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happier plane.
    The image of the earl as she had seen him in
the garden rose unbidden in her head, and she smiled slightly as
she remembered how his handsome face showed to such advantage in
the moonlight. She had to meet him, speak with him, no matter how
shy he was, no matter how he tried to hide from her.
    She was not only curious about Hawkhurst,
she was intrigued, and more than halfway along in her construction
of a fantasy life that would explain him—a life that included a
woeful tale of unrequited love and a volume of poems he was
doubtless straining to create as he paced his gardens in the
moonlight.
    Poor man, she sympathized silently, he is
obviously obsessed with beauty, if this chamber reflects his
interests, yet he hides his own as if ashamed of it. Someone must
have once hurt him very, very badly.
    “I said you might bathe at ten o’clock. It
is now nearly eleven. You abuse my hospitality. Do you then intend
to stay in there until you melt?”
    Christine’s eyes snapped open wide in shock
and surprise as she sat up, slopping water and bubbles onto the
rug, and clutching her oversized sea sponge tightly against her
breasts. Her sky-blue gaze hastily scanned the enormous chamber,
trying to ferret out the author of this frightening interruption.
Somehow, she had gotten herself trapped in her aunt’s worst
nightmare.
    When she didn’t answer, the deep,
disembodied voice went on coldly: “Well, girl, are you dumb? Have
you no voice? Answer me!”
    First he had frightened her, and now he was
insulting her. Christine’s eyelids narrowed angrily and her
winglike brows lifted in challenge as she retorted, “I don’t speak
with shadows, sirrah. Show yourself.”
    “I think not,” the voice said, although
Christine noticed that the menacing tone now had a faint tint of
amusement running through it. “You do not appear dressed for
visitors.”
    Christine began feeling the chill of the
draft created by an open door somewhere in the chamber. Still
trying to locate the source of his voice, which now seemed to be
slightly to the left of her, she said, “Yet you, noticing my
appearance, were not gentleman enough to retire without bringing my
attention to your presence, were you? I believe that makes us even.
Now, since I will not speak to shadows and you refuse to show
yourself, I suggest that you retire and allow me to quit this tub
in peace.”
    Her head snapped around as the voice,
cruelly teasing, suddenly seemed to come from directly behind her.
“But how, lovely one, will you know that I have gone, if you can’t
see my passing? Dare you rise from the safety of your bubbles
unless you are absolutely certain you are alone?”
    Tears of frustration stung Christine’s eyes
as she felt like the butterfly her childhood friend James had
pinned to a table before slowly ripping off its wings, one by one.
He held all the cards, this shadowy earl, yet she had to somehow
find a way to strike back at him.
    Thinking of James gave her a plan. James had
been a tease and a bully, and like all bullies, he had run away
when finally she had grown tired of his teasing and dared to call
his bluff.
    Swallowing down on her fear, Christine faced
forward once more and declared forcefully, “I shan’t know, shall I,
my lord Hawkhurst? Only you will know, only you will see. However,
if you are at all a gentleman you will not see. You will
instead turn your back to me—preferably right now—for at the count
of three I am nonetheless going to rise from this tub.
One—two— oh !”
    A light, warm pressure was applied to her
bare shoulder and she melted back down into the tub, her heart
pounding hurtfully against her rib cage, her vision narrowing as
she truly feared she would, for the first time in her life, swoon
completely away. Aunt Nellis would indeed return to see her niece’s
body submerged, her hair floating on top of the water, her eyes
staring sightlessly at the ceiling, just as she had said she
would.
    The thought of