for a departing servant. West made short work of sifting through it.

It was when he turned his attention to the bookshelves that he came across Beckwith's rather startling collection of erotic works.

It was not every book that contained such themes. Beckwith also collected the writings of Fielding, Jonson, Swift, Cervantes, and Marlowe. His library was remarkable fee the breadth of the works he had acquired, though West lad to wonder if part of it was to prove that his tastes were not confined only to things beyond the pale.

Choosing books at random, West had come across the Marquis de Sade's La philosophie dans le boudoir. Farther along the same row, he had stumbled upon de Sade's Justine. There were more writings of a similar nature by men less infamous than the marquis but with his same penchant for confusing sexual pleasure with blood sport.

West's final selection of the illustrated volume as the one to take was based on its relative uniqueness and the likelihood that it would not be missed. It was tucked away with other untitled books on the uppermost shelf and seemed an unlikely choice for Beckwith to make unless he was looking for it specifically.

The paintings, however, had been something else again. He had looked at three among a score and determined there was nothing that could be learned from them. As evidence of the artists' talents, they were of middling quality, something he might paint himself if he were so inclined. He could not say with any certainty what made him unwrap the string on the fourth.

The vibrant colors held his attention at first. There was a mysterious light that made the woman's nude body the focal point of the painting and drew his eye to her. She was in a cool and sterile place-a temple, perhaps. The graceful Ionic columns, the polished floor, and something that was probably an altar were all cut from the same green-veined marble. Her wrists were cuffed in gold chains, and she was stretched tautly between two pillars. Behind her was a man wearing nothing but the head of a great horned bull. The artist had rendered this mask with enough detail to show the fierce expression in its drawn mouth and flared nostrils. That the animal's head rested on the naked shoulders of a fully aroused male made the image as powerful as it was obscene. It might have been Hades come for Persephone, the very devil in want of his reluctant bride.

West's eyes strayed back to the woman held between the columns. Her pale, unbound hair was like a beacon of light. The fine strands formed a madonna's halo about her face and made her seem almost at peace with what was to be her fate.

At first glance he thought he was seeing Ria, and he was struck by such an urge for violence that it was painful to rein in. When that haze of blind emotion receded and he was able to think and see more clearly, he realized that he was mistaken. The woman was not Ria, but he knew her nonetheless.

She was India Parr.

The shock of it was a physical thing, pushing West down in the chair behind Beckwith's desk. Miss Parr was easily the best-known actress in London, famed as much for her sense of communicating the absurd as for her beauty. His own acquaintance with her had been brief, limited to the time he saw her on stage at the Drury Lane, then standing in the doorway of her dressing room afterward to witness her cuff South solidly on the chin for interrupting her performance with his ill-timed laughter.

There was gossip circulating in London that Miss Parr had come under the protection of a Lord M-, and the on dit was that she had gone abroad with her lover. Occupied by the problems that Ria served him, he had paid little attention to the particulars of Miss Parr's absence from the theater, not even taking the time to place a wager in the betting books as to the identity of the enigmatic Lord M-.

Now he wondered if he should have learned more about her. Southerton was not far away, but Westdid not want to trouble him with this. It was unlikely that South would appreciate an interruption at the cottage when he was using it as a trysting place with his latest bit of muslin. The bit of muslin would probably not appreciate it, either.

After finding Miss Parr was the centerpiece of one painting, he had to go through all of the others. He only found one more in which she was featured, and he decided he would take it also. These oils were vastly superior to all the others in Beckwith's collection. The artist had not signed his work, but West doubted it was because he did not deem the paintings worthy of a signature. It was an extraordinary talent that had put these brush strokes to canvas. What this master had chosen as his subject, however, suggested a mind that was dangerous with dark humors. It bore consideration that the artist himself was Miss Parr's mystery lover and protector, Lord M-.

West looked around his bedchamber for a better place to stow each of the paintings. He would have to take them to London and show them to the colonel. Blackwood was the person best suited to know what could be done-indeed, if anything should be. The colonel sat at the center of an intricate web that stretched the length and breadth of London and beyond. It brought him information from the palace at St.

James and Holbern's meanest streets, and he filed it all away in his steel trap of a mind. Blackwood's slender, silky threads reached across the channel to Brussels, Calais, and Amsterdam, then were spun out to Paris, Madrid, Rome, even Moscow. It had been several years since West had sent his coded messages from abroad, but he remembered the intricacy of the network and the speed with which the colonel gathered his intelligence.

