Free Vanquished by Hope Tarr Page B

him bad . . .
    It was then that the last of the fight left him. Harry squeezed his eyes closed and waited.
    Hadrian awoke amidst sweat-drenched sheets. Shaking, he reached for the gin bottle by his bed, pulled out the cork, and knocked back a healthy swallow. It was the dream again, the one that had haunted him for years only not for some time. Indeed, he'd been halfway to believing it was a thing of the past, a milestone he'd finally moved beyond. As always, it came as a rapid-fire flash of images with feelings attached like strings to balloons. No, not balloons--too benign an image, that. More like a black fog of terror and shame, a demon perched silently on his shoulder, awaiting the opportunity to strike.
    The earlier encounter with Caledonia Rivers must have rattled him more than he'd cared to admit. Raking a hand through his damp hair, he tried telling himself that however good and noble she might be, he owed her nothing. Regrettable as is was that he must ruin her,
vanquish
her to placate Dandridge and save himself, that's how it went in a dog-eat-dog world. He couldn't afford to let guilt make him soft, not now when he had everything to lose and so very much to gain.
    Forgive me, Caledonia. Nothing personal, but I can't go back. I won't go back.
    No going back.

CHAPTER FOUR

"O do not praise my beauty more,
In such world-wide degree,
And say I am one all eyes adore;
For these things harass me!"
--T HOMAS H ARDY,
The Beauty
    D o try to relax, Miss Rivers. You're looking stiff as a board."
Head buried beneath the light-blocking cloth cover, Hadrian studied his "subject" through the camera's viewing portal. Owing to the high caliber of his apparatus, he rarely required posing devices such as a headrest or clamp. Had Caledonia Rivers managed to stay reasonably motionless, they should have managed quite nicely. In the course of the past two hours, however, he'd shot easily a half-dozen photographs, each one worse than its predecessor. Already the close atmosphere in his studio's staging area was choked with the acrid odor of magnesium powder--which hardly set the scene for seduction.

    Seated in his posing chair against a backdrop of painted-canvas woodland, she lifted her chin in an age-old gesture of defiance. "I am doing my best to cooperate, sir. You did caution me to hold still just as I cautioned you that I am not accustomed to sitting idle."
    At wit's end, he threw back the cover and straightened. Really, she could be the most infuriating of women. "You're not sitting, idle or otherwise. You're
posing.
Think of it as a task, your job, if that helps you."
    "I beg your pardon." She lifted her eyes to his face despite his express instruction to settle on a spot just beyond him and not look away.
    Shoving hands in his pockets--what better way to stave off the temptation of shaking her--he came around to the front of the camera. "I only mean that you don't strike me as a woman who relaxes much. What with the whole great world in want of saving, and you alone responsible for its salvation, there mustn't be a great deal of time for leisure, let alone amusement."
    "Right is not done by shirking one's duty, Mr. St. Claire." All at once, the stiff-lipped look she'd worn since her arrival slipped. "Oh, blast. I have shown myself to be a dreadful subject, I know. I have tried your patience sorely."
    Oh, she had tried his patience, all right, only not in the way she thought. From the past hours spent in her prickly presence, it was abundantly clear that seducing Caledonia Rivers, the so-called Maid of Mayfair, was not going to be a matter of a few hours or even a day.
    "It is only that I have never so much as had my portrait painted let alone sat for something as . . . unforgiving as a photograph." She looked down, pretending sudden interest in the long-fingered hands laced in her lap. Sitting there so hesitant and unsure, she seemed more girl than woman, so much so that Hadrian hadn't the heart to point out that she'd