Perfect astonishment on her face was as taking as joy and amusement and anger and consternation and every emotion Gabriel had ever seen shape those features made of clay and faery dust. It was not the ideal emotion at present. But it was stunning.

“Will I—” she began, blinked, and the cloverleaf gaze snapped past his shoulder to the other end of the chapel. She snatched her hand from his. “You have not waked me in the middle of the night to—for this. I will not believe it. What sort of game are you playing now? More charades?”

“No game.” His heart was beating harder, faster, hotter than his ribs could contain. “Never games. Marry me, Amarantha.”

For a brittle interval of torturous silence, she only stared at him. Then understanding lit her eyes.

“Has my—has my father written to you?”

“Your father?”

“My mother told me—That is, nothing. Nothing. I—Nothing. Oh, do stand up. Please.”

“No’ until you give me an answer.”

She shook her head once.

He climbed to his feet. Then he took her hand and led her toward the door to the corridor.

“Your Grace?” Reverend Clacher called.

“A minute, vicar,” he said, pushed the door open and drew Amarantha into the corridor. Her eyes were chased with sleep, her hair escaping its thick braid, and a line ran across one cheek where the bed linen had impressed its edge into her skin. “You wear no cap when you sleep.”

“What an interesting observation, Urisk. No, I do not wear a cap when summoned abruptly from sleep in the middle of the night to go I know not where. But the moment you adopt an ear trumpet, I promise to start wearing a cap twenty-four hours a day. Will that suit you, old man?”

“Judas, you’re a delight.”

“You do not want to marry me.”

“I do.” Desire pressed at him powerfully: the ache he had felt for her since he had first seen her, first heard her, first witnessed her courage. Knowing her now, that ache had become actual pain, in his chest and in his damn breeches. He lifted his hand and allowed his fingertips to rest upon the delicate bone of her jaw.

“Amarantha, I willna take you to bed unless you are my wife.”

Distress rippled over her throat.

“I appreciate the respect you are showing me,” she said. “But, even were I to hold myself to that standard, given your many assets I imagine it would not be difficult to find another woman—multiple other women—to relieve that particular need without resorting to marrying any of them. Or me.”

He smiled.

“Which of those words amuses you?” she said.

“You are the only woman that can satisfy the need.”

The pleasure left her eyes.

“No lies,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Amarantha, I want you in my bed. I need you there.”

“I am sorry, truly. But that does not suffice to alter my conviction on this matter.”

Conviction.

The alabaster statue had returned.

“Hm.” He made as though he were studying the floor in thought. “Well, you will have this estate, though o’ course I promised just tonight to give it over entirely to the maidens in the dungeons. It would be a shabby thing to recant so soon.”

“Or ever, really,” she said thinly.

“There is Haiknayes. Impressive castle, that one. The cellar leaks, but the ramparts are especially fine on a starry night, they say.”

“They do?”

“Aye. So there’s an advantage: the run o’ Haiknayes. In fact, you will have everything o’ mine, my title, my name, my gold—”

“All of that excess gold you have lying about.”

“—an’ my lands. All in return for a few quick words spoken before that altar in there. ’Tis a bargain, really.”

“Your lands are handsome.” Her eyes seemed to soften, and her gaze dipped to his lips, then lower. Lifting one hand, she laid her palm upon his chest and trailed her fingertips downward. “Exceedingly appealing, really.”

He snatched her hand from where it was creating havoc in at least two separate regions of his body.

“None o’ that, lass, till you promise your troth to me.”

“Pity.” Her breasts were rising on quick little breaths, swelling against her gown.

Good God. Could a man take a woman against a wall outside of a church? Yes. Yes, he could.

“Did I mention, you will be a duchess?”

“I have never wished for a title.”

“O’ course you havena. Neither did I at one time. But I discovered it comes with all sorts o’ privileges. They let you walk into dining rooms before everybody else, an’ theaters an’ the like. An’ there’s a coronet. ’Tis a wee bit elaborate for my taste: a horde o’ gold strawberry leaves. But your beauty will improve it. Come now. Do this.”

“Do this?” she repeated blankly. “Between the two of us, truly you take the prize for madness.”

He wrapped both of his hands around her face and the lust in him felt fierce and especially urgent. He captured her open mouth beneath his. She tasted of warmth and surprise, and then desire. Her hands grabbed his arms and she did not push him off. She gripped hard, so tight that each fingertip was a nail driven into his flesh.

She drew away slowly. Her lips were red, her eyes fevered.

“I will make love to you,” she said. “I should like that very much. Very . . . much. But I cannot marry you.” Touching her fingertips to his lips, she whispered, “But thank you for asking.”

Then she was gone, into the darkness without candle or lamp, with only his heart.

