Praise for
Kasey Michaels

“Using wit and romance with a master’s skill,

Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

—Bestselling author Nora Roberts

The Butler Did It

“Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details

exposing the foibles and follies of the age…

The heroine is appealingly independent minded;

the hero is refreshingly free of any mean-spirited

machismo; and supporting characters have charm to

spare…[a] playfully perfect Regency-era romp.”

—Publishers Weekly

A Reckless Beauty

“With her Beckets of Romney Marsh series,

Michaels has created a soap opera with wonderful

characters, dark family secrets, exciting historical

events and passion.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Return of the Prodigal

“Only a mistress of the genre could hook you,

and hold you in her net, eagerly anticipating

her next move.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Kasey Michael is a New York Times bestselling author of both historical and contemporary novels. She is also the winner of a number of prestigious awards.

Available from Kasey Michaels and Mills & Boon® Mills & Boon Historical

Lords of Scandal
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Beleaguered Lord Bourne

For Joan Hohl, Rita Clay Estrada,

and remembrances of “Margarita”

…and they wonder why we write fiction…

PROLOGUE

SNAP!

The loud, discordant sound sent a flock of nesting birds, who had just moments before been chirping merrily in the branches overhead, soaring into the sky as one, calling anxiously to each other as they flapped their wings in agitation.

The girl, on the contrary, made no move to flee from the unmistakable sound of an animal trap’s heavy metal jaws snapping shut, locking its unwary prey in a grip of iron. It wasn’t that she hadn’t felt the impulse to flee. Indeed, her heart was pounding nineteen to the dozen with fright and her muscles were quite painfully tense, silently screaming the message “Run!”

But while her spirit and flesh were willing, they could not travel anywhere as long as one decidedly heavy, extremely cumbersome animal trap had its jagged-toothed mouth stuffed full of last year’s yellow sprigged muslin.

The power of speech, momentarily lost, returned just in time to give vent to the overwhelming anger that set the trapped female to trembling as the violence of that emotion rocketed through her system. “A trap in the Home Wood!” she announced incredulously to the air, pointing out the obvious to the world at large. “Never—never—has there been trap nor snare in the Home Wood. Only a monster would choose to do murder to a two-pound rabbit with a five-pound trap. It’s like…it’s like…like hunting down field mice with field cannon, that’s what it is.’

Bending from the waist, she attempted to free her skirts from the offending device, but to no avail. The skirt of her gown now rent in several places (long, jagged tears that would bring tears to the eyes of the most clever needlewoman), she had no recourse left to her but to drop to her knees and scrabble about in the damp undergrowth for the stake that held the trap in place.

It took a dozen mighty tugs and a good deal of digging in the soft black soil with her bare fingers to separate the metal stake at the end of the chain from its snug home a full foot deep in the ground; a hot, sweaty business that strained her gown, dirtied her cheeks, and succeeded in enraging her to the point that the thought of her rather bizarre appearance did not deter her for so much as an instant as she set off hotfoot for Bourne Manor, dragging the heavy trap, chain, and iron post along behind her willy-nilly.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LARGE, MULTIPANED glass doors in the morning room provided a pleasant view of the rear prospect of Bourne Manor, and Lord Bourne, wineglass in hand, debated the merits of having his luncheon served on the flagstone terrace accessible through these same doors.

After only five days in his new home, Christopher Wilde, known to his intimates as Kit and now the Eighth Earl of Bourne, felt completely at ease in his new surroundings. Renfrew, the late earl’s longtime majordomo, had already proved himself to be a pearl beyond price by anticipating his new master’s every need, deftly guiding his lordship until he became familiar with the layout of the large manor, and presenting him with a deceptively offhand yet amazingly thorough accounting of just what responsibilities went hand in glove with his new title.

The household servants, their company numbering in Kit’s estimation just slightly less than that of Wellington’s largest division, all seemed to know just what they were about. The manor being a model of organization, they took pride in considering the care and comfort of their master to have priority over polishing, straightening, and the like. Unpleasant memories of broom-wielding housemaids invading his chamber while he was still abed and important papers misplaced by overzealous servants in pursuit of domestic order reinforced his high opinion of his late uncle’s staff.

Leon, Kit’s valet of six years’ standing, had seconded his master’s vote of approval, stating unequivocally that, save for the shabby state of the Home Wood—a problem already discussed, and with corrective steps having been initiated immediately as per his lordship’s directive designating his trusted valet to be in full charge of the project—Bourne Manor was “as near to perfect as a body could expect to get without first croaking and sprouting wings like.”

The peaceful scene spread before him now, with rich, golden sunlight lending an added brightness to the gently rolling carpet of soft greenery and the seemingly randomly placed neat groupings of several varieties of flowers, ornamental shrubs, and small trees, made it somewhat less than difficult for Kit to convince himself that he had indeed somehow stumbled into paradise.

Reluctantly Lord Bourne restrained the urge to congratulate himself yet again for having had the good fortune to recover from the wounds he sustained in battle, thereby living to enjoy this truly magnificent day (not to mention having displaced the memory of his very ordinary leave-taking of Dame England as a mere major by means of his returning to her bosom a full-fledged earl), and was about to summon Renfrew when a movement in the extreme distance caught his eye.

Stepping closer to the window, he leaned his head forward and peered intently at the vague yellow blot that was even then advancing up the slight incline with all the grace of a knick-kneed pachyderm afflicted with a bad case of annoying heat rash.

As the blot slowly gained ground, the masses of yellow separated themselves into a large expanse of some patterned material that obviously was a woman’s morning gown (and sadly lacking in style, if he was any judge), and a smaller mass of wavy golden hair that surrounded the female’s head like some misshapen halo and reached considerably below her shoulders, the desired effect possibly an illusion of informality that fell sadly short, appearing instead as merely unkempt.

But what’s this? Kit asked himself, his attention caught by the curious sideways slant of the female’s skirts and the occasional glimpse of what seemed to be a jumble of dark, heavy-looking objects attached to those same skirts. Fumbling with the latch on the glass door, Kit stepped out onto the terrace and cupped his hands around his eyes as he inspected this oddity in earnest. What he saw caused him to issue a short, pithy curse, bound down the broad stone stairs two at a time, and pelt headlong down the grassy slope only to skid to a halt before the advancing female.

“How in bloody blue blazes did you get yourself caught in an animal trap, woman? That thing could have taken your leg off. Good God, have you no common sense? Don’t you even know enough to watch where you’re putting your feet when walking in the woods?” Clearly Lord Bourne’s questions and general tone of mingled anger and disgust could lead his listener into supposing the man believed himself to be addressing a hard-of-hearing idiot who should even now be down on her knees giving thanks to the gods on high for her lucky escape.

Just as clearly, the recipient of his lordship’s recriminations believed she had somehow stepped out of the woods only to stumble headlong into Bedlam, where she was immediately accosted by one of the hospital’s more violently disposed resident lunatics.

“I,” she countered, once recovered from the shock of the man’s uncalled-for attack, “am attached to this heinous instrument of torture and murder because some twisted, demented monster bent on destroying poor defenseless rabbits and furry little squirrels and other such wild and dangerous beasties has seen fit to set inhumane traps in the Home Wood. That’s how I became caught in this contraption.

“As to my leg, as you have so crudely seen fit to bring that appendage into this discussion, it and its mate are cognizant of their narrow escape, which is most probably why they agreed to carry me to Bourne Manor in order that I might confront Lord Bourne with the consequences of his thoughtless act.”

“I am Lord Bourne, madam,” Kit interjected at this point, his bow a mere mockery as he relinquished neither his belligerent pose nor his menacing expression. “The traps were set in order to thin the vermin population in the Home Wood. A population that through lack of sensible containment threatens to outstrip its food supply, inflict extensive damage upon the wood itself, and cause the invasion of nearby cultivated fields where those same cute, furry innocents will proceed to steal seed and destroy growing crops. That the perimeters of the area were not posted is an oversight possibly explained by the fact that residents of Bourne Manor have been duly made aware of the traps, while trespassers can only be prepared to suffer the indignities of any uninvited guest.”

“Why, you—” the young woman began hotly, then changed her tactics. “I have been accustomed to making free of the standing invitation issued me by the last Lord Bourne to think of the Home Wood as my own, as it were, and was therefore not aware that my formerly peaceful retreat had overnight taken on the aspect of a forest teeming with snapping iron dragons. Indeed, all that is missing are the tongues of fire.”

“Your apology is duly noted and accepted,” Kit returned cordially, his initial anger abating at the sight of the blond, green-eyed vixen who dared debate him as an equal while mud dried into crusts on her cheeks and her gown was held captive by an “iron dragon.”

The young woman’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Apology? What apology? I issued no apology! I’m here to insist you remove your traps at once. They’re inhuman!”

“They’re not intended for humans,” Kit was forced to point out. “But I do believe Leon showed an excess of zeal in setting such formidable traps. I shall amend my order to eliminate metal traps and replace them with more humane devices that ensnare rather than chomp. The end result is the same, of course,” he reminded her with a satisfied smirk. “Rabbits in the larder and the vermin population reduced to manageable proportions. It is moderation that I strive for, after all, not total annihilation.”

“And my use of the Home Wood?” She hated to beg, but had to ask. “Am I to discontinue my visits?”

Kit looked down at the dirt-streaked face, appealing even through its grime as the green eyes rounded artlessly and the firm little chin, so proudly tilted while she attacked him, trembled involuntarily as she awaited his answer.

“I cannot find it in myself to deprive infants of their treats. But curtail your visits for a few days, please—just until Leon gathers up his little toys.”

With nothing else left to say, the young woman made to depart the scene, but the clinging trap made the simple art of turning about a test of balance and dexterity. The sprigged muslin, already laboring under considerable stress, proved unequal to this additional insult and yet another long tear split the fabric, this time exposing a wide, knee-high expanse of white petticoat.

Tears born of frustration combined with a belated but none the less extreme sense of embarrassment made liquid pools of the girl’s eyes as Lord Bourne stooped to tug at her gown in an effort to release it from the trap.

“I’ll have to rip your gown even further, I’m afraid,” he apologized, raising his head to smile at her consolingly. “Not,” he mumbled as the abused fabric parted in two, leaving a goodly yard or more still in the possession of the half circle of grinning iron teeth, “that it’s much of a loss anyway.”

It is truly amazing how quickly a woman’s tears can dry, leaving behind them a pair of eyes alight with a strange glitter more reminiscent of leaping flames than of sparkling water. “You owe me for this gown, Lord Bourne,” she pronounced in a determined voice. “It was my very most favorite gown in the whole world!” she vowed passionately, her quest for retribution investing the lie with the ring of truth.

A healthy desire for his lunch combined with a sincere wish to be shed of his unpleasant trespasser prompted Lord Bourne to count out his astonishingly accurate estimate of the gown’s cost into her outstretched palm.

And then the young woman smiled, a simple exercise of muscle that lifted the heretofore sullenly downturned corners of her mouth and reassembled the smudged contours of her face into a composition so wonderfully appealing to the eye that Kit had to blink twice before he could be assured the transformation was not due merely to a trick of the sun.

“What’s your name, infant?” he heard himself ask in a soft voice, his gaze never leaving her face.

The smile wavered, slightly, then rebounded. “Jennie, my lord,” she answered saucily, tilting her head and throwing him an impudent wink. “I live at the far end of the Home Wood with my father.”

“No last name, Jennie?” his lordship pursued, all thought of his lunch forgotten in light of this unexpected pleasant development. The girl, he decided, might clean up to advantage, and a liaison with a comely, conveniently local wench could only serve to enhance his already comfortable existence.

She was the only child of her widowed schoolteacher father, Jennie informed him conversationally, and thus the recipient of that father’s intensive tutoring—a little fillip she offered to explain her accent-free, educated speech. She had read extensively, although she had never traveled more than fifteen miles from her birthplace, and even though she led a solitary existence she was more than content with her lot in life.

As she let her voice ramble on, her words tumbling out rapidly, she ran her spread fingers through her disheveled blond curls and smoothed her damaged gown with unconsciously provocative strokes of her figure-sculpting hands.

Kit had been without a woman for nearly a month, a lengthy period of abstinence for one of his healthy appetites, and Jennie’s attractions multiplied in direct proportion to the estimated total number of pleasures denied. As a gentle buzzing in his ears turned Jennie’s droning voice to the sweet notes of a siren’s song, Lord Bourne’s better self offered no resistance when his baser self reached out and drew the girl’s slight form into his strong embrace.

“Let me taste your honey, sweetings,” he whispered, his eyes already shut tight as his mouth descended to claim Jennie’s shock-slacked lips. Kit Wilde was ever the sort to strive for excellence in his many pursuits, and he was justly proud of his carefully learned and studiously applied expertise in the art of making love.

It was perhaps a shame that Jennie had no way of comparing Kit’s technique with that of some lesser mortal’s, but as a first kiss it set a standard that only a few foolhardy souls might ever presume to better.

The surprise that temporarily immobilized Jennie enabled Kit to gain a secure hold on her person, a hold that proved invulnerable to any amount of squirming and frantic wriggling on her part once surprise turned into indignation and then, as his plundering mouth touched off a series of intense miniature explosions throughout her body, into very real fear.

Oblivious to it all stood Lord Bourne, his legs slightly apart, one knee thrust boldly between her slender thighs, his hands roving freely through tangled curls and along the long curving sweep of her spine as he employed lips, teeth, and tongue to their best advantage.

Unconsciously holding her breath all the while, Jennie was slightly giddy, her vision hazy and dim around the edges by the time Kit remembered their exposed situation—placed as they were within clear view of dozens of manor windows—and put a reluctant period to an interlude that had proved intensely pleasurable, if somewhat unsettling.

For the first time Jennie looked at Kit, really looked at him, and she realized that the new Lord Bourne was an extremely handsome gentleman of no more than eight and twenty years, a man whose quietly elegant dress displayed to advantage his moderately tall, sleekly muscular body.

As for his face, how she could have overlooked for even an instant those intensely blue eyes or that healthy crop of thick, midnight-dark hair was beyond her comprehension. The lean, clean lines of his face were complemented by the almost too perfect chiseled square jaw that a wide, full-lipped mouth did little to soften. Taken in part, he was an impressive enough specimen; taken as a whole, the man was enough to give pause to the strongest heart.

How had she allowed her anger to blind her to the danger that exuded so visibly from every pore of Lord Bourne’s body? Even worse, what nearsighted imp of insane arrogance had cozened her into believing she could dare to flirt with this obvious man of the world?

Acknowledgment of her own guilt in leading the earl to believe she was forward kept Jennie from either slapping Kit’s face for his impertinence or dissolving into maidenly tears—as any well-brought-up young lady should have (any, that is, who had not yet taken refuge in a swoon).

In the short minute that had passed since the termination of their nearly one-sided embrace, neither of them spoke. They just stood there and stared at one another, each intent on their own chaotic thoughts.

Just as Kit was about to suggest renewing their acquaintance that night in some more secluded spot, visions of a cozy, candlelit supper followed by a mutually satisfying voyage of discovery upon the great barge of a bed in his private chamber, Jennie took him completely unawares by wheeling about, hiking up her tattered skirts, and racing pell-mell into the Home Wood.

“Wait!” Kit called, watching in amazement as her fleeing form was quickly enveloped by the dense growth and concealing shadows. “Jennie, you silly chit. Wait!”

