"You're not taking this milksop seriously?" Nicholas shook Johnny like a terrier shook a rat.

If Antonia needed proof of the contrast between the two men, she had it now. Johnny dangled from Nicholas's fist in picturesque helplessness. Nicholas looked big and commanding.

Fool that she was, something primitive within her had thrilled to Nicholas's grumpy protectiveness. There was no thrill now. Just boundless irritation at the machinations of masculine vanity.

"Put him down," she snapped.

Johnny looked as though he'd lost a sovereign and found sixpence. He was pale and shaking. She couldn't help noticing he retained his beauty even in devastation.

"Antonia, what is this man to you? You haven't . you haven't sold yourself, have you?"

She gritted her teeth. "You lost the right to ask me that question after you stole me from my father's house, vowing a lifetime of devotion but omitting to mention you had a wife and child already."

"There was no child, it was a lie," he said quickly. "That woman trapped me into marriage."

"What a prize she got for her trouble," Antonia said, not remotely mollified. "Ranelaw, I said put him down."

"I'd like to smash him against the nearest tree," Nicholas said, still in that grim voice.

"You might like to. But you won't," she responded sharply.

She should be terrified of him but strangely she wasn't. He was furiously angry but she knew him well enough to trust that reason would prevail. His was a much less volatile personality than Johnny's. Nor was he as self-absorbed, for all that he lived for selfish pleasure. There was a degree of self-awareness in the Marquess of Ranelaw that shallow Johnny Benton was incapable of achieving.

There was a strained pause. Then with a contemptuous gesture, Nicholas tossed Johnny aside.

"Good God, man, what do you think you're doing?" Johnny stumbled with a clumsiness she knew would chafe his conceit. Panting with outrage, he glared at Nicholas while remaining judiciously out of reach.

She saw so much now that should have been apparent ten years ago. Even as an inexperienced girl, she should have recognized Johnny's lack of backbone and that his principal ambition was to be the perpetual focus of admiration.

She supposed she had noticed. She just hadn't realized how that reflected on the character of the man she convinced herself she loved.

With an injured air, he straightened his clothing. Unfortunately his pouting displeasure made him look like a handsome trout. The glances he cast both her and Nicholas were sulky and childlike. But of course he was childlike. Clearly that hadn't changed either.

Since leaving Johnny Benton, she'd grown up. He'd remained a petulant boy. A pretty boy, she couldn't help acknowledging, studying his face and his graceful body with a jaundiced eye. At least she hadn't deceived herself about his beauty.

"Antonia, I know you still love me . "

She burst into astonished laughter. "Of course I don't still love you."

He stepped closer and grabbed her arms. "It's your pride speaking. Or perhaps your womanly modesty. I can imagine the last years. Your trials are my fault and I'll never again mention what you've been forced to do."

With a savage gesture, Nicholas struck Johnny's hands away from Antonia. "Touch her again, I kill you, whatever she says."

His voice vibrated with fury. She shot him a quelling look. He glared back unrepentant. Actually she was grateful he was here. She'd hate to deal with Johnny alone.

Johnny reacted with wisdom if not gallantry and stepped back. "I'll take you to Devon. We'll be together as we always should have been."

Antonia struggled to overcome a sensation of unreality. "Johnny, it's been ten years."

He raised his hands again, but dropped them the second he encountered Ranelaw's baleful regard. "There hasn't been a moment during those ten years when I haven't loved you. Let's put aside the past. Let me save you from a life of vice and unhappiness."

She smothered another scornful laugh. "You're making a lot of assumptions."

He frowned. "There's no need to lie."

"Damn it, man, she's not your responsibility," Nicholas growled, moving closer to Antonia.

She tried to inject a note of reason. "Johnny, it was better for you to believe I was dead "

"Never," he said fervently.

"Too much time has passed. I'm not the girl you knew."

"She's too bloody good for you. She's always been too bloody good for you," Nicholas interjected.

Antonia glowered at him. "You're not helping."

"I don't intend to." He looked particularly lordly as he surveyed her with arched brows and a contemptuous curl of his lip. "Send the puppy on his way."

"Lord Ranelaw, I protest." Johnny retained his distance. "The lady may have stooped to share her favors but those days are past. I intend to make an honest woman of her."

Reluctantly Antonia dragged her gaze from Nicholas to Johnny. He wasn't a cruel man. He was stupid and self-centered and vain. But Nicholas was right. Somehow, against all the odds, he'd convinced himself he still loved her.

