Читать книгу Prince Of Lies - Robyn Donald - Страница 5

HOSTILITY flared brightly inside Stephanie, matched by a crackle of antagonism from him. A searing glance from those colourless eyes warned her that she wasn’t going to win this one. Squeezing her eyelids shut, she stood mutinously while the flannel slipped slowly, gently over skin that was stretched and too sensitive.

Her blood gathered thickly in her veins. No matter how much she tried to concentrate on relief at being safe, all she could feel was the elemental nearness of the man who had brought her out of hell. His presence was a sensuous abrasion on her skin, electric, tingling, charging the shower stall with a fierce, primal vitality, setting acutely responsive nerves alight. Dazed, she set herself to endure what she couldn’t change.

He didn’t hurry. The flannel laved her body in subtle, diligent torture. He even shampooed her hair, working suds through the rust-coloured strands, seeming to understand that she needed it rinsed over and over until it was glowing against her head. Luxuriating in the purifying spray of water, she thought that he was surprisingly patient. She suspected that it wasn’t an inherent part of his character, but had been hard-won by the exercise of will. Whatever, she was grateful for it.

Sudden exhaustion robbed her bones of strength, and she swayed, her hands whipping up to grab his forearm as she fell. Unwillingly her eyes popped open. A wide, bare chest filled her vision, fine wet hair slicked in a tree-of-life pattern over olive skin clearly in the best of health, a shocking contrast to her own sunless pallor.

Without her volition her gaze travelled down; she realised he still had his trousers on.

‘You’re getting wet,’ she said foolishly, trying to curb a harsh, unbidden response, elemental and unwanted.

‘I didn’t think you’d like it if I came in without any clothes on,’ he returned, a satirical note edging his tone.

Blood stung her cheeks and throat. Feeling much younger than her eighteen years, she stammered, ‘No—well, no, I wouldn’t.’

She had wanted to stay beneath the water until her skin was wrinkled and pale, washing off the results of being locked in a coffin for three days, scrubbing herself free from the taint and the terror and the evilness of it. But now she needed to get out of there.

Quickly, she said the first words that came into her head. ‘I’m cold.’

‘All right.’ He turned off the spray.

Swallowing a lump that obstructed her throat, and apparently her thought processes too, Stephanie watched through lashes beaded with drops of water as he pushed open the glass door and stepped out on to the mat. Muscles moved in his back—not the smooth, sculptured works of art nurtured in a gym, but tautly corded, with the flowing vigour and hard, tensile power of rigorous work.

‘Here,’ he said, handing her a large, warm white towel.

Battling the treacherous feelings that surged through her, she accepted it and began to dry herself. He pulled another towel from the holder and started to wipe the glistening water from his arms.

Her last vestiges of energy evaporated as fast as the water on his skin. Stumbling once more, Stephanie would have fallen if he hadn’t sensed her predicament and whirled around to catch her, moving with a speed and accuracy that obscurely frightened her. For the second time in as many minutes, she was supported against a taut male body.

‘My legs won’t hold me up,’ she muttered, unable now to hide her panic with anger. Sensation bludgeoned her; acutely aware of the heated, silky dampness of his skin, the potency barely leashed in the tall body that supported her, she swallowed.

‘Stand still,’ he said in a cool, crisp voice, and began to blot the water from her shoulders.

Beneath the white towel his hands were careful yet completely impersonal. By the time she was dry Stephanie was shivering, engulfed by a fatigue that was only partly caused by her ordeal. Dimly she realised that she was being put into a huge T-shirt, thick and soft and enveloping, before being lifted and carried and lowered into a bed, and then sheets were pulled over her and she sank gratefully into the sleep that claimed her...

Until the nightmares came like evil wraiths, tormenting with the terrors she hadn’t allowed herself to feel while imprisoned, slyly sneaking through the unguarded gates of her unconscious mind and into her brain, vivid, horrifying, so real that she could feel herself screaming.

‘Stop that right now,’ a masculine voice ordered, compounding her fear.

