Maude helped Wren out of her dress and took the pins from her hair while telling her that her aunt would be the happiest woman in the world today if she were still alive.

“Well, the second happiest woman, I suppose I mean,” she added. “I suppose you are the happiest. And I am the third happiest, though since she is not alive, God rest her soul, I daresay I am the second.”

Wren laughed, wiped away a few tears, and hugged her startled maid before dismissing her. She donned her nightgown, a new one of fine linen Elizabeth had helped her select, and brushed her hair until it shone. Then she waited in the bedchamber to which her belongings had been moved this morning after she left for church. It was a lovely room, large and square and high ceilinged and decorated tastefully in various shades of fawn and ecru and cream and gold. It did not look down upon the garden at the back of the house, as her other room did, but upon the street at the front. It was a pleasant view nevertheless. Even an urban scene could have its charm—just as an industrial workshop could. Beauty came in many forms.

She was not nervous. Perhaps she ought to be. A typical lady would have been, she supposed. But she was filled with elation and expectation. She could hardly wait. And even as she was thinking it there was a light tap on her dressing room door. She had left it ajar, and Alexander came into her room without waiting for her summons. He had looked splendidly handsome in his black-and-white wedding clothes with a silver embroidered waistcoat and lace at his neck and wrists. He looked no less so now in a wine-colored brocaded dressing gown and slippers. It was certainly obvious that the breadth of his shoulders and chest owed nothing to padding.

He looked around the room. “I have never been in here before,” he said. “It is lovely, is it not?”

“It is,” she agreed.

“It is a great pity,” he said, “that my predecessor, the beloved Humphrey, did not lavish the same care upon Brambledean as he did upon Westcott House.”

“Ah,” she said, “but then he would have deprived us of the pleasure of re-creating it for ourselves.”

His eyes came back to her. “That is a striking thought,” he said. “So I may remember the late Earl of Riverdale with some fondness after all, may I? Ah, Wren, I have wondered how long it is.” He was moving toward her.

“My hair?” It was thick and almost straight and nearly waist length and a rich chestnut brown. She had always thought it her best feature.

“It is beautiful,” he said.

“I considered braiding it,” she told him. “But I have always worn it loose at night, sometimes to the despair of Maude if she is called upon to brush out the tangles in the morning.”

“You must continue to wear it down,” he said. “Husband’s orders. You did promise to obey me, if you recall. And if Maude complains, I shall dismiss her without a character and demonstrate that I intend to be master in my own home.”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled slowly. His eyes were, of course, laughing. “I am in fear and trembling,” she said.

“As you ought to be,” he said. “Wren, I never quite understand why married people of the upper classes have separate rooms. Just to prove that they can, perhaps? It seems especially puzzling when the two people are young and there is pleasure to be had and children to beget. Will you keep this room for your private use during the daytime and consider my bedchamber ours from tonight on?”

She was glad he was talking to her more as an equal than as a timid bride. She was equally glad of his suggestion. Aunt Megan and Uncle Reggie had always shared a room and a big old canopied bed, which sagged slightly in the middle. She had gone there screaming a few times in the early days when she was still suffering from nightmares, and they had taken her in between them and she had slept in warmth and happiness, half squashed and utterly safe.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come, then,” he said, and took up one of the candles from the table beside her and snuffed the others. He led the way through their dressing rooms and into his bedchamber. It was a twin to her room in size and shape, but this one was decorated in rich shades of wine and gold and lit by one branch of candles on the mantel and two candles in wall sconces on either side of the canopied bed. She ran her hand down one of the smooth spirals carved into the thick wooden posts at the foot of the bed.

“This is a fine room too,” she said. “But we will absolutely have to find a way to outdo it at Brambledean.” She turned a smiling face to him.

“I am in perfect agreement,” he said, setting down the candlestick beside the candelabra. “But perhaps we can wait until another occasion to discuss it. I find myself distracted tonight, I must confess.”

“Me too,” she said, and he kissed her.

