Bitten by Desire by Marguerite Kaye

Chapter 1
    London, Spring 1816
    â€œOh, Allegra, why must you always have your own way,” Imogen exclaimed. The sleek blue-grey cat cocked her head to one side and gazed impassively at her mistress. Mirroring Imogen’s own mood, she had been restless all evening, padding about the bedchamber, scratching at the door, wrestling her way under the heavy drapes to mew at the window, before finally jumping onto the four-poster bed and swiping her soft velvet paw at Imogen’s hair on the pillow.
    â€œCome on then.” Wearily conceding defeat, Imogen pushed back the sheets and stumbled over to the window, pulling back the curtains to open the sash and allow the cat out. The pitch-dark night was illuminated by the pale glow of a full moon. Below, in Berkeley Square, the few lanterns still alight cast dim shadows onto the cobblestones. She could hear the faint clatter of a carriage in nearby Bruton Street, no doubt bringing some weary rake home from a late session at his club.
    Wrapping her arms around her knees and tucking her feet under the flounce of her nightgown, Imogen settled on the window seat and watched as Allegra leapt fluidly from the little wrought iron balcony down onto the wall which formed the border with the extensive gardens of Lansdowne House next door, into which she disappeared. In the distance, the new gaslights on Piccadilly cast a faint glow. The moon hung low in the sky, fat and buttery. It was said to be at its most potent when full like this, Imogen recalled, the most auspicious time for making wishes.
    Long hours of reading to Alfred in an effort to take his mind off his suffering had cluttered her brain with such pieces of useless information. A bit like the attics here in Strathfyne house, stuffed full of broken chairs and mouldy hangings and dusty portraits of ancestors no one could recall. Imogen’s own portrait would no doubt end up there too some day. She and Alfred had been married less than four years. There would be no cause to remember a duchess of such short duration, one moreover who had been unable to produce an heir before her husband tragically succumbed to the consumption which had been the reason for their very unequal match having been made in the first place.
    The melancholy which Imogen had been striving to keep at bay all day settled on her like a lowering November sky. Poor Alfred, his suffering had led him to embrace death when it finally came. She’d loved and pitied her gentle husband in equal measure, though more in the manner of a sister than a wife. It was almost exactly six months since he had died. Time to put off her blacks and emerge from the cocoon of mourning.
    Imogen twined a long strand of her hair round her finger. While Alfred’s death had been a welcome release for him, it had becalmed her. Try as she might to look to the future, she seemed quite unable to shake off this sense of walking on sand, of being enveloped in treacle. It was as if the energy she had put into looking after Alfred had been buried with him. What she needed was something to jolt her out of this all-encompassing lethargy. Feeling slightly foolish, she screwed shut her eyes and wished. Yearning shuddered through her like a summer wind over a barley field, ruffling the tiny hairs on her skin. A violent shudder made her shoulders bunch. Someone walking over her grave. Or something waking from it.
    Imogen opened her eyes. The moon’s glow was temporarily obscured by a black cloud creeping ominously across the sky. She shivered again. Apprehension, rather than cold, made her skin prickle, forcing the soft hairs on her arms to stand on end. A fleeting spark of fear flamed in her, like a taper lit in a draught and instantly extinguished, but it was enough to send her scampering back to bed, pulling the monogrammed sheets up tight to her chin.
    In her haste to get back into bed she’d left the window open, the drapes pulled wide. As the black cloud slithered across the