A reflex action filled her lungs with air. Opening her mouth to scream again, she flung herself on to the other side of the bed. The sound was cut off instantly by a hand clamping across her mouth. Bucking with terror, she lashed her tired limbs to greater efforts, wrenching at iron fingers, trying to bite, to claw, to scratch.

‘Stop it, you little spitfire,’ he commanded.

It was the impact of his body rather than his voice, low and gritty and threatening, that restored her to her senses. Suddenly she realised where she was, and that this man had taken her from darkness and horror and cleaned her and soothed her, as well as giving her water several times already that night when she’d woken gasping for it.

A convulsive shudder shook her and she stopped fighting. Amid the fading panic and confusion she registered the change in his tone as he repeated, ‘Stop it, Stephanie. You’re safe, and no one is going to hurt you again.’

Silenced, the only sound the heavy pounding of her heart, she nodded feebly. The hand across her mouth gentled, relaxed, and slid down to the pulse that beat ferociously in her throat. ‘Poor little scrap,’ he said, his deep voice vibrating with a barely curbed anger.

Somehow the simple remark called her back from the frightening world of her memories. She didn’t want to be pitied, pity weakened her, yet for a moment she let her craving for security pacify her back into childishness.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It was just a dream.’

Perhaps because that long walk in his arms had desensitised her, or perhaps because of his total lack of response to her nakedness in the shower, she forgot any reservations she had and followed her simple need for reassurance by burrowing into him. As his arms tightened her panic eased into a strange contentment. She pressed her cheek against a bare chest, the slight roughening of his hair on her skin a profoundly comforting sensation.

He moved, but only to switch on a small bedside lamp. The light and his heat and solidity eased the chattering of her teeth, reached through her defences in some subliminal way and soothed her, as did the quiet rumble of his voice reverberating from his chest to her ear.

‘You’re safe,’ he said again. ‘No one will hurt you here.’

She could remember her father holding her and saying the same words. He had been proved wrong, and she knew that the man who held her so sweetly couldn’t guarantee his words either, but for the moment she allowed herself to believe him. Tiredness and the heart-warming feeling of being sheltered and protected combined to make her yawn.

‘I’m sorry I’m such a wimp,’ she said in a slurred voice when she could speak again.

‘You’re allowed a couple of episodes. Go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘If the nightmare comes back, try telling it you won, you triumphed. But sometimes they’re actually good for you, even though they scare the hell out of you. It’s one way the brain can try to make sense of what happened.’

‘I know what happened,’ she said grimly, resisting the possibility of any more dreams.

‘Oh, intellectually, but I’m willing to bet that in your heart you’re wondering how anyone could be so cruel as to put you through the particular hell they organised for you.’

‘Money. That’s what it usually is. Some people will do anything for money.’

‘You’re very young to be a cynic.’

‘I’m eighteen,’ she said.

He gave a ghost of a laugh. ‘And I’m twenty-five. I’m still considered young, so where does that leave you?’

‘Childish,’ she retorted almost on a snap, pulling free. The quick spurt of defiance exhausted her and his comment forced her to realise that he wasn’t her father. He was a total stranger, and a rather frightening one, because beneath the feeling of safety engendered by those strong arms there were other emotions, deep and bewildering, that combined to produce the subtle, wild attraction calling to her with a honeyed, siren’s voice.

Trying to speak without any indication of her runaway reactions in her tone, she said, ‘I’m all right now, thank you. I’m sorry I woke you.’

‘Princess, you didn’t wake me.’

She huddled back under the warm duvet, averting her face so he couldn’t see it. ‘Why do you call me that?’

‘Princess? That’s what you are, isn’t it? A genuine eighteen-carat-gold princess, with everything but the title. And your brother could probably buy one of those for you if you weren’t too fussy about its origins.’

As she thought this over, wondering how an amused voice could be so detached, the mattress beside her sank, and to her appalled astonishment she felt the covers twitch. Sheer shock jackknifed her upright.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she demanded in a high, shrill voice, staring with dilated eyes as he turned to look at her.

‘I’m making myself comfortable,’ he said mockingly, crystalline eyes gleaming. ‘You can’t expect to hog the covers, you know. It’s bad manners.’

