"How cruel you make me feel to refuse such a magnificent gift, Adam, but no. I must be free! Please try to understand."

He sighed. "You need time, Skye, and I am willing to give you all the time you need."

"You are impossible!" she scolded him.

"I am a man in love," he countered. "You are the first woman I have asked to marry me in twenty-two years, Skye."

"Oh no, Adam de Marisco," she cried, outraged. "You shall not make me feel guilty because the daughter of some obscure count once refused your suit! You know better where I am concerned."

"You will marry me!" he laughed, pulling her into his arms and nuzzling her neck with his lips. "Dammit, little girl, I love the smell of you!"

She pushed half-heartedly against his chest. "I won't!" she said stubbornly. Yet Skye felt lighter of heart than she had in months. Adam de Marisco was so very good for her, and she knew it.

Suddenly he was serious again, and he gently tipped her face up to his, his thumb and forefinger on her chin. His smoky blue eyes seemed to envelope her, and she thought for a startled moment that she might faint, but she didn't. Instead her heart raced madly, and a faint flush touched her skin as he murmured in his deep voice, "I adore you, you sapphire-eyed Celtic witch!" And then his mouth was closing over hers in a tender and melting kiss that left her both breathless and near to tears. "You see," he teased her when he had lifted his lips from hers, "you are yet alive, and still very much a woman, little girl."

She was surprised. When Niall had died she had thought that she could never again stomach a man's touch. Not after Kedar and his excesses. Still, this was Adam, her dearest and most beloved of friends; but deep in her heart Skye knew that was not the whole truth. She had always loved Adam in her fashion, and she strongly suspected that love was now deepening in a far different way. I will not give up my freedom, she thought furiously to herself. I won't!

Adam's mouth was smiling knowingly at her, and she hit him upon the chest with her fist. "I will be my own woman, you ass! I will never again belong to anyone but myself! Stop smiling, Adam! Oh, I hate you when you are smug!"

He began to laugh, and his laughter warmed her, much to her outrage. "In the end, little girl, you will marry me," he said in a voice deep and tender with his love for her. “You may take your time, Skye; whatever time you need to admit to what you know in your own heart. God only knows I have proved a patient man where you are concerned."

"Hah!" she snapped at him. "How many times did you turn me away, Adam de Marisco? Twice, as I recall, and now suddenly it is I who would turn you away, but you will be patient. I swear to you I will not marry again! I will learn to use men as they use women. I wonder how patient you will feel when you see me flirting with another man, Adam."

He grinned infuriatingly at her. "Get it out of your system, little girl, and when you are ready to be sensible again I will be waiting patiently for you, as I always have."

"Ohhh!" God's bones, he was making her so angry. He was treating her as if she were a child instead of a woman of thirty-one who had just come through a terrible experience. Skye drew in a deep breath to scold him further, but he forestalled her, saying:

"Look, there is Archambault!"

Unable to resist, Skye looked through the coach window. There on a gentle hill that rose above the River Cher, she saw a charming small château with its steep red-tiled roof, its four rounded corner towers, and very French dormer windows. Below it along the river were the vineyards of Archambault, and behind them a generous estate of fields and woodlands. It was a perfect summer's day with a cloudless, deep-blue sky and bright golden sun. The river ran cheerfully by the green vines and ripening fields of maize and wheat. The forest was in full leaf. There were cattle grazing in the fields, and sheep, too. It was altogether the most peaceful scene Skye had ever seen. She had not believed that there was any place on this earth that peaceful.

The coach rumbled onward up the hill to the château, drawing to a stop before a tier of steps crowned with carved and gilded double doors of weathered oak. As the vehicle stopped, the doors to the château were swung open by a liveried servant, and several footmen came running down the steps followed by a rather beautiful woman in a taffeta gown the color of purple primroses, its low-necked bodice embroidered in silver and crystal beads. The woman's hair was coiffed as Skye wore hers, parted in the middle, drawn back and gathered into an elegant chignon. There were pearls in her hair.

"Adam!"

"Maman!" He sprang from the coach, and caught her up in a bear hug of an embrace, squeezing her until she shrieked, and kissing her soundly upon both cheeks.

"Put me down, you great oaf!" she scolded him laughingly. "You are destroying my coiffure, and what will your lovely Skye think of me if you do!"

