the best university in the world,” he murmured. “Something tells me you will be a quick study.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He swallowed hard. “Yes?”
She framed his face in her hands. “Yes,” she said, “my answer is yes. Truth be told, I was close to crawling back to you to be your mistress, because even that began to look better than a life without you.”
He pulled her against him and his chest shuddered as he exhaled a long-held breath. “The only mistress you will be is the mistress of our home.”
She turned her face into his wet shirt, adding her tears to the rain. He was going to catch the cough because he had run after her without his topcoat. She swore there and then that he would never have to run or ride after her ever again.
“How can you still love me,” she said, her voice muffled by his chest, “after all the cruel things I said to you?”
She felt him smile into her hair. “Darling,” he said, “I have only just begun to love you.”
Chapter 33
April
Beneath the white blaze of the Mediterranean sun, a yacht was rocking gently on the Aegean sea.
Lounging in a nest of silken pillows in the shade of a canopy, her unbound hair playing in the warm breeze, Annabelle found that her eyes were falling shut instead of staying focused on the letter on her knees. After finishing her second term at Oxford, helping Lucie with her acquisition of a new women’s journal, getting married, and becoming a scandalous duchess in the space of two months, her body was finally demanding its due. Besides, the new bride of an amorous man was not afforded much sleep after sunset, so Sebastian frequently found her napping on the deck of the Asteria during the day ever since they had set sail from Saint-Malo two weeks ago.
She took another sip from her champagne glass, set it back down on the small side table, and selected a new letter from the looming pile of Sebastian’s unopened correspondence. Had it not been for her insistence, he would have left the whole stack behind untouched at his chateau in Brittany. He was enjoying his newly found laissez-faire attitude with his typical thoroughness. She had read two ignored letters from the new prime minister, William Gladstone, who tried to woo Sebastian to become a strategic advisor for the Liberal party, and from Lady Lingham, who, keen to make amends, offered to introduce Annabelle into polite society in a while, preferably as some “long-lost French nobility.” And this missive, holy hell, was from His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. Sent months ago!
A splashing sound had her pulse kick up. She lowered the letter in her lap and watched as Sebastian’s head appeared over the yacht’s ladder, followed by the sculpted curves of his bare shoulders.
Her face heated. After they had set anchor at the Peloponnesian coast a few days ago, her new husband had taken one look at his swimming costume and had decided to dive into the sea naked as God had made him. And he was so, so well made. Tall and lean and gleaming wet in the sunlight, he was a sleek Poseidon rising from his element. Rivulets of water were streaming down his torso, across defined bands of muscle and slim white hips. He was already half aroused, and now her skin was heating up all over.
His bare feet left wet tracks on the smooth floorboards as he padded toward her. In his right hand, he held a glossy pink seashell.
He placed the shell next to her champagne flute and looked down at her expectantly. Here under the azure Greek skies, his eyes looked almost blue.
She smiled. “I see you come bearing gifts.”
“Treasures of the sea for Your Grace,” he said absently.
His gaze had homed in on where her silk robe had parted in the front and revealed soft, bare skin.
“You have a letter from the Prince of Wales,” she said.
“Bertie? What does he want?”
“Essentially, he says, ‘I didn’t think you had it in you, old chap. You were so dreadfully stuffy back at Eton. Come hunting with me in autumn.’”
“Hmm,” Sebastian said, his eyes glittering as if he were already on the stalk.
She couldn’t resist stretching languidly under his perusal.
He pounced and crouched over her, showering her and his correspondence with salty droplets.
She squawked and raised the letters over her head. “You are getting everything wet.”
“That is the intention,” he murmured, and began scattering kisses down between her breasts,