“I’ll play,” he said.

A ripple of shock ran around the group of onlookers and Lizzie’s eyes widened in surprise.

“I did not think you approved of gaming,” she said.

“I don’t,” Nat said. He sat back, undid his jacket and loosened his cravat.

Lizzie took a long gulp of the champagne. Nat watched her throat move as she swallowed. The diamonds danced and glittered about her neck. She picked up the pack of cards and started to shuffle it again.

“Basset?” she said.

“Piquet.”

Lizzie shrugged one white shoulder. “Whichever you prefer. The stake?”

“You,” Nat said. “You coming home with me. To our bed.”

Again the group of onlookers rippled with scandalized shock and some moved away, Dexter, Miles and Alice amongst them. Lizzie looked up at Nat, her eyes wide and very bright with the excitement and wildness he had come to recognize. “You’ll lose,” she warned.

“No, I won’t,” Nat said.

Out of the corner of his eye Nat could see that Alice was clasping Miles’s sleeve and speaking to him urgently. Miles’s face was grim, but after a moment he shook his head and they left the card room, Alice throwing one troubled, backward glance at Lizzie. Nat felt the tension tighten within him, straining the muscles across his shoulders, drawing the material of his evening jacket taut. His entire attention was riveted on Lizzie, on the way the silk and net of her gown clung to each line and curve of her body, on the provocative rise and fall of the diamonds at her breast, the slender flick of her fingers as she dealt the cards. Their gazes locked. Hers was vivid and excited and challenged him so that the blood burned fierce within him.

“You have always been a poor card player,” she taunted.

“I have been an indifferent one,” Nat said. He held her gaze with his, intense, direct. “Perhaps I will surprise you.”

“You frequently do.” Lizzie bent her head over her cards and promptly won the first two parties. Nat won the third, then the fourth and the fifth. He could see that after a lapse in concentration Lizzie was trying very hard now, her lower lip pressed between her teeth. Most of their audience had wandered away now in search of fresh entertainment. There was only Lizzie and him left, swept up in their tight little circle of mutual tension and desire. The longer the game ran the more his lust drove him. He was determined to win, and to have her.

“You should not have drunk all that champagne,” he said. “It undermines the concentration.”

Lizzie shot him an irritated look. “You should drink more and then perhaps you would not be such a stuffed shirt.”

“Why the necklace?” Nat said. “Why gamble something that is so important to you?”

She flicked him another look over her hand and put a card down. “Why not? What does it matter?”

“It’s worth twenty thousand pounds.”

Her head was bent, the candlelight playing on the golden, bronze and red strands in her hair.

“It isn’t always about the money,” she said.

“No,” Nat said. “It’s about the fact that your mother gave it to you and that you value inordinately anything that connects you to her.”

She shot him a very sharp look at that. For a moment she looked afraid. Her hand stilled on the cards. “How do you know that?”

“Because no matter what everyone else says of her, you have always idolized her.”

He saw Lizzie swallow hard. Her lashes hid her expression from him. “I miss her.”

“So why gamble away something of value that she left to you?” Nat persisted. “It makes no sense.”

Lizzie slapped a card down onto the pile and leaned forward, her green eyes pinning him with their anger. “Sense! What sense is there in loss? I lost my mother-am I supposed to value a necklace in her place?” She sat back, the anger leaving her as swiftly as it had poured out. “I lost both my parents,” she said. “I lost Monty. None of them were perfect, but they were more valuable than this.” She touched the necklace with her fingertips and it caught the light and blazed with rainbow colors.

“Is that why you came out tonight?” Nat asked. “Because you felt lonely and you wanted to gamble to pass the time?” He could not understand her and with a moment’s surprise and pain he realized that he never had. He had never really tried; she had just been Lizzie and he had indulged her moods and had laughed at her wildness, but now everything seemed different because she was his wife, and he was baffled as well as dazzled by her. Everything that should have been simple-their marriage, his life-suddenly seemed intolerably complicated.

“I was bored.” She played her hand faster now, throwing the cards down as though she did not really care. “It was my wedding night and I was lonely. What about you?”

