Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Cassandra Stuart was beautiful, and she knew it. She could manipulate others, and she knew that, too. If she could just make him turn around and look back at her…

      “Jon! Jon!”

      She knew that he’d heard her, but he didn’t stop. He was really furious with her this time. As she watched, he continued down the gravel path that led to the loch. Maybe she had overplayed it this time, but she didn’t want to be here in the back of beyond, in this godforsaken, remote patch of Scotland. Despite his famous guests, despite his famous charity game. They were his guests; it was his game. She hated the country; she wanted to be in London.

      But she knew her husband, knew what he was thinking now. He’d known the day would go badly, that she would be rude and impatient and ruin it for them all. But damn him, he still wouldn’t give it up! He’d hosted this event every year for the past decade. He’d made his plans; he had a life to live. The week was already underway. Besides, no matter how damned marvelous his wife might be, he’d told her—sounding awfully damned sarcastic—he would be damned if a woman was going to lead him around by the nose. Any woman.

      “Jon!”

      She knew that he didn’t want to look back, didn’t want to see her.

      Because he knew what she was planning. And he had planned ahead himself. He wasn’t going to let her play him, wasn’t going to let her manipulate him the way she intended to.

      She meant to leave. Today. It was the last disruption she had up her sleeve. She hoped her departure would get through to him the way her pouting and petulance had not.

      But she wanted him to come back to her first; she wanted to make love, to be passionate and exciting, to remind him that he couldn’t exist without her. She would tell him that she needed him, remind him why he had married her. She could make him happy, could make him laugh, and she was damned good in bed, even if she had just taken a lover because she couldn’t bear the look in Jon’s eyes sometimes, knowing that he might on occasion be thinking of someone else. Come back! she thought furiously. Let me seduce you just one last time so you don’t forget, so maybe…

      She would wait until he had slipped away, and then she would pack, leaving behind a letter addressed to “My Dearest Darling,” explaining that she would be at the London Hilton, waiting for him when he could escape his dreary associates. And maybe, just maybe, he would come. He could be such a fool! She knew so much more about his guests and household than he did! Who was sleeping with whom. And why. Actually, she thought, and almost smiled, she knew a number of them very well. Intimately, one might say.

      And still there was such a wretched hole of jealousy in her heart.

      “Jon! Come back!” she called again. She experienced a strange new fear beyond the sense of powerlessness and loss she had been feeling so much lately. “Jon! Please come back! Or I’ll make you pay!”

      Her voice was both provocative and irritated. But he was still walking. So tall, hair so dark, shoulders broad and muscled. He was a beautiful man, and she was losing him.

      Panic seized her. He had guessed she was having an affair with someone here. Did he know that she was trying to goad him, get even with him? Because she was certain he was having an affair, as well.

      “Jon! Jon, damn you!”

      Her tone was growing more petulant. She stood on the master bedroom’s second-floor balcony, overlooking the rear courtyard. The rooms had been handsomely enough appointed, “remodeled” at the end of the seventeenth century and modernized by Jon himself just a few years ago. The balcony was a sweeping, curved affair that boasted views of three corners of the property. Here, in the rear, it looked over an elegant fountain with a priceless marble Poseidon, complete with trident, as its centerpiece. Despite the fact that winter was rapidly approaching, roses still bloomed around the tiled path that encircled the fountain. The path turned to gravel as it passed through the rose arbor and headed toward the loch. In the master chambers themselves, the walls were covered with antique tapestries, and there was a massive fireplace, as well as a state-of-the-art hot-water heating system with generator backup. A four-poster king-size bed sat on a dais, and one level down from the main section of the bedroom, just beyond a medieval archway, was a huge whirlpool bath and sauna. She had a huge dressing room and closet, as did he.

      “What’s not to like?” Jon had asked her impatiently, offended.

      The decor was fine. She just hated the country. No excitement, no sense of life. It wasn’t London, Paris, New York or even Edinburgh, for God’s sake.

      That was exactly why he liked it so much, he’d told her.

      He was walking away. Still walking away.

      She was amazed to feel tears stinging her eyes. How could he care more about this pile