Her voice was gentle and held a trace of sadness for what had once existed between them, however illusory. "Johnny, what you ask is impossible." She sucked in a deep breath. "Nobody can know I'm alive. Think of the scandal if the whole story comes out."

"I want to marry you," Johnny said doggedly. "That will protect you from calumny."

"I don't want to marry you."

"You'd rather endure Ranelaw's sordid caresses? I can't believe that, Antonia. At heart, you're a virtuous woman."

Heat flooded her cheeks. His description struck particularly false when she'd just spent the night in a rake's arms. "Johnny, it's over. It was over when my father told me you were married. Forget me."

"I'll never forget you. I know you still love me."

"I don't," she said with utter conviction.

Years ago, she'd told herself she'd recovered from her infatuation with Johnny's good looks and romantic mien-and it hadn't been much more than that, God forgive her for what she'd done. This encounter proved how right she'd been. When she surveyed him, no trace of attraction stirred.

Compared to Nicholas, he was uncooked clay.

She went on before Johnny objected. "I haven't been living in sin all these years. I found a respectable position with a good family." She swallowed and spoke as seriously as she could. "Johnny, if my identity becomes known, it will hurt the people who offered me shelter after you abandoned me."

She wasn't above emotional blackmail, not if it ensured Johnny's silence. Although he used to be garrulous in drink. Nicholas's encounter with him in the tavern indicated he still was. "I want your word as a gentleman that you'll never divulge you've seen me."

Johnny's face flooded with pique as he glanced from her to Nicholas. "You can't expect me to believe you're out at this hour with a man of Ranelaw's reputation and you're not his mistress. For God's sake, you look like you've just crawled from between his sheets. I'm not so wet behind the ears as I used to be, my lady."

"I'll box your blasted ears if you don't show some respect," Nicholas snarled, moving so close behind her that she felt like a mountain was about to tumble down on her head.

"For a man who claims no interest in the lady, you're mighty proprietorial," Johnny sniped back. It was the closest he'd verged to spirit, if one discounted his recklessness in proposing marriage to a woman he hadn't seen in a decade.

"That's it." Nicholas brushed past Antonia and stalked toward Johnny.

"Stop it, both of you!" Antonia was suddenly sick of the whole farrago. She'd grumbled about the boredom of life as Cassie's dowdy chaperone but right now, that dull existence seemed paradise. "I will not have you fighting like a pair of dogs snapping over a bone. It's degrading."

Both men turned to stare at her in shock. It was as if a cart horse had risen to make a maiden speech in the Commons.

"Antonia?" Johnny asked in bewilderment. Nicholas remained silent but the aggression drained from his expression.

"I don't want to hear any more. I'm leaving. You can murder each other in peace then." She leveled a glare upon her first lover. "Johnny, I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth. Once you've considered your proposal with a modicum of sense, you'll be grateful for my refusal."

She faced Nicholas and some of her angry self-righteousness ebbed. Nonetheless she managed a good imitation of a woman who knew what she wanted. "Lord Ranelaw, I appreciate your escort across the park. I bid you good day."

With a swish of her skirts, she left both men standing. At this moment, she heartily consigned every member of the male sex to Hades.

Chapter Twenty-six.

Ranelaw downed another brandy and just stopped himself flinging the delicate crystal glass into the unlit library grate. The act smacked too much of bloody Benton. The act betrayed too sharply how his belly had cramped with misery when he watched Antonia flounce away to a life sans the wicked Marquess of Ranelaw.

He felt anything but wicked right now. The heartless marquess felt bereft and alone and angry.

Oh, yes, he was angry, with the desperately held anger that kept mortal pain at bay.

Damn Antonia. Damn her, damn her, damn her.

Except the person who suffered the torments of the condemned wasn't the woman who had briefly transformed his life into radiance. It was the selfish, careless rake.

The description rang humiliatingly hollow.

After warning that mongrel Benton to stay away from Antonia, he'd prowled back to his house. To what felt like a thousand hours to fill and not a servant within earshot. He'd planned for Antonia to linger through the day. But she'd left him. Meant to leave him for good, blast her.

This dark, empty room where he'd skulked all day seemed a bitter foretaste of the dark, empty years to come. His hand closed into a fist and he slammed it against the mahogany top of the sideboard, setting the decanters rattling.

Curse the witch. Didn't she realize how precious that sensual delight was? How rare?

He ached for her. His need was throbbing physical pain. The excruciating longing wouldn't subside, no matter how he lambasted Antonia.

