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“I fear I’ve just reached them.” Cordelia laughed at his jesting. “Go. I shall see
you soon.”

As the ladies wandered off, Gavin watched fondly. Then an acquaintance of Cordelia’s,
Lord Darehurst, put himself directly in her path, where she would be hard-pressed
not to acknowledge him. She stopped, raised her gaze a sizable distance to meet the
strapping young earl’s stare. After a curt nod, she moved on. Darehurst stopped her
by bringing her gloved hand to his lips. She pulled away, and Gavin frowned. What
did Cordelia have against Darehurst? She was forever avoiding the man, despite the
fact she’d known him most of her life.

Brock tapped Gavin on the shoulder, and he turned to see his friend’s expectant expression.
He shrugged sheepishly.

“I’m sorry. You wanted to speak to me. Has something else come about with the railroad?”

Brock shook his head. “No, it’s as I said—all ready to go. I merely wondered about
you. You look as if something is amiss. Is all well with James and your aunt? With
your sisters?”

Casting a considering glance at Brock, Gavin regarded the man
,
his friend now. Over the course of planning and building a railroad, Gavin had learned
to trust Brock more than any other man, despite a contentious start to their acquaintance.

“They are all in good health.” That much was true, at least.

“Then it must be a woman.”

Gavin snapped his gaze back to Brock. “Why do you say that?”

A wide grin split Brock’s face. “Every man who’s ever had difficulty with a woman
knows the expression. Ask Lady Litchfield to marry you. I believe she’s been awaiting
your proposal for some time. She turned down three others, including Lord Toth’s,
just last week. And Darehurst looks as if he’d like to swallow her whole.”

Gavin glanced over his shoulder to see that the earl continued to follow her, flashing
the seductive smile for which he was known in every ballroom and nearly as many bedrooms.
While the sight surprised Gavin, it did not alarm him. Cordelia was admired wherever
she went. Of course other men would have designs on her, particularly fortune hunters
like Toth and lotharios like Darehurst.

“Cordelia is not partial to Toth, and Darehurst has made it clear he will never marry
again. They are really no threat to me. I will most likely propose to her once the
railroad has launched. And she has given me every indication that she will accept.”

Brock grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing servant carrying a full tray. Gavin
followed suit.

“So…Lady Litchfield isn’t the woman on your mind.”

Gavin hesitated, then decided if he wanted answers, he would have to make inquiries.
And Brock was discreet in everything. Before they’d wed, Brock had been sharing Maddie’s
bed for some years without a single whisper of it surfacing. The man could keep a
secret.

“I take it you’ve heard of the scandalous Miss Melbourne,” Gavin said finally.

“Who hasn’t?” He punctuated his rhetorical question with an ironic smile.

“To my dismay, you are right,” Gavin drawled.

“Have you met her?” Brock’s gaze questioned him.

“Have you?”

“Yes, but some months ago. Before the scandal.”

Slowly, Gavin nodded. “What was your opinion?”

“We were not introduced…but she was hard to miss. You know I love your cousin more
than any sane man should love his wife, but I confess, Miss Melbourne was stunning.”

Gavin agreed completely, much to his regret.

“Did you meet her here in London recently?” Brock asked.

He wished it were that simple. “She’s staying at Norfield Park. I only quit her company
five days past.”

“Have you taken her as a mistress?” Astonishment blanketed Brock’s face.

“No. My cousin James thinks to marry her.”

Though he spoke quietly, Gavin looked about to make certain no one had overheard.
Thank goodness the orchestra was loud tonight, the violins singing their lilting,
measured tunes.

Brock looked like he was about to choke. “
Marry her?
But the scandal…”

“Exactly. I have little doubt everything Lord Vance says about her is true—
”

“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Perhaps not.”

Something like hope
jumped inside Gavin. Did he want Kira Melbourne to be innocent? Why? Certainly her
chastity—or lack of it—was of no consequence to him. No, if he wished her innocent,
he wanted it thus for James’s sake. No other reasonable explanation existed.

“She disappeared with Vance for two days,” Gavin argued. “After such a shocking occurrence,
how could she be anything less than shameless, as he claims?”

“I cannot refute her… unusual absence, but there are several things about Lord Vance
that make one curious.” Brock’s voice dropped another notch. “Did you know he was
near penniless three years ago? Yes,” Brock assured at Gavin’s shocked expression.
“Now suddenly he’s more than ‘comfortable
.
’ I tried for months to learn what investments he’d made to pull him from ruination
to wealth, but could find
nothing,
not here, not on the
C
ontinent.”

That was serious, indeed. Brock knew everything about every investment. He knew how
every newly wealthy family had made their money and how those in the
ton
had rebuilt fortunes. Brock made it his business to know. But his lack of knowledge
about Vance had nothing to do with Miss Melbourne.

Gavin swallowed his champagne, then frowned at Brock. “What are you saying?”

“I still have contacts in low places. From them, I hear whispers that his money comes
from unsavory sources. I have no specifics, but if the speculation is true, perhaps
he is not all trustworthy. It is possible that Miss Melbourne eloped with him in good
faith, not knowing him well.”

While both interesting and suspicious, Brock’s information proved nothing. If his
friend’s theory was true, Lord Vance could certainly be counted among the worst of
cads. Then again, if the rake had duped Miss Melbourne into believing he meant to
marry her, wouldn’t she be crying foul to anyone who would listen?

Gavin sighed. “Even if you’re right, that hardly repairs the damage to her reputation.”

“Then consider this: one of his slum-dwelling associates hinted that Vance’s… interest
is not typically in members of Miss Melbourne’s gender.”

