"You look so beautiful tonight," he breathed. He ran his fingers slowly down her arm. "I can't believe you're mine."

She moaned his name in a voice that was barely a whisper.

He kissed her shoulder, molding his hands to her hips. "Let me make love to you."

She did not refuse him. She couldn't say a word. His touch commanded her full attention. She closed her eyes and licked her lips slowly as his smooth mouth nibbled at her nape.

He was too much.

"We need each other, Eden. You need me as much as I need you." Turning her gently to face him, Jack drew her into his arms and kissed her with drugging pa.s.sion. She clung to him, so entranced with the deep, slow glide of his mouth on hers that she barely noticed him backing her toward the luxurious striped satin chaise over by the white fireplace.

The next thing she knew, he was easing her down onto it, and she was trembling as he cupped her breast through her bodice. Her body felt so tender all over, her skin acutely sensitized. She writhed with his caress.

"Jack."

"Come, Eden, this has gone on long enough. Let's make up, darlin'. You know I love you."

She caressed his face, at a loss; on his knees before her, he turned his head and captured her finger in his mouth. In rising l.u.s.t, she watched him sucking her fingertips, his eyes closed. They glittered with feverish want when he dragged them open again, and turned his attention to the task of loosening her bodice.

She withdrew her fingertip from his wet mouth and leaned forward to kiss him anew, holding his face between her hands. Within moments, his touch ran all over her, clutching her greedily under her gown. His kisses traveled up her thigh as he knelt, worshiping her body-when all of a sudden, a knock sounded at the door.

"Jack! Jack! Are you in there?" It was Trahern's voice. "I need to talk to you! Now!"

He hissed a hot curse against her skin, then lifted his head.

"What?" he yelled back none too gently.

"We've got a problem, Jack."

Eden's heart was pounding. "Oh, dear." She laid her hands on his broad shoulders, pushing him back a small s.p.a.ce. "You'd better go see what it is," she panted.

"Give me a minute!" he called back, then looked at Eden in bitter disappointment. "One of these days-" He shook his head.

She chuckled and tousled his hair, giving him a smile full of smoldering affection.

"Hold that thought," he whispered to her.

"No, husband. I'm going to bed."

"But-"

"I need my beauty sleep," she informed him. "Especially now that I've met my sisters-in-law. I don't want to be the ugly one."

"Never."

"Besides, I don't feel so good." She'd had quite a bit of an unsteady stomach of late. Leave it to her to get seasick once they had come onto dry land.

"Are you all right?"

"Nerves, that's all."

"I could help you relax," he whispered.

"Jack?" Trahern pounded the door again.

"I'm coming! Only not in the sense that I'd hoped," he added under his breath, adjusting his hardness with a pained wince. "Look what you do to me."

Eden arched a brow in the direction of his groin, shot him a pitying smile, and then closed her chamber door.

Jack couldn't say he cared for Trahern's timing, but he soon learned the reason for his urgency. The intrepid lieutenant had taken it upon himself to do some discreet snooping around the Spanish emba.s.sy, and had discovered that the man newly a.s.signed as attache to the amba.s.sador was none other than Manuel de Ruiz, head of the deadly team of a.s.sa.s.sins who had pursued Bolivar to Jack's very doorstep on Jamaica a few short years ago.

"We should have killed them when we had the chance." Trahern poured himself a drink from the liquor cabinet.

"Easier said than done," Jack murmured, declining the whisky as he rested his hands on his waist and stared at the floor, mulling over the news.

Ruiz was a man to be reckoned with, and now it appeared he had moved up the ranks despite having let the Liberator slip through his fingers. Even if Ruiz never found proof that Jack was the Venezuelans' agent in London, the former a.s.sa.s.sin would be keeping an eye on him, Jack could be sure of that.

Well, he did not expect that he could keep his presence hidden from Ruiz, nor did he care to try, for he did not hide from any man. All he could do was to cling to his pretense for being in London, remain vigilant, and in his dealings with his recruits, continue to emphasize the need for secrecy.

