"He will love whom he will. All you can hope to do is purchase some time for him to consider his actions. With any luck he will use the time to make certain that what he feels for Juliana Dorchester is genuine love and not a passing fancy."

"I still think my approach is more likely to produce the desired results," Marcus said. "I wouldn't he at all, surprised if I have nipped the entire affair in the bud this evening."

"I think your approach will lead to disaster." "Hell and damnation. I detest this sort of emotional nonsense."

"You, sir, have no patience with anything that does not conform to the laws of science."

"Things were so much simpler when Bennet was younger," Marcus said in a low voice. "He respected my advice in those days. He asked me for help when he needed it. He sought my approval before he undertook an important task."

"I understand." Iphiginia smiled wistfully. "It was the same way between my sister and myself when she was a child. But everyone grows up eventually, Marcus."

"Must they destroy their own chance of happiness in the process?"

"Sometimes." "The cost of being wrong is too high. I cannot let him do it, Iphiginia."

Iphiginia took a grip on her fan. "Sir, I have taught students for several years. I have discovered that they do not always learn the lesson you believe that you are teaching. Too often they learn something else entirely."

"What is that cryptic remark supposed to mean?" "You must believe me when I tell you that your way of dealing with this situation is fraught with risk. Bennet will learn much from how you handle this situation."

"I should hope to God he will," Marcus said fervently.

"But I doubt that he will learn the lesson you believe that you are teaching. In short, my lord, when all is said and done, there is every chance that he will become more like you if this business ends badly. Do you really want that for him?"

Marcus looked at her in cold amazement. "I beg your pardon?"

"You are teaching him the things that are likely to transform him into a copy of yourself in later years."

"And just what sort of man is that?" Marcus asked in a dangerously soft voice.

"A man who lives by rules that are so rigid and so unbending that they do not allow room for love."

A terrible silence descended inside the carriage. Marcus did not move so much as an inch, but Iphiginia nearly drowned beneath the silent waves of his fury.

"My lord, I do not pretend to know much about your first marriage. I cannot help but conclude, however, that it was not a happy one."

"It was a living hem." "I wish to claim my half of our bargain. I want an answer to this question. Could anyone who knew you at the time of your marriage have stopped you from going through with it?"

For a moment she did not think he would answer. "No." The single word was as heavy as a stone. "Very likely not. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought that I was in love." His smile was savage. "I believed that Nora loved me."

"Perhaps she did," Iphiginia offered tentatively. "No." Marcus's hand closed briefly into a fist. "She needed a father for the babe she carried."

Iphiginia froze. "I did not realize-" Marcus met her eyes. His own were cold. "No one did. I have never told another soul that Nora came to me after she had got herself with child by another man."

"Oh, Marcus. How terrible for you." He fell silent for a while. Iphiginia could not think of anything more to say. She was stunned by the realization that he had kept the truth to himself for so long.

"Nora's family lived on the neighboring farm," Marcus said eventually. It sounded as though he were digging the words out of a grave where they had been buried for a very long time. "I had known her most of her life. I was a year older than she and I had believed myself to be in love with her since the day I turned sixteen."

"Marcus, please, you do not have to tell me this." He acted as if he had not heard her. "She found me amusing, I think. And useful. We learned to dance together at the local assembly rooms. I taught her to fish. She was the first woman I ever kissed."

Iphiginia did not want to hear any more. «Please-» "But I was just a simple country farmer. At the time the title was in the hands of a distant uncle. I never expected to inherit. Nora wanted more out of life than I could ever give her. And she was so very beautiful that she and her parents convinced themselves that she could look a good deal higher than a local country squire. The year Nora turned eighteen, her family took her to London for a Season."

"What happened?" Iphiginia asked, dreading the answer.

"She came home in June of that year and everything had changed. She was no longer the flirtatious, charming, happy young woman she had been when she left. She virtually threw herself into my arms and told me that she had finally realized that it was me she loved."

"I see." Iphiginia looked down at her fan. The waves of Marcus's old anger and pain beat at her steadily, unrelentingly.

"And I was so naive and inexperienced that I believed her." Marcus kept his gaze fixed on the night outside the coach window. "She told me that she had discovered that she did not care for Town life. She wanted us to he wed as soon as possible. Her parents were in full agreement. Her father took me aside and suggested we go to Gretna Green."

"No long engagement, I take it?" "Somehow everyone came to the conclusion that there was no point in wasting the time or the money. And I was so eager for her that I did not raise any objection. Nora and I went to Gretna Green. We spent our wedding night at an inn. I couldn't wait to take her in my arms."

"I really do not think I want to hear this." "I wanted her so much. I was determined to be as gentle as possible with her. But she cried that night. For hours, it seemed. She told me that I had hurt her dreadfully. Told me that I had the rough, callused hands of a farmer." Marcus looked down at his broad fists. "It was true. I did have the hands of a farmer. I was a farmer."

Iphiginia shivered at the memory of his hands on her. Strong hands. Good hands. Hands that made a woman feel wanted, needed. And safe. Tears formed in her eyes.

"The next morning there was a fair amount of blood on the sheets. I learned later that her mother had provided her with a small bottle of the stuff from the kitchen the day we left for Gretna. She needn't have bothered."

"I don't understand " Iphiginia whispered. "Even if there had been no blood, I would not have suspected that Nora had been with another man. I was the virgin in that wedding bed. I was far more ignorant than she about such matters."

"How did you learn that she had had another lover?" Iphiginia asked quietly.

"She miscarried the babe a month after we were married. I nearly went mad. I had no notion of what was happening. I thought she was dying."

"Dear heaven. "I summoned the doctor. When it was all over he told me what had occurred. He wanted to reassure me. He assumed I was the father, of course, and that the babe was the reason for our hasty trip to Gretna. He patted me on the shoulder and told me there would he another babe soon enough."

"You did not tell him the truth?" Marcus's mouth twisted. "Of course — not. What man would admit that he had been duped in such a fashion? And then there was Nora. She was my wife."

"And you felt you had to protect her, too, didn't you?" Iphiginia asked.

Marcus shrugged but said nothing. "You had taken care of your brother for years. Protecting someone younger and weaker than yourself was second nature to you. What did Nora say?"

"When I confronted her with the truth, she cried again. Then she broke down and told me the whole sordid tale. She had been seduced by one of her admirers in London, a young rake who was after an heiress and who had no intention of marrying her. Nor did he hesitate to boast. of his conquest."