“There may be no more petals on the bloom,” he said, “but there are certainly thorns enough on the stem. I do believe, Duchess, you may be quite confident of my fidelity for the next few months. I would not have the physical stamina to take on another one like you—or even unlike you, for that matter. Lie there for a while, and I will go and rouse my coachman. He will not be delighted. He expects to be called out early in the morning, but I believe this hour qualifies more as middle of the night than morning.”

He got out of bed as he spoke and pulled on his clothes.

Hannah lay where she was until he had left the room.

Well, this had been an interesting night. And not an altogether comfortable one. It had not turned out anything like what she had expected.

For one thing, the actual … experience had been far more carnal than anything she had imagined. Oh, and probably at least twice as pleasurable too, even if it had left her annoyingly sore.

But it had also left her with the uneasy suspicion that having a lover was going to involve a little more than just sprightly innuendo and vigorous bed sport. And she really had not expected or wanted more.

She suspected that this liaison with Constantine Huxtable was going to involve some sort of relationship, just as her marriage had.

She did not want a relationship. Not this time.

Except that she did. She just wanted it to be one-sided or on her terms. She realized that fact with some surprise. Right from the start she had wanted to know more about him—everything about him, in fact. She had told him so. He was such a dark, mysterious man. Certain things were known about him. But she did not know anyone who knew him. Her duke had not, though he had spoken of him from time to time. He had suspected that Constantine’s brooding darkness held hatred, that his often charming social manner held love, and that therefore he was a complex, dangerous, impossibly attractive man. He had actually said that.

It was probably in those words that she had found the seed of her decision to take Mr. Constantine Huxtable for a lover.

Tonight he had told her he had hated his young, mentally handicapped brother. And yet she could tell him with the greatest confidence that he had loved his brother too. Probably to the point of great pain.

What she had not realized until tonight, fool that she was, was that a relationship could not be an entirely one-sided thing. He had found out more about her tonight than she had about him.

Good heavens!

Her reputation would be in tatters if he told the ton what he had discovered tonight. Not that he would tell, of course.

But he knew.

How provoking!

She did not want a relationship. She wanted only … well, she must learn to use the word. The duke had always used it in her hearing, and she was not missish. She wanted only sex with Constantine Huxtable.

And it really had been glorious tonight, the sex. It had not even been painful until afterward. While it had been happening, it could have gone on all night as far as she was concerned. Poor Constantine. He would be dead.

Hannah snorted inelegantly as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and found her stockings.

SHE DID NOT WANT HIM to go with her, but Constantine gave her no choice. He handed her into the carriage and climbed in beside her. He took her hand in his and rested it on his thigh.

She looked more her usual self in her white cloak, the wide hood pulled up over her head.

He would never see her the same way again, though. Which was understandable, of course. He had seen her without the clothes and the careful coiffure. He had possessed her body.

But it was not just that.

At least in one respect she was not the woman everyone thought her to be, that everyone assumed her to be. The sort of woman she had surely gone out of her way to pretend to be.

Her marriage to the duke had never been consummated. That was not particularly surprising in itself. There had been endless speculation about it, in fact. But all those lovers she had flaunted before society—Zimmer, Bentley, Hardingraye, to name just a few.

Not lovers.

He had been her first.

It was a dizzying thought. He had never before been anyone’s first. He had never wanted to be.

Good Lord!

“You will need a few days to recover, Duchess,” he said as the carriage neared Hanover Square. “Shall we say next Tuesday, after the Kitteridge ball?”

She would never allow him the last word, of course—though she had at the garden party yesterday afternoon, had she not? It was her turn, then.

“Next Monday night,” she said. “The duke keeps a box at the theater, but there is no one to use it except me. I have promised Barbara that we will go. I shall invite Mr. and Mrs. Park too, and perhaps their son, the clergyman, if he is in town. You will escort me.”

“The perfect group,” he said. “A clergyman, a clergyman’s betrothed—though not to the aforementioned clergyman, the first clergyman’s parents, and the Duchess of Dunbarton with her new paramour, sometimes known as the devil.”

“One always likes to provide interesting topics for drawing room conversations,” she said.

Yes, he could imagine one did if one happened to be the Duchess of Dunbarton.

He lifted her hand to his lips as he felt the carriage turning into the square and then slowing and stopping. He lowered his head and kissed her mouth.

“I shall look forward to Monday night with the greatest impatience,” he said.

“But not Monday evening?” she asked.

“I will tolerate it,” he said. “Dessert is always more appetizing at the end of a meal, after all, as we discovered this evening.”

And he rapped on the inside of the carriage door to indicate to his coachman that they were ready to descend.

Someone had already been roused inside the house. The doors opened even as Constantine stepped down to the pavement and turned to hand the duchess down.

A moment later he watched her ascend the steps unhurriedly, her back straight, her head high. The doors closed quietly behind her.

This felt a little different from his usual springtime affair, Constantine thought.

A little less comfortable.

A little more erotic.

What the devil had he meant—I also hated him.

He had never hated Jon. Not even for the merest moment. He had loved him. He still mourned him. Sometimes he thought he would never stop grieving. There was a huge, empty black hole where Jon had been.

I also hated him.

He had spoken those words to the Duchess of Dunbarton, of all people.

What the devil had he meant?

And what else was she hiding apart from the minor, now-revealed fact that she had come to him tonight as a virgin?

The answer was absolutely nothing, of course. She had readily admitted that she married Dunbarton for the title and the money. And now she was using her freedom and power to take a little sensual pleasure for herself.

He could hardly blame her.

He turned and frowned at his coachman, who was waiting for him to climb back inside the carriage.

“Take it home,” he said. “I’ll walk.”

His coachman shook his head slightly and shut the door.

“Right you are, sir,” he said.