“What would happen if he had broken?”

He considered. “I suppose all that pent-up emotion would have rushed out . . . It would have been embarrassing for both of us.”

“So you never asked him where she was?”

“I pieced it together slowly, mostly from things I overheard. She ran away with my father’s brother. His younger brother.”

Fiona gasped. “That must have been so awful for your father!”

“Yes. He always talked of his brother as a man led astray by an evil woman. For a long time, I had no idea that my mother was the evil woman in question.”

“That’s dreadfully sad. No wonder you were taught such concern about your reputation.”

“It’s not my reputation that’s at the heart of it.” He moved a little closer, just enough that he could put an arm around her waist. “I like touching you.”

She frowned at him. “If not your reputation, then what?”

“I couldn’t bear to become like him,” Byron explained. “I thought if I didn’t fall in love, and I chose a woman who was utterly chaste, I could avoid the possibility.”

“Lady Opal . . .”

“I didn’t know her at all. But she seemed like the driven snow.”

Fiona giggled. “She obviously got to know you well enough to guess precisely what would drive you away.”

“I might kill a dancing master you kissed.” His voice came out hard, all the sheen of a civilized Englishman stripped away, leaving a blazingly possessive man. Just a man. It felt as if his heart stopped as he waited for her to answer, his breath clenched in his chest.

The sharp pain there eased only when she leaned closer to him and said, “You don’t have me, so you’d have no right to raise an eyebrow.” There was a promise in her voice, a daring, silky promise.

Byron took a deep breath, threw a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity happened to be listening, and began nimbly undoing the lacing on her velvet bodice.

“What are you doing?” she yelped.

His fingers stilled. “How drunk are you?”

Her eyes were clear. “I seem to have grown quite sober. But perhaps you should give me the bottle. I’m pretty sure that I’m hallucinating, and I don’t want it to stop.”

“It won’t,” he said. He slowly pulled her jacket wide open. Of course, she was wearing layers . . . a blouse, a corset, a chemise.

He had her out of the blouse and was unlacing the corset before she asked, “Byron, why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m marrying you.”

She was silent, and then: “Did I miss the moment when you asked me?”

“Yes. You must have had too much to drink.” He threw her corset to the side.

But she shook her head when he reached toward her chemise. “Byron. No.”

“I want you,” he said, his voice dismayingly like a growl. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I . . . I think I—”

But she interrupted before he could finish that sentence. “You want to marry me, even given my reputation.”

“You’re the one for me,” he said, giving up on her chemise and cupping her face in his hands instead. “I don’t know why. All I know is that the moment I saw you, my life changed. What I wanted from life changed. I don’t want to marry a woman who dislikes me enough to stage a performance with a dancing master. I don’t want to be safe and prudent. It’s true that if you leave me, I’ll turn into my father and stalk around being horrible and brokenhearted. I’d rather risk it than not be with you.”

“But you’re beautiful. You’re an earl, you’re brilliant, and if you stop being so frighteningly distant, ladies will fall at your feet. You needn’t marry me merely to prove that you’re a changed man.” She gently pulled his hands down from her face.

“Would you marry me if your fiancé hadn’t died falling from your window?” Byron asked. “Not just because I’m an earl, but . . . for me?”







Chapter 17

Fiona’s heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that she hardly heard his quiet question.

She’d always told herself not to want anything. Now she was breaking all her own rules. It was strange and rather terrifying to discover just how much she wanted to catch Byron in her arms, to kiss him, to reassure him, to make that tiny gleam of uncertainty in his eyes disappear.

“I would,” she said, her voice ringing out in the stables. “I would want you if you were one of Taran’s men, if you were a stable boy, if you were merely an Italian lover.”

“But I’m not,” he said. “I’m the man who is going to be your husband.” Their eyes met, and then he leaned toward her. She closed her eyes, falling into that dark sweep of emotion and desire that came with the touch of his lips.

After that, there wasn’t any fighting over her chemise. A short time later, he stood before her, skin the color of cream, dappled with flecks of shadow by the oil lamp, the powerful muscles in his buttocks leading to muscled thighs, lean calves . . . “I even like your ankles,” she murmured, devouring him with her eyes. His body was heavy and aroused, like nothing she’d imagined.

He didn’t answer, but dropped to his knees before her, his eyes ravishing her, his hands sliding up her legs slowly, seductively. Where his fingers trailed, hot, eager kisses followed.

Fiona writhed on the old blankets, arching her hips instinctively toward him, crying out when his lips moved on to torment yet another part of her.

“I—I—” she cried, meaning to say that she’d never heard of people, respectable people, doing things like this.

But he just nudged her legs farther apart. There was a hum of pleasure in the back of his throat.

