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I.”
    “Everyone was frightened of him.”
    “I meant my own. He used to fly into terrible tempers. Audrey and I would hide, and she would tell me stories to make me feel better.”
    “I never knew that.” Even as a girl, Audrey had seemed too cold and calculating to offer a younger sister comfort.
    “I realize she had her faults, but I loved her very much,” Celeste whispered, her voice full of sorrow.
    Nun or not, there seemed but one thing to do. Gerrard put his arms around her and pulled her into his embrace.
    He meant only to offer comfort, yet heat coursed through his body as her breasts pressed against his chest. He thought of her full lips so close to his own. All he need do was put a knuckle beneath her chin and tilt her head up to kiss her.
    They were in shadow. No light shone from the narrow windows nearby. No one could see them.
    She is a nun! She is a nun!
    “I’m sorry I broke your collarbone that day, Gerrard,” she said softly.
    “I’m sorry I cut off your hair,” he replied just as quietly.
    If he were wise, he would move away. Leave her. Go to the farthest corner of the castle. Or the village.
    He wasn’t wise.

Chapter Four
    C eleste knew what Gerrard was going to do before he did it. What he shouldn’t do, especially if he thought she was a nun.
    She also knew what she ought to do. Stop him. Move away. Leave. Go back to her chamber.
    She didn’t. She couldn’t. For too long she had dreamed of being in Gerrard’s arms. For too many years he’d been her idea of a hero, the ideal man. Of all the worldly longings she’d sought to stifle in the convent, the most difficult was the dream of being held in Gerrard’s arms with his lips upon hers.
    So when he kissed her as she’d always imagined, she could not resist. She couldn’t protest, for his kiss was even more wonderful and exciting than her most vivid dreams, and some of them had been very vivid indeed.
    His embrace tightened about her and her body seemed to become like liquid wax in his arms, without bones or muscles or sinews. Her only strength seemed to be in her hands as she clutched his shoulders to keep from falling, and to continue kissing him.
    Her desire increased, heating her blood and sending it throbbing through her body. This was the sort of passionate encounter some of the girls had talked of. Being with the men they loved, and how they’d felt in their arms.
    They hadn’t described the yearning building within her, the need for something more than lips on lips, or that a man might slide his hand along her arm and down her side, letting it rest on her hip before he began to slowly glide his palm up toward her breast.
    When Gerrard cupped her there, she opened her lips to gasp, and his tongue slid into her mouth—a shocking, unexpected act she had never heard of or imagined.
    Surprise and shame hit her like twin blows of a hammer.
    Horrified by her own weakness, she put her hands on his chest and shoved him away. She knew too well what men were like, how violent and angry they could get, yet it seemed she’d forgoteen everything for a moment’s fleeting pleasure. “Stop! How could you?”
    His brow furrowed, Gerrard spread his arms wide as he moved back. “I only meant to—”
    “What?” she demanded, hiding her regret and remorse behind anger of her own. “Seduce me?”
    His expression hardened and his lips became a grim, hard line, like Roland’s. Like Broderick’s and, yes, like their father’s. “No, that was not my intention.”
    “I am a nun!”
    “I forgot.”
    “Forgot?” she repeated incredulously, as if she’d never heard anything so ridiculous.
    “That’s the truth, whether you believe it or not,” he defensively replied. “And it wasn’t my idea to move farther back beneath the tree. It was you who led us here.”
    “I thought...” What had she been thinking? She had no explanation. Nevertheless, she gave him one. “I thought it would be more sheltered from the wind and so easier to