“I had business-”

“Oh, well.” Lizzie smiled at him, mocking, the smile not reaching her eyes. Her words stung him like tiny thorns. “That makes it all right, then. When men say they have to deal with business it is so important that it excuses all, does it not?”

“You’re angry,” Nat said.

“You’re perceptive.” Her expression was contemptuous. “It is our wedding night, Nat Waterhouse. You gain fifty thousand pounds from me, you have me in your bed-” her gaze, burning and intense, reminded him of how that had been “-you take the things you want,” she continued, “and then you go out on business and leave me alone. You treat me like a possession and then you behave like a single man.” She threw her cards down in a gesture of disgust. “I have carte blanche and no picture cards. I suspect you win.”

“Four games to your two.” Nat looked at her. “You should have declared earlier. You’re reckless.”

“Clearly,” Lizzie said. “How exciting for you to be proved right.” She stood up and the silver net dress rustled softly as it slid over the lines and curves of her body. She looked ice-cool and composed whilst Nat felt so hot he was burning up. It maddened him that she could provoke him and his body would respond to her so violently even when his mind rebelled against the hold she had over him.

“Come with me,” he said roughly. He stood up. “We are going home.”

She looked him up and down slowly like a queen appraising a peasant. Even the tilt of her chin was haughty. Her gaze rested disdainfully on the bulge of his enormous erection. “Home?” she said. “You’ll never last that long. You want me too much.”

Nat was afraid that she was right. He wanted to make love to her here on the card room table or against the wall or anywhere that would soothe this unbearable ache in his body. His desperate arousal was all he could think of. He grabbed Lizzie’s wrist, careless of who was watching.

“I won, so…”

“So you claim your prize.” Lizzie was smiling though her eyes were still cold. He wanted to kindle a matching heat in her, to master her and force a response. He pulled her to him and kissed her. He was not the sort of man to kiss a woman in the very public surroundings of the Fortune’s Folly assembly rooms but one touch of her lips, cool and firm, and he forgot where they were. He almost forgot who he was. He kissed her hard, tasting the champagne on her tongue and the sweet taste that was Lizzie herself and he did not stop kissing her until the Master of Ceremonies approached them to say that their carriage was waiting and if they could leave at once it would be much appreciated because they were creating a public disturbance.

Lizzie was proved right. In the carriage Nat stripped the silver dress off her, leaving her in nothing but the diamond necklace, and took her there and then on the seat, whilst the coach drove around the village in circles until they had finished. Lizzie smiled her cool smile in the summer darkness and her naked body glistened equally as cool and pale and the sight of it just seemed to fire Nat’s lust all the more. He lost himself in her whilst deploring his lack of control. Afterward he felt sated but not happy and Lizzie was silent and withdrawn from him, and the doubts that had shadowed his mind earlier in the evening came back and would not be banished. He had feared that marriage to Lizzie would be a disaster and whilst their lovemaking might be spectacular he was starting to see that his misgivings might be justified. There was some devil of unhappiness that drove Lizzie and he did not understand why, and whilst he wanted to help her he did not know how.

When they finally reached Chevrons he took Lizzie to bed and made love to her again, trying to banish the demons, and then he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking only when his valet brought in the hot water and threw the curtains wide. The bed was empty and Lizzie had gone. Nat felt a strange pang of loss.

Lizzie was already in the breakfast parlor when he went downstairs. She was wearing a dress of pale green trimmed with black lace-her concession to mourning, Nat presumed-and she looked exceedingly pretty except that there were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her hair was ruthlessly restrained in a matching green bandeau and she was picking at a piece of toast and honey as though she detested the sight of it.

Nat took a cup of coffee, dismissed the footman and went to sit across from her. He knew he had to speak to her but there was such a strong reserve about her that it seemed to make it impossible to find the right words.

“I trust that you are well this morning?” he said, knowing even as he spoke that he sounded stilted. Lizzie raised her blank, green gaze to his and he had the oddest sensation that there was nothing behind her eyes at all, no thought, no feeling.

“I am quite well.” She sounded as distant as the slightest acquaintance.

Nat cleared his throat. “About last night-”

“I suppose I should apologize for embarrassing you,” Lizzie said. She did not look up from her plate. “I apologize.”