Lucy flicked a hunted look around the room. "I would ask you not to mention it," she said. "My reputation-"

"Would surely suffer more if it became widely known that you attend lessons in Eastern dancing or life drawing," Robert said. "What an interesting society the Highland Ladies must be! I can quite see why its workings are secret."

Two bright spots of color burned in Lucy's cheeks. She looked charmingly annoyed. "The Highland Ladies wish to learn and broaden our experience," she said. "Our pursuits are entirely educational."

"Well, that is one word for it, I suppose," Robert said.

"You have double standards," Lucy said. "No one reproved Rubens for painting nudes. No one reproaches the gentlemen who frequent the Edinburgh clubs for their pursuits. People are quick to judge."

Robert scrutinized her thoroughly. She looked exquisite this evening in another demure debutante gown of white silk laced with silver thread, her vivid red hair piled up with diamond pins, so elegant, so discreet.

"It is curious," he said slowly, "that you are so determinedly proper on the outside, Lady Lucy, yet you write erotic poetry, you drink claret and you find music and dancing sensual. Is your propriety all for show?"

Now there was no doubt that he had provoked her. He saw a flash of anger in her eyes and something else, something different. Surprise. Panic?

"I am proper," she said. "A perfect lady. Everyone says so." Her fidgeting fingers were playing with the struts of her fan now. Robert heard them creak in protest.

"Everyone thinks you are proper," Robert corrected. "Unless, of course, you are deceiving yourself along with everyone else and you genuinely believe that you have no passion in you." He leaned closer to her. His fingers brushed her bare arm above the edge of her glove and he felt her shiver. He smiled. He suspected that Lady Lucy was in denial of her own passionate desires and he would be very happy to point out to her what it was she truly wanted.

"Tell me," he said, "what it is that you would look for in the man you chose to marry?"

She looked startled. Then her lashes swept down, veiling her expression.

"Why do you ask?" she said.

"I'm curious," Robert said, recognizing evasion when he saw it. "Humor me. You have rejected many suitors. Why?"

There was a strange expression in Lucy's eyes. Suddenly they were a blank blue, as though she had erected a barrier to keep him from reading any emotion there. "It's true that I am considered very particular," she said. "I was betrothed once. Lord MacGillivray was my perfect ideal of a gentleman. I do not expect to wed as I do not expect to meet his equal."

She spoke smoothly, as though she had said the words many times before. Robert wondered why he did not believe her. Something did not ring quite true. It was not that he thought she lied, more that she had become so accustomed to saying the words that she had started to believe them herself.

"A perfect ideal?" he said. He tried and failed to keep the skepticism from his voice. "Forgive me, but I never heard such rubbish in my life. There is no such thing as a perfect ideal."

Lucy stiffened. He saw surprise reflected in her eyes, and confusion. It was quite clear than no one had ever challenged her on the subject before. "Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, Lord Methven," she said, after a moment. Her voice was sharp. "I had forgotten how very abrasive you could be."

"Because I am honest?" Robert said.

"Because you are rude and brusque," Lucy corrected. "Your manner is in no way elegant or polished."

Robert was amused. "I imagine, then," he said, "that I in no way fit your ideal of the perfect husband."

"Certainly not," Lucy said with crushing politeness. "You are far too frank and unrefined."

"And? Surely I have other faults?" Robert cocked a wicked eyebrow, tempting her to further indiscretion. He waited, watching her struggle between innate good manners and the desire to give him a resounding set-down. She fell for the provocation.

"You are too tall," she said. "And too wide."

Robert bit his lip to stifle a smile. "I agree," he said, "that I am both tall and wide, but there is little I can do about those things."

"You are not a scholar," Lucy said. Now that she had started enumerating his drawbacks, it seemed as though she had quite a list. He was interested that she had thought about him in so much detail.

"I could only marry a man of intellectual attributes," Lucy said, "sober, academic, more interested in the cerebral than the physical. You are too forceful."

