Once An Angel

Chapter 1

New Zealand,

the North Star

1872

"If ever a brat needed a beatin', it's Emily Claire Scarborough!"

Barney's snarled refrain almost made Emily smile. She turned, bracing her back against the prow of

the small steamer. He glared at her, his pockmarked face twisted with hatred.

Flexing his wiry hands on the boat's rail, he muttered, "And I'm just the lad to give it to 'er."

Doreen grabbed her brother's ear, twisting it with one of the pinches that had made her the terror of

every classroom at Foxworth's Seminary for Young Ladies.

"Ow, sis!" he howled. "Turn loose. I 'aven't laid a fist on 'er. Not yet, anyway."

"It's more than a fist I'm thinkin' you'd like to be layin' on 'er. I saw yer eyes when we was stuffin'

'er into that fancy frock."

Emily did smile then, and Doreen twisted harder, her lapse into cockney enraging her further. They

all knew it was only her ability to mock the genteel speech of the upper classes that had earned her

a position at the school. That and Miss Winters's rapidly failing finances.

Barney knocked her hand away. "Between you two buggers, I'm like to be blind and deaf before we

ever see New Zealand. Women!" he spat out, reluctantly including his sister in that scathing epithet.

Rabid ferrets, Emily mused.

She had been dragged halfway across the world by two rabid ferrets. They walked upright and wore bonnets and caps, but even draping them in silk and diamonds wouldn't have cloaked their true… ferretness. She rubbed her arms. They were black and blue from Doreen's pinches. She supposed the woman would bite her if she didn't fear the captain would find it uncivilized. Or that Emily just might

bite her back.

She sighed. The tiny mail packet chugged through the water, churning an aqua swath through the

indigo sea.

Barney clawed at his collar. The wool suit Miss Winters had bought him before their departure would

be well suited for the brisk autumn winds now whipping through London, but not for the balmy breezes of New Zealand. The suit had obviously been tailored for a man two sizes smaller than he.

He mopped sweat from his brow. "This country ain't natural. It's like bein' in 'ell before me time." He narrowed his one good eye at Emily. "And if this is 'ell, that wench is the devil's own imp. Look at 'er. You'd think she owned the bloody steamer and the Tasman Sea with it."

His sister glanced not at Emily, but back at the bridge. The elderly captain was slumped over the wheel, half dozing.

"She might own it after we dump her in the lap of her rich guardian," Doreen said. "The highfalutin

duke's heir is to pay us all the money he owes poor Miss Winters for looking after the evil little bitch

all these years. And a tenth of it's ours to keep."

"Ought to be 'alf," Barney muttered, fingering the shiny bruise beneath his eye.

Emily was tempted to agree with him.

Monday she had smothered all of their rations with salt.

Tuesday she had poured out Barney's whiskey and replaced it with the contents of his sister's privy pot.

Wednesday she had tossed his only suit overboard. He had been forced to dive after it buck naked while Emily sliced her finger and cheerfully dripped blood into the sea in hopes of attracting sharks. It had taken both Doreen and the burly engine stoker to restrain him from throwing her overboard.

Only this morning she had blackened his eye with her flailing fist as he and Doreen had stripped off her simple pinafore and crammed her into a skirt and bustle.

"She ain't even got the decency to wear a bonnet," Barney growled.

While his face blistered and Doreen grew more sallow with each day of the journey, Emily had the sheer audacity to turn her face to the sun and brown like a little butternut.

"At least we finally got a proper frock on the boyish little fiend," Doreen snapped.

Barney's gaze roamed up and down Emily's figure, making her shudder. Emily knew he found her less than boyish, much as he loathed to admit it. Her breasts still ached from the horrid press of his bony

chest as he had held her down for Doreen to tie the bustle tapes. She edged as far down the rail from

him as the deck would allow. Leering at her, he adjusted his trousers. Emily hoped he was strangulating.

Doreen boxed his ears. "Keep yer bloody hands where I can see em. We can't muck this up now. We

got this job only because Miss Amelia couldn't afford to send another detective."

Barney's answering whine was interrupted by the captain's drowsy cry: "Land ho!"

Emily's pulse quickened.

The steamer slowed. A green flush appeared on the horizon. Doreen gripped the rail, her drawn features made almost pretty by anticipation. When they drew closer, Barney fumbled at the ropes on the small lifeboat that would carry him ashore. He was determined to find the elusive Mr. Connor himself before

he risked Emily running away again on dry land. She had run away once in Sydney and twice in Melbourne. But Barney was as dogged as a bloodhound. He'd simply thrown her over his shoulder and carted her back.

Doreen sucked in an excited breath through her pinched nostrils. "Shall I go with you? Do you think

you can find him alone?"

"If this bloke is as fine and uppity as Miss Winters said 'e was, I'll march straight up to 'is fancy 'ouse

and fetch 'im. Then we'll be rid of the brat and rich to boot."

Emily waited until Barney had hoisted the little boat into the bucking waves before leaning over the side and waving her handkerchief at him. "Do take care, Barney. One of Mr. Connor's partners is dead. The other disappeared without a trace." She smiled sweetly. "I should so hate for the same thing to happen

to you."

Barney's complexion paled to green. Shooting her a nasty look, he steered around and began rowing for shore.

A gull circled the dingy steamer, then soared into the sky. Emily's gaze followed its flight toward the silvery rim of the island.

"Never forget," she whispered to herself. "Justin Connor is a very dangerous man."

"The devil take that blasted Winters woman!"

As his soft-spoken master exploded in a burst of temper, Penfeld jumped, rattling the teacups on his

tray. The sea gull marching across the windowsill cocked his head in curious reproach.

Justin Connor threw down the crumpled letter and paced the hut, ruffling his dark hair into wild disarray. "Am I never to be left in peace?"

Penfeld set the tray on the stained tablecloth, fearing for his precious china with Justin's long limbs at

such odds with his gait. "It must have been the gum digger, sir. I told you the man was asking too many questions."

Justin turned with a sweeping gesture that made Penfeld thankful he had eased his sturdy bulk in front

of the tea service. "What makes you think the tenacious Miss Winters would require a mere mortal for her endeavors? She probably spotted me in her crystal ball." He flapped his arms. "I'm only surprised

she posted a letter instead of flying straight over on her broom to fetch me."

Penfeld's lips twitched, but he hid it behind a somber cough.

Justin stabbed an accusing finger at the gull. "Are you one of her familiars, too? No black cats for our indomitable Miss Winters."

The gull tucked his head shyly beneath his wing.

Justin growled. "Ought to wring your scrawny little neck. Put you in the pot for supper." He started for the bird, hands outstretched.

Penfeld cleared his throat meaningfully.

Justin swept up the letter that had been posted from London over five months before and had arrived

per a native runner only that afternoon. "The sheer arrogance of the woman! She insists I retrieve the

girl immediately. She's concocted some fabulous hints about her being involved in a scandal. What could the child have done? Spilled her milk at supper? Pilfered the sugar bowl?"

Penfeld patted his rotund belly fondly. "I was once caned myself for a similar crime."

"The grasping creature. I've sent every halfpenny I could scrape together for the girl's education."

Penfeld already knew that. He had been the one to post the slim envelopes devoid of a return address.

Justin sank down on an upended rum barrel. His shoulders slumped. "She must want more money.

But I've nothing left to sell. What am I to do?"

Penfeld directed all of his attention to polishing the immaculate spout of the teapot with his sleeve. "The Winters woman might not be the only one to learn of your whereabouts. Perhaps your family, sir…"

Justin lifted his head and looked at him with amber eyes that were dusted with flecks of ruthless gold.

He spoke with the level enunciation that had been known to freeze the staunchest Maori warrior in his tracks. "I have no family."

For a moment the only sound was the clink of one cup against another. Justin's gaze slowly melted from furious to imploring. "I'm a bachelor. Doesn't that woman understand? I can't be responsible for a child. It's quite impossible. She's far better off staying in England, where she can get a proper education."

Penfeld blew an imaginary speck of dust from the cream pitcher. "And when she's of an age to marry?"

Justin's laughter had a wild edge to it. "We've years to worry about that. She was only three when David died. She can't be more than ten or eleven now." Fueled by purpose, he donned his gold-rimmed spectacles and began to scribble furiously on the back of the paper. "I'm sending a letter back with the runner. The girl stays in the school her father chose for her. It's in her best interest. I'll send more money when I'm able."

"Have you ever thought the child might want a home? A family?"

Justin's pen hung poised over the paper. As he lifted his naked gaze, Penfeld wished he could bite back the words.

His master's sweeping gesture encompassed the dusty hut, the crude dirt floor, the books heaped in

every inch of available space. "Does this look like a home?" He touched his stubbled chin, his shirtless chest, the jagged hole worn in the knee of his calico dungarees. "Do I look like a family?"

Penfeld stared at the floor. Justin folded the letter in a neat square, scrawled a new address on the envelope, and held it out. Penfeld took it.

He paused at the door, glancing back to find Justin still slumped on the barrel, his hand cupped around

the gold watch he wore on a chain around his neck. In their years together, Penfeld had rarely seen him without it. As Justin snapped open the cover, a distant mist haunted his amber eyes.

Sighing with regret, Penfeld turned away and plodded toward the native village.

He caressed the worn envelope between his fingers, fearing it was not the poor little girl who needed

his master, but his poor master who needed the girl.

Emily shifted her bustle with both hands, watching with amused interest the battle taking place at the

stern of the steamer. Three hours had passed with no sign of Barney's boat. Doreen alternated between searching the horizon with a rusty spyglass and threatening the half-deaf, and, Emily suspected, half-daft steamer captain into drifting for one more hour. The captain's little mail packet ran only once a month from Melbourne to Auckland, and he was determined to sail.

While Doreen squawked and the captain bellowed, Emily turned back to the water, preferring the soothing lap of the waves against the hull. The balmy wind tore at her curls. The sun drifted like a

golden feather into the sea. How ironic that after all those years of waiting, she had spent her last ounce of energy trying to abort this trip. They would never have gotten her aboard the ship from England if

they hadn't laced her coffee with a dose of belladonna that had almost killed her.

They were determined to deliver her to the one man in the world she loathed more than them-Justin Connor.

The roar of the steamer's engines shook the deck. Emily clutched the rail, feeling the pistons throb to

life like her hatred for her guardian.

Rumors had flown through London society when the only son of the wealthy duke had failed to return from his New Zealand expedition. Girls Emily had once called friends brought her the murmured tales from their parents' drawing rooms, their malice masked by well-meaning sighs of pity and pointed

glances at her shabby frocks and scuffed boots.

In the best London circles Justin Connor's very name came to embody danger and romance. At the school it was whispered in tones of naughty reverence. Emily wasn't the only girl who drifted into sleep with his image swashbuckling through her dreams.

Most believed him a dashing adventurer, a speculator who had made his fortune gambling in land and

gold and human lives. They swore he had cast aside his own family and had scoffed at their written

pleas to come home and take his rightful place as heir to the Winthrop shipping fortune.

Emily narrowed her eyes. She could well imagine him ensconced on the fertile New Zealand coast,

living in the handsome Victorian mansion he had built with her father's gold… and her father's blood. Perhaps he had his own daughter by now-a golden-haired little doll-child swathed in love and lace. In seven years he had sent her not one personal note, not one word of kindness. Miss Winters had taken great pains to show her the stilted messages, the pathetic handfuls of pound notes and shillings.

After a few weeks of such obvious neglect, they had given her spacious sitting room to Cecille du Pardieu, a china-faced brat who was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of an Austrian prince. It

was only Miss Winters's fear of Emily's mysterious guardian that stopped her from casting her into the streets. It was decided she would earn her bread by teaching the younger girls who had once been her adoring equals.

In her tiny attic box-room, Emily had crawled beneath the gables and rubbed a clean spot on the sooty glass with her sleeve. She had gazed for hours across the grimy ocean of roofs and chimneys and waited for Mr. Connor to come and take her away.

Groaning, the steamer jolted into motion. Doreen screeched a protest. As the island melted into the horizon, Emily's nails dug into the rail.

"We won't meet today, Mr. Connor," she whispered. "Not today. Not ever." He would never have the chance to laugh in her face for daring to believe he might want her in his life.

But as the steamer chugged into its tidy rhythm, Doreen's moan of despair careened into a whoop of joy. Emily's gaze followed the stretch of her outflung arm.

Barney's tiny boat cut through the waves. Emily's breath caught in her throat. She took two dazed steps toward the rail and watched as Doreen and Barney struggled to hoist the boat up the side.

Before Barney could climb out, Doreen was poking him in the ribs. "What did he say? Didn't you bring him back with you?" She craned her scrawny neck to peer into the boat as if her brother might be hiding someone under the narrow seat. "Is he coming? Is he sending a fancy boat for us?"

Barney slowly raised his head, his eyes flat peridots in his sallow face. "He ain't there. Ain't no one

there but a pack o' bleedin' savages and some old 'ermit named Pooka livin' in a hut. There ain't no

fancy 'ouse and there ain't no fancy gentleman either."

"It can't be. He has to be there. Our Miss Amelia said so.

Barney's gaze came to rest on Emily with pure malevolence. "You 'eard me. 'E ain't there."

Doreen's shoulders slumped. "Miss Amelia was afraid of this. She didn't even tell him we were bringing the brat in the letter she sent."

"Then 'e must o' found out some other way and moved on. Wouldn't you?"

A bolt of raw pain shot through Emily, shocking her with its intensity. She hated Doreen. She hated Barney. She hated the whole world. But most of all she hated the tiny corner of her heart that had

dared to hope.

Tears sheened her vision. She threw back her head and burst into laughter, speaking for the first time in that long, sullen afternoon. "I'm sure Miss Winters will be receiving an explanation very soon. 'Dear Miss Winters, I regret to inform you my present situation is not suited for the care of a child. Enclosed within

is my generous offering of three pounds and five shillings for the continuance of her education, her board, her dowry, and an extra halfpenny to buy her a sweetmeat.' "

Barney and Doreen gaped at her; their pointed jaws dropped to their throats.

"Christ, the two of you are so pathetic! You trot halfway around the world at the bidding of some grasping, senile old woman on an idiot's mission. You with your hideous bonnet and you with your

short, ugly suit. You're both clowns! We're all clowns in Miss Amelia Winters's bloody traveling circus!"

Emily spun around. She was gulping back tears now and she would be damned to eternal hell before those two leeches would see her cry.

She heard them whispering behind her and wondered if she had gone too far. She doubted if any of

Miss Winters's genteel pupils had ever dared address the prickly Miss Dobbins in such a manner.

The creak of a plank warned Emily. She turned around. Barney and Doreen slunk toward her, shoulders hunched like two alley cats. Emily cast a frantic glance at the bridge. The captain was draped over the wheel, snoring with his eyes open.

"You were poor Miss Amelia's last hope," Doreen said, her voice as oddly flat as her eyes.

"Ungrateful little witch," Barney muttered.

Emily pressed herself to the rail. The rough wood dug into her back. "Stay away from me. I'm warning you."

"Why?" Doreen taunted. "Is the great and mighty Mr. Connor going to swoop down from the sky to

save you? He don't want you. Nobody does."

The words should have lost their power to sting. But Emily discovered they hadn't. Silently cursing the weight of her heavy skirts, she gauged her chances of dashing past them on the narrow deck.

Barney cocked his head. "What was it Miss Amelia said about bringin' 'er back?"

Doreen lapsed into pure cockney. "Said she was a disgrace to the school. Drivin' 'er finest pupils away. Said if I brought 'er back, I'd be lookin' fer a new position meself."

Barney nodded smugly. The twilight wind blew cooler as brother and sister gazed at each other in a moment of silent accord. With a resourcefulness born of surviving a motherless childhood in the East

End of London, they rushed her.

Barney caught one leg, Doreen the other. Emily balled up her fist and smashed it into Barney's face. Blood spewed, and she knew she had broken his nose. She enjoyed a fierce second of triumph. Then

the sky and water swapped places as they heaved her up and over the rail of the steamer into the darkening sea.

Chapter 2

Emily sank like a stone. The narrow double skirts twined around her legs in serpentine cords, cutting

off her feeble kicks. The weight of the whalebone bustle dragged her down, deep into the murky depths until the shimmer of the sunset on the water faded to black.

God? Her voice was shy and hesitant, as it had been when her father was alive before she learned that swearing and stomping got more attention than tugging politely on someone's skirt.

No answer.

God? Are you there? Louder this time, more strident. The crushing pressure in her chest worsened.

I know I haven't been very nice the past few yean. Miss Winters says I'm quite a naughty girl,

especially after that sordid incident with the gardener's son.

Her skirt wrapped around her face in choking folds. Perhaps this was an inopportune moment to be reminding God of her sins.

She clawed the skirt from her face. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd be very grateful if you

would let me live. Not really for myself sir. Just to spite Barney and Doreen. And Justin Connor,

that dirty, no-good, thieving wretch who stole my daddy's gold mine.

The familiar litany was a prayer all its own. She had breathed it, dreamed it, and feasted on its bitterness for seven years. Her legs pummeled the water with new ferocity. She tore at the buttons of her bodice, wrenched the bustle's tape from its mooring. Her head pounded. Tiny dots of light danced before her eyes. Still she clawed at the heavy garments, shedding each layer like musty skins. Finally, she was able to shoot toward the surface, strong and lithe in the simple cotton chemise issued each of the girls at the seminary.

Her hands pressed on with a life of their own, ripping the chemise as if they could somehow tear

asunder not only the garment, but all the drab, lonely, soot-stained years since she had sat in Miss Winters's library and been told her daddy was never coming back.

The buoyant water bore her upward. Her head split the surface with a splash. She sucked in a

shuddering breath. Life and air tingled through her blood all the way to the tips of her toes. The brilliant orb of the sun lay flat on the water, and for a dazzling instant Emily couldn't tell where the exploding rainbow of the sunset ended and she began. She dove beneath the waves and turned an exultant flip.

She emerged from the water, shaking sun-gilded drops from her hair. "Thank you, God," she whispered fiercely. "I shall try to be nicer. I swear I will."

At that moment she saw the steamer chugging toward the far horizon. A faint cry floated on the wind. Barney waved his arms and Emily knew he had spotted her.

Noble intentions forgotten, Emily thumbed her nose and wiggled her fingers at him in a gesture seldom practiced at the seminary. Blowing him a final taunting kiss she kicked herself around, rolling and

bobbing like a sleek seal. The silvery curve of the shoreline beckoned. She quenched a flare of trepidation. Before he'd gone off on his quest for gold, she and her father had rented a modest cottage

at Brighton each summer. She'd become a strong swimmer. It couldn't be as far to land as it looked. Could it?

The cool water caressed her bare skin. A wave of heady delight coursed through her. She drew in a

deep breath and struck for the shore with long, graceful strokes, free at last.

As Justin prowled the deserted beach, the bloated moon laved the peak of each swell in molten silver.

The waves broke on the sand and rushed over his feet in a swirl of foam before the sea could suck

them back. He felt the inexorable tug against his bare soles as if the sea held the power to melt the

very shore beneath his feet.

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. The breeze whispered of a respite from his aching restlessness, but for Justin it was a taunting refrain. He couldn't even still his thoughts long enough to hear the night's music calling to him. The only thing more elusive than sleep was peace.

Damn the tenacious Miss Winters and her letters! It had been months since he had been jolted from

sleep by the bright, merry edge of a child's laughter. Tonight the mocking echo had driven him stumbling and groaning from his pallet to seek the brighter darkness of night.

He paused, rocking back and forth on his heels, and stared blindly out to sea. Cool spray misted his skin. It had been seven years since he, Nicholas, and David had come to New Zealand to seek their fortunes. Seven years since Trini had dragged his boat ashore and pried David's stiffening body from his grip. But when Justin closed his eyes, time melted like the sand beneath his feet.

If the smooth-talking Nicky had been their wit and Justin their brains, it was David who had been their heart.

After weeks of fruitless panning for gold in the cold shadow of the Southern Alps, it had been David's relentless optimism that had given them the cheer to continue. David had hope enough for all of them; David had dreams of the future; David had Claire.

Claire. Long after Nicky was snoring, Justin would lie awake in the dark and listen hungrily as David talked of his baby daughter. As he would drift into sleep, it was almost as if the scent of her tousled

curls and the echo of her irrepressible giggle would warm their lonely camp. He had even dreamed of

her once. She had toddled from the sea, her plump arms outstretched, the lilting timbre of her voice crying for her father. In the dream it had not been David but Justin himself who soothed her puckered brow against his shoulder.

The stringent cry of a kiwi shattered his memories. Justin sucked in a breath, half expecting the beach

to erupt in a welter of Maori natives, their tattooed faces twisted in frenzied cries for utu, their sun-browned hands twined around the deadly hilts of their taiahas. From behind him came only the

flurry of wings as a startled gannet took to the sky.

Justin opened his eyes. He stood on a different shore now. The salt-tinged breeze of the North Island

was kinder and balmier than the stiff winds of the South Island. The palms swayed in lulling rhythms

and the sea sang instead of roaring. He had created a life for himself here. A small and simple life

stripped of snarls and entanglements. But the stench of gunpowder and blood still haunted his nostrils, mingling with the rich, sweet scent of the crimson-flowered pohutukawas.

It had been Trini, with his innocent wisdom, who had told him he still carried with him the body of his friend.

Justin kicked at the waves and started down the moon-drenched ribbon of beach. If he didn't return

soon, Penfeld would come searching for him. His valet believed him too absentminded and too

immersed in his music to find the hut once he wandered far from it.

He turned his face to the wind, abandoning his senses to the seductive beauty of the night. Stars misted the smudged charcoal of the northern sky. His hair danced against his shoulders like a dark cloak as he ambled along, lost in the pounding symphony of sand and surf.

A cloud darted across the moon; Justin spotted a dark shape against the sand. Seaweed, he thought. Or driftwood. The cloud sped away. Moonlight spilled over the beach, illuminating the shape in a pool of riveting clarity.

Justin's heart slammed into an uneven drumbeat; he glided forward as if in a trance.

A woman lay on the sand, half curled into herself, half exposed to his piercing gaze. No, not a woman, but a gossamer creature woven of moonlight and dreams. Justin blinked, expecting her to vanish. But

she remained-mysterious, provocative-and wearing not a single stitch of clothing.

He crept nearer. Her cheek was pillowed on folded hands. Her breasts rose and fell gently with each breath. Justin's dazed mind absorbed details with dizzying lucidity: a cherub's face-a dash of freckles across the bridge of a snub nose, a rosebud mouth, lashes of stubby velvet, an unruly mass of chestnut curls. Before he could stop it, his gaze drifted lower, where a nest of darker curls glistened with sea

drops. His toes curled into the wet sand.

The sun had kissed her face and arms, but the rest of her was polished to creamy pearl. Sand sparkled against her skin like ground diamonds. Luminous coral tipped her breasts. He was tempted to look

around for the giant shell that must have birthed her.

His gaze flicked upward to the mocking wink of the stars. "For me?" he whispered.

He sank down cross-legged in the sand beside her. He ought to be rousing her, checking her for injuries, covering her. But he had worn only his tattered dungarees. Even with the best of intentions, one of them was going to be naked. And he wasn't yet sure his intentions were the best.

He rested his chin on steepled ringers, unable to drag his gaze away from the rosy little nymph. He couldn't fathom the effect she had on him. He felt as if someone had punched him low in the gut,

driving out all the breath with one blow. His rising desire was a foreign heat that bore no relation to

the rare fumble in the dark he might share with some generous Maori woman or Auckland whore.

He felt he might sit forever, afraid of not touching her, more afraid of touching her, locked in her strange spell until someone dragged him away. The breeze whispered encouragement even as the waves chanted a warning. They might have been the only two alive. For the first time Justin understood Zeus's temptation to turn himself into a swan to mate with Leda in the forest. He knew the hunger of the fierce knight Huldbrand groaning for the siren song of his sea witch Undine.

A primitive enchantment beckoned him. It had nothing to do with the civilized constraints of his time,

but hearkened back to another era, when a man had knelt between a woman's thighs with no need for polite small-talk to woo her heart.

Justin buried his face in his hands. Sweet Lord, his morals were becoming as muddled as his dreams. Perhaps he should return to England, where he wouldn't be tempted to ravish a girl just because she'd

had the ill luck to wash up naked on his beach.

He shoved his hands through his hair, determined to take some action. He would have to carry her back to the hut. Unless he wanted to drag her by the hair, that would mean touching her.

He sat up on his knees. The feathery fingers of his shadow fell over her, brushing all the plump swells

and lush hollows his hands burned to touch. Dragging in a breath that was more a groan, he eased an

arm beneath her shoulders. The coral petals of her mouth parted in sleepy surrender. Justin's tongue darted out to moisten his lips.

What could one kiss hurt? Even Sleeping Beauty's prince had stolen that much. He leaned forward,

taking painstaking care that no less-principled part of his body should meet with hers. He touched her mouth softly with his own. Her lips were salty-sweet. Justin licked the salt away, glazing her lips with liquid moonlight. He couldn't remember the last time he had kissed a woman. His head reeled. Only minutes ago he had been walking alone on the beach. Now he was kissing a goddess.

A mistake. As her lips parted beneath the subtle, hungry pressure of his own, Justin knew kissing her

had been a terrible mistake. But it was too late to extricate himself. He could only slide his tongue between her parted lips, making hot, slippery love to her mouth with all the tender ferocity his body craved. Her taste was magic and he couldn't have pulled himself away if she had wrapped her legs

around him and dragged him to her kingdom deep beneath the sea.

He buried his face in her damp curls. The faintest aroma of vanilla clung to her hair, rendered erotic by

its very purity. Just one touch, he promised himself. Just to rake his fingers across her sand-sugared skin, to cup the gentle swell of her breast in his palm…

He was already reaching for her when the husky whisper came, so close to his ear it had the intimacy

of his own thoughts. "I stabbed the last man who stuck his tongue in my mouth."

Justin slowly lifted his head. He hung there, caught dead in the sights of her sparkling brown eyes.

"What's wrong? I didn't swallow it, did I?" Her pert nose crinkled as she laughed. Justin thought it was

the most endearing thing he had ever seen.

Her merry eyes went somber. She lifted her hand. Justin couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Her fingers caught a stray lock of his hair, brushed it gently from his brow. "You have the most extraordinary eyes," she whispered.

Then she rolled over, snuggled her face against the warmth of his lap, and went back to sleep.

Time stopped. Justin couldn't have said how long he knelt there, brushing the sand from her tangled

curls and enduring the exquisite torture of her warm sigh breaching the threadbare calico of his dungarees.

He didn't even hear Penfeld approach, huffing and puffing as if he'd trotted all the way from England. "There you are, sir. I was just out for a stroll-" His gaze dropped to Justin's lap. He threw a hand over his eyes. "Good Lord!"

"What?" Justin gazed dumbly up at him, still lost in the throes of his reverie.

Penfeld peeped between his round little fingers. "If I've come at an inopportune moment, sir…?"

Justin blinked as if coming awake after a long sleep. The sleep of a lifetime. He reluctantly untangled his fingers from the skein of curls. "No, no. You've come at the perfect time. Give me your coat."

Justin had to admire his valet's aplomb. Penfeld turned his back and peeled off his coat as if finding his master cuddled on the beach with a nude, insensible woman were a normal occurrence. He started to

fold it. Justin tugged it out of his hand. If he hadn't stopped him, Justin knew he would have washed

and pressed it before handing it over.

Penfeld rubbed his arms, shivering in his crisp linen shirt as if he were the one naked. "I do say, is it

a mermaid, sir?"

"Do you see any gills?"

Penfeld chanced a tentative glance over his shoulder. What he did see was a voluptuous young woman being tenderly enveloped in the folds of his coat.

Justin stood, gathering her like a child in his arms. Her head lolled warm and damp against his shoulder. His gaze traced her features-the elfin tilt of her nose, the pout that made no apology for its sensual promise.

Penfeld dared to turn around. "Wherever did she come from, sir? Could she be the victim of a shipwreck perhaps? Or a stowaway?"

Grinning, Justin lifted his head. "No stowaway, Penfeld, but a gift. A gift from the sea."

Penfeld couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his master truly smile. Justin was already striding

down the beach, his steps no longer weighted, but as light as if he carried not a woman, but a blithe

spirit fashioned of sea foam and Stardust. As Penfeld watched, Justin did the most extraordinary thing.

He lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the tip of the woman's nose.

Penfeld mopped his forehead, wondering if they'd both been struck with the moon madness so coveted and feared by the natives.

Emily burrowed into the thin mattress, her mind tugging greedily at the blurred edges of sleep. She despised waking up. Despised the sleet tapping at the tiny attic window, the wash water frozen in her basin, the prospect of crawling down the steep stairs to teach French to wealthy little brats who didn't know their demitasses from their derrieres and who teased her mercilessly because her dress was two years too small. Groaning, she fumbled for a pillow to pull over her head. Perhaps if she hid long enough, Tansy would come tapping on the door with a mug of steaming black coffee smuggled out from under Cook's bulbous nose.

