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  Now Gavin was stunned. Vance had sounded both lusty and well-satisfied by his bed sport with Kira Melbourne.

  “He is a sodomite?” Gavin whispered. “If that’s true, why would he elope with Miss Melbourne? Or even pretend to? She has no money, no family connections. If he did not want her for her feminine charms…”

  “Why did he want her?” Brock cast him a sharp glance. “That is a good question. A very good question, indeed.”

  * * * *

  During Gavin’s youth, he had discovered the dusty secret passages from Norfield Park’s master’s suite to virtually every bedchamber in the house. Likely the corridors had been built by some ancestor who, like his father, had been mastered by his lust.

  Years ago, his father had caught him navigating the paths—or more accurately, a young Gavin had espied his father peeping in on a young female houseguest. He had never ventured into the passages again, until now.

  For the first time in his life, Gavin was glad his father had been a licentious bastard.

  Like father, like son.

  Gavin thrust the thought away. He was not like his father. He did not seek gratification with any and all human orifices he encountered. Hell, he didn’t even have a mistress at the moment, as Cordelia had so bluntly pointed out. Still, Gavin could not deny that he wanted to see Kira Melbourne naked.

  Perhaps you’re more like your sire than you care to admit—wicked to the core.

  Gavin ignored the voice inside him.

  While it was true that on his journey back to Norfield he had been envisioning Kira Melbourne astride him, as he’d tried to piece the sultry image together, Gavin remembered Vance’s assertion that Kira had a birthmark. Instantly, he knew the means by which he could prove or disprove its existence, and thus, the scoundrel’s claims. So he’d waited for the servants to bring her fresh water. She would be awake now and dressing for the day. And he could learn the truth.

  With sun shining its pale morning light on the south side of the manor, he pushed aside the tapestry that hid the passage door, took a deep breath, and lifted the latch, candle in hand.

  It was dark in the tunnel, of course, as well as musty. The walls closed in around him. The low ceiling forced him to hunch over as he navigated the narrow path. He raised the candle, noting the markings by each chamber, written in his father’s hand. Leave it to dear Papa to be thorough when chasing a good voyeuristic thrill.

  Finally, he came upon the rose room. The room that held Kira Melbourne. The room where, by now, she was likely performing her morning toilet.

  Was Kira a seductress or an innocent?

  Though the truth did not matter where the ton was concerned, because she was still a ruined woman in their eyes. Gavin was determined to know the truth. Naturally, he sought answers for James’s sake. If the woman was as wanton as Lord Vance claimed, he would have no qualms about ousting Kira from his cousin’s life. She was scandal personified, a half-Persian outcast who did not belong in the Daggett family. Gavin didn’t personally want to disprove her dissolute past for any particular reason. It hardly signified whether she’d had one lover or one hundred.

  Some annoying part of him, however, hoped not to find the heart-shaped birthmark on her left hip that Lord Vance had so lewdly described.

  Shielding the flickering candle flame with his damp palm, Gavin leaned toward the wall behind the rose room. Silently he removed the slat behind the old painting of some long-dead Daggett matron who would probably be spinning in her grave if she could see him now. Ignoring the racing of his heart, he peered through the two small eye-shaped openings.

  Kira Melbourne stood before her mirror in a nightrail, bathed in gentle golden sunlight beaming through the room’s sheer drapes. With a sharp, clear voice she hummed a familiar tune he could not place. Her face looked soft, morning sleepy. She wore her black hair in a single glossy braid down her back. The tip of the thick tail brushed the top of her sweetly-sloped buttocks. Gavin hungered to touch her there.

  A moment later, Kira splashed some water from the pitcher atop her mirrored vanity into the bowl beside it. Then she reached for the buttons at the front of her gown. Still humming, Kira released each one at a slow, measured pace, displaying the delicacy of her collarbones, the top swells of her rounded breasts, the inviting valley in-between.

  As she exposed each inch of new skin, Gavin found it more difficult to draw his next breath. The lust inside him rose; his heart beat faster. Gavin reminded himself that he was only here to learn the truth—for James. He repeated that fact over and over, like a mantra.

