Her voice shook with urgency and her electric reaction to his touch. "Haven't you listened?"

His mouth flattened into a grim line. "I heard everything, madam." He tugged her through the door and toward the staircase. She mustered no will to resist. "I'm not leaving you to go home unprotected."

"But you can't just . " she said helplessly even as her stupid, traitorous heart rejoiced to squeeze another few moments of his presence from this horrible morning.

He still spoke in that stony voice. "It's early. Nobody will see us."

She flinched. He spoke the final words like a whiplash. She wanted to protest, insist she was perfectly fine alone. But she wasn't so strong.

She looked at him, recognizing that he, too, expected her to object to his escort. With a short nod, she stepped forward.

"Thank you."

Ranelaw easily found a hackney. At his side, Antonia remained locked away in impenetrable silence.

He fought the urge to harangue, demand explanations, insist she changed her mind. He'd never proposed marriage in his life. When the one woman he asked to be his wife dismissed his offer in such a cavalier manner, it stung like the devil.

His pride, which had taken such a battering lately, forbade him from pursuing the subject. He'd asked her to stay, as mistress or wife, and she'd refused.

Well, let the hellcat hang.

Except when he glanced surreptitiously at her, trembling beside him in the shabby coach, he didn't want her to suffer. He wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her that everything would be all right.

Whereas of course everything wouldn't be.

Damn, what if he'd planted a child inside her?

He was blackguard enough to wish he had. Perhaps then she wouldn't be so swift to refuse his proposal.

Let her see how it felt to beg him to save her from disgrace.

Except he knew to his bones she wouldn't ask for help. She was the proudest woman alive. She wouldn't humble herself to her lover, however much the lover longed to rescue her.

They approached the park, and she spoke for the first time since leaving his house. "Please stop here. Nobody will question me if I come from this direction."

"I'll see you home," he said stubbornly, even as part of him insisted if the wench was determined on making her own way, he should bloody well let her.

She turned and studied him, her face set and pale in the shadowy depths of her hood. "It's not necessary."

His jaw hardened. "Yes, it is."

"As you wish," she said in a subdued voice.

"It's not as I wish," he snapped back, tightening his hands into fists on his lap.

"I'm sorry," she said almost soundlessly.

To his shock, she took one clenched hand in hers. He'd thought she'd never again touch him willingly. He'd thought his anger defended him against her.

Wrong on both counts.

Before his pride prevented him, he laced his fingers through hers in a desperate grip. Her touch was like balm to his roiling grief.

He couldn't see her face, the hood shaded her features, but he felt her shaking. He supposed it should console him that she seemed as unhappy as he was.

It didn't.

He knocked sharply on the carriage roof. The vehicle stopped with a lurch and he stepped out, still clutching her hand. He tossed a few coins to the driver and headed across the lawns toward Curzon Street.

The air was sharp on his face and birds sang from the thick greenery. London held a touch of freshness before the day's bustle started. He saw a few horses on Rotten Row, too far away to identify riders or for riders to identify him. Nobody was out walking, although there had been a few early hawkers on the street.

Antonia kept her head down. Nobody would connect her with Cassandra Demarest's dowdy chaperone. Even ashen with sorrow, she looked like a sensual angel this morning.

As they approached the side of Hyde Park nearest the Demarest house, her steps slowed with palpable reluctance. Good God, if she was so desperate to stay, why didn't she say so? He wouldn't cavil if she changed her mind.

Opposite the turning to Curzon Street, they paused under a horse chestnut. He longed to accompany her to her door but that was impossible.

She turned to him. He braced for a curt good-bye. But she stared up with a searching glance as if memorizing his every feature.

Hell, this was like being skinned alive. He wanted to tell her to go, to stop eking out the agony. She was so determined that he held no role in her future. Well, why didn't she rush off to start that wonderful new life? Why not go and leave him behind to lick his wounds?

"Kiss me, Nicholas," she whispered.

"Hell's bells, Antonia," he gritted out. He grabbed her shoulders and stifled the urge to shake sense into her. What did she think she was doing? Surely she knew they were meant to be together.

Her eyes glistened with tears. "Please. I love . "

His heart crashed to a halt.

She loved what?

Suspense tightened every muscle. He held his breath.

If she loved him.

After she sucked in a shuddering breath, she continued in a low, ragged voice. "I love the way you kiss me. You kiss me as if the world would end if you stopped. It makes me feel like the most desirable woman in Creation."

Acrid disappointment flooded him. Although of course he didn't want her to love him. Love was a worthless, dangerous emotion. He didn't need anyone's love, particularly that of a woman who intended to walk away without a backward glance.

Plenty of other women had claimed to love him. He'd lost count of the hysterical scenes his lovers had staged, and the tantrums inevitably involved declarations of affection.

Antonia didn't stage hysterical scenes.

And Antonia didn't love him. Damn her.

"Only my kisses make you feel like that?" he asked harshly. "I must be losing my touch."

A faint tinge of color marked her cheekbones. "Well, and the other too." Her smile wasn't convincing. "But I'll have to be satisfied with a kiss."

He wouldn't be satisfied with anything except her capitulation. He'd kiss her, all right. He'd kiss her to show her just what she'd be missing. He'd kiss her until she admitted she was wrong to leave.

He didn't hesitate, not wanting to give her time to reconsider. Swiftly, commandingly, he swept her into his arms and swooped down to capture her mouth.

She gave a soft gasp and he took advantage of her parted lips to slide his tongue inside, to taste her so deeply that her essence leached into his bones.