‘You’re not—’

He interrupted with unexpected curtness, ‘Stephanie, you’re quite safe. I’m sleeping here, that’s all.’

‘But what—then why—?’

He said reasonably, ‘Although I’m almost certain no one is watching this place, I believe in caution, so I’m working on the assumption that we’re under surveillance. The last thing we need is for anyone to realise that there are two people living here now. So we act like one person. We sleep together, we move around the house together; when you’re in the bathroom, I’ll be next door with the light out. I’m going to stick as close to you as a shadow, princess, closer than a lover, but I’m not going to touch you.’

When Stephanie gathered her wits enough to object, he didn’t let her get more than a word out before finishing with a steely authority that silenced her, ‘Rules of the house, princess; don’t knock them—they might save your brother a lot of money and both of us quite a bit of trouble.’

The problem was that she understood. Having grown up in a small English village, she knew too well just what a hotbed of gossip such places were, and how by some osmosis everyone learned in an astonishingly short time all about everyone else.

But although his logic made sense, a wary feminine apprehension rejected it. The close, constant proximity he insisted on was going to be an enormous strain on her. She pulled the duvet around her body, trembling in spite of the mild temperature. ‘No! I’ll be very careful—’

‘I’m not suggesting this, or giving you power of veto. You have no choice, so you’ll avoid unnecessary stress if you just accept it.’

His voice remained cool, almost indifferent, but she heard the curbed irritation buried in the words as well as the implacable resolution. She gulped. ‘I don’t want to!’

‘Stephanie, if you’re afraid that I won’t be able to control my lust, rest assured that I am not attracted to thin, gangly schoolgirls, even when they have indecent amounts of money as well as big, innocent cornflower eyes and a mouth as soft as roses.’

No contempt coloured his voice, nothing but that steady detachment, yet each word was a tiny whip scoring her skin, her heart, as it was intended to be.

She retorted obstinately, ‘I’m not sleeping in this bed if you are.’

Unimpressed, he said, ‘Then sleep on the floor; I don’t give a damn. But just in case you’re stupid enough to run around the house putting lights on, I’ll tie you to the bed-leg first.’

Stephanie bit down on a gasp of outrage. Her gaze flew to his face; she read an implacable, unwavering purpose there. He meant every word. If she made up a bed for herself on the floor he would shackle her. At that moment, ensnared in the ice of his eyes, she hated him with every part of her soul.

However, two could play the game of threat and counterthreat. Her lips tightened. ‘Saul won’t like that.’

He directed a hard, level stare at her. ‘Your brother will have to accept that I know what I’m doing.’

Flinging caution to the wind, she said rashly, ‘He can ruin your career.’

As soon as she’d said the words she’d realised it wouldn’t work, but she hadn’t expected the deadly silence that followed. When he spoke his voice was slow and even and truly terrifying.

‘Perhaps we’d better get one thing straight,’ he said. ‘I am not afraid of or intimidated by your brother. I never have been, and I don’t plan to be in the future. In your world, princess, money might mean power. In mine it doesn’t. Now lie down and shut up before I say something I might regret.’

More than anything in the world she needed to make some gesture, prove that he couldn’t make her do what he wanted, but something in his stance, in the way his crystalline gaze met her rebellious eyes, something in the remote, chillingly indifferent face with its angular bone-structure and complete absence of softness or compassion, warned her not to try.

Defeated, she shuddered, almost swamped by the fear she had fought so valiantly. He was as callous as the kidnappers, finding the right buttons, pushing them relentlessly.

‘Very well,’ she said, striving for dignified self-possession, ‘but using physical strength is just as despicable as using money to force anyone to do what you want them to.’

‘I suppose it’s your privileged upbringing,’ he said conversationally, ‘that means you don’t know when to stop,’ and before she realised what he was doing he caught her wrist in a grip just short of painful and leaned over and kissed her with a merciless mouth, crushing her objections, her worry and fear to nothing.

It was over in a moment. As she dragged painful air into her lungs, he stared at her with eyes as cold as shards of diamonds and said beneath his breath, ‘God, what the hell are you doing to me?’

