“Lady Hardesty.” Stepping to the carriage’s side, Madeline touched her gloved fingers to her ladyship’s. Unsurprised to see Lady Hardesty’s gaze flick to Gervase’s face, she gestured his way. “I believe you’ve yet to meet Lord Crowhurst.”

“My lord.” Lady Hardesty’s eyes locked on Gervase’s, held as he took her hand.

“Lady Hardesty.” His expression coolly distant, he half bowed, then released her.

She immediately gestured to the others in the carriage. “If you’ll permit me to introduce…”

Madeline exchanged nods and greetings with the other ladies and the two gentlemen, one of whom was Mr. Courtland. The ladies, following their hostess’s lead, fixed their attention avidly on Gervase, leaving Madeline to Mr. Courtland and Mr. Fleming, neither of whom were backward in trying to engage her.

Or, as she cynically suspected, attach her.

“Perhaps,” Mr. Courtland suggested, “I could call on you?”

She smiled the distant smile she’d relied on for years to quell the aspirations of overly enthusiastic males. “My aunt is elderly. She rarely entertains.”

Courtland’s smile developed an edge. “It’s not your aunt I’d be coming to see, m’dear.”

Madeline held his gaze, and slowly, pointedly, raised her brows.

Under her steady regard, Courtland shifted, then an unbecoming shade of florid pink rose from beneath his neck-cloth and spread upward.

Releasing him, she turned to see how Gervase was faring.

He was, she discovered, giving an excellent imitation of a stone wall. Certainly Lady Hardesty’s entreaties and enticements had made no impression whatever; he looked arrogantly, superiorly, unmoved.

Good manners forbade him from cutting her ladyship, but now that Madeline had ended her conversation, he glanced her way, then turned back to Lady Hardesty and with cool civility informed her, “I fear we must get on. We have quite a ride before us.” He reached for Madeline.

As his fingers closed about her elbow, Madeline saw the flash of annoyance that passed through Lady Hardesty’s dark eyes. She wasn’t used to being denied.

But she was too wise to press.

With an inclination of her head that she endeavored to make gracious, her ladyship sat back. Her gaze shifted to Madeline; somewhat to her surprise Madeline detected nothing more than residual annoyance in that look.

It was transparently clear her ladyship saw her as no threat, no rival; she’d dismissed her as a woman-or rather as too inconsequential a female to have any chance of attaching Gervase.

That look was so unmaliciously dismissive, so purely a statement of her ladyship’s experienced evaluation and nothing more, Madeline was taken aback. But habit stood her in good stead; she parroted the right phrases as she and Gervase took their leave of the party, then he drew her back from the pavement’s edge.

Lady Hardesty leaned forward to speak to her coachman, then looked back at Gervase. “Until later, my lord.”

Her dark eyes holding his, she sat back, then the carriage jerked forward; raising and unfurling her parasol, she looked ahead.

They stood and watched the carriage clatter away.

Madeline glanced at Gervase and found his eyes narrowed on the retreating parasol. She hesitated, then unable to help herself asked, “What’s your verdict?”

He glanced briefly at her, then back at the carriage disappearing up the street. “My sisters,” he said, urging her on, “were right. Robert Hardesty has made a very big mistake.”


Gervase insisted on escorting her all the way back to Treleaver Park. The afternoon was waning by the time they clattered into the stable yard. Grooms came running. Madeline dismounted, gracefully sliding to the ground; she turned-only to discover Gervase beside her.

“Come.” He waved ahead. “I’ll walk you to the house before I ride home.”

She acquiesced with a nod. Side by side, they strode out of the yard, then by mutual accord slowed to a stroll. The path to the house cut through the gardens, a pleasant, wending walk in the golden light of the fading day.

From the cliffs, out of sight to their right, the surf boomed like distant cannon fire dulled by the thick canopies of the intervening trees. The tang of the sea didn’t reach this far; as they followed the path, the scents of lavender, roses and freshly clipped grass mingled and swirled around them.

They walked in silence; they’d exchanged few words, all purely commonplace, since parting from Lady Hardesty. But there was little to discuss; while trawling through the taverns searching for their quarry, they’d grasped the opportunity to spread their view of the current prospects for the local tin mines. Beyond that, until they located the elusive agent or he presented himself to Gervase, there was nothing more they could do.

As for Lady Hardesty…

Madeline halted beneath the arbor giving on to the formal rose garden. Beyond the roses lay the house, its red brick walls washed by the westering sun, the leaded windows glinting.

