"I care." He moved his hand beneath the edge of her unb.u.t.toned bodice, the low square neck of her chemise, his hand pushing beneath the edge of her corset to embrace her breast. He cupped it in his palm against the tight fabric. "Did you?"

Grace could hear herself making little panting sounds. "I am not that sort of woman," she gasped, twisting in his arms, trying to remind herself of that fact at this very moment. "You know that. I do not have affairs."

"Virtuous." He sounded so pleased, the wretch.

He laughed softly, blowing warm air against the base of her throat. "Poor Franz."

His fingertips brushed the side of her breast within the confines of her corset, and he trailed hot kisses along the line of her shoulder to where the edge of her partially unb.u.t.toned dress cut into her skin. He made an impatient sound and left off caressing her breast, lifting his hand to the b.u.t.tons of her dress to unfasten more of them.

"I heard what you said earlier. Did you mean it, Grace?" His breathing was ragged as he unfastened the remaining b.u.t.tons on her dress and untied the ribbons of her chemise with practiced skill, reminding her how many times he must have done all this before. He grasped fabric in his hands and pulled down her dress and chemise to bare her shoulders. "Are you lonely?"

Such an unfair question. She didn't answer, but then, she didn't really have to. He already knew, and he was exploiting it. She was letting him.

He cupped both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his thumbs brushing her bare skin above the corset. He edged his thigh between both of hers. Not at all hampered by the folds of her skirt, he moved his thigh, sliding against her where she burned the hottest. "Are you?"

"I... I do not believe... oh, G.o.d." Her voice trailed away. She was hovering on the edge of reason, and she knew she had to stop him now. Her loneliness would not be a.s.suaged by one glorious, frantic rut. It was a loveless act that would only leave her aching more than she already did. If she waited, if she played with this any longer, Dylan would scorch away all vestiges of her self-respect. Even as his thigh slid provocatively back and forth against her, she forced herself to say it. "Dylan, stop."

Stop. Somewhere beyond the fire in his body and the roar of sound in his head, he heard that word. He didn't want to hear it, he tried to think he had not really heard it. Women said all sorts of nonsensical things at moments like this.

She couldn't mean it. Not really. Not now. Not when her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were in his hands and his head was spinning, not when he was rock hard and she was making erotic little sounds. Not when all he wanted was to pull up her skirts, impale himself inside her, and end this torture. Stopping now wasn't possible.

Dylan could feel her move against him again, but this time it was different. She was stiffening, pulling away.

He could not let her go. Everything inside him demanded completion. He grasped her shoulders to keep her there. "I get lonely, too, Grace." He could hear the hard, desperate need in his own voice as he spoke. "Come upstairs with me. Now."

She was frozen in his grasp, stiff as a board. "I thought you were going out."

"When I could spend my night with you?" If he wasn't in such desperate straits, he'd laugh at that. There was nothing on G.o.d's earth that could compare with what he had in his hands at this moment. He nuzzled her neck, knowing he had to get any crazy notions of stopping out of her head. "Go out now?" he groaned against her ear. "Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely."

He felt her flutter for a second, soften, wavering in his arms and driving him to madness. Then, without warning, she stepped sideways, twisting out of his grasp. "No," she said, her voice ringing with a sincerity that even his l.u.s.t-filled senses could not ignore. "I cannot do this. I will not."

He made a low savage sound of protest, his body rebelling against this sudden, inexplicable withdrawal.

She was turned away from him, fastening b.u.t.tons, her head bent. He moved to stand in front of her, and he saw that her hands were shaking. "Grace," he said, striving to sound gentle when there was nothing but seething masculine chaos inside him. "Grace, stay with me."

"I am staying." Her voice was prim and cool, infuriating in its normalcy. Only the trembling of her fingers as she fastened the last b.u.t.ton of her dress gave her away. "I have to stay for a year."

"That's not what I meant." He reached for her, cupped her face in his hands.

"I said no," she reminded him. Her voice was soft, and she did not try to escape him. Instead, she looked straight into his eyes and said, "You gave me your word of honor."