Stephanie’s world had turned upside-down, been wrenched from its foundations by a kiss, as it had not been by the preceding nightmarish days. For a lifetime, for an aeon encompassed by the space between two heartbeats, she was captured by those eyes, dragged into a world where winter reigned supreme. This man, whoever he was, moved and breathed like a human being, but, in spite of his gentleness and care for her, at his heart was a core of primeval ice.

The prince of ice, she thought, trying to be flippant, an effort spoiled by foreboding.

‘Turn over and get to sleep,’ he ordered in that quiet, lethal voice.

Silently she turned her back on him and crawled beneath the covers, enveloped by the instant warmth of down. Tense and resistant, she huddled on the edge of the bed. Heat prickled across her skin, suffused every cell in her body. For the first time in her life she felt a tug of desire in her loins, a strange sensation in her breasts as though they were expanding.

Stop it, she adjured her unruly mind fiercely; stop it this minute. But she couldn’t, until finally she fell back on a childhood remedy for unpleasant thoughts and strove to block out the images that danced behind her retinas with a concerted attack on the seven times table.

Out of the darkness he said, ‘I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened, and it won’t be repeated. You needn’t be afraid that I’ll jump you again.’

She couldn’t answer; touching her tongue to lips that were tender and dry, she wondered why his kiss should have had such an effect on her. Beyond the somewhat inexpert embraces of several boys not much older than she was, she had nothing to judge it by. Oh, she’d had crushes, but her brother’s overwhelming masculinity made other men seem pale and ineffectual, and it had been difficult to let down the barriers of her mind and heart to anyone less compelling than Saul.

Also, her very protective brother made sure that she was kept well away from anyone who might view his younger sister as a tempting morsel. Consequently, most of her friends at school were far more experienced than she was.

Although their family had always been rich, and grown even richer under Saul’s capable hands, he wasn’t a member of the jet set. He despised people who didn’t work, and because he was deeply in love with his wife he preferred to spend the time he had to spare with her and their children. Stephanie, too, loved being with the half-sister she had come to know so late in her childhood, and adored being a favourite aunt. Saul, she knew, kept a close eye on her friends, so although she had spent holidays with schoolfriends she had never gone anywhere except with people he had known and trusted.

Which meant, she thought, as she lay rigidly in the bed, that she was pretty naïve. If she’d been more sophisticated she wouldn’t now be so overwhelmed by the powerful charisma of the man who lay beside her in the huge bed.

And perhaps she had been conditioned to look for that concentrated authority in a man; growing up with Saul had persuaded her that there could be kindness and love in a man of imperious character.

Exhaustion gripped her in unrelenting claws, but she couldn’t sleep. Acutely aware of every tiny movement her rescuer made, of the length of his body next to hers, of the sound of his breathing, the tantalising, seductive heat of his body, her nerves sang like tightened bowstrings.

She didn’t even know his name, and here she was sharing a bed with him!

Resentment simmered, encouraged because it blocked out the strange equivocal warmth seeping through her body. She despised men who thought their superior strength gave them the right to dominate.

And she hated the fact that he was able to sleep when she couldn’t.

He’d probably shared a bed more times than she could count. Like Saul, who had been unmercifully pursued for as long as she could remember, the man who slept beside her possessed a smouldering sexuality that every woman would recognise. Squelching a mysterious pang, Stephanie lay longing for him to snore. It would demystify him, make him an ordinary man.

Of course he didn’t. Eventually her muscles protested vigorously at being locked in stasis; giving in to them, she turned over on to her back, moving inch by careful inch in case she woke him. He didn’t stir, but her change of position had brought her closer, and she scorched in the heat from his body. Surely all men weren’t as hot as that? He certainly didn’t have a fever, so perhaps he lived on a fiercer, more intense plane than other men.

Hastily, she turned back again.

‘Stop thrashing about,’ he commanded, his voice cool and slightly amused.

‘Goodnight,’ she muttered through clenched teeth.

Strangely enough, sleep reclaimed her then, but with it returned the dreams. Unable either to banish them or allow them to take her over completely, she fought back, and woke to find herself once more in his arms, that cruel hand clamped over her mouth again to cut off her screams.