He was as careful in this as he was in everything: now delicate, now rough, experimenting to see what made her cry out, alternating with . . . She couldn’t find words because she was too busy trying to draw air into her lungs, and then her mind went black, and she was twisting against his hand, trying, trying . . . and then he finally slipped a broad finger inside her and she nearly screamed.

She did scream, at last, when the world broke around her into tiny shards of light that were somehow flashes of feeling at the same time. They swept over her body in wave after wave.

Byron laughed, and then lowered his head again. She reached down just in time and grabbed his hand. “Don’t touch!”

“Why not?”

She could hear the laughter in his voice, but she ignored it. The air still felt harsh in her lungs, as if she’d stopped breathing for a time. “I’m—I’m—just don’t. It’s too much. Too intense.”

Byron frowned to himself. Obviously, Dugald had been stupid in more ways than one. A silent shrug. If the idiot Scotsman had been too much of an idiot to please his fiancée, that was all to Byron’s advantage.

Fiona lay before him like a dish of strawberries and cream, her skin flushed with pleasure, her dark red hair strands of rubies against the rough woolen blankets. Too harsh for her back, he thought. There was no question but that their joining would make him lose control. He could feel crazed lust possessing him, like a kind of madness.

He had never lost control during a sexual act. Yet with Fiona, the slightest kiss brought him close to the limit of that control. She made him feel like a madman, crazed with the wish to possess her, to make her his. Knowing that was stupid didn’t help.

She would end up with abrasions on her back, and he had just enough control left to want to avoid that. He picked up her soft body and rolled backward, letting her down on top of him.

She balanced her weight by catching herself on his chest and then pursed her lips in the most carnal pout he’d ever seen. “What are you doing?”

Byron traced the line of her deep bottom lip with a finger. “I thought we’d try it this way for our first time,” he said, trying to disguise the keen ache that he felt at the mere sight of her breasts . . . and utterly failing. They were ripe and full, the perfect size to drive a man to his knees with lust. The groan that broke from his throat was more like a growl as he curled up to draw one pink nipple into his mouth, pleasuring first it and then the other.

She liked it. Her fingers clenched in his hair and broken cries flew from her mouth. Through the roaring fog of lust, he spared a thought about his good fortune to find a woman who was not afraid of marital congress. Who wasn’t pushing him away and shuddering in disgust the way most virgins did, or so he had been reliably informed.

When he could hardly breathe, and his loins were on fire, he said in a gravelly voice, “Now!”

Her head was thrown back, all that gorgeous hair tumbling to her bottom, but at his command she straightened and braced herself on his chest.

There was something odd and tentative about her expression, and Byron realized in a blinding flash that dim-witted Dugald had not only denied his ostensible beloved an orgasm of her own, but that he had apparently made love to her only in the most conventional of ways.

Which left more for the two of them to discover together, he thought with a rocketing streak of pleasure, his tool hardening even more at the thought.

He put his hands on Fiona’s lush hips and lifted her up, positioning her carefully, and then let her go.

He was desperate with need, mad to be inside her. Her mouth formed a perfect circle as he thrust upward. She felt like liquid silk, hot and tight.

She was so tight that his vision went white as a voluptuous fog of pleasure enclosed him. He threw his head back, his fingers flexing on her hips and arched so that this time, this first time, he was surrounded by her. A groan burst from his throat as he withdrew and thrust upward again, even the tiniest movement sending a blast of pleasure down his limbs. She was so tight. Very tight.

Byron’s eyes flew open.

Fiona was leaning forward, braced against his chest. She didn’t look precisely as if she was in pain, but her face was tentative.

He froze, his back still arched, his hands gripping the curve of her hips. A good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon curse erupted from his lips.

Fiona blinked and said, “There’s no need to speak in such a fashion.”

“You . . . You . . .” The word came out strangled, harsh and dark.

“I’m a virgin,” she said helpfully. “Or perhaps I should say that I was a virgin.” She wiggled her hips, and he swallowed a groan, his fingers tightening on her hips again. “It doesn’t feel terrible.”

“The window,” he gasped. “The—the ivy?”

“Do you really believe that I would be stupid enough to invite a lover to enter my bedroom by horticultural means?”

Her eyes were sparkling, although a tightness around her jaw told him that the snug fit that was making him tremble from head to foot was not as delicious for her. He began to lift her away from him, but she curled her fingers against his chest and said, “No!”

He stopped instantly.

She slipped back down until he was snugly hilted inside her. Byron couldn’t help it: his hips arched and he gasped her name.

“Did you like that?” she asked, her voice changing from its usual calm, dry amusement with the world to something different. Nearly a purr. She braced herself against his chest and lifted herself a bit and then slammed back down.

A ragged cry broke from his lips and he thrust into her again, taking that last millimeter, burying himself in her slick heat.