A very large man.

Lingering desire pulsed through her bodyand dawning horror.

She was all alone andshe had forgotten to bolt the door.

Abigail surged to her feetnaked feet, defenseless feet,where had she put her shoes? "Who are you?"

Her voice was loudtoo loud in the sudden quiet. Certainly it did not belong to the placid spinster everyone took her to be.

No more than it belonged to the wanton woman she had been but a moment before.

Hair rose on the back of her neck as she strained to see through the black abyss that was all that separated her and certain theft or death. "What do you want?"

Droplets of water pelted her in the faceas if some great animal shook itself dry.

"What do you think I want?" The low, masculine growl came from the vicinity of the door. "Lady, in case you haven't noticed, there's a storm outside. I want shelter."

Abigail's breath escaped in surprise at the blistering censure in the intruder's voice. His accent proclaimed that he was no local boy, but an educated man.

"I am fully aware that there is a storm outside, Mr…"

"Coally. Robert. Colonel," the disembodied voice curtly supplied.

White dots pricked the blackness in front of Abigail's eyes. "I am fully aware that there is a storm outside, Colonel Coally, but you can not possibly stay here. There is a"warmth flooded her cheeks at mentioning the unmentionable"a little house out back. You will find shelter there."

"Lady, I am soaked; I am cold; I am hungry. I amnot going to spend a night in a privy. Light that candle before one of us does ourselves an injury."

The order was abrupt, imperious and rude. As if Abigail was a soldiera rather dim-witted soldier at thatderelict in her duties.

A tide of shock washed over her; it was followed by rage.

She forgot that the colonel was an intruder. She forgot that gently bred ladies such as herself fainted in the face of danger and submitted to the voice of masculine authority. She forgot everything but the fact thatshe was not going to take orders, here, in this seaside cottage that she had rented far away from the dictates of society so that she could enjoy one precious month of freedom before she gave upeverything, and howdare

A dull clunk of boots on wood ripped through Abigail's fury the colonel was bridging the darkness that separated them. The clunk was interspersed by a dragging sound, as if he limpedor staggered.

Military men were notorious for their drinking habits.

Abigail hastily stepped back.

Only to collide with the chair she had just vacated. It skidded across the floor.

"Please stay where you are while I light the candle." Her voice in the darkness was just as sharp as the colonel's. "Are you injured?"

A grunt was her answer. And a flare of light.

Abigail stared at the intruder alias colonelfrom across the scarred wooden table instead of from across the room where he should be.

Her first thought was of how dark was his skinas dark as the gentlemen of her acquaintance were fair.

Her second thought was how ridiculously long his eyelashes were. They created jagged shadows on his cheeks as he concentrated on touching the head of the match to the wick of the candle.

Then he was entirely visible, illuminated in a widening circle of light.

Droplets of water trickled down off pitch-black hair. His face was lean, shaved clean of the sideburns or mustache that fashion dictated. The hand holding the match was as brown as his face. His fingers were long, strong, with square, blunt tips.

Far, far too large to fit inside a woman other than one at a time, surely, was her third and totally incongruous thought.

Shaking his hand to extinguish the match, the colonel abruptly straightened.

Unwittingly, Abigail's gaze followed his movements.

Standing five feet nine inches tall, there were few men Abigail did not top, but she had to tilt her head back to look at this man. Eyes the color of pewter locked with hers.

The one-room cottage shrank to the size of a closet.

She had never seen such stark eyes. There was nothing soft about them. And yet they were beautiful in their uncompromising masculinity.

The dark lashes flickered; she could feel the touch of the cold gray gaze on her lips, her throat, her breasts

Breasts, she suddenly remembered, that were confined by neither corset nor chemise.

Her fingers involuntarily clenchedabout damp, curling paper.

A hurried glance downward confirmed her suspicion.

The colonel wasn't staring at her breasts; he was staring atThePearl, A Journal of Facetiae and VoluptuousReading, NO. 12 June 1880. Which she clutched to her chest with the cover outward.

She whipped the journal behind her back.

Simultaneously, the colonel pivoted toward the iron bed against the right wall.

