Good heavens, whatever had become of the ironclad reserve of London’s most famous stone face? She had the odd feeling he was no longer speaking of Robin but something, or someone, else entirely.

She answered, nonetheless. “Perhaps he hopes to preempt the gossips by getting there first, and in doing so at least have the satisfaction of stealing their thunder and, perhaps, avoiding the sting unfounded accusations can bring.”

He regarded her sharply. “You may be right,” he murmured. “Robin is in many ways as fine a man as I would hope to know. But I would be a poor host indeed were I to allow my guests to unintentionally expose themselves to gossip.

“Be careful, Lady Cecily,” he added roughly, but not unkindly. “We have a mutual friend who would never allow his name to be associated, even tangentially, with anything remotely inappropriate. ”

He was talking about Burbett again, warning her that if she dallied with Robin, Burbett would break off his courtship. “You needn’t concern yourself, Lord Oakley. I have no intention of entering into a flirtation with your cousin.”

No. She had other ideas altogether.

“I would never presume such a thing, Lady Cecily,” Oakley said, stiffening once more. “You are obviously not the sort of woman who encourages men to . . .” His lips curled in a snarl that looked more frustrated than enraged. “ . . . to climb the ivy outside their bedchambers.”

She had no idea what he meant by this last, but clearly, it meant something important. She did not wonder for long, however, being wholly caught up in an idea that had taken root with his words.

“Ivy,” she muttered, her brow furrowed in concentration. What man could possibly mistake the intentions of a lady driven to such an act? He couldn’t.

She was thinking metaphorically, of course, but if Robin would not pursue her, then she would simply have to seduce the Prince of Rakes.







Chapter 20

Very early the next morning

The sky was still a deep cobalt paling to orchid on the horizons when Robin began prowling Finovair’s long-abandoned portrait gallery. The storm had passed, and Finovair stood cloaked in heavy white robes, her turrets and tumbled curtain wall shimmering with ice. It was as pretty now as ever it would be or, in all likelihood, ever had been. But Robin barely noted its beauty. His imagination was fixed on quite a different kind of beauty.

Who would have guessed that Lady Cecily Tarleton would prove to be the most dangerous woman in Great Britain? Oh, not to the world at large, but to a very small population of one, she most decidedly was that.

“Were it not so amusing, it would be pathetic,” he murmured, his breath turning to a cloud in the unheated corridor’s frigid air, glad to find his humor restored.

It had gone mostly missing since he’d first seen her, standing before Bretton’s carriage in a pool of torchlight. Snow caught in her lashes, spangled her rich, dark hair like the diadems in fairy queen’s veil, and melted on her rosy cheeks. Subtle bemusement had flickered over the cameo smoothness of her face, a sense of wonder growing in her amber-colored eyes as she looked around for all the world as if abduction were a regular occurrence, and she needed merely to enjoy the interim between theft and rescue.

Having been thrown at birth on the mercy of Fate and Fortune—and having discovered therefore that amused acceptance was the best ally against despair—Robin appreciated the same attitude in another. Especially such a lovely “other.”

When Byron had taken her hand, Robin had realized he had wanted to be the one taking her hand, and since Robin rarely denied himself anything he wanted, especially as he always made certain his wants were well within his means, he had fairly shoved Oakley aside and presented himself. As expected of a rake, he’d made some slightly outré comment and grinned wickedly, anticipating her gasp—de rigueur in such situations—or, possibly, if she was a rompish miss, a snicker.

She hadn’t done either.

She’d looked up at him. A strange, heart-stealing expression of recognition had arisen in her honeyed eyes, and her ripe, luscious lips had parted but not a word escaped them, and he had been stunned by the force of a yearning so unexpected it had nearly brought him to his knees. And it was at that precise instance he’d realized how very, very dangerous Lady Cecily was. Because against all reason, when he should have been proof against such nonsense, he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love.

And love at first sight, at that.

Robin had never been in love before, which is precisely how he recognized the sensation with such absolute certainty. Shortly thereafter, he had fled—and no, he would not appease his vanity by calling it anything else—from the more habitable portions of Finovair to those parts falling to ruin, which, he thought ruefully, looking around, was most of it. Because while Robin might be in love, he was not insane, and it would be insanity indeed to pursue that which he had no possibility of attaining.

He had learned that lesson early in life when he’d arrived in London as a young man. Society’s mamas wasted no time in cautioning their daughters against the son of an impecunious French count. And their papas had been just as quick to take Robin aside—accompanied by their more brawny retainers—to make very sure he understood the warning.

Thereafter, Robin had kept his liaisons strictly to the ranks of ladies who did not require marriage as a prerequisite to bed sport. And while his conquests were not nearly so legion as Byron assumed—and Robin let him assume—they were plentiful enough to keep a fellow from deploring his lot in life.

And why should he deplore his lot? he asked himself, stopping to stare sightlessly at the snowy courtyard below. He had health, good friends, a few acres of vines he still managed to keep a working concern, and—he cast a jaundiced eye down a hall of fallen plaster rubble and pockmarked walls—someday would inherit a Scottish castle. What more could he want?

Her.

He scowled at the betraying thought.

Irritably, he pivoted to leave, and as he did so, he heard the unmistakable if faint sound of a female cursing. Relieved by the distraction, he smiled, wondering if along with all the rest of the unwelcome bequests with which Taran—damn his unfruitful loins—intended to saddle him, he would also inherit a ghost. Though he thought even ghosts had more sense than to haunt so inhospitable a place.

He looked down the hall toward where the sound had come just as a pile of russet-colored rags topped by a head emerged from a doorway.

A particularly dark and lovely head.

Lady Cecily.

It appeared he was to be haunted, after all.







Chapter 21

For a second, Robin considered pretending he hadn’t seen her—again—and bolt down the adjacent corridor. By avoiding her thus far, he had avoided sampling what he could never wholly have.

True, manners had demanded that he make an appearance at dinner the first night, but he’d seated himself at the opposite end of the table from her and escaped as soon as Marilla had commenced her campaign to win Bretton’s . . . Well, if she won anything of Bretton’s, it certainly wasn’t ever going to be his heart. But, then, any fool watching her manhandle the duke would soon realize that Bretton’s heart was never her objective.

But now Robin found he could not resist the opportunity to spend some time alone with Lady Cecily before her rescuers came thundering through the passes. When they arrived, he would be gone. He had no intention of standing by while Marilla Chisholm convinced her father that events had occurred that could only be satisfied with a wedding. Particularly if it was his own.

Besides, perhaps if he spent some time with Lady Cecily, he would discover that she was not what every fiber in his heart declared her to be but simply a young lady whose lovely visage and pretty manners summed up the total of what she was or aspired to become. At least, he thought as he strode toward her, he could hope.

“Lady Cecily,” Robin hailed her, his amusement growing with each step.

She’d exchanged yesterday’s antique morning weeds for an even older ball gown, dating from an era when women would have had to turn sideways to enter through a door. But without the support of the underlying panniers that would have once jutted out from her hips, the heavy skirts dragged along the ground on either side of her like two broken wings.