THE WIND LASHED MAGGIE’S SKIRTS TO HER ANKLES, making her cloak flow out behind her, and the rain nearly blinded her, though it felt warm as bathwater against her skin. She paused at the foot of Reeve McKenna’s front walk, trying to remember whether the Parramatta Inn lay to the east or to the west.

She was still pondering this dilemma, her lower lip caught between her teeth, when Reeve suddenly appeared in front of her, grasping both her shoulders in his hands. She was not surprised, nor was she angry. Maggie was merely numb.

Reeve’s dark hair was dripping, his shirt so wet that Maggie could see through it. He shouted to be heard over the pounding rain, giving her small, periodic shakes. “Do you want to catch your death, you little idiot?!”

Maggie raised her chin. Her hair clung to her head like a sodden cap, and the rain was deafening, making craters in the deep puddles that lay all around. A loamy, fertile scent filled her nostrils. “Let me go,” she said.

Reeve couldn’t possibly have heard her, but he reacted all the same. Without warning or ceremony he shifted his hands from Maggie’s shoulders to her waist and hoisted her off the ground and over his shoulder. A second later he was striding back toward the house.

Maggie was too stunned to do anything at first, but soon enough she was kicking and struggling and shrieking words she’d learned years before from the circus people. None of her efforts brought anything more than a smart slap to her bottom as Reeve carried her back into the entryway and then the parlor. There, before the fire, he set her on her feet and summarily began removing her clothes.

Maggie tried to fight, but it was hopeless. Every attempt to scratch, slap, or kick was dodged or fended off, and her screams of fury were trapped in her throat.

Finally, when only her camisole, drawers, and shoes remained to her, Reeve clasped Maggie’s chin in one hand and caught her wrists together behind her back with the other. “Enough,” he said in a warning rasp, and Maggie went still.

“What a perfectly charming scene!” chimed a woman’s voice from somewhere beyond the mountainlike barrier of Reeve’s massive shoulders.

Loretta. Maggie wanted to die, knowing that that woman was witnessing her humiliation. She closed her eyes and swallowed, trying to brace herself for the moments to come. A woolen throw of some sort was draped around her, and Maggie looked up into Reeve’s face and saw understanding there.

He turned to face his mistress, his towering frame blocking Maggie’s view of the woman, and asked cordially, “Are you ready to leave for the inn, Loretta?”

Loretta’s laughter had a sharp edge. “And leave this poor child here, unchaperoned? Why, Reeve, darling, that would be unthinkable!”