The Earl and Countess of Falcondale were in possession of a beautiful pianoforte. A Stein in polished birch, imported from Germany in ’26. Tessa barely grazed her fingers across the keys and they trilled to life.

Lady Piety had been leading her on a tour of their home, a magnificent townhome mansion that Piety had bought with a great inheritance years ago. Although Piety was gracious and the house really was a showplace, it was little distraction from Joseph’s closed-door discussion downstairs with the earl.

It took no effort to guess what they discussed. Tessa wondered if Joseph had come here with a mind to unburden himself. An odd choice for their afternoon outing, she thought, but she understood the significance of a personal errand rather than some contrived diversion—tea in a café or a stroll through the zoo. It was no small thing to be introduced to the couple he described as “his family.”

And maybe Joseph needed the advice of his old friend? Perhaps her request to leave London had driven him here?

Regardless, the earl would soon be told the truth about Tessa and their marriage and the baby. And soon after the earl knew, the countess would know. She glanced at Piety, so effusive and open and bright. She would have liked to have known the older woman, to count her as a friend the way Joseph did.

Now . . . ?

Tessa sighed. Each time she survived one moment of shame—the misery against the tree, that first missed monthly cycle, the confession to Joseph, her parents’ rejection—she turned around to face yet another.

When she had been newly pregnant, she had distracted herself with hope in Joseph. After he sailed away, her solace was the baby. Today, however, staring down at the shiny pianoforte, she wondered if she could endure another rejection. Joseph’s friends would surely discreetly, if not politely, turn her out when they knew.

Suddenly, Tessa wanted nothing more than to slide onto the piano seat and lose herself. Only at the piano could she forget, even for ten minutes, what she’d done and how she and the baby would survive. She couldn’t control what Joseph discussed nor what the earl and countess would think of her. But just for a moment, Tessa might play.

“It’s wasteful to have a proper music room when no one plays,” Lady Piety was telling her. “I had high hopes that one of my boys might take up music as a hobby. But we’ve devoted so much of our lives to travel, it’s not convenient to lug musical instruments on a ship.” She laughed. “Trevor already believes me to be a champion over-packer.”

“It is a beautiful instrument, a showpiece, even if no one plays,” Tessa lied. Her fingers twitched to scramble over the keys. She heard music in her head. Her eyes returned again and again to the instrument, even while she trailed the countess around the room.

“Would you like to play, Tessa?” Lady Piety finally asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t impose.”

“Stop. I should love to hear it put to use. I adore music, but Trevor must be bribed to attend concerts.”

Tessa chuckled at this, studying her hostess more closely. She was so endearingly . . . irreverent. Perhaps, Tessa thought, perhaps she and the earl would not lose faith in Joseph for marrying a desperate woman. Perhaps they would see his predicament in sympathetic shades of grey, rather than black and white.

Tessa drifted to the pianoforte, knowing she could not decline a second offer. She settled on the bench.

“There are sheets of music somewhere in this room, now let me think where I . . .”

Tessa barely heard. She dove softly into Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 11,” thrilling to the sensitive response of the keys. The brilliant simplicity of the notes dropped from each key and then swelled to fill the room. Her body responded immediately, eyes closing, heart steadying, shoulders rising and falling as she conjured magic from the keys.

Distantly, she was aware of Lady Piety sucking in a startled breath, of her settling into an adjacent chair. Between songs, the countess applauded. Did she speak? Tessa could not say, she allowed herself to be wholly taken in by the music, to sink beneath the surface of sound. She lost herself, trilling and pounding through her entire repertoire of favorites—popular jigs, classic sonatas, refrains from operas.

At last, when her neck ached and her fingers cramped, she took a deep, satisfied breath and sat up. She stretched her shoulders. The room had shrunk to the keys before her, and she blinked at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows.

Behind her came a slow, steady clap. She spun on the bench.

Joseph. He stood not far behind, his eyebrows and head cocked. Look what you’ve found.

