And then Joy was smiling sunnily up at her-she was so like Anna, even in her smiles. "Aunt Emmy," she said, "may I be your bridesmaid? I am seven and a half years old."

Emily laughed and touched the child's hair.

It had been a difficult evening. Agnes and William had stayed, toasts had been drunk at dinner, everyone had gathered in the drawing room afterward for conversation and cards and music-Constance and Charlotte and Doris played the pianoforte, William and Jeremiah sang. The tea tray was ordered later than usual and they all went to bed late.

But none of them had known quite if they should be sober and solemn out of respect for Ashley or bright and merry in celebration of the betrothal they had toasted at dinner. The only one of them who was unashamedly cheerful all through the evening-he had even suggested that the carpet be rolled back for dancing-was Ashley.

Luke had said quite firmly that the carpet would stay where it was.

They had all had quite enough of dancing the evening before. And of course they were all rather tired after the evening before, and thus it was more difficult to keep up their spirits. At last, an hour after Agnes and William had left for home, the dowager duchess got to her feet and the rest of the party took her doing so as the signal to go to bed.

Emily changed into her nightgown without assistance and brushed out her hair and was thankful that the day was finally at an end. It had been an unbearably eventful day, and the evening had been almost intolerable. Everyone talking. Everyone focusing on her, expecting her to listen and understand. She had been unable to leave early, to relax into her own solitude as she had longed to do. Her eyes achedfrom such intent watching. And one foolishly insignificant fact had dominated her thinking all evening: She still did not know his name. She was to be his bride in two or three months' time, yet she did not know his name. The thought struck her as funny, and she laughed softly. It did not matter anyway. She could never speak his name.

He knew hers. It was almost all he knew of her. Another foolish, insignificant thought.

She was tired. She remembered suddenly that she had not slept at all last night and had snatched only perhaps an hour's rest this afternoon between tea and dinner. She was very tired, but she was not sleepy at all. There was a difference, she thought, wandering from her dressing room into her darkened bedchamber and standing before the window, still absently brushing her hair.

She did not believe she would sleep even if she lay down. She was betrothed, she thought, trying to feel different. She was going to be married. There were going to be form and purpose to her life. A totally new direction. Even her home and her companions would change. She would spend her days with his mother and his younger brothers and sisters. And with him.

He was going to have paper and pens and ink set in each room.

Without them she could not hope to communicate in the simplest ways with all those strangers.

He was a stranger too, she thought. And she would never be able to communicate with him. He would never know her. Such intimacy but no communication, because words- even if she could speak or write them-could never explain her world to him.

She rested one bent knee on the window seat. It was a lovely night, bright with moonlight and starlight. It was a tempting night, one that beckoned her. How lovely it would be to throw on a dress and a cloak and to slip outside to wander. Down across the lawn, along by the river. But it could not be done. She had made the decision. She had no promised herself this morning. He would never understand a wife who wandered outside alone at night. If she were to, he would soon be echoing Luke's words, but in all seriousness. He would be calling her a witch.

Emily sighed. Her new life was not going to be easy. But it was one she had chosen deliberately.

She longed for it to begin. She looked back involuntarily at her bed.

She wanted that too. It was strange how her body had come to crave it during the past couple of years or so, even while her head had been unable to fix upon any man-until now-and her heart had been faithful to an impossibility. Her body wanted to know...

She lifted her shoulders and turned her eyes back toward the window and the shadowed lawns and trees beyond it. How she yearned to go out there, to wander quietly, not doing anything in particular. Merely being. That was the heart of the difference, she thought. In her world she had learned to be. Other people seemed to gain their sense of identity and worth from doing. They pitied her idleness, believing it denoted emptiness, boredom. But now she had chosen to enter the world of doing.

She wondered if it would disappear with time and perseverance, this yearning to be free, to be a part of everything that was natural and beautiful and timelessly turning with the days and the seasons.

And then her brush stilled against her head and she leaned forward, her lips parting.

He was not strolling. He was not out there with any thought of enjoying his surroundings or of merely taking the air before retiring to bed. He was hurrying with purposeful strides, his head down. He looked almost as if he thought himself pursued, though he did not look back either.

He looked haunted.

He was going to the falls. Of course he was going there. He was close to breaking. All last evening, all today, his smiles, his laughter, his gaiety had scandalized some of the family and aroused the pity of others.

