Locating Cassie the next night was simple. In spite of Ranelaw's reputation, he had entree to all the ton gatherings. There were two or three likely possibilities, half a dozen more if those proved unfruitful.

At the third ball he visited, he discovered Cassie ensconced in the Merriweather party. Automatically he sought Antonia, although he was stupid to expect her. She wouldn't risk encountering Benton. Bitter disappointment shafted through him before he reminded himself he'd become impervious to regret.

Ignoring the weight in his heart, Ranelaw forced himself to concentrate on the Demarest chit. He'd spent too long panting after her chaperone.

Unfortunately his magic seemed lacking. Though Cassie granted him two dances, a sign of favor in spite of his neglect, he couldn't get her alone. She was popular with the other debutantes and more so with the unmarried males. The prowling wolf found himself frustrated.

The next two evenings, he met the same difficulties. For God's sake, isolating Cassie hadn't been nearly so troublesome when she'd been under Antonia's watchful eye.

No matter. Both he and Cassie attended the fete champetre that the Sheridans hosted at their mansion on the Thames. The party continued most of the day and was always among the season's most popular events.

Ranelaw arrived at the crowded, happy festivities and quickly ascertained Cassie was present, along with the ubiquitous Merriweathers. His plan today was foolproof and abetted by a well-compensated footman. He might feel like the specter at the feast, but his path was set. He would not deviate from his scheme.

With so many people spread across the substantial grounds, it should be easy to lure the chit away from her friends. His arrangements also offered the added advantage of daylight travel to Hampshire. He was all for making this abduction as convenient as possible. Which spoke volumes for his commitment.

He struggled to no avail to relish the misery Demarest would suffer when he learned his daughter was irreparably ruined. Even for a scoundrel who forsook every principle and lived only for vengeance, compromising Cassie felt more like duty than pleasure.

"Toni?" Cassie skittered down the narrow path, overgrown with stalky camellias. They served Ranelaw's nefarious purposes, making this corner dark and unfrequented. The day was fine and the Sheridans' guests preferred strolling on the lawns or playing silly giggly games in the famous maze.

Ranelaw stepped from behind a tall shrub and grabbed her arm as she threatened to barrel past. "Cassie, she's not here."

The girl stared at him in consternation as the footman Ranelaw had bribed entered the untidy shrubbery behind her. "Your note said she needs to see me. It's urgent."

"I'll take you to her. She doesn't want to be seen." Surreptitiously his hand tightened around her slender arm, although the girl displayed no glimmer of suspicion.

Poor foolish butterfly.

"Is it Mr. Benton?" she asked in a low, urgent voice. "I hope not."

"I'll let Miss Smith tell you," he said in a reassuring voice. He was surprised Cassie was so quick to mention Benton, although he supposed the girl must know about her cousin's scandalous past. He reached into his coat and withdrew a notebook and pencil. "You'll need to tell Mrs. Merriweather you've been called away to a crisis at home." He didn't want to risk someone rescuing the chit before the damage was done.

"Oh, you're right. I'd hate her to worry. She's been so kind."

Cassie's large blue eyes focused on him with a guileless trust that startled a distant yelp of contrition. He ignored his conscience and extended the notebook and pencil.

While Cassie scribbled a short note, he tried to stir some anticipation for what was about to happen. He should be breathless with suspense as his plot poised so near fulfillment.

For four agonizing days, he'd struggled to scotch his turbulent, confused emotions. Eventually thanks to resurgent pride and copious liquor, he'd succeeded. Now he was wrapped inside thick sheets of ice, safely locked in a frigid, gray Arctic where nothing mattered.

He felt nothing.

No guilt. No longing for Antonia. No triumph that his plan succeeded either.

He was some monstrous machine that performed at the twist of a key. He'd operate until someone turned him off. If he'd been capable of satisfaction, he'd welcome his lack of turmoil. The world was much easier to navigate when one became numb to all feeling. He honestly believed he could cut off his hand without a twinge.

"Here." Cassie passed across the notebook. Ranelaw cast his eyes over the message, ripped the page out, folded it, and gave it to the waiting footman.

"For Mrs. Merriweather," he said shortly.

The man bowed and left with impressive swiftness. Considering the coin Ranelaw had poured into his pockets, the fellow should sodding well fly.

"We can't delay." Walking so fast that she had to scurry to keep up, he drew an unresisting Cassie toward the nearby gate. It opened onto a side alley leading between high walls from the street down to the river.

