Praise

‘Known for her sexy, smart, and often scandalous romances, Campbell doesn’t disappoint … Her intelligent characters and their sensual cat-and-mouse games add to the mystery and poignant emotions …’

– RT Book Reviews

‘An entrancing, evocative romance.’

– JoyfullyReviewed.com

‘Campbell immediately hooks readers, then deftly reels them in with a spellbinding love story fuelled by an addictive mixture of sharp wit, lush sensuality, and a wealth of well-delineated characters.’

– Booklist

‘No one does lovely, dark romance or lovely, dark heroes like Anna Campbell. I love her books,’

– Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author

‘With its superbly nuanced characters, impeccably crafted historical setting, and graceful writing shot through with scintillating wit, Campbell’s latest lusciously sensual, flawlessly written historical Regency … will have romance readers sighing happily with satisfaction.’

– Booklist on What a Duke Dares

ANNA CAMPBELL was the sort of kid who spent her childhood with her nose buried between the pages of a book. She decided when she was a child that she wanted to be a writer. When she’s not writing passionate, intense stories featuring gorgeous Regency heroes and the women who are their destiny, Anna loves to travel, especially in the United Kingdom, and listen to all kinds of music. She has settled near the sea on the east coast of Australia, where she’s losing her battle with an overgrown subtropical garden.

Anna loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website at www.annacampbell.info.

A Scoundrel by Moonlight
Anna Campbell

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Mearsall, Kent

May 1828

“Avenge me.”

The raspy whisper stirred Nell Trim from her grief-stricken haze. She straightened in the hard wooden chair beside the narrow bed. Around her, tallow candles guttered. Outside the cottage’s mullioned windows, the night was dark and quiet.

She rose to smooth her half sister’s covers. “Shall I fetch Father?”

“No.” Dorothy grabbed Nell’s hand. The late spring air was warm and Dorothy’s fever had raged for two days, but the fingers that closed around Nell’s were icy with encroaching death. “Listen … to me.”

Nell stared helplessly into the girl’s ashen face. Once Dorothy had been the village belle. Now her skin was gray and dry, and her large blue eyes sank deep into their sockets. She was eighteen years old and looked three times that. “Dr. Parsons said to rest.”

Dorothy’s cracked lips turned down. “There’s no time.”

Nell’s heart cramped with futile denial. “Darling …”

Her half sister’s hold tightened, stifling the comforting lie. “We both know it’s true.”

Yes, they did. Dr. Parsons had relinquished all hope after Dorothy had lost her baby. Nell still shuddered to remember the sea of blood gushing from her half sister’s slight body.

Since then, Dorothy had lingered through agony. Looking into her drawn face, Nell knew that lovely, vivacious, heedless Dorothy Simpson wouldn’t last the night. “I’ll get you some water.”

Irritation shadowed her half sister’s face. “I don’t want water. I want your promise to take up my cause.”

Nell frowned. “But you don’t know who assaulted you.”

For months, Dorothy had hidden her pregnancy, until even her unworldly schoolmaster father had noticed. In tearful shame, she’d confessed that a stranger had attacked her.

Dorothy’s bitter smile was out of keeping with the frivolous girl Nell knew. But of course, frivolity had brought disaster, hadn’t it?

“It wasn’t exactly … assault.”

Horrified, Nell snatched her hand free. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

Ever since hearing that Dorothy’s pregnancy resulted from violence, Nell had been angry. This hint that the story wasn’t exactly as presented—hardly surprising, Dorothy was often unreliable with the truth—left her bewildered. “You went … willingly?”

Dorothy’s expression conveyed a strange mixture of shame and pride. “I loved him.”

“Was it one of the village boys?” Nell felt queasy. Had someone they knew taken advantage of Dorothy? It seemed the most obvious answer, yet Dorothy had always scorned Mearsall’s lads as yokels.

A grunt that might have been a dismissive laugh. “Don’t be silly.”

“Then who?”

Dorothy’s gaze fixed on some distant horizon. Unbelievably Nell heard a trace of her sister’s old conceit. “A great gentleman. A man who could give me everything I wanted.”

“Everything except a wedding ring,” Nell said sharply, unable to reconcile Dorothy’s boasting with this pain and disgrace.

Tears filled Dorothy’s eyes. “I knew you and Papa would scold. That’s why I said I’d been forced.”

Despairingly, Nell stared at this wayward girl she loved so much. Dorothy was seven years younger, more child than sister. When Nell was five, her soldier father had died fighting the French. Widowed Frances Trim had then married the considerably older William Simpson, as much to provide security for her daughter Nell as for companionship. Since Frances’s death ten years ago, Nell had cared for her half sister like a mother.

“Oh, Dorothy,” Nell said, a world of regret in the words. She could hardly bear her guilt at failing to keep a closer eye on her sister.

Convulsively Dorothy clutched Nell’s hand. “Don’t be cross.”

“I’m cross with the man who did this to you.” That was an understatement. She’d like to see the wretch hanged.

Before this unknown blackguard had got his filthy paws on her, Dorothy had been an innocent, although easily flattered. A man wouldn’t need much town polish to convince Dorothy, who’d never been past Canterbury, of his credentials as a lord.

“Good,” Dorothy said with venom, her face as white as the pillowcases.

For a terrifyingly long time, Dorothy lay still. Nell’s heart slammed to a stop, only to resume beating when Dorothy drew a rattling breath. She was alive. Just.

“I want you to …” A coughing fit interrupted. Every word sounded like her last.

“Don’t talk,” Nell said, although she was frantic to know who had wronged this beautiful, vibrant girl.

Dorothy’s words emerged in a breathless tumble. “Find him and expose him to the world as a villain.”

“But who—” Nell began.

“Promise me.” Dorothy struggled up on her elbows, the effort draining what little strength remained. “He said he’d marry me. He said he’d take me to his house and set me up like a queen.”

She started to cough again. Nell released her and poured some water, but drinking only made Dorothy choke. “Rest now.”

Petulantly Dorothy struck away the glass, spilling water on the sheets. “When I told him about the baby, he laughed. Laughed and called me a brainless slut.”

Nell winced at the language, even as her anger focused on this devil. “I’m so sorry.”

“He has … a book.” Dorothy closed her eyes, gathering herself. This time, Nell didn’t interrupt. For the peace of her soul, Dorothy needed to speak. “A diary of his seductions. Girl after girl. All set out neatly as stories in a newspaper.”

“Oh, my dear …” This spiteful betrayal horrified Nell. “Why on earth would he show you that? That’s needlessly cruel.”

“He was proud of it. Proud of all the women he’d ruined.” Her voice thickened with tears. “If you find that book, you can destroy him.”

“But how?”

Dorothy became agitated. “Just don’t tell Papa. Please.”

“I won’t, darling.” Grief split Nell’s heart at this fleeting glimpse of the sweet child she’d once been. “But where can I find this book?”

Dorothy breathed in shallow gasps. “Go to his house.”

“His house?” Was Dorothy delirious? “Where is his house?”

“You’ll find it.” Dorothy drew a shuddering breath. “You’re clever, too clever to believe a man’s lies.” Lower still. “If only I’d been as clever.”

Acid tears stung Nell’s eyes. Over recent years, Nell’s cleverness had inspired Dorothy’s resentment rather than admiration. If Nell or William mentioned propriety or prudence, Dorothy had flounced away, convinced that her family was hopelessly hidebound. “Who did this to you?”

Dorothy opened glazed eyes and her grip tightened to bruising. “Swear you’ll find that diary and expose this monster for what he is.”

Her half sister’s desperation sliced at Nell. “Of course I swear. Tell me the man’s name.”

Hatred sharpened Dorothy’s face. “The Marquess of Leath.”

Before Nell could respond to this astonishing claim, Dorothy began to shake and gasp. Nell surged forward to enfold her sister in her arms, but it was too late.

Pretty, reckless Dorothy Simpson had breathed her last.

Chapter 1

Alloway Chase, Yorkshire Late September 1828

Finally he was home.

James Fairbrother, Marquess of Leath, sighed with relief and whipped off his heavy topcoat as the footman fought to close the massive oak door against the blustery night. This year, winter came early to the moors. Most years, if Leath was honest. When he’d left London, lovely, golden autumn had held sway. The further north he’d ventured, the less lovely and golden the weather became, until he’d arrived at his family seat in a freezing gale.

“Go to bed, George. I can manage from here.” At three in the morning, he wasn’t selfish enough to keep the man at his beck and call. Knowing that he’d beat any message he sent to Alloway Chase, he’d left London in a rush. He’d considered putting up at an inn before the final desolate run across the heath, but the moon was full and the night was clear, if brutal, and his horse had been fresh.

“Thank you, my lord.” The young man in crimson livery took the coat and bowed. “I’ll light the fires in your apartments.”

“Thank you.”

As George left, Leath collected his leather satchel of documents, lifted the chamber stick from the Elizabethan chest against the great hall’s stone wall, and trudged down the long corridor toward his library. Against the looming darkness, the candle’s light seemed frail, but Leath had grown up in this rambling house. The ghosts, reportedly legion, were friendly.

Physically he was exhausted, but his mind leaped about like a cat with fleas. The roiling mixture of emotions that had sent him hurtling up to Yorkshire still warred within. Anger. Disappointment. Self-castigation. Confusion. A barely admitted fear. He wasn’t ready to seek his bed, although the good God knew where he did want to go, except perhaps to blazes.

Usually when he reached Alloway Chase, the weight of the world slid from his shoulders. Not tonight. Nor any time in the near future, he grimly suspected. There was a difference between visiting the country at one’s own prompting and having one’s political advisers demand a rustication for the nation’s good.

Outside his library, he paused, puzzled.

A line of faint light shone beneath the door. At this hour, the household should be asleep. Stupid with tiredness, he wondered if at the grand old age of thirty-two, he’d finally encountered one of the ghosts. The most active specter was Lady Mary Fairbrother, murdered during the Civil War after her husband caught her in bed with a Royalist.

As the door slowly opened before him, the unreal sensation built.

Flickering gold filled the widening gap. Leath found himself staring into wide dark eyes.

The apparition gave a breathy gasp of surprise. A stray draft extinguished both candles, and then he heard a dull thud as the girl lost her grip on the light.

Instinct made him drop the satchel and reach for her. It was as dark as a thief’s pocket, and something told him that she’d use the cover to flee. His hand closed around a slender waist. This was no visitor from the spirit realm. The body he held was undoubtedly human. Warm. Lissome. Taut with outrage or fright. Perhaps both.

“Are you a burglar?” she asked in a low voice, wriggling to escape.

“Isn’t that what I should say?” he asked drily.

“I don’t understand,” she hissed back.

She sounded young. Before the candles went out, he’d merely glimpsed her features. He wondered, although it could have no importance, whether she was pretty. “Damn it, stop squirming.”

Uselessly she pushed him. “Then let me go.”

“No.” He caught her more securely and back-stepped her into the library.

The thick darkness was confoundedly suggestive. He was overwhelmingly conscious of the curve of her waist and the brush of her breasts against his chest. The soft, urgent rasp of her breathing indicated fear, but sounded disconcertingly like sexual excitement. Hell, he could even smell her. Her intentions might be murky, but she smelled of freshly cut meadows and soap. If she was a burglar, she was a dashed clean one.

As he kicked the door shut behind him, she released a soft yelp and made a more vigorous attempt to break free. “I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead.” He dropped his candle to the carpet and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock. When he rode up to the house, he’d been mutton-headed with weariness. This riddle of a female in his library stirred him to full alertness.

“You’ve locked us in,” she said accusingly. “Who are you?”

A snort of laughter escaped him. She was a direct wench. This encounter became more bizarre by the second. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep in the saddle and he was dreaming. If not for the living woman under his hand, he might almost believe it. “More to the point, who are you? And what are you doing in my library after midnight?”

A bristling silence descended. “Your library?”

“Yes.” Unerringly he approached the high windows and flung back the curtains. Moonlight flooded the room. He turned to inspect the woman, but she lurked in the shadows by the door and he discerned little, apart from her slenderness and unnaturally upright posture. Her hands twined nervously at her waist.

She piqued his curiosity. A welcome change from the bitter dissatisfaction that had dogged him this last year. Using the tinderbox, he lit the branch of candles on the table under the window.

Briefly Leath caught his reflection in the glass, outlined in gold light. Large, looming. If he’d made the girl nervous in the dark, she’d be terrified now that she saw him. He didn’t look like a welcoming, easy sort of man. Recent trials had added sternness to a face not blessed with charm at the best of times.

Slowly, he turned. And his heart slammed to stillness.

His mysterious lady was a beauty.

Ignoring the way her lips tightened with resentment, he raised the candles to inspect her. A plain gray dress with white linen collar. Silvery blond hair drawn severely away from her face. No trace of curl or ribbon to soften the austerity. Her face was austere too, as perfectly carved as an angel on a cathedral doorway. High forehead; long slender nose; slanted cheekbones; pointed chin. Assertive brows darker than her hair above widely spaced eyes that regarded him with impressive steadiness. Few men could withstand the Marquess of Leath’s intense stare, yet this girl didn’t even blink.

Her mouth provided the only hint in that pure, calm face that she was more than a beautiful marble statue. Her mouth was … marvelous.