At last, when it had happened three times, he said brusquely, ‘Right, that’s it. No, don’t scuttle back to your side of the bed.’ His arms tightened around her; one large hand pushed her head into the warm, hard muscles of his shoulder. ‘Stay there,’ he ordered.

‘All right,’ she said in the flat tone of exhaustion.

He pulled the duvet over them both. ‘Now,’ he said, his voice as level and unhurried as ever, ‘let’s see if we both can get some sleep.’

Her last thought was that he wasn’t naked; she could feel some fine material beneath her hand as she cuddled against him, her body and mind immediately responding to his steady heartbeat.

Towards morning she woke, still in his arms, his body heat encompassing her, his scent in her nostrils, a masculine hand lying laxly along her thigh. At some time during the night she had climbed over him, and was now lying half on top, her leg between his, her arm underneath his other shoulder, using him as a mattress.

Overwhelmed by a demand she didn’t fully recognise, a need she had never experienced, by the sheer, male power radiating from him even in sleep, she woke with her senses fully alert, her body in high gear. Unknown feelings tingled through her and before she realised where she was she felt his awakening, and the surge of awareness through his heated body, the swift compulsion of arousal that gripped him.

Stephanie might have been innocent but she wasn’t stupid; she had read magazines and books, listened to some of her more worldly friends, and she knew that a man could be instantly ready for making love to any woman if she turned him on. She understood what was happening.

What she didn’t understand and couldn’t fight was her own reaction, the heady, draining weakness that had invaded her while she slept, making it impossible for her to retreat as prudence commanded. Anticipation coiled through her in sweet, seductive promise, drowning out common sense, washing away morals and logic and caution.

She had to get out of this immediately, scramble free and get on to her own side of the bed. But her muscles refused to obey her brain. Something world-shaking was making her heart race, drying her mouth, dampening her skin with an unexpected sheen.

He said harshly, ‘Is this what you want?’ And the hand that had been across her back found the full curve of her breast, cupping it, measuring its soft weight in slow, sensual appreciation.

Fire invaded her, robbing her of strength. An incredible sensation shot down her spine and into her loins; in answer she gave a tormented twist of her hips, seeking some as yet unknown response.

‘How many men have you slept with?’ he asked, that raw note in his voice abrading her nerves as savagely as his expert caress. ‘You certainly know how to get what you want.’

She would have sobbed with desolation when his touch lifted if he hadn’t slid his fingers down her back, exploring with lingering thoroughness the sharp bones of her hip and the amazingly sensitive hollow beneath it. She held her breath, and suddenly, fiercely, he clamped her hips down, pushing the newly awakened, violently sensitive portion of her anatomy against his growing hardness. Stephanie gasped, biting back a moan, unable to control the shudder that ran through her at the wild pressure.

And then she was almost flung across the bed, and he said in a voice that left her with no doubt about his feelings, ‘Sorry, princess, I was paid to rescue you, not act as your gigolo.’

Humiliation burned deep into her soul; she had to swallow before she could retort thickly, ‘I didn’t—I woke up like that, damn you! And it was you who forced yourself into this bed.’

‘Clearly a mistake,’ he agreed contemptuously. ‘But then, I didn’t really know what I was dealing with. According to most reports, you’re a sweet, innocent little schoolgirl.’

Sunk in frustration and shame, she lay with her eyes clamped tightly shut while he got out of the bed. However, after a moment she asked miserably, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making a bed,’ he said curtly.

Her lashes flew up. He hadn’t put the light on, but the wintry pallor of early dawn was seeping through the heavy curtains, and she could see his outline, and the pile of clothes on the floor.

‘No,’ she said involuntarily.

‘Yes,’ he said, lowering himself to it. ‘In another five years, perhaps, I might enjoy taking what you’ve got on offer. In the meantime, however, I’m going to have to say no, thanks. Nothing personal, princess—I’m a professional, and we like things to be nice and tidy.’

Which made her feel even worse.

