n the weeks that followed, Elizabeth discovered to her pleasure that she could ask Ian any question about any subject and that he would answer her as fully as she wished. Not once did he ever patronize her when he replied, or fend her off by pointing out that, as a woD1an, the matter was truly none of her concern-or worse-that the answer would be beyond any female’s ability to understand. Elizabeth found his respect for her intelligence enormously flattering-particularly after two astounding discoveries she made about him.

The first occurred three days after their wedding, when they both decided to spend the evening at home, reading.

That night after supper, Ian brought a book he wanted to read from their library-a heavy tome with an incomprehensible title-to the drawing room. Elizabeth brought Pride and Prejudice which she’d been longing to read since first hearing of the uproar it was causing among the conservative members of the ton. After pressing a kiss on her forehead, Ian sat down in the high-backed chair beside hers. Reaching across the small table between them for her hand, he linked their fingers together, and opened his book. Elizabeth thought it was incredibly cozy to sit, curled up in a chair beside him, her hand held in his, with a book in her lap, and she didn’t mind the small inconvenience of turning the pages with one hand.

Soon, she was so engrossed in her book that it was a full half-hour before she noticed how swiftly Ian turned the pages of his. From the comer of her eye, Elizabeth watched in puzzled fascination as his gaze seemed to slide swiftly down one page, then the facing page, and he turned to the next. Teasingly, she asked, “Are you reading that book, my lord, or only pretending for my benefit?”

He glanced up sharply, and Elizabeth saw a strange, hesitant expression flicker across his tanned face. As if carefully phrasing his reply, he said slowly, “I have an-odd ability-to read very quickly.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth replied, “how lucky you are. I never heard of a talent like that.”

A lazy glamorous smile swept across his face, and he squeezed her hand. “It’s not nearly as uncommon as your eyes,” he said.

Elizabeth thought it must be a great deal more uncommon, but she wasn’t completely certain and she let it pass. The following day, that discovery was completely eclipsed by another one. At Ian’s insistence, she’d spread the books from Havenhurst across his desk in order to go over the quarter’s accounts, and as the morning wore on, the long columns of figures she’d been adding and multiplying began to blur together and transpose themselves in her mind-due in part, she thought with a weary smile, to the fact that her husband had kept her awake half the night making love to her. For the third time, she added the same long columns of expenditures, and for the third time, she came up with a different sum. So frustrated was she that she didn’t realize Ian had come into the room, until he leaned over her from behind and put his hands on the desk on either side of her own. “Problems?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.

“Yes,” she said, glancing at the clock and realizing that the business acquaintances he was expecting would be there momentarily. As she explained her problem to him, she started shoving loose papers into the books, hurriedly trying to reassemble everything and clear his desk. “For the last forty-five minutes, I’ve been adding the same four columns, so that I could divide them by eighteen servants, multiply that by forty servants, which we now have there, times four quarters. Once I know that, I can forecast the real cost of food and supplies with the increased staff. I’ve gotten three different answers to those miserable columns. and I haven’t even tried the rest of the calculations. Tomorrow I’U have to start allover again,” she finished irritably, “and it takes forever just to get all this laid out and organized.” She reached out to close the book and shove her calculations into it, but Ian stopped her.

“Which columns are they’!” he asked calmly, his surprised gaze studying the genuine ire on her face.

“Those long ones down the left-hand side. It doesn’t matter, I’U fight it out tomorrow,” she said. She shoved the chair back. dropped two sheets of paper, and bent over to pick them up. They’d slid beneath the kneehole of the desk. and in growing disgust Elizabeth crawled underneath to get them. Above her, Ian said, “£364.”

“Pardon’!” she asked when she reemerged, clutching the errant sheets of paper.

He was writing it down on a scrap of paper. “£364.” “Do not make light of my wanting to know the figures,” she warned him with an exasperated smile. “Besides,” she continued, leaning up and pressing an apologetic kiss on his cheek-loving the tangy scent of his cologne, “I usually enjoy the bookwork. I’m simply a little short of sleep today, because,” she whispered, “my husband kept me awake half the night.”