Her groping search yielded no pillow. A new sensation crept over her, a feeling utterly delicious and so foreign to her gloomy attic that she wanted to weep at its beauty.

Warmth.

She slowly opened her eyes. The sun fanned tingling fingers across her face. She lay there, stunned, basking in its heat, enveloped in its healing rays. She closed her eyes against the dazzling shaft of light. When she opened them again, a twisted green face hung only an inch above her own, its pointed teeth bared in a ferocious grimace.

She shrieked and scrambled backward, groping for a weapon. Her fingers curled around the first blunt object they could find. As her back slammed into a wall, dust exploded, setting her off on a quaking

chain of sneezes.

"Now look what you've done, Trini. You've frightened the poor girl. I dare say she's never seen a

savage before."

Emily wiped her streaming eyes. Now two faces were peering at her. One was still green, but the other was round and decidedly English. It was clicking its tongue and shaking its side-whiskers like a great overgrown hamster.

The fierce green face loomed nearer. "How do you do, miss? The sheer luminosity of your countenance beguiles me. I take extreme delight in welcoming you, our most charming breast."

The round face pinkened. Emily gaped. The savage's words had come rolling out in deep, resonant tones as if he'd just strolled from the hallowed corridors of Cambridge, his feathered cloak swinging around his shoulders. Emily realized his teeth were bared not in a snarl, but in a beaming smile. Nor was he entirely green. Deep furrows of jade had been tattooed in his honey-colored skin in elaborate curls and soaring wings.

A soft groan came out of the shadows. "Not breast, Trini. Guest."

She squinted into the corner, but the sunlight had blinded her. She could make out only a vague shape.

The tattooed man stretched out a hand. She recoiled and smacked it away. "I'll keep my breast to

myself, thank you. I'm not a simpering ninny for some native Lothario to ravish."

The savage threw back his head. His musical laughter rocked the small hut.

"Did I say something amusing?" she asked the hamster. Her head was starting to pound and she was wishing even more desperately for that coffee.

"Oh, dear, I'm afraid so. You see-the Maori don't ravish their victims." He leaned forward and whispered, "They eat them."

Emily felt herself go the same color as the snorting native. She pressed herself to the wall. "Stay away from me. I'm warning the both of you. I wasn't kicked out of every girls' school in England for nothing." Emily disliked lying. She much preferred to embellish the truth.

She attacked the air with her makeshift weapon. The native danced backward. Narrowing her eyes in what she hoped was a menacing fashion, she said, "That's right. I know how to use this thing."

"What a comfort," came a dry voice from the corner. "If Penfeld ever decides to stop serving tea long enough to dust, you'll be of great service."

Emily glanced down to discover she was threatening a cannibal with a feather duster. Her cheeks burned.

A man unfolded himself from the shadows with lanky grace. He stepped into a beam of sunlight, tilting back a battered panama hat with one finger.

Their eyes met and Emily remembered everything. She remembered swimming until her arms and legs had turned leaden and her head bobbed under the water with each stroke. She remembered crawling

onto the beach and collapsing in the warm sand. Then her memories hazed-a man's mouth melted tenderly into hers, his dark-lashed eyes the color of sunlight on honey.

Emily gazed up into those eyes. Their depths were a little sad, a trifle mocking. She couldn't tell if they mocked her or himself. She forced her gaze down from his, then wished she hadn't.

Her throat constricted. His physical presence was as daunting as a blow. She had never seen quite so much man. The sheer volume of his sun-bronzed skin both shocked and fascinated her. In London the men swathed themselves in layers of clothing from the points of their high starched collars to the tips of their polished shoes. Shaggy whiskers shielded any patch of skin that risked exposure.

But this man wore nothing but sheared-off dungarees that clung low on his narrow hips. The chiseled muscles of his chest and calves drank in the sunlight. To Emily's shocked eyes, he might as well have been naked.

Another unwelcome memory returned-damp sand clinging to her own bare skin. The pulse in her throat throbbed to mortified life. She glanced down to find herself wrapped in the voluminous folds of a man's frock coat. The sleeves hung far below her hands, nearly enveloping the duster.

"My man Penfeld was kind enough to lend you his coat."

The husky scratch of the stranger's voice sent shivers down her spine. An endearing lilt had been layered over his clipped English, flavoring it with an exotic cadence. She had heard similar accents in Melbourne.

Disconcerted to find her thoughts read so neatly, she shot him a nasty look. A dazzling smile split the somber black of his stubbled chin. Dear Lord, the amiable wretch had kissed her! What other liberties

had he taken while she lay in his embrace? Dropping the offensive duster, Emily buried her fists in the coat and hugged herself, fighting a sudden chill.

Penfeld-the-Hamster leaned forward in his shirtsleeves and suspenders and peered into her face with concern. "You look a trifle pale, miss. Would you care for some tea?"

"Coffee, please. Very strong and very black."

Penfeld looked as dismayed as if she'd asked for a straight shot of arsenic. His whiskers quivered.

"You'll have to forgive him," said the man. "He's been waiting years for the opportunity to serve a lady tea."

"He'll have to wait a bit longer, then, won't he?" she snapped.

She couldn't tell if it was laughter or reproach that kinked the corner of the stranger's well-shaped mouth. While Penfeld retreated to the cast-iron stove, shaking his head sadly, the native squatted and grinned at her. To Emily he still looked hungry.

"Fix some for him, too," she commanded. "Or does he prefer blood?"

The stranger crossed his muscular arms over his chest. "Only the blood of virgins."

Emily pasted on her cockiest smile, determined to boast her way past these half-naked rogues.

"Then I've nothing to worry about, have I?"

A shadow flitted over his face but was gone before she could define it. Her mind raced feverishly. She was not in London, but halfway across the world in New Zealand. What if the dim-witted Barney had been wrong? If Justin Connor was living somewhere on this isolated stretch of coast, she would have

to flee as soon as possible. No body of land was big enough to hold the two of them.

A silver tray wielded by a pristine white glove slid into her vision. A dainty china cup perched on its gleaming surface. Penfeld held one hand behind his back with painstaking care. "Do forgive me, miss.

I lost my other glove in a thermal geyser."

"My condolences." She snatched the steaming cup. As she brought it to her lips, her sleeve threatened

to swallow it before she could.

The stranger knelt beside her and deftly rolled the cumbersome sleeves past her wrists. Emily gazed at

the top of his head. Threads of sun-burnished silver webbed his silky, dark hair. She brushed a riot of tangled curls from her own eyes, shied by his nearness.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"My pleasure, Miss…?"

"Scar-" the word was halfway out before Emily could stop it. She took a deep swig of the coffee, scalding her throat "-let," she finished. "Miss Emily Scarlet."

If Justin Connor was somewhere nearby, she couldn't afford to have her name bandied about the island. Her guardian did not want her. He'd made that painfully clear by never retrieving her from the seminary. If she showed up on his doorstep demanding her share of the gold mine, she might meet the same fate

as her father's other partner, Nicholas Saleri. She might disappear. For good.

The man straightened. "Well, hello, Miss Emily Scarlet. I'm"-Emily noticed his hesitation as he exchanged a wary glance with Penfeld-"delighted to meet you. Would you care to tell us how you stumbled upon our humble shore?"

"I fell off a boat." That much was true anyway. She hoped God was smiling down on her. From the skeptical gleam in the man's crystalline eyes, she had a feeling she'd be needing all the heavenly help

she could get.

"Shall we send a message to Auckland for you? Perhaps we could locate this boat. Find your family."

Wonderful, she thought. Just what she needed. Another chance for the darling Dobbinses to sink their claws into her.

She shook her head violently. Coffee sloshed onto Penfeld's coat, eliciting a soft moan from the valet. "That won't be necessary. I have no family. I'm an orphan."

She couldn't help feeling rather pleased with herself. That was the second time she'd told the truth

today. And it wasn't even noon yet.

Her confession seemed to disturb her host. He rose and paced the hut, raking a hand through the scandalous length of his hair.

Emily sipped her coffee, studying him from beneath her lashes. Tansy would love to dig her pearly

little teeth into this one. She had to admit he was handsome in an unpolished sort of way. Tall, broad-shouldered, and just a shade too thin. The kind of man any woman would love to fatten up.

She tucked her toes beneath the coat, wondering where that last treacherous thought had come from.

A gold chain gleamed on his chest. The sun glinted off a single earring as he turned.

Pirates! Emily thought. They must all be pirates! That would explain his reticence in introducing himself. His name and face must be plastered on wanted posters all over the South Pacific. Perhaps he would sail her off the island before Justin Connor found her. Emily's imagination soared. Why, she wouldn't mind turning a hand to pirating herself! She and Tansy had often sneaked off to play at Jean Laffite until Miss Winters had discovered them dueling with two of her finest parasols while Cecille du Pardieu, squealing like a piglet, prepared to walk the plank. Miss Winters might have forgiven them if they hadn't balanced the plank on the roof-forty feet above the street.

A little pirating and she would be powerful enough to win back her daddy's gold and send old Justin Connor himself to a watery grave.

Emily gulped the last of the coffee, immensely cheered at the thought. "You're so very kind to let me stay. I promise to be very little trouble."

"Stay? Stay here?" The man turned so fast that his knee dislodged a stack of books. They toppled to

the floor, sending up a new cloud of dust. Penfeld wheezed.

Emily reclined against the wall with what she hoped was convincing frailty. "I don't wish to impose on your hospitality, of course, but I do feel dreadfully weak. You'd be very generous to show mercy to a homeless orphan." She pursed her lips in a beguiling pout that had been known to drop grown men to their knees.

But this man only rested his hands on his slim hips. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and suddenly Emily was afraid. Wasn't it Tansy who had warned her that someday she would cajole the wrong man?

The native slipped soundlessly to his feet. As Emily's bravado wilted beneath the heat of the stranger's gaze, she rather wished the savage would eat her.

But he only bowed with a flourish, then slipped a sprig of greenery from behind his ear and laid it at her feet. "Trini Te Wana welcomes you to our humble abode with the most celebratory of congratulations." He backed away, still bowing.

The stranger's sun-flecked eyes challenged her. "It seems Trini has made his wishes known. Go on.

Take it. It's a Maori sign of welcome." When Emily frowned skeptically, he squatted beside her, lifted

her curls, and whispered, "It means he doesn't intend to eat you."

His warm hand lingered against her nape. At the flash of his wolfish grin Emily wondered if it was

Trini's appetites she ought to be concerned about.

She took the sprig of shiny leaves with trembling fingers. A warbling cry sounded from outside the hut. The man leaned one elbow on his knee and snapped open the watch case dangling from his chain.

"Trini, Penfeld, could you see to that?" he asked. "I'll be along shortly."

As Trini and Penfeld left, the watch spun on its golden chain, sending a blinding dart of sunlight across Emily's eyes. She stared at it, hypnotized.

"Miss Scarlet? Are you all right?" he said gently. When she didn't answer, he nudged her chin up with

his knuckle.

"I'm fine," she whispered, studying his features with a fresh mixture of wonder and horror.

He gazed down at her; a frown deepened the tiny sun creases around his eyes.

She forced a smile. "Really. It's nothing a fresh cup of coffee won't cure." She held out her cup.

As he sauntered to the stove, whistling under his breath, Emily stared at his broad back through a fractured prism of tears. She had lied. Heaven had stopped smiling. and she wasn't sure if she'd ever

be fine again.

She had caught only a glimpse of the tiny tintype mounted in the watch case. An angelic moppet smiled out at her, her brown eyes twinkling with hope. Emily knew that child had died long ago with her father. And no matter how hard she tried, she could think of only one reason why the gentle pirate with the stunning eyes would be wearing Claire Scarborough's portrait around his neck.

Her hand closed in a convulsive fist, crumpling Trini's friendly offering to shreds.

Chapter 3

Emily silently whispered frantic words of hope to herself.

Perhaps the handsome pirate had kidnapped Justin Connor, tossed his fat corpse overboard, and

kept her father's watch as booty.

"Here you go. Careful, it's hot." The man's husky voice interrupted her reverie.

She took the cup he offered and watched him settle his lean hips against the windowsill. The breadth of his shoulders blocked the sunlight, leaving him in silhouette. At least she was to be spared the temptation of gawking openly at his face. She took a swig of the coffee, but its bitter warmth failed to ease her chill.

Maybe the cannibal had eaten Justin Connor but been unable to digest the watch.

Her spirits lifted at the thought. She tilted the cup to hide her grin. Ending up as an English delicacy at some native feast was more than equal to the various tortures and lingering deaths she had devised for

the scoundrel over the years. This man simply couldn't be Justin Connor, she assured herself. If he were, he'd be living in a mansion, not a ramshackle hut with only a prim valet and an overeducated cannibal

for company. She opened her mouth to ask him his name, then closed it again, part of her quailing from what he might answer.

"I could hardly sleep last night, wondering about one thing," he said. Suspicion shaded his voice and Emily sensed he was a man who did not trust easily. They had that much in common.

She set down the cup, embarrassed to discover how badly her hands were shaking. "I should hate to be the cause of your insomnia. Do satisfy your curiosity."

Pulling off his hat, he fixed her with a gaze of disarming candor. "Were you naked before or after you

fell off the boat?"

A fierce heat burned her cheeks. She resisted the urge to tug the coat down over her pale calves. "After," she croaked dutifully. "My dress was pulling me under the water, so I tore it off."

Justin knit his hands at the small of his back, struggling not to smile at her bold ingenuity. "Most of the women I once knew would have gracefully drowned before shedding their precious petticoats and corsets."

Anger surged through Emily. This scowling stranger suddenly represented all the narrow-minded prigs she'd left behind in London. "Forgive me if I offended your delicate sensibilities. Better dead than immodest. Wasn't it our noble Victoria who said that?"

Except for a faint quirk of his eyebrow, he ignored her sarcasm. "So you're English."

"No. I'm Chinese," she snapped.

She knotted her hands in Penfeld's coat, struggling to control her temper. Miss Winters always said it would be her downfall, along with her profanity, her ardor for green apples, and her penchant for

sliding down the banister in her Sunday pinafore.

"Why were you expelled from boarding school?"

Damn. Could the man read her very thoughts? she wondered. "Which time?" she replied innocently.

The questic n took him aback. "The most recent?" he offered.

She crossed her arms over her chest, mentally arming both barrels. She liked to see how well a man

stood up under fire.

Drawing in a deep breath, she recited, "I ate a bucket of green apples and threw up on the headmistress's best cloak. I put a snake in Cecille du Pardieu's bed. I substituted firecrackers for the candles on last year's Christmas tree. I cut off the buttons on the teacher's boots… while she was teaching. I sawed

off the newel post at the end of the banister. I replaced all the pepper in the kitchen with saltpeter, and

I called the neighborhood curate a pompous, lily-livered, Satan-spawned, son-of-a-"

"Enough!" he shouted. "Thank you very much. That will be quite enough. There's really no need for further explanation."

She ducked her head modestly and cast him a shy look from beneath her lashes. "Oh," she added as if

in afterthought. "And the headmistress caught the gardener's son and me in a rather… um… compromising position."

Justin gazed down at her, thinking that a man could become intoxicated from the wicked sparkle of her eyes. Her grin slashed an impish dimple in one cheek and crinkled her nose. What manner of girl was she? She had tossed the torrid facts of a ruinous scandal in his face with the naughty aplomb of a fallen angel. Thank God he had a few more years of reprieve before David's little Claire was faced with temptations so grave.

He was forced to turn away, the image of Emily rolling in the leaves with some pimpled gardener's lad filling him with unexpected fury. Did they rendezvous in the gazebo? he wondered. Behind the toolshed? Did he bring her roses? Weave chains of daisies to crown her chestnut curls?

He found himself at the stove, fiddling aimlessly with the tin coffeepot. She'd been kicked out of other schools, had she? Had there been other boys? Grocery lads? Lamplighter's nephews? Chimney sweeps? A series of visions, erotic and vivid, raged through his mind, obliterating all his hard-earned sanity in their path. Because in those visions it wasn't some boy who took her, but he himself who knelt between her thighs and showed her how it felt to be loved by a man.

His knuckles whitened on the warm edge of the stove as he struggled to remind himself how fast a desire this hot could scar.

He stole a glance at her. With her tousled curls and flushed cheeks, she looked to be no more than a

child, a little girl playing dress-up in her father's coat.

Perhaps he should be locked away for even entertaining such notions about her. "How old are you,

Miss Scarlet?" he choked out.

She lifted her cup in a mocking toast. "Grown." Taking a deep breath, he turned. His voice came out

with the cool detachment of a stranger's. "I am terribly sorry, but I fear it's impossible for you to remain here unchaperoned. There are missionaries in Auckland who can help you."

"The curate suggested an exorcist." Justin suspected she needed an exorcist less than a sound spanking. He lowered his voice to a hollow whisper. "I could call on Trim's tohunga, the high priest. I'm sure he'd know some way to get those nasty spirits out of you." "Oh, no, you don't." She shook her head violently. "I'll not be an hors d'oeuvre for some leering skull shaker." "Why, Emily, you insult the Maori! They're quite civilized, you know. They never eat their friends. Only their enemies."

"How benevolent." Emily blew a stray curl out of her eyes. She had no intention of being frightened off so easily. Not until she'd quenched her burgeoning suspicions. "Very well, then. If you want to be rid of me, then rid of me you shall be."

Justin thought he had won until she began to briskly unbutton Penfeld's coat. His mouth fell open as the ebony folds parted to reveal the creamy swell of her breasts.

He leaped across the hut and grabbed her wrists. "What in heaven's name do you think you're doing?"

She blinked up at him. "Returning your valet's coat. I'm not blind. I can see he cherishes it."

"I'll buy him another in Auckland," Justin growled. He released her, ashamed to find his fingers had dug red marks into her creamy flesh. "Come on," he said gruffly. "We'll borrow a wagon from Trini."

He pulled her up. Before she could take a step, her leg collapsed. Justin caught her in the circle of his arms.

Moaning, she clung to him. "Oh, my ankle. I must have twisted it when I crawled ashore."

Her curls tickled his nose, maddening him with their softness. He was tempted to drop her, but forced himself to lower her gently. He knelt to examine her ankle. No swelling. No bruising. Not so much as a freckle marred the smooth satin of her skin. He pressed the bone with his fingertips. She winced and clenched her teeth.

"Terrible pain, eh?" He cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

"Dreadful." Tears welled in her luminous eyes. "Do you think it might be broken?"

Her face was next to his, her lower lip soft and trembling. Justin wanted to bite it. He trailed his fingers

up her calf to the hem of Penfeld's coat, helpless to keep from envisioning what she wore beneath it-nothing. She gave him one of those melting glances-her eyes all sparkling coffee innocence. He

was tempted to give her what she was so unwittingly asking for. Tempted to continue the slow glide of

his fingers up her thigh toward a dark and sensual destruction. But whose destruction? Hers or his own?

He snatched back his hand and stood, his spirits sinking. Unless he wanted to carry her all the way to Auckland, the girl was staying for a few days. He suspected she was faking her injury, but other than setting fire to the hut and hoping she'd run out, he had no way to prove it. A thread of relief ran through his irritation. Auckland would swallow a girl like her without a qualm. If it was a hint of purity shining in her eyes, he didn't care to see it destroyed. New Zealand took little mercy on innocents. He was living proof of that.

"It seems you'll be staying until you're well enough to travel." He shook a finger at her. "But if you've

any thoughts about slipping a snake into Penfeld's pallet, be warned. There are no snakes in New Zealand."

Her cheek dimpled. "I shall endeavor to put forth my best behavior."

He sensed her best behavior might be more than he could handle. He strode to the door, then paused.

He wanted desperately to question her further, but to do so would violate the unwritten creed of this

land. Too many ships had dumped their secrets, their scandals, and their unwanted convicts on these shores. It had resulted in a privacy hard won and so jealously guarded that a man might honorably

defend it to the death. At least his past would die with him. So Justin bit back his questions, knowing

he, too, might die or kill before he let someone rake open his own raw scars.

"You've no need to fear discovery here, Miss Scarlet. There are many who come to New Zealand to elude the past."

She inclined her head. A fall of curls veiled her expression. "And there are some, sir, who come to find it."

He realized he had become so accustomed to the island's code of suspicion that he hadn't even offered this small, bedraggled young woman his name. She hardly looked the sort of spy the efficient Miss Winters or his rigid father would dispatch.

"You may call me Justin. Justin Connor." He closed the door behind him, never seeing the bitter, triumphant twist of Emily's lips.

Justin couldn't seem to put enough distance between himself and the hut. He strode through the

cornfield, his long strides eating up the turf. Penfeld trotted along behind him.

"Hell and damnation!" he finally exploded. "A girl simply shouldn't go around looking at a man like that."

Penfeld plucked at his suspenders, more worried about being outdoors without a coat than about his master's consternation. "Like what, sir? I hadn't noticed anything unusual about her looks. A bit on the boyish side, perhaps."

Justin spun around, his voice rising on a note of disbelief. "Boyish? Compared to whom-Helen of Troy? Cleopatra? Besides, I wasn't referring to her looks in particular. I was referring to the way she looks at me. That ridiculous sparkle in her eyes. That clever little trick she does with her bottom lip."

Justin tugged on his lip to illustrate, but Penfeld only blinked at him dumbly. A trickle of sweat snaked between Justin's shoulder blades at the mere thought of it. As the sun beat down on his bare head, he realized he'd forgotten his hat.

"Blast her anyway! She had no way of knowing what sort of men we were. What if she had given that look to some of those whalers or timbermen in Auckland? They'd have slapped her in a whorehouse so fast, it would have made her curly little head spin."

The valet paled. He became as nervous as a rabbit when anyone mentioned Auckland. Justin had found him in the teeming harbor town four years earlier, wandering the streets in a daze, his handsome suit in rags, a shattered teacup his only possession.

Justin plucked a corn silk from Penfeld's thinning hair. "Now you're doing it. Don't stick out your lip

and go all quivery on me, because Auckland's exactly where I'm taking her. She must think I'm a blithering idiot to have fallen for that old twisted-ankle ploy."

"I've never known you to blither without cause, sir." Penfeld looked as downcast as if his master had announced he was taking the girl to Sodom with a side picnic to Gomorrah.

Snorting with determination, Justin spun on his heel. "I'm going to march right back to that hut, make

her gather her things-"

"She has no things."

Penfeld's quiet words halted him at the edge of the field. A hill studded with tussock grasses rolled

down to the beach. The warm breeze teased the golden clumps into waving fingers.

Penfeld was right, he realized. The girl had nothing. Not even the coat on her back. She had come into

his world as bare and unfettered as on the day she had come into God's.

He was a grown man. Surely he could temper his lust with common decency for a few days. If she refused to leave by the end of the week, he would ignore Penfeld's sulks and insist on escorting her to Auckland. Until then he would spend the long days working in the fields so he could collapse on his

pallet at night, too exhausted to even dream of-

He drove his fingers through his hair. It was hardly her fault that every time he looked at her he saw

her as she had been in the moonlight, that each time he touched her he wanted to bury his fingers in

her silky curls. All of them. Justin groaned.

His agonized musings were interrupted by a joyous cry. "Pakeha! Pakeha!"

A line of naked honey-skinned children streamed up the hill with Trini in tow. Justin squatted and a

wiry little boy barreled into him with the force of a muscular cannonball.

He faked a stagger. "Ho, there, Kawiri! You're too strong for an old chap like me."

The children swarmed around him, chattering in Maori. A little girl with almond-shaped eyes crawled between Kawiri's legs and held Justin's hand. His face relaxed in a smile as their musical tones soothed

his troubled spirit.

"You can come out, Penfeld," he called over his shoulder. "They won't eat you."

Penfeld crept out from behind a cornstalk and gave the children a shy bow. Trini beamed proudly as several of the children bowed back. Justin knew his unflappable valet wasn't afraid of cannibals, but children terrified him.

I have no family.

Emily's words came back to haunt Justin without warning, echoing what he had said to Penfeld only yesterday. He hadn't been completely truthful. The Maori were his family now. They had adopted him

as their beloved Pakeha, sharing with him both their land and their trust, giving him the right and power

to negotiate even the most delicate trade with other natives and whites. Justin ruffled Kawiri's black hair. Perhaps they were all orphans beneath the stark blue bowl of God's sky.

The little girl tapped the watch case resting against his chest, muttering beneath her breath in Maori.

"English, Dani," he commanded. If he could teach more of the children English, perhaps someday they would have no need of a stranger such as he living in their midst.

She popped her thumb in her mouth, then uncorked it and bellowed, "Claire!"

Justin winced.

Dancing around him, the other children took up the chant. "Claire! Claire! Claire!"

"Oh, dear," Penfeld murmured.

Justin leveled a lethal gaze at Trini. "Have you been letting them play with my watch again?"

The native lifted his palms in a universal gesture of apology, choosing in his chagrin simple English

words rather than the longer ones he delighted in. "They'd never seen a white little girl before. They believe her to be a lost angel whose spirit is trapped in time."

Justin dropped his head in defeat. Was he to be haunted by orphans today? In his preoccupation with

the girl, he had almost forgotten that other child. He made no protest when the tiny Dani reached up

and slipped the chain over his head.

Kawiri brushed the gold with reverent fingers, letting out a soft "Oooooh."

Justin knew he didn't have to worry about the safety of his watch. Dani cupped it in her plump hands

as if it were the most holy of relics.

As the children trailed after her, he stood, absently flattening his palm against his chest. If Claire Scarborough was his cross to bear, why did he feel so naked without her image resting next to his heart?

That night Emily kicked restlessly at her blankets. The island breeze had turned cool, but an icy fire burned in her veins, stoked by both disdain and fury. Her guardian lay on a pallet a few feet away. She pillowed her chin on folded arms and studied his sleeping features with hungry fascination.

He was nothing as she had imagined him. Somehow she had always expected him to be blond with a neatly clipped beard and side-whiskers. A cap of shining gold hair complemented a suit of armor, did it not? Self-contempt at her own naivete flooded her.

"Wouldn't have been able to cram his horns under the helm, would he?" she muttered.

From his pallet beneath the window, Penfeld emitted a lumbering snore. Emily shifted to her elbow.

Justin Connor more resembled a dark satyr than a noble knight. His lashes were too long, his lower lip

too full. He hadn't one perfect feature, but in combination they were devastating, giving his face a flawed male beauty that made her unwilling heart beat like the wings of a captive bird. She fought an absurd desire to crawl over to his pallet and run her fingers over him, to commit each feature to her memory in the fear she might awake in the morning to find him gone-just another elusive creature of her dreams.

She had spent years clutching her dreams of a noble savior to her child's breast. But her dreams had

been only phantoms, disappearing like smoke in the cold light of day. Reality lay on that pallet-six feet of reality, all refined sinew and muscle. She could reach out and touch it just as she had touched a stranger's face in the moonlight.

The light from the low-burning lantern gilded the chiseled planes of his face. She had expected him to

be older, but he couldn't be far over thirty. The same age her father had been when he died.

Her eyes narrowed. Justin stirred, groaning low in his throat as if sensing her enmity. The lines etched around his eyes deepened. He twitched as if in pain. Pain? Emily wondered. Or guilt? Her guardian did not sleep the untroubled sleep of the innocent.

She wanted to shake him out of his dream and demand he look at her. She had lived in his shadow for seven years. Every prank, each profanity, all the wasted fury of her tantrums had been played to an invisible audience of one -the man who had abandoned her then dared to hold her in his arms without showing even the scantest hint of recognition. His apathy touched an old pain in her, a pain she'd thought shoved to the farthest reaches of her heart. She could tolerate many things, but being ignored was not

one of them.

She flung herself to her side, forcing her gaze away from him. Questions buzzed through her mind like angry gnats. Why was he living in this dusty hut, and where were the riches her father had written of? Had he hidden the gold somewhere? Was he a smuggler using the pristine solitude of the beach to

escape the stiff port taxes of the harbors? Perhaps he was still just a dirty swindler taking advantage

of his reputation as the son of one of the richest dukes in England to bilk decent men of their inheritances, as he had done to her father.

Against her will, fate had delivered Justin Connor into her hands. He didn't realize who she was, but she knew him only too well. Surely somewhere in these musty stacks of books and papers she could find the sordid story of his life.

Her ruse of an injured leg had given her time. Time to probe his secrets and discover the truth about the missing gold and her father's untimely death. Time to make him sorry. Let him enjoy his dreams for

now, because once she had gathered enough evidence of his foul play, he would come face-to-face

with his worst nightmare.

Drawn like a moth to a sizzling flame, she rolled back over and glared at the dark purity of his features until her weighted lids dragged her into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 4

"More tea, Penfeld?" Emily gazed wanly into the delicate china cup the valet offered. "What a delightful surprise. You must have read my mind."

"A fine New Delhi brew," he pronounced, beaming proudly. "Justin procured it from the Bay of Islands for my last birthday."

"How dear of him," she murmured.

She waited until he had bustled back to the stove before tossing the contents of the cup over her shoulder and out the window. She'd trade all the fine teas in the world for one coffee bean to suck on. The mannerly valet had been very vocal in his opinion that coffee was simply too crude a drink to pass her dainty lips. Emily was beginning to wonder if the sly Mr. Connor was smuggling not gold, but tea.

