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  There was a scratching at the door, and Tabitha popped her head around. “Should I clear away now, miss?”

  “By all means.” Octavia rose from the table and went to warm herself at the hearth. There was a renewed chorus of shouts and crashes from below. “What’s going on?”

  “A fight or summat,” Tab said, piling crockery onto a tray.

  “Are there no women here except yourself and Bessie?”

  “No, miss … leastways, not unless they brings ’em in.” She carried the laden tray to the door, adding matter-of-factly, “They does that oftentimes.”

  “But what of you? Where do you sleep?”

  “Me, miss?” Tab looked surprised at the question. “I sleeps with Bessie over the wash’ ouse … ’ceptin’ when Ben wants ’er of a night. Then I sleeps by the kitchen fire.”

  No room in those sleeping arrangements for an extra female, however benighted.

  “The fire’s been kindled in Lord Nick’s bedchamber for ye, miss, when y’are ready to retire,” Tab said cheerfully, following the thrust of the discussion, balancing the tray on her raised knee as she opened the door. “An’ there’s an ’ot brick in the bed, and I’ve passed the warmin’ pan ’tween the sheets, so it’s all snug.” She beamed as Octavia murmured a faint thank-you, then left, banging the door behind her.

  “Do you prefer rum or brandy punch?” The highwayman returned in a few minutes, rubbing his hands together with an air of anticipation. “Bessie’s bringing the makings to the bedchamber so we may have a nightcap.”

  “It’s too early to retire,” Octavia said hastily.

  Lord Nick’s mobile eyebrows lifted. “It’s past eight o’clock, and I for one was up at three this morning to reach Tyburn by dawn.”

  “As was I. But I am not in the least tired. You go if you wish. I’ll stay by the fire in here.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said in the tone she’d been hearing all day. “I have assumed responsibility for you, my dear Miss Morgan, and you’ll spend the night behind a locked door in my company.” As if in orchestrated punctuation, renewed shouts and crashes came from downstairs, interspersed with the sound of breaking glass.

  Octavia shivered. There seemed no way out of the situation.

  “Come,” he said, holding open the door.

  She brushed past him, conscious again of her bare legs beneath his robe, of her flimsy shift. She felt small and vulnerable in the voluminous robe, totally without the means to defend herself.

  His hand was in the small of her back, urging her down the passage and around a corner, away from the sounds of the taproom. “It’s much quieter at the back of the house,” he said casually, reaching over her shoulder to unlatch a door. “Oh, good, Bessie’s left both brandy and rum for the punch. You must have a preference.” He pushed her gently ahead of him into the room and closed the door.

  “Brandy,” Octavia said numbly, watching as he dropped a heavy bar across the door and turned an iron key. Impassively, he removed the key from the lock and slipped it into his pocket. He could not be expecting anyone in this house, where he was clearly a friend and honored guest, to break into his room in the night—so the lock was presumably to keep his unwilling guest within.

  “You’ll find a commode and hot water behind the screen.” He indicated a worked screen in the corner of the room. “While you refresh yourself, I’ll prepare the punch.”

  The room was large and well appointed, warmed by a fire and lit, like the parlor, with expensive wax tapers. There was a deep armchair with elbow pieces beside the hearth, and Octavia decided she would sit up there until dawn.

  The highwayman was busy with his punch, considerately removing his attention from her, and she hastened behind the screen, grateful for the amenities it concealed. A freezing visit to an outhouse in the yard was an unappealing prospect at the best of times, let alone in a blizzard.

  When she emerged, her companion was grating nutmeg onto the contents of a silver punch bowl. The air was sweet with the scent of warmed brandy, oranges and lemons, cinnamon and nutmeg. Involuntarily, Octavia yawned, realizing how bone tired she was. Her eyes darted longingly to the deep feather mattress on the bed. Perhaps the highwayman would be chivalrous enough to allow her the bed and take the chair for himself.

  “Come to the fire.” His smile was inviting as he ladled punch into a goblet. “Taste this and see if it needs any adjustment. There may be a want of nutmeg.”

  It seemed pointless to resist the comforts offered in this cozy prison. Octavia sat in the big chair, curling her toes onto the gleaming brass fender, and took the goblet. “Plenty of nutmeg,” she pronounced after a judicious sip. “But perhaps just a touch of cloves.”

  “Ah, I forgot the cloves.” He unscrewed a twist of wax paper and dropped a pinch of dark ground spice into her goblet. “Better?”

  She sipped and nodded. “It doesn’t taste quite like cloves, though.”

  “Oh, they’re a very rare variety, from the Indies,” he said, drinking deep of his own goblet before taking off his coat and sitting down to remove his boots and stockings.

  When he pulled loose his neck cloth and began to unbutton his shirt, Octavia realized he was undressing for bed … right there in the middle of the chamber … right in front of her eyes. He was unfastening his britches. She stared, mesmerized as he pushed them off his hips. Candlelight flickered on his broad bare chest, and her eye moved inexorably downward, following the trail of dark hair snaking over his belly, down from his navel and into the waist of his woolen drawers that molded his hips and legs and clung tightly to a bulging shape…. She choked on her punch, turning her head away, eyes streaming.

  The highwayman appeared not to notice. He crossed the room to a deep cherrywood armoire. Octavia wiped her eyes with her fingertips, but she couldn’t stop herself from peeping through them, gazing at the hard-muscled shape of his buttocks clearly outlined in the drawers as he stood with his back to her at the armoire. He took out a fur-trimmed dressing gown and slipped it over his bare torso before disappearing behind the commode screen.

  Hell and the devil! Octavia pressed a palm to one flushed cheek. He hadn’t seemed to give her a thought. He’d undressed as casually if he were in a brothel with a whore. But at least he hadn’t removed his drawers in front of her. It was small comfort. She took another gulp of her punch, and to her astonishment a little giggle developed in her throat. If she was totally honest, she’d enjoyed the spectacle. As fascinated as a rabbit in the eye of the cobra. What on earth was happening to her?

  Another wave of tiredness washed over her, but there was a tingling sensation in her belly, and her toes were curling of their own accord around the fender. She felt both tired and strangely expectant.

  Her companion emerged from the screen, still in his dressing gown. He moved around the room extinguishing the candles until only one remained by the bed; then he turned back the patchwork coverlet and glanced expectantly at her. “Miss Morgan?”

  “I’d prefer to sleep in the chair,” she said, aware of her flaming cheeks.

  “That’s your privilege, of course,” he said. “But you’ll be cold once the fire dies down. I don’t believe there are sufficient logs to keep it in all night.”

  “I’ll be warm enough, thank you,” she replied stiffly. “If you don’t mind letting me have a pillow and the coverlet, I shall be perfectly comfortable.”

  He shrugged, pulled off the coverlet, and tossed it over to her. A pillow followed. Then, without another word, he tossed off his dressing gown. He must have removed his drawers behind the screen. For a breathtaking second his body glimmered, naked and powerful in the dim light, and then he’d climbed into bed. He leaned over and blew out the bedside candle, and Octavia was left in the firelight.

  She dragged the coverlet over her, thumped the pillow behind her head, and tried to settle to sleep. But it was impossible. That curious unfocused excitement grew, together with the tingling in her belly that soon spread to her fingers
and toes. But perhaps it wasn’t unfocused. Perhaps it had everything to do with the last few minutes, with what she’d seen, with the knowledge of that naked male body a few feet from her. She gazed into the fire, trying to calm herself with the ruddy glow and the deep-blue undertones.

  But as the fire died, the room grew colder and darker, and still she was wide awake. Wide awake and freezing. So cold that deep shudders racked her body and all she could hear was the wind whistling around the now silent inn, rattling the ill-fitting panes.

  She looked toward the bed. The highwayman was a humped shape at one edge, sleeping tidily and deeply, judging by the steady, rhythmic breathing. If she put the pillow down the middle of the bed, separating them, surely she could creep in without disturbing him and sleep on the farthest edge. She had to get warm. Even if she didn’t sleep, she had to get warm if she wasn’t to be frozen solid by morning.

