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‘No How dreadful’ Tess reached out and caught his hand, tugged him towards the bed ‘But what on earth could the earl have said for him to do that? Had he committed some crime?’

‘No, but he had wanted to Tess, I can’t explain’ He looked down on her bent head as she studied their joined hands and felt her concern and kindness like a caress

‘Was he in love with you?’ she asked

‘What?’ Alex realised he had almost shouted it and dropped his voice to a whisper ‘What did you say?’ He tried to tug his hand away, but Tess held tight

‘There was a scandal last year, the brother of one of the boarders He wrote a very indiscreet letter to his sister and told her what had happened He ran away to Italy with his friend’

‘I had no idea sheltered young ladies knew about such things’

‘Some of us do, and we aren’t idiots, Alex Ityou But they rong, weren’t they? I mean, you and I’

‘Yes, they rong My father’s an intolerant old bully and I was too artistic, too neat and precise for his liking Then when he realised what Peter felt—which was ether and hteous indignation, stopped on the way to rant at Peter about the stupidity of my father, then left for Oxford without any idea of the bombshell that I’d dropped at his feet’

‘If that hadn’t happened, then both you and your father would have calmed down, reconciled,’ Tess said

The sadness in her voice was like a jab in the solar plexus What had she to be sad about? Was he just another of her larief, his anger, and he hadn’t asked her to care, certainly hadn’t asked a sheltered young woman to understand variations of sexual preference that should have sent her into strong hysterics Alex found he was beco his feelings, of appearing tolerant and self-assured and all the things that right at that moment he most certainly did not feel

‘Are we going to bed or a my family?’

Tess blinked at hie to his voice Well, damn it, it was about tioodwill to all God’s creatures behind a cynical exterior Nor was he some hapless victim of cruel fate Just at that e of losing his temper for reasons he was not at all sure he understood

‘Yes, of course’ Tess flipped back the covers and ht, he saw A priht to the throat and the cuffs without a single frill or ornament to its cream plainness ‘I hoped you would come,’ she added as he tossed his robe aside

Her eyes widened Had she seen hihtened? Then Tess ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and a surge of prih him When he joined her on the bed she reached for the heown and pulled it over her head without hesitation, turned into his arhtened

He took the lips that were offered to hient body, found, without conscious intent, that he was already over her, nudging against the wet heat that was so ready for hiling with their panting breaths Her mouth was open to hient, yielding, de the pleasure like a wild horse, focused only on the turmoil of their two bodies, heard her cry and, somehow, found the focus to pull fro climax

Pleasure, exhaustion, sticky heat, softness, the beat of a heart under his Alex lay still, let his lax body coainst the soft one next to it

Gradually the huained some ascendancy over the triuht on the slender figure beneath him

Tess God, what have I done He rolled off with a contraction of muscles that almost sent him off the far side of the bed She was as near as, dain, and I used her like a courtesan

‘Alex?’ Tess blinked her eyes open onto a chilly world where the lovely, big, one Alex’s loveency, the sheer vibrant sexuality of it, had shaken her in a different way to his tenderness and care the night before That love could be so varied had never occurred to her What would it be like tomorrow?