She realized almost immediately that he was going to take his time about it. The bed was beside them, but for now he was ignoring it. He had kissed her before, but each time it had been all too brief for someone who was starved of intimate human contact and yearned for it. She knew very little. Almost nothing, in fact, but she knew enough to understand that there was a whole world of erotic experience that had been denied her—or that she had denied herself. Tonight would begin to set that right, and she was glad he was in no hurry.

He opened her mouth with his own, slid his tongue inside, and proceeded to do things that had her clutching the sides of his dressing gown at the waist and fighting to keep her knees under her. With the lightest of strokes against sensitive surfaces, he sent raw aches shooting through her. But it was not just his mouth. His hands roamed over her, seeming to find curves where she had not thought she had any and to appreciate the curves she had thought inadequate.

His hands spread over her buttocks at last and drew her fully against him. His hard, muscled man’s body was enough to make her want to swoon. Not that she would. She had no intention of missing a single moment. She could feel that he was aroused, though she had no experience. She inhaled slowly as she tipped back her head, and his mouth, freed from hers, trailed kisses along her neck.

Please never stop. Oh please, please never stop.

“Come and lie down,” he murmured, his mouth against hers again, his eyes gazing, heavy lidded, into hers.

“Yes.”

“Will you let me remove your nightgown first?” he asked her.

Oh. Really? Now? With so many candles burning? “Only if I may remove your dressing gown,” she said.

“Agreed.” He laughed softly. “But me first.”

He edged her nightgown up between them and lifted it off over her head when she raised her arms. He dropped it to the floor and took a step back, his hands cupping her shoulders. Wren found herself curiously unself-conscious, though she did fight the urge to apologize. She was such a shapeless beanpole. Well, not quite shapeless, perhaps, but certainly not shapely. But he had chosen to marry her. He really had. On Easter Sunday she had released him from any sense of obligation he might have been feeling. He had proposed marriage to her here in London entirely of his own volition. He had had options—that pretty and shapely young lady with whom he had been walking in the park, for example.

“You have the physique of an athlete, Wren,” he said. “If there were women athletes, they would surely aspire to look like you.”

She looked, startled, into his face, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

“That does not sound like much of a compliment, does it?” he said. “It was intended as one, though I probably ought not to have spoken aloud. You are magnificent.”

He could not possibly mean it. But he would not lie to her. And if he did, he certainly would not have paid her that particular compliment. She liked it. Oh goodness, she liked it. “And did you notice tonight?” she asked.

He raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

“Did you notice?” she asked again. And she saw understanding dawn as his eyes focused upon the left side of her face.

“In all truth I did not,” he said. “My gentleman’s honor on it, Wren. I did not notice. I do not believe I have noticed all day. Which proves a point, I believe.”

“That you are not much of an observer?” she said. But though she made a joke of it, she felt a great lifting of the spirit. Was it possible that someone could look at her and truly not notice? Her aunt and uncle had always said it was so, of course, but they had known her forever. And she had never been quite sure they had not spoken more from the heart than from a strict adherence to the truth.

She untied the sash at his waist and slid her hands beneath his dressing gown at the shoulders. It was only then she realized he was wearing nothing underneath. She pushed the garment off and watched it slither down his arms and body and bunch about his feet. He kicked it away, his slippers with it.

She looked at him as he had looked at her, the candlelight flickering over his body. And … oh goodness. There were no words. She ran her hands lightly over his chest and felt the firmness of muscles there. She slid them up to his shoulders and felt their warm, hard solidity. His legs were long and powerful, a little longer than her own. His hips and waist were slender. And—ah yes, he was aroused and ready, as was she. She was aching with longing—or with something stronger and more physical than mere longing, though she could not find a word for it. She raised her eyes to his face before turning to lie down on the bed.

“Do you want me to snuff the candles?” he asked her.

She hesitated. “No.” She wanted to see as well as feel. She had five senses. Why deliberately eliminate one of them?

