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fling them together, tonight of all nights, wasn’t likely to heed her pleas.
    “Do you intend to introduce me to your
cicisbeo?”
Kinvarra’s voice remained quiet. She’d learned that was when he was at his most dangerous.
    Dear God, did he intend to shoot Harold after all?
    Surely not. Foul as Kinvarra had been to her, he’d never shown her a moment’s violence. Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. Harold wouldn’t stand a chance.
    “My Lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling back to evade assault.
    Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she’d married as a stupid chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she favoured Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn’t an overbearing brute like her husband, the earl. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a sign of Harold’s intelligence that he was wary right now.
    But somehow her insistence didn’t convince her traitorous heart.
    How she wished she really were the impervious creature Kinvarra called her. Then she’d be immune both to his insults and to the insidious attraction he aroused.
    “My Lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even, frightening voice. “Who is this … gentleman?”
    She stiffened her backbone. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess he still had power over her. Her response was steady. “Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”
    Harold performed a shaky bow. “My Lord.”
    As he rose, a tense silence descended.
    “Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn’t abated one whit.
    “I don’t see why,” Alicia snapped.
    It wasn’t just her husband who tried her temper. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn’t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stares at an adder.
    “Do you imagine I’m so sophisticated, I’ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”
    She stifled the urge to consign him to Hades. “If you’ll put aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you’ll see we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like complete strangers, My Lord.”
    He laughed and she struggled to suppress the shiver of sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. “Some things haven’t changed, I see. You’re still dishing out orders. And I’m still damned if I’ll play your obedient lapdog.”
    “Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.
    “Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I can leave you to freeze. Not that you’d probably notice.”
    Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather — and what common sense she retained under the anger that always flared in Kinvarra’s proximity — prompted her to be conciliatory.
    It was late. She and Harold hadn’t passed anyone on this isolated road. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn’t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn’t prepared to endure a snowy night in the open. The chill of the road seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.
    “My Lord …” During the year they’d lived together, she’d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she’d clung to formality as a barrier. “My Lord, there’s no point in quarrelling. Basic charity compels your assistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”
    He arched one