No good would be served by pursuit, as the girl probably knew every tree and concealing rock and could elude him almost without effort. Besides, if he gave chase she might sacrifice prudence for speed, thus putting herself in danger of springing yet another of Leon’s deadly traps.

Ah well, he decided, shrugging his wide shoulders, it wasn’t as if she were about to disappear from his life forever. He had only to question the resourceful Renfrew as to the whereabouts of one blond-haired miss named Jennie and he would be halfway home. Once he located her, it shouldn’t take more than a few soothing words (and perhaps a bauble or two) to coax the fair Jennie into his bed.

Secure in his estimation of both Jennie’s character and the attractive lures his title and fortune must represent to someone of her modest circumstances, Kit returned to the manor, partook of a restorative luncheon, and then repaired to the library, where he penned his acceptance of one Sir Cedric Maitland’s invitation to dine with him the following evening.

CHAPTER TWO

“MISS JANE, iffen ya don’t stop squirmin’ about like some pig caught in a gate I ain’t never gonna get these tangles out, and Miss Bundy, that old cat, she’ll have my head on a platter iffen you be late comin’ down to table tonight. Just the thought of Miss Bundy tearin’ inta me is more than I thinks I can bear.”

As this whining complaint by her maid, Goldie, was reinforced by means of a restraining tug on one of those tangled locks of hair, a tug that brought tears of pain to her eyes, Miss Jane Maitland subsided obligingly onto her chair and allowed her hair to be twisted into a loose knot on the top of her head. “And woe be to anyone who doubts that the meek shall inherit the earth,” Jane confided to her reflection in the mirror. “Forgive me, Goldie, my love,” she said more loudly. “Far be it from me to be the cause of your catching the sharp edge of my dear companion’s tongue.”

“That’s good,” sighed Goldie, putting the last touches to her mistress’s coiffure. “Seein’ as how that woman’s got a tongue would clip a hedge.”

“Not to mention a pair of ears that can pick up the sound of your foolish jabbering at a hundred paces, more’s the pity,” pointed out Miss Ernestine Bundy herself, who had entered the large bedchamber unnoticed.

“Yoicks and away!” Jane chortled as Goldie hastily hiked up her skirts and propelled her ample girth toward the small door to the rear of the chamber, hell-bent on escaping the peal that Miss Bundy was otherwise bound to ring over her poor head.

“Daft woman,” Miss Bundy commented, sailing into the room, her dignity in full sail. “Why any of us put up with that sad excuse for a maid, I find myself saying for what must be the thousandth time, is far beyond my limited comprehension. Really, Jane, sometimes I feel bound to point out to you that your grand gestures of charity do have the lamentable tendency of producing the most disappointing results.”

“Now, Bundy,” scolded Jane, rising from her seat in front of the mirror to smooth down the skirts of her robin’s-egg-blue gown. “What Goldie lacks in talent she more than makes up for in heart.” Twisting about to peer over her shoulder, just making sure her departing self would do credit to her arriving self, she went on idly, “Besides, the poor girl was such a sad failure in the dairy.”

“And in the kitchens, and as a housemaid, and as a seamstress, and—”

“Enough, Bundy, else Papa’s dinner guests will find themselves welcoming me rather than the other way round.”

Ernestine Bundy, governess and now companion to Miss Maitland, had watched her charge grow from an entrancingly lovely child into an awkward, too thin adolescent until, over the course of the year following her eighteenth birthday, she had blossomed into the young woman who now descended the wide stairway ahead of her: an astonishingly beautiful creature of high intelligence, quick wit, a ready smile, and a charming way about her that could coax the very birds down out of the trees.

If she was just a teeny bit strong-willed, this was only to be expected in a doted-on only child, and surely her generous nature and propensity for seeing only the good in people would never harm her as long as her fiercely protective father and Miss Ernestine Bundy were around to cushion her from some of the more distasteful realities of life.

Openly preening over her no little involvement in the creation of the exquisite creature now politely awaiting her at the bottom of the stairway, Miss Bundy had no way of knowing that one of those “realities” was already lurking in the shadows (or, in this case, in the drawing room of Maitlands itself), ready to pounce.

LORD BOURNE had been at Maitlands only a few minutes—just long enough to be introduced to his host and dinner partner, be asked his preference as to liquid refreshment, have his antecedents inquired about, and his personal history vetted—all accomplished in the politest of ways and with a thoroughness a member of the Inquisition would envy.

Miss Abigail Latchwood, a spinster of some indeterminate years and, Kit assumed, a frequent visitor at Maitlands, was quite the noisiest person Kit had heretofore chanced to encounter, and he had encountered quite a few in his time. Obviously her presence tonight was Sir Cedric’s way of assuring himself that news of his coup—being the first of his circle to host the new earl under his roof—would reach even the farthest corners of the neighborhood with all possible speed.

All in all, Kit found himself to be incredibly bored with the whole affair, and took rapid inventory of his brain, searching for a plausible excuse that would get him shed of Sir Cedric and his inquisitive guest immediately after brandy and cigars. The benighted countryside around Bourne was a far cry from the frenetic activity of a Spanish battlefield, and the soldier in Kit was not so easily mellowed that the boring duties of his new title could yet be borne with any real grace.

If only the so-estimable Renfrew had been more helpful in the matter of Jennie, the teacher’s daughter—that normally helpful man having disclaimed any knowledge of either father or offspring residing in the area. There were two Jessies in the village, and the blacksmith had a niece named Jackie visiting this month or more—although that damsel had hair as dark as pitch and weighed half again as much as the smithy—but nary hide nor hair could be found of any blond wench named Jennie.

Ah well, thought the earl, smiling politely as Sir Cedric described in great detail his latest triumph on the hunting field, he’d be leaving for London within another week and Jennie’s bucolic beauty would soon fade from his memory, to be replaced by one or more of the many comely opera dancers he intended to honor with his favor.

Kit allowed a half smile to soften his features as he swirled his drink and thought his private thoughts. Boring dinner partners and a nonexistent social life were a small price to pay for the opportunity to call Bourne Manor his own. For a certainty it beat wallowing in the mud of Ciudad Rodrigo all to sticks—and the rank of earl brought with it benefits no mere major could dream to command.

While the aging Miss Latchwood preened delightedly, the proud Sir Cedric recounted his brilliant outmaneuvering of some hapless fox, and Lord Bourne smugly contemplated a season of wallowing in the fleshpots of London, Miss Jane Maitland stood outside the drawing-room doors enduring her companion’s last-minute adjustments to her charge’s perfectly draped skirts.

“Papa will demand to know the reason for my tardiness, Bundy,” Jane warned her companion, just now fussing over a loose thread daring to peek below the hem of the blue gown, “and demand an explanation for it. I shall be forced—for you know I would not be so mean as to implicate you voluntarily—to explain that my companion delayed my appearance by some fifteen minutes while she searched out nonexistent flaws in my toilette.” Jane heaved her shoulders in a heavy sigh. “And then Papa will rant and bluster, and I will have recourse to tears, and you will be called for and roundly scolded for your impudence in thinking there existed even a single flaw on the person of his only daughter, and then you will be cast posthaste out into the snow—”

“It hasn’t snowed in Bourne for three years,” Miss Bundy was moved to point out, placing her hands on Jane’s shoulders and pushing her in a circle as her shrewd eyes made one last appraisal. “You are to dine with the new Earl of Bourne, missy,” she went on, heedless of Jane’s sudden harsh intake of breath, “and I am under strict instructions that you are to look your very best for the gentleman. Your papa is aiming rather high, if you ask me, which he certainly did not, but I must admit Lord Bourne would have to look far and wide to find a countess as fair as you, my dear.’ Giving one last unnecessary pat to Jane’s coiffure, Miss Bundy stood back, surveyed her handiwork, and exclaimed, “There! No mere man could ask for more.”

Jane wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Are you sure, Bundy? Perhaps my price tag is showing. Tell me, dearest Ernestine, is the marriage settlement to match my dowry, or will Papa throw in Mama’s diamonds to sweeten the pot?” A slight flush lending even more lively animation to her features, Jane goaded further. “Dearest, sweetest Bundy. First you served as nanny, then governess, then companion. I had not realized your real calling was that of procuress.”

Miss Bundy did not have an immediate spasm at her charge’s audacity. Indeed, she did not so much as blink her pale gray eyes. All Miss Bundy, that long-suffering servant, did was to pinch Jane’s cheeks to give them color, step back out of sight of the double doors to the drawing room, signal the snickering footman to step lively and announce his mistress to the company, and retire upstairs to the small brown bottle she kept concealed beneath her knitting. Life at Maitlands had long ago taught the woman the best way of dealing with either Sir Cedric or his audacious daughter was by prudent withdrawal. Jane would apologize, as she always did whenever her tongue ran away with her—not that the poor girl hadn’t cause enough for anger, being paraded about for the new earl like a prize calf—and in the end Miss Bundy would allow her sensibilities to be mollified by the way of Jane’s pretty pleas for forgiveness. It was a game they played, the two of them, with Jane tugging more and more at the leash of obedience every year as she grew from submissive girl to self-sufficient young woman.

Jane waited until Miss Bundy’s receding back disappeared around the curve in the stairs and then, her softly rounded chin held high, she took a deep breath, sent up a quick prayer that Lord Bourne wasn’t any more of a fool than he could help, and allowed herself to be announced.

The first person she saw when she entered the candle-lit chamber was Miss Latchwood. So, she thought wryly, Papa is leaving nothing to chance. If the poor earl so much as smiles in my direction that old biddy will have the entire countryside believing we have posted the banns. Nodding pleasantly to the older woman, who winked conspiratorially back at her, Jane turned her gaze in the direction of her father, just then posing at the mantelpiece under an obscure (for good reason) artist’s rendering of one of Sir Cedric’s epic exploits with the Mowbray men. “Good evening to you, Papa,” she intoned sweetly, dropping the man a curtsy. “Please forgive my tardiness, but the time just seemed to run away with me.”

Sir Cedric, seeing before him the reincarnation of his beloved deceased wife allowed himself to be charmed into forgiving Jane for keeping him from his dinner. Taking one of her small hands into one of his own huge paws, he turned her slightly so that he could introduce her to their guest of honor.

“Lord Bourne,” the proud father began, “allow me to introduce my daughter—”

“You!” loudly exclaimed the earl, fairly goggling at the girl as the very air between them suddenly began to crackle.

“So much for prayers,” Jane muttered disgustedly under her breath as she glared at the fashionably dressed young man with the gaping jaw.

Abigail Latchwood leaned forward in her chair, her powers of intuition telling her she had chanced to secure herself a front-row seat at what should prove to be a most interesting spectacle.

“I WOULD BE MORE THAN HAPPY to listen to your suggestions as to a solution to our problem, my lord, but I do not wish a dismal retelling of the problem itself. Do I make myself clear?”

“You do not wish! I do not wish, damn it, and since it is my feelings that concern me and I am forced to dismiss them I see no gentlemanly need to trifle over your paltry sensibilities.”

Jane paused to mull Kit’s words over a moment or two, and decided that she may have been looking at him in the wrong light entirely. Perhaps he was not the enemy. Perhaps she had been in the process of berating the only ally she had in the entire world—what with her father, Bundy, and even Goldie firmly listed among her adversaries in this matter.

“You are against this marriage plan of Papa’s?” Jane asked the man now standing across from her in the herb garden, his ebony hair gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. He nodded his head in the affirmative. “Then why,” she asked with a sudden return of heat, “didn’t you stop Papa when he first proposed the idea last night? You don’t strike me as a man who is usually at a loss for words.”

Kit shook his head in astonished disbelief. “Please don’t tell me you’re that much of a clothhead. After your ridiculous hysterical outburst last night when we were introduced there was deuced little I could do to rescue the situation.”

“My outburst?” Jane sniffed indelicately, correcting him. “I merely muttered a small involuntary verbalization prompted, my lord, by your inelegant bellow!”

Kit had the decency to admit to a slight lapse of his own, caused, undoubtedly, by his surprise at seeing his wild-haired Jennie parading about as the so-proper Miss Maitland. “But,” he rallied quickly, “it was not I who then fell apart like soggy tissue paper in the rain and confessed to every tiny detail of our meeting at Bourne Manor—right down to that truly sickening, simpering recital of what in fact had amounted to nothing more than a simple stolen kiss. Miss Latchwood nearly swooned dead away.”

“No she didn’t. She wouldn’t do anything so self-defeating—it might cause her to miss some juicy bit of gossip. Lord!” Jane shuddered at the memory. “I was hard-pressed not to offer her the loan of my handkerchief, she was drooling so copiously.”

“So you instead offered her the notion that poor, innocent Miss Jane Maitland might just have been compromised by that nasty Lord Bourne,” Kit sneered. “Lord!” he pressed, aping Jane’s exclamation. “You may as well have gone traipsing over the countryside ringing a bell, calling: ‘Kit Wilde kissed me in the Home Wood; Kit Wilde kissed me in—’”

“Don’t!” Jane begged, clapping her hands over her ears. “Papa never told me the names of our guests, you see, and I didn’t ask, as our dinner guests tend to be limited to Miss Latchwood, Squire Handley and his sister, or the vicar, and knowing beforehand just whom I shall be facing across the table does nothing to enliven my appetite. I only found out you were to be present a moment before I was announced. Under the circumstances I believe I did my best—”

Kit, plucked a stray thread off his sleeve as he interrupted wearily, “Your best? How very sad. Please, Miss Maitland, I beg you to refrain from bringing my attention to your shortcomings, as I am depressed enough as it is without—”

“When I am saying something, Lord Bourne,” Jane cut in with some heat, “you will oblige me by restraining your lamentable tendency to interrupt!”

With his head still lowered, Kit raised his eyebrows and peered at his adversary. “Welcome back, my little tiger cat. I was wondering how long it would take for Jennie to loose her claws on me.” Temper definitely became the chit, Kit mused to himself, admiring the flush on Jennie’s cheeks and the way the slight breeze set the blond curls around her face to dancing as her agitated movements caused her casual topknot to come half undone.

Jane looked back at him in disgust. She had requested this meeting with him this morning in the hope that together they would be able to find a way out of the muddle they had bumbled into the night before, but it was obvious now that she might just as well have saved herself the bother of eluding Bundy and engaging in what that very proper lady would only construe as yet another “tryst.”

“If you are quite done salving your wounded ego at my expense, I suggest we either put our heads together to find a way out of this ridiculous coil or else terminate our meeting so that you can return to Bourne Manor and barricade the doors against Papa’s wrath.”

If Sir Cedric’s wrath were all that was to be faced, Kit would have been more than capable of dealing with it in short order. But no. Once Jennie (he refused to call her Jane) had been escorted to her room by the soproperly outraged Miss Bundy and Miss Latchwood had been sequestered in the morning room with a half decanter of her favorite cherry brandy, Sir Cedric had confessed to Lord Bourne that he suffered from a “disky heart,” and any scandal surrounding his dear old child would as surely put him underground as would a bullet through the brain.

Kit was prompted to wonder aloud about how such a hearty-looking specimen—a man who rode to hounds with such vigor—could possibly be in ill health, a tactical error that sent Sir Cedric tottering posthaste to a nearby chair, a hand clutching at his ample bosom as he called weakly for his manservant. While Kit looked on, his face still showing his skepticism, Sir Cedric’s solicitous valet administered a draught to the panting gentleman and, with the help of two sturdy footmen, had his employer hoisted aloft in his chair and carted off to his bed—a move that put quite an effective period to any hope of rational discussion.

