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F or the first time, her mother found Fenella actually taking an interest in her appearance that night.

“Good heavens, Fenella, what has come over you?” asked Lady Eden.

Mama was a small, slender woman, with soft brown hair and slightly myopic grey eyes.

Her health was delicate, and Fenella, as the youngest and only child left at home, was frequently called upon to step into the role of nursemaid and companion when Mama’s health let her down.

Papa was devoted to her and Fenella dreaded something happening to Mama.

Papa would be devastated, as would she and her siblings.

Fenella, belatedly realizing she had revealed more than she should, shrugged and said airily, “Oh well, I suppose I’ve realized you’re right; I can’t be unruly forever.

At least my cousins are better company than the boys in London, and Robert’s friends are interesting!

” There, that should put her off the scent!

Let her think I am interested in one of them!

Sneaking back into her room after her adventure by the lake that afternoon, Fenella was floating on air.

When she had burst back to the surface after the captain ripped her shirt and she had got a look at her rescuer, she had been taken immediately with his warm smile and gorgeous, mossy green eyes.

She thought him quite handsome with his weather-beaten complexion, almost straight nose, rather sensual lips and firm jaw.

And when later he stripped off his wet shirt and revealed his muscular brown chest with dark curly hair disappearing into his breeches, she had known a flush of tingling heat she had never experienced before.

His raw masculinity was an assault on her senses, and sent a wave of yearning through her body she couldn’t contain.

Discovering this Adonis was a seasoned naval captain who had served with Nelson at Trafalgar had sealed her fate. She had tumbled into love between one breath and the next. And then he’d returned her kiss with passionate ones of his own and confirmed in her mind that they were fated to be together.

He was the embodiment of her ideal in every aspect.

A mature man, not a silly boy. Someone who patently loved the sea as much as she did, and a gentleman by birth.

While she didn’t give two hoots for his title, she knew Mama and Papa would.

She cared far more that he had been captain of a ship of the line, and she planned to find out all the particulars of which ships he had served on and in which conflicts and theatres of war.

Had he been to the West Indies? Sailed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic?

The sights he must have seen, the experiences he must have had. ..

At last she was confident that she was looking her best in a blue muslin gown that made her rather strange-colored eyes look more violet than lilac. With his cravat pin tucked into her bodice, she descended to the drawing room to mingle with her cousins.

Aunt Jocelyn had three sons. Robert was the eldest and most handsome and was in his late twenties. Stocky and gentle, Hereward was somewhere in his middle twenties. And Kenrick, a long, cheeky streak of around twenty, had yet to fill out.

Since she had known the Layne boys most of her life, it was difficult to see them in a romantic light.

She regarded them in a similar way that their sisters—Ava, Heather and Ingrid—did.

Ava, the eldest girl, was fourteen, and she and Fenella had always had a bit of a bond, despite the six years between them.

Ava was a petite, blue-eyed blonde, like her mother.

The girls were still officially in the schoolroom, but because this was a family party, Ava was allowed to attend with their governess, Miss Pringle.

Robert’s three friends, the darkly handsome and dashing Marquess of Ravenshaw, the awkward and rather lumbering red-haired Earl of Pendrell, and the untidy Viscount Ashford and his pretty, ethereal wife, Caroline, with her strawberry blonde curls and creamy skin, rounded out the dinner guests, which of course included her parents and the duke and duchess.

Of the three of Robert’s friends, Ashford was her personal favorite.

He was so kind and had a warmth to him that was infectious.

But of course, he was married, so she couldn’t pretend to be interested in him .

Which left Pendrell or Ravenshaw. The latter was the obvious choice, as handsome as he was charming, in contrast with the tongue-tied red giant, Pendrell, whose habitually hawkish expression was known to frighten small children.

She was standing with her parents by the windows that were open onto the south lawn when the Duke of Westcott was announced. She jumped at the title. He had mentioned it, but it hardly registered, so taken was she with his status as a captain. But Mama would prick up her ears at a duke.

“Wescott! Come in! Come in!” said Costin Layne, the Duke of Troubridge, with his usual bluff bonhomie.

