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Ten minutes later, only a crack of light shone through the nearly closed wardrobe doors. Livie was on her back, her shoulders cradled in velvet. One of her legs was bent at the knee, and Joshua had a heavy leg thrown over the other.

“I refuse to take you in a wardrobe,” he muttered. His eyes glinted at Livie in the half-light.

“I love this wardrobe,” Livie whispered. She couldn’t help rocking against the weight and the friction of his thigh.

A grin curled the edge of his lips. “I’ll buy the wardrobe from the duke.” He kissed her nose. “We can put it in a bedchamber or a sitting room. Even so, I won’t make love to you in it.” He kissed her jaw. “A wardrobe is not erotic.”

“I shouldn’t know that word,” Livie said, wrinkling her nose.

“I didn’t really understand what it meant until tonight. Erotic,” he said, kissing her eyelashes. “Erotic,” nipping her bottom lip. “Erotic,” pressing his hips against her leg, the one he had pinned down. He watched her dazed face carefully. “Erotic,” he whispered again, running his left hand up her leg, under her gown, biting back a groan.

Livie’s mouth eased open into a little pant, her pulse beating frantically in her throat. He eased his fingers higher over the inner curve of her leg. “May I touch you?”

“There?”

Joshua nodded.

She gulped. “I suppose.”

Joshua slipped his hand beneath the lace trim of Livie’s fashionable drawers, his fingertips grazing the soft skin of her hip. And then, when she bit her lip but didn’t protest, he skimmed his fingers over delicate hair.

“This is so improper.” Her eyes were glossy, needy.

“I love being improper with you.” He dipped his fingers into her sleek, wet flesh, giving her a torturously slow caress. And another.

One of her hands curled tightly around his wrist. “Joshua, this is wrong.”

But Joshua could see and feel pleasure building in her body. “No, it’s not,” he growled in her ear, as one thick finger eased into her tight warmth.

Livie squeaked and then arched toward him, melting into his touch, spinning out of control a moment later. Her whole body clenched around him, her eyes closing in bliss, her plump lips opening in a scream that he only just managed to stifle with a kiss.

When he eased his fingers away, she was chanting under her breath, “Oh, goodness, oh, goodness.” Then she pulled him close, pasting her mouth to his clumsily but with great enthusiasm. “I’m so … but that was wrong.”

“Because we’re not married?”

“It’s just not done. I’m certain of it.”

“I’m sure of the opposite.”

“Perhaps only in a secret place like this, where you’re just Joshua and I’m just Livie,” she offered. “A secret place doesn’t count.”

“In that case, I am definitely buying this wardrobe,” he said, licking his finger. “Essence of Livie.”

Her mouth fell open again.

“Essence of my wife.” He licked his finger again, eyes still on Livie’s face. “I’ll buy this wardrobe, cut off the top, and make it into a bed.” His blood was boiling. He longed to wrench off his pantaloons, thrust inside, fill her up.

Yet he’d been taught the order of things:

Marry a lady.

Then bed that lady.

Still, he let his hand stroke her thigh again.

This wasn’t bedding; it was wardrobing.

It didn’t count.