Looking back on it years later, she could see how the most important truth she’d ever needed to learn had been exemplified by the nesting dolls she’d played with as a child. The outermost portrayed the Lady of Paladins, armed and armored, resplendent in Her glory. Parts of the ungainly outer shell detached from one another to reveal a second doll, the Shield Maiden, portrayed in Her strength and innocence, and ripe with the promise of fertility. Within the second doll was a third, the Defender of the Hearth, the fierce, yet nurturing mother who would willingly fight to the death to protect Her own. Just beneath Her, the Matriarch was revealed, robed and crowned, wise, compassionate, and just. The last secret, the tiny mystery at the heart of the toy was a delicate porcelain figurine, not of the Lady in any of Her guises, but that of the Lord of Paladins, portrayed as the crowned and sceptered King in Glory.

 

It had seemed so simple then, but like so many other girls, she’d missed the point completely.

 

Baron Bonsall’s summer townhouse, the City of Angels, Greater Fernwall
15 Amerian 580, 1500 hours

 

Lady Angelique Blakesly paced restlessly.

Sunlight filtered through the lacy curtains at the open windows, fragrant with blooming roses, fresh mown grass, and spicy notes of m’banda, the tiny northern flower the elves had named ‘love’s prison.’ Wisteria dripped seductively from blossom-laden boughs, caressed by budding tips of foxglove, and delicate azaleas blushed all the pinkened shades of a maiden’s confusion, serviced by the bees that probed at them them to draw forth their sweet nectar. Summer was a rioting orgy out there, just meters away, and though she had been pacing inside for the past quarter-hour, she knew there was no escape. In Angels, the refined northern enclave of the city of Fernwall where the Guardian Paladins dwelt, lace could be every bit as confining as iron bars, and as difficult to escape.

It occurred to her then, as she turned away from the windows, toward where fine Angström porcelain clinked delicate grace notes over muted and banal conversations, that she’d been spending too much time lately pacing the confines of an over-upholstered cage.

“My dear Carlisle, do please sit down. Your pacing could make a soul frantic.” The voice was that of her friend and patron, the elderly Lady Emilia Nielsen, the Countess of Remington. As Guardian Paladins sometimes did, she had addressed Angelique by the name of her baronial holding. It was their way of reminding one another that they held responsibilities that went far beyond personal gratification, Angel had learned. It was one of those little cultural affectations that was easy for outsiders to learn, though they’d never grasp the subtle nuances of its significance the way those raised within it instinctively did.

Conversations ceased, and the eyes of the half-dozen or so other ladies in the room turned in Angelique’s direction as one. She drew an even, steady breath, and rejoined Emilia and the other noble ladies in the room’s interior, where it was much cooler. She sat beside Emilia, whose gnarled old hands idly fondled a strand of prayer beads. The older woman had lost her vision decades ago after a series of strokes, though her sightlessness never seemed an impediment. It was said that their God, the Guardian Paladin, had granted her a special kind of inner sight in compensation, an exchange that had served her well in her declining years.

“I have no wish to make anyone frantic,” Angelique murmured apologetically, schooling herself once again to the role she was expected to play. And Vin-Nôrëan-born baroness is better than most, she reminded herself, taking up her accent along with the cup and saucer she’d abandoned, earlier. “The gardens here are lovely, Mercía. Such beauty has always caused me to feel restless, though I can hardly think why.”

Mercía Devon, Bonsall’s portly baroness, nodded her thanks for the compliment. “Our groundskeeper has been with the Devon family since my late mother-in-law was a child. Claims he’s lost more blood to the roses here than he lost in the War!”

The baronesses Anne Carter of Lansdowne, Patrice Vickery of Willston, and Georgiana Dawes of Grafton tittered obligingly at the old jest. They were near enough in age to Angelique, but as near as she could tell, had been reared in an unbelievably sheltered world. Many of the nobility were proud that they were raising children who had not had to taste of war’s privations. Carlisle’s brand new baroness had kept her opinions on the matter carefully to herself.

