Verity still pondered the duke's extraordinary parting lines-how could she not?-the next afternoon as she sat in the sunlit garden. The rain that had made her escape so wretched had relented for the moment. She ached all over from her ordeal in the mountains, and she was tired after a troubled night.

Kylemore had been gone all day. Which, she told herself, was a blessing.

What could she say to him? Especially now, when he wanted more than her simple physical surrender. Instead, he wanted everything-her heart, her soul, her body. More than Verity had ever been capable of giving.

He saw too clearly, damn him. Somehow, he comprehended the games she'd played for her sanity's sake.

At fifteen, she'd created a being called Soraya who could commit any sin, break any rule. Verity, the core of who she was, remained as pure and untouched as she'd been when she'd sat in chapel with her Methodist parents.

The fiction was fragile. But it had helped her survive.

Now Kylemore wanted to meld the two halves of her nature into one. More, he wanted her to present that unified whole unconditionally to him.

Was all this just one more twist to his revenge?

If she gave him everything he wanted and he spurned her, he'd destroy her. She knew that in her bones.

His rejection would cut to her soul because she no longer had Soraya to hide behind. She risked her real, vulnerable self.

Her hatred had retreated impossibly far, considering how she'd raged when he'd kidnapped her, dragged her to Scotland, forced himself upon her.

She'd lost Soraya. She'd lost her sustaining resentment against him. She'd lost her longing for freedom.

What was left? She hardly dared to find out.

Somewhere in the last days she'd forgiven him. Perhaps when he'd wept in her arms. Or when he'd listened to her sorry history without judging her.

Or perhaps she'd finally forgiven him during that desolate moment in the kitchen before she'd escaped. The moment she'd admitted he and she shared much more than just carnal passion.

Certainly, by the time he'd been so furiously intent on saving her life yesterday, she hadn't hated him.

How could she hate a man who acted as though, without her, he lost every hope of happiness? For one strange second on that cliff face, she'd recognized that he would have gladly changed places with her if it meant she stayed safe.

Oh, why did she even think about this? Hadn't she wanted him to keep away from her? And at last she'd managed to coax him into a halfhearted agreement to let her go.

But she couldn't forget how he'd looked as he'd left last night.

He'd been a man at the limits of his endurance. She'd seen him in the grip of physical desire, but this was something else, something infinitely more powerful.

Not for the first time, she wondered if they'd end up annihilating each other before this contest played out.

"Och, lassie, it's too bright a day tae look so fashed." Hamish came around the corner of the house.

The giants were nowhere to be seen. Clearly, Kylemore thought he'd vanquished her impulse to run off. Why not? He had.

She managed a smile for the older man. Chasing her fears and doubts around her head was driving her mad. At least company promised distraction.

"It's a strange place, this valley. Yesterday, it was utter misery. Today, it's the Garden of Eden."

Hamish stopped in front of her, his bright eyes considering as they rested on her. She wondered what he saw. Nothing of Soraya, that was sure. His manner was unguarded, and for the first time, he sounded genuinely friendly.

"Aye, it's a country of extremes," he said. "Much like the people born here."

Verity's curiosity got the better of her now that the normally taciturn Scotsman seemed in a mood to chat. "Does that include the Duke of Kylemore?"

Hamish shook his grizzled head. "No, my lady. The heir is always born at the castle further down the coast. Young Kylemore grew up in this glen, though. At least until he was seven and they sent him away tae some Sassenach school tae learn tae be a wee gentleman." Hamish's sarcastic tone indicated what he thought of that plan.

Verity glanced around at the isolated valley. It was an unlikely location to raise one of the kingdom's greatest landowners.

"And you were here then?"

"Aye, I worked for his father, the sixth duke. The Macleishes have always been in service tae the Kinmurries."

"I understand your loyalty to the duke," she said softly.

Hamish looked at her sharply. "I doubt ye do, lassie. I doubt ye do. Justin Kinmurrie is a better man than he lets ye or anybody see."

Once she'd have laughed such a statement to scorn. But recently, the duke hadn't behaved like the unredeemed villain she'd believed him on the road north. And even on that onerous journey, he hadn't been as cruel to her as she was sure he'd intended.

Light and dark battled for supremacy in Kylemore's soul. Occasionally, she was lunatic enough to imagine light might emerge victorious.

Oh, you're a willfully blind fool,she chastised herself.He kidnapped and abused you. Never forget that. Don't make the mistake of imagining just because he saved your life, he's some sort of hero.

She bit her lip. Did she really want to learn more about Kylemore? She was too confused already. Right now, she needed a clear head and a cold heart. A devoted servant's reminiscences about the duke's childhood would only cloud her thinking, remind her that Kylemore was human and not the monster she so desperately wanted him to be.

But Hamish's teasing offer of information lured her. This might be her only chance to answer her questions.

She met the old Scotsman's steady gaze with equally unwavering eyes. "You know him so well," she said.

Was that approval she read in his face? Surely not. A woman who had led the life she had would be anathema to this stern man.

"Aye, that I do. Ever since he was a wee bairn." He gestured to her bench. "May I join ye, my lady?"

She nodded. "Of course."

"Thank you." He took the space next to her and stretched his bare legs under the kilt out to the sun. "I'm not as young as I used tae be."

She didn't say anything, afraid she might discourage confidences. Because confidences were about to flow, she knew.

After a pause, he went on. "I was gey lucky-I've always had work on the estate. Most other crofters werenae so fortunate. They were all tossed off their land when the duke's mother decided more gold lay in sheep than in folk. Families who had served the Kinmurries for centuries were cast away like so much rubbish tae starve or emigrate or find what work they could far from all they knew and loved."

Verity was appalled. "Surely you exaggerate."

