"But Arabella is another matter. I have watched her well and known her long. Unlike the majority of her s.e.x, she is a clever, rational, moral woman. She will be a fine wife for the husband who deserves her-for the husband I will select for her.

"Therefore, when she marries, it is my intention to make her and her spouse the heirs to the bulk of my estate."

Neville stared at him, unbelieving.

"You will have the old manor house on the estate and receive an allowance upon which a sensible man might live comfortably, both from now on and after my death. Unfortunately, I cannot strip you of the t.i.tle."

"You cannot be serious!" Neville gasped at last.

"I a.s.sure you, Neville, I have never been more serious in my life. I am determined that the estate of Ba.r.r.s.ettshire will: not be frittered away on gambling, drinking and wh.o.r.es."

"I'faith, Father, what have you been imbibing?"

"You are the one who imbibes to excess, Neville," his father retorted.

"Who says so?" Neville demanded, for the moment forgetting the wine bottles shoved in the ashes.

"I have it on good authority."

"And is this authority the same source for your belief that I am not worthy of my rightful inheritance?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"Who?" Neville asked angrily, all pretext of calm unconcern gone. "Who has convinced you to pa.s.s over the son of your body?"

The earl looked away. "That is immaterial."

"Not to me!" Neville cried. Then his eyes narrowed. "Lady Lippet, I dare say."

"And others," the earl declared defiantly. "Would you tell me they are lying? Even you cannot have the gall to deny what so many have said."

"I fear that I have indeed been remiss in not visiting you at the ancestral home," Neville said, fighting to regain his composure. "Then I might have realized you were in your dotage."

"My dotage!"

"What else would you call it? Or are you ill?"

"I am in perfect health and my judgment is utterly sound."

"Sound? How can it be, when you would rob your own son?"

"You would have done well to remember that you are my son, with duties and responsibilities, before now," the earl replied. "You are not worthy of your place. This house is nearly falling down from neglect.

This room is filthy. You look like a drunken sailor. Add to that all the other things of which I have heard.

There is a very mult.i.tude of reasons for me to renounce you."

"And I am my mother's son," Neville added grimly, regarding his father steadily.His father did not answer.

Neville strolled to the chair where his jacket lay. "I confess myself surprised that you would trust a woman with a ha'penny, let alone my inheritance, but then, Lady Arabella is so concerned for you!" He picked up the plain black garment and drew it on. "Tell me, did she promise to look after you in your old age? Did she say that you would always have a home with her and that she would nurse you and fuss over you like a hen with one chick?"

His father scowled. "By your words you again demonstrate both your corruption and your ignorance."

"Oh, I am at fault again, although I am not bestowing a considerable inheritance upon some country-bred female who is no blood relation and who has done nothing to earn such a reward, while your son is to inherit nothing more than a t.i.tle, a pittance and an old house that has been crumbling since Henry the Eighth ascended the throne. Oh, yes, and for all this, the disinherited son is to be grateful."

"I would rather bestow it on her than see you and your decadent friends waste it! She will put it to good use. Moral use. Virtuous use. Christian use."

"I dare say one's opinion of your decision depends upon how one defines waste."

Neville reached down and swept up his hat. As he placed it on his head, he glared at his father, and for a moment, in their anger, they looked very much alike. "I wonder who first put this ludicrous notion into your head at all? Surely not the moral, virtuous, Christian Arabella Martin. She would not do such a thing. She would not wield winning smiles or pious looks or dedicated prayer, pretending that she didn't know you were listening."

"No, she did not!"

Neville spotted his errant boots and grabbed them before picking up his baldric and sword. "My lord, that is the most astonishing thing you have yet said. You would have me believe you thought of this incredible resolution all on your own?"

"You rude, disgusting, impertinent rascal! You are so corrupt you can no longer recognize a virtuous woman when she stands before you. Leave my house!"

"As you might have guessed when I took up my hat, I am doing just that," Neville said at the door, his boots, baldric and sword held against his chest, his hand on the latch. He gasped dramatically. "Or are you casting me into the streets forever?"

"Don't tempt me-and don't you go near Arabella!"

"If she is as virtuous as you think, she will be impervious to anything I might do. Or am I to a.s.sume from this desire to have me gone that you have some doubt of her rect.i.tude? Indeed, Father, given your astonishing announcement, I rather think I have more to fear from her than she from me. Who knows but she might persuade me right out of my clothes?"

"Neville!"