"You underestimate me," Robert said. "In so many ways. I may not be a scholar but I do read. I have read your love letters." Keeping his gaze on her face, he recited: "Exquisite beauty beyond imagining, a snare to tempt man to desire..."

He heard Lucy gasp. She shifted, as though his words were making her uncomfortable in some way. Above the neckline of her demure white silk gown, her breasts rose and fell quickly with each sharp breath she took.

Watching her, Robert continued softly. "To steal a kiss, to dare a touch, to taste and stroke and linger over every sweet caress..."

Lucy ran her tongue over her lower lip in a quick, nervous gesture. There was the glitter of heat in her gaze as she lifted it to his face.

"To nip and lick and pluck and take a bite of sweetness to the core." Robert lowered his voice, keeping his eyes fixed on her.

"To dip deep and drink up every drop, to plunder and ravish in sensual excess..."

Lucy made the softest sound in her throat that had his body hardening into instant arousal. He wanted to carry her upstairs, strip that demure gown from her and make love to her.

The dinner gong sounded. Robert saw Lucy jump. The dark, unfocused look in her eyes faded. Her lips were parted and she looked dazed and bemused, which only made him want her all the more.

He could see Lady Durness coming to claim him as her escort for the meal. He stood politely to greet her, hoping that he would be able to move without too much discomfort or embarrassment.

Lady Durness slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. "We are very informal here," she murmured, "but I take it as my privilege as hostess to claim you, dear Lord Methven." She squeezed his arm to emphasize the point. "I hope," she added, turning her pale gray eyes on Lucy, "that Lady Lucy will not mind relinquishing you."

"I shall do my utmost to cope," Lucy said crisply. She had regained her composure very quickly. There was no hint of the emotion Robert had seen in her a moment before. She dropped him the slightest and most dismissive of curtsies. "I hope that you enjoy the meal, Lord Methven."

Over dinner Robert heard plenty more of the activities of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society. For a secret society they seemed to possess a number of very indiscreet members. Activities varied from academic lectures on the arts and sciences to the less cerebral and more physical entertainments of riding, hawking and watching naked wrestling, the latter, he was told, solely for the entertainment of the widows and married ladies. Indeed it seemed to Robert that with the life drawing class, as well, a number of the Highland Ladies seemed most anxious to get as many men naked in as many varied and exciting ways as possible. Somehow he suspected that Lady Mairi would be present to cheer on the naked wrestlers, while Lady Lucy, presumably, was barred by her spinster status and her precise ideas of decorum.

Before dinner Robert had paid the butler a discreet sum to ensure that Lucy was seated beside him, but when they came to take their places he was quite amused to find himself outmaneuvered. Evidently Lucy had checked the table and had changed her seat for one at the farthest distance from him. She ate as she did all other things, daintily, precisely and elegantly. She conversed easily with the guests on each side of her, and when she was drawn into conversation with one of the handsome young life models she parried his flirtatious approach with beautifully judged politeness, neither too warm nor too cold. Robert began to see why she had such a reputation for perfection. On the surface she was indeed everything that was well brought up and proper. He wondered if that was why her passions escaped in other ways. Being a pattern card of respectability must be damnably tedious.

She did not glance in Robert's direction once, and Robert was amused to discover that her indifference annoyed him, as did the attentions to her of the handsome young man. He had never given a damn about a woman before, never experienced any sort of jealousy. This woman, though, was different. This woman was his even if she was not yet aware of it, even if she thought him the very least suitable husband in the world.

He had intended to talk to Lucy again after dinner with some vague idea of what his grandmother might have called wooing, but he was beginning to see that his cause was hopeless if he approached it in the conventional sense. Lucy was not indifferent to him; she felt their attraction as fiercely as he did, but she was fighting it for reasons of her own. As far as he could tell, she was averse to marriage with anyone but especially with him. His honor revolted at the thought of forcing any woman into marriage with him, but for the first time in his life he was facing a choice between his honor and the survival of his clan. He knew which he had to choose.

