"I went to Cavendish House myself four hours ago, intending to escort you home. You were not there, madam wife." And for the last three hours, he had been lying awake listening for the sound of her return, imagining any number of scenarios, from footpads to an illicit tryst. Everything he knew of her lent itself to the worst possible construction, and within a short time, he had ceased to be able to think of any sensible explanation.

Judith tried to think quickly, aware of her mental fatigue after the hours at Pickering Street. She shrugged and asked coldly, "Were you spying on me, sir?"

He had gone to Cavendish House with the best of motives, determined to paper over their differences in the only way he knew how: a lover's insistence on seduction. But at the cold, sardonic question, all good intentions vanished. "It seems I have cause. When my wife is not where she's supposed to be and disappears God only knows where for the greater part of the night, it's hardly surprising I should feel a need to check up on you."

Abruptly Judith changed tactics. The last thing she wanted was for Marcus to decide to dog her footsteps in public. It would play merry hell with her gaming plans. She offered him a conciliatory smile, and her voice was quietly reasonable. "I was with Sebastian, Marcus. We haven't had the opportunity for a comfortable talk for some time."

Marcus knew how attached they were, how strong the bond was between them. He looked at her closely, frowning. It was distracting. The closer he looked, the more he saw of Judith in her nakedness. He felt his body stir, begin to harden. Judith's eyes flickered unerringly downward and she came toward him, extending her hands. "But since neither of us is asleep in the dawn, I can think of any number of diversions."

He took her hands, holding them tightly, examining her face, telling himself she had given him a perfectly understandable explanation for her absence.

"So can I." He drew her to the bed and fell back, pulling her with him. "Were you at your brother's lodgings?"

Judith froze beneath the stroking hand. "We had a great deal to talk about." Rolling over, she kissed his nipples, her tongue lifting the hard buds, her hand drifting down his body.

Marcus caught her hand in mid caress. "I don't think you've answered my question, Judith."

Hell and the devil. He was going to force her to lie. Or course.

Was she lying? What reason had he for believing her? The perverse prod of disillusion drove him onward down this destructive path. "Why do I have the feeling you're being less than straightforward?" One hand still held hers, his other caressed her back in long, slow strokes.

"I can't imagine why." Her voice was muffled, buried in his skin. She still had the use of her lips and tongue, but that use didn't seem to be creating the hoped for distraction.

"If you're lying to me, my dear wife, you're going to discover that my patience and tolerance have certain limits. You are my wife, and as such the guardian of my honor. Honor and untruths make uneasy bedfellows."

"Damn you, Marcus!" Judith sat up, glaring at him. "Stop threatening me. Why would I lie?"

"I don't know," he said. "But by the same token, why wouldn't you?"

Judith closed her eyes on the hurt… a hurt she wasn't entitled to feel because she was lying. But whose fault was that?

Marcus hitched himself up against the pillows, regarding her through hooded eyes in the dim, gray light of dawn. He could feel her pain as he could feel his own, and he tried to find the words to put this mess into perspective, to salvage something out of the night.

"Judith, I can't have you running around in secret pursuits at all hours of the night, with or without your brother. It may be what you're used to doing, but your position is different now. The Marchioness of Carrington, my wife, has to be above reproach… whatever Judith Davenport may have done. You know that damn well."

"And why are you assuming that I was doing anything that was not above reproach?" she snapped. "I told you I was with my brother. Why isn't that enough?"

"You seem to forget I know what you and your brother get up to. Fleecing gulls with fan play…"

"Not anymore," she interrupted, flushing. "You can no longer have any justification for such an accusation."

"I trust not," he said. "Because let me tell you something, Judith." Reaching out, he caught her chin, his eyes and voice as hard as iron. "If I ever find that you and your brother have performed your little duet again, by the time I've finished with you, you will wish your parents had never met. Do I make myself clear?"

Judith jerked her head free of his grip, her voice frigid. "Such a statement would be impossible to misconstrue, sir."

"I had hoped to be perfectly lucid."

"You may rest assured you were."

But they were going to do it again, just once more.

And once it was over, she'd leave Marcus to find himself the kind of wife he wanted: a woman of honor and principle; meek and obedient; the epitome of virtue. And she'd wish him joy of her, she thought savagely.

"I don't think we can have anything further to discuss," she declared. "I bid you good night, my lord."

Marcus swung himself off the bed. "Good night, madam."

The door clicked shut. Judith huddled into bed, swallowing the lump in her throat, tears pricking behind her eyes. She was miserable and she was disappointed. Her body ached for some other finale to the evening, for what had been promised and then so devastatingly denied. She stared, scratchy-eyed, into the pale light of early morning, her limbs aching, her mind as clear as a bell, her body throbbing for fulfillment.

Suddenly the door between their bedrooms flew open again and then slammed shut. Marcus stood at the end of the bed, and she could feel the force of his emotion as vitally as she could see the power in his aroused body.

"Damnation, Judith. I don't know what to do about you!" His voice was a contained whisper, but the fierce frustration was all the more potent for its containment. "I want you more than I have ever wanted another woman, and yet you madden me to such a degree sometimes, I can't distinguish between the need to love you and the need to subdue you."

He came round to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her.

Silently Judith kicked aside the cover, offering her body, opalescent in the pearly dawn. Marcus came down on the bed beside her. He gathered her against him, and his hand was hard on her body as he possessed the long length from waist to ankle, the indentations and the curves. Judith felt her skin come alive under the rough touch, her thighs dampen. His fingers probed with deep, intimate insistence, and his voice demanded that she tell him what pleased her, that she open herself to him fully, that she reveal to him the sites and touches that gave her greatest pleasure…

He branded her with tongue and hand, searing her with the mark of a lover who knew her in her vulnerability, in die wild passionate soaring of her need. And finally he knelt between her widespread thighs, his body etched against the light from the window. He drew her legs onto his shoulders, slipping his hands beneath her buttocks to lift her to meet the slow thrust of his entry that seemed to penetrate her core, to fill her with a sweet anguish that she could barely contain yet could not bear to relinquish.

Tears stood out in her eyes as she held his gaze. But they were tears of joy as the ravishment of her senses began anew, this time in shared glory, a tornado, a wild, escalating spiral that swept them into the void where the world has no sway and nothing mattered but the ability to be together in this way, to be a part of each other, she in him, he in her.

Afterward, he lay holding her, her head on his shoulder, her body soft against him as she slipped into sleep. And he was filled with a great tenderness, and a tiny spring crocus of hope pushed through the heavy soil of disillusion. Surely their passion counted for something. It couldn't be a complete lie. If only he could bring new eyes to bear.., cut through the preconceptions… see another Judith.