“Elizabeth,” he began hesitantly, “there’s something I-” Then he shook his head and changed his mind. and since Shipley was already standing in the doorway to announce the arrival of his business acquaintances, Elizabeth thought no more of it.

Until the next morning. Rather than use his study again and disrupt his working schedule, she spread out her books and papers at a desk in the library. With her mind fresh and alert. she made quick progress and, within an hour, she’d gotten the answer she’d been seeking yesterday and double-checked it. Positive that £364 was correct, she smiled as she tried to recall what Ian’s wild guess had been yesterday. When she couldn’t recall it. she looked among her papers for the one he’d written his guess upon and found it tucked in between the sheets of the book.

With her own answer in one hand, she looked at what he had written... Shock sent her slowly to her feet, the paper with Ian’s answer clutched in her other hand: £364. Trembling with an uneasy emotion she couldn’t identify, she gazed at the answer he had calculated in his head, not on paper, in a matter of seconds, not three-quarters of an hour.

She was still standing there several moments later when Ian walked in to invite her to ride with him. “Still trying to find your answer, sweetheart?” he asked with a sympathetic grin, mistaking the cause of her wary stare.

“No, I found mine,” she said, her voice unintentionally accusing as she thrust both pieces of paper toward him. “What I would like to know,” she continued, unable to tear her gaze from him, “is how it happens to be the same answer you arrived at in a matter of moments.”

His grin faded, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, ignoring the papers in her outthrust hand. His expression carefully impassive, he said, “That answer is a little more difficult than the one I wrote down for you-”

“You can do this-calculate all those figures in your mind? In moments?”

He nodded curtly, and when Elizabeth continued to stare at him warily, as if he was a being of unknown origin, his face hardened. In a clipped, cool voice he said, “I would appreciate it if you would stop staring at me as if I’m a freak.”

Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open at his tone and his words. “I’m not.”

“Yes,” he said implacably. “You are. Which is why I haven’t told you before this.”

Embarrassed regret surged through her at the understand. able conclusion he’d drawn from her reaction. Recovering her composure, she started around the desk toward him. “What you saw on my face was wonder and awe, no matter how it must have seemed.”

“The last thing I want from you is ‘awe,’” he said tightly, and Elizabeth belatedly realized that, while he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him, her reaction to all this was obviously terribly important to him. Rapidly concluding that he’d evidently had some experience with other people’s reaction to what must surely be a form of genius-and which struck them as “freakish”-she bit her lip, trying to decide what to say. When nothing came to mind, she simply let love guide her and reacted without artifice. Leaning back against the desk, she sent him an amused, sidelong smile and said, “I gather you can calculate almost as rapidly as you can read?”

His response was short and chilly. “Not quite.” “I see,” she continued lightly. “I would guess there are close to ten thousand books in your library here. Have you read them all?”

“No.” She nodded thoughtfully, but her eyes danced with admiring laughter as she continued, “Well, you’ve been quite busy the past few weeks-dancing attendance on me. No doubt that’s kept you from finishing the last thousand or two.” His face softened as she asked merrily, “Are you planning to read them all?”

With relief, she saw the answering smile tugging at his lips. “I thought I’d attend to that next week,” he replied with sham gravity.

“A worthy endeavor,” she agreed. “I hope you won’t start without me. I’d like to watch.”

Ian’s shout of laughter was cut short as he snatched her into his arms and buried his face in her fragrant hair, his hands clenching her to him as if he could absorb her sweetness into himself.

“Do you have any other extraordinary skills I ought to know about, my lord?” she whispered, holding him as tightly as he was holding her.

The laughter in his voice was replaced by tender solemnity. “I’m rather good,” he whispered, “at loving you.”

In the weeks that followed, he proved it to her in a hundred ways. Among other things, he never objected to the times she was away from him at Havenhurst. To Elizabeth, whose entire life had once been wrapped up in Havenhurst’s past and future, it came as something of a surprise to realize very quickly that she rather begrudged much of the time she had to spend there, overseeing the improvements that were getting under way.

