Francesca had always been a rather good liar, and, Michael reflected as he read the short letter she’d left for Helen and Janet, she was even better when she could avoid face-to-face contact and do it in writing.

An emergency had arisen at Kilmartin, Francesca had written, describing the outbreak of spotted fever among the sheep in admirable detail, and it required her immediate attention. They weren’t to worry, she assured them, she’d be back soon, and she promised to bring down some of Cook’s splendid raspberry jam, which, as they all knew, was unmatched by any confection in London.

Never mind that Michael had never heard of a sheep contracting spotted fever, or any other farm animal for that matter. Where, one had to wonder, did the sheep show their spots?

It was all very neat, and all very easy, and Michael wondered if Francesca had even arranged for Janet and Helen to be out of town for the weekend just so that she could make her escape without having to make her farewells face to face.

And it was an escape. There was no doubting that. Michael didn’t believe for one minute that there was an emergency up at Kilmartin. If that had been the case, Francesca would have felt duty bound to inform him of it. She might have been running the estate for years, but he was the earl, and she wasn’t the sort to usurp or undermine his position now that he was back.

Besides, he had kissed her, and more than that, he had seen her face after he’d kissed her.

If she could have run to the moon, she would have done so.

Janet and Helen hadn’t seemed too terribly concerned that she was gone, although they did chatter on (and on and on) about how they missed her company.

Michael just sat in his study, pondering methods of self-flagellation.

He had kissed her. Kissed her.

Not, he thought wryly, the best course of action for a man attempting to hide his true feelings.

Six years, he’d known her. Six years, and he’d kept everything beneath the surface, played his role to perfection. Six years, and he’d gone and ruined the whole thing with one simple kiss.

Except there hadn’t been anything simple about it.

How was it possible that a kiss could exceed his every fantasy? And with six years to fantasize, he’d imagined some truly superior kisses.

But this…it was more. It was better. It was…

It was Francesca.

Funny how that changed everything. You could think about a woman every day for years, imagine what she might feel like in your arms, but it never, ever matched the real thing.

And now he was worse off than ever before. Yes, he’d kissed her; yes, it had been quite the most spectacular kiss of his life.

But yes, it was also all over.

And it wasn’t going to happen again.

Now that it had finally happened, now that he had tasted perfection, he was in more agony than ever before. Now he knew exactly what he was missing; he understood with painful clarity just what it was that would never be his.

And nothing would ever be the same.

They would never be friends again. Francesca was not the sort of woman who could treat an intimacy lightly. And as she hated awkwardness of any kind, she would go out of her way to avoid his presence.

Hell, she’d gone all the way to Scotland just to be rid of him. A woman couldn’t make her feelings much clearer than that.

And the note she’d penned to him—Well, it was far less conversational than the one she’d left for Janet and Helen.!!!It was wrong. Forgive me.

What the hell she thought she needed forgiveness for was beyond him. He had kissed her. She might have entered his bedchamber against his wishes, but he was man enough to know that she had not done so with the expectation that he might maul her. She had been concerned because she thought he was angry with her, for God’s sake.

She had acted rashly, but only because she cared for him and valued their friendship.

And now he had gone and ruined that.

He still wasn’t quite certain how it had happened. He’d been looking at her; he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. The moment was seared in his brain—her pink silk dressing robe, the way her fingers had pinched together as she spoke to him. Her hair had been loose, hanging over one shoulder, and her eyes had been huge and wet with emotion.

And then she had turned away.

That was when it had happened. That was when everything had changed. Something had risen within him, something he couldn’t possibly identify, and his feet had moved. Somehow he found himself across the room, inches away, close enough to touch, close enough to take.

Then she had turned back.

And he was lost.

There was no stopping himself at that point, no listening to reason. Whatever fist of control he’d kept wrapped around his desire for years had simply evaporated, and he had to kiss her.

It had been as simple as that. There had been no choice involved, no free will. Maybe if she’d said no, maybe if she’d backed up and walked away. But she did neither of those things; she just stood there, her breath the only sound between them, and waited.

Had she waited for the kiss? Or had she waited for him to come to his senses and step away?

It was no matter, he thought harshly, crumpling a piece of paper between his fingers. The floor around his desk was now littered with crumpled pieces of paper. He was in a destructive mood, and the sheets were easy targets. He picked up a creamy white card sitting on his blotter and glanced at it before readying his fingers for the kill. It was an invitation.

He stopped, then took a closer look. It was for tonight, and he’d probably answered in the affirmative. He was quite certain Francesca had planned to go; the hostess was a longtime friend of hers.

