Kat didn’t wait. She gratefully slid into the lavender-scented water. Perhaps her troubles would melt away if she just stayed here. Surely Annie would bring her food and the lads would keep the glasswork going…Why, she could stay here for the rest of her life and no one would ever know. Kat’s lip trembled. Who really needed her anyway?

Stop that, she told herself. You are being silly. And she was, but somehow she couldn’t help it. Her heart was trying valiantly not to show its cracks, and all the while it was trembling, falling to pieces. To stop from thinking too much, she scrubbed herself thoroughly, trying to rub away the hurts. It helped…a little.

Annie leaned out the window. “By the saints, ’tis that Sassenach of yours.”

Devon? Here? Now what was she to do? If she saw him and he guessed how she felt, it would ruin everything together. But if she didn’t see him, he would know something was amiss.

Which was better? Kat took a deep breath. She could do a lot of things, but pretend she wasn’t affected by him wasn’t one of them. Not here, or now, anyway. If she waited until the ball to see him, at least then she’d be girded in the wondrous ball gown. She would smile and laugh and dance, and no one would know her secret.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed her wet hair behind her ears and then sank into the water up to her neck. “Annie, please inform Mr. St. John I will see him at the ball and not a second before.”

To say that Devon took the news of Kat’s defection well would be a misstatement. He didn’t. He’d been at first incredulous, and then irritated, and at last angry that she could so calmly put him off when he’d come to see her time and again.

While he was not in love, their night together had proven something to him. It had shown him that passion did not burn itself out, that it could satisfy even as it left one hungry for more. Never in all his days had he ever had such a delightful encounter with a woman. And if he’d had his normal reaction, once having sampled her bounty, he would be itching to be off, looking for another challenge. But this time, all he wanted was to be with Kat. More and more.