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fingertips, lubricating
her path. She plucked at her nipple through the fabric of her bodice and then,
impatient, yanked it down so she could tug, skin to bare skin. Something rose
within her.
    She imagined herself tied to that stool, with a thick
phallus filling her. Bare. Exposed. Forced to—
    She came.
    Some great, gushing tempest washed down and took her,
swirling her in the miasma, blanketing her in a fog of bliss. She shook, she
wailed, she trembled.
    She planted her feet on the bed and arched up, sinking her
fingers deep into her sheath, as Asha had been commanded to do. Oh why had Asha
refused? It felt divine!
    And as the pleasure took her, and she plunged in and out of
her dripping cunt, Kaitlin imagined it was Edward’s touch. Edward pinching her
nipples. Edward filling her. Edward stroking that spot that made her heart leap
and her toes curl.
    When she succumbed again, for the second time—for the fifth
time that day—she cried his name.
    She probably shouldn’t have, but sometimes one couldn’t help
such things.
    After she returned to herself, Kaitlin closed the book and
tucked it into the little drawer of her bedstand.
    Edward wasn’t getting it back.
    She was keeping it.

Chapter Five
     
    Edward looked for her all afternoon, with no success. He
found the rest of them though, repeatedly. Violet in the kitchen chatting with
Mrs. Murphy as she baked—the little ones, Hamish and Taylor, pilfering biscuits
and gorging themselves beneath the table. Malcolm and Ned in the billiard room
sneaking his whiskey and smoking his cheroots. Violet once more, with Aunt
Hortense, rearranging furniture in the Blue Salon and babbling on about a Poseidon
Motif or some such nonsense. The middle boy, Dennis, uprooting orchids in
the conservatory. Hamish again—or was it Taylor?—eating worms in the garden.
The one that really frightened him was Sean, the quiet one, a surly
seven-year-old, whom he found in the dining room, hiding a saw behind his back
with a guilty look on his face.
    But of Kaitlin, there was no sign.
    By dinnertime Edward was positively petulant. Where had she
gone?
    He wanted, rather desperately, to talk to her about what had
happened between them that morning. Even more desperately, he wanted to finish
it.
    It stuck in his craw that she was hiding from him, because
he didn’t know if she was just afraid of him—of the power of what they had
experienced together—or if she was regretting it. Both prospects soured his
mood.
    So, though it had become his custom to take his meals in his
suite since the invasion , he decided to go down for dinner. He found
everyone in the drawing room awaiting the gong. Everyone, that was, but
Kaitlin. Hovering at the door, he scanned the assembly again and again, hoping
he’d overlooked her auburn head in a sea of black, but she was not there.
    Damn. Damn and blast.
    He should escape now, before anyone spotted him—
    “Halloo! Moncrieff.” Aunt Hortense, girded as she always was
in her breastplate of pearls, waved at him from the divan. Her upper arms
wobbled with the vigorous motion. “Are you joining us for dinner?”
    He straightened his waistcoat and entered the room.
    “Oh, how lovely, Edward.” Violet smiled. “We’ve so missed
you at the table. Boys?” She clapped her hands. “Boys! You must be on your best
behavior. His Grace is joining us for dinner.”
    Naturally, they all ignored her. The twins, Hamish and
Taylor, were engaged in a battle—using his finest chess men, bashing them
together and making “ cuhss ” and “ pkoo ” noises. Malcolm plunked
out sour notes on the piano. Sean jabbed viciously at the fire with a poker.
Ned stood at the mantel with a large glass of amber liquid looking for all the
world like the lord of the castle.
    Come to think on it, this probably was their best
behavior.
    By the time the gong sounded, a headache had begun to ping
at Edward’s temples. He was certain it wasn’t the din in the drawing room. It
probably