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He’d been trying hard – maybe she had too – to maintain an air of fraudulent normality in front of Adrian, who admired her so much, as well one might, so beautiful, talented and clever as she was, not knowing that she was false to her very core. As he had not known, not all of it, till just now. Before this, he’d known merely that she’d left him; he had not known the extent of her lies, and in truth, he still did not. He did not know why.

But really, did it matter? This pretence of civility was suddenly unendurable to him. He wanted his son gone, away from her and all her poison, but with iron self-control he managed not to dismiss him with an abruptness that the child would certainly find both remarkable and hurtful. The bond between them was still too fragile to risk. There was no danger of him imperilling it for her. Nobody in the world could be worth that, and she least of all.

‘I think it must be time for your mathematics lesson, Adrian,’ he said with a patience that cost him something. ‘You must not keep Mr Smithson waiting. And I would like to have a word with Miss Constantine before she departs, so you may safely leave her with me. I will take care of her.’

Another child might have protested; not Adrian, who was always so well behaved. Too well behaved, he’d come to realise, too anxious always. But he could not worry about that just now. He felt the façade he had maintained up to this point was crumbling by the second.

‘Yes, Papa,’ the child said dutifully, his brow unwrinkled by any suspicion. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Constantine. I will look forward to seeing you tomorrow.’

‘And I you,’ she responded warmly, smiling as if she were the innocently lovely woman she appeared to be. ‘Do not work too hard.’

Adrian bowed with his customary touching formality. The door closed behind him; they were alone.

There was no time for awkward silence. Of course she would not want that, would not want him to speak first. She’d never lacked courage – but then, what did he know about her, really? ‘I had no idea,’ she said instantly, urgently. ‘Xan, I swear I didn’t. You were Mr Challender when I knew you, and you did not tell me that you were an earl’s heir. Of course there was no reason why you should. When I met Lord Dawbney, I had not the least idea he had anything in the world to do with you, though I realise now that he does resemble you enormously. But even if I saw it, as perhaps I did, I dismissed it as mere fancy. I had no reason to suspect a connection, least of all that he was your son. I promise I would have refused the commission from Lady Deborah if I had the least suspicion of the truth.’ There was a little catch in her voice; she sounded so genuine. She was very good at this, but then she had the practice; she was a liar to her fingertips and false in every curl and curve, every gasp and moan.

‘How dare you of all people speak of truth? Naturally I don’t believe you. Oh – I beg your pardon, madam, I will be clearer. Let’s have no more misunderstandings. I believe that you did not know who I was when you left me in Italy. Of course you did not. If you had known, you would scarcely have let such a rich prize slip from your grasp. But when you came creeping home, perhaps short of money, then you discovered the truth, and acted accordingly, thinking yourself very cunning, thinking I would fall under your spell again as soon as I set eyes on you. I cannot possibly be expected to credit that your being so cosy here in this house, my house, is simple coincidence. I have been a fool, fifty times a fool, but I know better now.’

Neither of them had raised their voice. Her implausible excuses, his intense and bitter fury, had both been expressed in low, agonisingly careful tones. They could not count on being undisturbed, not here. They were standing quite close together, close enough that he had her elusive scent in his nostrils, as so often before. The smell of her hair, the lemon soap she used, her warm skin. He knew how good she tasted. Which part of her had he not tasted?

She was so damn close. He could reach out and touch her if he wanted to. And God knows he wanted to. Just because he had been abandoned and cruelly deceived did not take away the torturous, incessant wanting. She was here now, which was what he had longed for all these months. He could pull up her skirts with ruthless haste, bare her to his pitiless, lustful gaze, put her over the table there and take her right now with no preliminaries, spend all he had in her to the last drop, then send her on her way and never see her or think of her again.

Or no. A better thought. He could use their previous illicit connection to blackmail her into his bed until he tired of her. She might even be willing enough; she’d been willing before. A groan almost escaped him as he remembered exactly how willing, when and where and how.

He could be just like so many other men of his class, just like his father or his brother; he could set her up as his mistress in a rented house somewhere. But he wouldn’t even need to spring for carriages and horses and diamonds, as those fools often did, as his father certainly had, to his mother’s public humiliation. And she would not be for show, but for use. He could keep her as his toy, keep her fucking naked and tied to his bed if he wanted, until this madness left him and he was himself again. He’d been perfectly fine before he met her – no, he hadn’t, he’d been lost in a fog of misery, but he’d been sane and rational and he could be again, if he could just shake her off and move on with life. He had an estate, responsibilities, a son.

He did not lay a finger on her. He dared not.

