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the air like a loosed crossbow bolt. Headed straight for them.
    Lady Cambourne screamed.
     
    Julianne pounded on the bedchamber door, but there was no response. “Mr. Preston, I insist you open at once or I’m coming in, whether you will it or not.”
    “Your ladyship, I beg you. It would not be seemly,” Fenwick said, trying in vain to insert himself between her and his master’s chamber.
    “Is it seemly for your employer to keep me waiting again?” Julianne glared at him until he stepped aside. “Mis-ter Preston!” She rapped her knuckles sharply on the door between each syllable.
    A low bellow came from the room, the feral noise sounding more like the guttural cry of a bull standing at stud than something torn from the throat of a man. Fenwick’s eyes went round and he jumped farther away from the door. Julianne grabbed her chance, turning the crystal knob and pushing it open.
    “Mr. Preston, I—”
    Words failed her. Jacob Preston was standing on his bed, legs spread, knees flexed and fists clenched. His red-rimmed eyes were wild as a stallion’s, his hair sticking out at odd angles like a startled hedgehog. His brows were lowered in a gladiator’s frown. He looked ready for the fight of his life.
    Except for the fact that he was naked.
    And fully roused, further reinforcing Julianne’s earlier impression of a bull at stud. She’d seen some impressive male members in the past, but this one rendered the others pale and flaccid by comparison. Fully engorged, Jacob’s length and girth were beyond her experience. His ballocks were drawn tight, nested in chestnut curls at the apex of taut thighs.
    She forced her gaze away from his groin, traveling up his torso to his well-muscled chest and forearms. Clearly, Mr. Preston didn’t spend all his free time in gaming hells and brothels. A man didn’t acquire that sort of muscular development without regular strenuous work. But there was a blood-soaked bandage near one brown nipple, so perhaps he regularly participated in bar fights instead.
    Julianne met his ferocious gaze and wondered if he could even see her. His bloodshot eyes were unfocused and darting. She didn’t think he was drunk. If this was the aftereffect of too much alcohol, she doubted he’d sport such a formidable cockstand.
    She sniffed the air and thought she detected a subtle, cloying odor mixed with whisky fumes.
    Opium, she thought with disgust. The upper crust complained about the way gin had enslaved the masses but were blithely unconcerned by their own addiction to laudanum. How was Jacob Preston to be of any use to her if he woke with a head full of poppy each morning?
    “Oh, dear, oh, no. Oh, my lady, you’ve ruined me. He’ll have my guts for garters, sure as there’s snot on the face of an urchin,” Fenwick fretted from behind her in the doorway.
    “Don’t despair, Mr. Fenwick. It’s not your fault your employer is an opium fiend.”
    “Oh, but he’s not usually ... I mean, you don’t understand—” Fenwick began, then seemed to reconsider arguing with a countess. He slipped away, murmuring something about fetching that sovereign English remedy for all ills—tea.
    The opium fiend in question rested his bleary-eyed gaze on her and blinked slowly. Then Mr. Preston gave his head a vigorous shake, like a water spaniel emerging from an algae-coated pond.
    “G’morning, Julianne,” he said, his speech far clearer than she expected it to be. He seemed to have shrugged off the ill-effects of his night of drugged indulgence with surprising quickness.
    She stiffened her spine. “I have not given you leave to use my Christian name.”
    One corner of his mouth kicked up. “If a woman’s staring at a fellow in his altogether, you can’t blame the man for assuming she’s given him leave of some sort.” Heedless of his nakedness, he stepped down from the bed and stomped over to the washstand. Then he leaned over the basin while dumping the contents of the pitcher over his head.