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Mary woke with a smile on her lips, blissfully happy, her muscles trembling from a night of adoration, embers glowing warm beneath her skin. She lay amid tangled sheets, his thigh resting over her legs and his palm on her stomach, weighting her down.

Andrew had made love to her thrice more through the night. After the rushed experience, they had sat side by side on the bed, drinking wine, as he talked more about his friends. He spoke of his friends as she would speak of her family, with relaxed amusement. Then he made exquisite love to her; it had been excruciatingly and beautifully slow and gentle. The next time was in the middle of the night, and that time was different too. She woke up while he was touching her, arousing her. Then he had rolled her on top of him and taught her how to kneel across him, rise and lower. It made her feel exposed, but her self-consciousness was soon forgotten as her body heated to flowing lava.

During the last time, she felt like an earthly goddess half awake and half asleep as the first light of dawn had flooded the room. He’d worshipped her body with his lips, tongue and teeth, until she was panting and begging him to be inside her. Then he had settled between her thighs and ridden her deeply until she was mindless.

It felt as though he tried to teach her everything he knew about physical pleasure in one night.

Mary pushed Andrew’s leg from atop hers, rolled away, got up and gathered her clothes. The air was heavy with the scents of their bodies.

A clatter of horseshoes on the inn’s cobbles in the courtyard pulled her attention to the window.

‘Hey!’

‘You!’

‘My good man!’

Men’s voices shouted and others responded in sharp tones.

‘Where?’ That one word sounded like her father’s voice.

Clothed only in her chemise, Mary pushed aside the curtain and looked through the window, but now the sound of the commotion came from within the inn.

Outside two horses that were damp with sweat and foaming about their bits were stamping the cobbles as a groom held their reins and tried to calm them. They had been raced at a gallop for a long way by the looks of it.

Hurried steps struck the stair-boards as someone ran to the upper floor.

Andrew woke and stretched out his arms.

The aggressive-sounding strides travelled along the hall towards their room.

He sat up, no longer languid, looked at the door, then at her. He sent her a twisted nervous smile and his eyes said something she could not read.

The footsteps stopped outside their door and someone banged the flat of a fist against it, thumping it, not knocking, making the door jolt against its frame. It was only held by the lock.

‘Mary!’

‘Papa,’ she whispered towards Andrew then rushed to grab her clothes.

Andrew’s expression immediately changed to the man she first met in the ballrooms of London. The defiant devil. ‘Andrew,’ she warned sharply. Why was he not rushing to get up and dress?

Another strike jolted the door. ‘Framlington! I know you are here!’

‘Open this door!’ John!

Mary feared the lock would break as she clutched her clothes to her chest. ‘A moment, Papa!’ she called back as Andrew finally rose and picked his shirt up from the floor.

Andrew was in his arrogant mood. His lips twisted when he smiled before he slipped the shirt over his head. It was as though he did not care that they were caught like this. He cared. She was learning his ways; the more defiant he was the more emotions he was trying to hide. Yet this was not the moment for the rogue to rebel.

‘Let me in!’ her father roared.

‘Open the damned door!’ John yelled.

The handle rattled back and forth.

Andrew walked to the door, wearing only his shirt.

She had not for one moment thought he would open the door until he’d put his underwear on but he did?—

He turned the key, released the lock and stepped out of the way.

The door was flung back on its hinges. It bounced back against the wall.

The air left her lungs as she stood motionless, her clothes clutched to her chest.

Her father’s fist was already raised and he struck Andrew’s jaw with a swift hard punch. Andrew stumbled back against the wall but he did not fall.

‘Papa!’ Dropping her clothes, Mary rushed to stop them fighting.

Her father’s gaze did not even acknowledge her. ‘I will kill you!’ he growled at Andrew, spittle flying from his mouth.

She stood in front of Andrew. He had not raised a hand, not even to defend himself, let alone fight back. ‘Please, Papa!’

His eyes fixed on her. ‘Why would you do this? You have hurt your mother! Do you know how terrified we were to find you gone?’

‘Sorry.’ The word leaked from her throat on a torrent of pain as tears of anger as well as sadness glazed her vision.

John stood behind her father, his fingers curled into fists too.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ Mary begged. ‘I love him.’

‘You love him!’ Mary’s father scoffed, his eyebrows rising. Then he glared at Drew, contempt and condemnation burning in his eyes.

‘He’s charmed you,’ John said. ‘Nothing you feel was your choice. He’s made a fool of you.’