He kicked off his shoes. “And one client to please.”

She refused to be baited. Her smile couldn’t have been improved upon by the actress, Sarah Kemble, herself. “Perhaps if I don’t please you, you may not return, and I’ll no longer have to deal with your impudence.”

His narrowed gaze held hers as he slid off his dinner jacket and waistcoat “Rest assured, darling, you always please me. Now, kindly take off your nightgown. We don’t have much time.”

When she didn’t move, he half smiled. “If we’re going to play by these rules, you’ll have to do your part.”

“I don’t have to do anything except leave tomorrow when you go hunting. You’re the one who wants something. You’re the one who’s disturbing my sleep and life. I’m perfectly content to pretend I barely know you. In fact, I would prefer it. So, don’t give me orders.”

“Or,” he said, softly, “I could take you away, now, this minute, anywhere I chose, so perhaps I can give orders after all.”

“I’ll scream.” She smiled. “Checkmate.”

“Maybe I don’t care if you scream. Maybe I don’t care what Ian and Jane think. By the time they can get out of bed, I’ll have you downstairs and into my carriage.”

“It’s not harnessed.”

“How do you know?” He smiled. “Checkmate.” A brittle silence fell.

“Now take off your nightgown.” He slid his suspenders down his arms. “What if I don’t want to?”

“I gave you five hundred pounds. You have to.” She scowled. “You’re not making this very easy.”

“Whoa.” He held up his hands. “Who’s not making this easy?”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right about that,” he said, grimly, “life isn’t always about you having what you want when you want it.”

“You seem to be having your way more than I.” She snorted. “If that were the case, you would be back downstairs in your bedroom and I would be peacefully sleeping.”

“So you have no interest in making love?” His voice was velvety and low, his dark gaze heated and what she wanted was always equivocal when Simon was close. “I can’t afford to lose this job,” she said, her voice trembling slightly at the last.

“You don’t need a job. I’ll take care of you.” “For how long? You see how practical I’ve become.”

“If you need money, I’ll give it to you.”

She glared at him. “Of course I need money.

What a stupid thing to say. Do you think I’d be a governess if I had money?“

He blew out a breath. ‘Jesus, Caro, tell me what you want me to do.“

“I want you to leave me alone.”

He was silent

“Did you hear me?” Challenge in each syllable.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

He shook his head again. “No, I can’t” Although the reasons he couldn’t weren’t entirely clear. Or maybe they were clear, but he refused to acknowledge them. Or maybe wanting and having were two different things, although the wanting part wasn’t open to discussion right now. He began unbuttoning the collar button on his evening shirt.

“Simon, don’t!”

“I’m willing to accede to your rules, but that’s all I’m willing to do. I’m not leaving. So scream if you wish.”

“And if I do?”

“I’ll take you away, right now, this minute.”

“I hate you,” she whispered.

“No, you don’t”

“Then I should.”

“Don’t. I’ll live with your ridiculous rules. That makes you triumphant”

“Damn you, Simon!”

He smiled. “Is that a yes?”

“Only to the most obtuse.”

“I doubt you’re obtuse either. Make up your mind.” He glanced at the clock. “If we’re staying here, there’s not much time left.”

He’d take her away if she refused; he’d made that plain. “No comments in public, now?”

“I’ll be completely circumspect”

“You won’t be staying long, will you?”

“Probably not,” he lied. His curfew tonight was less than two hours away and he didn’t want to waste it in further conversation.

“Very well.”

He laughed. “Your enthusiasm is gratifying.”

She glanced at his obvious erection. “It doesn’t seem to have affected your interest.”

“We’ve missed you.”

“I suspect you say that to all your women.”

“Are you mine, then?”

She took note of the time. “For an hour and a half I am.”

“I’m flattered,” he said as casually. “Would you like me to undress you?”

“In these kind of arrangements, don’t the ladies usually undress themselves?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” he asked with a hard look, his hands arrested on one gold cuff link.

“Good God, Simon. I didn’t sleep my way across Europe, so kindly stop acting like a jealous husband.”

His eyes narrowed further as he set the cuff link on the bedside table. “Did your husband have reason to be jealous?”

“Are we questioning degrees of intemperance here? Because I don’t think you of all people have the right. And I doubt, in these circumstances, you grill the ladies you’re about to sleep with on their virtue.”

“I’ve never exactly thought of you in those terms.” He slid the second cuff link free, set it aside and tugged his shirt out of his trousers.

“Then don’t start. But if you’d rather, I wouldn’t mind saying good night and best wishes for your future. Truthfully, I’d prefer that.”

“No.” His voice was unrelenting and partly muffled as he pulled his shirt over his head. He tossed it aside.

“Yes, Captain.”

He went still, his gaze shuttered. “I haven’t heard that for a long time.”

“Your scars stand out in the candlelight.” His nude torso was burnished by the flickering light, his virility impossible to ignore.

‘They’re almost gone,“ he said, brusquely.

They weren’t, nor would they ever be, she thought, remembering how she’d helped care for him when he came back from Waterloo, nearly dead.

He didn’t remember the misery of those days, he recalled instead the bewitching game they’d played as he’d recuperated. His sigh was part memory, part regret. “What the hell went wrong?” he murmured.

She didn’t need clarification. She shrugged. “Too many things to count.” She looked past him for a moment, at a loss to even begin to define when the ruin had begun. Then her gaze returned to his and she suddenly smiled. “Do you want to play because I don’t want to remember the disasters.”

He inhaled softly, the disasters having come in stages he didn’t want to think about either. He nodded. “You choose which one.”

“The one where you knock on the door.”

His mouth turned up slightly at the corners. “Your favorite.”

