She was more than ordinarily beautiful. There was also a very definite aura of countrified innocence-or naivete-about her. But an air of good breeding too. And there were those eyes of hers. He had never seen them from close up, but they had intrigued him nonetheless. He had found himself wondering what was behind them.

It was most unlike him to wonder any such thing. He was a man of surfaces when it came to other people and even when it came to himself. He was not in the habit of looking within.

Perhaps part of the lady’s appeal was the fact that she was Con Huxtable’s cousin and Con had made a point of not introducing her to him.

Now he was pledged to seduce her.

Full sexual intercourse.

Within the next fortnight.

Devil take it! Yes, that was it. That was the wager. That was what he had agreed to do.

It was a sobering thought-literally. He felt as he climbed into bed as if he had progressed straight from deep drunkenness to the nauseated, head-pounding aftermath.

One of these days he was going to renounce drinking.

And wagering.

And sowing wild oats, or whatever the devil it was he had been sowing for more years than he cared to count.

One day. Not yet, though-he was only twenty-five.

And he had a wager to win before he set about reforming his ways. He had never lost a wager.

2

KATHERINE Huxtable was one of the most fortunate of mortals, and she was well aware of that fact as she took a brisk morning walk in London’s Hyde Park with her sister Vanessa, Lady Lyngate.

Just a few short months ago she had been living in a modest cottage in the small village of Throckbridge in Shropshire with her eldest sister, Margaret, and their young brother, Stephen. Vanessa, the widowed Vanessa Dew at the time, had been living with her in-laws at nearby Rundle Park. Katherine had spent a few days of each week teaching the very young children at the village school and helping the schoolmaster with his other classes. They had been living a life of genteel poverty, which had meant that there was almost no money except for food and the essentials of clothing-and what Meg had been saving for Stephen’s education.

And then suddenly everything had changed. Viscount Lyngate, a total stranger at the time, had arrived in the village on Valentine’s Day, bringing with him the startlingly unexpected news that Stephen was the new Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall in Hampshire as well as other sizable and prosperous properties-and a huge fortune.

And all their fortunes had changed. First they had all moved to Warren Hall, the mansion and park that were Stephen’s principal seat, taking Vanessa with them. Then Vanessa had married Viscount Lyngate. And then they had all come to London to be presented to the queen and the ton and to participate in all the busy activities of the spring Season.

So here they were, she and Vanessa, walking in the park as if there were nothing better to do in life. It all felt shockingly decadent-and undeniably enjoyable too.

Suddenly they were in possession of all sorts of new and wonderful things-money, security, fashionable clothes, vast numbers of new acquaintances, and more entertainments than there were hours in the day during which to enjoy them. And suddenly for Katherine there was the prospect of a glittering future with one of the numerous and eligible gentlemen who had already shown an interest in her.

She was twenty years old and still unattached. She had never been able to persuade herself to fall in love when she lived in Throckbridge, though she had had a number of chances. The trouble was that she still could not here in London even though she genuinely liked a number of her admirers.

She had just admitted in response to a question Vanessa had asked that there was no one special among the gentlemen of her acquaintance.

“Do you want someone special in your life?” Vanessa asked with perhaps a thread of exasperation in her voice.

“Of course I do,” Katherine admitted with something of a sigh. “But that is it you see, Nessie. He must be special. I am coming to the conclusion that there is no such person, that I am looking for a mirage, an impossibility.”

Though she knew romantic love in itself was not an impossibility. She had only to consider her sister’s case. Vanessa had been deeply in love with Hedley Dew, her first husband, and Katherine strongly suspected that she loved Lord Lyngate just as much.

“Or perhaps,” she admitted, “there is such a person but I just cannot recognize him. Perhaps the fault is in me. Perhaps I was just not made for soaring passion or tender romance or-”

Vanessa patted her reassuringly on the arm and laughed.

“Of course there is such a man,” she said, “and of course you will recognize him when you find him and feel all the things you dream of feeling. Or after you have found him, perhaps, as I did with Elliott. We were married before I knew how much I loved him-or that I loved him at all, in fact. Indeed, I have still only just admitted it to myself, and I am not at all sure it would not alarm him dreadfully to know it, poor man.”

“Oh, dear,” Katherine said. “This does not sound at all encouraging, Nessie. Though I am sure Lord Lyngate would not be alarmed.”

They looked at each other sidelong and both chuckled.

But perhaps the fault really was in herself, Katherine thought in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps she had too rigid a notion of what the man of her dreams would look like or behave like. Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places.

What if love was not safe at all?

That startlingly unexpected and really rather alarming question occurred to her when she was at Vauxhall Gardens one evening.

Margaret and Stephen had just gone back to Warren Hall to stay, Margaret because she was upset over the recent news that Crispin Dew, her longtime beau, had married a Spanish lady while with his regiment in the Peninsula-though she would never have admitted it if confronted-and Stephen because at the age of seventeen he could not yet participate fully in the social life of the ton but could get back to his studies and prepare himself for Oxford in the autumn. Vanessa and Lord Lyngate had gone with them to spend a few days at Finchley Park, their home nearby. Although Katherine would have been more than happy to go too, she had been persuaded to remain in London for the rest of the Season to enjoy herself. So she was staying at Moreland House on Cavendish Square with Viscount Lyngate’s mother and his youngest sister, Cecily, who was also making her debut this Season. The dowager Lady Lyngate had promised to keep a maternal eye upon Katherine.

But that eye was perhaps not quite as watchful as it ought to have been, Katherine concluded during the evening on which she and Cecily joined a party at Vauxhall Gardens organized by Lord Beaton and his sister, Miss Flaxley. Their mother had undertaken to take charge of the party of young people, and the dowager Lady Lyngate had decided upon a rare evening of relaxation at home.

It was a party of eight young persons, not counting Lady Beaton herself-and it included Lord Montford of all people.

Baron Montford was a gentleman who had been specifically pointed out to Katherine as one of London’s most disreputable and dangerous rakehells. The warning had come from one of his friends and therefore someone who ought to know-from Constantine Huxtable, in fact, her wickedly handsome, half-Greek second cousin, whom she had met for the first time only recently when she had moved to Warren Hall with her family. Constantine had been obliging enough to take both her and his first cousin, Cecily, under his wing here in London, escorting them about town to see the sights and to meet new people whom he considered suitable acquaintances for them. No chaperone could possibly have been stricter on that point, though Katherine suspected that he knew any number of less savory persons and was perhaps even friendly with them.

There was Lord Montford, for example. That gentleman had approached them in the park one day, calling a greeting to Constantine as if he were his closest friend in the world. But Constantine had merely nodded to him and driven on by without stopping to make introductions. It had seemed almost rude to Katherine.

Baron Montford was mockingly handsome, if such a word could be used to describe a man’s looks. Even if Constantine had not proceeded to warn her against him after that chance meeting, Katherine was sure she would have taken one look at him and known that he was a rake and someone best avoided. Apart from his good looks, the careless, expensive elegance of his clothing, the assured skill with which he rode his horse-all attributes of numerous gentlemen she had met during the past several weeks-there was something else about him. Something-raw. Something to which she could not put a satisfactory name even when she tried. If she had been familiar with the word sexuality, she would have known it as the very one for which her mind searched. He positively oozed it from every pore.

He also oozed danger.

“If I should see either of you so much as glancing his way at any time for the rest of the Season,” Constantine had said after Lord Montford had ridden by and he had explained who the man was and why there had been no introductions, “I shall personally escort the culprit home, lock her in her room, swallow the key, and stand guard outside her room until summer comes.”