"You're going to have my shirt and britches within the half hour," he prophesied with resignation. Judith chuckled. "An enticing prospect."

"Since you've lost nothing but a hair ribbon and your shoes in the last two hours, I can't help feeling the stakes are somewhat uneven."

"Well, why don't I give you a knight handicap?" She took her queen's knight off the board.

"My pride!" He groaned. "You are a devil at this game, Judith."

"But the stakes are fun," she said with another grin.

"They would be if I were not the only one being stripped of my clothes." He moved his own pawn to queen four. "There, now what?"

"Let's play piquet instead. Maybe two hours of chess is enough." Again she picked up one of the pieces, holding it up to the light. The pale marble glowed, translucent and alive with hinted streaks of color in its depths. "They are exquisite. I don't know how to thank you."

"You could always start losing pieces and thus a few articles of clothing," he suggested.

"It's hard for me to lose at chess. Let's play piquet."

"Now, just a minute. Are you telling me you will deliberately lose hands to salvage my masculine pride?"

"If necessary." She gave him an impish smile.

"What is a man to do with such a wife!" Marcus leaned forward, grabbed her upper arms, and hauled her over the board and across his thighs.

"Play piquet with her." She traced his lips with her thumb. "Otherwise, I shall never get my clothes off."

He said nothing for a minute, gazing down at her upturned face, the smiling mouth, the banked fires in the gold-brown eyes.

"I'm not as good at piquet as I am at chess," she offered. "And you are skilled with the cards."

"Nevertheless, madam wife, I doubt I have your experience."

"Perhaps not," she said. "But necessity is the mother of experience." A shadow crossed her eyes.

"Tell me about your father." The request came without conscious decision just as the evening had developed.

Judith rarely spent an evening at home, but after dinner he'd found her in the library, examining the shelves for a book to read in bed. She'd said she was tired and hadn't felt like going to the Denholms' rout party, and matters had proceeded from there. Now there was something about the firelit intimacy of the evening, something about the sensual pleasure they were taking in and of each other that made it both natural and inevitable for him to probe into areas they ordinarily kept closed.

Judith remained leaning against his chest, idly twisting a ringlet on her shoulder between finger and thumb. "He was simply a gamester who lost everything, even his lands, the family estate… everything."

"Tell me about him… about you and Sebastian."

She hitched herself up on his thighs until she was sitting straight, staring across the chess board into the fire. "He took us with him when he left the country. Our mother hadn't been able to withstand the disgrace. She went to a convent in the Alps and died there. Father hinted that she took her own life. We were no more than babies when we left England. Sebastian was nearly three and I was just two. We traveled with a series of itinerant nursemaids until we were old enough to manage alone: Vienna, Rome, Prague, Paris, Brussels, and every city in between. Father gamed, we learned how to deal with landlords and bailiffs and merchants. Then we learned to play the tables ourselves. Father was often ill."

Judith paused, looking into the flames. Absently she reached for the black marble king. The blackness was of an obliterating depth. She caressed it.

"In what way was he ill?" Marcus asked softly, feeling the currents of memory in her body as she sat on his thighs.

"Black moods, dreadful gulfs of inexorable despair," she said. "When that happened, he would be unable to leave his bed. Sebastian and I had to fend for ourselves… and for him."

Marcus stroked her back, looking for adequate words, but suddenly she laughed. "It sounds horrendous, and often it was, but it was also exhilarating. We never went to school. We read what we pleased. No one ever told us what to do, what to eat, when to go to bed. We did exactly as we pleased within the constraints of necessity."

"An education of some richness," Marcus agreed, pulling her down against his chest again. "Unorthodox, but rich. An education Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have applauded."

"Yes, I daresay he would. We read Entile in Paris a few years ago." She stared into the fire for a minute. It was hardly an education Marcus would embrace for any child of his. But then, he was determined there would be no children of his… at least not conceived in this liaison.

"So," she said. "Piquet?"

"No," he said. "I am no longer prepared to play for your nakedness. I have a much more efficient way in which to achieve it."

"Ah," said Judith, lying back. "Well, perhaps speed is becoming of the essence, my lord."

"Yes, I believe it is."

14

Lady Letitia Moreton fancied herself a semi-invalid and reclined on a chaise longue amid piled cushions, smelling salts and burned feathers at hand. She was a handsome woman, although her features were somewhat blurred by self-indulgence, and her voice was a plaintive thread, occasionally edged with shrillness.

"So, Lady Carrington, your brother has recently come from the Continent?"

"Yes, ma'am, from Brussels," Judith replied, performing her sisterly duty in Lady Moreton's drawing room. "After my marriage, he decided to set up in London."

Lady Moreton toyed with the silk fringe of her shawl, her eyes resting on Sebastian and Harriet. They were sitting on a sofa, Harriet's soft brown hair contrast-

ing with Sebastian's copper head as they looked through a book of illustrations. "I'm unfamiliar with your family, Lady Carrington," she remarked.

In other words, what is your brother worth? Judith had no difficulty interpreting Lady Moreton's remark. Any woman with daughters of marriageable age would welcome young gentlemen of title and fortune to her drawing room as fervently as she would dismiss those lacking such assets. In this instance, since Harriet was an only child and a considerable heiress, her mother would also be on the watch for fortune hunters.

"My brother and I lived abroad with our father until his death," she said smoothly. "We spent much of our time in France."

"Ah, I see. A family chateau…" Lady Moreton's voice lifted delicately, investing the statement with questioning inflexion.

Judith smiled and inclined her head as if in agreement, repressing images of the endless series of grubby lodging houses that had comprised the family chateau.

There was more than a hint of calculation in Lady Moreton's responding smile, and the gaze she bent upon her daughter and Sebastian was tinged with complacence. Any family with which the Marquis of Carrington was willing to be allied had to be good enough for the Moretons.

"I hope you and your brother will honor us at dinner one evening," she said. "And Lord Carrington, of course, if something as ordinary as a family dinner could appeal to him."

"We should be delighted," Judith replied formally.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of another caller. Agnes Barret swept into the drawing room, words of greeting on her lips, her hands extended to the room at large. She bent and kissed Lady Moreton with the familiarity of an intimate, embraced a blushing Harriet, shook Judith's hand with a degree of formality, and then turned a friendly smile on Sebastian, who kissed her hand, offering a twinkling compliment on her dress. Her green satin redingote with a tiny tulle ruff was set off by a dark-green silk hat with a bronze feather. The effect was certainly stunning. Judith was honest enough to recognize that if she hadn't felt perfectly satisfied with her own driving dress of severely cut turquoise broadcloth, trimmed with silver braiding, she might have experienced more than a hint of envy.