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He really had read her novels.
    She tried to brazen it out. “You’re confused. Everyone knows that Rockton is based on Oliver.”
    “Right. That’s why Rockton has blue eyes and dark brown hair.”
    “I couldn’t make him be exactly like Oliver, for goodness sake. I had to change a few details.”
    “Is that why Rockton has a father rather than a mother who committed suicide?” he went on, those blue eyes gleaming. “How clever of you to anticipate that people would assume you changed
that
detail, too. Your little personal joke.”
    She colored. Never in a million years had she thought he would read her books. “You’re making absurd assumptions.”
    “Really? What about the lines in
The Stranger of the Lake
where the hapless Lady Victoria falls in love with Rockton and throws herself at him?” He stopped in front of her. “What was it he says? Ah, yes. ‘Do be careful, my dear, next time you decide to act like a doxy. Some men don’t take kindly to blackmail.’ Sound familiar?”
    That one she really couldn’t get around.
    “But the passage that settles it is the one I read this morning.” With a blatant confidence that rubbed her raw, he strolled overto where he’d left
The Ladies Magazine
and picked it up to read aloud:
“Lady Anne pushed her way through the crowds at the masquerade, praying that her Marie Antoinette costume was innocuous enough to keep her from being noticed by Lord Rockton’s loathsome friends. As she burst into the study, relieved to have escaped unscathed, she realized she was not alone. Rockton himself stood by the fireplace in his priest costume.”

    He tossed the magazine back onto the chair. “The chapter ends there. What comes next? Rockton helping himself to the files in the study?”
    She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “All right, so I used some of our . . . encounter at Lord Newmarsh’s party in my novels. I don’t see how—”
    “You swore to keep quiet about that night.” He strode up until he stood so close that she could smell the spicy scent of Guard’s Bouquet on him. “You exacted a price for it, as I recall, and I paid your damned price.”
    “I did keep quiet—about your stealing, at least. You ought to be glad that I have, considering that a brief explanation from you might have prevented my being interested in the first place.”
    “Or enticed you to write about it all the more. You’d probably even embellish the incident to make it worse. You made Rockton a spy for the French, for God’s sake! Why would you put
that
in there?”
    “Because I’m a writer. I invent things. It’s called fiction.”
    He narrowed his eyes on her. “Not when you use real people as characters.”
    “You’re missing the point. First of all, Rockton isn’t you or Oliver or anyone. Just because I took a bit of what happened between us and—”
    “A
bit
?” His gaze bore into her. “You put our kiss in the very first novel where Rockton appears. Rockton accosts the heroine in the mews and forces a kiss on her. She slaps him for not being ‘nice,’ and he says, ‘What made you think that a kiss from me would be
nice
?’” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You know perfectly well where you got that line.”
    “You read that book, too?” she squeaked. “How many of my novels have you read, anyway?”
    “Since I found out that you’re putting me in them? All ten. Imagine my surprise to discover that you’ve been flaying me alive in your ‘fiction’ for the last three.”
    He was right, though she’d never admit it to him. His rejection that night had stung her pride and wounded her heart, so she’d taken her anger out on him in her novels. But she’d honestly never believed he would read a word of it. Or that anyone would recognize him in it.
    She had certainly never believed he’d be angry about it. Giles didn’t get angry. He didn’t seem to feel deep emotion of any kind. He joked and gambled and flirted his way through life without a