Galloping home, sans one promised dinner, the earl had barked out orders for food and drink to an astonished Renfrew only to react in a most violent manner when the platter of succulent rabbit smothered in spring onions was placed before him, rudely tossing the rabbit, platter and all, smack against the nearest wall. Hours later, just before the quantity of port he had ingested lulled the young earl into heavy slumber, Renfrew heard his master proclaim sorrowfully: “Rabbits are the root of all that is evil in this world. If I were king there would not be one of the fuzzy-tailed monsters left on this whole bloody isle. Damned if there would.”

Upon awakening the next morning Kit did not remember this particular profound statement, a punishing hangover being his only lingering souvenir of a truly forgettable evening; but Jennie’s note served to bring his dilemma into sharp focus and he had rallied sufficiently to agree to the meeting now taking place in the Maitland herb garden. Not that their discussion had so far produced anything more tangible than a mutual agreement as to the total unsuitability of both parties for the roles of husband and wife.

And yet, his head still pounding as if a blacksmith had set up shop between his ears, and his ears ringing with Jennie’s condemning accusations, Kit found himself coming to the reluctant conclusion that his carefree bachelor days could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. There was no retreat for a man of honor, no possible avenue of escape without bidding his good name a permanent adieu. Between them, the naively candid Jennie and her determined Papa had trussed him up all right and tight and delivered him neatly into the parson’s mousetrap. All that remained now was to convince his “intended” of the futility of resisting the inevitable.

“Well?” Jennie demanded, breaking into Kit’s thoughts. “Have you been struck dumb?”

“While I will admit to feeling slightly less than my usual intelligent self,” Kit replied, a note of bitter self-mockery in his tone, “I am not about to oblige you by descending into imbecility, as even being forced to wed you, my dear Jennie, cannot make me forget I am a Wilde, and as such above any such cowardly dodge. Not that the idea is entirely without appeal, you understand.”

“Then you are going to simply knuckle under, marry a woman you obviously detest—making the both of us totally miserable in the process—rather than make the least push at settling the matter another way?” Jennie’s huge eyes were staring at him incredulously.

“What other way would you suggest?” Kit asked politely, taking Jennie’s hand and placing it on his arm before guiding her in a leisurely stroll along the garden path.

Jennie’s brow creased in concentration as she cudgeled her brain in a quest for some splendid burst of inspiration. Sadly, none was forthcoming, and upon reaching the gate at the bottom of the path, she admitted she hadn’t a clue as to where to search for salvation.

“I’d be inclined to suggest prayer,” Lord Bourne said, tongue in cheek, “but I doubt the Lord grants entreaties that have to do with transporting earls to the far side of the moon.” Turning so that they faced each other fully before he uttered the fateful words, Kit then intoned solemnly, “Miss Maitland, I have admired you from the moment of our first meeting and can only hope that you have come to return my esteem at least in part. Please, Miss Maitland, do me the honor of making me the happiest man on earth by consenting to become my bride.”

As a proposal of marriage it lacked nothing in composition, although condemned men must have sounded more cheerfully animated speaking their final words before mounting the scaffold. And if his mention of their first meeting was taken at face value, devoid of any intentional double meaning, Jennie supposed it was a much nicer proposal than she could have expected under the circumstances. It was not, however, the proposal she had dreamed of ever since reading her first Minerva Press romance.

If her heart beat faster, it was with the frantic flutterings of a trapped animal, and not the accelerated rhythm all romantic heroines experienced at the very sight of their beloved. If her breathing was swift and shallow, it was panic, not passion, that set her young breast to heaving rapidly up and down. And if her milky English complexion was very prettily set off by a sudden blush of dusky rose suffusing her cheeks, it should be remembered that agitation should not automatically be construed as excitement.

Jennie looked searchingly into Kit’s blue eyes, searching in vain for some carefully concealed humorous glint that would assure her he had spoken in jest. She found none. He was serious, she concluded at last, deadly serious. Earls may not steal kisses from baronets’ daughters, even if they thought they were merely indulging in a bit of a lark with some little nobody of no consequence. Violators, this unwritten law decreed, will forfeit either their honor or their freedom.

Lord Bourne had made his choice. He would marry her to satisfy the conventions. And to save her good name, she reminded herself nastily, she shouldn’t forget that little favor—not that Bundy would ever let her.

“Well,” she said at last, just when Kit was beginning to think she would turn him down flat and wildly wondering just why this particular notion should distress him as much as it did, “you aren’t fat. There’s that at least.”

Kit smiled broadly, clasping her hands in his as something tightly coiled deep inside his chest obligingly relaxed. “I’m not bad either,” he pointed out cheerfully, amused by her youthful bluntness.

Jennie returned his smile, shyly at first, and then expanding the smile into a wide grin. “Or ancient, full of prickles and complaints, and suffering with the gout.”

“Or foul-smelling, or afflicted with warts, or widowed with six bawling brats for you to mother, or hard of hearing, or missing half my teeth.”

“Or a dedicated gamester?”

“Not even on nodding acquaintance with the cent-per-centers, playing for sport but never too deep.”

“Or overfond of spirits?”

“Moderation—moderation in all things—that’s my motto!” he averred, conveniently dismissing his truly dedicated drinking of the night just past.

“Well then, a girl would be foolish beyond permission to turn her back on such an obvious catch as you, my lord, wouldn’t she?” Jennie declared, her smile faltering a bit before shining as before.

At last she could see the humor lurking in Lord Bourne’s twinkling eyes. “Foolish indeed, Miss Maitland,” he assured her, lightly squeezing her hands.

‘Then…then I accept your kind proposal, sir, and I thank you.” The fateful words spoken, Jennie allowed her smile to fade and dipped her head, no longer able to meet Kit’s all-seeing gaze.

As she stood there, doing her utmost not to tremble and thus betray her nervousness, Kit slipped his crooked index finger beneath her chin and lifted her face toward his descending head. “A betrothal must be sealed with a kiss,” he whispered solemnly before laying claim to Jennie’s lips with the velvet warmth of his mouth.

Remembering their first kiss—the way he had captured her in his embrace and exercised his considerable aptitude in the fine art of seduction—Kit deliberately kept this kiss gentle, undemanding; a tentative exploration rather than an attempt at conquest, and Jennie responded by allowing her lips to soften, molding themselves to fit against his in a highly pleasing manner.

He did not wish to wed Jennie. He did not wish to be married at all until at least a half-dozen more years of bachelor-oriented indulgence and high living were behind him. He resented being pushed into matrimony at, figuratively at least, the point of a gun, and to a mere child just out of the nursery, no less.

Jennie Maitland was the exact opposite of the sort of female he had hoped to surround himself with in London. She was much too young, for one thing, besides being woefully inexperienced—possessing none of the brittle sophistication required to survive in the haut ton—and to top it all, he decided glumly, the outside world would consider him responsible for her well-being and behavior.

Kit had just completed two grueling years of volunteer duty in Spain, and he was sick to death of responsibility—responsibility for the men who fought and died under him, and responsibility for the constant daily decisions of command. His wound and his lengthy convalescence had sorely tried his patience, with only the prospect of the gaiety promised in the coming London Season serving to keep a rein on his impatience until he was free to join his friends in an orgy of hell-raking and carousing that would set the metropolis on its heels.

A wife could only be viewed as a serious impediment to his plans. Husbands lacked the freedom of bachelors, especially brand-new, supposedly honeymooning husbands. He would marry the chit and leave her at Bourne Manor for the Season if he could, but his conscience overrode him on that score. Besides, he felt sure, Sir Cedric was not beneath another theatrical display of ill health just to force his son-in-law’s hand, and Kit didn’t think his constitution could bear another such performance. But going around London with a wife in train was going to be like trying to run with an anchor—or should he say “mantrap”—chained to his ankle, deuced difficult.

And yet…and yet, he thought as Jennie allowed him to take her more fully into his arms, the child wasn’t totally lacking in appeal. With proper tutoring, his tutoring, he could almost believe she’d eventually make a more than tolerable bed partner.

Suddenly Kit’s appetite for romance evaporated. Of course Jennie was a kissable wench—that’s how he had come to be in this damnable coil in the first place! Too much of this sort of thing and he’d not only be saddled with an unwanted wife, but he’d find himself a papa into the bargain.

Jennie looked up at him, puzzlement clouding her eyes. What was wrong? Didn’t he like kissing her? She had enjoyed it quite a little bit herself, although she’d rather swallow nails than admit any such thing, but from the pained look on Kit’s face he had found the entire experience distasteful. Well, she thought angrily, he had certainly taken his good sweet time making up his mind, seeing as how he had been kissing her for more than a full minute—she had counted to sixty-four, as a matter of fact, just to keep from doing something silly like throwing herself into his arms like some love-starved ninnyhammer.

“If everything is official now?” Jennie prompted, angry to hear a trace of huskiness in her voice.

“Hmm?” the earl murmured, still lost in his own depressing thoughts. “Yes, you insolent infant, everything is all right and tight,” he assured her much like a parent shushing a bothersome child. “You may go inside now and wait for your luncheon and I will return at the dinner hour to speak with your father about the final arrangements—if he has recovered from his indisposition of last evening, which I am somehow convinced he has.”

“Kit,” Jennie called rather sharply, as Lord Bourne had already turned and begun walking toward his horse.

“What?” he questioned rudely, eager to be gone.

“You may not be fat or bald, your lordship,” she trilled, spurred by a sudden need to strike back at the man who had so carelessly dismissed her, “but you neglected to mention that you possess all the charm and personality of a turnip.”

Kit stood stock-still as Jennie flounced off with her head held high, obviously believing herself to have come off the victor in their little sparring match, before muttering as he stomped off toward his waiting mount: “Leading strings. I’ll be the only husband in London who has a wife in leading strings. Impertinent infant!”

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS A WET WEDDING. Goldie’s never-ending stream of tears, accompanied by sighs, gulps, hiccups, and several ear-shattering recourses to her oversized red handkerchief were depressing enough without nature echoing the maid’s sentiments by sending dull gray skies and a drenching downpour just as the bride was leaving for the church.

Nothing is quite so inelegant as a limp lace veil unless it is a wilted, water-spotted silk gown with a muddy hem, both of which Jennie wore as she trailed reluctantly down the short aisle with Sir Cedric hauling her toward the altar with unseemly haste.

The ceremony itself was mercifully brief, with Ernestine Bundy poker-faced as the maid of honor and Leon, Kit’s valet, preening pompously in his role of groomsman.

With clumps of baby rose petals clinging damply to their bodies, the bride and groom made short work of climbing into the traveling coach that stood ready to embark on the day-long trip to London, with two other smaller, less elegant coaches holding their belongings and personal servants set to follow along behind.

After handing his bride into the coach, Kit ordered his driver to head for Bourne Manor, deciding a change of clothes was necessary if their journey was to be accomplished in any degree of comfort.

Bride and groom allowed the short journey to pass in silence and parted from each other’s company without regret to enter separate bedrooms and await the arrival of the servants bearing dry clothing.

A scant half hour later—the earl noting the new Lady Bourne’s promptness with a pleasure he saw no need to convey to her—they were finally on their way, with Kit already bored with the confinement of the coach and wishing himself astride the spirited black stallion tied to the back of the coach and Jennie idly stroking a strange wooden carving she held lovingly in her gloved hands.

His own thoughts holding no real appeal, Kit reluctantly turned his attention to the girl perched so stiffly beside him, and his gaze alighted on the carving. “And do you plan to plummet me with that maltreated tree branch if my baser instincts surface and I attempt to ravish you here in this coach?”

Jennie gave the carving a considering look before turning her head to stare at her husband as if weighing her chances of success if she was forced to defend herself before slowly shaking her head and confessing, “I saw the carving as I passed by the main saloon and couldn’t resist taking it with me as a remembrance of home.”

“You consider Bourne Manor to be your home?” Kit questioned, raising his brows so that furrows formed on his smooth forehead.

Jennie shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, replying, “The late earl encouraged me to think of Bourne Manor that way, and I was accustomed to being welcomed almost as a member of the family. He had no children, you know, and he was frightfully lonely when his wife died five years ago.”

Noticing the way Jennie’s tightly controlled features relaxed as she spoke of his uncle, Kit pressed on with his questions, not overly interested but conceding that a pleasant conversation was as good a time-passer as anything else he could think of at the moment. “But why that truly homely carving? You could have had your pick of the manor rather than settling for one of the scores of carvings—all looking very much like misshapen turtles with udders, by the way—that litter the place.”

Jennie’s shoulders straightened as she took exception to Kit’s insulting remark. “I’ll have you know that this carving—indeed, all the carvings—are very creditable renditions of Amy Belinda, your uncle’s favorite model. He took great pride in his work, and I’ll not sit idly by and let you malign his efforts.”

“Amy Belinda?” Kit nudged.

“His pet cow,” Jennie informed him matter-of-factly.

“Of course,” her husband responded in a choked voice. “His pet cow.” His face mirroring his astonishment, Kit prized the carving from Jennie’s grasp and raised his quizzing glass to study Amy Belinda from various angles—none of which provided a clue as to which end depicted the cow’s front end. “M’uncle carved this?” he puzzled. “Good God—he must have been lonely!”

“He was not!” Jennie protested angrily. “At least he wasn’t once I introduced him to Will Plum. Poor man,” she mused reflectively. “Will lost his wife about the same time as the earl, and as he was too old to work as a carpenter anymore he felt he had nothing left to live for.

“Well,” she went on, heedless of her husband’s in credulous expression, “any fool could see the two men needed each other, and once I put Will in the earl’s way the two of them became the best of good friends. Will taught the earl woodcarving and your uncle thought it was just grand to capture his dearest Amy Belinda in all of her many moods.”

“Cows have moods?” Kit interrupted, not that Jennie noticed.

“Their friendship lasted for five years, until old Will finally died, your uncle surviving him by only a month. Amy Belinda didn’t last much longer, poor dear,” she added thoughtfully, “but I imagine that was only to be expected.”

“Definitely,” the earl agreed, trying hard to contain his mirth. “I had no idea I had wed such a clever puss—matching such disparate persons as my uncle and the estimable Will Plum with such gratifying results. Is this a special talent of yours, or was old Will a fluke?”

Jennie knew Kit was teasing her, but she refused to allow it to rankle. She had always prided herself on her ability to settle people into niches she personally carved out for them, deriving satisfaction by aiding her fellow human beings.

Her maid, Goldie, was a prime example of the success of her humanitarian endeavors, and so she proceeded to inform the scoffing earl. “She was totally hopeless in the dairy, you understand, being mortally afraid of cows.”

“Sad,” Kit commented, clucking his tongue in commiseration.

“Poor Goldie. She felt herself to be an abject failure, and her mother, a widow and dependent on Goldie for her support, came to me and begged me to take her daughter in hand.”

“Naturally you agreed,” Kit interjected cheerfully.

“But of course—how could anyone so petitioned do anything else?” Jennie countered emphatically. “We tried Goldie in the laundry, but the soap made her sneeze, and even I could find little to praise in her needlework. She was so dejected we could scarcely catch a glimpse of her grandest possession, for she smiled so seldom. She has a truly magnificent gold tooth smack in the front of her mouth, you know, which is why we call her Goldie even though her name is Bertha.”

“This is a most affecting story. I can only wonder if I am strong enough to hear the rest,” lamented the grinning earl, earning himself a killing glance from his new bride.

