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you play another hand, my lord? I’m certain the house will give you credit. Come, I shall fetch you a glass of wine.”

      He knew that voice. Her voice. The Lost Queen.

      Yet it couldn’t be. Had to be another illusion, like that woman’s laugh at the chophouse.

      “Are you hungry, my lord? Cook has just prepared a superb steak avec poireaux vinaigrette.”

      No—this was no illusion. Two years melted away like ice in a fire as Alex slowly turned around, uncaring that he was in the middle of a game. His body roared with pain and pleasure.

      There she was. Achingly unforgettable. Devastatingly beautiful. As slim as a birch tree, with pale golden hair framing a face of shattering loveliness. Dressed in a bronze satin evening gown, her hair held up with amber clips, she stood next to Lord Coleman, smiling at the old earl in her winning way. Her hand rested lightly on his sleeve.

      She wasn’t one of the patrons. She . . . worked here. But how? Why? What did any of this mean?

      “Cassandra.” The word came from his lips like a rasp, as though his body was a cavern that had been closed for a millennium.

      He didn’t speak very loudly—at that moment, he couldn’t. Yet she looked up at once. Her hazel gaze met his.

      For half a heartbeat, her expression registered joy, longing. Then horror.

      He blinked, and both expressions were gone from her face. She looked smooth and unreadable. It was as if he’d imagined her emotions.

      He felt both numb and acutely aware of every nerve. His heart pounded and his mouth went dry.

      “Alex?” she whispered.

      It truly was her. Cassandra Blair. The Lost Queen. The woman who’d shattered his heart two years ago.

Chapter 2

      For several moments, Alex and Cassandra stared at each other, as if frozen. The only thing that moved was Alex’s heart, pounding like a steam engine in the center of his chest.

      He barely noticed Lord Coleman looking back and forth between them. “I’ll, ah, investigate the vingt-et-un tables,” the older man muttered before ambling away, leaving Alex alone with her.

      He’d had lovers and mistresses before—women who enjoyed pleasure and were eager to share it with him—and while he acknowledged he’d been attracted to sundry women, his hunger for Cassandra had been sudden and obsessive. He’d seen a flame smoldering beneath the coolness of her exterior and it called to him, like a fire seen through a long, dark night.

      He’d been drawn in by her quiet dignity, so different from the forced frivolity of debutantes in search of husbands. When other women looked at him as a collection of wealthy estates, awed by the age of his title and his prestigious lineage, she had spoken to him and looked at him as though he was a man, not just a duke. There had been tragedy in her eyes and understanding in her smile born from years of lived experience. And—he couldn’t deny it—the carnal awareness she displayed in her movements stoked a fire in him he’d never before known. He’d burned to touch her, to taste her kisses, to know the feel of her body against his.

      Now the woman who’d carved a hollow inside his body and brain stood before him, two years older but as powerfully stunning as she’d been back in Cheltenham. Seeing her again seared a hole right through him. He’d be reduced to ashes in a moment.

      All the details of her returned to him in an instant, from the arch of her eyebrows to the birthmark on the inside of her thigh. A birthmark he’d kissed.

      Someone at one of the faro tables shouted, snapping Alex back to the present moment, to this place. Cassandra, too, seemed to wake, blinking and furrowing her forehead.

      He could not speak to her as he longed to do in the middle of a gaming hell.

      “Your Grace?” the card dealer behind him tentatively asked. “Do you wish to continue playing?”

      “No,” Alex snapped over his shoulder. “I—”

      His words died as he looked at Cassandra. Scanning the room, he noticed a secluded corner, partially shielded by an enormous Chinese vase holding palm fronds. The middle of a gaming hell was no place to talk to her. No place to see her.

      Before Alex could think, he took her uncovered hand in his own ungloved hand. The feel of her skin against him was a hot brand upon his heart, both a balm and an agony.

      Wordlessly, she followed him to the corner, where Ellingsworth and Langdon couldn’t cast their curious gazes in his direction. Even in a gaming hell, where guests engaged in numerous vices, people gossiped.

      Her familiar fragrance of rose and warm vanilla drove thorns of heat through his chest. Though her expression remained unreadable, the long line of her throat revealed the quick pulsation beneath her flesh. His fingers itched to stroke along that silken column, as he’d done before. Or press his lips to the spot at the juncture of her jaw and neck, to taste her again.

      Her eyes widened slightly, as if she could read his thoughts.

      Very slowly, as if defusing an incendiary device, she untangled her fingers from his. But she didn’t put more distance between them.

      “Alex,” she whispered.

      “Where did you go?” he demanded lowly.

      She didn’t speak. Yet her gaze never left his.

      “I woke up,” he continued, “and you had disappeared.”

      Her gaze slipped to the side, as if she had trouble looking him in the eye. Was she ashamed?

      He pressed. “No one at the hotel knew when you’d left or where you had gone.”

      Her lips tightened regretfully. “I know.” She glanced back at him, and a wealth of misery shone in her eyes. “I’m . . .” She drew a breath. “I’m so sorry.”

      Her apology was only a trickle of water upon the hot wound of the past. The words were too meager for the immensity of his feelings, broad and vast as a jungle, and just as dangerous.

      He couldn’t stop the words that tore from him, revisiting that dark time. “And then no word. Not a letter, not a note. Nothing.” Anger and fear pulsed beneath his words. And relief, to find her again after so long, after he’d believed the worst.

      “I looked everywhere for you,” he went on. “Every inn between Cheltenham and London. My solicitors scoured the country for word of you.”

      “England is a vast place,” she whispered. Her face was pale, her eyes wide.

      “It always seemed too small to me,” he gritted. “Until I tried to find you. It was as though you were made of smoke. You vanished utterly.”

      She looked down at her clasped hands, her knuckles white as she gripped her fingers tightly.

      He gazed at the crown of her head, shining softly gold like something deeply precious. “I thought—” His voice thickened. “I thought you’d been hurt. Worse. That you’d . . .” He couldn’t even say the word, though he had proof at last that his greatest fear had been unfounded.

      “Oh, God, no,” she breathed. She glanced up, and then her eyes briefly closed. “I had hoped that you’d forget me. Go on with your life as if we’d never met.”

      “How can you say that?” He realized his voice had grown louder. Alex carefully lowered his tone so that they wouldn’t be heard above the noise of the gaming hell. “It’s not my habit to seduce impoverished widows at spa towns.” Sharp, cutting feelings threatened to overwhelm him once more—in Cheltenham, he’d reached toward her like a plant finding sunlight. And when she’d gone, he could only think that again, he was unworthy of love. The sun disappeared.

      “Nor

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