Chapter 1

The late Dominic Breckland, Viscount Stratfield, was returning to life in a sea of women's underwear. From ear to ankle he fought a sensual undertow of lacy shifts and white silk stockings, his muscular arms tangled in the ties and tapes of lavender-scented buckram stays, his heavy thighs wrapped in a pair of dainty French percale pantalettes. Like a wounded beast of the night, he had eluded capture and taken refuge in the last place his pursuer would think to look.

Summoning a primitive instinct for survival, he had climbed the sturdy oak tree outside the manor house and hauled his bruised and bleeding six-foot frame over the windowsill. Hopeful he had outwitted the man who chased him, he had then collapsed—into an open trunk stuffed with personal female attire and frivolous accessories.

He was not too exhausted to appreciate the irony of the situation.

For now at least he had managed to escape the man who was hunting for him. Yet moment by moment his life's blood was saturating an unknown woman's muslin petticoats and blush-pink stockings. Pain seared his upper body. Gritting his teeth, he unraveled from his elbow a flimsy lawn chemise embroidered with blue silk forget-me-nots. His gaze unfocused and brimming with deviltry, he examined it in the moonlight.

If he was going to die, for the second time in a month, he might as well go out on a rousing sexual fantasy. "Well," he murmured, "what sort of woman are you anyway? Fast or merely fashionable? Do I have a choice? Then give me fast."

Unfortunately the maidenly garment failed to inspire a potent sexual image in his mind. The owner did appear to possess a decent pair of breasts, although Dominic was admittedly not capable of objective appraisal in his current condition.

God help them both—the poor woman would suffer a heart seizure when she found his carcass buried in her drawers. It seemed to him that he had once owned this creaky old manor house, at some time in the murky past, and he tried to remember who had bought it from him. To his frustration his brain refused to focus, images flitting elusively behind his eyes like moths in the shadows.

A retired sea captain, wasn't it? Sir Hickory or Humpty Something, his wife and daughter. Their names escaped Dominic at the moment. Bleeding to death, he hoped he would be forgiven the lapse in manners.

"Humpty Dumpty had a great fall," he muttered. "But who the devil was his wife?" If he was wallowing in the women's underclothes, he ought at least to know her name.

Many would remark that Dominic being found dead in a trunk of petticoats was not surprising for a former English scoundrel who had thumbed his nose at society. His closest friends might even have chosen to bury him in a shroud of female underclothing as a loving tribute to his past sins.

Except that Dominic had been officially "buried" a month ago, mourned by a few, cursed by many. Aside from the persistent rumors of his ghost popping up in the oddest places and doing the naughtiest things, no one really expected to see him again.

Not his servants or scattered acquaintances.

He trusted only one person. The man who had helped him arrange his own funeral.

The late-evening silence of the country estate was marred by thumping footsteps, a bucket being kicked over, and an irate male voice coming from the front of the house.

"Somebody open the bloody gate!" the gardener shouted from the driveway below. "The carriage is coming over the bridge!"

"The bloody gate has been open for an hour!" the groom shouted back.

"Company," Dominic said with a mordant sigh, tossing the embroidered chemise over his shoulder. "I suppose I ought to tidy myself up—if I'm expected to entertain."

He looked like a nightmare cast up from hell, and he knew it. His lanky frame had lost flesh. The hollows below his cheekbones gave his masculine face a dangerous gauntness. The lugubrious pattern of surgeon's stitches that crisscrossed his chest and left shoulder had been torn during his tree-climbing escapade. Taking a breath that burrowed into his lungs like talons, he felt with his uninjured arm for the windowsill and hoisted himself upright for a few moments of enlightening agony.

His gray eyes widened in approval as he took stock of his surroundings.

"Well, isn't this convenient?" he said, clenching his teeth against a wave of pain. "A room with a view."

Copyright © 2005 by Maria Hoag