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the tiger’s cage.
    And unless she wanted to become his dinner, she knew she had best try to repair her crumbling composure.
    As she slowly turned to face him, Simon rose from the settee. He was taller than she remembered. Broader in the shoulders, leaner in the hips. He wore no coat or waistcoat, just a pair of doeskin trousers and a white lawn shirt with full sleeves laid open at the throat to reveal a wedge of muscular chest lightly sprinkled with golden hair. In her boldest imaginings, she had never dreamed that his charms would grow even more lethal with time, honed by that mysterious masculine alchemy of age and experience.
    “I’m a wretched liar,” she confessed.
    “I know. That must be why Mummy always loved me best.” At her reproachful look, he cocked his head to the side. “If you’re not another one of my father’s bastards, then why are you here? Did you come to assassinate me or”—his skeptical gaze dipped to the slender waist revealed by the flattering princesse -cut of her redingote—“to accuse me of siring your future progeny?”
    “Why, I—I—” she sputtered before curiosity got the best of her. “Does that happen frequently?”
    He shrugged. “At least once a week. Sometimes twice on Tuesdays.” The wry twist of his lips made it impossible to tell if he was mocking her or his own reputation. “If you’ve come to assassinate me, then I’m afraid I’m at your mercy. I’d offer you my cravat so you could strangle me, but they took it away so I wouldn’t hang myself. Wouldn’t want to deprive the executioner of the pleasure.”
    “The last time I checked, getting oneself nearly seven thousand pounds in debt and seducing a magistrate’s daughter wasn’t a hanging offense.”
    “You haven’t met the magistrate.” He sank back down on the edge of the settee and reached beneath it.
    Half expecting him to whip out a weapon of some sort, Catriona took a nervous step backward. But when his hand reemerged, it was brandishing a half-empty bottle of port.

    He whisked two glasses out from under the settee with equal aplomb. “I’ve been remiss in my manners. Would you care to join me?”
    “No, thank you.” Watching him pour a generous splash of the ruby liquor into one of the glasses, she said, “I forgot that you were expecting company of a different sort altogether. You must be very disappointed.”
    He slanted her an unreadable look from beneath his gilt-tipped lashes. “I wouldn’t say that. Surprised, perhaps, but not disappointed.”
    “We’ve met before, although I can hardly expect you to remember me.”
    Just as she could never expect herself to forget him.
    “Then you do me a grave disservice”—Simon’s gently chiding look could have melted an ice floe—“Miss Kincaid.”
    Catriona’s mouth fell open in shock.
    He lifted the glass in a mocking toast. “I never forget a lovely face.”
    Her mouth snapped shut. “You thought I was a boy.”
    His lips twitched with amusement as he glanced ever so briefly, yet boldly, at the generous swell of her bosom. “A mistake I can assure you I won’t make again.” He took a sip of the port, a teasing lilt infusing his voice. “Surely you didn’t think I’d forget a bonny Scottish lass who smelled of fresh-cut hay and cinnamon biscuits and whose only champion was a savage orange kitten named Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
    “Robert the Bruce. I suppose you remember my cousin as well?” she could not resist asking.
    He blinked at her, all doe-eyed innocence. “You had a cousin?”
    “You really should remember Alice. You were about to complete your seduction of her when I tumbled out of the hayloft onto your back.”
    “Ah, yes, how could I forget dear sweet…” He frowned. “What was her name again?”
    “Alice.”
    “Ah, yes, dear sweet Amelia.” He clapped a hand to his heart. “I’ve thought of her fondly nearly every day since the cruel hand of fate tore us apart.”
    Biting back a reluctant smile,