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course he broke into women’s bedchambers. He was both a pirate and highwayman—two male pursuits that involved stealing women’s virtues.
    Mr. Sharpe looked annoyingly smug. “It might surprise you to know that I do not. I usually await the inevitable invitation.”
    He leaned elegantly in the doorway, propped on his arm, legs crossed at his booted ankles, obviously awaiting hers. The blue of his eyes kept her mesmerized—sapphire blue, dark and glinting in the light of her one candle and her low fire. As spectacular a color as she’d imagined and entirely unlike Lord Wesley’s, thank heaven.
    Why had he come? What did he want? If she had sense she would send him away, but she needed him—if only to undo the knot in her corset ties. “You may come in, because otherwise someone will peek out their door and see you standing there.”
    She couldn’t help but give a triumphant smile as he hastened off her threshold into her room and shut the door behind him.
    His masculine scent, different from his brother’s—more earthy, more spicy, entirely seductive—filled her senses, filled her room.
    He filled her room.
    And in that instant, as she drank in his astonishing height and his wide shoulders, she remembered Lady Prudence’s stark fear and accusations. She turned away, struck by nerves, wondering at her own sanity, and she crossed her arms over her breasts. He had openly admitted to dueling and she had brought him into her bedroom.
    But he’d rescued her. He had made her smile when any sensible, well-bred woman would be crying so hard she would have to wring out her bedspread.
    “I spoke to Wesley.”
    That caught her attention and she spun around. “What—good heavens, your neck is bleeding!”
    His lips parted; his teeth flashed in the audacious grin of a man accustomed to taking what he wished. “Not anymore. I used my overpriced and overstarched cravat to soak it up.”
    “Lord Wesley attacked you? What did you do in return?”
    “I took that stupid knife off him, took him over my knee, and spanked him.”
    “You didn’t! You couldn’t have possibly done so!”
    He calmly peeled off his glove and winked. “I thought my hand might still be red. My palm is still stinging. I felt childish, bullying behavior deserved a child’s punishment. I would have used a belt on him, but the coward fled out into the gardens.”
    She snorted. Then clapped her hands to her mouth in horror. She’d meant to laugh in the demure and melodic way that women should do, but her natural laugh came out. The horrid snort that always sent her sisters into gales of laughter. Inappropriate laughter, theirs might be, but it was feminine at least.
    The highwayman in her bedroom grinned broadly. “Good Lord, did that sound come from you?”
    “Yes,” she declared with defiance, aware that they now stood on either side of her bed, which was neatly turned down for the night.
    He raked back his long blond hair. “You are lovely, aren’t you?”
    Embarrassment struck. “Before you raised your hand—or your belt—to Lord Wesley, did you discuss my…my reputation?”
    “Why do you think I was flogging his backside, Miss Hamilton? It wasn’t for exercise. It was an indication of how seriously I would humiliate him, hurt him, destroy him if he dared to breathe a word of what happened.”
    She was half-undressed, and had no idea what to think. How could a highwayman be her knight protector? “But he is your brother, and he must know you wouldn’t seriously hurt—”
    Clenched in a fist, Mr. Sharpe’s hand rested against the fluted column of her bed. His dimple deepened. “He knows I would. How do you think I got him to stop lording his legitimacy and his title over me? I kicked his little bottom at school with my booted foot.”
    Grace realized that for all she was barely dressed Mr. Sharpe’s eyes never left her face. It gave her an odd sense of courage and focused all her thoughts on him. “You went to school?”
    “Do I