  Then Kira bent and grasped the hem of her gown. It came off in one clean sweep, exposing every lush inch of her body.

  His gut knotted. Lust sizzled down his legs, burst like fire in his groin. He began to sweat. A craving to touch her, explore every curved, feminine inch of her, seized him. He wanted her slick and ready for the feel of him deep inside her.

  So much for mantras. Gavin swallowed, his throat dry.

  When was the last time he’d felt such driving lust? Never. Gavin frowned. He kept occasional, discreet mistresses whom he found vaguely pleasant. He had never encountered a woman who made him fierce and reckless, as his father had been. If any woman had affected him like Kira Melbourne, Gavin would have shunned her.

  Now he did not have that chance. The integrity of his family name depended on him discrediting her.

  With an absent flick of her wrist, Kira tossed her thin nightrail to the floor. Gavin released a shaky sigh. The air felt bloody hot.

  The observation point his perverted father had established some twenty years ago allowed him to see Kira in profile, from the right. He could not see her left hipbone so he might confirm the rumor of her birthmark. Instead, he had a perfect view of the firm thrust of her breasts, coral tipped by the sun streaming through the windows, nipples erect in the morning cold. Dusky shadows softened her lithe torso.

  Gavin nearly groaned aloud as his gaze traveled down her smooth belly and sleek thighs to the round curve of her soft buttocks, all covered in skin the exotic color of prime tea flavored with warm milk. She stretched, reaching her arms to the sky like a sleek cat.

  He had not thought it possible, but he became harder still.

  How on earth was he to look at her in polite company and not become as stiff as a pike? He could just see himself now at James and Kira’s wedding, ready and eager to do more than kiss the bride…

  What in the hell was wrong with him? He was more than a few years away from the randy imaginings of his adolescence. He had learned iron control. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen naked women in his life; he had, dozens of them. Why did Kira Melbourne affect him so?

  Gavin closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, but he could still see Kira Melbourne naked in his mind, deliciously nude, contemplating her reflection in the vanity’s mirror. Grasping for control, he counted to ten. He went on to twenty. Then he swore.

  “Blast and rot, this is ridiculous,” he whispered to himself. “She is merely a woman and I am…” A peeping tom? A voyeur? No, a man determined to save his family from scandal and ruin.

  Purpose firmly in mind, Gavin opened his eyes again to find James’s fiancée still naked. He wouldn’t look at her breasts… or think about how ripe the tips would taste in his mouth if she dangled them over his face in invitation. Look lower, he told himself. Wondrously, his eyes obeyed, but this time settling on the juncture of her slender thighs and the trim thatch of dark hair covering her cleft. He imagined her opening for him, inviting him into her, tempting him with a glance of her dewy vulva… Lord, the tunnel was suddenly hotter than Hades.

  A few moments later, Gavin forced his gaze down again, all the way to her feet. Perfect. There was nothing sexual about feet. Except hers were long and elegant, attached to slender ankles and nicely rounded calves, and oh, her sleek thighs, topped by her—

  No. He was here for James, here to find out the truth.

  If she would turn even slightly, Gavin
would be able to view Kira’s left hipbone in the vanity mirror. Once he saw the birthmark Vance had described, or the absence of it, he could drop the slat back into place and return to his room. It was all very simple.

  Unfortunately, he did not remember ever having an erection that could rival granite, so that part of him disagreed.

  With a disgusted shake of his head, Gavin sighed and willed Kira to turn just a bit in his direction so he could end this torment.

  Naturally, she did no such thing. Instead, she lifted her cloth, doused it in the water, and began scrubbing her face. Soon she moved onto her shoulders, her arms, her long-fingered hands, washing in unhurried strokes. She returned the rag to the water again, then squeezed the excess moisture from the small white scrap of linen he envied.

  Before he could look away, Kira cupped one of her breasts, lifting it to the cloth in her other hand. She washed efficiently, but her every movement had a sensual air. He’d bet few women of the ton had ever really viewed themselves in the altogether before, and yet Kira seemed eminently comfortable with her nudity.