“Ladies, let us turn our minds back towards our discussions today,” Lady Beatrice Wilkinson-Foster, Countess of Liberaune, interrupted, thereby saving Angel the tedium of thinking up a clever reply. “We’ve just this last hour together before the exhibit opens to ensure our duties have been completed. Remington, have you been able to convince Fernwall’s police commissioner to release some of his blue-jackets, as additional security for Bishop-Florian Hall?”

“He has done what he can, Beatrice,” Emilia replied quietly, but firmly. “It is a little late to be concerned about such matters, now. You’d have been better served to listen to the advice you sought, and moved the Santí exhibit to a venue more easily secured. You can’t expect the commissioner to leave Merchants’ and Docktown completely unpatrolled to oblige you, now.”

Liberaune’s countess frowned disapprovingly, but though their titles matched, Emilia’s leadership in matter of both church and state meant she outranked almost everyone. “It’s as well, Emilia. The magical wards are supposed to be fool-proof. A thief could break in to look at the display, but I doubt he or she could successfully remove any of it.”

Not without magical help, anyway. Which isn’t hard to find, if one knows where to look. Did her imagination vanish with the assumption of her title? Angel didn’t snort aloud, and was rather proud of it. She sipped her tea, and listened closely.

“If you will forgive me, my lady Countess, perhaps Lady Angelique could speak to Sir Vincent about the matter.” The suggestion was offered by Lady Georgiana, Grafton’s heir. It prompted another round of nervous tittering, which was shushed abruptly by Lady Beatrice.

“Pray tell,” she drawled, in that acerbic way that made her juniors flush furiously, “what wisdom a convicted criminal who is serving his sentence in bond to the State could possibly have to offer, which highly paid experts in the field could not?”

Georgiana, still flushing, lifted her chin and answered. “My father has said that the best way to catch a thief is to use another,” she offered pertly. “Since Lady Angelique takes pains to be on speaking terms with him—”

So that’s why she raised his name, Angel thought wryly, handing her cup and saucer to her young attendant, her face a mask of pleasant neutrality. She’s snooping around for another gossipy tidbit which she can tear to bits later with the rest of that coterie of savages she calls ‘friends.’ But Lady Emilia had cut off what Georgiana was about to add.

“In strictest terms, Sir Vincent Sultaire was convicted on counts of extortion and blackmail, not thievery,"she told them, conveniently omitting that the charges of burglary and “unlawful entry of a domicile” had been dropped, Angel noted. “Whatever his crimes have been, he is atoning for them, and shall for the next seven years of his life. Justice has been done.”

“Urilian justice,” Lady Beatrice snorted, the words plainly leaving a sour taste behind.

“Ours is not to judge,” Emilia reminded her calmly, black opal beads clicking softly in her hands. “Neither legally, nor morally. Lady Angelique’s association—and friendship—with Sir Vincent no more than models the Lady’s teachings in this matter.”

“I still think a good horsewhipping would have served him better.” Lady Beatrice was from very old and honored Cascadian nobility, none of whom had taken kindly to having given up their hereditary rights of justice under the new constitution. Her words snapped, as whip-like as in tone as in subject.

Angelique shuddered. Unlike everyone present save perhaps Lady Beatrice herself, she well knew what such punishments looked like. “If that is a sample of the Paladin’s justice in your desmesnes, my dear lady countess, then I must be relieved that Urilia’s justice here in greater Fernwall is more forgiving. Such brutality is better left to the Confederation orcs, surely.”

Liberaune turned her unsparing gaze upon Carlisle’s young baroness. “Some of us know that such things may appear ‘brutal’ to less experienced eyes, but are in fact more compassionate when looked at in context of what is best for all,” she stated flatly, holding the younger woman’s gaze.

Afraid she’d been caught out, Angelique flushed hotly, and looked away. Was it yet another obscure nugget of Paladin cultural knowledge that she was supposed to know? Georgiana, Mercía, and Anne had gazes that bounced between Beatrice and Angelique so avidly that all three jumped when Lady Emilia’s voice broke into what had become an awkward silence.

“Be that as it may, Beatrice, even your father would not have applied the whip without first examining whether a whipping would appropriately address the crime,” she said pointedly. “Nor would you, and we both know it.”

