"Why?" Her blue-green gaze rising to his was cool, guarded.

"No reason." He shrugged-a small lazy movement, deprecating, indulgent. "I was just making conversation. I have no intention of hurting you," he softly added.

Her expression visibly relaxed. "My name's Serena Blythe."

Definitely an actress, he thought. She couldn't be a governess with a name and face and opulent body like that. "Have you been a governess long?" he casually asked, waiting to decipher the fabrications in her reply.

"Four years. When my father, Viscount Amberson, died I was forced to make a living."

He felt his stomach tighten. A viscount's daughter? Did she have relatives? he instantly wondered, the kind who would exert all the conventional pressures? And then as instantly he decided any young lady so destitute must be on her own. "I'm very sorry."

She sat still for a moment, thoughts of her father always painful, and then taking a small breath, she said in a controlled tone, "Papa gambled his money away. He wasn't very good at cards after his first bottle."

"Most men aren't."

She glanced at the bills and then at him and he could almost feel that small spark of elation he suddenly saw in her eyes.

"Are you?" she mildly inquired.

"Best hand wins the money?" he suggested, one dark brow raised in query. "Although I warn you, I'm sober."

"It would legitimize my taking it." She smiled for the first time, a lush yet curiously girlish smile, enigmatic like her.

Twenty minutes later, when the first course of oysters arrived, she was five hundred pounds richer, the Tokay decanter was empty, an easy bantering rapport had been established, and Beau had deliberately let her win only two hands. The rest she'd won on her own. She was either very good or very lucky. But she was definitely beautiful, he cheerfully noted, comfortably sprawled across from her, his cards balanced on his chest, his gaze, over the colorful fanned rims, gratified.

As was his mood.

The chill in her voice had disappeared, the guarded expression in her eyes replaced with animation. And when she smiled at him after a winning hand, he found it increasingly difficult to refrain from touching her.

She ate the oysters with relish.

She drank more wine when another decanter arrived and she said "thank you" so sweetly and gratefully when only the empty oyster shells remained on her plate, he almost considered giving up his plans to bed her.

But then she smiled at him and leisurely stretched and all he could think of was the soft fullness of her breasts raised high with her arms flexed above her head. Not even the plain navy serge could disguise their delectable bounty.

"Did you make your gown?" he inquired to mask his overlong gaze with politesse. "I like the lace-trimmed collar."

Leaning back against her chair, she delicately touched the white lace. "It was my mother's. I outgrew all of mine."

He swallowed before he answered, the thought of her outgrowing her girlish gowns having a profound effect on him after just having observed the voluptuous swell of her breasts.

"We could probably find you some additional dresses on board."

"Like the ones in the closet under the stairwell?"

"You were hiding there?"

She nodded. "The scent was luscious. Very French."

"I'll have my steward put together a wardrobe tomorrow," he blandly said, not about to discuss French scents or the reason they were there.

"Whose gowns are they?"

He gazed at her for a brief moment, gauging the degree of inquisition in her query, but her expression was open, innocent of challenge.

"I'm not sure," he evasively answered. "Probably my mother's or sister's." Which meant the more garish gowns would have to be culled out before offering the lady her choice. The light of loves he brought aboard for brief excursions on the Thames had a penchant for seductive finery.

"I often wished I had siblings. Do you see your family often?"

He spoke of his family then in edited phrases, of their passion for racing and their winning horses, of their stud in the north, how his younger brother and sisters were all first-class riders, offering charming anecdotal information that brought a smile to her face.

"Your life sounds idyllic. Unlike mine of late," Serena said with a fleeting grimace. "But I intend to change that."

Frantic warning bells went off in Beau's consciousness. Had she deliberately come on board? Were her designing relatives even now in hot pursuit? Or were they explaining the ruinous details to his father instead? "How, exactly," he softly inquired, his dark eyes wary, "do you plan on facilitating those changes?"

"Don't be alarmed." She suddenly grinned, feeling gloriously alive again after so many years. "I have no designs on you."

He laughed, his good spirits instantly restored. "Candid women have always appealed to me."

"While men with yachts are out of my league." Her smile was dazzling. "But why don't you deal us another hand," she cheerfully said, "and I'll see what I can do about mending my fortunes."