When he lay down beside her and turned to her, she did not think she could be any more ready for the consummation. But she could, as she discovered over the next several minutes. And again he was in no hurry. His hands and mouth moved over her, explored her, tasted her, while her own hands, helpless and untutored at first, followed suit, discovering maleness and otherness as well as a beauty that might have brought her close once more to swooning if there had not been more powerful feelings to keep her very much aware and present.

He turned her onto her back at last, came over her, spread her legs wide with his own, and slid his hands beneath her while his weight came down on her, almost robbing her of breath but not of need. And she felt him at the most sensitive part of herself, seeking, circling, settling. He came into her. She inhaled slowly and deeply, feeling the hardness of him opening her, stretching her, hurting her, coming deep and deeper, the sharpness of the pain gone, until she was filled with him and filled with wonder.

At last. Ah, at last! At last.

He held still for a few moments and then took some of his weight on his forearms while he gazed down at her, his eyes heavy with an expression she had not seen there before.

“I am sorry,” he murmured.

For the pain? “I am not,” she said. She would have endured a great deal more of it in order to have this—this joining of her body to a man’s, this knowledge that after all she could be fully a woman and fully a person too.

He lowered his head to the pillow beside her own then and began to withdraw from her. Please don’t, she wanted to say but did not. She was glad a moment later, for he paused at the brink of her and pressed inward again—and then again and again until his movements were firm and swift and rhythmic. And of course. Oh, of course. She was not an utter ignoramus. She had occasionally observed the animal kingdom, and it was not so very different for humans. This was what happened. This was the consummation, the lovemaking, and it would happen again and again in the nights and weeks and years ahead. This was how they would be man and wife. This was how they would get sons and daughters. She concentrated upon experiencing every strange and new sensation, upon listening to the unexpected wetness of it and their labored breathing, upon breathing in the surprisingly enticing smells of sweat and something else unmistakably carnal, upon seeing dark hair mingling with her own and his muscled shoulders just above her own and his rhythmically moving body as he worked in her.

This, she told herself with very deliberate exultation at last, when the ache of need and pleasure flowed in tandem with her blood, was her wedding night. Their wedding night. The first night of their marriage. She was glad she had decided to trust him, not just on the issue of money, but in everything. It would be a good marriage.

After what might have been many long minutes or only a few—time had become meaningless—his movements turned swifter and more urgent until they stopped suddenly when he was deep inside and she felt a gush of liquid heat and knew with only a slight pang of regret that it was over. But only for now. There would be other times. They were married and he was the one who had suggested that they share a room and a bed.

He made a sound of male satisfaction that did not translate into words, relaxed his full weight onto her again, and—if she was not mistaken—fell promptly asleep. The thought amused her and she smiled. He must weigh a ton. But she did not want him to wake up.

Alexander was not sleeping. He had just allowed himself the self-indulgence of total relaxation after his exertions even though he was aware that he must have been crushing her. It had been a long time. Too long. And now he had settled for less than his dream. But that was a disloyal thought, and he moved off to her side and pulled the bedcovers up about them. He felt too lazy to get out of bed to snuff the candles. Her face was turned toward him, shadowed by the flickering candlelight, her dark hair in disarray about her head and over her shoulder and one breast. It made her look much younger and more obviously feminine than usual.

He wondered if he had made the right decision in persuading her to make his bedchamber and his bed her own too. It seemed, strangely, like more of a commitment than simply marrying her had been this morning. It was a loss of privacy, of somewhere to retreat that was entirely his own. But he could no longer think that way and would not. He had made the decision when he offered her marriage. No half measures. No harking back to a dream that could never now be fulfilled. But then most dreams were like that. That was why they were called by that name.

