There was a great temptation to say yes, but Beth did not want him to leave and quailed to think what such an answer might do to their fragile relationship.

"Of course not," she said, holding out a hand to him. "I... I just did not expect you so early. You have been out late these last few nights."

He relaxed and smiled again as he came to sit beside her. "Am I to be under the cat's paw? I might like it, I think. Truly, I thought you needed a break from my company."

He seemed so honest. She wished she could believe him. "Of course I didn't," she said. "I've missed you."

He didn't move. There was no significant change in his expression and yet something altered. Something took her breath away. He gently took the empty gla.s.s from her hand. "Have you? You may be right, then, about eliminating our anxiety. I thought you'd taken me in dislike again."

Beth felt her heart hammering in her chest, a warmth spreading through her body. He raised her hand and kissed it, his lips soft and warm against her fingers. She watched his lowered head breathlessly as he turned her hand and pressed a kiss into her sensitive palm.

"Oh."

It was a meaningless little exhalation on her part. She had to breathe sooner or later. He looked up, and she had the impression fire danced in his eyes. His cheeks were beautifully touched with color.

He pulled her gently and she swayed into his arms. "I should have seduced you that morning, shouldn't I have, my little radical?" he said softly.

Beth remembered. "Yes, I think you should."

He buried his face in her curls and she felt his lips at her neck. Her hands sought him but found, unsatisfactorily, the fabric of his jacket.

"Lucien," she said. "You have too many clothes on."

He choked with helpless laughter against her shoulder and then pushed back slightly to look at her "Of course I have. It would have been a trifle brash, though to have come in my night robe, wouldn't it?"

"Would it? You weren't ashamed of your banjan before."

"But then," he said, "I was fairly sure I wouldn't be your lover. Now, my wonderful angel-light, I'm fairly sure I will."

There was the slightest question in the last phrase and, by way of answer, Beth raised a hand to touch his face. So that quotation hadn't been an insult. "I am not quite sure I see the logic in that, my lord," she said lightly, over the staccato of her heartbeats and the singing of her nerves.

He turned his head to kiss her palm again. "In my state, you expect logic, dear one?"

"Oh." She understood what he meant. She seemed to be reduced to incoherence herself.

"I think," he said, smiling, "I will see how many times I can make you say, 'oh.'"

She expected to be kissed, but he traced her lips with a delicate finger, leaving them tingling, hungry.

Then he licked his finger and traced them again.

"Ohhh."

He smiled as he slowly unb.u.t.toned her nightgown and slipped his fingers to nestle between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She waited for his hand to move over a breast, rub a nipple as he had that evening; waited in shuddering expectation for that deep, stirring excitement, welcome now.

He leaned forward and sucked softly on her earlobe.

"Ohhhh." It was a long-drawn-out moan.

Then she became aware that his hand had moved and was rubbing b.u.t.terfly soft over her nipple through the silk of her nightgown. A dizzy hunger surged in her, and she turned her head to meet him in a desperate kiss. His arms around her, pressed to him, she wanted only to eliminate all their clothing and be skin to skin, and more.

When the kiss died and his hot lips trailed down her throat, Beth said, "Oh and oh and oh. Please will you take some clothes off?"

He laughed again, so hard he had to stop kissing her. "You're adorable! What a terrible amount of time we've wasted."

Running a wondering hand through his curls, she asked. "Why did you not seduce me that morning? I was more than half willing."

He captured her hand. "I have never forced a woman," he said softly. "You had so little choice in events that I feared I would have been forcing you then." With a teasing smile he asked, "How willing are you now, my courageous one? Still more than half? Three-quarters? Four-fifths?"

Beth pretended to give the matter deep thought. "Ninety-nine one hundredths," she said at last.

He drew her back into his arms. "I'll have to work on that fragment of doubt, my enchanting schoolmistress...."

Like an icy shock, remembrance of Clarissa, so close, stiffened Beth's muscles.

He frowned in perplexity. "Beth, there's no need to hurry into this," he said, drawing back. "I'm sorry if you feel I've been neglecting you, but I require no price for my presence."

If he left her now, Beth thought, she'd tear the room apart. "Lucien," she said, "stop being so n.o.ble, d.a.m.n you!"

