"But why would someone want to hurt you?" She tried again, pushing herself away from his chest. "You can't just stop discussing it as if it never happened."

"Oh, I believe I can do that," he said coolly. "Just as I can become extremely unpleasant on the subject of my wife's sticking her overinquisitive nose with unpardonable recklessness into my very private business. Now, do you wish to discuss that, or would you prefer to tell me what inspired this piece of foolishness?"

Theo sat in chagrined silence for a minute, and Sylvester, smiling, drew her head to his shoulder and slipped his hand beneath her cloak to find the soft swell of her breasts. "Come, gypsy," he said, softly cajoling now. "You came a long way to say something to me. I'd like to hear it again when I can concentrate."

Theo bit her lip in frustration. But she did want him to concentrate on what she had to say, and clearly he wasn't going to be prodded into confiding in her. She'd just have to go about discovering the truth in some other way.

"I wanted to tell you that I don't seem to mind anymore that you tricked me into marrying you," she said, sitting up on his knee and cupping his face in her hands. "Life with you is much more exciting than it ever was without you." She bent to kiss his face, her tongue flickering over his lips, dipping into the cleft of his chin, licking upward over his nose, flickering across his eyelids.

"And that's all that counts?" he murmured. "Excitement?" His teasing tone masked a sweet joy.

"It covers a multitude of delightful things," Theo responded, her tongue tracing the plane of his cheek and around to his ear. He shuddered with pleasure as the hot tip flicked, probed, licked the sensitive whorls, and her teeth nibbled on his earlobe.

"Who was the man? You did recognize him?" She couldn't resist one last try with the simple approach.

He kept his response light. "Blackmail, Theo."

"You should know. You're a fairly impressive exponent of the art yourself." Her tongue was a burning dart, and her loins moved sinuously over his so that his flesh sprang to life.

She slid a hand down to cup his arousal through the constraint of his britches, to press the erect flesh against her palm. "Of course, I had intended to suggest that we go back to Stoneridge, since I find London very boring. But now that we're in the middle of this adventure, I can see that it could become quite exciting."

"Theo, I am not involving you in my affairs just to satisfy your ennui," Sylvester declared, removing her hand abruptly. "Sit over there." He took her waist and deposited her on the opposite bench.

"But I am involved."

"You are not! And if you ever endanger yourself as you did tonight, I can safely promise that you will regret it."

The simple statement somehow carried more force than a more explicit threat. Theo nibbled a thumbnail in contemplative silence for a minute. She hadn't felt in the least endangered, but Sylvester wasn't in the mood to hear that.

She said cheerfully, "Well, since I don't wish to quarrel with you tonight, perhaps we can go back to what we were doing before?"

Crossing the narrow space, she sat on his knee again. "Now, where was I?"

"About here, I believe," he said, taking her hand.

"Ah, yes, now I remember…"

Several hours later Sylvester lay in the darkness of his bedchamber, Theo's deep breathing filling the quiet, rustling across his chest, his fingers tangled in the fragrant cloud of her hair. Despite his relief that she'd at last decided that the why of this marriage no longer mattered when set beside the fact, he knew it disposed of only one of his problems. Theo's acceptance would do neither of them much good if Neil Gerard succeeded in inflicting the damage he seemed so set on.

But what could possibly drive Neil Gerard to attempt murder? What could Sylvester, his friend from their earliest schooldays, have done to drive a man to such desperate straits? Neil was a coward, inclined to panic, but Sylvester had understood his physical fears and had never condemned him for them. Indeed, he'd stood by him and stood up for him through some of the worst schoolboy hells. Neil had not returned the favor, though. At the court-martial he'd done everything but directly accuse his old friend and comrade of cowardice.

And he turned his back on him afterward.

The old serpents of hurt and self-disgust coiled in his belly, and their venom ran in his veins. Neil had made it clear that Sylvester Gilbraith had forfeited all claims to friendship and loyalty.

And now he was trying to kill him! His mind snapped clear of the pointless misery of the past. Why would a man who'd destroyed the reputation and career of another then decide to go one further?

Vimiera had to be behind this. There was nothing else that connected the two of them in antagonism.

What was Neil afraid of now? Was he trying to prevent something from happening? Sylvester must hold the key to some secret.

It was the only explanation. Some secret that would ruin Gerard.

He tried to force his mind back to those moments on that Portuguese plain. It had been sunset, and they'd been holding their position since dawn against continuous enemy forays. The river had been behind them, and his small company formed a lonely outpost protecting the bridge for the main body of the army, expecting to cross at some point in the night.

He knew all that. It was documented in the records at Horseguards. Captain Gerard was to come up with reinforcements. They had only to hold out until dusk.

Sylvester closed his eyes, trying to recreate those hours. A hawk circled in his internal vision, a dark shape against the dazzling blue expanse of the sky. How had he been feeling? Apprehensive… frightened even? Probably. Only fools were unafraid of battle and death. A young private, little more than a lad, had been wounded in the morning and had lain throughout the heat of the day, alternately whimpering and screaming, calling for his mother. He could hear his voice now, coming at him across the mists of memory. He could see the face of Sergeant Henley, hear his voice reciting the drill, exhorting the men to greater speed as they fired and reloaded at the undulating blue line of Frenchmen appearing over the small line of hills facing their position.

They'd beaten them off. How many times during that interminable day had they driven that line back beyond the hills? It would have been so easy to have withdrawn over the bridge, and yet not once had it occurred to him to do so. They would be reinforced at nightfall, and the bridge would be secured.

And then what had happened? The line was coming up at them again, the sun dipping into the hills behind the advancing French so it was hard for his men to see as they fired into the red glow.

And then what happened? It was as if his mind retained that single picture, a brightly colored picture surrounded by blackness. And a certain something hovered on the periphery of that picture, but it refused to take a tangible, recognizable form.

It was no good. He always got this far and no farther. There was only one other memory of hideous clarity – an isolated picture that had no physical context. He saw the face of the Frenchman standing over him, the bayonet poised. He saw the twisted light of a fanatic in the man's eyes and the flash as the bayonet descended. He thought he'd put his hands up to cover his eyes before the white light had burst in his head. And he remembered nothing else, except confused moments of delirium, punctuated by Henry's voice, until the brain fever left him months later in that stinking jail in Toulouse.

Sylvester eased himself out of bed. Theo murmured and rolled onto her stomach, her arms reaching across the bed as she searched for him in her sleep.

He poured himself a glass of water and stood at the window, watching the imperceptible lightening in the east.