His lip curled at the shambolic sight within. Three women, wearing little more than the paint on their faces, were standing on a table, performing a lewd dance for a group of five men, sprawled over couches and chairs, glasses in hand.

“Governor, wasn't expecting you back so soon.”

One of the men stumbled to his feet, a fearful note underpinning the drunken slur.

“Clearly not,” his uncle declared in disgust. “I've told you before I'll not have you whoring in my house. Get those harlots out of here and conduct your business in the stews, where it belongs.”

He stood to one side, watching with searing contempt as the men lurched to their feet with mumbled apologies and the women stepped off the table,.hastily scrambling back into skirts and petticoats, their eyes glazed with drink yet haunted with the predatory hunger of the desperate.

One of them approached David Penhallan with a deprecating smile. “A guinea apiece, sir,” she whined. “You promised, sir.”

She went reeling as Cedric's nephew backhanded her. “You think I'm fool enough to pay a guinea for a drunken dance by a scrawny bag of bones?” he demanded savagely. “Get out of here, the lot of you!” He raised his hand again and the woman cowered, her hand covering the mark on her cheek.

“Oh, we should give them something for the dance, David,” his twin said with a chuckle that sounded more menacing than humorous. Charles reached into his pocket and threw a handful of pennies at the women. His aim was true and vicious. A coin struck one woman in the eye and she fell back with a cry of pain, but then she bent with the others, scrabbling to pick up the coins amid the laughter from the men, who all joined in the new game, bombarding them with coins-an assault that they couldn't afford to run from.

With a disgusted exclamation Cedric turned on his heel and left the room. He despised his nephews, but he wasn't interested in their puerile little cruelties. The women they were tormenting meant nothing to Lord Penhallan; he just didn't want them in his house.

He marched up the stairs, pausing for a minute to look at the portrait of a young woman hanging above the half landing. Silvery fair hair, violet eyes, she gazed down at him with the same defiantly mischievous smile he remembered across the mists of more than twenty years. His sister. The only person he believed he had ever cared for. The only person who had dared to challenge him, to mock his ambition, to threaten his position and his power.

Cedric could still hear her voice, her chiming laugh as she told him how she'd overheard his discussion with the Duke of Cranford, how she believed that Williarn Pitt would be most interested to know how one of his most trusted advisers was working behind the scenes to oust him. The price of her silence was her own freedom from her brother's authority. The freedom to pursue whatever little adventures she chose, and, when she was ready, the freedom to choose her own husband without thought to whether he might be useful or a liability to her brother's ambition.

Pretty, lively little Celia had made herself too dangerous.

Shaking his head, he went on upstairs, ignoring the renewed shrieks and gales of drunken laughter m the hall as the women were chased from his house followed by the revellers heading out in search of new entertainment.

Portugal

“So what's behind this journey, little girl?”

Tamsyn looked up at the sky, following the flight of an eagle as it soared above the mountain pass, its magnificent wingspan black against the brilliant, cloudless blue.

“We're going to be avenged upon Cedric Penhallan, Gabriel.” Her mouth was set, her eyes suddenly hard. She looked across at him as they rode abreast, following the line of a goat track etched into the mountainside. “And we're going for the Penhallan diamonds. They were rightfully my mother's, and now they're rightfully mine.

Gabriel drew a wineskin from his belt and tilted the ruby stream down his throat. He knew the story as well as Tamsyn did. He passed her the skin, saying thoughtfully, “You think the baron would have wanted you to seek his revenge, lassie?”

“I know he would,” she said with quiet certainty.

“Cecile was cheated out of her inheritance by her brother. He planned her death.” She tilted the skin, enjoying the cool stream as it ran down her dry throat. “The baron swore he would be avenged. I used to hear them talking at night.”

She fell silent for a minute at the memory of those evenings when she lay in her own bed, the door ajar, listening to the soft voices, the baron's rich chuckle, Cecile's musical laugh, and occasionally the chilly ferocity of El Baron roused to anger by some stupidity or perceived failure of loyalty. Cecile would defuse his anger, but she never interfered in his dealings with his men, and she'd never been able to soften his icy rage at what Cedric Penhallan had paid the robber baron to do.

Gabriel frowned, his customary placid demeanor disturbed. He wasn't sure what position to take on Tamsyn's plan because he wasn't sure what position the baron would have taken. “The baron had a powerful grudge against your mother's family,” he said, feeling his way. “But I don't believe he considered it your grudge, too. And Cecile always said there was nothing to avenge because her brother's plans went so far awry.”

Tamsyn shook her head, screwing the top back onto the skin and passing it across to him. “And you know the baron always denied that Cedric's plans had failed. He wanted his sister out of the way, he wanted to bilk her of her rightful inheritance. He succeeded. The baron always intended to redress that wrong. He's not here to do it, so I will do it for him.”

Gabriel's frown deepened. “Cecile counted that wrong as a good,” he said. “There's never been a love like theirs, and she always said it was the Penhallan who put them in the way of it.”

“Cedric Penhallan paid for Cecile's abduction and murder.” Tamsyn's voice was almost without expression. “The fact that she found a lifetime's happiness instead with the man Cedric paid to do his dirty work is no thanks to him. It's time he paid the price.”

Gabriel clicked his tongue against his teeth, considering. The baron had confided his intention to concoct an appropriate vengeance on the Penhallans. It could be said that that confidence had laid the burden now upon his old friend to do what he could no longer do. Gabriel certainly had the responsibility to protect the baron's daughter, and if she chose to exact her father's vengeance, then it seemed he had no decision to make.

For a man of action rather than decision, the conclusion came as a relief. “So how will you prove your kinship?”

“I have the locket, the portrait, and other documents. Cecile gave me all I would need to prove that I'm her daughter.” Tamsyn adjusted her position in the unfamiliar side-saddle. “She also told me that her real name was Celia. She started to call herself Cecile when she was fourteen because she thought it was prettier.” A misty smile touched her lips as she heard again her mother's laughing description of her own youthful romanticism.

“She said she had some romantic notion about the name when she was a girl, and it annoyed her brother almost more than anything else when she refused to answer to anything but Cecile.” She looked.across at Gabriel. “She said that should I ever need to prove my identity to the Penhallans, it would be the final confirmation for Cedric if I told him that, because it was not something anyone else knew about.”

Gabriel whistled through his teeth, nodding. “If she gave you all that, little girl, I'd guess she wasn't totally against the idea of vengeance, after all.”

“No,” Tamsyn agreed. “But she would have called it restitution.” She chuckled. Cecile's delicacy of phrase had always amused her robber-baron mate. “And she also gave me a written and witnessed account of her abduction,” she continued, serious again. “If that found its way into a London newspaper, vouched for by her daughter, it might cause her brother some considerable embarrassment, don't you think?”