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  "Now, to begin. Regard her if you will, Piers. Good height, good straight bones. I'm sure she has good teeth. No indulgences since childhood. Very important that." He nodded sagely. "Not set on going up to London and spending your money. Your mother-Ah, but I shall not resurrect old and unpleasant memories. Suffice to say. This one will not spend your money."

  Vivian sank back in her chair staring at the old man with furious incredulity. Rage whitened her skin and widened the pupils of her eyes. His appraisal of her person insulted her so that she curled her fingers into talons on the arms of her chair. He was serious. She might have been a half-wit for all he cared for her good opinion. She could not believe that such an anachro­nism existed in the nineteenth century.

  Piers's scowl was thunderous. "That makes absolutely no difference to me. I have none to spend except—None to spend."

  Larne's mouth spread in a wolfish grin. "Indeed, but now you will have. Hers. Why did you think Dawlish had her locked up in the first place? He could spend her money unrestricted. Lovely old money. Lovely old house."

  Piers's angrily swinging foot slowed. His eyebrows rose as he studied the unprepossessing figure clad in the bedraggled black habit.

  Vivian pushed herself indignantly from the chair. Larne thrust the end of the walking stick into her chest. She caught the end trying to wrench it away, but he whipped it out of her hand. When she started up again, he raised it above his head threateningly. "Here I was criticizing Piers for acting like a barbarian, and you start up. If you move one more time, my dear, I shall order Mrs. Felders to tie you to that chair. And, believe me, she will take great pleasure in making the knots as tight as possible."

  Faced with the three-foot stick with its lethal gold knob at the top, Vivian subsided. She shot a sulfuric look at Piers, who shrugged and slouched back in his chair, eyelids drooping.

  "Now." Larne drew a deep breath. "You will both pay attention and learn the real economics of marriage. You, Piers, have had a bride carefully selected for you since you made no move to select one of your own."

  "I have had other things to think of. Mother was ill for—”

  "To be sure. To be sure."The earl callously brushed aside mention of his wife's very recent death and burial. "Very laudable of you. But now life goes on. And I am particularly set on life going on." He added the last with particular emphasis. "Did I mention that this young lady, the Honorable Vivian Marleigh, is an heiress? Yes, I believe I had been allowed to say that much. To a considerable fortune and a fine country house and estate with several very productive farms and a mill as well as a town house. I don't believe I have omitted anything of importance, have I, my dear?"

  Vivian refused to grant him a nod of approbation. At the same time, she realized that the earl probably knew more about her business than she herself knew. The knowledge galled her. She should have learned her business. While she could not speak, she could read and write. She should have demanded that her solicitors inform her. All too late. She had contributed to her own disaster.

  The earl turned to his son. "All this will be yours after you shall have wrested it from the unsurping hands of her cousin Sebastian in your wife's name, of course. Think of it, Piers. You have the chance to steal a fortune legally, an act which could give you no small pleasure."

  "Poor old Sebby," the viscount murmured without a trace of sympathy.

  "Exactly." The earl's smile was feline. "Furthermore, since you cannot take the farm without the livestock, look at what you will be getting."

  Vivian's expression of outrage would have slain a lesser man.

  Larne merely chuckled. "Of course, the nun's robes are somewhat disagreeable, I will admit, but look closely. Skin like velvet. Hair, truly amazing, a silver-gilt color. Why, I have known women who would kill for hair that color. And the eyes, Piers, the eyes. I've never seen that color anywhere else. Moon on water."

  Piers snorted rudely. "Much more of this and I may be sick."

  Larne's smile disappeared as if it had never been. "What a disappointment you are! Fool. You sit and sneer at everything." He pointed his stick at Piers's crotch. "Are you a man? Or perhaps it is that you can't work up an interest in anything female? Did I leave you with your mother too long? Have I raised a daughter instead of a son?"

