LITMIR.BIZ

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her from the gardens but did he know her from the tavern, as well? It felt as though they were already deeply involved in a game of hunter and hunted and any admission she made could be so very dangerous.

      Challenge him. See how far he will go, what he will give away….

      She had always been a gambler. She had had to be in order to survive. Sometimes to throw down the gauntlet was the only way.

      She gave a little shrug. “Very well. I concede that I was the woman you saw in the fountain. I thought I was unobserved. It was…careless of me.”

      He flashed her another smile, a disturbingly attractive one. Her toes curled instinctively within her slippers and her heart did another giddy little skip as though she was a schoolroom miss developing a tendre rather than a mature woman of five and twenty.

      “I like it that you do not pretend,” he said. His voice was intimately low. “Ninety-nine women out of one hundred would have claimed not to understand me.”

      If only he knew. Sometimes she forgot where the pretence began—and where it ended.

      She gave him a very straight look. “Of course they would, and who could blame them? A reputation dies all too easily, as you must know, Major Falconer.”

      “So why are you different? Why did you admit it?”

      Mari met his quizzical dark gaze and felt a little breathless. “I am not different. I do not wish you to be the ruin of my reputation, Major Falconer. But equally, I know that you saw me, so what can I say?” She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was bathing. You saw me. It would avail me little to pretend otherwise. So I must rely on your behavior as a gentleman and hope you will not speak out.”

      It was not the whole story, of course. It would be impossible to tell him the truth, that sometimes the role of the respectable widow grated on her and she felt an impossible desire to be free. She could not tell him that it was this impulse that had led her to strip off her clothes and revel in the fresh coldness of the fountain. That was too intimate a thing to confide to a virtual stranger, a dangerous stranger who already saw far more than she wished.

      When he remained silent, watching her face, she raised her brows. “Was that all you wished to say to me, Major Falconer?”

      She saw his lips twitch into a smile at her attempted dismissal of him.

      “No, it was not all.” He reached forward. His fingers brushed against her neck very lightly and lingered, warm against her skin. “You had better hide that curl if you do not wish anyone else to guess your secret. Your hair is still wet. You must have rushed home and dressed in a great hurry.”

      Mari’s hand flew to her neck where the wayward curl of hair nestled against her throat. It felt feathery, soft and damp, drying from the warmth of her body. She pushed it beneath the edge of her turban, her fingers suddenly clumsy. She could feel the color suffuse her face as Nick continued to watch her.

      “Hair as black as midnight,” he said. “I remember.”

      There was a heat in the pit of Mari’s stomach as she thought of what else he might remember about her. Her whole body felt as though it was on fire. But then the memory of Rashleigh—his violence, his touch—slithered into her mind and turned her blood to shards of ice and this time she could not erase it.

      Not all men were cruel like the Earl of Rashleigh had been. She knew that. She knew that some were all that was chivalrous and honorable. But she had no desire to find out for herself which were good and which were not. She could never trust a man; never let him close to her, and this man least of all when he could bring them all down. So she had to put an end to this disturbing attraction now. She had to finish matters before they really began.

      “I have to ask you to forget everything that you saw, sir,” she said coldly, “and never speak of this again.” Indignation swept through her and she could not quite stifle it. “Indeed,” she said, “if you had any claim to the title of gentleman, you would not have been watching anyway.”

      She saw the laughter lines around his eyes deepen and felt a strange tug of feeling inside. “My dear Mrs. Osborne,” he sounded amused, “you ask too much. I am a man first and a gentleman second.”

      “A very long way second!”

      He inclined his head as though conceding the point. He took her hand again, drawing her close. His breath tickled her ear. The icy feeling that was wedged beneath Mari’s heart threatened to melt in the heat of his touch.

      “You are a widow, Mrs. Osborne,” he said softly, “and as such, I assume, you are familiar with the way a man thinks on such matters as—” his voice dropped further “—physical desire?”

      Mari repressed a shiver. Oh, yes, she knew all about the way a man thought about lust. Rashleigh had taught her more degrading things than she ever wanted to remember. She looked down her nose at him.

      “The thought processes of a man on such subjects are scarcely complex,” she said coldly.

      Nick laughed. “Quite so. Then you may imagine how I felt on seeing you naked and soaking wet with the water cascading over your body and the droplets catching the last of the light—”

      Her whole body suffused with blistering heat, Mari wrenched her hand from his. “Major Falconer!”

      “Call me Nicholas. Or Nick, if you prefer, since we already know one another so well and are likely to know each other even better.”

      “Major Falconer,” Mari repeated, “you are remarkably—indeed, distressingly—obtuse. I have no interest in encouraging your attentions to me. I am a respectable widow.”

      “All appearances to the contrary, Mrs. Osborne,” Nick interrupted smoothly.

      Mari stared at him. He was right, of course. No woman who displayed herself so wantonly in public could possibly claim the right to modesty. It was the richest irony that she had allowed herself to swim only because she was certain she was alone and now it turned out that the one man in the entire kingdom whom she would wish never to meet again had been the one man standing watching her.

      “If you are looking for a lover—” Nick began.

      Mari’s temper snapped. “Major Falconer, I am not! I must ask you to desist from speaking of such matters! As for what you saw in the gardens, you will desist from even thinking about it—” She broke off as Nick shook his head.

      “Oh, no, Mrs. Osborne. I give you my word that I will tell no one of what I saw, but you cannot ask me to forget.” He smiled. “You cannot erase my memories.”

      Mari had an all too vivid picture of what those memories might look like. She took a deep, steadying breath.

      “Very well. If I have your promise of silence then I suppose I must be content.”

      He bowed mockingly. “Of course. No gentleman could promise less.”

      Mari bit her lip. She was not sure if she trusted him to keep silent. It should have felt like a partial victory and yet the spark in those dark eyes suggested that it was anything but.

      “Thank you,” she said warily.

      He shrugged easily. “Once again, a pleasure. And if you tell me that we have never met before, then I shall, of course, believe you. But…” He hesitated, and Mari’s overtaxed nerves tightened a further notch, “I wonder…Do you ever visit London, Mrs. Osborne?”

      It took every last ounce of self-control for Mari not to jump. She met his gaze and saw nothing there but polite inquiry. He had the most perfect face for games of chance, she thought. He was able to hide every emotion behind a wall of impassivity. And yet she thought she knew where this conversation was heading now. Despite her disguise, he must have recognized her from the Hen and Vulture. He must know she had been the one there that night, waiting for Rashleigh.

      Why had he come to Peacock Oak? Did he know her true identity? Had he come to accuse her of

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