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there’d been a line of pressing, very real and weighty responsibilities waiting to claim him.
    Her final words had been scathing, her meaning crystal clear. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d indulged in the manner to which she was alluding; no doubt that accounted for his current state—the intense, urgent, remarkably powerful urge to slake his long-suppressed carnal appetites.
    With Boadicea.
    Not with any other woman. Now he’d met her, no other would do.
    It had to be her.
    Clearly he had his work cut out for him, but he loved challenges, especially of that sort.
    An image of Boadicea— Lady Clarice —lying naked beneath him, heated, desperate, and wantonly begging, those long, long legs tensing about his hips as he thrust into her, helped immeasurably in focusing his mind. In clarifying his direction.
    They’d reached the hedge surrounding the rectory. She lashed him with another of her cutting glances; he caught it, held her gaze as, by unvoiced consent, they paused in the archway leading into the rectory gardens.
    He read her face, examined the dismissive contempt written in her fine features, that glowed, alive, in her lovely dark eyes. Slowly, he arched a brow. “So…you think I should remain at Avening and devote myself to my responsibilities?”
    She smiled, not sweetly—condescendingly. “No—I believe we’ll all do better if you return to London and continue with your hedonistic existence there.”
    He frowned. She continued, without hesitation answering his unvoiced question, “We’ve grown accustomed to managing without you. Those here no longer need a lord of the manor—they’ve elected someone else in your place.”
    She held his eyes for a defiant instant, her gaze direct and ungiving, then she turned and swept on, heading for the rectory’s side door.
    Frown deepening, Jack watched her—let his eyes drink in the quintessentially feminine sway of her hips, the evocative line from her nape to her waist, the promise of her curves…
    She couldn’t mean what he thought she’d meant, surely?
    There was one certain way to find out. About that, and all else he now wanted to know about Boadicea. Stirring, he followed her into the rectory.
     
    He found the Rector of Avening, the Honorable James Altwood, in exactly the same place he’d left him seven years ago—in the chair behind the desk in his study, poring over some tome. Jack knew the subject of said tome without asking; James was a renowned military historian, a Fellow of Balliol among other things. He held the livings of numerous parishes, but other than overseeing the work of his curates, he spent all his days researching and analyzing military campaigns, both ancient and contemporary.
    Boadicea, predictably, preceded him into the study. “James, Lord Warnefleet has returned—he’s come to speak with you.”
    “Heh?” James looked up, peering over his spectacles. Then his gaze found Jack, and he dropped the book on the desk. “Jack, m’boy! At last!”
    Jack managed not to wince as James surged to his feet. Very aware of Boadicea’s critical gaze, he went forward to grasp James’s outstretched hand and let himself be pulled into a fierce hug.
    James gripped tight, thumped his back, then released him. Retaining Jack’s hand, he drew back to examine him.
    Now in his fifties, James was starting to show his age; the brown hair Jack remembered as thick and wavy had thinned, and the paunch around his middle had grown. But the energy and enthusiasm in James’s brown eyes was still the same; if anyone had been responsible for encouraging Jack into the army, it was James.
    James blew out a long breath, and released Jack’s hand. “Damn it, Jack, it’s a relief to see you hale and whole.”
    Along with Jack’s father, James had been one of the very few who knew that Jack hadn’t spent the last thirteen years in any regimental barracks.
    Jack smiled, no screening charm; with James, he was never other than himself. “It’s