And clouted him as hard as she could with the fire iron.

Chapter Five.

Merciful heaven, she'd killed him.

Antonia stared aghast at Lord Ranelaw's loose-limbed form sprawled across the red and blue Turkish rug. The poker she'd swung at his head dropped from nerveless fingers to hit the carpet with a muffled thud.

Bile soured her mouth. Vaguely she realized she should feel remorse, but terror was paramount. A terror that cramped her throat shut and set her swaying with dizziness.

Explaining a live Lord Ranelaw in her bedroom would be difficult enough. How to excuse a dead one? She had no way of hiding the body. She'd have trouble even shifting him.

The blood flowing copiously from his temple stained the rug, she'd never get the betraying marks out. Her heart racing, she whirled toward the washstand. Before she reached it, someone knocked on the door. Antonia's stomach twisted with nausea as she remembered it wasn't locked. If anyone came in, her goose was well and truly cooked. In fact, her goose was completely incinerated.

"Miss Smith, are you all right?" It was Bella, Cassie's middle-aged maid, who slept in the dressing room next to her mistress. "I heard the most almighty thump."

"Bella . " Oh, dear Lord, could this get any worse? She struggled for a cheerful note. She hoped it sounded more convincing to Bella than in her own ears. "I tripped over a chair. Nothing to worry about."

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" The maid, jealous of Antonia's influence on Cassie, would luxuriate in any fall from grace. No way could Antonia ever enlist Bella's sympathies to keep this incident secret. "Would you like me to come in?"

Sweet God, no!

"No." Then because her sharp answer might rouse curiosity, she continued more carefully. "No, thank you. No damage done. Go to bed, Bella. You must be tired after these late nights."

There was a fraught pause. An iron band of suspense tightened around Antonia's chest as she braced for the door to swing open. Then what on earth could she do? She had no money to buy the woman's discretion. And she'd never bring herself to silence Bella permanently with the poker.

Lord Ranelaw was one murder too many.

Her breath hissed in relief when Bella eventually spoke. "If you say so, miss. Good night to you."

"Good night, Bella."

Antonia poised in quivering stillness as she listened to the maid make her way up the corridor to her room. Then, wishing herself anywhere but here, she stared at the disaster lying motionless at her feet.

She'd killed a peer. She could claim self-defense, but who would believe a woman with her history? Given the scandal that threatened, the hangman's noose almost offered blessed escape.

Please don't be dead.

She'd caught him across the face as well as the temple. A long graze marked one slanted cheekbone. Blood dripped sullenly from his wound onto the carpet. Her paralysis shattered. She dashed over to splash water into a bowl and grab a washcloth. Breathlessly she dropped to her knees beside Ranelaw.

So desperately she'd wished to banish him from her world where he caused nothing but chaos. Now it looked likely she'd never hear another of his sardonic responses or shiver with unwilling awareness when he laughed.

She struggled against suffocating panic. She hadn't hit him that hard. But when she was a girl, a branch had struck the temple of a workman in Blaydon Park's orchard and he'd died instantly.

Ranelaw's face was pale, severe. The provoking glint in his eyes usually distracted attention from his elegant bone structure. Unconscious, he looked surprisingly ascetic. Like a knight carved on a monument, not a man whose name was a byword for vice.

Please, don't let him need a monument anytime soon.

The dreadful truth hammered at her heart. She didn't want him lying dead. He made her life difficult, he threatened disaster to Cassie. But the world, her world, would be poorer without him.

She wet the cloth and pressed it to his wound. Her hands shook uncontrollably and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip to stave off frightened tears. His skin was warm. Surely if he was dead, he'd be cold as stone.

Don't die.

She wasn't aware she spoke the words over and over like a litany until he groaned and stirred, and she faltered into silence.

He became terrifyingly still once more. Had she imagined that brief sign of life? His thick black lashes lay unmoving on his cheeks. At least her agitation had exaggerated the blood. It was only a sluggish dribble. She raised one hand to brush moisture from her cheeks.

"Ranelaw? Speak to me."

