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but I do not intend to sit up all night.” He picked up his cloak where Dobbs had laid it and drew out his pistol. “See, I have this right here beneath my pillow, all primed and ready. Now, take off your shoes and lie down so I can douse the light.” He folded back the covers and waited. “Well?”
    “I—I cannot.”
    “Ellen …” There was a hint of warning that his patience was coming to an end.
    “I cannot sleep in the same bed with you.”
    “Do I have to throw you in? Have you never slept with a sister or another female?” He watched her think about it. “Well, pretend we are brothers, then.”
    “No!”
    “Shall I take off your shoes and your corset for you? Is that what you want? Because I am not above doing it if it will get me a night’s sleep.”
    “All right.” She swallowed hard to hide her embarrassment and edged over to the bed to sit. When he started to turn his back, she blurted out, “You don’t have to do that, my lord, for I never wear a corset.” Then she slipped her flat kid shoes off and lay down along the edge of the bed as though she were on eggshells.
    “That’s better.” He moved to the other side and blew out the candles before lying down. “Now, let us pull up the covers, if you please. I am not so hot-blooded that I do not need any, no matter what you may have heard.” He sat up to rearrange the coverlet over them. “And do not be taking the whole—I cannot abide struggling for possession—and my brother was always wont to play tug-of-war over them at night.” He lay back down and turned away from her. “Good night, Ellen. You need not fear I shall ever tell the story, my dear.”

Chapter 3
3
    “E ITHER YOU PRODUCE the girl, or I want my settlement back, Marling. You have no notion of how mortifying it is to be deserted on one’s wedding night,” Brockhaven grumbled. “And do not be saying you’ve no notion of her whereabouts, either, for she cannot have just disappeared.”
    “Really, my lord, I am unable to convey the extent of my disappointment to you. Naturally, as her parent, I am as concerned as you about the situation.” Marling mopped his brow at the thought of losing twenty thousand pounds. “You have my word that I shall notify you the instant I hear from her. Thank heavens you had the presence of mind to give out that she has taken ill.”
    “Nevertheless,” the baron sniffed, “my own servants know it for a lie. If I am to save any face at all, she will have to be returned to me within the week, do you hear? I expect you to find her.” Angrily pushing his hat on his head, Brockhaven executed a stiff bow to Thomas Marling. “One week!”
    “Aye, I understand,” his host acknowledged. “But I cannot guarantee that I shall even get wind of her direction by then.”
    “One week,” his lordship reiterated with awful finality as he slammed out the door.
    “Dear me, Thomas, but what an ugly little person he is. I can quite sympathize with Ellen for running away, you know. But then I never did favor the match,” Eleanor Marling reminded her husband.
    “Twenty thousand pounds, Nora—twenty thousand pounds! What an ingrate you have reared!” Thomas Marling’s sense of outrage bordered on apoplexy. “She was Lady Brockhaven! Do not be forgetting that, my dear. She” was to be mistress to a great estate with a bloody fortune at her disposal.”
    “You speak as though she were dead, Thomas.”
    “Well, if I do not find her before she costs me the settlement, she might as well be, for all I shall care. Twenty thousand pounds! I shall not welcome her back in my house—not ever.”
    His wife’s eyes widened at the vehemence in his voice. “But you cannot be such an unnatural parent as that!” she gasped.
    “What a simpleton you are, my dear. Do you not realize how she has ruined the future of your other children? We have nurtured a viper in our midsts, Eleanor.”
    “Pooh. The scandal will blow away long before Amy is to be presented, I