The effect of this was to wipe away all other thoughts from Davina's mind other than that he was the most arrogant bastard… 'Yes,' she said crisply. 'I'll stay.' And might just as well have said, So do your damnedest… He raised his eyes ceilingwards. 'I might have known!' 'And what might you have known, Mr Warwick?' she asked through her teeth.

'That all the foregoing was entirely unnecessary. Women,' he said scathingly, 'have to be the most entirely unstraightforward creatures-God alone knows why!'

Davina held on to her temper by the narrowest margin. 'Oh, I suspect,' she said sweetly, although her eyes were an icy violet, 'that it's what we have to put up with from men that does it. I mean to say, in the space of a couple of hours I've gone from being suspected of wanting to take my clothes off at the first opportunity to-'

He laughed. All of a sudden he relaxed, the tension went out of his broad shoulders and the furious impatience drained from his expression. 'I excelled myself there, I'm afraid,' he said wryly.

She could have hit him; she was visited by the most intense anger she'd ever experienced and to make matters worse that keen hazel gaze missed none of it-and Davina passed suddenly from rage to fear. I must be mad, she thought. This man… is dangerous. He incites altogether too much emotion in me even if it is rage and hatred. I should have said no…

'You still can, Mrs Hastings,' he murmured, and her eyes widened.

'D-do what?' she asked unsteadily, hoping and praying that he hadn't read her mind.

'Tell me to go to hell,' he said softly. 'In fact, I'm wondering why you didn't. Care to enlighten me?'

'Yes.' She attempted to pull herself together. 'I think I was hoping to prove something to you-'