Full. Lush. Sweetly pink.

He was so big that most women seemed tiny in comparison, but the repressed energy radiating from her made her appear taller than average. His eyes lingered on the delightfully rounded bosom beneath her demure bodice.

Her gaze turned frosty and despite the uncertain light, he saw a flush on those high cheekbones. Good God, whoever she was, she had spirit. He reduced most young ladies to blushing silence. This girl—and she was little more, mid-twenties at the most—might blush, but she was far from intimidated.

When she bloody well should be.

The childishness of that last reflection had his lips twitching. He’d feared months of boredom ahead, but his return started in a most intriguing fashion. If he’d known this odd, fascinating creature waited in Yorkshire, he might have visited more often, instead of burying his head in parliamentary business in London.

“Just what are you up to?” he asked softly, placing the candles on a table and stepping closer.

Ah, she wasn’t totally foolhardy. She retreated toward the door, eyes widening. He wished he could see their precise color. The light simply wasn’t good enough. “You’re trying to frighten me.”

“Perhaps I’m seeking a little respect,” he said smoothly.

She curtsied, but he could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. “Your lordship.”

He folded his arms and surveyed her under lowered brows. “So you know I’m Leath.”

“You said it’s your library. And her ladyship has a portrait in her room. I recognized you when you lit the candles.”

The world toadied to his wealth and influence, but the spark in this girl’s eyes looked like hostility. A challenge sizzled between them. Or perhaps the beginnings of attraction.

“At last a straight answer,” he said wryly. “Now can you bring yourself to tell me who you are?”

“Will you let me go if I do?”

Her audacity stole his breath. Nobody defied him or denied him or bargained with him. Most people tripped over themselves to do his bidding before he’d even worked out what his bidding was. “We’ll see.”

Her eyes narrowed, confirming his impression that she didn’t like him. He wondered why. “You have a reputation for keeping your hands off the housemaids, my lord.”

“What in Hades?” Her meaning smashed through his burgeoning interest. “Are you saying that you’re a … housemaid?”

A fleeting smile tilted her lips. His wayward heart jolted at the promise of other, more generous smiles. “Yes.”

“You don’t look like a blasted housemaid.” Nor did she speak like any housemaid he’d ever known. She sounded like a lady.

“You … you caught me at a disadvantage.”

“I’ll say I did.”

He waited for some retort, but her expression turned blank. For the first time, to his disappointment, she looked like a servant. Although this sudden docility meant that he might discover why she was in his library. Housemaids started work early and generally didn’t have the energy to run around after bedtime. “What’s your name?”

She dipped into another curtsy. He could have told her she overdid the meekness, but he held his peace.

“Trim, my lord.”

Trim? He couldn’t argue with that. “Trim what?”

He thought she might smile again, but she’d leashed her rebellious spirit as tightly as she tied back her hair. He wasn’t a man who experienced profound and sudden sexual urges. But he’d give this girl every sparkling diamond in the family vault if she’d take down her hair. If she let him touch it, he’d throw in the damned house as well.

“Nell Trim, sir.”

“Helen or Eleanor?”

“Eleanor.” Her voice retained its curiously flat quality and she stared somewhere over his shoulder.

Eleanor. An elegant name for an elegant woman. An elegant woman who was his housemaid.

“Very good.” Except Eleanor wasn’t a suitable name for a junior servant. Eleanor was a queen’s name. It brought dangerous, powerful women to mind. “What are you doing in my library, Trim?”

By rights, he should call a housemaid Nell, but with her slender neatness, Trim suited her so well.

“If I tell you, you’ll dismiss me.”

He kept his expression neutral. “I’ll dismiss you if you don’t.”

She leveled that direct stare upon him. “I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted something to read. I always return the books, my lord; you have my word.”

A housemaid who rifled his bookcases and offered her word? She became more extraordinary by the minute. “You can read?”

“Yes, sir.” In a show of deference that didn’t convince, she lowered her eyelids. Years in the political bear pit had taught him to read people. He was sure of two things about the trim Miss Eleanor Trim. One was that deference didn’t come naturally. The other was that somewhere in this odd conversation, she lied.

“So what did you choose?” She hadn’t carried a book when she’d run into him at the door.

“Nothing appealed. May I go, my lord? I’m on duty early.”

“Do I need to search you to see if you’ve stolen anything?” She could be a master criminal bamboozling him into complacency. Except he didn’t feel complacent. He felt alive and interested as nothing had interested him in months.

Temper lit her eyes. She didn’t like him questioning her honesty. “I’m not a thief.”

Ah, the false docility cracked. He hid his satisfaction. “How can I be sure?”

“You could check the room for anything missing, my lord.”

“I might do that.” Abruptly his sour mood descended once more. What the hell was he doing flirting with a housemaid in the middle of the night? Perhaps his political advisers were right about him needing a break.

He bent to pick up the candle the girl had dropped when he’d barged in on top of her. He lit it from the branch and passed it across, then unlocked the door. “You may go, Trim.”

She raised the candle and surveyed him as if uncertain whether this dismissal was good news or not. Her curtsy this time conveyed no ironic edge, then she backed toward the door. “Thank you, my lord.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not going to pounce on you,” he said on a spurt of irritation. It niggled that for a different man living in a different world, the thought of pouncing on the delectable Miss Trim was sinfully appealing.

Her eyes flashed up and he saw that beneath her drab exterior, she was fierce and strong. He awaited some astringent comeback. Instead she dragged the door open and fled.

Wise girl.

Chapter 2

Blast, blast, blast.

Exhausted, angry, disgusted with herself, Nell collapsed onto the narrow bed in the small room that had become hers a fortnight ago. She buried her head in her hands.

Why, oh, why did the depraved marquess have to catch her searching his library? And when he did, why on earth hadn’t she behaved like a proper servant? Until now, she’d managed to hide any rebellious impulses under a subservient mask. If she’d been humble and silent, he’d have sent her away, instead of finding her of surpassing interest.

But she’d just been so furious to see him alive and well, when her beloved half sister had died in such shame and misery. Caught by surprise, she’d forgotten to play the circumspect domestic.

And now she’d attracted his attention.

She didn’t want to arouse James Fairbrother’s curiosity. She wanted to find the diary that proved his offenses, then leave Alloway Chase and pass the matter of Leath’s destruction over to the Duke of Sedgemoor, his sworn enemy. A woman of her humble background would get nowhere, taking on such a powerful man. But the duke could use the book to blackmail Leath into behaving himself, or publish the details and expose the marquess to trial by public opinion.

Nell hoped he chose the second course. Lord Leath deserved general condemnation.

In her bedroom at Mearsall, the plan had appeared straightforward, once she’d come to terms with the exalted status of Dorothy’s lover. A check of her stepfather’s old newspapers had confirmed his lordship’s presence at a house party in Kent, around the time Dorothy fell pregnant. Leath had been near enough to seduce Dorothy. Given her deathbed confession, that was enough evidence to convince Nell to pursue the marquess’s downfall.

As Dorothy had promised, discovering the location of the marquess’s family seat had been easy. It had also been surprisingly easy finding employment as a housemaid.

She’d set herself a daunting task, but she’d made a promise to someone she loved—and she was angry. The idea of this devil ruining more innocent girls like Dorothy made her want to scream with rage. She’d left Mearsall to seek the diary and other evidence of Lord Leath’s sins. If she failed in Yorkshire, she’d find work in his house in London and continue her quest there. However long it took, she’d make him pay for his crimes.

But now that she’d met the marquess, nothing seemed so clear-cut. After that oddly charged encounter downstairs, her heart still galloped like a wild horse—and her mind whirled with bewilderment.

Dear heaven, when his wicked lordship had locked the door, she’d nearly collapsed with horror. She was alone in the middle of the night with a lecherous monster. She’d never imagined that her quest might involve physical risk.

Cursing her naivety, she’d prepared to fight off the hulking brute.

Then the marquess had confounded every fear. Apart from catching her to stop her escape, he hadn’t touched her.

Which was … puzzling. And troubling.

She’d sensed his interest. At twenty-five, she wasn’t a green girl, and she knew what it meant when a male leveled that prickling, intense concentration on a woman. Yet he’d kept his distance and remained remarkably polite, given her barely concealed insolence.

In her mind, Lord Leath had always been a caricature of a villain. But tonight, once she’d realized that he wouldn’t leap on her—and she’d realized quickly despite that unwelcome awareness—he’d proven much more real. And much more alarming.

Immediately she’d noted his cleverness, his calmness, his confidence. All worked against her. The man in the portrait in his mother’s apartments was big and powerful, with a personality that threatened to burst from the frame.

In the flesh, he’d been … more.

He wasn’t a pretty man, by any means. But there was beauty in that tall, strong body and that craggy, individual face with its beak of a nose and heavy black brows. No wonder Dorothy had been smitten.

Still, Nell had expected more overt charm, a Lothario from a play, all smooth words and false compliments. She couldn’t picture this man filling a girl’s head with nonsense until she spread her legs.

These riddles gave her a headache. And she faced a day’s work and, if she could evade the marquess, a night’s searching.

Hope staged an uncertain return. Perhaps Leath’s unexpected arrival was more blessing than curse. Perhaps Nell hadn’t yet found the diary because this dedicated seducer kept his record of ruin with him.

If so, the diary was now at Alloway Chase.

“Darling, I didn’t know you’d come home.” From the chaise longue, Leath’s mother extended her hands toward him.

He hated to see his mother’s health deteriorate to a point where she spent most days in her apartments. At least his rustication meant that he could devote more time to her. Guiltily he realized that he hadn’t been home since his sister Sophie’s hurried wedding last May. Parliamentary business had been pressing, as had his need to rise above the scandals engulfing his family.

“I got in late last night.” He took his mother’s hands and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You look well.”

It wasn’t true, but it was less of a lie than last time they’d met. The gray morning light through the large windows was stark on her thin body. But her cheeks held a hint of color and her eyes were brighter than he’d seen them in years.

“I’m feeling better.” She indicated a chair, inviting him to stay. “How long are you here?”

“Until people can say the Fairbrother name without a sneer,” he said flatly. He supposed that he’d learn to accept his exile, although at least with his mother he needn’t hide his bitterness.

She frowned. “I’d hoped the brouhaha about your uncle might blow over by now. After all, it’s a year since he shot himself to escape a hanging.”

A year in which everyone had eyed Leath as if afraid he might resort to violence and larceny the way his odious Uncle Neville had. A year in which Leath’s every political plan had fallen foul of some opponent mentioning the Fairbrothers’ infamous criminal tendencies. A family flaw only widely recognized since his uncle’s exposure as a thief and murderer. Thanks to Camden Rothermere, the damned meddling Duke of Sedgemoor, the whole world knew about Neville Fairbrother’s crimes.

For months, Leath had been furious at Sedgemoor and his cronies. Only gradually had he admitted that ultimate blame for the family’s straits lay with Lord Neville.

That was little satisfaction when another snide comment in the House of Lords topped one of Leath’s speeches with jeering laughter. For years, the Marquess of Leath had been the most powerful personality in parliament, his progress to the premiership taken for granted. The gossip now dogging him gratified his enemies—and a disappointing number of people he’d counted as friends. He was cynical enough to recognize that the world loved to witness an ambitious man’s fall. But recognition made it no more pleasant to be that man.

“You forget Sophie,” he said grimly, rising and prowling toward the window, too restless to sit when reviewing his recent disasters.

His sister had set tongues wagging afresh when she’d eloped with a penniless younger son who happened to be Sedgemoor’s brother-in-law. Sophie’s timing had been calamitous for Leath’s political hopes. The whole world now considered Fairbrother a synonym for flibbertigibbet. Or scoundrel.

Neither adjective befitted a future prime minister.

His mother looked troubled. “She’s safely married now, and you and Sedgemoor united to approve the match.”

Much against Leath’s inclination, he’d offered the runaways what countenance he could. He and Sedgemoor had even patched up their feud, at least in public. They were never likely to be friends, but Leath no longer itched to punch His Grace’s supercilious nose.

Whatever measures both families had taken, they couldn’t contain the scandal. Especially as it followed so closely on the heels of his uncle’s disgrace. Even worse, Sophie had jilted Lord Desborough, one of England’s most powerful men, and as a result his lordship had shifted from Leath’s greatest ally to his implacable foe. “My political career still hangs in the balance, Mamma.”

He turned to see her raising a frail hand to her lips. “James, I’m sorry.”

Damn it. His chagrin got the better of him. Upsetting his mother was the last thing he wanted. He wasn’t himself this morning. And he knew who to blame. A housemaid! He had bats in his belfry.

“At the moment, the party powerbrokers consider me more hindrance than asset. I’m to retire to my estates, keep my head down and my nose clean, and reappear once the world has had time to forget the gossip.”

“That’s unfair. None of this is your fault. Your uncle was an out-and-out rogue. Your father banned him from the house after he got that poor girl into trouble.”

Leath had been a boy when his uncle had raped a maid. “Perhaps Uncle Neville’s crimes aren’t my responsibility, but Sophie was,” he said heavily.

“At least she’s happy.”

