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Violet, at least, wasn’t inferior to him. Which was why he had to tell her what had been true for a long while now, but he just hadn’t known himself.
    “I love you.”
    Her eyes flew open. “Oh!” A pause, during which Christian hoped he wasn’t mistaken. “Well, that is good, because I love you, too.”
    As Christian thrust his way to completion, then lay spent and breathless on top of her, his luscious Violet, he realized he still had to write that damn column.

 
    To Scott, who has yet to compare me to a cow.

Acknowledgments
    Thanks to my fiercely persistent agent, Louise Fury; my enthusiastic editor, Sue Grimshaw; and my fabulous friend Myretta Robens.

Read on for an excerpt from Megan Frampton’s
    Hero of My Heart

Chapter 1
Alnwick, 1814
    “She’s a virgin, gentlemen. And she’ll be sold to the highest bidder.”
    Alasdair raised his head from the worn wooden table, struggling to open his eyelids. He lifted his hand from where it had been dangling by his side and pried his left lid open, propping his head up on his right hand. The words had registered only vaguely, but they were enough to pull him from his miasma.
    The man who’d spoken was standing on the largest of the tables in the pub, his loud, checked waistcoat and overoiled hair proclaiming his gentlemanly aspirations. The man bowed, spreading his hands wide and smiling.
    “Allow me to introduce myself; my name, fine sirs, is William Mackenzie, and I am in the fortuitous position of offering something very rare, very special to you this evening.” His overdone accent almost disguised his Scottish burr. “If you’ve got the blunt,” Mackenzie added, clearing his throat. The clamor in the pub did not abate. “Gentlemen! If I may have your attention,” the man repeated in an even louder voice.
    Alasdair wished he’d just shut up. It wouldn’t be possible to slide back into oblivion, not while the loudmouth was yelping. At least the rest of the customers had quieted, waiting to hear what it was the Scot was selling.
    Alasdair watched as Mackenzie leaned down and pulled on something—an arm? While he pulled, another man—a younger one, his face contorted in a sneer—shoved a woman onto the table where Mackenzie held her, tightly, around the waist. She didn’t struggle, just gazed at the assembled crowd with a blank expression on her face. Too blank.
    Alasdair sat up. His head throbbed from the effort.
    “What’ll you bid?” Twenty or thirty men were watching—no,
inspecting
—the woman on the table. Alasdair wiped a hand over his face, clearing his bleary eyes.
    She was medium height, with dark, curly brown hair. Her gown was modestly cut, but tight, as if it had belonged to someone else, and her breasts strained at the fabric. Her figure looked lush and inviting, the kind of figure men slavered after.
    The kind of figure that would make every man in the room want her.
    “Untouched.” Mackenzie winked, a grotesque leer, and then bent down andinched her skirt up slowly until her entire ankle and part of her shin was showing. She wasn’t wearing shoes or stockings, and the pale, white flesh of her leg gleamed in the candlelight.
    Alasdair stared, transfixed by the lovely curve of her calf, the delicate bones of her ankle. His eyes traveled up, taking in the much-washed fabric of her gown, her luscious breasts, the graceful column of her neck.
    He noticed a dark area on her shin. A trick of the light? A birthmark marring that otherwise perfect skin?
    He glanced at her face, dreading what he would see there, but knowing he had to look anyway.
    As he’d expected, no emotion registered there. Her eyes were dull, her pupils huge and dark.
    It was worse than if she’d been frightened or trembling—she was so distant from what was happening, he doubted she even comprehended it. And that blankness, that empty gaze, cut through to the heart he’d thought was blackened forever.
    Damn it. He was going to have to do something.
    “How do we