She was either completely ingenuous or the most skillful coquette. But he had more than enough money to indulge her and she amused him immensely.

He dealt the cards.

And when the beefsteaks arrived some time later, the cards were put away and they both tucked into the succulent meat with gusto.

She ate with a kind of quiet intensity, absorbed in the food and the act of eating. It made him consider his casual acceptance of all the privileges in his life with a new regard-but only briefly, because he was very young, very wealthy, too handsome for complete humility, and beset by intense carnal impulses that were profoundly immune to principle.

He'd simply offer her a liberal settlement when the Siren docked in Naples, he thought, discarding any further moral scruples.

He glanced at the clock.

Three-thirty.

They'd be making love in the golden light of dawn ... or sooner perhaps, he thought with a faint smile, reaching across the small table to refill her wineglass.

"This must be heaven or very near...." Serena murmured, looking up from cutting another portion of beefsteak. "I can't thank you enough."

"Remy deserves all the credit."

"You're very disarming. And kind."

"You're very beautiful, Miss Blythe. And a damned good cardplayer."

"Papa practiced with me. He was an accomplished player when he wasn't drinking."

"Have you thought of making your fortune in the gaming rooms instead of wasting your time as an underpaid governess?"

"No," she softly said, her gaze direct.

"Forgive me. I meant no rudeness. But the demimonde is not without its charm."

"I'm sure it's not for a man," she said, taking a squarely cut piece of steak off her fork with perfect white teeth. "However, I'm going to art school in Florence," she went on, beginning to chew. "And I shall make my living painting."

"Painting what?"

She chewed a moment more, savoring the flavors, then swallowed. "Portraits, of course. Where the money is. I shall be flattering in the extreme. I'm very good, you know."

"I'm sure you are." And he intended to find out how good she was in other ways as well. "Why don't I give you your first commission?" He'd stopped eating but he'd not stopped drinking and he gazed at her over the rim of his wineglass.

"I don't have my paints. They're on the Betty Lee with my luggage."

"We have to dock in Lisbon to alert the authorities to the man Horton. Why not buy your paints there? How much would you charge for my portrait?"

Her gazed shifted from her plate. "Nothing for you. You've been generous in the extreme. I'd be honored to paint you"-she paused and smiled-"whoever you are."

"Beau St. Jules."

"The Beau St. Jules?" She put her flatware down and openly studied him. "The darling of the broadsheets ... London's premier rake who's outsinned his father, the Saint?" A note of teasing had entered her voice, a familiar, intimate inflection occasioned by the numerous glasses of wine she'd drunk. "Should I be alarmed?"

He shook his head, amusement in his eyes. "I'm very ordinary," he modestly said, this man who fueled the scandal sheets and stood stud to all the London beauties. "You needn't be alarmed."

He wasn't ordinary, of course-not in any way. He was the gold standard, she didn't doubt, by which male beauty was judged. His perfect features and artfully cropped black hair reminded her of classic Greek sculpture; his overt masculinity, however, was much less the refined cultural ideal. He was startlingly male.

"Aren't rakes older? You're very young," she declared. And gorgeous as a young god, she decided, although the cachet of his notorious reputation probably wasn't based on his beauty alone. He was very charming.

He shrugged at her comment on his age. He'd begun his carnal amusements very young, he could have said but, circumspect, asked instead, "How old are you?" His smile was warm, personal. "Out in the world on your own?"

"Twenty-three." Her voice held a small defiance; a single lady of three-and-twenty was considered a spinster in any society.

"A very nice age," he pleasantly noted, his dark eyes lazily half-lidded. "Do you like floating islands?"

She looked at him blankly.

"The dessert."

"Oh, yes, of course." She smiled. "I should save room then."

By all means, he licentiously thought, nodding a smiling approval, filling their wineglasses once more. Save room for me-because I'm coming in....

When the dishes were cleared away by the servants and coffee and fruit had been left, they moved to a small settee to enjoy the last course. She poured him coffee; he added his own brandy and leaning back took pleasure in watching her slice a pear and leisurely eat each succulent piece.

"Your employers didn't feed you enough, did they?"

She turned to look at him lounging against the settee arm, all languid grace and beauty. "You wouldn't understand."

