But Sebastian merely frowned and said, "How very unpleasant for you."

The three women exchanged a look of amazement. What kind of a man was Judith's brother?

"Let's see how Judith's doing," Sally said, to break the moment of startled silence.

"No," Sebastian said immediately. "She won't want to be disturbed. When she's won what she intended to win, she'll stop playing."

Cornelia smiled to herself and Sebastian caught the smile. Again, he reflected that friends could be hazardous when one had secrets to keep. He suggested they repair to the supper room while they waited for Judith.

She joined them there shortly. Her eyes were tired, Sebastian thought, and her face was drawn… much more than an evening's intense gaming would produce. In fact, it occurred to him that she'd been crying. He gave her a glass of champagne and sat quietly as she responded to her friends' eager accounts of their various successes.

"How much did you win?" Sally asked.

"A thousand," Judith said, as if it were nothing. "I don't owe 'the fund' anything for the horses, do I, Sebastian?"

"No, Pickering Street settled that, if you recall."

"Oh, yes, I remember."

"Fund?" Sally asked.

"Private language," Judith said, smiling with an effort.

"I'm going to escort you home," Sebastian said. "You look exhausted."

"I suppose I am a little." She stood up. "I'm glad the evening was a success."

"What about Charlie?" Sally asked. "Wasn't he going to play macao this evening?"

"Yes," Judith replied with a touch of constraint. "I hope he also profited from our sessions." She touched her brother's hand. "I don't need an escort, Sebastian. My chaise is waiting outside."

Sebastian knew she was telling him she wanted privacy, and he acceded without demur. He'd find out what was troubling her when she was ready to tell him. He escorted her to the waiting chaise with the Carrington arms emblazoned on the panels and kissed her good night.

Judith sat huddled in a corner of the carriage as the iron-wheeled vehicle bumped and rattled over the cobbles. She felt chilled, although there was a rug over her knees and a hot brick at her feet. Chilled and bone-weary, although she knew the weariness was of the spirit, not of the body. Intermittent moonlight flickered through the window, shedding a cold pale light on the dim interior… as cold and pale as her spirit, it seemed, in the fanciful reverie of her unhappiness.

Millie was waiting up for her, but the comforting warmth and soft lights of the firelit bedchamber did little to cheer Judith. "Help me with my dress, Millie, then you may go to bed. I can manage the rest myself."

The abigail unhooked the gown of emerald silk and the apple-green half slip embroidered with seed pearls. She hung them in the armoire and left, bidding her mistress good night.

Judith sat in her petticoat in front of the mirror, raising her hands to unfasten the emerald necklace and remove the matching drops in her ears. The connecting door opened with a shocking abruptness. Marcus stood in the doorway in his dressing gown, his eyes glowing like black coals.

"No!" he said.

Judith dropped an earring. It fell on the dresser with a clatter. "No what?"

"No, I do not wish we'd never met," he stated, striding into the room to where she sat on the dresser stool. Slowly she turned to face him.

His hands clasped her throat, his thumbs pushing up her chin. He could feel the slender fragility of that alabaster column warm and pulsing against his ringers. "No," he repeated softly. "Although you're an inflammable, brawling wildcat with a tongue so sharp I'm amazed you haven't cut yourself, I could never wish such a thing."

Judith found she couldn't say anything. His eyes burned into hers and the violent, jolting current of their sexuality ripped through her.

"And you?" he asked. "Do you wish such a thing, Judith? Tell me the truth."

She shook her head. Her throat was parched and she could feel its pulse thrumming against the warm clasp of his hands. "No," she whispered finally. "No, I don't wish such a thing."

He bent his head and his mouth took hers as his hands still circled her throat. The power of the kiss blazed through her like a forest fire, laying waste the barriers of her soul, the thin defenses she might have put up to save herself from extinction in the power of his passion. She was lost in the kiss, his tongue possessing her mouth, becoming a part of her own body, and her skin where it touched his seemed no longer to belong to her.

Without moving his mouth from hers, he drew her to her feet with his hands around her throat. She obeyed blindly, inhaling the rich scents of his skin, tasting him in her mouth. He moved her backward until she felt the wall behind her, hard against her shoulderblades.

And then he lifted his mouth from hers, and she seemed to be drowning in the great black pools of his eyes, existing only in the tiny image of herself in the dark irises.

"Raise your petticoat."

It was the softest command, yet each word rang with die force and promise of fierce arousal. Slowly she drew the soft cambric up to her waist.

"Part your legs." His hands fell from her throat, opening his robe, revealing the erect shaft, poised for possession.

Obeying the jolting charge of lust, swept along on the turbulent current of passion, she moved her legs apart. Still holding her petticoat at her waist, she braced herself against the wall as, without preliminary, Marcus drove deep within her. His eyes held hers as he moved himself inside her, his hands resting lightly on his hips. Only their loins were touching, only their eyes spoke.

The black eyes seemed to swallow her as his body took control of hers. Judith felt herself losing herself, her identity, all will, joined to a power outside herself. A power that pleasured as it mastered. Her head fell back against the wall, her throat arching, white and vulnerable above the scalloped neck of her petticoat. Marcus took his hands from his hips for just long enough to pull the top of the flimsy garment down so that her breasts were bared. He nodded, a small nod of satisfaction, as he gazed down at the exposed creamy swell. He felt her submission, the yielding of her body to the power and will of his. A wave of triumph crashed over him, taking his breath away, and he surged within her as if he would make her a part of himself, indivisible, transcending her separateness, the secret parts of herself that she kept from him. For this moment, he had tamed his lynx… for this moment he had her bound in the chains of a delight that was in his hands to give or to withhold.