He must get used to having her here in his bed, partly because he did have needs—as did she—but more because he had duties to his title and position over and above the financial ones. Cousin Eugenia, the dowager countess, had stated it baldly not so long ago. There was a great dearth of heirs in the Westcott family. He was it, in fact, yet he was not even the heir. He was the incumbent. If he were to die before producing at least one son, the family tree would have to be climbed to the very topmost branches in order to discover another more fruitful branch, or else the title would have to pass into abeyance. It was his duty to beget several sons and, he hoped, some daughters. He liked the idea of daughters. Yet his wife was almost thirty. They could not delay.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“I did not mind,” she said, though she did not deny it. But no, she would not. She had wanted to be married. She wanted children too. If she had ever dreamed of romantic, passionate love, she too had made the decision to settle for a quieter substitute. It was not necessarily a bad thing. It was not without hope.

“I do not believe it will happen again,” he said. “The pain, I mean.”

“No.”

“Was I very heavy?” he asked.

“Alexander,” she said. “I was well pleased. I thought all men above a certain age were experienced enough not to feel such anxieties.”

Good God! He was very glad of the dim, flickering light. He was quite possibly blushing. He had not been a virgin tonight. He had had one very satisfactory lover ten years ago when he was at Oxford. She had been a tavern keeper—not one of the barmaids, but the owner herself, a widow twenty years his senior and buxom and hearty and affectionate and very, very skilled in bed. Not that he had had anyone with whom to compare her, it was true, but he had not doubted at the time and did not doubt now that she had been the very best teacher any young man could possibly wish for. They had parted on the best of terms after he graduated, and there had been very few women since then. For one thing, he had been busy at Riddings Park. For another—well, finding women of easy virtue, an unkind euphemism for women who were forced to sell their bodies in order to eat, had always seemed distasteful to him.

“You see,” he said, “it has always seemed a bit sordid to engage in casual liaisons.”

“So I have rescued you from a life of near celibacy, have I?” she asked him.

This was a strange conversation. “You have indeed,” he said. “Wren, thank you for marrying me … without a marriage contract. Thank you for trusting me.” According to the law, everything that had been hers, including her very person, was now his. And if that was a disturbing thought even to him, what must it be to her?

She did not say anything for a while but merely gazed at him. “I learned trust at the age of ten,” she said. “It was a bit like jumping out of an upstairs window while someone stood below, holding no more than a pillow while the house burned down behind me. I put my faith in the person who saved me and learned that trust and knowing whom to trust are among the most important qualities anyone can cultivate. Without trust there is … nothing. A contract would have made me feel that perhaps I ought to have a little bit of doubt, and I chose not to entertain that fear.”

He gazed at her for a long while, wondering if she intended to continue, to tell him what it was in her life that had been like a house burning down behind her. But she did not say any more.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “we will be visiting a lawyer within the next few days, Wren. I will not have you totally dependent upon my trustworthiness. Besides, some things need to be in writing and properly certified. I could die at any moment.”

“Oh, please do not,” she said.

“I shall try not to.” He smiled at her and raised one hand to push her hair back over her shoulder. She had small breasts, but they were firm and nicely shaped. He moved his hand about the one he had exposed, cupped it from beneath in his palm, and set his thumb over her nipple, which hardened as he stroked it lightly. “Are you very sore?”

She thought a moment and shook her head.

“Will you think me very greedy?” he asked, feathering light kisses over her forehead, her temple, her cheek, her mouth.

“No,” she said.

She was wet and hot when he entered her this time and closed inner muscles about him while she raised her knees and set her feet flat on the bed. He moved swiftly in her, his eyes closed, the bulk of his weight on his forearms again, feeling greedy despite her denial, and came to a quick climax. He brought her with him this time when he moved off her, not withdrawing from her, keeping his arms about her, and he felt the soft warmth of her body as he settled the covers about them once more, and knew that she was relaxing into sleep, her head nestled on his shoulder.

Yes, he had settled for less than the dream. But so, probably, did almost every other man and woman who married. There could not be very many who were at leisure to search for love, and even fewer who found it. His mind touched upon Anna and Netherby and even upon Camille and Joel Cunningham, but he was not going to start making comparisons. He did not know anyway, did he? One surely never did know anyone else’s marriage as it really was. No one would know his except the two of them. They would make of it what they chose. It was actually a good thought with which to begin a marriage.

He slept.