To avoid spending more time there than was absolutely necessary, she began bringing home the drawings the architect had made, along with any other problems she’d encountered, so that she could consult with Ian. No matter how busy he was or who he was with, he made time for her. He would sit with her for hours, explaining alternatives to her in a step-by-step fashion which she soon realized was evidence of his inexhaustible patience with her, because Ian’s mind did not reason in step-step fashion. With awesome speed, his mind went straight from point A to point Z, from problem to solution, without needing to plod through the normal steps between.

With the exception of the few times she had to stay at Havenhurst, they spent their nights together in his bed, and Elizabeth quickly discovered that their wedding night had been but a small preview of the wild beauty and primitive splendor of his lovemaking. There were times that he lingered over her endlessly, lavishing her senses with every exquisite sensation, prolonging their release, until Elizabeth was pleading with him to end the sweet torment; other nights, he turned to her in hunger and need and took her with tender roughness and few preliminaries. And Elizabeth could never quite decide which way she liked best. She admitted that to him one night, only to have him take her swiftly and then keep her awake for hours with his tender attentions, so that she might be better able to decide. He taught her to ask, without embarrassment, for what she wanted, and when shyness made her hesitate, he taught her by example that same night. It was a lesson Elizabeth found incredibly stirring as she listened to his husky voice grow thick with desire while he asked to be touched and caressed in particular ways, and when she did, his powerful muscles jumped beneath her touch, and a groan tore from his chest

Toward the end of the summer, they went to London, although the city was still somewhat deserted. the Little Season having not yet begun. Elizabeth agreed because she thought it would be convenient for him to be nearer the men with whom he invested large sums of money in complex ventures, and because Alex would be there. Ian went because he wanted Elizabeth to enjoy the position of prestige in society she was entitled to-and because he enjoyed showing her off in the setting where she sparkled like the jewels he lavished on her. He knew she regarded him as a combination of loving benefactor and wise teacher, but in that last regard, Ian knew she was wrong, for Elizabeth was teaching him, too. By her own example, she taught him to be patient with servants; she taught him to relax; and she taught him that next to lovemaking, laughter was undoubtedly life’s most pleasant diversion. At her insistence, he even learned to look tolerantly upon the foolish foibles of many of the ton’s members.

So successful was Elizabeth in this last endeavor that they were, within a matter of weeks, rather a favorite couple, much sought after for every sort of charitable and social event. Invitations arrived at the house in Upper Brook Street in large numbers, and together they laughingly invented excuses to avoid many of them so that Ian could work during the day and Elizabeth could occupy her time with something more interesting than social calls.

For Ian that was no problem at all; he was always busy. Elizabeth solved her problem by agreeing, at the urging of some of the ton’s most influential old guard, including the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne, to join in a charitable endeavor to build a badly needed hospital on the outskirts of London. Unfortunately, the Hospital Fund Raising Committee, to which Elizabeth was assigned, spent most of its time mired down in petty trivialities and rarely made a decision on anything. In a fit of tired frustration, Elizabeth finally asked Ian to step into their drawing room one day, while the committee was meeting there, and to give them the benefit of his expertise. “And,” she laughingly warned him in the privacy of his study when he agreed to join them, “no matter how they prose on about every tiny, meaningless expenditure-which they will-promise me you won’t point out to them that you could build six hospitals with less effort and time.”

“Could I do that?” he asked, grinning. “Absolutely!” She sighed. “Between them, they must have half the money in Europe, yet they debate about every shilling to be spent as if it were coming out of their own reticules and likely to send them to debtors’ gaol.”

“If they offend your thrifty sensibilities, they must be a rare group,” Ian teased. Elizabeth gave him a distracted smile, but when they neared the drawing room, where the committee was drinking tea in Ian’s priceless sevres china cups, she turned to him and added hastily, “Oh, and don’t comment on Lady Wiltshire’s blue hat. “

“Why not?” “Because it’s her hair.” “I wouldn’t do such a thing,” he protested, grinning at her.