Trahern remained for an hour discussing various concerns pertaining to the mission. When he left, Jack checked in on Eden, but she was fast asleep.

d.a.m.n. He let her rest rather than push his luck, and closed her door with a regretful smile.

The next day, he attended to more business, visiting the Exchange with Peter Stockwell to meet with a few of his investors. He was very pleased to see his stock prices climb by twelve percent as word spread about the acquisition of Abraham Gold's company by Knight Enterprises. He accepted bids for the rare tropical hardwoods he had brought from the torrid zone, and gave a nod of approval on the price for the sugar, indigo, rum, and other goods from the West Indies.

Later that night, returning to the hotel a considerably richer man, he took his wife out to the theater.

Robert maintained one of the best-situated boxes in the house, and with Strathmore and Lizzie having bowed out on account of their newborn at home, the theater box held all twelve of them quite comfortably.

As luck would have it, Shakespeare topped the bill of fare and the Dramatis Personae inevitably listed the villain as "Edmund the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Jack let out a disgruntled sigh to read it, shifted in his seat, and tried to comprehend why anyone would want to watch a tragedy, anyway, life being tragic enough as it was. Then again, the performance on stage was hardly the point of a Society night out at the theater. The point, of course, was to see and be seen.

The Knight ladies were up to the task, of course. All looked ravishing. Alec declared that, seated as they were along the railing, they looked like a row of posies planted in a flower box.

"Very droll," Damien's wife, Miranda, had teased him, while their sister gave him a small kick with a slippered toe and told him to behave.

During the silly pantomime on stage, meant to warm up the audience before the main play, everyone was marveling at how easily Eden had learned to tell the twins apart.

"It took me forever," Bel declared. "How did you do it?"

"Simple," Eden said with a grin. "Damien marches; Lucien glides."

Both twins had laughed aloud at that.

Before long, the pantomime players scurried off stage and it was time for King Lear.

The audience quieted down somewhat, but there was still m.u.f.fled noise and plenty of motion throughout the theater as the ladies waved their fans and the men talked about the day's horse races in what they considered m.u.f.fled tones.

Down in the pit with the lower orders, orange girls hawked their wares, so that, every now and then, a piece of orange peel went flying through the air to hit some unsuspecting playgoer in the head, much to the hilarity of the one who had thrown it.

Higher up where the rich kept their boxes, Jack noted the winking lenses of countless opera gla.s.ses trained on the Knight family's box. Oh, yes, they were being watched.

Jack watched Eden watching the stage, sweetly unaware that at this very moment, the whole ton was watching her, pa.s.sing judgment on her-and trying to figure out what to make of him, as well.

He put the watchers out of his mind and instead savored the pleasure of looking at his wife. A true beauty. She looked wonderful in dark blue silk with the double string of pink pearls around her neck that he had brought her just today. He was glad she was feeling better this evening, and wondered when the h.e.l.l she was going to sleep with him again, but just then, the soliloquizing fellow on stage-the villain, of course-spoke a line that grabbed his attention.

" 'Why b.a.s.t.a.r.d?' " poor Edmund demanded from center stage. " 'Wherefore base, when my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and my shape as true as honest madam's issue?' "

Jack and his brothers exchanged a wry glance.

A few of their ladies looked at them and suppressed giggles, but Eden looked shocked.

" 'Why brand they us with base? With baseness? b.a.s.t.a.r.dy? Base?' " Edmund cried as if he could not comprehend it. " 'Base?' "

Jack knew exactly how he felt. Alec put his head down, laughing into his hand. His pregnant wife, Becky, elbowed him.

" 'Who, in the l.u.s.ty stealth of nature, takes more composition, and fierce quality, than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops, got 'tween asleep and awake?' "

"Man's got a point," Damien drawled in a low tone.

" 'Fine word, legitimate!' " Edmund the b.a.s.t.a.r.d kept at it, crossing toward the limelight, so close that Eden with her fine aim could have hit him in the head with an orange peel if she'd had one.

She looked as if she might like to.