She smacked her lips on the cup's rim, pretending to drain it. "Marvelous flavor. I've never tasted anything quite like it."

Penfeld clapped his plump hands. "It warms my heart to see a young lady enjoying tea." He swept the cup from her hand. "If you like it so well, I'll pour you another."

Groaning silently, Emily buried her face in her hands. The portly valet was killing her with kindness. Every time she'd wiggled in the past three days, he had been there- fluffing the blankets beneath her ankle and pouring tea down her throat as if it were the elixir of life. She would almost swear her wary host had sicced him on her out of spite.

The mysterious Mr. Connor disappeared each day at dawn and did not return until sunset. After wolfing down some flat biscuits and a hot pasty stew consisting mostly of canned beans, he would collapse on

his pallet with little more than a grunted good night.

As attentive as always, Emily thought grimly.

A cooling breeze wafted through the window, stirring the curls at the nape of her neck. Her nose twitched at the salty tang of the sea. A twilight paradise beckoned to her with a whisper of sunlight and surf, but thanks to her own lie, she was trapped in this musty hut, watching Penfeld polish his teapot. She ached to sink her toes into the warm sand, to feel the ocean spray mist her skin. She eyed the stacks of books longingly. She was also dying for a moment of privacy to dig through the hut for some hint of the treachery her guardian had worked on her father.

Her wish was granted when Penfeld pulled a wicker basket off a peg and trotted out the door, mumbling something about a "tidy pinch of mint." Praying mint did not grow in this hemisphere, Emily jumped to her feet and whirled in a giddy circle. A teetering stack of books blocked her way. She steadied them

with her heel, torn between the books and the window. The warm breeze was too strong a temptation. She thrust her head out the window, savoring the salty bite of the sea air.

The wicker hut crouched at the very edge of a sun-dappled forest, huddled beneath the sweeping boughs of two trees that resembled gigantic ferns. The murmur of the sea was a distant sigh, luring her toward freedom. She ought to climb out that window and never look back. But how far could she get before the truth would catch up with her? She'd spent far too long eluding it.

She tightened her jaw in determination and turned back to the books. Her daddy had always said you could divine a man's soul by reading his books. Somewhere among them might be a deed, a map, or a journal holding clues to the whereabouts of her father's gold.

She picked up a leather-bound volume and blew the dust off its cover. "Mozart: The Master and His Music," she read aloud. She thumbed through the pages, then tossed it aside and plucked out another. "The Polyphonic Symphonies of Beethoven?"

Emily frowned. She had been hoping for Machiavelli's The Prince or perhaps the Marquis de Sade's

Les 120 Journées de Sodome. She examined book after book, only to discover weighty biographies of Mendelssohn and Rossini, fifteen volumes describing the rhythms and meters of the world's greatest operas, and a mildewed treatise pleading the case of the viola against the violin. She pawed through the stacks, swearing under her breath as the precious minutes ticked away.

A hefty libretto of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde slowed her progress. She gave it a vicious yank. The entire heap weaved dangerously. She threw her arms around it, bracing the books with her chest. Dust tickled her nose. She swallowed a sneeze. All she needed was for Penfeld to return and find her buried beneath a pile of musty tomes, her skull crushed by The Encyclopedia of West Indian Dance Rhythms.

The shift had revealed a tiny cavity between two larger books. Emily drew out a slim volume bound in morocco. Although the leather had worn well, the gilt-edged pages had tarnished with age. It was almost as if the book had been tossed aside and forgotten. Or carefully hidden.

Emily's hands began to tremble as she stroked the unmarked cover. Perhaps now she would learn her guardian's dark secrets.

She sank down cross-legged on the floor and opened the book. Inscribed across the frontpiece, not in

the strong, measured script of a man, but in the clumsy scrawl of a child were the words: This book is

the property of Justin Marcus Homer Lloyd Farnsworth Connor III. (Peek at your own peril.)

"Homer?" Emily whispered, smiling in spite of herself.

Her finger traced the ominous skull and crossbones sketched beneath the warning. She turned the page, already suspecting what she would find. But instead of hasty jottings about how many frogs he'd caught or plum puddings he'd pilfered, she found wavering lines connected into grids and splotched with ink.

She held the book up to her nose. "Why, the clever little brat was already writing his nasty secrets in code!"

Her vision blurred; the lines danced, then steadied into a recognizable pattern. Her mouth fell open as

she fanned the pages, turning them faster than her eyes could follow. Not a code after all, but wavering bars connected by blots of ink. Music. Bar after bar, note after note, transcribed with a patience that should not have belonged to any child.

Baffled and oddly touched, Emily let the little book fall shut. She almost didn't hear the warning creak

of the door.

She made a diving roll for the pallet, praying Penfeld's coat would follow. Losing it could have dire consequences. Apparently no one had thought of offering her the valet's long underdrawers.

As Justin ducked beneath the lintel, Emily realized with horror that she was still clutching his journal.

She shoved it under the blankets, faking a tremendous yawn.

"Hello, Emily," he said, his voice notably devoid of warmth.

She bit her tongue to keep from blurting out Hello, Homer. "Good evening, Mr. Connor."

He gazed around the hut. "Where's Penfeld?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "He went out to pick some mint."

Justin lifted an edge of the stained linen tablecloth and peered beneath. "You sure you don't have him trussed up somewhere?"

She flashed a deliberate dimple. "Why, Mr. Connor, you flatter me."

He drew off the watch and laid it on the table.

"Beautiful workmanship," she murmured, hoping his face might betray something.

"Pity I don't have a waistcoat pocket to keep it in. I have to wear it around my neck like a woman."

One would have to be blind, deaf, and comatose to mistake him for a member of that fairer sex, Emily thought as he dipped into the wash bucket and poured handfuls of water over his flushed face. Sparkling drops caught in the dark filaments of hair along his forearms. An errant trickle eased down his muscled abdomen and disappeared into the low-slung waistband of his dungarees.

She swallowed, wishing for even a drop of tea to wet her throat.

He turned toward the door. "Tell Penfeld I went down to the beach."

It was all Emily could do to keep from scrambling to her feet. She would have gone to the beach with Lucifer himself to escape the stifling confines of the hut.

"Take me," she blurted out.

Her innocent plea stopped Justin in his tracks. She would be gone in a few days, he reminded himself, and then he could resume the orderly tempo of his life. All he had to do was turn around and tell her

he wasn't interested in her company.

He turned around. Her ardent brown eyes sparkled up at him. "Penfeld's coat is due for a washing.

We might as well wash it with me in it."

Justin ruffled his hair. She lowered her lashes, obviously bracing herself for his refusal.

"I have only one question, young lady," he said sternly, bending over her.

"What?" Emily replied, biting her lower lip. To her embarrassment, genuine tears of disappointment

stung her eyes.

She gasped as he caught her under the knees and shoulders and swept her into his arms, bringing her

nose to nose with him. "What if Penfeld should decide to iron the coat with you in it?"

She giggled. "It wouldn't be the first time I'd been ironed. My teachers used to sit on me and iron my hair."

His gaze softened. He raked his fingers through her mop of curls, mesmerizing her with his tenderness. "What a crime."

* * *

As they started down the short, sandy path to the beach, Emily threw an arm around Justin's neck.

They burst onto the beach and her senses exploded in drunken abandon. The warmth of the setting sun branded her skin; the wind dragged soothing fingers through her hair. Moaning with delight, she tilted her face back and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Justin's face was very close to hers. She could see each stubbled hair along his jawline and was seized with a strange urge to rub her cheek across it and see if it felt as prickly as it looked. Her face flushed with more than the heat of the sun.

"You may put me down," she said primly.

Mischief glinted in his golden eyes. "Oh, no. You wanted a bath, and it's a bath you'll be having."

Before she could even squeal, he strode through the damp sand into the waves. She buried her face in

the haven of his chest, clinging as he waded deeper into the swirling surf. Cool water licked her thighs. Penfeld's coat ballooned around her hips. She pressed it down with frantic fingers.

"There now, isn't that pleasant?"

"No." Her teeth chattered against his chest. "It's bloody cold."

"I'm afraid there's only one cure for that."

He dropped her.

Emily thrashed wildly. Salty water rushed into her mouth. Good Lord, the lunatic was trying to kill her! She should have suspected as much. He must have recognized her from the photograph. Her toes churned up a mass of sand and she realized the water was only a few feet deep. She also realized the muffled sound above her was not the pounding of the surf, but the infuriating rumble of a man's laughter.

Her fingers dug into Justin's thigh, and she shot from the waves, climbing him like a tree monkey. She shook water from her stinging eyes. "You ill-mannered, wretched-" She sputtered to a halt, trying to remember some of the viler names Barney had called her on the journey from England.

"Would you like to sit on my shoulders?" he suggested dryly. "The view is much better."

Justin knew a brief moment of panic when it looked as if she might take him up on his offer. The prospect of being cradled between her shapely thighs for such a benign purpose was too torturous to contemplate.

He caught her hips to stop her panicked ascent. "I was only trying to help."

Emily opened her mouth to argue, but realized the water now swirled around her hips in currents of delicious warmth. Even worse, most of the warmth seemed to be centered at the juncture of her thighs, where the faded V of Justin's dungarees was pressed with alarming intimacy. By flinging her legs around him, she had put herself in a more precarious position than she dared to admit. She'd lost track of Penfeld's coat during her writhing, and most of it was trapped around her waist. She stilled, terrified

Justin would discover only a fragile weave of calico bound her nakedness from his own.

He already knew. He betrayed himself by the downward flicker of his gaze, the faintest shift of his hips, the barely perceptible wince of his chiseled mouth. A buoyant wave rocked against his back, and her

body cradled his with an artless skill as primal as the sea itself. She had never been more aware of a man's strength or a woman's vulnerability. Heat stung her cheeks.

Justin gazed down at her, already beginning to regret his brief lapse into kindness. He should have let Penfeld bring her to the beach. His own peace of mind was too hard won to surrender without a fight. Half wishing he were a more ruthless sort of man, he rested his hands against her ribs, his thumbs a ticklish inch from her breasts.

Emily's heart rocked into a shuddering slam as Justin's palms rode to her hips, easing the coat down to cover her. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and turned her away from him, cradling her back against his chest.

"Relax, Emily," he commanded in that husky lilt of his.

He guided them past the place where the waves crested and broke. Emily poked her toe toward the

sea floor but met only a chill current of deeper water. Damp hairs clung to the bronze skin of Justin's forearm. How easy it would be for him to push her under, she thought. To hold her head beneath the water with exquisite gentleness until her struggles ceased.

She shivered, and Justin wrapped his other arm around her. "Don't be afraid. I won't let you go."

The shiver that rocked her at those words was so deep, he never felt it. It filled her with both a terrible fear and an insatiable longing that sharpened her loneliness to an unbearable edge. Her eyes stung. She blinked, swearing it was only the salt.

His breath warmed her ear. "Close your eyes, Em, and let the water take you."

She couldn't fight the sensation that she was being saken by something far more potent than the water. She fct her eyes drift shut, surrendering to its seductive pull. Her head fell back against his shoulder.

Her feet drifted up antil her lower body was floating, rocked in the rhythmic cradle of the sea. The

sunset faded to a warm spatter of gold against her eyelids. The water caressed her with liquid fingers, deliciously cool against the heat of his chest.

"Why would anyone live in London when there's such a place as this?" she murmured, licking the salt from her lips.

He guided her around to face the shore. "Some say New Zealand is God's own paradise, that after He created the rest of the world, He made this Eden for His own pleasure, then destroyed all the land

bridges so it could belong to only the boldest adventurers."

Emily wondered if he, like her, was thinking of three bold young men who had dared the sea to come here.

He rested his chin on top of her head. "Look at it, Emily. Can you really see it?"

Her gaze swept the shore. She wanted desperately to see it through his eyes. Glittering stars punched holes in the fading fabric of day. Night shadows melted across the swaying palms. The plaintive cry of

a bellbird lifted the tiny hairs at her nape.

His long, elegant fingers curled over her collarbone. She studied them, dazed by their grace. They were saved from effeminacy by their tensile strength and the dusting of dark hair along their knuckles. "God banished every deadly creature here. There are no dangerous animals, no poisonous bugs, no snakes.

He molded the mountains with His fists and blew roaring blizzards down the slopes. He sculpted icy fjords and smoothed the pristine beaches with His loving fingers." His voice grew soft, wistful. "Then

He sprinkled the hills and streams with gold."

His love for this country was palpable, but Emily sensed that running through it like a thread of gold through a gurgling stream was a deep sadness. What had his love cost him? New Zealand might be a paradise, but for him it had become a paradise lost. Her heart ached.

Before she realized it she was cupping his hand and bringing it toward the comfort of her lips. She gently kissed his fingertips. He drew in a ragged breath and Emily stiffened, horrified by what she had done. How could she have fallen so quickly beneath the sway of his charms. Had her father succumbed as easily?

"Let me go," she whispered, pleading for far more than her physical release.

His grip tightened for an implacable instant. "Who are you, Emily? What are you running from?"

"You!" She began to struggle, afraid panic might force her to blurt out more than she intended. She worked her fingers up between them and shoved at his arms with all her strength. "I've met men like

you in London. You take a girl out in the moonlight, relax her guard with soft words, then play your

little game of seduction."

Before she could wiggle away, he caught her arm in a steely grasp and jerked her around to face him,

his eyes dark-lashed orbs of brandy fire. "Is that what you think this is about? Seduction?"

Emily hung in his grip, accusing him with her silence and the sullen set of her jaw.

"I might remind you, Miss Scarlet, that you were the one who just kissed me. I live on a bloody island, for Christ's sake. I'm surrounded by hundreds of miles of coastline." His voice rose to a roar. "And you had the sheer audacity to wash up on my beach stark raving naked." He pulled her tight against him, molding her like a wet glove to the lean curves of his body. His voice softened to a dangerous purr.

"I'm warning you now-this isn't England. We don't deal in seduction here. If I decide I want you,

I won't need any flowery words or moonlight swims."

Braced in the powerful cradle of his thighs, Emily knew his words to be true. A helpless shudder rocked her.

He shoved her away from him. She didn't dare look at him. A little thrashing and a few awkward strokes and she felt sand beneath her feet. She lurched forward until she could crawl up on the shore. She

wanted to run, to flee far away, where his mocking anger could not find her, but her ruse of an injured ankle forced her to sprawl in the sand like some wounded fish. If she jumped to her feet and sprinted for the shelter of the bush, would he follow?

A furious splashing came from behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Justin emerge from the waves-a smoldering Poseidon, magnificent in his fury. Water streamed from his chest, plastering his dungarees to his hips and thighs like a second skin. Emily lowered her shocked gaze.

She needn't have worried. Justin strode past her as if she were no more significant than a sand crab.

"Justin?" she said tentatively.

He moved down the shore, slowing only long enough to scoop up a shell and hurl it into the sea.

"Mr. Connor?" she said louder.

He was rapidly fading into the darkness. Emily cupped a hand around her mouth and yelled, "You lied! You said you wouldn't let me go!"

She flopped to her back and let her fist fall over her eyes. "Damn," she whispered. "Damn. Damn. Damn."

He had opened up to her, given her a glimpse of the ticking works of his mind, spoken of New Zealand and adventurers and gold. And what had she done? Behaved like a galloping ninny.

The surf tickled her toes. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the moon drift like a weightless pearl over the horizon. The night wind caressed her cheeks. She wondered how long it would take to crawl back to the hut. Justin was probably lurking somewhere in the brush, laughing at her. She considered limping up the path sprinkling her performance with a pathetic stumble or two. But maybe it was time she taught him that no one could be as stubborn as Emily Claire Scarborough when she set her mind to it.

She was still glaring at the stars when Penfeld marched down to the beach, threw her over his stalwart shoulder, and carried her back to the hut.

* * *

Justin cringed as another sneeze rocked the hut. He jerked the blanket over his ears.

"There, there, dear, just tuck this around your shoulders and have another sip of tea. I put a lovely

sprig of mint in it just for you."

Muttering under his breath, Justin flopped over on his back. He wasn't sure what was more annoying-Emily's infernal sniffing or Penfeld's motherly clucking. He stole a reluctant glance at the

other side of the hut.

There was nothing visible of Emily but a mop of damp curls and two huge, accusing eyes. She was swathed in a woolen blanket all the way to the tip of her pinkened nose. Even through the folds of

blanket Justin could hear her teeth chattering. Penfeld loosened the blanket and held a steaming cup to

her lips, but she freed an arm and waved it away. The valet watched in horrified fascination as she snuffled into his coat sleeve.

"Thank you, Penfeld, but I'm sure I'll be all right. I just caught a tiny chill lying in those icy waves."

The entire blanket shuddered.

Penfeld swiveled to skewer Justin with a reproachful stare.

"For Christ's sake!" Justin threw back the blanket. "She wasn't out there twenty minutes."

"It seemed like hours," she said earnestly.

"I dare say it did, miss," Penfeld agreed, tucking the blanket around her toes. "I can't imagine what possessed my master to be so thoughtless. Why, he rescued me from the clutches of Auckland's slums when my own employer sailed back to England and deserted me! He's usually a very caring fellow."

Emily's snort might have been a sneeze, but Justin doubted it.

He sat up on his elbow, narrowing his eyes. "Take a good look at her, Penfeld. She doesn't have a cold. She's the very picture of good health. I suppose you're going to tell me those roses in her chubby little cheeks are the ravages of some gruesome fever."

Penfeld reached to feel her brow, but Emily stopped him. "No. Justin's right. I don't have a cold." Her pale hand fluttered at her breast. "I do believe it might be consumption." Wheezing, she doubled over.

Justin smoothed his voice to liquid honey, addressing Emily directly for the first time since Penfeld had carried her in. "Perhaps Penfeld should take the rifle and put you out of your misery. That's what we

do to lame horses here."

Emily paused in the middle of a hacking cough. Her eyes widened in chiding accusation. "Why, Mr. Connor, your lack of compassion makes me feel faint." Her lashes drifted down, but not quick enough

to veil the malicious sparkle of her eyes.

Penfeld bustled off for his smelling salts. Growling, Justin pulled the blanket over his head. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since he'd found the brat. His nightmares had worsened and all his efforts to work himself into exhaustion had failed. Only last night he had bolted straight off the pallet, a child's merry giggle still spinning through his head. He had jerked around, frantically seeking its source, but all he had seen was Emily curled in the blankets, her chest rising and falling in the sweet rhythm of sleep, her face lax in angelic repose.

Angelic, hell, Justin thought, shifting restlessly. The curate should have summoned that exorcist. The girl seemed to be possessed by at least five different spines.. She'd play the temptress in one breath, and in the next entertain Penfeld with stories of the Regent zoo, chattering of lions and baboons with all the guileless enthusiasm of a child.

But it hadn't been a child he had held in his arms, Justin reminded himself. She had brought his fingers to the softness of her lips with all the empathy of a woman, willing to absorb an anguish he'd never even dared to name. Even now the memory of her tenderness riveted him.

He threw himself over. She was like a ceaseless melody pounding at the back of his brain. There had to be a way to break the skein of enchantment she had cast over him, a way to get her out of his hut and out of his life before she drove him mad. He kicked the blankets, praying that once she was gone, the ache in his groin would become more tolerable than the one in his heart.

* * *

As soon as the door shut behind Penfeld and Justin the next morning, Emily bounded off the pallet and kicked up her heels in a fling of freedom. She didn't care if Justin brooded forever. At least he had dragged Penfeld along on his mysterious chores, to deprive her of his devoted attentions.

She hefted the blankets, holding her breath while she shook out the pepper she'd hoarded to enhance

her sneezes. Justin's little blue journal thumped to the floor.

She knelt and picked it up, turning it over thoughtfully. She was still no closer to unraveling the enigma

of the man. She surveyed the crowded stacks of books despairingly. There could be a hundred hiding places within their dusty ranks.

Tapping the book against her thigh, she straightened. The books in the rear should be the oldest. She wiggled between two stacks and squatted to peruse the titles.

A rush of warm wind teased her curls, then stilled abruptly as if a door had been slammed. Emily

pivoted on her heel to peer behind her. The thatched door was still closed.

Shaking her head, she bent back to her task. Tiny claws clicked across the floor. The hair on Emily's nape tingled to life. Justin's book slid from her fingers.

Holding her breath, she turned. The dirt floor was empty.

She blew out a shaky breath. What had Justin said? There were no snakes in New Zealand, no dangerous animals? The musty stacks suddenly seemed ominous, blocking the cobwebbed corners from the morning sunlight. Something blunt thumped to the floor. Emily snapped to attention. From the corner of her eye she saw a shadow scuttle behind the table.

She rose, measuring each step as if it would be her last. Her trembling fingers closed around the handle

of Penfeld's broom. She eyed the rifle hanging over the door longingly, but she would have to cross in front of the table to get it. Clutching the broom like a shield, she tiptoed toward the table.

"Probably just a cat," she whispered, soothed by the sound of her own voice. "Justin forgot to tell me

he had a sweet little cat."

She got down on her knees and pinched the edge of the tablecloth between two fingers. "Nice kitty,"

she crooned, easing the cloth up. "Come out and meet your auntie Emily."

As she lowered her head, a fat green monster galloped out of the shadows, charging straight for her nose.

Chapter 5

A bloodcurdling scream fractured the serenity of the morning, startling a gull into soaring flight across

the azure sky.

Completely unruffled, Justin leaned back in the sand, resting his head on his folded arm. If his plan worked, the scheming little orphan would be out of his life and on her way to Auckland by nightfall.

"Look at those clouds, won't you, Penfeld? Magnificent, aren't they?"

Penfeld eyed the hut a few yards away, expecting Emily to come bursting from the door, newly healed

of her affliction, as his master had promised she would. A ringing crash was followed by the thunder of wildly running feet. He would almost swear the hut was rocking.

He took out a handkerchief and mopped beads of sweat from his upper lip. "She really should have

come out by now. Perhaps I should go back and-"

"Back in London you can't even see the sky for the soot." Justin tucked a blade of tussock grass

between his lips, the very picture of indolent ease.

From the hut a shrill squeal was followed by a string of colorful profanities. Clouds of dust billowed

from the windows. An ominous silence fell.

"But, sir … what if she uses the rifle?" Penfeld's voice lowered to a horrified whisper. "Or stomps it

to death?"

Justin uncurled his fingers to reveal a handful of rifle shells. "Not loaded. Trust me. He'll outrun her.

I'd wager he'll outlive all of us." A smile teased his lips. "Why, it might even be snowing in London right now! Do you fancy snow, Penfeld? Doesn't that cloud over there to the left favor a giant snowflake?"

Sighing, Penfeld sank back into the sand. "No, I do believe it more resembles a giant teapot." Pottery crashed. He winced. "A broken teapot, sir."

* * *

Emily was chasing a dragon. She slammed the broom into the floor, wishing the horrid creature would sprout wings and fly out the window. With an insolent flick of its spiked tail it darted behind the nearest stack of books. She crept nearer, picking her way over toppled books and shattered earthenware, muttering under her breath. Sweat trickled down her brow.

She swung the broom in a whistling arc. It caught the books broadside and sent them crashing to the floor. Pepper shot up her nose; a chain of sneezes blinded her. As she stabbed wildly into the dust, she heard the thump-thump of fleeing little monster feet behind her.

She threw herself after the sound and tripped over her own blankets. She swung the broom, swiping tin pots or the stove. They crashed to the floor in a ringing symphony Her coat caught on the edge of the stove, bringing her up short. She knuckled her eyes and peered into the misty gloom. The beast was

gone again, always one step ahead of her. Perhaps it wasn't a dragon. Perhaps it was a very clever alligator.

The swing of the tablecloth caught her eye. She felt a wicked grin curve her lips. Not so clever after all. Stupid enough to return to its original hiding place.

Lifting the broom, she inched toward the table.

"Come out, you darling little thing. Emily won't hurt you." Her ringers dug into the broom handle.

A beam of sunlight pierced the dust, caressing the porcelain beauty of Penfeld's tea service. It was the only thing in the hut left intact. Emily hesitated, formulating her plan. She would calmly coax the beast

out of hiding, then obliterate it from the face of the earth.

The monster poked its head out from beneath the cloth, taunting her with a flick of its little red tongue.

Emily's control snapped. A fierce battle cry tore from her throat. She charged, swinging the broom like

an enraged samurai. The bristles whisked past the tea tray without so much as rattling a cup, then skimmed beneath the table. The broom handle caught in the hem of the linen cloth, jerking it askew.

The tray started to slide, but it was too late for Emily to stop the momentum of her swing. She could

only watch, horrified, as the tray teetered on the edge of the table for a timeless moment, then flipped. The crash seemed to echo forever. A single unbroken cup rolled across the floor, coming to rest against her toes.

Emily cringed. She gazed at the scattered carnage, then down at herself in the deafening silence.

Penfeld's coat was furred with dust. One tattered sleeve hung by a few threads. She blew a curl from

her eyes, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

Behind her someone cleared his throat.

She whirled around, dropping the broom.

Through a curtain of glittering dust motes she saw Justin leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest. Beneath the slanted brim of his hat his eyes crinkled in a lazy smile. He had never looked more handsome. Or more infuriating.

She sat down abruptly on the floor, clutching her ankle. Something scuttled out of the shadows, darting straight for Justin.

"Watch out!" she shrieked, snatching up the broom.

Before she could swing, Justin reached down and scooped up the creature. He dangled it above his head like a fat, scaly baby.

"There now, my pet," he crooned, giving Emily a reproachful look. "Did the wicked little girl frighten you?"

Her jaw dropped. "That thing is a pet?"

He cradled the beast to his chest. "This thing is a tuatara lizard, a veritable living fossil. They can survive for more than a century, although I dare say you've taken a few decades off this poor fellow's life."

"Then we're even. He's taken a few decades off mine."

The lizard's spiked tail waved near the waistband of Justin's dungarees. Emily felt an absurd flare of jealousy as he tickled it under its beaked chin. "Poor, sweet Fluffy."

"Fluffy?" she echoed.

"What would you have me call him? Scaly? Ugly?"

"It would seem more appropriate."

"Ah, but your parents didn't name you Brat, did they?"

She snapped her mouth shut, tempted to whack him with the broom. The lizard flicked its tongue out at her. She poked out her own in return. "You might have told me you had a two-foot dinosaur for a pet."

He smiled with maddening sweetness. "You never asked." He held the lizard up, examining it in the sunlight. "She didn't hurt you, did she?" As Justin kissed its scaly head, Emily would have sworn its

beady little eyes flickered in demure triumph.

"Poor Fluffy, indeed," she muttered. "Poor Flurry gets all the sympathy." She knuckled the corner of

her lip tasting blood. "What about poor Emily? I could have been killed, but nobody cares enough to

fuss over me or lick my wounds."

Justin slanted an unfathomable look at her. Her heart thumped into an off-key rhythm.

He gently deposited Fluffy outside the door, then shut it with deliberate care. "We wouldn't want you

to feel neglected, now, would we?"

Emily's eyes widened as he closed the space between them and hauled her to her feet. His hands were rough, but his mouth as it found hers was achingly tender. His tongue glided with silky ease over the contours of her lips, lingering and soothing until a yearning ache replaced the sting. He didn't stop then, but tangled his hand in her hair and tilted her head back. He swept his tongue across hers, branding her with his taste and heat. Her hand curled helplessly around his nape, winding in the textured silk of his

hair. A moan rose from deep in her throat.

He released her.

Emily was so shocked she forgot to fall down. She just stood there in the middle of the floor, stunned

by the knowledge that with one kiss he had shattered all her defenses, all the independence she had

fought so hard to win. She was the sort of woman who could be had by her worst enemy for only the subtle eroticism of a kiss. Dazed, she touched two fingers to the tingling pillow of her bottom lip. Miss Winters must be right. She must be a very bad girl indeed.

Justin took a step backward, unprepared for Emily's trembling vulnerability. He had expected an enraged shriek, perhaps a slap, but not the lost expression that darkened her pretty eyes. She looked as if he had struck her, not kissed her, and it made him feel both cruel and ashamed. If she started to cry, he feared Penfeld might return to find them both on the floor, bawling like babies. He ached to touch her, but satisfied himself by plucking a dust ball from her curls.

She sank down on an overturned bucket, wrapping her dignity around her like the shreds of Penfeld's coat. "I fear the joke's on me this time. I lied about my leg." She met his gaze with aching candor.

"I didn't have anywhere else to go."

Justin's heart lurched. He had the odd feeling that those were the truest words she'd ever spoken to him. A wave of unexpected anger surged through him, driving him to break his own precious code of privacy. "Where is your family? Is there no one to take care of you? What is society coming to when a girl like you can roam halfway across the world without a soul to protect her?"

"I don't need protecting. I cherish my independence." She lowered her eyes. "I've been too long dependent on the fickle whims of men."

He cupped her cheek in his palm, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Perhaps you've only chosen the wrong men."