"Poor Toni, it's so unfair," Cassie said breathlessly, as if she addressed someone who gave a damn. "She's sneaking back to Somerset to hide. That vile John Benton should be the one to run away."

"I'm sure," Ranelaw bit out, increasing his already punishing pace. The last thing he wanted was a cozy chat about Antonia Hilliard.

"I wish you'd shoot Mr. Benton," Cassie said, scuttling in his wake.

That attracted even Ranelaw's distracted attention. He came to an abrupt halt and turned toward her. "Pardon?"

Cassie stopped and stared back with a surprisingly hard expression in her fine eyes. "You should shoot Mr. Benton. He acted dishonorably and Toni has nobody else to stand up for her." She paused and frowned. "Apart from me. And I can't challenge a gentleman."

In spite of himself, Ranelaw snorted with dismissive laughter. He opened the gate into the alley. "You're a bloodthirsty creature, aren't you?"

She stood her ground and studied him with a thoughtfulness he didn't appreciate. "I look after the people I love. So does Toni."

"Very commendable," he said dryly, ignoring the pointed comment at the end.

Impatiently he gripped her arm and hauled her toward the street where his coachman waited with a light gig harnessed to his two fastest horses. This was the riskiest part of Ranelaw's plan. In front of the Sheridan mansion, there was a chance someone might see them, but he couldn't turn a carriage in the alley.

Cassie craned her neck, checking the street. "Where's Toni?"

He stepped in front of her to block her view. Or anyone's view of her. "I told you, I'm taking you to her."

The lie emerged so easily that the girl immediately accepted it. He handed Cassie into the carriage, vaulted up beside her and seized the reins. Bob coachman stepped aside and they set off with a clatter of hooves and wheels.

Antonia was in her room packing, when she heard a panicked tattoo on her door.

The interruption didn't surprise her. For four days she'd fielded questions from staff unsettled with news that Antonia had left and Cassie spent what remained of the season with the Merriweathers. The agency servants finished tomorrow. The Somerset staff shut up the house then returned to Bascombe Hailey. Bella remained in London with Cassie.

To ascribe the term packing to her activity was an exaggeration. She stood unmoving in the center of the room while her mind picked and prodded at her gnawing unhappiness. She knew she'd done the right thing, leaving Nicholas. She couldn't be his mistress, and life as his wife would be purgatory. But without him, she felt some essential part of her had been amputated. Ordinary activities required an energy and commitment almost impossible to muster.

Blindly she gazed at her open bag on the floor, but she saw only Nicholas's stark expression as he spent himself inside her. She didn't want this image, any image from that night, etched in her brain. But she had a grim suspicion that while she lived, she'd remember. And while she remembered, she'd hunger.

Whoever waited outside knocked again, so forcefully the doorknob rattled. With a heavy sigh, Antonia dropped the shawl she carried into her bag and trudged to the door. Every second was gray misery. She felt a hundred years old and these constant, trivial interruptions strained her to the limit.

To her astonishment, Bella stood outside, wringing her hands and panting as though she'd run a mile.

"Bella?" she asked in shock. "What are you doing here?"

Bella barged in, bumping Antonia against the wall. "It's Cassie." She stopped, gasping for air. "You have to do something."

Sick panic constricted Antonia's chest. "What is it? Is she sick again?"

Dear God, had Cassie suffered a relapse? The girl's strength had returned so quickly, Antonia occasionally forgot how recently she'd hovered at death's door.

The maid slumped against the armoire. Worried, Antonia rushed to pour her a glass of water. She extended it to Bella, who snatched it and gulped a mouthful.

"What's happened?" Terror chilled her blood.

Bella looked up, her eyes glittering with tears. "He's got her. I don't know who else to tell. There's going to be the most awful to-do. Oh, my poor sweeting."

The glass trembled so violently, Antonia grabbed it. "Who's got her?"

Bella glared at her. That at least hadn't changed. "Who do you think? That ruddy bastard Ranelaw."

After all her longing, the name was an arrow aimed directly at Antonia's shredded heart. Before she thought to conceal her reaction, she retreated a shaky step, a trembling hand pressed to her breasts.

"The Marquess of Ranelaw?" she said hesitantly. "You must be mistaken."

"He's been after her from the start. The filthy brute. Now he's taken her."

Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas, tell me it isn't so.

Immediate certainty weighted her belly, tightened her throat. Of course it was so.

Was this wicked act revenge on her for rejecting him? She hadn't thought him so childish.

Or-what a gullible idiot she was-had he wanted Cassie all along?

"Taken her where?" she stammered.

