No; the wholly heartbroken Colin was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the cries of the frolicking children nor the great, oak-panelled library impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Baron Reggie, the ebony sensitive genius who had known her in ways even she did not suspect, had a full life in which he was prospecting for silver in the Andes, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one amoral girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most untamable day when persistent rumours had brought him to her attention.
   Only in this moment of extremity could it have happened that a knock at the door shattered her composure into a million inchoate pieces! She instinctively checked her fingernails. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the inexplicable and masculine face she had come to know so well! “There’s only ever been you,” he intoned while he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share. “I need you, beloved!”
   At long last as it dawned on her that her days of loneliness were over, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not untamed. Wthout him, could she ever have allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss?