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His eyes had darkened to black. “You’re exquisite.”

She walked away from him, enjoying the swing of her hip, the fact that she could hear him breathing quickly. Reaching up, she pulled pins from her hair until it fell in a Fool for Love

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gentle swoosh to her pantalettes. Then she sank backward onto the couch with an exquisite feeling of abandon. And held out her hand.

“Will you join me, my lord?”

He was there before she took a breath. He didn’t seem to appreciate her French lace, because he pulled it off until she was quite naked, curling her toes into the carpet. And then he just looked at her.

When he spoke, his voice made her jump. “I love you, Esme.” He pulled her forward, up and into his arms. In some part of her mind, the real Esme knew that her dream had taken a curve, a turn from the truth. Sebastian didn’t love her.

But the dream Esme said, “As much as I love you, Sebastian?”

He smoothed the long line of her hip and thigh so that their bodies clung together.

“What about Gina?” she asked, feverishly aware that Gina was her best friend and his fiancée.

“Gina is in love with her husband. She will dismiss me,”

he said, kissing her shoulder and drifting south. It was pure discovery for him, since Sebastian Bonnington had never understood the folly that leads to setting up a mistress, and had never met a woman who tempted him into foolish behavior. Until he met Esme, that is.

“You can’t . . .” She faltered. “You mustn’t . . .” The real Esme was trying very hard to remember what she had to tell him.

But he was licking an exuberant trail from her collarbone down . . . he was kneeling. And what he was doing with his mouth—

Her knees went to water, but collapsing on the couch seemed to be exactly what he wished.

“I’ve desired you from the moment I saw you. God, you 86 Eloisa

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are so beautiful, Esme. Every . . . every inch of you.” His voice was husky.

Her body trembled. Those hands had never touched another woman’s body, but they seemed to know exactly what to do. They stroked past her knees with a touch like wildfire.

“I have to tell you something,” she gasped.

“Not now,” he said, lowering his head again. Fire surged through her body, pleasure darting to her very fingertips.

“Seb—Sebastian.”

He didn’t even answer, and the dream Esme was utterly lost, curling forward to put her hands on his large body, to show him things he knew of but had never felt, heard of, but never experienced. Her breath was caught in her chest, unable to form itself into coherent words. But Esme herself, Esme Rawlings, widow of Miles Rawlings, was twisting and turning in her bed and it wasn’t from passion. She was caught in the dream, desperately trying to tell her dreaming self something—make her—

She woke up.

Woke up back in her body, not the lithe, sensual body that Sebastian Bonnington had been caressing, but her rotund, very pregnant self. Once again she had woken up before she could tell him.

A tear leaked down her cheek. She knew well enough why she kept dreaming about a certain evening last June, over and over and over again. Well, there were many reasons. One was that the child in her belly might well be the fruit of the night. The second was that the child might well not be Sebastian’s, because the following night she and her husband had shared a bed for the first time in years, precisely in hopes of creating an heir.

Her hands restlessly soothed her lump of a tummy. The child seemed to be asleep as well. No little bumps tumbled against the sides of her belly to make Esme feel less alone. It was so mortifying that while dreaming she always told Fool for Love

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Sebastian that she loved him, but she never told him to avoid her bedchamber the next night. She never managed to inform him that their affair must begin and end in that one night. Because Sebastian had come to her room the next night. Startled them awake and led her husband to think he was a thief. And when Miles jumped on the intruder, his heart had given out.

They were familiar tears. They were familiar as the taste of bread, these grieving, guilty tears.