Look, indeed, Tessa thought.

The countess had gone. Joseph stood alone in the room, so very tall and broad and handsome. Her stomach swooped at the sight of him. She’d thought he would never look more beautiful than he had with the milky cloth draped over his shoulder and Christian balanced on top of it. But now?

She felt tears well up in her eyes and she turned back to the keys.

He was never meant to be so handsome and measured and thoughtful. From the beginning, when Willow had placed the advertisement, he was only meant to be some man, some anonymous man. He was only meant to marry her, give her son a name, abscond with her dowry, and disappear. She was not to think of him again.

But he had never, not for a moment, been some man.

And when he had disappeared, Tessa had awakened every day wondering if today would be the day he might come back. And if there was some chance to salvage the unlikely strains of love they’d kindled in those weeks at Berymede.

Looking back, their early love seemed almost too easy, the expected combustion of young attractive people falling into lust. The feelings she held now for Joseph were combustible, yes, but they were a slow burn, built hour by hour, gesture by gesture, as each new intimacy was added to the fire.

The Old Tessa would not hesitate to say that she was in love with Joseph Chance. She’d loved him at Berymede, and she certainly loved him now. The New Tessa would concur, but she must force herself to proceed with thoughtful caution. Her regard for him now was part attraction, part kinship, part gratefulness, and part . . . something else. A magical, intangible wholeness that made her heart surge. Taken as a whole, her love for him now, the truest, purest love, had far more potential to crush her than the dazzling, playful love of before.

Although Tessa could admit that seeing him here now, with the music still echoing in her ears and the captivated look on his face, she felt the old stirrings of playfulness as she had not known since Berymede. She wanted to entertain him. She wanted him to sit beside her and gaze sideways at her bent profile, inching his hand closer and closer to her leg.

Joseph said, “It occurs to me that there’s no pianoforte at the Boyds’.”

She shook her head. “They are artists, not musicians, I’m afraid.”

“You should have one. Actually, I am in possession of one. A pianoforte. It’s at my home. If the Boyds will allow it, I shall have it sent over.”

“You have a house?” she asked. Of course, the politer question would have been, You have a pianoforte? But good lord. He has a house?

“Indeed, I do,” he said.

He gestured to the piano bench and raised his eyebrows. She scooted to the side to make room and he settled beside her. He smelled like brandy.

“The house is in Blackheath,” he said. “A small Georgian mansionette, I believe it’s called. Mostly empty, except for a bed and a card table. And a pianoforte.”

“But you don’t play,” she said.

“No. I don’t.”

Before Tessa could stop herself, she said, “Is the pianoforte for me?”

“Yes.”

She wanted to ask when he bought it. She wanted to ask when he bought the house, and did he love it, and did he love London?

Would he consider leaving the house or the city for a place like Hartlepool on the North Sea?

Was he aware that when she said she wanted to move to Hartlepool, what she really wanted was for him to move there with her, or somewhere else they chose together?

The questions piled, one on top of the other, like the rising notes of a sonata, and Tessa tried to sift through them, to light upon the most innocuous one, but each one seemed more pointed and telling and demanding than the last. And she was not ready to hear him say no.

Not yet, she thought.

And so she let the questions accumulate, let them build into a very high, teetering pile, and then she raised her hands to the keys, and she played them all away.

Joseph had left his discussion with Falcondale in curiously good spirits. He’d thought he might tell Trevor everything, consider the older man’s opinion, and then try again to mesh his Plan for the Future with his ever-evolving knowledge of Tessa and Christian and their plans.

Instead, he’d told Trevor everything and walked away . . . invigorated. Propelled. Incited. Trevor had surprised him with advice that, only in hindsight, seemed predictable.

Stop playing the bloody coward, be a man, make some overture to her. A real overture. And suffer or enjoy the consequences, come what may.