"How very brave the poor boy is being, Theo," she had seen Aunt Marjorie, Lady Sterne, say to Lord Quinn.

Emily had known that the gaiety had been no more than skin-deep.

She had known that the company of his family had not helped him at all but had possibly had the opposite effect. She had known that he was close to breaking and that he might very well break.

She could not help him. She leaned forward until her forehead was against the glass of the window, and closed her eyes. Ashley. Ashley, I cannot help you.

But she would not believe it. Nothing had really changed. She was here and he was here. She could still listen to him. And he could still talk to her. Luke had come back to Anna's sitting room this morning, pale and weary, and said that he had tried to talk to Ashley, had tried to assure him that there were love and healing to be had at Bowden for the taking, but that he was not sure he had accomplished anything. Ashley had built a wall about himself.

Luke had talkedto Ashley. Perhaps what Ashley really needed, as he had more than seven years ago, was someone to listen. Someone who could not give him verbal consolation or advice. Someone like herself.

Perhaps he would talk to her if they could be together at the falls again, as they had so often used to be. As they had been this morning.

Perhaps he would feel some of the old magic return. Perhaps some of the burden could be lifted from his soul. Perhaps he could be saved from breaking apart.

She had been like a dear sister to him, he had said just this afternoon.

His words had hurt. They still hurt. He had been so much more to her than a brother. But her feelings did not matter. Besides, she could be no more to him any longer than a sister. And perhaps a friend.

But was she fooling herself? She kept her eyes closed and looked honestly at the question. Could she go to him there, break the promise she had made to herself just this morning, and not be deeply hurt herself? Would she be going only for her own sake? Because she wanted to go to him?

But she did not matter, she thought. It was Ashley who was hurting.

Even though she would allow her feelings for him to make no difference in her life from now on, she was never going to deny to her inmost self that he mattered to her more than anyone or anything else in her life-herself included. If she was hurt, it did not matter. She would heal, as she had healed before. And his pain was so much worse than her own.

She wanted to go to him, she decided, because he needed her. If she was mistaken, if he spurned her, then she would bear the humiliation.

But she did not believe she was wrong. There had always been an extra sense where Ashley was concerned-almost as if it had been given her in place of the sense of hearing. She knewthat he needed her.

And so promises and propriety and common sense and the very real possibility of being hurt mattered not one iota. Lord Powell, her betrothal, were forgotten.

Ashley needed her.

She was hurrying after him, the direction he had gone, less than ten minutes later, having donned a dress and a warm cloak. She was wearing shoes against the chill of the night, and had tied her hair back with a ribbon at the nape of her neck.

He stood for a while on the flat rock, looking down into the almost black water beneath his feet as it spilled and bubbled over the stony basin of the steep descent. He was enclosed by trees and night and the rushing sound of water. He breathed deeply and remembered how he had always been able to come here and feel that he had left the world and its cares behind. But his cares had been insignificant things in those days.

Even so it was good to be alone. He had been alone in his bedchamber, of course, but it was not the same. He had felt surrounded by people, by family, by those who cared for him. He had felt suffocated by them. It had been a mistake to imagine that people would be able to help him. Least of all his family.

He had felt the depth of Luke's love this morning and it had weighed heavily on his heart and his conscience. He had felt the love and concern of all of them. He had been unable to reach out and wrap it about himself. It had felt more like a heavy burden pressing down on him, stifling him.

But how could he feel otherwise? How could he take comfort from his family when his wife and Thomas had died and he had not been there? And when he had wished a hundred times for their deaths? No.

No, that was not true. He shook his head from side to side, denying the terrible thought. He had never wished for Thomas's death.

Never. He must never burden himself with that untruth. And never seriously for Alice's either.

But he had not come here to be plagued by memories or by guilt, he thought, closing his eyes, listening to the soothing sound of the water, trying to let it seep into his soul. He had come here for an hour's forgetfulness. He wanted to be able to go back to the house later to sleep.

If only he could sleep.

He had been wildly, passionately in love with Alice. As she "had been with him. Two strangers, who had mistaken an initial attraction for love. He had loved her because she had nursed him through a lengthy illness. She had loved him because he had needed her nursing. It had been almost inevitable. Neither could be blamed, perhaps.

And she had married him for another reason too-one he had discovered twenty-four hours after their wedding. After a difficult and disappointing wedding night. The passion with which his bride had responded to his kisses had changed to panic as soon as his hands touched her body and to-it still made him shudder to remember- to revulsion as he entered her. He had finished the consummation quickly, unsatisfactorily.