The covers were turned back in ready invitation.

Alarm leapt up her spine. "What are you doing?"

He bypassed the bed and limped to the smaller of the three trunks that sat at the foot of it.

Scalding blood filled Abigail's face. Just as quickly it drained.

For the first time in her life she thought she would faint.

She darted after the colonel. "Now, you wait just one minute"

Too late. He thrust open the trunk.

To reveal a jumbled collection of leather and paper. Books with unmistakable titles:Adventures of a Bedstead; The Story of a Dildoe; Tales of Twilight, or the Amorous Adventures of a company of Ladies before Marriage. And more copies ofThePearl.

No one had ever seen her collection of erotica.

Anger that this man,this colonel had barged into her private retreat and discovered her secret vice overrode fear and shame.

"I asked you a question, sirrah, and I expect to be answered! What are you doing?"

The colonel stared at the contents of the trunk for a long moment before he lifted his gaze to hers.

For a second there flared inside the gray eyes something that caused Abigail's nipples to harden. Then the eyes became cold and flat, like his voice. "I am looking for a towel. And a blanket."

"Well, you willnot find them there." Abigail threw the journal inside the trunk and slammed shut the lid. She glared up at him, daring him to comment on the literature that no lady was supposed to know about, let alone possess. "There is a towel by the pump in the corner near the stove. Why do you want a blanket?"

She must have been mistaken at the brief flare of heat in those eyes. They were as hard as the pewter they took their color from. "My clothes are soaked, Mrs.?"

"Miss." Abigail hesitated. She was not about to give this autocratic colonel her last name lest he know someone in society who was acquainted with her family. "Miss Abigail."

"My clothes are soaked, Miss Abigail. I want a blanket so that when I strip down I can cover my nakedness."

Abigail stared. The wordsstrip andnakedness momentarily drowned out the pelting rain and the relentless wind.

"Colonel Coally." She drew herself up to her full height. "I will give you shelter from the storm, but I will not allow you to to"

The gray eyes were implacable. "Miss Abigail, there is nothing you can do to stop me."

Abigail bristled, fully prepared to fightor flee.

A crack of thunder shook the cottage.

A warning that she had nowhere to run.

A reminder that she was behaving more like the juvenile Laura inThe Pearl than a mature spinster dressed in a faded green shirtwaist and who, furthermore, was already sprouting a few strands of gray in pale-brown hair that was straggling free of its bun.

Clothed or buck-naked, there was little likelihood of a man like him forcing his attentions on a woman like her. Especially chilled through and through as he no doubt was.

Dripping water formed a dark circle about his boots.

"I asked if you are injured."

The coldness in the gray eyes intensified. "No."

"Good," she said curtly. "Then you will have no trouble walking to the table and taking a chair. I shall procure you a towel and a blanket. But first let me stir up the fire in the stove"

"That won't be necessary."

"Colonel Coally"

"Miss Abigail, there is a full-fledged storm going on outside your door. You have a thatch roof. If the wind should remove your chimney, it will, if the stove is blazing, quite probably cause a fire. I would as soon suffer from a slight chill as roast to death."

Abigail took a calming breath. Even her elder brother, the Earl of Melford, was not as overbearing as the colonel.

"Very well." Tight-lipped with anger, she retrieved a towel. While he briskly dried off, she flounced toward the bed and yanked off the top blanket.

When she returned to the table, he had dried his hair and slicked it back from his forehead. It was not black as she had earlier thought it to be, but the color of burnt umber. The water, she noted, did not bead on it, which meant he did not pomade his hair like his contemporaries in London.

Abigail could not recall the last time she had seen a man who did not pomade his hair. His cleanly shaven skin, tanned from the sun, was extremelyvirile.

She dropped the blanket onto the table.

"I will wait over by the bed. Pray tell me when you have changed and I will hang your clothes up to dry."

The wailing of the storm did not hide the creak of the chair as he struggled to remove his boots, or the thunk they made when they dropped to the plank floor. Cloth, too, made a sound, she discovered. It whispered, the outer clothes a harsh one, the inner clothes softer, more beguiling.