Her voice indicated that Sophie’s happiness hardly counted, compared to the damage she’d done to her brother’s career. His mother had married the late marquess, expecting to be a political hostess and eventually wife to the prime minister. After a carriage accident crippled his father in his forties, her hopes had focused on her then twenty-year-old son. For the final eight years of his father’s life and the four since, Leath had devoted himself to fulfilling his parents’ political dreams. He’d loved his father dearly. The possibility of failure now when the prize hovered so close made him grind his teeth in frustration.

“Your exile isn’t all bad.” His mother had clearly decided to take the news stoically.

“Isn’t it?” he said gloomily, wandering to the dressing table and picking up a delicate Meissen shepherdess. The simpering expression mocked his pretensions to taking on his brilliant father’s mantle.

“I’ll see more of you.”

He sighed and replaced the figurine. “Yes, and my tenants will be pleased I’m home.”

“There’s no substitute for the lord of the manor.”

“Perhaps not,” Leath said shortly. “But I can’t angle for influence in London and be here at the same time.”

“No,” Lady Leath said without offense. “But a period of reflection won’t go astray. It’s time you thought about a bride.”

Startled, he bumped the crowded dressing table, setting the china figures and glass bottles rattling. “What?”

His mother regarded him patiently. “Don’t pretend it’s an outlandish suggestion, James. You need an heir. Right now, you need more than an heir; you need allies. If this mess hasn’t taught you that a man can’t stand alone in politics, nothing will.”

“With the stink surrounding the family name, who would have me?”

“Don’t be a fool. You’re the Marquess of Leath. Anyone with a scrap of acumen knows that you’ll return stronger than ever.”

“So nice that my private requirements count in this decision,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

His mother didn’t smile. “You’re not an amorous shepherd in a poem, James, free to bestow his heart and hand where he likes. Fairbrothers marry for advantage, not because they fancy a pretty pair of blue eyes.”

“You loved my father.”

Her face softened. “I did. But even if I didn’t, I’d have married him.”

Leath struggled to contain his surprise. And disappointment. He’d always thought his parents had married because they were soul mates. Yet it seemed that they’d married for the same cold-blooded reasons as most other aristocrats.

“My wife and I will enjoy a mutual regard.” He must marry to continue the line—and a woman from an influential family was the obvious choice. While he mightn’t pant after neck-or-nothing passion, nor could he be completely pragmatic about his choice. He was a man before he was a politician, however ambitious he might be.

This time his mother smiled. “Of course, that would be ideal.”

Ideal but not essential, he noted. His mother continued, “What about Marianne Seaton? She behaved perfectly when Sedgemoor got entangled with that dreadful Thorne woman. You might balk at Camden Rothermere’s leavings, but her father would make a valuable friend.”

Poor Lady Marianne, jilted when the Duke of Sedgemoor fell in love with the notorious daughter of a scandalous family. A love match that had only caused trouble. Just as Sophie’s love match had. Still some hitherto unsuspected part of Leath’s soul revolted at the idea of marrying without affection.

“Mamma, I can choose my own bride,” he protested, even as he pictured lovely, sedate Marianne Seaton in the Fairbrother sapphires. They’d match her eyes. Which seemed a dashed stupid reason for proposing to a chit.

“What about Desborough’s sister? An engagement would heal the rift between you. Honestly, I could box Sophie’s ears for ruining that match.”

A chill slithered down Leath’s spine. “Lady Jane is forty-five if she’s a day, not to mention a dedicated spinster.”

His mother sighed. “Pity she’s too old to bear children.” She paused and Leath hoped the discussion was over. A hope quickly shattered. “If only Lydia Rothermere hadn’t married that penniless libertine. She was a marvelous hostess, and a Rothermere match would silence talk of a feud.”

“God made a mistake when he created you female, Mamma,” he said drily. “You’d make a capital prime minister.”

She laughed and dismissed his comment with a wave, although it was true. “I’m a mere woman, James.”

He smiled, hoping that she’d stopped listing possible marchionesses. “And clever as a fox.”

“You flatter me, darling.” Briefly he saw the beautiful girl who nearly forty years ago had captivated the brilliant marquess with the glittering political future. Fate had played his parents some cruel cards.

“Not at all.” He sank into one of the frail chairs near the blazing hearth. The chair creaked beneath his weight. He was a large man and the furnishings in his mother’s apartments were decidedly dainty. “Let me establish my credentials as a respectable landholder before we plot my walk down the aisle.”

“You’ve always been a solid, reliable, thoughtful gentleman. People will eventually remember that. You’ll be back in London before you know it.”

He smiled, while his vanity bucked at the description. What a dull dog he sounded. “Ever the optimist, Mamma.”

“I have every faith in you.”

Sometimes he wished she didn’t. Each step of his life, he’d carried the weight of his father’s unfulfilled promise and of his invalid mother’s hopes. No wonder he’d never kicked over the traces like his less burdened colleagues.

Now he faced a solid, reliable marriage. The prospect was depressing. “I thought to find you all cast down with your own company,” he said. “You’re in better spirits than I expected.”

“I was lonely at first. There’s no denying it.”

“So what’s happened?”

She looked almost mischievous. “Aha, I must reveal my secret.”

Whatever she was up to, he was in favor if it lent her this spark. “Do tell.”

She rang the bell on the side table. The door to the dressing room opened and a neat, fair-haired young woman entered, head lowered and hands linked decorously at her waist.

Leath’s gut tightened with a premonition that the alignment of his planets changed forever. Of course, the girl was the mysterious Miss Trim who had kept him restless and intrigued past dawn.

Chapter 3

“My lady?” The girl’s curtsy conveyed considerably more respect than she’d granted him a few hours ago, Leath was piqued to note.

“Nell, let me show you off to my son.” The fondness in his mother’s voice troubled him, although only moments ago, he’d been grateful for whatever had brought about this positive change in her. His mother turned to him as if she presented a huge treat. “James, Miss Trim is my companion.”

The girl poised in the doorway. She wore the same plain gray gown and her hair was still wrenched back. She looked biddable and competent. Why, then, was he so convinced that she was up to no good?

During his sleepless hours, he’d wondered if his imagination exaggerated her attractions. Daylight didn’t lessen her physical impact. There was nothing flashy about Miss Trim, nothing vulgar. The purity of her features struck him even more strongly now than in candlelight. And that miracle of a mouth still made his skin itch with unwilling sexual response.

“Good morning, Miss Trim,” he said calmly.

Her gaze shot up to meet his. With a satisfaction completely out of kilter with the fact, he noticed that her eyes were a coppery brown, striking against her pale hair. “Welcome home, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

What the devil was she playing at, calling herself a housemaid? What the devil had she been playing at in his library at three this morning? The revelation of Miss Trim’s position in the household raised more questions than it answered.

“Nell has become indispensable.” His mother’s voice was warm with affection. Which made him uneasy on so many levels.

“I’m sure.” Leath mustn’t have contained the irony in his tone because his mother cast him a puzzled glance.

“She’s transformed my life,” his mother said, in answer to his unspoken criticism.

“You’re too kind, my lady.” Miss Trim’s voice was low and melodic, like a cello.

“You didn’t mention Miss Trim in your letters,” Leath said neutrally. Given his mother wrote most days, the omission had to be deliberate.

“I wasn’t sure you’d approve,” his mother said.

“I’m not sure I do,” he said. “When I’ve offered to arrange a companion, you’ve always declined.”

His mother grimaced. “You’d saddle me with some destitute relative. Bores, every one.”

“A little harsh.”

“But only a little.” His mother reached for Miss Trim who, blast her, took her hand. “Nell does me perfectly, especially since Sophie left. I need someone young and bright to talk to.”

Leath had no right to resent the implication that he wasn’t young and bright. Miss Trim cast him a nervous glance under thick lashes, dark like her brows. She must expect him to betray her midnight wanderings. He wondered why the hell he didn’t.

“Perhaps. But I would have liked to help you find someone suitable.”

The girl’s lips flattened. His mother looked equally unimpressed. He realized that he’d handled this as badly as a parliamentary novice with an unpopular petition. He must be wearier than he’d thought. Or Miss Trim’s silent and subtly hostile presence unsettled him.

“Nell is completely suitable. You’ll see.”

He’d see something, that was sure. He wasn’t letting the manipulative Miss Trim out of his sight.

“My lady, perhaps it would be better if I finished ordering those embroidery patterns.” The girl shifted uncomfortably. Obscurely it galled him that her manners proved better than his. He and his mother should hold this discussion in private.

“If I’m going to quarrel with my son, perhaps you should,” his mother said.

“No, stay. I want to talk to you, Miss Trim.”

“Bully her, you mean,” his mother sniped.

Leath ignored the gibe and focused on his mother. “Where did you discover this paragon?”

“In the kitchen, my lord,” Miss Trim said with a hint of challenge.

“Nell, don’t bait my son. He doesn’t like to be crossed,” his mother said as if describing a fractious toddler. “James, Nell came to us in July as a housemaid. I was suffering … megrims and she was drafted into my care. It was immediately apparent that her talents extended beyond dusting and scrubbing.”

Leath fumed under his parent’s tolerant glance, even as guilt assailed him. He well knew his mother’s courage. “Megrims” meant she’d been prostrate with pain. And he’d been in London and ignorant of her suffering. While this encroaching maidservant took advantage. “A housemaid is no apt companion for the Marchioness of Leath.”

“She is when the marchioness so decides,” his mother snapped. “If I can no longer choose who serves me, it’s time I moved to the dower house.”

Leath endured a meaningful glance from Miss Trim, as if to remind him that his mother’s health was poor and this disagreement must try her nerves. Damn it, he knew that. In frustration, he ran a hand through his hair. If they ever allowed women into parliament, every man there was doomed.

“Mamma, this is your home. There’s no need for this.”

“If it’s my home, I should be allowed to select my servants,” she said stalwartly.

Miss Trim shifted to a table covered with bottles and vials and poured a cordial for his mother. “Your ladyship, perhaps I should return to my former place in the household.”

Leath’s eyes narrowed on her. “Capital suggestion.”

His mother accepted the small crystal glass with a grateful smile. He couldn’t help noticing the glitter in her eyes. She didn’t look ill. In fact, she looked better than she’d looked in recent memory. But the doctors had insisted that too much excitement could exhaust her.

“I will not countenance you dismissing Nell just because you’ve got some bee in your bonnet.” She handed the half-empty glass to Miss Trim, who returned it to the table without glancing at him.

He sighed. “It’s a pity to start our reunion with an argument.”

His mother regarded him with a less militant light in her fine gray eyes. “Perhaps I should have told you in a letter.”

He doubted that would have changed his mind about Miss Trim’s suitability, although he might have had a clue about the identity of last night’s moonlit wraith. “I’m willing to give the girl a chance.”

He waited for his mother to insist that he had no say in the matter, but it seemed she too regretted their disagreement. “You’ll soon see how good she is for me and you’ll be as grateful as I am that she came to us.”

Somehow he doubted that. “I would still appreciate the chance to interview her.”

Miss Trim glanced up quickly and he saw that she was as reluctant to be interviewed as his mother was to allow the interview to take place. Too bad. He was master here and it was time he took control. His mother had always been an excellent judge of character and he had a large and capable staff. But even so, things at Alloway Chase were not as he wished.

“Don’t let him browbeat you, Nell,” his mother said with an encouraging smile.

“For heaven’s sake, Mamma, you make me sound like a tyrant.”

His mother arched her eyebrows. “If your guilty conscience prompts that thought, perhaps you should examine your behavior.”

He flushed, he who stood firm under the most concentrated parliamentary attack. His mother always knew how to best him, devil take her. “I’ll be gentle.”

The girl clearly didn’t believe him, but his mother took the statement at face value. “Thank you. I won’t have you upsetting someone who is so kind to me.”

Miss Trim hovered near the sideboard, looking as guilty as sin. Interesting.

“Miss Trim, if you please, we’ll adjourn to the library.” He knew she caught the faint edge as he mentioned the scene of their nocturnal encounter.

“You promise not to browbeat her?” his mother insisted.

He muffled a growl. He wasn’t in the habit of badgering the servants. At this rate, the girl would be in such a state by the time he questioned her, she’d be in hysterics.

“Do you need anything, my lady?” she asked with a calmness that belied that prediction.

“Just my book and spectacles,” his mother said and accepted them with a smile. “Don’t stand for any nonsense from James.”

Miss Trim’s smile was faint as she curtsied and preceded him from the room with a poise that wouldn’t disgrace a debutante at Almack’s. As he followed, Leath couldn’t help thinking that she was the damnedest housemaid he’d ever seen.

Nell’s heart hammered with dread by the time she reached the library. She knew Leath chose this room to intimidate her. Goodness, after his tiff with his mother, she might yet face dismissal. It was clear that he wanted to get rid of her. If he did, how would she gather the evidence against him?

Before she was summoned, her eavesdropping had been enlightening. The newspapers were right. Leath’s political career was in trouble. Good. When Sedgemoor used the diary to expose him as the villain he was, all hope of public office would evaporate.

Nell had arrived at Alloway Chase despising Lord Leath. But that was before she’d listened to him battle with a mother he loved over something he considered important for her sake, not his own.

Mentally Nell kicked herself. His kindness to his mother didn’t mean anything. With his family, the marquess might act the civilized man, but at heart he was a monster. If she forgot that, she was lost.