“Yes, you would!” she whispered, trying to frown and chuckling instead. “The dowager duchess told me that, last night, you complimented the furry dog Lady Shirley had draped over her arm.”

“Madam, I was following your specific instructions to be nice to the eccentric old harridan. Why shouldn’t I have complimented her dog?”

“Because it was a new fur muff of a rare sort, of which she was extravagantly proud.”

“There is no fur on earth that mangy, Elizabeth,” he replied with an impenitent grin. “She’s hoaxing the lot of you,” he added seriously.

Elizabeth swallowed a startled laugh and said with an imploring look, “Promise me you’ll be very nice, and very patient with the committee.”

“I promise, “ he said gravely, but when she reached for the door handle and opened the door-when it was too late to step back and yank it closed-he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Did you know a camel is the only animal invented by a committee, which is why it turned out the way it has?”

If the committee was surprised to see the formerly curt and irascible Marquess of Kensington stroll into their midst wearing a beatific smile worthy of a choir boy, they were doubtlessly shocked to see his wife’s hands clamped over her face and her eyes tearing with mirth.

Elizabeth’s concern that Ian might insult them, either intentionally or otherwise, soon gave way to admiration and then to helpless amusement as he sat for the next half-hour, charming them all with an occasional lazy smile or interjecting a gallant compliment, while they spent the entire time debating whether to sell the chocolates being donated by Gunther’s for £5 or £6 per box. Despite Ian’s outwardly bland demeanor, Elizabeth waited uneasily for him to say he’d buy the damned cartload of chocolates for £10 apiece, if it would get them on to the next problem, which she knew was what he was dying to say.

But she needn’t have worried, for he continued to positively exude pleasant interest. Four times, the committee paused to solicit his advice; four times, he smilingly made excellent suggestions; four times, they ignored what he suggested. And four times, he seemed not to mind in the least or even to notice.

Making a mental note to thank him profusely for his incredible forbearance, Elizabeth kept her attention on her guests and the discussion, until she inadvertently glanced in his direction, and her breath caught. Seated on the opposite side of the gathering from her, he was now leaning back in his chair, his left ankle propped atop his right knee, and despite his apparent absorption in the topic being discussed, his heavy-lidded gaze was roving meaningfully over her breasts. One look at the smile tugging at his lips and Elizabeth realized that he wanted her to know it.

Obviously he’d decided that both she and he were wasting their time with the committee, and he was playing an amusing game designed to either divert her or discomfit her entirely, she wasn’t certain which. Elizabeth drew a deep breath, ready to blast a warning look at him, and his gaze lifted slowly from her gently heaving bosom, traveled lazily up her throat, paused at her lips, and then lifted to her narrowed eyes. ‘

Her quelling glance earned her nothing but a slight, challenging lift of his brows and a decidedly sensual smile, before his gaze reversed and began a lazy trip downward again.

Lady Wiltshire’s voice rose, and she said for the second time, “Lady Thornton, what do you think?”

Elizabeth snapped her gaze from her provoking husband to Lady Wiltshire. “I-I agree,” she said without the slightest idea of what she was agreeing with. For the next five minutes, she resisted the tug of Ian’s caressing gaze, firmly refusing to even glance his way, but when the committee re-embarked on the chocolate issue again, she stole a look at him. The moment she did, he captured her gaze, holding it, while he, with an outward appearance of a man in thoughtful contemplation of some weighty problem, absently rubbed his forefinger against his mouth, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. Elizabeth’s body responded to the caress he was offering her as if his lips were actually on hers, and she drew a tong, steadying breath as he deliberately let his eyes slide to her breasts again. He knew exactly what his gaze was doing to her, and Elizabeth was thoroughly irate at her inability to ignore its effect.