"A mistake I don't care to repeat," she said with forced lightness, drawing away from him. "You were kind to let me stay. You knew better than anyone that I had nothing to pay you with."

Nothing but the cheering warmth of her chatter, the clean scent of her curls, and more laughter than the dusty old hut had heard in years. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, afraid he might beg her to stay not for another week, but for another month.

"You can pay me," he said abruptly.

Her fingers knotted in her lap. She rolled her foot over Penfeld's remaining cup, tension written in the curve of every toe. "I know such arrangements are common in a land such as this, but I don't believe

I could-"

Justin bit off one of Nicky's favorite oaths. Emily s eyes widened in shock. He snatched off his hat

and turned away to pace, not wanting her to see him bleed from aer careless cut.

His foot scattered a pile of books. "Is that what a kind man would do, Emily? Force you to share his blankets for a thatched roof and a plate of beans? Is that what you're worth?" He whirled to face her.

"What manner of man do you think me?"

Justin didn't think she could hurt him any more than she had, but when she lowered her gaze to her lap without answering, he discovered he was wrong. Dust motes drifted down to halo her disheveled curls. His throat tightened with a temptation sharper than pain.

What if he allowed Emily to barter her tender young body as the price for his protection? Would he be

a monster for wanting to blunt the sharp edges of night with the pleasure of her charms?

"Come here."

An unbidden shiver raced through Emily at the smoky timbre of Justin's voice. She untangled her fingers and smoothed the remnants of Penfeld's coat over her thighs. She rose and glided toward him, mesmerized by the clarity of his golden eyes. How could such crystalline eyes hide such dark secrets?

she wondered.

She tilted her face to his, meeting his gaze boldly despite the faint quiver of her lower lip.

"You can repay me . . ."he said, brushing a strand of hair from her brow.

His shadow fell over her; Emily's eyes fluttered shut in unwitting invitation.

". . . by cooking dinner tonight."

Emily snapped open her eyes. Justin was already striding toward the door, stepping over broken bits

of china with the lazy grace she found so unnerving.

"You've piqued my curiosity about one thing," he said. "Why didn't you just run outside when I put Fluffy in the hut?"

"Run?" she echoed, still dazed by his abrupt mood change. "I never considered it."

Grudging admiration touched his voice. "No, I suppose you wouldn't, would you?"

Justin watched his words sink in; Emily's eyes slowly widened to vengeful saucers. "When you put

Fluffy in? When you put Fluffy … do you mean you deliberately . . . why, you miserable wretch!"

She fumbled at the floor. Justin slammed the hut door just as the last unbroken cup crashed into it and shattered. Grinning, he slapped on his hat at a cocky angle. "Now, that's my girl."

He strode toward the fields, the music of Emily's curses still ringing in his ears.

* * *

Penfeld was moping. Even the creases in his trousers looked droopy. Emily fussed over him with unrelenting cheer, bringing him conch shell after conch shell of tea heavily sweetened with precious treacle. In the course of a day, their roles had oddly reversed. The valet reclined on his pallet, his hands folded over his belly in plump wings. He hadn't made a single remark about Emily's miraculous recovery. Even in tragic defeat he remained tactful.

Emily clucked into his untouched shell of tea. "This won't do at all. If I didn't know better, I'd swear

you were sulking."

"A good valet never sulks, miss. He mourns."

"I am terribly sorry about your tea service. It wasn't entirely my fault, you know." She shot Justin's

back a dark look.

Her host stood at the stove, flipping the sweet potato pancakes she had molded earlier. He had the

good grace to turn around at her pointed words, but she almost wished he hadn't. There was something hopelessly compelling about a man as virile as Justin wearing an apron. Her toes started to feel sticky,

and she realized she was pouring the lukewarm tea over her feet. She dried them with the hem of Penfeld's coat.

"Emily's right. It wasn't entirely her fault." Justin pointed his spatula at the impassive lizard perched on

a stack of books. "Fluffy must have been dipping into the rum again. You know how clumsy he gets

on one of Irish drunken rampages."

Emily, Penfeld, and the maligned lizard all glared at him.

Justin threw up his arms. "I confess! I murdered those innocent cups and sugar bowls with my own ruthless hands. But I've promised you new ones the very first chance I get. Even if I have to swim all

the way to Fleet Street to find them."

Penfeld's long-suffering sigh was enough to make Emily weep. "You can't afford it, sir. Your every halfpenny is promised to Miss-"

Justin flashed a warning glance toward Emily. If Fluffy had been blessed with visible ears, she was

sure they would have perked up.

Penfeld snapped his mouth shut and began toying with his suspenders. Miss who? Emily wondered. Miss Auckland Strumpet? Miss Greedy Mistress with Soft Blue Eyes and Not a Freckle on Her Body? Justin obviously wasn't channeling his fortune to his ward. Was some New Zealand beauty bleeding him dry? Did he have a shrewish paramour and five mewling brats tucked away somewhere? She supposed it would serve him right after what he had done to her father. So why had she suddenly lost her appetite?

Their meager supply of plates had been broken, so Emily began slamming pancakes on palm fronds.

Justin crouched beside the pallet. "Picture it in your mind, Penfeld. A gleaming vista of Waterford

goblets and Wedgwood jasperware. Linen napkins heaped like snowy Alps beside each plate."

The valet only sniffed. "How arrogant of me to think I could preserve a tiny corner of civilization in this wilderness, a small fragment of the mighty dignity of the British Empire in this wasteland of . . ."

He droned on. Justin shrugged at Emily over his head, indicating it best to let him ramble. As they sat, picking the sand out of their pancakes, a trilling cry interrupted Penfeld's recitation.

A long, tanned leg jutted over the windowsill, followed by a tattooed arm waving a bottle of rum. "Greetings, most noble companions. I come bearing liquid sustenance for your delectable banquet."

"Doesn't Trini know any words under six syllables?" she hissed at Justin. She was still cranky from envisioning him adrift in a welter of milk-skinned, golden-eyed babies.

"Of course he does, but he prefers the ones I taught him."

"That explains why he's so pompous."

Justin slanted her a dark look, but she was already taking a dainty bite of her pancake. He caught the bottle Trini tossed and splashed rum into his tea. Emily reached for the bottle, but Justin slyly eased it

out of her reach. He was afraid rum and Emily might not mix. He could too easily imagine them igniting with a lethal flash, burning his lean, hungry body to cinders.

Trini squatted in their circle and Emily hastened to offer him a pancake. Penfeld's pancake. She ignored the valet's protests, more concerned with soothing the native's hunger. She didn't have to worry about Penfeld eating her. Trini gulped down the crisp treat, then licked his fingers and grinned at her. Emily looked around frantically.

"Oh, no, you don't." Justin slid his own food out of her reach. "Give him yours."

"But I'm hungry," she wailed.

Justin grabbed her foot and ran his thumb over the sleek curve of her instep. A decadent heat tingled

up her calf. "Have I ever mentioned what succulent little toes you have?"

She caught her breath, so paralyzed by the wicked sparkle of his eyes that she absently handed her pancake to Trini. When Justin freed her foot, it felt even more bereft than her empty stomach.

Trini's voice boomed out. "You benevolent gentleftsik have shared your sumptuous repast with me.

Now I bee for the privilege of repaying the favor."

He vaulted out the window, returning with a platter of glazed meat. The exotic aromas of honey, cinnamon, and passion fruit wafted from the steaming dish, making Emily's mouth water.

She clutched Justin's arm. "Please tell me it's not-"

"Good old-fashioned English pork, my dear. A favored delicacy of the Maori."

She slumped in relief. Even Penfeld perked up as bottle and platter were passed around. The shadows

of dusk lengthened across the hut, but the gathering darkness did not pierce their warm glow of laughter and conversation.

As Penfeld rose to light the lanterns, Emily leaned against the wall, content to watch the emotions dance across Justin's face and hands. She'd found most Englishmen to be stilted in both speech and manner,

but Justin's fingers were eloquent extensions of his voice. He spoke briefly to Trini in Maori, the foreign words rolling like song from his tongue. Trini rose and disappeared out the window again.

"His comings and goings are enough to make a kiwi dizzy," Penfeld said, splashing a healthy dose of

rum into his tea as Trini bounced back into the hut.

The native knelt in front of Emily and offered her a calico-wrapped package.

"For me?"

Trini nodded. "For that most elegant of womankind, the veritable apex of feminine pulchritude-"

"Did he just insult me?" she asked Justin.

His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. "No. He said you were lovely." The warm glow in his

eyes made Emily wonder if he shared that opinion.

She tugged open the package. Nestled within the worn folds were a skirt of woven flax and a thin scarf

of flowered calico.

She held the skirt up to the light, admiring the exquisite workmanship. "It's stunning, Trini, but I mustn't accept it. Look what I've done to poor Penfeld's coat."

Penfeld offered a toast to that, sloshing rum on his immaculate trousers.

Trini spoke rapidly to Justin in Maori. He grunted a reply. The native took the skirt and laid it across

her hands once again, saying simply, "Not for Trini. For Em."

For Em. Not borrowed from a befuddled valet. Not outgrown by some snobbish teacher. For Em.

Virgin flax woven to hug the curves of her body. She looked around at their expectant faces, wondering how she could have allowed them to become so familiar and so dear in such a short time. Her gaze stopped at Justin. A wistful hunger touched his smile.

She offered Trini her hand, hiding a flinch when he brought it toward his teeth. "My most marvelous gratitude, Trini Te Wana," she said.

He kissed her palm with the suave charm of any London swell. Emily gathered her gift and withdrew

to the other side of the hut, terrified Justin might hear the tiny cracks shooting through her frozen heart.

* * *

Justin reclined on one elbow and tipped the rum bottle to his lips. The liquor spread its warm haze through his veins. Behind him Penfeld was snoring. The valet had forgotten to put any tea at all in his

last conch shell. Trini had confiscated Justin's watch and was twirling it over the lantern, watching darts

of light dance across the hut in drunken fascination. Conversation had long ago declined, as it tended to do when stomachs were full and bottles empty.

Sighing, Justin allowed his gaze to lead him to the same hopeless place it had all night. To Emily.

She sat, hugging one leg, her chin pillowed against tbe satiny curve of her knee. A jagged tear in

Penfeld's coat exposed a creamy shoulder burnished with freckles. The lantern light tipped her chestnut curls with flame, haloing a profile as fragile and inscrutable as porcelain. Her eyes followed the spin of

his watch as if hypnotized.

He closed his own eyes for a weary moment, wondering if they'd somehow wounded her with their kindness.

When he opened them, Emily was staring at him, her pensive expression hardened to something more feral. For a chilling instant he would have sworn she hated him.

Then the lantern flickered, Trini began to hum softly, and the moment was gone.

Too much rum, Justin assured himself uneasily as he tipped his hat over his eyes and eased into stupor.

* * *

Justin awoke to darkness. His head throbbed and his mouth tasted as if Fluffy had been tramping through it. No nightmares though. The thought gave him little comfort. He had learned long ago the seductive danger of drowning his dreams in rum.

Penfeld's rumbling snores assured him it was still night. He stumbled to his feet, hoping a trip into the moonlight would relieve more than his aching bladder. His eyes adjusted poorly, and he stubbed his toe on Trini's prone form. A sliver of moonlight beckoned him into the night. He was already fumbling at

his dungarees when he hit the door.

He stumbled a few feet away, then stopped, his back to the hut. His shoulders slowly relaxed in relief.

"Feel better?"

A rich note of humor tinged the feminine voice. An icy heat knifed between Justin's shoulder blades

and crawled all the way to his hairline. Dear God, don't let her see me blush, he prayed.

"Quite," he said gruffly, making crucial adjustments with frantic hands. He hitched his thumbs in his waistband and swaggered back to the hut as if he had known she was there all the time.

Emily sat in the sand, staring glumly at the fragments of china gathered in the circle of her legs. An elfin frown crinkled her brow.

She swept a floppy curl out of her eyes, leaving a pale smudge of flour on her cheek, and held up a teacup with no handle. "I made some paste for Penfeld's tea set."

Justin wondered how long she had been sitting out there alone. Shadows stained the fragile skin beneath her eyes. Her efforts seemed to have yielded little more than sticky fingers and sandy china. As they watched, a gaping fissure split the cup she was holding.

Her bereft sigh was more than Justin could bear. He ducked into the hut and returned with a small jar. "Kauri gum. Hand me that teapot and we'll give it a try."

Emily's grin swept away the last of the rum's stale fog. Their fingers brushed and lingered as he knelt

and took the spoutless teapot from her hand.

* * *

Penfeld threw open the door, inviting the brisk morning air into his lungs. He had awakened to an empty hut and was mortified to have outslept Justin. It wasn't that his master required any assistance wiggling into his dungarees, but a proper valet should always rise first.

He balled his hands and stretched, shading his tender eyes against the sunlight. He lifted his foot but mercifully glanced down before lowering it, realizing he was about to tread directly on someone's fingers. He hopped backward. His eyes widened as he took in the spectacle before him.

Justin and Emily lay in a heap, entwined like a pile of sleeping kittens, her arm looped across his stomach, his head pillowed on her thigh. Emily's cheeks were flushed. Justin's dark hair stirred in the morning wind. Beside them in the sand lay one of the sweetest sights Penfeld had ever seen.

The sun gleamed across the silver tray, kissing the sleek curves of the porcelain. They had rescued a handful of cups, the teapot, and the sugar bowl. What did it mar-ter that the china was webbed with thick brown gum and crusted with sand? Or that the spout of the teapot now hung upside down like the trunk of some morose elephant? Penfeld thought it all unbearably lovely.

He drew out his starched handkerchief and dabbed at his cheeks. "Silly sand," he muttered. "Always blowing in my eyes."

* * *

Later that same morning Emily danced around the hut, delighting in the musical sway of the flaxen

skirt. It hugged her hips, then flared around her legs in a graceful bell, granting her giddy freedom of movement. After nearly lynching herself, she had even managed to tie the calico scarf around her

breasts in a makeshift bandeau. She wished Miss Winters could see her now. The flowered material

bared enough skin to send the poky old headmistress past death into rigor mortis.

She folded Penfeld's ragged coat with tender hands. She was worse at sewing than she was at pasting together teapots and wouldn't have inflicted her seamstress skills on her worst enemy.

Not even on Justin.

Her hands paused in their motion. Her worst enemy, she thought. The man who had sat with her until dawn, using his exquisite patience to piece together shards of broken porcelain to cheer his friend. The man she had vowed to somehow destroy.

She tossed the coat on Penfeld's pallet. Today was to be her first taste of real freedom, and she refused

to dwell on such dark thoughts. The slant of the sun warned her she had slept past noon. Such decadence made her shiver with delight. She started for the door, but could not resist one last peek at Penfeld's tea tray. She had awoken alone on her pallet to find it displayed proudly beneath the window.

The sun illumined bulbous cracks patched with amber gum, but Emily had to admit it was a valiant effort. She leaned forward, lured by a hint of her reflection in an unbroken stretch of silver. She tugged at one

of her curls. It popped back like a coiled spring. She sighed. Why couldn't she have been born with a straight fall of ice-blond hair like Cecille du Pardieu?

The door swung open, and she thrust her hands behind her back, embarrassed to be caught primping. Miss Winters would never have tolerated such vanity.

Justin ducked beneath the lintel. "Thought I'd come back and see if Sleeping Beauty had decided to rise.

I was beginning to wonder if you were ever-" As his gaze lit on her, he stopped.

Emily held her breath as he reached up and slowly pulled off his hat. An odd tingle swept up her body

in the smoldering path of his gaze. Their easy banter of the previous night perished in its flame.

Laughing shakily, she spread her arms and spun around for his perusal. "Do I look like a native? Would Trini be pleased? Of course Trini wouldn't be pleased. He would be exultant. Or rhapsodic. Or-"

"You look fine." Justin's tone bordered on surliness.

She caught a tantalizing glimpse of something pained, almost stricken, in his eyes. Then he donned his hat, tilting it forward as an effective veil.

She flitted around the hut, gathering a towel and a wicker basket. "I thought I'd go down to the beach

and dig some clams for supper. I'm weary to death of this dusty old hut." She started for the door.

"No!"

His yell startled her so badly, she dropped the basket.

She felt her jaw drop as he threw his body across the door. "You can't go out there! I absolutely forbid it."

Chapter 6

Justin knew he was behaving like a madman, but he was helpless to stop. The same impish demon

who had driven him to return to the hut at midday had taken his little pitchfork and twisted it deep into Justin's heart.

He had opened the door, expecting to find the bedraggled waif he had carried to the pallet after Penfeld had awakened him that morning. But the fairies had come while he was in the fields, leaving in her place one of their own-an ethereal vision of womanhood. Her loveliness pained him, opened up a raw chasm of hunger in his heart and in his arms. He wanted to cover her shy smile with his lips, to ease her back down on the pallet and beg her to adore him with both her woman's body and her child's heart.

She had tried to tell him she was grown, but he had refused to heed her warning. Until he had heard

the teasing whisper of flax against her thighs and traced the exquisite cling of the fabric across her full breasts, it had been less painful to pretend she was just a funny little moppet, a minor annoyance to his well-ordered existence.

But when he walked through that door, his neat existence had crumbled like sand before an irresistible tide, and he had ended up flung across the doorway like a pagan sacrifice.

"You can't go out there," he repeated. "I won't have it."

Emily's brow folded in a stormy frown. Justin knew he had made a mistake. Forbidding Emily anything was like tossing a haunch of beef to a starving lioness.

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the dirt floor. "I beg your pardon."

"I'm sorry, but I simply cannot allow it."

"Why not?"

"It's not safe. There are too many-uh-um-"

"Tigers? Cobras? Bears?" she offered.

Bears? He wanted to reply that there were too many other men out there. Maori warriors, undeniably handsome even by English standards. Virile Polynesians whose bronze muscles gleamed with sweat and whose bones never ached, not even after long, hot hours in the sun. Strutting young heroes in the first flush of manhood with not a gray hair among them. Justin searched his mind frantically.

"Cannibals!" he almost shouted. "Too many cannibals. I'm disappointed in you, Emily. How could you have forgotten?"

"And you think they might want to gobble me up?" She swept her tongue across her pearly little teeth.

Justin wadded his hat into a ball. His body was strumming like a piano wire strung to reckless limits.

God, she was luscious. She was in far more danger of being gobbled up in here than out there.

"They might," he replied, refusing to commit himself.

"How odd. I distinctly remember Trini telling me the surrounding tribes were all friendly to whites.

He said they even fought side by side in the recent land wars against the hostile natives."

Luscious and gifted with a good memory, Justin thought. A lethal combination. "There are still hostile Maori to the east of us in Rotorua who have been known to send out marauding parties." Her lower lip inched out, and Justin groaned. "I'm simply asking you not to go out alone. I'll come back and take you out later." Much later. Preferably after it was pitch dark and there was no one to ogle her but him.

She tossed back her curls and struck a long-suffering pose. "So until then I'm to remain your prisoner

in this hut?"

Justin was torn between laughter and painful desire. Her words summoned up some very naughty images of fur rugs and silken chains. Once again he thanked God she had fallen into his hands instead of some less scrupulous man's. His own scruples were wearing thin faster than he cared to admit.

She had worked herself up to a full pout now. Justin decided it best to go before she started throwing things. She was standing dangerously near the skillet, and he didn't want to spend another sleepless night gluing together teacups. He donned his hat, wondering how it had gotten so misshapen. He dared a last glance from beneath the shelter of its brim and caught Emily's expression in a moment of rare honesty. She wasn't angry. She was hurt. As she watched him go, it had become impossible for her to hide the forlorn tilt of her lips.

He crossed to her and nudged her face up with one finger. "I'll be back for you. I promise."

Unable to deny himself, he touched his lips to hers in a brief caress. Her shiver of response rocked his soul. As he turned to go, the look in her fathomless dark eyes made him wonder which of them was

truly the prisoner.

Justin's words haunted the lonely hut.

I'll be back for you. I promise.

Those were the last words Emily's father had ever spoken to her.

They had faced each other in Miss Winters's elegant parlor, awkward and at a loss for words for the

first time in Emily's memory. The fawning headmistress had offered them the room for their farewells. She had assured him she would spare no expense for her cherished new pupil and her doting father, a man they all knew had a healthy investment in the booming New Zealand gold rush. Frost had webbed the windows, but a cheery fire had crackled on the hearth.

Eleven years before, when he'd been only twenty himself, David Scarborough's lovely Irish bride had died, leaving a squalling red-faced infant in her place. He delighted in telling his friends that he and Emily had grown up together. He was more than father and mother to her. He was her dearest friend. They'd never been separated, not even for a night, and now he was going away.

Emily was afraid to look at him. Snowflakes melted on the cape of his greatcoat. His own unruly curls had been tamed by a top hat of polished beaver. She thought he had never looked taller or more handsome. Or less like her daddy. She comforted herself by studying his leather shoes, memorizing

each familiar knick and scuff, ignoring the trickle of the tears down her cheeks.

He folded her face in his kid gloves, his voice choked with a helpless agony that mirrored her own. "Claire. My sweet, my darling . . ."

She had buried her nose in his waistcoat, savoring the scent of pipe tobacco that always clung to him.

He had touched his lips to her hair and whispered, "I'll be back for you. I promise."

Then he had turned and gone, leaving her standing alone in a blast of icy air.

"He would have come back, too," Emily whispered to the silent hut. "If it hadn't been for you."

She curled her lip in a snarl. How dare Justin make a mockery of her father's words! How dare his lips caress hers as if she were still a child to be pacified with a kiss and a promise! Promises were only as good as the men who made them.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "As if your words mean spit to me, Justin Connor!"

She snatched up the basket and threw the towel over her shoulder. Justin had been lying to her. The furtive dart of his eyes had given him away. Being a skilled kisser did not preclude being a bad liar. He probably wanted her safely closeted in the hut so she couldn't discover what dark deeds he accomplished in the glaring light of day. She marched across the hut, fully intending to tell him where both he and his mythical cannibals could go.

She threw open the door. A half-naked savage sprang into her path, swinging his club in a whistling arc. Emily froze. He shoved his face into hers. She recoiled from the fishy stench of his breath. The sunlight shining through her hair seemed to mesmerize him. Muttering under his breath, he wrapped one of her curls around his grubby finger, baring his yellowed teeth in a fearful grimace.

When he released the curl, it sprang back and hit her in the nose. Nodding as if satisfied, his chant

swelled to a wail and he began to roll his eyes and wag his tongue in time to the wild gyration of his hips. Emily didn't know if he wanted to kill her or marry her. A churning throng of natives milled behind him, their gleaming teeth sharpened to menacing points.

Emily slammed the door in their tattooed faces and threw her back against it.

Cannibals! Oh, dear Lord, Justin had been telling the truth! Moaning under her breath, she pressed her eyes shut, feeling sick. Perhaps they'd go looking for fatter prey. Where was Penfeld when she needed him? She eased the door open and peeped through the narrow crack. A bulbous brown eye peered back at her.

Muffling a shriek, she slammed the door and backed away from it. Miss Winters had always warned

her that disobedience would lead to a dire fate, but Emily thought being eaten by cannibals a trifle too dire. She could well imagine the superior smirk on Justin's face as he toasted her demise with Penfeld.

I tried to warn her, he would say, shaking his head sadly. The obstinate little vixen just wouldn't listen. Mock tears would well in his golden eyes. Penfeld would snort into his own starched handkerchief and pour him another cup of tea.

Anger stiffened Emily's spine. She forced her frantic hiccups into slow, deep breaths. Damn Justin.

Damn them all. She'd never met fate gracefully, and she wasn't about to start now. A beam of sunlight caressed the sleek stock of the rifle hanging over the door.

She dragged herself over the rum barrel and climbed on top of it. It teetered beneath her weight as she drew the rifle from its hook. She'd never held a gun before. Running her hand over the cool barrel gave her a heady sense of power.

Her gaze darted between the door and the window. She had little advantage except the element of surprise. If the natives had surrounded the hut, she was done for.

She tiptoed across the hut and poked her head out the window. Bushy fronds waved in the breeze. She might be able to slip out undetected and run for the beach. But what glory was there in running to Justin's arms, screaming like a hysterical chicken? Wouldn't he be far more impressed if she captured an entire band of hostile marauders alone? If she proved she could look after herself, he might grant her the freedom to roam the beach undisturbed.

Emboldened by that thought, she heaved herself out the window and slunk toward the front of the hut, the rifle cradled awkwardly in the crook of her arm. Sheltered by a fat bush, she peeped around the corner.

The savages' attention was focused on the door. The one who had threatened her with his club had melted back into the crowd. They jabbered among themselves in low musical cadences. Almost every man carried some sort of weapon, except for two who bore an iron pot between them. Emily flared her nostrils indignantly. The arrogant wretches, she thought. What were they going to do? Boil her on her own doorstep?

Her finger curled around the cold trigger. Before she could move, a burly warrior wearing dangling jade ear pendants had a heated exchange with an older man whose shock of white hair contrasted sharply

with the green furrows dug into his wizened skin. The muscled cannibal made a dismissive gesture

toward the door. They argued briefly, then the old man demurred, baring his yellowed teeth in a smile that conveyed respect without obeisance.

As they turned toward the hill, Emily plunged out of the bush, waving the rifle wildly. A vine tangled around her foot.

The Maori gaped at her as she came to a hopping halt. She realized how ridiculously pathetic she must look. Bracing the stock of the rifle against her shoulder, she swaggered forward. The natives rewarded

her with several nervous glances toward the weapon.

"Don't take another step," she barked. "I know how to use this thing."

At least she knew which end to point at them. The gun was definitely inspiring more fear than Penfeld's feather duster.

The tall warrior crossed his arms over his chest and glared down his nose at her. His broad nostrils flared with contempt, but the older man lay a restraining hand on his arm and made frantic signs in the air. The men holding the pot dropped it in the sand. Several of the natives covered their eyes and made whistling sounds through their teeth. The whites of their eyes swelled with fear. Emily bit back a giggle, finding it

all rather gratifying. But when the old man flattened his knuckles against his skull and wiggled his fingers like snakes, obviously indicating the state of her hair, she was less than amused.

The massive warrior took a menacing step toward her.

She swung the rifle in a dangerous arc. "Halt, you carnivorous fellow. You won't be putting me in your pot today. Down on your bellies! All of you."

Her command might have eluded them, but they understood the language of the rifle as she swept it across the sand. They flopped to their bellies like beached fish. The muscular warrior was the last to

fall. His growling snarl made the hair on Emily's nape tingle.

An awkward silence descended over the clearing, broken only by the cheerful chirp of a cricket. Emily chewed on her lower lip. Now that she'd captured the cannibals, she hadn't the faintest idea what to do with them. She searched the cloudless sky, wondering how long it would be before Justin returned. She considered firing a shot in the air, then realized she'd never checked to see if the rifle was loaded. A hollow click at an inopportune moment might see her well on her way to martyrdom.

She knew of only one sure way to get Justin's attention. Ignoring his grunt of protest, she rested her

foot on the curve of the warrior's back in what she hoped was a noble pose, threw back her head,

and screamed at the top of her lungs.

Chapter 7

Her scream echoed across the amber hills. The hoe slipped from Justin's hands, smashing his toes.

The pain was only a nagging reflection of a sharper agony as he whipped his head around.

"Good Lord, sir, what manner of hellish creature could have-"

Before Penfeld could finish, Justin was gone, his path marked by a wild crashing through the dense

brush.

Justin could not have explained how he knew the unearthly cry had come from Emily, only that the timbre of her voice had somehow become as familiar to him as his own. An icy sweat broke out on his body as he careened down a hill, scraping his back on the serrated trunk of a totara tree. Ferny boughs whipped his face, blinding him, but still he pressed on, driven by the stark terror that by his absence he had allowed something terrible to happen to her. Time spilled back to the night when he had rushed to another beach, clutching Nicky's bloody coat like a talisman against the darkness, only to arrive a

moment too late.

He tripped over a trailing creeper and went sprawling. His cheek struck the warm, rich earth with a

thud. He shook damp tendrils of hair from his eyes and flung himself to his feet, catching a tantalizing glimpse of wicker through the trees. He hurtled into the clearing and stumbled to a halt, his heart slamming against his ribs, his breath dragged from his lungs in raw rasps.

Emily favored him with her sweetest smile. "What took you so long? I thought you'd never come."

Nothing could have prepared Justin for the sight of Emily holding court over a throng of prostrate

Maori warriors like some triumphant Amazon queen. She cradled the rifle in her arms. Her little foot rested daintily on the spine of one of the largest and most irate warriors Justin had ever seen. Even his ears were pink with fury.

Justin doubled over, flattening his palms on his knees, before she could begin to guess at the depth or bitter sweetness of his relief. Its intensity terrified him. He took a deep breath as a hard-edged fury

born of thwarted fear flooded his veins.

He jerked his head up. "What in the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

Emily recoiled. Why didn't Justin look more pleased with her? She shrugged. "It's obvious, isn't it? Capturing cannibals."

Contempt iced his voice. "You, my dear, have just captured our neighboring tribe of Maori. A tribe,

I might mention, that has been quite friendly to me, at least before they made your acquaintance."

