He spoke the last words to Mrs. Fitzgerald, who was smiling and curtsying in front of him. Bertrand had already been claimed by the girls.

"What, Fitz," Hortense cried, pushing past Peregrine, "are we invisible just because we are females? For shame."

"Well," Bertrand said, standing back and looking admiringly at his former playmates, "aren't you the grand ladies all of a sudden? I wouldn't have recognized either of you without tangled curls and smudged noses and tears in your dresses."

Jack had immediately singled out the prettiest and the youngest of the three Misses Fitzgerald. "Rose," he said, taking her hand and holding it far longer than was necessary, "the last time I saw you, you had so many freckles one might not have put a pin between them. I would not have guessed then that you would grow into such a beauty. And to think that I have already wasted three days at Portland House."

The seventeen-year-old Rose blushed deeply and smiled, totally enslaved.

"Come along, Frederick," the oldest Miss Fitzgerald said in her rather masculine, no-nonsense voice. "You shall tell us all about the play inside. Here you are blocking the pathway so that no one else can get near the door."

"How right you are, Ruby," Freddie said, looking behind him in surprise. "Damme, but I didn't notice. You're a sensible female. Always were, I remember." He allowed her to take his arm and lead him inside.

It was noticeable that all members of the party were in a considerably more cheerful frame of mind one hour later when they were on their way back home. Finally they had contacted sanity and normality again.


************************************

Merrick and Anne looked into each other's eyes for a few uncomfortable moments before he turned away and began pacing back and forth in front of her.

"Why must you take this whole damned thing so seriously, Anne?" he said. "Are you trying to put us all to shame?"

"No!" she protested. “I am merely trying to do my best. Grandmamma wants us to perform this play for an audience. It seems to me that we owe it to her to make the performance as good as we are able."

"What do you owe Grandmamma?" Merrick asked, coming to a stop before Anne and glaring at her. "A public place in the family? Are you reveling in it, Anne, and are you hoping that if you act like her blue-eyed girl, she will persuade me to take you back home with me? Is that what you want? To be the Viscountess of Merrick, to be shown off to all the ton?"

There were tears in Anne's eyes, but she kept her chin up and looked steadily back at him. "No," she said, "you know I could not be so conniving, I think. The duchess has been kind to me, Alexander, and she has made me feel a part of her family. I have never before felt part of any family."

"I cannot act this scene with you, or any of the other scenes," Merrick said. "Can you not understand that I want no part of you? How can I stand with you here, speaking words of love and admiration, watched by Claude and frequently by several of the others? I would prefer to be alone, trying to forget your existence."

His words were deliberately brutal, and he turned away as she bit her lip. He could see that she was trying to control her facial muscles so that she would not cry before him. His words were foolish, anyway. How could he say he wanted no part of her when he could not stay away from her at night? How could he claim to be trying to forget her existence when he had made love to her each night with such obvious hunger? He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. He took a deep breath.

"I do not know the words of the scene as well as I should," he said. "I had better sit down and read through them again before Claude returns."

"Alexander," she said. Only the slightly higher-than-usual tone of her voice indicated her distress. "Can you not forget who I am while we are acting this play? Can you not pretend that you are Charles Marlow and that I am Kate Hardcastle? Must we show everyone in your family that there is so much bad feeling between us? I shall not impose more of my company upon you than these rehearsals call for, and I shall be quite content to return to Redlands after the ball. You need not be afraid that I shall try to remain with you. Why would I want to stay where I am considered nothing? Why should I deliberately court a life of abuse and misery?"

Her face was very white and very set, Merrick noticed when he looked at her, startled. It was the first sign of spirit he had ever seen in her. He bowed formally, picked up his book from a table where he had flung it earlier, crossed to the opposite end of the ballroom, and seated himself with his back to her, the book open on his lap.