“Don’t take the tedious, unnecessary journey I took, Joe,” Trevor had said. “Don’t wait until she falls from a balcony and nearly dies to admit that you require her. You do require her, don’t you? I’ve not misread your ravenous looks or generalized misery?”

Joseph had drummed his fingers on the table and not answered. “But Piety’s affections for you were never in doubt,” Joseph had countered. “Tessa has given me no certainty. She may want nothing from me—well, nothing save a cottage in County Durham.”

Trevor had simply shaken his head. He waited.

Joseph had gone on, “It would be impossible to overstate my devastation when she confessed the reason for our marriage. All those weeks, I’d been completely take in. Her affection had seemed as authentic as my regard for you, or your love for Piety. As a result, I can’t trust any suggestion that she might still want me. And let’s not forget that she’s just asked me to move her to the bloody North Sea.”

“Coward,” Trevor had said. He’d raised his glass in a mock toast.

Joseph had rolled his eyes.

“So what if she might not still want you?” Trevor had sighed. “And by the way, if you go in seeking this milquetoast level of interest—‘any suggestion,’ for God’s sake—I hope she rejects you on the spot. Bloody hell, Joe. Spare me the flaccid, head-bowed side shuffle. As if Piety and I have not been beating girls from your path since you were a boy. Rarely have I known you to be without some young woman swooning over you.”

Joseph had considered this. Flaccid? Head-bowed side shuffle?

“Would you like to know what I think?” Trevor had asked.

“No, but I feel sure that you will tell me.”

“I think you’re suffering from your first-ever rejection. Or potential rejection. By a woman, that is. And not just any woman, a gentleman’s daughter who you thought you didn’t deserve from the start.”

“Perhaps I do not deserve her.”

“Likely you did not,” Trevor had said. “But not for the reason you think. You see yourself as a servant and her as a lady, and you believe, ‘She only chose me because she was disgraced.’ The truth of it is, none of us deserves these women. Certainly, I don’t deserve Piety, and I’m a bloody earl. And you don’t deserve Tessa, despite being so much more than a servant. Please tell me the money and effort I’ve devoted to your education has earned this, at least. That you are fully aware that you are so much more.”

Joseph had refused to comment. He’d taken a drink.

“Very good then,” said Trevor. “Unless Tessa St. Croix harbors some predisposition for chronic lying—”

“It’s not that,” Joseph had said harshly, cutting him off. “It was never that.”

The earl had leaned back in his chair, raised his eyebrow, and taken another slow sip. “Well, then. There’s an inspired answer for you. If you believe this, then what in God’s name are you waiting for?”

What are you waiting for? Joseph asked himself now as he watched Tessa lose herself in the swirling eddies of a Bach aria, eyes closed, shoulders drawn. She played like a woman walling herself in, note by note. It was beautiful, emotional, and moving, but different from the abandon with which she had played at Berymede.

He chuckled now, thinking of Trevor’s view of his romantic exploits.

“Excuse me?”

The piano clunked to a halt, and Joseph and Tessa spun on the bench.

Piety stood in the doorway, tugging on leather gloves. Trevor leaned casually on the doorjamb beside her, tapping his hat in his hand.

“I hate to interrupt,” called Piety, “but, Joseph, we’ve an appointment and must dash out, just for a bit. Beckett is with his French tutor, and we’re meant to meet with the man at the end of the lesson. Another conflict of interest, I’m afraid.”

Beckett Rheese was Piety and Trevor’s third son, the wild one, the one with a heart for the open sea and little else.

Tessa rushed to stand, but Joseph grabbed her wrist and held her still. “Not old Monsieur Chapelle?” asked Joseph.

“Monsieur Chapelle has passed on, I’m afraid,” said Trevor. “Done in by your refusal to memorize Amphitryon in the original French, no doubt.”

“I beg you,” said Piety, “please stay and enjoy the pianoforte. It is a thrill to hear music in the house. And when we return, we will take supper together. I insist. I shall send a note to Jocelyn and the duke to join us.”