Liberaune’s countess snorted once, but allowed herself to be mollified.

“But, not all of our peers have been so graced with wisdom, or compassion, and so the people revolted, and we have Urilian justice now,” Remington went on to remind her. “In the instance of Sir Vincent, I am of Angelique’s mind where the dispensation of justice is concerned. If she errs on the side of gentleness, well, we all know the reasons for it. And perhaps, in this post-war land of ours, she will have the right of it, after all. Now, shall we continue our serious discussions about the last of the preparations for tonight?” Her question was rhetorical, and her blind old eyes had not even once flicked in the direction of the younger ladies, but all three knew they’d been censured for unwarranted frivolity, and held their silence.

The rest of the hour passed rather quickly, and with the “last hour” discussions laid aside, Angel judged it appropriate to rise and return to the sunlit windows, and her contemplation of Bonsall’s gardens. Her companions of the afternoon would decide she needed time to calm herself, after her confrontation with Lady Beatrice, and they were right, as far as they knew.

It was not long before Georgiana and Mercía joined her at the window. The former was carrying a fresh cup of tea, which she offered to Carlisle’s baroness with the air of one who was offering an apology.

“I think you were very brave, earlier,” Georgiana said, as Angel smiled and accepted the tea. “And very eloquent in Sir Vincent’s defense.”

“It was quite remarkable,” Mercía rushed to add. Angelique found the baroness of Bonsall to be a silly creature, but doubted there was any real malice in her. “But then, you must live the Lady’s words every day, and recite them as your prayers every night! How do you abide the company of that young rakehell, Vincent Sultaire? Your virtue is at risk with each moment you spend in his company! Are you not …afraid…?”

Angelique’s response was automatic by this time, and sounded very natural even to her. “Afraid of what, my lady? Sir Vincent claims he desires my company, and is willing to abide by my terms for it. As such, he dares not insult me in any way, or I shall reject his company. He knows this.”

Mercía glanced nervously at where the two older countesses were speaking quietly together with Lady Anne. “I have never heard that the young lord forebore effrontery for any reason. Your virtue is at risk with each moment you spend in his company. My lord husband has forbidden his presence here, and anywhere near my younger sisters while they’re with us. I’ve also heard,” she whispered, with another nervous glance toward the corner, “that he’s considering apostasy—to the Urilian church!”

Angelique did not roll her eyes, but it was an effort for her. This was yet another familiar embellishment in the rigidly structured social lexicon they used. “Apostasy to the Urilian church” translated to “damned to everlasting torment.” Proper ladies of the Guardian Paladin were not supposed to judge such things, of course, but it didn’t seem to stop them from gossiping about it. She maintained her customary reserve as she sipped her tea, and thought about how best to answer.

Toss the bitches a bone; they’ll leave you alone, she reminded herself, and pursed her lips briefly in preamble ot her reply.

“He has entertained the notion,” she admitted, taking covert pleasure in the horrified expressions her words evoked. “And discarded it, after he brought it to me for examination. It isn’t Urilia he wants, my ladies. It is forgiveness.”

Whether it was that which shut them up, or the quiet approach of Lady Emilia on the arm of her maid, Angel would never know.

“Mercy. Compassion. Forgiveness.” Her dry, husky chortle went on quietly for a moment, while the other ladies attended respectfully.

“Angelique, you are either very brave, or a fool. In truth I know not which. But if young Vincent Sultaire can be redeemed by anyone, it will be by someone with fortitude enough to forgive him all that he does, and yet remain somewhat detached from his charms in the doing of it. Lady bless you and help you, child. You will need it.”

“‘…virtue is at risk with each moment you spend in his company,”’ Angelique repeated, mimicking the horrified gestures of the Baroness of Bonsall. “‘I’ve heard that he’s considering apostasy–to the Urilian church!’ I swear, Raven,” she went on in her own voice, using her companion’s more notorious street name like an endearment. “She tossed that into the room like she’d toss a bone to a pack of wild dogs.”

