"How remarkably selfish: to dislike your own children for coming from a marriage you regretted!"

"Yes," Rafe said slowly. "I'm afraid that my father was a rather selfish man, in many respects."

He led her to the next panel. A plump Bottom was looking around quizzically while Puck was in the very act of lowering an ass's head onto his shoulders.

"Who is this?" Imogen asked.

"Have you read A Midsummer Night's Dream}" Rafe asked.

"I suppose so… oh, that's the workman who is given a donkey's head."

"Only then does Bottom dare court the Queen of Fairies," Rafe said, feeling rather queer. "When he wears the ass's head. He has to be disguised because she's so beautiful." He looked down at Imogen. Her hair was shining, sleek, as if he had never rumpled it in his hands, drawn it across her breasts, and then replaced that caress with a rougher touch of his own. She was looking up at him, amused, her eyebrows arched.

Slowly the amusement faded from her face, and after a moment she wrenched her eyes away and fairly ran back to the group.

Rafe just stood there a moment. He could almost feel the weight of the ass's head on his shoulders.

Chapter 31

In Which Several Parties Warn of Ruined Reputations

Gillian marched out of the theater and straight into her bedchamber. She stood there for precisely one moment, her fists clenched. Then, solely because her chest was compressed and for some reason she couldn't even take a breath, she marched back out of her chamber and into the nursery.

Mary's new nurse was sitting comfortably by the fire, and Mary herself was lying on a blanket, kicking about and talking to herself.

The nurse launched herself to her feet and bobbed a curtsy with some creaking of knees. "It's Miss Pythian-Adams, isn't it? I'm Mrs. Blessams. I remember your name, of course, because it sounds just like a heroine in a novel. I don't suppose you read them, but I'm fair addicted to Minerva Press."

"Oh, I have read them," Gillian said, trying hard to shape her mouth into a smile. A heroine she wasn't. Because a heroine—

Even in the most degraded of situations, a heroine never found herself—

She knelt next to Mary. The baby gurgled and smiled and made a swipe at one of Gillian's curls. She was a darling. "Mamammmmmma," Mary sang.

Gillian had seen Mary's large eyes before and that delicate pointed chin.

The baby had just reached out again, when the face looking down at her suddenly disappeared. Mary's little face crinkled with rage, and she let out a shriek.

Gillian looked down at Mary, kicking her fat little legs in disapproval, as Mrs. Blessams hoisted herself out of her chair.

"She's that dramatic," Mrs. Blessams said. "As good as an angel, but if you cross her in the smallest way, you'd think she was being murdered. There you are, lovely. She likely just had enough time on the blanket. It's good for them, but of course they might take a chill." She said it importantly, and Gillian again tried to summon the kind of smile required: a complimentary smile. Then she walked out, closing the door quietly.

He was there, leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm.

So she looked, chin high. There was no point in pretending. "It's none of my business," she said.

He looked at her. "Mary is mine."

She just couldn't stop herself. "Yours and—and that—"

"Mine." He said it fiercely.

She nodded and pulled her arm away. "Good afternoon, Mr. Spenser."

She walked most of the way down the corridor, but she could feel his eyes on her back, and so finally she looked back. He was looking after her, and there was something in his eyes that she—Gillian Pythian-Adams—had never seen in any man's eyes. So she turned around and walked back to him.

It was despair.

"I won't tell anyone," she said, gentling her voice. "It is irregular, but I respect the fact that you are raising Mary yourself."

He moved so fast that she didn't even see him, just pulled her shoulders to him and kissed her, hard and despairingly.

He was worse than Dorimant.

She should let him know in no uncertain terms that she, Gillian, was no woman to be manhandled by a rake.

But the flood of exhilaration that filled her chest had nothing to do with rakes.

"Are you having an illicit affair with Lady Maitland?" she asked, pulling back just far enough so that she could see his face.

He looked down at her, and the confused, bewildered man look of him made her smile deepen.

"No, you're not," she said to herself. "And you are not currently having a relationship with Mary's mother, are you?"

"I doubt you'll believe this, but such things are not in my normal course of life." He sounded so earnest that she almost giggled. "You think me a Dorimant, but I assure you that I'm tediously sober in my daily life. Although—" he said it haltingly—"I don't precisely regret that night with Loretta."

"Of course not, because Mary came of it."

This time it was she who drew his head down to hers. And she whose tongue touched his lips, in that daringly mad kiss that he had taught her.

"You must not," he said, after a few minutes.

She felt as if her heart would burst, hearing the pain in his voice. It was perverse, really, how much she felt like crowing with delight merely because—because—Mr. Gabriel Spenser was in love with her.

"I must," she said simply.

"No. I'm—"

"You're illegitimate. You're raising a child from an illicit liaison with an actress. You are Mr. Dorimant to the life," she said severely.

But he had caught something in her voice, or her eyes, now.

"No," he said suddenly. "I will not allow it."

"I will not allow anything else."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"You know nothing about me," he finally said hoarsely. "My mother—"

"I look forward to meeting her."

"You will never meet my mother. My mother was a kept mistress to the duke for years. And I am no secretly illegitimate child, as Mary will be. Everyone knows my parentage. You would be ruined to even—to even—"

"Yes," she said, smiling at him. "I suppose so."

"No!" he said again.

Men were so foolish. She'd always thought so, and thus she'd never been able to bring herself to feel any affection for one of the poor creatures. So how did it happen that she had fallen head over heels in love with this one, who was showing just as much blind stubbornness as the rest of his gender?

She put her palm to his cheek. It was an angular cheek, a strong sweep of slightly prickled beard under her fingers. He was everything she ever wanted: a true scholar, a person with whom she could talk for hours, a man who made her blood race.

"As far as I can see there is only one no about it," she told him, her fingers clinging to his cheek.

"I can see a hundred," he said harshly, obviously determined to hold his ground, like that silly bulldog her father had owned.

"You don't like Shakespeare," she said. "It's a grave fault."