"I don't understand," she said faintly. The rifle slipped a notch in her hands. "That horrid creature waved his club at me. They were all armed. They even brought their own pot. I only assumed-"

"That 'horrid creature' was performing the te uero a ceremonial dance to welcome you to his country." Justin picked his way over several inert Maori and grabbed a long-handled tool topped by an innocuous blade. "What were they going to do? Hoe you to death?" He pulled an orangy-brown object out of the overturned pot and waved it at her. "A kumara. Sweet potatoes. Their gift to you."

"Oh, dear." Emily mopped her brow, feeling suddenly sicker than she had before.

Justin glided toward her with such lethal grace that she started to point the rifle at him. He plucked the weapon out of her arms, handling it with two fingers as if it were a deadly serpent, and tossed it in the sand.

"I'd like to introduce you to Witi Ahamera, their ariki, their chief."

She squared her chin, mustering her fading pluck. "I'd like to meet him, too. I've got a few things to

say about his tribe running about, terrorizing unsuspecting young Englishwomen."

"You're standing on him."

A brilliant heat flooded her cheeks. She followed Justin's mocking gaze down her calf to the foot braced against the bronze muscles of the Maori warrior. Her toes twitched nervously.

She looked to Justin for help, hoping he'd provide a graceful dismount, but he only smirked at her.

"Well, so I am," she said. "Who would have thought it?" She hopped off the man and tugged at his arm. He rose slowly, towering over her. She reached above her head to brush sand from his chest, avoiding

his stony glare. "If Mr. Witi would have bothered to tell me he was the chief, I'd never have trod upon him in such a thoughtless manner."

Biting off what sounded like a distinctly Anglo-Saxon oath, the chief shoved her hand away. She shrank against Justin without realizing it. His arm slipped around her waist, molding her to his lean frame. She

felt as if she'd flopped literally from stew pot to fire.

Taking their cue from their chief, the natives rose, shaking sand out of their raw flax skirts. An admiring murmur of "Pakeha, Pakeha" rose from their ranks. Emily looked around, but could see nothing or no one who might inspire such deference.

The chief jutted out his hand. All murmuring ceased. A fierce intelligence burned in his bright, dark

eyes. His nostrils flared as he pointed at Emily and bit off a string of guttural words that made her thankful she did not understand Maori.

She pressed herself to Justin, basking in his strength. "What is he saying?" she whispered.

His lips touched her ear. "You have offended his mana."

"His mama?"

Justin gave her a hard squeeze. "His mana. His honor. His pride. Mana is all-important to the Maori. Every slight, real or imagined, demands retribution. He wants to declare war on you."

She squirmed. "Why, that overgrown, jade-headed bully! Where's my rifle? Of all the arrogant, ridiculous-"

Justin clapped his hand over her mouth. The chief punctuated his newest accusation by leaning forward and poking her in the chest. She gulped.

"Cease!" Oddly enough, Justin's soft-spoken command stilled the irate warrior in mid-poke and threw

an unnatural hush over his men.

Justin kept one hand firmly anchored over Emily's mouth, but his other hand took eloquent wing as

Maori words spilled from his lips like song. Emily felt her body relax, lulled by the velvety timbre of his voice, hypnotized by the graceful flight of his fingers in the air. The natives hung on every word. Even

the chief cocked his head in reluctant attention. Justin's hand slid from her lips and cupped her chin,

tilting her face up for their regard.

Several of the men hopped back in fear, making signs in the air. A dreamy assurance melted through Emilys veins. He must be warning them never to trouble her again, telling them that she belonged only

to him and he would protect her even at the cost of his own life.

The chief made a disgusted gesture toward the white-haired man. He nodded and they climbed the hill, leading their men into the brush and leaving her and Justin alone in the clearing.

Justin released her. Emily locked her knees, fearful she might melt into a besotted puddle at his feet.

She grabbed his arm. "Thank you, Justin."

He shook her hand off, his lips twisted in scathing dismissal. "Don't mention it. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to meet with them as I'd planned to do before they were ambushed by Emily Scarlet, the

jungle princess."

He started up the hill, brushing dirt off his dungarees with a disgusted motion. Emily's hands clenched

into fists.

"What did you tell them?" she cried, refusing to be daunted by the note of desperation in her voice. She had to hear him say he cared. She'd waited to hear the words for almost half her life.

He picked his way over a thorny bush without slowing his pace. "I told them you were crazy. That you'd escaped from Bedlam and stowed away on a banana boat before the attendants could catch you."

He topped the crest of the hill. "I told them insanity ran rampant in your family and one of your

ancestors thought he was a kiwi bird and tried to leap from the London Tower, not realizing, of course, that kiwis don't fly."

Emily suddenly knew what it meant to be blinded by rage. Or at least by the glint of the sun off a rifle barrel. She snatched the gun, cocked it, and aimed it at the tree nearest Justin that she thought she might hit without blowing his head off. She didn't want to maim him, just scare the hell out of him.

She squeezed the trigger. The lifeless click seemed to reverberate for miles.

Justin froze, his back rigid. As he came scrambling down the hill at twice the pace he'd climbed it, Emily tried to shove the rifle behind her skirt. It was a very poor fit indeed.

His eyes blazed as he reached around her and snatched the weapon. He leaned forward until his nose touched hers. "If you think I'd leave you alone with a loaded gun, you're loonier than they think you are."

He hurled the rifle into the hut and turned away, dismissing her with contemptuous swiftness.

"Justin?"

He stopped, his shoulders braced against the sound of her voice.

"You must hate me, don't you?"

He sighed. "I wish I could, Emily. It would make life so much simpler."

An odd glow touched her. As he ducked into the bush she felt a grin steal over her face. In all the confusion he hadn't forbade her to leave the hut. She gathered her skirt to muffle its rustle and slunk

up the hill after him.

* * *

Emily darted from tree to tree, running to keep Justin in sight. As she threw herself behind the trunk

of a kauri tree, her foot came down squarely on a twig. The crack resounded through the forest. The quivering silence warned her Justin had also stopped to listen. She shrank into herself, holding her

breath until his crashing path through the underbrush resumed. She poked her head out from behind

the tree, looked both ways, then ducked after him. This might be her only chance to discover how he spent the long hours of daylight.

The trees thinned, shrinking into thick clumps of broom fragrant with masses of delicate pink amaryllis. She dropped down, forced to scramble up the slope on hands and knees to avoid being seen.

The hillside ended abruptly in a sprawling fence of stakes, their points whittled to menacing sharpness.

"At least there aren't any shrunken heads on them," she whispered to herself.

Not yet anyway.

Less than comforted by the thought, she followed the curving line of the palisade, still shielded by

tangled growth. A yawning gate divided the stakes. Emily parted the fronds of a bush and watched

Justin disappear into its maw. Seeing no guards, she dared to follow.

Hugging the palisade, she slipped through the gate to find a small village drowsing in the midday sun. Across the courtyard Justin was entering a round hut thatched with wicker. As Emily picked her way

after him, a mangy dog lifted his head from his paws. Instead of barking, he greeted her with a pant

and a lazy wag of his tail. These natives must be a trusting lot, she thought. Just as her father had been.

She inched around the walls of the windowless hut. What reasons did Justin have for meeting with the Maori? Was he buying land with her father's gold? She had read of some diabolical white men turning

the natives against other whites so they could step into the carnage and steal their land. Her stomach tightened to a nervous knot. A trickle of sweat inched down her cheek.

Her groping fingers found a weak spot in the wicker. She tore it away, then knelt and pressed her eye

to the tiny hole.

Her gaze adjusted slowly to the cavernous gloom of the meeting house. Burning torches had been spiked into the dirt floor, casting an amber glow over the gathering. Skirted natives sat cross-legged throughout the hut. A handful of women wearing feathered cloaks were sprinkled among the men. She recognized

the stern chief and his white-haired companion. They all gave the center of the hut their rapt attention, their faces glowing with a common serenity. Even the fierce chief had allowed his expression to soften

to curiosity, although the skeptical glint never completely left his dark eyes.

A smoke hole had been cut in the domed ceiling and a single shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom, illuminating the finely hewn features of the man sitting cross-legged in their midst. Emily was tempted

to believe he had planned it that way, but realized he must need the light to read from the leather-bound book spread across his thighs. Trini sat beside him, translating Justin's English into Maori each time he paused.

Puzzled, Emily strained her ears to hear. She doubted if cannibals would be that enthralled by the life

and times of Mozart or Vivaldi.

She didn't have to strain long. Justin's voice carried like the rich, sweet tolling of a cathedral bell.

" '. . . she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.' "

He paused so Trini might translate. The glowering chief shook his head as if saddened by the fate of the hapless child.

" '. . . And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round them . .

Emily had squirmed through seven interminable Christmas pageants at the seminary. Pageants where Cecille du Pardieu played Mary while she got stuck as the far end of a sheep or donkey. But as she

closed her eyes, it was as if she were hearing the power of the old, old words for the first time.

". . . And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which

shall be to all people . .

She opened her eyes, blinking away the tears caught in her lashes. The hut seemed to reel, pivoting

slowly around a man with somber gold eyes caught in a web of sunlight. It sparkled across his hair,

glinted off the gold watch case that lay against his breastbone.

Emily shoved herself away from the hut, clapping a hand over her mouth. A hysterical giggle escaped

her, them another. The dashing rogue Justin Connor a missionary? Had her father bequeathed both his gold mine and his daughter to a madman? What had he done with the gold? she wondered. Given it to

the natives to buy supplies? Or Bibles?

She doubled over, clutching her stomach as helpless laughter crippled her. How could she have let her own suspicions and the gossip of London society blind her to the man's true character? He had opened

his life and heart to every stray who wandered past, taking in abandoned valets, reformed cannibals-even ugly lizards.

Everyone but his ward, she realized. There was no room at the inn for Claire Scarborough.

Until she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks, Emily didn't realize she was crying. She backed

away from the meeting house. The emotional carousel she'd been on since her guardian had stepped

out of the shadows was spinning out of control and, dear God, she had to get off.

The village blurred as she pelted past the gate into the tangled arms of the forest. Behind her a dog barked, the sound hollow against the blood rushing through her ears. She might have heard a man's

frantic cry, or it might have been only the careening slam of her heart. Dappled shadows lured her

deeper into the bush, promising escape. Vines swatted her face, but she barely felt their sting.

The land climbed and Emily scrambled upward, digging her nails into a naked root to keep from falling. This narrow finger of land jutted high above the island, giving her a breathtaking view of a slim ribbon

of beach below and rolling hills of grain to the west. The shimmering crowns of the fern trees waved

over the emerald forest to the east, giving it all the illusion of a tropical paradise. The air was cooler

here, sheltered from the sun by a tall stand of trees.

At another time Emily might have delighted in its beauty, but now it only pained her-like gazing at something she wanted desperately but could never have. She claimed the farthest tip of land as her

own, flinging her am around a tree and digging her toes into the cottony moss. A snowy bird hopped

off a vine and went dancing into the sky. She stood aching and adrift in a whisper of Dirdsong as the breeze cooled her flaming cheeks. She had ro flee the island, flee Justin before her own defenses were replaced by the tender adoration she had seen on the faces ot the natives.

A shrill giggle rang out, mocking her heart's turmoil, only to be followed by the maniacal patter of little feet. Emily whirled around. The hill was shaded, the surrounding trees rife with shadows.

On the other side of the bluff a bush shuddered. Emily moaned. What now? she wondered. Pygmies? Gnomes? She'd been awake only since noon, and the day had been one disaster after another. She

was beginning to feel like die little girl who had tumbled down the rabbit hole in Mr. Carroll's novel.

She wouldn't have been surprised if a white lizard had bolted out of the trees, pulling her father's

watch from his waistcoat pocket.

She scanned the tangled undergrowth. It trembled as if ilive. Tiny invisible eyes bored into her like

poison darts.

She turned to flee and ran straight into a tree, eliciting i demonic ripple of laughter.

"It's not funny!" she cried, spinning around.

Straight ahead of her a low-slung bush quivered with mirth. Anger surged through her. She narrowed

her eyes.

Wouldn't be laughing so hard if I had an ax, would you?"

Gathering her skirt in her fists, she dashed toward the bush. At the last possible second she jumped, clearing it in jne leap, catching the barest flash of tanned skin and shocked eyes.

The hunt was on.

The forest erupted in running feet. Emily hurtled through the dense brush, leaping bushes and dodging branches with an agility that surprised even her. She expected an arrow to tear through her tender flesh

in a second. The trees thinned, but she didn't dare pause to look behind her.

She burst out of the cool canopy into the warmth of sunlight and an endless vista of aqua sea. There

was an instant when she might have stopped, but the stampede of little feet spurred her on. The land

tilted beneath her and she went tumbling head over heels down the sandy slope. Flashes of brown and blue spun in her vision. After an eternity of undignified grunting she caught the land and held it still beneath her stomach.

Eyes closed, she turned her face to the side, gasping for breath. Her fingers curled in the warm sand.

A breeze stiff with salt caressed her aching legs. A curious silence assailed her.

She eased her eyes open to find herself surrounded by toes-dozens of plump little toes browned like raisins by the sun.

She lifted her head. Her eyes widened in shock to find a little boy wearing nothing but a necklace of

shells and an impudent grin.

Naked children ringed her. Emily had never seen so much baby fat in one place.

These children had never been swaddled in corsets and crinolines. They'd never been stuffed into stockings or endured the torture of hooking a dozen buttons on high black boots that pinched their toes. They stared at her, and Emily stared back, shocked but fascinated by their freedom.

A solemn little girl gazed shyly at her from behind a fall of dark hair. Her belly pooched out in the swayback posture of a toddler. She popped her thumb in her mouth, sucking it noisily.

Groaning, Emily flopped to her back in the sand. "Why couldn't you have been Pygmies? I hate

children."

The little boy offered her his hand. "Isn't it a bit intolerant of you to condemn an entire echelon of

society based only on their collective ages?"

She jerked her head up. She hadn't expected him to understand her, much less answer in anything more than childish jabber.

She warily took his hand and climbed to her feet. "Let me guess. Justin must have taught you English."

"Justin?" he repeated.

The little girl spat out her thumb and squealed, "Pakeha!"

The children's faces lit up as they joined in her joyful trilling.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Stop that, won't you? You're making my head ache." Emily backed away from them, throwing out her arms in a helpless gesture. "Of course. It only makes sense that Justin would be the almighty, magnificent, all-holy Pakeha!"

They lapsed into silence. The boy stared at her vacantly. Apparently, his tutor had yet to teach him the sting of sarcasm. The little girl gazed up at her with something akin to awe.

"Must she stare so? It makes me fidget."

The boy gathered the toddler to his side. "She is my sister, Dani. They call me Kawiri."

Emily bobbed a reluctant curtsy. "They call me Emily." She rested her hands on her hips. "Why were

you chasing me?"

"We weren't chasing you. We were following you. We had no idea you'd be asinine enough to fall off

the hill." Emily couldn't find an argument for such evenhanded logic. "Neither did I," she muttered. "Asinine. Now, there's a good word. Did your mighty Pakeha begin with the A's?"

Dani opened her mouth to chirp. Emily didn't think she could bear another hymn to Justin's goodness,

so she squatted and plugged the child's thumb back in. While the other children experimented with

Emily's name, the little girl pulled a crimson flower from behind her ear.

She tucked the bloom in Emily's hair, weaving it among the curls. Emily felt a hesitant smile touch her lips.

As a new excitement rippled through the children, she straightened. A plump boy pointed toward the waves, yelling in Maori.

"High tide," Kawiri explained.

"High tide?"

At Emily's blank look, he added, "A natural phenomenon initiated by the waxing and waning of lunar forces which in turn-"

"I know what a tide is," she interrupted.

He shrugged and jogged after the others. They pounded across the beach toward the waves, whooping

in sounds that needed no language.

Emily watched, envying them their freedom and fighting a wistful sense of abandonment.

She felt a shy tug on her hand. Dani gazed up at her, grinning toothlessly. "Emmy," she said.

Her heart contracted.

Kawiri had spun around to jog backward. "Make haste, Emily. The day won't last forever."

"For a while it seemed like it might," she said softly.

Clinging to Dani's hand, she pelted after him, scattering sand in her wake.

* * *

Justin sat high atop the sandy bluff overlooking the beach. The wind raked his hair from his eyes, but

not even the ocean breeze could cool his fevered musings. His gaze was locked on the beach below, drawn like the tide to the enchanting child-woman dancing through the waves.

Who the hell was she?

Had women changed so much since he'd left England? Emily was so little like those he had known in London that she seemed to be some exotic species, both irresistible and mysterious. Her mercurial

moods both compelled and exhausted him. She was nothing like his addle-witted mother and even less like his vapid sisters. Their only concerns in life had been which gentlemen were going to sign their

dance cards for the next ball. His stunning fiancee, Suzanne, had slapped his face in the lobby of the Theatre Royal when he'd informed her he'd rejected his inheritance, but at least he had understood her motive- healthy greed.

As Justin watched, Emily lifted her skirts and frolicked through the shallow waves, tossing her head

with laughter as the children splashed her. Droplets of water caught in her hair, sparkled on her skin.

A flower nestled in her hair, a crimson splash against her chestnut locks.

Had some man wounded her? Justin wondered. His hands clenched into fists. He'd like to get his

hands on the wretch. The image of her being ill used at the hands of some scoundrel filled him with

both jealousy and rage. And grief-a wistful longing that he could have known her before the shadow touched her smile.

She knelt in the wet sand, cupping her hands around a castle tower while Kawiri dug a moat with his toe.

Had some wealthy rake seduced her? He knew only too well the morals of his London. Propriety and upright thinking were the false gods of society. What went on behind closed doors was another matter.

A man could do what he liked to a woman as long as he wasn't caught doing it. The sinking sun dipped behind a cloud, and Justin shivered. David's wealth had given him and Nicholas the means to escape London's stifling confines, but what means had Emily been forced to use? If left alone without the guidance of her guardian, would David's daughter be forced into similar straits?

The children took their leave in laughing clusters, leaving Emily alone on the beach. Justin stood,

hoping to slip away before she caught him spying on her. But at that moment the sun clipped away the edge of the cloud: its rays struck his chest with a fiery warmth. Emily shaded her eyes and he knew she had seen the sun glint off his watch case.

Their gazes locked and held for a long time before she turned her face away and stared out to sea.

Justin scrambled down the bluff, but the proud curve of her back warned him to silence. He was beset

by a terrible urge to touch her there. To lay his palm against the warm satin of her bare skin and draw

her into his arms. His breath caught in his throat, trapped by an unbearable wave of longing.

He swallowed his questions, hesitant to shatter anything as fragile as her pride. "I saw you in the village."

"Forgive me for intruding. I hope I didn't stop you from healing any lepers or raising any natives from

the dead." Her voice was as brittle as her stance as she swung around to face him. "Where are your followers? I expected you'd be trailed by a veritable parade of blind men and paralytics."

Her mocking tone stung him less than the depth of her emotion. It was not a child's petulance he read in her darkened eyes, but the anguish of a woman.

He stretched out his hand, no longer able to keep from touching her. She recoiled visibly and his fingers slowly curled into his palm.

He fought to keep his voice steady. "You're not the only woman to flee to this country to escape an intolerable past. If someone has hurt you … if a man has hurt you . . . ?"

Justin's compassion stabbed Emily like a blade. She wanted to scream, "You! You've hurt me!" but the words were locked inside some dark, secret place.

Her gaze raked him with all the cool contempt she could muster. "I'm not like them. You're not my savior. I'm not compelled to spill my sins to the mighty Pakeha."

He stepped back, and she suddenly knew what made his face so compelling. His features came alive

with every emotion. Even pain. A desperate need to comfort him flooded her. Fighting it, she struck

out like a wounded animal.

"What is it, Mr. Connor? Haven't I put you high enough on my pedestal?" She stalked him, spurred by some dangerous need to move him, to elicit some reaction that would prove he was no marble saint, but only a flawed creature like herself. "You enjoy their adoration, don't you? It must be very gratifying for

a man like you."

A moment earlier she wouldn't have thought it possible, but his face had closed now, gone as immobile

as a Maori totem. His words were clipped. "What sort of man might that be, Emily?"

"Patron to valets. Friend to lizards." She drew the crimson flower from her hair and ran it up his muscular arm, tracing teasing swirls on his sun-heated skin. "Is that what you want from me? Blind adoration?"

His body was rigid with tension, but the uneven rhythm of his breathing warned her she had affected him.

Tilting her face to his, she rubbed against him with a boldness that would have shamed a feline. "Shall

I fall on my knees and wash your feet with my tears?"

Emily was mocking him. Mocking his faith and his life. And all Justin could think of was the kittenish softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. He wanted to free them from their thin band of calico,

to feel their lush curves brand his skin with their naked splendor, to stroke their coral tips to aching fruition with his fingertips. The velvety petals of the bloom opened against his skin just as her lips might open to his tongue's invasion, her body to his fierce possession.

She must be truly mad to taunt him in such isolation. His senses sang with the relentless rhythm of the sea. How easy it would be to push her down on the bed of sand and take her without any of the niceties society demanded.

He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her crudely and deliberately into the cradle of his thighs.

Emily hung in his embrace, her courage melting in the heat of his wary, smoldering gaze. Somehow he had seized the moment and made it his own. She trembled with a primitive fever, but still she met his gaze squarely, refusing to lower her lashes, refusing to shy away from his blatant need.

He pressed against her, moving, seeking, showing her without words how easy it would be for the contours of their bodies to mold into one. He was marble, yes, but molten marble, not cool and distant, but hot and seething. He was not a saint, but a man. All man.

"Which of your foolish lads taught you to play such a dangerous game?" he asked.

"You don't like danger, do you, Mr. Connor?"

"I don't like games."

As she gazed deep into his eyes, his pupils seemed to swirl in a sea of amber. Her need. His power.

Her temptation. His challenge. Emily dropped her head back, going light-headed with fear.

He caught her by the shoulders, his face darkened with emotion. "I never asked you to worship me, Emily. All I wanted from you was a little common courtesy."

He thrust her away from him and strode down the beach. Emily knew he was lying. He wanted her. Badly. And that was one weapon she'd never thought to hold. Shaken, she sank down in the sand and watched the encroaching tide crumble her castle.

Chapter 8

Justin had walked the twisted corridors of the Victorian mansion hundreds of times, first in childhood, then in dreams. The plush burgundy carpet unrolled at his feet. He was a boy again, hurrying past dim passages drenched in the shadows of flickering gaslight. Tall doors flanked the hallway, dwarfing him

with their mahogany splendor. He was late again, always late, and he knew his father would be displeased.

His thin legs would not carry him fast enough. The corridor stretched into infinity. He began to try

doors, afraid they'd be locked, but more afraid they wouldn't be. He rattled each crystal knob with shaking fingers. If he made too much noise, his father would lock away the piano and send him back

to his room without supper. His stomach knotted with hunger.

Light blazed at the end of the corridor. His steps slowed, mired in some unspeakable dread. Now the carpet was unrolling faster, dragging him into the widening air of light against his will. As the light

engulfed him, he swallowed a scream.

Thank God he had. There was nothing to be afraid of. He was standing inside the dining room, where

his family had gathered around the long oak table. He scooted into his seat, perplexed by the empty

chair at his side. They were all there. His mother. His three sisters, demure in their ruffled frocks. His ancient grandmother, nodding in her pudding.

Glowering, his father lifted a carving knife and pulled the covered warming tray toward him. The light from the gasolier burnished the keen blade. Justin glanced again at the chair beside him, haunted by its emptiness.

His father's fingers curled around the handle of the silver lid. Justin's stomach spun. He slammed his

chair back, overturning it. He had to warn his father, to somehow stop him from lifting that lid before it was too late.

His father shook his head. His mouth didn't move, but the unspoken words pounded through the

room in bass counterpart to his sisters' soprano giggles. Don't be so sensitive, boy. You're too damned sensitive for your own good.

With a terrible grin his father lifted the lid of the warming tray. Justin screamed. Then he was alone in

the dining room, alone with the shadowy figure in the chair next to him. The figure turned, basking in

the glow of the gaslight.

Nicky.

Nicholas in all of his dark beauty, his hair slicked back at the temples, his teeth flashing white against

his swarthy skin.

He pointed a tapered finger at Justin. "Your father was right, my boy. You always were too goddamned sensitive for your own good."

He threw back his head in a burst of baritone laughter. t Justin clapped his hands over his ears and

backed into the corner until his own screams faded into the bright, tinkling notes of a child's laughter.

* * *

Emily sat straight up as a hoarse whimper arrowed through the darkness. She rubbed her eyes, disoriented. How late was it? she wondered. Exhausted by the playful beating her body had taken from sea and sun, and unable to endure either the false cheer of Penfeld's prattling or the sight of Justin's empty pallet, she had crawled to her own blankets after dinner and collapsed in a dreamless heap.

Her eyes adjusted slowly. Pale wisps of moonlight drifted through the window. Penfeld's comforting

bulk was humped under his blankets. A low moan shuddered the silence.

Emily sat up on her knees, her heart hammering in her throat. Justin was only a vague shape in the shadows. She crept toward him, dragging one of her blankets behind her like a lifeline.

A shallow beam of moonlight caressed his face. His waking defenses had fled, leaving him as helpless as

a child in sleep. Sweat beaded his upper lip. Emily wanted to touch him, to smooth away the grooves of pain around his mouth, to wipe the shadows from beneath his eyes. He flung out an arm, startling her, and she jerked back her hand.

He had thrashed his way out of the blankets, and the first two buttons of his dungarees had come

undone. There was something touching about the untanned swath of skin beneath the folded flap of calico, a beguiling reminder of the pale, proper young Englishman he had once been. He muttered a

name between clenched teeth. Emily leaned over, torn between curiosity and empathy.

His body twitched. His face crumpled in a spasm of horror. She reached for him, despising herself for

her hesitation.

His eyes flew open. With dizzying speed and no more than a grunt of exertion he caught her wrists and rolled over, pinning her beneath the hard length of his body.

A single word, fraught with meaning, hoarse with accusation, flew from his lips.

"Claire."

Chapter 9

Emily's heart stopped.

A jolt of recognition blazed like a comet through Justin's eyes, then skimmed away, leaving her

straddled by a bewildered stranger. She didn't know whether to laugh with relief or weep with disappointment.

"Emily? What in the hell . . . ?"

She chose her words with care. "You were dreaming. Having a nightmare."

"Dreaming?"

Justin's gaze traced Emily's features in confusion. The moonlight had softened her gamin edges, given

her brown eyes a glow hauntingly familiar in its tenderness. Why did it hurt so bloody much to look at her? There was something there. Something he ought to remember flirting with the edges of his consciousness. His gaze traveled downward, held captive by the pliant sprawl of her limbs beneath him, her unspoken acceptance of his weight and will. Her slender wrists hung limp in his harsh grip.

Consternation flooded him along with the waking memory of his nightmare. He shoved himself off her and stumbled out the door.

Refusing to be abandoned yet again, Emily trailed after him. He stood in the sand a few feet away, his back to her, his shoulders heaving. She was afraid for a moment that he was going to be ill, but he straightened, dragging the back of his hand across his lips, shivering despite the heat.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I could have hurt you."

"Could you?"

Only the forest answered, creaking and sighing around them in a midnight symphony.

She touched his shoulder. His skin felt like warm marble to her fingertips. He flinched, but did not pull away.

"Tell me about Nicky," she whispered.

He swung around, and their faces almost collided. His tension had returned, as palpable as his suspicion.

"The nightmare," she said swiftly. "You cried out his name."

He bent to scoop up a stone and cast it into the darkness. "Nicholas was my partner."

"What happened to him?"

"He died. His vanity killed him."

Emily was very still. If vanity had killed Nicholas Saleri, what had killed her father? she wondered. His generosity? His loving nature?

A humorless laugh bubbled out of Justin's throat. "Even the wilds of New Zealand couldn't rob Nicholas of his precious vanity. He used to preen for the natives in his fine coat of English broadcloth. He even deigned to let the high priest run his shriveled hands down his silk lapels."

"He must have been quite the swell."

"He was." Justin tugged his ear. "The earrings were his idea. He fancied us Gypsy rogues-daring exiles from society. He pierced our ears himself with Maori needles that seemed as long and sharp as spears.

I bled for days."

Emily bit back a small, sad smile as she tried to imagine her bewhiskered father sporting a dashing

earring.

Justin's eyes clouded. "Sometimes I can still see him in the firelight, swilling beer with the natives.

I believe he thought himself immortal."

"He was wrong?"

"Dead wrong."

A night bird echoed a haunting refrain. Emily shivered, remembering something her father had said in

his last letter. "Did you trust this Nicky?"

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "He was my friend. He was penniless himself, but took me in when everyone else turned their backs on me. I suppose I loved him. But, no, I knew him too well to trust him." He stared unseeing into the shadows. "When the land wars broke out and the Maori turned against us, he insisted on going to talk to them alone. He honestly believed his old drinking companions wouldn't hurt him." Justin met her gaze, his jaw set at a grim angle. "We never saw him alive again."