She lay awake, her eyes open to the final remnants of moonlight. She could not sleep. She suspected she might never sleep again.

He did not knock but entered without warning or permission. Closing the door and turning the key in the lock, he walked toward her removing his coat and then his waistcoat, and left them where they dropped.

“I have decided to give you a taste o’ what you will be missing,” he said with a gorgeously husky quality to his voice, and untied his cravat.

“Y-you have?”

His neck was all sinew and strength and she was staring.

“Aye.” He was lifting his shirt and her eyes widened. Muscle. Beautiful muscle, in his chest and arms and waist, and taut skin to which the candlelight clung in undulating shadows, and black hair tapering in a line that disappeared beneath his breeches. He was male beauty she had never imagined.

“A taste?” she said.

“A meal, in truth. But only one,” he said, unbuttoning the fall of his breeches. “Do you understand?”

Her throat was closed. She nodded.

He paused in his task. Every nerve of pleasure and fear and anticipation gathered in Amarantha’s stomach.

With the fall of his breeches only half unfastened, he came forward and stood before her, bare feet planted so firmly on the floor that he could not possibly feel the cold. But with the magnificent expanse of his naked torso and arms before her, she no longer could either. She was afire already, remembering what his mouth could do to her, and his hands.

“The cap,” he said with simple pleasure.

She nearly sobbed.

As she sat very still, he removed the pins and set the ruffled linen cap aside. His fingertips came beneath her chin and gently he urged her to lift her face. A crease marred the brow she had always thought so sober, even when he smiled, so suited to his natural authority.

“Does what you see displease you?” she said.

“No’ enough light.” Taking up a candle he went to the hearth and lit it from the glowing embers. Then he put more wood on the grate and brought the candle to the table by the bed, where he lit the lamp.

“Now I can see the beauty o’ which I have dreamed every day for five an’ a half years.”

“You needn’t flatter me. I require no seduction now.”

“No flattery. No seduction. Nothing but the truth. I will never lie to you, Amarantha. I have said it. Many times. I have promised. When will you believe it?”

She stood up and reached for his face. He grabbed her hand and pressed his lips to her palm.

“If you please,” he said, “remove that ridiculously chaste garment, an’—”

“Remove it?”

“Aye.”

“But if I remove it, I will be wearing nothing.”

“Aye. Nothing but me.”

Heat leaped from her belly into her cheeks and her nipples prickled. She reached for the skirt of her gown.

“Allow me,” he said.

She stared fixedly at his collarbone as he took her nightgown in each hand and began gathering it up. By the time it was skimming her thighs, his big hands were full of the fabric.

“Ready?” he said.

“Y-yes.” Her voice wobbled.

He dropped the fabric and it fell to her ankles again. Curving his palms around her shoulders he kissed her softly.

“Your lips,” he murmured, “your fingers, your hair, your eyes, your chin, your throat, your lashes—”

“What are you—”

“—your palms, the occasional glimpse o’ your ankle, your ears: each o’ these alone suffices to make me want you beyond endurance.”

“My ears? Really?”

“Aye. You needn’t reveal any bit o’ skin more, if you dinna wish.”

“But I do wish it. May I . . . that is . . .”

“Lass?”

“May I touch you?”

His throat jerked. “Aye.”

“I may?”

“If it will give you pleasure.”

“Will it give you pleasure?” she said.

“Me?”

“If I touch you.”

“Amarantha.” He spoke above the clamor of his heartbeats. “I have been dreaming o’ your hands on me since the night we met. If you dinna touch me, I’m likely to perish here on the spot.”

Her eyes shone with the oddest light. Relief. An improvement over uncertainty and confusion, to be sure.

She touched him, tentatively, so softly he barely felt it. And then with growing confidence she stroked her fingers over his chest and to the base of his throat then along his arms.

“This—touching you—fills me with such longing,” she whispered, trailing her fingertips downward, over his nipples. “I wonder if it is a sin to believe that I am in heaven now.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed his groan. Wrapping his hands around her waist, he drew her to him, against him, and he made her feel his need.

“If so,” he said, bending to kiss her just beneath her perfect ear, “then I will have plenty for which to ask forgiveness.”

“Not to me,” she said, her hands sliding up either side of his neck and into his hair. “Undress me now.”

He swept the garment over her head and discarded it, and she stood naked before him.

“I cannot—cannot seem to cease tre-trembling,” she said bumpily, her eyes very wide.

The wild creature had returned, curious and hungry but uncertain.

He pulled her to him, wrapped his arms about her, and she pressed her cheek and palms to his chest. Every bit of her skin felt like fire against his.

“I have never done this,” she said. “Undressed. As God intended it.” She lifted her face and her smile was brilliant. “It is positively delicious.”

“Wild one,” he uttered.

He swept her up into his arms to her tumble of laughter and deposited her on the bed.

