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gazed mutely back at him, as if finally accepting that this was really happening to her.
    Rising, Ian said in a bracing tone, “You may decidewhere the blessed event is to take place. Any of my homes might do … my house in London, the chapel at Bellacourt, here at Wingate Manor, your own house in Chiswick. Or you may prefer a church wedding. I doubt if St. George’s in Hanover Square is available at this late date, but you may have other ideas. If I recall, you planned to wed Richard in the village church in Chiswick.”
    “No, not there,” Tess said. “It would be a mockery to wed in a holy church for an unholy union.”
    She shuddered slightly, evidently an involuntary response. Even so, Ian couldn’t help wincing again, in addition to feeling another wave of guilt along with a fresh desire to comfort her. It would take a harder heart than his to be impervious to this beauty with the passion-bruised mouth and vulnerable eyes.
    Stepping closer, he reached down to touch the backs of his fingers to her cheek. His voice lowered as he gazed down at her. “I truly regret that it has come to this pass, Tess.”
    “So do I,” she whispered, drawing back and looking away.
    Remorse was Ian’s chief sentiment as he waited in the entrance hall of Wingate Manor for his carriage to be brought around. He deeply regretted forcing Tess to the altar. In fact, he regretted the entire damned morning.
    His first mistake was overreacting when he parted the stage curtains to find her kissing Hennessy. He’d felt an instinctive rage, a deep-seated, primal male possessiveness that he’d never felt with any other woman.
    Then he’d compounded his error by taking Tess to task for her wanton conduct and revealing the extent of his jealousy.
    It wasn’t that he harbored any deep feelings for her, Ian reasoned. He simply wanted to save her from a Lothario. Yet he couldn’t deny that he savagely disliked the idea of Tess giving herself to another man, particularly one of Hennessy’s hedonistic tendencies.
    He hadn’t liked the idea of his cousin Richard having her either, Ian remembered. He could still recall his first sight of Tess at her comeout ball. She was laughing with Richard with the intimacy of old friends, the expression on her face one of fond delight.
    Her delight had suddenly arrested, however, when Ian stepped forward, as if she’d become sharply conscious of the sexual awareness pulsing between them. When Lady Wingate made the introductions, Tess stared up at him warily through a fan of dark lashes. She wasn’t intimidated by him, Ian thought, merely cautious. And given his wicked reputation, he couldn’t blame her.
    He’d wanted her from that first moment, though. When he danced with Tess at Lady Wingate’s urging, the heady sensation of being so near to her had gone straight to his head—and to his loins as well. He’d been immediately, shockingly aroused.
    His wild physical response to Tess had no justifiable rationalization. The sensual hunger she stirred in him was far out of proportion to their respective ages and experience.
    He’d been twenty-six at the time, well on his way to becoming a rake like his late father. As a genteelyoung lady making her bow to society, Tess was much too innocent and proper for his tastes.
    Oh, she was an acknowledged beauty, no doubt about it. Her thick, glossy hair was mahogany dark and rich; her face fine-boned and captivating, her complexion pale and perfect. Her figure was slender but enticingly ripe in all the right places.
    She had a serene loveliness about her, an unmistakable feminine allure that drew Ian against his will. She’d left a deep mark on his memory that night, a mark that had only increased over the years since. But even though Tess’s magnetic beauty bowled him over at a physical level, it was her passionate warmth and spirit that touched him on a much deeper plane—as did, ironically, her genuine goodness.
    Perhaps because it was such a contrast to