The muted sounds of the horse’s steel shod hooves clopping on the cobblestone street, and the squeaking of the rented carriage kept the young couple company. Vincent Sultaire watched his lovely Angelique raptly, his steel blue eyes glittering with suppressed mirth.

She placed her hands demurely in her lap, and resumed her own, overly-correct Vin-Nôrëan accent. “‘He has entertained the notion,”’ she continued, playing her own part to the hilt, “‘And discarded it, after he brought it to me for examination. It isn’t Urilia he wants, my ladies all.”’ After an appropriately dramatic pause she delivered the conclusion with the finesse of a seasoned story-teller.

“‘It is forgiveness.”’

The young lord stared at her for several heartbeats, then collapsed in gales of helpless laughter. “Forgiveness?” he gasped, howling with glee. “Oh, by all the gods and goddesses! Forgiveness?” It was hard to say which was more amusing, the ignorant self-righteousness of the ladies at tea, or the sight of the infamous Raven, incapacitated by the idiocy of it all.

Finally, he got himself back under control.

“Oh, burning bright, that was rich. Forgiveness indeed,” he sputtered. “That was very good.” If all too true, he thought quietly to himself.

She bowed slightly from the waist, no mean feat considering the restrictive nature of noble ladies’ fashions. The pendant she wore about her neck, an etched silver replica of a long sword’s sheath, thumped softly against the fabric of her blouse as she settled back. It glittered with peridot and amethyst, stones appropriate to her rank as a baronial land-holder. Its companion sword would have been around the neck of the husband she’d buried several years previous, in Vin-Nôrë.

With a rueful grimace, she removed the necklace and stuffed it into a skirt pocket. Vin-Nôrë was the last place she wanted to think about.

“Why, thank you, darling. Those teas would be tedious indeed, if I had no way at all to amuse myself, during. And,” she went on, delighting in the play of sunlight in his dark hair, “if I didn’t know you would be there to rescue me, afterward.”

He moved across the carriage to sit beside her, nimble fingers at the tiny buttons of her neckline, and then scalding the flesh of her throat. “Ah,” he breathed, his hands caressing the pale, supple skin between her breasts. “For you, the moons, burning bright,” he breathed into her lips. His hands caressed their way to her cheeks. “Or Commissioner Roland. But I don’t think you’d want him.” He wrinkled his nose.

“And what,” she kissed him, trusting the anonymity of the carriage for the moment, “does your parole officer have to do with this?” The City State neither imprisoned nor jailed offenders. It sold them into slavery for the term of their sentence. Technically, Vincent was a slave, bound in service to the State by Police Commissioner Hal Roland, who had purchased his bond. For the remainder of it, the young lord would serve his term under Roland’s thumb, an outcome many, like Beatrice Wilkinson-Foster, regarded as outrageous privilege.

Angelique didn’t want to think about that, either. Just then, Raven’s sensitive hands were on her bared skin, and he was clearly enjoying the “impertinence” as much as she. “More than the moons,” he grinned impishly. “It’s usually his carcass that has to be moved for me to rescue you.” He kissed her again. “This isn’t the kind of investigation that he finds stimulating.”

Her answering chuckle was soft. “No doubt he finds supervising the infamous Raven stimulation enough, these days. No one envies our police commissioner that, so far as I have heard.”

“Ever the black sheep,” he sighed tragically. Unfortunately, there was more truth in the statement than anyone wished to face—including Sultaire himself. Instead, he turned his attention to the lovely female before him. She was an interesting study, a pleasant facade which gave no hint of the intricate depths beneath. Thick, ashen-blonde hair piled loosely into a proper and stylish coiffure atop her head, framing deep-set hazel eyes, high, delicate cheekbones, and mobile, expressive lips. Angelique’s build was slender, willowy, markedly patrician even if it did not bespeak a typical Sylantian heritage. It seemed he never tired of looking at her—and he had been looking at her for nearly two years.