Troubridge was the same age as Papa, with brown hair going grey and a tendency to corpulence, high color and the signs of dissipation marring a once handsome face.

The duchess, ten years his junior and a diminutive and still beautiful blonde, came forward to add her welcome to his.

Fenella gazed at their guest avidly. Her pulse fluttered, and a sense of yearning toward the handsome captain seized her again.

Stop it! She chastised herself. You are supposed to have never met him!

“Captain Falkland!” said the duchess offering her cheek and clasping his hand in hers.

“We are so delighted you could come.” The captain was dressed, like the other gentlemen, in correct evening attire, and it suited him.

His hair—now dry—was a slightly wavy brown, with a hint of silver at the temples.

He looked over the duchess’s head straight at her for a moment, his expression frozen, before dragging his eyes away, but the look of aching desire—as fleeting as it was—made her heart turn over.

And her pulse race frantically. That is what I saw, isn’t it?

Or am I imagining things? Things I want to see that aren’t there?

“Just a family affair, Westcott,” said the duke, with a slap on the back. “No need to be shy.”

“Let me introduce you,” said Aunt Jocelyn kindly, rescuing him from her husband’s effusiveness.

Fenella watched greedily as the captain was circulated round the room by the duchess, conscious that he had not looked in her direction again.

And then Aunt Jocelyn was bringing him toward her.

She had been giving less than half an ear to her parents’ conversation.

Fortunately, they seemed oblivious to her distracted air.

“My cousin Gregory, Viscount Eden, and Delia, Lady Eden his wife, and their youngest daughter, Miss Fenella Eden. May I introduce our neighbor, Captain Beroald Falkland, Duke of Westcott. Though he prefers to be addressed as captain ,” she added sotto voce.

And he was there, shaking Papa’s hand, kissing Mama’s, and bowing over hers with punctilious politeness.

“Miss Eden, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He had schooled his face into a polite smile, but there was a lurking fire in the depths of his gorgeous green eyes that did nothing to slow her racing pulse.

She sank into a curtsy, a faint flush suffusing her cheeks from his proximity. “Captain.”

She found her throat closing over with sudden shyness as Papa said, “Army or Navy?”

“Navy. Twenty-three years’ service.”

“Ah! Be careful old chap. My daughter has a passion for all things nautical. She’ll badger you for all your stories, you know!”

“Papa!” protested Fenella, blushing, for he was making her sound like a schoolgirl.

“She is quite an accomplished little sailor in her own right. I’m very proud of her, despite the fact that she gives me grey hairs,” went on Papa, oblivious of her discomfiture.

The captain was saved from having to reply to this by the butler announcing dinner. He was able then, much to her gratification, to offer her his arm into dinner.

Seated beside him at the dinner table and stealing glances at him in his formal evening attire, she felt suddenly shy.

She recalled her forward behavior that afternoon and was appalled.

She couldn’t entirely regret it, because nothing could have been better than his kisses, but she wondered what he was thinking.

Did he think she was a trollop for baring her breasts and kissing him?

He had behaved like a complete gentleman, but she had been an absolute wanton.

Before she could bury herself in shame, he murmured under cover of the general buzz of conversation, “I trust you took no harm from this afternoon’s adventure?”

“Oh, none,” she reassured him with a sunny smile.

“And no one caught you coming back to the house?”

“No.” She peeked at him sideways. “I told you I know a secret way in. It runs from the stables.”

She surreptitiously passed him his cravat pin under the table.

When her hand first landed on his thigh, his eyes widened in shock and his cheeks flushed, but she pressed the cravat pin against his thigh and he caught on and slid his hand under the table to take it from her with a murmured, “Thank you.”

“No, thank you. It was most handy,” she murmured back.

It being a family party, the usual protocol of only speaking to the persons on either side of one were waived, and the duke at the head of the table boomed to the company at large, “Well, isn’t this fine!

Westcott—no Jocelyn informs me you’d rather be addressed as Captain—don’t blame you, being a duke is the very devil, which Robert will no doubt discover in time.

” He waved his glass at his eldest son, who had inherited his sire’s dark hair, his mother’s blue eyes, and both his parents’ good looks.

He smiled awkwardly at his father’s overly loud cheer.