" 'Edmund the base shall top th' legitimate,' " the villain declared. " 'I grow, I prosper: Now, G.o.ds, stand up for b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' "

"Bravo, my lad!" Jack stood up and bellowed in a voice made to carry orders out across the waves.

Immediately, his brothers echoed the sentiment, cheering with applause and a piercing whistle of approval.

The whole theater broke into laughter, having been in on the joke for years. After all, the whole town knew who they were; their scandalous history had always been an open secret in London.

The Knight women glanced at their husbands with equal parts doting and exasperation.

Jack looked the audience over for a moment with a wry stare.

"Welcome back, Lord Jack!" somebody yelled from down in the pit, but there was no point in overdoing it.

He sat down with a look of tranquil cynicism, tugging his waistcoat into place. Lucien was still laughing and clapped him on the back.

"Perfect timing, old boy."

"Somebody had to say something," he muttered, then took a swig from his flask.

Eden shook her head at him and smiled.

In the days that followed, Jack was amused to find the invitations pouring in.

It seemed his open acknowledgment of the family scandal had quite disarmed the ton, and now Jack, the prodigal son, was being given the chance to show he wasn't such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, after all.

Funny how fortune and power could make a man's sins seem mere foibles, eccentricities. At any rate, the society that had once shunned him was now offering him the olive branch.

There was a time when he would have s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of their hands, snapped it in two, and thrown it on the ground, but he was not so angry anymore.

Not so full of obstinate pride.

Besides, his darling Eden wanted to belong to their world, and recalling Lord Arthur's advice, Jack deemed it an honor to make her wish come true.

Chapter.

Fifteen.

"You said you wanted to put down roots," Jack murmured as she stared in shock two days later at the house he was proposing to buy.

Eden could not even answer, bedazzled by the dramatic Baroque ceiling mural in the entrance hall: blue sky and great, silvered clouds with Apollo the sun G.o.d driving his chariot across the ceiling. She had a direct view of his mighty steeds' underbellies from where she stood; one could almost hear them snorting.

The mural had a sense of vivid motion, which, when added to the rest of the entrance hall's opulent details, created an almost dizzying sense of grandeur: gilded bannisters, huge splendid door cas.e.m.e.nts, decorated white pilasters, roundels with the bas-relief busts of Greek philosophers peering out like nosy onlookers, painted cherubs everywhere, expanses of gleaming Italian marble, and chandeliers above like sparkling crowns.

The house was being offered to Jack on extraordinary terms as part of the settlement finalizing matters between him and old Abraham Gold. For all its grandeur, it would need a bit of work. Jack had suggested that overseeing the improvements and refurbishing it might be an apt project for Eden while he was gone to Venezuela.

She turned rather dazedly, taking it all in, and was delighted anew by the view out the high, arched windows. The tall, spouting plume of the fountain danced in the center of the ornamental lake. The mile-long drive up to the house wound through two hundred acres of green, rolling landscape sculpted by Capability Brown.

Through the window, presently, she spotted Cousin Amelia strolling with Lieutenant Trahern, and smiled. They had fetched her cousin on the way out to Derbyshire, where the grand house was situated, a few hours from London.

The gallant young lieutenant and her shy cousin had charmed each other from the moment they had met. Now the pair had gone out to view the grounds while Jack and Eden toured the house. When they were done here, Amelia would accompany Eden back to Town for a few days-information that seemed to please Mr. Trahern as much as it pleased the girls.

Eden quite believed a bit of matchmaking was in order.

She had never antic.i.p.ated becoming her cousin's chaperone, but now that she was an old married lady, such was her privilege.

"My lord, my lady," Mr. Gold's land agent addressed them. "If you wish to come this way, I should be very pleased to show you the ballroom. It holds up to four hundred guests..."

Never in her wildest dreams did Eden ever contemplate owning a ballroom, let alone having four hundred friends to invite there. She looked at Jack, who was sauntering along languidly by her side.

"Can we really afford this?" she whispered.

"No worries," he murmured as the agent marched ahead. "I'll just sell off the castle in Ireland."

She gasped. "Don't you dare!"