Deceived

outside the estate early in the morning once a week. That morning was the day. The coach would take her to the town of Hereford, and from there she would be able to get the London coach. She was taking none of her possessions so that no one would suspect she had gone far until possibly the morrow, at which point it would be too late to find her. She would dress plainly so as not to attract attention, and carry only a small reticule with her funds, and a brush to keep her hair neat.

The dress she chose was a simple dark blue silk, respectable but not showy. She wore several petticoats beneath it, including a flannel one, and knit woolen stockings. She would buy whatever else she needed in London before sailing. Pinning her hair into a neat chignon, she picked up her fur-lined cloak and slipped from the bedroom. She walked carefully, tiptoeing down the staircase and across the foyer to the front door. Cautiously she drew back the bolts on the front door.

'And where, my dear betrothed, do you think you are going?' the duke's voice shattered the silence of the night.

Aurora whirled to see him in the dimly lit doorway of his library. '1 am going home,' she said. 'You cannot stop me, Valerian!' lietrothed! He had called her his betrothed. So he really did know.

'I think not,' he said coldly. Then he closed the distance between them, and snatching her cloak from her grip, flung it across the foyer. An arm reached out, wrapping itself tightly about her waist, forcing her body against his in a proximity that set her senses reeling. 'Hawkes Hill is your home, Aurora. It was settled even before your birth, when our fathers pledged us in marriage. A marriage you sought to avoid with deception, putting your sister in your place.'

'You got what you wanted!' she cried. 'You got St. Timothy and a wife. What more do you want, Valerian? What more?'

'I want you, Aurora!' he said fiercely, and his hand caressed her face, his dark blue eyes scorching her with their intensity.

'Was not my sister enough for you?' she demanded angrily. 'You mistreated her, Valerian! She told me so!'

'Calandra was a marble Venus, my dear Aurora,' he said in hard tones. 'She hated my touch, and I had to force myself upon my own wife in order to get her with child. She lay like a dead woman, her head turned from me, her body as cold as stone each time I took her.'

'But you still managed to engage your lust, Valerian, didn't you? Did you enjoy your rape of my sister? How could you do it?' Aurora demanded, her eyes filled with tears as she remembered Cally.

'1 thought of you,' he said with devastating effect, almost pleased to see the shock in her aquamarine-blue eyes. 'I aroused my baser instincts as Calandra would have called them, by remembering the sight of your coming naked from the sea one day on St. Timothy.'

'Oh, my God!”

'I am not proud of it, Aurora,' he told her. 'Do not ever think I was proud of what I had to do, but your sister hated the physical act of love, and I had to have an heir. Calandra was my wife, and that was her duty. I would have given her anything she wanted if she had only given me an heir. I quickly accepted the fact that she did not love me because I realized she would never love any man, nor would she cuckold me. She loved her position, and she loved my weaith and all it afforded her. It was all she sought, but she was too selftsh to give me what I sought in return for what I gave her. 1 regret her death.'

'Yet you are glad she is no longer here to trouble you!' Aurora accsed him. 'Do not deny it, Valerian!'

''I wished your sister no harm, Aurora, but she is dead, and no, I will not deny my relief at being freed from her. You would despise me if I did, for you would then know me as a liar, and I am not that.'

''I despise you anyhow,' Aurora declared angrily. 'You cannot stop me Valerian. I am going home to be with my family, and to wait out my year of mourning for Cally. But when that year is over, I shall marry St. John, as we have planned. I hate you! I will always hate you for what you did to my poor little sister!'

It was as if the small thread of sanity and reason that had been holding him together for these past months was suddenly snapped. 'You deceitful little bitch,' he snarled at her. 'You are going nowhere and as for my cousin, St. John will not have you, my dear, after I have finished with you!' Then he began ripping her bodice m^ her skirts.

With a shriek Aurora pulled away from him, turning and running for the stairs. Halfway up he caught her, his hands furiously shredding the fabric of her garments until she was virtually naked despite her valiant efforts to fend him off and escape once more. Finally Aurora attempted to scream, but he clapped his hand over her mouth even as he picked her up in his arms and continued on up the stairs and down the hallway to his bedroom. Kicking the door open and then shut behind him, he walked across the room, flinging her onto the bed as her hair came loose from its neat chignon, spilling about her shoulders.

She had to get up, she realized. She had to push past him and run for her very life. Yet she lay upon her back, watching with fascination as he yanked his own clothing off. Boots were kicked across the room, followed by breeches, drawers, stockings, and shirt. He stood over her, and she could not for the life of her stop staring. He was beautifully proportioned, but he looked hard as iron. I have to get up, Aur0ra thought desperately, yet her own limbs felt weakened and incapable of supporting her. She made a single futile attempt.

He pushed her back. Then, putting one knee upon the bed, he bent, cuppjng her face between his two big hands, and kissed her. It was a deep, slow kiss, his mouth warm and demanding upon hers, and betrayed by her own body, Aurora's lips softened beneath his. She sighed deeply, her mouth opening against the pressure of his. Their breaths mingled, and she could taste the whiskey on his. For a single moment in time, sanity returned, and she attempted to struggle away from him, but then his tongue slipped between her lips to touch hers. Emotions she had never really quite understood exploded within her. Their tongues entwined and caressed until Aurora was completely breathless and near to fainting.

He seemed to sense her state, and lifted his mouth from hers so she could catch her breath. Then slowly he began to kiss her face, his lips grazing softly and warmly over the skin. Delicately he touched the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her chin, her eyelids, her forehead. Not just once, but several times over. Then, pushing her head back with the heel of his palm, he began to place warm kisses upon her straining throat, lingering momentarily in the beating hollow at the base of it. She almost screamed when his hot tongue began licking at the column of her neck, sweeping up the length of it and then back down again. Her silken flesh was utterly intoxicating.

'Oh, God,' Aurora murmured. How could he do this to her? How could his passion have such an incredible effect upon her? She loved St. John, didn't she? Did she even know what love was? She was beginning to realize that she didn't. How could she feel this way about Valerian Hawkesworth when he was forcing her. But he isn't, the voice in her head said. You want him. You have always wanted him. Has it not been his face you saw in your dreams? 'No!' she cried aloud.

'Yes!' his voice grated back at her. 'Yes!'

Lying next to her now, he drew her into his arms. Gently he began to fondle her breasts. Aurora quivered with anticipation, desperate for the feel of his mouth upon her nipples, but instead he caressed the small rounds of warm flesh with delicate fingertips, brushing over the skin lightly, teasing at the little nubs until they darkened and grew taught with their rising excitement. Finally, when her breasts were swollen so hard that Aurora thought they would burst, he touched the very tips of her with his facile tongue, brushing against them quickly at first, and then each in its turn slowly. And at last he took a nipple in his mouth, sucking hard upon her until she gasped, feeling the wetness against her thighs.

Shyly, she touched the dark head upon her chest, not daring to stroke him, not even certain she should if she could get up the nerve. What was a woman supposed to do when a man