Dr. Meeker motioned to a chair near the desk. "Please sit, my lord."

James crossed his arms over his chest. "I prefer to stand."

He was too agitated to sit. He had given up on his interrogation of the two women and come here to bang on Dr. Meeker's door and demand entrance. Only his insistence that he would return the next day in the company of his solicitor had moved the rather burly-looking servant to wake his master.

"Well, I hope you do not mind if I sit. My bones do not like me being awake this long before sunrise anymore." A caricature of a smile bent the doctor's thin lips. He reached into the pocket of his dressing gown and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and put them on. His hands were slender and pale as parchment. The blue veins were prominent. The long fingers were gnarled.

The sight of those hands sent a chill through James, though he couldn't have said why. They were simply the hands of an older man.

However the hands looked decidedly older than the man.

"Now, what can I do for you, Lord Blayne?"

"You can explain to me what is happening with Lady Blayne."

"Lady Blayne?" Dr. Meeker stared at James over the rims of his glasses, his dark brown gaze intense. "I presume you mean young Lady Blayne?"

"Of course I do," James said, his patience almost completely gone. "What's all this talk about her being hysterical?"

The doctor gazed back at him mildly, a slight twist in his lips sufficing as a smile. "You needn't take offense, my lord. It is a medical diagnosis, not a personal condemnation of her character."

"All right, so it is a medical diagnosis and one that you have applied to the lady."

"Yes, she is suffering from hysteria. But we must focus on the cause, not the label given to the condition."

"What is the cause? Her husband's death?"

Dr. Meeker made a skeptical expression. "Her husband's death certainly did not help, but I cannot believe it was the cause of her malady." The older man drummed his fingers on his desktop. He raised his brows. "My lord, before I go any further, may I make a request?"

"What request?"

"Well, in order to fulfill your demand for information, I must disclose secrets that I normally would not. Things that could be very unhealthy for one man to say to another man about a lady, especially to a man who is, for all intents and purposes, her guardian." He compressed his lips briefly. "Do you understand what I am saying, my lord?"

"I understand."

"Lady Blayne is confused in her way of thinking. She was wed to a man who was not a fit husband. He was too ill to properly fulfill his duties in the marriage bed. This caused a lack of respect on her part and an unfortunate dependence on self-pleasuring."

"Self-pleasuring?" James gaped at the doctor. "May I remind you, doctor, you are speaking of a lady."

Dr. Meeker offered him a mild smile. "Indeed. But ladies are women, my lord."

James supposed that they were. But it was too much of a shock to think of Sunny and self-pleasure in the same sentence. Yet, the doctor had a point. Ladies were women. Some ladies were women, yes, of course, as James well knew from direct experience.

But surely not Sunny!

Then something else occurred to him. "Wait," he said. "How the devil did such a personal matter ever become known to you?"

"Why, the lady herself confessed it. She was quite troubled by her inability to stop such unnatural behavior and the thoughts that accompanied it. She is a good person at heart. She knows what is a proper and healthy way of life for a lady. And she realizes her deficiency in her inability to comport herself as befits her station. But her deficiency remains unresolved. This is the sole cause of her current mental fragility."

James frowned. He had some difficulty putting the concept into words. He sat in the chair the doctor had offered earlier. "Mentally fragile? Because she self-pleasures?"

"Quite so."

The doctor sounded so serious and the whole matter was so far from what James had expected to discuss with the man that he laughed. "Good God, doctor, if that were true, the whole of the Royal Navy would be stark raving mad."

"Ah, but those are men, are they not?"

"Yes."

"Women are different. Especially gently reared ladies such as young Lady Blayne. They need a man's authority and guidance. In the bedchamber most of all. Young Lady Blayne is ill, very ill, and she will continue to be so and thus prey to sensual weakness with men until I can redirect her focus of carnal authority from herself to a male authority where it more properly belongs."

James' blood turned to ice. "And just how are you intending to do that?"

"Opiates to calm her. A basic diet without too many spices or herbs that might prove too stimulating to her natural desires. But much of it involves her being answerable to me for her behavior. And she must be watched. Her former maids had a fond attachment to her, and they were too sympathetic and thus too lenient with her. Not watchful enough. I have employed Mrs. Tibbs. She has instructed the new maids on how to better observe Catri...Lady Blayne for the...uh, the signs."

"What signs?"

"Signs of inappropriate behavior."

"So, she has been drugged, imprisoned in Blayne House, and is being watched at every moment-in short, she has been robbed of every possible dignity left to her. And I have been paying for this service." He ground the words out, feeling a heaviness weighing on his chest.

Guilt.

He should not have delayed coming home to Blayne House. He ought to have come to Edinburgh directly upon landing on British soil again. But he had stayed in London, keeping occupied with business, enjoying all the pleasures available to him as a titled gentleman in his prime with money to spend. Wasting time, attending fox hunts and the races. Escorting certain ladies to the opera and exhausting himself between fine, white English thighs whilst Sunny, a woman under his protection, had needed him.