He did not linger over his port and courteously evaded the efforts of the drawing master to extract a portrait commission from him. When the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room, however, Robert saw that Lucy was already leaving. He wondered if she was retiring early for the night, but there was something purposeful about her that aroused his curiosity. He gave her a few moments, then discreetly followed her out of the drawing room. He caught sight of her figure disappearing up the main staircase and along one of the wide upstairs corridors. When he reached the first floor, she had vanished. Then a door opened furtively, farther down. Thoroughly intrigued now, Robert waited. A maid peered out. Her gaze swept the corridor in both directions and, frowning, fixed on him. Without giving him the chance to speak, she jerked her head to indicate that he should enter the room.

"You're early," she snapped. "My lady is not ready yet. Wait in there." Another jerk of the head indicated a door on the right.

Robert felt as though someone had dropped a bucket of ice-cold water down his back. Shock, fierce and wicked, ambushed him. Lucy was expecting a visitor to her rooms, a male visitor. No wonder she had hurried away from dinner with such alacrity. No wonder she had looked furtive. That perfectly proper conversation with the handsome artist's model had evidently been anything but respectable. They must have been making an assignation.

He was startled by the cold anger that possessed him. Not a week ago he had sworn he would marry a lightskirt if it would save Methven; he had simply not imagined that the lightskirt would be Lady Lucy MacMorlan. At Brodrie she had sworn to him that she was innocent. His instinct had told him she told the truth.

He closed his eyes for a second. The words of the erotic letters danced on his closed lids, mocking him for a fool. Of course Lady Lucy was not innocent. How could she be? She had tried to play him before, manipulate him with her charm and her wit. Deceit ran in her veins and he was a fool to trust her word in anything. The maid was waiting for him to move, one eyebrow raised in exasperation. "In your own good time," she said.

Moving automatically, Robert stepped into the dressing room and heard the maid shut the door sharply behind him. Immediately he pressed his ear to the panels. Through the wood he could here the sound of voices, muffled as though underwater.

"The gentleman is here, milady." The maid spoke as though the word gentleman was, in this case, a vulgar insult. "I have asked him to wait in the dressing room."

"Thank you." Lucy sounded her usual serene self. She had definitely been expecting this visitor. Robert felt his heartbeat increase.

There was the sound of rustling and then the maid's voice once more. "This isn't right, milady. I know it's not my place to say so, but I have to speak up."

"Nonsense, Sheena." The smoothness in Lucy's tone was slightly ruffled now. She sounded nervous. "It is medicinal. Lady Kenton recommends it and she is most respectable."

Medicinal? Robert had heard lovemaking called many things in his time, but medicinal was not one of them.

"I don't like it," the maid said. "It's downright heathen, that's what it is."

"Oh, Sheena." Lucy sounded indulgent. Her voice was fainter as though she had turned away. "No more of your nonsense. Help me to disrobe, please."

Disrobe? Robert groped for the edge of the dressing table to steady himself. Lady Lucy MacMorlan was disrobing to welcome a male visitor to her chambers. His heart was positively galloping now and so was his imagination. Riotous images of Lucy greeting her lover completely naked hurtled through his mind. So did visions of Lucy, her body pale against the tangled sheets of her bed, her hair released from the diamond pins and spilling over her shoulders and across her breasts. He could see her lover beside her, reaching for her...

He swore, briefly and fiercely, under his breath.

"Ma'am..." The maid was making one last effort, pleading.

"Bring him in now, please," Lucy said crisply.

A moment later that the door opened and the maid's black-gowned figure bustled in. Her cheeks were blazing red and she kept her gaze averted from him.

"Milady says you are to come in," she snapped, making it clear that if it were her choice Robert would be drummed out of the castle and probably the town, as well.