His lashes lowered fractionally. "Tell me anyway."

"I don't want to," she retorted, suddenly disquieted, all the misery still too fresh. "I don't want to remember anything about those four years with the Tothams." And despite her best intentions, her eyes grew shiny with tears.

Quickly setting his cup down, he took the dessert knife from her grasp and the remains of the pear, wiped her fingers on a lavender-scented napkin, and holding her small hands in his, softly said, "It's over. You don't have to go back."

When a tear slid down her cheek, he gently drew her into his arms and held her close. "Don't cry, darling," he murmured. "By the time we get to Naples, you'll have won a fortune from me. And then the Tottles can go to hell."

She giggled into his chest.

"And I'll see that the portrait you paint of me is seen at the Royal Academy. Should I pose nude as Mars? That should draw attention."

She giggled again and pushing slightly away from him, gazed up into his smiling face. "You're incredibly kind," she whispered.

Her lips were half parted and only inches away. It took all his willpower to resist the temptation, her sweet vulnerability, her sadness affecting even his disreputable soul.

"May I kiss you?" she whispered, her feelings in turmoil, the warmth and affection he offered inexpressibly welcome after so many years of emotional deprivation, the feel of his arms around her comforting after the recent desperation of her plight.

"You probably shouldn't." He was trying to be honorable. She perhaps didn't understand what a kiss would do to him.

"I'm not an innocent." She'd been kissed before, although against her will, by the Tothams' repulsive son, when he'd dared transgress his mother's commands. It was immensely satisfying to offer a kiss of her own accord.

Beau shut his eyes briefly, her few simple words permission for all he wished to do. And when he opened his eyes, he murmured, heated and low, "Let me kiss you...."

She was lost then, a true innocent despite what she'd said, her notion of a kiss eons distant from Beau St. Jules's kisses.

He made her feel lusciously heated, melting, his mouth delicate at first, offering butterfly kisses on her lips and cheeks, on her earlobes and temples, on the warm pulse of her throat, and then his mouth drifted lower, following his fingers as he unbuttoned the top three buttons of her neckline, drew her collar open, and kissed her soft, pale skin.

She kissed him back after that and a new tremulous feeling flared deep in the pit of her stomach. Pleasure inundated her senses, her heated blood, the warming surface of her skin, and most of all, gloriously in her spirit where she felt overwhelmingly happy. "You make me feel wonderful," she whispered, too long in the wasteland to want to forgo such blissful sensations.

"You make me feel-impatient." He lifted her into his arms, moving toward his bed, his mouth covering hers again, eating her tantalizing sweetness.

"Maybe I shouldn't," she breathed moments later when he lowered her gently to the bed.

"I know," he murmured, brushing his mouth over hers. "I shouldn't undo these buttons," he whispered, unclasping another pearl button at her neckline. "Tell me I shouldn't."

"It's highly improper," she gently teased, touching his strong jaw with a trailing fingertip, smiling up at him.

"But I have this powerful carnal urge." His voice was deep, low, rich with promise.

"Should I be frightened?" Her heart was racing, her senses in tumult.

"Are you usually?" he silkily inquired, amused at how well Miss Blythe played the game.

She didn't know what to say for a moment. "No," she finally replied, trembling, eager for his touch. "I'm not."

And then the man known by salacious repute as Glory lived up to his name.

Her dress was discarded between flame-hot kisses and bewitching caresses, his hands intoxicating on her flesh, his touch incarnate sensuality, her petticoat and chemise leisurely removed, her worn slippers and much-mended stockings slipped off with tantalizing languidness. And when she lay nude before him, flushed pink with arousal, the pulsing between her thighs leaving her breathless with longing, he pulled off his shirt and placed her palms on his chest so she could feel the powerful beat of his heart. "I want you that much," he whispered, seated beside her, his large hands covering hers, his skin hot, the rhythm of his heart turbulently echoed in her own.

The rich splendor of her body incited his passions: her provocative breasts pinked from his touch, their ripe fullness his for the taking; the sensuous curve of her slender waist and hips was female sorcery; and lower, her pale silken hair was lure and magnet to his lust. Lifting her hands to his mouth, he lightly kissed her fingertips and then gently lowering her hands, he whispered, "Don't go away...."