Yet within… within that prim, socially-correct exterior beat the heart of a woman of tremendous wit, passion, and sparkling-dry humor. It had taken him nearly six months to get underneath the mask she so expertly wore, and another few to earn enough of her confidence to tease out the hints of the real woman that lived just beneath. Her mind was quick, facile, and grasped new ideas with ease. She kept him thinking, guessing, laughing, always wondering; a glittering, changeable jewel wrapped in soft, fragrant velvet. Once she’d decided to trust him with her secret heart, she’d begun to confide in him, and he’d never since ceased to delight in her double-life: Baroness Angelique Blakesly of Carlisle for the public; for him, his Angel-fire, burning bright, tender, inexhaustible lover, wanton slut…

The thought caught him unaware. ‘Wanton slut’? The term was loaded with imprecations, laid upon it by both his church and, more influentially and forcefully, by his father. Farmers were stupid peasants; craftsmen illiterate tradesmen; Urilian judges arrogant whores; and of course, any woman with a healthy sex drive was a wanton slut. It was the undercurrent that ran through him, and caught him unawares: his father’s diatribes about a world he couldn’t control any better than his trouble-making youngest son. Rebellion against it had ignited Vincent’s burning desire for freedom—freedom from his father’s abusive tirades, from the manor, and from the religion of his caste. It wasn’t his church, he’d never felt comfortable or accepted there. It was the church of his hated family, and of the social mores they promulgated. It took what few wanted to give, commanded what few wished to obey, and denied what many passionately desired. Many women, he knew, refused to be stigmatized, and wore the label like a badge of honor. Were it not for her responsibilities to her barony and within that church, Angel could have been one: a proud Wanton Slut…

He looked deeply into her eyes, hazel eyes that seemed to turn sea-green, even as he watched. Almost idly, he reached up and loosed her hair, ignoring her mild protestation. It tumbled about her shoulders in a silken mass to frame her lovely face.

“It is always the black sheep, I am told, who make the very best lovers,” she murmured in response, lips twitching at the corners. One thumb stroked his clean jawline softly even while her other fingers wound their way into the soft, dark hair at his collar.

“A myth,” he whispered, occupied with fluffing out her hair. He firmly believed that the only reason in the world for women to do themselves up with such complexity, to invoke such passion with their beauty, was so that they and their lovers could have the joy of undoing them. “The best lovers are the ones who have a true passion for the fine arts of sex and seduction. And in that august world, you, burning bright, hold no seconds.”

He saw his words soar deeply into her, and hit the center of her heart with uncanny accuracy. In the next moment, she was writhing like living flame in his arms, lips pressed to his, mouth open and sweet. It was like that with her, almost every time. Her natural reserve and quiet, demure countenance became ignited by one word, or perhaps a look, into a bonfire. From the very center of the conflagration emerged the wanton, alive and seething against him, setting his own barely-banked fires aflame.

He met her there, heart to heart, passion to passion, his lust blossoming with hers. Twining her long hair around his hands, he drank her in, losing himself in the kiss, in the smell of her hours-old perfume, now perfectly blended with her natural scent. It took only moments for him to be completely intoxicated.

Before either of them sank too deeply into the other, the carriage slowed, then negotiated the hard-angled turn onto Queen’s Street, where the Raven kept his tiny flat. Angelique stiffened, straightened, and pushed herself free of his arms even while her lips refused to relinquish his.

“I may indeed,” she began between kisses, “be the woman taken in adultery… but it would not do… to be seen like that… in public.” Pulling free of him with a breathless laugh, she retreated to the other seat and began twisting up her hair, eyes shining with excitement.

Vincent watched her hungrily as she hurriedly made herself ‘presentable.’ She beat the coach’s roll to a stop by scant seconds, smiling triumphantly. He chuckled at her, then opened the door and handed her out. The red brick building looked much like those on either side of it, three stories of apartments, complete with window boxes and a wrought iron railing at the steps. Not a typical domicile for a baron’s younger son, but all that the Raven, convicted criminal and indentured police officer, was permitted during his servitude.

“Unimposing pile, isn’t it, Baroness?” he drawled, flipping a coin to the coachman.