The luscious, mysterious Lady Antonia Hilliard, only daughter of the late Earl of Aveson.

When Benton spilled that information, she'd been too flustered to notice the slip. Ranelaw had noticed, and he'd wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.

Why the blazes was a woman from one of the nation's greatest families playing nursemaid to henwit Cassie Demarest?

Even after Antonia's father disowned her, she must have had relatives or friends to turn to. People to ensure her youthful indiscretion didn't stir a whisper of gossip. People to see she took her rightful place in society. That worm Demarest had offered sanctuary, but in return he'd made her his drudge.

Ranelaw didn't keep track of every blue-blooded family. But the Hilliards were famous, inescapable, their history entwined with the nation's since the Norman Conquest. On their vast estates in wild, remote Northumberland, the Hilliards ruled like princes.

No wonder Antonia had refused his proposal. She probably considered him below her touch.

If she'd been a shred less honorable about her disgrace, Antonia Hilliard would be married with a gaggle of children by now. His gorge rose as he imagined her wed to another man, in bed with another man, carrying another man's baby.

The Hilliards were noted for their riches, their pride, and their Nordic good looks. Good God, he should have realized who she was the instant he saw her unusual coloring. Silvery blonds with pale blue eyes marked the line. Her father, a major political figure until his death, had been a striking giant of a man, like an elegant Viking.

Hell, Ranelaw even knew her brother, Henry. They'd been at Oxford together, although the fellow was a year younger. Not that they'd run in the same circles. Young Viscount Maskell, Aveson's heir, had been a studious cove, not a dissolute blade like Ranelaw and his cronies.

The late Lord Aveson was a martinet and Ranelaw could easily imagine the old man banishing the girl without a moment's hesitation. But Henry, Henry had been a different sort. Gentle, tolerant, an independent thinker. A man with a scholar's open curiosity, not a tyrant's urge for control. It seemed uncharacteristic of him to consign his only sister to almost certain degradation.

Ranelaw's secretary entered with the post. The staff had returned about an hour ago. The man bowed, obviously surprised to find his employer lurking in the gloom, but he knew better than to comment. After the fellow left, Ranelaw wandered across to the desk and lit a lamp. The usual thick packets from his various estates. Once he'd learned to live with his failed pursuit of Antonia, he might muster interest to open them.

A handful of invitations he didn't bother reading.

A letter from Ireland.

His hand closed hard on the paper. He couldn't face Eloise's lying attempts to assuage his conscience. Not tonight.

With bleak clarity, he surveyed his life. Antonia was lost to him. He couldn't lure her back. Not unless he sparked a scandal that destroyed her. Not unless he risked the bond they'd forged through their long night together.

He'd always considered himself a ruthless man. He wasn't quite that ruthless.

Antonia had escaped. He must live with that reality, even if his gut clenched in savage denial.

What was left?

Eloise's letter arriving at this precise moment seemed a message from heaven. Or hell.

He'd started this season seeking vengeance. His craving for Antonia had diluted his resolve.

But no longer.

It was time he pursued overdue justice against Godfrey Demarest. He refused to wallow in self-pity because the woman he desired refused him. Nor would he allow a sneaking compassion for Cassandra to restrain him. She was innocent of her father's sins, but she was too perfect an instrument of revenge for Ranelaw to permit her escape.

Antonia hadn't destroyed him with her desertion, she only made him stronger. Even though he'd never spoken the words aloud, he'd made a solemn vow to his sister when her lover betrayed her twenty years ago. He'd wasted weeks pursuing the foolish illusion that one woman might offer something more profound than fleeting physical pleasure. The only truth he believed in now was that Demarest must pay for Eloise's suffering.

Last night in Antonia's arms, Ranelaw had felt remade, renewed, redeemed. Today he realized he was the same miscreant he'd always been. Or at least he would be, once he came to terms with never seeing Antonia again. He would become that callous, driven man or die trying.

That man lived for vengeance. His will was iron. His heart was stone. His determination was unshakable. That man wouldn't care how he damaged Cassandra Demarest or what anguish he caused Antonia Hilliard. He'd promised Eloise recompense and he'd see she got it.

He crushed the letter as if it were his enemy. He was grimly aware what Cassie's seduction would cost him. He'd always known. By destroying Godfrey Demarest through his daughter, he eternally ended all hope of reconciliation with Antonia.

But he had no hope of reconciliation now. He was realist enough to recognize nothing would reunite them. She'd left him. She intended to stay left.

All that remained was his chance to offer his sister some measure of peace.