"Don't you find them oppressive when you visit?"

"I don't visit. I lived here with my father until I was seven. I haven't been back since. Unless I'd needed to stash a troublesome mistress, I wouldn't have returned now." His expression was guarded as usual when she probed his past.

"It's certainly inconvenient." She used a neutral voice.

"It's a hellhole," he said flatly. "And no," he continued when she opened her mouth, "I don't want to discuss it. Let's go back to bed."

Startled to hear him echo her own wanton thoughts, she put down her glass. "We only came downstairs an hour ago."

His black brows lowered in a frown. "Is that a no?"

"No." Then, when the frown darkened, "That's not a no."

He laughed softly, and the deep sound skittered up her spine like hot lightning. He quickly rounded the table to pull out her chair.

"I don't know what I've done to deserve you," he said fervently.

She sent him a level look. "Neither do I. And don't think you can always use sex to distract me."

"Why not? It works."

Smug again, damn him. He was so beguilingly pleased with himself.

But if he thought she'd abandoned her curiosity, he was wrong. Last night, he'd forced her to come to terms with who she was and what she'd done. Her love made her determined to help him conquer his demons in return. If this determination abetted her purely feminine need to learn about the man she loved, so be it.

Something terrible lay buried in his past. He'd never be free until he confronted it.

She was thoughtful as she left the parlor on his arm.

Kylemore crossed his arms behind his head and relaxed against the pillows while he studied Verity. To his drowsy chagrin, she'd just tugged a green day gown over her delicately embroidered chemise. The shift had done nothing to hide the splendors of her body. The dress required him to use a little more imagination.

She sat down at the dressing table and began to brush her long, shining hair. The regular pull and release of the silver brush was sensuously soporific.

His body ached pleasurably in passion's aftermath, and unfamiliar contentment lulled his mind. The afternoon edged toward evening. Outside, rain fell, filling the room with cold, gray light.

He'd always watched her. From the first, when he'd been desperate to have her and her elusiveness had proven so frustrating. But after last night, it was as if she was giving him permission to stare. The pastime would never pall.

A feline smile curved her lush mouth as she caught his eye in the mirror. She knew he couldn't get enough of her, the witch.

She was the most intriguing mixture of sophistication and innocence. Over the last hours, the sophisticate had dominated. But at the height of their pleasure, he'd caught a flash in her eyes that had pierced straight to the soul he'd sworn he didn't possess.

Until now.

In the mirror, she regarded him with the thoughtful expression she'd worn downstairs.

Hell, he should have known she wouldn't forget her damnable questions. Perhaps he should have tried harder to divert her. Unbelievably, given what had just taken place, his body expressed its enthusiasm for the idea.

"Mr. Macleish said I should ask you about your father," she said evenly.

Blazing anger banished his sleepy well-being. He thrust himself up against the bedhead and glared at her with all the hauteur a duke could muster. "Did he, by God?"

"Yes," she said with remarkable calmness, considering his growl. "He wants me to cultivate a better opinion of you."

"I'll have his head on a plate," he muttered.

Hell, he wasn't just furious; he felt betrayed.

Hamish Macleish had witnessed every humiliating moment in a boyhood crammed with shame and pain. Someone bruiting those tribulations as idle gossip wounded him to the marrow.

"He presumes too much on old obligations." He used Cold Kylemore's voice, clipped, frigid, cutting. "As, madam, do you."

In the mirror, he watched the light fade from her shimmering gray eyes. "Yes, Your Grace," she said listlessly and returned to fiddling with her hair.

The formal address stung. It always had. But it smarted more today. He sighed and rose from the bed. Her expression indicated that he was unlikely to coax her back into it any time soon.

"Verity, allow me my secrets. This isn't a matter for frivolous chatter," he said heavily, drawing on his breeches. Obscurely, clothing felt like armor against her attack.

She set her brush down on the table with a sharp click. "I wasn't making frivolous chatter. Your precious secrets give you nightmares. When you scream, you call out for your father."

With jerky movements that indicated temper, she began to wind the thick black hair into a knot. He strode forward and took her busy hands in his. Bending down, he stared at her in the mirror. The slippery strands tumbled into disarray around her shoulders.

"Stop this, Verity."

"I'm trying to do my hair," she said crossly.

"It will wait. Or don't do it at all. I prefer it loose." He released her hands and stroked his palms down the side of her head until he held her face looking straight ahead into the glass. Defiant silver eyes met his.

"Can't we just enjoy what we have?" It was a plea. "We've only just found one another. Don't spoil it."

Her fine dark brows contracted in displeasure. "Soraya was paid to do what she was told, Your Grace. I'm afraid your next mistress is a woman of more independent character."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. "Soraya was no wilting violet either. Your memory plays you false, mo leannan ."

"Stop using those outlandish foreign words to me," she snapped, irritated even further by his humor.

"It's English that's foreign here, mo cridhe ." He bent to kiss her glossy crown.

"As you wish, Your Grace," she said woodenly.

She shook her head, dislodging his grip. He stayed behind her for another moment, then swung away to pace the room.

"Devil take you, you won't play me. Sulk as much as you like, but you won't make me your toy." He wouldn't accept this. His whole life, he'd fought his mother's self-serving machinations. He'd be damned before he accepted similar manipulation from his lover.

"As you wish, Your Grace."