"However, I shall not put her to the test. Instead, I shall take my useless, disgusting presence where it will be appreciated. I bid you good day, Father."

Neville strolled out the door. Then he slammed it hard behind him.Arabella slowly paced in the dusty, musty upper chamber to which the red-haired Jarvis had reluctantly led her. She did not know if his unwillingness stemmed from his desire to remain where he could hear the earl and his son arguing, or because the earl's bedchamber was in no fit state for anyone's occupation.

Thick, heavy draperies, made of what had once been fine and costly brocade, but now seemed to have the dust of ages upon them, covered the small mullioned windows overlooking the street. The dark oak paneling was likewise dust-covered, as were the table and worn chair and the very large, heavy bed.

There was a featherbed upon the bed, but no other coverings of any kind.

Cobwebs hung in the corners, and when Arabella glanced down, she saw that her feet were leaving patterns on the dusty floor. Apparently mice had also been cavorting about the room.

Arabella shivered a little and looked around before laying her cloak over the back of the single chair. She did not fear mice, exactly. Their wiggling little bodies just bothered her a little. Rats, however, were another matter entirely.

m.u.f.fled sounds drifted up the chimney from below, for this chamber was directly over the withdrawing room.

The earl and his son were still quarreling.

She sighed softly, glad to be out of the room and dismayed, too.

To think she had come to London with such joyful expectations! For one thing, it was London, where b.a.l.l.s and parties and masques and there were b.a.l.l.s and parties and masques and theaters. Where there would be color and light and music.

And where Neville Farrington would be.

She should not have been so swift to rationalize the earl's opinion of his son, thinking that, as with many critical men, beneath his harsh words was an abiding love for his child. So it had been with her father, who had often found fault with her. Yet she had never doubted his love.

In this case, however, she saw no evidence of anything other than disappointment and anger in the earl's responses to his son, and a shocking lack of respect and deference and remorse on Neville's part.

Of course, she had expected Neville to be different. It was seven years since the day her father had brought her to the earl's estate, and they had both been little more than children. But she hadn't expected him to have fallen so low.

Unfortunately, what had been sincere, kind and soft-spoken seemed to have disappeared completely, replaced by a cynical, flippant bearing when he was not speaking and looking at her so seductively.

She had attracted men's notice before, yet every attempt by a man to compel her notice paled beside one glane from Neville Farrington.

She looked into the busy street below. Fine coaches rumbled along the cobblestones. Well-dressed couples strolled arm in arm, the women cloaked against the cool spring air, many of the men wearing the new fashion of petticoat breeches, which looked like beribboned skirts.

Neville had yet to adopt this somewhat effeminate apparel. He had been wearing tight-fitting breeches that were intended to be rucked into boots. Given that his legs were long and muscular, it could be that he was too vain to conceal them under folds of fabric.As if to forcefully demonstrate the difference in clothing, a horseman trotted past, his dress a model of fashionable extravagance. His breeches looked so voluminous that they might have utilized enough fabric to make a dress for her. His waist-length jacket was of scarlet velvet trimmed with gold, like the breeches. His broad-brimmed hat had such a large feather, she wondered if it doubled as a quill pen.

As the stranger rode out of sight, she was reminded of something else: no matter what happened between Lord Ba.r.r.s.ettshire and his son, she was in London at last. With the earl as her guardian, she could move in the first circle of society. If she was very lucky, she might even see the king!

With that comforting thought, she turned away from the window and again surveyed the room. This could yet be a lovely chamber, with some cleaning. Deciding it would be better to work than muse upon recent, unsettling events, she searched about for anything she might use as a rag.

A door slammed below. Curious as to what that heralded, she hurried to the top of the stairs.

Neville Farrington was at the bottom, his expression an angry scowl, his white-plumed hat perched on his head as he struggled to put on his boots. A leather baldric and sword lay on the floor beside him.

Even now, despite the changes in him, he was still the most attractive man she had ever seen. Moreover, he seemed to emanate virility as the sun did its rays. His broad shoulders and muscular chest added to that impression, as did his lean, strong fingers.

Those same fingers that had clasped her own in warm intimacy that day in the garden.

Before she could go back to the bedchamber, he glanced up. Straightening abruptly, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his baldric and sword. His intense gaze seemed to bore through her body as he slowly climbed the stairs toward her.

She clenched the banister. "You... you are leaving?"

He regarded her with his piercing eyes. "Not yet."