Robert followed her into the chamber. It was a large room with a huge bay window facing the sea. The thick velvet curtains were pulled back, and the evening sunlight drifted through the window in a dazzle of gold. It fell on the woman who was lying on a wide velvet chaise positioned in the center of the bay and burnished her bare skin to rose-gold.

For a moment Robert thought that he had stepped directly into his own fantasy.

Lucy lay on her front with her face turned aside, eyes closed as though she were asleep. There was a blanket covering her demurely from the waist downward, but above it her back was bare. It was curved in the same elegant arch as the bay window. The line of her throat was another pure curve against the velvet cushion, vulnerable and tempting. Robert wanted to trace the tender indentation of her spine and run his lips over the roundness of one shoulder. He wanted to drop his lips to the dip in the hollow of her back and taste the skin there.

His throat dried to sawdust. His mind was a jumble of thoughts and images. The curve of her buttocks and the long line of her legs were visible beneath the silken blanket. Her arms lay slender and pale by her side. She did not open her eyes or address him. He wondered crazily if she was waiting for her lover simply to start making love to her. Then the maid spoke.

"Well?" she said. "Aren't you going to begin the massage? My lady will catch her death lying there like that whilst you waste time."

In that moment Robert caught sight of the phial of oil on a table beside the chaise. The scent of lavender, sweet and faint, caught his nostrils. He saw the towel folded over a small wooden-backed chair.

The relief shattered through him.

He had been mistaken for a masseur. It must be another of the Highland Ladies' extraordinary pastimes.

"Well?" the maid said again.

A gentleman would have explained it was a case of mistaken identity. A gentleman would have stepped back, made his excuses and left.

Robert stepped forward.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

LUCY HAD HAD every intention of greeting the masseur coolly and politely, but at the last moment shyness held her completely paralyzed. She heard his soft tread advancing across the thick carpet toward her bed and heard also the disapproving swish of Sheena's skirts as she escorted him. Her maid had been with her ever since she had left the schoolroom. She was extraordinarily protective as well as very conservative. Sheena had thought that Lady Kenton's suggestion of a masseur had been both outrageous and scandalous. Now, when it was too late, Lucy was inclined to agree with her.

Lying on the velvet chaise longue, aware of the cool air caressing her bare shoulders and back and certain that the man was watching her, Lucy felt horribly exposed. Lady Kenton had said that Anton was a professional and, further, that he was not interested in women, but even so this felt awkward and embarrassing. In two seconds she would grab her dressing robe, sit up and dismiss the masseur curtly with no explanation given. Two seconds, one...

He touched her. His hands were warm, not cold as she had imagined. They swept in a long glide from her neck, over her shoulders and down across her shoulder blades. She could smell lavender from the oil that Sheena had prepared earlier, but on his skin, or on hers, it had warmed and was scented of other herbs, as well, scents that were sweet and heady. Lucy felt a startled sense of well-being. She began to relax. His hands swept over her again, down her spine to span out across her lower back. Her tight muscles started to ease as he built up a rhythm, stroking over the line of her neck and spine, then spreading out over her ribs and back, down and up again, forward and back as soothing as the tide until she started to lose track of time and lay there conscious of nothing but sensation.

"That feels very good." Lucy kept her eyes closed as his hands moved over her. She was drifting now, her aches dissolving delightfully into pleasure. Her voice sounded a little blurred even to her own ears. She jumped when Sheena shifted sharply, close by. The maid must have heard some note of abandonment in her voice, for she said: "It's medicinal, madam. Remember?" Then, turning to the masseur: "It's my lady's shoulder that troubles her, the left one, from all the writing."

"And my back," Lucy murmured. "It aches."

The masseur changed position and now his fingers were kneading Lucy's shoulder harder and the sensation hung between pleasure and pain and for a moment she was almost tempted to stop him. Yet the persistent throb that had plagued her was already softening, melting beneath his clever hands. She gave a sigh of relief and heard his low laugh.

