I am not a big drinker. After the third glass of champagne I was feeling decidedly carefree. The soup somehow came and went. So did the smoked haddock. A bottle of claret was opened to go with the pheasant, which appeared swimming in rich red-brown gravy with tiny pearl onions and mushrooms around it. I found myself deciding that I’d been stupid, trying to earn my own living. Life was for having fun and adventure. No more gloom and doom.

I finished every morsel on my plate, then worked my way through the bread and butter pudding and a glass of port. I was feeling content with the world as the taxi whisked us back to Rannoch House. Darcy escorted me up the steps and helped me put the key in the door when I was having trouble locating the lock. At the back of my brain a whisper was saying that I was probably just a little drunk while another whisper added that I probably shouldn’t be letting Darcy come into the house late at night when I was all alone.

“Holy Mother of God, but it’s cold and bleak in here,” Darcy said as we closed the front door behind us. “Is there nowhere warm in this confounded place?”

“Only the bedroom,” I said. “I try to keep a fire going in there.”

“The bedroom. Good idea,” he said and steered me toward the staircase. We ascended together, his arm around my waist. I wasn’t conscious of taking the steps. I was half floating, intoxicated with the wine and his closeness.

The last embers of a fire still glowed in the bedroom fireplace and it felt comfortably warm after the frigidity of the rest of the house.

“Ah, that’s better,” Darcy said.

I saw the bed before me and flung myself down on it. “Ah, my bed. Bliss,” I said.

Darcy stood looking down at me with amusement. “I must say, that wine certainly has done wonders for your inhibitions.”

“As you very well knew it would,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “I know your evil intentions, Mr. O’Mara. Don’t think I can’t see through them.”

“And yet I haven’t noticed your telling me to go.”

“You just said that the purpose of life was to have fun and adventure,” I said, kicking off one shoe so violently that it flew across the room. “And you’re right. I’ve been miserable and boring for too long. Twenty-two years old and a boring virgin. What is the point of that?”

“No point at all,” Darcy said softly, removing his overcoat and draping it over the back of a chair. His jacket followed and then he loosened his tie.

“Don’t leave me all alone here, Darcy,” I said in what I hoped was a seductive voice.