By riding helter-skelter into the thick woodland, Miss Smith left her chick unprotected. This was exactly the moment to pursue Cassandra Demarest.

Thick woodland.

His revenge must wait. He mightn't get another chance to corner the intriguing Antonia away from prying eyes.

With a heady surge of anticipation, he spurred his horse into a gallop.

Ranelaw easily caught up with Miss Smith. His horse was bigger and swifter and he wasn't riding sidesaddle.

She shot him a glance like blue lightning from under her stylish beaver hat and urged her mount to a faster pace. As they thundered into a clearing, he lunged over to grab her horse's bridle and drag the beast to a heaving stop. He wanted to seduce Antonia but he had no intention of chasing her to Timbuctoo for the privilege. He spoke softly to her horse, calming it. With animals and women, he always had a magical touch. Although so far, this particular woman resisted his fabled charm.

Most of the time.

"Let me go, damn you," she gasped, raising her crop.

She was incandescent with fury. Nobody who saw her would ever again consider Miss Smith mousy. She looked like a queen decreeing a fractious subject's execution.

Ranelaw laughed, excitement fizzing in his veins like champagne. He'd never before felt this extravagant hunger to push a woman to her limits, to take her until she screamed.

"Don't hit me, Antonia."

"Why?" she snarled. "Because I might hurt you?"

He snickered. She had such an inflated opinion of her ability to withstand him. It was one of the things he found delightful about confounding her. How delicious when she finally lay under him, panting with unconditional surrender.

"No, because this time I bloody well will tell anyone who asks exactly where I got my bruises."

Her eyes flashed azure with temper. Yet again, he marveled at their beauty, usually concealed behind her spectacles. Large, clear, and slightly slanted. Thick lashes darker than her pale hair. He noticed with a stab of unwelcome remorse that the lashes were matted with drying tears.

However upset she might be, the gaze she leveled on him held no softness. Only anger and something that in a less complex woman he'd read as desire.

"I'm willing to take the risk," she sniped.

"I'm not." He snatched the riding crop from her gloved hands. "You're a violent wench, aren't you?"

There was an enchanting flush of pink high on her cheeks. How could he ever have considered this woman plain? Even under her disguise, he should have recognized her splendor. As he stared in admiration, something about her coloring struck him as familiar. The fleeting thought drifted away before he could catch it.

"Only when goaded." She tried to jerk her horse free but he kept a firm hold. All she achieved was a restive sidle from her mount.

"Such passion, Antonia." With a deliberately dismissive gesture, he dropped the crop to the ground. "It makes a man hunger to seize you in his arms. You'd go up like fire."

The light dimmed in her ice blue eyes and her mouth flattened with what he recognized as shame. Sour anger stirred in Ranelaw's gut. Someone somewhere had taught her to loathe the thrilling woman she was.

Her gaze flickered away from him. "Please let me go," she said in a dull voice.

He'd set out to cow her, to gain the upper hand. Now that he couldn't mistake the slump of her shoulders, he realized he wanted her spirit, not her dejected submission. He wanted her fighting.

Who the hell was he trying to gull? He wanted her any way he could get her. Every minute with her honed his craving.

He wasn't by nature a gentle man, but he knew how to feign gentleness to get what he wanted. He released his grip on her reins and lowered his voice to the coaxing tone that never failed to lure a woman to ruin. "The morning's too fine to quarrel. Walk with me, Antonia."

She stiffened and sent him a nervous glance. "I need to get back."

"Nonsense. It's still early."

She tilted her chin with familiar defiance, but to his regret, the shadow of shame remained. "If I stay, will you promise to leave Cassie alone?"

Brave little bird. She thought to bargain with the devil. When surely she knew the devil couldn't be trusted.

"Today."

"For the rest of the visit."

"For such a concession, you'll have to surrender your virtue."

He waited for her to bite back, but instead her lips twitched. "No."

"Worth a try."

