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“Exclusive access,” Pen went on. “You’ll have no other men. Not business associates, not hangers-on, certainly not friends.” He knew all too well how immoral men were when it came to beautiful women. No code of honor whatsoever.

“But milord, St. Sefin’s has always been open to men as well as?—”

“Do you want the property or not?” he barked. “These are my terms.”

She scowled. “I am listening.” But she clutched the lace at her bodice as if she were steeling herself against a turmoil of inward thoughts.

He had the upper hand, and he knew it. “I have liberty to visit whenever I wish,” he rapped out, drawing closer.

His leg protested, and he hid a grimace.

Blast and damn, he couldn’t appear weak now.

“No headaches,” he insisted. “No excuses. No womanly complaints beyond the, er, usual.” Women often had complaints about something, and there were certain days of the month when it was best not to interfere, that he’d learned.

“If you are signing the property over to me, I don’t see why we need to submit to your inspection?—”

“Not them. Just you. And you’ll not complain about the lodgings I give you,” he added, recalling friends whose mistresses constantly nagged about their rooms being too small, or poky, or infested.

She blinked, and he was ensnared further. “I intend to continue at St. Sefin’s, since I?—”

“I’m to live in Wales, the back end of Britain! No, thank you. It’s London for me, and for you now as well.”

“But you have an estate in Wales, I thought. A few miles from Newport?”

He’d forgotten about that. And he supposed he must visit the bloody place, or Ross would never cease nattering ad nauseum about his responsibilities.

He’d been told the fastest way to get there would be to take a pilot cutter across the Bristol Channel, which was out of the question.

He was damned if he’d set foot in any kind of boat.

Though setting foot in a boat was not the problem. The problem was the stepping off the boat into a strafing attack from battlements hidden above the beach, the bodies of men suddenly exploding about him, sand and gore filling the air.

Well, there were roads even in the hind haunch of Britain, weren’t there? Pen spoke loudly to drown out the sound of cannon fire in his head. “Very well, we can visit the house in Newport now and again, when you’re weary of London. Maybe there’s good shooting.”

He would have Ross look into it. Wouldn’t Turbeville be impressed when Pen turned up tonight with this exquisite creature? He’d try to steal her away immediately. Finally, his mates would have something to envy him for, rather than treating him like the poor broken sod they took on sufferance.

“You keep saying we ,” she noted.

“Well, that’s the point of keeping a ladybird, ain’t it? A mistress goes with her man. Like a well-trained hound.”

Blink. Blink. Blink. He was lost, wrapped in the silky snare of those unending lashes.

“Ladybird?”

For the first time in ages, Ross appeared vastly amused.

“In return for St. What Who’s,” Pen said impatiently.

Her mouth fell open. She had all her teeth, white, pretty ones. Another point in her favor. “Are you asking me to be your mistress ?”

“That’s what you’re here for, ain’t it?”

“I came to ask you if I might purchase St. Sefin’s!” Outrage filled her tone, but well-modulated, controlled. “Since you didn’t respond to my letters.” She tossed a look of accusation at Ross, who was no more moved by it than he was by any of Pen’s scolds.

Pen crossed his arms over his chest. It hurt his shoulder like hell, but he liked the intimidating effect. “And I’ve said you might have it. On certain terms.”

“Becoming your mistress!” she sputtered.

“What, you’ve another keeper? Barlow treats you better, does he?” Pen snarled, his fury rising. He stepped closer, which was a mistake. The scent of bluebells whacked him over the head, sending his brain awhirl.

She held her ground. He made note of that. Most people quivered and ran when he raised his voice. Except, of course, for Ross.

Up went that altogether too pert chin. “Did you not say before you were willing to grant me St. Sefin’s for free, milord? It might do you good to cultivate a charitable interest.”

She was cunning in the extreme. He leaned toward her, breaching the bluebells like a wall.

He’d walked into cannon fire before this.

He could bear the assault on his senses of her unbelievably soft-looking skin, her dusky hair beneath the silly cap, the red of her parted lips, that haunting timbre of her voice.

Her eyes. They were the color of the pond where he’d swum as a lad when his family went to their home in Essex for the summer.

His brother couldn’t swim, so it was Pen’s way to escape him.

He’d hold his breath and sink to the bottom and stay there as long as he could bear, watching the rays of sun slant through the grey-green water to light on the weeds and the fish and the utter quiet.

That sensation gripped him again for a fleeting moment.

