But he had looked closely more than once at Katherine Huxtable.

She was more than ordinarily beautiful. There was also a very definite aura of countrified innocence-or naivete-about her. But an air of good breeding too. And there were those eyes of hers. He had never seen them from close up, but they had intrigued him nonetheless. He had found himself wondering what was behind them.

It was most unlike him to wonder any such thing. He was a man of surfaces when it came to other people and even when it came to himself. He was not in the habit of looking within.

Perhaps part of the lady’s appeal was the fact that she was Con Huxtable’s cousin and Con had made a point of not introducing her to him.

Now he was pledged to seduce her.

Full sexual intercourse.

Within the next fortnight.

Devil take it! Yes, that was it. That was the wager. That was what he had agreed to do.

It was a sobering thought-literally. He felt as he climbed into bed as if he had progressed straight from deep drunkenness to the nauseated, head-pounding aftermath.

One of these days he was going to renounce drinking.

And wagering.

And sowing wild oats, or whatever the devil it was he had been sowing for more years than he cared to count.

One day. Not yet, though-he was only twenty-five.

And he had a wager to win before he set about reforming his ways. He had never lost a wager.

2

KATHERINE Huxtable was one of the most fortunate of mortals, and she was well aware of that fact as she took a brisk morning walk in London’s Hyde Park with her sister Vanessa, Lady Lyngate.

Just a few short months ago she had been living in a modest cottage in the small village of Throckbridge in Shropshire with her eldest sister, Margaret, and their young brother, Stephen.