Maybe he should drag his pathetic self upstairs and dress for the evening. Maybe he should go out, find himself a wife. It probably wouldn’t cure what ailed him, but it had to be done sooner or later. And it had to be better for the soul than sitting around and drinking behind his desk.

He stood, eyeing the invitation again. He sighed. He really didn’t want to spend the evening socializing with a hundred people who were going to ask after Francesca. With his luck, the party would be full of Bridgertons, or even worse, Bridgerton females, who looked fiendishly alike with their chestnut hair and wide smiles. None held a candle to Francesca, of course—her sisters were almost too friendly, too sunny and open. They lacked Frannie’s sense of mystery, the ironic twinkle that colored her eyes.

No, he didn’t want to spend the evening among polite company.

And so he decided to take care of his problems as he had so many times before.

By finding himself a woman.

Three hours later, Michael was at the front door to his club, his mood stunningly foul.

He’d gone to La Belle Maison, which was, if one wanted to be honest about it, nothing but a brothel, but as far as brothels went, it was classy and discreet, and one could be assured that the women were clean and there of their own free will. Michael had been an occasional guest during the years he’d lived in London; most men of his acquaintance had visited La Belle, as they liked to call it, at one point or another. Even John had gone, before he’d married Francesca.

He’d been greeted with great warmth by the madam, treated like a prodigal son. He had a reputation, she explained; and they’d missed his presence. The women had always adored him, frequently remarking that he was one of the few who seemed to care for their pleasure as well as his own.

For some reason, the flattery just left a sour taste in his mouth. He didn’t feel like a legendary lover just then; he was sick of his rakish reputation and didn’t much care if he pleased anyone that night. He just wanted a woman who might make his mind a delirious blank, even if only for a scant few minutes.

They had just the girl for him, the madam cooed. She was new and in great demand, and he would love her. Michael just shrugged and allowed himself to be led to a petite blond beauty that he was assured was the “very best.”

He started to reach out for her, but then his hand dropped. She wasn’t right. She was too blond. He didn’t want a blond.

Quite all right, he was told, and out emerged a ravishing brunette.

Too exotic.

A redhead?

All wrong.

Out they came, one after another, but they were too young, too old, too buxom, too slight, and then finally he’d selected one at random, determined to just close his damned eyes and get it over with.

He’d lasted two minutes.

The door had shut behind him and he’d felt sick, almost panicked, and he realized he couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t make love to a woman. It was appalling. Emasculating. Hell, he might as well have grabbed a knife and eunuched himself.

Before, he had taken his pleasure with women to blot out one woman. But now that he’d tasted her, even with one fleeting kiss, he was ruined.

And so instead he’d come here, to his club, where he didn’t have to worry about seeing anyone of the female persuasion. The aim, of course, was to wipe Francesca’s face from his mind, and he was rather hoping that alcohol would work where the delectable girls of La Belle Maison had not.

“Kilmartin.”

Michael looked up. Colin Bridgerton.

Damn.

“Bridgerton,” he grunted. Damn damn damn. Colin Bridgerton was the last person he wanted to see right now. Even the ghost of Napoleon, come down to slice a rapier through his gullet, would have been preferable.

“Sit down,” Colin said, motioning to the chair across from him.

There was no getting out of it; he could have lied and said he was meeting someone, but he still would have no excuse for not sitting with Colin to share a quick drink while he was waiting. And so Michael just gritted his teeth and sat, hoping that Colin had another engagement that would require his presence in—oh, about three minutes.

Colin picked up his tumbler, regarded it with curious diligence, then swirled the amber liquid around several times before taking a small sip. “I understand that Francesca has returned to Scotland.”

Michael gave a grunt and a nod.

“Surprising, wouldn’t you think? With the season still so young.”

“I don’t pretend to know her mind.”

“No, no, of course you wouldn’t,” Colin said softly. “No man of any intelligence would pretend to know a female mind.”

Michael said nothing.

“Still, it’s only been…what…a fortnight since she came down?”

“Just over,” Michael bit off. Francesca had returned to London the precise day that he had done.

“Right, of course. Yes, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”

Michael shot Colin a sharp look. What the hell was he getting at?

“Ah, well,” Colin said, lifting one of his shoulders into a careless shrug. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Not likely to find a husband up in Scotland, after all, and that is her aim for this spring, is it not?”

Michael nodded tersely, eyeing a table across the room. It was empty. So empty. So joyfully, blessedly empty.

He could picture himself a very happy man at that table.

“Not feeling very conversational this evening, are we?” Colin asked, breaking into his (admittedly tame) fantasies.

