"Do you indeed believe so?" Freyja asked haughtily. "Do you see this gentleman? If not, I suggest you close the door quietly as you leave and allow me and the other guests in this establishment to resume our slumbers."

"If it is all the same to you, ma'am," the gentleman said, eyeing first the closed window and then the bed and then the wardrobe, "I would like to search the room. For your own protection, ma'am. He is a desperate rogue and not at all safe with ladies."

"Search my room?" Freyja inhaled slowly and regarded him along the length of her prominent, slightly hooked Bedwyn nose with such chilly hauteur that he finally looked at her-and saw her for the first time, she believed. "Search my room?" She turned her eyes on the silent innkeeper, who shrank behind the screen of his candle. "Is this the hospitality of the house of which you boasted with such bombastic eloquence upon my arrival here, my man? My brother, the Duke of Bewcastle, will hear about this. He will be interested indeed to learn that you have allowed another guest-if this gentleman is a guest-to bang on the door of his sister's room in the middle of the night and burst in upon her without waiting for a reply merely because he believes that another gentleman dashed in here. And that you have stood by without a word of protest while he makes the impudent, preposterous suggestion that he be allowed to search the room."

"You were obviously mistaken, sir," the landlord said, half hiding beyond the door frame though his candle was still held out far enough to shine into the room. "He must have escaped another way or hidden somewhere else. I beg your pardon, ma'am-my lady, that is. I allowed it because I was afraid for your safety, my lady, and thought the duke would want me to protect you at all costs from desperate rogues."

"Out!" Freyja said once more, her arm outstretched imperiously toward the doorway and three men standing there. "Get out!"

The gray-haired gentleman cast one last wistful look about the room, the unshaven lout leered one last time, and then the innkeeper leaned across them both and pulled the door shut.

Freyja stared at it, her nostrils flared, her arm still outstretched, her finger still pointing. How dared they? She had never been so insulted in her life. If the gray-haired gentleman had uttered one more word or the unshaven yokel had leered one more leer, she would have stridden over there and banged their heads together hard enough to have them seeing wheeling stars for the next week.

She was certainly not going to recommend this inn to any of her acquaintances.

She had almost forgotten about the man in the wardrobe until the door squeaked open and he unfolded himself from within it. He was a tall, long-limbed young man, she saw in the ample light from the window. And very blond. He was probably blue-eyed too, though there was not quite enough light to enable her to verify that theory. She could see quite enough of him, though, to guess that he was by far too handsome for his own good. He was also looking quite inappropriately merry.

"That was a magnificent performance," he said, setting down his Hessian boots and tossing his coat across the truckle bed. "Are you really a sister of the Duke of Bewcastle?"

At the risk of appearing tediously repetitious, Freyja pointed at the door again.

"Out!" she commanded.

But he merely grinned at her and stepped closer.

"But I think not," he said. "Why would a duke's sister be staying at this less-than-grand establishment? And without a maid or chaperone to guard her? It was a wonderful performance, nevertheless."

"I can live without your approval," she said coldly. "I do not know what you have done that is so heinous. I do not want to know. I want you out of this room, and I want you out now. Find somewhere else to cower in fright."

"Fright?" He laughed and set a hand over his heart. "You wound me, my charmer."

He was standing very close, quite close enough for Freyja to realize that the top of her head reached barely to his chin. But she always had been short. She was accustomed to ruling her world from below the level of much of the action.

"I am neither your sweetheart nor your charmer," she told him. "I shall count to three. One."

"For what purpose?" He set his hands on either side of her waist.

"Two."

He lowered his head and kissed her. Right on the lips, his own parted slightly so that there was a shocking sensation of warm, moist intimacy.

Freyja inhaled sharply, drew back one arm, and punched him hard in the nose.

"Ouch!" he said, fingering his nose gingerly and flexing his mouth. He drew his hand away and Freyja had the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn blood. "Did no one ever teach you that any ordinary lady would slap a man's cheek under such scandalous circumstances, not punch him in the nose?"

"I am no ordinary lady," she told him sternly.