“I’ll disregard your sarcastic attempt at humor, if only to prove my point,” she told him crushingly.

“Oh? There’s a point?” Kit exclaimed in disbelief. “How gratifying.”

“Of course there is. The point is that there is a place for everyone if one but takes the time to seek it out. In Goldie’s case the search was a bit longer than usual, as she soon proved incapable of serving at table without overturning the soup tureen or losing her grip on a stack of dirty plates. But I really had hopes for her as a kitchen assistant—you know, peeling vegetables and chopping things and such—until Papa’s silly French chef threatened to hand in his notice if Goldie wasn’t permanently removed from his sight.”

“Got on the bad side of the fellow, I assume?” Kit opined, and Jennie vigorously nodded her agreement.

“I still don’t see what all the fuss was about,” she ended, her expression one of sublime innocence. “After all, it wasn’t as if his mustache wouldn’t grow back eventually. He removed the rest of it after Goldie’s little accident with the knife, you see, which was just as well considering he looked rather lopsided with half of the droopy thing gone.”

That did it. Kit was unable to contain his mirth any longer, and his full, masculine laugh reverberated inside the closed coach as he gave voice to his amusement.

Within seconds Jennie’s delicious-sounding giggles blended with her husband’s throaty chuckles as the two leaned against each other for support as they enjoyed the joke—causing the coachman to remark later to the postilion that Lord and Lady Bourne seemed to be taking to each other right quick-like, which was a good thing considering they was bracketed like it or nay.

After a quick stop for luncheon Jennie allowed herself to be talked into resting her head on her husband’s broad shoulder, and the rest of the journey passed with Lord Bourne alternately gazing dolefully at the scenery passing by outside his window and doing his best to ignore the soft, warm bundle nestled so trustingly against his chest.

JENNIE FELT she had somehow been transported to another world. It wasn’t as if her father’s house had not been comfortable, and she had run tame at Bourne Manor for as long as she could remember, but nothing in her experience had prepared her for the opulence of the Bourne mansion—no stretch of the imagination could convince her that this massive structure was any ordinary townhouse.

Bourne Manor had been furnished with an eye for comfort rather than elegance, but the many-storied dwelling in Berkeley Square was crammed cellars to attics with furniture and accessories that intimidated her with their grandeur.

Even the walls and ceilings, festooned as they were with intricate stucco designs and painted Cipriani nymphs, seemed to mock her as she roamed aimlessly from room to room, feeling smaller, less significant, and increasingly more insecure as she encountered Sheraton sideboards, Darly ceilings, Shearer harlequin tables, Zucchi pilasters, arches, and panels, Thomas Johnson clocks, Chippendale parlor chairs, and even an Inigo Jones chimneypiece that had been carted there from heaven only knew where.

“Love a duck, miss, ain’t it grand?” Goldie gushed for the hundredth time, her eyes nearly popping out of her head as she followed in her mistress’s wake, nearly cannoning into Jennie before she realized the girl had stopped dead at the entrance to the master bedchamber.

“Th-there’s no need to go poking about in here,” the new Countess of Bourne stammered nervously before beating a hasty retreat back down the wide hallway to her own chamber, closing the door behind her, and leaning against it as if to block out the rest of the world.

“Is that any way for a countess to enter a room, racing and romping and slamming doors behind her?” Miss Bundy, never raising her eyes from the trunk she was in the midst of unpacking, asked in her best stern-governess voice. “And what is that infernal banging?”

Jennie opened the door an inch, saw Goldie’s hand raised for yet another assault on the heavy door, grabbed the maid’s arm, and hastily pulled the plump form inside. “Land sakes, missy, what didya see in there ta set ya off like a cat in a fit?” the maid asked, darting a quick glance out the crack in the door as if to catch a glimpse of some horrifying creature barging down the hallway.

“I didn’t see anything, Goldie,” Jennie responded a lot more coolly than she thought possible. “I just suddenly remembered that we left poor Bundy alone all morning to unpack while we gadded about the place gawking like country bumpkins, that’s all.”

As Goldie had been more than aware that Miss Bundy had spent the morning toiling while she, in a very un-maid-like way, had done nothing more strenuous than inspect her mistress’s new digs, and as Goldie had secretly delighted in this unaccustomed freedom, her only answer to this damning statement was to flash her gold tooth at Jennie and wink broadly before picking up a paisley shawl and making a great business out of folding it over her arm.

Thank goodness, thought Jennie, releasing her pent-up breath in a long sigh. They’re both too busy either working or avoiding work to tax me further. I’ll just have to learn to control myself better and not do anything else to arouse their suspicions. Why, if Goldie knew I’d been frightened by a mere bed she’d tease me to death, while Bundy would see it as ample reason for yet another blistering lecture on the punishment of “Evil”—the evil in this case having more than a little bit to do with “giving false witness” only to “reap what you have sown.” Hummph! Jennie thought with a toss of her blond curls. I need another lecture like that like I need another freckle on the tip of my nose!

Snatching up a book from a nearby table, Jennie made her way past opened trunks and pieces of her personal belongings Bundy had divided into various towering piles, the purpose of which only she knew or cared to know, and took up residence in the deep, robin’s-egg-blue velvet-padded windowseat that overlooked the square and the statue that depicted a much younger, trimmer Prinny on horseback—the royal frame all rigged out like some long-dead Roman emperor for reasons only Princess Amelia, who had commissioned the piece, knew.

The book spread open on her lap (she never did take notice of its title), Jennie let her thoughts drift to the preceding evening and what she knew had been the markedly less than regal London debut of the new Countess of Bourne—considering she had slept through the entire business.

The strain of the wedding had somehow temporarily overcome her wariness of the man she was henceforth to love and cherish and—she gritted her teeth as she had done when the minister bade her repeat the word—obey, and against her better judgment she had allowed herself to fall asleep against his shoulder, thereby missing her very first sight of London by night.

It was only when the sound of hushed but obviously angry voices intruded on her slumber that she had roused sufficiently to realize that she was no longer in the coach, but reclining, cloak and all, upon an extremely comfortable bed.

“It’s indecent, that’s what it is,” hissed the first voice, which Jennie had readily recognized as Bundy’s.

“God’s teeth, woman, I was merely loosening the ties of her cloak, not taking the first step in any serious pursuit of debauchery,” a second masculine voice had hissed back angrily.

“Kit!” Jennie remembered she had screamed—fortunately only in her sleep-befuddled mind and not aloud. Squeezing her eyes shut, she had tried to feign sleep once more, hoping they would all just go away and leave her alone, but the earl was too sharp not to notice the sudden tenseness in the lower limb he had just then been in the process of divesting of its footgear.

“Ah ha!” he had crowed, more than a hint of triumph in his voice. “Methinks yon beauty awakes! Dash it all, foiled again. Just when I was about to have my evil way with the innocent, not to mention unconscious, damsel.” This last was said with heavy sarcasm, which, as Jennie could have told him, sailed completely over the head of the hovering Ernestine Bundy.

That overwrought female, torn between her duty to her charge and a strong inclination to indulge herself in a bout of strong hysterics, had then somehow steeled herself to throw her body between Jennie’s and that of her would-be ravisher and declared in a quavering voice, “Over my lifeless, bleeding body, sirrah!”

Even now Jennie’s shoulders shook slightly as she remembered Kit’s immediate descent into the ridiculous—clasping his hands to his chest and fervently denying any intention to harm so much as a single hair of the lady’s gray head while backing toward the door mouthing absurd apologies that had Jennie stuffing her knuckles into her mouth so that she would not laugh out loud.

“I saved you for now, young lady,” Bundy had told her charge as she helped her undress before throwing a nightgown in her general direction and stomping heatedly out of the room. “But I shan’t always be here to protect you. Remember,” was her parting shot, “you have made your bed, my dear—and now you must lie upon it!”

And lie upon it Jennie had done; long into the dark of the early-morning hours, tossing and turning but never finding her rest until a thin, watery sun rose above the horizon.

By the time Goldie had roused her with her morning chocolate, Jennie felt like the proverbial last bloom of summer—faded, more than a tad wilted, and increasingly unable to put on a brave face for yet another chilly day.

But being young, and therefore fairly resilient, by noon Jennie had been sufficiently restored in spirits for her to drag the willing Goldie on the tour that had ended abruptly at the sight of the massive bed in what she knew was the chamber she would soon be expected to occupy with her husband.

I can’t do it! she shrieked silently, her small hands clenching into fists and thoroughly wrinkling the green sprigged muslin skirts now clutched between her fingers. Kit said I had to marry him. Papa said it was my duty. But I and I alone will say whether or not I have to share his bed. And I say no!

“Jane. Jane!” Miss Bundy repeated more loudly. “Woolgathering again, I suppose. Some habits never change. Why, I remember when you were seven and I found you daydreaming in that tree in the garden. I had to call you a dozen times before—”

“Before you startled me out of a very pleasant daydream, as I recall, and I toppled to the ground and broke my arm,” Jennie ended for the lady. “Papa wasn’t best pleased, you’ll remember.”

Miss Bundy merely sniffed, obviously still feeling she had been more victim than sinner in that particular incident.

“Well?” Jennie asked after some moments when Miss Bundy seemed to be lost in replaying old hurts.

“Well, what?”

“You called my name, Bundy, remember?” Jennie sighed, a small smile lighting her face as the familiarity of this little scene made her feel less an alien in an unfriendly land.

Miss Bundy puzzled a moment, tapping one long finger against her pointed chin, before declaring brightly, “I remember now. How very remiss of me. Renfrew gave me a note earlier for you—which I opened, of course—”

“Of course,” Jennie sighed fatalistically.

“Don’t interrupt, Jane. All my many hours of instruction on deportment and still you—but never mind. The note says that the earl desires the pleasure of your company in the main saloon—that’s the huge room just off the foyer, the one that houses the Jones chimneypiece, my dear—at half past three of the clock today. My goodness, it’s that now! You’d best hurry, dear, but do let Goldie straighten your hair first.”

“There’s no time for that, Bundy. I’m late as it is,” Jennie said in reply, already moving toward the door. Now that she had made up her mind about the direction she wished this marriage to take, she was all at once bursting with the necessity to share her decision with Lord Bourne—whom she graciously acknowledged to possibly have some slight interest in the business.

THE EARL OF BOURNE was pacing the main saloon, glass in hand, looking about him with what he hoped was bored disinterest. This place is a far cry from your bachelor digs in the Albany off Piccadilly, even if Byron, Macaulay, and Gladstone shared the same address, Kit, my lad, he mused, positioning himself with one arm propped negligently (he hoped) upon the mantelpiece.

If only he could get over the disquieting feeling that at any moment some long-lost Wilde with a better claim to the title would come bursting through the door and roust him outside and back into the real world.

Kit had never dreamed he would one day inherit his uncle’s title, lands, and great wealth. In fact, the most he had hoped for—when he dared to hope at all—was for the old boy to leave him a broken pocket watch or some such useless trinket.

But fate works in strange ways; in this case by eliminating all close heirs by way of accident or unfortunate illness. And while Kit had been striving to make a name for himself as a soldier, his male relatives had all been conveniently dropping like flies in order to pave his way to the earldom.

And fate hadn’t stopped at the earldom either. Dame Fate, not one to indulge any mere mortal to the point where he might tend to get cocky, had then leavened Kit’s triumph a bit by saddling him with a totally unnecessary gift—a wife.

He abandoned his studied pose—his lordship reclining at his ease—to check the watch at his waist. His late wife, he pointed out to himself, just as there came a noise at the doorway and Jennie entered with more haste than decorum, skidding to an ignominious halt about three feet inside the double doors.

“I…um…I mean, Bundy…er…that is…you wanted to see…um, talk to me?” Now that’s an auspicious beginning, Jennie berated herself mentally, her outward grimace bringing a pained smile to the earl’s face.

Yes, infant, Kit replied silently, I do want to see you—waving goodbye as you ride out of my life. But he did not say the words. Jennie was his wife now, for good or ill, and they were just going to have to make the best of the cards Dame Fortune had so capriciously dealt them.

“Sit down, Jennie,” Kit said gently, then waited impatiently as she took up her seat on a straight-backed chair positioned at the far side of the room. “Would you like me to ring Renfrew for some tea? No? Then I suggest we get right down to it.”

Jennie jumped slightly—just as if he had suggested they lie down on the Aubusson carpet and proceed to make mad, passionate love—and Kit hastened to explain the reason for his summons. “We must organize this household, Jennie, as Renfrew and the skeleton staff my late uncle kept here are not sufficient to our needs if we mean to entertain during the Season.”

“We mean to entertain?” Jennie asked, trying to imagine herself in the role of hostess of this great mansion and failing dismally.

“We do. Unless that presents a problem?” Bourne inquired, deliberately needling her.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Jennie assured him through clenched teeth, wanting nothing more than to box his lordship’s ears. “I’ll set about hiring extra staff as soon as possible.”

“Renfrew will arrange things with a reputable agency, and you will only have to select from a group of eligible applicants.” Kit saw no possible way Jennie could land in the briers with the resourceful Renfrew to guide her.

“Oh,” Jennie murmured confusedly. “I had thought to place an advertisement about, as we do at home sometimes if the need arises.”

Kit quickly explained the folly of ever advertising for domestic help—heaven only knowing what sort of riffraff might then show up in Berkeley Square looking for a handout. At Jennie’s nod he promptly considered the matter to have been satisfactorily settled and went on to discuss a more delicate topic—one he had been secretly dreading to broach.

“Jennie,” he said gently, dropping to one knee beside her chair, “after giving the matter a good deal of thought, and with due consideration of your sensibilities and the uniqueness of our situation, I have decided not to ask for my husbandly rights just yet. I believe we should first become more comfortable with each other.”

“Oh, good!” Jennie exclaimed happily, before she could temper her response. “That is, I mean, why?…No! Don’t answer that. I don’t mean why, exactly. Disregard that if you will, please. What I mean to say is—thank you.” As Kit’s eyebrows shot up, she stumbled on hastily, “No! I didn’t mean that either, did I? I’m sorry I interrupted you, my lord,” she said, belatedly striving to behave like something more than completely brainless. “Please, continue. You were saying—”

“Actually, pet, I was done saying,” he told her, stifling his amusement at her obvious agitation. But this amusement changed rapidly to confusion as Jennie’s eyes took on a hard glint and her chin lifted in determination. “Now what?” he was then foolish enough to inquire.

Jennie, who should have been feeling nothing less than tremendous relief, had suddenly decided that the man in front of her was nothing less than the greatest beast in nature. How dare he decide not to exercise his rights? How dare he tell her anything? It was she who would do the telling!

As Kit watched, Jennie’s face did its little chameleon trick yet again and became soft and almost pleading in its woebegone expression. “Then you do not want me, my lord? I do not appeal to you—perhaps even repel you?”

Looking up at her, his heart touched by her wide, sad eyes, Kit protested passionately, “Of course I want you, infant. You appeal to me immensely. Isn’t that how we found ourselves in this situation in the first place?”

Now Jennie smiled in earnest. Rising to look down on her still-kneeling husband, she informed him brightly, “That is a great pity, my lord husband. For I do not want you, which is why I was so glad you requested this meeting. I was looking forward to telling you that you may have taken my hand in marriage, but that is all you will take from me.” So saying, and with her gape-mouthed husband looking on, she swept out of the room, at last looking every inch the countess.

