“Are you certain that this is a shortcut?” Lillian asked. “I think the other way would have been much faster.”

Unaccustomed to having his decisions questioned, Marcus shot her a cool glance as she came up beside him. “I know the way through my own estate gardens, Miss Bowman.”

“Don’t mind my sister, Lord Westcliff,” Daisy said from behind them. “It’s just that she’s worried about what will happen if we’re caught. We are supposed to be napping, you see. Mother locked us in our room, and then—”

“Daisy,” Lillian interrupted tersely, “the earl doesn’t want to hear about that.”

“On the contrary,” Marcus said, “I find myself quite interested in the question of how you managed to escape. The window?”

“No, I picked the lock,” Lillian replied.

Tucking the information in the back of his mind, Marcus asked mockingly, “Did they teach you how to do that in finishing school?”

“We didn’t attend finishing school,” Lillian said. “I taught myself how to pick locks. I’ve been on the wrong side of many a locked door since early childhood.”

“How surprising.”

“I suppose you never did anything worth being punished for,” Lillian said.

“As a matter of fact, I was disciplined often. But I was seldom locked away. My father considered it far more expedient—and satisfying—to thrash me for my crimes.”

“He sounds like a brute,” Lillian remarked, and Daisy gasped behind them.

“Lillian, you should never speak ill of the dead. And I doubt the earl likes to hear you call his father names.”

“No, he was a brute,” Marcus said with a bluntness that matched Lillian’s.

They came to an opening in the hedge, where a flagstone walk bordered the side of the manor. Motioning for the girls to be silent, Marcus glanced at the empty walk, eased them out into the partial concealment of a tall, narrow juniper, and gestured to the left side of the walk. “The kitchen entrance is over there,” he murmured. “We’ll go through there and take the staircase on the right to the second floor, and I’ll show you the hallway that leads to your room.”

The girls stared at him with brilliant smiles, both faces so similar and yet so different. Daisy had rounder cheeks, and an old-fashioned china doll prettiness that provided a somewhat incongruous setting for her exotic brown eyes. Lillian’s face was longer and vaguely feline in cast, with tip-tilted eyes and a full, sweetly carnal mouth that made his heart thump an uncomfortable extra beat.

Marcus was still watching her mouth as she spoke. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “I trust we may depend on your silence about our game?”

Had Marcus been another kind of man, or had he entertained the merest flicker of romantic interest in either of the girls, he might have made use of the situation with some flirtatious little piece of blackmail. Instead he nodded and replied firmly, “You may depend on it.”

Another cautious glance established that the flagstone walkway was still unoccupied, and the three of them walked out from the concealment of the juniper. Unfortunately, when they had reached the midway point between the hedge opening and the kitchen entrance, the sudden sound of voices echoed across the smooth slate-paved walkway and bounced gently off the manor wall. Someone was coming.

Daisy took off like a startled doe, reaching the kitchen entrance in a fraction of a second. Lillian, however, took the opposite tack, launching herself back toward the juniper. With no time to consider his actions, Marcus followed her just as a group of three or four figures appeared at the head of the walkway. Crowding with her in the narrow cavity between the juniper and the hedge, Marcus felt more than a bit ridiculous, hiding from guests on his own estate. However, his own dirty, dust-streaked condition was not something he cared to vaunt in company …and suddenly his thoughts were jumbled as he felt Lillian’s arms clutching around the shoulders of his coat, pulling him deeper into the shadows. Pulling him against her. She was trembling …with fear, he thought at first. Shocked by his own protective reaction, he put his arm around her. But he quickly discovered that she was laughing silently, so inexplicably tickled by the situation that she had to muffle a series of squeaking gasps against his shoulder.

Smiling down at her quizzically, Marcus pushed back a straggle of chocolate-colored hair that had fallen over her right eye. He squinted through a small aperture between the fragrant, thickly needled juniper branches. Recognizing the men, who were slowly making their way along the path as they discussed business matters, Marcus ducked his head to whisper into Lillian’s ear. “Quiet. It’s your father.”

Her eyes widened, her laughter dissolving as she dug her fingers reflexively into his coat. “Oh no. Don’t let him find me! He’ll tell Mother.”

Dipping his chin in a reassuring nod, Marcus kept his arm around her, his mouth and nose near her temple. “They won’t see us. As soon as they pass, I’ll take you across the walkway.”

She stayed very still, staring through the tiny spaces in the juniper leaves, seeming not to realize that she was locked against the Earl of Westcliff’s body in what most people would have described as an embrace. Holding her, breathing against her temple, Marcus became aware of an elusive scent, a faint flowery overture that he had vaguely registered at the rounders field. Hunting for it, he found a stronger concentration of the fragrance on her throat, where it was blood-heated and intoxicating. His mouth watered. Suddenly he wanted to touch his tongue to her tender white skin, wanted to rip her dress down the front and drag his mouth from her throat down to her toes.