“If not to me then to Gaines,” Miles said. “He did a sterling job for you. He argued that as you were outside the shop rather than inside there was no proof you had ever been inside.”

“And the wedding gown?” Alice objected.

“He said that you had probably found it in the street, where the true thief had dropped it, and that you picked it up out of curiosity.” Miles laughed. “He was very plausible.”

“He’s a good man in a crisis,” Alice said. She sighed. “I suppose he was even able to come up with a reason as to why I was in the street at midnight in the first place?”

“Of course,” Miles said. “You were there to meet me.”

“I suppose you denied it?”

“No,” Miles said. “No one asked me if it was true.”

“So now I am supposed to have been trysting with you before we were betrothed!” Alice said wrathfully. “So much for my good reputation!”

“You have no reputation left,” Miles said. “You are scandalous, Alice. Ruined.”

The exasperation and anger swelled in Alice. “Mostly thanks to you! You madden me! Why did you have to decide to reform now?”

“I can’t help it,” Miles bit out. “Have you not heard a word I’ve said? Do you think I wanted to change? I was perfectly fine until I met you.”

“You were ruthless and arrogant unreformed,” Alice said. “I have yet to see a difference in you.” The anger within her was starting to ease slightly at the sound of the irritation in Miles’s voice. Clearly his reformation was not proving a comfortable experience for him. She stopped struggling and smoothed her fingers down the material of his jacket.

“I am not marrying you,” she added. “I don’t have to, now that you have broken the terms of our agreement.”

“You are marrying me,” Miles corrected. “You have not a shred of reputation left and if you do not wed me you will be shunned by society and incur all the scandalous gossip that your mother fears and that you have tried so hard to avoid. You know you would hate that and your mama would be distraught.”

“The scandal is of your making, not mine!” Alice said, incensed. “You were the one who locked us in the spa baths and made love to me!”

“That is beside the point,” Miles said. “And anyway-” a wicked grin tilted his lips “-I did not hear you protesting. In fact I seem to remember that you connived enthusiastically in your own seduction. You begged me not to stop.”

Alice remembered. She felt a stab of anguish. No wonder Miles looked so pleased with himself. She had pleaded with him to make love to her. And thinking about it now, through all her fury and frustration, she felt like begging him all over again because it had been so unutterably blissful and she could not deny it.

“You are no gentleman to remind me,” she said.

“I am as much a gentleman as you are a lady,” Miles said. He dropped his voice. “You know that what you really want now is to return home to a hot bath and a deep feather bed and to make love with me again-and again-until we are both satiated. You know it, Alice.” His lips brushed her ear, his breath warm in the cold of the night. He held her caged in his arms. “What we did was wonderful. Sinful and decadent and so very, very wicked but so delicious-”

“No!” Alice whispered. The low murmur of his words tormented her. Her pulse beat frantically in her throat. The heat pooled within her.

“I don’t want to forgive you,” she said truthfully, but even as she spoke she could feel herself weakening. “Damn you, Miles.”

“Damn me to perdition if you wish,” Miles said, “but you’ll have me just the same.”

Alice made an infuriated sound and grabbed him and kissed him hard. He tasted cold, tasted delicious.

“I am still very angry with you,” she said as her lips left his. “I want to punish you.”

“I can tell,” Miles said.

He kissed her this time, a soft brushing of his lips against hers.

“Still angry with me?” Then as she made a tiny sound of assent he said, “You can settle the score when we get back to Spring House.”

“I doubt it,” Alice said regretfully. “Mama will be there, and Lizzie and the servants and everyone will want to know how I am-”

“No, they won’t,” Miles said. “Sir Montague has taken Lady Elizabeth back to Fortune Hall and your mama is staying with Laura at the Old Palace and all the servants are abed.”

Alice looked at him. “Then…” Damnation take it, she thought. I am no lady and we both know it but I want to make love with him again and he is right, I am going to do it.

“What are we waiting for?” she said.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MILES CARRIED THE FINAL pitcher of water upstairs and closed Alice’s bedroom door behind him. Alice had set up the bath behind a muslin screen. The room was warm. Sweet-scented steam rose into the air, reminding him sharply of the time they had spent together in the spa baths. He could hear Alice humming softly to herself and the muted splash of the water. He rounded the screen and put the pitcher down.