Emily swallowed. Justin had been only too clear on how the Maori dispensed with their enemies. Had

her father met with such a fate? Why did Justin never mention his name? Was David Scarborough haunting yet another of his twisted nightmares?

Her vision blurred. She swayed on her feet. Then Justin was there, his strong arms wrapping her in a cocoon of warmth. She buried her face in his chest, too shaken to apologize.

He rubbed his cheek against her curls. "God, girl, you're as pale as milk. I'm bloody sorry. You're so damned brave about everything. I wasn't even thinking how such a story would affect you." He tilted

her chin up, running a thumb over her trembling lips. "Where's my courageous Em? The one who fought the deadly dragon, routed savage cannibals, and even faced the dreaded scourge of naked toddlers."

She laughed weakly. "I left her snoozing on my pallet."

"Let's go find her, then, shall we?"

He carried her into the dim hut and lowered her to the blankets. Penfeld was still snoring blissfully.

"Dreaming of winged teapots, no doubt," Justin whispered.

She giggled, but his own eyes sobered as he gave the valet a furtive glance. Emily knew what he was thinking. How much noise could they make without disturbing Penfeld's slumber? Would he hear the whisper of their lips in the darkness?

Like a thief in the night, he leaned down and kissed her with a fierce sweetness that left her breathless.

He smoothed the tangled curls away from her face. "Don't worry about what I told you. What's in the past is done."

He touched his lips to her brow before slipping back into the shadows. Was he comforting her or warning her? Emily wondered. She licked the bittersweet taste of him from her lips, wondering what he would

do if he only knew how wrong he was.

* * *

Emily awoke the next morning to a deserted hut and the patter of a gentle rain against the thatched roof. She felt a pang of disappointment as she crawled out of the blankets. She had hoped to continue her exploration of the beach that day and had promised Kawiri she'd teach him how to swear in English.

Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she shambled to the window. A sky frosted in pewter gleamed between dripping fronds. The rain showed no sign of abating. Was Justin safe and warm, crouched before a Maori fire, or was he out there somewhere, shivering in the cool, damp air?

Sighing, she turned away from the window. Should she once again paw through his belongings for some clue to his past? A dull weight settled in her throat. If Justin's nightmare was only the tip of his anguish, what new agony might her search uncover?

She dropped to her knees and reluctantly began to sort through a pile of books and papers. It seemed a waste of time to simply move books from one pile to another, so she began to dust them with a corner of the blanket and separate them according to subject and author. As exertion warmed her, the blanket slid unheeded from her shoulders. Lulled by the cozy drumbeat of the rain, she had fashioned several tidy stacks of books and whiled away half the morning before she realized it. Without books blocking every path, the hut had swelled to twice its size. It was actually beginning to look homey.

Seized by this alarming spirit of tidiness, Emily folded their blankets and decided to drag the table into the center of the room. Fluffy watched her efforts from his perch on the stove without blinking.

"You might help me, you lazy lizard," she berated him. "I ought to light a fire under you." His tongue darted out in disdain.

She tugged at the table. The heavy oak resisted her. Grunting, she gave it another pull. A narrow drawer snapped out, striking her hard across the thighs.

Emily's curse faded in the silence. Was this the secret cubbyhole she had been searching for? She reached slowly into the shadowy recess as if afraid she might find a nesting adder.

Her hand trembled as she drew forth a sheaf of papers rolled into a fat tube. Fearful her knees would betray her, she sank cross-legged to the floor. She sat for a long time, staring at nothing. Claire Scarborough's bright, loving spirit had died with her father. Why couldn't Emily let her go? Why couldn't she accept Justin for what he was? A kind man who had welcomed a naked stranger into his lite without knowing if she was a thief, a murderer, or a pox-ridden doxy from the London wharfs. He might not

have wanted her as a child, but the fierce hunger of his kiss promised he wanted her now. Her fingers toyed with the frayed ribbon that bound the heavy scroll.

She tugged the ribbon. The pages flopped open in her lap. She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle

a sob of relief. Neat bars had been etched in black from margin to margin on the long sheets. These musical notes were drawn not in the painstaking scrawl of a child, but in the thick, measured strokes of

a man. She flipped through the pages, marveling at their sheer volume.

The enormity of what she was holding struck her like a blow. Justin's life work. He had been holed up

in New Zealand for the past seven years, pouring his soul into this music. She ran her hand over a page, caressing the blots of ink with her fingertips. A tremendous sadness touched her as she imagined him hunched over the table, scratching away in the feeble glow of the lantern until his eyes burned and his vision blurred. Music written in silence and hidden from the world, symphonies that would never know the joyous strains of violin or piano. A world of uncaring ears deaf to their peculiar magic.

She turned the page with reverent fingers. Music had been one of her more tolerable classes at Foxworth's. Every girl had been taught to bang out "God Save the Queen" on the scarred piano in the music room. She squinted at the notes, forcing them to unite in a pattern she could understand.

A smile touched her lips as she began to hum softly. She picked out the melody, bright, simple, and wistful. She was haunted by its beauty, seduced by its innocent genius. Almost of its own volition her voice warbled into full-throated song, weaving a shining thread of sound through the tapestry of the

falling rain.

Justin shook the sparkling drops out of his eyes. He loved the New Zealand rain. In London it had fallen in a dull curtain, heavy with soot, but here it shimmered from the sky, misting the world in radiant defiance of its ordinary colors. It sharpened the greens to a minty gloss and deepened the browns to mahogany. Tramping through the bush on a rainy day almost made him believe the stains of the world could be washed clean. Almost.

He ducked beneath the shaggy branch of a punga tree, chagrined to realize he had made yet another loop past the hut. Thank God Penfeld had stayed behind in the Maori meeting house to nurse a cup of steaming clam soup. He couldn't bear another roll of the valet's expressive eyes.

Why shouldn't he wish to check on Emily? It was nearly midday. With her penchant for mischief, she'd had ample time to sell the hut to passing natives or set her skirt ablaze.

He crouched beneath the shelter of a bush. Rain poured from his hat brim and dripped off his nose, but he paid it no heed. His hungry gaze was locked on the window, on the cozy halo of lantern light that warmed him simply by its existence. He imagined Emily within, her chestnut curls inclined toward a book or some gentle feminine task.

Like skinning Fluffy to make a pair of boots. Justin lowered his forehead to his hand, chuckling at his

own whimsy. At some point he would have to learn to trust the girl. How else was he to teach her to

trust him? He forced himself to rise and turn away. A lilting whisper of angel song drifted to his ears. At first he thought the melody was in his head, as haunting and familiar as the rhythmic rush of blood through his veins. Then a spasm of pain crushed his chest. Emily.

Her husky contralto toyed with his creation, gifting it with an artless charm and an innocence he had been able to envision only in the maddened inspiration of his dreams. It cut through his sophistication like a blade, peeling away the pretentious layers of oboes and French horns he had labored over for days. Without even trying she had stolen his song and made it her own. He knew that for the rest of his life, even if that song resounded through every concert hall in Europe, he would hear only the resonant purity of her voice.

Justin felt violated. He felt as if someone had stroked the most intimate heart of him and left it quivering, too easily shattered by the next careless touch.

Burning with fury, he strode across the clearing and threw open the door.

Emily lifted her head. Her soft trilling died in her throat. "Why, Justin, it's so beautiful."

Her cheeks were flushed, her lips parted. Her eyes shone with trust and tenderness. He had seen that

look before, and being unable to remember where or when only stoked the fires of his anger.

He pulled off his hat. "Who gave you the right to rifle through my private things? Who the hell do you think you are?"

Emily's smile faded. She gazed up at him, wondering what he would do if she told him. Rain pelted the back of his oilcloth coat. Damp hanks of hair curled across his brow, shadowing his eyes. He smoothed them back and she swallowed a flinch. She had seen that look of embittered ire often enough in her life.

"Nobody gave me the right." She dragged her knee closer to her body, cradling his symphony to her chest. "Are you angry?"

He slammed the door. A handful of thatch spiraled down from the ceiling.

"Miffed, eh?"

He crossed the hut and jerked his music out of her hands. Still glowering, he rolled the sheets into a tube, giving her the distinct impression he wished it were her neck he was throttling.

She climbed to her feet, brushing dust from her skirt. "Are you ever going to speak to me again?"

He slapped the scroll against his palm. "Not if you're lucky."

"Luck was never my strong suit."

"Nor mine," he shot back. "At least not since I met you."

She clasped her hands behind her back. "You didn't actually meet me. You sort of found me. Like a

stray pup or a-"

"Bad apple?"

She looked down at her feet, but not before Justin saw her lips twist with a wry pain. Guilt shot through him. She hadn't helped his temper by reminding him of the night he had found her. The nubile curves of her moon-drenched body still haunted him. A gift from the sea, he had so foolishly called her. A gift from hell, more likely. Poseidon had probably laughed himself off his underwater throne to be rid of her. For a savage moment Justin wished he could recall that night, wished he had thrust apart her silky thighs and ravished her before she'd ever opened her impudent mouth.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Emily asked, alarmed by the open voracity of his gaze.

"Like what?" His dangerous purr folded an aching knot in the pit of her stomach.

She pressed her fist there. "Like I'm a French pastry and you haven't eaten in a month."

"Oh, it's been far longer than a month, my dear." He stalked toward her, backing her up with each silky word. "I wish I had gobbled you up that night on the beach. Because then at least I would have had a moment's peace in the afterglow . . . which is more than I've had since then." He stroked her cheek in

the tenderest of caresses. "Did you know you are an ungrateful, deceitful, rude, ill-tempered, nosy little wench?" His voice shot to a roar, "And those are your good points!"

Emily's rear struck the table. She tilted her chin in wounded dignity. "I'm quite aware of my shortcomings but if it makes you feel better, do continue your assassination of my character."

Growling under his breath, Justin spun on his heel. It didn't take him more than three strides to realize he was pacing without having to hop over stacks of books or snarled blankets. Emily folded her hands in a demure knot.

"My books," he muttered. "What the hell has she done to my books? She's trying to drive me mad. I'll never be able to find anything."

"Why, of course you will. I've organized them ever so nicely."

His accusing gaze impaled her. "I knew where every book was. Before you moved them."

A spirit of perversity seized Emily. She pulled his boyhood journal off the nearest stack and waved it under his nose. "Even this one, Homer?"

Justin snatched it out of her hand and reached around her to jerk open the secret drawer. It slid from its moorings and clattered to the floor, spilling out papers, bottles of ink, several charcoal pencils, a thin pair of gold spectacles, and a yellowing packet tied with string. Muttering under his breath, he squatted and crammed the journal and his symphonies into the cubbyhole.

Emily knelt to gather some papers, prepared to hand them over as a peace offering. She glanced curiously at an official-looking document signed with flourished signatures, but it drifted from her fingers, forgotten, as her gaze fell on the packet of letters. She recognized the bold strokes of Justin's handwriting.

He was still muttering through clenched teeth. "If I'd have wanted an infernal woman pawing through

my belongings, I'd have married one, now, wouldn't I? Why can't you stay out of my things? Better yet, why can't you just stay out of my life?"

His hand closed around the letters, but it was too late.

A tear splashed the envelope, smearing the faded ink. Another pelted his hand like a salty raindrop.

"Oh, Christ, Em, don't go all weepy on me. I get enough of that from Penfeld."

But Emily wasn't looking at him. She was staring at the thick bundle of letters, each one addressed to a Miss Claire Scarborough of 45 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, and never posted.

She gazed up at him through a mist of tears. He reached for her, but she was already gone, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

Chapter 10

It rain melted to a fine mist against Emily's skin, mingling with her tears. The wind tore at her curls and whipped the sea into foaming whitecaps. She hugged her knees to her chest, lulled by the sibilant hiss

of the waves against the shore.

It didn't take Justin long to find her. She looked up to find him silhouetted against a curtain of gray, hatless, his hands clenched into fists, empty and beseeching. Rain misted his hair and caught like crystal beads in the stubble of his beard.

She turned her face to the sea, dashing her tears away. How could she explain it wasn't sadness making her weep, but a fierce joy?

He had never forgotten her, she realized. In all of those long, lonely years he had never once forgotten her. The thick packet of letters bound by a frayed string was proof of that. But why had he never posted them? Why had he robbed a bereft child of the solace his words might have given? She had slipped downstairs each morning at the school when the mail was delivered only to creep back to her attic empty-handed, praying the others girls hadn't seen her. She could only imagine the joy and pride she might have felt had Miss Winters laid one of those crisp brown envelopes in her hands. She would have flown up the stairs then, torn open the letter, and savored every word from the guardian she had never met.

Confusion buffeted her like the wind. If Justin had uttered one word, one contrite syllable, it might have all come tumbling out-the questions, the accusations, the pleas. Instead, he offered her his hand.

Emily took it, relieved to find something of warmth and substance in her shifting world. He pulled her to her feet, and they faced each other for a timeless moment, just a man and a woman alone on a barren stretch of sand. He entwined her fingers in his own and led her up a sandy hill to a broad bluff crowned by a rough-hewn cross.

The wind was stronger there. It whipped Justin's hair to a dark froth and battered the purity of his profile as he freed her hand and faced the sea. Suddenly Emily didn't want to know the truth. With a desperation that shocked her, she longed to press her fingertips to his chiseled lips, to silence his mouth with the ravenous heat of her own.

But when he opened his mouth, only these halting words came out. "I hear music in my head all the time. I always have. For as long as I can remember."

Emily sank down in the shallow grass, her knees weakened by relief. "It must be a gift."

His laugh was short and bitter. "A curse perhaps. My family thought me a freak. I was my father's only son, yet I had no interest in his shipping firm or the blasted social obligations that accompanied his wretched title. He couldn't drag me away from the piano." His voice dropped, became as gray and passionless as the sky. When I was twenty-one he gave me a choice. My music or my inheritance. I chose the music. He tossed me into the streets with nothing but the coat on my back. I ended up at a music hall in a rat-infested rookery playing bawdy tunes for drunken sots who tossed me pennies for

pay. That's where I met Nicky. He took me under his wing and taught me how to survive."

He glanced down at the cross. Emily sucked in a breath, suddenly realizing what she was sitting next to.

"Nicholas?" she said softly. "Is he buried here?"

Justin looked up, blinking almost absently. "We never found anything of Nicholas to bury. My other partner rests here." He reached down and ran a hand over the cross. "The dearest friend I ever had."

Emily couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Emotions she'd thought long suppressed welled up in her throat, rendering speech impossible. She was as helpless as a doll in Justin's hands as he cupped her cheek and gently tilted her face to his. He could have hurled her into the sea, and she wouldn't have been able to

do so much as whimper a protest.

"I'm trying to say I'm sorry for shouting at you, Emily. I was afraid you'd think me a freak, too."

He leaned down and brushed her lips with his own, leaving his indelible taste. Then he jammed his hands into his pockets and started down the hill, his shoulders braced against the wind.

Emily stared blindly out to sea, far out, where the hazy curve of the horizon met the waves. The rough-hewn cross slowly filled her vision. No marble angels for her father. No elaborate script carved in granite-David Scarborough, Beloved Father. Only a simple cross on a windy hill overlooking the sea. A cross, she knew somehow, lovingly carved by Justin's hands.

Tears dimmed her vision as she ran her palm over the sparse grass blanketing her father's grave.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered. "What am I to do?"

Emily returned to the hut much later. She pushed open the door, expecting to find it deserted in the deepening gloom.

But orange and yellow tongues of flame licked at a handful of brush inside the stove. A pot simmered

on top of it, fragrant with cumin and cloves. Penfeld met her at the door with a towel to dry her hair. Touching his finger to his lips in a plea for silence, he cocked his head toward the table.

As Emily saw Justin, she shivered, realizing how chilled she had been. He sat with his long legs sprawled before him, his head inclined toward the table. As she watched, he drew a fresh sheet of paper to him

and continued making furious marks, his hand flying across the page. His hair gleamed in the lantern

light like damp silk. Emily wanted to wind her fingers through it, to bring it to her lips and dry it with a whisper of her breath.

The towel fell from her fingers as she drifted toward him, remembering his earlier explosion. He pulled

off his spectacles to rub his eyes, then glanced up, slanting her a smile that made the fire in the stove

cool by comparison.

She dared to peek over his shoulder. His arm curled to shield his work, then relaxed in surrender to her curiosity. His casual posture did not deceive her. Her heart did an unbidden flip at his trust.

She hummed a few shy notes under her breath. "Something new?"

"Very." He shuffled the papers so she could start at the beginning.

Her hair brushed his cheek as she leaned over his shoulder. The wordless melody warbled from her throat, growing in confidence with each enchanting bar. As the notes tapered to an end, a lilting echo

hung in the air.

She lifted her head to find Justin's eyes narrowed in a lazy appraisal that could not quite hide their hungry glitter. Emily leaned forward, lured by the irresistible curve of his parted lips.

Penfeld's applause broke the spell. "Bravo, master! One of your finest, I do believe."

"Thank you, Penfeld," Justin replied. Wariness tensed his jaw as he tore his gaze away from hers and began to roll the papers. "What did you think?"

Somehow to Emily it didn't seem enough to murmur "Wonderful" or some other benign praise. She struggled to find words to express her brimming heart. "It began like a gentle rain, all soothing and safe. But then something dangerous happened, something free and joyous like a burst of thunder and lightning. Because of it, nothing will ever be the same again."

Justin's hands stilled.

"Do you have a name for it?" she asked.

A ghost of a smile played around his lips. He swiveled on the barrel to face her and she heard once again the joyous strains of his song. "I call it 'Emily.' "

* * *

A new melody began that day, weaving its shy strains through the sunny days and lush tropical nights

that followed. It whistled through Emily's head as she splashed in the waves with the children. It danced with elfin feet across her heart as she trailed Justin through the fields, catching his hat in her hands when

a gust of wind blew it astray. It haunted her serenity each night as she sipped her rich coffee and beneath her lashes watched him scribble his symphonies in a pool of lantern light.

She found herself standing alone in the hut one morning, Justin's letters to Claire Scarborough clasped in her trembling hands. She'd never had any qualms about reading anyone else's mail, so why was she so reluctant to read her own? She held a letter up to the window. Sunlight filtered through the worn envelope, illuminating the bold strokes of handwriting within. Emily quickly lowered it. The morning was simply too bright to be dimmed by old memories and fears, she thought, tucking the packet tenderly back into its hiding place. For now it was enough to know that Justin had remembered her.

She awoke that moonlit night to the discordant drumbeat of her own heart. A hoarse moan tore through the silence. Justin was dreaming again.

Her blankets fell away as she scrambled across the hut. Her hand brushed his fevered brow. She was helpless to explain even to herself her frantic desire to soothe him. Was Nicky haunting him tonight? Or was it her father, his brilliant smile faded, his merry brown eyes glittering not with laughter but accusation? Pain twitched in the grooves around Justin's mouth, and suddenly it didn't matter who his demons were. She wanted only to banish them.

She lay down and curled into his side. Her palm crept across his bare chest, coming to rest over his heart. His restless thrashing eased, then stilled completely. His groan was one of contentment as he drew her into the shelter of his arms and buried his face in her hair.

* * *

Feathers tickled Justin's nose. He wiggled it, sniffing back a sneeze. Aroma filled his nostrils, a scent so rich and pure it was rendered exotic by its sheer simplicity. Vanilla. It assaulted his brain with a longing

for an England he barely cared to remember. It made him crave civilized delights like Gracie's cookies

hot from the oven and sprinkled with cinnamon. Scones rolled in sugar and wrapped around steaming peaches. Emily dipped in Stardust and laved with melted moonlight.

His eyes flew open. Emily?

His nose nested not in feathers, but in her curls. Her body twined around his in drowsy innocence. She was as fervent in sleep as in wakefulness. Her thigh was flung across his leg and her hand lay in a gentle cup over his abdomen. The tempered glow of dawn caressed her face.

The craving in Justin's stomach shot to his groin with merciless swiftness. He shifted his hips. To hell

with cookies and scones, he thought. He wanted a taste of Emily. He wanted to gorge himself on her tender body until they were both sated. It was torture enough to rise each morning to find her huddled under her own blankets, her pert rump tilted to the ceiling. But to emerge from the fog of sleep to find

her curled around him like some sweet wanton? He felt so hard it might take only one of her artless wiggles to shatter him. Careful not to disturb her, he reached down and freed a button of his dungarees.

She'd become more than a burden to him in the past few days. She'd become an obsession. He struggled to treat her with the same gentle affection he showed the children, but the sharp edge of his desire was only whetted by her merry smile. She'd flourished like a tropical bloom in the wilds of the island. Sunlight had honeyed her skin and tipped her lengthening curls with gold.

His world belonged to Emily. She hovered around him like a gamin angel, lithe and funny. He pressed his eyes shut, battered by images of her bending over a flax plant at his side, wading through the shallow waves at sunset with Maori children dangling from her arms like crabs. He had even glanced up from his Bible Sunday at the meeting house to find her sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, her expression pensive, her cheek resting against Dani's sleek head. He had stammered through five verses of Matthew, then lost his place entirely. When he had looked up again, she was gone.

He'd had his share of mistresses in London, both false and true, yet none of them could compare to the mischievous charms of the barefoot waif clinging to his side.

Emily stirred. Her lips parted in a delicate snore. A twinge of shame touched him. Here he lay, plotting

a seduction so lascivious it would have shamed even Nicky, and she was probably dreaming of starfish and sand castles. He ran his finger down her nose, expecting to find a dusting of cinnamon freckles on

his fingertip.

Her eyes fluttered open, then widened in a mixture of dread and horror that made him wonder if he'd sprouted fangs during the night. He ran his tongue over his teeth. They all felt reassuringly blunt.

Ruefully, he touched his bristled jaw. "I know I haven't shaved in a few days, but I'm not that frightful, am I?"

He must have been, because she struggled to untangle her leg and roll away.

He gathered her tighter into his arms, not willing to let her go without an explanation. "Why the terrible rush? Contrary to my staid reputation, I'm not averse to a little morning cuddle."

She gave a husky squeak. "But Penfeld-"

"-is sleeping."

A sonorous snore from beneath the window proved his words.

"So was I," she blurted out. "Sleeping, that is. Sleepwalking, actually. I must have stumbled and fallen

on you. Perhaps I struck my head. I should walk about and see if I'm dizzy."

She was halfway up when his arm snaked around her waist, jerking her back. He winced as her plush

rear wedged against the part of his anatomy that at the moment was too prominent to be seemly.

"If you're dizzy, you need rest," he said, hoping she would attribute the croak in his voice to drowsiness. "You know, for a good prankster, you're a terrible liar."

"That's not truel I'm a very good liar. All my teachers said so." She wiggled in protest.

Justin's beleaguered body reached its breaking point. He shoved her off him, then rolled on top of her, stilling her struggles with his weight. He laced his fingers through hers and imprisoned her hands above her head.

He arched his eyebrow in a wicked threat. "Now, suppose you tell me what you were doing on my pallet. Blowing pepper up my nose? Tying my blankets into knots? Planting brambles in my dungarees?"

She lowered her eyes, leaving him gazing at the velvety silk of her lashes. "I had a bad dream. I was afraid."

Her sheepish confession touched his heart. He knew only too well how it felt to awaken trembling in the dark. He imagined her creeping to his side, trusting him to chase away her monsters. He lowered himself, wanting only to kiss away her fears. Before his lips could touch hers, his hips grazed her bare belly. A shock of pleasure electrified him. He realized too late that swapping positions had only "worsened matters. The heavy fullness in his dungarees had become impossible to ignore. For both of them.

Emily's mouth fell open in shock.

To his utter horror he felt a blush creep up his jawline. "It's nothing," he said tersely. Her eyes widened

in comical disbelief. "A normal phenomenon of the morning, I assure you. It has absolutely nothing to

do with you," he lied.

She hesitated, then sniffed in prim sophistication. "I knew that."

Justin sat up, swinging his legs away from her. Of course she knew that, he thought. Her smug little gardener's lad had probably taught her. Or had it been the chimney sweep? His temper burned with a ferocious urge to shove her back on the blankets and teach her a few lessons of his own.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her sit up. She drew her skirt down to hug her shapely thighs as if

she were the shyest of virgins.

He owed her a warning, he reminded himself, nothing more. "Emily?"

"Yes?"

"If you have any more nightmares"-he felt her waiting silence-"go to Penfeld."

"As you wish, Mr. Connor. I shouldn't wish to burden you."

Justin was unprepared for the bitterness of her reply.

He swiveled to face her, but she had already dropped to her pallet and pulled the blankets over her head like a sullen child.

* * *

That afternoon Justin stood on the shore and watched the storm roll in with the tide. Black clouds poured from the west, driving the rain before them. Far out at sea it was already falling, melting sky and ocean into a seamless curtain of gray. Lightning crackled and snapped in a broken web above pitching waves tinted green by the eerie light of the approaching squall. Justin braced his legs against the wind and thrust his hands into his pockets. He welcomed the storm, seeking in its savage wildness a kindred spirit to his own mood.

An oppressive heat had hung in the air all day, simmering like the tension in his body since he had awakened to find Emily snuggled in his arms. He recognized it for what it was: desire-hot, potent, and too long denied. She had shattered the fragile peace he had found on the North Island, stirred the hungry beast within him who craved excitement and passion and more than the loyal devotion of a small tribe of natives.

His nostrils flared at the scent of the coming rain. If only the breaking of the storm could ease his own pent-up frustration. His gaze raked the deserted beach. A ripple of saffron caught his eye.

He watched as Emily made her way down the path :rom the bluff. The wind molded the flaxen skirt to her legs and whipped her curls into a blinding frenzy. Her feet :-';pped in the soft sand. She slid a few

feet and Justin took — step toward the bluff without realizing it. She didn't see him. As the first fat raindrops pelted his back, she ran for the shelter of the forest path and disappeared among the wind-lashed trees.

Justin glared at the bluff, his brow furrowed. This was the third time he had seen Emily descend from

the path, always at twilight and always alone. Oblivious to the rain, he strode down the beach and

started up the sandy hill, groping for handholds in the tussocks of grass.

As he topped the bluff, a blaze of color brought him up short. Crimson flowers spilled like blood around the base of the cross that guarded David's grave. Pohutukawas. Justin dropped to his knees and touched

a fragile petal with his fingertip, drowning in the cloying sweetness of their scent. Remembered shame washed over him in waves. He pressed his eyes shut as David's voice whispered through the rain, carrying him back through time.

Take care of my little angel, Justin. Swear you will.

Thunder drummed the air in a sharp cannonade.

Justin flinched, smelling gunpowder on the wind. His eyes flew open. He knelt at the edge of the lonely bluff, gripping David's watch in his hand. He did not dare open it. Even after all these years he dreaded facing the child within. The child who still waited for him in England. The child who wore David's eyes.

Mystified, he lifted one of the flowers. He imagined Emily struggling up the narrow path, her arms laden with the fragrant blooms. Why would she carry flowers to David's grave? Had she somehow sensed how important this place was to him?

He brushed a raindrop from the velvety petal. It melted to his touch like tears against Emily's creamy skin. His fingers unfolded, and a gust of wind tore the flower from his hand, sending it skimming into the sea. As the storm broke hard around him, it bobbed on the water until the inky waves swallowed it without a trace.

Chapter 11

Grnily trotted through the forest, cradling a basket in the crook of her arm. Despite her burden her steps were as light as the shimmering air washed clean by yesterday's storm. Tomorrow was the day they were to join Trini's tribe in welcoming their neighboring Maori to a magnificent feast. Her own humble offering was a basket of fuzzy green fruit plucked from a rambling gooseberry vine with Kawiri's help.

As she approached the hut, male voices rose in furious argument.

Puzzled, she stopped, then took a step backward. Yes, she thought, she was at the right hut.

Her basket slipped a notch as Penfeld's voice boomed out. "Our dear Lord said it far better than I when he told the Pharisees 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' I fear you're making a tremendous mistake . . . sir." The last word was bitten off in such a tone of insult that Emily broke into a grin. Apparently, Justin's timid hamster had gone rabid.

"Sic him, Penfeld," she whispered under her breath. She would gladly cheer anyone who dared to defy the mighty Pakeha.

"If I wanted your interpretation of scripture, King James, I'd have asked for it," Justin shot back.

She set down her basket. She hadn't learned many of Tansy's more lurid skills, but eavesdropping was one she had mastered. She crept around to the window and dared a peek. Justin's back was to her, but Penfeld's profile was a livid shade of pink. He was definitely in the throes of what Miss Winters would have labeled "a huff." As Justin swung around, she dropped to a crouch.

"The woman has left me no choice," he was saying. "I haven't two halfpennies to rub together. I have

to send the old witch something even if it's only a gesture of good faith."

Penfeld sniffed. "Have you considered cutting out your heart? A suitable offering from a man who

enjoys martyrdom as much as you do. It has always escaped me why you didn't just throw yourself in your friend's grave when you had the chance."

From the pained silence that followed, Emily knew the valet had gone too far. A tiny vise squeezed her own heart.