Maybe he hadn't returned because he knew, deep inside, that he'd never fallen out of love with her? After he'd lost Sunny to Freddy, he'd spent a long time disciplining his mind to remain disconnected from his emotions. Had he not wanted to test that discipline?

He scowled. Did it matter why he had delayed? The point was that he had trusted Aunt Frances' judgment. He had thought Sunny was just exhibiting the reclusive ways that she had proved herself so capable of during her marriage to Freddy Blayne.

The doctor watched him calmly. The man's calmness shattered the last of James' tolerance. How could Meeker just sit there and explain how he had stripped every last scrap of Sunny's dignity and autonomy in the name of "helping" her?

James stood.

Dr. Meeker stood. He took a few steps forward and opened his mouth to speak, but James threw a forestalling hand between them. "I have heard enough."

The doctor fixed him with an intent look. "Those scratches."

He reached out with his gnarled fingers toward James' face.

James jerked his head back.

The doctor's gaze sharpened. "She came to you, didn't she?"

James said nothing.

"She is a highly persuasive young woman. Dangerously seductive. Such women are sirens. She is not to blame, of course; she cannot help her sickness of mind and spirit. But it would be a mistake, my lord, for you to allow her any sway over your mind." The doctor raised his brows. "Or your emotions. Especially your emotions."

"Careful, doctor, in what you say about Lady Blayne. In fact, from this moment on, I revoke your liberty to speak of her any further-I forbid you to go near her again. Your services are no longer required."

Chapter Six.

Sunny awoke with a start. The feel of her skin brushing the linen sheet gave her another start. She glanced up at the unfamiliar dark green velvet bed curtains that were drawn back to let the early morning light spill across the bed.

Yes, she was in James Blayne's bed. Naked.

Alone.

Shame burned into her. No, it was deeper than shame. Utter humiliation.

He had rejected her advances. Resisted her seduction.

Oh, she had to get back to her own bedchamber. Now.

With a soft cry, she jolted into a sitting position.

Blue eyes met hers. Blue eyes that immediately lowered to her breasts.

She grasped the coverlet and jerked it to her collarbone.

James' attention returned to her face and he stared at her intently.

Not just intently, determinedly. As though by the power of his stare, he could impel her to do his will.

She remembered that about him and how it had frightened her as a younger woman.

All right, it still frightened her. What woman wouldn't feel a bit dismayed to be the object of those piercing ice-blue eyes? Her heart pounded in her ears, and inwardly, she began to tremble.

He approached the bed. The sound of his boots on the floorboards echoed unnaturally loud in the chamber. Had he spoken with his aunts and his grandmother? How much had they told him?

Did he know the full truth about her now?

Her heart pounded all the harder.

Almost to the bed, he stopped, bent and picked up a white garment.

Her nightdress, where she'd shed and dropped it earlier when planning her seduction of him.

What madness!

She'd made a complete fool of herself!

She wanted to pull the coverlet over her head yet she resisted, trying to slow her fast increasing breaths.

"Here." His voice was soft and gentle. "Put this on."

He handed her the nightdress then turned his back.

She hastily pulled it over her head and down her body. "Tis done," she said, hearing her voice dry, raspy, small.

He turned back just as she was making to arise. He closed the space between them in two strides and placed his hands on her shoulders and stared down at her.

She dropped her gaze, unable to bear how he seemed to search into her very soul. Her heart fluttered and she took a shuddering breath.

He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. "You're shivering."

It was a statement that required no answer.

"Are you cold?"

"No," she said, again hearing the smallness in her voice.

"Look at me, Sunny," he said, his voice deep, maybe a little husky.

She glanced up at him and let him see her eyes. Let him see all the way down into her soul.

And he did not look away.

"My God, all that has happened to you. Everything. How does one find words?"

She caught her breath.

What did he mean by "everything"? Oh, how much had they told him?

"How you have been hurt."

She opened her mouth, ready to deny the depth of her hurt, but at the sight of the sudden tenderness in his eyes, her wits flew away.

He slid his hands down to her upper arms then tightened his grip. "I am sorry, Sunny." He'd sounded strange, as though he might be ready to weep. "I am so goddamned sorry."

A lump formed in her throat. She couldn't swallow it down. Couldn't speak.

"I am sorry they have imprisoned you here and robbed you of all privacy and dignity."

Her heart's beat went all fluttery. The lump in her throat grew larger. Her vision went blurry.

"I am sorry..." His voice sounded a little more strangled. "I am sorry for your loss of Freddy. For all of it."

Oh God. Oh God.

Her throat burnt now. Tears fell from her eyes. She couldn't hold them back.

No one had ever said they were sorry for her loss of Freddy.