the women's avid gazes and the heated puffs of fog emerging from the men's lips. He leaned over and whispered something in Justin's ear.


Justin dropped his gaze to Emily as if seeing her for the first time. Her curls glistened with damp. Her dress- the charming girlish confection he had chosen in order to keep himself at bay-clung to her

skin in all the wrong places, the pristine white going almost sheer over the dusky hint of her nipples.

Her lips quirked in an apologetic smile.


He took one step toward her. Then another. Her smile faltered. "What are you going to do?"


He smiled pleasantly. "Murder you."


"Oh dear," Herbert murmured.


Moaning, Lily pressed a scented handkerchief to her lips. The bobbies exchanged a nervous glance, wondering if the rumors they'd heard about the savage young duke were true.


The dog growled. Justin gave it one look and it buried its head beneath its paws, whimpering. Justin stretched out a hand toward Penfeld. "Give me the sash."


"Whatever for, sir?"


"I'm going to strangle her with it."


"Very good, sir. Right away." He began to tug at the knot around the dog's collar.


"Penfeld!" Emily wailed. As she backed away from Justin, her feet slid on the dead grass.


He stalked her, grinning like a vengeful demon. "Why make these poor policemen come all the way

out here for nothing? They can use their wagon to cart me off to jail. Think what a nice, peaceful place prison will be after living with you for a day. I can while away the hours with thieves, ruffians, and other killers."


Her voice trembled. "This isn't very sporting. You can't murder me in front of all these witnesses."


She came up against the trunk of an oak. His fingers closed ever so gently around her throat, his broad thumbs seeking and caressing her throbbing pulse points. "Why not? They can testify before the House

of Lords that I was provoked. They won't hang me. They might even give me a medal of valor."


The pads of his fingertips combed through the delicate fleece at her nape. Her shiver vibrated through his taut body like the stroke of fingers against harp strings. A shiver of what? Justin wondered. Cold? Fear? Reaction to the heat blasting like a furnace from his body? A glint of triumph sharpened in her smoky eyes. The tip of her pink tongue moistened her lips. Taunting him. Tempting him.


Her husky whisper was meant only for his ears. "What do you really want to do, Justin? Kill me … or

kiss me?"


He wanted to kiss her, all right, long and hard and rough. He wanted to mate her mouth with his teeth

and tongue until he'd wiped away her teasing smirk. He wanted to carry her upstairs to his bedroom and lock the door against them all. He wanted to peel off her damp clothes and drown her beneath the unrelenting weight of his body until neither of them could think or walk straight.


Then he'd kill her.


She'd done it again, he realized. With barely a flutter of her silky lashes she'd committed the unpardonable sin of shattering his composure and making him feel alive again. More alive than he'd felt since he buried her father.


His hands dropped from her throat. He unbuttoned his coat and with a sweeping motion laid it over her shoulders.


"I must apologize for the inconvenience, gentlemen," he told the bobbies. "I fear my ward is a bit high-spirited."


"Nothing a good beating wouldn't cure," Harold muttered, still sulky from being rousted from his bed.

His bluster wilted beneath Justin's glacial stare. He slipped behind Edith's skirts.


Justin linked his hands over his waistcoat, every inch the affable lord of the manor. "I'm sure you know how trying children can be."


The bobby ducked his head. "That we do, Your Grace. Got eight of 'em between us, don't we, Ned?"


"Aye, Clarence. And a feisty lot they are."


Justin divided a wad of pound notes between the two men. "Buy yourselves a round of ale when you

get off duty. For your trouble."


As the men climbed onto the wagon, still singing the praises of the generous duke, Justin commanded

his own driver to take the dog to the stables. Penfeld mopped his brow with Emily's sash, thankful to

be relieved of his monstrous burden. Justin refused to look behind him.


"Mother, would you please escort Emily to her room?"


"That won't be necessary." Emily's words rang out in the crisp air.


He pivoted to face her. She hugged his coat closed at her throat like a queen's mantle. She wore her dignity well, but not well enough to disguise the stricken look in her eyes-eyes darkened by his casual betrayal.


"Thank you, but I'm not so young I can't toddle up the stairs unassisted." As she brushed past him, a whiff of vanilla tickled his nostrils.


"If you want to be treated like an adult," he said softly, "you might try behaving like one."


She hesitated, then moved up the shallow stairs into the house, her shoulders set at proud angles.


"Coming, dear?" his mother crooned as the others filed after Emily, the husbands grumbling and the

wives murmuring soothing lullabies.


Justin jammed his hands deep into his pockets. "Later."


Penfeld stood before him, his face folded in miserable lines of defeat. "If you wish to dismiss me, sir,

I understand. I'd appreciate a reference, but if you don't feel I deserve it . . ."


Justin sighed as sudden exhaustion overtook him. He felt as if he'd been master of this house for

centuries instead of months. "Go ring for a bath, Penfeld."


"You wish to bathe at this hour?"


He straightened the valet's crooked tie. "Not for me. For you."


"Aye, sir! As you wish." Penfeld bowed his thanks and went scurrying for the house.


