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expected him to be with his bride.
    Marshall stood in front of the door to the countess’s suite. His fingers flexed once, twice, and then clenchedinto a fist. He stared at the gilt framing of the door, a creation of a carpenter employed more than a hundred years ago. Had the man known, when he crafted such a delicately carved frame, that an earl would stand motionless, staring at it in turmoil a hundred years later? Had he ever thought, this long-ago carpenter, that the door would come to represent a barrier greater than painted wood?
    Beyond that door was temptation. Not simply a temptation of the flesh, although there was that. But Davina offered forgetfulness for a few hours. With her he wouldn’t be the hermit lord, the Devil of Ambrose, the Earl of Lorne, his honor stained and shriveled by the actions of the past. With his bride he would simply be a bridegroom.
    She knew nothing of him, and that was both disconcerting and a cause for rejoicing. He could be anyone he wished with her: kind and temperate, distant or caring. Or he could simply be the man he’d always known himself to be, only recently damaged and incapable of becoming himself again.
    He should leave her alone. He should turn around and walk down the hall to his own suite. There he could forget about his bride by the judicious application of several glasses of wine. He could sleep, finally, and not require the touch of another human being. No one needed to hold him, or kiss him, or promise him any physical pleasure.
    Wine would work well enough; it had before.
    Ah, there was the temptation again. The world expected him to be with his bride. The world exoneratedhim for this night above others. Tonight he might be here to fulfill the obligations his rank and his birthright demanded. Never mind that he hated nightfall and dreaded his dreams. Never mind that he wondered if his bride might ease the transition from sanity to madness.
    Perhaps he wasn’t consumed by lust at all but simply melancholia, and was standing here in a misguided attempt to make amends for forcing her into marriage without being totally honest to her.
    Forcing? He raised his right hand and placed his fingers in the middle of the gilded panel, stroking the delicate pattern of leaves and roses. Not quite forcing her, perhaps. But neither did he offer her honesty. Perhaps earlier, in the chapel, he could have halted the ceremony by simply holding out his hand. He could have taken her into the vestibule, and they would have spoken for a few moments, long enough for him to acquaint her with certain salient facts of their union.
    “I’m known as the Devil because word has spread to Edinburgh of my screaming fits. When the madness is upon me, I see the very demons of hell. I have nightmares as well as visions that haunt my days. I am not entirely certain I’m of this world any longer, although I cannot quite dismiss the feeling that I am part of it. I am well on my way to becoming a madman, and yet I crave the touch of an innocent the way I crave my wine.
    “Marry me and you’ll have no lack of anything except for my company, perhaps. I’ll use you when I will, and do so for as long as I’m strong enough to push aside my madness and perhaps my compassion.”
    She would have scurried back to Edinburgh as fast as her carriage could travel. She might have even regaled the whole of society with his strange confession so that no other woman would ever look at him with wide eyes and inquire about his soubriquet.
    What a fool he was. As much, perhaps, as his bride. He allowed his hand to fall to his side.
    The door suddenly opened, a sliver of light appearing first, and then her face.
    “Are you lost, Your Lordship?” Davina inquired. But she didn’t open the door further, and most definitely didn’t welcome him inside. Instead she stared out at him, her face pinkened by her blush.
    Perhaps she was as uncertain as he. Did she feel as if they tiptoed on shattered glass? Or on the thinnest