After a while, he stirred. She put a hand over his mouth before he could speak. His arms slid from around her shoulders and she stepped back, tearless, head high.

“You cannot marry me. You will marry Tatiana because she is chosen for you, but more than that, Gabriel, because you deserve someone who speaks five languages, and who dances like an angel, and brings a king’s ransom with her.”

“If the world were different—” His voice broke.

“It isn’t,” she said steadily. “The world is what it is, and you have a whole castle to feed and clothe and look after. Not to mention a lion.”

He didn’t smile.

“You will never turn your back on your responsibilities,” she told him. “You are not your brother, Gabriel.”

“But for you,” he said achingly.

“I would rather love you now,” she said fiercely, “than take you as a man broken by turning your back on your family.”

“You are a rather frightening woman,” he said, a moment later. But his eyes had lost that wild despair.

She put her hands on the knot holding the dressing gown together. “What do you call this garment?” she inquired.

“A banyan.”

“It is rather hot.” She slowly untied the knot. “You see, Gabriel, while you were downstairs making a decision of one kind, I came to a decision of my own.”

He looked, rather unwillingly it seemed, from her hands to her face. “You did?”

“Whatever happens with Tatiana,” she said gently, “doesn’t matter here, not tonight. Tonight is for us. Tomorrow is for the world, for Tatiana, for dowries, and all the rest. I shall come to your ball with Algie, and then I shall travel to London with Henry. I believe that I shan’t go back to Mariana at all. There is nothing for me there, though it took me years to realize it.”

“Henry will take care of you.”

She smiled. “Yes, she will. She fell in love with my father, you know. Truly fell in love with him. But he married my mother instead. So she lived her life without him. And it was a happy life.”

Gabriel made a sudden violent movement. “I don’t want to even think about the prospect of you with someone else.”

That was just like a man, to Kate’s mind. He talked easily of Tatiana, but the parallel, her future spouse, was not such a straightforward subject. “Henry sees me as the daughter she never had,” she said. “You will be here, and I shall be in London. But tonight . . .” She untied the cord and let it slip through her fingers. It fell to the floor with a gentle slap.

“Tonight I want you, all of you.”

“What are you saying?” His face was dark with hunger.

She let the banyan ease apart, its silk falling to the side to reveal one breast.

“I’m giving you my virginity, such as it is,” she said simply. “It’s a gift, Gabriel, and one I have the right to bestow on whom I wish. It does not mean that I won’t climb in a coach after the ball and leave this castle, because I will.”

He was shaking his head, so she let the other side of the banyan slide open, freeing both of her breasts to his gaze.

“I, and I alone, can bestow this gift,” she told him, drawing a hand over the curve of her breast. “It will not change anything between us. I expect you to use a French letter.”

To her relief, the steel in his jaw eased a bit. “You sound like the abbess of a particularly strict brothel.”

“Not a very complimentary comparison,” she said, unable to stop her grin, “but I’ll forgive you.” The banyan fell down, to her elbows. “Do we have an agreement, Gabriel? Do we have tonight?”

“I shouldn’t,” he said raggedly. “As a gentleman—”

“You’re not a gentleman tonight,” she reminded him. “You’re a man, Gabriel. And I’m a woman. With no titles, or society, or nonsense between us.”

“You’re killing me,” he said, snatching her to him so suddenly that the breath left her lungs. “You unman me.”

From what she could feel, that was definitely not the case.

“Really?” she asked, her voice a provocative thread of sound. Then she deliberately rubbed against him. Her wrapper had given up the fight and fallen to the ground; there was something delicious about the contrast between her nakedness and his formal attire.

Not that she had long to enjoy it.

With a muffled groan, he fell back a step, his eyes eating her alive, and began wrenching off his clothes. Buttons flew; his cravat skidded across the desk and landed on the little pile of pottery fragments; his breeches disappeared while she was still absorbed with his chest.

“You’re very muscled,” she said, striving for a casual tone.

“Hunting,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been providing all the fowl that we eat at every meal.”

His mouth quirked. “Hardly. Witness the gift of my mother, who kindly left me a Star of India emerald whose price will keep the castle going for another six months, even given the extravagances of this weekend.”

She sobered, drew closer, and put a finger out to his shoulder. “Gabriel?” Her whisper had an aching hunger to it, and he responded immediately, scooping her up and striding over to the bed.

He put her down and then, without further ado, swung a leg over her and lowered himself, slowly, onto her body.

Kate let out an involuntary squeak at the weight of him, the heat, the curious feeling of a muscled body against hers. He didn’t move, just waited there, elbows braced on the side of her head.

She opened her eyes and met his. “Aren’t you going to . . .”

“What?” he asked, obviously trying to look innocent but failing.

Kate licked her lips. She didn’t expect to have to instruct him . “You know,” she insisted.

“No, you tell me,” he said silkily. “You had all the time to study Aretino while I was downstairs.”

“I didn’t look at that book,” she said, wiggling around to get herself more comfortable. He was no lightweight, after all. A strange look crossed his face. “What?”

“That—feels good,” he said, a hoarse little gasp escaping his lips.

“Ah,” she said, pleased. She wiggled again, testing how his hardness fit into the curve of her thighs. “Would you like to know what I did while you were downstairs?”

“What did you do?” He had lowered his head and was licking her collarbone. The rasp of his tongue sent a little frisson over her nerves.

“I didn’t look at the Aretino, but I read the journal about Ionian antiquities,” she said, running her fingers down his shoulder, slipping to his broad back, dancing down the line of muscle there. “I read your letter to the editor. It was very intelligent. Very argumentative too. I thought you needn’t have called the author a numbskull. Or said that he was writing nothing more than piffle.”

“Kate.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

His head slipped lower and his mouth closed over her nipple.

She didn’t shut up. She couldn’t; when he took her nipple into his mouth, she gave out a startled cry. It felt as if a wire snapped inside; as if she were a puppet, her body arched toward his, feeling soft, warm, and desperate. Suddenly the erection pressing between her thighs felt . . . different. “Gabriel!”