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nose, thick lashes, slender brows, delicate earlobes. He reached up and touched more linen.
    A cap.
    He pushed it off. A thick, long braid of satiny tresses met his touch.
    His chest filled, thick and itchy and sharp all at once, like a scream forming. But Ian had never screamed in his life, except on that one occasion when he fell out of the old oak and broke his arm. He’d been ten. He still had the bone-scar on his wrist to show for it. His father had said thank God it wasn’t his right arm, a gentleman couldn’t wield a sword properly with such a handicap. After that comment, Ian worked especially hard to get the wrist fully mobile again, left hand or not. It had hurt like the devil, but he’d done it. As with his university studies later, he’d had to save face.
    A face that seemed to be no longer his own.
    He choked, dragging in air. This couldn’t be happening. It must be a dream. He pinched his thigh hard.
    “Ouch!” His voice came forth light. Rich.
Familiar
.
    No. Oh, no.
    Not a dream.
    A nightmare
.
    Leaping from the bed, legs tangled in the ruined nightshirt, he tripped toward the dressing table. The mirror, gilt-edged but not showy, was long and narrow, an oval that captured nearly his entire image as he stumbled to a halt before it.
    No!
    Ian squeezed his eyes shut.
    Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare.
    It had to be a horrible nightmare. Or a wretched jest his friends were playing. Stoopie was wealthy enough to fund something this elaborate, and immoral enough to invent it. They’d dosed him with a strong drug to put him into some sort of reverie, a terrifyingly real reverie, designed to make his stomach heave and his legs shake.
    He didn’t feel the thick pull of the poppy seed in his blood, though, nor the heavy stupor. But he’d only indulged in that messy pursuit a handful of times, and years ago. He preferred brandy. Perhaps there was something new he hadn’t yet heard of. Another drug much stronger than opium. Something imported from the Orient. It must be. He cracked his eyes open and peeked at the mirror again.
    The eyes that stared back at him in horror were not Chance blue, passed through nearly every male in his family since the time of King Harry. Instead they were muddy. Greenish-brown with a hint of gold if a man had to be decent about it.
    But Ian didn’t have to be decent about it. He’d never been decent to the bearer of those pond-colored eyes. And his anger was mounting. This was going too far. Drake and he had traded pranks since their school days, but neither of them had ever stooped so outrageously low. Ian’s friend could not have chosen a more painful torment to impose upon him, a worse penance for the wrong Drake obviously imagined he’d committed—whatever it was.
    He would exact retribution. As soon as the effects of this wretched drug wore off and he had his proper senses back, he would see to it right away. He’d no doubt that when he was in his right mind again he would remember the ruse. A man didn’t recover from this level of terror so readily.
    Stoopie would pay. And pay.
    Staggering back to the frothy bed, he fell upon it on his face, releasing a shuddering breath into the feather quilt.
    A scratch came at the door. This time another maid entered. He couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to examine her breasts.
    “Milady.” Glancing swiftly at his torn garment, then away, the girl extended a silver dish bearing an envelope.
    Ian reached for the envelope but his hand stalled. He leaned toward the tray. On the face of the paper, his monogram—the Chance crest—showed bold and clear. The address read
The Honble. Corinna Mowbray
.
    This was wrong. He had never, ever sent Corinna Mowbray a letter. Categorically never.
    Trying to still the shaking of his hand, he took up the envelope, nodded to the maid, and waited until she left. He unsnapped the wax seal—the Chance seal, stored in his dressing chamber table, to which only he possessed the key—and withdrew a