“Agreed, Monty?” Motherham asked when all had been decided upon.

“Agreed,” he said with a careless wave of his hand. “Miss Katherine Huxtable will be bedded and enjoyed within the next fortnight. And, it might be added, she will enjoy it too.”

There was a ribald burst of laughter.

Jasper yawned hugely. This was certainly something new for him. He had never done anything like this before. But there were no really interesting challenges left that he had not already taken on and won. This would at least be interesting. Also challenging.

The seduction of Agatha Strangelove had been neither really. It had basically been the other way around, in fact, except that it could not be said that he had exactly been seduced. Miss Katherine Huxtable was a rare beauty. He had seen her a number of times so far this spring and had even taken the occasional second look. She was the young Earl of Merton’s sister, as someone had just pointed out. Her elder sister had recently married Viscount Lyngate, who was Merton’s official guardian-and possibly Miss Huxtable’s too. Now there was an interesting thought.

A formidable man, Lyngate.

As was Con Huxtable. And Jasper was not as sure as Motherham was that Con hated his cousins-at least this cousin. Jasper had met him one day driving her and another young lady about town, presumably showing them the sights, and-significantly-he had not stopped to introduce them. He had probably been protecting their innocence, an unlikely shepherd guarding the lambs from the wolf.

Con would very probably not be pleased with this wager or its inevitable outcome-for it was, of course, inevitable.

Which fact merely added titillation to the challenge, for Con was, of course, his friend.

The other men were preparing to leave, he saw. He was very glad that he was already at home, though even the thought of hauling himself to his feet and climbing the stairs to bed was daunting. He had better make the effort, though, or his valet would be in here within a half hour with a burly footman or two to carry him off to his bed. It had happened once, and Jasper had found it more than a mite humiliating. Perhaps that had been Cocking’s intention. It had never happened again.

And so less than half an hour later, having seen his friends safely off the premises, he weaved his way upstairs to his rooms, where he found his valet awaiting him despite the hour, which was late or early depending upon one’s perspective.

“Well, Cocking,” he said, allowing his man to unclothe him just as if he were a baby, “this has been a birthday best forgotten.”

“Most birthdays are, milord,” his man said agreeably.

Except that he was not going to be able to forget it, was he? A wager had been made. Another one.

He had never lost a wager.

But this time?

For a few moments after he had dismissed his valet and crossed his bedchamber to open a window, Jasper could not remember what it was he had wagered upon. It was something that even at the time he had known he would regret.

He did not usually look too closely at each year’s new crop of young marriage hopefuls. There were often a few notable beauties among them, but there was also too much danger of being ensnared in some matrimonial trap-despite what someone had said earlier about the innocents not wanting to marry him. He was, after all, a wealthy, titled gentleman, two facts that could easily wipe out a multitude of sins.

But he had looked closely more than once at Katherine Huxtable.

She was more than ordinarily beautiful. There was also a very definite aura of countrified innocence-or naivete-about her. But an air of good breeding too. And there were those eyes of hers. He had never seen them from close up, but they had intrigued him nonetheless. He had found himself wondering what was behind them.

It was most unlike him to wonder any such thing. He was a man of surfaces when it came to other people and even when it came to himself. He was not in the habit of looking within.

Perhaps part of the lady’s appeal was the fact that she was Con Huxtable’s cousin and Con had made a point of not introducing her to him.

Now he was pledged to seduce her.

Full sexual intercourse.

Within the next fortnight.

Devil take it! Yes, that was it. That was the wager. That was what he had agreed to do.

It was a sobering thought-literally. He felt as he climbed into bed as if he had progressed straight from deep drunkenness to the nauseated, head-pounding aftermath.

One of these days he was going to renounce drinking.

And wagering.

And sowing wild oats, or whatever the devil it was he had been sowing for more years than he cared to count.

One day. Not yet, though-he was only twenty-five.

And he had a wager to win before he set about reforming his ways. He had never lost a wager.

KATHERINE Huxtable was one of the most fortunate of mortals, and she was well aware of that fact as she took a brisk morning walk in London’s Hyde Park with her sister Vanessa, Lady Lyngate.

Just a few short months ago she had been living in a modest cottage in the small village of Throckbridge in Shropshire with her eldest sister, Margaret, and their young brother, Stephen. Vanessa, the widowed Vanessa Dew at the time, had been living with her in-laws at nearby Rundle Park. Katherine had spent a few days of each week teaching the very young children at the village school and helping the schoolmaster with his other classes. They had been living a life of genteel poverty, which had meant that there was almost no money except for food and the essentials of clothing-and what Meg had been saving for Stephen’s education.

And then suddenly everything had changed. Viscount Lyngate, a total stranger at the time, had arrived in the village on Valentine’s Day, bringing with him the startlingly unexpected news that Stephen was the new Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall in Hampshire as well as other sizable and prosperous properties-and a huge fortune.

And all their fortunes had changed. First they had all moved to Warren Hall, the mansion and park that were Stephen’s principal seat, taking Vanessa with them. Then Vanessa had married Viscount Lyngate. And then they had all come to London to be presented to the queen and the ton and to participate in all the busy activities of the spring Season.

So here they were, she and Vanessa, walking in the park as if there were nothing better to do in life. It all felt shockingly decadent-and undeniably enjoyable too.

Suddenly they were in possession of all sorts of new and wonderful things-money, security, fashionable clothes, vast numbers of new acquaintances, and more entertainments than there were hours in the day during which to enjoy them. And suddenly for Katherine there was the prospect of a glittering future with one of the numerous and eligible gentlemen who had already shown an interest in her.

She was twenty years old and still unattached. She had never been able to persuade herself to fall in love when she lived in Throckbridge, though she had had a number of chances. The trouble was that she still could not here in London even though she genuinely liked a number of her admirers.

She had just admitted in response to a question Vanessa had asked that there was no one special among the gentlemen of her acquaintance.

“Do you want someone special in your life?” Vanessa asked with perhaps a thread of exasperation in her voice.

“Of course I do,” Katherine admitted with something of a sigh. “But that is it you see, Nessie. He must be special. I am coming to the conclusion that there is no such person, that I am looking for a mirage, an impossibility.”