  Piers's eyelids narrowed to slits. "Larne," he said steadily, "another word, and Felders and Beddoes be damned. I’ll break through that door and be gone.*'

  The earl's veined nostrils quivered. With a monu­mental effort at control, he swung the stick toward Vivian. In a flat voice he continued. "Good straight bones, good teeth. The grandfather and grandmother Lord and Lady Casterbridge-both most unfortu­nately carried off by influenza-were nevertheless of long-lived stock. Her father, a younger son, was killed at Talavera. Her mother died in a coach accident the same year."

  The mention of her mother's death cast a chill over Vivian. Exhaustion and depression weighted her back into the chair. She closed her eyes.

  The earl droned on. "Alone in the world, an heiress, of good family." He dropped the stick to the floor again, to put a period to his speech. "Altogether suitable. She’ll bear strong, healthy sons.

  Piers's face darkened angrily, but his expression did not change. He stared at Vivian, then his eyes shifted back to his father. "Except that she's a freak. Her children might be like her."

  Vivian's eyes flew open. Her nails ripped the material of the chair arms.

  Larne shook his head. "You thought of that possibility, did you? Very good. Let me assure you that will not be the case. No, not at all."

  "You can't be sure."

  "Ah, but I am. She didn't lose the power of speech until her mother was killed. I've read all the family records. I've investigated the story thoroughly." He scowled at his son. "Do you think I'd take a chance on my own posterity?"

  "Family stories could be lies," Piers scoffed. "Besides, maybe she's half-witted. How long ago was the accident? Perhaps she got her brains bashed in?"

  The earl shifted irritably. His body was rebelling against standing so long. "I tell you she is not half­witted nor a freak."

  "I don’t want her."

  "Damn you. You will take her. She is the best that can be found for you." Larne's complexion darkened. A trickle of sweat ran down his hollow temple. "We have no friends in all this end of England among suitable people. I will not have my heir dropped by some farmer's ill-bred sow or some poxy whore from the streets."

  "Larne."

  The old man swung his stick. The heavy wood whistled through the air like a saber. "Not another word more. Not one! I have gone to great lengths to provide her. You will do as I say. Or I will make you very, very sorry that you did not. Remember, my arm is long and a cell in a French prison would be easy enough to arrange."

  Piers leaned forward in the chair. "Why go to so much trouble? Simply have Beddoes drop me overboard some dark night."

  The earl's face twisted in rage. "Don't think the thought has not occurred to me."

  "But, of course, when I'm gone, then your heir is gone also!" Piers's voice rose defiantly.

  "You will do as I say!"

  Vivian pressed her fists to her temples. Her expression was frantic as she shook her head.

  The earl drove his stick into the floor and pivoted to face her, showering her with his wrath. "And you, my dear Miss Marleigh, will marry him! Or go back to Sebastian Dawlish and the prison cell in the madhouse he has reserved for you."

  His pronouncements made, Larne hobbled to a chair across the room and dropped into it with a groan. Pulling a handkerchief out of his sleeve, he mopped at the sweat that trickled down his face and stained his neck cloth. Slowly lowering her lists, Vivian caught Piers staring at her in the red light from the hearth.

  Mrs. Felders remained immobile at the door. Her burning eyes watched the earl. A silence settled over the room.

  At last, lids drooping to conceal the expression in his dark eyes, Piers pushed himself out of the chair. An insolent twist
to his mouth, he strolled over to Vivian's chair.

  Closer he came, and closer. So close that his knee actually nudged the side of hers. Vivian could keep her head bowed no longer. From near sleep, she managed to push her way through veils of exhaustion and tip her head back to meet him.

  As he returned her half-defiant stare, he noted the dark mauve circles beneath her eyes, the deepened hollows in her cheeks, the colorless lips. She was near the end of her tether. Still his eyes betrayed not a jot of feeling. Silently, he stared down at her, peeling away the rumpled, filthy habit and seeing the shape of the body beneath.

  A frisson of alarm wracked her. She sucked in her breath in apprehension. A faint color rose in her cheeks as her bosom swelled.

