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conversation.”
    “You’re sure you will be coming down to nuncheon tomorrow, Nicholas?” she said, recalling his rude absence at table all day.
    “Ah! My apologies,” he said. “What kept me from joining you at nuncheon and dinner today came up quite suddenly, and couldn’t be avoided. That may happen from time to time. I should have sent my regrets. Please forgive my want of conduct. I shall try to be more chivalrous in future.”
    “After nuncheon, then . . . in the study,” she agreed. “Good night, Nicholas.”
    “Good night, Sara.”
    He moved on then, but the deep, sensuous echo of his voice lived after him, tampering with her balance. So did the image of that lean, corded, lightly furred body half-exposed in the candlelight. How handsome he was, mussed by the gale, this strange man she’d married. His scent was still with her, all around her—in her. Breathing deeply, she drank her fill. Yes. She was attracted to this man, but he did not want her in that way. What he did want was still unclear. Maybe tomorrow, he would answer her questions. Maybe tomorrow, she would be brave enough to ask them. Right now, as she approached her suite, she prayed that she wouldn’t find Nero crouching on his haunches in her foyer. Thank God, it was vacant.

Four
    Sara heard the howl again in the dead of night. It wrenched her from a sound sleep, and she went to the door, but there was no sign of Nero in the deserted hallway. Had she dreamed it? No. It was much too intense, so plaintive and sad it tugged at her heartstrings. She had bonded with the creature and, if anything were to happen to him, the heart he’d wrapped himself around would break all over again, just when it had begun to mend. Nero’s unexpected presence in her life eased the loneliness in her strange situation: to be married to a husband who wasn’t a husband, who showed not the slightest affection—who didn’t even want to be
touched
. How could she bear to lose the dog’s comforting presence now?
    She did not mention Nero at nuncheon. The meal was passed for the most part in silence, though she didn’t miss Nicholas’s articulate eyes studying her from the opposite end of the table. There it was again—that look. She hadn’t imagined it. There was something unspoken in those eyes—something veiled, though acute, as if he were struggling with some inner demon. That hypnotic stare seemed alarminglysoft and intense, seductive and cold all at once. How could that be? But it was. If only she could read it.
    The storm had finally spent itself in the night. By dawn, the rain had stopped, and the wind had died to a sighing murmur. Though the sea rolling up the coast below still had a fearsome voice, it had ceased climbing the house’s ancient curtain wall and flinging spindrift high into the air, clear to the carved stone ravens at the pinnacle. The sun was another matter. Dark brooding clouds still hung heavy on the horizon, adding to the gloomy mood of the day, and Sara watched Nicholas stir the fire to life in the study hearth in a vain attempt to chase off the dampness that permeated the old house. She noticed, too, that the wet clothes and muddy boots were gone.
    “You needn’t look so grim,” he said, surging to his full height after the chore. “You have nothing to fear from me, Sara. This isn’t the Inquisition, you know. I’m in hopes that when we leave this room today, we shall have a better understanding of each other, nothing more.”
    “I’m not afraid of you, Nicholas,” she said. It was half-truth. She was very afraid of her attraction to this man, because it wasn’t returned. “You’ve been most generous, and you’ve saved me from a nightmarish existence, for which I am exceedingly grateful. It’s just that your motives are . . . unclear.”
    “My motives are
suspect
, you mean.”
    “If you prefer.”
    “I see. You have questions. Let us begin with those then, shall we?” He took his seat on the edge of the desk as