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In flames and in love.

Even as she entwined her hands in his curls and pulled him up, up so that his mouth came to hers, she knew. He was making her heart sing by kissing her, and pulling her thighs apart, not gently. And then,

And then,

She arched to take him, to take all of him, because that was the only thing that mattered in the world. She was lost except for the choked sound of his voice saying her name, and his rhythm, God, for someone who hardly knew how—

But that thought slipped away in the rising heat and the way he was thrusting against her, his hands on her breasts now, and she was going to shriek, really shriek—she never shrieked; it wasn’t ladylike.

Sometimes even a lady breaks the rules.

“All I wanted was buttered toast,” she said sometime later, running a lazy finger over his stomach.

“To hear is to obey,” he said, and the lazy pleasure in his voice made her shiver all over again.

He stoked the fire and made her toast without bothering 246 Eloisa

James

with his clothes, and that gave her the inestimable pleasure of watching him.

“Gardeners don’t eat butter,” he said, bringing back the toast.

She brightened. “Jam?”

“They can’t afford such niceties. Why, the mistress of this house is a terribly hard taskmaster. Pays her workmen a pittance.”

“What do gardeners eat on their bread?” she asked.

“Honey,” he said, taking a little wooden ladle shaped like a spindle from a jar and raising it in the air over her bread so that a thin gold stream of honey curled in the air and fell on her toast.

They ate toast, tucked side by side on the edge of the bed. He kept a hand on her stomach, even though the babe was still sleeping, although how the child managed to sleep through the last hour, Esme had no idea.

“Why are you doing that?” she finally asked, deep in the comfort of a satisfied body and honey toast.

“I’m pretending he’s mine,” Sebastian said. He gave her a smile. “Don’t worry: I know the child is Miles’s. I’m just pretending.” He bent and kissed her ear, just a brush with his lips.

Emotion choked her throat, and she could hardly finish her toast, but she managed, and then she had to think of a way to leave, or she would cry.

So, with her usual bad luck of the last few months, she was struck by an idea that achieved just the opposite effect. She took his hand off her stomach and pushed him back on the bed. He went without protest, but with a surprised look in his eye.

And then she reached out for that little earthenware jar, the one with the tiny ladle in it, the ladle shaped like a spindle. And smiling her Infamous Esme smile, the smile that had se-Fool for Love 247

duced the most starched marquess in London, she held that little ladle up in the air.

Golden drops of honey clung to the spindle, dropped slowly, fell to something smooth, and hot, and male. It was a good thing that she was always hungry. Pregnancy does that to you.

< 33 =

The Remedy for Sin and Fornication

The wedding was to be a very quiet affair, held at Holkham House, which was graced with a very small fourteenthcentury chapel that had a tiny altar and high-backed oak pews. It was a rather dim and damp sort of place, but Lady Holkham insisted.

“I won’t have the villagers out gawking at you, which they would if we held it in St. Mary’s,” she said. Millicent had not taken the story of the letter well, although she seemed relieved that her stepdaughter had not truly thrown all propriety to the winds. “Of course Darby must marry you,” she had snapped. “It doesn’t matter what the truth of the matter is: your reputation is ruined.”

Henrietta didn’t sleep more than an hour or two the night before her wedding. She lay awake in an agony of irresolution, certain that she was making the mistake of a lifetime. But finally dawn came, and with it a numb sense that she had no choices left.

The first thing she saw on walking into the chapel was Darby, speaking with Mr. Fetcham. Naturally he was a vision of elegance from head to foot. Henrietta looked down at her Fool for Love