The committee departed on schedule a half-hour later amid reminders that the next meeting would be held at Lady Wiltshire’s house. Before the door closed behind them, Elizabeth rounded on her grinning, impenitent husband in the drawing room. “You wretch!” she exclaimed. “How could your’ she demanded, but in the midst of her indignant protest, Ian shoved his hands into her hair, turned her face up, and smothered her words with a ravenous kiss.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” she warned him in bed an hour later, her cheek against his chest. Laughter, rich and deep, rumbled beneath her ear.

“No?” “Absolutely not. I’ll repay you if it’s the last thing I do.” “I think you already have,” he said huskily, deliberately

misunderstanding her meaning. Shortly afterward, they returned to Montmayne to spend September in the country, where it was cooler. For Ian, life with Elizabeth was everything he ever hoped it could be, and more. It was so perfect that he had to fight down the nagging fear that things could not go on like this-a fear which he tried to convince himself was mere superstition brought on by the fact that two years ago fate had snatched her from him. But in his heart, he knew it was more than that. His investigators had not yet been able to find a trace of Elizabeth’s brother, and he lived in daily dread that hers would succeed where his had not. And so he waited to discover the extent of his offense against her and her brother, knowing he was going to have to beg her forgiveness for it, and that-in marrying her without telling her what he did know-he was as guilty of duplicity as he was of her brother’s abduction.

In the rational part of his mind, he knew that by having Robert tossed aboard the Arianna, he had spared the hotheaded young fool a far worse fate at the hands of the authorities. But now, without knowing what fate had actually befallen him, he couldn’t be certain that Elizabeth would see his actions in that light. He couldn’t see them in that light himself anymore, because now he knew something he hadn’t known at the time. He knew that her parents had been long dead by then and that Robert had been her only buffer against her uncle.

Fear, the one emotion he despised above all others, grew apace with his love for Elizabeth until he actually began to wish someone would find out something, so that he could confess to her whatever sins he was guilty of, and either be forgiven or cast out of her life. In that, he knew his thinking was irrational, but he couldn’t help himself. He had found something he treasured beyond all bounds; he had found Elizabeth, and loving her made him more vulnerable than he’d been since his family’s death. The threat of losing her haunted him until he began to wonder how long he could bear the torment of uncertainty.

Blissfully unaware of all that. Elizabeth continued to love him without reservation or guile, and as she grew more certain of his love, she became more confident and more enchanting to Ian. On those occasions when she saw his expression become inexplicably grim, she teased him or kissed him, and, if those ploys failed, she presented him with little gifts-a flower arrangement from Havenhurst’s gardens, a single rose that she stuck behind his ear, or left upon his pillow. “Shall I have to resort to buying you a jewel to make you smile, my lord?” she joked one day three months after they were married. “I understand that is bow it is done when a lover begins to act distracted.”

To Elizabeth’s surprise, her remark made him snatch her into his arms in a suffocating embrace. “I am not losing interest in you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” be told her.

Elizabeth leaned back in his arms, surprised by the unwarranted force of his declaration, and continued to tease. “You’re quite certain?”

“Positive.”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked in a tone of mock severity.

“I would never lie to you,” Ian said gravely, but then he realized that by withholding the truth from her, he was, in effect, deceiving her, which in turn, amounted to little less than lying outright.

Elizabeth knew something was bothering him, and that as time passed, it was bothering him with increasing frequency, but she never dreamed she was even remotely the cause of his silences or preoccupation. She thought of Robert often, but not since the day of her marriage had she permitted herself to think of Mr. Wordsworth’s accusations, not even for an instant. In the first place, she couldn’t bear it; in the second, she no longer believed there was the slightest possibility he was right”

“I have to go to Havenhurst tomorrow,” she said reluctantly when Ian finally let her go. “The masons have started on the house and bridge, and the irrigation work has begun. If I spend the night, though, I shouldn’t have to go back for at least a fortnight.”

“I’ll miss you,” he said quietly, but there was no trace of resentment in his voice, nor did he attempt to persuade her to postpone the trip. He was keeping to his bargain with the integrity that Elizabeth particularly admired in him.

“Not,” she whispered, kissing the side of his mouth, ‘‘as much as I’ll miss you.”