  She abandoned her breast and repeated the process with the other, pausing again to collect fresh water from the bowl. Entranced, Gavin watched her nipples tighten, darken, as the morning chill swept over her. Surely his heart could not take much more.

  Turn, damn it!

  Still, Miss Melbourne remained stubborn. She stroked the cloth in languid circles over her abdomen before moving lower.

  She parted her legs ever so slightly. Gavin closed his eyes and groaned. This manner of torture was above and beyond familial duty, surely.

  But he owed answers to Aunt Caroline, who had taken the place of the mother he could only remember for her pale, lilac-scented skin and sunny smiles. He owed answers to James. His aunt and cousin were nearly all the family he had left. How could he fail to produce the truth? He could see himself now, trying to explain that he’d been overcome by a stiff cock…

  Gavin heard another splash, followed by bare footsteps over the soft imported carpets. Kira had turned, but in the opposite direction. She treated him to a magnificent view of her backside, which made a perfect curve to her hips, tapered up to a pleasingly small waist, a sleek, narrow back, and elegant shoulders.

  Lord, now he was waxing poetic over her shoulders?

  Kira grabbed for something off to her left, in a drawer of the mahogany chest resting against the soft rose-painted walls. As she shook the garment out, Gavin identified it as a clean chemise.

  She tossed it over her head, turning slowly toward him, then thrust her arms through the appropriate openings. She shimmied slightly, and Gavin watched as the chemise slowly covered the magnificent profile of her breasts, then slid down her abdomen.

  Before the garment settled into place, she pivoted toward him just enough to see a reddish birthmark on her left hipbone.

  Heart-shaped—exactly as Lord Vance had described it.

  Gavin cursed beneath his breath. Disappointment and lust both raced through his veins as he slid the slat back into place and leaned against the dark tunnel’s wall, teeth clenched.

  Clearly, Brock’s information had been wrong. Vance wasn’t a sodomite, at least not completely. Perhaps he didn’t discriminate against anyone of any gender who provided bed sport.

  And once upon a time, that someone had been Kira Melbourne. How else could he know of her unique birthmark?

  Gavin stalked back to his room, hot candle wax dripping close to his fingers. What would he tell Aunt Caroline now? More to the point, what would he say to James?

  And why was a part of him unhappy to confirm that Kira Melbourne was a woman of easy virtue?

  * * * *

  “Gavin, you’ve returned from London!” James greeted from the breakfast room before he paused with a frown. “And in a fine mood, I see. Your face looks like a thundercloud.”

  He felt more like a tornado, tightly wound and ready for battle or sex, preferably the latter, but Gavin knew he wouldn’t get to choose today. Damn, he wasn’t returned from London three hours yet. Already he’d seen a most tempting naked woman—and now he would confront his cousin because if it.

  “James, I heard some very alarming gossip about your intended in London. Do you truly mean to marry this woman?”

  Apprehension clouded James’s pale face. “I implore you not to believe everything you hear about Miss Melbourne. The gossip is simply not true.”

  Gavin swore. James’s pleading expression would only make insisting he renounce Kira Melbourne more difficult. Couldn’t his cousin see that wedding a woman of her ilk would be tantamount to societal suicide for the whole family? That his new parish in Kent would hear of her scandals and shun them both? That she would likely betray and hurt him someday?

  “Lord Vance says he has full carnal knowledge of your fiancée. Certainly you can see—”

  “He lies, I am sure of it! I have no notion why he would make such outrageous claims. Kira says he asked her to elope with him, and because she cared for him and believed him to be a gentleman, she agreed. She learned most painfully that Vance is not a man of honor.” James grimaced. “Perhaps the tale sounds farfetched, but I have prayed on this. I know she is innocent.”

  Impatience nagged at Gavin. “Vance has details. For instance, he claims Miss Melbourne has a very unique birthmark on her…person. I—I have it on good authority that is indeed true. There is but one way he could know that.”