Now Gavin was stunned. Vance had sounded both lusty and well-satisfied by his bed
sport with Kira Melbourne.

“He is a sodomite?” Gavin whispered. “If that’s true, why would he elope with Miss
Melbourne? Or even pretend to? She has no money, no family connections. If he did
not want her for her feminine charms…”

“Why did he want her?” Brock cast him a sharp glance. “That is a good question. A
very good question, indeed.”

* * * *

During Gavin’s youth, he had discovered the dusty secret passages from Norfield Park’s
master’s suite to virtually every bedchamber in the house. Likely the corridors had
been built by some ancestor who, like his father, had been mastered by his lust.

Years ago, his father had caught him navigating the paths—or more accurately, a young
Gavin had espied his father peeping in on a young female houseguest. He had never
ventured into the passages again, until now.

For the first time in his life, Gavin was glad his father had been a licentious bastard.

Like father, like son.

Gavin thrust the thought away. He was
not
like his father. He did not seek gratification with any and all human orifices he
encountered. Hell, he didn’t even have a mistress at the moment, as Cordelia had so
bluntly pointed out. Still, Gavin could not deny that he wanted to see Kira Melbourne
naked.

Perhaps you’re more like your sire than you care to admit—wicked to the core.

Gavin ignored the voice inside him.

While it was true that on his journey back to Norfield he had been envisioning Kira
Melbourne astride him, as he’d tried to piece the sultry image together, Gavin remembered
Vance’s assertion that Kira had a birthmark. Instantly, he knew the means by which
he could prove or disprove its existence
,
and thus, the scoundrel’s claims. So he’d waited for the servants to bring her fresh
water. She would be awake now
and dressing for the day. And he could learn the truth.

With sun shining its pale morning light on the south side of the manor, he pushed
aside the tapestry that hid the passage door, took a deep breath, and lifted the latch,
candle in hand.

It was dark in the tunnel, of course, as well as musty. The walls closed in around
him. The low ceiling forced him to hunch over as he navigated the narrow path. He
raised the candle, noting the markings by each chamber, written in his father’s hand.
Leave it to dear Papa to be thorough when chasing a good voyeuristic thrill.

Finally, he came upon the rose room. The room that held Kira Melbourne. The room where,
by now, she was likely performing her morning toilet.

Was Kira a seductress or an innocent?

Though the truth did not matter where the
ton
was concerned
,
because
she was still a ruined woman in their eyes
.
Gavin was determined to know
the truth
. Naturally, he sought answers for James’s sake. If the woman was as wanton as Lord
Vance claimed, he would have no qualms about ousting Kira from his cousin’s life.
She was scandal personified, a half-Persian outcast who did not belong in the Daggett
family. Gavin didn’t personally want to disprove her dissolute past for any particular
reason. It hardly signified whether she’d had one lover or one hundred.

Some annoying part of him, however, hoped not to find the heart-shaped birthmark on
her left hip that Lord Vance had so lewdly described.

Shielding the flickering candle flame with his damp palm, Gavin leaned toward the
wall behind the rose room. Silently he removed the slat behind the old painting of
some long-dead Daggett matron who would probably be spinning in her grave if she could
see him now. Ignoring the racing of his heart, he peered through the two small eye-shaped
openings.

Kira Melbourne stood before her mirror in a nightrail, bathed in gentle golden sunlight
beaming through the room’s sheer drapes. With a sharp, clear voice she hummed a familiar
tune he could not place. Her face looked soft, morning sleepy. She wore her black
hair in a single glossy braid down her back. The tip of the thick tail brushed the
top of her sweetly-sloped buttocks. Gavin hungered to touch her there.

A moment later, Kira splashed some water from the pitcher atop her mirrored vanity
into the bowl beside it. Then she reached for the buttons at the front of her gown.
Still humming, Kira released each one at a slow, measured pace, displaying the delicacy
of her collarbones, the top swells of her rounded breasts, the inviting valley in-between.

As she exposed each inch of new skin, Gavin found it more difficult to draw his next
breath. The lust inside him rose; his heart beat faster. Gavin reminded himself that
he was only here to learn the truth—for James. He repeated that fact over and over,
like a mantra.

Then Kira bent and grasped the hem of her gown. It came off in one clean sweep, exposing
every lush inch of her body.

His gut knotted. Lust sizzled down his legs, burst like fire in his groin. He began
to sweat. A craving to touch her, explore every curved, feminine inch of her, seized
him. He wanted her slick and ready for the feel of him deep inside her.

So much for mantras. Gavin swallowed,
his
throat dry.

When was the last time he’d felt such driving lust? Never. Gavin frowned. He kept
occasional, discreet mistresses whom he found vaguely pleasant. He had never encountered
a
woman
who made him fierce and reckless, as his father had been. If any woman had affected
him like Kira Melbourne, Gavin would have shunned her.

Now he did not have that chance. The integrity of his family name depended on him
discrediting her.

With an absent flick of her wrist, Kira tossed her thin nightrail to the floor. Gavin
released a shaky sigh. The air felt bloody hot.

The observation point his perverted father had established some twenty years ago allowed
him to see Kira in profile, from the right. He could not see her left hipbone so he
might confirm the rumor of her birthmark. Instead, he had a perfect view of the firm
thrust of her breasts, coral tipped by the sun streaming through the windows, nipples
erect in the morning cold. Dusky shadows softened her lithe torso.

Gavin nearly groaned aloud as his gaze traveled down her smooth belly and
sleek
thighs to the round curve of her soft buttocks, all covered in skin the exotic color
of prime tea flavored with warm milk. She stretched, reaching her arms to the sky
like a sleek cat.