He burst out laughing. "Oh Beth, I do love you."

That shocked her into a semblance of sobriety. "You do?"

He met her eyes calmly. "Yes, I really do. I think I fell in love with you at Hartwell. I've missed our time together these last few days. I've missed your challenging way of looking at things and your wit. You always catch my jokes first time, and often cap them. Do you mind very much being loved by your enslaver, my darling houri?"

Mind? She felt as if she could float away with happiness. "How could I mind? I've been trying to persuade myself for weeks that I don't love you. And failing."

As he took her in his arms again she murmured, "Do you think we can keep it from the duke, though?"

His lips were against hers as he said, "Why?"

"He'll be so pleased with himself."

He laughed even as his mouth came down on hers and the magic started again. With playful hands and velvet lips, he teased and tantalized her into delight but always, a barrier to ecstasy, was the knowledge of Clarissa.

Then Beth had an inspiration. "Lucien!"

"Yes, my darling," he said against her breast.

"Lucien. I want you to make love to me in your bed."

He looked up into her blushing face, his eyes bright with delight. "You are a box of wonders, my angel. What strange fancy do we have here, and where did you find the courage to demand it?"

Beth could only think that in his bedroom they would be four doors away from Clarissa. "Am I not a flaming radical, my dear baboon?"

He laughed and swept her up in his arms, twirling her round and round on the way to the door. "What do you expect, I wonder? It's a perfectly ordinary room, exactly like your own." He stopped with her high in his arms and lowered his head to gently torment one swollen nipple with his teeth. Beth arched and gasped as an aching need filled her.

When he looked at her, she knew her eyes spoke for her, though she was beyond speech. She knew her eyes said, "I need you. Now." His breathing became ragged and his eyes were strangely dark with pa.s.sion.

They were at the door to her bedroom. He hesitated as he considered the situation. "Do you know, delicious wanton, I will either have to put you down or ask you to manage the k.n.o.b. I prefer the latter." He bent slightly and twisted so she could reach it. His lips took the opportunity to brush again across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s so that her fingers trembled as they tried to grasp the k.n.o.b.

As she twisted to reach it, she felt him stiffen.

"What-"

He put her down so abruptly it came close to a drop. Shocked, senses adrift, left leaning against the wall, Beth watched him walk over and pick up a man's tricorne. He turned with it in his hand and stared at her. G.o.d knew what he saw in her face, but it was doubtless guilt. It bleached his fine skin.

"Lucien-"

"No." It was quietly violent.

He walked a few paces, stiffly as if in pain, and picked a crumpled cravat from a chair. When he turned to face her, he had regained a kind of control, brittle and terrible to see. "Part of your new habit, perhaps?" he queried, his eyes like chips of blue gla.s.s.

"You know it isn't." She tried a smile, but fear was icing through her, surely without cause. She would have to tell him about Clarissa. He wouldn't be pleased, but he wouldn't be too angry. Despite reason, instinct was screaming, Danger!

"Of course I know it isn't," he said quite casually, turning and turning the hat in his hands. "Has it all been acting? What a fool you've made of me. It would have worked, too, if it hadn't been for this s.l.u.ttish piece of carelessness. I would never have noticed tonight if your cries were false, if the bladder of blood had been employed." On the last measured, almost judicial, words, his eyes blazed fury and he hurled the hat viciously from him.

"Lucien," cried Beth, too frightened to think straight. "I don't know what you mean."

He strode over to her and grabbed her arms bruisingly. "Stop! Never again. We'll deal together if we must, but there'll be no more lies!" He punctuated the last three words with violent shakes.

"You're hurting me! I haven't lied to you!"

"You are a lie, d.a.m.n you," he shouted and thrust her from him so that she staggered. He gestured towards the hat and the cravat. "Who owned that archaic piece, that rag? A groom, perhaps? Tell me your tastes, madam. I need to know if I'm to serve you as well as he did!"

Revelation flashed upon Beth. She ran forward. "No, Lucien, no! It's not that. I've never loved anyone but you!"

He backhanded her. She was thrown bruisingly against the wall, her brief cry silenced by shock.

After a blank, disbelieving moment he turned sharply away, his hands to his face.