“No,” Michael said, not appreciating the vague hint of condescension in the other man’s voice, “we are not.”

Colin chuckled, then took the last sip of his drink. “Just testing you,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“To see if I have spontaneously divided into two separate beings?” Michael bit off.

“No, of course not,” Colin said with a suspiciously easy grin. “I can see that quite clearly. I was merely testing your mood.”

Michael arched a brow in a most forbidding manner. “And you found it…?”

“Rather as usual,” Colin answered, undeterred.

Michael did nothing but scowl at him as the waiter arrived with their drinks.

“To happiness,” Colin said, lifting his glass in the air.

“I am going to strangle him”, Michael decided right then and there.” I am going to reach across the table and wrap my hands around his throat until those annoying green eyes pop right out of his head.”

“No toast to happiness?” Colin asked.

Michael let out an incoherent grunt and downed his glass in one gulp.

“What are you drinking?” Colin asked conversationally. He leaned over and peered at Michael’s glass. “Must be jolly good stuff.”

Michael fought the urge to clock him over the head with his now empty tumbler.

“Very well,” Colin said with a shrug, “I shall toast to my own happiness, then.” He took a sip, leaned back, then touched his lips to the glass again.

Michael glanced at the clock.

“Isn’t it a good thing I have nowhere to be?” Colin mused.

Michael let his glass drop down onto the table with a loud thunk. “Is there a point to any of this?” he demanded.

For a moment it looked like Colin, who could, by all accounts, talk anyone under the table when he so chose, would remain silent. But then, just when Michael was ready to give up on any guise of politeness and simply get up and leave, he said, “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Michael held himself very still. “Meaning?”

Colin smiled, with just enough condescension that Michael wanted to punch him. “About Francesca, of course,” he said.

“Didn’t we just confirm that she has left the country?” Michael said carefully.

Colin shrugged. “Scotland’s not so very far away.”

“It’s far enough,” Michael muttered. Certainly far enough to make it abundantly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him.

“She’ll be all alone,” Colin said on a sigh.

Michael just narrowed his eyes and stared at him. Hard.

“I still think you should—” Colin broke himself off, quite on purpose, Michael was convinced. “Well, you know what I think,” Colin finally finished, taking a sip of his drink.

And Michael just gave up on being polite. “You don’t know a damned thing, Bridgerton.”

Colin raised his brows at the snarl in Michael’s voice. “Funny,” he murmured, “I hear that very thing all day long. Usually from my sisters.”

Michael was familiar with this tactic. Colin’s neat sidestep was exactly the sort of maneuver he himself employed with such facility. And it was for probably this reason that his right hand had formed a fist under the table. Nothing had the power to irritate like the reflection of one’s own behavior in someone else.

But oh God, Colin’s face was so close.

“Another whisky?” Colin asked, effectively ruining Michael’s lovely vision of blackened eyes.

Michael was in the perfect mood to drink himself into oblivion, but not in the company of Colin Bridgerton, so he just let out a terse, “No,” and pushed his chair back.

“You do realize, Kilmartin,” Colin said, his voice so soft it was almost chilling, “that there is no reason you can’t marry her. None at all. Except, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “the reasons you manufacture for yourself.”

Michael felt something tearing in his chest. His heart, probably, but he was growing so used to the feeling it was a wonder he still noticed it.

And Colin, damn his eyes, just wouldn’t shut up.

“If you don’t want to marry her,” Colin said thoughtfully, “then you don’t want to marry her. But—”

“She might say no,” Michael heard himself say. His voice sounded rough, choked, foreign to his ears.

Dear God, if he’d jumped on the table and declared his love for Francesca, he couldn’t have made it any more clear.

Colin’s head tilted a fraction of an inch to the side, just enough to acknowledge that he’d heard the subtext in Michael’s words. “She might,” he murmured. “In fact, she probably will. Women often do, the first time you ask.”

“And how many times have you proposed marriage?”

Colin smiled slowly. “Just once, actually. This afternoon, as a matter of fact.”

It was the one thing—truly, the only thing—that Colin could have said to completely diffuse Michael’s churning emotions. “I beg your pardon?” Michael asked, his jaw dropping in shock. This was Colin Bridgerton, the eldest of the unmarried Bridgerton brothers. He’d practically created a profession of avoiding marriage.

“Indeed,” Colin said mildly. “Thought it was about time, although I suppose honesty is owed here, so I should probably admit that she did not force me to ask twice. If it makes you feel any better, however, it did take several minutes to wheedle the yes out of her.”

