that the stuffy confines of the room could not stifle. Isabella found that she was instinctively backing away, though he made no move toward her. She took a deep breath and forced herself to hold her ground.
“No, I was not looking for you specifically,” she said, “but now that I have found you—” She paused. Could she come out with the proposal now? No, that was a little too blunt, even for her. Besides, there were things that she wished to know.
“More to the point,” she said, “what are you doing here, sir, under the name of John Ellis?”
She saw his dark gaze narrow on her acutely, and although his expression was blank a few seconds later, she read his feelings clearly enough. This mattered to him. He did not want her to give his true identity away and he would certainly have preferred that she had not stumbled across him in the Fleet of all places.
“Forgive me, but that is none of your business.” His tone was clipped.
“I think it might be.” Isabella took a step farther into the cell. There were a hundred and one doubts and reasons hammering in her mind, telling her that it was the worst possible idea in the world to petition Marcus Stockhaven to marry her. She ignored them. She had been offered a chance, the possibility of a bargain, and she was going to take it.
“I have a proposition for you, sir,” she said, once again careful not to address Stockhaven by name. “Help me and I will…help you. At the least, I will hold my tongue and tell no one that I have seen you.”
Marcus Stockhaven did not speak. There was a quality in his silence that intimidated her. She hurried on. “I do not suppose that anyone knows that you are here?”
Still he did not reply.
“I do not suppose that you wish anyone to know that you are here?” Isabella pursued.
This time she saw that her words had penetrated his silence. He gave an involuntary movement. Again that hard, dark gaze raked her. “Perhaps not.”
“The disgrace of the debtor’s prison—”
“Quite so,” he interrupted her. “Are you seeking to blackmail me, madam?” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “I regret I cannot pay.”
“I do not want your money,” Isabella said. “I need a favor.”
“A favor from me?” Stockhaven’s smile deepened. “You must be desperate indeed to even think of asking.”
“Perhaps so. As you must be to be here in the first place.”
Stockhaven acknowledged the hit with an inclination of the head. “So? In what way may we be…mutually…helpful?”
There was an element in his tone that brought color to Isabella’s cheeks. There had always been something about this man that cut straight through her defenses and made them as thin as parchment. She felt astonishingly vulnerable, deeply disturbed by his presence and the memories he stirred. She sought to disguise her nervousness.
She looked around the filthy cell, from the water seeping through the walls to the bare mattress boasting a single dirty blanket.
“In return for a favor from you, I will not only hold my tongue but I am prepared to make your stay here more comfortable,” she said. “A room of your own, clean linen, good food and wine—” she looked at the book he had placed on the table “—more books to read…”
Isabella saw his gaze narrow on her thoughtfully. She took a step closer to him in silent appeal. For a moment Marcus Stockhaven was silent. She could feel herself trembling as she waited for his response.
“How generous,” he said. “So what is it that you want?” His tone was even but his dark eyes were very cold.
Isabella took a deep breath. For a moment she was poised on the brink and then there was no return.
“I want you to marry me,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS DOWNRIGHT OUTRAGEOUS.
Marcus John Ellis, seventh Earl of Stockhaven, had been waiting for an opportunity like this for twelve long years. He had not expected it to present itself in the Fleet Prison.
Marcus was accustomed to dealing with the unforeseen. Eight years spent in His Majesty’s Navy before unexpectedly coming into a distant cousin’s earldom had given him a wide and colorful experience of life. This, however, was something that he could never have anticipated. It was ironic, amusing, extraordinary. And it should have been out of the question, of course. But it was also remarkably tempting.
“You are twelve years too late, my love,” he said sardonically, and watched the color rush into Isabella’s cheeks at his casually cruel use of the endearment that had once meant so much.
“The church was booked, the bridegroom in attendance, the only thing that was missing was the bride—if you recall.”
He watched her thoughtfully. She looked almost the same and yet heartbreakingly different from the debutante of seventeen who had jilted him at the altar. In the dank confines of the prison, she seemed hopelessly out of place. It made no odds that she had taken steps to disguise her appearance with a plain black cloak and practical boots. For a start, she was a great deal cleaner than anyone else who had set foot in his cell during the past three months. Then there was the fact that she smelled not of rank sweat and tobacco but innocently of jasmine. He remembered that scent on her skin and in her hair. Autumn hair, he had once told her, layered with hues of gold and copper and russet like fallen leaves. The memory sharpened an edge of hunger in him. He felt his body harden in response to images that were as potent now as they had been twelve years before. Isabella naked in his arms, his hands on her, dark against the paleness of her skin, her gasp of shocked delight as their bodies touched, famished, desperate, forgetful of everything but the shimmering desire that burned between them. He had taken her fiercely, with no consideration for her virginity, and she had responded with unguarded passion. Then, afterward, in the intimate dark of the summerhouse…
“I should not have been so wanton….” She had sounded astonished at her own behavior and the capacity for pleasure that he had unlocked within her. He had drawn her damp body close to his and kissed her with humility and a blissful disbelief that had echoed her own.
“You are lovely and I will always love you.”
It had been sentimental, boyish stuff and it had been ripped apart brutally when she had left him standing at the altar and married someone else. Yet infuriatingly, no one had ever compared to Isabella in his eyes, not in all the long years since he had last seen her.
They had met as often as they could in the gardens of Salterton House. The secrecy had added an edge of excitement to their trysts that seemed well nigh unendurable. He had burned up with the need to possess her, each time more potent than the last, each caress a brand on her skin that was echoed in his heart. There, in the cool darkness of the summerhouse, he would pull her to him, his hands feverishly pushing aside the lace and silk of her clothing, kissing her with savage fervor, invading her body with his in a heated tangle of desire and need. The turbulent emotions she aroused in him had driven him to near madness.
Marcus blinked to dispel the memories and tried to rein in his galloping imagination. Such images were not conducive to clear thinking. But it was no wonder that he lusted after her even now. He had been a long time without a woman, for the whores who plied their trade in the Fleet held no interest for him. Besides, this woman would be enough to tempt a saint.
“Your love,” she said, and the ragged anger in her tone quenched his desire as sharply as a bucket of cold water. “I was never that, was I, Marcus? You married India quickly enough after you lost me. One cousin or the other—it seems it mattered little to you which.”
Marcus felt a violent flare of fury. He had been waiting twelve years to have this very subject laid bare between them and now she dared to put the blame on him?
“I was never so careless as to lose