She stood straight and quiet in the center of the library as he prowled across to sit behind the desk.

“It’s too late to pretend humility, Miss Trim,” he barked, making her start.

When he’d spoken so tenderly to his mother, the beauty of his deep baritone had struck her. Now his voice was like a gunshot. Of course it was; she was a lowly servant. And he didn’t like her, despite those disturbing moments last night when she’d sensed male interest. This morning he’d regarded her like a cockroach in the castle’s pantry. Should the Marquess of Leath ever condescend to visit that prosaic location.

“Yes, my lord,” she said meekly, intending to needle him.

She succeeded. He growled and gestured toward the chair in front of the desk. “Sit down.”

“It’s inappropriate for me to sit in your presence, sir.”

“It’s inappropriate to answer back, my girl.”

He had a point. She sat and concentrated on her lap to avoid those intense deep-set eyes.

Last night, his size had struck her as remarkable. Since then, she’d told herself that nervousness alone had painted him as such a powerful physical presence.

It wasn’t nervousness. He was tall and broad and dauntingly muscled. Clearly he found time for plenty of exercise away from his parliamentary activities. The portrait in his mother’s room was of a young man, long and lean and with a touch of innocence in his face. When she dared to glance up, there was nothing innocent about the man studying her over steepled fingers. He clearly awaited her full attention. She shivered and prayed he didn’t notice her disquiet.

“Tell me about yourself.”

The mad urge rose to announce that she was Dorothy Simpson’s sister and she was at Alloway Chase to ensure that he never ruined another woman.

“Well?” he asked when she didn’t answer. “Cat got your tongue?”

She licked her lips in uncertainty and suffered a jolt when his eyes focused on the movement. Immediately she was back in that strange dance of hatred and fascination. She’d been mistaken to think he’d conquered last night’s sensual awareness.

Oh, dear Lord, this was an unholy mess.

“I’m a little frightened,” she admitted.

“Rot.” He arched those formidable black eyebrows. “How did you come to work here?”

She straightened in the chair, which would have put any of the furniture in her stepfather’s cottage to shame. “I’m an orphan.”

“Is that so?”

Her lips tightened. When she’d told his mother that her parents were dead—well, it was true, however kind her stepfather was—the marchioness had overflowed with sympathy. Lord Leath studied her as if reading the layers of deceit beneath every word.

“Yes.”

“And how long have you been alone in the world?”

She couldn’t restrain a faint sharpness. “You speak as if my bereavement is a matter of choice, my lord.”

He bared his teeth. “My apologies.”

She shifted uncomfortably under his unblinking regard, before she reminded herself that betraying her fear gave him the advantage. “My father was a sergeant major under Wellington in Portugal. He died when I was a child. My mother remarried and died when I was fifteen.”

All true. So why did she feel like she’d lied?

“Where did you grow up?”

“Sussex.” Her first lie. If she mentioned Kent, he might connect her to Dorothy, although he’d shown no recognition when she’d told him her name last night.

“You don’t sound like you’re from Sussex. You sound like a lady.”

William Simpson had been an unusual man, educated on a scholarship at Cambridge despite his humble origins. He’d made sure that both girls in his charge spoke with educated accents. “Are there no ladies in Sussex?” she asked sweetly.

His lips quirked. “None that I’ve met.”

That was another surprise. In her imaginings, Dorothy’s seducer had possessed no sense of humor. Nell had expected evil to seep from his very pores. But unless she’d already known his wickedness, she’d see nothing to despise and much to admire. It was odd, the more she saw of Leath, the less she understood why flirty, flighty Dorothy had found him appealing. Perhaps on the hunt, he adopted a different style.

“How did a woman from the gentle south end up here?”

She’d prepared a plausible story. The marchioness had swallowed it without question. She had a nasty feeling that the marquess wasn’t nearly so trusting. “I was to take employment in York, but the lady was called back to London unexpectedly and shut the house. One of the other servants told me about Alloway Chase and I decided to try my luck.”

His face didn’t lighten. Her stomach sank with the certainty that she hadn’t gulled him. “So you crossed an inhospitable moor, came miles from the nearest civilization, on the off chance of finding employment?”

She kept her voice positive. “Indeed, sir. Fortunately there was a vacancy for a housemaid.”

That had been lucky. Although if there hadn’t been a place, she’d have sought work in the area and waited until a job opened up. Staff at big houses were always coming and going. She’d have found a spot eventually, especially with the excellent references she’d written in the guise of a wholly fictitious employer at a wholly fictitious Sussex manor. Of course there was a risk that someone might check her background, but hopefully by the time anybody discovered her ruse, she’d be far away with the diary in her possession.

Under that level gaze, she battled the impulse to fidget. No wonder Leath had such a reputation as a shark in parliament. If she were the opposition, she’d roll over and give him anything he wanted.

“I find it puzzling that you accepted such a junior position. Surely if you can read and write, you’d find work as a governess.”

Perhaps she should have adopted a rustic accent. The problem was that she couldn’t see herself keeping up the pretense. “I was desperate, sir.”

She should have known that an appeal to his compassion would fail. “Is that so?”

When she didn’t answer—she wasn’t a skilled liar, which was why she stuck to the truth as far as possible—he went on. “And now you’re my mother’s companion.”

“It’s a preferment beyond my wildest dreams,” she said quickly.

For an uncomfortable moment, she wondered if he’d try to shake the truth out of her. Surely only her guilty conscience persuaded her that he recognized her lies.

“I’d like to hear more about your wildest dreams, Miss Trim,” he said slowly.

She clutched her clammy hands together to hide their unsteadiness and stared directly into those unfathomable eyes. “Do you suspect that I’m not who I claim, my lord?”

To her surprise and considerable discomfort, he smiled. This was the first time she’d seen his smile and she wouldn’t describe it as nice. It was the sort of smile a wolf gave a chicken before he tore it to pieces. Flashing masculine attraction and straight white teeth that looked ready to snap at her.

“Outlandish fancies, I’m sure, Miss Trim.”

Dangerously, she forgot her meekness. “Do you put all your domestics through this inquisition?”

“Only the ones I discover raiding my library in the middle of the night,” he said affably.

Curse her blushing. “I told you, I wanted something to read.”

“Yet in all those volumes, nothing caught your interest.”

Oh, dear God, he was a devil. Why wouldn’t he leave her be? She’d been overjoyed when the marchioness had promoted her. She’d soon discovered that housemaids had no privacy and little time to search a house the size of Alloway Chase. As a companion, she had a lot of free time—the marchioness wasn’t demanding—and a room of her own. Not only that, she had access to the family’s apartments.

The disadvantage of her new status was that she’d hoped to pass through Alloway Chase without attracting notice. Even before last night’s encounter with the marquess, her ladyship’s favoritism put paid to that idea.

“Perhaps I could advise you on purchasing some novels, my lord,” she said with cloying helpfulness.

If she’d thought his smile was astonishing, his laugh made her sit up like a startled rabbit. It was warm with appreciation. She liked it so much that she had to struggle shamefully hard to remember she despised him. She stopped wondering why Dorothy had found him appealing. Even she, with every reason to loathe him, couldn’t stifle a prickle of attraction.

Dorothy hadn’t stood a chance.

“Perhaps you should.” The watchful light returned to his eyes. “Do you enjoy your post, Miss Trim?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, only partly a lie. The marchioness was a darling. Her kindness had gone a long way to helping Nell cope with her grief over Dorothy’s death. Nell winced to think that her vendetta against the marquess would ultimately hurt Lady Leath.

“I need hardly say that I take great care for my mother’s happiness.”

Given that he hadn’t visited his mother in months, she could disagree. But even if she’d been his social equal, it would be impertinent to say so. “As do I, my lord.”

His eyes glinted as if he saw every prevarication. “Then please don’t imagine that your attentions will go unremarked.”

“No, sir.” She took the words as the warning they were.

“You may go, Trim.”

Trim, not Miss Trim, she noticed. Clearly he’d indulged her delusions of importance as far as he intended. That suited her fine. She couldn’t help feeling that if she lingered, that searching dark gaze would winkle out every secret. Then where would she be? Out on her ear. And he’d be free to continue on his nasty, seducing, ruinous way.

Strangely she was angrier now than when she’d arrived. And more intent on bringing this brute down. Even after a short acquaintance, she recognized that the marquess was a clever, perceptive, interesting man. Yet still he chose to wreck innocent lives.

Taunton, Somerset, early October

Hector Greengrass settled his considerable bulk into the oak armchair in the cozy little tavern’s inglenook. It was a bloody chilly night, but in the month that he’d been in the area, he’d trained the locals to leave the room’s best spot for him.

He raised his tankard, took a deep draft and smacked his lips with satisfaction. The ale was good. Even better was this lark he’d set up over the last year since leaving the late Lord Neville Fairbrother’s employment. Sodding pity that the man had shot himself. Sad waste of a fine criminal mind.

Greengrass knew that most people saw him as hulking muscle, but he possessed a fine criminal mind too. And he wasn’t a cove to let an opportunity pass. When he’d realized that things in Little Derrick had gone awry, he didn’t hang around to share his master’s fate. He’d kept his eye on the main chance and survived.

He’d more than survived; he’d thrived.

Before abandoning Lord Neville, he’d taken what cash he could find and a few trinkets. Best of all, he’d nicked his lordship’s detailed record of debauchery. Since then, that diary had bought Greengrass’s mighty fine life. Not to mention his fancy clothes.

Even poor women paid to keep their sins secret. Luckily for Greengrass, Lord Neville had indulged his lusts up and down the country. Greengrass had plenty of bumpkins to hit for a shilling here and there, in return for suppressing the record of their ruin.

The sluts whose fall had resulted in pregnancy were no use to him. Their disgrace was clear for the world to see. But thanks to Lord Neville’s yen for silly virgins, the diary listed hordes of girls desperate to keep a good name in small, gossipy communities. They’d give up their last penny to escape public shame. After all, if their families disowned them as wanton trollops, the likeliest outcome was a hard life on the streets. Something well worth digging into the housekeeping money to avoid.

Greengrass still marveled at the diary’s salacious thoroughness. His lordship couldn’t bear to hold back any detail of his illicit encounters, and the pages were well-thumbed with use. A sane man would have hesitated to keep such a complete record of his sins, but clearly Lord Neville enjoyed reliving each affair over and over again.

Still, Greengrass had good reason to be grateful to Neville Fairbrother for his nitpicking record keeping, as though the chits he seduced formed part of his famous collection of pretty baubles. Lord Neville could never get enough women to slake his appetite. The only pity was that he’d limited his depredations to the lower classes. It made sense—anyone further up the social scale wouldn’t believe that Lord Neville was the Marquess of Leath. They had access to newspapers and London gossip that would expose the lie before his lordship got into their drawers.

Poor and stupid, that was how his late lordship had liked them. And poor and stupid in large numbers kept Greengrass in ready cash and easy bedmates.

Aye, it had been a bonny twelve months or so. A false name and constant traveling kept him out of the magistrates’ hands—there was a warrant out for him, thanks to his crimes last year in Little Derrick. And it was grand how eager a lass became when disgrace was the alternative. In a lifetime of fiddles, this blackmail fiddle was the best.

The landlord thumped a brimming plate of roast beef and gravy on the table. Fast as a striking cobra, Greengrass’s massive hand shot out to crush the man’s wrist. “I’ll have a bit more civility, my fine fellow,” he said cheerfully, closing his grip until the bones ground together.

Hatred flared in the man’s eyes. But stronger than hatred was fear. Pale with pain, the man bobbed his head. “Your pardon, Mr. Smith.” He struggled to smile. “Enjoy your dinner. And of course, it’s on the house.”

“Better,” Greengrass grunted, releasing him and picking up his knife and spoon.

Aye, being cock of the walk was fine and dandy.

And when he’d tired of catching tasty little sprats in his net, he had a bloody great mackerel of a marquess ready to take his bait.

Chapter 4

Lord Leath’s return soon had Nell seething with frustration. Until now, she’d found Alloway Chase a surprisingly congenial location. Perhaps because unlike Mearsall’s schoolhouse, there was no silent, reproachful ghost reminding her that she’d failed to watch over her half sister. Her stepfather had seen her unhappiness and hadn’t discouraged her when she’d suggested finding work away from home. He’d have been appalled if she’d told him why she really left Mearsall.

Under the marchioness’s relaxed supervision, she’d found ample opportunity to seek the diary. So far she’d concentrated on the library. It was a huge collection, but she had time and patience. Or at least she’d had both until the marquess started working there. And after their early hours encounter, she hadn’t worked up the courage to wander the house at night again.

Now he’d brought a secretary from London. Even when his lordship was absent, Mr. Crane occupied either the library or the small adjoining room. A room he locked every evening.

As subtly as she could, Nell had quizzed the other servants about the marquess. Some of the maids had hair-raising stories about lecherous employers in other households, but nobody had a bad word to say about Leath. She’d failed too in all attempts to obtain evidence of his lechery from women living on the estate.

It was decidedly annoying. And a little unsettling. Nell had imagined that the people who knew him best would despise him for the monster he was.

His lordship had been home nearly a fortnight and he was yet to spend a night away from the house. For a heartless seducer, he was a diligent worker. Reams of correspondence came in and out, and he also paid conscientious attention to the estate.