She smiling fondly at him as he ushered her to the front door. Raven always kept the truth of his thoughts masked by a witty remark, his passion checked—or perhaps merely deflected—by clever repartee. He had his masks, and many layers of being, most of which he never bothered to recognize. He was a rakehell playboy and a reformed criminal, a con man and—lately—a “cop” who figured every angle; but also within him lurked a tender, gallant lover whom she named aloud only in private. It he who incited her passions with ease, and then fanned them into explosion over and over again. He was the one to whom she’d clung afterward, when they cradled each other through the aftershocks of lust and orgasm.

Angelique loved him with an intensity that sometimes frightened her. She was almost certain he knew. “What is it the sailors say? ‘Any port in a storm?”’

“They say other things, too,” he chuckled over the sounds of the retreating coach. “Like how dangerous most ports are to enter in a storm.”

With a shrug at her quick laughter, he swung open the door and let her through, then bounded ahead of her up the stairs to unlock the door to his flat. She ascended at a much more dignified pace. Once again, he ushered her through before him.

“Ah, perfect!” he exclaimed, pointing at the bottle of wine already set to chill. He kicked the door shut, threw his jacket over the back of a leather-upholstered chair and headed for the cooling wine. “I told the old biddy to have one set out for me about noon. She actually remembered. I think I’m in shock.”

Angelique snickered, touched his arm fondly, then moved through the small, quaintly furnished room to lay her purse on the low table. The fabric at the back of the divan had faded from exposure to sun, the rug beneath her booted feet was old and somewhat worn from use. An air of carefully aged, fragile gentility pervaded the room. She thought it actually had a great deal of charm, and knew that her fondness for its inhabitant had colored her perceptions a bit.

The cork came out with a pop. He handed her a long-stemmed glass. “I hope you don’t mind a bit of ceremony. I have neither seen you nor bedded you in thirty six hours—almost,” he amended, noting the time on his small mantel clock.

“Raven! I’m touched,” she drawled, accepting the glass with one of those graciously lofty nods—the same one she’d once used to distance herself from him when they’d first met. This time, however, she relented almost at once, expression relaxing into one of relief and gratitude. “Ah, but I’ve missed you.”

The roguishness melted off his features like rain, and he was next to her before the storm that took them had passed. “Oh, burning bright, I’ve missed you, too. Your flame burns away the darkness, and for a while I almost believe I can see.” Myself, he wanted to add, but didn’t.

The dark cloud had arisen unbidden, and was as quickly dismissed. His lover, however, was unconscionably perceptive.

“‘See…?’ See what, Mar’leven?” It was the word for ‘raven’ in D’wanese, her native tongue, and she reserved its use for the intimate moments between them. It demarked the third side of Raven’s personality, the one he so rarely showed, and then only in private.

He shook his head slightly. “Dark thoughts,” he murmured, dipping a finger into his wine and caressing her lips with it, mesmerized as they parted, sucking his finger tantalizingly. He withdrew it slowly, then licked the wine from her lips. “Not for afternoons stolen for moments of pleasure.”

Angel wanted to ask, but instead accepted his words without demur. Raven had his secrets, and a deep-running instinct told her that she probably didn’t need, or want, to know them. She was quite certain he didn’t need to know hers, not while he was indentured to Fernwall’s law enforcement department, anyway. It was enough, more than enough, to take what hours they could together.

“Had you plans for dinner this evening?” she asked instead.

“Yes,” he murmured, his lips still brushing hers. He led them to the divan, where they could sit comfortably together. “You. Or are you otherwise engaged?”

Her delighted laughter answered him, soft and low. “Not until nineteen, or so. The Arts Exchange Conference wraps up its exhibit tonight. There is a dinner party afterward. Given that I am on that committee, I must attend. Until then, my love… I am all yours.”

“Promises,” he murmured accusingly, again releasing her wondrous hair from its pins. “You’ve been telling me you were mine since last winter.” He kissed her again, expertly parting her lips with his tongue, kissing her in that way which promised much more than an afternoon’s delights could fulfill.

But she laughed in spite of herself, pulling away from him just enough catch his gaze. Hers, he noted, was as green and restless as the sea.

