It took Rupert some time to register what Crawley had said.

The guy didn't think he was guilty. So why had his father lied about keeping Rupert out of jail, out of the tabloids, and all that bulls.h.i.t? The ringing of the phone and beeps of walkie-talkies brought him slowly back to the police station.

"So you think I'm not responsible for what happened?"

Rupert had meant to ask a question, but it sounded more like a plea.

Crawley shuffled in his seat. "You were the one driving so, of course, you had some responsibility. You might have been careless or not paid enough attention, but the bottom line is that there wasn't any trace of alcohol or drugs in your system. The accident happened on a descending slope, in heavy rain, at night, and the road was very slippery. You were an inexperienced driver."

Rupert nodded. Flashes of that night played out in front of him. He shut out the memories.

"Rupert." Crawley's use of his first name demanded his attention. "You drove carelessly, not recklessly. As a result, you lost your mother, and you were stuck in a hospital bed for months. So, however bad your driving was, you paid for it dearly. Don't you agree?"

Crawley's phone rang, and the interruption startled Rupert. While the policeman took the call, he turned toward Madison, whose unwavering eyes stared back at him.

"I'm sorry, guys. I've got to go." Crawley had stood and was getting dressed for the cold February day. "Duty calls."

He grabbed some of his belongings and came in front of Rupert. He extended his hand once again. Rupert stood and accepted the firm handshake.

"I respect what you've done today, son. Your father would never have the guts to stand up and be a man like that."

The policeman left, but Rupert didn't move.

Madison struck his forearm with one hand, while rubbing his back with the other.

When Rupert talked, he could hardly articulate. "Thank you, thank you for giving me the courage to come here today."

A tear rolled down her cheek.

"Why are you crying?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "It's happy crying. Don't worry."

He knew what she meant. He leaned toward her and rested his forehead on her shoulder. Four years of guilt started to lift from his shoulders. Now the grieving could start.

THE OXFORD & Cambridge Club was as Madison remembered it: masculine and as old as the hills. It hadn't changed.

She was the one changed.

She was amoureuse, in love. Hook, line and sinker. That put pepper in the old gumbo.

Shaking herself, she returned her attention to Archie Black, who stood at the club's mahogany bar ordering drinks. He was so tall he could have hunted flying geese with a rake.

Two days earlier he had phoned Madison and told her about an "intriguing" detail he had discovered in Robert Dallembert's life. Could that detail be Sarah?

So here she was, in London, on a Sunday evening about to share a whiskey with the Vances' genealogist after a weekend when she had been closer than ever to losing her virginity. A weekend spent at Rupert's townhouse, a fair amount of it lying on his king-sized bed.

Smelling the inside of her wrists, she breathed in the scent of his cologne. Her fingertips caressed her lips, where he had kissed her goodbye. She was already suffering from "Rupert withdrawal."

Professor Black sat back on his cushioned chair, the same one that overlooked The Mall, as on their first meeting. She brought the drink to her lips and let the peaty taste tease her tongue. She liked whiskey, but in her heart nothing could beat Mamie's Old New Orleans Cajun Spice Louisiana Rum.

Black interrupted her flight of thought with a blunt statement. "Robert Dallembert followed in his father's footsteps and sired an illegitimate child. I have confirmation of the rumor."

Madison's eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. Robert had been too much of an honorable man to sleep around and seed b.a.s.t.a.r.ds all over England. Unless ...

Unless that child was Sarah's.

Hope simmered in Madison's heart.

"I found a letter addressed to the earl, dating back to August 1651, before Robert's death at the Battle of Worcester."

"After our conversation last month, my curiosity was tweaked, and I thought I would research further into this rumor of a love child, the one I mentioned to you. After all, it could have challenged the claim made by Robert's half-brother upon Robert's death. But the child in question ended up being a girl."

A baby girl, a tiny little girl.

"Who wrote the letter?" Madison tapped her fingers against the engraved gla.s.s of her whiskey tumbler.

"A certain Mrs. Anne Alspeth, from Norwich."

Not Sarah.

