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The more was lost in a guttural yell. He flung himself from her, spending himself with a jerk in the tangled counterpane. He turned instantly to clasp her in his arms, her back to his front. His muscles were hard and thick, but they trembled just like hers.

“That was magnificent.” He whispered it against her ear.

She slid around in his embrace and kissed him.

“It was.” She smiled against his mouth, victorious. “We won.”

8

The next morning, James found his father in the blue room, so-called because the walls were hung with blue silk damask. And also, James had always thought, because the large windows opened on so much sea and sky.

Of all the thirty-two rooms in the castle, it was the entire family’s acknowledged favorite.

James stood for a moment in the doorway.

His father sat in his usual chair, facing the window. Breakfast service was arranged on the marble-topped table.

“Father,” said James, and his father turned his head. He was sharp featured, with dark eyes, and wings of silver in his black hair. He looked well. He looked very well. He looked like a man well-pleased by vigorous bed sport.

James recognized that contentment. Hell, he could sit for a portrait to illustrate the same happy state himself. He and Tib had competed three more times throughout the night, always to a draw. To see the signs on his father’s face—James fisted his hands to contain his disgust, his furious disappointment.

The 7th Duke of Pemberton wore a complacent, slightly drowsy smile. Even his surprise at seeing his glowering son scarcely altered his expression.

“James,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here? That’s the question.” James strode into the room. “You told me you were shooting with the Earl of Ramsdale.”

“Lower your voice.”

James laughed at his father’s air of quiet command. The duke was eccentric and obsessive, implacable in his pursuits and convictions. But he never expressed extremes of emotion.

“Do you know what I once believed?” asked James. “I believed that your calm temperament signified an untroubled conscience.”

“And I believed I’d sit to an untroubled breakfast.” His father sighed. “You’re agitated. And you’ve bumped your head. Another curricle accident?”

James fingered the knot on his forehead. He’d forgotten it was there.

“Underwater cave,” he muttered. “Just a slight mishap.” He wouldn’t let his father turn the tables. Certainly, he hadn’t behaved responsibly of late. But he wasn’t the dishonest, adulterous louse. “That’s not what I’ve come to discuss.”

“Take a seat.” His father gestured to a chair. His green silk dressing gown was richly embroidered and struck James as horribly sensual. Was it a gift? From her?

“Whatever your latest scrape, it can wait until I’ve drunk my tea.”

“No.” James folded his arms. “I’m not in a scrape. In fact, I’ve never been better. You are in a scrape. You deceived me.”

“Regarding Ramsdale and the grouse? Come now. A rather paltry deception. Or poultry deception, as the case may be.”

He laughed.

James didn’t. “The grouse is a gamebird, not a domestic fowl.”

His father tilted his head. “I sacrificed precision for the pun.” His good humor was every bit as garish as his attire. He assumed an attitude of faux remorse. “My serious regard for animal husbandry shouldn’t have permitted it. Apologies to the chicken, the most productive of birds.”

“Apologize to the duchess.” James snarled it. “Your husbandry makes me ill. Or do you deny that you also deceive your wife?”

At that, his father rose, white-lipped.

“Perhaps you think I haven’t the right to meddle in your affairs.” James took a step closer. “But you are the man who taught me the meaning of honor, who raised me to keep my word, no matter what the cost. No matter what the temptation. And so, I can’t stand by and let you discredit yourself, much less my mother.”