“And like the woman scorned,” Angel finally managed, around burbling mirth, “here I yet sit, unmarried despite all my shameless offers.”

He chuckled mockingly. “Ah, but my lady, you are of the greater station. It would be improper for me to presume.”

After a moment’s shocked disbelief, Angelique laughed out loud, a light, ironic laugh that went on for some time. “Presume, Raven? You presume as easily as other men draw breath!”

He looked at her, his face a perfect mask of boyish innocence. “You injure me, my lady!” he said with a perfectly straight face.

“No,” she corrected, the lights in her eyes dancing. “I know you.”

He looked positively crestfallen, like the boy whose wagon was hopelessly, tragically, broken. “Ah, well,” he sighed, hands almost idly unbuttoning her blouse again. “I guess all that leaves is sex.”

“I was beginning to believe you’d forgotten how,” she murmured, tugging at the knot on his impeccably tied cravat. How rich, the irony of it: Raven wouldn’t ask her to marry him because of her rank. It was completely true, yet it was not all of the truth. As an excuse, it would do, and they both knew it.

What they both did not know was that she could not have married him, either.

His long, deft fingers slowly released each and every tiny pearl button on her blouse, until her corset and chemise were revealed. “Ah,” he breathed at last, standing with facile grace to assist her to her feet, all traces of his feigned tragedy gone. High fashion for the ruling class did a competent job of disguising most of a woman’s charms. Layers and layers of fabric interceded between the eyes without and the skin underneath. But, for all the intricacy of fabric, ribbon, lace, buttons, and bows, he found they held not a candle to the loveliness of the treasure hidden within.

A flush of pleasure coursed through him when, the corset gone, Angel drew her first free breath; a sleeping princess, freed from her torpid tomb. A bird spreading her wings in first flight. Passion released. The sudden, aching lift of her ribcage, nipples crinkled, creamy skin coloring from forehead to shoulders, and the sinuous, sybaritic stretch signified liberty, a kind of freedom from the constraints of a society she lived in, but was not of. Lady Blakesly, he had been delighted to note, had already adopted a gartered arrangement to hold up her stockings. Pantaloons were now for virgin maids and older women, of which Angel was neither. He stepped back to admire her, then coaxed her back down onto the cushions of the sofa, and began massaging muscles held motionless for hours by clothing, and the somewhat sedentary demands of her station.

Rivers of knotted tension flowed from her freely under his sensitive, clever hands. Angel, he’d noticed on several occasions, suffered from a single disadvantage where the corset was concerned. She was an active woman and toned muscles complained when forced into motionlessness for protracted periods; thus, his ministrations to her abdomen and chest were both therapeutic and arousing.

As he finished kneading the tight muscles of her back and assisted her to roll over, her small, pink nipples were taut with building desire. He answered their mute pleas with his lips, licking each pert nipple even as she arched her back to meet him. Then he claimed her mouth again, slowly, passionately, fully in the grip of his desires. “Beautiful, as always,” he murmured into her half-open mouth.

“Mar’leven,” she whispered, the name tingling on her lips. “Thirty-six hours—almost—is too long. By far.” It was her turn to unfasten, unbutton, and tug at the clothing she could reach, hands trembling; but men’s fashions were as restrictive as their feminine counterparts’, and from where she lay she could not quite reach them all. Waist-coat, vest, suspenders, double-starched shirt, undershirt…  At last, his smooth chest stood exposed to fingers that traced across his skin, trailing arousal in their wake.

His eyes closed, and he shivered slightly. Thirty-six hours. Too long indeed. Wordlessly, he lay across her, the bared skin of their upper bodies touching, her small, firm breasts pressing delightfully against him.

The kiss that followed, cuddled closely there on his divan, was long and languorous. Despite the urgency, there was no real hurry, no rush to satiation. Each knew the other’s body well, understood what fed the fires, and what sustained them. What had passed before was as tinder and kindling to the ultimate blazing glory to come.

