Still was.

He drew his hand from hers, raised himself onto one elbow, and smiled lazily down at her. It was time to recover himself.

“Has my sad story moved your tender heart, Katherine?” he asked, his eyes roaming over her face to come to rest on her mouth. “And is that heart smitten with love for me as a result? Are you ready to confess all? That I am one step closer to winning our wager? Two steps? Or that I have won it outright?”

He realized his mistake immediately. She would not view that as gentle teasing. It was too reminiscent of what had happened at the lake, by Jove. And it was unfair, dash it all.

Would he never learn?

But the words could not be unsaid, and all he could do was wait for her reply, his right eyebrow cocked, his eyelids hooded over his eyes, the corners of his lips drawn up into a half-smile.

One devil of a fine fellow.

God’s answer to the prayers of lonely, lovelorn womankind.

Or perhaps not.

She raised one hand as if to set it tenderly against the side of his face. Instead, her open palm cracked hard and painfully across his cheek.

22

SHE rolled away from him, scrambled to her feet, jumped down from the stone, and strode halfway across the clearing before stopping almost knee-deep among the grass and wildflowers.

She had never in her life hit anyone. She had slapped him across the face. Her hand was still stinging. Her heart was pounding up into her throat and her ears, almost choking and deafening her.

She whirled on him.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she cried, her voice breathless and shaking. “Not ever. Do you hear me?”

He was sitting up, propped on one arm while two fingers of the other hand were poking gingerly at his reddened cheek.

“I do indeed,” he said. “Katherine-”

“You took me in,” she said, “you invited me in, and then you slammed the door shut in my face. If you do not want me to have any part in your life, then shut me out altogether, stay hidden behind the wit and the irony and the hooded eyes and the cocked eyebrow. Go away. Leave me here to live my life in peace. But if you choose to let me in, then let me all the way in. Don’t suddenly pretend this has all been about the winning of a stupid wager.”

She was panting for breath.

He gazed at her for a few moments, his lips pursed. Then he got to his feet and crossed the clearing to stand in front of her. She wished he were wearing his coat and hat. He was too disconcertingly… male in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

“They were just a few random comments about my family,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing to get excited about. I thought you might be amused by them. No, I thought you might be touched. I thought you might pity me. Is pity not halfway to love? I thought you might-”

Crack!

Oh, dear God, she had done it again-the same hand, the same cheek.

He closed his eyes.

“That does hurt, you know,” he said. “And you have me at a disadvantage, Katherine. As a gentleman, I cannot retaliate, can I?”

“You know nothing-nothing!-about love,” she cried. “You have been loved, and you are loved. You even love without knowing it. But you shut yourself away from it as soon as it threatens to break through the barriers you erected about your heart years and years ago lest you be hurt more and more until you could not bear even to live. Those days are over if you would just realize it.”

He half smiled at her.

“You are lovelier than ever when you are angry,” he said.

“I am not angry,” she cried. “I am furious! Love is not a game.”

Still that half-smile and the hooded eyes, which were hooded indeed now. There was not even a glimmering of mischief or humor in them.

“What is it, then, if not a game?” he asked softly.

“It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfort. It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability. Oh, I know I have had life easy in the sense that there has always been unconditional love in my life. I know I cannot even begin to understand what it was like to grow up with very little love at all. But are you going to let that upbringing blight your whole life? Are you going to give your stepfather that power, even from the grave? And you were loved, Jasper, perhaps by everyone except him. All your servants and I daresay all your neighbors have always loved you. Your mother did. Charlotte adores you. I am going to stop talking now because really I do not know what I have been saying.”

His smile was twisted, lifting one corner of his mouth higher than the other, and she realized that there was a great tension in him, that his facial muscles were not perhaps quite within his control. The two slaps had probably not helped either.

“If I can persuade you to love me too, Katherine,” he said, “my life would be complete. Happily ever after. I will-”

“That wager!” She almost spat out the words. “I am mortally sick of that wager. I’ll have no more of it, do you understand? It is over with. Done. Love is not a game, and I will no longer have any part in pretending that it is. The wager is obliterated. Null and void. Gone. Go back to London with your stupid wagers if you must and to your equally stupid gentlemen friends who think it fun to bet money on whether or not you can persuade a woman who has done nothing to offend any one of you to… to debauch herself with you. Even to allow it to happen up against a tree in a public pleasure garden. Go, and never come back. I will never miss you.”

Oh, dear, God, where were the words coming from? Why had she had to bring that up again?

“I think,” he said softly, “my wagering days are probably over. I hurt you dreadfully.”

It was not a question.

“Yes, you did,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Katherine.” His hands cupped her shoulders.

But she would not collapse against him and cry her heart out. She beat her fists against his chest instead, sobbing and hiccuping and keeping her head down. Oh, how foolish she felt. Why this sudden hysteria? All that had happened a long time ago. It was ancient history.

“How could you?” she cried, gasping and sobbing as she spoke. “How could you do that? What had I ever done to you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I have no excuse, Katherine, no defense. It was a dastardly thing to do.”

“All the gentlemen in that club must have known,” she said.

“A goodly number, yes,” he agreed.

“And now everyone knows,” she said. “And it is too convenient to blame Sir Clarence Forester.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is. The fault was entirely mine.”

She looked up into his face even though she knew her own must be red and swollen.

“How could you do that to yourself ?” she asked him. “How could you have so little respect for yourself? How could you have so little regard for human decency?”

He pursed his lips. His eyes-wide open now-looked steadily back into hers.

“I do not really know, Katherine,” he said. “I am not much given to introspection.”

“And that has been deliberate on your part,” she said. “Feelings must have been unbearable to you as a boy, and so you cut them off. But when there are no feelings, Jasper, there can be no compassion either-for other people or even for yourself. You end up treating other people as you have been treated.”

She swiped the back of her hand over her wet nose, and he turned abruptly and strode back to the flat stone. He leaned down to his coat, drew a handkerchief out of a pocket, and came back to her, his hand outstretched.

She dried her eyes and blew her nose and balled the handkerchief in one hand.

“I am not going away,” he said when she looked at him again. “This is my home and you are my wife. What I did to you three years ago was unpardonable, but unfortunately you are stuck with me. I am sorry about that. But I am not going away.”

“Oh, Jasper.” She looked at him, glad despite herself. He was not going to go away. “Nothing is ever unpardonable.”

He pursed his lips and gazed at her in silence for a few moments.

“If the wager is off,” he said, “is it all off? All the conditions too?”

“Yes,” she said, and it was an enormous relief to say so, for of course she knew to which condition he referred. He was not going to go away, but their marriage as it was now was no marriage at all-thanks to that condition she had imposed on the wager during their wedding night.

She had missed him so much, which was a ridiculous thing when there had been only that one night. Not even a full night. He had slept in their private sitting room for much of it.