CHAPTER FOUR

KIT ENTERED the dim main room of the Guards Club and cast his eyes about in the gloom with the alert, roving gaze of a man who has served on the Peninsula. He quickly spotted and nodded to several acquaintances, but it was not until his scrutiny was rewarded with the sight of one fellow in particular that he smiled and started across the uneven sanded floor of the converted coffeehouse.

“Ozzy, you old dog,” he called out loudly as he advanced on a painfully stylish young man of fashion sprawling at his ease at a table in the corner. “I knew I could count on you to be here.”

Ozzy Norwood, who had just then been profoundly contemplating a fly walking backward up the table leg and wondering that such powers would be given to a mere insect and yet denied one such as himself, was so startled at this violent intrusion upon his thoughts that his legs—which had been propped on a facing chair—slid from under him and his rump took up a closer association with the hard floor.

His mood, as he had over the years become accustomed to his own clumsiness, was not darkened by his ignominious position, and he swiftly if not gracefully regained his feet in time to be caught up in Kit’s enthusiastic bear hug of a greeting.

“Kit! Kit by damn Wilde! I’d heard you cashed it in at Badajoz,” Ozzy exclaimed when he could get his breath. “You’re no ghost, though. My bruised ribs can attest to that, by God! Let me loose, you great hairy beast, and let me look at you. What a sight you are, man.”

What Ozzy saw was his old friend and fellow officer: a little leaner, perhaps; a little tougher, most definitely; but those smiling eyes were still those of the Kit Wilde Ozzy had hero-worshiped since they were both in short coats. “You look wonderful, friend, and I mean it truly. Sit down. Where did you spring from? Last I heard you were wounded and not expected to make it. I took a ball in the shoulder in a damn silly skirmish in some benighted Spanish slum village soon after Badajoz and sold out—my heart just wasn’t in it, what with you gone and all—but I couldn’t get word of you anywhere. It was as if you fell off the face of the earth. Girl! Bring us a bottle of your finest! Sit down, I said, Kit, and stop standing there grinning like a bear. Have you nothing at all to say for yourself?”

Kit could only laugh and shake his head. “I find it gratifying in the extreme, Ozzy, that some things never change. You’re still chattering nineteen to the dozen, and woe betide anyone who dares to attempt to slide a word in edgewise.” Seating himself across the table from his friend, he took up the bottle the servant wench had brought and drank from it, saying, “Best order another for yourself, old man, as I’ve got plans for this one.”

“Girl!” Ozzy bellowed, thinking Kit was out to make a night of it and more than willing to match him drink for drink. “Bring a bottle. Bring a dozen bottles! Eh? Oh, yes, Kit, of course. And two glasses, you silly chit; what kind of heathens do you think you’ve got here?”

Three hours and more than a half-dozen bottles later, Kit and Ozzy were still sitting at the table, their reminiscences of the Peninsula having brought tears as well as smiles as their thoughts passed over events past and friends lost, and they were at last ready to speak about the present.

“Earl of Bourne, is it?” Ozzy repeated, clearly pleased for his old friend. “Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch. And there you were hobnobbing around the muck of Spain like the rest of us, just as if you was ordinary folk. Why ain’t you rubbing shoulders with the rest of the nobs at White’s or Boodle’s, instead of this lowlife at the bottom of St. James’s?”

“Oh, cut line, Ozzy. You belong to both those clubs, and Almack’s to boot, as I remember your tales of that woeful excuse for a select gathering spot for the haut ton and the ugly ducklings your mama forced you to bear-lead around the floor.”

“Snicker all you wish, you cynic,” Ozzy shot back, thinking to trump Kit’s ace, “but you’ll soon be hounding me to get you a voucher—need one, you know, if you’re on the hangout for a wife. Stands to reason you’ll be wanting to settle down now that you’re a blinkin’ earl.”

Kit drank deep from his glass. “I’ll take you up on that offer of securing a voucher, but I have to tell you, friend, I have been nothing if not thorough since last we met. Within a week of hitting these shores—having happily put those months of convalescence in Portugal behind me—I acquired a title, a large estate, a, I must say, considerable fortune, and a wife.”

Ozzy sat up straight in his chair, knocking his halffull glass over into his lap in the process. “Ain’t you the downy one! How could you get yourself tied up so fast? It’s not like you was hanging out for a wife so soon—no rich young bachelor would be so dense as to forgo the joy of wading through the debutantes for at least one Season on the town. Tell you what, you were in your cups—or suffering from some lingering fever caused by your wound. I’m right, aren’t I? Say I’m right, Kit, and then tell me her name. Is she pretty?”

“Put a muzzle on it, Ozzy,” Kit implored, his head beginning to reflect the combined assault of drink and his friend’s garrulous tongue. “Her name is Jane Maitland, and her father’s land runs alongside my estate.”

“Greedy bugger, ain’t you?” slipped in Mr. Norwood, earning himself a hard stare from the earl, who had hoped to find more sympathy from his oldest and best friend.

“That’s an insult, Ozzy, damned if it ain’t,” the new earl declared, slurring his words only slightly. “Damned if I won’t cut you dead when next we meet. Besides, Jennie’s a charming enough nitwit; I might have pursued her anyway, without her father threatening revenge if I didn’t do right by her.”

“You did wrong by her? And who’s Jennie? Thought you said her name was Jane.” Clearly Ozzy was perplexed. “You know, Kit, sometimes you don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“I’ve been known to have that reputation,” Kit said ruefully. “Ozzy,” he continued, leaning forward across the table confidingly, “I need your word of honor that this goes no further.”

“Word of a gentleman!” Ozzy swore, then hiccupped. “I’ll be quiet as a tomb, I swear it.” He leaned forward to put his nose smack against Kit’s. “Spill your guts, my friend, Ozzy’s here.”

And so, as the dusk gave way to darkness, and before drunkenness turned to near insensibility, Kit told his tale to his awestruck audience.

When the story was done and Ozzy had commiserated with his friend’s ill luck, the question was raised: “And what are you going to do about the chit? Can’t wish her gone, can’t do her in, not without the father kicking up a fuss.”

“Do with her?” Kit repeated, concentrating on the mighty task of directing his hand in the general direction of the bottle before him. “I don’t see that I have to do anything with her. After all, Ozzy, how much trouble can one small female be?”

FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Kit was conspicuous in Berkeley Square only by his absence—a fact Jennie duly took note of, sent up fervent thanks for, and secretly credited to her masterful handling of that single interview the day following their hasty marriage. Sure that her parting shot had put her firmly in the position of power—with the tenor and direction of their marriage to be dictated solely by her—she felt she had left the earl with no option but to cool his heels while she became “more comfortable” with their delicate situation.

And she had been immensely “comfortable” in his absence, as Kit had seemed to abandon even his half-hearted suggestion that they get to know one another better. If the truth be told, there were times Jennie almost forgot she was married at all, pretending instead that she was in town for the come-out her father had promised, then conveniently forgotten to deliver. If only Renfrew would refrain from calling her “my lady” every time she so much as passed in the hallway. And if Bundy would only cease her endless sermons on the behavior befitting a countess (and the folly of thinking one could play with fire without being burned—as if Jennie’s inadvertent compromise was the act of a misbehaving child with Kit cast in the role of a highly combustible match). And if only Goldie would stop dropping into a comical knee-cracking curtsy each time Jennie looked her way—which had driven Jennie to walking about with her eyes averted in some other direction, leading to more than a few stubbed toes and bruised shins.

But her companions as well as the facts were against her. Only Kit, by his absence, gave her any respite, and at times she could almost find it in her heart to be in charity with the man. Almost, but not quite. After all, if not for his, as Bundy called them, “male urges,” she’d still be at home, dreaming safe dreams about the handsome knight on a white charger who would rescue her from the fire-breathing dragon and carry her off to his castle, where they would live happily ever after.

But even though he was seldom seen, the earl’s presence in Berkeley Square could not be denied. Every day after rising at the heathen hour of eleven, Kit breakfasted in his rooms, allowed himself to be dressed by Leon, who was still determined to turn a perfectly presentable Corinthian into a dashing darling of fashion, and exited the mansion, his departing form variously disappearing around the corner of the square on foot, vaulting into the seat of his new curricle and giving his horses the office to start, or bending himself into the smart town carriage that then bore him off in the regal style befitting his station—always with Jennie discreetly watching his leave-takings from behind her curtained window, happily waving him on his way. Where he went did not concern her. She was only grateful to have him gone.

Renfrew, on the other hand, had a pretty good idea of just what his lordship’s travels encompassed. Struts down Bond Street on the arms of his cronies, tours through an assortment of low taverns, forays into the world of ivory turners and cardsharps at seamy private gaming hells, hours spent in the blue room at Covent Garden negotiating an opera dancer’s current asking price for her oftsolid virtue, and an innocent prank or two aimed at livening the watch’s dull existence would all number among the earl’s activities, unless things had changed mightily since Renfrew was last in London town.

Natural high spirits and the thrill of being reunited with his boyhood friends might have explained this earnest pursuit of pleasure that nightly had Kit beating the rising sun home by less than an hour, but Renfrew knew there was another, deeper reason.

It was the dream. The dream that sent Renfrew scurrying from his warm bed on the first night of the new earl’s residence at Bourne Manor, the wicked, panic-filled dreams that tore ragged moans and hoarse screams from the sleeping man’s throat until Leon’s soothing voice could penetrate the panic and lull the tormented earl back to sleep.

Leon either did not know or would not divulge the nature of the recurring nightmare that had the earl calling the name Denny over and over again, the memory whose nocturnal reenactment moved the man to dry sobs and broken pleas for help.

The dream seemed to have disappeared, the last nightmare occurring the night before the earl’s marriage, but Renfrew knew it wasn’t so. The earl was fighting the nightmare in the only way he knew—by not falling into bed until he was either too exhausted or too deep in his cups to dream at all.

The old butler, who had served the Wilde family man and boy, could only stand back and let his master battle with his private demons, knowing the outcome but not daring to overstep his place by telling his lordship he was fighting a losing battle.

Renfrew could only watch and hope, believing the gentle child he had watched grow into the giving, compassionate young woman the earl had married was the only key to the man’s salvation. Yet Jennie and Kit might as well have been residing on separate continents for all they saw of each other. It was enough to make a stronger man than Renfrew despair. But not Renfrew—he only bided his time while making plans of his own.

As part of his project designed to invest Jennie with some passionate feelings for this particular Bourne domicile and her position as mistress of all it contained, Renfrew spent three full days acquainting her with every stick of furniture in every room of the mansion, impressing her with the history of this original painting and that priceless set of engraved silver plate.

His efforts were not in vain. Jennie was not impressed by the wealth spread out before her, but rather with the stories of the Bourne ancestors who had furnished the mansion with such care and love. That the responsibility for maintaining the beauty around her as well as placing this generation’s personal stamp on the place by way of worthy additions of art and other accessories that would reflect their times while not detracting from what had gone before was now hers was not lost on Jennie. It surprised her, though, to realize that she was more than eager to take up the challenge.

The more mundane side of running a household, neatly catalogued in a half-dozen closely written ledgers, did not inspire the same creative urges. In fact, after pretending a studious perusal of just two of the big black leather-bound books, Jennie pleaded a headache and Renfrew kindly moved the dratted things out of her sight.

“Renfrew,” Jennie proposed, once the butler had poured her a bracing cup of tea, “I’d like to strike a bargain with you. If you will consent to managing the household accounts, acting as secretary or whatever, I shall, besides offering you my eternal gratitude, undertake the hiring of the additional staff his lordship tells me we require.”

Happy to see her showing such an interest, such a willingness to involve herself, no matter how indirectly, with his lordship’s comfort, Renfrew agreed with alacrity. After all, he told himself airily, what could go wrong in the mere hiring of household staff?

And with that thought Renfrew proved yet again that, be he earl or butler, a male is still a male—never failing to underestimate the tremendous potential for disruption that churns just beneath the surface of those apparently fragile feminine forms men so condescendingly refer to as the weaker sex.

THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL of perverse satisfaction to be derived from flouting your husband’s wishes, Jennie learned as she and Goldie climbed back into the town carriage after concluding her business with the clerk in charge of placing advertisements in the Observer.

She was pleased with the wording of her advertisement—certainly the clerk had seen no reason to change so much as the placement of a single comma—and she rode home secure in the belief that this more personal form of advertising would result in bringing to her door a fair number of robust, hardworking country folk who were new to London and eager for honest work they could not find due to lack of references.

That’s what she wanted. Country folk. Plump, redcheeked farm girls and strong, raw-boned farmers’ sons who’d remind her of home. After all, what did she want with a passel of top-lofty London servants who were known far and wide for aping their masters while at the same time despising the very people who paid their wages?

She had done the right thing, she was sure of it. The fact that she had planned her trip to the newspaper office to coincide with Bundy’s monthly retreat to her couch due to a regular-as-clockwork migraine headache proved nothing to the contrary, absolutely nothing.

As they rode along the crowded street, Jennie rechecked her list. Heading it was the need for a chef—Renfrew had informed her that Kit had specifically requested a French chef—followed by notations calling for three additional footmen, two kitchen helpers, a pair of experienced stable hands, at least two more housemaids who could double at serving table, and, perhaps even a tweeny to run errands between floors if she could find one.

It seemed ostentatious to require nearly two dozen people to care for the needs and comforts of a family consisting of two young, healthy creatures who by all rights should be capable of fending for themselves.

Of course, they weren’t two average people, she amended mentally. After all, how many English couples live in eighteen-room houses containing a conservatory, two separate dining rooms, and a veritable barn of a ballroom? Bundy said the Bourne mansion was no more than a fit setting for an earl and his countess. Jennie wisely refrained from wondering aloud if this particular earl and countess didn’t look just a tad out of place in their grand surroundings—almost like children playing at being all grown up.

Kit, she had to admit, at least looked the part, having visited his tailor before traveling to Bourne Manor so that an entire new wardrobe had been waiting for him in Berkeley Square, but she knew her own simple gowns to be sadly provincial. Which was why the Bourne carriage was just then coming to a halt outside a fashionable shop in Bond Street (this part of her trip also deliberately planned around Bundy’s migraine or else Jennie knew she’d be the first countess in history to be dressed entirely in concealing white dimity gowns matched to sensible, serviceable jean boots).

Goldie was in her glory as she stood gaping and gawking throughout Jennie’s lengthy session with the modiste. A young woman of definite tastes that had previously taken second place to her budget, Jennie worked her way purposefully from one end of the selling room to the other, selecting lengths of material with an eye to color and texture and never once bothering to ask a single price.

In the space of an hour Jennie had matched the materials to sketches the delighted modiste swore on her hopes of heaven were designed with just madam countess in mind. “That exquisite waist! That so entrancing swell of bosom—so innocent, so alluring! The regal carriage of a princess, the fine molded arms of a Greek goddess. The hair of an angel, the skin of a newborn babe. Ooh la la! That the countess would deign to honor this humble establishment with her attention. I will be the making of a poor, struggling widow in a foreign land. Once madam is seen in public the ton will demand a like transformation—an impossible task, to duplicate such beauty, my lady, but one must make a living.” On and on went the modiste.

Two hours after entering the shop, Jennie departed, her head still buzzing with the Frenchwoman’s ridiculous compliments and fervent expressions of gratitude (the latter being more readily believed if Jennie had but known the total of the bill). She changed her mind about shopping for shoes, bonnets, gloves, and other accessories, putting off that errand for another day even if it meant she must listen to Bundy’s prudish criticisms of her every choice. She had a headache of her very own now, the result of the modiste’s incessant chatter and a growing hunger for her lunch, which may have accounted for her almost violent reaction to seeing her husband strolling down the opposite side of the street, a soft, clinging bit of frailty hanging from each elbow.