Justin's quiet voice finally came. In its passionless tones Emily heard a ringing chord of the duke he

might have been. "I could dismiss you for that."

Penfeld's frosty dignity was palpable. "If you prefer, I will seek another position."

To Justin's credit, he didn't point out the ludicrous nature of that offer. What was a valet going to do on this isolated coast? Offer his services to Trim's chief? Iron his flax skirt? Polish his jade earrings?

Justin sighed heavily. "I simply don't trust that Winters woman."

Emily's fingernails dug into her palms as she realized they were talking about her. No, not about her,

she corrected herself coolly. About Claire Scarborough.

"If she doesn't have word from me soon," he added, "she might toss the child out in the street."

Or the ocean, Emily thought, quenching a hysterical giggle.

The valet's voice lowered to a fervent plea. "If you don't trust her, why don't you remove the child

from her care? The calculating woman may try to sell the knowledge of your location to your family for

a profit anyway. Perhaps your father could-"

"I'm dead to my father. He made that painfully clear when I threw my inheritance back in his priggish face."

Penfeld fell into defeated sikice. Emily heard the rustle of tissue paper, the clink of metal. She eased her eyes above the windowsill. Justin was drawing her father's watch over his head. It dangled from his graceful fingers, spinning in the sunlight above a tissue-lined box.

She sank back down, pressing her fists to the cool earth. Her thoughts raced in time with her heart. What in God's name had happened to the gold mine? Had Justin lost not only his friends and partners, but his fortune as well, in the Maori uprising? She realized he hadn't sent more money to the school because there had been no money. And now he meant to send her father's precious watch to Miss Winters.

Emily felt sickened by the image of the old woman digging her talons into the fragile tissue, clawing greedily for the heavy gold at the bottom of the box. She would probably send Barney to the goldsmith that very day to have the engraved case melted to a formless lump.

Emily choked back the lump in her own throat. Their words had only confirmed what she had come to suspect. Claire Scarborough's sole inheritance lay in the inscrutable gold of Justin Connor's eyes.

* * *

"Gor blimey, ya bloody brat! 'Aul yer arse to the other side of the beach or I'll 'aul it there for ya!"

As the vulgar words spewed out in Kawiri's musical tones, Justin dropped the basket he was carrying

and exchanged a startled look with Penfeld. Children swarmed over the kumaras and passion fruit

heaped along the shore for the following day's feast. Kawiri glowered at his sister.

Dani thrust her hands on her hips and stuck out her little pink tongue in a defiant gesture Justin found painfully familiar. "Ya ain't big enough to make me move." Justin cringed at the grating cockney. "An' effin ye try, I'll call my Emmy and she'll box yer damned ol' ears."

Justin spared her the trouble. He threw back his head and bellowed, "Emily!"

She popped up from the newly dug clam pit, brushing sand from her stomach. "You rang?"

She looked so charming that Justin almost forgot his reprimand. Her cheeks were flushed with the afternoon heat. Her hair twined in damp tendrils around her face, framing a smile that was an intoxicating mix of mischief and tenderness. A menacing thud from the direction of the baskets jarred his memory.

He pointed. "Those children. What have you been teaching them?"

She shuffled her feet primly. "The King's English?"

"Guttersnipe English, more likely. They'd do better at an East End brawl than at court. What are you trying to do? Erase all the good I've done?"

She poked her toe in the sand, showing excessive interest in the tiny crab she unearthed. "Have you ever heard Dani speak a complete sentence of English before?"

"That horrid exhibition could hardly be called-" He stopped, scratching his head. "Well, no, I suppose

I haven't."

He was spared from further thought by the solid thwack of a kumara striking someone's head. An answering wail followed. Justin winced.

Emily wiggled past him. "I shall endeavor to set a better example," she promised, bending over to box both Kawiri's and Dani's ears in one smooth motion. "Hush your silly selves," she hissed, "or I'll blister both your naked little arses."

A reverent course of "Aye, mums" followed.

Justin's lips twitched as he gazed at the delectable curve of her own ripe derriere.

A voice boomed out, unmistakaHe in its resonant bass. Move out them torches, laddies! We ain't got

all bloomin' day!"

Justin groaned. "Oh, no. You didn't. Not Trini too."

Giving him an innocent shrug, Emily ducked back into the clam pit. Justin's snort of mirth choked him. He dropped his basket and was forced to watch all of his hard-picked kiwi fruit roll gently into the sea.

* * *

Emily failed to return to the hut for dinner that night. Justin left Penfeld snoring and went in search of

her. Several of the Maori had chosen to camp along the beach rather than return to their fortified pa. He drifted from fire to fire, smiling, calling out greetings, and pretending not to be as lost as he felt. From the tangled bracken came the forlorn cry of a foraging kiwi. Justin pitied the bird-it was clumsy, shy, and despite its noblest efforts to fly, forever bound to the earth.

A melody stirred the air, mingling with the lap of the waves against the shore. Justin's melancholy vanished. He quickened his steps toward the sound, crunching the powdery sand between his toes.

At the edge of the shore a crackling fire shot sparks into the crushed velvet of the night sky. Justin squatted in the shadows just outside the circle of light.

Emily had gathered the children around the fire like a snub-nosed angel directing a choir of naked cherubs. Their pure, sweet voices rose in the air, ringing with a clarity that would have been the envy of any St. Paul's boys' choir. A grin touched his lips as he imagined the shocked reaction of a staid London congregation to this ensemble of chubby, nude moppets. Especially since they were lending their lilting tones to a jolly rendition of "Naughty Maud, the Shrewsbury Bawd, by Gawd!"

He dropped his head down^ laughing under his breath. He had dreamed his whole life of studying music with the masters in Vienna, but seemed destined to learn of its subtleties on his knees at the feet of a brash young girl.

As he lifted his head he met Emily's gaze over the swaying heads of the children. His breath caught in

his throat. The children's song faded, making way for a brighter melody, poignant with longing. A shy invitation sparkled in her eyes. At that moment she was neither angel nor child, but a woman rife with tender promise. Justin's resolve swayed. Did he truly enjoy martyrdom as Penfeld had accused? Would

it be so selfish to allow himself some small measure of happiness in Emily's arms? To awaken each morning with her curled against his side? To sleep each night with her taste burning on his lips?

To lose his heart and soul to this fallen angel and perish in the scorching flame of his own desires?

Justin stood abruptly. Penfeld was wrong. He didn't crave martyrdom. He craved solitude. He'd tucked himself in this corner of the world for seven years just to keep anyone from looking at him the way

Emily was looking at him then. Steeling his heart against her fading smile, he gave her a cool nod and melted back into the darkness, still haunted by the lonely cry of the kiwi.

* * *

The night of the feast fell in a warm explosion of wind and stars. Emily and Justin stood with Trini's

tribe and watched as a shimmering line of torches wound its way down the shore.

Justin gently rested his hands on her shoulders. Emily drew in a shuddering breath, afraid to speak for fear of destroying the tender emotion unfolding its wings in her soul. It had been so long absent, she almost didn't recognize it.

Happiness. A chord of joy striking her treacherous

heart like the echo of chimes on the wind, once heard and never forgotten.

A song rose into the night, a melody so pure and harmonious, it seemed to quiver on the air, casting its own light across the somber dark. Justin swayed, pulling her with him in a timeless dance. She leaped

the back of her head against his shoulder, feeling at one with the music, with the night, and with him. Their guests filed down the beach, accepting their hosts' song of welcome in reverent silence.

As the last plaintive note died on the air, Justin whispered, "Don't applaud. It could start a war."

Just as he'd predicted, a moment of respectful silence passed before the celebration broke into full

flower around them.

No nobles of the English court could have afforded such hospitality as the Maori offered their friends.

If Witi Ahamera was their king and his white-haired tohunga their royal physician, then Justin was their cherished crown prince, greeting the other tribe with respectful familiarity. Emily tried to shrink into the crowd, but Justin caught her beneath his wing and shielded her with the umbrella of his popularity. Basking in his reflected glow made Emily feel rather like a princess herself.

A short while later she tucked a juicy piece of ham between her lips, entranced by the swirl of motion

and color along the beach. Children grasped hands and ducked beneath the arms and legs of the dancers, mocking their motions with clumsy exuberance. Emily's own toes twitched in rhythm with their song.

Trini and Justin flanked her, sitting cross-legged in the sand.

Smiling shyly, a Maori girl offered her a wicker tray heaped with chicken. She groaned and waved it away, rubbing her sated tummy. She'd been so delighted to escape Penfeld's bean stew that she'd fairly gorged herself on morsels of ham, pork, and the precious toberoa clams steamed in the sand.

Finding Justin occupied with the toothless old man to his left, she reached for his cup.

His stern hand closed around her wrist. "Tsk, tsk. Are you being a naughty little girl again?"

"I'm not a little girl," she retorted, crossing her eyes at him. "I'm thirsty."

They both knew his cup of icy spring water had been laced with rum, while hers was plain.

He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I suppose one sip wouldn't do you any harm."

"No, but denying me might do you harm."

He held the cup out of her reach. "Patience, love. Allow me the honor."

Emily was so stunned by his chiding endearment that the press of the cool cup against her lips startled her. The noise and confusion seemed to fade, leaving her alone, trapped in the golden heat of Justin's eyes. He tilted the cup and she drank deeply. Liquid fire spilled through her veins, intensifying with each slow throb of the pulse at the base of Justin's throat. He drew the cup away, leaving clear drops of flame pearled on her lips. Her greedy tongue lashed out to extinguish them, and his breath caught in a groan.

The old man tugged on his arm, begging his attention.

Emily summoned a shaky smile. "There. I promise not to be naughty anymore."

She waited until he'd set down the cup, then deftly switched it with her own. She took care to sip, not gulp, knowing the rum was more exotic and far more potent than the cooking sherry she and Tansy

used to pilfer from the seminary kitchen.

A line of oil-sheened warriors leaped into the center of the torchlit circle, their wild gyrations telling of battles won and battles still to be fought. Emily swayed to the chant of their mighty war song. They used no drums, but kept the tempo by stamping their feet. The packed sand reverberated with their masculine fervor, churning Emily's blood to a dangerous pitch. She shifted in the sand, feeling acutely the press of Justin's hip against her own.

She was almost relieved when the women of both tribes appeared, weaving a dance to a lilting melody as they twirled balls of plaited flax between their graceful fingers. Her relief vanished as a dusky-eyed stranger broke from their ranks and started for Justin.

Emily slumped with a long-suffering sigh, awaiting the deferent bow, the adoring squeal of "Pakeha!"

"Justin, my darling!" the woman cried, her voice a musical purr.

"Rangimarie! I didn't know you were coming," he answered, breaking into a boyish grin.

Emily sat straight up.

The woman flung herself to her knees, enveloping him in her embrace. He disappeared in the straight

fall of her silky black hair. Emily dazedly touched her own coarse curls. The humid air had tightened them into corkscrews.

The lush Polynesian beauty spread her skirt around her, speaking rapidly in Maori. Justin answered in kind, bringing her hand to his lips in a gesture so civilized, so purely English, Emily found it as damning a confession as if he'd laid the woman on the sand at her feet and bedded her. Their intimacy was obvious. The woman shook her hair in a seductive motion. Emily glared at it, wondering what sort of war she would start if she yanked it out by its ebony roots.

She nudged Trini, nearly overturning his cup. "She's rather pretty, isn't she? If you fancy women with tattoos."

In truth, only the woman's chin was tattooed. The etched wings emphasized the pouting tilt of her lips, the exotic slant of her eyes. Reaching across Emily, she plucked a passion fruit from a tray and snapped half of it away with her straight white teeth. Golden juice trickled down her chin.

"Did you see that?" This time Emily did tumble Trim's cup, spilling cold water down his bare chest. "What horrid table manners. The brazen wench wouldn't last through tea at Miss Win-" She bit off the word, casting him a nervous glance. Trini didn't seem to notice her slip. He was too busy sponging off

his chest with his feathered cloak.

Her mouth fell open in hopeless shock as the intruder tucked the other half of the passion fruit into Justin's mouth, her tan fingers lingering against his lips as if in memory of past delights and a promise of future ones. A jagged spear of pain plunged into Emily's heart. Feeling small and ugly and freckled, she bowed her head, wishing for hair long enough to hide behind.

The song of the dancers swelled to a new rhythm, hypnotic and sensual. Laughing, the woman pulled away from Justin's hands and rose to join the sultry dance of her native sisters.

Justin leaned toward Emily, forced to yell over the music. "Now you can see why I find the Maori so irresistible. They do nothing without singing."

"Nothing?" she bit off acidly.

He hummed under his breath, blithely unaware of the petite volcano seething at his side. "Rangimarie

was one of my best pupils. I taught her English."

"Is that all?"

He missed her lethal look. His admiring gaze was hovering at the opulent bosom of his sloe-eyed friend. Her serpentine twists threatened to shake the golden orbs free. She danced toward him, stamping her

feet and swinging her hips in blatant invitation.

The tips of her hair flicked Emily's cheek like tiny eels as she bent over Justin, mouthing Maori words.

He grinned and ducked his head. It might have been the torchlight, but Emily would have sworn a flush crept along his cheekbones.

As the woman slithered away, Emily slammed her fist into Trini's arm. "What did she say?"

Trini gave her an infuriating smile and wagged his finger under her nose. "No, no! Not for the hearing appendages of filial progeny."

"Not for the hearing appendanges . . . ?" She muttered the words under her breath before their meaning came to life with furious clarity.

Not for the ears of children.

Justin's own voice, smooth and condescending, echoed through her head. Are you being a naughty little girl again?

Her nails dug into the woven flax of her cup. They all seemed to think her some overgrown toddler who needed her fingers slapped to keep her out of mischief. She tilted the cup to her lips, draining it in one swig. Fire raced through her limbs, throbbing in time with the music.

Rum and wavering torch smoke blurred her vision. The exotic features of the dancers melted into the smug faces of Miss Winters's students. She had hovered in the corner during their ballet class as they floated past, wrapped in yards of delicate white organdy. Her feet had itched to join them, but it had been Cecille who drifted to her sylvan death as Giselle at the recital each spring. Emily's own small satisfaction had come last year when Cecille had lifted her head to take her bow only to find her shimmering blond mane pasted to the stage.

The stamp of native feet thundered through Emily's veins, enthralling her with their primal beat. She glanced over at Justin. His rapt attention was still held by the siren song of the dancers.

The empty cup slid from her fingers. She was sick of watching from the wings while others took their bows.

She rose with sinuous grace and slipped among the dancers. She had no need to mock their motions.

As she closed her eyes and lifted her hair from her sweltering nape, the rhythm took her in its masterful hands, swaying her like a long-stemmed bloom in the wind.

The wailing song of the dancers soared and the pent-up spirit of a lifetime burst into flower. Emily spun free, caught in the sheer joy of the motion. The stamping swelled until it resonated through her bones

and fueled her pumping heart.

One by one the natives left their places in the sand to join the dance, bewitched by the spell of rhythm and song. Kawiri leaped and grimaced, wielding a piece of driftwood as a spear. Trini spun with a

graceful swirl of his feathered cloak. The old tohunga gummed a smile and rocked in the sand. Dani hopped from one foot to the other, shaking her dark mop of hair.

For one magical moment Emily was no longer alone. She belonged to something larger than herself-a family. She whirled around, coming face-to-face with Justin.

Somehow in the midst of this exuberant crowd Justin had never looked more alone. A quizzical sadness tinged his expression. Emily faltered.

He swept his hair from his eyes and made a courtly bow, giving her a jarring glimpse of how striking a figure he might cut in a London drawing room. "May I have the pleasure of this dance, my lady?"

The native music seemed to fade, merging into the sweet strains of a formal waltz, half imagined and

half remembered from a dream.

Emily had trouble finding her voice. "I should be honored, my lord."

He took her into his arms, holding her at arm's length with flawless grace. His big, warm hand pressed against the bare skin of her lower back. The natives faded to faceless blurs as they swept through the sand in an ever-widening circle, both of them too lost in the charm of the moment to recognize its incongruity. They never saw the Maori step back, yielding their own dance to the exotic cadences of

the waltz.

Emily gazed up into his face, marveling anew at the strong line of his jaw beneath its careless whiskers, the somber sparkle of his feline eyes. This was nothing like waltzing with Tansy in the cramped corners of their attic rooms.

She had been dancing for him as long as she could remember. She had always imagined Cecille would twist her ankle and she would be forced to take the lead in the recital. Her guardian would materialize from the fog-shrouded night and slip into the back of the recital room. As she collapsed in a graceful heap of organdy, his beautiful baritone would ring out, crying, "Bravo, bravo! There's my girl!" to the shocked stares of Miss Winters and the other girls.

Tears pricked Emily's eyes. She blinked them away, then wished she hadn't as Justin's face came clearly into focus. Lust and tenderness and hopeless longing warred in his gaze. She closed her eyes, dizzied by his strength and the warm, spicy scent of his skin. The windy beach vanished. They might have been dancing alone in a darkened ballroom beneath the tinkling fingers of a thousand chandeliers.

He folded her deeper into his embrace. She lay her head against his chest, half expecting to feel a crisp waistcoat instead of the warmth of his bare chest.

He rubbed his cheek against her curls. A shuddering breath escaped her. They were merely swaying

now, clinging to any excuse to remain entangled in the tender web they'd woven. As the last pure note of the Maori song rang between them, the solution came to Emily, a revenge so simple and so diabolical, it could not fail to destroy him.

Tansy had always said there was only one way to bring a good man to his knees.

The music died and she quivered in the sudden hush.

The silence seemed too harsh, too penetrating. Justin reached to tilt her face upward. She tore herself out of his arms and ran, fleeing both herself and him, yet knowing in her heart that he would follow.

Chapter 12

A laughing mob of dancers streamed around him, but Justin stood in a daze, staring at the spot where Emily had been as if he expected her to reappear in a puff of smoke. Blood rushed through his veins, flooding uninvited to his loins, his heart, his pounding head. The roaring in his ears had nothing to do

with the sea. It was the same roar he had heard on the night he found Emily, the same relentless ebb and flow of warning and desire that had taunted his waking moments and colored his dreams with madness.

He plunged forward, shoving his way through the Maori, deaf for the first time to the lilting intricacies

of their song. A woman's hand touched his arm, but he shook it away, blinded to all else by the lithe shadow growing smaller in the distance.

The ribbon of beach unfurled beneath his pounding feet. A shy moon peeked through the sparse clouds, scattering diamonds of light across the sand. Emily stayed just ahead of him, a whisper of movement between the shallow dunes. His nostrils twitched. He would almost swear he could scent her on the

wind, an alluring blend of vanilla and musk.

As he ran, the lights from the feast faded to a rosy glow in the sky. The echoes of music and laughter were drowned in the crash of the waves. He rounded a high dune and staggered to a halt. Emily stood alone on the stretch of beach where he had first found her.

Justin knew he would never forget the way she looked at that moment. She was as rare and exotic as a wild English rose blooming in the desert. The wind tousled her curls and whipped at her skirt. Her chin tilted in defiance even as she twisted her hands together for courage. He couldn't have said which made her more beautiful to him -her vulnerability or her pride. She might have been a defiant Eve dangling a juicy apple in front of Adam's nose.

As he angled toward her, he could feel his face hardening in ruthless lines of desperation.

"I don't like you," he said.

"I don't like you either."

Each weighted step through the damp sand carried him nearer to his destruction. "I'm too old for you."

"Much."

He was near enough to touch her now. "I have gray hair."

She reached up, wound a silvery strand around her finger, and jerked it out. "Not anymore."

He tangled his hand in her curls, drawing her head back until her mouth was a scant breath from his own. "I won't marry you."

Her hand crept around his nape. "I wouldn't have you."

"Oh, you'll have me."

She shivered at his husky promise. His mouth closed on hers, tracing its shape, its softness, with a patience and delicacy he was far from feeling. He wanted to make her ache deep inside, as he was

aching. He rubbed his lips across hers, nibbling and coaxing with an expertise he'd almost forgotten he possessed. He was determined to stoke the flame of her need with exquisite stealth until she burned only for him.

Her lips parted shyly beneath the tantalizing pressure, burning his restraint to cinders. With a will of its own his tongue snaked out, delving deep inside the lush sweetness of her mouth. She met his thrust with

a soft swirl of her own. He groaned. She tasted like a hot, luscious berry- succulent and ripe for his picking. With a hunger that made him quake inside, he wanted to taste the rest of her, to feel her sugared heat melt around every throbbing inch of his body.

The knowledge of what Justin wanted to do to her exploded through Emily, both terrifying her and imbuing her with a delicious sense of power. Gasping for a breath of sanity, she tore her mouth away from his. Dear God, what was she doing? It wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to coolly seduce him, scorn him, and toss the shreds of his broken heart in his face like confetti. Instead,

she was clinging to him like a helpless wanton, drowning in the fervor of his kiss. With only a few expert caresses he had become the hunter and she the prey.

His lips flowered hungrily against her dimpled cheek, the curve of her jaw, the tingling skin of her earlobe. His tongue flicked out to taste the damning pulsebeat below her ear. A hoarse whimper escaped her throat. She struggled to remember why she must hate him.

Pressing her burning brow to the hollow of his throat, she whispered, "You always treat me like a child."

"No more," he vowed, sliding his hands down her back. Their callused strength against her bare flesh made her shiver. "You're all woman. Woman enough to take whatever I can give you." His warm, rough tongue plundered her ear, sending ribbons of sensation cascading deep into her womb.

Her knees buckled, but he caught her, dragging her against him. If he only knew how desperately wrong he was. She was no match for him, she knew. No match at all. She knew that with dread certainty as he angled her thigh upward and pressed his flagrant arousal to the aching cradle between her legs.

She moaned as his mouth took hers again. The slow grind of his hips and his tongue's feverish strokes painted a dark and vivid picture of his desires. She trembled, but his body was too broad, too unrelenting for escape. There was no place for her to flee from the tender assault she had provoked.

The rough satin of his fingertips inched between her breasts, gliding wider with each sensual circle. She gasped as his palm cupped the threadbare calico of her bandeau, molding it to the soft globe of her breast.

He pressed his mouth to her ear. "I'm not like the others, Em. I won't hurt you. I swear it."

How could she tell him he'd already hurt her beyond bearing? Unable to resist his hoarse promise, she clung to his shoulders. His fingertips skimmed her nipple like butterfly wings, igniting tremors of pleasure. Beneath his caress the calico became not a barrier, but silky kindling for a spreading wildfire. She muffled her whimpers in his chest, desperate to hide her agonized blush. She could not still the irrational fear that he might discover not only what she was, but who she was as well.

His lips brushed her hair. "I've spent the last few nights pouring all of my passions into my music, when all I really wanted to do was pour them into you."

His blunt confession and the loving stroke of his thumb over the tender bud of her nipple were her undoing. Longing coursed through her in dark waves. She rubbed her lips against his chest, tasting the salty spice of his skin, teasing the rigid nub of his own nipple beneath her tongue.

Justin was shaking almost as hard as Emily was, hardly daring to believe his sweetest fantasy was unfolding like a dream before him.

To hold Emily naked in the moonlight, her smooth young body his domain to pleasure and possess. To slake her darkest and most secret desires with his fevered touch. To ease himself inside her scrumptious body and take her, each stroke as deep and measured as the tide against the shore. It was as if time had rolled back to that other windy night and he'd been given a precious gift he thought lost forever. Now that gift had been sweetened by the privilege of knowing her sparkling mischief, her tender wit, and her irrepressible spirit. She was no longer a mysterious nymph coughed up by the sea. She was his Emily, a shining thread of melody wound around his heart.

His deft fingers tugged at the knot of her bandeau. Before she could moan a protest, the fabric unfurled and slipped from his finger to the sand, baring her breasts in all their pagan splendor.

Emily could feel their dusky peaks pucker beneath the greedy mouth of the wind and the smoldering caress of Justin's gaze. She shivered, seized by a terrible vulnerability.

He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against the unyielding warmth of his chest. "What is it? Have I frightened you?"

Beneath her ear his heart slammed like the distant thunder of drums. "Everything is happening so quickly."

"Quickly?" He tilted her chin up and gazed into her eyes. "I've waited a lifetime for this."

Her broken hiccup was half sob, half laugh. "So have I. If you only knew . . ." No longer caring if this was revenge or madness, she tangled her hands in his hair and drew his mouth down to hers, kissing

him with a ravenous passion to match his own.

Groaning, Justin dropped to his knees in the sand, only too eager to worship at the altar of her pleasure. He stroked her rounded shoulders, the satiny hollow above her collarbone, the plump underside of her breasts, utterly captivated by the contrasts in their bodies. What had seemed common with other women now seemed exotic, shaded with mystery. Emily's body was ripe with secrets just waiting to be unfolded and stroked and explored.

He reached beneath her skirt, running his hands up the back of her calves and thighs to the bare curve

of her rump. His thumbs angled across her hipbones, marveling at the cushion of flesh that softened her

in all the places bone and muscle tempered him to hardness.

She quivered at his touch but did not shrink from him, not even when his thumbs curled around to graze the delicate fleece that sheltered the feminine heart of her. Not yet, he warned himself. Too soon. He lay his burning cheek between her breasts and let the sea breeze wash over him, praying it might soothe the desperate tide of desire in his groin. She had known enough of the hasty, selfish fumbles of boys.

Tonight she would go where only the restraint of a man could take her.

His mouth captured her breast, sucking the tender bud with a fierceness that made her arch against him and whimper his name.

It was all the invitation he needed. He lifted her and carried her to a sandy haven between two low-slung dunes. As he laid her in the sugary bed, the endless throb of the sea taunted him with the vain hope that this night might last forever. Without a word he eased her skirt down over her hips and cast it away.

He gazed down at her as he had on that first night, enchanted by the hint of a dimple in her cheek, her luminous eyes. Tonight she seemed more angel than nymph. Her nakedness stirred in him a fierce possessiveness centuries of civilized breeding should have exorcised. He had blunted his emotions for

too long. This rush of lust and tenderness and primitive jealousy exhilarated him, making him feel

reckless and drunk.

Emily drew in a shaky breath as Justin's hungry gaze raked her from head to toe, lingering at the nest of curls between her legs. "Justin?"

His gaze flew back to hers with a guilty haste she might have found amusing if she weren't petrified

with fear. "Mmmm?" he said dreamily.

"Are you sure you haven't any Maori blood in you?"

His slow, wicked smile curled her toes. He reached down and popped open the first button of his dungarees in a gesture so totally out of character and so full of masculine swagger that she had to choke back a frantic giggle.

"Perhaps the Maori know something we don't. Why should I be denied the pleasures of your succulent flesh?"

His shadow blocked the moonlight as he came down over her, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth. She could taste the salt of the sea on him. Her hands toyed with his hair, wrapping it around her fists as he moved lower to scrape his teeth against the peak of her breast and dip his tongue into the shy dimple of her navel. She moaned as he filled her, even as a void opened lower, making her clamp her thighs together against the blinding need.

As he slid his elegant fingers into the coarse silk between her legs, Emily felt the shock of it all the way

to her soul. She knew it was wrong to let him touch her there- scandalous, forbidden. But he stroked her with agonizing tenderness and infinite patience, consuming her not in flesh, but in flame. Pleasure coursed hot and thick through her veins, drugging her, weighting her legs until they fell apart at the gentle insistence of his hands.

She had thought to use her body to enslave him, and here she lay, a chattel to his touch, writhing and begging for a fulfillment she couldn't even name. The stars blurred to glimmering shards before her eyes. Her fingers knotted over the sleek muscles of his shoulders.

Justin parted the slick petals of Emily's body as if she were the most fragile of tropical flowers. He

rubbed his nose tenderly over her belly, basking in the intoxicating fragrance released by his exploration. Driven by the soft whimpers escaping her throat and the dig of her fingernails into his back, he smeared her dew over the delicate bud nestled in her curls, then pressed his finger deep into the very heart of her bloom.

She cried out.

Her tautness was irresistible. Justin had never felt such a thing, not even in the woman he had once planned to wed. It made his whole body shudder in anticipation even as it birthed a terrible suspicion in his sluggish brain. Lifting his head so he could watch her face, he slipped his finger out of her, then gently eased it back in. She winced and bit her lip to muffle a cry.

His spirits hovered somewhere dangerously between plummeting and soaring. With lumbering reluctance he relinquished his prize and straddled her, crawling up until he could flatten his palms in the sand on

both sides of her head.

"Emily?"

Her eyes flew open and she started to find his face only inches from hers. An enchanting mask of pleasure flushed her cheekbones. "Yes?"

"You're not nearly as bad a girl as you've led me to believe, are you?"

Her words tumbled out in nervous spurts. "Of course I am! All my teachers said I was horrid."

He sighed. "Let me phrase that a different way. That compromising position you were found in with the gardener's son-would you care to describe it?"

"Could we talk about this later?"

God, wouldn't he love to! he thought. Much later. While he was offering tender ministrations to her ravished body. "No. We have to talk about it now. What sort of position was it?"