He failed to notice during the ten minutes that elapsed before the return of Claude that the book was upside down. Damn it, but he hated her. He wanted to hurt her. He had never in his life felt so out of control of his destiny. She was nothing. She was a nobody, without vitality or personality. He could no longer say she was without beauty; she was damned pretty, in fact. But she was so bland. Her answer to everything seemed to be to stare accusingly at him out of those large gray eyes, which were as often as not filled with tears. He wanted to shake her, slap her, provoke her somehow to… what? He did not even know. Did it matter to him what she did? He did not even want her in his life. She did not fit into any of the plans he had ever made for himself.

He was beginning to hate himself as much as he hated her. Maybe that was why he disliked her so much, in fact. He could not act like his usual self here, knowing that she was in the same house. He wanted to ignore her, or at least to treat her with the contempt that he felt she deserved. He wanted to make it obvious to her that he had wed her out of a sense of honor but that he had no intention of ever letting her share anything else of his life except his name. But she drew him like a drug. He tried to convince himself each night when he went to her that he was merely using her, displaying to her in the most insulting manner possible that to him she was a mere convenience, but the trouble was that he was too damned hard to convince.

Last night he had not even been able to content himself with having her once. He had woken up during the night to find his cheek resting against her soft curls. Her head was nestled as usual against his shoulder. He had turned his head, and immediately his nostrils had been filled with the very distinctive smell of her, that clean soap smell. He had tried to control the desire that had arisen in him as he became more aware of the warmth of her, of the softness of her flesh touching his. He had lost the battle. He had taken her almost in anger, and when she had woken with a little whimper as he thrust inside her, he had been further enflamed. He recalled now that, instead of crying with pain or fright, she had clung to him, her fingernails drawing blood from his back, her passion quickly matching his own.

She was making him her slave, and she must know it. And he hated her for it. He would not let any woman, least of all her, take away from him his freedom to control his own actions. He had ten more days of this torture to endure before he could pack her off back to Redlands, where she belonged, and begin to forget her and get his life back in order again.

Merrick turned in his chair as the door at the other end of the ballroom opened and Claude entered again. With him, surprisingly, was Grandpapa, leaning heavily on a cane and peering fiercely at Anne, who was sitting on the floor in the spot where Merrick had left her, clasping her knees and looking no older than a child.

"Now, what is this?" the duke asked gruffly. "Claude tells me that you are acting like a wooden soldier, Alex. It won't do, you know. You used to be one of the family's star turns. You two are having problems with your marriage, eh? Can't understand why, Alex. She's a pretty-enough little thing and nicely behaved."

"Grandpapa," Merrick said harshly, crossing the room again, "the condition of our marriage is a matter entirely between Anne and me. I will not permit even you to interfere in that."

"And quite right too, my boy," the duke said, looking at his grandson from beneath drawn brows, "and my marriage is my concern. At the moment the happiness of Her Grace depends a great deal on the success of this play. I don't necessarily understand why it is so important to her, but it is. And what is important to Her Grace is important to me. From now on, you will know your lines, my boy, and you will act them as What's-his-name intended them to be acted when he wrote them. And your feelings for your wife will not be allowed to intrude. Is that clear?"

Merrick's hands formed into fists at his sides as he glared back. The two men took each other's measure for long moments as the pair of spectators looked on with bated breath.

Merrick relaxed suddenly. "I always said that your bark was worse than your bite, Grandpapa," he said, "but I never knew anyone whose bark was quite so fierce. Now would you kindly leave so that Claude can start bullying Anne and me again?"

The duke left.

Chapter 9

After dinner, followed by tea and conversation in the drawing room, the duchess insisted that rehearsals resume. And the following morning was no different. As soon as the stragglers could no longer pretend that they were still eating breakfast, they were informed that the small ballroom was awaiting their use. Strangely, no one grumbled on either occasion. The visit of most of the young people to the vicarage had cheered their spirits, and all were looking forward to the return visit that the three Fitzgerald girls and Bertrand had promised for the afternoon.