Justin stood alone on the barren stretch of lawn, staring up at Emily's window until the light fluttered and went out, leaving the glazed pane a square of black. He shivered as from somewhere behind the house came the mournful baying of a dog.


* * *


In the next few days Justin was to regret his cool rebuke. With the stubborn conviction of a woman wronged, Emily became exactly what he had requested.


She seldom smiled, and if she did, it was a watery imitation of her infectious grin. Lily used an iron to tame her wayward curls to rigid ringlets. The stench of scorched hair hung in the musty air of the house. Millicent taught her to embroider and Edith to bang out Beethoven's "Minuet in G" on the piano with military precision. She practiced each evening for hours until Justin's head throbbed from gritting his

teeth. Penfeld became her unofficial lady's maid, pressing her childish pinafores to starched perfection. Her crinolines appeared so stiff that Justin found it a marvel she could sit without them flying up over

her face.


When Justin entered a room she'd make some snippet of conversation about the weather or the dinner party his mother was planning at the end of the week. His sisters would chime in about the upcoming New Year's ball and he'd be left gazing at the smooth cap of Emily's head as she bent back to stitching the family crest on his handkerchiefs with slavish devotion.


She was a perfect lady.


Justin hated her.


He couldn't decide who he despised more-this new Emily or himself. Unable to bear this pale shadow

of his vibrant Emily, he shut himself in the study, immersing himself in Winthrop Shipping business with an enthusiasm that made his father seem a rakish wastrel. He glared at reports until his vision blurred. His insomnia returned with savage force, but even pounding the piano until dawn did not ease it. His temper flared without provocation, and the servants scurried to avoid him. They whispered among themselves that it was as if the gruff ghost of Frank Connor had returned to stalk the halls of Grymwilde.


Armed with a tumbler of his father's Scotch, Justin emerged from the study one evening. He veered

away from the smoking room where the men had retired for brandy and cigars. Last night he had

severed himself from their company and reduced poor Harvey to nervous snivels by snapping that he ought to consider seeking a job instead of living off his wife's dowry like a spineless slug.


As he passed the parlor, the siren song of badly struck piano keys and feminine chatter lured him in. He knew his brooding presence made his sisters nervous. Edith and his mother lapsed to whispers. Millicent hummed under her breath while Lily's trembling ringers dropped stitches all over the place. Only Emily seemed undisturbed by his crude intrusion. She continued her graceless thumping on the spinet.


Even Emily's bulldog seemed drained of spirit. He lolled on the rug at Emily's feet, his massive head stretched out on his paws and his spiked collar replaced by a garish pink bow. As Justin sank into the chair beside the piano, the dog rose and slunk out the door.


Justin leaned back in the chair, nursing his Scotch and eyeing Emily through narrowed eyes. She sat in a luminous halo of lamplight, her skirts spread in a perfect bell around the piano bench. Her piquant face glowed with serenity. Justin shifted his weight and rolled the amber liquid in the bottom of his glass. He had done in one careless night what Miss Winters had failed to do in seven years-made a lady out of Emily Claire Scarborough. So why did he want to yank her up by her ridiculous ringlets and demand some show of spirit?


Emily could feel Justin's smoldering gaze on her, but she willed her fingers to continue their mechanical pounding, knowing she was slowly driving him insane. The fact that she'd just ripped out his initials and sewn Homer onto all of his handkerchiefs inspired her to continue.


She stole a look at him from beneath the shelter of her lashes. Her heart skipped in her throat. In the

mere space of days he had descended from mildly rakish to barbarous. His jaw was shadowed, his thick hair tousled. His waistcoat was rumpled and his white shirt lay open at the throat. Emily remembered

only too well the feel of him beneath her fingers. With his long legs stretched out before him and his

eyes glittering beneath the ebony silk of his lashes, he didn't look the sort of gentleman to seduce his ward. He looked the sort to ravish her.


Emily experimented by striking an off-key chord. A muscle in his jaw twitched dangerously. She hid her smile behind a frown of concentration. As she finished the minuet, his shoulders slumped and he tossed back the rest of the Scotch in a relieved swig. Shooting him a sly glance, she hooked her fingers and started at the beginning again.


Justin choked. He shot out of the chair, his face darkened with emotion. "For God's sake, woman!

You're not some wind-up monkey beating a drum. Must you play like one? "


Emily froze, her fingers poised over the keys.


His sisters gaped at him in open-mouthed shock. They had seen their brother frustrated, morose,

angry, elated, and white-faced with shame beneath his father's taunts, but they'd never seen him show deliberate cruelty to anyone.


His breath seared the back of her neck as he folded his hands over hers, forcing them out of their rigid stance.


"Loosen your fingers," he commanded. "Stop clawing the keys like a bloody cat. "


He massaged each of her knuckles until her hands went limp in his rough embrace. "There. Can you

feel the difference?"


"Yes," she murmured. "I can feel it."


She could feel other things as well. The press of his muscled thigh against her back. The whisper of his breath against her cheek, its Scotch-warmed fragrance as intoxicating as fresh sin. She gazed down at their linked hands. His knuckles had yet to lose their island tan.