Madison squeezed her eyes shut and felt her mouth sinking downward. Robert had seduced married women throughout the whole kingdom. Poor Sarah. She probably ended up marrying Peter out of a broken heart.

When Madison opened her eyes again, a manila folder lay on Archie Black's knees. One of his eyebrows rose, the asymmetry betraying his concern at Madison's reaction. The dude must think she was a whacko.

The professor removed a second folder from inside the first. He offered it to Madison, and she opened it. Buffered, acid-free paper separated the brittle pages of the letter.

"Based on the information provided by this Mrs. Alspeth, Robert's daughter was three months old at the time the letter was written," Black revealed.

Madison was about to flick through the pages to see for herself, but the lanky man cleared his throat and stopped her midway through her movement. He extracted light cotton gloves from the pocket of his tweed jacket and offered them to her.

She put them on and reverted her attention to the letter. Mrs. Alspeth's handwriting was neat. Madison studied the second leaf.

Again, Black interrupted her before she could read the doc.u.ment. "She seems to apologize profusely first and ask for his forgiveness. She rea.s.sures him about the child's welfare and promises to take good care of her."

"Why would she apologize? She also signed the letter to her lover, to the father of her child, in a formal way, Mistress Alspeth. It's stiff even for those times, even for an Englishwoman."

He ignored her question. "She was on the Parliamentarian side of the political stage. At least her husband was ..." His mouth shaped itself into a knowing smile.

"Have you found out who her husband was?"

"Well, I researched the matter a little more, on my own time. As I said, I was intrigued." Black pushed his gla.s.ses back to the peak of his nose. "Alspeth is a rare surname. I managed to get a copy of the parish register in Norwich, recording dates of birth and death. This is what I found. It goes back to the late 1650s."

He removed yet another doc.u.ment from his manila folder, but this time it wasn't an original, just a scanned copy. Madison took the paper, and her eyes focused on the lines highlighted in fluorescent yellow.

The genealogist summarized what she read out loud. "Anne was the wife of Joseph Alspeth, a wealthy merchant. They had seven children together, though three reached adulthood. Among them was a daughter named Rose, born in June 1651."

"Rose." Madison said the name out loud, as if it were a foreign word. Her voice had dropped. Tears watered her eyes, and she pretended to look back at the parish register to hide her emotions.

Her mind came back into focus. "Wait a minute, something isn't quite right here."

"I beg your pardon." Black's hand reached up to adjust his tie. "My sources are impeccable."

Madison cut him off. "If your sources are correct, it's very unlikely Rose was Robert's daughter... or rather, impossible she was Anne's."

"I can't see what makes you draw this conclusion."

Leaning toward him, she pointed at one of the highlighted lines. "Joseph and Anne Alspeth's eldest son, John, was born in March 1651. That means she couldn't have given birth to Rose three months later."

Black grabbed the piece of paper, his eyes scanning the doc.u.ment over and over again, until he gave up. "You are right, Miss LeBon." Staring back at Madison, he asked, "But then who was the mother of Robert's illegitimate child?"

Chapter 38.

THE MOVEMENT OF Rupert's lips along her collarbone lighted a brazier, burnt every molecule of her skin. His weight was a delicious pressure to her bare legs, hips and stomach. His hand cradled her shoulders, where his fingers tip-tapped a s.e.xy melody throughout her consciousness.

Being in Rupert's bed, beneath his naked body, was mindblowingly hotter than in her wildest dreams. Madison wanted to give herself to him. She wanted to be his, to merge with him so that n.o.body could ever say that moment hadn't happened.

Why-why?-must she have her periods at the strategically worst time EVER?

Need made her bite her tongue. She listened to her heart pounding inside her ribcage. When Rupert shifted his hand from her shoulder to her breast, her nipple hardened and her heart stopped making a sound as it skipped a beat.

Madison moaned and the sound of her own desire fed into further desire. She caressed the taut skin on his back, followed the hard muscles that defined his shoulders and ran her fingers through his hair.

It was his turn to moan. "Maddie."