And she had not been a virgin bride.

Her lover, she had told him when confronted the next morning, had been left behind in England. She had even told Ashley his name-Sir Henry Verney, a neighbor, her brother's closest friend. And yes, she loved him still. She would always love him. Always. The fierce, almost fanatical, light in her eyes had left Ashley in no doubt of the truth of her words.

Ashley had been left wondering exactly why she had married him and exactly how he was to make anything of this marriage.

She had answered the first question, though he had not put it into words. He had reminded her of her lover, she had told him with bitter defiance. She had thought he looked a little like him. She had been mistaken-dreadfully mistaken. He had not feltlike the lover, Ashley understood her to have meant.

Love had died an instant death on both sides.

It was the only time they had been together as man and wife, he and Alice. Though fidelity to Verney was certainly not her reason, or chastity its result. She had taken lovers and not even tried to hide her infidelities from him, though she had been otherwise discreet. He had tried to reason with her, to persuade her to give their marriage a chance, since they were bound to it for life. But she had hated him with a passion equal to the love she had shown him before their marriage, perhaps because she had realized too late that her lost lover could not be re-created in him. He asked why she had not married Verney. Perhaps he was married already? She had refused to answer his question.

He had thought she was with a lover on the night she died. She had given her usual lame excuse, which she never even expected him to believe-she and Thomas were to visit her friend, Mrs. Lucaster, overnight. And she had left the house before he did. But inexplicably both she and Thomas had been at home when...

And yes, numerous times he had wished her dead. He had imagined the enormous relief he would feel to be free of her.

Ashley laughed harshly.

And then he turned his head sharply, some instinct warning him that he was no longer alone. Devil take it, but he did not want company.

He had come here to be alone.

Emily was standing at the foot of the rocks, looking up at him. She was wearing a long dark cloak. All he could really see of her was her face and her fair hair, falling in thick waves down her back from the ribbon that confined it at her neck.

Emmy. Part of him leapt with hope and with gladness. But the saner part of him knew that she was the last person he wanted to see at this moment. He was not in a mellow mood. However, there was little point in saying anything. In the darkness and at this distance it was unlikely that she would be able to read his lips.

She came up the rocks toward him, her eyes on him the whole time.

She stood in front of him, close to him, looking at him. She made no attempt to say anything, as she could have done with her eyes and her hands. He knew very well why she had come. It was why she had always come. She had come to listen. She had come to give of herself.

"No, Emmy." He shook his head. "Go back to the house. Go back to bed."

But she touched her fingertips to his chest and then to her own heart. Speak to me. It was a gesture that had been part of their silent language. Not just Talk, but Speak to me; tell me more than facts; open your heart.

"There is nothing to say." He laughed harshly. "You heard it, Emmy. They died and I blame myself. I am filled to the brim with bitterness and self-pity and am no decent company for anyone. Least of all you, on this of all days. The happiest day of your life. Go away."

But she shook her head. She was watching his lips intently. She touched them very briefly before beckoning with her fingers. Speak to me. Tell me. She touched his heart with her fingertips again.

He felt a sudden, shocking, and quite unexpected stabbing of desire.

And realized fully the danger.

"Listen to me, Emmy." Desire converted quickly into anger- annoyance against her dangerous innocence in coming to him alone like this, in the middle of the night; fury against his unwanted response to her. "We are out here alone together, a single man and a single woman in the dead of night. The impropriety of it would be obvious to an imbecile. The danger of it should be apparent even to an innocent like you. Go home while you have the chance."

But being Emmy, she could see beyond his anger. Her eyes, gazing deeply into his, told him so. Let me share it, she begged him without having to use her hands at all. But then she did lift her hands to cup his face gently in her palms. One of her thumbs brushed his lips.

Speak to me. This had never been part of their language. But it was very eloquent.

She was incredibly, foolishly generous, as she had always been. This surely must have been a deliriously happy day for her, and yet she had made room in it for him. This morning and again now. For old times' sake she was offering all her understanding and sympathy. She was offering her deaf ears for his dark secrets. She was offering her ability to probe beyond words. She wanted to soothe his pain.

And all he could do in return was-desire her. He felt himself harden into uncomfortable arousal. He took her hands from his face and held them tightly in the space between them.

