Miss Moore was kept in a particularly heavy disguise: the loose dresses, the severe hairstyle. She must be an unusually attractive girl. So he had concluded when he had first cast assessing eyes on her the week before. And it seemed his host did not avail himself of her personal services. At least, Rutherford had been able to intercept none of those knowing glances that usually told him if a man's wife was being cheated in her very own house. The chances were that Miss Moore had passion just waiting to explode at the first invitation.

It was true that he had been unable to come any closer to her than half a room away during the past week. True too that he hardly knew the sound of her voice. And he did not know the color of her eyes. But then it was very understandable that Lady Barrie would not allow him any chance encounter with her daughter's governess when the daughter looked as she did. Who could blame a mother?

The door was finally shut behind him, and the book was finally on its shelf.

"Do you suffer from insomnia too, Miss Moore?" the Earl of Rutherford asked conversationally, moving a few steps into the room.

The governess whirled around, her eyes wide and startled. She grabbed for her shawl and fumbled with its folds before throwing it, bunched untidily, around her shoulders.

Dark eyes, Rutherford thought, though he was not close enough to know their color. He observed the blush that flooded into her face. And he noted with some interest that her breasts, unconfined beneath the linen of the nightgown, were firm and high. What on earth did she do with them beneath the gray dresses? Bind them?

He felt a distinct stirring of desire.

"Oh," she said. "My lord. I did not realize that anyone else was still awake."