"You still are," Dare said crushingly.

"No, Anne and I are the black sheep of this family,"Elizabeth said calmly."At least according to the beau monde."

"Black sheep?"Pilarquestioned, not sure she understood the term in this context.

"Social outcasts,"Elizabeth explained, smiling at her.

"But..." Sebastian looked from one of his brothers to the other, obviously hoping for clarification.

"I was dealing faro in a gambling hell when Dare found me," the Countess of Dare said. "He won me on a hand of cards." Her face was perfectly composed as she told that incredible tale.

"And I..." Anne began, speaking into the sudden silence that had fallen, her eyes again on her husband's face. "My father was a coward whose actions resulted in the death of many good men on thePeninsula .

Ian was almost one of them. Despite that, and despite even--"

"Anne," Ian said softly when the flow of words faltered.

"Despite the fact that he was my guardian, he proposed tome. " she said. It was obvious to them all that was not what she had started to say. "I accepted, of course. We were married inScotland ."

"Do you mean...an elopement?" Sebastian asked, clearly relishing the scandal of that. "fantook you toScotland ? Major Ian Sinclair, the steadiest officer and the finest gentleman in His Majesty's army, spirited his own ward across the Border?"

"The course of true love," Ian said without a trace of embarrassment.

Actually,Pilar decided, he was looking quite pleased with himself.

"By the way," Sebastian said, "there's something I forgot to tell you.Wellington sends his congratulations. Those were given me along with his advice that I should try to emulate you in all things.

I'm fairly certain when he said that he hadn't heard about your elopement."

"So you see,Pilar ," Anne said, ignoring the brotherly teasing, "whatever...unconventional path led Sebastian to you or you to him, none of us are in any position to criticize it. Nor do we have the slightest inclination to do so. I thought you should know."

"Thank you,"Pilar said, wondering what she could possibly say in light of those confessions.

It seemed that the Sinclair brides had created a tradition of unusual courtships. It also seemed that she had been worrying unnecessarily about their husbands' willingness to accept hers.

"Perhaps, given your generosity, I should share something of our courtship," she said, feeling far more willing to do that now. "Sebastian rescued me from the man who murdered my father. In reality, he rescued me more than once, each time at great personal cost to himself."

"And in a fit of gratitude for my many sacrifices," Sebastian said, his voice teasing but his face touched with a slight blush along the cheekbones, "she finally gave in and agreed to marry me."

"No,"Pilar corrected seriously, "I married you because you assured me that was the only way I might safely leaveSpain ."

The silence that fell this time slowly filled with tension. No one broke it until Sebastian said, "But now you've decided to honor those vows because...?"

"Because I love you,"Pilar said readily. "And because Anne has assured me that Sinclair marriages are magical. I have yet to put that to the test, of course."

"Is that a challenge?" Sebastian asked.

"I believe it might be," she agreed.

"Then I believe I accept," he said. He stood, again taking the footman by surprise. "Come, my dear. It's past time you became a Sinclair wife. You will excuse us, won't you?" he asked politely, raising one dark brow in imitation of his oldest brother.

"Of course," the earl said with equal aplomb. "With your recent wounds, we all expected you'd make it an early night."

"I find that I am fatigued as well," his countess said, feigning a graceful yawn behind the tips of her fingers. "Perhaps an early night would not come amiss for us, my love."

"I have never found an early night in your company to be amiss, Elizabeth," Dare said, rising with alacrity. "Ian? Anne?With your kind permission."

"Of course," Ian said.

And almost like Anne's promised magic, in a matter of seconds the dining room had cleared except for Ian and his wife, who still sat across from one another at the table.

"Do you really believe Sinclair marriages are magical?" he asked.

His tone had been as light as Sebastian's, but Anne's, when she answered, was contemplative.

"I believe love is magical. And when two people vow to love forever, despite any and every obstacle that may be thrown into their path--" She stopped, the words a little too abruptly cut off.

After a moment, Ian pushed up from his place and walked around the table to hold out his hand.

Smiling, Anne put her fingers into his.

"Most beloved of wives, this seems a night for making magic. At least my brothers think so. Shall we join them?"

"I have, it seems, more than my deserved share of magic in simply beingyour 'most beloved of wives,'

but I think that your brothers, as much as I hate to admit it, have the right idea."

"If they do," Ian said, returning her smile, "itwill almost certainly be the first time."

"At last," Sebastian said, his lips trailing over her throat.

Despite the long hours they had spent together at the inn, this was the first time she had truly felt as if they were married. There had been something clandestine, almost illicit, about going to the bedchamber Sebastian occupied there.

No one had said or done anything to make her feel she didn't have that right. And as long as Lord Dare had stayed, overseeing his brother's care, he had treated her with every courtesy. Exactly as if shewere his brother's wife and a member of his family.

It had not been the same, however, as having their own suite of rooms.Or having the right to come to them openly and together, as they had done tonight.

"Did you really not know the circumstances of their marriages?" she asked, lifting her hand to touch his cheek.

"I knew only that they'd both married. As for the circumstances..." He shook his head. "I suppose those are not the kind of explanations one includes in letters."

"Still..."

"Must we talk about my brothers?" he asked.

His lips moved lower, trailing along the low neckline of her gown as he talked. She shivered to feel the warmth of his breath feathering against the moisture left on her skin.

"I doubt they are talking about us."