"No, lassie," he said sadly. "I wish I did. It's a common story since the lairds started tae cut a dash down south. The clearances were late coming tae Kinmurrie holdings. But when she decided tae act, the duchess was ruthless. Folk tried tae resist but there wasnae anything they could do. And when the troopers shot John Macleish, my nephew, most of us went quietly enough. We couldnae fight the law."

It was a terrible story, more terrible for what Verity suspected Hamish left out-the destruction of a whole way of life. "On the way here, I thought it was odd that we saw no people, just ruined cottages."

"Aye. This happened all over the Highlands," he said with a bitterness he didn't hide.

"Yet you don't blame the duke?" Surely this tragic tale provided her with another sin to heap on Kylemore's head.

"Och, he was but a bairn. He might have inherited the title, but he had nae real power until he reached his majority. The duchess had all the say, and she's no a woman tae put anything ahead of her own selfish wishes."

"But Kylemore continued to profit from what she did."

Hamish stared straight ahead into the misty hills. His expression was distant, as though he relived those tragic events.

"No, he did his best tae make amends. When His Grace took over, he set out tae find everyone he could. But by then, fourteen hard years had passed. Folk died or were lost. Many went across the water tae Nova Scotia. Still, he tracked down those he could and invited them back. Those with new lives, he gave them money tae make up for their trouble."

"Fergus and his family," she said, remembering their fervent and, at the time, inexplicable devotion to Kylemore.

"Aye. Fergus is my brother. Search as ye will, my lady, ye won't find a soul on any Kinmurrie estate tae say a word against His Grace."

Once she mightn't have believed Hamish. But while the last days had revealed a darker, more complex Kylemore, they had also shown her the honorable man hidden inside him too. She had no trouble imagining that honorable man moving heaven and earth to make recompense for the pain his mother had caused.

The duke would abhor them discussing him like this. He wanted her to view him as the impossibly self-assured Cold Kylemore.

But she'd held him in her arms too often. Held him when he'd shuddered with sexual release. Held him when he'd sobbed with misery.

He'd never be that impervious aristocrat to her again. Hamish's revelations only moved that false perfection further out of reach.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

He turned his head and looked at her squarely. "I've watched ye, lassie. I've watched the laddie with ye. I know he's done wrong by ye. I think in his soul, he admits that. But there's good in him, if ye look. And for all his privileges, he's no had an easy life."

"He's rich and handsome enough," Verity said, echoing her brother's dismissive reply when she'd falteringly tried to describe the tormented depths she'd sensed in her lover's soul even then.

"Aye, weel, neither make ye happy. Ask him about his father some time."

She already knew Kylemore had feared his father. She shivered as she recalled him begging his papa to leave him alone. A child's cry in a sleeping man's voice.

"Can't you tell me?"

The older man smiled ruefully down at her. "Och, I've gossiped enough for one day. Too much, folk might think."

Kylemore would certainly agree, but Hamish had only whetted her curiosity.

"The duke has bad dreams," she said abruptly.

Hamish looked unsurprised. "Aye. He's had them since he was a ween." He gave her another of those straight looks, as though he sought some commitment from her. "But ye can help him. If ye feel braw enough tae take the task. And the lassie who climbed Ben Tassoch yesterday is as braw a lassie as any I've ever met." He stood up and stared down at her.

"I was so frightened," she admitted, remembering the raw panic that had threatened to paralyze her throughout her misguided attempt to flee. She hadn't been brave. She'd been utterly terrified.

Hamish's smile didn't fade. "Aye, but ye still did it, my lady." He bowed his head to her, one of the few times she'd seen him show anything like conventional respect for anyone, even the duke. "Good day tae you."

Clearly, he'd tell her nothing more. Troubled, she watched him walk away toward the stables.

Was he right? Did she have the heart to take on Kylemore and the demons that pursued him?

Did she have a heart left at all?

Kylemore's ultimatum last night had demanded a surrender that was already so precariously close.

Her abject surrender had been his goal from the start. She wasn't fool enough to imagine anything else.

Oh, why couldn't she have fallen in love with someone simple and straightforward? Someone who at least promised her a tiny hope of happiness.

She'd never asked much from life. Experience had taught her to make do with what was within reach and never to howl after the moon. She'd be content with kindness and a few shared interests. Companionship. Consideration.

She didn't want a difficult, brilliant, mercurial, tormented man like the Duke of Kylemore.

But she did.

A horrified gasp escaped her, and she staggered to her feet in denial. The devastating truth hammered at her with the grim inevitability of the cold Scottish rain she'd endured in the mountains yesterday.

She'd struggled against this fate since she'd seen a gloriously handsome young man across a London drawing room. Something within her had immediately warned her of danger. But she'd kept her head over the years, difficult as that had sometimes proven.

Until he'd radically altered the game between them.

In London, she'd been able to maintain the detachment that kept her safe. Here in this small house, where Kylemore refused to countenance barriers between them, she couldn't pretend she felt nothing for her lover.

Was this the revenge he'd planned all along? Had he fought to stay in her bed because he'd known that eventually she'd fall victim to love?

Love.

Such a small word for what she felt.

Yet what other word could there be?

She loved the Duke of Kylemore. And that love could only lead to disaster.

Chapter 18.

Kylemore lay awake in the barren little room he'd claimed for himself in this hated house. It wasn't the room he'd used as a boy. Neither pride nor will could make him sleep in that particular chamber: It remained empty and abandoned at the end of the corridor.

Empty, that is, of everything except the screaming ghosts that returned to rupture his slumber.

He'd dream again tonight. He knew it. And in his extremity, he'd find no soft comfort, no warm arms to embrace him, no whispered words of reassurance.

Verity wouldn't come to him. Why would she?

He hadn't seen her since he'd left her to sleep on her own last night. Perhaps it was best if he never saw her again.