A perfect little lady, one who would never be allowed to grow up. Never allowed to have her own pursuits. Never allowed to have a normal marriage. Never allowed to be a mother.

She hadn't even been allowed a Season.

Not even one Season.

Never allowed her own free choice.

Even he had tried to strip her of her free choice in the manner in which he had approached her, seducing her into a compromise that would have forced her to become his wife.

He gave his cravat another jerk, more violently this time.

Was that how the Blaynes reacted to life? Even to love? Use wealth and power to gain the obligation and to tie those they desired to themselves?

The thought rested uneasily on his nerves and he focused his mind on the matter at hand.

"You're uncomfortable here?" he asked, needlessly.

"I know it doesn't make sense, but I need to be someplace where no one knows who I am." She folded her hands in her lap.

He could feel how hard she worked to appear composed, but her eyes held that touch of wildness.

"Can't we find a place like that? Will you take me there?" Her eyes implored him, touching him so deeply, he couldn't look away, couldn't deny her.

"Of course we can go someplace like that. But I am afraid, on such short notice, that it won't be very luxurious."

"I don't care about hardship. I just want anonymity. Can we leave here soon?" Now her voice held a touch of anxiety. She reached to the hollow beneath her ear-the hollow where he longed to press his lips once more-and tugged a small curl loose and began to twist it about her finger.

That simple gesture, so sensual yet so vulnerable, sent heated blood rushing into his loins. At the same time, it made him want to take her into his arms and shield her against the whole world.

He realized too, how much it must have cost her to reach out to him. To ask for his aid in escaping from those who held her in bonds of guilt and obligation. To ask for his aid in escaping from that abominable physician. She had taken a great risk in trusting him. James might have well ignored her pleas. He might have even betrayed her to Aunt Frances for her pleas for help and left her behind in a far more vulnerable position than before.

He'd been a man of power and position with much responsibility. Yet he'd never been entrusted with such weighty matters in such a personal way by a woman. The idea that she had trusted him that much filled him with warmth. And maybe some hope.

He wasn't used to hope.

"Very soon?" she asked softly.

"Yes, we can leave as soon as you are ready." He frowned. "Has anyone treated you poorly?"

"No, they've been quite lovely. But I am nervous here. I feel as though they might be watching me." She gave a weak laugh. "Lady Carson seems to know that I am dependent on laudanum."

Her gaze flickered to his, direct, cutting him to the bone. Was there a hint of accusation in her eyes?

"Did she say something to you?" he asked, feeling that his neckcloth had perhaps shrunk again.

"She asked how much I take daily."

Damn Donna for her meddling and not knowing when to hold her tongue. And damn him for being so rattled by the whole matter as to have confided in her to begin with. He was to blame. Accused and found guilty of sharing Sunny's secrets. A profound sense of shame and remorse hit him hard. "I am sorry, Sunny, I shouldn't have shared your-"

She waved her hand dismissively. "I am accustomed to it, James. Everyone speculating about me, discussing me, watching me."

She was trying to appear unconcerned but he caught the hunted look in her eye. It hurt him. He felt an actual twinge in his chest. She shouldn't have to be accustomed to such infringement on her dignity.

He was the head of this family. He should have been here to be the one who made the final decision on how to handle Sunny's...her what, exactly? Peccadillo? Is that how he should refer to it? That was certainly less painful than calling it what it was.

Her secret love affaire.

With a mere servant.

The softness inside him turned to something harder, cooler. It enabled him to direct the conversation to the unpleasant matters which needed to be discussed. "How much opiate do you take each day?"

She looked abashed.

God, it must be worse than he'd suspected.

"I am not entirely certain."

"Surely, you mix your own medications and take them, or you instruct your maid?"

"I don't like the way it makes me feel. I used to refuse it. Often I just wouldn't want to cope with the effects, so I would wait until they left me and toss the dose out the window." Her expression grew contrite. "But I have become more aware, more sensitive of how my impetuous actions have hurt and worried Frances. I have tried to be a good patient. Yet they don't trust me, they often force the dose on me. Dr. Meeker showed them how to-to-" She grimaced. "It isn't very pleasant and I won't elaborate."

Anger roiled through him. But also a touch of hurt for what she'd had to endure whilst under his supposed protection.

She raised her brows and pursed her lips in a sheepish look. "Well, now you know another naughty thing about me. I am not a good patient." She sighed. "Lady Carson seemed concerned about what it would take to break my dependence on the laudanum. That it would cause me certain hardships."

"Yes. I too, am concerned about that. But I am prepared to do whatever I must to help you though it."

"How kind you are, James." Sadness entered her eyes. "You always have been."

Relief broke over James; the tension he'd been holding in his neck over the past few hours loosened. He hadn't known how to broach the subject with her of what they must face in the next few weeks.

"I look forward to stopping the opiates," she said.

"We'll start easing the dose as soon as we get to Brownwood Place. For now, are you ready to leave for the inn?"

"Could we get some dinner first?" She touched his arm. Such light familiarity, as though they were longtime friends.

The unconscious gesture warmed him. Did she consider him a friend? Even after the way he had once disrespected her by trying to seduce her? Had he been so wrong to assume that she had likely held a grudge over that? The warmth spread through him further. He smiled and nodded. "We can do anything you like. What would you fancy for dinner?"

"Beef ragout." She smiled tentatively. "And plum pudding."

"Now who is becoming very English?"

Her smile broadened. Dimples popped into her cheeks on either side of her wide, lush mouth. Her lips were very red.