Nothing.

She injected a stronger note into her voice and his Christian name slipped out before she realized. "Nicholas? Nicholas, please, please wake up."

His face was white as paper, apart from the shocking red weal. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She wouldn't let him be dead. And not just because his demise made him as troublesome deceased as he ever was alive.

Coherent thought gradually seeped into her numb mind. A pulse. She should check for a pulse.

What the devil was wrong with her? That was the first thing she should have done. Usually she was coolheaded in a crisis, but Ranelaw's kisses had turned her into a hysterical fool.

She fumbled at his cuff until she pressed her fingers to his powerful wrist. Immediately her stomach clenched with sick relief. The hard, strong beat confirmed she hadn't killed him.

Tumbled prayers of gratitude filled her head.

Surely she could revive him, send him on his way, forget tonight. One thing was for sure. After this, he'd never want to come near her again.

Which should make her happy.

But in this quiet room, she admitted something she'd never admit to another living soul-something heinous but starkly true. After so many dull, chaste years, she'd relished tasting a man's desire again.

And from such a man. Strong. Virile. Beautiful.

She was irredeemably wicked. Ranelaw tugged at her senses the way a magnet drew a rusty nail. With steely determination, she mashed the unwelcome perception deep down in her soul, into the darkness where it would never rise to the light. Once, ten years ago, she'd stared into an abyss where whoring herself had loomed as the inescapable future. She'd never let herself sink so low again.

She had to get him on his feet and send him on his way. Fast. She wiped again at the blood.

"Wake up. Please." Below the pooling redness, a long scratch extended. It didn't look serious, but she wasn't qualified to say with certainty. "Ranelaw, I beg of you, wake up."

"You called me Nicholas before," he murmured, without opening his eyes.

Her ministrations paused while thankfulness vied with aggravation. As so often when she was in Ranelaw's presence, aggravation emerged triumphant. "You're alive," she said flatly.

"Of course I'm alive." He didn't open his eyes. "It requires more than a slip of a girl to send me to my heavenly reward."

In spite of the giddy relief stewing in her belly, she gave a dismissive grunt. "There will be nothing heavenly about your final reward. Why didn't you say something earlier? I've been sick with worry."

"You deserve to be. That was one hell of a whack."

"You wouldn't stop," she said, even as her conscience pricked her. She'd never before struck anyone in violence. Ranelaw brought out the absolute worst in her.

At last he looked at her. Or at least he opened one eye. The side she'd hit was swelling. By tomorrow he'd have an impressive black eye. "You didn't want me to."

Beating back another twinge of remorse, she pressed more forcefully on his injury. "You're such a vain coxcomb."

He winced. "No need to try and kill me again."

"I'm cleaning up the blood," she snapped. How could she have regretted trying to murder the clodpole? He deserved clouting with a poker. He deserved clouting with a ship's mast.

His lips quirked with familiar amusement. "Can't you kiss it better?"

"No, I can't." She wrung the cloth over the bowl. Despite her irritation, her gorge rose when blood stained the water bright red.

He struggled into a sitting position. "You look a little pale there, Miss Smith."

Violently she wrung the cloth again. "It's late. I'm tired. It would serve you right if I had killed you."

"If I died kissing you, I'd die a happy man."

She arched her eyebrows in disbelief and dabbed again at his wound. The bleeding almost stopped but the bruising became more spectacular by the second. He'd bear the memento of her assault for a few days.

"Do you get results with lines like that?"

He laughed, then winced, raising one long-fingered hand to press her palm to his head. "You'd be surprised."

She twisted her hand from under his and leaned back on her knees. She didn't want him touching her. That was where the problem had started. Except of course that wasn't true. The problem started the moment she'd met his eyes across that crowded ballroom.

God rot him for being as addictive as opium. She could still taste his kisses, and Wild Antonia wanted more. She ignored Wild Antonia and injected a practical note into her voice. "I've done all I can. You need a physician and perhaps a stitch or two. You should put ice on that swelling."

He smiled at her as if she were the birthday present he'd begged for all year. "You're a remarkable woman, Antonia."

