"I merely wondered aloud what you would do if you did."

"I shall not."

"Yet will not seducing her anger your father even more?" Foz questioned. "He might never forgive you."

"He loathes me now, and I can scarce sink lower in his estimation."

"Very well. You are quite certain you will succeed in proving to your father that the woman he thinks superior to you in virtue is not," Richard said. "The only question that remains is, how long will it take?"

"With so much at stake, you can be a.s.sured I will be diligent," Neville replied, his tone grave, but his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt.

"Even though you are sure to triumph in the end, I cannot help thinking it will not be as easy as you believe, if she is a Puritan," Richard observed.

"Puritan or no, I'll wager within a fortnight," Foz cried excitedly. "Ten pounds says she will be in Neville's bed in that time!"

Neville regarded his literary friend with a cool smile. "What say you, Richard? Would you care to wager on how long it will take to make the citadel of my Nemesis's virtue fall?"

Richard leaned back and regarded Neville impa.s.sively. "Since I have not seen the lady in question, I hardly think that would be wise."

"But you are so knowing in the ways of women. Isn't that what everybody says after they see one of your plays?" Neville replied. "So what need you know but that I am determined and she is not ugly?"

He thought of mentioning the kiss, then decided against it. Let Richard believe this seduction difficult; that would make his eventual triumph even sweeter.

"Very well. I'll wager it will take longer than a fortnight.""Longer? Are you mad?" Foz cried.

Neville continued to regard his friend, suddenly not quite so certain himself he could succeed with Arabella in a mere fourteen days, despite the pa.s.sion in her kiss. Yet he would die before he would reveal any lack of confidence to his friends.

"Very well, Richard," he said. "Prepare to lose your money. However, I could use more than ten pounds."

"Then we shall make it more sporting, shall we?" Richard said. "I am willing to wager fifty."

"What?" Foz gasped. "Fifty pounds!"

"Come now, Foz," Richard said calmly. "What is fifty pounds to you?"

"You don't have fifty pounds," Neville charged. He had scarce five pounds in his purse; nor did Richard have much more, he ventured. What, then, was he to make of this astonishing sum? Was Richard that confident he would fail?

"Neither do you, but I could get it," Richard countered. "Are you beginning to doubt your abilities?"

"Not a whit. Fifty pounds, then, that I can get Lady Arabella into my bed in a fortnight."

"What will you give for proof of success?"

"If my word is not enough," Neville brazenly declared, "then she will tell you herself. Will that content you?"

"If you can debauch a Puritan woman and then persuade her to confirm her sinful act to us, I will most certainly be content," Richard agreed.

"Surely debauch is too harsh a term for what I have in mind. Nevertheless, give me your hands, gentlemen," Neville replied, "and we shall seal our wager."

Richard and Foz placed their hands over Neville's and they shook them once.

"I suggest you begin searching for those fifty pounds, Richard," Neville remarked.

Richard got to his feet. "You will forgive me if I do not wish you luck, Neville. Now, I must get to the theater. I fear my actresses are going to do each other injury if I am not there to come between them."

"Perhaps you require some a.s.sistance, Richard," Neville proposed, "although really, sir, if you persist in having more than one mistress at a time, I think you have only yourself to blame when war breaks out between them."

The former cavalier bowed courteously. "I learned from a master."

"Yet you bid against me."

Richard continued to smile as he regarded Neville with a steadfast scrutiny that made Neville feel he had just made a terrible blunder. "Even a master may fail occasionally."

"Or succeed where doubt is cast. Well, let us all go and we shall see if either I or Foz can enable a truce.""Should you not go direct to Lady Arabella?" Foz asked anxiously.

"Oh, I shall see her soon enough," Neville replied with a sly and secretive smile, for he had the beginnings of his siege already mapped within his head.

Chapter 4.

Arabella awoke with a start.

Immediately she knew that she was not in her old home, or the ornate bedroom she had been given in Lord Ba.r.r.s.ettshire's country house. She was in the earl's townhouse in London in a bedchamber at the opposite end of the corridor from the earl's. For confirmation, several church bells tolled the hour: three of the clock.

However, it was not the sound of the bells that had woken her, she realized. It was another, more local noise: the soft scratching of mice in the wall across from her.

Sitting up, she reached for the bed curtains and pulled them open. Moonlight flooded in through the mullioned window, making diamond-shaped patterns on the bare wooden floor.

She lay down again and told herself there was nothing to fear. It was only a harmless little mouse burrowing through the wall. Or perhaps a few of them. Surely it was not a rat.

At that more distressing thought, her first instinct was to pull the covers over her head. However, she also knew that if she did not discover what was making that noise, she would never be able to go back to sleep.

Therefore, clad in her thin nightdress, she rose from her bed and with chilly fingers struck flint and steel to kindle the rushlight set in the holder on the table beside her bed. The rushlight burned up brightly, then settled into a fairly steady, if dim, flame.

Before picking up the holder, she wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and found her thick boots in the chest that had arrived that afternoon with the rest of the baggage. She had no desire to be creeping about a strange place in her bare feet looking for small furry creatures.

With her other hand, she lifted the basin Jarvis had set beside the ewer of water on the table. Thus armed, she crept into the hall.

A thin stream of golden light issued from beneath The door of the room that shared a wall with hers. It had been closed when she had come upstairs earlier, and Jarvis had not said to whom it belonged. As she drew near, the scratching noise grew louder. And then she heard a m.u.f.fled curse.

Moving cautiously forward, she gently pushed at the door with the basin, opening it wider so that she could peer inside.A single candle burned upon a table near the head of a bed, aiding the moonlight. At once Arabella realized this room was much cleaner than hers was. The curtained bed sported linen and a brocade coverlet, none of which had been lately disturbed.

