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  Livia’s heart pounded double time and she had to take a deep breath merely to regain her balance. That fierce stare held her completely. Until he pulled her closer, dragging her against his chest, his arms clamping around her like iron bands.

  His mouth came down on hers.

  Livia had been kissed before, at least she’d thought she had. But never like this. Never with a ruthless efficiency she couldn’t fight. His lips melded to hers until she forgot who she was, where she was. Nothing else mattered, nothing outside the circle of his arms.

  He crushed her body against his, her breasts slammed against his chest, swelling above so she was in danger of popping out of her corset. If he touched her there, she’d be lost. But that didn’t stop her wanting him to.

  Heat poured through her, tingles attacked every part of her body, particularly her groin and thighs, but he held her tightly, so she wouldn’t collapse like half a pound of melted butter at his feet.

  When he thrust his tongue into her mouth she was no longer sure about the collapsing part. Maybe she was melting already; she had certainly heated to boiling point. Surely kissing shouldn’t be like this.

  She sucked him in, greedily claimed his tongue as he explored every part of her mouth, demanding everything she could give.

  She did her best. Spearing her fingers into the hot silk of his hair, she found the soft, velvet ribbon confining it, and ruthlessly pulled it free. A curl of her own locks tumbled down and tickled her cheek. If she could have spoken, she’d have begged him to take her back inside and find a convenient surface.

  With a muffled moan, he dragged his lips away from hers. Whimpering, she reached up, went on tiptoe to find that bliss once more, until her whirling thoughts slowed and she blinked.

  “There she is,” he murmured. “I see you now.” A self-satisfied smile curled his reddened lips. She’d done that. She’d made that difference. No doubt her mouth was in the same state.

  A shudder of horror froze her where she stood. He released her with one arm, using his freed hand to tuck the curl behind her ear with exaggerated care. Even his light touch sent sensual shivers down her spine.

  This would not do at all.

  “I am perfectly able to stand by myself.” Her usual hauteur, the frigid politeness she used when she wanted to depress someone was gone, and her words came out in a breathless rush.

  He unwound his arm from her waist, but crooked it and tucked her hand underneath, as if he were used to doing this every day. He leaned closer. Still her senses reached for him, even though she knew she could have sealed her own doom by responding in the way she had.

  They were standing in the street now, curious passers-by blatantly staring as they passed. How much had they seen? Had they recognized her?

  What in God’s name had come over her?

  His breath tickled her ear. “My lady, now you have been marked—by me. So how many of your friends and acquaintances will hear that you were standing in the street kissing the Blackamoor Duke? Think of that in your lonely bed tonight.” He raised a brow. “You should know better than to leave a place early, however smelly or demanding the children are. Worse fates await you, as I have just demonstrated.”

  With an elegant gesture that had more force than it appeared, he handed her up the steps and into her carriage.

  He touched his lips to the back of it. “I thank you for a pleasant hour, Lady Livia,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard in Mayfair. Or so it seemed to Livia, now sitting rigidly upright in the carriage, staring straight ahead, as near to the cut direct as she could manage in the circumstances. “Please call again whenever you wish.”

  The footman slammed the door and the coachman immediately whipped up the horses, obviously keen to be gone.

  The Duke of Preston was a scandal. He didn’t have to do anything. He was the product, society claimed, of his mother and her blackamoor page. Neither he nor his grandfather, the previous duke, had denied it, so by now society accepted it as fact. He was a walking scandal. If he had gone into the church and become a pattern-card of respectability, he’d have been a scandal. Not surprisingly he’d chosen to go the other way. But she could not afford to be seen with him, and he’d deliberately provoked gossip.

  Only when she had nearly reached the sanctity of home did Livia realize her precious brooch was gone. Her stomach plummeted, and she felt sick. She couldn’t have lost it.

  She always wore it. In her chamber she’d asked her maid to help her to strip, then dismissed Finch and meticulously searched every garment. Nothing.

  Livia sat on her bed, stark naked, in a sea of silk, lace and linen, staring into space. It was gone. The last link she had with the secret that had haunted her for ten years.

  Perhaps losing the brooch had been nature’s way of telling her to give up the search. That orphanage held no record of what she searched for, even though she’d asked to see the registers. She’d scoured them. Nothing.

  Hardly able to bear the disappointment, Livia had reeled into the street—and a swarm of children had attacked her, looking for rich, easy pickings.

  They’d found them. Not only taking her purse, which she didn’t mind at all, but the brooch, which she cared about more than anything else.

  Unless, by some miracle, she’d dropped it in the Duke of Preston’s house. She’d seen the disgust in his eyes when he’d taken his revenge in that devastating kiss. Despite that, she would have to approach him, ask him if he’d found it.

  Losing it didn’t bear thinking about. It held her only memento of that terrible time. She had to get it back.

  Chapter 2

  “Whatever have you done?” Lady Strenshall demanded of her only unmarried daughter.

  Livia started guiltily. “In what way, Mama?”