He caught his breath.

Her present beauty was enchanting, distracting. A deliciously maddening temptation. Yet her dimples were a potent reminder of the girl he'd once known. Sunny's dimples. Her broad, cheerful smiles.

It slammed into him with a torrent of mixed emotions, all tearing at him at once. Devastating him.

"I fear I have developed a taste for plum pudding," she said.

The same self-protective instincts that had seen him through all the years of battles, all the attack plans made on the spur of the moment, told him not to pry into the matter of who had given her a taste for English foods. Some secrets between a man and a woman were best left untold.

She lowered her hand from his arm and he wished she had not. But she was still smiling. "Would you prefer that I settled you at the inn and brought the meal back with me?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I should like some air." She pressed her hand to her collarbone and took another furtive glance around. She turned back to him and studied him for a moment. Speculatively. "And perhaps on the way to dinner we could visit a couple of shops."

He frowned. "But do you really wish to be out amongst people like that?"

Her brow furrowed. "As long they do not know who I am and-" she hugged herself and rubbed her upper arms-"they are not watching my every move for some kind of misstep, well, I should love to be out amid people. I have been isolated for so long."

To James' surprise, the first shop Sunny asked to visit was a confectionery. She purchased a large box of expensive sweetmeats. Expensive with some rare ingredients, delicacies.

The shopkeeper tied the heart-shaped box and handed it to James. It was the kind of item he might purchase a mistress after he had neglected her. He had never much paid attention to such items, as most often he had delegated the task of purchasing and arranging for their delivery to his valet. He would have ordered something basic. Red roses and plain walnut and date sweetmeats.

But Sunny, with her grin broadening, flashing those charming dimples, had ordered Turkish apricots, coconut, rare nutmeats, dried berries that came from distant lands.

They didn't even have some of the things she wanted in stock. She accepted this with the same smiling grace. The clerk had flushed with pleasure, just to be serving her.

Wouldn't any man be pleased to be the object of that dazzling smile?

Now James studied the box, wrapped in pale pink velvet and secured with a bright red ribbon tied into a big bow. He had to admit, such frivolous indulgence added a cheerful touch to an evening that might have been a bit awkward, a bit dark.

He ought to have bought her something like this himself.

The thought accused him.

But since when had he spent so much of his time wondering how he might make a lady's evening more cheerful? Without an ulterior motive, that is.

Since when had he ever been so selfless in his thoughts?

And since when did Sunny enjoy sweetmeats? He recalled her eating the cakes this afternoon, her lips speckled with sugar and how she had licked it away with relish.

So many changes in Sunny.

He could scarce keep up with all of them.

As a young man, he had fallen in love with her because of all the little details about her. Now, all those things had changed.

How should he feel about her now? Was the softness he felt toward her born simply of longing to have that girl he once knew returned to him?

He let his gaze drift to her generous curves.

He did have some definite feelings about the new Sunny. He'd been half-hard during the entire carriage ride here, and now his flesh threatened to stir to life again.

One thought kept tormenting him.

She'd had an affaire with a servant. She had wanted that man badly enough to risk scandal and even ruin to have him.

Had she given herself to this man fully?

The question tormented James endlessly, eating into his gut with burning fire.

Perhaps she had.

Perhaps after so many years wed to an invalid, she had just wanted sex that badly. It must have taken quite a bit of cunning and sneaking around to accomplish the meetings.

An intensely sexual, artful Sunny, planning and plotting to see her lover. There was a part deep inside him that found the whole matter perversely arousing.

On the tide of that thought, came another, more shocking-she had risked ruining the entire Blayne family with her impetuous madness! The knowing was like the edge of a knife's blade.

He had been so blithely unaware of how close she had come to casting all his political ambitions into the dustbin. He ought not to have neglected the situation-to have neglected her. Yes, he should have wed her. As her husband and lord, he could have kept her hot little desires satisfied, he could have controlled and watched over her behavior himself.

Lust pulsed through his blood, boiling, heated insanity.

However, there was more to a wife for a nobleman than his sexual domination of her. If sexual domination were even proper and fit between a gentleman and a lady. That was likely something better kept between a man and his mistresses.

None of his thoughts about her were honorable. And he had sworn that he would treat Sunny with honor this time.

He would keep that promise. He would treat her like a lady if it killed him.

She placed a white and red striped bag on the counter and then turned and beamed at James a smile that was all dazzling white teeth and rose-colored lips. "Pay the man, darling."

Her voice held something akin to a courtesan's teasing note. It sent a further thrill of lust into his cock.

It also unnerved him. It was further proof of her new sexual sophistication.

Yet her green eyes sparkled and their beauty wiped the thoughts from his mind, and he caught his breath from something that felt deeper than the lust beginning to swell in his loins.

He couldn't have said the amount the shopkeeper asked for. He reached into his pocket and spilled out a handful of coins, then put his hand on Sunny's arm and led her from the shop.

Once on the street, she stopped and he stopped in response.

She gave him another one of those spectacular smiles. All sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks. The sounds of carriages rattling by and the din of people's voices and the need to be aware of appearances all faded away.

Only her smile and her loveliness filled his awareness.

He stood there, gawking at his cousin's widow on a public street.

Though it was unlikely anyone on this side of town, amid the merchants and shopkeepers, would recognize them.

She reached up and placed her hand to his mouth. "Here, have one."

He opened his mouth to ask what she was trying to give him and when he did, she popped the candy piece in.