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“I could sculpt the curve of your bottom were I blinded,” her husband said into her ear, sounding rather drunken. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I couldn’t,” Gina said, enjoying herself immensely. “Max might come outside at any moment.”

“He’s in the nursery being bullied into eating far more rusks than he wishes for nuncheon.” Cam had dropped the offending sketch to the ground and his hands were roaming freely. His mouth burned a trail across her cheek…Gina turned to meet his lips.

“Yes,” she whispered, opening her mouth to him, to the charcoal and chalk, the wild man whom she married. His tongue slid slowly across her lips, came to her with a sudden passion that made Gina fold into his arms in helpless surrender.

“Your Grace,” came a pompous voice.

Gina tried to tear her mouth from Cam’s but he wouldn’t let her, finishing his kiss, lingering there without regard for the liveried butler standing at a polite distance.

“Yes, Towse,” Cam said finally, not looking up from her face. He was tracing the line of his wife’s rosy mouth with a finger.

“Her Grace has a visitor,” Towse said majestically, his eyes fixed on a nearby bush. “The Earl of Mayne.”

“If Mayne thinks he’s going to add you to the notches on his bedpost, he’d better think again,” Cam said softly, and suddenly the urbane duke disappeared, replaced by a muscled wild man who had spent years in Greece and thought Greek husbands weren’t overly savage when it came to protecting their women.

“Mayne is wooing Helene,” Gina told him.

Cam thought about that for a second. “She could probably use his attentions,” he said with a wicked grin. “I always thought she was a bit too sober for her own good.”

“Cam!” Gina protested, an instant scowl appearing on her face. “I won’t have my friends insulted by you or anyone else.” She turned to Towse and called, “Please ask the earl to join me in the garden.”

“I’ll give you ten minutes with that seducer,” her husband said, grabbing her slim waist again and pulling her back against his hard body. “Ten minutes only, Gina, and then you belong to this seducer.”

Objections trembled on Gina’s lips, and then she realized that there was no point to cutting off her nose to spite her face. She no more wished to deny her husband’s provocative smile than she wanted to kiss the Earl of Mayne, be he the most seductive man in London or not.

“All right,” she whispered. “Ten minutes.” Even meeting his eyes, seeing that sweep of smoky eyelash, made her stomach curl.

“Don’t be late,” he said, and the urgency in his tone had nothing to do with ducal responsibilities.

The Earl of Mayne found the duchess clipping roses and looking rather flushed from her gardening endeavors.

“How delightful to see you,” she said, smiling at him and holding out a delicate hand.

Mayne admired the lovely picture she made, pale red hair gleaming in almost the precise color of the blush roses she carried in a basket. “It’s a shame that you’re so happily married,” he said, dropping a kiss onto her palm. “May I say that I would be very delighted should that circumstance ever change?”

She chuckled, and the low, happy sound of it jolted his loins. If he could find a woman like her, marriage wouldn’t seem such an unenviable prospect.

“I suspect you have come to see me for reasons other than my supposed marital bliss,” she said, but the smile curling on her lips left him in no doubt that bliss was likely the right word.

“In fact,” he said, “I was hoping you could give me the direction of your lovely friend Helene.”

“Are you and Helene on terms of such intimacy, then?” she said, eyeing him with obvious curiosity.

“She was kind enough to give me leave to use her Christian name.”

The duchess obviously remembered the story she had been told to recite. “Helene has decided to take the waters,” she said piously. “She finds herself exhausted by the season. I’m afraid that I’m not at liberty to give her address to anyone.”

“Hmm,” Mayne said. “I would have thought the countess was one to eschew ill-smelling medicines. And when I saw her last…she was in the very pink of health.”

“Yes, well,” Gina said, conscious that at least eight minutes had passed since Cam went upstairs, “I’m afraid that I can’t give you her direction without betraying her confidence.”

He sighed inwardly and took a billet from his breast pocket. “In that case, would you be so kind as to forward this to her?” he enquired.

She gave him a beaming smile and began walking rather quickly toward the house. “I shall give it to a footman immediately,” she said, towing him along.

Two minutes later, Mayne found himself deposited, rather unceremoniously, outside the front door. He walked to the pavement and then paused, examining his watch fob until the Girton butler closed the door. The house, and indeed the whole street, were sleepily dozing in the unexpected heat that had struck London that morning.