* * *

When she woke it was morning, and the sun was shining in through the window with a hearty fervour that released something inside Stephanie. For the first time since she had been kidnapped she believed, not merely in her mind but in her heart, that there might be some future for her after all.

And then her eyes fell on the pillow beside her, and she stiffened, remembering. In one involuntary motion she sat up and looked at the floor where he had slept. The clothes were gone.

Heat flooded her skin; bitterly, angrily ashamed, she sank back against the pillow. How on earth had she let down her guard enough to climb all over him while she was asleep? And then, even when she was awake, to lie there and practically invite him to do whatever he wanted? No wonder he had been taken aback, although he needn’t have been quite so brutal.

A self-derisory little smile curled her wide mouth. Perhaps he was afraid she’d make a nuisance of herself. If so, he’d certainly made sure his rejection was cruel enough to convince her never to fall into that trap again. If he still insisted on them sharing a bed, from now on, nightmares or not, she’d keep to her own side.

Forcing her mortification beneath the surface of her thoughts, she gazed around a room in the shape of a half-circle, its walls made of wooden panelling, its ceiling plaster. Both walls and furniture had been carefully carved by superb craftsmen to look medieval. Even the armchair was decorated by over-exuberant fretted wooden carving.

Yet wherever she looked she saw the icy scorn in her rescuer’s expression as he rejected her.

She had to face it. And although shame still stained her cheeks she thought resentfully that he had had no right to be quite so—so scathing. There was some excuse for her behaviour. Surely after an experience like hers it was normal to crave the reassurance of human warmth, the comfort of arms around her, the momentary return to childhood when parents made everything better, even though from the age of four she had known that parents could die, that love was not enough to keep her safe, that the arms and soothing voice of a strong man were only temporary refuges.

Anyway, natural or not, a need for reassurance was a luxury she couldn’t afford, especially if it led to situations like that of a few hours ago. Her fingers crept up to touch her trembling lips. For a moment she fancied she could feel his kiss on them. Very firmly, she banished the memory.

She shouldn’t blame herself for what had happened in her sleep, but afterwards—well, that was a different story. If she had immediately climbed off him and made it obvious she wasn’t trying to seduce him she wouldn’t be feeling like this—embarrassed, ashamed, and with a forbidden fire in her blood that had to be outlawed. Instinct warned her that she was asking for heartbreak if she allowed herself to become even slightly dependent on the man who had rescued her.

Stephanie had learned the value of accepting her own emotions, and now she admitted that keeping her heart whole might be a little difficult. He had come to her like a prince on a charger, saving her from a hideous fate. She was entitled to spin a few fairy-stories about him; he was the stuff of fantasy, the dark hero, at once gentle and dangerous, kind and threatening, armoured in power and a fierce, unknowable authority.

But, tantalising though her fantasies might be, she couldn’t afford to fall in love with him, for as well as the heart-stopping attributes of his strength there was that cool, impregnable self-sufficiency and a callousness that hurt. He might be only seven years older than she was, but what had happened to him in those years set a barrier between them.

He was a loner, a man who walked by himself. Prince of ice, she thought again.

She gazed around once more, searching for clues to the personality of the man who had brought her here. She found nothing. There was a dressing-table made of sombre, highly polished wood, on which was a tumbler with a collection of wild flowers. Stephanie wondered if the brilliant blue one was a gentian, then dismissed the query. Candace, her sister-in-law, would know; she was the expert on gardens and flowers.

But the little posy made a pleasant spot of colour, and in some odd way reassured her. Turning her head, she surveyed the other side of the room. The bedhead was against the straight wall that divided the room from the bathroom and the landing. The other walls stretched around her, enclosing and comforting, as though they were holding her in a protective embrace.

‘It must be a tower room!’ she said out loud, delighted, and flung the covers back.