“We will,” Joseph said, glancing at Tessa. She shrugged as if the decisions were his. He added, “If you really don’t mind.”

“Excellent,” said Trevor, fitting his hat on his head. “It’s all settled then. Make yourselves at home. I know Beckett will want to see you.”

And then they were gone. Tessa and Joseph sat in tense silence, listening to Piety’s voice trail down the landing and the stairwell. Seconds later, the front door opened and closed.

“We cannot simply loiter in their empty house when they’ve gone,” Tessa whispered.

“Did you know, this was my house, too,” he said. “Once upon a time.”

She glanced around. “It was?”

He nodded. “Piety gave you the grand tour, I’m sure, but I’m doubtful she showed you my favorite room. Would you like to see it?”

She looked at the beautifully upholstered sofas, the vibrant rugs, the lonely harp. “Alright.”

Joseph slid from the bench and held out his hand. She plunked out two or three more chords, like someone taking a few more bites before she left the table. She took his hand, her expression part anticipation and part hope—and ever so slightly shy. He felt a jolt of desire and possessiveness so strong, he almost pushed her back against the music room wall.

Instead, he cleared his throat and embarked on the long series of stairwells that led to the cellar kitchens.

“To properly introduce this favorite room, I must first tell you a story.” He tucked her arm beneath his.

“I should like that,” she said.

“I’ve told you that my mother was in the employ of the earl’s late mother?”

She nodded, watching him with rapt attention.

“My mother,” he went on, “was already a widow when I was a baby, and she raised me in the servants’ quarters of the small manor house in which the earl—before he was made earl—lived with his mother, Lady Blanche.

“From the time I was old enough to work, I was also in service to the household. Trevor’s father had been a second son, and his older brother held the title. Trevor’s father died in a hunting accident when Trevor was young, and he was left alone with his mother, who was feeble and given to ill health. It’s fair to say that sickly Lady Blanche and her son were largely forgotten in the hierarchy of the Falcondale earldom. We lived in a small manor house in the countryside. Trevor’s education was paid for by his uncle and the household was given a small stipend, but that was all.

“The staff was small and informal, all Trevor could afford, but this suited his lifelong aversion to intrusiveness or fussing. He is private and largely self-sufficient. That said, my mother was instrumental in caring for his mother, and Trevor had a fondness for me. He eschewed the idea of a valet, but my mother did his washing and mending and I tended to his attire in as much as he required it. I kept his room tidy, I tended his fire, I cleaned his boots. He taught me to care for his horse and tack.”

They reached the ground floor and Tessa looked around, expecting perhaps to be led through any number of wide, heavily molded doorways, but Joseph opened a small door and tugged her down a narrow set of stone steps.

“Trevor was not lying when he said he was an architect,” Joseph went on. “He studied architecture in school, and before university, he spent hours in his library, pouring over books. When I showed an interest in his sketches, he began to teach me basic mathematics, world history, physics. By the time I was eight or nine, my life was divided evenly between working as Trevor’s general manservant and learning as his pupil.”

They reached a cramped landing, and two footmen crowded past, mumbling a respectful, “Hello, Mr. Chance,” as they passed. Joseph crowded Tessa against the wall, making room. When the servants were gone, he took her hand and led her down a dim corridor.

“When I was ten or so, doctors advised Trevor to leave England and take his ailing mother to Greece because of the climate and sea air. Trevor had just finished university and was keen to travel, so he thought, why not? He moved us all to Athens.”

He sighed heavily. “Our time in Greece is a whole different story, but in short, Trevor became the sort of . . . right-hand man to a fiefdom of unsavory characters, slumlords, men who owned tenement flats all over the city. He was originally hired to shore up the slums, but eventually he rose through the ranks and advised the chief slumlord in all of his various holdings and interests.

“And while Trevor served the slumlord, I served Trevor. This was a rather . . . dark period of our lives, the both of us. Trevor’s mother was very ill, and he detested the work he did for this man, but we became too embroiled to see a clear way out.