  Livia and her parents sat at the sadly reduced breakfast table, its once considerable size shrunk from a majestic oval to a mere circle. The maid serving them had disppeared. Her mother always preferred breakfast that way. In the past that had given her an opportunity to talk frankly with her family and resolve problems. Now all her chickens had left the nest except for Livia, who consequently had the full force of her attention.

  “Don’t be disingenuous, child. What on earth got into you?”

  The marquess shook his newspaper. “Preston very nearly did.”

  “John, I’ll thank you not to make vulgar remarks at the breakfast table.”

  “Humph.” Her father turned a page.

  Reports were flying around town of Lady Livia Shaw being seen kissing his grace the Duke of Preston in the street. Unfortunately she was not wearing a hat, or even a cap, so that red-gold hair was on full display. Livia, correctly attired this morning, sighed. She flicked her lace elbow ruffles, more to avoid her mother’s gaze than to adjust the way they fell.

  Carefully, her father folded the journal over and met Livia’s eyes, his gray gaze filled with compassion. He could be a tartar, but he had a heart of gold. Or rather, soft blancmange, if one approached him the right way. “I’m sure the altercation was of his making.”

  “Tell anyone you meet that we have no idea where they get their foolish ideas,” her mother said. “Livia was nowhere near King Street yesterday.”

  “That won’t work,” the marquess said. “It’s gone too far for that. What we need is a good, juicy scandal. A real one. Perhaps Princess Amelia can be persuaded to run away with her groom.”

  Livia thought of the horse-faced, middle-aged princess, and snorted. At least her father could still make her laugh. He chucked her under the chin on his way out. “Cheer up, puss. We’ve survived worse.”

  His wife watched him leave the room, a jaded expression gleaming in her eyes and turning down the corners of her mouth. “Maybe we have.”

  When the marquess had gone, she got to her feet and crossed to the door, ensuring it was securely closed. In this house, se
rvants did not listen outside doors. She returned with a swish of pink silk skirts and gracefully sat next to her daughter. “Now,” her ladyship said. She reached for Livia’s hand. “You can have nothing to do with the Blackamoor Duke.”

  She flinched. “Don’t call him that. The conditions of his birth are nothing to do with him.” The Duke of Preston was supposed to be the son of his mother and her black page. Nobody in the family had denied it, and his darker than usual coloring was a vivid reminder of the story, it was mostly accepted as reality.

  “He has done nothing to deny it and everything to perpetuate the scandalous reputation he was born with.”

  Livia could understand that. “If he’d entered the church and become a pattern-card of respectability people would still have talked.”

  “Indeed. And one cannot blame the duke. The current duke’s grandfather defined the word tyrant. It’s no wonder his son ran wild. He was married at sixteen. It’s no wonder that when he insisted on an heir, they produced one. Even if the boy was not his father’s son.”

  “Is that certain?”

  Her mother shrugged. “They have not denied it. But that cannot matter to us, child. More important is the way this incipient scandal affects you. You know why you must avoid any whisper of scandal.”

  Nobody better. If her transgression became known, she could become a pariah overnight.

  “If he’d stayed in the shadows and let you make the short trip to the carriage on your own, nobody would be any the wiser,” her mother said.

  She nodded sadly. “I know it. All I can assume is that I said something to annoy him, because I saw it in him, a change of mood. Maybe when I disparaged the orphanage and told him that they smelled. I think he was exacting revenge for a careless remark.”

  Livia bit her lip. “And I have to speak to him again, Mama.” She raised her eyes to meet her mother’s gaze. “I lost my brooch.”

  “Oh, my dear!” Lady Strenshall tightened her grip on Livia’s hand. “I’m so sorry! Can you tell when you lost it?”

  Livia shook her head. “Either the cutpurse took it, or I dropped it in the duke’s house. I cannot understand it. It’s a tawdry thing, not something a thief would normally go for.”

  Livia would have given all the jewels she owned for that small gold brooch. It had a transparent back meant to hold precious mementos. It did, and that was the trouble. “It’s all I had left. I don’t even have that anymore.” She tried for a smile but failed miserably. That curl of baby hair set in the back of the brooch was the only memento she had of the son she had borne and lost too soon. Tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them away.

  “Perhaps, my dear, it’s time you let go and moved on with your life. It is hard to say it, and harder for you to hear me, but this time—he’s gone, my love.”

  Yes, he’d gone. Visiting the orphanage had been Livia’s last attempt to trace her son. Receiving a faint, though promising hint that her nurse had put him there, Livia had rushed to the place and found nothing. For Nurse Sherwood had died before she could return to Derbyshire and tell Livia what she had done with her baby.

  If he had died, perhaps she’d have found the task of putting her past behind her easier. But with no definitive answer, the memory of holding that tiny, mewling bundle in her arms for a few precious minutes had ruled the rest of her life since.

  “We have been patient, my dear, but please try. For your own sake.” Her mother had been a rock Livia could lean on when she most needed it. Even though she had never told her mother the entire truth.

  She’d refused to tell anyone who had fathered her child.

  If she had, the knowledge would only have caused trouble. If they’d known who had seduced her, her parents wouldn’t have rested until they had destroyed the boy and his parents. What good would that have done?