"Who knows? I waited outside the Sheridans', in case my lamb came to grief." Her eyes sharpened with resentment. "For all that we've had our differences, you watch her like an eagle. But you weren't with her this afternoon so I made sure she was safe."

Cassie hadn't been safe. Another layer of guilt to pile on the layers that already threatened to crush Antonia.

She stared blankly at Bella as she struggled to make sense of this. Did Ranelaw intend to marry Cassie? After proposing to Antonia only days ago? Immediately she stifled a surge of searing agony at the recollection. His proposal had been a ruse. Obviously. Cassie was much more eligible. Rich, young, pretty, untainted by scandal. So far, at least.

But Antonia wasn't convinced he meant marriage to Cassie. Even now. She had a grim intuition that he sought the momentary gratification of a night's passion, never mind the damage he did.

The man she'd first thought Nicholas to be might do this terrible thing. The man who had held her through a dark, passionate night was better than this.

Or so she'd imagined.

What a wealth of pain that admission masked. The enormity of his crime beggared description. She battered back the need to curl into a ball and scream out her confused rage.

Damn you, Nicholas, damn you to hell for a faithless liar.

Two men she'd allowed into her bed. Two men had betrayed her.

Later. Later she'd pick up the bleeding remnants of her heart. She'd always known it was dangerous to allow Nicholas close. Only now did she realize how dangerous.

Traitorous, heinous, contemptible villain.

"Bella, tell me what you saw," she snapped.

The maid immediately responded to the voice of authority. The voice, did she but know it, of Lady Antonia Hilliard. She straightened and looked less likely to collapse. "I was in the street across from the mansion. I saw Lord Ranelaw come out of an alley with Cassie. Before I could do anything, he bundled her into a gig and took off like the devil was after him."

"Perhaps he just invited Cassie for a drive," Antonia said, even as she accepted with bleak certainty that Bella's suspicions must be correct.

"That's not how it seemed to me." Bella didn't sound like the harridan who dogged Antonia's life. She sounded like a woman facing disaster. "What are you going to do?"

The lethargy that had infected Antonia for the last four days vanished. With sudden purpose, she whirled away and rifled through her bag.

Her hand finally alighted on the mahogany case holding her dueling pistols, a gift from her father on her sixteenth birthday. A relic of the days when the earl had been proud of his daughter's spirit and independence. "I'm going to fix this."

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Ranelaw kept the gig traveling too fast through the thick traffic for Cassie to risk jumping out. She remained quiet. His reckless speed as he wove in and out of the other vehicles must make her nervous. The last thing she'd want was to interrupt his concentration and send them both hurtling onto the cobblestones.

When they reached London's outskirts, he maintained the breakneck pace. Something in him responded to the velocity. He had a bizarre fancy that if he went far enough and fast enough, he'd leave his disasters behind.

The idea of flying into nothing was hellishly appealing.

"You're not taking me to Antonia, are you?" Cassie's voice was flat.

"What?"

He kept his eyes on the road although of course he'd heard her, in spite of the wind and the carriage's creaking and the fact that he damned well wanted to postpone this particular conversation as long as possible.

"You're not taking me to Antonia."

She didn't sound like the little airhead he'd danced with. He hated to think of Antonia, but he couldn't help remembering she'd repeatedly told him Cassie was considerably smarter than she pretended.

Too bad. Cassie wasn't as smart as he was. And he was far enough out of London to have her at his mercy. All the brains in the world wouldn't save her now.

He should rejoice. He'd succeeded with such minimal difficulty, he hardly believed it. God couldn't be on his side, not when his purposes were so wicked. Perhaps the devil seized control of his fate.

Nothing new there.

The area was deserted. Fields lay on either side and deep ditches lined the roadside. If Cassie tried to escape, he'd have no trouble catching her.

He drew the carriage to a stop and turned to her, gripping her arm to make sure she didn't do anything stupid. "No, I'm abducting you."

He braced for hysterics. But she didn't tremble under his hand. Instead she fixed him with a steady and remarkably contemptuous gaze. "You want to marry me? Why not just apply to my father? I'm sure he'd listen. You are, after all, from a noble family."

He released a scornful laugh. "Good God, no. I don't want to marry you. I just want to ruin you."

She reacted with a cool curiosity he couldn't help but admire. "Why?"

He frowned. Strangely he hadn't expected he'd have to explain himself. More strangely, the power seemed to have shifted to this astonishingly composed eighteen-year-old girl who regarded him as if he'd just crawled out from under a rock.