"They might be," she said, leaning back a little to look into his face.

"Would you mind?" he asked.

"Tonight, micorazon ," she said, leaning forward again to press her lips against the scar that marred his cheek, "I shall mind nothing except the dawn."

"Why are you smiling?" he asked, using his thumb to brush a sweat-damped strand of hair away from her cheek.

She lay curved against his body, her own sated and fulfilled in ways she had not dreamed possible. At his question, her lips tilted.

"I knew all about horses," she said.

"Horses?"

"My father's passion, besides my mother and his country, was to produce the finest Barbs in all ofSpain , no small feat, since that is a horse which has been bred there for thousands of years. Since he refused to marry again after my mother's death, he knew I would eventually be his heir. Everything on the estate would one day be my responsibility. He wanted me to be prepared to carry on the bloodlines he had begun."

"So..."

"He made me watch."

"The breeding?"

Although he had attempted to control it, she could hear a hint of shock in his voice. Perhaps no well brought up English girl would have been allowed to do that. Her father, however, had insisted upon it.

And because he had considered it merely another necessary aspect of her education, she had found nothing shocking about the experience. Not even the first time.

Despite her expectations, however, all she knew about the breeding of horses had not prepared her for tonight. The fury with which her father's stallions had mounted his mares bore no resemblance to the slow, deliberate seduction with which her husband had taken her.

"That surprises you," she said, tracing the fullness of his lower lip with her finger.

"I think it intimidates me," he said, smiling at her.

She could feel the movement of his lips beneath the tip of her finger.Another unfamiliar sensation to add to a night that had already been full of them.

"I had thought..." She moved her head a little from side to side, thinking how foolish she had been. "I had prepared myself for something like that."

"And you're disappointed?" he asked, his tone mocking.

"You know I'm not."

He did know. She could see that in his eyes.An arrogance that rivaled his brother's.

In this case, with just cause, she acknowledged.

"Horses mate," he said. "They know nothing of making love."

And that, of course, was what Sebastian had done tonight. Through these long dark hours he had made love to her.

"If you are interested, however, in a more--"

"No," she denied quickly.

"No?" he said, lifting his upper body so that he could look down into her eyes.

Propped on his left elbow, he cupped his right hand under the fullness of her breast. Then he lowered his head, his tongue lightly rimming the nipple until again it began to tighten and then harden, almost aching with pleasure.

She had believed her body so sated it could not possibly respond. Not as it had before. As he began to touch her, however, that same slow heat began to coil, drifting like smokeinto every emptiness she had ever felt. The warmth of its tendrils curled lightly around each nerve.Caressing. Beginning once more that spiraling descent into sheer mindlessness he had created before.

His hand deserted her breast, leaving its worship to his lips and tongue. The callused palm flattened, sliding downward, its roughness slightly abrasive over the smoothness of her skin. Another sensation, one she found as sensual as his lips against her breast.

His hand continued to move.Unhurried.Seemingly without direction.

Sunburned fingers spread to encompass the small, convex rise of her stomach. There where she would carry his children, she realized.

When she did, he would touch her exactly like this.With this love.And with joy.

And to the slow seduction of those physical caresses was added the more powerful aphrodisiac of mental images. Her belly filled with his seed, growing rounder and rounder until even the spread of his long fingers could no longer enclose it.The small rosebud mouth of their child, suckling her breasts as he did now.

With that thought, the waiting tinder of her body caught spark. What was happening within it was no longer smoke, but fire.

Then, as his fingers found the destination she had known they would ultimately seek, flame began to spread like a long, slow fuse through her lower body. Flickering along each quivering nerve and then leaping like wildfire to the next, it ignited everything in its path, gradually building into an uncontrollable conflagration.

Like thePhoenix , feelings she had believed must lie dormant awakened into life. Her pulse began to race and her breathing quickened, anticipating. She, who had learned the lessons of control at the hands of cruelty, was being taught the sweetness of release at the hands of love.

She drew breath, allowing her mind to float on the hot wind that was beginning to soar within the heart of the flame. Her body writhed against the tangled sheets, not to retreat from the demanding pressure of his stroking fingers, but to seek it.

It happened more quickly this time than before.

Her body, it seemed, was learning this new and difficult art.

Or perhaps each time he carried her there, to this place she could never have imagined, her love for him grew. Like the mythical grail, it replenished itself each time something was taken from it, growing stronger and more vital with each use.

If it did, she thought, her hips arching in response to what he was doing, eventually she would die. As then, just as she wondered if this ecstasy had already reached that point, Sebastian shifted his body so that his was over hers.

In a heartbeat, his fingers were replaced by the hard strength of his erection, pushing into her with that same sure, mindless domination of the stallions she had watched as a child. No less powerful.

She flinched away as he filled her beyond the physical limits of what she was, thrusting ever deeper until he touched the very walls of her soul.Claiming them.Making them, too, his own.

This was a man who had fought countless battles. Ruthless in war and in the defense of those he loved.

From the first, she had believed in his strength.In his purpose.In his promises.

And he had never disappointed her. He didn't in this. Almost before she had time to be aware of the pain of his entry, it was only a fading echo. The reality of it, if there had been one, drowned out by the clamor of her senses.

His mouth opened over hers. His tongue mimicked the controlled lift and fall of his hips. His skin slid hot and damp over hers.