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“Did you say that you want to live here, in the Dower House?” He propped himself up on his elbows.

“Yes, I did. Your mother loves the Grange, so why shouldn’t she continue to live there?”

“Because I am the duke?”

Stella shrugged. “Does anyone truly care where the duke lives? You said yourself that the nearby gentry have nothing to do with your family. It’s not as if we’ll be inviting them for Christmas dinner.”

Silvester let himself slip down to lie on his back again. “I always pictured myself living in the Grange, restored to its former glory.”

“It is true that most of the ton would leap at the chance to break bread with you,” Stella said with a distinct note of dismay in her voice. “I suppose that was the way you imagined ‘winning’ when you were a boy.”

“Yes,” Silvester said, thinking about it. “I wanted all the people who snubbed my parents to long for an invitation to the Grange.”

“Your parents didn’t care,” Stella reminded him.

“I cared.”

Stella moved to lie partly on top of him, just enough so she glazed his mouth with a kiss. “Would you find it shameful to live in a less-than-palatial building? This is a normal house. Just the right size for two people and a few children.”

“Footmen, maids, cook? The servants’ quarters are limited.”

She shrugged. “If they can’t be housed here, surely they could run over from the Grange? The cook we just met seemed very capable, and I like Bertha.”

“I hired a French chef for the Grange.”

He saw her eyes harden.

“No.”

“You dislike French food as well as French wallpaper,” Silvester guessed.

She shook her head. “That’s not it. Though I am glad not to marry your cousin and open a laughing gas salon in Paris.”

“I don’t like Harold.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I don’t care for the way he looks at you,” Silvester said, his voice roughening. “He gobbles like a turkey, thinking French is the language of love.”

Stella laughed, which brought his attention to her lips, swollen from his kisses. He licked and kissed her mouth some more until his cock was throbbing against her leg.

She broke free and said, breathlessly, “Silvester, I want to live here, in this house.”

Silvester’s mind boggled. He’d never imagined living anywhere other than the Grange, the house where his ancestors going back generations had lived. Lived uncomfortably, it’s true.

Silence fell as he tried to think it through. Stella had been orphaned, so of course she wouldn’t care about an ancestral home.

“I can see that won’t work,” Stella said, dropping a kiss on his nose. “Then I suggest we move to Queen Elizabeth’s chamber. I can’t live with the jasmine wallpaper.”

“What wallpaper?”

“Jasmine. The jasmine petals blowing around the walls.”

He blinked at her. “I didn’t tell them to do that.”

“You must have told them the name of your future wife.”

Remorse tore through Silvester’s chest. Of course she didn’t want to be reminded of his idiocy. “We’ll rip out the paper,” he promised. “You’ll never see it again. Would we live in the Dower House forever?”