Calmly, she returned to doing her hair. She ignored his request to leave it down. Pleasing him plainly wasn't her priority. The more agitated he became, the more composed she appeared.

The chit meant to provoke. And, damn her, she definitely provoked.

Looking cool and remote, she turned on the stool and faced him when she'd finished pinning up that luxuriant mass. "What is Your Grace's pleasure now?"

It was Soraya's voice and he hated it. He bit back a blistering setdown.

Because he read what she hid beneath her tranquility. And what he saw made his barren heart ache.

God, he'd hurt her. He couldn't bear it.

He'd sworn nothing would hurt her again. He'd sworn that on his life when he'd brought her home from the mountains.

This moment revealed the value of his oath.

To save her from hurt, he'd injure himself, he'd injure others. He'd fight, lie, steal, kill. He'd do anything.

Anything except reveal his shame.

Hell, this wasn't worth it.

Shewasn't worth it.

He snatched up his shirt and tugged it over his head. Then he turned on his heel and marched to the door. Let the baggage pout at not getting her own way. When they were back in London, he'd buy some pretty bauble to soothe the sting.

He stopped on the threshold. Oh, Lord, how he deceived himself.

Soraya would be content with such sops. He could only satisfy Verity with tribute more costly than even the most precious diamond.

Verity wanted his quivering, inadequate, vulnerable soul. And she wanted him on his knees when he offered it.

Damn her. Damn her to hell. He couldn't do this.

But what did his pride matter when he'd made her unhappy?

Nothing. Less than a single speck of dust.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to watch her face while he told her. Once, she'd loathed and despised him. With good reason.

After the miracle that had flowered between them since last night, his courage failed at the prospect of reviving her contempt. Slowly, he moved across to the window and looked through the bars onto the rain-swept glen.

"Madam, I will speak of this once and once only."

His voice was low with the control he exerted. The humiliations he'd endured since his mistress ran away last spring paled in comparison to this bitter moment.

He waited for her to say something, perhaps encourage him to go on. If she called him Your Grace again, he honestly thought he might strike her. But she remained silent, though he felt her gaze trained steadily on his back.

He curled one hand hard against the window frame. "My father, the sixth duke, was a debaucher, a drunkard and an opium addict. The poisons he'd taken since his schooldays gradually but inexorably sent him mad. My mother had him confined in this glen to avoid the scandal of committing him to a lunatic asylum."

He paused for her to make some conventional expression of surprise or dismay or even denial.

She said nothing. Perhaps he'd already shocked her into speechlessness. Worse was to come, he grimly and silently told her.

He wished he didn't need to say more.

He steeled himself to continue. "My father's retinue included Hamish and a twelve-year-old mistress called Lucy. And my infant self. He had some idea snatching the heir would spite my mother." He used the same flat voice. "He never understood his wife. He hated her, but he certainly never understood her."

As though appearance of distance made it so in fact, he spoke quickly, unemotionally. Because, of course, the pain and fear still fed on him. They were close as his own skin.

Closer.

He no longer saw the rain-sodden view outside the window.

Instead, his head filled with the long, dark nights of debasement and imprisonment in this house. Long, dark nights that insidious memory melted into one endless night. He took a deep, shuddering breath, bracing himself to reveal the rest.

"When the mania was upon him-and it grew increasingly more severe-he became violent. Everyone within reach was at risk, but he took a particularly virulent hatred to me. Perhaps because I look so much like my mother. At his worst, he tried to kill me. Several times, he tried to kill himself."

He paused, the memories rising as poisonous as any adder. His voice was bitter as he continued. "He died in Lucy's arms when I was seven. The poor little bitch didn't know that his foul diseases would finish her a year later. After my father's death, my mother sent me to Eton while she evicted most of the tenants to starve or emigrate."

He paused again. Surely, Verity would say something now. Protest, express sympathy. Scoff, even. But the taut silence extended.

And extended.

Perhaps she gloated to see him brought so low. His mother would have relished the moment. She'd made it her lifetime's work to crush his pride and turn him into one of her creatures.

She'd never succeeded. But Verity could destroy him with one word.

Christ, he was so very tired of pretending to be the great Duke of Kylemore. He found a bleak freedom in owning to the truth behind his sham magnificence.

The silence continued.

Christ, what was wrong with her? Why the hell didn't she speak? Surely his pathetic confession deserved some response.

A gust of wind spattered cold rain against the windowpane.

What was the use of hiding? He had to face her. He was no longer the frightened child he'd once been in this glen. Even so, making himself turn tested the limits of his courage.

As he moved, he hardly dared to look at her. What would he find in her face? Contempt? Pity? Triumph?

Or worse, indifference?

Slowly, his eyes traveled up from the trailing green hem of her dress. She hadn't shifted from her dressing stool, and her heavy hairbrush dangled in her lap. Reluctantly, he met her gaze.

And finally, finally, understood her silence.

Disbelievingly, he searched her beautiful face. Her eyes were stark with sorrow, and tears glittered on her cheeks.

"Oh, my dear," she said brokenly. She smiled shakily and held out one trembling hand in his direction.

His lonely, doubting heart opened to the beckoning gesture. He crossed the room in a couple of steps and stumbled to his knees at her side.

"Verity..." he whispered and buried his head in her lap, his arms lashing around her waist. The brush slid to the floor as she bent over him and surrounded him with warmth.