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Philadelphia, PA

Spring, 1812

Grey couldn't keep his eyes off her. Philadelphian women were the cream of the Republic, but damn if this one didn't exceed all previous definitions. Curling wisps of hair escaped from her indigo bonnet and trailed down her graceful neck. He'd never seen hair that colour-like champagne shimmering in the moonlight.

She looked up, giving him his first full sight of her face. Sky blue eyes, full of aching, longing...and something else. Abject sadness. Haunting.

Something caught in his chest. Something reminiscent of pleurisy. Well, it wasn't surprising. Philadelphia air was notoriously insalubrious and the day was oppressively damp. He blinked, glancing away. Was he losing his wits? Haunting eyes? What romantic nonsense. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was getting a fever.

He glanced at his pocket watch. God, time was crawling. He'd arranged this series of lectures to entice potential investors, and last week in Boston had been most profitable. However, today, Mason's Bookstore was packed with adolescent boys who sat with their mouths agape listening to local captains recount tales of privateering glory. His own speech on how and why to invest in a voyage had been met with yawns and bobbing heads. What a waste of an afternoon.

Shifting in his seat, he sensed her gaze. Lingering. Burning him. Against his will, he turned back to her. Those eyes seemed to reach across the room, directly into him, to touch his emptiness.

What a fanciful notion. His wits must be addled.

She didn't drop her gaze, as a modest woman might. Instead, she appraised him, boldly weighing and measuring. A hint of her tongue flirted along the seam of her pink lips. Her eyes smouldered as if she'd read his every erotic longing and fantasy in his face.

He shifted again, trying to adjust for the heated blood rushing into his cock. The corners of her mouth turned up and humour glinted in her eyes. Clearly, she found his interest amusing. She found him amusing.

By God, then, I'll have her beneath me, writhing and begging me to fuck her.

Damned if he wouldn't.

The fervour of his thoughts shocked him back to his senses. People were talking and laughing and moving around. The lecture was over. He got up to leave, but he found himself standing at the windows, transfixed by the rain sheeting down.

"My goodness." The breathy, feminine voice hit him low in his gut and he didn't have to look to know who'd spoken. Something primal pounded through his blood. An urge to turn, grasp her by the back of her hair and kiss her with such brute force she would run.

Shaken, he took several long, deep breaths before he trusted himself enough to turn to her. He looked down to where her head barely met his shoulder and suddenly he was drowning in those azure eyes.

"It's so hard, isn't it?" she said in breathy, bedchamber tones.

"Pardon me, Madam?"

"The rain. It's coming down so hard today. Buckets and buckets full." Her voice sounded sincere but her eyes glimmered with mirth.

"Yes, it is." He kept his tone cool, polite.

She stood so close his arm almost touched her breast. So close her tangy, sweet gardenia-like scent became intoxicating.

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"You're going to have to behave."

His cool tone, with its undercurrent of tolerant amusement, made her bristle. She forced herself to relax and smile at him. Seductively. Dazzlingly.

Grey Sexton remained unmoved, his silver eyes distant, the skin over his angular cheekbones taut, his strong jaw jutting with as much arrogance as ever. Tension poured off him, making her own neck muscles tighten. She'd known him in many moods but never so completely unresponsive.

Silence fell between them. As the carriage clattered towards Third Street along the pebble stones , her stomach fluttered. What had happened to the uncontrollable passion that had always flared between them? For weeks he'd been so warm, so attentive, so affectionate, the way she'd only suspected he could be. That warm affection had melted the very last of her defences and made her fall utterly in love with him.

Now, his handsome, hard-boned features remained closed, controlled.

Like ice.

Like a stranger.

Maybe the attentive lover had been a façade on his part, designed to gain her trust and secure her commitment? Or maybe it was a dream she had conjured from her own imagination.

Maybe the man she had fallen in love with had disappeared forever. No, she couldn't accept that. She simply had to try to break through his icy exterior to the warmth beneath. Warmth she needed. She put her hand on his leg, whence he had so recently removed it, and traced her fingers over the fine, soft wool of his pantaloons. His powerful thigh muscles tensed. She glanced up.

His gaze was fixed on her moving hand, his pupils dilated and the skin taut over his cheekbones. How well she knew that expression. She smiled and laughed softly. What a ninny she was to worry. Nothing had changed. He would not be able to resist twice.

She reached the growing swell at his groin. Dear God, he was so huge and hard-as he was always. Heat flooded her veins and a tingling ache spread into her loins. She pressed her thighs tightly together.

His hand swept down and clamped hers. She caught her breath and a shiver raced through her, making her nipples pebble and her breasts swell. His hands were so large and strong, his skin so deeply tanned against hers. She couldn't glance at his hands without recalling how they felt, so sure and skilled on her body. Wetness flowed from her core. She crossed her legs more tightly, turned and leaned closer to him.

He lifted her hand away, not gently as just a moment earlier but with determination. At the terse gesture, her heart leapt into her throat. She glanced up at him. "Why?"

He kept his hand wrapped around her wrist, holding her hand to her thigh. "You're not listening to me."

Her spine stiffened. "Well, this is a chilly reception after a week's separation. A whole week without-"

A muscle twitched in his jaw. "I sent you a message, explaining why."

Her stomach began aching like the first indication that something she'd eaten had begun to sour. "Yes, and I am certain you put more warmth into your bank drafts."