Of being weightless. Caught in a warm, silent world brimming with life.

If only he’d met her before. Before he’d lost his family, before he was shot to bits, before he became a cursed viscount, the title thrusting him into a world he never wanted.

He might have had a chance with a woman like her, the man he was before.

Ah, he was eight ways a fool. He was born an ass and he’d always be an ass. He narrowed his eyes, steeling himself against her bewitchment. “If you want your St. Sodding, you know what to do.”

“You won’t accept any other terms?”

The lace over her bodice rose and fell. She was real, every part of her.

She was warm and she smelled like paradise, and she was every bright, beautiful thing that life had denied him up till now.

He reached out a hand, the right hand that still worked as it should, to run his fingers over the lace and the supple swell of flesh beneath.

She pushed his hand away. “I won’t do it.”

He scowled. “You bloody well came to my rooms. You made me an offer. I accept.”

“I didn’t offer that . My…” She didn’t say the word virtue , but a courtesan, no matter her price, could make no claims to virtue. She firmed her lips. “I’ll pay you. A thou—a thousand pounds.”

“Done. And you’ll pay in the currency I specified.” He smiled broadly. “The cloth market. The blanket hornpipe. Making the beast with two backs—that is Iago’s line, you know. Always did think he’s the best thing Shakespeare wrote.”

See, he wasn’t an entire ogre. He was cultured. He’d take her to the theatre. He’d even take her to musical evenings if she persuaded him in the right ways. “I’ll tell you when the debt is relieved.”

She narrowed her eyes right back at him. “There will be no blanket hornpipe. Sir. ”

“Oh, there will be horn piping.” She stepped away, and he grasped the fringe at the edge of the shawl she wore draped over her elbows.

It wasn’t a Kashmir shawl like that worn by the girls his stepmother tried to make him talk to.

It was wool with a red and black print, a serviceable item of clothing, freshly laundered but clearly much worn.

Neither was her cap of a fashionable style, and her gown, for that matter, was a decade out of date, not of silk or satin but hand-painted muslin.

The lace that enchanted him was an archaic touch, as fashionable young ladies had put off their laces during the French Revolution. She wasn’t expensive.

Which meant he could afford her. Which meant he couldn’t let her leave.

“Ross!” he barked. “That contract.”

Ross lifted one maddening brow. “Have the terms been decided, then?”

“I just want St. Sefin’s.” She clutched her lace as if he would tear it from her. Her eyes were wide but not full of fear. Rather anger, sorrow, disappointment—God, how he hated when women looked at him with disappointment. But there was also a hint of despair.

And I just want you . Of course, he wouldn’t be such a complete clod as to say it. A woman that beautiful, that graceful, that entirely enchanting should never know despair, not the faintest hint of it.

Instead, he stretched his mouth into a grimace that was his attempt at a smile.

He wanted her in his bed immediately. She could start earning her title to whatever properties of his she wanted and he’d strive for that oblivion that would release him, however temporarily, from remembrance, from hauntings, from pain.

“And you know what my requirements are. I’ll give you a week to gather your things. And if you don’t agree, then I’ll come to St. Who’s What myself and turn all of you out, every last rat and bedbug.”

She whirled away from him, and beneath the flare of her petticoats he glimpsed her feet, clad in sensible leather half-boots, much worn.

Her flight to the door left him with the most extraordinary tearing sensation, like a limb being ripped away.

She was leaving, but he understood now that she didn’t have any money.

Nothing near a thousand pounds. Likely she’d never seen two sovereigns side by side.

She had nothing to bargain with but her own sweet, delicious self.

She’d be back.

“Don’t make me wait too long!” he called as she exited. “I’m likely to lose interest, and I have a terrible memory.”

He smiled as the door slammed behind her. For the first time in ages, Pen had something to look forward to. Something more than a burned flank steak, weak grog, Turbeville’s idiocy, and a blinding hangover.

He faced Ross, who looked back with a level stare. “I’ll wait on that contract then, shall I?” his secretary said.

Pen rubbed his hands together, the good right against the left that sometimes had full sensation, sometimes not.

He felt more alive than he had in ages. As if life had been granted him again.

He hadn’t felt that even when he woke on the surgeon’s cot after Tenerife, unable to move half of his body, beset by a staggering pain that he understood even then would become his constant companion.

Finally, undeservedly, but after much suffering, he’d been granted a reprieve.

“I give her two days. Three at most,” he said confidently. “Where’s my rum?”