didn’t put it on. “Thank you, Ash Dorning.”
“For?”
“Asking if Chastain misbehaved.” She untangled the bonnet ribbons, blue satin the same color as her eyes. “He frightened me. I hate that. I hate him. I hate myself for allowing the whole farce to happen.”
Ash rose and offered her his hand. When she stood, he took her bonnet, placed it on her head, and did up the ribbons in a loose bow.
“A man who outweighs you by a hundred pounds spent all day getting drunk. He broke his word to you and then menaced your virtue. He and he alone is responsible for what transpired. You did not allow anything, Della. Put the notion from your head and toss it into the midden.”
They stood improperly close, but Ash was determined to make his point.
Della braced a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. I have missed you so very much, Ash Dorning, but you’re here now, and you’re still you. I thank you for that.”
You’re still you. She could not know how those words puzzled and pained him.
She took him by the arm and led him back to the walkway, while Ash marveled at what had just happened. Soon—too soon—he’d remonstrate with her for casual displays of friendship. Soon, he’d talk himself into believing a peck on the cheek meant nothing.
Soon. But as Ash wandered down the leaf-strewn path with Della at his side, the lion in his mind was for once purring.
Chapter Four
Grey Birch Dorning, Earl of Casriel, was a profoundly happy man. Despite the burden of an old and vast estate, which seemed to ingest money much more quickly than it produced same, despite the tedium of his duties in the House of Lords, despite the little urchin whose damp grasp hopelessly wrinkled his cravat the instant he appeared in the nursery every morning, he was a very happy man indeed.
Particularly when his countess, wearing not one stitch, was draped about his person and in a friendly mood.
“Afternoon naps are so restorative,” Beatitude observed. “Why more adults don’t indulge, I will never know.”
“If we napped any more frequently… Do that again.”
She licked his nipple, then blew on it. Then she licked him Elsewhere, a skill at which Beatitude was fiendishly clever, and Grey—being a gentleman, a devoted husband, and all-around good sport—got in a few licks of his own, so to speak, until Beatitude hauled him over her and commenced their favorite shared pastime, seeing to the succession.
“Why is it,” Beatitude asked around a yawn fifteen exuberant minutes later, “I need a nap to recover from our naps?”
“Because I am a lover without compare, of course.”
“And so modest.” She smacked his chest gently, shifted off of him, and collapsed against his side with a sigh of happy repletion. “I suspect I am breeding again. More evidence of your masculine prowess.”
Grey had wondered when she’d say something. He’d suspected another child was on the way based on the sensitivity of Beatitude’s breasts and a certain knowing quality in her eyes. When she was carrying, she was also more likely to choose gunpowder tea over China black or hot chocolate, and the scent of tallow made her bilious.
Grey gathered her close. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve missed my menses three times.”
He’d noticed that too, of course. “Do you know why I am such a great lover?”
Beatitude tucked her leg across his thighs. “You are a Dorning male, the best of the lot. Some things are a matter of God-given endowments.” She patted his endowment fondly.
“All the endowments in the world don’t make a man a decent lover, your ladyship. While I will admit to a certain fascination with conjugal intimacies since marrying you, if I acquit myself adequately in bed, that is solely because of the inspiration joining me under the covers.”
She kissed his cheek. “I love you too, Grey.”
“Are you worried about the baby?” He was worried. He would spend the next five months vacillating between desperate anxiety and desperate prayer. All the while, he’d beam husbandly good cheer at his wife and manfully endure the heightened sexual appetite that pregnancy brought out in her.
“I am not worried about the baby in the sense you mean,” she said. “I found childbirth uncomfortable, but not the horror I was dreading. I am worried that you are worried about the baby. Another child is another mouth to feed, a son to educate, or another daughter to dower. It’s not as if you haven’t a few spare brothers to carry on the title should