Mary turned from the door. “We’re all saying that you and duke are well matched,” she announced.

“Really?” Edie was startled. She didn’t, personally, think that she and her husband had much in common. In fact, she was a little worried that he was all about eels and she about staves, and there wasn’t much of an overlap.

“You’ve both beautiful manners,” Mary said. “They as have worked for His Grace for years don’t even mind the daft schedule because they say he’s always fair and he never makes a body feel like an idiot. Though he’s some sort of genius, or so they say.” She opened her eyes very wide.

“Therein lies a huge difference between us,” Edie said. “But thank you, Mary. I hope you’re right.”

It was rather odd, lying in bed, waiting for a man. It made the parts of her body to which she usually paid no attention prickle all over.

The night before, Gowan had whispered in her ear that he loved her bottom. It was nice to have someone telling her how fine it was, given that she’d never thought twice about her rear. Like getting a bequest from some relative one never knew.

Now, lying in the dark and waiting, her body started waking up all over because she couldn’t stop thinking of the way his big hands had slid over her hips and down the slope of her bottom. And the way he had sucked her breast, and then had actually nipped her. Her nipples stood out against her nightdress at the memory.

Still he didn’t arrive, but Edie’s imagination kept presenting her with images of the previous night. Gowan had kissed her fiercely, until the only thing she could hear was the thunder of his heart, or perhaps of her own. So she could see . . . she really could see how . . .

After another few minutes, she decided to check whether she was as sore down there as she had been.

She wasn’t.

That was surprising. Then, without really thinking about it, she started touching herself as he had. Her private parts felt soft and complicated under her fingers, her caress sending little whorls of heat down her thighs. The area she had briskly washed once a day for nineteen years felt . . . different.

Not quite hers, yet entirely hers.

Behind the safe darkness of her closed eyes, she relived the way Gowan had removed his clothes and slowly unwound his kilt. The sparkling, hot feeling that she had had when he cast his shirt aside and she saw all the taut muscles on his abdomen and below.

And all the time the stroke of her finger was making heat gather in her limbs until she was practically throbbing there.

It was as if she was in a safe cocoon in the dark room, tucked under the covers.

Then the door opened.

Twenty-one

When the door swung open, Edie froze, instinctively clamping her knees together. Gowan stood in the doorway, light falling over his shoulder, talking to someone who remained out of sight.

She sat up in the bed. “Gowan.”

“Yes?” He turned, and for a moment the heat pulsed again, because he was so beautiful. A lock of hair fell over his brow, and his cheekbones gave him the look of a Spanish conquistador.

“I am sleeping or, rather, I was sleeping.”

His brows flew together and she could practically see him formulating another rule. Don’t wake my wife.

“I don’t mind if you enter my room, but I’d prefer that you concluded your conversation before doing so.”

He nodded with his usual decisiveness. Edie slipped back down under the covers while he stepped into the hallway to finish his conversation. She had that restless, burning sensation again, worse than the previous night.

Gowan walked back in, closing the door behind him. “I am truly sorry to have woken you up.”

“It’s not that . . . who were you speaking to?”

“Bardolph. He wanted to—”

“So Bardolph knows that you have come to my room rather than to your own?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like that,” Edie said. Gowan tossed his dressing gown onto a chair, and with that gesture, her next sentence evaporated. He was naked, those long-muscled legs glowing like dark honey.

He loomed over her, bracing one arm on either side of her shoulders. “Yes, wife?”

“I don’t think the servants should know what we’re doing,” she said, alarmed at how weak her voice sounded.

“They won’t know everything.” He dropped a kiss on her brow. “They don’t know that I intend to kiss you until you are helpless.” A kiss on her nose. “They don’t know that I intend to make love to you until you haven’t any breath in your body.” A kiss on her lips, a lingering one that promised, but didn’t breach. “Bardolph thinks I was listening to him all afternoon.”

“You were,” she said, feeling a bit breathless. “I listened as well, at least to part of it.”

He shook his head.

“No?”

“I thought about you all day. I know it was painful last night, but I intend to make up for it.”

Edie smiled up at him. “Have you had a bath?” she asked, running her hands over his shoulders. He was naked and smelled of almond soap, and she was clothed. There was something quite enticing about that.

“Of course,” he said, lowering himself onto the bed but holding his weight off her body.

Edie had rather like how he’d smelled earlier, like male sweat and leather. “I wouldn’t mind,” she murmured.

“I would never come to my lady unbathed.” Well, that settled that.

Edie discovered that Gowan was as muscled below the base of his spine as he was elsewhere. “My rump is very soft,” she told him, “but yours is not.”

“I’m a brawny brute.” He shifted onto his side, his hand curving around one of her breasts.

“If you’re a brute, what am I?” Edie prompted, enjoying herself.

“Perfect.”

Their kiss was like a whirlpool: it made Edie’s head spin until she clung to him, her breath coming in urgent little pants. Part of her felt self-conscious about the way their tongues kept touching, but another part of her relished it. He still had a hand on her breast and he was caressing her in such a way—rough and gentle at the same time—that she kept choking back little cries. Embarrassing ones.

Then Gowan pulled back and kissed his way down her neck. He slipped lower in the bed, and his mouth was on her nipple, suckling her straight through the thin lawn. Edie’s fingers dug into his shoulders and she sobbed because it felt so good. She even tried to pull him over so that his weight was on her, so that he rubbed against that part of her, so her knees could cradle him . . .

Her mind was an incoherent storm. As Gowan moved to the other breast, Edie had a brief moment of clarity. It was very odd to realize her nightdress was wet. She wouldn’t want to have cotton in her mouth, no matter how clean.

“Would you like me to remove my nightdress?” she asked, looking down at his head and feeling another pulse of heat so deep that she almost moaned aloud.

Gowan glanced up at her, his eyes dark as a crow’s feather. A moment later she was unclothed, her gown tossed by the bedside, and they were lying side by side.

Heat rushed up into Edie’s cheeks. They had been naked the night before, so it shouldn’t feel so awkward to have his naked body next to hers. It was, though. And then he started kissing her again.