It was ridiculous. Why should she feel this almost overpowering urge to dash across the street and plummet the two slyly simpering creatures about the head and shoulders with her reticule? And when she had done with them she would deliver a bash or five on the noggin of the stupidly grinning ignoramus who was acting less like a married man than Prinny himself!

She stood stock-still on the flagway, rooted to the spot by her anger and her inability to do more than mentally mangle the cause of her upset.

“O-oo-o, lookee, miss,” Goldie piped up loudly at exactly the wrong moment. “There’s his lordship himself, out for a breath of air. Yoo-hoo! Your lordship!” she trilled in a high, carrying soprano, her voice succeeding in reaching the earl above the noisy street sounds and the animated chattering of his companions.

“Oh, my God!” Kit breathed in exasperation as he spied Goldie and his wife—his oddly erect wife—on the opposite side of the street. What a coil! He couldn’t abandon the two females on the crowded flagway, and he wasn’t such a gapeseed as to drag them with him and introduce them to his wife of seven days. Yet to ignore his wife entirely was courting disaster. Besides, that dratted maid would probably keep bellowing like a sick calf until he acknowledged their presence. He was damned no matter what he did!

And the Lady Luck, in the form of one Oswald Norwood, came sauntering toward him, and Kit began to believe in good fairies. “Ozzy, my dearest friend,” he intoned bravely, “would you be so kind as to escort these ladies to a hackney? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten an urgent appointment.”

Ozzy was delighted, a fact Kit did not linger to learn, hurrying instead across the street, neatly dodging horses and vehicles that dared to get in his path, to stand smartly, and just a bit breathlessly, in a direct line between his wife and his too recent companions. “I did not know you had planned to visit the shops, my dear,” he said with studied nonchalance.

Jennie leaned a bit to the left and peered over his shoulder at the females, who still stood where Kit had left them. “Obviously,” she drawled sweetly, “else you would have asked me to join your party. Wouldn’t you?”

Wretched chit! he swore silently, acting just as if we had vowed fidelity or some such rot. Which they had! he remembered with a jolt. “Party?” he improvised rapidly. “Oh, pet, you mistake the facts entirely. Those young ladies are—er—cousins of my friend Ozzy, the man with them now. I was just lending them my company while he dashed off a moment to speak with an acquaintance he hadn’t seen for some time. Merely holding the fort, as it were,” he ended with a limp laugh.

“Really?” Jennie’s voice conveyed her disbelief. “It’s a shame they had to rush off without so much as an introduction. But perhaps we can have them to dinner one evening. We know so few people in London, you know.” It was amazing how calm her voice sounded, considering she was still seriously contemplating homicide.

“Yes, well, er, you shouldn’t let the horses stand too much longer, Jennie,” Kit said in a sudden inspiration. “Allow me to escort you home, and, er, we can take luncheon together. I’ve been so busy establishing my bona fides at the banks and seeking out friends from my army days that I’m guilty of neglecting you, aren’t I, puss? I confess to feeling ashamed.”

You could charm the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, Jennie decided nastily, hating herself for feeling her outrage slowly melting under Kit’s engagingly open grin. Now her anger was somehow redirecting itself, turning away from her husband and centering on her own overreaction to seeing him in the company of two, she reluctantly acknowledged, beautiful females, when she herself didn’t care two sticks for the man personally. In fact, had Kit only promptly shepherded his wife into the coach he might have come out of the whole episode with nary a scratch, so angry was Jennie with herself. But Lady Luck had deserted him too soon this sunny spring day and the storm clouds were gathering, soon to rain all over his victory.

“Kit,” came the voice of Ozzy Norwood as he joined his friend after sending two very disgruntled ladies on their way back to Drury Lane. “I demand you return my favor and introduce me to your beautiful companion. Two for one may not be a fair exchange, but then a simple mister cannot command the same privileges as an earl, what? By the by,” he added, securing his friend’s coffin with a few finishing nails, “this one makes those two warblers look like yesterday’s kippers, stap me if they don’t. Can’t blame you for dumping them in my lap and loping off like that.”

A large rock—possibly Gibraltar itself—was lodged in Lord Bourne’s throat, making coherent speech impossible, although he did try a time or two, gasping and choking badly before subsiding into silence and glaring at his grinning friend.

Just as Ozzy’s eyes were belatedly taking in Jennie’s simple but well-cut gown and the presence of a female much resembling a lady’s maid standing in front of what looked suspiciously like Bourne’s town carriage—a small glimmer of light beginning to grow in his pleasantly vacant face—Jennie stepped into the breach and took charge.

Extending a small gloved hand in his direction, she said brightly, “You must be one of my husband’s good friends—one of those selfish creatures who so monopolize his time in lengthy sessions reminiscing about your shared youths. But I’ll forgive your interruption of our honeymoon, as I know how greatly Kit enjoys reliving his childish exploits. He must, mustn’t he, as I have not seen him above a moment or two since we arrived in town.”

“It’s all my fault!” Ozzy sacrificed bravely. “He didn’t want to be with us, you know. We fairly begged for his company. Don’t blame him, my lady, I implore you—”

Jennie pretended to pout, throwing out her full bottom lip, thereby nearly inciting her husband to violence, then brightened visibly as she said, “I have it! You must come to dine. Just as soon as our French chef is in residence—say, a week from today? And bring your two cousins, as I do so pine for some female companionship. After all, sir, any friend of Kit’s cannot help but find welcome in Berkeley Square. Isn’t that so, dear?” she asked the mute earl. Was that smoke she saw coming out of her husband’s ears? she thought, feeling rather full of herself.

“You’re kind, ma’am,” Ozzy blustered, his overtaxed intellect reeling under the barrage his faux pas had unleashed and powerless to maneuver out of range of attack. “Too—too—kind. Indeed,” he said, attempting an air of worldliness, “Kit is undeserving of such a fine lady as yourself.”

“Why thank you, sir,” Jennie responded. “I quite agree. But then we so seldom get what we deserve, don’t we?”

At last Kit found his tongue. “Oh, I don’t know about that, my love,” he put in, leading her toward the open door of the coach. “Some of us get exactly what we deserve. In fact, one of us might just get it this very night if she continues asking for it so blatantly.”

“Really?” Jennie exclaimed, bravado masking the fact that her knees were beginning to experience a decided tendency to quiver. In a much lower voice heard only by her husband she added, “My papa always warned me that people who choose to live in glass houses should beware of tossing rocks. Look to yourself, my love, before casting any stones at my behavior. Retribution can be demanded on both sides.”

After delivering this stunning coup de grace, Jennie turned, inclined her head to her husband’s friend and incidental tattletale, and allowed herself to be assisted into the carriage. Blond head held high, she concentrated on her second verbal victory over her husband and determinedly resisted any thoughts concerning her ridiculous overreaction upon seeing Kit enjoying the company of any female besides his wife—who wouldn’t cross the street with him if he asked her to, which, she owned sourly, he hadn’t.

As the carriage drove away Kit turned to his lifelong friend, ready to do murder in broad daylight while standing in the middle of crowded Bond Street. “Now, now, Kit, old chum, it was an honest mistake,” Ozzy began, hastily backing up a step. “You never told me your wife was such a looker. Anyway, wives ain’t supposed to be pretty. They’re supposed to have big dowries and buck teeth. And hatchet noses. And…and…and scrawny chests—”

“Keep your filthy mouth off my wife’s chest!” Kit was so overcome as to bluster before realizing exactly what he was saying. “Never mind that! What in thunder did you think you were about, prancing over here like some hound in heat and cadging in a tryst with my wife as if she were some trollop we’d share between us? Are your brains entirely to let that you’d mistake a lady for one of your loose women? I ought to call you out for this, Ozzy, I swear it!”

Ozzy cast his eyes about furtively and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Attracting a crowd, sport. What say we toddle down to White’s and settle this quietly over a bottle? My treat, o’ course. Call me out, you say. You wouldn’t really do that, Kit, would you? Deuced unsporting of you, knowing what a fine shot you are, don’t you think?”

Looking around, Kit reluctantly realized the wisdom of Ozzy’s warning—while hating to credit his friend with even a small portion of brainpower at that moment—and roughly grabbing the fellow by the elbow, he surreptitiously pushed him along the flagway as if unsure Ozzy wouldn’t bolt if he relaxed his hold.

It took more than one bottle before Kit could find any small bit of humor in the scene lately enacted in Bond Street, but no amount of wine or conciliating chatter on the part of Ozzy would make Kit believe Jennie could be induced to speak to him again much before the first snow of winter.

CHAPTER FIVE

FOR A MAN who had so distinguished himself in battle as to have been mentioned in dispatches more than a half-dozen times, Kit showed a remarkable lack of courage when it came to confronting his wife. Perhaps this reluctance to face her stemmed from the fact that he knew himself to be totally in the wrong—as even the slapdash marital habits of the ton included at least a show of fidelity, certainly during the first flush of the union.

So Jennie was left to wade her way through the long list of applicants who replied to her advertisement—their numbers making a long, snaking line that stretched from the servants’ entrance into Berkeley Square itself—while the earl continued making himself scarce.

Five days after their meeting on Bond Street, Kit at last ran out of diversions and found himself, at only three in the afternoon, at loose ends. Lacking any other alternative, he directed his mount to the rear of Berkeley Square, dismounted in front of the stable doors, turned, and walked headfirst into a mountain.

“What the devil?” Bourne exploded once he had regained his breath. Looking up, quite a good way up, actually, his startled eyes took in the sight of an enormous, hairless, black head fitted with glittering black-bean eyes; a gargantuan head that sat atop the largest man Kit had even seen.

Two hands as large as hams reached out to steady him, nearly crushing his shoulders in the process, as Kit rocked slightly on his heels. The man must be all of seven feet tall, the gaping earl told himself in amazement. I can only hope he’s a friendly beast.

Recovering his dignity and firmly stamping down any impulse to turn tail and make a run for it, Kit inquired softly: “What—er, I mean, who are you?”

“I be called Tiny,” the giant rumbled from somewhere deep in his massive chest.

“Naturally,” the earl quipped ruefully, his quick sense of the ridiculous coming to the rescue.

“I be the earl’s new groom. Who be you, sir?”

“I be—er—I’m the earl, actually,” Kit informed him, stepping out of Tiny’s large shadow and back into the sunlight. “So, you’re my new groom, eh, Tiny? Tell me—who hired you?” Kit held out a hand before Tiny could answer. “No, don’t tell me, let me guess. Lady Bourne, right?”

“Lady Bourne, she be a queen. I be ready to die for her,” Tiny growled passionately. “I be ready to kill for her. With these hands,” he swore, holding out his large fists and then clenching them tight.

Kit swallowed hard and stretched his neck. “Good, Tiny. I like—um—loyalty in a servant. But I asked her ladyship to secure two grooms.” He looked the giant up and down, still amazed by the man’s size. “Or did she think she had?”

“’ullo, guv’nor,” came a thin, high voice as Tiny stepped sideways to reveal the person standing behind him. “Goliath’s m’name and groomin’ nags m’game. Me an’ Tiny ‘ere ‘re a team, ye ken. Worked the trav elin’ circus till it went flat, an’ yer missus took us up. Right pretty piece too,” Goliath added with a wink, earning himself a menacing growl from Tiny.

“A dwarf,” Kit breathed in amazement, looking down on the tiny man. “A bloody dwarf.” And then, remarkably, he grinned. “Why not? Why the bloody hell not?”

“You be wantin’ Tiny ta take yer horse?” the large man asked almost timidly, belatedly remembering his mistress’s hint that the earl was best humored at first, until he felt more at ease with his new staff.

“That’s very kind of you, Tiny,” Kit thanked the man as he turned and headed toward the rear of the mansion. “Just toss him over your shoulder, why not, and carry him into his stall. I’m sure he’ll give you no trouble.”

Goliath let out a giggle and executed a perfect, if compact, backflip. “’e likes us, Tiny,” the delighted dwarf crowed, jumping up and down on his sturdy, stubby legs. “’ome at last we is, boyo, ‘ome at last!”

JENNIE PACED the drawing room in mounting apprehension. Kit’s behavior had been courtesy itself since their unfortunate meeting in Bond Street, not only refraining from taking out his threatened revenge on her person, but allowing time and distance to separate them from the nastier memories of that meeting.

Since she had spent a very busy week interviewing possible servants for the mansion, Jennie’s memories of that fateful meeting had been given a chance to mellow, so that now she could recall little of her former anger, concentrating instead on the ludicrous image of her infuriating urbane husband at a total loss for words. Of her other, more unsettling feelings at having spied two obvious ladies of the evening dangling from her husband’s sleeves, she refused to think at all. It only confused the issue, whatever it was.

She’d been granted time, and time was what she had needed. Time to complete her new wardrobe, and time for some of her new things to be delivered, so that she could, when the time came, face him in her new finery. That was important. She needed the outward trappings of her new title about her when her husband confronted her demanding she explain about the servants she had hired.

Oh, yes, she mused knowingly, there would be quite a grand to-do then. She was not a complete fool. But she must make him understand her reasons for hiring Tizzie and Lizzie, Tiny and Goliath, Charity—the poor, dear thing—Bob, Ben, and Del, and Irvette and Blessing. Even Montague, the French chef Kit had particularly requested, would require a good deal of explaining on her part, she knew.

Now the time and space Kit had granted her began to wear on her nerves. She yearned to have him summon her, ring a peal over her head, and have done with it.

Bundy had told her he would. Even Goldie had clucked her tongue at the sight of Charity—the poor, dear thing. Renfrew, Jennie silently blessed the man, had said nothing, possibly because Del’s happy “Mornin’, guv’nor” as he took up his proper footman position in the foyer had robbed the majordomo of coherent speech.

Deep in her heart of hearts, Jennie knew she had grossly overstepped herself. She had been commissioned to hire the servants, of course she had been, but she had not been given carte blanche to employ the odd assortment of humanity she had chosen. But they had needed jobs so desperately, she consoled herself. All those other, qualified applicants, who had presented themselves, references in hand, would have no difficulty in finding positions.

But Tizzie and Lizzie, for instance, had little hope if she turned them down. Where could two overage, out-of-work Shakespearean actresses find work if even the lowest traveling troupe would not hire them? And as for Charity—the poor, dear thing—she might well expire in a filthy gutter if Jennie hadn’t taken her on as tweeny. Not that Charity could climb the stairs very much in her present condition.

Surely Kit would understand. Jennie picked up a Dresden statuette of a young maiden and scowled into its placid, peaceful face. And a herd of elephants might dance on the head of a pin. Of course Kit wouldn’t understand! Why should he? Hadn’t the man already proved himself to be a heartless beast capable of compromising an innocent maiden, marrying her, and then deserting her in the midst of a strange city?

Jennie rapidly worked up a full head of steam, all her heart directed at her cruel husband, the heartless monster from whom she must protect her latest batch of ugly ducklings and pitiful misfits. How dare he question her judgment! Who was he to set himself up as arbiter of all that was required to make a good and loyal servant? Well, she thought, now in a high state of temper, just let him say one word against her choices. Just let him dare!

Kit’s entrance into the drawing room at that precise moment was not exactly a triumph of superb timing. “Good day, m’love,” he began cheerily enough. “And what are you about today?”

