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though he’d ever been a saint.
    Moreover, he was aware that some women had remarkable powers of endurance. Was there so much difference, he wondered, between lying with a man who was as good as a corpse and lying with a drunken, lusting oaf, insatiable while the need was upon him and soddenly morose afterward?
    That was the man he’d been, not so very long ago.
    He shuddered—at the past and at what his future held if he yielded to his baser self and took what she offered.
    “We had better start back,” she said. “You are tired and wet and chilled.”
    She turned and moved toward her horse.
    Dorian rose and followed, relieved that she sought no further explanation. Though he’d already said more than he wanted, he still wanted to tell her more, to explain. But that would mean describing the sordid life that lay behind him and the helpless imbecility that lay ahead. Better to leave it as it was, he told himself. She seemed to accept the situation.
    They reached the bay gelding, and Dorian was so busy telling himself to hold his tongue before it got him into trouble that he didn’t pause to think but picked her up and set her upon the saddle.
    Too late, he remembered it was a man’s saddle.
    She swung her leg over and settled comfortably astride, naively exposing to his view several inches of feminine underthings.
    Between the dirty draggle of her petticoats and the slime-encrusted boots, her muddy stocking hugged a slender, curvaceous calf.
    Dorian backed away, silently cursing himself.
    She didn’t need his assistance. He could have mounted his own horse and started for home and let her take care of herself. He had just escaped a mire. No one would expect him to play the gallant at such a time, and she was obviously not a helpless female.
    He should not have allowed his mind to wander into the past. He should not have touched her or come close enough to notice what her legs were like. Already he could feel his resistance weakening, was aware of the excuses forming in his treacherous mind—the false promises he knew better than to trust. There would be no relief for him, or release, if he yielded to this temptation. There never had been before: only a temporary oblivion and self-loathing afterward.
    He hurried to Isis and hastily mounted.
    G WENDOLYN A DAMS WAS not the granddaughter of a famous femme fatale for nothing. Though she had not inherited Genevieve’s raven hair or heart-stopping countenance or subtly seductive ways, Gwendolyn had inherited certain instincts.
    She did not have much trouble interpreting the Earl of Rawnsley’s expression when his exotic yellow gaze wandered to her leg.
    She did not have much trouble, either, interpreting her own reaction when his gaze lingered at least two pulse beats longer than delicacy allotted. The hot spark in his eyes had seemed to leap to her limb and set a little fire to it that darted up under her petticoats and past her knee, teasing her thighs with its naughty warmth before it swirled into the pit of her belly. There it set off sensations she had heard of but never before experienced in her life.
    She had never dreamed the mad Earl of Rawnsley would arouse such sensations, but then, he was nothing like what she’d expected.
    She had read about quicksand and the agonizing pressure it exerted. She was sure he must feel as though he’d been run over by a herd of stampeding bulls. Yet he had picked her up as easily as he might pluck a daisy from the thin Dartmoor soil. Now she watched him swing his long, powerful body up into the saddle in one easy motion, as though he’d done nothing more tiring than pick wildflowers.
    Puzzled, she followed the earl in silence down the narrow, winding track.
    Rain was falling, but halfheartedly. The worst of the storm seemed to be rampaging in the southeast.
    Rawnsley trotted on steadily, never once glancing back at her. If his horse had been fresh, Gwendolyn had no doubt he would have galloped out of Hagsmire in the same