  Before she could tell him of her condition, he’d married someone else and run. She didn’t entirely blame him. She’d have run too, given the chance.

  Livia was still stinging from the celebrations of her nephew’s birth three months ago. Having to celebrate it, loving the new baby but having to keep her secret had refreshed all the emotions she’d carefully locked away. After this first child, she would get used to it. She had to. Her mother was right. She couldn’t spend all her life sobbing uncontrollably in the safety of her bedroom.

  She would take control. Starting now.

  “I’ll talk to the duke and discover if I lost the brooch in his house.”

  Lady Strenshall nodded. “If you are seen with the duke in a socially acceptable place, the gossip will turn toward a possible courtship and not a clandestine affair. If we go all hugger-mugger about it, then gossip will multiply. You can ask him about your brooch, and then you may be seen to drop him. We’re leaving for the country in a few weeks. Let gossip die a death over Christmas. We don’t have to return to London for some time, after all.”

  She brightened, her blue eyes recovering their sparkle. “Yes, that tactic would work better. A short flirtation, cut off in public.”

  Leaning back, the marchioness surveyed the garden, watching as a gardener trundled a wheelbarrow across the green space. “We are, after all, an influential family with a reputation every bit as colorful as his. He is but one man. We are legion.”

  The unexpected quotation startled Livia into laughter.

  Her mother patted her hand. “There, my dear. Things are never so bad as they seem.”

  Livia smiled automatically. But sometimes things were that bad. Sometimes they were worse.

  * * * *

  In the autumn balls happened less frequently than during the spring. Then Livia could count on at least one every night, frequently more. The pleasure gardens were closed, and not every family of note had chosen to return after the summer. Only the ones wishing to attend Parliament or bored by the country.

  Adrian stood on the other side of the street, watching the guests arrive for Lady Crawford’s ball, the flames from the torches in their holders that bracketed front door putting the house into a glow. Light blazed bravely from every window, and people swarmed into the hall, handing their heavy outer garments to the footmen.

  Tonight the Duke of Preston had decided to attend the ball, but he was in no hurry to rush inside, even though he’d seen his quarry arrive with her parents twenty minutes ago.

  He took a few minutes to steel himself and set his mind into the appropriate channels. Every now and again he tested the waters to see if he was acceptable to society, or more than before. He could go to any house in London, and he would find a group of coldly polite people, unwilling to give him the cold shoulder because of his rank, but equally unwilling to allow him into their exclusive club.

  Adrian told himself he didn’t care. For the most part it was true, but the injustice of the situation struck him from time to time and he would go, ostensibly to taunt, tease and behave badly. However tonight he was on a mission.

  Ever since he’d kissed Lady Livia Shaw he’d been unable to shake the memory. He’d woken in the night rigid with desire, his hands already at work on an activity he rarely had to employ. During the day he’d thought of her, and he was mightily annoyed that he continued to do so. A woman he disliked to come up with something as ridiculous as a dislike of orphans because they smelled? He found that attitude hard to forgive.

  But he would. On reflection, perhaps the sheer squalor of a place like that had shocked her enough to send her reeling into the street. Gently nurtured, spoiled even, reality would have hit her hard. His revenge, swiftly enacted, might have been a little too much. Or not, depending on what he found tonight. He might forgive her. He might even like her.

  Perhaps.

  He would brave society’s constant opprobrium to discover it.

  Striding across the street to the one house illuminated from top to bottom he allowed a smile to touch his lips. He would sho
w them how much of a gentleman he could be, smile in their faces and behave perfectly. He was a man of influence, and worth a fortune, so what did he care?

  Except, deep down in a place he barely acknowledged, he did. He was still that little boy trying to kick down the gates forever barred to him. Knowing that only made him more determined to force them to accept him, so that he could spit in their faces farther down the line. Lure them in, then reject them.

  The last thing he would admit to was walking through those doors with his heart in his throat. He’d entered gambling dens, thieves’ kitchens and coffeehouses thronged with political opponents with more bravery than he experienced now.

  That would pass. It always did, the minute he drawled his first insult.

  Walking inside and handing his cloak, hat and gloves to a waiting footman took nothing at all. He’d done that any number of times. Even the gasp from his left didn’t surprise him, especially since he’d chosen his most flamboyant coat of scarlet figured velvet. He didn’t want anyone to miss him. Nodding at the lady who had muted her surprise, he received a glacial acknowledgment.

  He couldn’t remember being here before, but the house was similar to many owned or leased by the great and the good. His own London residence had a similar arrangement. Stairs swept up to a hallway that led to the public rooms, more stairs up to the bedrooms and private ones, each staircase growing progressively less grand and more domestic. Rooms downstairs led to smaller reception rooms, offices and family rooms. All depressingly familiar. Even the portraits of ancestors ranked up the stairs had a look of jaded cynicism.

  He recognized most of the people climbing those stairs too. This time of year, the younger aspirants to society were balanced by their older siblings and family members, a more comfortable mix. Especially for a widower with no children who must be searching for a new wife. Surely he was, they just knew it.