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want a tramp for a wife or for the mother of my child.'
    'I'm not a tramp,' she insisted quietly.
    'The stories—'
    'Are only stories. They're not true,' she cried desperately, easing off her soaking skirt.
    'I've heard the details.' His eyes flashed. 'Confirmed by several people—'
    'They're repeating the same he that someone's circulated!' she cried, beginning to fear that her protestations would be in vain. 'I can't prove my fidelity, Leo! But surely you must give me the benefit of the doubt?'
    The lines around his aristocratic mouth were deep with pain. 'How can I when you so brilliantly display a sexual expertise you never had before? When you respond to me with such devastating sensuality that I—? Oh, Ginny!' He threw his head back in a gesture of helplessness. 'I stood up for you. I looked everyone straight in the eye at my club when they whispered behind my back. But now I'm sure I'm a cuckold. And I sure as hell won't stand for that!' he snapped. 'I want a divorce. I must remarry. Time is running out—my grandfather is ninety. I would like him to see that I have an heir to the earldom before he dies.'
    'Leo! Is that more important than our marriage?' she faltered, naked now and grabbing a thick towelling robe and slipping into it.
    'Having a child is an important part of marriage for me,' he growled. 'It always has been. That—and having a loyal wife.'
    Ginny's anguished eyes watched him stride to the mahogany linen press. French. Priceless. Louis the something, she remembered, and inherited with a castle full of French furniture after one of the earls had married into the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. France and Scotland had always been linked in the past. She thought of the castle, sitting on the windswept crag, all turrets and drawbridges, narrow windows and vast, draughty halls, and shivered.
    It was an inheritance she didn't understand and didn't want to be part of. It had been a mistake for them to marry. She'd been naive to imagine that their marriage could be ordinary. Leo had expectations she couldn't meet however much she loved him.
    'I love you,' she said quietly, sadly.
    He froze, his arm halted in the action of reaching for a clean shirt. It was a moment before he moved or spoke again. 'I'm not sure you do,' he said shortly, slipping his arms into the shirt and not looking at her. 'Love has little to do with it, anyway. We're incompatible and that's that.' He picked up the cuff-links that she knew had been given to his father by a minor royal and finally met her eyes. As he dressed, she thought mournfully, he looked more and more the perfect gentleman with every impeccable garment he put on.
    'I have a duty to continue the family line,' he continued. 'To see the Brandon name die out after nearly a thousand uninterrupted years would be unthinkable. I had hoped to father children by a woman I loved but it seems I'm to be denied that.'
    Ginny's eyes widened. 'Are you intending to make a marriage of convenience?' she cried.
    His eyes stared sightlessly ahead and he was still for several seconds before he answered. 'Do I have any option? Love was always a risk for both of us. We didn't know much about it from our parents, did we? And now all I have left is Castlestowe and a dynastic marriage some time in the future.'
    She couldn't believe her ears. He'd marry, make love to a woman and father children all for the sake of a wretched blood-line... 'No! I won't give you up to anyone else!' she seethed.
    'No?' He wouldn't look at her and his face was grim, his mouth working as if he was grinding his teeth. 'We'll see about that.' With a look of sheer determination on his face, he picked up a pair of linen trousers and stalked into his dressing room, locking the door behind him.
     
    Two years and a few months or so later Ginny was secretly divorced.
    Leo had convinced her that he had washed his hands of her only eight hours after the incident in the shower.
    She'd been tucked up on the big