Clearly his licentious impulses were under control. So far, she’d only seen him behave inappropriately with one woman. When he’d caught Nell Trim about the waist that first night. When he’d spoken to her as his equal. And more, the shameful awareness that hummed endlessly between them.

When they were together, dislike set the air sizzling. It must be dislike. She refused to admit that she found the man who had ruined her half sister attractive.

His lordship’s presence was impossible to ignore. The air buzzed with energy, the staff were on extra alert, the marchioness glowed, the gardens bloomed with extra color. Goodness, even the sun shone more brightly, now that the master returned.

If Nell had remained a housemaid, avoiding his lordship would have been simple. For his mother’s companion, it was impossible. With every day, maintaining her loathing became more difficult. And each moment felt more like a betrayal of Dorothy’s memory. Nell could almost believe that there were two Lord Leaths. One despoiled innocent girls and abandoned them to suffer the consequences. The other was kind to his mother and considerate of his staff and careful with his tenants.

She couldn’t believe Dorothy had deceived her—her half sister’s dying words had rung with anguish and burning sincerity. But still Nell couldn’t match the Leath she came to know with the man who so callously had destroyed an innocent girl.

Her desperation to find the diary built to a frenzy. Hatred alone gave her courage to carry out her scheme. She didn’t want to think how Leath’s sternness softened when he smiled at her ladyship. She needed instead to remember Dorothy lying quiet and unmoving after breathing her last.

Wariness—and awareness—deepened every time that enigmatic gaze settled upon Nell, as if the marquess added up all he knew about her and found the total wanting.

As Leath approached the library after his morning ride, he heard the unexpected sound of laughter. Frowning, he opened the door and paused, observing the tableau before him. A tableau that didn’t please him at all.

He was used to everyone snapping to attention. He wasn’t by nature a vain man, but how irritating that neither of the people sharing a jolly chat noticed him. Paul Crane, his staid-as-a-maiden-aunt secretary, poised halfway up the library stairs, passing books down to a beautiful woman who smiled at him as if she enjoyed the most wonderful time.

Of course it was Miss Trim. Miss Trim who never looked so animated nor so happy in the company of the man who paid her wages. Morning sun poured through the tall windows to light her graceful figure. She looked unassuming in one of her ubiquitous gray dresses. Her hair was scraped back in its severe style. She made a most unlikely seductress, but something in Leath stirred to savage resentment that she smiled at Crane in a way she’d never smiled at him.

“Clarissa will keep her ladyship busy,” Crane said.

“It’s rather dour,” Miss Trim said. “What about something by Miss Austen?”

“At least they’re shorter.”

Who knew his secretary read novels? And what other housemaid discussed books with such familiarity? She was an unusual one, Miss Trim. So unusual that Leath felt like grabbing those straight shoulders and shaking her until she confessed her secrets.

“Here’s Pride and Prejudice. That’s a favorite in my family.”

“Mine too.”

Family? She claimed to be an orphan. Leath tensed like a hunting dog on a fox’s scent.

“Her ladyship might have read it.”

“His lordship needs to get something more recent for his mother,” Miss Trim said, making Leath bristle at the implication of neglect. “It’s odd that she doesn’t get a standing order of the latest books from Hatchards. Surely Lady Sophie wanted to read something published in the last ten years.”

“Lady Sophie wasn’t much of a reader,” Crane said. “If I can assist with making a list for the marchioness, I’d be happy to oblige. My sister is always mentioning some book or another in her letters.”

“Clearly I’m not keeping you busy enough, Crane,” Leath said acidly.

Silence crashed down. Crane wobbled on the ladder and dropped the leather volume onto the carpet. “My lord …”

Miss Trim turned more slowly. “Your lordship,” she said coolly, curtsying and lowering her eyes.

Damn it, Leath already regretted the loss of that glorious smile. It was possible he made her uneasy—God knew, his constant physical yen for her made him uneasy. But he didn’t think she was frightened. Instead, he felt like she watched him, waiting for some slip. He had no idea why. But his skin prickled when she was in the room, and not just because of his inconvenient interest.

“My lord, Miss … Miss Trim wanted some reading for her ladyship. I didn’t think you’d mind if I helped her.” On unsteady legs, Crane descended and bent to retrieve the book. “I can only apologize most sincerely if I’ve overstepped the mark.”

Damn it, Leath had reduced his obliging and efficient secretary to a stuttering wreck. He hated feeling like the specter at the feast. Illogically, he blamed the girl whose gaze was focused on the floor. The girl who looked as if she’d never permit an insubordinate thought to cross her mind.

He believed that like he believed in fairies building bowers in his parterre.

Despite his guilt, his voice was stern. “I’d like that report on draining the Lincolnshire property today.”

“Yes, sir,” Crane said miserably. He passed the book to Miss Trim. “I’m sure her ladyship will like this.”

Leath’s grumpiness deepened as she bestowed a glimmer of a smile upon Crane. “Thank you. I’m sorry I kept you from your work.”

“Not at all,” he said, and Leath’s eyes narrowed on the young man’s besotted expression. Crane had always struck him as a sensible fellow. Leath would hardly have employed him if he wasn’t. Clearly the marquess wasn’t the only man at Alloway Chase susceptible to wide brown eyes.

“Crane,” Leath said curtly.

“Immediately, my lord.” He glanced nervously at his employer, swallowing until his Adam’s apple bobbed, then disappeared into the office.

“Not so fast.” Leath caught Miss Trim’s arm as she edged toward the door. The contact slammed through him, demanded that he kiss the impertinence out of her. Pride alone steadied his grip. “I’ll thank you to stay away from my secretary.”

Brown eyes could be warm as honey. They could also flash with disdain. After a blistering moment of communication that had nothing to do with lord and housemaid and everything to do with male and female, she glanced away. “Yes, my lord.”

He stared at her, willing her to look at him properly. Even, heaven save him, smile the way she’d smiled at that stupid boy Paul Crane. “See that you follow my instructions.”

“Yes, sir.”

His hand tightened. Through her woolen sleeve, he felt her strength. He was used to society ladies. Miss Trim felt real and earthy in a way no woman of his own class ever did.

The silence lengthened. Became awkward. Reminded him of those charged moments the night they’d met. He still woke from dreams with her citrus scent filling his senses and his arms curling around a fantasy Eleanor Trim. In his most forbidden fantasies, he did a lot more than hold her in his arms.

He hadn’t panted after the maids since he was an adolescent. Even then, he’d recognized the essential unfairness of pursuing women who worked for him. How could a woman freely give consent to the man who paid her wages?

Despite Miss Trim’s outward docility, he knew that she’d have no trouble denying him. Blast her.

“May I go, sir?”

He caught a faint edge of mockery. He hated to think that she recognized his lust. He didn’t trust her, he didn’t much like her, but dear Lord above, she set him afire as no woman ever had.

“No.”

This time when her eyes flashed up to his, he was delighted to see trepidation in the coppery depths. So far, they’d played a game where she knew the rules and he didn’t. That disadvantage ended today.

He’d tried ignoring her. Much good that had done. Now he’d try a direct challenge. “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

A frown crossed her face. “Her ladyship will wonder where I am.”

“I won’t keep you long,” he said coolly, releasing her with a reluctance he hated to acknowledge and gesturing toward a chair.

He moved behind the desk, hoping that the authoritative position might lend him some desperately needed gravitas. How ludicrous that he’d faced down the greatest men in the land without a qualm, yet this one humble girl, who worked for him, goddamn it, made him as unsure as a boy with his first sweetheart.

Not that he was naïve enough to imagine anything romantic happened here. He had a bad case of blue balls for an unsuitable woman. Given that satisfying his craving was out of the question—not least because if word got out about him tupping his mother’s companion, he’d rusticate in Yorkshire forever—he needed to control himself.

Easier said than done.

Miss Trim had a subtle, enticing beauty. Every time he saw her, he thought her lovelier. Right now, with her chin set and a flush on her slanted cheekbones—perhaps embarrassment, more likely vexation—she was delicious. Like a cranky goddess.

The silence extended. And extended.

“We weren’t doing any harm,” she said eventually, without looking at him.

“Crane has work to do. Too much to waste time flirting with pretty girls.”

Hell, he’d better watch his tongue. At the compliment, the pink in her cheeks deepened delightfully. She had lovely skin, smooth and creamy. It looked as soft as velvet and his fingers curled against the blotter as he beat back the urge to touch her.

“It was only a few minutes, and he was being kind.”

Leath hid a wince at the unspoken criticism that he, in contrast, wasn’t kind. She had a point. Crane hadn’t deserved the reprimand. “My mother doesn’t like novels.”

“She does now. I suggested something more entertaining than those dry-as-dust treatises you send her.”

She was definitely criticizing him, the baggage. “She’s satisfied with my choices.”

At last Miss Trim raised her eyes and looked at him properly. As he expected, there was no fear in her expression. Instead more watchfulness. “That’s what she’d tell you, I’m sure.”

“She likes to keep up with my political career.”

That lush mouth quirked with a faint derision that made him feel like a gauche schoolboy. “Yes.”

An ocean of implication in one short syllable. Because Miss Trim must be aware that just now he had no political career. And if he didn’t keep his nose clean until they invited him back, he’d never have a political career again. Good enough reason, even if he forgot that he was a gentleman, to keep his hands off her, however beguiling she was. And now she’d stopped pretending to be a dutiful domestic with no will beyond her master’s, he found her very beguiling indeed, bugger it.

She was a puzzle. He didn’t like puzzles. But however closely he’d observed her over the last week, he couldn’t work out her scheme. Perhaps she was what she claimed to be, a woman down on her luck.

Perhaps.

“You’re a very unusual housemaid, Miss Trim,” he said and was intrigued that his remark made her uncomfortable. Every instinct shrieked that she hid something.

“Because I suggested that your mother might enjoy a novel?”

“I doubt many of my housemaids could recommend a lady’s reading,” he said neutrally, steepling his fingers and regarding her.

She raised her chin with un-housemaid-like hauteur. She tried to play the self-effacing servant, but she wasn’t much good at it. Something else that made him question her background. Girls went into service young and were trained to become obedient ciphers. There was nothing of the cipher about Miss Trim, and while she wasn’t exactly disobedient, there was an edge to her that indicated she cooperated only so far as she was willing.

“Have you asked them?” she said sweetly, regarding him as unwaveringly as he watched her.

His lips twitched. “No, I haven’t. But I’d still like to know where you developed this extensive knowledge.”

More discomfort. For a woman who lied so often, she was dashed bad at it. “The lady who was my last employer encouraged me to better myself.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So she read you the latest books while you polished the silver?” He didn’t bother to mask his skepticism.

To do her credit, she hardly flinched, although in her lap she gripped the Austen like a lifeline. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m surprised you left this paragon.” He could come right out and accuse her of lying, but where would be the fun in that?

Her lips tightened. “Needs must, sir. Why don’t you believe me?”

He leaned his chin on his joined fingers and regarded her. “Should I?”

“Yes.” She sucked in an annoyed breath and he felt a strange little tug in the vicinity of his heart. The housemaid shell became thinner by the moment. He still didn’t trust her, but he’d lay money that she was closer to her real self now than she’d been since their encounter on his first night home. “My lord, do you find my work unsatisfactory?”

“My mother likes you.” Both of them knew that was no answer.

Her expression softened and he realized that whatever else he doubted, she was genuinely fond of his mother. “I’m most grateful to her ladyship for her kindness. There’s no conspiracy in asking Mr. Crane to help me find something to ease her cares.”

He frowned. “Is her health worse?”

Miss Trim’s gaze became shuttered. “She doesn’t complain.”

So she was loyal to his mother. Perhaps the marchioness’s favor wasn’t completely misplaced. “She wouldn’t.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed and he remembered what had made him mistrust her motives from the first. Whatever lip service she gave to his title, she didn’t like him.

How bizarre.

He muffled a wry laugh. What an arrogant coxcomb he was. He’d never before wondered if his employees liked him. They did a job. He paid them—generously. Most of the time, he hardly thought about them.

He thought about Miss Trim far too often.

“She’s looking better for your return, my lord.”

Ha, another barely hidden accusation of neglect. He ought to put this presumptuous chit in her place and tell her that if anyone wanted him in London fulfilling his father’s dreams, it was the marchioness.

The girl shifted restlessly, behavior unacceptable in a well-trained domestic. It was clear that Miss Trim would dearly love to finish this conversation.

Too bad.

“You will tell me if my mother’s health deteriorates.” More order than request.

Her shoulders went straight as a ruler. She didn’t like being told what to do, yet domestics were accustomed to having every move regulated. Whatever Miss Trim had done before coming to Alloway Chase, he’d lay money that she’d been nobody’s household drudge.

Which begged the question—just why was she here?

“Perhaps you should ask her yourself, sir.”

“I doubt she’d tell me.”

A faint smile lightened her expression. “You’re probably right. But I suspect a man of your cleverness could get an answer.”

“Lately I’ve lost all confidence in my cleverness,” he said with a sigh, thinking how little he’d managed to glean from this interview. Miss Trim’s ability to evade a straight answer put his parliamentary colleagues to shame.