The gardeners had finished for the day, their tools tidied away; there was no one about, not a soul in sight. She stood silent beneath the arbor, supremely conscious of the large male who’d prowled the long path in her wake to come to a halt behind her.

Was Lady Hardesty right, or wrong?

Until recently the question wouldn’t have bothered her, would have occurred to her only to be derisively dismissed.

Until recently she’d had no interest in attracting any man-and, if truth be known, no real belief in her ability to do so, not once they got to know her.

She was who she was-nearly six feet of twenty-nine-year-old spinster with an uncompromising attitude and a purpose in life that to her mind precluded any dalliance.

She hadn’t, until today, felt any less of a woman for that.

Her senses flickered as Gervase stepped closer, and she felt the heat of him against her back. Her lungs tightened; her breathing grew shallow as he shifted, raising one hand to gently, evocatively caress the side of her throat.

She closed her eyes, shivered. Tried to breathe.

He bent closer, and his lips replaced his fingertips. Touched, traced, lightly kissed. The most tantalizing, most provocative caress she’d ever felt.

“Have you changed your mind yet?”

His words flowed across her mind.

Eyes closed, she drew in a deep breath. Scented the lavender, the roses, the grass-and him. Male. The unknown, the dangerous, wrapped in the familiar.

Opening her eyes, she turned and faced him. Met his amber gaze, saw the latent heat in his tiger’s eyes. “No, but…” She lowered her gaze to his lips. Moistened hers. “I’m open to persuasion.”

A risk, but one she couldn’t not take, not anymore.

A heartbeat passed, then two; she felt the increased intensity in his gaze, but refused to look up and meet his eyes.

His lips curved, just a little, the line almost wry. “In that case…”

He closed the few inches between them, and covered her lips with his.

Kissed her-and welcomed her response when she kissed him back.

And their hunger flared again, more insistent and intense, unsatisfied and growing, evolving and developing, strengthening and deepening.

He angled his head over hers; she locked her arms about his neck. Their mouths fused, tongues tangling, tempting, wild and uninhibited. She sank against him, into him, and felt his breath hitch.

His arms rose and locked around her, and as before she became someone else-or perhaps she became who she really was. She was no longer sure.

She no longer knew anything beyond the moment, beyond the thrill, the excitement, the yearning.

He lifted and turned her, setting her on her feet deeper under the arbor; she understood why-now they stood fully under the foliage, no one could see them. Only if someone approached on the path and came close could they be seen, and as the path was gravel they’d be warned long before.

So when his arms eased and his hands roved her back, then slid low to close over her bottom and lift her against him, she made no demur. Instead, she rejoiced, dizzy with the knowledge that if nothing else he wanted her. She could hardly miss the evidence, pressed low against her belly. When he molded her against him, shifting provocatively, she gasped.

He couldn’t have been clearer over exactly what he wanted.

Of her. From her. With her.

She could have pulled back then, Lady Hardesty’s view rebutted and dismissed, yet the thought never entered her head. Now she was in his arms, kissing and being kissed, she had other questions, much more burning ones, to address.

Such as whether there was any limit to the heat that rose between them, that like a flame seemed to ignite, flare, then rush through her, and him, through his touch, over her skin, down her veins. How hot could she-they-get? Enough to melt her bones along with her reservations? Enough to cinder all wisdom and cauterize all doubts?

More importantly, more tantalizingly, whether the sharp edge of desire now coloring their exchange, harder, more definite, more real, was his, hers, or theirs.

Regardless, it possessed power enough to drive them, to leave them both gasping when they broke from the kiss. To have her senses reeling when he closed his hand over her breast, and kneaded. To have her breathlessly willing him on when his fingers found the buttons closing her bodice and deftly, expertly, flicked them free.

To have her closing her eyes, head falling back, trapped in a web of expectation when he pressed the halves of her bodice wide and slid one hard hand beneath, with a quick jerk and a tug stripped away her chemise…and touched.

Her senses seized. Her lungs locked.

On a strangled gasp, she drew his lips back to hers. She had to kiss him, deeply, passionately; she couldn’t breathe but through him and she was desperate. Desperate to know, to feel, to experience…the pleasure in his touch. The reverence, near worshipfulness with which his fingers traced, tested, learned. Until at the last he cupped her breast in his palm, hot skin to hot skin, and gave her all she wanted.