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“If anyone’s going to criticize, it might as well be you,” he said gloomily. “I know this is paltry stuff.”

“Shall we look at it again tomorrow?”

“I expect. But it’s like trying to turn horse manure into gold.”

“It’s not that bad!” Helene exclaimed. “There’s a very sweet bit of melody here,” and she played the phrase.

“Don’t you recognize it?” Rees asked. “That’s from Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth. Stolen. There’s not a bit of music in here that’s worth the paper it’s written on,” he said savagely, pointing to the stack on top of the piano. “It’s all claptrap.”

Helene put a hand on his arm. He looked down. She had the delicate, pink-tipped fingers of a real musician, not a charlatan like himself.

“I doubt that very much,” she said.

“You might as well believe it, since it’s true,” he snapped, getting up. He walked one length of the room, but the papers swirling around his boots bothered him so much that he stopped. “I suppose we might as well get the tupping out of the way,” he growled. “I’m going to have to be up all night rewriting that score.”

Helene was biting her lip. She had a beautifully plump lower lip, he noticed, as if seeing it for the first time.

“Are you sure you want to?” she asked hesitantly. “We could wait a day.”

Suddenly he was quite certain that he did want to. “It’s best to start as we mean to go on,” he growled, striding to the door. “My room?”

“Absolutely not!” Helene said, running after him. She wasn’t going to engage in any such activities if there was even the slightest possibility that Lina could overhear. “We’ll go to my room.”

A moment later they were standing in her bedchamber staring at the bed. “It’s no narrower than the sofa at Lady Hamilton’s house,” Helene said, rather uncertainly. It was one thing to make plans with Esme to bed her husband once a day. It was quite another when his large body was standing next to one. It gave her an odd zinging feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“It’ll have to do,” Rees growled, pulling off his cravat. A moment later he was down to a shirt. Helene watched with some fascination. His legs were just as muscled as she remembered from Lady Hamilton’s music room. It was rather mesmerizing to see the powerful way his thighs flexed.

“How do you take exercise?” she asked.

“I walk between my pianos. Aren’t you going to undress?”

“Well, you still have on your shirt,” she retorted.

“I thought you’d prefer it.”

“Why?” Helene asked, wondering whether there was something about shirts that she should know. Perhaps gentlemen always wore their shirt in the presence of ladies.

“You dislike the hair on my chest,” Rees pointed out.

“Oh,” Helene said weakly, “I’d forgotten.” How extremely rude she had been, all those years ago. She was so hurt and desperate to injure him that she would have said anything. “I’m sorry if I made inappropriate comments,” she added. “I believe I was quite rude.”

He just stood in the middle of the room like some sort of big jungle cat, watching her intently. “It’s quite all right. I’m not wedded to my chest hair. Aren’t you going to undress, Helene?”

“I can’t undo this gown by myself,” she said, turning about and presenting him with an elegant row of pearl buttons.

Rees began unbuttoning. Helene’s hair curled into little wisps just at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t wearing a chemise. He would never have thought that Helene—his Helene—would wear a gown without a chemise and, underneath it, a sturdy corset. Every newly opened button revealed skin the color of snowflowers in the mountains, skin as clear and delicate as a baby’s cheek.

His fingers, Rees noticed with a flash of objectivity, were trembling. It was absurd to be excited about the prospect of bedding one’s wife. One’s estranged wife, he corrected himself. And the bedding was merely for purposes of procreation. The gown parted far enough now so that he pushed it forward, making it fall forward off her shoulders.

“You have a beautiful back, Helene,” he said, startled to hear the little rasp in his voice. He had obviously gone too long without visiting Lina, if he was getting excited over one slender back, albeit with an elegant curve that made a man long to run his hands down…down.

Helene didn’t know what to think of Rees’s compliment. Last week he had said she had beautiful legs, and now she had a beautiful back as well? She clutched the gown to her bosom. But she could hardly cover up her breasts forever.

So she turned around and let the gown drop to the floor. He might as well see it all, although surely he could remember for himself.

For a moment he didn’t move at all, just drew in a breath. There was something about his eyes that made Helene feel a bit better. It was only Rees, after all. What was she so worried about? She walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs. She felt rather wicked, sitting naked in the presence of a man. Back when they were first married, they had conducted all intimacies discreetly under the sheets, and here they were, estranged, and she naked in front of him.

“Do take off your shirt,” she suggested. It hung past his hips. She didn’t care about his chest either way, but she was very curious to see whether her memory of last week could possibly be accurate.