Into the tomblike silence Clarissa burst, wild-eyed, with a candlestick in her hand. She saw Beth on the floor, hand to her throbbing cheek. She screamed, "You beast! You swine!" and went for the marquess swinging.

He was clearly disorientated by shock himself. She landed a crashing blow to his temple before he grabbed the weapon from her and wrapped her in a grip that prevented further a.s.sault.

By that time, Beth had struggled up and run over. "Clarissa, stop it! This doesn't help. Lucien, let her go."

He did so cautiously, and Clarissa fled to Beth's side, partly comforting and partly seeking solace. "I couldn't help but hear, Beth. He hit you!"

"Yes."

Beth and Lucien stared at each other in bleak silence. Could life ever be the same after that explosion of violence? How could she have been so dense not to immediately see what interpretation he was putting on things? Those careless words of so long ago were still coming back to destroy.

He turned away from them, moving slowly as if exhausted, and drained the long-forgotten wine.

"I think some rational conversation is called for," he said at last in a flat voice. "Are you willing to attempt it?"

"Of course," said Beth and seated Clarissa firmly in the straight-backed chair. She herself took a seat on the sofa and wondered if he would join her. She could have wept, and not because of the blow. Where had all that beautiful pa.s.sion gone? Exploded in a brutal moment.

He preferred to stand. He was white-faced and rigid. He took up her towel and absently dabbed at the trickle of blood on his face.

"Who is she?" he asked. "And whose is the hat?"

"This is Clarissa Greystone, Lucien. She came disguised as a boy. I'm giving her refuge from her parents."

He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. When he opened them again, it was to look at Clarissa with dislike. "Oh G.o.d."

Clarissa scowled back at him fiercely.

He turned back to Beth. "Can you forgive me? That was an unpardonable thing to do even if you were-I have no excuse except disordered emotions."

"You have every excuse," said Beth clearly, still rubbing at her throbbing face. She could taste blood where her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek. "If I found evidence you had the White Dove in your bedroom, I would have enjoyed doing much the same thing."

He straightened and frowned. "How did you...? No, let's not be distracted. I have to point out it is not the same thing, Beth. Women have a traditional right to express their grievance on a man's face. For one thing," he said, with a trace of bleak humor, "they can rarely land more than a feeble swat. You are likely to have a bruise there."

"I must practice my technique then," she said pensively, "against the time I need it."

He laughed briefly and looked a little more like himself. He soaked her washcloth in the water bowl and came to look at her face, turning her jaw with gentle fingers. He placed a gentle kiss where it throbbed the worst, then held the cloth over it. "I love you more for your gallantry," he said softly, "but I will never forgive myself for this to my dying day."

Beth took the cloth and held it. It was true she understood and forgave, but she was not sure she could ever feel quite the same about him. The next time he was angry, would she have to fear blows?

"So I would hope," broke in Clarissa shrilly. "Beth, don't let him cajole you. He hit you."

"We know that, Clarissa," said Beth in her best Miss Mallory voice. "I understand your feelings, but I have to point out that you do not understand ours."

Having quelled the girl, Beth filled in the details of Clarissa's situation. By the time she had finished, the marquess had a look of disbelief on his face.

"Beth, there's nothing you can do. Her parents have all the rights. Marriages like this are made every day. People learn to make the best of it."

"That is merely a sign of all that is wrong in the world," said Beth firmly. "Clarissa is not going to marry Lord Deveril against her will."

"Deveril!" he exclaimed, and Beth realized this was the first time she'd identified Clarissa's rich suitor. "That changes matters."

"How?"

"He certainly cannot be allowed to marry any gently born woman. Any woman at all, if it comes to that."

"Then you'll help her?"

He thought. "It's still not easy. We could probably keep her out of Deveril's hands, but there is no way in law of freeing her of her parents. It'll be another beating and another Deveril."

"No one can be as loathsome as Lord Deveril," said Clarissa with a shudder.

"There," said the marquess, "you have a point."

"And if Clarissa escapes," Beth said, "Lord Deveril will merely seek out another victim."

The marquess shook his head. "Am I to spend the rest of my life rescuing innocents from villains? There's a never-ending supply of both."