Page 62 of A Baby for the Duke

“You may tell yourself whatever you like about the gun room, Your Grace, but you carried five balls up a flight of stairs at ten o’clock at night and then ran away, and I have decided that it is the nicest thing anybody has ever done for me, and I intend to say so at breakfast in front of Mrs. Pike.”

“You will not.”

“I shall put it in a letter to my mother.”

“Duchess.”

“I shall have it engraved.”

“Then stand closer to the fire.”

“I have been standing close to the fire since I came up, and the fire has been extremely disappointing.”

He lifted her hands and pressed them flat under his open collar, against bare skin.

Leonora made a sound.

“Better?” Colin asked.

“That is not,” she said, with what she considered admirable steadiness, “a recognized medical treatment.”

“No.”

“You have very likely killed us both. We will be found in the morning.”

“Very likely.”

She looked up at him. The fire was behind her. There was nothing on his face but the flat attention he brought to everything, the same face he had worn over a bowl of broth and a chisel and a rope ladder. It undid her completely.

She rose onto her tiptoes and kissed him.

He met her the way he had in the treehouse—without a hurry, one hand going into her damp hair. This time, it was Leonora who backed him up, Leonora who pulled her gown down one shoulder, Leonora who moaned. At some point, he lifted her off her feet and lowered her onto the edge of the table by the fire.

“Wife.”

“Don’t ask me if I’m certain.”

“I’m going to ask you every time.” His mouth was on her throat. “You may find it tiresome.”

“I find it unbearable, which is not the same. And if you stop now, I shall throw you in the lake myself.”

“You can’t lift me.”

“I shall get Marina. She has been looking for an excuse since Tuesday.”

“Your sister,” Colin said against her collarbone, “would do it for ninepence.”

“My sister would do it for nothing, which is what makes her dangerous. And I would very much like you to stop discussing my family.”

He stopped discussing her family.

He pulled her gown off her other shoulder and down to her elbows, which pinned her arms to her sides and which she discovered she did not mind in the least. Then he kissed the line of her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, where he lingered long enough that she said something incoherent about the fire. He kissed her lower through her shift, until the linen was no use and she arched up off the table without meaning to.

He made a low approving sound against her skin.

“Colin.”

“Mm.”