Briefly he thought she might respond to that, but another of those damned evocative silences descended. Into the quiet, the clock outside chimed eleven. He’d kept her too long. Too long for his peace of mind. Too long for her reputation with the other servants.

Just … too long.

He gestured dismissal. “That will be all, Trim.”

After a brief curtsy, she disappeared through the door with a speed that betrayed her eagerness to escape. He stood and stared unseeing through the window at the flat gray disk of the lake. A premonition that he invited danger by singling out this girl weighted his belly.

He wondered about his strange affinity with Miss Trim. He wondered about the hunger she aroused. He’d never felt anything like this before. If he wanted a woman—and he made sure he only wanted women who wouldn’t cause trouble—he made arrangements, scratched the itch, and moved on to more important issues.

He couldn’t dismiss the delectable Miss Trim as unimportant, whatever he tried to tell himself. The thought of tumbling her thundered through him like an earthquake. His head might insist that he’d recover from his inappropriate interest. His ravenous senses told him that he had to have her soon or go mad with it.

That edgy, roundabout conversation just now had been a mistake. He was more intrigued than ever. And more convinced that she concealed secrets.

Even worse, he knew that he wouldn’t leave her alone, whatever the risks.

Nor was his mood improved when he checked the mail piled on the desk to find two more of the sad little letters that had haunted him this last year. The revelations of his uncle’s crimes seemed never to end, but for Leath, the most pathetic results of Neville Fairbrother’s activities were the begging notes from women raising children in poverty and disgrace. Letters addressed to Leath because Lord Neville had assumed his nephew’s identity when he’d seduced these girls.

For most of his life, Leath had done his best to ignore his odious relative, so he had no idea how long the swine had played this particular game. From the timing of the letters, Leath guessed at most a few months before his uncle’s suicide.

Why had Neville Fairbrother stolen his nephew’s name? The answer had died last year with his uncle, but Leath could guess. Some spiteful attempt to destroy his nephew’s reputation. A way of diverting blame from where it belonged. Perhaps even an attempt to impress the women with a marquess’s title.

Whatever his uncle’s motives, the scheme couldn’t have continued indefinitely. While it was clear that the man had threatened his victims to keep their mouths shut, he must have known that his deceit would emerge. Perhaps he thought that family pride would keep Leath complicit, even after the masquerade was exposed.

The women who had written to Leath had all been so desperate that they’d braved his uncle’s wrath to ask for help. His heart ached for these innocents. The scale of the devastation Neville Fairbrother had left behind beggared imagination.

Leath had employed a confidential agent to locate the women and offer aid. Otherwise he’d kept the letters private. Good God, if this got out, especially if people believed Leath rather than his repulsive uncle had fathered the children, all hope of high office would disintegrate.

His confidential agent could help him with something else. Miss Trim had arrived bearing glowing references. Perhaps it was time someone investigated her background.

Chapter 5

From the corridor, Nell watched Leath entering his mother’s rooms. She hadn’t seen his lordship since that nerve-racking interview yesterday when he’d expressed his distrust. His expression this morning portended trouble. She had a premonition that the trouble concerned Lady Leath’s lowborn companion.

Nell slipped into her small office. She set down the ink she’d got from Mr. Crane—who was young and handsome and eager to help, and forgotten the moment she left his company—and crossed to close the door to the marchioness’s sitting room.

“… Miss Trim isn’t suitable.” Leath’s deep voice carried to where she stood.

Nell couldn’t see mother or son, but she guessed that the marchioness was in her accustomed place on the chaise longue and his lordship paced the floor as he did when he was impatient.

“James, we had this argument when you arrived a fortnight ago.” The marchioness’s voice was softer.

“I thought I’d give her the benefit of the doubt before my final decision.”

“Your final decision?” Lady Leath asked sharply.

“Mamma, you know I’m considering your welfare.”

“I know you’ve taken an unreasoning dislike to Miss Trim.”

“She doesn’t deserve your confidence.”

“I grieve to think I raised such a snob. Your father took people on their own merits.”

“Well, my father was clearly a better man in every way.”

Despite everything, Nell felt a twinge of sympathy. Something in his weary tone indicated that he didn’t appreciate the comparison to his brilliant father.

“Nell is from a respectable family. Poverty isn’t a crime.”

“I don’t know anything about her background, and when I ask her, she’s remarkably noncommittal.”

“Only because you bully her. Frightened people always look shifty.”

A contemptuous snort escaped Leath. “She’s not at all frightened of me, Mamma.”

“And is that why you want to dismiss her? Because she doesn’t cower at your merest whisper?”

Brava, your ladyship. The talent for political debate wasn’t confined purely to the male Fairbrothers.

“I want to dismiss her because I don’t trust her.”

“She’s worked as my companion for well over six weeks and the more I see of her, the more I like her.”

“You’re missing Sophie.”

“You’re here now,” the marchioness said with spurious docility. “Still I like Miss Trim. And you forget how long Sophie was in London before she married Harry Thorne.”

“Exactly.”

“James, stop this.” In her mind, Nell saw the marchioness glare at her son. “I mightn’t be able to run from Derby to York, but there’s nothing wrong with my mind.”

“I’m not implying that, Mamma.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m trying to do what’s best. That girl puts herself forward in a most unbecoming manner.”

Dear Lord in heaven, why hadn’t Nell been more careful around Leath? Dismay left a foul taste in her mouth. She’d tried to disappear into the background, but something about his lordship goaded her. Nell swallowed to dislodge what felt like a rock stuck in her throat and leaned forward to hear the rest of the conversation.

“What’s best is that Nell continues to keep me company in her delightful fashion.”

“I insist you dismiss the girl.”

“Why?”

“She’s sly.”

“No, she’s not.”

“And she doesn’t show proper respect.”

“Her manners are excellent. I won’t have you interfering, James.” The marchioness paused and when she resumed, a husky edge indicated that her son had upset her. Of course he had, the insensitive toad. “I’ll pay her from my pin money if you’re unwilling to cover her wages. I’m hardly at your mercy, although you’re acting like I’m a charity case.”

“Mamma,” he protested, “I can’t be easy with that girl in the house.”

“Then that’s your problem.” The husky note persisted. “I can’t be easy if you banish someone who is my friend as much as my employee.”

Nell’s fists closed at her sides, even as her conscience chafed at what her plans meant for the marchioness. Her lifelong loyalty to Dorothy clashed painfully with her newer loyalty to Lady Leath.

“I could arrange for one of Aunt Sylvia’s girls to come.”

The marchioness’s delicate sniff was a feminine version of Leath’s snort of derision. “Not a brain between them. Anyway, it’s cruel to shut a young girl up with only a decrepit old lady for company.”

“You’re not decrepit.”

“I’m too decrepit to put up with those silly chits and their constant chatter.”

“What about Cousin Cynthia?”

Another delicate expression of disdain. “She’s even stupider than Sylvia’s girls. And she’d read me sermons. She’s becoming odiously preachy in her old age. One would think she’d never kissed an undergardener in the maze at Hampton Court.”

“Did she, by God?”

Nell could tell that this glimpse of his staid relative in her salad days had momentarily distracted Leath. Pray God he stayed distracted.

“She was quite the hoyden before she became so holy. Although she wouldn’t thank me for remembering.”

“Speaking of people reading things to you, when did you develop a taste for novels? You’ve never picked up anything frivolous in your life.”

The marchioness laughed. “You can thank Nell for that.”

“I’m sure,” Leath said, and his displeasure oozed down Nell’s backbone like ice.

“Don’t be so stuffy, James. After Sophie married, life became dull until Nell brightened my days. I can’t imagine why you’ve got yourself in a twist about the girl.” She paused. “One might think you’re jealous that I’m so fond of her.”

“A masterstroke, madam. But sadly one that’s gone astray. You won’t get me to retreat in a fit of pique. I don’t like that girl and I want her gone.”

“Well, I do like her and I want her to stay. Will you insist?”

“I’d like to.”

“But you won’t.”

Nell couldn’t be nearly as sure as the marchioness. She braced to hear Leath pronounce the fatal words, but he laughed with a mixture of chagrin and fondness. “You’ve won. Temporarily. But I’m watching your dear Miss Trim.”

“You won’t see anything to her detriment.”

Nell took a moment to appreciate the marchioness’s trust. Trust she didn’t deserve. Her whisper of guilt swelled to a clamor. She might be grateful that her ladyship won this battle, but Leath was right to be wary.

“You’re an obstinate wench.”

“Of course I am, darling. Where do you think your stubbornness comes from?”

He laughed with genuine humor, and began to speak about someone they both knew in London. Very quietly, Nell shut the door.

For the moment, she was safe. But only for the moment. Leath wouldn’t let the matter go. And he’d do his best to discredit her with the marchioness. From now on, she must move carefully. She also needed to resume her search for the diary, no matter the danger.

The marchioness made no mention of her son’s attempt to dismiss Nell, but her manner became if anything, more affectionate. Nell tried to steer clear of Leath, but it was inevitable that they should pass in the corridor or encounter each other when she slipped into the library to select a book for the marchioness.

The lady’s taste for novels grew apace. When Nell had started as a companion, her duties had involved conversation, playing cards and writing letters. Occasionally she assisted with treatments during the marchioness’s bouts of ill health. Now they’d rushed through Pride and Prejudice and had just finished Sense and Sensibility. Apart from the dreary Clarissa, Nell had no idea what to choose next. The Alloway Chase library was crammed with dispiritingly worthy volumes.

Nell enjoyed reading aloud and the activity was undemanding, welcome when she managed so little sleep. The last three nights, she’d devoted fruitless hours to searching the library. Fear goaded her to haste. If the marquess caught her, he’d dismiss her for sure, whatever his mother said.

“Shall we continue with Don Juan this morning, your ladyship?” Nell had started Byron’s poem yesterday and the marchioness was enjoying the change.

“Yes, please, my dear. Such a wicked fellow.”

“Byron or Don Juan?”

The marchioness laughed, although a flat note in her amusement worried Nell. Blast Leath for harrying his mother.

“Both. Help me to sit up, if you please. I’m feeling a little tired.”

Her request didn’t surprise Nell. The fair, delicate features, so different from her son’s saturnine intensity, were drawn. She settled the marchioness more comfortably and opened the morocco-bound volume where she’d left off, with the youthful philanderer seducing the virtuous but hot-blooded Lady Julia.

Settling the parcel he carried more securely, Leath paused on the threshold to observe the two women in the sunny room. Capricious autumn offered up a few perfect days before winter descended.

With a tenderness that he couldn’t mistake, Miss Trim was arranging his mother’s pillows. It was possible, even probable, that the girl was a self-serving schemer, but at this moment when she thought herself unobserved, he couldn’t mistake her affection for his mother.

When he’d tried to have the chit dismissed, he should have expected to fail. He was honest enough to admit that his reasons for wanting to banish Miss Trim extended beyond her influence over his mother. He wanted her out of his house because he wanted her out of his mind. She was far too distracting. Hell, she was far too tempting.

Her veiled hostility didn’t douse his sexual interest. It fired him up. There was something exciting about a woman who didn’t fawn over him and imagine herself either his marchioness or his mistress.

With a turn of her graceful body that made his heart leap, the girl reached for a book. She sat in profile, so he saw the delicate nose and resolute chin so incongruous on a housemaid. His hands itched to tear away the pins torturing her bright hair. He mightn’t trust her, but by God, she was a pleasure to behold.

Whereas his mother didn’t look well. He frowned, hardly hearing Miss Trim begin to read. Then, like his mother, he found himself caught up in the racy tale.

But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?

Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;

A little still she strove, and much repented.

And whispering, “I will ne’er consent”—consented.

On the line’s sting in the tail, Miss Trim noticed Leath in the doorway. While the duchess snickered, the girl’s cinnamon eyes widened. Fleetingly he saw no trace of dislike. He wished to Hades he did. Instead he was astonished to discover that his reluctant attraction wasn’t one-sided.

Like wanton Lady Julia in the poem, Miss Trim’s expression spoke of resistance—but also desire. If they were alone, he’d sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she yielded to what they both wanted.

This was a bloody disaster.

“Go on, Nell. This is so delicious.”

“My lady, Lord Leath is here.”

When his mother glanced toward him, her weary face briefly brightened. “Darling, come and listen. Nell’s reading me a naughty poem.”

“You’re too young for Byron.” Leath deposited his brown paper parcel on a gilt and marble table, then kissed his mother’s cheek.

“Nell is,” his mother said with another smile. “It’s most shocking what that libertine got up to. I remember all the gossip, of course. This adventure must be based on real life.”

“Byron was a rake, Mother.”

“And you didn’t like him, I know.”

“I didn’t.” He remembered the brilliant, troubled, troublesome man he’d met briefly as a youth. “He was an entertaining fellow, and clever with it, but he left a good many ladies the worse for knowing him. I can’t admire someone so addicted to selfish pleasure that he was cavalier about the harm he did.”

The blaze of heat in Miss Trim’s eyes had cooled to curiosity. He couldn’t imagine why she cared about his opinion of the notorious poet. Leath certainly wasn’t the only person in England to frown upon his activities.

Hell, he needed to stop staring moonstruck at his mother’s companion. He turned back to the table and lifted the parcel. “I’ve brought you a present.”