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Oh, very well. He was lying on the ground all bloody and I was standing over him with a pitchfork." Groaning, Justin dropped his head to her breastbone. "He should never have stuck his tongue in my mouth. He was a most unpleasant boy. He had a tongue like a grubworm." She gave his hair a nervous pat. "I didn't kill him, you know. I only wounded him."

Justin feared his own wounds were mortal. He slowly lifted his head. "One more question, darling.

How long have you been without a man?"

New patches of scarlet tinged her cheeks. The stubby silk of her lashes shuttered her eyes. "Eighteen years," she mumbled.

He threw himself off her with a yelp that was half laughter, half despair. The stars winked down at

him, giggling behind their brittle shells.

He chose his next words with elaborate care. "Do you even know how a man and a woman make love?"

She sat up, hiding her breasts behind the indignant curl of her knees. "Of course I do. A man puts his-"

Justin clapped his hand over her mouth. An anatomy lesson taught in Emily's uncompromising terms

was the last thing he needed. His fingers lingered against the softness of her lips. The shine in her eyes threatened to flow over into tears. How could he explain the agonized delight her sheepish confession

of innocence was causing him?

All the masculine vanity and hypocrisy he despised welled up inside him, penetrating the haze of his

desire and bringing the blurred visions of his heart into sharp focus: coaches rocking through the English countryside on a spring day, their lacquered roofs garlanded with flowers; bells ringing a joyful peal through the crisp air; Emily adrift in a cloud of white satin, her eyes dimmed not by tears but by the shimmering gauze of a veil.

Hope. Hope for the future.

He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. Life had finally handed him something pure and fine,

and he could not bring himself to tarnish it.

Her tears spilled over his fingers. "What is it, Justin? Don't you want me?"

A groan escaped him in lieu of reassurances. If he dared take her in his arms, he'd never find the strength to let her go. He swung away from her, welcoming the gritty reality of the sand, praying it might dispel

the heady enchantment of her nudity. He tried to focus his thoughts elsewhere-on the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, on Bach's Concerto in D Minor, on Chopin's bloody Funeral March, but she was the

only melody he could hear.

Emily stared at the bronze expanse of Justin's back, cringing inwardly at her own pathetic question.

Don't you want me?

As his damning silence stretched on, the shrill malevolence of another voice hissed in her mind.

He don't want you. Nobody does.

Doreen had been right. He always turned his back on her. But somehow this was worse. It left her shivering, abandoned to the night wind, naked and raw, shamed in both body and soul. The darkness no longer enveloped her, but hovered like a murky cloud, the stars shards of ice in an uncaring void. A vast loneliness rose like bile in her throat.

She swiped at her nose with the back of her fist as the familiar anger slammed like a shield over her pain. "There's really no need to explain. My friend warned me most gentlemen find virgins a bore. They're clumsy and predictable and they always cry at the wrong times." She dashed a hot tear away. "Like now."

Justin swung around, shocked by the bitter tenor of her voice. How could she believe he would think her clumsy? Or predictable? She was as clumsy as a she-tiger, as predictable as a summer storm at sea. He watched, paralyzed with disbelief, as she scrambled to her feet, snatching up her skirt.

"We'll just forget this ever happened, won't we? If you like, I'll send your darling Rangimarie back to

tend to you. I'm sure she's had scads of experience. Most of it with the almighty, all-potent Pakeha."

She backed away without even bothering to cloak her nakedness with the skirt. Moonlight bathed her luminous skin and tipped her breasts with silver. Justin's head reeled as he imagined her strutting into the Maori encampment in all her naked glory to deliver a scathing invitation to the unsuspecting Rangimarie. He eased himself to his heels.

She spread a hand as if to ward him off. "Don't bother getting up. I don't want to be any trouble. I never wished to be a burden to anyone. Especially not to you."

She spun around to flee. Justin dove for her, his strength and grace serving him well. He tackled her easily, bringing her down in a soft explosion of sand. He hadn't expected her to fight him, but she twisted in his arms like a wild thing, beating at his back with her fists, raking his neck with her fingernails. She swore at him through her tears, calling him names so vile they would have made even the worldly Nicholas blush.

Grunting with exertion, he caught her hands and pinned her beneath his weight. He kissed her damp lashes, the salty curve of her cheek, the corner of her trembling mouth. "Don't you know, angel? Don't you know how much I want you?"

A broken sob escaped her. He dragged one of her hands downward. She resisted him, but his greater strength, even in gentleness, bent her inexorably to his will. "Touch me," he commanded hoarsely. "Touch me and then tell me I don't want you."

He pressed her hand inside his dungarees, cupping it around the full, rigid length of him.

The fury in her eyes slowly faded and shy wonder dawned. "Oh, my," she whispered, her fingers enfolding him like velvety petals.

A spasm of exquisite agony made him shudder.

"Oh, my!" she repeated. He had finally succeeded in rendering her speechless.

The extent of her innocence washed over him like a spring rain. He pressed an adoring kiss to her freckled nose. "That, my dear, is by far the most gratifying response I've ever had from a woman."

"A woman? Not a child?" She stroked him, enslaving him with her artless touch, her dark, questioning eyes.

He shook his head. "Not a woman." He kissed away the clouds threatening to gather across her brow.

"A goddess."

He plunged his tongue into her mouth and drove himself hard into the sheath of her palm, allowing himself one moment of shameless pleasure. Then, ignoring her dazed moan of protest, he pulled her

hand away and brought it to his lips, kissing each fingertip in turn, then her palm.

He met her gaze over her hand. "I need a gift from you, my goddess."

"Anything," she whispered.

The enticing visions that one word provoked almost wreaked havoc on his determination. He laced his fingers around hers and squeezed her hand. "Time. I need time."

"Time?" Emily echoed. Her thoughts spiraled crazily. Time? How much time did this man require before he loved her? A decade? A lifetime? He'd already had seven years of her time. Time tucked away in a golden watch case. Time ticking away against his heart. Time frozen forever in a faded tintype of a happy child.

He stroked her hair away from her face. "I need time to get my life in order. I've been running from the past for far too long."

Emily had to close her eyes at the irony of that. What would he do if she blurted out that the past was lying naked and trembling beneath him?

She opened her eyes, praying they would not betray her. "And when you get your life in order?"

"You'll be the first to know. I promise you that."

He kissed her, his mouth moist and sweet against her own. She hooked an arm around his nape,

pressing him into her as if it might be the last kiss they would ever share.

Groaning, Justin pulled away. He rolled to his back, dragging her snugly into his arms.

"For a man who doesn't like me, you're being terribly kind," she said.

He smoothed her curls and spoke without even a hint of humor. "I said I didn't like you. I never said

I didn't love you."

* * *

Justin couldn't sleep. But this wasn't the dream-plagued insomnia of a tortured man. His body tingled

with the edgy excitement of fresh hope. It was as if a door had been thrown open, showing him a sunlit world brimming with plans and possibilities. He watched the encroaching dawn absorb the darkness, bleaching the sky to a pale rose. The sea was a glassy jade, smooth and unmarred like a mirror that has yet to know an ugly reflection.

He drew Emily deeper into his arms, savoring the lush feel of her bare skin against his own. She looked so terribly young with her lips parted in sleep. He felt more than a little depraved, wanting her so desperately, but still he could not stem the swift tide of desire rising in him. He swore softly under his breath.

Soon, he promised himself. Soon he would awaken like this every morning, snuggled with Emily on the . . . floor. The floor? He would have to build a bed for the hut immediately. Hell, he'd have to build a new hut. One with a separate room for Penfeld at a discreet distance from their own. And another room, airy with sunlight and decorated in chintz and dolls.

He felt a reluctant grin touch his lips. What would Emily say when he informed her they would start

their new life with a daughter? She had professed a gruff dislike for children, but he had seen how

Kawiri and Dani adored her. She treated them like people, not dolls.

He traced her features with his loving gaze. She had taught him so much in so short a time. She had charged headlong into his life, meeting its challenges with verve and tenacity. He owed her nothing less.

He was done cowering from life. He was no longer going to hide from his family, his inheritance, or

even from the child awaiting him in England. When they returned to the hut, he would pen a letter to

his father, asking him to see to Claire Scarborough's well-being until he could send for her. A hint of bitterness touched him. His father would probably have an easier time understanding if the child had

been gotten off some mistress rather than from a pledge to a dying friend.

Emily stirred, moving her lips in a seeking caress against his chest. His doubts melted at her touch. His spirits soared, unfettered by guilt or remorse. It was as if her innocence had somehow washed away his own dark sins.

His thoughts, though, were far from virginal as Emily stretched with feline grace, giving him an untrammeled view of her delectable body, all vanilla cream sprinkled with cinnamon.

He crooked an eyebrow. Surely even the most noble gentleman allowed himself a few liberties with the woman he intended to make his bride.

* * *

Someone was stroking Emily like a kitten. She was afraid to open her eyes for fear they would stop. Her drowsy contentment was melting to a quicksilver shimmer of joy. The touch was completely unselfish. It demanded nothing of her, but gave only pleasure-pure, feathery strokes of pleasure. She tried to catch her breath but couldn't.

Justin hadn't played the piano in years, but he played Emily like a master, using the full skill of his long, tan fingers to bring her to the shuddering brink of ecstasy.

His lips caught her cry as his touch splintered her into a thousand shards of pleasure.

Her eyes slowly fluttered open. Justin hung over her, breathing hard, his slanted grin both proud and endearing.

"What was that?" she asked, gulping for breath.

"A hurricane? An earthquake?" he offered.

She blinked in wonder. "Was it legal?"

"Probably not. Immoral, too. I fear I just took shameless advantage of you."

"Am I compromised?"

He laid his lips against hers in a lingering caress. "If I compromise you, you'll know it. I promise."

They rose with reluctance, hesitant to leave their sandy haven. Justin went in search of Emily's bandeau, leaving her sitting in the sand, her hands pressed shyly over her breasts. The morning wind ruffled her curls. She stared out to sea, fighting off the panic that threatened to claim her. How could she have been so foolish as to believe she could take Justin's soul without losing her own?

He reappeared, dangling her bandeau from his finger like a flag of surrender. He insisted on tying it himself, sneaking behind her to nuzzle the back of her neck. She moaned helplessly as his arousal

nudged against her rump.

"A normal phenomenon of the morning?" she asked him.

He reached around to stroke her nipples beneath the thin calico. "That's right. It has nothing to do with you."

"Liar," she whispered, wiggling against him.

"Tease," he countered, nipping her ear.

Justin caught himself whistling as they strolled hand in hand down the gleaming strand of beach. Sunlight sparkled off crystals in the sand. A gull soared into the deepening blue of the sky.

"I've been thinking about building a house," he shyly confessed. "Not a hut, but a real house with polished wood floors and scads of sunlight. I don't want any shadows or gloom like the house I grew up in."

Emily was strangely silent although she gripped his hand so tightly he was in fear for his fingers. He attributed her pensive mood to a new shyness. He grinned at that. Shyness was the last trait he would have associated with Emily. He would soon break her of it. He fully intended to keep his private vow of celibacy, but that didn't mean he couldn't give her a taste of what they would share once they were wed. The weeks of waiting to hear from his father might be agony for him, but it would be a sweet agony indeed.

As they rounded the bend and came in sight of their own beach, Emily gave his hand a squeeze that

made his knuckles crack.

He winced. "Careful, dear. I might want to play the piano again someday. Or-" He lowered his head to whisper a more enticing suggestion, but his voice faded as he saw the massive steamer anchored offshore.

The sun gleamed off the two words emblazoned on its mighty hull.

WINTHROP SHIPPING

Chapter 13

The. steamer loomed offshore, squat, ugly, and incongruous against the crystalline sea. Even at rest its towering stacks belched out smoke as if some serpentine beast snored within its belly. The black wisps fouled the air with their stench. Justin clung to her hand, squeezing it as hard as she had squeezed his

own just a moment before. An icy knot hardened in Emily's throat.

The Maori had fled back to their fortified pa at the approach of the foreign vessel, leaving only scattered clam shells and barren ashes to mark the site of their feast.

"Damnation," Justin muttered. "I should have been here to reassure them."

Down the beach a dinghy had been dragged up on the sand. Two sailors lounged beside it, smoking

pipes and talking among themselves. If the steamer looked odd against the pristine background of sea

and sky, the scene on the beach appeared positively ludicrous. Emily might have laughed if she could have choked any sound past the lump of dread in her throat.

A folding table draped in snowy linen and spread with gleaming china had been set up in the sand. Three men perched like black crows around it. In the middle of the table sat Penfeld's teapot, dripping a steady amber stream from its inverted spout. The valet jumped to his feet as they approached, pinkening as if he'd been caught with his pants around his ankles at a bawdy house.

A fat man in a towering stovepipe hat rose with him, but his companion remained seated, in no apparent haste to abandon his leisurely breakfast.

"Good morning!" he called out, spearing something with a silver fork. "Care for a kipper?"

"No, thank you," Justin replied. "May I help you gentlemen?"

"We certainly hope so," the plump man boomed out. He offered Justin his hand. "Thaddeus Goodstocking at your service."

Justin released her with obvious reluctance and allowed the man to pump his hand, but Emily noticed he did not offer his name. Wariness cut shallow grooves around his mouth.

"And I am Bentley Chalmers." The seated man dabbed his waxed mustache with his napkin. "Your charming valet was kind enough to offer us a spot of tea to wash down our breakfast."

Penfeld inched toward Justin as if sneaking out of an enemy camp. It was only too easy to understand how he'd been seduced by their creamy china, their salted kippers, their London gossip.

Both of the strangers looked hot and stifled in their quilted waistcoats. The leaner man had been smart enough to drape his heavy frock coat over the back of his chair. Emily pitied Mr. Goodstocking. Sweat dripped into his bushy whiskers, and the points of his starched collar cut into his heavy jowls.

"You must forgive our interruption," he said. "We do so hate to draw you away from your native delights." Her sympathy vanished as his piggish eyes raked her in leering curiosity.

She was suddenly and painfully aware of her appearance. Her curls were tangled, her feet bare and sandy. With her scant garb, tan skin, and sun-burnished freckles, she must appear to these proper

English gentlemen as the basest of whores. Her first instinct was to shrink behind Justin, but she had

too often endured shame and condemnation from forbidding figures dressed in black.

Justin was not oblivious to the exchange. He stepped in front of her, his jaw hardening with the glacial dignity she had glimpsed before. "You didn't come all the way to New Zealand for a good cup of tea."

Mr. Goodstocking retreated from Justin's frosty stare even as Chalmers rose with a placating smile,

taking a thick leather packet from beside his plate. He refused to even acknowledge Emily, which was somehow more cutting than Goodstocking's leer.

"No," he admitted. "We didn't come for the tea. We came as agents acting on behalf of the Duchess

of Winthrop to seek a man calling himself Justin Connor."

Justin hesitated; Emily could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

"I am that man," he finally replied, his New Zealand brogue as flat as she had ever heard it.

Goodstocking's gaze traveled from the ragged knees of Justin's dungarees to his bare feet. He cleared his throat and exchanged a long look with his companion.

Chalmers handed Justin the leather packet, then swept off his neat bowler in a deferent bow that might have belonged to another century. "Your Grace."

Penfeld gasped. Emily took a step backward without realizing it.

Justin stared down at the packet in his hands. Chalmers's benign address had conveyed a wealth of meaning. His father was dead. He was now the Duke of Winthrop.

He ran his fingers over the pitted leather, desperate to feel something, anything at all. But all he felt was

a vast emptiness. David Scarborough had been more father to him in six months than his own father had been in a lifetime. His grief was not the sharp pain of loss, but an overwhelming sense of regret for the moments they might have shared, moments lost forever to them now.

Chalmers gestured. "Within that packet you will find several letters from your mother. She would like

you to return to London immediately to assist her in the matter of settling your father's estate. She

needs you."

Those three words tightened the noose around his neck. For a terrible moment the old choking pressure returned. He was now the owner of that crude vessel anchored offshore and a fleet of sailing ships and steamers strewn from the English Channel to the Bering Strait.

Not this time, he thought. Things were different now. He was no longer a helpless child or even a rash, rebellious young man. He was lord of the manor now. There was no one to stop him from returning to New Zealand and running his empire from the sunny coast of the North Island. He could hire men to

take care of the mundane details of the business while he used his wealth and influence as he chose. He slapped the packet against his palm, seeing it not as a warrant of execution, but as a golden ticket of opportunity for both him and Emily, his chance to make amends to his family and to David's daughter.

Chalmers droned on. "It would have taken us much longer to find you, but we had the good fortune to stumble upon a detective who had located you while employed by a Miss Amelia Winters."

Justin didn't even hear him. He was already dwelling on his first meeting with Claire Scarborough,

praying he would have the courage to look her in the eye and tell her the truth about her father's death. His jaw tightened with resolve. With Emily by his side he could do anything.

He turned, eager to share his plans with her.

Emily was gone.

Chapter 14

Emily tossed the little blue journal on the stack of books and bound them together with a leather strip.

Her hands worked separately from her brain, knotting and neatening, tying and folding in a soothing stream designed to numb both mind and heart. She bundled a pile of blankets into two bedrolls and began to wrap what was left of Penfeld's tea set in soft scraps of flannel. Her hands did not falter until they ran across the box containing her father's watch. Justin would have no need to send it to Miss Winters now. He would soon discover that all the gold in the world couldn't buy him Claire Scarborough.

She padded to the table and eased Justin's symphonies from their hidden drawer. The embossed document she had seen once before slid out with them, but she tossed it aside. She had no more interest in grants or deeds or mysterious maps. The gold mine was as dead as her father's dreams.

All that remained in the drawer were Justin's letters to Claire. Emily drew them out, crumpling them in

her clumsy fingers. Justin had never shared them willingly, but they still belonged to her. They might be all she ever had of him.

Justin's shadow fell across her like a caress.

Shoving the letters into the waistband of her skirt, she spoke without turning around. "I'm afraid you won't be able to take all the books. You'd sink the dinghy. Perhaps even the steamer."

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

"Packing," she replied, jamming the sugar bowl into a wicker basket. She folded the tablecloth, refusing

to halt her frenetic activity long enough to look at him.

She heard the betraying shuffle of claws across the dirt floor. Fluffy had taken advantage of the open door to skitter in.

She picked up another teacup, praying her clumsy motions would not betray her. "You'd best leave the lizard with me. You'd look odd walking him on a leash in Kensington Gardens. I suggest you buy a nice English bulldog instead."

Justin's footfalls sounded behind her. The cup slipped from her hand and struck the edge of the table, shattering.

"You're going with me, Emily."

She crouched and gathered up the fragile bits of china. There would be no gumming them back together this time. The pieces were too jagged to fit.

"No," she said softly. "I'm not."

He caught her arm and pulled her around to face him. "Why not?"

She inclined her head, fearful of finding her own pain mirrored in his tawny eyes. "I can't go back to England with you."

He was silent for a long moment. She could almost hear the facile little wheels of his mind clicking.

"If you're in trouble with the law, Emily, I can help you. I'm an influential man now. I'll have an army

of barristers at my disposal."

She laughed weakly. "Probably a few judges as well."

His fingers bit into her arm. "What is this? Your brave attempt at gallows humor?"

Tilting her face to his, she flattened her quavering voice to dead calm. "Unless you care to tie me up

and put me on that ship, I'm not going."

Justin was tempted to do just that. But as he gazed down at her, he didn't see her pale and drawn as she was now. He saw her pelting down the beach with the children, her curls dancing, her merry, freckledface turned to the sun. He saw her swaying in the firelight with sensual abandon, her skirt billowing around her ankles. Try as he might, he could not imagine her trapped in the winter chill of London, her glow fading to pallor beneath a gray sky dulled with soot.

Grief stabbed him, fresher than anything he'd felt at the news of his father's death. Emily was right. She didn't belong in London any more than he did. She belonged here, bathed by sunlight and sea, cloaked in the sweet melodies and loving grace of the Maori. Despite her tough veneer, she was a wild, fragile

bloom that would surely wither if transplanted.

He paced away from her, raking a hand through his hair. If it weren't for David's child, he would stay. But he couldn't offer Emily a heart unfettered by the past until he'd repaid that old debt. "I have to go.

I have no choice."

"I know."

Why didn't she cry? Why didn't she throw herself at his feet and beg him to stay? Her damnable pride was tearing him apart. A fierce regret touched him. He should have taken her last night, forged the bond between them that much stronger. What a joy it would have been to return to find her splashing through the waves, rosy and plump with his child!

"I shouldn't be gone for more than a few months. I'm leaving Perifeld with you."

"You can't. You'd break his heart. He'd never forgive you if he missed a shopping expedition to Fleet Street. Trini can look in on me if you'd like, but I'm really quite good at looking after myself."

He snorted. "This from a woman who fell off a boat in the middle of the Tasman Sea?"

She shrugged. "I tripped over my boot lace."

His shoulders slumped in helpless laughter. "Christ, Em, what am I going to do without you?" Aching

with longing, he reached to fold her in his arms.

She backed away, her dark eyes aflame with the dangerous sparkle of tears. "Please, don't. I detest good-byes."

With those words she spun around and fled the hut, leaving him to gaze at the barren table and wonder how she could have swept his heart so empty with a single careless stroke.

* * *

Emily stood alone on the bluff, gazing out to sea. Her fingers trailed absently over the blunt peak of the wooden cross.

The sun's splintered rays bathed her face in warmth. She closed her eyes. The wind raked her with

tender fingers, fresh and pure like a melody never to be heard by any ears but her own. Its beauty made her ache. But when she opened her eyes they felt as dry and barren as the withered husks of the flowers rustling at the base of the cross.

She was waiting for Justin. She knew he would come. She had seen him on the beach below saying his good-byes -embracing Trini, grasping the sun-browned hands of the solemn natives, lifting Dani to his shoulders for a last ride.

The Winthrop steamer loomed like a dark blot on the misty azure and jade of a wet painting. Justin

didn't make a sound, but Emily knew he was behind her.

"I hate ships," she said. "They're always taking people away."

"But they bring them back too."

She turned to face him, hugging back a shiver as if the wind were cold instead of warm. A jolt of shock raced through her. She had never seen Justin in anything but his faded dungarees. Seeing him fully clothed now was somehow more erotic than his near nakedness. He wore no coat, but a handsome waistcoat covered a shirt pressed to crisp perfection. Her mouth went dry with unexpected longing.

The shirt hung loosely over his broad shoulders. Tenderness washed over her for the brawny young prospector who had come to New Zealand filled with dreams and hope. But she wouldn't have traded

a single thread of silver from his temples to have that man back.

His lean form suited the elegance of his garb. Emily felt sorely lacking in her primitive skirt. She shuffled her feet in the sand, fighting a desperate shyness. "I've never seen you with shoes before."

He cast the polished leather a woeful glance. "They pinch like hell."

She drew in a breath, but instead of the laugh she had intended, a broken sob burst forth. Justin reached for her. She melted into him, throwing her arms around him like a bereft child.

He held her as if he would never let her go, kissing her nose, rubbing his stubbled chin against her cheek, mingling her tears into a salty balm against his seeking lips.

He buried his mouth in her hair. "I'll be back for you, Emily. I swear it."

Her slender shoulders convulsed beneath Justin's hands. Her small fists opened and closed against his back, and in the desperation of her grasp he realized something that cut him almost as deeply as leaving her.

She didn't believe him.

With staggering reluctance he dragged himself out of her embrace. He reached in the inner pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a box.

"I have no ring to give you. All I have is this." His hands shook as he dropped the lid in the sand and

drew out the shining rope of gold.

The watch dangled between them, casting shards of sunlight across Emily's tear-stained face. She sucked in a shuddering breath as he lowered the chain over her head. The watch fell between her breasts, golden bright against her tanned skin.

He cupped her face between his palms and gave her one last kiss, hot, sweet, and fierce with promise. Then he started down the hill, nearly stumbling in his haste to leave her before his will faltered.

"Justin Connor!"

The croaked bellow brought him to a sliding halt. He shaded his eyes against the sun and looked back

at the bluff.

Emily was jumping up and down, waving her arms. "Show them you're the best damned duke England has ever seen! Better than Prince Albert. Better even than the Duke of Wellington. And tell

Mr. Thaddeus Swinestocking his spit isn't fit to polish your shoes!"

He wouldn't have to. The hefty agent was standing beside the dinghy, his fat jowls drooping in consternation.

Justin touched his fingers to his lips, then spread them toward Emily in a silent salute.

"Buy Penfeld some china!" she shouted, cupping a hand around her mouth. "Wedgwood jasperware

with a floral pattern."

The natives watched with solemn eyes as he climbed into the dinghy. The sailors used the long oars to shove them away from the shore. Penfeld perched awkwardly in the bow, clutching the sides of the boat with whitened fingers. Justin didn't dare look at him. If his valet's fat little chin quivered the tiniest bit, Justin feared he would throw himself overboard and swim back to Emily even if they were halfway to England.

"Don't forget that English bulldog! He'll need a spiked collar. Keep him away from poodles. They're not real dogs, you know, just rats with curly hair and you mustn't breed . . ." Her hoarse voice was fading.

The oars parted the water in long, rippling strokes, shoving away the shoreline. A plaintive melody filled the air, sonorous and sweet.

He had told Emily the truth. The Maori could do nothing without singing.

Not even say good-bye.

Chalmers's cool, questioning gaze touched his face, but Justin didn't even blink. He kept his gaze riveted on the slender figure standing on the shrinking bluff and let the salty breeze burn the tears from his eyes before they could fall.

* * *

It was twilight before Emily made her way down from the bluff. The last tawny rays of the sun bathed the beach. Her limbs, her eyelids, her throat, ached with a leaden heaviness like the weight of the watch against her breastbone, but her heart felt as drained as her eyes. She had watered her father's grave with her tears for the last time. The sand had absorbed them, sucking them away as if they had never fallen.

The packet of letters she had taken from the hut rustled against her skin. She had spent the past few hours poring over them. They were simple letters written to a child, filled with the warmth, wit, and charm she had come to expect from Justin. They were filled with the pleasures of his days, the beauty

of the island, his friendships with the Maori, and humorous anecdotes about her father. He had shared

all of himself in those letters, everything but the puzzling truth that had kept him from posting them.

Emily's steps faltered as she saw Trini sitting crosslegged in the sand. She didn't want to see him. She didn't want to see anyone. She just wanted to crawl back into the sea as she had come. She walked past him without a word.

He scrambled to his feet. "Where will you go?"

She forced back a groan. When Trini used words under five syllables, he was deadly serious. She turned to face him, "Away."

"What shall I tell the Pakeha when he returns?"

"He won't be back." The bitter words shot out before she could stop them.

"And if you are wrong?"

She squared her shoulders. "Then I'll be the one to leave this time."

A sad smile played around his lips. He drew a line in the sand with his toe. "Perhaps you are no wiser than we Maori. Seeking utu, your own personal revenge, for every slight."

"He slighted my whole life!" she cried.

Emily realized then that it wasn't about the gold. It never had been. She couldn't forgive him for breaking the heart of a child who had believed in him. And she couldn't afford to find out if he would do it again. Time had robbed her of her defenses. Her woman's heart wasn't as resilient as the child's had been. Another blow would surely shatter it. She felt the warning prick of tears behind her eyes. She blinked them away, not wanting Trini to see her cry. Not wanting anyone to ever see her cry again.

"It reminds me of something the Pakeha's mighty God once said-'Vengeance is mine.' "

"Not this time, Trini." She stabbed her chest with her finger, tapping the locket. "This time vengeance

is mine." His solemn brown eyes surveyed her with maddening wisdom. She turned away with a dismissive wave. "How can I expect you to understand?"

"Perhaps I understand better than you know . . . Claire."

Emily froze in mid-stride, flinching as the name sounded like a slap across her face. She turned slowly, remembering all the times she had seen him entranced by the shiny watch case. "How?"

Trini pointed. For the first time, Emily saw the children scattered among the dunes, their normal

jubilance muted to pensive quiet.

"Dani," he said. "She recognized you from the watch. She told me you were the Pakeha's lost angel

freed at last from a terrible spell."

Dani was wrong, Emily thought. She had only fallen under a more deadly spell. She opened the watch case with a trembling hand. The case was empty, the photograph gone. Once again Justin had taken

the best part of her with him.

She cast Trini a pleading glance. "How could he not have known?"

The native's lips quirked in an enigmatic smile. "The Pakeha sees only what he chooses to see. It is his way."

As Emily stared blindly into the locket, a low chant rose from the dunes. The children were repeating

one word over and over. Claire, They pelted out of the dunes, surrounding her. She sank to her knees, wrapping Dani's warm little body in her arms. She pressed her eyes shut, imagining how it would have

felt to hold the child she would never have. She could almost see him-his silky dark hair falling in his eyes as he bent over the piano.

She opened her eyes. Trini helped her to her feet, his tattooed brow furrowed in a frown. "How will

you go from here? You have no money, no means."

Her eyes burned with a fierce light. "Oh, yes, I do. Gold brought me here, and gold will take me away."

A yelp of dismay escaped him as she held the watch aloft and twisted, shattering the last chain that

bound her to Justin Connor.