He did not tell her how beautiful she was, not her breasts or hips or legs or buttocks or any other divine part of her revealed by the removal of the nightgown. Instead he treated each just as he had treated each of her fingers in the Solstice’s kitchen: with devoted attention. Her skin was caressed, her buttocks adored, her legs lavished with attention until she was breathless with sighs, and her hips and abdomen kissed with exquisite care. Her breasts were worshipped, their fullness enjoyed by his hands and his lips, and her nipples sucked so thoroughly that she was lifting her back from the bed and parting her thighs much sooner than planned.

So he gave her his hand there, where she longed to be touched, and his fingers, which made touches into torment and then into sublime satisfaction. She came like that, suddenly, surprise in her cries as she moved against him.

Without asking now, she touched him everywhere she could find skin to touch, his arms that were thick with muscle and his chest and waist, his shoulders. The taut dampness of her body again became an empty ache that she needed filled. Unfastening the remainder of the buttons on his trousers, she thought he would take her then—wanted it even knowing that it would bring the end too soon.

He did not. Drawing away, he left the bed and refastened the buttons.

“What are you doing?” she said.

He took up his shirt and coat.

“The meal is over. I hope you enjoyed it.” He moved toward the door and reached for the key.

“But that was not an entire meal!”

He scanned her body with his shadowy gaze. “No?”

“The soup, perhaps. And entrée, at best.”

“Still unsatisfied?” The partial smile played about his gorgeously talented lips.

“You neglected to serve the principal remove.” The words quavered between outrage and hilarity.

“Principal remove, hm?”

“Yes, of course. But perhaps, being a beast, you do not know all the courses of a civilized meal.”

He dropped the shirt and coat. “I’ll give you civilized, wild one.”

She sprang off the bed and flew across the cold floor and into his arms. Their mouths met, hands assisting, famished, as though they had not just kissed or touched, as though they would find in each other’s mouths and hands what they sought most desperately.

“Principal remove,” he growled upon laughter, and lifted her entirely off the ground.

The bed now seemed miles away and far too civilized after all, and they had already waited for years. They took each other there, at the door, against the wall. He groaned upon entering her and became very still, and she choked back her sobs of happiness and kissed his jaw and neck and shoulders and every part of him she could reach. For a wonderfully extended interval, they remained like that, Amarantha disbelieving that this kind of love could be real and Gabriel simply making a valiant effort not to end it all prematurely.

Then his mouth found hers, and she learned the great joy of being adored as she was being pleasured. It was a revelation to her. She had never been touched as he touched her now, with reverence and care and hunger all at once, as though to love like this were to both take and give. He gave, and gave, until she was moaning again and neither of them could wait another moment.

Eventually he carried her back to the bed.

She lay on her side looking at him, hands beneath her cheek and delectable weariness in every limb. She stretched her legs to tuck her toes beneath his calf.

“’Tis ice you give me now?” But he did not move, only his mouth stretching into a smile.

“My toes are always cold here.”

He sat up and took her feet into his hands. His palms were warm.

“Will you continue that all night?” she said sleepily.

“Aye, if you wish.” His thumb stroked the sole of her foot and she sighed. “Anything you wish.”

“I wish for there to be no need for women to run away from men who intend harm to them, from men who do not treat them with . . .”

She closed her eyes as his fingers stroked, his heat once again awakening her desire, this time languid and safe.

“With?” he said.

Love.

“Respect,” she said. “Can you do that, Urisk? With this haven you have created, can you make all other men cease harming women?”

“I canna, lass.”

“The world is full of messiness,” she said.

“Aye.”

She fell asleep to the rhythm of his caress.

He awoke when he felt the loss of her warmth, of her silken hair spread over his chest, of her soft skin against him. He forced his eyes open to find mere embers illumining the chamber. As any sailor on a sightless sea, he searched with his hearing.

Sobs rose in the darkness.

He found her sitting on the floor, her back to the bed, arms strapped around herself. Her knees were pulled up tight to her breasts. She shook with great convulsions. He grabbed a blanket and went to the floor and wrapped it around her. She made no protest, only swiped at the trails of tears on her face.

He settled beside her and swallowed a yelp. The floor was ice. But she had been down here for longer. Women were remarkable.

“I know, princess,” he said softly. “I dinna care for heights either. If you wish, we can remain down here on the ground for the rest o’ the night.”

She lifted a face stained with tears. Her lips wobbled into a smile.

“You,” she whispered, “made me laugh through a hurricane.”

He ached so fiercely he wanted to shout to the entire world.

Reaching one hand out of the cocoon of blankets, she stroked his cheek. The caress went through him like hot oil.

“What is amiss, my lady?”