Suddenly, his arm encircled her waist and he tugged her close. His lips captured hers with arrogant confidence.

She had never been kissed before, not even on the cheek, so she was totally unprepared for the incredible sensation of his mouth upon hers.

The incredible, exciting, overwhelming sensation that spread from her lips outward, to encompa.s.s and overpower her entire body.

His hand moved slowly up her arm. His touch seemed made of fire, igniting her. The heat of pa.s.sion melted away everything else but him, including her resistance.

Just as abruptly, he drew back, a mocking smile on his handsome face. "Allow me to give you a bit of advice, beautiful Arabella," he said with quiet yet unmistakable menace. "You are not in sleepy little Grantham anymore. You have come to great and wicked London-my realm. It can be a very dangerous place."

"I believe you," she whispered, stumbling back from him. "And I can believe you are the most dangerous thing in it."

His smile broadened. "You would do well to remember that."Then he turned and left the house. While Arabella put her hands to her slightly swollen lips as if she could wipe his kiss away.

Chapter 3.

With an elegant flick of the wrist, the wide-brimmed, white-plumed hat sailed across the coffeehouse to land neatly on a peg near the dispenser's stall. A rousing and welcoming cheer went up from the patrons as a smiling Neville Farrington paused on the threshold and surveyed them with the magnanimity of a benign sovereign.

None of them, including the serving wench leaning against the counter and incidentally displaying more of her wares than her coffee, would believe that he had spent the past few hours striding about the city, attempting to overcome his shock, anger and frustration.

Now, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the n.o.ble customers and disapproving glances from the few Puritans inside, Neville suddenly groaned pitiably, stumbled forward as if he had been stabbed and staggered toward his friends sitting at their usual table in the corner.

"Alas, my friends!" Neville cried as he reeled close to them, the back of his hand against his aristocratic brow. "A disaster has befallen me!"

Lord Fozbury Cheddersby, not the most discerning of mortals and, as always, beribboned and bedecked in the latest fashionable attire, no matter how ridiculous, obviously expected Neville to drop dead at his feet, for a look of stunned horror came to his round face.

"Odd's fish, Farrington!" he cried, jumping up and spilling his coffee onto his scarlet velvet breeches.

"Have a care, Foz!" Sir Richard Blythe snarled, his expression as severe as his dark woolen clothing, which made him look more like a Puritan than the cavalier he had been and the playwright he was. "Can't you see he's only acting-and poorly, too? Zounds, you've burned me!"

"An unfortunate baptism by coffee, Richard," Neville said with a sympathetic sigh as he moved his sword out of the way and lifted his leg over the bench to sit. "But that is what you get for criticizing my acting.

Besides, what is a little singed flesh compared to my current dilemma?"

"You look as if you have not slept all night or washed, either," Foz noted worriedly, absently mopping up the spilled coffee with his handkerchief of linen and lace, then just as absently shoving the damp cloth into his cuff.

"Oh, I dare say it cannot be so bad that Neville would neglect to wash, although he does need to shave if he's going to persist in going beardless as a boy," Richard remarked.

"Please, my friends, speak softly and give me your pity, for I am in agony," Neville pleaded as he covered his ears with his palms, shaking his head mournfully."Let me hazard a guess as to the cause of this agony," Richard answered coolly. "Minette Sommerall still refuses to consider your addresses."

"Ah!" Neville gasped, doubling over. He raised his mirthful eyes. "Another blow I had forgotten!"

As he spoke, he forced away any mental connection between mistresses and the astonishingly provocative kiss he had stolen from the lovely, shapely Arabella. "But this is not the time for idle chitchat," he continued. "I a.s.sure you, my trouble is very serious."

Lord Cheddersby scratched his head beneath his peruke. Unlike the other gentlemen seated at the long tables, he had quickly adopted this new fashion, too, perhaps because his natural hair lacked the fullness of Neville's locks.

"Can you not surmise from whence disaster comes, at least?" Neville asked.

"Your father?" Richard suggested.

"You are waking up at last, I see!" Neville cried triumphantly. "Exactly. My esteemed parent."

"He's not sent you any money."

"No, I should say not."

"You lost a considerable sum at Whitehall last night," the playwright noted calmly. "You ought not to gamble."

"Are you quite certain you are not a Puritan in disguise," Neville asked, "or an agent of my father?

Besides, I usually win."

"It is easy to take such a lax view if one can afford it," retorted the former Royalist soldier.