What the hell was she doing at this time of night? He glanced at the clock. It was two in the morning. Flinging the library window wider, he straddled the sill and jumped down into the soft earth of the flower bed beneath. He ran across the lawn, entering the fragrant arbor, his feet loud on the flagged pathway beneath the arch.

Theo heard the steps and spun round, her hair flying round her with the abrupt movement. She had one hand at her throat, her heart pounding with fright.

"What the devil are you doing out here?" Sylvester demanded, reaching her. The terror lingered in her eyes, purple in the darkness, and he put his hands on her shoulders in a gesture that combined both exasperation and reassurance.

"What are you doing?" she gasped, twitching out of his grasp. "You frightened me."

"Well, so you should be frightened," he declared. "Running around outside at this hour."

"There's nothing to scare me, except you," she said crossly, her heart slowing. "Everyone knows me around here. No one would harm me."

"Maybe so, but it's still insane." He took her shoulders again. "Where were you going?"

"Why should that matter to you?" she said. "You haven't yet forbidden me to walk around the gardens… or did I miss something?"

"You know, I've never before had the slightest urge to offer a woman violence," the earl said in a tone of mild curiosity. "But you, cousin, are in a category all of your own."

Theo stepped backward away from his hands. It seemed a prudent move. She drew the folds of her thin cloak around her and regarded him as steadily as the renewed thumping of her heart permitted. She took a deep breath and said what she'd told herself she wouldn't say.

"I will agree to help you in your work on the estate, sir, if you still wish it."

"Such concession, cousin." He stepped forward. Theo took another step backward. "But I'm not sure that I do still wish it." There was an openness in her face, a vulnerability about her eyes… the result of explosive emotions and the shocks and surprises of the evening. Take advantage of her disadvantage. There was still, he thought, one last possible tactic.

With a swift movement he caught her arm and swung her into his body, twisting the folds of the cloak securely round her, imprisoning her limbs before she could employ them to devastating effect. "This is what I wish."

Theo was engulfed in a kiss of savage force, a kiss that bore as little resemblance to lovemaking as a pistol shot, and yet, perversely, she was responding with the same passion, whether it be anger or desire, she neither knew nor cared. Her body was clamped so tightly to his that she could feel the buttons of his coat pressing through the flimsy cloak and nightgown into her flesh. Again she was aware of the hard shaft rising against her belly, and again she pressed herself into him, moving her body against his with a soft moan of need.

His hands moved down to her buttocks, clamping her against him, and she arched her back, her breasts aching for the touch she remembered from the beach, her head falling back as his mouth devoured hers.

Silver moonlight sliced through the night-closed rosebuds wreathed over the arch above them, throwing her face into relief as he raised his head, his breathing ragged, his loins heavy.

Her eyes opened, sensual currents racing in the dark depths of her gaze as she met his own eyes and read the same message there.

"I don't want your help, cousin," he said slowly. "I want your partnership." He bent to take her mouth again, and his hands moved now inside her cloak, lifting her nightgown, baring her legs, her thighs, his hands smoothing over her skin, sending shivers from her scalp to her toes. He stroked upward, over her bottom, and she jumped at the shocking intimacy of the touch, then lost all sense of shock as his flat palm slipped between her thighs, and the most secret parts of herself were invaded in a deep caress that opened gates of pleasure she could never have imagined.

"Partnership," he murmured against her mouth. "In this and in everything, Theo. Join with me, and I promise I'll show you a landscape you wouldn't believe existed." His fingers parted her, opened her, moved within her, and Theo heard her own ecstatic cry shivering in the moonlight.

He held her against him until strength returned to her limbs and her breathing slowed. He ran his flat palm over her mouth, and her own scent and taste was on his skin. Then, smiling, he tilted her chin. "Are you willing to renegotiate, cousin?"

Theo nodded slowly. In this strange half world of rose-scented moonlight, when she no longer seemed to know exactly who she was, when all the tumbling confusion and distress of the last days receded into the mists of fatigue, it was a decision that seemed to make itself… a decision that now seemed inevitable.

"Partnership?" His voice was low and intense, his thumb caressing her mouth, his eyes smoky with passion.

She could partner this man. They were alike in so many ways. Perhaps that was what she'd been resisting, what had frightened her with its power. "Partnership," she agreed in a low voice.

Triumph and a sweet wave of relief surged through him. He'd snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. "Good," he murmured with quiet satisfaction.

He gathered her to him again and kissed her, this time with a gentleness that startled and delighted her as much as the earlier fierceness.

And then he released her, putting her away from him, wrapping her cloak around her. "You must go to bed now, Theo. We'll talk to your mother in the morning."

She allowed him to escort her back to the house and up to her room, to remove her cloak, to tuck her into bed as if she were an exhausted Rosie.

"Sleep," he said softly, kissing her brow.

And she did.

Chapter Seven

"Theo… Theo, love, are you awake? It's gone nine." Clarissa's voice from the doorway brought her sister swimming up from the depths of a black and dreamless sleep.

She opened her eyes, stretched, and yawned. "Is it really that late?"

"Yes, and you went to bed so early." Clarissa came into the room, an anxious frown between her eyes. "Emily and I wanted to come to you last evening, but Mama wouldn't permit it." She sat on the edge of the bed, regarding her sister with the same anxious frown. "Are you feeling quite well?"

"Yes, of course." Theo sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes. "I feel a bit as if someone hit me over the head with an ax, but… Oh, God…" She stared at her sister as memory flooded back. No wonder she'd slept so late; it had been almost three before she'd gone to bed… been put to bed.

"What is it?"

Theo combed her hands through her hair, tugging at the tangles. "I believe I said I'd marry Stoneridge," she announced slowly. "Clarry, I must have been mad."

"Oh, Theo, are you all right?" Emily spoke from the door before Clarissa could respond to Theo's startling statement.

"I don't think I can be," Theo said. "I'm heading for Bedlam. Oh, God!" She fell back on the bed and pulled the covers over her face. "Tell me it didn't happen."

"What didn't happen?"

"She agreed to marry Stoneridge," Clarissa informed her elder sister with a grin.

"Oh, I am glad," Emily said with heartfelt warmth. "He's such a nice man, Theo. I'm sure you'll suit… and you won't have to leave the manor now."

Theo flicked the covers from her face and said vigorously, "Stoneridge is not a nice man… He's many things, but nice is not one of them."

Clarissa nodded. "Yes, I agree. It's too… too sloppy a word to describe him."

"Well, forgive me," Emily said with some asperity. "I don't have your linguistic precision, clearly. Anyway, / like him, and so does Mama."