He looped the tie around her wrists. Judith craned her neck sideways, gasping with a mixture of anger and excitement as he fastened the tie to the carved cher-rywood pillar behind her head.

"Now," he said cheerfully, "you may fight me with your tongue, my lynx, but nothing else. However, I'm willing to wager twenty guineas that I can defeat you handsomely with the same weapon."

Judith abruptly ceased her struggles. "Twenty guineas?"

For answer, he plucked the sides of her peignoir apart. Bending his head, he drew a tongue stroke down between her breasts and over her belly. "Unless you wish to make it fifty?" He parted her thighs, holding them wide with flat palms. His breath whispered cool yet warm over the secret sensitivity of her core.

Judith lost all interest in conflict. "I'm not fool enough to defy these odds," she managed to articulate, before coherent speech was denied her under the grazing mouth, the hot, sweet strokes of his tongue.

He should have listened to his brother-in-law, Marcus thought dreamily, as he fed upon the pleasure growing within her. Direct confrontation was a crude and exhausting tactic, doomed to failure. Defeating her with delight was an infinitely more subtle strategy for achieving mastery.

Her whimpers of pleasure were building to a crescendo, her thighs tautening as the spiral coiled ever tighter in her belly, until with a shuddering cry her body arced, taut as a bow string, and then she fell back on the bed, her breath swift and shallow.

Marcus moved up her body, dropping a light kiss on her mouth, brushing her closed eyelids with his lips, and she opened her eyes, giving him a dazed smile.

"You work miracles, sir."

"One of my minor talents," he said with a smug grin, holding himself over her on an elbow, while fumbling one-handed with the waistband of his britches, pushing them off his hips. Reaching above her, he pulled loose the silk tie that bound her wrists. "I think you're sufficiently tamed now to have your hands back. You might need them for the next stage."

"I might," Judith agreed. She brought her hands down, slipping them around him, grasping his buttocks, as he eased himself into her. "Ah, that feels wonderful."

Marcus sighed in agreement, moving with gentle rhythm within the smooth, warm quiver of her body. "Sometimes," he murmured, "I think you were made to hold me as I was made to fill you."

"You only think it sometimes?" She laughed up at him, an exultant spark in her eyes as she tightened around him, glorying in the feel of him, in the light in his eye, in the absolute knowledge of the pleasure they found in each other. She lifted her hips to meet him.

"Ah, Judith, don't move again unless you're ready to be with me."

"I'm ready," she said breathlessly.

She touched his lips fleetingly, then with wicked intent moved her hand to his belly. The muscles jumped against her flattened palm and he surged against her. Their cries mingled, redolent of a primitive exultation,

and his body fell heavily upon hers, sweat-slick skin melding with sweat-slick skin.

They lay for long minutes in deep, satiated silence, before Judith stirred beneath Marcus. Her legs were still sprawled around him, her arms spread out as they had fallen in the aftermath of that climactic explosion.

"Was I crushing you?" Marcus murmured, rolling away from her. He propped himself on one elbow, looking down at her, smiling at the wanton sprawl of her body.

"Only pleasurably." Her eyes opened lazily.

"Now," he said, trailing a finger down between her breasts, "to return to the vexed question of perch phaetons…"

Judith pushed his hand away, sat cross-legged on the bed, and regarded him. "Now, listen to me," she said calmly. "You are an old stick-in-the-mud, Marcus Devlin… No, don't interrupt. When, since we've been married, have I ever caused you the slightest embarrassment?"

"Never, to my knowledge," he conceded. "And you'd better not."

Judith patted his knee. "I'm not about to. I'm going to set a new trend. I'm not about to race at Epsom, or charge down the London-to-Brighton post road at full gallop. I'm simply going to do something different-a little daring, perhaps. But you just see… In a week, I'll wager any odds that there'll be quite a few others driving perch phaetons. And," she added, "you'll see that none of them exhibits anything like my style and expertise."

"Conceited baggage," he said.

"Just wait and see," she responded stoutly.

Marcus didn't immediately answer, his thoughts having taken a new direction. "How did you learn to drive so well, Judith?"

"Oh," she said vaguely, "a friend taught me two years ago."

"A friend?".

"Yes, in Vienna. He drove a team of magnificent grays and was most obliging as to teach me."

"In exchange for what?"

"Why, for my company," she said, as if it were self-explanatory.

"One of your flirts, in other words."

"I suppose you could say that. He was a very respectable flirt, though. An Austrian count of some wealth."

"Of which you and your brother relieved him, I assume."

"A few thousand," she said with cheerful insouciance. "He could well afford it, and he enjoyed my company as compensation."

"And you wonder why I sometimes question your judgment."

Judith bit her lip hard. "This is different. Why do you always throw my past in my face?" She turned her head away, blinking back tears.

Why did he? He looked at her averted profile, saw the shimmer of a teardrop on her cheek. Perhaps he wasn't being fair to her. No matter how their marriage had come about, he couldn't help but take pride in his beautiful, elegant, intelligent wife. Maybe it was time to bury the past.

He leaned forward and smudged the tear on her cheek with his finger. "If you can satisfy me that you can handle in every contingency a spirited pair between the shafts of such a vehicle, then you may keep your perch phaeton."

She swallowed her tears and swung out of bed.

"We'll put the matter to the test immediately." Bending over, she playfully tugged at the coverlet. "Come along, lazy, get up. We'll drive to Richmond in your curricle with your grays and I'll show you how I can handle a four-in-hand. I promise you I'll prove to you that I can drive to an inch."

"Yes, I rather imagine you will." He stood up, then said consideringly, "By the way, I believe you owe me twenty guineas."

"Why, yes, sir, I believe I do," Judith replied in dulcet tones.

16

"I don't know what to do now." Charlie looked up from the cards in his hand, his expression baffled.

Sebastian, standing behind Charlie at the table, glanced down at the young man's hand of cards and grinned as he felt his sister's surging impatience. Judith was a good teacher, but she was short on forbearance. She looked up and caught Sebastian's eye. Taking a deep breath, she struggled for patience. "Do you think you want another card, Charlie?"

"I don't know exactly." He frowned. Judith was trying to explain how one could reduce the element of chance at macao. "I have eighteen points."

"Then you don't want anything higher than a three," she explained carefully. "That means there are twelve possible cards."

"Ten," Charlie said. "I already hold an ace and a two."

"You're getting there," Sebastian approved. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his buckskin britches, watching the lesson with amusement.

"All right," Judith said, gesturing to the dummy hands on the table. "We've had five rounds, two hands have folded, three are still left. What does that tell you about the three left?"

Charlie frowned. "That they have mostly low cards?"

"Exactly," she said. "Therefore, your chances of drawing one of the ten low cards that you don't have are…?"