  Softly, she got up, dragging the coverlet around her shoulders, her feet like blocks of ice on the hard wooden floor. She approached the bed. Barely breathing she lifted the feather quilt and pushed her pillow into the middle. The sleeper made no movement. Still holding her breath, she climbed up onto the high mattress and slid beneath the quilt, where she lay shivering, trying desperately to keep still but unable to control the violent tremors of her body, which seemed to rock the bed.

  Gradually, however, she began to warm up. She was acutely conscious of the form in the bed beside her, weighing down the mattress so she had to concentrate on not rolling down into the valley that separated them. But now she was hot, the heavy velvet robe twisted around and beneath her in cumbersome folds that took on the consistency of hardwood pressing into her flesh. Perspiration gathered between her breasts, trickled down from her armpits. And now those strange currents of restless excitement swirled more vigorously in her veins, so that she could hardly keep her feet still, and strange half-formed thoughts kept drifting into her mind, then sliding out again before she could grasp them.

  The robe had become an instrument of torture, enclosing her so she could barely breathe, setting her skin on fire. She wriggled out of it, forgetting in her desperate urgency to move only discreetly. The robe fell to the floor beside the bed, and she heaved a sigh of relief, conscious now of her body beneath the thin shift.

  The strange drifting thoughts increased, twining like thick lazy serpents in her head, more sensations than thoughts, and her body was suffused in a deep, dreamy languor that overlaid the urgent restlessness without banishing it. She was conscious of her body in a way she’d never known before. Her hands moved over the shape of herself, startled to discover that her nipples were hard, lifting to her touch. Her skin was warm and tingling as she passed her hands over her belly, feeling the sharp points of her hipbones. Her thighs parted as her hand slipped between them, feeling the moistness of her core, a strange sensitivity; and the aching restlessness rushed upon her anew.

  She stroked herself, slipping slowly into a rich and sensual dreamland as the warmth crept over her and her body sank deeper into the feather bed. The twisting images in her head lost definition, and her eyes looked upon a soft, pulsating landscape without form or substance that drew her onward into the enticing glow.

  She dreamed of a mouth on hers, of a kiss so light and delicate, it barely stirred the air. She dreamed that her hands were moving over a warm, powerful male body and she was inhaling the scent of skin, a scent that she knew but that was nonetheless unfamiliar and didn’t belong to herself. She dreamed that her own skin now touched the skin of the body beside her, that fingers caressed the small of her back, touched her breasts, swept down her form in long strokes that soothed the urgent restlessness but replaced it with a clearer sense of need. She dreamed her lips were parted for a different kiss, one that took driving possession of her mouth; she heard little feline cries in the humid sensual darkness of the deep enclosing feather mattress, and she dreamed they were her own. She dreamed a joyous fulfillment that seeped into every cell of her body, that made her soul sing in wonder. She dreamed that every part of her body was lost in this other shape, that her limbs were joined with his, that as she dipped into the darkness of oblivion and surfaced again into the warm glowing light of her dreamworld, she was entwined with this other body, that her eyes were in her fingers and in her skin where it touched his. She dreamed the moments of joy again, the long slow sleepy slide into infinite pleasure, before she slipped again into the dim green glowing light of the sleep-filled trance.

  The dream was with her all night, her body moving through the strange landscape, ever new and more glorious waves of pleasure breaking over her as she adapted herself with such wonderful ease to the large, powerful frame that both took from her in possession and gifted her with itself.

  And when she awoke, her eyes opened onto washed-out sunshine, and she was alone.

  But the dream was still with her. Its threads still twined beneath her skin, its images, blurred now, still inhabited her mind. She lay burrowed in the feather mattress, bewildered and disoriented, conscious of a sense of loss as she tried to recapture the defined images of the night.

  Her hands moved over her body. She was naked. But she had not gone naked to bed. The disorientation faded, but her confusion increased as the room took shape in the early-morning light and memory returned.