  From his expression, Gavin saw that his disclosure had not swayed James. “I can only assume you learned such information from her lady’s maid. If you did so, Lord Vance could easily have done the same.”

  Gavin could hardly refute his cousin’s assumption without implicating himself. But he wondered if Vance might have paid a servant for the knowledge. Still, why would he? So far, the blackguard had accomplished nothing but ruining Kira’s reputation, and Gavin saw no gain for Vance in that.

  “Miss Melbourne is a kind and honest woman, Gavin. I know she would not do such a sinful thing.”

  And apparently James had just fallen off the apple cart. James was Kira Melbourne’s avenue to respectability and comfortable living. Couldn’t he see that? “Why would you believe a woman you’ve scarce known for three weeks over evidence? Do you love her?”

  “I love all of God’s children.”

  Sighing, Gavin dug deep for patience. “Do you love her in the man-woman, I-must-marry-her way?”

  James hesitated. “I greatly esteem her.”

  An odd relief ploughed through him. “But you don’t love her.” Before he had a chance to become too pleased, another distasteful thought hit Gavin. “You—you didn’t compromise—”

  “Heavens, no!” James pulled on his stiff lapels, looking stunned. “I would never demean her in that insulting way, nor would she allow such a thing.” Then he sighed and softened. “Gavin, I can save Miss Melbourne from further ruination. I require a wife who will be as committed to my cause as I. She is most eager to nourish the souls of my new parishioners with me. We look forward to our lives together, in God’s service.”

  The woman washing her breasts before the mirror a scant three hours ago hadn’t appeared as if she’d been contemplating a life in God’s service. “I understand that you think marriage will protect her from the ugly gossip, but that will not stop tongues from wagging.”

  “We plan to have a small ceremony here, then retire to my new parish where we shall lead very quiet country lives. The gossip will die eventually, I am certain.”

  “For you and Miss Melbourne perhaps. But in London, no. What of my sisters? Anne is only having her first season. And what of your mother? I do not think she can bear another torrid scandal.”

  “Romans, chapter five, verse three, says, ‘And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience.’”

  To hell with patience. Clearly it, like proof, would not work in the face of obstinance such as James’s.

  “Mother is strong.�
� James looked at Gavin as if he were a misguided soul. “I feel certain this shall pass.”

  Perhaps, but not before it kills her. “As head of this household, I could demand you forsake her.”

  “Gavin, no! Give yourself a chance to truly know Miss Melbourne, please. For I would hate to lose the cousin I have always considered a brother. That would bring me such pain.”

  James would choose the sensual strumpet over his own family? Such an assertion was appalling—unthinkable! The thought made Gavin ruthless.

  “What will you do when you come home someday to find another man in bed with your wife?”

  “Miss Melbourne would never do that! She is loyal to our common cause. Truly, you have misjudged my fiancée.” James shook his head at Gavin. “My higher calling to God’s service is the one area of my life of which I am certain. I know this is the right thing to do. Please understand.”

  “So you plan to give up your bachelorhood in supreme sacrifice to God?”

  James brushed a wisp of fair hair from his forehead, his blue eyes both sad and resolute. “I believe God put Miss Melbourne in my path so I might save her. And saving her is exactly what I intend to do.”

  Chapter Three

  “This travesty has gone too far!”

  Kira turned to the sound of her brother’s agitated voice, carried by the late morning wind. With long strides, Darius marched across Norfield Park’s green lawns. The sun hid behind a hazy gray sky, portending a storm. In keeping with the weather, his mouth had a grim cast.

  “Good morning.” She ceased walking until he reached her side. Clasping her hands before her, Kira watched his vigorous approach, hoping the subject darkening his mood was the weather, or even Mrs. Howland’s chilly inhospitality. But Darius’s thunderous expression gave her little hope.

  “The hell it is,” he snarled.

  She sighed. “Darius, don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Defend you when people speak ill of you?” He scowled. “James is a good man and you are deserving of his gentle attention and care. But I vow to you his cousin needs a swift pounding of his face.”