He tapped his fingers on her hand. "Beth, I was preoccupied. I shall often be engaged with business matters. You shall have to accustom yourself."

A hot retort rushed to her tongue. She gritted her teeth to stop it. Yes, he was a man of business. He had important things to do, places to go and people to see. But surely he could have spared her an hour or two somewhere in those seven days to pen a decent lover's letter. She had ached for his company-she hated to admit how much. She ached right now for his hard body, pressing hers down on the plush velvet seat cushions. She ached even more for the reassurance of his lips on hers, his soft words in her ear.

Why must he deny them? What had changed? He'd said he was over the issue with the money. He'd said it that night before he'd left the shop. And now again this evening.

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Philadelphia, PA

August 1793

A quarter to two in the afternoon. With her stomach knotting, Emily Eliot tore her eyes from the clock. She'd have to hurry, else Grandmother would get a megrim over her being out for longer than it took to walk to the baker's and back. She hated making Grandmother ill.

Thud, thud, thud.

Emily's heart echoed the rhythm of the printing presses as she drew up her courage. She took a deep breath and approached the man who was leaning so lazily against the worn walnut desk.

"Good afternoon, Mr Sawyer. I'd like to discuss my book again."

He blinked several times, then grinned. He wasn't too old or too ugly, but his reptilian smile repulsed her to the very pit of her soul. "Now, sweeting, I have explained it repeatedly-if you'd only be a little more agreeable with me, I'd look a little more favourably on this book of yours."

Her mouth fell open. What-had he just made an improper suggestion? After she had so patiently explained the last time that she was uninterested in-in... Well, in what he was interested in? He'd seemed like such a rational person. Why must he be so insensitive? She gaped at him.

He peeled an orange with his ink-stained fingers, filling the air with a sharp citrus scent that mingled with the odours of paper dust and fresh ink. All the time he leered at her. Leered at her while she was here to see him on a matter of such importance.

Crawling sensations tingled over her skin and she resisted the urge to shiver openly. She still wasn't used to dealing with men on her own and certainly not men who regarded her so salaciously. But for the sake of her mission, she'd have to press on. She wiped her sweating, shaking hands on her skirts and took a step closer.

"Mr Sawyer, please don't tease me. You said I might return in two months and ask if you had changed your mind about printing my book."

He lifted his sandy brows as he paused with an orange segment held to his red, overripe lips. "I believe that what I said was for you to wait at least two months before coming to pester me again."

Pester him? Pester him? How could he suggest that her work was so insignificant? It was only the most pressing issue facing the United States at the moment. Her book was a collection of stories telling the tales of some of the mariners from the Dauphin, a ship out of Philadelphia that had been captured by the Barbary Pirates in 1785.

She'd had to wait so long already, for accomplishing this work had been no small feat under the watchful gaze of her grandmother. She owed a great debt to Mr Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, who had answered her very first enquiry and generously supplied the names and addresses of the mariners' relatives. Over the past two and a half years, through letters, she'd managed to interview the families of the captured men. She had also done detailed sketches of them, from their family's descriptions. But gathering the information like that had taken so much time. More time than she could have imagined when she'd embarked on her course.

Now it was taking every ounce of faith she possessed to persevere with trying to get her work distributed to the populace. All she lived for was getting her book printed, but she'd never imagined it would be like this. She'd been sure that the need for her work would ensure its rapid publication. Yet to her vast shock, she'd been rejected by every printer she'd contacted. "Well, Mr Sawyer, it is very hard to remain patient when I know that my book will bring a personal perspective that the people of the United States will no longer be able to ignore."

He stared back at her silently, blinking a few times. Had he even heard her? Didn't he know it was rude to refuse to answer? Goodness. Writing letters had been a lot easier than facing printers in their shops. She straightened her spine.

"Mr Sawyer, how could anyone with any human feeling remain passive while our countrymen are still held in Algiers, in shameful slavery?" She couldn't help letting some of her disapprobation leach into her tone. "It has been almost a decade and still our country refuses to act."

"Indeed, it is terrible business what those Barbary pirates have done, but our country is young and money is limited." He rolled his shoulders up and tilted his head to the side. Then he relaxed. "Without a navy and without large sums to pay their ransoms, I just don't see what more can be done."

He popped a piece of orange into his mouth and chewed it slowly.

She resisted the urge to shake her head. Initially, he had seemed like a kind person. How could he just stand there and say those things? Didn't he care about what his countrymen were going through? Apparently not. Unfortunately, in her experience, his apathy wasn't atypical. Her shoulders sagged. It was so hard to see what needed to be done so clearly and yet to have others be so blind and deaf to her message. But she couldn't give up.

Clearly she'd have to try harder.

"Please, Mr Sawyer, you must listen." The words rushed past her lips, their urgency pressing hard on her. She took a deep breath and made a concentrated effort to slow down. "The long-term lack of concern over this issue is what has allowed those men captured in eighty-four to be held for all these years. My book would really help people to see this issue in a more personal light. People need to see those men as fellow citizens, with families who love and need them-not just as names on a list."

"Young lady, I've told you repeatedly what I need. The public wants to read stories of captivity, torture, ravishment, a little allusion to sexual depravity...heaving bosoms." Mr Sawyer's gaze dropped to her bodice.