"I'm sure." With every second, she looked more like the strong woman he knew. He felt an uncharacteristic impulse to plant his fist into the face of the man who had undermined her confidence.

Inevitably it was a man.

Was it the same man who had taught her how to kiss?

The fellow had made a good job of that at least. Although Ranelaw suspected Antonia demonstrated natural talent.

His horse shifted. Perhaps at the long delay. Perhaps at the tension building in his rider. Ranelaw injected all the charm he could summon into his smile. "Will you walk?"

Antonia didn't smile back. "Will you behave?"

"Of course."

She studied him with an assessing light in her eyes, then relented with a sigh. "For a moment."

A moment was all he needed. He hid his triumphant grin and swung out of the saddle. "Let me help you."

She still looked as though she ventured into the den of a hungry bear. But she reached for his shoulders and only flinched slightly when his hands circled her waist.

As he lifted her, she was stiff, expecting him to pull some trick. Wise dragon. He wasn't yet ready to make his move. His hands didn't linger when he set her on the ground, much as having her close made him itch to kiss her senseless.

"There's a brook not far away," she said with unconvincing calm. She looped the reins over her arm and bent to collect her crop from the grass.

"Of course you've had days to explore the estate."

To his surprise, she answered readily. "I miss the country. London's so crowded and dirty."

While she didn't sound at ease, her voice wasn't edged with the usual hostility. He wasn't sure what prompted her to stay, but he refused to question the fortunate turn in his scheming.

As they followed a faint trail through the trees, he fell into step beside her. The leaf litter muffled the clop of their horses' hooves to a soothing rhythm. Even under the trees, the morning became uncomfortably warm. He shucked off his jacket and slung it over one shoulder. She cast him a sharp glance. He waited for a protest at this breach in decorum, but she remained silent.

The path was so narrow, his arm occasionally brushed hers. The first time it happened, she jumped like a scalded cat, but when he pursued no further liberties, eventually she relaxed.

Ranelaw took advantage of her uncharacteristically confiding manner. He wanted her in his bed. But with that never-ending desire came gnawing curiosity about her seemingly inexplicable choices. "You grew up in the country?"

She nodded, swishing her crop at the long grass edging the path. In the capital's ballrooms, she bottled up her natural energy. Here she revealed more of her true self every second, did she but know it.

"Yes. But in a much wilder place than this."

She was at home on this estate, and the groom had commented on her aplomb when handling a difficult horse. From the first, Ranelaw's title hadn't struck her with particular awe.

Unusual in a paid companion.

Everything pointed to a woman from Ranelaw's level of society.

If that was so, why did she play the stultifying role of companion to a spoiled flibbertigibbet like Cassandra Demarest? Even Cassie's father wasn't top drawer. The man was second or third cousin to the Earl of Aveson, a link too tenuous to sweeten the whiff of trade that clung to the Demarest fortune.

Hoping to encourage her to continue, Ranelaw found himself confiding in turn. "So did I. In Hampshire. Near the sea. In a tumbledown manor house infested with ungovernable children and even more ungovernable adults."

He rarely spoke of his childhood. The subject stirred few happy memories.

In his opinion, his upbringing provided an infallible argument against marriage as an institution. His parents had loathed each other. He'd hated his father more with every year and once he was old enough to form an independent opinion, he'd felt little but contempt for his shallow, self-indulgent mother.

The house had brimmed with a continually shifting tide of unruly humanity, children, mistresses, servants, various relatives and toadies. Political intrigue that wouldn't have disgraced an Ottoman court had poisoned his boyhood. Until he was eleven, Eloise's affection had provided his one constant, but then his father had banished her forever.

No, he was more than happy to relinquish the dubious joys of family life to people whose optimism outstripped grim reality.

Wary curiosity laced the glance she cast at him. "That wasn't what I imagined."

He'd known she must think of him in his absence-if only to consign him to perdition. But her admission filled him with pleasure. If he took up residence in her thoughts, he'd soon take up residence in her bed. "What did you imagine?"