Once again Raven took control of her, and put at risk all the things she hadn’t had the courage to tell him. His hands and mouth drew forth more than the honeyed fluids of her body, and excited her to more than mere orgasm. In a surfeit of passion, Angel ached to hurl the truth of her heart at his feet, to release herself from deception and guilt as easily as he released her from the sweet agony of desire. In quieter moments, she often wondered if he knew just how close he was to baring her completely, or if he would care. Or, if he would hate her, afterwards…

Fortunately, the ache passed, as did the need for thought. He was a running river of erotic energy, one that drew ever more from its source; as she poured herself forth to meet him, she became blissfully lost in the torrent. Again and again, he pressed her to that quivering edge, her body shimmering expectantly around his shaft as she danced at the lip of the abyss, only to back away in the heartbeat before the plunge. Breath by breath, he reveled with her in exchanged ecstasy, until every other thing in the world disappeared, and all that was left was their shared passion, and its spectacular release.

They clung together in the aftermath, he whispering her name, and finding the taste of it sweet in his mouth; she, hearing that name, was suffused in a kind of joy she’d never known before.

“Mar’leven,” she whispered finally. turning in his arms to kiss her own fragrance from his face. It was something to focus upon, like his hand at her cheek, or his lips touching hers. He kissed her again, and the world once more narrowed to shut out everything but what was in the sphere of their shared heartbeat. Angel felt herself alive again, vibrantly alive after thirty-six hours of living death.

“How you set my heart afire,” Raven was saying—when had he broken that kiss? “The passion burning beneath that proper exterior… I can hardly believe…”

Words seemed to fail him. For but a moment, they did for her, too. There was too much, it seemed, she might say to that. Things like, I’m not really who you think I am, or There are things I haven’t told you, things that, once said, could never be unsaid. Things that were much, much too late to say.

Instead, she summoned up a helplessly tender smile. Just barely in time, she summoned up the accent that should accompany the words. “Then it would seem, darling man, that I am not the one to redeem you, after all.”

His look became puzzled, and his caresses paused. “Angel?” he said softly, questioningly.

“It was what Lady Emilia told us all earlier, just before she removed you as a topic of conversation at tea today.” Her fingers traced the outline of his lips, fighting down her own flickering smile. “She said that if you could be redeemed by anyone, it would be someone with the capacity to forgive you anything, and yet remain free of your ‘charms’,” she chortled, indicating the euphemism in the inflection, “in the doing of it. Though I’m sure I could meet the first condition, it’s regrettably obvious that I’m completely lacking in character for the latter.”

He chuckled softly. “Ah, but burning bright, are you familiar with the Urilian form of baptism?”

She feigned Lady Mercía’s actively horrified expression from earlier that afternoon. “Certainly not! I mean, really!” Expressions changing like quicksilver, she grinned and asked, “Are you?”

He waggled an eyebrow. “So how, my Angel, do you know you have not just become my salvation?”

“Your Urilian salvation?” She stifled a moment of laughter. “An unlikely position for a proper lady of the Guardian Paladin to find herself, wouldn’t you say?”

“About as unlikely as finding a proper lady of the Guardian Paladin here in bed with me,” he agreed, his naughty grin fading into a kind of wistfulness that made him seem much more vulnerable. “Ah, burning bright. Thirty six hours is too long.” He pulled her to him again, and cradled her close.

“By far,” she agreed, kissing him with all her heart.

He shuddered from the tips of his toes to the ends of his hair. Many were the women the Raven had wined, and dined, and then bedded. Many more were the women he had simply seduced for the sheer animalistic pleasure it brought. None had ever regretted it—though admittedly there a good many fathers who didn’t share their daughters’ views of the matter. But this woman… to be inside her, to move with her, to feel her whole being shudder in pleasure… the sense of merging he felt when with her was so far outside his experience that it bore little resemblance to anything he thought he knew.

For an immeasurable time he held her there, eyes closed, breathing softly, her delicate hand lightly caressing the hairs on his chest. Unbidden tears welled in his eyes. Something far down in the hidden depths of his immortal soul shifted ever so slightly. The irrepressible rakehell of Fernwall gave in to what he already knew, but couldn’t admit. He’d fallen in love.

Silently those unbidden tears wound their way down his cheeks.

 

Baptism complete.