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me.”
    “Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it? You have kept yourself hidden away here in the country, else I should have met you, pursued you, come to know you. Perhaps we would have been lovers.”
    His arrogance made her mouth drop open. She quickly re-gathered her wits. “Where on earth do you get such a notion? I was a married woman.”
    “Married, yes—but not happily.”
    “Certainly not unhappily. I was Lady Cranfield and I managed this estate. People depended on me.”
    “But you didn’t respect Cranfield and he didn’t understand you. You resented him for not trying.”
    Her heart began to beat rapidly. It simply wasn’t true. Ruel did not know. She had to refute him. “Like most marriages of our class, we had our own lives. He preferred Mayfair and I preferred the country. But we understood this about each other and we respected each other. It was an amicable marriage.”
    “Some truths are harder to face than others.”
    Sympathy glinted in his eyes. If only he would not use such understanding tones, then she could hate him for saying such things. Because the things he was saying simply weren’t true. But how to make him understand?
    “William was a dear person. I—”
    He laughed softly. “As I said, your primary problem is that you are not honest with yourself. Nor do you trust yourself. In fact—”
    Anger burnt in her throat. She threw up a hand between them. “Do you know?”
    His eyes widened a fraction, then warmed with humour. Another, hotter wave of resentment smouldered through her.
    “Know what?” he asked.
    “I don’t think it’s possible for me to dislike you more than I already do. I don’t enjoy negative emotions, so would you please let me pass so I can leave before I begin to truly hate you?”

Chapter Three

    Jon studied Anne’s sparkling, deep blue eyes. Her emotion seemed to spark between them, a seething mix of ire, frustrated sexuality and something he couldn’t quite place. He moved out of her way.
    She seemed frozen, standing there glaring at him. He motioned past his body and towards the door. “You were in a hurry to leave, Lady Cranfield.”
    She flushed. Her shoulders rose and fell. Then she swept by him in a rustle of silk skirts and crinkling, starched linen petticoats, leaving in her wake a scent of rose and lavender mingled with an under-note of something spicy and uniquely her.
    The sensual aroma wafted over him like a caress. It sent a stab of renewed desire straight to his balls.
    She walked towards the door, bearing herself with a calm dignity. He watched the subtle sway of her fetching arse moving beneath the dark purple silk. By damn, she was a prime article.
    A vision burnt into his mind. Of her beneath him, her soft thighs pinned between his. Her honeyed body bared to his view and sweetly submissive. His heart raced and his hands trembled with the desire to feel her delicate wrists locked in his grip while he bound her with silk rope.
    God.
    The slam of study door brought him out of his fantasy.
    He took a deep breath. Shaken, he walked over to the hearth and leant down to light a cheroot. Then he returned to sit at Richard’s massive mahogany desk, propped his boots on the polished desktop and willed the ritual of smoking to smooth his senses.
    When he’d first come in here, he’d been anticipating an easy conquest, the start of a short, uncomplicated affaire .
    How stupid and blind a man’s lust could make him. Well, he certainly saw things clearly now. What Lady Cranfield wanted from him—even if she was not entirely certain of it herself—wasn’t something he wanted to give. She didn’t simply want a brief affaire . She wanted his strength, his protection. She wanted not only someone to dominate her sexually but someone to hold her and cosset her when her fears and memories and dreams became too much.
    She didn’t just want these things—she needed them.
    He hooked a finger into his cravat and gave a sharp tug but he still couldn’t