made each other miserable, you know. He certainly knows. I behaved badly to him, but I hurt mainly his pride. He is lucky to have you, and I believe we are all lucky to be allied through our children.”
It was a handsome speech, and Jenny Stewart hadn’t needed to make it. Juliet’s mother acknowledged everything with a brief clasp of her hand.
*
It seemed both strange and wonderful to dance into her bedchamber with Dan that evening. He was humming a popular waltz tune and pushed the door closed with his shoulder as he spun her. They whirled dizzyingly across the room and landed, laughing, on top of the bed.
“What shall we do now?” Juliet asked as he leaned over her.
His eyes darkened. He swept his hand down the length of her body, leaving her breathless.
But she caught his hand, smiling. “No, I mean tomorrow, the next few weeks, the rest of our lives. It’s not as if we’ve had any time to plan this.”
“Unplanned fun is nearly always the best.” However, he seemed to bend his mind to it. “Tomorrow, we should rescue Gun from the garden at Myerly. Or, alternatively, rescue Myerly from Gun. Then…wedding trips are traditional. Your parents seem to want you to go to London to buy clothes.”
“Well, that is always fun. You should do the same.”
He sat up and shrugged off his somewhat threadbare coat. Tossing it aside, he said, “Perhaps you are right. And I would like to go to the theater with you.”
“And Vauxhall Gardens! Ranelagh!”
“Why do you want to go there? They’re hardly fashionable anymore. Or respectable.”
“That’s why,” she said happily. She caught his hand and held it to her cheek. “You are not a poor man anymore, Dan,” she said with difficulty. “Even without Myerly.”
“I know. Your father spoke to me. Apparently, we have an estate in Lincolnshire. And my grandfather, inspired by his determination to keep up with the generosity of his old enemy, has said I shall still have Myerly. Plus, a small allowance now. Apparently, my aunts and cousins have always had one. Now my mother and I will, too. He even said he would increase Aunt Hetty’s, for their…difficulty. And when he dies, he will divide his fortune between us.”
“And you will still have Myerly. I think you would have given up the rest for Myerly.”
“Except you,” he said, tossing his cravat and waistcoat carelessly on the floor. He leaned over her once more, tracing the outline of her lips with his fingertips, then trailing them down her chin and throat.
His lips followed, and her arms came up of their own volition to hold him. His hand slid beneath her, unlacing her gown even as he began to speak, rapidly and breathlessly.
“I will make light of things that are important. I will, from time to time, behave badly, though never unfaithfully. I may wander off forgetting to tell you and miss engagements, though I will try not to. I will laugh inappropriately and fail to be polite to supposedly important people who annoy me. Occasionally, or quite often, I am bound to annoy you. We will quarrel. But through it all, Juliet, never doubt that I love you, that I will always protect you, and love you, support you, and love you…”
“I am seeing a pattern,” she managed, and stopped his lips with her own. “Don’t apologize for crimes you have not yet committed. I love you, Dan, not some silly idealized version of what a husband should be.”
He smiled, tugging the gown and undergarments from her shoulders until her arms were free and then the rest of her, and she lay quite naked in his arms. “You are quite wonderful…” His eyes, thrillingly hot and clouded, devoured her. “My God, what did I do in my life to deserve you?”
She caressed his stubbly cheek and throat and tugged at his shirt. “You made that nasty porter give me a ticket for the stagecoach. You helped me and believed me. But it’s never a matter of deserving, is it?”
“No,” he agreed, obliging her by pulling his shirt up over his head. “And it’s probably as well you didn’t know exactly what was in my head at the time.”
“What?” she asked, just before he kissed her mouth long and deeply.
“This,” he said huskily, trailing kisses across her cheeks and shoulders and breasts. “And this, this, and this…”
All the delicious heaviness she remembered from previous encounters seemed to intensify. His lips, his hands, trailed fire and sweetness, coaxing, arousing