Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,388

you’d done it on purpose.”

“We didn’t! We didn’t!” Charlotte said excitedly. “We really did just fall. By accident!”

“I suppose I will believe you,” he said with a sigh, “but only because I know you are far too trustworthy to lie.”

She looked him in the eye with a melting expression. “I would never lie to you, Uncle Michael,” she said.

He kissed her cheek and set her down. “Your mother says it’s time for dinner.”

“But you just got here!”

“I’m not going anywhere. You need your sustenance after all the dancing.”

“I’m not hungry,” she offered.

“Pity, then,” he said, “because I was going to teach you to waltz this afternoon, and you certainly cannot do that on an empty stomach.”

Charlotte’s eyes grew to near circles. “Really? Father said I cannot learn until I am ten.”

Michael gave her one of those devastating half smiles that still made Francesca tingle. “We don’t have to tell him, do we?”

“Oh, Uncle Michael, I love you,” she said fervently, and then, after one extremely vigorous hug, Charlotte ran off to Aubrey Hall.

“And another one falls,” Francesca said with a shake of her head, watching her niece dash across the fields.

Michael took her hand and tugged her toward him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Francesca grinned a little and sighed a little and said, “I would never lie to you.”

He kissed her soundly. “I certainly hope not.”

She looked up into his silvery eyes and let herself ease against the warmth of his body. “It seems no woman is immune.”

“How lucky I am, then, that I fall under the spell of only one.”

“Lucky for me.”

“Well, yes,” he said with affected modesty, “but I wasn’t going to say it.”

She swatted him on the arm.

He kissed her in return. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“And how is the clan Bridgerton?” he asked, linking his arm through hers.

“Rather wonderful,” Francesca replied. “I am having a splendid time, actually.”

“Actually?” he echoed, looking vaguely amused.

Francesca steered him away from the house. It had been over a week since she’d had his company, and she didn’t wish to share him just then. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“You said ‘actually.’ As if you were surprised.”

“Of course not,” she said. But then she thought. “I always have a lovely time when I visit my family,” she said carefully.

“But . . .”

“But it’s better this time.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

Which wasn’t precisely the truth. That moment with her mother—there had been magic in those tears.

But she couldn’t tell him that. He’d hear the bit about crying and nothing else, and then he’d worry, and she’d feel terrible for worrying him, and she was tired of all that.

Besides, he was a man. He’d never understand, anyway.

“I feel happy,” she announced. “Something in the air.”

“The sun is shining,” he observed.

She gave him a jaunty, single-shouldered shrug and leaned back against a tree. “Birds are singing.”

“Flowers blooming?”

“Just a few,” she admitted.

He regarded the landscape. “All the moment needs is a cherubic little bunny hopping across the field.”

She smiled blissfully and leaned into him for a kiss. “Bucolic splendor is a marvelous thing.”

“Indeed.” His lips found hers with familiar hunger. “I missed you,” he said, his voice husky with desire.

She let out a little moan as he nipped her ear. “I know. You said that.”

“It bears repeating.”

Francesca meant to say something witty about never tiring of hearing it, but at that moment she found herself pressed rather breathlessly against the tree, one of her legs lifted up around his hips.

“You wear far too many clothes,” he growled.

“We’re a little too close to the house,” she gasped, her belly clenching with need as he pressed more intimately against her.

“How far,” he murmured, one of his hands stealing under her skirts, “is ‘not too close’?”

“Not far.”

He drew back and gazed at her. “Really?”

“Really.” Her lips curved, and she felt devilish. She felt powerful. And she wanted to take charge. Of him. Of her life. Of everything.

“Come with me,” she said impulsively, and she grabbed his hand and ran.

Michael had missed his wife. At night, when she was not beside him, the bed felt cold, and the air felt empty. Even when he was tired, and his body was not hungry for her, he craved her presence, her scent, her warmth.

He missed the sound of her breathing. He missed the way the mattress moved differently when there was a second body on it.

He knew, even though she was more reticent than he, and far less likely to use such passionate words, that she felt