“During the years in Athens, I was neither servant nor student. I was more like . . . steward, sword bearer—”

“Sword bearer?” said Tessa.

“Actually, Trevor prefers a matched pair of Scottish sgian-dubh daggers.”

“You’re joking.”

“Joking? No. Showing off? Perhaps just a little.” He winked at her. “Athens is where I learned to fight, learned to speak Greek, learned all kinds of nefarious things that can still come in handy in dark pleasure gardens or far-flung ports to this day.”

“But you did not stay there forever. You’ve said you attended university in England. When did you leave Greece?” Tessa asked, transfixed.

“We left when Trevor’s uncle died unexpectedly and he was made earl. The slumlord was dazzled by the title and simply let us go. Lady Blanche was dead by this time, my mother too, and we made our way home. I was Trevor’s only family and he was mine. He inherited the townhome next to this very house, and we moved in and plotted the next stage of our lives. Trevor was finally free of the burden of caring for Lady Blanche, and he wanted nothing more than to travel. I wanted to work as his servant and travel with him. But then . . .”

They came to a small room at the end of the corridor. There was a step. The wooden planks of the floor gave way to stone. A door to the garden glowed with daylight at the end of the little room, and heavy winter coats hung from hooks along both wall. Boots lined the floor. Joseph stepped down.

“But then what?” demanded Tessa.

“Then a certain American heiress moved next door, into this very house, and Trevor became . . . distracted. And he is still happily distracted to this day. But that, too, is a story for another time.

“By this time, my knowledge on many subjects had exceeded Trevor’s and he had begun to hire tutors for me. Some met with me in Trevor’s office, others I met in laboratories or libraries or museums. I was particularly interested in commerce and the economy of England, the way trade was managed between countries. Despite our joke about my French tutor, I had a proclivity for languages. I was a ravenous student. I relished learning. I knew the money Trevor spent on tutors was rare and indulgent, I knew my time away from household duties was unheard of, but I could not bring myself to refuse the next session or lesson or master. And that . . .”

He reached out and handed her into the small room. “. . . brings me to this. My favorite room in the house.”

Tessa looked around, taking in the coats and the boots, the brushes, buckets, and umbrellas. “But isn’t it a . . . boot room?”

“Yes,” said Joseph, “the boot room. That door leads to the stables. Around the corner is the scullery. Just there are the kitchens.”

He watched Tessa’s face as she looked thoughtfully around the small room. Despite her own elevated upbringing, he doubted she would disparage the modesty of the room, but she was clearly confused.

He would tell her why—he’d brought her here for the sole purpose of telling her—but he was touched by her reticence. Since his return, she’d been so very careful about saying and doing everything right; she was determined to make no misstep. It endeared her to him. Everything about her felt so very dear.

A servant laughed in a distant corridor, and Joseph used his foot to close the gallery door. They were alone in the small musky room.

“Am I . . . meant to ask?” she said finally, looking up. “Why is the boot room your favorite?”

“This is the room,” Joseph said, “where I ceased being a servant and became a full-fledged, abovestairs member of this household.” He glanced around. A pair of shiny black Hessians were propped neatly on an inverted shelf. Two muddy pairs of work boots sat beside it. There was a broom. Umbrellas. A stack of sodden broadsheets.

Tessa stared at the humble objects and waited.

Joseph took a deep breath. “One day, about a year after Piety and Trevor were married, Trevor and I returned from a session with my humanities tutor. It was spitting rain, one of those days when you can’t distinguish the falling rain from the splashing mud. Trevor was out on an errand, so instead of my walking home, he came to fetch me in the carriage.

“My tutor, Mr. Coates, followed me out in the downpour to make sure Trevor was shown a short treatise I had written for an assignment. It was an editorial on the state of education in Britain at the time, and it drew on my research of state-provided schooling in countries around the world. It was very idealized, I’m sure, but Mr. Coates had liked it enough to submit it to some political journals he favored, and we’d heard that an editor or two were considering publication.

