He took her questions seriously, even when there was no question of kisses, and she loved that.

“So I lose the earldom…”

“Yes.”

“And the castle…”

“Yes.”

“And all the trappings, all the possessions—”

“More than that. You lose all the people who love and depend on you.”

“Gregory and Rosy?”

She nodded. “And the cottagers, your staff, Mac. All the people and things that make you formidable in the eyes of the world.”

“Are Gregory and Rosy safe and well-cared-for?”

“Of course.”

“Then…do I get to keep you?”

There was a note in his deep voice that made her shiver, and she said, rather breathlessly, “I suppose so. I thought I was marrying a penniless earl.”

“Then I don’t care.” He wasn’t even touching her and she felt as if she’d received the sweetest caress of her life. “If I had you, Annabel, I could start in this little cabin and make us a living.”

Annabel tried to smile, but it trembled on her lips. “I’m glad we don’t have to live here,” she said finally.

“I could eat your potatoes with butter every day and be happy.”

“You would have to,” Annabel said with a little gurgle of laughter, “since that’s all I know how to make.”

“It isn’t so bad, is it?”

And she was silent, thinking about the rosy, clean little house, and the way Ewan caught her when she fell, and the way he laughed when the milk spilt. “No,” she said finally, “It hasn’t been the way I would have thought.”

“Father Armailhac says that one should be able to give up the things of the world without a moment’s regret,” Ewan said, turning over and nuzzling her shoulder.

“Good for him,” Annabel said, a bit crossly. “I don’t believe that you could do it, for all you say so. This is only for a day or so.”

“Believe it,” he said, but his voice was muffled by kisses. He was kissing his way down her throat, past her collarbone…

“What if you didn’t have me either?” Annabel asked. “What then?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “If I had no responsibilities and I had to live without you, I’d become a monk. Or a priest. Something of that sort.”

His lips were drifting across her breast; Annabel was terribly glad that Ewan hadn’t disappeared into a monastery. “I have another question.”

“Mmmm,” he said, not paying her close attention.

“If you haven’t been with a woman for years…how on earth did you know about that kiss?”

“Which kiss?” he asked with maddening obliviousness. He was running his fingers over the curves of her breasts as if he would never get enough.

“You know! That coney’s kiss,” she said.

“Oh, that.”

“How did you know how to do it? How did you know what it was?”

He was stroking the undercurve of her breast with his lips. “I made it up.”

“You what?”

“I made it up…well, part of it. Men are always telling jokes about coney-catchers, you see. Coney being a rabbit, but also—”

“I know,” she said hastily.

“So I was trying to think of a way to horrify your sister, and I made up a coney’s kiss. It worked, didn’t it? And as for how to do it…’twas instinct, darling. I trust my instinct a great deal.” His mouth closed around her nipple and she squeaked aloud. “My instinct tells me that you like that,” he said, smug as a cat by the hearth. “And I know I do.”

She swatted him.

“It’s a God-given gift I have, obviously.”

He was laughing against her breast and kissing her at the same time, and Annabel, for once, had to agree with him on a matter of theology. It was, indeed, a God given gift.

In the end, they had no sleep at all. They were cuddled together in an exhausted, boneless state when the sun began stealing under the curtain. By then Annabel had decided that her new favorite activity was to make the amusement disappear from Ewan’s eyes. So she said to him, “Do you know what Tess told me about marital consummation?”

He shook his head. “I trust it wasn’t some foolishness about lying back and enduring.”

“She told me that whatever my husband does to me, I should do to him,” she said, making her voice as provocative as she could make it. And since Annabel had practiced the art of provocation for years, she was very, very good at that particular skill. “That means, oh, my almost-husband,” she clarified, “that tonight…”

There wasn’t a trace of laughter on his face now.

She let her smile turn from provocative to wicked. Then she reached out one finger and put it on the smooth skin of his chest. Delicately, delicately, she trailed that finger down…down…

“And what do they call the coney’s kiss when it’s not a coney being kissed?” she said, relishing the tightness of his jaw.

Her finger swept down to the rigid length of him. Ewan shuddered. He hadn’t taken his eyes from hers, though. And he wasn’t laughing.

She pursed her lips at him and then he was there, rolling over on her with a strength that she was powerless to resist, plunging into her mouth with a ferocity that made her shudder against him as if she weren’t limp with pleasure but a moment before.

“Tonight,” she whispered against his lips, once she regained her breath.

And he was the one who closed his eyes this time.

Twenty-five

Annabel woke some time later to a persistent banging noise. “What on earth?” she asked sleepily.

Ewan didn’t seem to notice the noise. His strong arms came around her from behind, pulling her against him. Annabel’s body melted. “No,” she said uncertainly.“Yes,” he said into her hair.

Bang! went the shed door.

“The cow needs milking,” Annabel said. If Ewan kept doing that even one more moment, she’d—she’d—

He groaned and rolled away.

Annabel sat up and then edged quickly to the side of the bed. The tablecloth appeared to be slightly soiled.

“I would give a sovereign for water to wash my face,” Ewan muttered, pulling on his breeches. All the while the cow kept slamming its stable door.

A few moments later the noise stopped, and then Annabel found that the chicken had very kindly laid an egg in the butter mold.

She felt less charitably inclined when she discovered that the bird had also soiled their only chair. Without water, she couldn’t clean it, so she found her brush and started to work on her hair. But given the absence of a looking glass, she could only wind it into a graceless bun.

Ewan returned with a pail of milk in one hand and a pail of water in the other. His hair was wet.

“There’s a stream down to the right, behind the woodshed,” he said. “It’s cold as the devil’s behind. The only way to get clean is to jump in.”

Annabel shivered. She would bathe without taking such drastic measures, even if she had to heat pans of water all morning. “Would you build up the fire, please?”