His lips buried her name into a kiss. His tongue explored her mouth. Their teeth met. She lifted her pelvis toward his, inviting him inside of her. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Pride exploded inside her. Rupert belonged to her, only to her.

Her victory was shortlived. He rolled his weight aside to rest next to her rather than on her. Her eyes opened wide. His were drowned under the heat of their almost-lovemaking.

"I'm going to break, baby. I want you so bad it's hurting me." His voice was hoa.r.s.e.

"I can help... I mean, I can give you some fun." She wanted to bury her head under the pillow as a blush crept across her face like a wildfire. But Madison didn't want to play hard to get. She wanted Rupert. He wanted her. That was all they needed to know. "You can show me what you like."

Rupert growled. "If you talk like that, I'm going to get off on the sheets."

Madison giggled, enjoying her new role as the Princess of Naughty. She had never worn the crown before. "Tell me what you need."

Rupert didn't answer, seemingly absorbed in the line formed by her collarbone.

"I'm scared," he murmured. Humm. She hadn't expected that. "You mean so much to me. When we have s.e.x, there will be no way back. Ever..."

Love and pride mingled in her chest and tears started falling down her cheeks.

"Don't cry. Or I'll start as well." Rupert brushed her face with the back of his knuckles.

They both laughed and he dropped a kiss on each of her damp eyelids. Lying on their sides, they faced each other, nose to nose, their fingers and legs intertwined. With his eyes fixed on her, she felt like a pagan idol worshipped on the pedestal of love and l.u.s.t.

In an unexpected move, he flipped on his back, his hands around her hips pulling her on top of him. He pulled her closer to him until her nipples dangled above his mouth. He sucked one of them, pulling and releasing, then administered the same care to the other one. A zing shot back and forth from the tip of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her core. The sound she made was a medley between a moan, a groan, and a purr. Entirely embarra.s.sing.

She straddled his length, enjoying its tiny jerking movements each time her groin gave in to the smallest shift.

"I want to make you come with my hand." Humm, had she just said that?

The muscles of his stomach tightened, his chest caved in. He chuckled. "If you keep talking to me with this purring voice of yours, you won't even need your hand."

Madison moved her weight to the top of his thighs so that she could take hold of him. Her fingertips followed its long warmth. Up and down. Up and down. Finally, she took full hold of it, squeezing it gently.

Rupert groaned and his head fell back against the cushion.

They had been making out for an hour at least and his swollen s.e.x was pulsing against her curled palm and fingers. It was all tense and warm. She started pumping him, his hips thrusting toward her.

"I'm close, baby," he warned, his hands now over her forearms trying to move her further aback. "Let me finish it."

She refused to stop. "No way."

"Fu-"

He erupted, warm and sticky, between her hands, but she continued until the flow dried down.

His chest heaved and he swallowed hard. When he broke the silence, his words were choppy. "That was-that felt better than in my wildest teenage dreams. And I was a very h.o.r.n.y boy."

"Glad I could help."

His torso twisted so that he could grab the shirt he had dropped next to the bed when they had undressed earlier. He wiped her hands with it then cleaned the mess over his lower stomach.

Reluctantly, Madison abandoned her straddling position and lay along Rupert. He pulled the duvet from where it had been kicked earlier down to the feet of the mattress and tucked it around them.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're very welcome,"

His hand cupped her cheek, the tip of this thumb drawing small circles. "I can share everything with you." Rupert moved his hand from her face and laid it over her stomach. "I trust you implicitly and it gives me a strength I didn't know I had. I'll never lie to you, and you'll never lie to me."

He dropped a kiss at the corner of her mouth, but her inner temperature plunged down to subzero.

"Let's try and sleep, otherwise I won't stay a gentleman much longer."

She shifted her body so that he could hold her from behind, his body tight against hers, surrounding her in a coc.o.o.n.

His protection wasn't enough to lift the burden that had crashed over her. Madison had lied to Rupert from the get-go. She had never hinted at her powers, at the dead people in her life ... at the Cavalier, and what he could mean to both of them.