This was the moment upon which the whole of her future hinged. She continued to swing one foot, careful not to increase the speed or otherwise show how tensely nervous she was. She half closed her eyes, half smiled.

"Business?" He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, brushed his hands rather ineffectually over his clothes, and attempted to tidy the fall of his neckcloth. He still looked like a man who had slept fully clothed.

"I did not seduce you," she said, "for the pleasure of just one night in your company, Lord Merton. Especially when you slept through most of it."

"I beg your – " he began.

She held up one hand.

"I take your sleeping so soundly as a tribute to the pleasure I gave you," she said. "I slept through most of the night too. You are a very… satisfactory lover." She curved her lips upward at the corners.

He did not say anything.

"I want you tonight again and tomorrow night and every night into the foreseeable future," she said. "And I can see to it that you will want me equally as much and for at least as long, Lord Merton. Or do I not need to employ further seduction? Do you already want it?"

His answer gave her a slight jolt of alarm.

"I do not like the word /seduction/," he said. "It suggests weakness on the part of the seduced and cold calculation on the part of the seducer.

It suggests an inequality of desire and need. It suggests a puppet and a puppeteer. I have never admired male seducers because they exploit women and make of them only playthings for their beds. I have never met a female seducer, though I am very familiar with the story of the sirens."

"Did you not meet one last evening, Lord Merton?" she asked him.

He smiled at her.

"I met a lady," he said, "who /called/ herself that. You, in fact. I would prefer to think that in your loneliness – pardon me, your /aloneness/ – you looked for someone for whom you could feel the comfort of an attraction, and you found me. You did not seduce me, Cassandra.

You were open and bold about the attraction you felt, something I have not encountered in any of the ladies of my acquaintance, who usually employ a whole arsenal of more subtle wiles if they are interested in capturing my attention. I appreciated your openness. I felt an equal attraction to you. I would have asked you to dance with me even if you had not collided with me just before the waltz began. I do not suppose I would have also invited you to share a bed with me quite so soon if you had not made it very clear that it was what /you/ wanted, but our mutual attraction might have led us here eventually."

He had misunderstood entirely. Which was just as well. /Our mutual attraction/.

"Yes," he said, "I do want to sleep with you again and again into the future. But I must ask some questions first."

She raised her eyebrows and regarded him haughtily.

"Indeed?" she said. She had somehow lost control over this business conference. She was supposed to be doing the talking, he the listening.

"Tell me about Lord Paget's death," he said. He was leaning forward, his arms draped over his knees. His blue eyes were looking very intensely at her.

"He died," she said, smiling scornfully. "What more is to be said? You want me to tell you that his skull was cleaved in two with an axe, Lord Merton? It was not. It was a bullet that killed him – a bullet through the heart."

He was still looking very directly at her.

"Did you kill him?" he asked.

She pursed her lips and looked back into his eyes.

"Yes," she said.

She did not realize he had been holding his breath until he expelled it audibly.

"I might have found it difficult to wield an axe," she said, "but a pistol was a weapon I was quite capable of using. I used one. I shot him through the heart with it. And I have never regretted it. I have not for one moment mourned him."

His head had dropped so that he was looking down at the floor and she was gazing at the top of his head. She thought his eyes might be closed.

The fingers of both his hands curled into his palms. He did not speak for a long time.

"Why?" he asked at last.

"Because," she said, and smiled though he was not looking at her.

"Perhaps because I felt like doing so."

She ought to have said no to his original question. Was she trying to drive him away and sabotage her carefully laid plans? She could not have chosen a better way.

There was another loud silence. When he spoke again, his voice was scarcely audible.

"Did he abuse you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "He did."

He lifted his head at last and looked intently at her again with troubled eyes, a frown between his brows.

"I am sorry," he said.

"Why?" she asked him, her lip curling. "Could you have done anything to prevent it but failed to do so, Lord Merton?"

"I am sorry," he said, "that so many men are brutes simply because they are physically stronger than women. Was it bad enough, then, that you had no alternative but to kill him?"

But he answered his own question before she could do so.

"It must have been. Why were you not arrested?"

"I shot him in the library," she said, "late in the evening. There were no witnesses, and by the time a number of people gathered there, drawn by the noise, there was no knowing who had done it. There was and is no proof that I did. Anyone could have. Anyone at all. The house was full of servants and other residents. The library window was open to the whole world beyond. No one can prove anything except that he died of a bullet wound."

"And except," he said, "that you have confessed to me."

"And to no one else besides you," she said. "You will fear from this moment on that when you are asleep one night I will kill you too in order to keep you silent."

"I am not a tattler," he said, "and I am not afraid. You must not be either."

"I do not fear you," she said. "A gentleman does not reveal a lady's secrets, and I believe you /are/ a gentleman. And I do not fear you would ever abuse me. If you did, I would not kill you. Why would I when I can simply walk away from you as I could not from a husband? A widow has power, Lord Merton. She is free."

Except that she was not. Her lack of money set her in thrall. And somehow this conversation was not proceeding at all as she had planned it in her mind. Then she had been able to control his answers as well as her questions. She was not sure there was a way of bringing it back under her control.

"I will be happy," he said, "to be your lover. I will treat you kindly.

I promise you that. And when it is over, you will simply tell me and I will go."

"But the trouble is, Lord Merton," she said, "that I cannot afford a liaison that is simply an affaire de coeur."

It was not at all as she had intended to say it. But it was too late now. The words were out, and his gaze had sharpened further on her.

"Cannot /afford/?" he said.

"A man who succeeds to his father's title and property and fortune," she said, "is almost always going to consider his surviving stepmother an encumbrance. But most such men honor their obligations nonetheless. The present Lord Paget did not."

"Your husband left no provision for you in his will?" he said, frowning.

"Or in your marriage contract?"

"Certainly he did," she said. "Do you think I would have killed him if I had known I would be left destitute, Lord Merton? I was to have the dower house at Carmel for my use during my lifetime, and the house in town here. I was to have a money settlement, all my personal jewelry, and a comfortable pension for life."

He was still frowning.

"Can Paget legally withhold any of those things from you?" he asked.

"He cannot," she said. "Neither can I legally kill a man. His father, in fact. It was a stalemate, Lord Merton, but he resolved it. He would not pursue prosecution against me if I just simply went away empty-handed."