.

as he removed his hand before taking a step back, uncaring as the other man lost his balance and almost fell to his knees as he dropped those several inches back down to the floor. ‘I advise that you stay away from Mariah in future, if you know what is good for you.’

      Richard Nichols had his hand raised to his bruised throat, his expression one of belligerent irritation. ‘You only had to say no, old chap. There’s no need for—for such violence. There is plenty to go round—’ He broke off as he obviously saw the savagery of Darian’s expression. ‘I— Well— Yes. I think I will go and rejoin my other guests down the stairs.’

      At any other time Mariah might have found amusement in seeing the indignity of the obnoxious Richard Nichols scuttling hastily down the hallway before quickly turning the corner and disappearing in the direction of the staircase.

      Here and now, the older man having stood witness to the heated lovemaking between Mariah and Darian—and who knew how long he had stood observing the two of them before he spoke up!—Mariah was too upset to be able to find any amusement in the situation.

      Instead, she felt humiliated and sickened, the pleasure of that lovemaking becoming as degrading as the rest of this evening’s events had been. She shuddered just thinking of Richard Nichols having lasciviously watched as Darian suckled and pleasured her breasts. Having heard her gasps and moans as the heat coursed through her body. It was— Her gaze sharpened on Wolfingham as she realised he had made no move since he had stepped back after releasing Nichols, those icy green eyes now narrowed in concentrated thought. ‘What is it, Darian?’ she prompted abruptly.

      He drew in a deep breath before answering her distractedly. ‘What was Nichols doing wandering about up here in the first place when the entertainment is downstairs?’

      She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Perhaps he came to collect something?’

      ‘Or perhaps he came up here for another reason entirely!’ Darian rasped as he turned and strode determinedly down the hallway towards her, collecting up the candle and taking a firm grasp of her arm before continuing on his way to their bedchambers.

      ‘Darian?’ Mariah was totally at a loss to know what was bothering him as he stepped aside and waited for her to enter her bedchamber ahead of him, before following her inside and closing the door firmly behind him. Because something most assuredly was.

      For herself, she could imagine nothing more humiliating than the two of them, their lovemaking, now being the amusing topic of conversation down the stairs, when no doubt Richard Nichols would skip over his cowardly response to Wolfingham’s violent reaction, but enlarge and embellish what he had observed, for the lascivious pleasure of his listeners. It was—

      ‘What are you doing?’ She frowned as she watched Darian now moving about her bedchamber, lighting several more candles before he commenced prowling about the room. His expression was grim as he moved several paintings aside before moving on to examine the four-poster bed, stepping up on to the pink bedspread to examine the top and back of it. ‘Darian?’

      Angry colour stood out in the hardness of his cheeks when he finally stepped down from the bed, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘There are peepholes, through several of the paintings and the frame at the back of the bed, all neatly disguised so that none would know if not aware of them, but there nonetheless.’

      ‘Peepholes?’ Mariah repeated uncomprehendingly.

      ‘You had no idea they were there?’

      ‘I—’ She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘I do not even know what they are.’

      He grimaced. ‘No doubt Nichols came up the stairs just now to check on which bedchamber we had gone into, yours or my own. His intention then being to go back down the stairs and invite his guests to come up here and observe the two of us together through those peepholes, no doubt accessed through a shallow passage between the walls.’

      Mariah dropped weakly down on to the side of the bed and felt all the colour leach from her cheeks as she took in the full import of what Darian was saying to her.

      A peep show. They were to have been nothing more than a—

      ‘It did not happen, Mariah,’ Darian soothed as he moved to sit on the bed beside her before taking her into his arms as she collapsed weakly against his chest; one look at the blank shock on Mariah’s deathly white face had been enough to tell him that this was the first she had known of those strategically placed peepholes in the walls of Lady Nichols’s bedchamber.

      He felt ashamed now for having harboured even the briefest of doubts that Mariah might have been a willing participant in the entertainment the Nichols had now intended providing for their guests.

      An understandable doubt, perhaps, in view of Mariah’s reputation, but Darian now felt a heady relief at realising, from her collapse against him, that if they had made love together she would have been as innocently unaware of the people watching as he was.

      A reputation Darian had already started to question earlier this evening and about which he now had serious doubts.

      She had been at deep pains in his carriage earlier to ensure that he understood that any show of intimacy between the two of them was for show only.

      The gown she wore this evening was positively virginal in comparison with the other ladies’ attire.

      Mariah had seemed relieved rather than disappointed when his glowering presence beside her had kept all other gentlemen at bay this evening.

      She had been as disgusted as he by the sexual play they had witnessed during dinner and since.

      Lastly, he would swear that her responses just now, to his kisses and the caress of his hands, lips and tongue, had been completely without guile or pretence.

      As had her dismay when she realised that Richard Nichols had been watching them.

      ‘It could have,’ she choked now. ‘It could have!’

      Mariah pulled out of Wolfingham’s arms before standing up abruptly, knowing, that if Richard Nichols had not played his hand too early, that she had been on the brink—the very brink!—of allowing her emotions to rule her head.

      She had wanted Darian Hunter to make love to her.

      She had hungered for it.

      Had been so lost to the pleasure of his hands and mouth, of wanting that pleasure to continue, that she had almost been on the point of begging him to make love to her!

      It was incomprehensible.

      Unbelievable.

       Unacceptable!

      She did not find pleasure in a man’s arms, in his closeness, in his lovemaking. She never had. She never would. How could she when the single memory of that act was of the violation of her body rather than pleasure?

      When Martin Beecham, the man who had later become her husband, had forced himself upon her shortly before her seventeenth birthday.

      A rape of her body and her soul of which Christina was the result, thus forcing Mariah into becoming Martin’s wife.

       Chapter Eight

      ‘What is it, Mariah?’ Darian questioned sharply as he stood up.

      He made no move to touch her again; Mariah now looked so fragile, in her emotions as well as her body, that he feared she might crumple and fall at his feet if he attempted to place so much as a finger upon her.

      ‘You can ask me that?’ she choked out incredulously, those turquoise eyes glittering brightly in the pallor of her face. ‘After learning that the two of us were to be nothing more than exhibits in the Nicholses’ peep show?’

      He grimaced. ‘Only if we had proceeded to make love together. Which we have not.’

      Mariah