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laughed. "Could you not, for a moment, allow me to be extraordinary in a desirable way?"

"That was my precise meaning."

She stared at him, throat constricting.

He reached out and drew the knuckle of one finger down the line of her jaw. "It does no good to ignore it. Better a battle faced. Yes, I desire you - strength, honor, courage, and all. However" - he took his hand away - "I am well skilled at resisting temptation."

She captured that hand. "So am I, which is why we don't have to resist everything. Kiss me."

His hand lay lax in her grasp. "You know that would be most unwise."

"Do I? Explain it to me."

"Have you never experienced a kiss that demands more, much more?"

She shivered. "Perhaps..."

"I think not."

"Why?"

"If you had, you would not risk it now."

"You have?"

"You think me made of ice?"

Of course he had, and doubtless surrendered, too. It would be permitted, for a man. "I cannot endure this... incompletion," she whispered.

"The ordeal is nearly over. After tomorrow we will see each other only occasionally. There will be distractions. Others."

Sappho, she thought with a poisonous burst of spite. Had the woman really been on her way north?

"Where do I sleep tonight?"

"At Malloren House. But not," he added, "in adjoining rooms."

There was a tease in it, and a warning. "Then there is little danger, is there? In a kiss now?"

"My dear Lady Arradale, we are alone in a closed carriage. It would be perilous."

"My control must be greater than yours, then. It does not seem so perilous to me." She shifted, his hand still in hers, and leaned lightly against him raising her head. "I promise on my honor not to let you ravish me, my lord."

Hands still joined, his finger traced her lips. "You are frighteningly naive."

Dalliance. One step above flirtation. One step below seduction.

"Then educate me," she said.

His eyes seemed surprisingly dark. Perhaps it was the shadowing effect of the setting sun, but she didn't think so. "You do need to recognize the fire with which you so foolishly play..." He freed his fingers and lightly cupped her head, lowering his lips.

She had been kissed in many ways - with mashing passion, and tentative sucking; with intent to impress, and with frantic hope of passing muster. She suddenly felt, however, that she had never experienced a true kiss. A simple kiss, as direct, as honest as a joining of loving hands.

Breath stealing, mind dazzling, soul shaking in its simplicity, power, and connection.

Her lids fluttered open and she stared at him. "What was that?"

A stupid question.

The answer was: a kiss.

But he did not say a kiss. He said, "That was our kiss. Do you understand now?"

She understood that she might be sick with the force of the changes shuddering inside her. "I understand that I want more."

"My point, I believe." He put her gently from him, back into her corner of the carriage.

She opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it. She couldn't sort through all this now, but yes, at last she understood the forces with which they contended. "How long have you known?" she asked.

"Since I rubbed your feet."

"We could be lovers." It burst through all her attempts to contain it.

He shook his head. "This is a fire that can never burn tamely. It will consume. We must each guard our flame, and never let them join."

She covered her face with her hands. Two flames in separate glass lamps. For eternity.

She would not protest. Not now. Perhaps if she thought about it, she could find a way. Or find a way back to the safer shore she had so tempestuously abandoned. A place to live for the rest of her life in some sort of peace without him.

Without him.

She lowered her hands to speak, to protest, and found he was looking away. Out of the coach.

That the coach had halted.

For a moment she thought it an illusion of her disordered mind. Then that he'd stopped the coach to get out. To leave her.

But she heard one of the outriders saying, "There's something wrong with the horses, my lord."

Chapter 14

The marquess opened the door and stepped down. Diana followed. The six horses drawing the coach were standing, heads drooping, looking almost asleep. The coachman and groom were down studying them.

"What is it?" the marquess asked, but Diana saw that he was glancing around.

The French? All senses snapping to the alert, she too studied the countryside. A fallow field to the right, with a church spire in the distance. A