"She will think what I think. She will think you are the most beautiful, the most marvelous mother in the whole world!" He set her gently on her feet.

Gabrielle de Saville's glance softened with the fondness a mother harbors for her firstborn, then quickly she demanded, "Well, where is she, my son? Where is this paragon you have written me about?"

Skye felt her cheeks coloring as she heard Adam's mother's words. As she stepped down from the coach, her small hand in Adam's big one, she had no idea of how lovely she looked. She was wearing a simple light silk traveling dress of leaf green with a soft scooped neck and comfortable hanging sleeves, which were cool for coach travel. She had only a simple strand of pearls about her neck and matching earbobs in her ears. She looked fresh and very beautiful.

"Maman, may I present to you Skye, Lady Burke, better known as Skye O'Malley. Skye, my mother, the Comtesse de Cher."

"You will call me Gaby, my dear," Adam's mother said graciously, "and I shall call you Skye. You are every bit as fair as Adam has written. Welcome to Archambault! I hope you will stay with us for a long visit."

Skye blinked back her sudden tears. "Madame… Gaby… your welcome is most kind. I am so grateful for your hospitality."

Gaby de Saville put a motherly arm about Skye. "There, my dear, you are safe now. Here at Archambault nothing will hurt you. Adam has written to me a little bit about your bravery and how you sought to rescue your poor husband from Morocco. I am so sorry about his death."

Skye bowed her head.

"Come," said the comtesse, "we must not stand here. The family is gathered inside waiting to meet you."

As they walked up the steps and into the château Skye looked admiringly at Adam's mother. She had borne her eldest son when she was fifteen. She was now fifty-seven, yet her thick, dark blond hair was still full of warm golden lights, and her eyes, the same smoky blue as her son's, were bright and knowing. She was nearly as tall as Skye herself, and she was as slender as a girl, with fine, full breasts. Adam, Skye decided, did not look like his mother except for the color of his eyes and his nose, for Gaby de Saville had given her son her aristocratic, elegant French nose. The comtesse's face was that of a little cat, though, with a pointed chin, and a provocative rosebud of a mouth. As they followed her into a lovely salon with long windows looking out onto a colorful garden of brightly colored flowers Skye thought that she was going to have a friend in this charming Frenchwoman.

The salon was filled with chattering people who all stopped in mid-sentence and stared as they entered the room. In the moment of heavy silence that followed a scholarly looking man detached himself from the group and hurried forward to place an arm about the comtesse.

"Skye, my dear, this is my husband, Antoine de Saville, Comte de Cher."

"M'sieur le Comte, you are so kind to offer me your hospitality," Skye said, holding out her hand to be kissed. She liked the look of this balding, somewhat paunchy man whose brown eyes twinkled appreciatively at her.

"Madame, how could I refuse such beauty," the comte said, kissing Skye's hand fervently.

His greeting seemed a signal for the room to erupt. "Adam!" three of the women shrieked, flinging themselves at him. With a delighted roar Adam de Marisco managed to envelope them all in a crushing embrace.

"Mes enfants! Mes enfant*!" Gaby cried. "You must wait to greet your brother until after I have introduced our guest.

"Pardon, maman," the three said with one voice as they stepped away from Adam.

"Skye, my dear, these three ill-mannered creatures are my daughters. This is Isabeau, and Clarice, and Musette."

The three women curtseyed, as did Skye in return. She knew that Isabeau Rochouart, and Clarice St. Justine were Adam's full sisters, children, like him, of Gaby's first marriage to John de Marisco. The two sisters looked like their mother, but their hair was dark, as was their brother's. Musette de Saville Sancerre was Adam's half-sister, and she, a miniature of her mother, was just twenty-five, the youngest of Gaby's children.

Now the others came forward to be introduced. Alexandre de Saville, the oldest child of the comtesse's second marriage, a widower with three young children. Yves de Saville and his wife, Marie-Jeanne, with their children. Robert Sancerre, Musette's husband, and their three children. Then there was Isabeau's husband, Louis, and their daughter, Matilde, who was sixteen. The last to be introduced was Henri St. Justine. He and Clarice were the parents of four children ranging in age from nineteen to eleven, and they had all come to see their Uncle Adam.