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Stella narrowed her eyes at him.

He nodded.

“I like your mother. But I can’t imagine where you get your moral sense from,” Stella said flatly. “You are virtually promised to Yasmin and should not be kissing another woman.”

His jaw clenched. “I agree.”

“As for evidence regarding unbridled male lust, have you ever found yourself in a bedchamber with Lady Yasmin?”

His eyes darkened to an icy gray. She already knew that His Grace didn’t like being served any sort of corrective. “Certainly not.”

“Which suggests I am the only marriageable lady you have encountered in a bedchamber,” Stella pointed out. “As I said, your evidence agrees with my aunt’s assessment of male restraint: to wit, they don’t have much.”

He broke into a bark of laughter. “You claim that I always want to win, but you are no better, Stella.” He reached out and tugged one of the curls hanging by her ear. “That kiss was not merely a matter of propinquity.”

She frowned.

“I know big words too,” he told her, one side of his mouth tugging up.

It struck her again: the smiles he gave her were so different from the beaming smiles with which he charmed the ton. Polite society saw him dazzle, whereas she got these wry twitches. Half a mouth. One eyebrow.

“I know what ‘propinquity’ means,” she told him. “Closeness to a bed or in this case, a mouse.”

“It doesn’t mean this. Whatever it is.” Silvester pulled her into his arms with no questioning preface. One hand curved around her head, under her hair. This kiss was deeper and longer than the last, their tongues stroking against each other in a way that made Stella’s common sense evaporate like a soap bubble in the sun. The kiss was desperate, urgent, accompanied by Silvester’s rumbling growl and her gasp.

Stella came back to herself to find she was trembling against him, the imprint of his hand between her shoulder blades prickling with sensation. Her arms were wound around his neck, and she couldn’t even hear the rain over the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. A hungry ache had sunk into her bones.

“Damn it!” she cried, pulling away again and drawing in an unsteady gulp of air. “It wasn’t just my aunt. I was also right!” She was shocked to hear a hoarse note in her voice.

“You were correct when you decided that male lust was wildly overestimated?” This smile, the one in Silvester’s eyes, was a far cry from that with which he entertained polite society. It was hungry, animalistic, and his voice was hard. “I can assure you, Stella, that male lust is alive and well.”

“Obviously. No, not that.”

He raised an eyebrow.

She’d been honest with him so far, so she might as well continue. “I deduced that women’s desire is as dangerous as men’s, if not more so. The proof of which being that you and I are kissing in . . . with—”

“With no more chaperonage than a rodent,” Silvester said. “So you kissed me merely because of propinquity and a bed?”

“You are the only man who’s ever tried to kiss me,” Stella said. She certainly was not going to confess to how she felt about him.

Not that she understood her own feelings.

His eyes had warmed; now they cooled again, glittering at her from under lowered lids. “I would not advise that you bring another man into your bedchamber to test your self-restraint.”

Stella was staring at him, thinking hard. “I owe my aunt several apologies. Not that I argued with her, but inside my head, I concluded that . . . that . . .”

“That Mrs. Thyme’s warnings were foolish?” Silvester retreated to the door of the bedchamber. “Or that she was incorrect about male desire? She is foolish at times, but not mistaken when it comes to her niece’s desirability.”

Stella rolled her eyes.

“I have never been attracted to a portrait of Holofernes,” Silvester said thoughtfully. “But you, Stella? You?”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“You might want to avoid bending over a bed if you don’t wish to drive a man into a frenzy.”

“Oh.” She locked that away to think about later: not just what he said, but the raspy note in his voice when he said it.