"I have no use but one for you tonight, Emmy," he said harshly. "Go away while you may. Go!" And yet he clung, without realizing it, to her hands.

She raised their joined hands and set the backs of his against her cheeks. Emmy. Dangerously innocent or dangerously courageous or both. Feeling his need and not really caring how that need showed itself. Prepared to give all that was needed to comfort him. Prepared to give until there was nothing more to give. Emmy, his savior-the forgetfulness and the peace he had sought single-mindedly since leaving India, not knowing that it was she he sought.

He groped blindly for her mouth with his own, his eyes tightly shut.

Her lips were cool, closed, trembling, pushing back against his. He pressed his tongue urgently against the seam of her lips and she opened to him, so that he tasted all the warmth and moistness and sweetness of the inside of her mouth. He withdrew his tongue and thrust deeply inward again. Desire was one strong, insistent pulse in him.

He was still gripping her hands. He had lowered them from her cheeks and was using them to keep the rest of their bodies from touching. He raised his head.

" 'Tis your ruin you have come to tonight, Emmy," he said. " 'Tis the only use I have for you. Go away. Leave me." He felt unfamiliar and unexpected tears spill down one cheek and then the other.

She removed her hands from his, but even as he felt a mingling of panic and relief, expecting that she would turn and bound away down the rocks, she stepped closer and set her arms around his waist.

She leaned lightly against him, turning her head to rest one side of it against his shoulder. He could feel all the warmth of her generosity.

All her incredible foolishness. He wondered if she fully understood.

He drew a deep breath and wrapped his arms about her. He shuddered.

"Damn you," he said, lowering his face to her hair. "Damn you, Emmy. Damn you." He knew she could not hear him. He swallowed-and swallowed again.

And then he had a hand beneath her chin, lifting her face so that she would see his lips. So that there would be no doubt of her knowing.

"If you wish to give me comfort tonight, Emmy," he said, "it must be as a woman. My need for you tonight is physical." He took her hand in his, turned it palm out, and brought it against the front of his breeches, beneath his cloak. He was trying desperately to shock her. Her eyes widened, but there was no real alarm in them. "Go now. Go while you still can. While I can still allow you to leave."

With all his mind he willed her to go. With his eyes he begged her to stay. She heard only what his eyes had to say. And she had come to give-whatever he needed. He knew that and did not have the strength to reject her gift.

He scooped her up into his arms suddenly and strode downward with her. Part of him-the cold, rational, intellectual part-could still not believe that this was going to happen, that one of them would not impose sanity on a dangerous situation before it was too late. But his body burned for hers, with blind instinct he yearned for her.

He set her down on her feet on the grassy bank beside the river, removed his cloak and spread it on the ground, removed her cloak, and laid her down.

"Emmy." He came down beside her, leaned over her, brushed his lips lightly over hers, touched a warm, firm breast through her dress, and tried to tell himself that it was still not too late. But it was. It was far too late. He lifted her loose dress with both hands, and her shift with it, then she raised her arms so that with one motion he could remove the garments entirely. He dropped them above her head. She was wearing nothing else; she had kicked off her shoes when he had laid her down. Ah, rash, innocent Emmy.

He made love to her with urgent, ungentle hands and lips, touching, stroking, pressing, sucking. She touched him with warm, gentle hands and made strange low sounds in her throat. He had no time to undress. Need was a pulse that drowned out even the sound of the falls, and a pain that drove him onward to release and oblivion and obliterated conscience. He undid the front of his breeches, his fingers fumbling with the buttons.

He tried to mount her slowly. She was slick with wetness, but the passage was tight and virgin. He felt the barrier. He felt it stretch and thought it would never give and release her from pain. But then it was gone, and he eased his full length inside her. He could hear someone sobbing. Himself. She was crooning to him with unknowing sounds.

He waited in an agony of patience, giving her time to adjust to the hard and painful invasion of her body. He had his hands spread beneath her in an unconscious attempt to cushion her against the hardness of the ground. His face was buried in her hair, which had come loose from its ribbon.

He tried to take her slowly, but she had lifted her legs and wrapped them about his own, and pivoted her hips, so that his pain was enclosed in a cradle of soft, warm womanhood. He drove into her, far too deeply, far too fiercely, half aware that this was all wrong. It was all give on her side, gentle, generous giving, and all take on his side, harsh, selfish taking.

But she gave.

And he took.