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Knowing that she would rather like to look over Jake’s shoulder and see his . . . see him. From the rear.

“Someday,” Jake promised in a low rasp.

A tightness in her throat stopped Cleo’s response. She looked up at him, cataloguing what she saw: somber eyes—no, longing eyes. A strong nose. A stronger jaw. An American air to him, imperceptible but intrinsic.

The air of a man who would change his last name because his uncle had soiled it.

“Jake,” she whispered.

“You’re not ready for us,” he said, dropping a kiss on her lips. “But when you are, the carriage awaits.”

She could feel herself reddening. “It’s time for bed.” And quickly added, “Separately, if that needs to be said. Because we’re not having an affaire, remember?”

“I do remember,” Jake said. His finger rubbed her lip again.

“You shouldn’t speak to me that way,” Cleo answered, her voice shaky.

“What way?” He smiled down at her.

“Tenderly,” she managed.

His smile . . .

She’d never seen one like it.

“Even a queen can’t have everything she wants,” Jake said, his hand curving around the back of her head. “Kiss me once more, Cleo. Take me through the night.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

After the duchess’s informal dinner, Cleo’s life rearranged itself into a pattern. Jake appeared every morning with a plate of kippers. He’d found someplace in London that sold him a cranking mechanism for grinding beans, and fifteen minutes later, her dining room would be fragrant with freshly brewed coffee.

Cleo began every morning with India tea, but ended the meal with a hand-brewed drink. Not because she liked coffee, but because she liked Jake: the man who would lean toward her, plunking contracts down on the table and demanding her opinion of the eighth page, because he was sure that a blackguard was trying to rook him.

After the meal, they would separate, she to her plumbing contracts, her French studies, her philosophy essays, and he to . . . whatever he was doing.

For the life of her, Cleo wasn’t quite certain.

He liked to acquire companies and challenge her to figure out how to make them better. For example, he became interested in Flemish lace, but when he tried to buy the company, the lace turned out to have been made by a convent of nuns. They were glad to sell him their lace, but not their convent. On Cleo’s suggestion, he offered them apprentices, who would form the core of a new lace company in a few years.

Meanwhile, Quimby’s was doing so well that Martha hired four more seamstresses. Every evening Cleo would don one of Martha’s gowns. They had a certain look to them, she was realizing. Like any modiste, Quimby’s had carved out a specialty, a niche.

Their niche?

Gowns that would look well under theater lights. Gowns that would make an entire audience full of men—and women—fall in love with the actress lucky enough to wear them. Half mourning or not, Martha’s gowns sparkled, and even if Cleo protested in a fitting that she didn’t need quite so many jet beads sewn onto her hem, she never won an argument.

In the evening, Jake would escort her to her grandfather’s for dinner, or to a society event. Later, in the corridor reserved for the two of them, they would kiss for an hour, the very air vibrating with desire.

He never asked for more. He would lean over her, one arm braced against the wall above her head, and just kiss her. Cleo had never imagined that such erotic sounds could come from her own throat, but they did.

She couldn’t lie to herself. She clung to him, whimpered when he turned aside to kiss her eyes or jaw. It was in those moments that her mind would focus with utter clarity on one fact: she felt as if she would die if they never made love.

After years of silently criticizing her mother’s passions, she was consumed by one greater than Julia had ever experienced. The odd leading actor, after all, had been married or easily distracted. Julia would shrug and drift off to another man.

For Cleo, there would be no drifting to another. Each day her understanding of that fact grew. Every kiss, every word, every touch knit her closer to him.

Made her—

Made her love him, if truth be told.