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her body. It made her skin feel hot, as if she were standing too close to a roaring fire. She wished he would go away.
    "If you've a taste for drink," he said curtly, "lose it. Don't ever let me smell alcohol on your breath."
    "I don't drink... sir," she said in a strangled whisper.
    His nostrils flared. "I've never met a thieving whore yet who didn't like to hit the bottle."
    She felt an angry flush stain her cheeks. "I'm not a whore. And I'm not a thief, either."
    "No?" He pushed away from the table. "Then, what are you?" he demanded, advancing on her slowly. "What does a woman like you do to get herself deported?"
    She didn't answer him.
    "Well," he prompted, still coming at her. "What was it? Forgery? Receiving? Uttering?"
    "No," she said finally, goaded, her voice trembling with fury. "Manslaughter."
    In the suddenly silent room, the word hung in the air between them. Bryony stared up into his deadly blue eyes and wished she could call it back.
    He planted himself in front of her. He was so close she could feel the tension radiating from him, see the muscle that jumped beneath his hard, tanned jaw. He towered over her, six feet plus of raw, angry power.
    "For what?" he demanded, his voice low and dangerous.
    She swallowed convulsively, but she didn't cower and she didn't back away. "Manslaughter," she repeated.
    "Good God." He tossed his evening cape and hat on a nearby chair and walked away from her, as if he didn't trust himself to stand too near. Reaching the table, he leaned over it, bracing his hands against its edge. She could see the smooth line of his evening coat bulge over the bunched muscles of his arms and back, a kind of feral strength gloved in black silk. "They've given me a murderer to nurse my son?"
    "I'm not a murderer," she said faintly, her earlier bravado gone. "It was an accident."
    He twisted his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "Was it, by God?"
    "Yes."
    "And just who was it you accidentally killed?"
    Bryony hesitated. "My husband."
    His eyes narrowed. "I thought they still burned husband-killers in England."
    Her breath left her in a whoosh. It had been one of her worst terrors—that they might burn her. The fear of it still haunted her. "It... it was an accident," she somehow managed to say again.
    He straightened up and walked back to her with the slow stalk of a hunter advancing on his prey. She held her ground as he came right up to her again, only closer this time. Close enough that she could see the fine pattern of the silk of his waistcoat, the intricate folds of his cravat, the smooth tan of his lean cheek, the hard slant of his lips. Close enough for him to put his strong, beautiful hands around her slender throat.
    She forced herself to stand still beneath his grip, barely breathing. "If you ever— ever —do anything to harm my son," he said quietly, increasing the pressure of his fingers slightly, "you won't live to hang. I'll break your neck myself."

CHAPTER FIVE
    Cornwall, twelve months earlier
    "When is Papa coming home, Mama?"
    Bryony forced herself to smile as she smoothed the tangled curls away from her two-year-old daughter's forehead. "Soon, sweetheart." She glanced to where the warm, golden light of the fine September evening slanted in through the nursery's mullioned window, and added, "It's time for you to go to sleep now."
    "But he promised he'd be home in time to read me a story," Madeline insisted.
    "I know." Bryony fussed with the cutwork trim on the child's sheet and noticed absently that the lace needed mending again. "Something must have come up to delay him."
    Madeline's lower lip trembled, but she was too stubborn to let the tears that swam in her big brown eyes fall. "He only said he'd read to me because he didn't want to take me down to the village with him. He never really meant to do it."
    "Oh, no, Maddy." But of course it was true, which was why Bryony didn't hold out any hope of the promised story being delivered tomorrow. Oliver disappointed the