"Better?" The word was no more than a deep rumble.

"Oh yes. Thank you."

She heard Sheena mutter something disapproving and did not care. The massage continued, alternating between the deep kneading of her shoulders that she moved to meet now with keen pleasure, and a gentler, softer sweep down the length of her back to the waist. His hands spanned out, sliding up, brushing the side of her breasts. It could have been accidental; or it might not have been. Lucy lay still, breathing suspended. He did it again. This time Lucy felt her body grasp greedily after the sensation, and when it happened again she felt a sweet melting warmth swamp her entire body and it twitched with recognition and desire.

She was depraved. This was supposed to be a purely therapeutic process. Shockingly she realized that she wanted to pull the covers away entirely and to experience the masseur's touch over her whole body. His hands stroked up her sides again and she almost moaned. Her nipples had hardened against the velvet of the chaise longue. It felt exquisitely arousing to rub against the rough material. In fact, her body seemed to be coming alight now in a curious way she had never experienced before. Her skin felt as though every inch was alive. It was acutely sensitive. She had always lived in her mind before with thoughts and ideas jostling for space. She had never really been aware of her physical body apart from those occasions when she had hurt herself: a fall from a horse or this pain in her shoulder. Now, though, her head was full of how she felt, not of what she thought. All she was aware of was the way in which his touch rippled over her and how her body rose to his hands, begging for more.

Sheena tweaked the covers higher. Lucy, suddenly aware that she had been wriggling beneath the masseur's hands in a most abandoned manner, tried to school her body into stillness. It was too late. She could not dismiss the sensations. They were pent up tight within her, waiting to burst out in a shower of pleasure.

There was a rap at the door. The masseur's hands checked into stillness for a moment before he resumed the slow sweep and stroke. The loss of his touch more than the sound pulled Lucy from the cocoon of pleasure. She opened her eyes. Sheena had gone to the door. She appeared to be arguing with someone; her head was shaking vigorously. Then she gestured the newcomer to step into the room and came hurrying back to the chaise.

"Madam." Her tone cut straight through Lucy's languor like a cascade of cold water. "There is a gentleman here who says your godmother has sent him. He claims to be the masseur. In which case-" Sheena turned and pointed. "Who is this?"

Lucy sat up, grabbing the blanket and holding it up to her chest, and looked up straight into Robert Methven's eyes.

For a moment she could not believe that he was there. It was impossible; impossible that he was the man who had been touching her so intimately only a second before. Yet since there was no one else in the room, it had to be him.

He picked up the small towel that Sheena had put on the side and wiped his hands on it. He did not look remotely surprised or indeed disturbed to have been caught masquerading as a masseur.

"What the devil are you doing?" Lucy said. Her voice came out as an outraged squeak. She felt at a very distinct disadvantage holding the blanket up to cover her nakedness. Again she was very aware of her body and this time not in a pleasurable way.

"Your maid mistook me," Methven said.

"I had worked that out for myself," Lucy snapped. "The mystery is why you did not correct her."

He smiled wickedly. "I'm not sure that it is much of a mystery, at least not to a gentleman." His gaze swept her from head to foot, making his meaning explicitly clear. She felt more heat build inside her, sliding over her skin.

"I was helping ease the pain in your shoulder and back," he added. "I flatter myself that I was doing rather well. I have a little experience in such matters, having been taught the art of massage on my travels-"

Lucy cut him off with an exasperated chop of the hand and he fell obligingly silent, although his blue eyes still danced with amusement.

"Send Lady Kenton's masseur away, please, Sheena," Lucy said. Her head was starting to ache. She wanted to press her fingers to her temples to ease it, but that would involve dropping the blanket. She turned back to Methven. "You, sir... You will leave too. Such outrageous behavior-" She stopped when she realized that her voice was shaking.

"You're upset," Robert Methven said.