  She was naked and heir skin felt different: used, marked, in some strange and frightening way. There was a soreness between her legs—not a bad soreness, more a kind of warm and satisfied ache. Tentatively, she touched herself. There was a stickiness, and when she drew her hand away, she saw the smear of blood on her fingers.

  Octavia kicked aside the covers and sat up. There was blood on the sheet and on the inside of her thighs … not much blood and it wasn’t flowing anymore.

  It was three weeks before her next monthly terms. She lay down again, pulling the cover to her chin, and stared up at the chintz tester. The highwayman had raped her.

  But he hadn’t. Nothing had happened that hadn’t brought her the most exquisite pleasure. She had believed herself to be dreaming, but the evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of reality.

  And reality meant consequences. She might have conceived a child. How had it happened? How could such a thing have happened? What had happened to her that had allowed such a thing to happen?

  Slowly, Octavia sat up again and took stock. She was alone in the room. The fire now burned brightly, and someone had scraped the snow from the outside of the window so that a feeble ray of sunlight fell across the wooden floor.

  Where was the highwayman? Her dream lover? If she hadn’t been so devastated, Octavia could almost have laughed at herself for such whimsical folly. What had happened to her? What had taken her into that fantastic world?

  Her eyes fell on her clothes, neatly arranged over the chair by the fire. Her boots had been polished. At the end of the bed were draped her shift and the velvet robe.

  “Lord of hell!” she muttered. There was nothing dreamlike about this morning.

  The door opened. A booted foot stepped into the room. The door closed. Each sound unnaturally loud. Dreams and fantasy trances vanished into the woodwork.

  Octavia turned her head warily. The highwayman walked over to the bed. Except that it wasn’t the highwayman. Oh, it was the man of her night, but she no longer looked upon the plainly dressed gentleman of the previous day.

  “Who are you?” Her voice came out as a whisper. The highwayman was dressed in a suit of turquoise velvet, rich Mechlin lace edging his shirtsleeves, his hair concealed beneath a high-dressed powdered wig, a black solitaire at his neck, tied in a bow around his starched white stock. He wore a sword and jeweled buckles on his red-heeled shoes, but his smile was straight out of the night.

  “At this moment, Miss Morgan, Lord Rupert Warwick is at your service.” He bowed with a deep flourish, and as his hand moved through the ray of sunlight, the amethyst on his finger sparked fire.

  Octavia’s voice shook with angry confusion, banish
ing the lingering memories of joy. “So yesterday you were Lord Nick, the highwayman, and today you’re Lord Rupert Warwick, the courtier. Do you have other identities, sir? Or have I met all of you?”

  The slate-gray eyes glittered and his voice was lightly humorous. “Not quite, my dear. But all those you need to know … at least for now.”

  “You gave me your word you would not ravish me.”

  “I did not ravish you.” His eyes met hers steadily.

  “But I may now be with child,” she said in a low voice, accepting his flat denial by default.

  “No, Octavia, you need have no fear of that.” He sat on the bed beside her, reaching for her hand, his expression gentle, his eyes reassuring. “I don’t know what you know of such things, but there is a device that a man may use. It’s known as a condom.”

  “You used such a thing?” She stared at him in disbelief, unable to imagine how in that entwined dream such a practical, wide-awake consideration could have come to him.

  He nodded. “I would not hurt you, my dear. You must believe that.”

  “But how did it happen? I don’t understand how it happened.”

  “You invited me,” he said simply.

  Had she? It seemed impossible … and yet she had been willing. More than willing.

  “I don’t understand anything,” she said helplessly.

  “There’s nothing to understand. We enjoyed each other last night as men and women do. And now you will get up, dress, break your fast, and I will take you home to your father.”

  And it would be over. She would forget all about it. All about that tangling of limbs in limbo.

  Perhaps.

  Chapter 4

  Someone had mended the torn lace of her fichu—Tabitha, Octavia presumed. It was difficult to imagine the hard-eyed, unfriendly Bessie performing such a service.