Her lips curved with wry humor. "That you were spawned fully formed as Satan's minion."

With every second, her tension seeped away. She reached up to grab a dangling leaf. This time when her arm brushed his, she hardly jumped at all.

Even through his shirtsleeve, her heat seared. Desire surged. Still he bit back the impulse to seize her.

Not yet.

He released a soft gust of laughter, not at all offended. "I was a child like any other."

"I doubt that." She slipped her crop under her arm and absently tore at the leaf, scattering the fragments on the path at her feet. "I've always considered you a lone wolf. Now I discover you have a bevy of brothers and sisters."

He shrugged. If she wanted, he was willing to talk about his background. He knew this seemingly harmless discussion allayed her lingering fears.

"I am a lone wolf. It was the only way I kept sane in that chaos. From my father's three marriages, I have six legitimate siblings. My mother whelped two bastards to different lovers before she died in a carriage accident when I was eight. My father acknowledged another five bastards of his own. There were rumors of more. In the local village, the family coloring certainly proliferates. My first stepmother brought two sons to the marriage and my second stepmother brought three girls. Keddon Hall is a barn, big enough to billet an army, but the Challoners en masse threaten to burst it at the seams. It was a relief to leave for Eton and escape the pandemonium."

She paused to stare at him with an odd expression. Not the familiar suspicion. And unfortunately not the melting surrender he connived to see.

A kind of hard, speculative curiosity.

He too stopped so his horse's nose nudged him in the shoulder. "What?"

"You speak of your family like strangers."

He shrugged. "With such a crowd, it was like living in a menagerie. Most of them are strangers."

Most. Not all. Which was why he was here now.

The reminder provided a fillip to his determination for revenge. He berated himself for allowing Antonia to divert him. But when he met her vividly interested gaze, the admonition faded to a distant whisper.

"Where are they now?"

"My father was careless where he sired children, but once he had them, he saw the girls were dowered and the boys found suitable employment. The youngest children are still in school. My other sisters, mostly, are married. A few brothers went into the army, some into the church, some into the law."

"Do you see them often?"

"Some of them." He paused. "Sometimes. You'll be shocked they all ended up respectable members of society. I'm definitely the family black sheep, if you discount my parents."

She laughed, the sound too warm and enchanting for his comfort. "I am shocked."

"What about you?" He didn't need to feign his curiosity. "Do you have brothers and sisters?"

The ease drained from her manner. Again he had the odd perception that his question trespassed on private sorrow. He braced for her to tell him to mind his own business, but eventually she answered. "I have nobody."

"An orphan?"

It made sense, especially if she was a woman of good family who had come down in the world. Increasingly that's what he believed she must be.

Her lips tightened and she stared straight ahead as she preceded him, leading her horse. The silence bristled with unspoken regret.

"I have . had a brother."

He couldn't see her face, but her tone's flatness indicated longstanding pain. He caught up with her. "Older or younger?"

"Three years older." Thick underbrush forced her to veer closer. Again he resisted the urge to grab her.

They emerged from the bushes onto the bank of a sparkling stream. Antonia stopped and faced him. He couldn't mistake her strain, however hard she strove to hide it.

"I told you the brook was pretty." Her tone indicated she'd reveal nothing more of her mysterious past today.

His gaze swept their surroundings. The spot was indeed pretty. And isolated. He was astounded he'd coaxed her to this secluded location with so little effort. She'd always been awake to his stratagems before.

He stretched out a gloved hand. "Let me tie the horses."

Unsuspectingly she cooperated. Holding both sets of reins in one hand, he grabbed her crop and poked it through her horse's saddle leathers. No need to court danger when he finally touched her.

Once he'd secured their horses, he stripped off his gloves and shoved them in his coat pocket. He wanted to feel her skin against his. Anticipation rising like an approaching storm, he carelessly tossed his jacket over his saddle.