“As we rode home, Trevor read the piece, but he said nothing—which was not out of the ordinary. Unless the subject was architecture, Piety was more likely to take an interest in my studies than Trevor. He cared only that I convened my sessions and that I was prepared. In this instance, however, he read every word. The ensuing silence was . . . unnerving.

“He finished reading the piece, concealed it in its leather cover and retied the string. Then, silently, he turned to look out the window. I remember thinking, ‘He hates it. It presumes too much. He finds me ungrateful because I propose schooling for all children, despite the effort he’s made to have me tutored in private. He’s bored. He thinks my writing is weak. He believes editorials are a waste of time.’ Every defeatist thought entered my mind, and I was, quite literally, crushed.

“When finally we reached Henrietta Place, Trevor called for the carriage to bypass the front door in favor of the stable. We did this on rainy days if Piety was not with us, because it allowed us to enter the house by this room, rather than tracking mud in through the front door. So the carriage finally came to a stop just there . . .” Joseph pointed out the door window “. . . and we splashed through the alley.

“And I’ll never forget, Trevor tucked the leather cover and my paper inside his greatcoat to protect it from the rain. And I thought, ‘He wants it dry to throw it in the fire.’”

“So fatalistic,” Tessa said.

Joseph raised his eyebrows. “I’ve developed a much thicker skin.”

“Yes, I know all about your thick skin,” said Tessa, and she raised an eyebrow.

For half a beat, Joseph lost track of the story. He cocked his head. The atmosphere in the room, the energy in the air, had changed. They hadn’t touched, but something passed between them. A wave, a current. He longed to follow it with his hands.

“Right,” he said slowly, eyeing her.

There was a high shelf lined with hats behind her head, and he leaned forward and grabbed it, propping himself over her. She looked up to see his face.

“We left the carriage,” he repeated, “and stomped through the mud of the alley to this door. When we were inside, I shucked out of my outer coat and stooped immediately, down on one knee. My first duty in this room was always to pull Trevor’s muddy boots from his feet. Later, I would return to clean the leather and polish them. He wouldn’t wear them into the house until I had cared for them. I kept a clean pair here for that very purpose. I’d knelt at his feet and pried his filthy boots a thousand times.

“But this time,” Joseph went on, his voice low, “Trevor said to me, ‘We’re all finished with that, Joe.’”

“He calls you Joe?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“May I call you Joe?”

You may call me whatever you like, he thought, but he said, “Yes. Although I like the way you say ‘Joseph.’”

She blushed. “But what did the earl mean?”

“Well, this is what I asked him. I can still hear my voice asking, ‘What d’you mean?’ And Trevor said, ‘No more pulling my boots. No more cleaning my boots. No more service for you of any kind, ever again.’

“And I was devastated. I was only seventeen, but I struggled to rise from the floor like an old man. I actually thought I might bloody cry. I said, ‘Are you sacking me, my lord?’ Only very rarely did I invoke his title, and when I did then, my voice broke. I was ready to take my treatise and fling it into the mud outside.”

“Oh, Joseph,” Tessa whispered. She raised her small, perfect hand and rested it on his chest. Joseph stared at it. He wanted desperately to take it up and press it against his cheek, to nuzzle her palm, to kiss her fingertips. It had been years since he’d thought of this story, and he was surprised to feel a welling of emotion, almost as raw as that rainy afternoon, years ago.

“His opinion of me,” Joseph said, trying to make her understand, “was so much more important than any other of my ambitions.”

“And what happened?”