  He focused on the movement. One dark eyebrow rose. Behind him, the earl chuckled lecherously. Piers shrugged and returned to his study of her, letting his eyes move critically from her toes to the crown of her disordered head.

  Her fear and distaste could not sustain itself against her body's total exhaustion. She had had neither food nor rest in over twenty-four hours. Before that had been the days of nursing a dying woman, of traveling alone except for her own fears. Vivian dropped her eyes and bowed her head.

  Trembling, she stared dazedly into the flickering flames to avoid noticing how the dove-gray buckskin covered the muscular thighs with never a wrinkle, to avoid staring at the soft material stretched taut over the hard bulge at the bottom of his flat belly. When she tried to take shallow breaths, she only succeeded in starving herself for air; so in the end she was forced to gulp.

  A log broke in the fire. The flames sprang up and died back as quickly. Then long brown fingers slid under her chin and turned her face back to his. Dispassionately, he studied the play of expression across her pale mouth. When she tried to twist out of his hand, his grasp tightened painfully.

  With the other hand, he brushed the disordered silver-gilt hair from her forehead and cheek. Tangled and snarled as it was, its beauty was extraordinary. His hand smoothed down the long skein and brought it to lie over her right shoulder.

  The unexpected tenderness of his touch brought tears to her eyes. Her color came and went. Her scalp prickled at the feel of his fingers in her hair. She shifted uncomfortably as a peculiar heat built and curled between her thighs. Her fine dark brows knitted together in puzzlement.

  He grinned stiffly and tilted her face back to the fire observing the purity of her profile. Anger rekindled signaled by a flush of color. She clutched at his wrist to pull his hand away.

  He bent closer until his lips were only a few inches from her ear. He might have been a lover bestowing a kiss, but his tone made a mockery of his gentle touch in her hair. "How do you feel about this, milady in nun's clothing? What do you think of the prospect of being my suitable wife and mother of my heirs?"

  Sagging with weariness, she pantomimed writing.

  The earl chuckled. "I'm sure you see the beauty of this entire scheme, Piers. She cannot object. She was in the coach, the night her mother was killed. How old were you, my dear? Nine or ten? She was marooned for hours in a snowstorm. When they found her, she couldn't speak. Not a word. And not a word since. Without a pad and pencil, she's helpless. And even were she to write a protest, who would believe her?"

  "Sebby might." Piers straightened only enough to rest his long arm across the back of her chair. One hand still tangled in the skein of hair at her shoulder.

  "Oh, to be sure. He would indeed. But what could he do? He wants to keep his skin whole. He's the one who had her locked away to begin with."

  "What about the solicitor she was trying to reach in London?"

  "Thick with Dawlish. If Beddoes had gotten there a couple of hours late, she'd have been long gone."

  They were doing it again. Talking in front of her as if she were not there. Despairing, she huddled in the chair. Yet even as she collapsed, the earl surprised her. "Am I right, Miss Marleigh?" His hoarse bark aroused her. "Nod your head. You can do that much."

  Vivian roused to look up at the man who claimed her. Obediently, she nodded.

  Piers shrugged. "So you rescued her. Why not send her on her way? Take her under your guardianship? Get control of her money. But don’t breed her to me. You talk about strong, healthy heirs. What kind of mother would she make? My God, Father! A good colt needs a strong mare to follow. This one may be simpleminded. If she hasn't taught herself to speak in ten years—”

  Vivian clenched her hands. She swallowed again, willing herself to speak to utter a refutation. Nothing happened. Her throat could not produce a single sound. Not even a groan.

  The earl's face darkened. For a moment he hesitated, his smile fading. Then he shook his head. "I'm satisfied with her. She was perfectly normal until the accident. I have proof incontrovertible of that. The family doctor was a fund of information. His theory was that women are simply not capable of withstanding the stress to which she was subjected. But as for her children, they'll be normal."