She opened the door a little wider, trying to see more of the room.

She stifled a gasp as a half-naked Neville Farrington came into view, his back to her as he washed his face. His powerful arms that had held her upon the stairs were like those of the blacksmith in Grantham, lean and sinewy, and his exposed, unexpectedly muscular back tapered to a thin waist above narrow hips. Thick, black, curling hair brushed his broad, bare shoulders.

It was Neville's own hair, too, she confirmed. No wig accounted for his dark ringlets, but only Nature's hand, as if She had decided to give this mortal man the ultimate finishing touch.

It was not that she had never seen a man without his shirt on before. Living in the country, she had seen farm laborers thus unattired in the warm summer months many times-but she had never seen any man quite like this one, who could have provided a model for Adonis or Apollo, so well formed was he.

Breathing a little faster, she licked her lips, thinking of the pressure of his mouth upon hers when he had kissed her.

And the excitement that had coursed through her. The yearning. The need.

She told herself to go back to her room at once.

As he leaned forward, his black breeches grew snug around his backside and thighs, which showed that every part of his body was well formed and muscular. His skin glowed bronze in the candlelight, adding to her impression that he could be a sculptor's model.

She might have stayed thus, merely watching and remembering, for a long time. But he suddenly turned and stared right at her.

Before she could run away, he crossed the floor, grabbed her arm and pulled her into the room.

Dismayed, she twisted out of his grasp, knocking the door shut behind her. Then she accidentally touched the flame of the rushlight to his hand.

With a profane curse-words she had also heard from country laborers-he dashed across the room and shoved his hand into the washbasin.

"I'faith, woman, would you set me on fire?" he demanded under his breath.

"I'm sorry!" She set down the light and basin, and hurried over to him. "Let me see. Is it very bad?"

With a scowl, he disdainfully offered his hand to her as if he were an arrogant king expecting her to kiss it.

Which was a most disconcerting thought.

Nevertheless, the important thing was to see to his wound.

She looked carefully at his proffered appendage. The burn mark was red and surely painful and might leave a scar, but she did not think it overly serious.

Her gaze shifted to the rest of his hand, his undeniably masculine hand, including his slender, artistic fingers that were so surprisingly strong. It was easy to envision them stroking... a musical instrument.She shook her head as if that would curb her wayward thoughts.

"This does not look terribly bad," Arabella said quietly as she examined the burn without touching him for what seemed an inordinately long time, the tip of her tongue resting ever so temptingly against her upper lip.

"Perhaps not to you, but it hurts like the very devil," Neville replied in a low growl, glancing at the red mark the size of a guinea on the back of his hand, which was starting to sting.

In truth, he was considerably less angry than he might have been had she not been so pretty, so remorseful and so scantily attired. She wore only a thin-very thin-nightdress and shawl. Her hair fell loosely over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which rose and fell in a most enticing manner, her rosy nipples visible beneath.

"You shook your head like a physician whose patient is not expected to recover."

"A bit of hair fell in my eyes."

He had not noticed that, perhaps because he had been wondering what might be seen if someone were to throw a basin of water over that thin nightdress.

"Since your wound does not appear to be life-threatening, my lord, I shall leave you."

He drew on his shirt. He mustn't frighten her with too rapid a pursuit, tempting though it may be. "You cannot go without offering an explanation for wandering about the house. And armed, too."

"I heard a noise and wondered what it was."

"I was as quiet as the proverbial mouse," he said softly, approaching her as cautiously as a hunter stalking a deer.

"Precisely, my lord," she replied with a shiver. "I thought you were one, or a big black rat."

"Hardly a flattering comparison."

"Again, my lord, I apologize. It was an accident. You grabbed me most unexpectedly-again."

"And so you thought to set me alight? Is that not excessive?" he asked, noting with great satisfaction that she seemed in no hurry to depart. "Did it not occur to you that the sight of you spying upon me was just as unexpected?"

"I wasn't spying!"

He was pleased that she was a little fl.u.s.tered. "No, you were hunting with a basin. Did you intend to capture one of G.o.d's little creatures and set him free?"

She shrugged her shoulders and clasped her hands like an errant schoolgirl. "I don't know what I would have done if it had been a rat. I would have killed a mouse."

His eyes widened in genuine surprise. "You sound surprisingly bloodthirsty for a Puritan."

"Mice are nuisances, and I am not a Puritan."

"You quite take me aback," he said truthfully. "How could you live with your father all those years and not be a Puritan?"She flushed, the pink dawning on her cheeks in a most becoming manner. "I could not accept all the tenets of the faith."

"How very interesting."

"I might ask you what you are doing wandering around the house in the middle of the night, my lord."

"You make it sound as if I were creeping about like a housebreaker. I was in my own chamber, preparing for bed."

She glanced at the large piece of furniture not far from her. Suddenly, he had a vision of Arabella naked in his bed, waiting for him.

It almost took his breath away.

He reminded himself that he intended to proceed with caution.

He glanced at her boots peeping out from beneath her nightgown. "I suppose that is the height of fashionable footwear in dear Grantham."

"I didn't want to encounter a furry little animal in my bare feet."

He came yet closer to her, and she did not move away. "It could have been worse than merely a mouse.

I might really have been a housebreaker. What would you have done then?"

She did not look away or blush. Instead, she made the most attractive, secretive little smile Neville had ever seen.

"To speak the truth," she confessed with a shiver, again reminding him of her interesting state of undress, "I think I would have been more undone by a rat."