Joseph shrugged. “He told me he was terminating my employment. He said no boy with talent equal to mine should be wasted cleaning his boots. He told me Piety would hire someone else to look after him. And then, he told me I should clear out of my room in the servants’ quarters and take a family room on the third floor. He said, ‘You will devote yourself to your studies full time. You will be like a . . . like an annoying relative who freeloads off of my hospitality and will not leave. Only we both know you are not terribly annoying, and certainly you have earned your place in this house. You’ve been toiling here, largely unpaid, since you were a boy. And that says nothing of the great debt I owe your mother for her years of service to mine.’

“And then, as I was trying to sort through the magnitude of what he’d said, he added, ‘In a year or two, we will send you off to university, so I might as well get used to someone else looking after me now. To break him in.’”

Tears welled in Tessa’s eyes, and she blinked. “But what did you do?”

“I knew Trevor well enough to not belabor the point or overblow the gesture. I said something like, ‘But surely I will pull your boots once more? Now? We’re flooding the boot room. They’re filthy, Trev.’

“And I’ll never forget. He said, ‘No, you won’t. That part of your life is over. Take the paper you’ve written and show it to Piety. Tell her the changes she and I have been planning begin today. She will show you your new room. Supper is at eight o’clock.’

“And then he handed me the treatise and turned away. I did not argue. And I have not worked as a servant since that day.”

Tessa breathed in a hitched breath and wiped a tear from her eye. The hand on his chest curled in slightly, her fingertips digging in to his lapel. He felt her touch all the way to his lungs. He looked from her hand to her.

“It’s hard for me to envision you working as a valet,” she said.

“I preferred ‘man of all work’ at the time, I believe,” he joked.

Tessa held his gaze and then looked bashfully away. She saw a boiler hat hanging beside her on a peg, and she reached out and ran a finger along the smooth bill.

Joseph swallowed hard. He thought of kissing her then. Dipping down, lips on lips, just a taste. For now. Until . . . until he could do it properly. Until they weren’t surrounded by boots and umbrellas. Until she was ready.

His brain scrambled for the next correct thing to say. “Being a servant, I’m guessing, is not so very different from being a mother.”

She smiled at this, still studying the hat.

Joseph said, “For example, if it is a cold day, you must stand ready . . .” he plucked the hat from the peg “. . . with a hat. To keep bare heads warm.”

Gently, he settled the hat on Tessa’s head. She giggled but did not duck away. It was too large and dropped over one eye. She shoved it back.

“If a ride is in order, you are ready with gloves.” He plucked a pair of fine leather gloves from the shelf and tucked them under his arm. He held out his hand. Smiling cautiously, Tessa reached out. Joseph took her hand and began to work the large, soft glove onto her fingers. She turned her hand, helping him slide it on. Her skin was soft and warm, her fingers nimble. The only sound in the room was the rustle of leather and the sound of their breathing.

When one glove was on, she was ready with the other hand immediately, holding it out. He slid the second glove in to place.

“And if it is very cold and wet,” he said, taking a greatcoat from a hook, “you’ll need this.” They locked eyes again as he slid the heavy coat around her shoulders.

The coat enveloped her and he stepped closer. The heavy wool would easy wrap around them both. She licked her lips, and Joseph felt his pulse all over his body.

Casting around for any excuse to touch her, he took up the lapels of the coat and joined the collar loosely beneath her chin. His hands brushed her face and she sucked in a little breath. She raised her face, smiling at him. He ran a thumb along her cheek a second time, never breaking her gaze. Her mouth was open, just a little. He tugged the collar, the slightest possible tug, and she stumbled closer still.

He scanned the walls; he was running out of garments in which to drape her. In the back of his mind, he thought, this was possibly the strangest seduction in the history of the world. He was putting clothes on her body instead of taking them off. They were in a bloody boot room, for God’s sake. He almost laughed, almost gave up and laughed at his own feeble attempt, but before he could pull away—

She leapt up and kissed him.

One moment she was staring up at him, the next she was against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips pressed against his.

The hat fell off, the coat dropped. Behind his neck he could feel her peeling off the gloves.

For the blink of an eye, Joseph froze, not believing. And then he growled and scooped her into his arms.