  "But—”

  "We won't allow her around them, if that bothers you. They can be just as carefully reared by nannies and nurses and later tutors and governesses. You will have the money to hire any number of servants. Three-quarters of the aristocratic families of England never see their children except when they're cleaned up and brought downstairs for holidays."

  "And what about my wife? Will I clean her up and bring her downstairs only on holidays?"

  The earl slammed his stick against the floor. "Damn you, Piers. I don't ask that you associate with her. Take a mistress when your duty's done. Society has never meant anything to you one way or the other." He motioned to Mrs. Felders. "Pour drinks for everyone. We’ll toast the bride and groom."

  The housekeeper moved silently across the room. The earl took his brandy with pleasure, his smile affable, now that he saw his plan nearing completion. Piers took the glass, his face a mask of self-disgust.

  Vivian waved the woman away. She would not drink with her enemies. Furthermore, she was sure that her stomach would refuse the drink. The final humiliation of this wretched encounter would be if she vomited and further befouled herself.

  The earl rose. "To my son and daughter-in-law."

  As Vivian watched, Piers's expression changed. He tossed the brandy into the back of his throat and held out the glass for more. As Mrs. Felders silently refilled it, he laughed mirthlessly. "To the Earl of Larnaervon, Tristram Alexander George," He pitched his voice and spaced each word, so the high beams of the room resounded. "Whose special attention is incalculable. What a future he has contrived for his son! Wedded to a wife that hates the sight of me."

  Piers signaled to Felders. "Fill her a glass." When Vivian shook her head, he stooped and dragged her to her feet clasping her hand tightly in his own. "No fainting and fading away, my dear. The end of the evening is nearing. The long ordeal, about to be finished. Just one drink and you can be escorted to your penitential lying. And remember just before you sink into exhausted slumber that at least it will be better than the restraining straps at an institution. But only just."

  Felders pressed the glass into Vivian's hand. She stared at it stupidly.

  "Drink," Piers prodded softly. "Believe me, this is better than any watered wine in the nunnery. And a thousand times better than any foul substance pushed into your mouth in an institution. Good French brandy." He clinked his glass against hers. "Drink."

  "Careful, Piers," the earl suggested. "She's had a long day and night."

  "Why so she has, but can she complain?" He spun her halfway round.

  The black nun's skirts flew out. Vivian staggered, and he caught her against his body. She was aware of his arm clasping her, of the scent of his body. The brandy slopped from her glass, wetting the front of her dress.

  Piers drank again, his strong lingers massaging her shoulder, holding her pressed against him. "Can she complain? No. Can she question? No. Can she rant and rail? Not those either. Can she beg and whine and whimper?"


  Vivian rallied for a single instant, though her head was spinning. He was supporting almost her full weight leaned against his chest. Her head fell back on her shoulders. Her silver-blue eyes flashed up into his own. Pain almost too severe to be borne pounded and clawed at her temples. Her mouth was so dry that she could not have spoken in any case. Only her eyes lived in the pale mask of her face.

  Piers looked deeply into them, then up to his father. He took another drink. "No," he said softly. "She can do none of these things. She can only hate. And hate. As Mother hated you."

  The earl's amused stare dropped. He drank his own brandy, then glanced back at his son with a halfhearted shrug.

  "Pledge me that hatred, my lady," Piers challenged, looking down at her.

  Her lips parted, revealing her teeth tightly clenched. She aimed a sibilant hiss at him.

  He laughed. "A tiger cat with fangs bared. But a small tiger. Much overmatched, I fear." He drank again, then slowly, he inclined his head bringing his lips nearer to hers; his hand tilted her head to one side. His eyes were so close to her own that she could now see they were not a single opaque dark color, but brown, floating shifting shades of brown with a golden radiance around the pupil. Closer they came, their color richer, until it lost focus and became unclear.

  His lips touched hers. She tasted brandy first and foremost, then his tongue caressed her teeth begging admittance. She was not aware she had opened them until she felt him slide into her mouth. His breath mingled with her. He sought and found her own tongue.