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Beth squeaked. "Then why are you biting me?"

"Perhaps I'm hungry. You taste better than cold pork. In fact, I am excited by anger. I hope Francis and Serena are, too."

Beth grabbed his ears in an attempt to control him. "What's been going on? Who's angry and why?"

He released her and took over her chair by the tray. He picked up her fork and started in on her sponge cake. "Take your clothes off and I'll tell you, one fact for each item."

Beth stared at him. "Lucien! You are in a most peculiar mood."

He raised his brows and grinned.

Beth giggled, then took off one slipper and dangled it.

"The Allbright brothers had some scurrilous pictures of Serena and were trying to sell them to her for ten thousand pounds."

"What?
What did you do?"

He just smiled. She took off the other slipper and threw it at him.

"Francis and I went to the Scepter Inn to confront them...."

* * *

Francis entered his house trying to taste the atmosphere. What did he have to face here?

Dibbert appeared so quickly that he must have been hovering. "Welcome home, milord." It sounded intensely honest.

Francis shed his outer clothing into the man's hands. "Is Lady Middlethorpe at home?"

"Yes, milord. She is in her chamber."

"Excellent." Francis headed toward the stairs.

"My lord!"

He turned impatiently. "Yes?"

"Dinner has been ready for some time...."

"Do what the hell you like with it." Francis took the stairs two at a time.

At Serena's door, he braced himself. No sound could be heard. Was that good news or bad? Perhaps she had cried herself to sleep....

He opened the door and went in.

Serena was kneeling on the floor over a piece of paper, scribbling. Her jewels were scattered around the room amidst more sheets of paper and a great many torn scraps. There seemed to be a lot of broken china as well.

He closed the door carefully.

She looked up and her eyes flashed. "Hah!" She grabbed the nearest solid item and hurled it. "Go away!"

A silver manacle missed his head by an inch, leaving a scar on the mahogany doorjamb. He looked back just in time to dodge the other. She was scrambling to her feet, doubtless to try to improve her aim.

He launched himself at her and trapped her on the floor, but her writhing, maddened body could hardly be controlled. "Stop it, Serena! What the devil's the matter with you?"

She froze, glaring at him. "What's the matter with me? You called me a worthless tart and an adulteress!"

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry!
I'll make you sorry!" Now she was back to struggling with an intensity that made him afraid he might hurt her. He released her and backed away.

"Serena, let's talk about this sensibly."

She leapt to her feet, hair wild and loose, eyes burning with a passion he had never seen in her before.
"Sensible?
That's what I've been all my life. I've been
sensibly
quiet,
sensibly
docile,
sensibly
obedient. Well, I won't be anymore."

"Good."

She jerked with surprise, but then her eyes narrowed. "Oh, no, you won't cozen me that way. I am very angry with you!" She grabbed a candlestick and hurled it. He ducked it, but it hit a picture on the wall, shattering the glass.

"Goddammit, Serena, stop this! I made a mistake, but what else was I to think when I saw you in Ferncliff's bedroom?"

"And I suppose you've killed him for it, haven't you? Why aren't you after me with a gun, too, you bloodthirsty monster? That was the point of that shooting exercise, wasn't it? Not to reassure me, but to show that you could kill!" She picked up the vase containing the daffodil and threw it. It missed, but the water didn't.

"Ferncliff is in excellent health," snarled Francis, brushing water off his face, "which is more than will be true of you if you don't cease this disgraceful behavior!"

"Are you going to whip me?" She whirled around and grabbed the jeweled silk-thronged whip. "Here." That, too, flew through the air at him.

He caught it by the handle. "I'm very tempted."

Serena planted her fists on her hips. "Oh, why not? It's what I'd expect from a man. I warn you, though, it only stings and reddens the flesh for quite a while. You have to have patience if you want it to really hurt."

Francis threw the whip aside. "Serena, stop this. I misjudged you. But all the evidence was against you."

"What evidence?"

"I saw you coming out of a man's bedchamber for a start!"

"And could conceive of no explanation except that I was having an affair with him? For your information, Charles Ferncliff is a prosy bore!"

"Even boring men become lovers now and then. I have proof of that. I might not have leapt to conclusions if I hadn't found his card in your pocket and heard that you were meeting him in the garden."

"Meeting
him! Bumping into him, more likely. You need to do something about that garden of yours. No one is safe there!"

"The gate is now locked."

"And why," demanded Serena with scarcely a pause for breath, "were you going through my pockets? And who did you have spying on me? I had my fill of that from Matthew. I will not stand for it again."

"I didn't set anyone to spy on you!"

"So, a card, two accidental meetings, and finding me in Ferncliff's room..."

Serena paused, considering that list. Despite her longing to cling to her delicious anger, her sense of fairness was reasserting itself. She tried, though. "You wouldn't have given a thought to those things if you didn't think me a loose woman."

"Of course I don't think that."

Now Serena was distracted by the very look of him. His hair was damp and disordered, and his clothes had a somewhat disheveled look, but it was the energy crackling around him that stole her breath. She wanted to devour him.

"What
do
you think, then?" She grabbed a picture and thrust it at him. It was one of the more innocent ones. She had been drawn sitting on a stone balustrade, one arm around an urn. The urn was now a monstrous phallus. "What do you think of
that,
then?"

He looked at it for a moment, then burst out laughing. She flailed at him, but he caught her arm and trapped her close. "I'm sorry, love, but it is very silly. Is that what has you so upset? These pictures?"

