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“In what respect?”

“As a husband. Other than the given: respect, affection, duty. And fidelity.”

Viola had seen plenty of marriages in which those attributes didn’t seem to be a given, but she was happy to hear they would be in hers. Her bout of shyness eased. “I feel safe with you.”

“Good,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I will always protect you, Viola. I will give my life for yours.”

“I hope there’s no need for that. I would like a kiss,” she said.

His face eased. “What sort of kiss? Here?” He kissed her forehead.

“No.”

“Here?” He kissed her cheek, the way one kisses a child.

Viola turned and caught his neck cloth. “I have some rules for marriage. No shouting.”

He nodded.

“No treating me like a child. I am younger than you, but I am an adult.” She was quite certain of that. There was nothing like experiencing profound humiliation to drive one to maturity. She often felt three or four years older than Joan, even though their birthdays were not far apart.

“You are my partner,” Devin promised.

“I do not want to spend the afternoon touring the house and meeting the members of your household.”

“No?” He looked startled but nodded. “We can do whatever you wish.”

She tugged on his neck cloth, ruining its perfectly starched edges. “I want to consummate our marriage, Devin. If I have to wait until this evening, I will be twice the nervous wreck that I am already. I may look calm, but I am not.”

His hands came up over hers and then fell away. “We won’t do anything that frightens you.” There was something fierce in his voice. “I have no interest in that.”

“Kiss me,” Viola said, tugging again.

He bent his head and brushed his lips over hers.

Annoyed, she nipped his lower lip and licked the reddened mark.

His eyes kindled and his lips opened against hers. “The duchess commands?”

“You said that I could have anything I desire,” she reminded him.

“I don’t want to frighten you.”

“I’m not frightened of kisses,” she said impatiently. “I’m nervous because I don’t know what’s to come. I don’t want to spend the entire day with my stomach in knots.”

His voice dropped to a velvety purr. “I completely understand, and I sympathize.”

“I can assure you that if I spend the day walking about the house making small talk with your housekeeper, introducing my maid to the butler, finding out what the accounts and the house book look like . . . by the time supper comes about I will be a babbling idiot.”

Devin stared down at his wife—his wife!

The word echoed around his mind.

Viola was the most complicated mathematical theorem he’d encountered in his entire life. She looked and sounded like a young lady, but she didn’t act like one.

Above all, above even her training as a lady, she was honest.

She was gazing up at him now, her eyes a mix of bravado and fear.