He could have laughed at notions of honor at this moment, but those green eyes of hers were so steady, so unwavering as she looked at him, and it suddenly struck him that she was afraid. She should be. If he stayed here one moment longer, he did not know what he would do. The whine in his brain amplified to a screech, and he felt as if his head were exploding.

He uttered the foulest oath he knew and turned away, striding toward the doors, hating her, hating himself. He had to get out of here before he came apart. Never in his life before had he been close to forcing a woman. He flung back the doors with such violence that they probably dented the plaster walls. The footman in the chair near the door jumped to his feet. "Get my carriage," Dylan said as he pa.s.sed the servant, knowing he was shouting over the noise screaming through his mind. "I'm going out."

He ran up the stairs to his room, sent Phelps scrambling for hot water, and less than fifteen minutes later, he had shaved, changed into evening clothes, and was downstairs in the foyer waiting for his carriage, his body still raging with unslaked l.u.s.t, his head drowning in noise and static and the erotic sounds Grace had been making two seconds before she'd stepped right out of his arms.

He was finally going over the edge of madness, he must be. Grace, who was supposed to be his antidote, was making him insane. For weeks now, he'd been panting after that woman like a half-grown pup, rejected time and again but still coming back for more.

These past two weeks, while his body had healed, he had tried to keep thoughts of her out of his mind so that he could work on the symphony, but she'd kept getting in the way of it, invading his thoughts with such unerring persistence that hearing anything like music had been impossible. Things weren't all that different than before Grace had come, really. He still couldn't compose. He went out, caroused about town, sought his pleasures, indulged his whims, did all the things he usually did, with one glaring exception.

He hadn't touched another woman, much less bedded one. He had not really wanted to. He had become too captivated by the woman living under his own roof.

How long was this going to go on? He'd been cooling his heels for weeks now, getting a few pa.s.sionate kisses and any number of erotic fantasies. He wanted some erotic reality, d.a.m.n it.

Before this evening was over, he was going to have a woman beneath him, by G.o.d, a woman eager and willing, a woman who didn't say no right at the moment when his c.o.c.k was splitting his trouser b.u.t.tons apart. A courtesan, a demirep, a bawd, a streetwalker-any was preferable to a woman of virtue. When the h.e.l.l had he started to forget that?

When the carriage pulled up in front of the house, Osgoode set Dylan's cloak across his shoulders, a footman opened the front door for him, and he walked out into the soft air of a warm spring night.

He would have relief from this torment. He knew exactly what he needed right now, and a virtuous woman was not it.

It was a good thing Papa's house was on the corner of the square, Isabel thought as she crouched down in the night shadows, watching through the bars of the side gate as her father's landau drove from the mews to the front of the house. She breathed a sigh of relief that the tops had been lifted and the landau was enclosed.

The moment the carriage pa.s.sed her, she grabbed the black wool blanket she'd brought with her, opened the gate, and followed the landau to the corner of the house, where the vehicle turned left.

Isabel did not continue to follow it around the corner. Instead, she stopped, flattening herself against the side of the house, waiting and listening as the landau stopped before her own front door only a few feet away. She heard the carriage door open, she heard her father give a direction to Roberts, then she heard the door close again. The moment it did, she peeked around the corner and saw that Roberts had his back to her and was walking toward the coachman's seat at the front.

Isabel knew this was her chance. She came out from around the corner and ran to the back of the carriage. She grabbed the bar and hauled herself up onto the footman's dummy board.

"Walk on," Roberts said, the landau jerked forward, and they were off. She wasn't tall enough to be seen by Roberts if he happened to look over his shoulder, but she did not want to be noticed by people on the street either, people who might be intelligent enough to see that the footman at the rear of the carriage was very short, very small, and didn't have any livery. The last thing she needed was for someone to call out to Roberts that he had a stowaway. She covered herself completely in the black blanket and curled herself into a little ball on the dummy board, hoping anybody who happened to look would think she was a bundle being transported.