Michael just stared.

“Her first reaction to my query was to fall to the pavement in surprise,” Colin admitted.

Michael fought the impulse to look around to see if he’d somehow been trapped in a theatrical farce without his knowledge. “Er, is she well?” he asked.

“Oh, quite,” Colin said, picking up his drink.

Michael cleared his throat. “Might I inquire as to the identity of the lucky lady?”

“Penelope Featherington.”

“The one who doesn’t speak?” Michael almost blurted out. Now there was an odd match if ever he’d seen one.

“Now you really look surprised,” Colin said, thankfully with good humor.

“I did not realize you’d hoped to settle down,” Michael hastily improvised.

“Neither did I,” Colin said with a smile. “Funny how that works out.”

Michael opened his mouth to congratulate him, but instead he heard himself asking, “Has anyone told Francesca?”

“I became engaged this afternoon,” Colin reminded him, somewhat bemusedly.

“She’ll want to know.”

“I expect she will. I certainly tormented her enough as a child. I’m sure she will wish to devise some sort of wedding-related torture for me.”

“Someone needs to tell her,” Michael said forcefully, ignoring Colin’s stroll through his childhood memories.

Colin leaned back in his seat with a casual sigh. “I imagine my mother will pen her a note.”

“Your mother will be quite busy. It won’t be the first thing on her agenda.”

“I couldn’t speculate.”

Michael frowned. “Someone should tell her about it.”

“Yes,” Colin said with a smile, “someone should. I’d go myself—It’s been an age since I’ve been up to Scotland. But of course I’m going to be a touch busy here in London, seeing as how I’m getting married. Which is, of course, the entire reason for this discussion, is it not?”

Michael shot him an annoyed glance. He hated that Colin Bridgerton thought he was cleverly manipulating him, but he didn’t see how he could disabuse him of that notion without admitting that he desperately wanted to travel to Scotland to see Francesca.

“When is the wedding to be?” he asked.

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Colin said. “Soon, I would hope.”

Michael nodded. “Then Francesca will need to be informed right away.”

Colin smiled slowly. “Yes, she will, won’t she?”

Michael scowled.

“You don’t have to marry her while you’re up there,” Colin said, “just inform her of my impending nuptials.”

Michael revisited his earlier fantasy of strangling Colin Bridgerton and found the image even more tantalizing than before.

“I’ll see you later,” Colin said as Michael headed for the door. “Perhaps a month or so?”

Meaning that he fully expected Michael not to be in London anytime soon.

Michael swore under his breath, but he did nothing to contradict him. He might hate himself for it, but now that he had an excuse to go after Francesca, he couldn’t resist making the trip.

The question was, would he be able to resist her?

And more to the point, did he even want to?

Several days later, Michael was standing at the front door of Kilmartin, his childhood home. It had been years since he’d stood here, more than four, to be precise, and he couldn’t quite halt the catch in his throat when he realized that all of this—the house, the lands, the legacy—was his. Somehow it hadn’t sunk in, perhaps in his brain, but not in his heart.

Springtime didn’t seem to have arrived in the border counties of Scotland yet, and the air, while not biting, held a chill that had him rubbing his gloved hands together. The air was misty and the skies were gray, but there was something in the atmosphere that called to him, reminding his weary soul that this, not London and not India, was home.

But his sense of place was little comfort as he prepared for what lay ahead. It was time to face Francesca.

He had rehearsed this moment a thousand times since his conversation with Colin Bridgerton back in London. What he’d say to her, how he’d make his case. And he rather thought he’d figured it out. Because before he convinced Francesca, he’d had to convince himself.

He was going to marry her.

He’d have to get her to agree, of course; he couldn’t very well force her into marriage. She’d probably come up with countless reasons why it was a mad idea, but in the end, he’d convince her.

They would marry.

Marry.

It was the one dream he’d never permitted himself to consider.

But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Forget that he loved her, forget that he’d loved her for years. She didn’t need to know any of that; telling her would only make her feel awkward and then he’d feel like a fool.

But if he could present it to her in practical terms, explain why it made sense that they marry, he was sure he could warm her to the idea. She might not understand the emotions, not when she didn’t feel them herself, but she had a cool head, and she understood sense.

And now that he’d finally allowed himself to imagine a life with her, he couldn’t let it go. He had to make it happen. He had to.

And it would be good. He might not ever have all of her—her heart, he knew, would never be his—but he’d have most of her, and that would be enough.

It was certainly more than he had now.

And even half of Francesca—Well, that would be ecstasy.

Wouldn’t it?