Alice was sitting in the hip bath. Her blond hair was piled up on top of her head and tiny strands were escaping to curl in the steam. The hot water had stung her skin pink all over and she looked glowing and rosy, delicious enough to eat. She gave a little gasp when she saw him and made a grab for her petticoat but Miles whisked it out of her hands.

“Very virginal and modest, my love,” he said, “but scarcely necessary now.”

My love. The endearment had come easily to his lips, he realized. He felt a sudden uncertainty-a strange, hollow feeling inside-but he dismissed it from his mind. Later. He would think about it later. Right now he did not want to think about anything other than making love to Alice with a concentrated passion that would satisfy them both.

Alice was looking at him and her eyes were shy. He realized that despite her unrestrained response to him earlier she was still feeling diffident. This was so new to her. He felt a pang of compassion. Her gaze slid away from his. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“It’s just…” Her voice was a little husky. “I know I am very plump,” she said in a rush. “The ladies are always saying that I have a peasant build.”

Miles felt a rush of fury. He looked at the voluptuous curves that were barely hidden. He took her wrist and gently drew her arms down. Her breasts were beautiful, lush and creamy with tight, raspberry-pink nipples. Below them the swell of her stomach and her rounded thighs looked so lavish and bountiful that he simply wanted to bury himself in her body and revel in the opulence of it.

“Sweetheart-” his voice was rough “-they are only envious of you. There is not a man on earth who would find fault with your body.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, feeling the dampness and slick warmth of her skin beneath his hand. “Not,” he added, “that I would wish you to put that to the test. The only man who can touch you-” he slid his hand down over her breast “-is me.”

He wanted to tempt her out of her anxieties, make her forget everything but the need she had for him. At his words a smile had banished the anxiety in Alice’s eyes, and Miles felt another kick of possessive tenderness. He bent his head to kiss her neck, tasting the salt on her, licking up the droplets of water that beaded the skin of her shoulders. Despite the heat in the room her nipple hardened against his palm and she sighed, leaning her head back against his shoulder to allow him greater access to her breasts. Her eyes closed slowly. As he continued to nuzzle the hot, damp skin of her neck, she gave a little moan, totally abandoned. Miles felt awed by her trust in him and more deeply, elementally possessive than he had ever felt before. Her natural sensuality delighted him. He knew and understood now the insecurity that plagued her because she had had it drummed into her so many times that she was no lady. For himself he did not care a fig about it. What mattered was that Alice was as honest in her passion as she was in everything else, and now that she had decided to give herself openly to him she held nothing back at all.

He cupped her breasts, toying with them until she was making little needful noises and arching back against him whilst his searching fingers sought her taut, pointing nipples. He squeezed the tips gently, then more firmly as she squirmed and the sounds she made became more urgent and desperate. He was hard as a rock already, but for once-was it the first time ever he had been unselfish in his lust?-he suppressed his own urges and the demands of his body. This was for Alice, the seduction he should have given her before.

He rested her carefully back against the edge of the bath so that he could lower his mouth to the place his fingers had been and could lick and pull on one tight nub and circle it with his tongue. His fingers ceaselessly rubbed back and forth across the other taut peak so that there was no escape for her from his seeking mouth and the exquisite torment of his touch. The sensation of her beneath his hands and his mouth was beautiful: hot, silken and trembling. He could sense she was wound so tightly that she wanted surcease. It was not enough. She had to be desperate for the release that only he could give her.

“Please, Miles…” She had opened her eyes and was looking at him with utter appeal.

“Do you like that?” His mouth brushed wet and hot across her breast.

“Oh yes, but-” a little frown touched her forehead “-I need to get out of this bath.” The hot color deepened in her face. “I want to lie with you, to touch you.”

“I want that, too,” Miles said. He scooped her up out of the bath and wrapped the bath sheet about her, trailing water across the carpet toward the bed, where he laid her down gently amongst the covers. It seemed to take him an age to strip off his clothes. His hands were shaking, clumsy. He was not normally so inept. Yet the rich, slumberous blue of Alice’s gaze as it rested on him seemed to make him even more ham-fisted. He felt a stab of alarm. He wanted this to be perfect for her. If he frightened her or gave her a disgust of him…