She wouldn't surrender and held herself rigidly. "No.
Men
have me upset. My brothers, my husband, his friends, your friends, and
you.
I am very angry."

He looked beyond her and let her go. He picked up the picture she had been scribbling on when he came in. She could feel the color in her cheeks at having been caught in such a childish impulse. He picked up one, then another. She had been changing them so the naked victims were men and the clothed oppressors were women.

"I have a right to be angry," she said. "I like being angry. I am enjoying my rage!" It was a rear-guard action, though, for the genuine tender concern in his eyes was leaching away her fury.

Without a word, he began to remove his clothes.

"What are you doing? I'm not doing bed-work with you now."

He stopped, in only his pantaloons. "Bed-work? Is that how you think of it?"

He was hurt. "No. Matthew called it that."

He continued to strip. "You just called it that."

Serena didn't know what to say. When he stood naked before her, he was aroused. "I suppose these pictures excite you," she accused. "Tom said he wore out two whores after looking through them."

"Your brother is beneath contempt and no indication of men in general."

"No? I have experienced little else."

"Really?"

She looked away, arms tightly folded. "I suppose that's another reason you're ready to believe the worst of me. My brothers. You probably think I'm cut from the same cloth."

"No, never. Actually, Lady Cawle is of the opinion that you and your brothers have different fathers."

Serena swiveled back. "What? Oh, this is beyond anything! Now I'm not just an adulteress, I'm a
bastard!"

He gripped one of the bedposts, and she saw his knuckles gleam white. "Serena, I'm losing patience. For the last time, I do not think you are an adulteress. I hope you are a bastard, though, because the less connection between you and your brothers the better, but I don't much care either way. If I'm to be crudely honest, I am suffering a violent excess of lust."

Serena could see it was true. "Suffer, then."

"I will until you feel the same way."

She stared at him. "But I can't..."

"Can you not? Perhaps if you funneled all your rage into abusing my naked body...?"

"Francis!" But something was uncoiling like a serpent in her belly—rage, lust... Both?

He walked across the room, all lean muscular grace, and picked up the manacles. He inspected them for a moment, then clipped them on his wrists, even though they must be cruelly tight.

"Stop it," she whispered. But by the stars, the silver and jewels on his wrists made him look like a magnificent creature of dreams.

"Do you want to tie me to the bedposts?" he asked. "Do you want to whip me?"

"No! Stop it." Without conscious thought she walked to him and laid her hands on his rib cage. "I feel very strange."

A flame lit in his eyes. "I hoped you might." He grabbed her by the hair and kissed her, and the metal on his wrists was cold against her neck. He twisted her so they tumbled onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and hair.

But Serena fought free. "No. I want to undress!"

After a reluctant moment, he let her leave the bed. He watched her, though, his eyes dark with the passion that showed in his erection, in his color, and in his unsteady breaths—the passion he held under ruthless control.

The balance of beauty, lust, and powerful control weakened Serena so her fumbling fingers could hardly manage her fastenings. She hummed with a need that was new to her, that frightened her even as it drew her, for it could become a master and she its slave....

When she was finally naked, she faced him and asked, "Am I your slave now?"

He held out his hands. "I'm the one in shackles."

Serena picked up the barbaric slave collar and considered it a moment. Then she fastened it around her neck with a sharp click. The heavy golden chain hung cold between her breasts and brushed against her thighs as she approached the bed.

She thought perhaps he trembled, but there was nothing hesitant in his action when he caught the loose end of the chain, wound it once around his shackled wrist, and slowly pulled her down to him.

She was both afraid and desirous, unsure of this strange world. "Now we are each prisoner of the other," she whispered and gave her lips permission to explore his torso, to move lower and lower down his body toward an anticipated target.

That thought chilled her, and she stopped her gentle foray. She had never wanted that before, never dreamed of it as anything except a loathsome duty. If she had come to like these things, what did it make her? She looked up at him. "Francis, this isn't right. What if I desire many men? What if I have the soul of a whore? Look at my mother."

He pulled her up to face him. "Serena, there's no right and wrong between us. Anyway," he added with a gentle kiss, "if Lady Cawle is to be believed, your mother only ever wanted one man, and it wasn't your legal father."

Serena thought of her quiet, unhappy mother. "Oh, I do hope that's true, though it makes me very sad for her."

"But she had her moment of delight. Do we not deserve ours?"

Serena was still not sure, but she would give him anything she could. "You certainly do."

He shook his head, but asked, "Do you like being kissed yet?"

She slid her hands into his hair. "I think I might."

They experimented and proved that she did indeed like being kissed.

His hand brushed lightly over her breast. "And this?"

"Yes, that is sweet..."

His lips and teeth replaced his fingers and Serena gave a cry of desperate astonishment. "Francis, Francis!" How was it that everything was changed, that touches that had left her cold now inflamed her...?

She heard him murmur, "Perhaps the books were right after all," but thought was drowned by the fevered pounding of her blood.

His hand and mouth worked magic on her and he whispered, "Let it happen, Serena! Let it."

She wanted it to, for him as much as herself, but it was as if a part of her was locked, chained by fear, unable to trust...

In the end, Serena could only moan, thrashing her head, tormented by the impossible. She cried out her desperation and begged him to stop.

When he did she rolled away, aching with shame and frustration. Why could he not just take? Why did he have this terrible need to
give?