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Chapter One

Haust 1852

Anyone who had ever read a novel knew that governesses were supposed to be meek and downtrodden They were also supposed to be quiet, subservient, and obedient, not to mention deferential to the master of the house Leo, Lord Raotten one of those Instead the Hathaway family had hired Catherine Marks, who, in Leo’s opinion, cast an unflattering shadow upon the entire profession

It wasn’t that Leo found fault with Marks’s actual abilities She had done an excellent job of instructing his two youngest sisters, Poppy and Beatrix, in the finer points of social etiquette And they had needed an inordinate amount of help, since none of the Hathaways had ever expected to le in the upper circles of British society They had been reared in a strictly e west of London Their father, Edward Hathaway, had been a ood blood but hardly an aristocrat

However, after a series of unlikely events, Leo had inherited the title of Lord Rah he had trained to be an architect, he was now a viscount with land and tenants The Hathaways had led to adjust to the dees for the Hathaway sisters had been to learn the absurdladies Had it not been for Catherine Marks’s patient instruction, the Hathaould have ra elephants Marks had done wonders for all of them, especially Beatrix, as undoubtedly the h Beatrix was happiest roh the ed to impress on her that a different code of behavior was required in the ballrooirls, with such literary ge with a stranger

Flirtations, quarrels, or coer

Naturally Leo hadn’t been able to resistMarks’s poetic abilities, but he had to admit privately that her ated a London season, at last And Poppy had recently e

Now only Beatrix was left Marks had assuetic nineteen-year-old As far as the rest of the Hathaere concerned, Catherine Marks was practically a member of the family

Leo, for his part, couldn’t abide the woive orders to him On the rare occasions when Leo tried to be friendly, she snapped at him or turned away in scorn When he stated a perfectly rational opinion, he could hardly finish a sentence before Marks had listed all the reasons why he rong

Faced with the immutable fact of her dislike, Leo couldn’t help but respond in kind All during the past year he had tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter if she despised him There were ing, and appealing than Catherine Marks

If only she didn’t fascinate hiuarded so zealously Marks never talked about her childhood or her family, or why she had taken a position with the Hathaways She had taught at a girls’ school for a short time, but she refused to discuss her academic tenure or explain why she had left There were ruht have been a poor relation of the headmistress, or that she was a fallen woo into service

Marks was so self-contained and tenacious that it was often easy to forget she was still a young woman in her early twenties When Leo had first met her, she had been the perfect embodiment of a dried-up spinster, with her spectacles and forbidding scowl and her stern hyphen of aas a fireplace poker, and her hair, the dull brown of apple htly The Grim Reaper, Leo had nicknamed her, despite the objections of the fae in Marks She had filled out, her body slender but no longer ained color A week and a half ago, when Leo had arrived from London, he had been absolutely astonished to see Marks with light golden locks Apparently she had been dyeing her hair for years, but after an error on the part of the apothecary, she had been forced to abandon the disguise And whereas the darker brown locks had been too severe for her delicate features and pale skin, her own natural blond was stunning

Which had left Leo to grapple with the fact that Catherine Marks, his mortal enemy, was a beauty It wasn’t really the altered hair color that made her look so different … it was more that Marks was so uncomfortable without it She felt vulnerable, and it showed As a result, Leo wanted to strip away more layers, literal and physical He wanted to know her

Leo had tried to keep his distance while he pondered the ramifications of this discovery He was confounded by his faWhy weren’t any of them even a fraction as curious about her as he was? Why had Marks deliberately ? What the devil was she hiding from?

On a sunny Hampshire afternoon when Leo had ascertained that most of the family was otherwise occupied, he went in search of Marks, reasoning that if he confronted her in private, he would get soarden filled with flowers She occupied a bench at the side of a graveled path

She was not alone

Leo stopped at twenty yards’ distance, drawing into the shade of a heavily foliated yew

Marks was sitting beside Poppy’s new husband, Harry Rutledge They were engaged in what appeared to be an intih the situation wasn’t precisely incri, neither was it appropriate

What in God’s nae, it was clear that soe’s dark head was inclined over hers protectively Like a close friend Like a lover

Leo’sbeneath her spectacles with a delicate hand, as if to wipe away a tear

Marks was crying, in the coe kissed her on the forehead

Leo’s breath stopped Holding still, he sorted through an emulsion of emotions and separated them into layers … a Plotting soe once kept her as aher, or was she perhaps extorting so from him? No … the tenderness between the pair was evident even at this distance

Leo rubbed the lower half of his jaw as he considered what to do Poppy’s happiness was more i over to beat his sister’s new husband to a bloody pulp, he would find out exactly what the situation was And then, if circue to a bloody pulp

Taking slow, e stood and went back to the house, while Marks re a conscious decision, Leo approached her slowly He wasn’t certain hoas going to treat her, or what he was going to say It depended on which ily the moment he reached her It was entirely possible that he would throttle her It was equally likely that he would pull her to the sun-war in a hot, unpleasant rush of feeling that wasn’t at all familiar Was it jealousy? Christ, it was He was jealous over a skinny tered him at every opportunity

Was this some new level of depravity? Had he developed a spinster fetish?

Perhaps it was her very reserve that Leo found so erotic … he had always been fascinated by the question of what it would take to demolish it Catherine Marks, his fiendish little adversary … naed andhe’d ever wanted more And that , there was no challenge in it But taking Marks to bed, ed and screamed … now, that would be fun

Leo walked toward her casually, not ht of him Her face beca her head in his hands, kissing her for long lasciviousin his arms

Instead he stood with his fists in his coat pockets, surveying her without expression "Care to explain what that was all about?"

The sun glinted on the lenses of Marks’s spectacles,on me, my lord?"

"Hardly Whatever spinsters do in their personal time doesn’t interest me in the least But it’s difficult not to notice when arden"

One had to give Marks credit for co of her hands in her lap "One kiss," she said "On the forehead"

"It doesn’tto explain to me why he did it And why you let him And try to make it credible, because I’er ayou bodily to the coach road and putting you on the next cart bound for London"