“You asked,” she said, not quite able to read his tone. “Would you rather do yours?”

He shook his head. “I like that one too.”

She tipped her head faintly, her gaze on his trousers. “I can tell.”

He chuckled. “They were all my favorites. What the hell happened to us?”

She could have told him the truth-that aside from any number of adjunct disagreements he hadn’t been ready to think of marriage… not really, although they’d talked about it since they were young. “I felt like traveling,” she said, lightly instead, rising from the bed and moving toward him. “But right now, Captain, I can’t let you in,” she murmured. “It’s very late, and I’m alone in the house.”

The words were like a line from a song, forever etched in his memory and he answered as he had so many times before, “Forgive me, my lady. But I have my orders to bivouac here.”

She clutched the front of her nightgown, holding it tightly at her neck. “Surely… there… must be… some mistake.”

The hesitation in her voice was exactly the same, innocent, winsomely appealing and he felt the same surge of desire he’d always felt when he heard it “I’m afraid there’s no mistake. The campaign has moved this way and we’re in pursuit…” His voice trailed off.

She didn’t find it difficult to mimic apprehension; he was gazing at her with naked lust. “I… don’t know… what to say.”

“Forgive me. But my orders are plain.”

“If you insist on coming in… you must stay… in the parlor.”

“Of course. You needn’t fear, my lady. You’re completely safe.”

“Thank you.” A faint smiled played about her mouth and she nodded at his partial nudity. “You’re ahead of me.” She waved her hand in a small circle as though moving them along. “Would you like to dry your coat by the fire?” Her voice had reverted to her actress intonation.

“If I may…”

She turned and made a pretense of placing his coat by an imaginary fire, her breath in her throat

He came up behind her like he had so many times before; she could feel the heat of his body, the hard length of his arousal pressed into her buttocks. As she shivered at the sudden flaring heat, his erection moved and swelled against her.

“I’ve been on campaign for weeks,” he whispered, lifting her hair from the back of her neck, the coolness a signal memory from the past. “I haven’t seen a woman for so long…”

She stiffened in anticipation.

And then he bent his head and touched his mouth to the nape of her neck.

So light a kiss shouldn’t have made her so frantic, so covetous and eager. It hadn’t always. Not to this staggering degree. Please, please… now, she wanted to say. I can’t wait another second.

But he whispered, “I’m sorry, my lady. I shouldn’t have done that.”

And for a flashing moment she wasn’t sure what was now and what was then. But he’d stepped back, like he was supposed to and she turned to him. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she breathed, her agitation plain.

He took her hand and rubbed it across the front of his trousers, so she could feel the breadth and length of his desire. “You have to,” he said, not caring if this was fantasy or reality, knowing why he was here.

She jerked her hand away.

He didn’t move, although he’d quickly scanned the room. “You can’t go anywhere,” he whispered. “I won’t let you.”

Inundated by carnal longing, she drew in a sharp breath. “Because you’re-the captain.” She’d almost said My captain, but caught herself just in time.

He’d heard the minute pause, took note of the altered wording, resolved to change it back again now that he’d found her. But he uttered the expected words in order not to frighten her. “You needn’t worry, my lady. No one will know.”

“Your troopers will know.”

“Not unless I invite them in. Would you like me to?”

“No… no-no.”

He saw the uncertainty in her eyes, heard it in her breathy reply. “Are you sure? They won’t touch you.”

“You said you wouldn’t touch me.”

“I haven’t yet.” His voice turned silken. “Not really.”

Her skittish gaze glanced downward to the bulge in his crotch and her voice when she spoke, was almost inaudible. “There’s more?”

“Invite me in and I’ll show you.”

“You are in.”

“In here,” he murmured, touching her mons, slipping his fingers downward, forcing the soft linen of her gown into the moistness of her vulva. “Lift your gown,” he ordered. “I can’t feel you.” His dark eyes held hers. “And I want to.”

“No… no-I couldn’t… I can’t-my family would disown me. I’m betrothed to the local curate.”

His gaze was half-lidded; his fingers buried in her cleft were damp from her wetness. “I won’t tell the curate. He’ll never know.”

She shook her head. “He’ll know. Truly, he will.”

He stroked her gently, the fabric of her nightgown slippery under his fingers. “I’ll be gentle,” he whispered. “You could have lost your virginity riding.” He brushed her mouth lightly with his. “You ride don’t you?”

She quickly nodded, her thighs pressed tightly around his hand, her breath coming in short little pants.

“Lift your gown, my lady… for me.”

Temptation in the wilderness or in a small English hamlet or in a governess’s room under the eaves. Unable to resist, she closed her fingers on the fabric of her gown, bunched the skirt in her hands, and slowly lifted it.

“That’s a good girl,” Simon whispered, stroking the smoothness of her exposed belly. Sliding his hand downward, he nudged her thighs apart and slipped in one finger palm deep. “Ummm… you’re a very good girl. Have you let your curate feel you all wet and juicy like this-have you?”

She shook her head, not meeting his gaze.

“So I’m the first man to touch this?” He stroked her liquid flesh. “I think you could take more than one finger, couldn’t you?” he whispered, probing her slick passage.

She should say no to such cool self-possession; she shouldn’t be so shameless in her need-so insatiable. And if she weren’t aching to feel him deep inside her, she would.

He touched her cheek. “Answer me.”

His dark, seductive gaze further incited the scandalous throbbing between her legs. He was too beautiful. That was the problem. She craved him for his beauty alone. “Yes, yes… yes,” she said, her voice sounding as though it were someone else’s. Someone ignominiously in rut; someone who would have lain with him anywhere.