West wished there was someone else he might depend upon to take the book and paintings to Blackwood. There were no couriers here, however, and this was not a wartime mission. He was not even in the colonel's service at the moment, but was reversing their long-established roles and asking for his assistance. Blackwood had already been helpful in identifying the academy's board of governors as members of the Society of Bishops. West hoped he could depend on more of the same.

The disappearance of Miss Jane Petty was opening Pandora's box.

Ria had schooled herself to be able to face West in the breakfast room. When he did not join them for the meal, she was made more anxious than relieved. It meant that this first encounter of the day would not necessarily be on her terms. It was important to her that she not appear to have any regrets about the previous night. He would pounce on her for those sentiments like a cat on a canary. There was no question in her mind but that he would misinterpret her feelings in that regard. The regrets, from his perspective, would be all about what she had done. It was not likely to occur to him that her regrets were for what she had been unable to encourage him to do, namely, apply himself to the particulars of illustration number two.

Before falling asleep, Ria arrived at the somewhat humbling conclusion that she had not the ways of a temptress and was unlikely to acquire them. She was the headmistress of Miss Weaver's Academy, not a courtesan, and she did not aspire to be the latter. What she wanted was the full experience of being a woman without the trap and trappings of marriage, nor did she want to gain that experience in the bed of just any man. It must be someone whose discretion and manners were above reproach and could be depended upon not to take her to his bed, then name her a whore for being there. When she considered the whole, it seemed rather a lot to expect.

The idea of being done with her virgin state was not one that had been long in her head. Tenley's single-minded pursuit had provided ample opportunity for Ria to be relieved of her virginity if she had been so inclined. In truth, she had not even conceived of such a notion. She had not lacked for partnersduring her first Season, and there had been a proper number of rakes and rogues among them. The duke's watchful eye would not have been enough to keep her safely out of their arms had she been determined to be in them. The fact of it was, she had not been interested.

Ria did not hold West responsible for putting so many contrary thoughts in her head, but she believed he should be made accountable for stirring them. It seemed a certainty that but for his provoking, they would have lain dormant for the length of her life. She might have carried on in blissful ignorance, unaware of her baser needs, and secret yearnings would have remained secret, even from herself. It seemed to Ria that West had shown a certain disregard for her with the reckless use of that wicked smile, then underscored that carelessness with a kiss of the very same nature.

Ria found that if she refined upon it too long, her temper required some outlet. To that end, she plunged knee-deep into the snowbank beside the hedgerow and began preparing her arsenal. "We shall lay siege to a real castle today," she told Will and Caroline. "Do you think you can throw as high as those windows?"

West almost toppled from his stool when the first snowball thumped loudly against the glass. He managed to right himself by grasping the beveled cornice on the armoire, using the toe of his boot to tip the stool back into place. He made certain the canvas rolls were not visible from any angle before he stepped down and approached the window.

The next snowball exploded on the pane directly in front of his face. Even at the risk of taking one on the chin, he threw open the window and leaned out. The children appeared patently horrified. Ria, he thought, was looking rather pleased with herself. If he'd harbored any doubts as to the identity of the one pummeling his window, they were gone now. "Beware!" he called down to them. "I have cauldrons of boiling pitch, and I will be pouring them on you directly."

Will and Caroline swung around to face Ria, their eyes as large a sovereigns. "It is a fib, is it not?" asked Caroline. "There is no poiling bitch."

"Nor boiling pitch, either," Ria told her. She touched the little girl's rosy cheek with her gloved fingertips and erased a dusting of snow. "Come. He has already closed his window and will be upon us more quickly than you can imagine. We need more weapons and a better place to fire them."

Will took charge then and led them to the garden, where the statues and topiary provided protection and the terraced landscape offered opportunity to seize the high ground. In spite of the advantages they had, West managed to sneak up on them from the rear and mount an effective attack.

Caroline was the first to defect. She took up a position behind a scalloped fountain on West's side of the battleground and packed snowballs almost as fast as he could throw them. At first Will ridiculed his sister for abandoning them, but had cause to reconsider when she sent one flying that caught him in the open mouth. After that he hunkered down and applied himself to her demise. That was when Ria realized it was safer for Caroline if Will was allowed to join West's flank. She waved Will's white neckcloth to signal a temporary truce and demanded parley. In exchange for giving up young William, she received as many snowballs as she could carry in her skirt.

Although the outcome was never in doubt, Ria did not surrender until she was lying on her back in a snowdrift with West, Will, and Caroline standing over her. Even then, she capitulated with ill grace.

West held his snowball at the ready and allowed Ria to consider her options. "Even at Waterloo, Napoleon did not force Wellington and Blucher to such a pass as this," he said. "The man knew when toyield."