17

‘I should go,’ Bianca said, trying not to show her desperate need to escape from Lord Fairmount’s house. Xan had fallen silent, though she could not imagine that he had done with his accusations; on the contrary, he’d barely begun. He was lost in dark places inside his head, that was plain, deep in shared memories that he now considered hurtful, but his eyes had not left her, and she knew – because in one respect she did know him very well – that his whole body was still possessed with a burning desire for her. He had explicit pictures in his mind, and she could see every one of them. She was sure of all this because she saw the same things, felt the same inconvenient and most unwelcome desire.

She’d never made love in anger, with someone who hated her. The thought ought to be terrible, not exciting. She ought to be scared of being alone in this room with him – a legitimate fear. It would not take much, she thought, to break the fragile control he had over himself so that he fell on her and devoured her like a starving man who’d suddenly been offered a feast. Or hers, so that she did the same to him. If she reached out and touched him, he’d be hard under her fingers. The hardness of him was familiar, and horribly tempting. If she licked her lips… She remembered what had happened when she’d done that once before, right at the start.

‘I should go,’ she repeated to herself.

‘You seriously imagine I will let you?’ His pupils were entirely dilated – she was an artist, she noticed such things – so that the grey was almost obscured by the black. Her own eyes were darkest brown, and so this effect of arousal would be harder to see in her, but she knew hers were the same.

‘You would not keep me here against my will.’ Her voice was not quite steady.

‘It would not be against your will, though. You know that as well as I do. And there’s more to say. If I took you now, you would be willing. Wouldn’t you, Bianca? Wet and willing as ever. There on the table. Up against the wall. On the floor, like beasts.’

‘That would be a terrible mistake, for both of us.’ She did not have to admit to him that she wanted it; this was not an admission. ‘And what would be the point?’

‘As much point as there ever was, I suppose. Which is to say, not very much. You are a wicked liar, Bianca. Is that really your name? I don’t even know what your true name is. Everything you told me about yourself was false. I don’t know why you did it, perhaps just to amuse yourself at my expense, and I don’t know why you’re here, but I must imagine it to be because you regret the golden chance you threw away in Italy. You know I was stupidly besotted with you once and perhaps you think I will be again, if you flutter your lashes and pout at me as you did before. Perhaps you even think – Jesus Christ! – that I’ll marry you. That would a coup – but not the first time a nobleman has been entrapped by a cunning whore, after all, even in these days.’

‘I’m not a whore, and I don’t want to marry you. I have no idea if you’re seen as a great catch or not; it’s of no interest to me at all. I’m here by pure accident. I don’t want anything to do with you. I’ll go now and never come back; you can think of some tale to tell Adrian. Xan, Xan, you know I was the one who left you. Why would I do that if I was as mercenary as you seem to believe?’ She could hear that her voice was ragged with desperation, but she could not hope it might be more convincing to him because of that.

She backed away from him towards the door, but he came after her, dark and lithe, the toes of his Hessian boots almost brushing the hem of her gown, almost making her stumble and fall into his grasp. Her hand was on the doorknob, but his shot out fast and covered it. It was many months since they had been skin to skin, and the spark that flared between them at the slightest contact was still as instant and as overpowering. Still entirely mutual and overwhelming. She did not move to open the door. His fingers did not release hers. They stood immobile, touching, silent, chests heaving.

‘I don’t want you as my wife,’ he groaned at last. ‘I’m not such a besotted fool as to marry you, deceiver that you are. Maybe you aren’t a whore, or maybe you are and I am too: yours. I want to possess you and be possessed. I want to take you again in all the ways I took you before, and find new ones. You can do anything to me your mind can devise or lewd books could tell us. I am not fit for decent company. I’m only fit for yours. I don’t know who I hate most – myself or you. And still I want to kiss you, though I know your kiss is poison.’

18

ITALY

It had been a simple enough idea, at the start. When Miss Macintyre, the Constantines’ old governess and friend, had decided that she’d like to stay on in Rome for an extended visit with the old companions she hadn’t seen for many years, she’d known her charge wouldn’t mind in the least, because the young lady had already confessed her desire to travel on alone. Bianca had come to realise that there was no need to separate her artistic ambitions from her desire for personal freedom; they were one and the same, a rejection of convention, a claiming of what she wanted, not what she was supposed to want.

So it had always been her secret plan to travel on unaccompanied. What Mrs Constantine, safe in Piacenza with her long-lost cousins, didn’t know – or wouldn’t know until it was too late to stop it, at any rate – wouldn’t hurt her. The question was, how to go about it. Even Miss Macintyre, who’d had her own adventures in the past, had been obliged to admit that a young, single woman would have an uncomfortable time of it travelling about Italy, or anywhere, entirely alone, and matters would not be much better if she tried to hire a courier and servants to smooth her way. By all the dictates of convention, she ought to have an older female companion as well, to play propriety and ensure she remained unmolested in each place she stayed in – but Bianca didn’t want any strange companion to watch and judge her, still less to restrict her behaviour.