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“I got that impression when he dragged me around the bedding gardens before he allowed me to mention you,” Silvester said dryly.

“For obvious reasons, they never had children.”

He kissed her senseless again before he whispered, “We will have children, Stella.”

“They’ll be half-blind, like me,” she said, clearing her throat.

Silvester shrugged. “I like your spectacles. I’m hoping they have your freckles too.”

“Short and stocky, like me.” She told him the truth. “Everyone is going to be shocked that you courted a woman as beautiful as Yasmin only to marry me, Silvester. Their surprise will be hard to bear.”

“They only have to observe us together to know the truth. I can’t stop looking at you,” Silvester said, his voice hoarse with truthfulness. All pirate. No duke. “For God’s sake, Stella, you can’t doubt how much I desire you.”

“Ladies like Blanche will believe that you need my dowry. If you had married Yasmin, they would have believed the marriage was forged for genuine reasons.” Exhaustion caught her unawares. “I don’t suppose it matters. No one would ever imagine that my marriage would involve romance.”

He moved sharply, and she added, “I’m not whining about it, Silvester. Well, I suppose I am, but I oughtn’t to. I’m so lucky.”

“Yes, imagine,” he said, his voice dry. “You are being forced to marry a duke.”

Stella sighed. “They’ll all see it the other way around, believe me. The only question will be what forced you to do it.”

“Does it matter? You’ll be a duchess.”

“Does it matter?” She shook her head at him. “My aunt told me that no one in society dislikes you, Silvester. You ask that, you who have crafted your entire life around what other people think of you?”

His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you might see it that way.”

“I do see it that way, but I’m not . . . it would be hypocritical to say that I wouldn’t have done the same, if I had your charm. I occasionally rub white lotion on my face to cover my freckles. I have contemplated taking my spectacles off and blundering around the ballroom.”

“I like your freckles.” He dropped a kiss on her nose.

“Those are shallow things,” Stella said impatiently. “If I had the allure that you have, I might well have flaunted it. I can’t stop myself from asking the wrong kind of questions and volunteering the wrong sort of information.”

“One of the things I like best about you is that you’re interesting,” Silvester said, splattering kisses on her face like a spring rain shower. “Don’t worry about what society thinks.”

“Says the man whom everyone loves,” she said dryly. “In a perfect world, I would like society to think that my fiancé had chosen me over Yasmin. Not instead of Yasmin.”

He was silent for a moment. “Your aunt told me that I was lucky she didn’t accept my hand. My mother said the same, emphatically and repeatedly. I didn’t choose you instead of Yasmin, though I understand that it looks that way.”

Stella was constitutionally prone to making the best of things. Her whole childhood had been a lesson in that particular art: for example, her mother’s terror of her freckles had led to her love of reading. Obviously, there were huge benefits to marrying Silvester, namely: being a duchess and going to bed with Silvester. She just had to focus on those things.

She wound her arms around his neck. “I suppose I’ll get used to being married to the most beloved man in London.”

“You’re exaggerating.” He brushed his thumbs over her forehead and down her temples. “Do you have freckles everywhere?”

The raw note in his voice made blood throb in her veins. “Yes, I do. They’re . . . My mother loathed them.”

“I don’t.”

Silvester meant it. Stella could hear truth in his voice. He liked the fact that she was speckled as a hen. Or even worse, as speckled as a toad, a charming phrase she’d overheard in a ballroom one night.

“More than anything, I want to strip this gown off you and caress every freckle, every curve,” Silvester muttered. “With every part of me.”

In case she didn’t understand the implication, he rubbed that part of himself, the rigid, large cock, against her thigh.

“No!” Stella squeaked, alarmed by the sweet heat that made her want to curl her legs around his hips. “I mean it, Silvester.”

He groaned. “Will you marry me by special license?”