He grinned again and dabbed at his nose with the back of one hand. "You are adorable when you are angry," he said.

"Get out."

"But I cannot do that, you see," he said. "That grandfatherly soul and his pugilistic henchman will be lying in wait for me, and I will be doomed to a leg shackle as surely as I am standing here."

"I do not want to hear any of the sordid details," she said, the significance of his dishabille suddenly borne in upon her. "And why should I care if they are lying in wait?"

"Because, sweetheart," he said, "they would see me coming from your room and draw their own slightly scandalous conclusions, and your reputation would be in tatters."

"It will doubtless survive the shock," she said.

"Have pity on me, O fair one," he said, grinning again-did he take nothing seriously, this man? "I fell for an old trick. There were the elderly gentleman and his granddaughter-a damsel lovely beyond words-in the parlor downstairs with nothing to do to while away the evening hours, and there was I, similarly employed-or unemployed. It was the most natural thing in the world for the grandfather and me to play a few hands of cards while the said damsel watched quietly and sweetly, always in my line of vision. After I had retired for the night and she came to my room to offer further entertainment-I daresay you have noticed that there are no locks on the doors?-was I to point virtuously at the door and order her to be gone? I am made of flesh and blood. As it turned out, it was just fortunate for me that I was still up and still half dressed and that the grandfather did not wait quite long enough before bursting in, all righteous wrath, with the innkeeper and his ferocious-looking thug in tow as witnesses. It was fortunate for me too that they came rushing into the room in a great zealous body, leaving the door unguarded. I made use of the exit thus provided me, dashed along the corridor as far as I could go, and . . . took the only door available to me. This one." He indicated the door of her room with a sweeping gesture of his arm.

"You were going to debauch an innocent girl?" Freyja's bosom swelled.

"Innocent?" He chuckled. "She came to me, sweetheart. Not that I was in any way reluctant, I feel compelled to admit. It is a way some men have of marrying their daughters or granddaughters to advantage, you know-or at least of extorting a hefty sum by way of compensation for lost virtue. They lie in wait in places like this until a poor fool like me happens along, and then they go into action."

"It would serve you right," she said severely, "if you had been caught. I have not the least bit of sympathy for you."

And yet, she thought, it was just the sort of scrape that Alleyne might get into, or Rannulf before his recent marriage to Judith.

"I am going to have to stay here for the rest of the night, I am afraid," the stranger said, looking around. "I don't suppose you would fancy sharing your bed with me?"

Freyja favored him with her coldest, haughtiest look, the one that froze most normal mortals in their tracks.

"No?" He grinned yet again. "It will have to be the truckle bed, then. I'll try not to snore. I hope you do not."

"You will leave this room," she told him, "before I count to three, or I shall scream. Very loudly. One."

"You would not do that, sweetheart," he said. "You would expose yourself as a liar to your erstwhile visitors."

"Two."

"Unless," he said with a chuckle, "you were to explain that I must have tiptoed in and hidden myself in the wardrobe while you still slept and then jumped out on you as soon as I surmised the coast to be clear."

"Three."

He looked at her, raised his eyebrows, waggled them, and turned with studied nonchalance toward the truckle bed.

Freyja screamed.

"Jesu, woman," he said, one hand coming up as if to be clapped over her mouth.

But it must have been clear to him that that would have been akin to shutting the stable door after the proverbial horse had bolted. Freyja had considerable lung capacity. She screamed long and loud without once having to stop to draw breath.

The stranger grabbed up his coat and boots, dashed to the window, threw up the sash, poked his head out, tossed down his garments, and then disappeared.

The drop to the ground must be at least thirty feet, Freyja estimated, feeling a moment's remorse. His mashed remains were probably splashed over the cobbled yard below by now.

The door burst open to reveal a veritable mob of persons in various states of dress and undress, the innkeeper bringing up the rear, the gray-haired gentleman and the unshaven, leering thug with him.

"He burst in upon you after all, did he, my lady?" the gray-haired man asked above a hubbub of voices demanding to know what was the matter and who had been murdered in his bed.