Jennie whirled on him in some heat. “And just what is that snide remark supposed to mean?” she sneered, her green eyes narrowed into wary slits. “How unhandsome of you, Kit, how very unhandsome of you!”

“I make you my compliments, ma’am,” Kit drawled, executing an elegant leg in her direction. “That is quite a novel greeting. Am I, I sincerely trust, going to be given an explanation for it, or am I to be summarily executed for my sins without even so much as a hearing?”

Jennie tossed her blond curls and sniffed. “Oh, you think you’re so very droll, don’t you?”

She ain’t exactly falling over herself to be nice to me, Kit told himself, hiding a smile. Possibly she feels attack to be the best defense. I wonder what she believes herself to be guilty of, for I doubt I have been in Berkeley Square frequently enough to have done anything too lamentable. “What is it, puss?” he prompted, lowering his rangy frame into a chair and stretching his legs before him. “Have you overspent your allowance? If so, don’t fret, for if that fetching creation you are wearing is part of the reason I forgive you with all my heart. You really do clean up quite nicely, pet, if I must say so m’self.”

Having successfully taken himself out of the pan and placed himself squarely in the fire, Kit subsided into silence, content to watch the sparks now emanating from his wife’s eyes.

Plopping down on the settee opposite his chair, Jennie spat nastily, “Oh, do be quiet. I know very well you have just come from the stables, dressed as you are. Don’t tell me you don’t have something cutting to say to me about our new grooms, for it won’t fadge, Kit, truly it won’t. Well,” she nudged, “go on—have done with it. Tell me I am the greatest fool since time began—even Bundy would not gainsay you.”

Kit had the audacity to assume a crestfallen expression. “How low your opinion is of me, ma’am. I had nary a thought but to praise you on your finds. What splendid grooms Tiny and Goliath will make. Goliath can tend horsey hoofs all the day long without ever complaining of a sore back, and Tiny—why, the man is invaluable. If one of my blacks comes up lame I’ve simply to set Tiny between the shafts and I’ll have the fastest curricle in all London, possibly all England.”

“Don’t you make fun of them,” Jennie shot at him angrily. “Don’t you dare make fun of them!”

The smile left Kit’s handsome face. “I do not make fun of them, Jennie. It is you who demean them by thinking they are in need of your protection. It is you who sees them as different, not me. Oh, I admit to being momentarily startled by their rather, er, different appearance, but I believe I recovered in time so as to not embarrass either them or myself.” He leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankle. “Actually, pet, it is you who should be apologizing to me for believing I would let some sort of prejudice against people who are a bit different influence my consideration of their talents. If they prove to be good grooms, they shall stay. If not—” his voice hardened fractionally “—no power on earth will induce me to keep them on. Do we understand each other?”

Jennie had the good grace to feel ashamed of herself, and said so—quite prettily—causing Kit’s smile to return. It was then, as she was enjoying this show of friendly compatibility, that she decided to press her luck.

“Tiny and Goliath are not the only servants I have hired. You may not be so generous when you have met them.”

“Again you malign me before the fact.” Kit sighed theatrically. Really, this getting along with wives was not so bad after all. Jennie was proving quite easily maneuverable. She was also, as he had observed earlier, growing to be quite easy on his eyes. Marriage certainly did have its compensations. Hard as it was to believe, he was beginning to truly enjoy her company.

What a pity she was not more worldly or he might be tempted to bed her. Yet, he surprised himself by thinking, he was glad she was not worldly, had little experience of men such as himself. Disturbed by this train of thought, he swiftly turned his mind back to the subject at hand. “Tell me about the rest of our staff, pet. If I am going to live here I guess I should make myself at least tokenly acquainted with them.”

Look at him, Jennie told herself irritably, sitting there looking so smug and self-satisfied—and so wretchedly handsome, she added reluctantly. Oh, he thinks he’s got me right in the palm of his hand. The high and mighty Earl of Bourne, condescending to be nice to his simple, countrified wife. How dare he try to manipulate me this way! Even worse, how dare he succeed so handily!

She would have verbally taken him to task then, but she could tell, by the disgustingly satisfied smile on his face, that she might just as well save her breath to, as Goldie said, cool her porridge. Well, if he intended to be disobliging she saw no reason not to do likewise. “I see no need to give you a recital of our serving staff, seeing as how you are home so seldom and unlikely to run into other than those on duty after midnight.”

So it sits like that, does it, Kit mused, raising one speaking eyebrow as he took in Jennie’s flushed cheeks. The kitten has her back up yet again. “I would perceive the wisdom of your words, kitten,” he told her with a maddening smile, “except for one thing. I have decided to change my ways, knowing myself to be guilty of shamelessly neglecting you. Dear me,” he exclaimed, feigning astonishment as Jennie leaped to her feet and stared down at him openmouthed, “I do believe I have said something to upset you. Is it the thought of our finally acting the part of man and wife that so discommodes you? Or, might I hope, do I misread your agitation? Perhaps, be still my foolish heart, you too wish for this closer association?”

Jennie stomped away from the settee and took up a position nearer the doorway to the foyer. “There are times, my lord, when you can be unbelievably crude,” she said crushingly.

Before Jennie could make good her exit, Kit leaped up from his chair and loped across the room to capture her shoulders in his strong grip. He did not know what imp of mischief had possessed him—surely he had not entered the drawing room with any such thoughts in mind—but suddenly he felt himself overpowered by an undeniable need to feel Jennie’s softly pouting mouth beneath his own.

He told himself he was merely kissing her as a means of shutting her up, but he knew he was lying. The high life he had been living ever since he came to London had included being in the company of many beautiful women—women who neither railed at him nor accused him of every evil under the sun. No, the women he had spent time with were all generous females, giving to a fault—for a price. Yet he had not once sampled their wares, even though his pockets were now well lined enough to set up his own stable of fine fillies. He had flirted, he had teased—but he had not bedded a one of them.

Jennie, her heart fluttering madly, stared up into Kit’s strangely staring face, unable to know what was going on in his mind. If she knew that the thought of a small, blond slip of an unwanted bride had kept her dashing husband celibate she would not have believed it. That was probably why, although he looked about to speak, her husband said nothing. He only continued to stare—taking his own sweet time about it too.

As the tension in the air became nearly thick enough to slice, he acted. Abruptly dragging her soft body up against his lean, hard frame, Kit swooped like a bird of prey and claimed Jennie’s unsuspecting mouth in a nearly ruthless kiss.

The flash of feeling was instant and just as intense as he remembered. Almost at once his lips softened, moving sensuously as they molded themselves to the warm contours of Jennie’s. He felt the heat rising within him as he pressed his body more firmly against her yielding form, and his heart leaped at the very moment he felt the tenseness leave her and her hands begin to inch up to clasp his waist.

As for Jennie, she wasn’t thinking at all. She was leagues past rational thought and had been from the moment she was first rudely captured in Kit’s arms. Try as she might to tell herself it was fear that held her captive, she knew she was only deceiving herself. She wanted Kit to touch her, to kiss her. Perhaps she had subconsciously been hoping for just such a reaction when she had insulted him. This and a lot more she would sit alone in her room and dissect later. Much later. Right now she would give in to the enjoyment of the moment.

But all good things must come to an end, and this interlude was no exception. Why he looked up he did not know; perhaps a noise distracted him—although he found it hard to believe anything could have distracted him, so intense was his concentration on the logistics of transferring their activity from the doorway to the settee—but suddenly his eyes were taking in the sight of a small, mobcapped servant girl surreptitiously crossing the foyer.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, releasing Jennie so abruptly she nearly fell. “That chit’s pregnant!”

Jennie shook her head a time or two, trying hard to bring herself back to reality. “Increasingly,” she corrected at last, striving for a bit of dignity. “Charity—the poor, dear thing—will be presenting us with a little bundle of joy in about a month.”

“In a pig’s eye she will!” the earl countered hotly. “It’s not a home for fallen women I’m running here, damn it all.” All thoughts of shared passion forgotten, Kit rounded on Jennie and ordered coldly, “Get rid of her. Now! Today!”

Her hands planted firmly on her hips, her head and shoulders leaning toward him for emphasis, Jennie responded, “Charity is my choice for tweeny. You said I could have one if I wished. Well, I wish. I shall pay her wages out of my own allowance if necessary, but I promised that child a home, and a home she shall have!”

Kit lifted a hand to his pounding head. “Who’s the father? Do we employ him as well?”

Now Jennie was in her element. “We do not, my lord. The father is a peer of the realm, already married and father to more children than Adam. He seduced poor Charity within a month of her employment in Grosvenor Sq—”

“Spare me his name, infant,” Kit cut in resignedly, “else you may yet tell me it is my duty to call the cad out to avenge the chit.” Reluctantly nodding his head in surrender he sighed, “All right, Jennie. Charity, as they say, begins at home. I guess our home is as good a place as any. But for the sake of our unnamed peer, I suggest you keep Charity abovestairs until after her confinement.”

“You are not going to fight me on this?” Jennie asked incredulously, finding it hard to accept this easy victory.

“I be fond of my own skin, I be,” the earl quipped in imitation of Tiny’s peculiar phrasing, “and I be leery of your setting your great giant after me if I refuse.”

Kit’s magnanimity, as well as the lingering softness she felt for him after their embrace, combined to put a smile back on Jennie’s face. “Should I spare you more surprises and tell you about the rest of the staff?”

The Earl of Bourne, that so beset and beleaguered man, merely shook his head in denial. “In consideration of my sanity, pet, I believe you should refrain from such an inventory and leave me to discover them one at a time. Although I cannot imagine that anything can surprise me anymore.” Turning to quit the room, he added one last thought. “Other females content themselves collecting bric-a-brac, y’know. But I guess that would be too tame a hobby for you, wouldn’t it, kitten?”

He left then, taking her furious blush as his answer, and went in search of his valet and a hot tub, leaving Jennie alone in the drawing room to relieve his kiss and her daring response to it.

“Tonight, my infant,” he whispered under his breath as he climbed the wide stairs. “Tonight we will resume what Charity, that ‘poor, dear thing’ you have taken under your wing, interrupted. It is more than time I began acting the husband.”

THE HEADACHE that had been the excuse Jennie offered in order to get out of dining with her husband that evening became a reality a few hours later. Pacing alone in her bedchamber (having effectively banished Bundy and Goldie with her tearful pleas to be left alone in her misery), Jennie’s abused head rang with her companions’ parting words that echoed over and over in her ears: “You’ll have to face up to your actions sooner or later, missy.”

Jennie tossed her head arrogantly as she tried to dismiss Bundy’s words. “No, I don’t,” she denied aloud. “I can go home to Papa and never set foot in London again.” Her triumphant grin faded abruptly as she realized her title-conscious father would send her back to London so fast her feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

“I can take refuge in a convent,” she announced to the empty room, then made a face as she realized the absurdity of such a move. “Well, what else can I do?” she asked her reflection in the full-length mirror. “I can’t very well disguise myself as a man and ship out on some vessel bound for India. I get seasick on the pond at home.” She leaned her forehead against the cool glass. “Maybe I’ll just hide away in here until I go into a decline and Kit loses interest.” She raised her head slightly to look into her own eyes. “Oh, fudge!” she exclaimed pettishly and turned away from her reflection.

Tossing her dressing gown across a chair, she crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and tried to find peace in a good night’s sleep.

Three hours later, still tossing and turning in her rumpled bed, Jennie heard Kit’s footsteps climb the stairs and halt outside her door. She held her breath for an eternity of time before his footsteps moved on down the hallway to his own door, then tried to ignore the sound of Kit’s voice as Leon helped the earl in his preparations before retiring. It wasn’t until the valet could be heard closing the door behind him on his way out that Jennie felt she could relax at last, and it wasn’t long until sleep overcame her.

“Denny!” a voice called urgently. “Denny, what happened? Hold on! I’m coming!” Jennie sat straight up in bed, eyes wide with fright, her heart pounding in her chest. Someone had called her name. “Denny! Oh no, Denny!” the masculine voice cried yet again, torment in every syllable.

It wasn’t her name that was being called, Jennie realized. It just sounded like it to her sleep-fuzzed mind. Her bare toes hit the floor as she involuntarily responded to the anguish in Kit’s voice—for she could tell it was her husband who was calling out, probably in the throes of a nightmare—and, being Jennie, she had no other thought but to go to him and comfort him, her dressing gown left behind forgotten on the chair.

Swinging open the connecting door between their chambers, the door that had remained firmly closed all the time they had resided in Berkeley Square, she stumbled through the dim light cast by the full moon out that night and made her way to the side of the large bed. Fumbling with the familiar implements, she at last lit the candle next to Kit’s bed, and her husband’s face came into view—a face ravaged with some pain that twisted his features and drove his clenched fists into the mattress on either side of his body.

She reached out her hands and shook his shoulders. “Kit. Kit!” she whispered loudly. “Kit, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.” But Kit was too far away to hear her, his mind locked in some hellish place her voice could not reach. Again, Jennie didn’t think; again, she acted. She crawled into the bed and put her arms around his thrashing body, pressing her cheek next to his, and began to croon softly, as one would to a distraught child.

“Denny!” Kit breathed, seeming to quiet a bit. “I knew I could find you. The cannon—where did they all come from? Ambush, Denny, caught napping.” Kit’s hands reached up and clamped themselves around Jennie’s slim form. “So much blood, Denny. Ah, my side. It hurts like hell. Where’s Denny? He was next to me when the ball hit. Denny?” Kit’s muscles tightened, and Jennie nearly cried out in pain as his grip punished her soft flesh. “Denny!” Kit rasped, the pain in his voice bringing tears to her eyes. “Jesus, Lord, Denny, where are you? For the love of God, where’s the rest of you?”

“Kit!” Jennie called loudly into his ear, giving his cheek a firm slap as she outwardly strained for control, ignoring her own fear at the sight of his wide, sightlessly staring eyes. “Wake up, my poor darling,” she implored on a dry sob. “Please, Kit, wake up!”

She watched anxiously as his eyes blinked once, twice, and then seemed to focus on her face. His hands, crushing her upper arms in their superior strength, relaxed slightly. “It was just a dream, Kit. A nightmare.”

Kit’s chest was heaving as he struggled to regain control over himself. “Dreaming,” he rasped, taking a deep, shuddering breath and letting it out slowly. “Only a dream, only a dream,” he parroted, giving his head a slight shake. He reached down somewhere deep inside himself and summoned up a small smile. “And you came to wake me up and chase the bogeymen away. Thank you, kitten.”

Leon and Renfrew, standing in the hallway in their nightclothes, exchanged glances and turned away, each returning to his own bed, to think his own thoughts. The valet’s hand had been on the doorknob when Renfrew restrained him, shaking his head silently and cocking his head toward the door and mouthing, “Listen.” They heard Jennie’s voice struggling to be heard over Kit’s cries, and both men waited, Leon barely resisting the urge to comfort his friend and master, and Renfrew silently praying that the near strangers on the other side of the heavy wooden door might learn more about each other before this night was over.

Never knowing the two servants had been outside the door, Jennie and Kit, their emotions heightened by the events of the past few minutes were suddenly tinglingly aware that they were alone in the near dark, lying side by side on a bed, their arms wrapped around each other. When Jennie, in her nervousness, squirmed slightly, the movement brought their bodies even closer together, a fact Kit was not backward in realizing.

