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“You’re the only man who ever called me that.”
“Perhaps not to your face,” Miles growled. “Believe me, your suitors thought it behind your back.”
Daisy slung an arm around his neck. “I think you’re delectable too,” she whispered. “You don’t mind that I can’t keep my hair above my shoulders? That I don’t take daily walks and eat nothing but rusks one day a week? That’s what Lady Regina suggested.”
“I love your hair. I don’t want you to become slimmer. Your curves are everything to me. I want you to be who you are.”
He set her gently onto the entry’s flagstones.
“The Lady Devin,” he said formally to his assembled household. He nodded toward Nanny Plum. “And Miss Belle Devin. My daughter.”
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN
COURTSHIP BY WAY OF VIOLETS
The next week was the happiest of Daisy’s life. She and Miles took Belle with them everywhere: to the village in a pony cart, to the estate’s tenant farmers in a carriage, to the trout river for fishing, and even into the kitchens and up to the attics.
Nothing Daisy knew of courting had prepared her for the delight of having a man stroll into her bedchamber in the morning and drop a handful of violets on her coverlet. And then squash all the blossoms because he’d rolled on top of them during a kiss.
At the end of the week, Miles brought Daisy and Belle to a clearing deep into the woods where the grass was a dark acid-green with a carpet of violets hanging over every blade.
“It’s so lovely!” Daisy cried, looking about.
Miles shook out a blanket and set Belle down. She promptly reached for a handful of flowers and stuck them into her mouth.
“Don’t eat those, Belle. They’re better when candied,” he told her, coming down on his knees and pulling a stem from her lips.
Belle frowned. “Boo-boo,” she said, snatching another fat little fistful of crumpled flowers.
“You could teethe with this instead,” Miles said enticingly, waving a silver rattle.
The baby grinned at him as she crammed the new bunch into her mouth, chomping down with all three teeth.
“I find it ominous that her smile grows bigger when she’s being disobedient,” Miles remarked, still trying to convince her to take the rattle.
Daisy sat down beside her family, her heart thumping as she watched them. Her husband was wearing an exquisite white linen shirt—but no coat or cravat, so she could see his corded neck. He bore almost no resemblance to the elegant gentleman who strolled the House of Lords.
“Belle might as well eat violets,” she said. “Nanny Plum says that she doesn’t care for vegetables and throws them to the floor.”
Miles shrugged and stretched out beside her, his eyes expressing smoldering interest. “Have I told you recently how exquisite you are? Better than a violet.”
“Now and then,” Daisy said, dimpling.
“Are you certain you don’t feel like impulsively inviting me to your bedchamber?” His smile made desire burn in her core.
Behind him, Belle rolled to her back, meditatively chewing more violets as she stared at shifting leaves high above them. Daisy wasn’t an experienced mother yet, but she recognized the look of a baby contemplating a nap.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” Daisy said, avoiding the question. “I feel as if we’re lying on a flowery mattress.”
Miles propped himself up on one elbow and cocked an eyebrow. “A purple mattress?”
“If only mattresses smelled like this,” she said dreamily.
Miles sniffed loudly. “Green wood with a touch of mushroom.”
Before she could answer, he rolled back to his other side to make sure that Belle was all right. Not surprisingly, Miles had shown himself a wonderful father: loving, protective, endlessly celebratory. Everything that Daisy’s father had not been.
She loved her husband. She believed that he loved her. Deep in the night she couldn’t stop herself from gloating over the evidence: the longing in Miles’s voice, the ferocity in his eyes when he threatened to kill Frederick, the intensity with which he regarded her, praised her, kissed her, touched her.