Unless it made the society papers, like the fight two weeks before, she didn't know what her father did when he went out at night. She could make lots of guesses. He belonged to Brooks's and several other clubs, though precisely what men did in clubs she had no idea. Gambled, she knew that much, and drank. She didn't mind so much about those things. Papa did seem to win a lot at cards, and it wasn't as if he couldn't afford to lose. He drank, but he never became one of those horrible men who did mean things when they were drunk, so that was all right.

As for the other things he did, she was rather proud of some of those. It was exciting when you had a handsome father who fenced on top of stone walls and raced phaetons with other members of the Four-In-Hand.

His exploits with women, though, were a whole different matter. Isabel knew quite a lot about that sort of thing, and she was going to put a stop to it. If he was going to be the kind of father she wanted, he had to get married to a nice woman. Then she'd have brothers and sisters to play with and she wouldn't be lonely anymore. She wanted to live on Papa's estate in the country, where there were orchards, and baby chicks, and ponies.

On the trip from Metz, she had planned just how her life with her father was going to be, and she meant to have it just as she'd planned. Papa was just going to have to change, and she was going to help him do it.

She did not know how long they drove or how far they went, but it seemed to take a long time before the landau finally slowed, then stopped. She felt the carriage rock a little as the driver hopped down to open the door and her father got out. She listened to what the two men were saying, something about Papa intending to be here for several hours this time, and how Roberts could take the carriage around to the stables. He'd send word when he wanted to have the landau brought round.

Isabel squeezed her eyes shut and stayed utterly still, hoping neither man took a look at the back of the vehicle. If they did, they'd see her, certain sure. But when she felt the carriage rock again as Roberts climbed back up onto the seat, she took a peek out from under the blankets and saw her father go inside a house. It was a small villa, surrounded by a bit of park and trees.

The carriage circled around to the back of the house, and she pulled the blanket back over her face. When the landau was parked in the stables, Roberts was greeted by male voices of some other drivers, and Isabel concluded her father had been to this house before, because all six of the coachmen seemed to know each other well.

Isabel had to wait for a chance to escape without being seen, and it took a long time. It wasn't until the men began a game of dice that she saw her chance. From the sound of their voices, she could tell they were playing toward the front of the carriage, and when the dice game sounded like it was getting exciting, she peeped out from under the blanket. She saw nothing in front of her but the open stable doors, and she slid down from the dummy board and ran, hearing only the excited shouting of the winner of the dice game behind her.

Using the ivy to help her, she climbed over the garden wall of the villa. She tried several doors around the house, but all were locked, until she came to the conservatory on the far side of the house. That door was open. Thankful for careless servants, she slipped inside.

She could hear piano music, voices, and laughter coming from above. It might be that a party was in progress. She navigated her way through the house, dodging a few servants along the way, but she managed to find the stairs without being seen by anyone. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she knew just what sort of party was going on.

Isabel had peeked in on parties like this. Her mother had given quite a few. She cast a glance around and down the stairs, then she took a quick peek around the jamb of the open door into the parlor.

Yes, it was just what she would have expected. Silk palm trees, lots of gilt mirrors, and red wallpaper. Why the houses of courtesans always had red wallpaper was something she didn't understand, but it had to mean something. There was smoke in the air, and she could smell both tobacco and hashish. Papa might be in that parlor, or he might already have gone upstairs with one of the women. She had to find out.

She stuck her head around the edge of the door for a longer look. There was a pianoforte in the corner, and a young man was playing it. There were several card tables in the room where men and women were playing poker and taking their clothes off. There were couples lounging about in chairs, on the settees, on the floor, and they weren't making conversation. A black boy was sweating as he waved a huge fan over the group, but the thick haze of smoke from the cigars and gla.s.s pipes made his task futile.

Isabel dodged out of sight again, and her lips pressed together with anger and disgust. Things weren't any different here in England than they'd been in Metz. Things were exactly the same. Only the parent was different. And she'd had enough of it.

Her father was here, somewhere in this house, and she was going to find him. She took another look, letting her glance sweep more slowly around the room this time, and that was when she saw him. He was in a far corner of the room, lying the wrong way on a chaise longue, his head toward the door, his hair partially caught back by the hand of the woman beneath him, a woman with long blond hair that spilled over the front of the chaise and onto the floor. Isabel watched as he smiled at the woman, and she felt as if she'd been kicked in the stomach. That was her papa, and no mistake.