Slowly he withdrew to the edge of her body, holding himself there. Her eyes pleaded for his return but she remained mute, locked in the deep sensual silence of this world they were creating. He disengaged, and her little gasp of loss broke the silence, but he placed his hands on her hips and turned her to face the wall, fitting himself against the small of her back as she shifted to accommodate him, positioning herself so that he could slip easily within her again.

Her breasts were pressed to the wall, her cheek resting against the cool, cream paint. Denied eye contact, she was now totally possessed, submerged into his being. And Marcus gloried in an ownership that grew and fed upon the sensual purity of this union.

It was as if he had limitless resources that night. His powers of invention were unbounded, his drive and energy infinite. He commanded without words; only his hands indicated what he wanted of her, and she followed direction as blindly and willingly as if she were bewitched. There were times when she knew herself to be entranced in some fairy ring. Again and again he brought her to the outermost limit of pleasure, to the fine boundary where pleasure bordered upon pain, so intense was the delight. Again and again she surged beneath his body, his mouth, his hands, as he showed her an internal landscape she hadn't known existed; and in showing it to her, he entered the secret chambers of her soul.

There would be other nights… other times when Judith would take the initiative, would make her own demands and in their satisfaction satisfy in turn, but for this night, Marcus was both inventor and master of their pleasure. Through the hushed reaches of the night until dawn grayed the sky they moved silently around the room, from floor to bed, chair to couch. Sometimes she lay beneath him, sometimes over him. Her skin identified the slight roughness of the carpet, the nubby brocade of the chaise longue, the damask smoothness of the bed sheets.

Finally he laid her down on the polished, cold wood of a long rosewood table. The flat surface was hard against her shoulder blades, unyielding beneath her buttocks as he raised her legs, lifting them high onto his shoulders as he plunged for the last time deep into her body, in a fusion so complete that she could no longer tell where her own bodily limits ended and his began. The long silence of the night was at last broken when their elemental cries of a savage and primitive fulfillment mingled in the room.

Judith flung her arms high above her head, her hips arced, holding him inside her through the wild, pumping, climactic glory, then her body seemed to collapse, to go limp and weak as a newborn foal's, and she lay unseeing, unaware, a sacrifice to passion upon the cold flat altar of the table.

It was a long time before Marcus had sufficient strength to scoop her from the table and carry her to the bed. He didn't know whether she was asleep or unconscious, so deep and heavy was her breathing, so limp and relaxed her body. He fell down beside her, sinking into the mattress, as sleep rolled over him.

Judith swam upward from the dark depths of exhaustion about an hour later. She lay in the graying light, neither asleep nor awake, as memory returned to make sense of the night's excess of sensual joy. Vaguely she remembered that at the last, Marcus had not withdrawn from her body. Had he intended it that way, or was it simply that the night's loving had not admitted of such pragmatic, pedestrian concerns?

Sleep reclaimed her.

18

"How kind of you to call, Lady Carrington." Letitia Moreton smiled at her guest from the depths of her cushioned chaise longue. "Your brother isn't with you today?" Her complacent gaze rested on her daughter, sitting beside the window with her embroidery. Harriet was looking entrancingly pretty in a round gown of sprig muslin. Thoughts of weddings played most pleasurably in Letitia's head these days. Lady Carrington's brother had been making his preference for Harriet obvious, and with such a connection, Harriet would be assured of entree into the first circles.

"No, I haven't seen him today," Judith said, drawing off her gloves. "I was wondering if Harriet would care to drive with me this afternoon?"

Harriet gave her a quick, shy smile.

"Of course she would be delighted." Letitia spoke for her daughter. "Run and change your dress."

Harriet hesitated for a minute. "I understood Lady Barret was to call this afternoon, Mama. She promised to bring the topaz ribbons that we bought yesterday… the ones I left by accident in her barouche."

"Lady Barret will understand if you're not here. Now don't keep Lady Carrington waiting."

Harriet obeyed without further demur and Judith said reflectively, "Lady Barret's most attentive to Harriet. You must find it a great comfort to have such a friend, ma'am."

Letitia sighed. "It's such a trial to be so invalidish, Lady Carrington. And Agnes has been most kind in chaperoning Harriet."

"Perhaps you'll allow me to act as chaperone occasionally," Judith offered. "Maybe Harriet would like to accompany me to Almack's for the subscription ball next Thursday."

"Oh, you're too kind." Letitia dabbed her lips with a lace-edged handkerchief soaked in lavender water.

"Not at all. We'd be delighted if she'd join us for dinner beforehand. I'll send Sebastian with my carriage for her."

"Oh, you mustn't put yourself to such trouble."

"But I'm certain my brother will be only too happy to escort her," Judith said, offering a conspiratorial smile. It was returned with more than a hint of self-satisfaction.

"Ah, Harriet, that was quick." With relief, Judith greeted Harriet's return to the salon. "What a very dashing hat."

Harriet blushed. "Your brother was kind enough to compliment it."