His mother tried to sit up and Miss Trim rushed to assist with a gentleness that Leath couldn’t help noting. “Oh, how wonderful. I love presents.”

He held the box out. “Careful. It’s heavy.”

“Not diamonds, then?” she asked playfully.

“Not today.”

Miss Trim fetched scissors to cut the string. “I’ll finish those letters, my lady.”

“No, stay, Nell. This looks intriguing.”

His mother tore at the paper, as excited as a child at a birthday party, then reached inside the box. “James, and you pretended to disapprove.”

“How could I disapprove of anything that gives you such enjoyment?”

She drew out a beautifully tooled volume in dark green leather. “The Fair Maid of Perth. How wonderful.”

“I asked Hatchards to send their most popular books. There’s now a standing order each month. If you find that doesn’t meet your needs, they’ll increase it.”

“How can I thank you?” His mother’s eyes sparkled as she looked at him.

He often sent her gewgaws, jewelry or scarves or trinkets for her rooms. But he couldn’t remember her getting such pleasure from a gift. And it had been so simple to arrange. He felt like a fool that he hadn’t thought of it earlier, and unreasonably nettled that he’d needed Miss Trim to point out how a good book or two might brighten his mother’s restricted existence.

“What fun we shall have, Nell.”

“Indeed, my lady,” the girl said neutrally. Leath cast her another glance and was surprised to see that she studied him without her usual reserve. Instead, she regarded him as if he was a puzzle she couldn’t put together. He wondered why. The mystery here was Nell Trim, not the Marquess of Leath.

“Can you stay, James?”

“Of course,” he said, although now he paid closer attention to his estates, he was surprised how much work it took to run them. Even more surprising was how he enjoyed meeting the challenge of his vast inheritance.

“Lovely. Perhaps Nell will read on. She’s most entertaining.”

He stifled a groan. The last thing he needed was that low, husky, damnably suggestive voice describing seduction.

“I’m sure his lordship doesn’t want to listen to me,” Miss Trim said.

She’d avoided him recently. Was she still smarting after their talk in the library? Or had his mother told her that he’d tried to send her away?

“You should read James some of those agricultural reports that arrived yesterday,” his mother said drily.

“How did you know about those?” he asked, although he shouldn’t be surprised. His mother remained mistress of the house, despite rarely leaving her rooms.

“I have my spies,” she said. “They tell me that the ghosts are back.”

“What nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. As a new bride, I saw Lady Mary on the battlements.”

“On a foggy night, Mamma.”

“I’m not the only one.”

“At least you were sober.”

His mother’s jaw firmed. They’d had this argument before. She fancied that the castle, parts of which dated to the fourteenth century, was haunted. “Lady Mary’s visiting us again.”

“On the battlements?”

“No, in the library. For the last three nights, lights have been seen after midnight.”

He thought he heard a strangled gasp from Miss Trim, but when he glanced at her, she’d lowered her eyes in her perfect servant pose.

“Who the devil’s skulking in the gardens at that hour?” he asked.

“Garson was watching for poachers.”

“And drinking to pass the time,” Leath said with grim amusement. “I’ll have a word with him. If my gamekeeper has taken to the bottle, he’s not safe wandering the property with a gun.”

“You mock, James, but you know it’s true that Lady Mary’s husband strangled her.”

“I know that’s true. I don’t know it’s true that she lingers to keep an eye on her descendants. And if she does, I doubt that she’s developed a taste for literature. Especially as I have it on good authority that my library is full of boring books.”

He didn’t look at Miss Trim. But his brain worked, even as he argued with his mother’s conclusions. Despite his joke, Garson wasn’t a drunkard. If he said he saw lights in the library, odds were that he had.

A determination to catch Miss Trim in the act gripped him. If he could prove to his mother that the girl meant no good, he could send her away.

And conquer this inconvenient itch to bed her.

Chapter 6

Nell had read every thought that crossed the marquess’s mind when his mother told him about Lady Mary’s ghost. He’d known immediately who was flitting around his library. Fear had twisted her stomach into knots as she waited for him to denounce her. Then she’d realized that he’d take this as a golden opportunity to catch her prowling about.

Her suspicions were confirmed that evening when she saw Mr. Wells, the daunting butler, delivering a tray to the library. Obviously refreshments for his lordship’s watch.

For once, she was a step ahead of Lord Leath.

The diary wasn’t in the library. The next likely place—in fact always the most likely place—was his lordship’s bedroom. After all, the scandalous document would hardly be shelved alongside Fordyce’s Sermons where anyone could lay their hand upon it. The problem was entering the marquess’s rooms unobserved. His vigil in the library provided the ideal chance.

Now as she crept along darkened hallways, only a candle to light her way, the house seemed twice the size as it did by day. And by day, the sprawling pile stretched for miles. Thick carpeting under her feet muffled her passing, but she remained preternaturally alert.

His lordship’s valet lived above his rooms, but last week Selsby had been called away to his sick mother. Everything conspired to allow her to search Leath’s apartments.

She prayed that she’d find the diary quickly. She desperately needed to escape Alloway Chase. The longer she stayed, the flimsier became her resolution. Every moment she spent with the marquess left her more befuddled. Witness today when he’d surprised his mother with those books. Hardly the act of a thoughtless cad. And was he hypocrite enough to denounce Lord Byron for sins he himself had committed? She wouldn’t have thought so.

If she’d been ignorant of the marquess’s offenses, she’d like him. Oh, who was she fooling? She’d more than like him. Even knowing his wickedness, she found him breathtakingly attractive.

However dirty that made her feel.

How could she yearn after the man who had destroyed Dorothy? Was she victim to the same fatal weakness as her half sister?

Carefully she inched open the door to the marquess’s apartments. Although he was safely ensconced in his library, her heart skittered with fear that somehow he was in two places at once.

She stepped into a dark, cavernous space. She closed the door and raised her candle to reveal a sitting room, as masculine in decor as the marchioness’s was feminine. Flickering light glanced across a leather couch and two armchairs beside a cold hearth. Piles of books teetered on heavy mahogany tables. She’d lay money there wasn’t a novel among them. Light glinted off decanters on the sideboard.

James Fairbrother’s presence was palpable, as though he stood right behind her. The muscles across her neck and shoulders knotted until she told herself to settle down. He was downstairs. She was safe, at least for now.

She pushed open the door from the sitting room and entered a short corridor. Shelves lined the first room off the hallway. She inhaled to calm leapfrogging nerves, then wished she hadn’t. When had the marquess’s scent become so familiar? Her senses expanded with pleasure as she recognized sandalwood soap and clean, healthy male. Riffling through the clothes he wore on that strong, hard body seemed unforgivably intimate, and she fumbled the door shut with a loud click that made her heart jolt with alarm.

Desperately listening in case someone came to check on the noise, she stood motionless.

Nothing.

She sucked air into starved lungs. Nell didn’t take easily to deceit. Sneaking around and eavesdropping and telling lies went against her character. Another reason to leave Alloway Chase sooner rather than later. Much more chicanery and she’d be a wreck.

The next door revealed a bathing room of a luxury beyond anything she’d imagined when her world was confined to Mearsall. At last she found proof of sensual self-indulgence. The marquess presented a restrained façade to the world. Something at Nell’s deepest level insisted that beneath that proper exterior lurked a man who appreciated pleasure.

The thought of James Fairbrother standing naked in this blue-tiled magnificence heated her blood. She couldn’t help seeing him as he doused himself with water, stroked soap along his wet skin, lounged in the huge bath.

This time, although she closed the door carefully, panic nipped more sharply. Her invasion of the marquess’s rooms inflamed her senses in a way that appalled her.

One door remained.

Only her piercing need to run away made her proceed. If she failed at this hurdle, she was likely to fail altogether.

As she opened this last door, her hands shook so violently that her candle cast wild shadows over the walls. She felt like Bluebeard’s bride breaking into the locked room. A discomfiting thought, as the nosy girl came to a nasty end in that tale. At least she did in the pragmatic version told around Mearsall’s firesides.

The bedroom was so enormous that the candle’s light didn’t penetrate its far reaches. A fire burned in the grate, but the flames left most of the room in shadow. The room was circular with tall windows facing three directions. She must be in the castle’s west tower. Quietly she closed the door behind her.

The huge four-poster bed sat on a dais, curtained in gold brocade. The ceiling was so high it dwarfed even this lofty structure. The covers were turned down, ready for the marquess’s powerful body. Nell shivered with a dread that, she was ashamed to admit, included a dollop of forbidden excitement.

If she’d felt like she infringed the marquess’s privacy elsewhere in these apartments, here where he slept, he could be standing at her elbow. A book lay open on the nightstand as if he’d just laid it down. A shirt draped across a chair. A black velvet dressing gown as soft as panther fur spread across the base of the bed, waiting for its owner to shrug it over his long body. She could picture him wearing it as he enjoyed a last brandy before sleep.

The image of Leath as his real, animal self, not the civilized man he presented to the world, was painfully vivid. Here it was easy to envision him with a lover. Not a girl he tumbled to scratch an itch, but someone he wanted. Perhaps even … loved. Nell released a soft gasp of distress when she realized that the fantasy woman in Leath’s arms bore her face.

Enough. She swallowed to control her queasiness. She didn’t have long. And she couldn’t waste it on nonsense.

Recalling Lady Mary’s “ghost,” she crossed to the windows to check that the curtains were closed. Then she set her candle on a small table and surveyed the room.

This vast, idiosyncratic chamber was full of interesting nooks and coffers. Fertile ground for her search. She leveled her shoulders and stepped toward a large studded chest near the hearth with the year 1676 picked out in heavy iron nails.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The door opened and his lordship strode in.

Nell caught her breath and held it as if somehow that made her invisible. Her queasiness changed to cramping horror.

Shock flared in his face then his gaze narrowed on her. He couldn’t be nearly as appalled to see her as she was to see him.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” Thick black brows lowered over deep-set eyes. He was dressed informally. A loose white shirt and breeches with boots. He looked utterly terrifying.

Nell held her breath so long that it hurt when she exhaled. She felt dizzy with lack of air, stabbing dread, self-disgust.

Curse him, what could she say? What could she do? She faltered back, although there was no escape. Leath’s formidable form blocked the only door. She should have thought of some excuse for being in his room. But what excuse could there be?

She dipped into a wobbly curtsy. “My lord.”

His furious gaze didn’t waver. “Just what are you up to, Miss Trim?”

“N-nothing, sir,” she stammered. “I’m sorry for intruding. I’ll leave you alone.”

He didn’t budge as she scuttled toward the door. Her knees trembled so badly that she feared she might collapse in a heap before she reached it. She darted past him, and for a brief, mad moment thought that she might make it.

Until he turned and slammed the heavy door in her face. “Not so fast, my inquisitive chit.”

The impulse to haul at the handle died as it arose. She’d never win a physical battle against Leath. She panted, more with fright than exertion, and twisted to press her back against the door. “Let me out.”

“Not yet,” he said mildly, placing his palms flat on either side of her head. His calmness was more frightening than shouting. It hinted at the tight rein he held over his temper. He was so huge, this was like facing down a planet. An angry planet. Dear heaven, she was in such trouble.

“You’re scaring me,” she said, hoping to appeal to his softer side. He had one; he’d shown it to his mother. The problem was that if Dorothy’s story was true—and surely it was—his benevolence didn’t extend to women outside his class.

“You deserve to be scared,” he said grimly.

Without touching her, his body hemmed her against the door. The evocative scent of his skin was rich in her nostrils. Something other than fear started to beat in her blood.

Hating herself, she met his uncompromising expression. “That’s … that’s not kind.”

His eyes glittered. She knew he was no respecter of innocence. Even if he was, what was he to make of her invading his bedroom? Panic tasted rusty on her tongue and she licked dry lips.

His gaze dropped to the betraying movement. The same awareness that had extended between them their first night sizzled through the pause. “I’m not feeling kind.”

She shivered. “Please …” she whispered. “Step back.”

He loomed above her, impervious and unforgiving. “Not until you tell me what you’re doing here.”

“I …” Desperately she sought for some way to explain her presence. Nothing came to mind.

Black brows arched in cynical inquiry. “I what?”

“I can’t think when you stand so close,” she muttered crossly.

Despite the nasty edge to his soft laugh, the sound stroked along her skin. Every hair on her body stood to attention. This heady mixture of desire and alarm sent her into a complete spin.

“I don’t want you to think. I want you to tell me the truth.” He frowned. “Have you come to steal?”

She should be grateful for the accusation. It jolted her out of cowering like a mouse. She straightened and glared at him. “Of course not.”

“Then what are you doing?”

She avoided his eyes. “I thought you were in the library.”

“Catching Lady Mary.” His acerbic response made her wince. His concentration on her burned like a flame.

“I saw Wells bring you supper.”

“What a busy little miss you are.” It wasn’t a compliment. “I already know you’re the ghost.”

Her eyes flashed up. “I wanted a book,” she said desperately.

“One you can’t find during the day?” His voice bit as he continued. “With dear Mr. Crane’s advice on your choice?”

If he was another man, she’d think he was jealous. But the great Marquess of Leath wouldn’t care about a maidservant’s flirtations.

He went on before she could protest. “Surely you won’t say that you’re here for something to read.”