Will glanced up at West. "I say, it is very bad of you to compare Aunt Maria to Boney. She is a right'un, through and through."

This pronouncement, delivered in tones that lent it importance and sincerity, had the effect of raising Ria's most beatific smile. At the first glimpse of it, West thought he might go down on his knees. He managed to steady himself, but only by the narrowest margin. Maintaining his balance on the stool in his dressing room had been easier. Offering peace, West held out his hand to her.

Without the slightest compunction, she pulled him down, rolling away at the last possible moment to keep him from landing on top of her. He fell on his face in the drift, and the children immediately pounced. Ria saw that he didn't try very hard to fight them off, and when he finally gave in, it was with grave good humor. Yet another thing she could learn from him, she thought. Surrender did not have to be met with resistance.

Will and Caroline ran off in the direction of the kitchen immediately afterward, in want of large mugs of hot chocolate. Ria and West followed more slowly, brushing themselves off as best they could before conceding they required some help from the other to make a good job of it.

"To do what I must do next I will need to return to London," he said without preamble.

Ria's steps faltered, but she recovered quickly. More difficult to manage was the way her spirits plummeted at this news. "Of course."

"It is this business of Miss Petty that takes me away." He did not know if an explanation was required, but he thought he should offer it.

"Yes, I understand. I did not think otherwise."

"Shall I accompany you back to the school?"

"No. Christmas will be upon us soon and more than half of the girls will be leaving for their homes. For the others it will be time away from the classroom. I have not spent Christmas at the manor since Tenley married Margaret. I think I should like to stay this year, if they will have me."

"You will not be uncomfortable?"

"No." Her smile was a trifle lopsided, slightly rueful, but her chin came up, and she managed to infuse her voice with carelessness. "I shall be perfectly credible as one who is missing you. That will make Margaret's mind easy and keep her at my side to offer condolences and more sage advice."

"While Tenley will remain at a distance."

"If he chooses, yes. I do not think he will have occasion to find me without Margaret nearby. I will return to the academy after Boxing Day but before the new year." She turned to him as he opened the door for her. "How soon will you leave?"

"As soon as the roads are passable for the carriage. Even Draco would find the going hard after the snowfall these last two nights." "Then let us hope for a quick thaw, for Miss Petty's sake."

"Yes," he said quietly. "For Petty's sake."

Three days passed before West judged the roads to be in tolerable conditions for traveling. It was not with an eye toward his own comfort that he waited, but to ease the journey for Finch, who suffered a painful attack of gout and could not endure the jouncing and hitching of the carriage for long. Although the valet protested vociferously against the accommodations that were made for him inside the carriage, West would have his way.

They left at daybreak and made frequent stops. West often rode ahead of the carriage, ostensibly to make certain the way was clear, but in truth, to be out of hearing of Finch's pained grumbling and alone with his thoughts.

He had left presents behind for Tenley, Margaret, and the children. It was the first time he had ever made any gift to them, and he was uncertain of the rightness of doing so now. His feelings were not precisely those of a brother, uncle, or even a cousin. He could not say with assurance that he felt anything familial, only that he was not so indifferent toward mem as he used to be. The children, he realized, he liked well enough, especially when they were in Ria's company. They were spirited then, playful and energetic, up to every trick that she would entertain. They laughed easily in her presence, and she in theirs. It was only when he came upon the three of them unexpectedly that she grew more restrained.

West did not dwell on this now. He considered the subtle changes in the way Margaret conducted herself and realized that a thaw was not only a characteristic of the weather. Margaret was no longer so determinedly gracious or affable, rather she had become genuinely so, seeming to find pleasure in his company that was not predicated on his inheritance of the title. Her nerves, while not entirely settled, were stretched less tautly when she comprehended he did not mean to send them packing.

As for Tenley, there was no ignoring the strain between them. Neither of them mentioned it or acknowledged that a second seed had taken root now. West decided he could be tolerant of his brother's temperament, though it would have been easier had Tenley possessed even an inkling of what was darkly comic about their circumstances. That Tenley was put out with him for removing Ria from his path was infinitely more understandable.

He'd left Ria a present also, something that he'd carried with him from London: William Blake's Songs of Experience. The slightly mad, mystic poet appealed to him in a way the romantics did not, but he treasured this particular volume because it had belonged to his mother. On the frontispiece, Blake had penned his name as a favor to the man who had meant for her to have it. West never considered that his own father might have been an admirer of Blake's bold, sometimes violent images, or that he had presented the book to his mother with any thought save to get her in his bed. Gifts like this one were rarely offered in penance of the grievous wrong he had done her, but as inducement that he be allowed to carry on without consequences.