Still stiff and sore, she staggered as renewed pain throbbed through her, but even so she was halfway to the window when she was caught and pulled back, whirled abruptly and held by a cruel grip on her shoulders, to meet the impassive, glittering eyes of her rescuer. Yesterday she had been too dazed to realise just how unusual they were, although she had registered their concentrated compulsion. Now, imprisoned as unequivocally by them as by his hands, she almost gasped. Instead of the warm, brilliantly clear sapphire she was used to seeing in the mirror, this man’s eyes were so pale as to give an impression of translucence, with white flecks in the iris that made them look like splintered glass. Such was the intensity of those eyes that Stephanie’s struggles stopped immediately. Her own widened, darkness swallowing up the colour; she shivered with some strange inner confusion.

‘Don’t go near the windows,’ he said roughly.

The fragile moment of happiness shattering irrevocably, she nodded. Instantly, he let her go.

It was the most difficult thing she had ever done, but she managed to look fearlessly at him. He had freed her, slept with her, comforted her and finally held her, his strong arms and the solace of his presence banishing the nightmares. Then he had unfeelingly rejected what her innocent body had offered of its own volition.

Those powerful hands held her life and well-being. He could snuff both out as easily as he had pulled her away from the window.

He made her heart falter. Partly it was his amazing eyes, but they were merely the most arresting part of a truly formidable man. At five feet nine she was accustomed to looking many men in the eye, but he towered above her by at least six inches—possibly seven, she thought, gazing up into a face far more impressive than handsome. Slashing bone-structure formed the basis of features that reminded her of an eagle, the fiercely hooked nose and dominant, angular lines of jaw and cheekbones reinforcing an arrogant authority. His straight mouth warned of self-possession and fortitude, although she recognised something ambiguous about that mouth, a hint of sensuality in its sharply cut outline that set female nerves jangling at some hidden, primitive level.

From the top of his blue-black head to the soles of his feet he was all edged, confident masculinity, but it was a masculinity tight-leashed by an almost inhuman will.

‘Who are you?’ she blurted.

Apparently not in the least affected by her bold survey, he’d waited until she spoke. At her question his lashes drooped, and a smile, mockingly amused, curved his mouth.

‘Duke,’ he said laconically, and to her astonishment held out his hand.

Most men looked stupid with a hand held out, a hand that was ignored. This one didn’t; completely relaxed, he merely waited. Once more Stephanie glimpsed a monumental, hard-headed patience that sent a cold shiver flicking down her spine as she reluctantly accepted his invitation. She had long fingers and a strong grip, but in his clasp her hand seemed small and white and powerless.

‘You know who I am,’ she said uncertainly.

‘We haven’t been introduced.’

Later she would wonder whether he had enough intuition to realise that this introduction was a wiping clean of all that had happened previously, and even before entertaining the idea would dismiss it. In spite of his care of her the preceding night he’d been more forceful than sensitive, and his abrupt rejection in the morning hadn’t revealed any insight or empathy at all.

At that moment, however, saying her name, asserting an identity, was a reclaiming of something that the calculated inhumanity of her imprisonment had taken from her.

‘Stephanie Jerrard,’ she said, and her head came up. While they shook hands she asked, ‘Just Duke?’ and thought how strange it was that she had called him a prince, an ice-prince. He looked more like a prince than a duke, and yet the name suited his careless arrogance.

‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said, an indifferent note in his voice warning her off.

As their hands fell away he ordered curtly, ‘The windows look out over the valley, so the only people we have to worry about are ones with binoculars on the far side. Still, remember that if anyone does see you here word may reach the men who kidnapped you.’

At her involuntary shiver he nodded, pale eyes ranging her face. ‘And if that happens we could lose not only the small men but those who gave the orders. Then there are your brother’s negotiations; while you’re thought to be safely stashed he’s working from a position of power. If we can fool them into thinking that you’re still their pawn, we’re going to catch them all, including the ones who’ve kept their fingers clean.’

‘I only saw two men. What makes you think there might be others?’ she asked swiftly, striving to hide the sick panic that clutched her for an unnerving moment.

Broad shoulders lifted in a gesture oddly at variance with his poised, controlled persona. ‘Rumours,’ he said without expression, his eyes searching her face keenly. ‘I need to know everything you can remember about the kidnapping.’

‘Now?’ she asked, realising that she was still in the thick T-shirt she’d worn as a nightgown. From the way it slid down over her shoulders it was one of his.