He'd planned on remaining controlled, on punishing her with pleasure. The moment she arched, flung her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, he was lost.

He should have guessed any attempt to subdue her was useless. His hunger was too intense. He'd played power games from the start and he'd never won. Instead he sank into a perfect, dark velvet world where there was nothing but Antonia and the heat of her body and the demands of her mouth.

How could she relinquish this? It was utter madness.

He closed his eyes, pushed back her hood, and buried his hands in her loose tumble of hair. He kissed her as if she was his source of air and life. He clung as long and hard as he could. At this moment, she was his without question. He wouldn't release her until he must.

Eventually she drew away. Slowly, reluctantly, but definitively.

"No . " He gave no thought to pride.

"I must go," she said in a broken voice. Instead of turning away, she raised her hand to his face and she searched his features with a searing, intense look that made his heart contract with agonized yearning.

"Then go," he said hoarsely, sliding his hands from her body.

This was unbearable. Laughable to think he'd imagined kissing her might gain him some advantage. He felt like a dog kicked in the ribs by its master.

"Good-bye, Nicholas," she whispered, and started to turn away.

"No, not yet." He grabbed her arm.

By God, he wasn't letting her go like this. No man with blood in his veins would. He'd haul her back to his house and lock her away until she admitted she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

The dazed passion in her expression faded and he caught a flash of fear in her eyes. "It's getting late."

"Kiss me again," he said, although he knew she was set on going. He'd never met a woman with such will. He cursed it to Hades even as he reluctantly admired it.

"You know when you kiss me, I can't think. I have to . "

"Antonia?"

The man's voice emerged from another world, so bound up was Ranelaw in this battle.

"What the devil?" He wrenched around to face the familiar figure.

Under his hand, Antonia stood as if turned to marble.

Ranelaw had kept her too long. Or he shouldn't have let her leave his house. She'd been safe there. Here he could do nothing to protect her. The urge to grab his lover and flee across the dew-laden grass was overwhelming.

The interloper didn't glance at Ranelaw. Instead he stared at Antonia as if she were a ghost. The man's voice was strangled. "Antonia, they told me you were dead."

Slowly, as if she approached the block for her beheading, Antonia looked past Ranelaw to the man accosting her.

"Johnny," she said flatly.

Chapter Twenty-five.

A decade since she'd left Johnny Benton, and Antonia recognized him immediately. He wasn't the perfect Adonis of her youth but he was still breathtakingly handsome. He made her heart race, although not with excitement. No, her heart pounded with horror. And a futile anger that after all her stratagems, he found her so easily.

"Antonia . "

Johnny couldn't move beyond repeating her name. He stared at her as if he didn't believe his eyes. He hardly seemed to notice she was in the company of one of the kingdom's most notorious rakes or that she'd obviously spent the night rolling around Nicholas's bed.

The possibility flitted through her numbed mind that she could claim to be a stranger. Johnny hadn't seen her for ten years and he had it on good authority that she was dead.

One glance at his distraught face and she knew the ruse wouldn't serve. Just like him, she hadn't changed much. Especially this morning when he caught her undisguised. She thought with futile longing of her unbecoming wardrobe and her lace cap and above all, her tinted spectacles, abandoned in her bedroom.

She felt trapped in some horrible fantasy. Her fraught parting from Nicholas split her in two. Now she confronted the man who had ruined her.

Johnny still seemed in a trance. His theatricality was so ingrained, she knew his bewilderment was sincere. At seventeen, she'd imagined his dramatic behavior promised a larger life than the conventional one her father planned. Now it just irritated.

He burst into speech. "I saw your brother when I went to Blaydon Park to find you. Lord Aveson said you'd died in France. When I heard that, I thought my life was over. I've spent ten years wanting you back, desperate to make reparations. And when at last I braved a return to my native land, it was too late." He drew an audible breath and spoke with a wonder that made Antonia flinch. "Now here you are, stepping into the dawn like Eos herself."

Johnny's fondness for mythology clearly hadn't waned. She tried to summon words to placate her former lover, to convince him to keep her secret. If he alerted the world that Lady Antonia Hilliard hadn't died scandal-free across the Channel but was alive in London, the damage would spread to the Demarests, then even further to her brother, Henry.

Johnny frowned. "Speak, Antonia. If only to berate."

She swallowed and stepped away from Nicholas, who loomed at her side in bristling silence. "I don't want to berate you," she said wearily.

That was the wrong thing to say. He looked brighter. "Have you forgiven me? Great passion tempted me to great wickedness. If you've forgiven me, perhaps you'll consider my offer."

"Offer?" she said stupidly, wishing herself anywhere but here.

"Yes." To her dismay, he dropped to his knees. "My wife is dead. I'm free to ask what I should have asked ten years ago."

He paused but Antonia was too horrified to interrupt. He continued in a low, urgent voice. "Antonia Hilliard, my beautiful beloved, will you marry me?"

Nicholas made a disgusted sound. "Get up, you bloody fool. You're making a complete ass of yourself."

Johnny looked as though he awoke from a dream. He blinked in confusion and glanced past Antonia to her companion.

"Ranelaw?" He frowned and she realized he'd been so shocked to see her, he hadn't registered whom she was with.

"Yes," Nicholas bit out between his strong white teeth. He strode forward and dragged Johnny upright with such roughness, the slighter man stumbled.

"Don't hurt him," she found herself protesting even as she stifled a distinct desire to kick her former lover. And her current lover as well.