Clearly, if he was well enough to flirt, he'd survive without her attentions. She dipped the cloth into the bowl and lifted it out sopping. She started to scrub at the blood on the rug. Fortunately it was nothing like the lake she'd imagined in the first, horrible moments after hitting him.

She felt him watching but refused to look up. He'd uncovered too many secrets tonight. She needed to restore the distance between them. Difficult when her lips tingled from his kisses and her heart pounded with a stormy mixture of fear and desire.

"Will you help me up?"

She didn't look at him. "Will you go home?"

He laughed, and despite everything, her resistance melted at that soft, deep sound. "You're not exactly the kindest of nurses, are you?"

With an irritated gesture, she plopped the cloth into the dirty water. She rose to carry the bowl toward the washstand. "You shouldn't be here. You should never have been here."

He still smiled. His ruined beauty made the smile more precious. When he attended society events, he was almost too perfectly turned out. The disheveled, bruised man lounging at her fireside set her heart cartwheeling with helpless yearning.

Helpless yearning? She needed to get rid of him before she lost her mind completely.

"Should, should, should. The woman who kissed me wasn't such a martinet."

"No, she was insane," Antonia said in a discouraging voice. "And a gentleman would never refer to a lady's lapse in judgment."

He laughed again. "You told me I was no gentleman."

Amazement stifled her retort. Even after tonight, she hadn't imagined that plain Miss Smith had left an indelible mark on his attention. Yet he remembered exactly what she'd said the night they met.

"Antonia?" He extended a hand, and for once didn't sound mocking or superior. Instead he sounded something she'd never heard before. Vulnerable. "Will you help me?"

She was a thousand times an idiot, but she responded to the sincere appeal in his beautiful black eyes. "Here."

"Thank you."

He gripped her hand and staggered as he stood. She realized with a lurch of sick guilt that he wasn't as whole as he strove to appear. She rushed to put her shoulder under his arm. "Can you make it to the bed?"

"Miss Smith, I thought you'd never ask."

"Don't be a rattlepate," she said without venom.

He was heavy and his height made him awkward to support, even for a tall woman like her. With shuffling and grunting and a good deal of ungentle pushing, she managed to get him to the bed.

He collapsed with a groan. Sitting on the floor, he'd seemed a little more like himself. Now he was pale and blood oozed from his temple. Reclining against the headboard with a nonchalance that didn't conceal his pain, he looked cursedly romantic, like an injured hero from a Minerva Press novel.

"Do you have any brandy?" He sounded exhausted.

"Of course I don't have any brandy." Her sharpness wasn't totally to keep him in line. Alarm streaked through her at his waning stamina. She retrieved the cloth and knelt on the mattress to wipe the fresh blood from his face.

"Pity. You look like you need it."

She rose and poured him a glass of water. "You can't stay."

He accepted the glass with an unsteady hand and took a long drink. "I can't climb down the tree. I'm dizzy on my own two feet, let alone a dozen yards up in the air."

"You can't go through the house. Mr. Demarest left strict orders to post a man at the door every night."

"Well, the only other exit is up the chimney."

She hoped his hint of asperity indicated returning strength. For all her wish to have him gone, right now he wasn't fit to negotiate the tree. "Rest awhile. But you have to go."

"Soon." With visible discomfort, Ranelaw stretched out and gingerly settled his head on her pillow. He looked big and dangerous against her white sheets.

How odd to have a man in her bed. An alien presence in this eternally feminine domain. But there was no shifting him and she knew for all his bravado, he wasn't pretending weakness. She'd knocked him unconscious, for heaven's sake. She was lucky she hadn't killed him.

Antonia didn't want him dead. She just wanted him out of her life. Although she hadn't spent such aninteresting evening in years. She frowned and struggled against the impulse to smooth the thick golden hair from Ranelaw's forehead. He wasn't a helpless child. Anything but. "You need a doctor."

His eyes closed and he looked remarkably at home, damn him. "Unless you intend to summon one, the sawbones must wait."