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brown that was almost black. The candlelight had revealed intense dark red highlights in it. Gabriel had experienced an almost overpowering need to see those tresses loose around her shoulders.
    He could not quite believe he finally had his hands on his Veiled Lady. As he gazed down at her, all the strong emotions she had aroused in him crystallized into a white-hot desire. He wanted her.
    Even as anger began to replace the astonished shock on her face, Gabriel bent his head and took her mouth.
    In the beginning he did not ask for a response. The kiss was hard and commanding in retribution for all the trouble she had caused him. "Then her lips trembled and he felt the shiver of fear that went through her entire body.
    Gabriel hesitated for an instant, nonplussed by her panicky reaction to his kiss. She was not a child. The chit appeared to be in her early twenties and she had been deliberately challenging him. Furthermore, she had apparently been one of Neil Baxter's paramours. Baxter had been a master at seduction. Even Honora Ralston, Gabriel's fiancée in the South Seas, had succumbed to Baxter's lures and lies.
    But whatever else she was, it was immediately obvious the mysterious Veiled Lady was not the accomplished flirt he had assumed from the start. She had goaded him into kissing her, yet she seemed completely disconcerted by the response she had drawn.
    Gabriel's curiosity, already straining at the leash, broke free of the last vestiges of his self-control. He suddenly needed to know if he could make her respond to him.
    He softened the kiss, sliding the edge of his tongue along her lower lip, urging her to open her mouth. He wanted to taste her more than he had wanted anything in a very long time.
    He knew the instant the feminine fear in her dissolved beneath a wave of desire. The Veiled Lady made an achingly sweet, soft sound against his mouth. Gabriel swallowed up the tremulous cry as if he were a starving man being offered food. He immediately craved more.
    A deep satisfaction flared in him as he felt the undeniable stirring within her. She trembled. Her free hand was on his shoulder now, clutching at the heavy wool of his greatcoat. He felt her lean forward as if she wanted to be closer to him.
    The hint of passion in his Veiled Lady sent a shudder of heightened desire through Gabriel. His own body was throbbing with an urgent need to possess her. He had definitely been too long without a woman. His arm tightened around her.
    "My lord?" She sounded dazed.
    "There is a chill in the night air," Gabriel muttered hoarsely against her throat. "But I vow that when I lay you down on the ground over there in the woods, you will soon be warm enough. I shall use my coat to make a bed for us, my Veiled Lady."
    In the blink of an eye the spell was broken. The Veiled Lady shuddered as if she had been burned. Suddenly she was pushing at him, trying to wrench herself free of his grasp.
    Gabriel fought a battle with his clamoring senses and won. He reluctantly released the lady. With a muffled exclamation, she sat back, grabbed at her veil with fumbling fingers, and lowered it hastily. He could hear her unsteady breathing. The knowledge that her nerves and passions were unsettled gave him some satisfaction.
    "You had no right to do that, sir," she whispered in almost inaudible tones. "That was most unchivalrous. How could you be so ungallant? I thought you an honorable man."
    Gabriel smiled. "You seem to have acquired some very odd notions of my sense of chivalry based on your reading of The Quest. It goes to show the critics are right, I suppose. Young ladies should be prevented from reading tales of that sort. Their emotional natures are too easily influenced."
    "Rubbish. You are deliberately trying to provoke me." The strength was returning rapidly to her voice now. This was not a woman who was easily overset.
    "You have been deliberately provoking me for the past several weeks," he reminded her. "I have already told you