“Thank you, kitten,” he breathed into her hair. “I must have given you quite a fright.”

“Hrummmph, umm-wumpum.” Jennie’s mouth, pressed firmly against his bare neck, garbled her words, and Kit responded by chuckling deep in his throat. “What was that?” he asked, moving his head away only marginally in order to look into her face.

“I said, ‘You’re welcome,’” Jennie repeated, flushing hotly under his intense gaze. Pushing against his shoulders with her hands she tried to rise, mumbling rather incoherently about returning to her own chamber.

“But what if I should have another nightmare?” Kit questioned, using his own hands to push her back down against him. Then, all traces of humor leaving his voice, he asked her softly, “What was I dreaming about, kitten? I never remember much, although I’m fairly certain it’s the same dream over and over again. Leon wakes me, my throat raw with screaming, my body drenched in sweat, but I can’t remember anything but this—this feeling of terror.”

He looked so lost, so vulnerable. Jennie could no more leave him than she could turn away a starving child. Allowing herself to be gathered against his chest, she whispered, “You called for someone named Denny. At first, when you woke me, I thought you were calling my name.” As soon as she began speaking Kit had grown rigid under her, and she knew he was upset. “Who is…was…Denny? Was he a friend?”

“Lord Denton Lowell. The closest friend, the only friend any one man could ever need or want,” Kit told her in a low voice. “He, er, he died on the Peninsula.”

Jennie remembered Kit’s ramblings about Denny, and a tear formed in the corner of her left eye and splashed onto her husband’s silk-clad chest. “You said something about your side. You were injured in battle, weren’t you?”

The earl’s right hand unconsciously rubbed up and down Jennie’s bare arm as he returned into his memories. “We were caught unawares. We were to leave for home in less than a week and thought we had seen the last of battle. I don’t know where the enemy came from; we had thought we were in a safe place behind the lines. I took a piece of exploding shell in my side, and Denny…and Denny…”

Jennie touched her fingers to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it.”

Kit covered her hand with his own and placed a slow kiss on her palm before laying her hand on his chest. “I have to talk about it. I never have—not to anyone. Maybe if I tell someone, these damned dreams will stop and you and Leon can get some sleep,” he quipped, vainly trying to inject some humor into the tense atmosphere.

“I must have been knocked unconscious for a while,” he pursued doggedly after a short pause when he seemed to retreat inside himself, talking as if he were reciting a lesson by rote. “When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the pain in my side. And then the blood—there was blood all over me. Everywhere men and horses were screaming, and smoke stung my eyes. I looked around for Denny, but I couldn’t find him. I crawled on my hands and knees in the dirt, looking for him, calling for him…”

“Oh, Kit, please stop—”

“No!” he nearly shouted, staring at the ceiling. “I have to say it. I dragged myself over to where Denny’s mount lay, a bloody hole in his belly, and that’s when I saw him. When…when they found me I was still trying to put Denny back together.” He turned toward Jennie, his eyes burning fiercely as he tried to explain. “I tried, kitten, I really tried. But…but the pieces…the pieces didn’t fit.”

Jennie could stand no more. “Stop it! Please, Kit, stop it!” she pleaded, sobbing as she hid her face in his neck while one bunched fist beat ineffectually against his chest. Kit grabbed at her hand and tried to calm her, suddenly cast into the role of comforter, but his words had taken the innocent child named Jennie and rudely catapulted her into the real world, where sometimes the handsome knights did not prevail.

He rose up, pushing Jennie onto her back and catching her flailing arms above her head. “Jennie…kitten…hush, sweetheart. I’m sorry,” he crooned as her hurt whimpers slowly subsided.

Did he know that her tears were for him? For him, and for Denny, and for all the soldiers who were still dying in that awful, awful war? “No, Kit,” she whispered huskily, “don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just that it’s all so awful…so cruel—”

He looked down into her tear-bright eyes and confused, defeated expression, and his heart swelled with fierce, unfamiliar feelings for this caring, compassionate girl who cried for him. “Jennie…kitten…I…oh, God,” he groaned passionately as his mouth came down over hers.

CHAPTER SIX

NOTHING COULD BE this comfortable, this delightfully warm and soft. Jennie couldn’t suppress a small sigh as she snuggled more deeply into the cocoon of creature comfort provided by Kit’s embrace—although her sleep-befogged mind had yet to identify it as such. She was too intent on indulging herself in a few more moments of blissful sensuality, allowing the demands of her pleasure-seeking body to keep her mind uninformed as to its actual source. But nothing, not even such innocent bliss, can last forever, and at long last, Jennie began to surface from her slumber.

Stretching out one small hand, she encountered a smooth expanse of warm flesh that she instantly recognized as Kit’s bare left shoulder. His entire body stiffened and her huge green eyes opened wide as the events of the previous night came rushing into her consciousness willy-nilly. “Oh, Lord!” she whispered almost under her breath. “What have I done?”

Slowly, praying all the while, she tilted her head back until she could see her husband’s face. Her prayers were answered—he was still sound asleep. If her luck only held until she managed to disentangle herself from his slack hold, she could escape to her own chamber, hide her traitorous body beneath her covers, and try to pretend nothing had happened. Please, she silently entreated any kind spirits who might have been listening, just let me get away from here without waking him.

Slowly, and with incredible stealth, she backed her body toward the side of the large bed and angled one foot toward the floor, which was maddeningly far away. Ducking her head, she slipped Kit’s right arm into position across his own chest and allowed her arms to trail behind her as her other foot hit the floor and she slid her body over the edge of the mattress. Another inch or two and she would be completely free of the bed. She held her breath as she slid closer and closer to the floor, releasing it in a long sigh only as her knees made contact with the rug. She’d made it! Now all she had to do was find her nightgown, wherever the dratted thing was, and steal across the room to the adjoining door. She gave a slight shiver—it was rather cold on the floor—and adjusted her plan. She could send Goldie to retrieve the nightgown later, even if it meant she’d have to listen to the maid’s sly jokes. She could not dare remaining in Kit’s chamber much longer, or else Leon might arrive to wake his master only to catch a glimpse of one hastily departing naked countess. Weighing her options in the twinkling of an eye, she chose Goldie as the lesser of two evils.

Jennie swiveled on the balls of her feet and prepared to creep across the wide expanse of carpeting that lay between her and safety, and had in fact begun to take a small step when her head was enveloped in a cloud of sheer white silk. Her nightgown! Where had that come from?

“Good morning, wife,” came a calm male voice. “Going somewhere? Surely you’ll wish your nightgown?”

Jennie looked over her shoulder and upward to see Kit’s leering face looking down at her from the edge of the mattress. That he was actually there looking down at her was bad enough, but to know that she could see him almost as clear as day through the nightgown still covering her head was enough to send her into an immediate attack of hysterics.

“Close your eyes, you lecher!” she yelped in a most unloverlike way. While Kit obligingly hid his eyes (though not his wide smile) behind his hand, Jennie struggled with the cursed nightgown, nearly ripping it as she fought her way through its folds to find the neck and arm openings hidden there.

“All right, you beast, you may open your eyes now,” she said as she laid her hand on the doorknob in anticipation of showing him nothing more than her rapidly departing skirts.

“Hey, kitten, wait a moment!” Kit called after her as she disappeared on the other side of the closed door. “You haven’t even given me my morning kiss. And after last night, too,” he ended on an exaggerated sigh of longing.

Jennie’s head reappeared through the partially opened door just long enough for her to say a highly colorful, definitely improper word and disappear again, leaving Kit to howl in delight at her display of temper.

Once safe in her own room and under the covers just as she had planned, Jennie bit down hard on the soft cushion of her thumb as she struggled with the memories that now crowded into her mind. Had she really allowed him to…encouraged him to…aided him in his desire to—oh, Lord above, she had! How could she ever hold her head up in his presence after her shameless behavior?

But it had seemed so right, felt so right at the time. She had been listening to his nightmare, comforting him. When had everything changed? How had she reverted from the comforter to the comforted, and when did the comforting turn into something deeper, something infinitely stronger than the mere wish to give each other ease? Somehow, without her knowledge, compassion had become passion, and that passion had led to…

Well, her common sense intruded, never mind now just where it had led. She poked her head out from under the covers to check the time on the mantel clock, planning to calculate how soon Goldie would be barging in with her morning chocolate, and came nose to nose with a smirking Lord Bourne.

“Up for air, are you?” he questioned cheekily before vaulting casually onto the mattress to lie at his ease on his side, one hand propping up his head as he gazed up at Jennie just as if he weren’t the most obnoxious, insufferable beast in creation. “You dashed off before I could claim a kiss from my dear bride. Tsk, tsk, how naughty you are, puss,” he said with a sad shake of his dark head. Reaching up, he snaked a hand around the back of her head, pulling her down to within an inch of his smiling mouth. “Pucker up now, sweetings, and give your husband his due.”

“I’ll give you a punch in the chops,” Jennie retorted, wrenching her head from his grasp.

Kit allowed his head to plop down onto the pillow. “Oh, woe is me,” he mourned in mock dejection, “the chit spurns me. And after all we were to each other. I believe I am cut to the quick.”

How dare he! Jennie thought, incensed. He has taken what had been a beautiful—although, perhaps, in the clear light of hindsight, unfortunate—interlude and turned it into an object of fun. Does he spare my blushes, even a little? He does not. Has he so much as the slightest consideration of my finer feelings? He has not. Does he show the least bit of shame for having taken such elaborate liberties with my person? Far from it. So what does he do? He crashes in here and tries to make a May game out of me, that’s what he does! Her fury getting the better of her, Jennie grabbed hold of her pillow and swung it square at Kit’s head.

“Hey, what’s all that about?” the laughing earl protested, grabbing the fluffy pillow and throwing it to the floor, where his prone body, having been the recipient of Jennie’s none too gentle shove, soon joined it.

“Get out of my chamber!” she ordered, hanging over the edge of the bed, the better to shout at him—a tactical mistake that soon had her body joining his on the rug. “At the risk of understatement, Lord Bourne,” she intoned crushingly, once she had caught the breath her ignominious fall had knocked out of her, “I loathe you!”

It had taken him a while—quite a good while, actually—but at last Kit realized that Jennie wasn’t just putting up a token show of anger. She really meant it—she hated the sight of him. How strange, thought the intelligent, but still rather young Earl of Bourne—so perhaps his confusion was excusable. How very strange. My recollections of last night are far from unpleasant. Surely she couldn’t be finding fault with my performance. After all, I know she has no way of comparing me to another, and even in the heat of the moment I can tell the difference between a cry of distress and a cry of passion. And that was passion last night, sure as check, he assured himself in self-defense.

Perhaps if Kit had been older, had a few more years of exposure to the gentler sex under his belt, he would have realized that Jennie was too shy, too inexperienced, to find any pleasure in verbally rehashing the events of the previous evening. An older man might have handled the “morning after” with a good deal more finesse than had Kit. But Kit was not older or more experienced. And he had bungled his role of loving husband—bungled it badly—and now he would have to pay the piper.

Or would he? As he fought to control Jennie’s flailing limbs without injuring her, Kit slowly began to get angry. What was the chit carrying on about, anyway? he reasoned with typical male logic. It wasn’t as if he had entered her chamber in the middle of the night dressed in next to nothing and hopped into her bed was it? No! And was it he who had cradled her in his arms and shed sweet tears for her? Again, no! And if he reacted in the same way any red-blooded male animal would react when put into the same circumstances, he’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of his life wearing sackcloth and ashes like some dreadful sinner. If there was blame to be placed in this whole business, then let it rest on the head that deserved it—Jennie’s!

“Here now!” he exclaimed, grabbing Jennie by the shoulders and pressing her back against the carpet. “Fun’s fun and all that, kitten, but me thinks thou dost protest too much. After all, it was you who seduced me, y’know.”

“Me! Seduce you!” Jennie screeched in disbelief, her body shocked into rigidity. “Well, if that isn’t above all things stupid. You ruin me, and then you have the gall—the absolute gall—to blame me for my own ruination?”

“Ruination, is it?” Kit retorted acidly. “That’s a bit strong, don’t you think, Jennie? After all, we are married. Besides,” he ended, softening a little as his ego surfaced, “it wasn’t all that bad, was it?”

“Oh!” Jennie exploded, rising to her feet to brush her tangled gold locks out of her eyes. “The conceit of the man!” Dramatically pointing toward the door, she pronounced regally, “Get out, my lord, or I shall tell you just how bad things could really become if I put my mind to it, sirrah!”

Kit took in Jennie’s thunderous expression, mentally complimenting the accuracy of his memory when it was applied to his recollections of the sweet curves hardly concealed by her thin nightgown, and slowly got to his feet. “All right, puss, I’ll leave. But try as you might, my dear, last night did happen, and it happened because you came into my chamber, not through any fault of my own.”

“I only entered your chamber because of your nightmare,” Jennie protested weakly, hating to see any logic in Kit’s statement.

“Perhaps. And, if I have not mentioned it before, I do now thank you, kitten,” he said, sobering for a moment. “But you stayed to comfort me after I awoke, didn’t you?” he pointed out, driving his point home with a vengeance. “How dare you stand there and tell me I’m a cad just because I took what was offered me!”

“Well,” Jennie returned, determined to brazen it out, “how dare you be angry with me for having the audacity to be angry with you!”

That piece of feminine reasoning was beyond Kit, and he belatedly saw the wisdom in returning to his own chamber before things became so muddled that Jennie ran home to her father in a pet. He had enough on his plate without that! Left alone, Jennie might eventually see their unplanned lovemaking in a more charitable light, and him along with it. Not that he would pine away to nothingness if she never shared his bed again, but damn it all anyway, he had rather enjoyed her company, even if she hadn’t been the bride of his choice.

Left alone once more, Jennie launched her body onto the bed and indulged herself in a cleansing bout of tears which settled absolutely nothing, but at least kept Goldie and Bundy from asking too many questions.

HIS MASTER WAS in a fine temper this morning, Leon mused placidly as he deftly caught the spoiled cravat that went winging past his shoulder and handed his lordship a fresh one. That it had something to do with the young countess Leon was certain, but since Renfrew, that old stickler for propriety, had pulled him away from the door last night, Leon was left to ponder whether or not the rumpled state of the bed had anything to do with it. It was unusual for his old major to keep anything from him, Leon having served as his batman in Spain, but the servant instinctively knew that he was not soon to become privy to this latest secret.

His toilette having suffered sadly for his haste, Kit left his valet to straighten the mess his dressing room had become and slammed out of his chamber, intent on quitting the mansion without breakfast and heading for the nearest club that saw nothing wrong with a purely liquid breakfast. Grabbing the stair rail, Kit swung himself onto the stairs and pelted toward the foyer, only to be stopped in his tracks by a reedy cockney voice exclaiming: “Coo, Del, wouldya clap yer glims on the fine gentry mort! Puss like a thundercloud ‘e’s got. ‘ang me fer a bachelor’s sprig iffen it ain’t the arl ’imself.”

The object of this speech inclined his head and took in the sight of three banty-legged creatures dressed in Wilde livery standing at some semblance of attention near the wide front door. He knew what they were supposed to be, they were supposed to be footmen, but they looked for all the world to be escapees from Newgate—low toby men who made their living by picking pockets and breaking into people’s houses. Another example of my wife’s discerning judgment of character, he decided angrily. But these three cutpurses make Goliath and Tiny look like the cream of the crop! Forcing his feet to carry him closer, he stopped on the bottom step and introduced himself.

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