He lowered his head, burying his face against the harlot's nearly exposed bosom, and she arched her body toward him. Her arm fell sideways, leaving his black hair to fall like a curtain over them both. With that, Isabel saw all her plans to be part of a real family disappearing into oblivion. She stepped into the parlor.

No one noticed her for several moments. Then the piano stopped playing, heads started turning in her direction, and the room began to quiet. Above the lowering voices and shocked murmurs, one woman's jaded laugh could be heard. "How, now?" she cried. "What have we here?"

Isabel didn't turn to look at the woman who had spoken. She kept her gaze fixed on Papa, folded her arms, and said in a loud, clear voice, "I have come to fetch my father home."

She watched as he lifted his head and shook back his hair. A grim, satisfied smile curved her lips at the appalled, stunned expression on his face.

His shocked baritone voice broke the silence in the room. "Good G.o.d!"

Chapter Fourteen.

Dylan did not wait for his carriage to be called. He did not glance at the other people in the room. He did not even grab his evening coat from the floor. His only thought was to get his child out of this place. Silently, he picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the parlor, putting a hand over her eyes at the half-dressed and quite pa.s.sionate couple on the stairs. Then he walked out the front door.

"Papa-" she began as he hauled her to the stables behind the house.

"Not a word from you, young lady," he said. "Not a word."

She seemed to take it meekly enough, for she didn't speak, and he was glad of it. He didn't want to discuss this, not when it was twisting his guts to know what she must have seen. He breathed in deep gulps of air, trying to get clear of the haze of hashish. His own pulse hammered like a staccato drum, and the whine in his brain began to get loud again. He did not think he had ever been more angry in his life.

"Roberts!" he bellowed, entering the stables and interrupting the coachman's lively dice game. "We're leaving, and I mean now!"

The young, good-humored driver lost his smile as he spied the bundle in his master's arms. "What in blazes?" he cried, then looked at Dylan's grim expression, pulled at his cap in a gesture of complete acquiescence, and started to hitch the horses. Dylan took Isabel out to the stable yard to wait.

It was not until they were both inside the landau and the carriage had begun the ride home that he found the ability to speak. "What did you think you were doing?" he demanded. "And how did you get here?"

"I rode on the back like a footman, and why does it matter? I wanted to know where you go at night, and I guess now I know, don't I?" Isabel looked at him, and the moonlight through the window showed her face. Her expression was one of both loathing and feminine contempt. His daughter, looking at him that way, did something to him, sliced him in a way no woman had ever been able to do.

"Do you know how dangerous London can be?" he shouted. "When I think of what could have happened to you-" He broke off, too furious, too appalled, too alarmed by the possible dangers to a little girl on a London street at night. "If you follow me again, I will peel the skin right off your back."

Isabel turned her face away, looking out the open carriage window. He caught the gleam of a tear on her cheek, a tear of genuine pain, and a force as powerful as a physical blow slammed into his chest. It made his heart hurt, and the pressure pushed up into his throat, trying to choke him. He'd known from the start he would be a bad father. Here was his evidence.

Dylan rubbed his palms over his face, not knowing what to do. If Grace were here, she could advise him, but considering where he had just been, he could hardly explain and ask for her help.

That blond courtesan had looked a bit like her, slender, with all that hair spilling down like gold silk. That was why he had chosen her, of course. Her eyes had been blue, not green, but since they had been closed and her lips had been parted in pretended ecstacy as he'd caressed her under her skirts, he had almost been able to believe the fantasy. A poor subst.i.tute for a desperate man.

Now he looked across at his daughter, who was the one suffering for it, and he did not know what to say. He reached out and touched her cheek, brushing the tear away. "Isabel," he began. "Don't cry."

She slapped his hand away. "Don't tell me I can't cry," she shot back with all the childish fury an eight-year-old could muster. Wiping away the tear herself, she added, "Nothing's different here. Wherever I was, I used to sit in my room and look out and dream that one day you would come and get me and I would have a real father. I thought you'd come and take me to England and we'd live at your house in the country, and I'd have a pony and an apple orchard and you'd take care of me." Her eyes bored right through him, accusing, angry, contemptuous. "You never came."

