She would have thought he’d be too heavy, even propped up on one elbow. But he wasn’t. Her body loved the feeling of all that muscle and heat; it made her want to form a cradle with her legs. Which was such an outrageous idea that she shocked herself.

He’d reached the base of her neck, but instead of a kiss he gave her a little lick, which felt so good that, quite involuntarily, she whimpered and arched her back a little. It made his body settle more firmly on her.

Now he was kissing the slope of her breasts and then he dropped his thigh between her legs and pressed. She clutched his shoulders so hard that she was certain her fingernails would leave little marks.

Gowan murmured something so low she couldn’t hear it, and then he pulled sharply on her gown; her bodice slipped down, and his lips closed over her nipple. Edie had literally never imagined such a feeling. She arched again with a little shriek.

Gowan was nibbling and licking and kissing in a sensual assault so overwhelming that Edie stopped thinking altogether and just let herself feel. She felt like one of the tin pots that boys blew up on Guy Fawkes Day. She was ready to explode into something bright and frightening and gorgeous, if only . . . She pushed up against his leg, feeling a fiery burn spreading through her body that left her breathless.

But just then, when she felt kindling catch fire—Gowan stopped. An unwelcome coolness replaced the warmth of his mouth. She looked down. In the dim light her breasts were pale but her nipples had turned dark pink and stood out, begging for more attention.

His gaze followed hers, but he had that look on his face again, or perhaps it was no look at all.

This was a problem, Edie thought groggily. She fell into melting darkness when he kissed her, and if she was truly honest, she didn’t care whether they were married or not. She wanted to make love on this carriage seat. Or the ground. Or anywhere else he cared to put her.

On the other hand, he seemed to have retained a disconcerting amount of clarity.

“How can you be so composed?” she said, a moment later, when he had deposited her on the opposite seat, located her cloak, and begun tying it as if she were a little girl.

“I’m not composed,” he said shortly. His voice made her feel better, because there was a raw sound to it.

“I feel hot all over,” she whispered, kissing his brow. It was the only part of him she could reach while he concentrated on tying a perfect bow. “I feel as if I won’t be able to sleep. I feel . . .”

“I know I won’t be able to sleep.” His fingers paused and he met her eyes. “I never dreamed that I would share my life with such a sensual woman.”

“I’m not sensual,” Edie whispered. “I’m quite ordinary, really.”

“You are anything but ordinary,” he said, cupping her face and giving her a hard, swift kiss. He had the door open and handed her down to the pavement, almost before she knew what was happening.

“Gowan!” she protested. She lowered her voice, realizing that grooms had hopped from the carriage and were standing to attention, two on either side of the door. “Don’t you think that I have a significant point, given that special license you acquired? If our reputation is to be ruined under the suspicion that we have anticipated our vows, we might as well do so!”

Gowan tucked her hand in his arm, and began walking up the path toward Willikins, who stood in the light of the open door. “I indeed take your point, but you must understand: I value my honor above my reputation.” He had assumed his ducal voice again—in response, she had to suppose, to all the men standing about in livery.

Edie stopped when they were halfway up the walk and, she hoped, out of earshot of both the grooms and Willikins. “Gowan,” she hissed.

He looked at her with a kind of placid tolerance, though it was hard to discern in the flickering light from the doorway. She found it so annoying that she gave his arm a shake. “You are behaving in a rather stickish manner, Duke.”

“Stickish?” A flash of wry humor returned to his eyes. “Addressing me by my title is stickish as well.”

She felt all hot and melting and urgent, and it was extremely vexing to see Gowan looking as calm as a vicar after his Sunday’s sermon. So she came up on her toes and licked his bottom lip.

“What are you doing to me, Edie?” The sentence growled out of some deep part of his chest and flooded her with satisfaction. Perhaps he was simply better at covering up things than she was.

“I’m making certain that you will have as much trouble sleeping as I shall.” Then she reached up, pulled down his head, and kissed him. It wasn’t their fourth, or even their fourteenth kiss, but it was the first kiss that she gave him.

There was something about that realization that made her feel even more melting. But even though he showed satisfactory signs of enthusiasm, Gowan did not sweep her into his arms and stride back to the carriage, shouting to the coachman to take them to a bedchamber somewhere.

In fact, after a bit, he pulled his mouth away, peeled her arms from around his neck, and growled, “I’m taking you to the door now, Edith.”

Edie had managed to get her breath back by the time they reached the long-suffering Willikins. His countenance was expressionless, and for some reason, that made her feel even crosser. Was she to spend her life being watched by living statues?

So she curtsied good-bye to Gowan, but refused to meet his eyes. She had just turned to climb the stairs when she heard an exasperated sound and he spun her around and said, low and fierce, “Dukes don’t deflower their wives-to-be in carriages, Edie.”

She glanced to the side, but Willikins had shown his intuitive grasp of a butler’s more sensitive duties and disappeared into the recesses of the house.

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s the way you lose all expression. One minute I’m kissing you, and the next I find myself being put aside by a man exhibiting all the emotion of a block of wood. One moment you make me laugh, and the next you assume the expression of a schoolmaster speaking to a naughty boy. I find it annoying. In the extreme,” she added, in case he thought to discount her feelings.

“A man is what he does,” Gowan said. “If I deflower my fiancée, I am not myself, but some other being, some person so overcome by lust that he forgets the rules that govern civilization.”

Edie suddenly felt too weary to argue. “Yes, well, you’re probably right,” she said. She thought of dropping another curtsy, but it would likely be taken the wrong way. So she patted his cheek because, after all, he was a dear man, if a misguided one. And then she made her way to her room.

Sixteen

Gowan returned to his carriage, climbed in, and sat there with his arms folded during the short drive to his own town house.

Once home, he nodded to his butler, tossed off his coat, and went up to his bedchamber. All the while a kind of desperate sensuality tore at him, buffeting him with images of Edie’s luscious breasts, of the way her breath had caught in her throat when he’d kissed her.

His man entered the room and asked whether, while His Grace unclothed, he would be interested in reviewing the butler’s report regarding household expenditures, as was customary. Gowan ordered a bath and then threw the fellow out; he had no wish to display an erection that showed little signs of softening.