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“When I can. But we are both fascinated by predictions,” Bea told him. “Between us, we’ve made a lot of bets—‘probabilities,’ we’d call them—that have worked. Mine more than his.” She couldn’t suppress her grin.

Jonah’s brows drew together. “What exactly are you saying, Bea?”

“My father informed Lady Alcon that he would give me a respectable dowry.”

“I just need you, not your dowry.”

“But the money that I made myself, figuring out percentages and putting money behind my bets?”

“No …”

“Oh, yes,” she said with satisfaction. “Query: if the Duke of Lennox marries Miss Beatrice Valentine—and he’d better, because he debauched her in a carriage—will he be able to rebuild all those outbuildings, add a cupula or two, and still found an Oxford College, if he wants?”

Jonah was distracted. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Oh, I thought perhaps in honor of Ed and his love of philosophy. But it wouldn’t have to be a college. We could build a chapel or create a scholarship. So … your prediction?”

Jonah knew that if he tried to put into words what he was feeling he would lose control. He would say unmanly things and perhaps shed unmanly tears.

Instead of speaking, he turned over his precious soon-to-be wife and kissed a lingering, possessive trail up and down her body, lavishing her with the feelings that he wasn’t good at putting into words, but which she seemed to understand without a problem.

“Won’t your horses grow tired?” Bea whispered, sometime later.

Jonah grunted.

He was lying beneath her, which was good because there had been a moment when Bea thought she might stop breathing from the pure weight of having a man the size of a house on top of her.

She smiled to herself.

She had thought she was broken by Regina’s cruelty, but that wasn’t true. She had been cracked and forged again, stronger, like double-glazed china. Inside, she was herself again, the girl who’d spent hours playing in the stables and never considered herself pudgy or any other unpleasant word.

Because she knew she was loved.

And lovable.

That was the saddest truth of this whole Season: Regina wasn’t lovable and somewhere underneath it all, she knew it.

“I suppose I should bang on the roof and send us back home,” Jonah said, his voice husky. “Damn it, woman, you’ve exhausted me. Stripped me to the bone.”

Bea reached out and caught her chemise, then sat up and pulled it over her head. Not to cover herself up, because her soon-to-be husband loved every inch of her, every dimple and every valley.

But because she would like a hot bath. Her hair was tangled. She was thirsty and sweaty. She poked Jonah.

“Humph.”

“Bath, tea, toast,” she told him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her, his gaze sliding from her face to her breasts. His shaft, lying quiescent on his belly, stiffened.

Bea laughed.

“Lifelong condition,” Jonah said, putting his hands behind his head, which made his muscular chest look particularly desirable, emphasizing the washboard effect of his stomach.

“Up,” Bea said. “Bang on that ceiling.”

“If we do that, I’ll have to give you up. Lady Alcon won’t let me spend the night with you.”

“Very true,” Bea said.