"I didn't know about you."

"You do now," she countered, a point he could not refute. "But it still doesn't matter." Her voice caught on a sob. "All you want is for me to be out of the way!

You're just like all the rest of them."

Dylan frowned. "Who are the rest of them?"

She leaned back in the corner of her seat. Sniffing, she folded her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees, and looked at him. "Mama's friends. Every time she'd get a new friend, we'd move into a house and he would come and stay, and Mama would say that he was going to be my papa, but none of them were my papa. You were, and you never came. When that new, pretend papa got tired of Mama, we'd move again. That place-" She paused to jerk her thumb back in a gesture to show where they had just been. "Mama was living in one of those when you first came to Metz. I heard her tell someone about it."

Vivienne. A vague memory brushed his mind of a pretty, dark-haired courtesan with brown eyes. They hadn't been able to come to terms. He'd had a night or two with her, but her price for exclusivity had been too high. He hadn't thought her worth her asking price.

The earth beneath him must have been cracking, for he felt himself falling down into a deep, dark cavern, headed straight for h.e.l.l.

This wasn't my fault, he tried to tell himself. I hadn't known. But he could find no consolation in that. Sitting in front of him was a child, his child, and he understood with terrible clarity the life she had lived. The pain in his chest deepened.

Isabel began to sob, wrenching, inconsolable sobs. "I thought you'd be different.

I thought since you were my real father, you'd take care of me and want me, but

you're not my father. You're a pretend papa, just like all the others."

Each word flayed him.

"I'm not stupid, you know!" she cried. "Those men back at that house, I know what kind of men they are! The same kind I've known all my life. When they came to see my mama, I knew what they wanted!" Suddenly, she hurled herself across the carriage at him, her small fists striking out at him wherever they could. "You're just like them!"

Just like them. Dylan wrapped his arms around the flailing fury attacking him. He was sickened and ashamed in a way he had never been in his life before. Just like them.

And, G.o.d, he was.

He lifted the sobbing child up onto his lap and held her tight. He could not think of anything to say that would console her. He could only hold her and smooth her hair as she cried, each tear sending him further into the pit of h.e.l.l.

As the carriage rolled back to London, a protective instinct Dylan had never known came over him, and he knew he had to do something to make up for the neglect she had suffered, for the lousy hand that her mother and he had dealt her. This was his daughter. His to raise, defend, and protect. His responsibility, and no one else's. He could not shirk this duty. He no longer wanted to.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," he muttered against her hair. "So d.a.m.ned sorry. I didn't know you were there. If I'd known, I'd have come. I vow on my life I would have come and taken you away." He wasn't completely sure of that, but he'd have said anything to stop the flow of her tears. Anything.

"All I ever wanted was a real family," she said, her sobs m.u.f.fled by his shirt front.

"I know." He kissed her temple. "I know. We'll be a real family. You and I. We will."

Isabel didn't answer. She grabbed a handful of his ruffled shirtfront and burrowed her cheek into his shoulder, still crying. It wasn't until they reached Hyde Park that she finally cried herself to sleep. Dylan pressed his lips to the sleeping child's hair and whispered, "I'll change, Isabel. I'll be a real papa for you. I swear it. "

Grace was in a panic, but so was every other person in the house, so she strived to be the calmest one. "Think," she ordered the handful of servants surrounding her in the foyer. "Where could she be?"

Molly began to cry. "Oh, ma'am, it's all my fault. I only left her for a few minutes. I couldn't sleep and came down for a cup of tea. I thought she was asleep."

Grace pressed a hand to her forehead, the bit of nightgown lace at her wrist tickling her cheek. "I know, Molly, but stop berating yourself. It does no good. Did she take any of her clothes?"

"No, ma'am. I checked twice to be sure. She just put on one of her old pinafores and her old white shirt that she wore with the nuns, you know. A pair of her shoes and her cloak."