She raised her chin. Knowing that she risked disaster, she said the only thing that came to mind. “I wanted to see where you sleep.”

Surprise had him lurching back. “What the devil?”

She took advantage of the few extra inches of space to draw a breath, tangy with sandalwood. Turning red as a tomato would lend credence to her explanation. “Please don’t make me admit this.”

He watched her like a snake watched a rat. “Admit what?”

“Must I say? You put me to the blush.” That at least was true.

“Yes, you must.”

She pressed her damp palms to her skirts. How she’d love to punch him, but she had a horrible inkling that his jaw would be much harder than her fist. Dear heaven, help her to sound convincing. But not too convincing.

“Hasn’t a servant ever been besotted with you, my lord?” To her surprise, her question emerged steadily.

“Not to my …” He spoke very deliberately. “Are you saying you have a penchant for me, Miss Trim?”

He didn’t sound pleased. She should be relieved that he wasn’t ripping her clothes off. After all, her confession could be taken as an invitation. Yet again it struck her that he was a remarkably restrained libertine.

She struggled to appear bashful instead of scared out of her wits. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I’m sure.” He sounded skeptical, as well he might. “You’ve never seemed dazzled.”

She turned her face away, staring at his hand spread against the door’s rich mahogany. Like the rest of him, his hand was big and powerful and beautifully formed. Despite everything, she couldn’t resist imagining that hand on her skin. His gold signet ring, visible symbol of his rank, gleamed evilly from his little finger. “I have my pride.”

“Of course,” he said drily.

She struggled to look humble and shy and innocent. All were true. Well, apart from the humble part. Her stepfather had frequently warned her that a mere sergeant major’s daughter had no right to be so stiff-necked. “I’m aware of the gulf between us.”

“And it breaks your heart.”

If only she could squeeze out a convincing tear. “I can’t help my feelings.”

He didn’t move closer. It just felt that way. “Do you really expect me to credit this balderdash?”

Her temper stirred. “You underestimate your effect on an impressionable girl.”

He snorted disbelief. “More balderdash.”

Damn him. A turbulent mix of desperation, anger and reckless bravado gripped her. Frantic hands grabbed the front of his shirt. “I’ll show you balderdash, my lord.”

She stretched up until her lips crashed into his.

Chapter 7

Leath stiffened—everywhere—under Miss Trim’s unexpected assault. He had to give her credit. She’d dare the devil. He hadn’t expected her to take this absurdity about her tendre for him to this length.

But then, he’d cornered her, hadn’t he?

Her lips were soft and endearingly clumsy. She kissed like a young girl. This might be another ruse to disarm him, but he didn’t think so. Even more unbelievable than her supposed infatuation, the glorious Miss Trim wasn’t much good at kissing.

Which turned out to be a damned lucky thing. As it was, he was hard as an iron bar. If she demonstrated an ounce of skill, his sanity would dissolve completely.

Because he was still marginally sane, he caught her shoulders. For a moment, he reveled in her slender strength. Then with more difficulty than he wanted to admit, he pushed her away.

She panted as her lips slid free. Throughout the brief, urgent kiss, she’d kept her mouth closed.

“What—” She looked dazed, as if he’d painted her world with rainbows. Imagine if he’d kissed her back, taught her what to do.

Except that he refused to kiss women he didn’t trust. And he most definitely didn’t trust this one. Although the shine in her eyes, firelit amber, might almost convince him that she really was smitten.

She licked her lips again, slowly, as if tasting him. He bit back a groan and drew her closer, when good sense dictated that he throw her out on her delectable rump. Solving the puzzle of her presence was impossible when the wicked urge to have his way with her jammed his brain. He wasn’t used to his head and his instincts being at odds. His head should be winning.

It wasn’t.

“I give you points for trying,” he said, the hint of savagery directed mostly at himself. Her flinch stabbed him with guilt, although heaven knew she’d asked for trouble.

“I’m sorry.” Her slender throat moved as she swallowed. “If you tell your mother I kissed you, she’ll let you dismiss me.”

He was surprised that his mother had mentioned his attempts to send Miss Trim away. “If she knows you came to my room, that’s enough,” he snapped and felt guilty again when she flushed with humiliation.

“So you’ll win.”

More easily than he’d expected. He wondered why he wasn’t happier. He should be dancing a jig, now that this conniving baggage had overreached herself. But his lips tingled from the pressure of hers. His head flooded with the lemon perfume of her soap, more familiar than it should be. Just the sound of her voice made him yearn.

He didn’t believe that she wanted him. But by God, he wanted her. Except she hadn’t claimed to want him, had she? She’d claimed a silly schoolgirl infatuation.

It would serve her right if he showed her what risks she took. Tossed her onto his bed and flung himself on top of her.

Except …

Except in her face, he saw secrets and mysteries. But he also saw innocence. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t experienced with men. That one awkward, incendiary kiss betrayed Miss Trim as a novice.

She played dangerous games.

He should send her away with orders to pack.

His hands tightened on her shoulders, holding her in place.

“Why don’t you tell me to go?” she asked wonderingly. For once, she sounded like a bewildered young girl, not the woman whose actions tormented him with questions and whose presence banished his sleep.

“You want to kiss me?”

“No,” she said quickly, then less certainly, “Yes.”

She struggled to keep up the pretense of girlish adoration. Except that after she’d kissed him, he’d caught arousal stirring in her eyes.

“Which is it?”

She bit her lip and before he could stop himself, he bent to kiss her, to stop her torturing that luscious mouth. Her shocked gasp was a whisper of warm breath on his face.

His hands slid around her back, holding her as a lover holds a woman he intends to kiss. Thoroughly.

Knowing he’d pay, knowing this was absolutely the last thing he should do, he brushed his lips across Miss Trim’s.

Nell still shook with reaction from her first kiss. The experience had left her confused and strangely frustrated. She wasn’t sure she’d enjoyed it, although it had been … interesting.

She hadn’t expected the heat and intimacy and sheer physicality of placing her lips on a man’s. His mouth had been firm and he hadn’t responded. Not that she was sure what she wanted him to do.

For a long moment, Leath watched her with an unreadable expression. His hands dug into her shoulders and she feared that he was about to shove her out the door. She was bizarrely reluctant to go. She braced for a summary ejection from his room, then tomorrow a summary ejection from Alloway Chase.

His hold softened in a way she couldn’t describe. She stared up at him, transfixed, afraid. No wonder poor silly Dorothy had fallen under his spell. He was the most compelling man she’d ever known.

Her skin tightened with anticipation. Slowly his lips skimmed across hers in a caress as different from her allout assault as satin from iron.

The kiss lasted no more than a second, yet flooded her with such longing that her knees buckled. She leaned back against the door.

He still looked uncompromising. His features were all hard planes: strong bones, jutting nose, adamantine jaw.

Yet his lips … His lips had been softer than a feather.

She snatched a jagged breath and struggled to speak, but before she could, he gave her another of those sweet kisses. Did he linger a little this time? Taste her as delicately as he’d sample a fine claret?

Her breath caught as he raised his head and regarded her with familiar concentration. To steady herself, she hooked her hands around his neck. “That was …”

Lovely? Wrong? Frightening? Beguiling?

Heaven help her. Heaven condemn her. She’d started this. Now she’d opened the gates to destruction on a level she’d never contemplated.

One thumb trailed down the line of her jaw, leaving a tingling wake. His lips quirked in a faint smile that set her heart cartwheeling. The huskiness in his voice stroked across her nerves like silk. The clean, male scent of his skin surrounded her, too familiar in a man who should be a stranger. “You’re not usually lost for words, Miss Trim.”

She’d never been kissed before. She’d always imagined that whoever the lucky fellow was, he’d use her Christian name. Still, something about the way his lordship said “Miss Trim” made her shiver with excitement. And God forgive her, lately when she’d imagined kisses, the man kissing her had been Lord Leath.

Nell felt as if she toppled over a cliff. She should flee, forsake her quest for vengeance, forget that however unacceptable the attraction, she found this man so appealing. She should scuttle back to Mearsall and her dear, kind stepfather, and her dull existence, and be grateful that dullness promised safety.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said shakily.

“You kissed me first.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

She wasn’t surprised when he laughed. Even she thought that she sounded absurd.

“You seem new to the activity. I merely offered an alternative technique.”

She thought she’d blushed before, but this critique set her cheeks on fire. “I don’t go around kissing random men, my lord. I refuse to apologize for my inexperience.”

“I’m glad.” He caught her loosely by the waist. She was overwhelmingly conscious of those large hands holding her.

“For my inexperience?”

“That you made an exception to your rule.”

“I suppose you’re used to women throwing themselves at you,” she mumbled, knowing she made a fool of herself. A man like Leath probably couldn’t step outside without tripping over eager young ladies wanting to kiss him. Wanting more.

The idea of him doing more to her sent Nell’s heart hurtling into her ribs.

He smiled. How she wished that he’d stop. That gentle curve of his beautifully cut lips set her pulses rocketing. “If only life was so exciting for a politically minded marquess.”

She wasn’t deceived. Even disregarding Dorothy’s story, she couldn’t see women ignoring his manifold attractions. He’d been angry when he’d discovered her in his room. She sensed no anger now. Just perpetual waiting.

She backed away and bumped hard into the door. “I must go.”

His hands tightened. “You freely entered the lion’s den, Miss Trim.”

“Stop calling me Miss Trim,” she said crossly, bracing her hands against his powerful chest. She told herself to push him away, but her disobedient fingers curved into hard muscle. He was so wonderfully warm. Beneath her right palm, his heart beat like a conqueror’s drum.

The kiss had been intimate. Feeling the life pounding through him felt more so. What a mistake she’d made coming here. Even if she left immediately, she and the marquess would never be strangers again.

“Would you rather I called you Eleanor?” he asked silkily.

Her eyes widened. “Only my father called me Eleanor. Everyone calls me Nell.”

“I rather like the idea of kissing Eleanor.”

“I rather like the idea of going back to my room.” She squeaked in horror. That sounded like a proposition. “Alone.”

“So no curiosity?”

She saw by his expression that the shake of her head lacked conviction. “I’m sorry I invaded your apartments.”

“I’m not.”

Shocked, she stared at him. “You’re not?”

“I have a lovely woman in my arms and no particular plans for the rest of the evening.”

Her stomach lurched in dismay. Dear Lord, at last she saw the seducer. And as he’d so rightly said, she’d put herself squarely in his sights. She shoved his chest. It was like trying to move a monolith. “No.”

“No?”

“Droit de seigneur went out of fashion with the farthingale.”

“So you don’t want to share my bed?”

“No.” Although her blood beat hard and hot at the thought of having that big beautiful body as her plaything for the night.

“Yet here you are.” The edge in his tone made her shiver.

“I … told you why.”

“Yes, you’re suffering a bad case of unrequited love.”

She pushed at his chest again. “Not love. Just infatuation.”

“Prove it.”

Her wriggling stopped and she regarded him aghast. “I’m not a doxy.” Bitterness seeped into her voice. “I don’t even know how to kiss, as you so ungallantly pointed out.”

His laugh this time held the characteristic grim note. Briefly when he’d kissed her, he’d looked like a gentler, younger, kinder man. Now the purpose in his expression made her quake with nerves. And unwilling excitement. She’d never stood so long in a man’s embrace. Next to Leath, she felt small and feminine. Powerless too, which should terrify her. After all, he threatened ruin, and there was nobody to save her.

“You’ll keep your chastity, although God knows you tempt fate.”

“I thought you were in the library,” she said stubbornly.

“No excuse.”

“So let me go.”

His smile wasn’t reassuring. “Not until you’ve learned how to kiss a man.”

She braced against him. “I think I’m better off not knowing.”

“I’m appalled that a woman so lovely is untouched.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Compliments won’t make me stay.”

“Perhaps not. But this might.”

He captured her lips in a quick, commanding kiss. Odd how much he could convey without words.

“You … you flatter yourself, my lord.”

“Do I? You’re still here.”

She gulped in air. She kept forgetting to breathe. Then when she did, Leath’s musky essence intoxicated her, making coherent thought impossible.

Another inhalation. Only to realize that he no longer held her. His beautiful hands hung loose and open at his sides, although his rough breathing indicated disquiet.

She raised her hands from his chest, loathing how his warmth lingered on her palms, and reached behind her for the doorknob. “You’ll stop me if I try to leave.”

Nell had a horrible feeling that she sounded like she wanted him to keep her here.

“Try it and see.”

Despite all the evil she knew of him, she had the strongest feeling that she could trust him with her life. Was she right? Or was she another stupid girl caught in a rake’s net?

“Just a kiss?” she whispered, hardly believing that she wasn’t already halfway back to her room. She wondered if he had any idea what potent effect his raw masculinity had on her frail willpower. “Can I trust you?”

The edge returned to his voice, although he didn’t move. “You’re the one who broke into my bedroom.”

Completely unjustified guilt surged. He was a bad man and she’d been doing the work of the righteous. But she couldn’t deny that she’d felt shabby breaching his inner sanctum. “One kiss and then I’ll go.”

“As you wish.”

“You agree?” she asked in shock.

“It’s time to move from negotiation to action, my dear Eleanor.” To prove he meant it, he drew her into his arms.

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