“You will now say, ‘Allow me to help,’” she said, her fingertips slipping down his neck to his chest, and then curling up inside his hand, just as she had done that night in the cellar.

“Will you allow it?” he somehow managed to say, though hoarsely.

“You cannot. They were dreams. Bad dreams. Memories,” she said. “I had a son.” The words fell into the silence. “His name was Edward. I named him after my father. He lived for only six minutes.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. She scrubbed her hand beneath her nose and sniffed. “I don’t know why I dreamed it, or why I am weeping like this now. Or why I have just told you.”

“I knew it already.” And grieved, elated that she had survived, suffering with her loss, and furious that the pompous Reverend had had the privilege of being there to hold her as she wept—not he. The day the tender ship brought the letter that had told him of it, he ordered his quartermaster to break open a barrel of rum and serve a cup to every man aboard. Astonished, they had welcomed the celebration, and he had raised a cup with them beneath the blue Mediterranean sky. Then he had gone to his quarters, locked the door, and gotten drunk. It was the first and last time he ever did so aboard his own ship.

“How did you know?”

“Jonah occasionally wrote to me with news.” Monthly in the first two years. Gabriel never replied, and eventually the letters ceased.

“After I lost my son,” she said, “my husband never again touched me with desire.”

Gabriel’s stomach turned over.

“The blood had alarmed him,” she said. “There was so much more than there should have been. I did not understand that then, not until later, after I had attended other women at births.” She spoke now without emotion, telling the story as though someone else had lived it. She donned the alabaster statue as she required it. “He did not know that at first.”

“You told him.”

“Yes. He did not wish to hear it.”

“He was a coward, Amarantha.”

For a stretched moment she said nothing. “He was not a cruel man. He gave me a home, ample food and clothing, and some time to pursue my interests—Mr. and Mrs. Meriwether’s hospital as well as my friendships beyond the mission. He did not approve of them, but he allowed it.”

Food, clothing, and disapproval: the stuff of her marriage.

“After a time, he ceased touching me entirely. He was afraid that another pregnancy would kill me. He told me he treasured me too greatly to bring me harm.” She ducked her head and her next words were muffled against the blanket. “Months before the accident that took his life, I found him with one of the Englishwomen who worked at the mission, a married woman. He said she had offered him consolation after the death of our son, and that since he had been afraid of making me ill again, he had continued to go to her. He told me this as though he meant it to comfort me. Or perhaps to exonerate himself.” Her nostrils flared. “I had suspected it. But every time I spoke of it to him he denied it, furious with me for accusing him. It was not until I actually saw them together that he could no longer lie.”

She turned her face away.

“But the worst of it was my own fault,” she continued. “I had trusted him. I had given my faith and affection to him, and I tried to please him, only to learn that I had misjudged a man again—so thoroughly.” Her eyes gleamed as she looked at him. “I will never give myself into a man’s power again. Do you understand? You must understand.”

“When you trusted in his fidelity,” Gabriel said, “you didna misjudge a man again. You misjudged a man for the first time.”

Allowing the blankets to fall away from her, she climbed into his lap, wrapped her arms about his neck, and brought her mouth against his. He kissed her and ran his hands over her soft back and buttocks. Then he rose with her in his arms and laid her on the bed.

He made love to her slowly. This time, however, he spoke to her of her beauty as he touched it: the freckles that made her face unique and the pointy chin that made it imperfect; the long cinnamon lashes that were very fine except when they shrouded the cloverleaves; the lips that had uttered impertinences to an officer in the King’s Navy and still spoke outrageously to a duke, and that he would never be able to taste enough; the slender hands that one of his could swallow and that he wanted all over him; the feet that were indefatigable, sometimes inconveniently so; the soft belly that would surely again know the heartbeat of a little one.

Upon this last she began to weep anew, but she smiled as tears dribbled into her hair. He kissed her damp eyes and hair and lips, and she wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him to her and made him give her what she needed.

Afterward, she lay awake, watching the rhythm of his breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and his face at rest: the noble jaw, sensuous mouth, the flare of his nostrils, the arc of his nose, and the tumble of too-long locks over his brow.

“After you departed Kingston,” she said, and saw his lashes twitch, then his chest fill on a deep waking breath. Slowly he turned his face to her.

“Several days after you departed Kingston,” she said, “a maid with whom I was friendly at the hotel told me she pitied me.”

His eyes were like onyx.

“Did she?” he murmured.

“She said it was a shame for me that Mrs. Jennings was such a fine watchdog of my virtue, for you had extraordinary stamina.”

“Every man at twenty-three has stamina.”

“Does he?”

He pushed himself up onto his elbow. “If he has properly bridled himself, aye.”

“She was trying to embarrass me. I only realized that much later. At the time I was too naïve to understand her meaning. You knew that I was naïve.”

“Aye.”

“What did you want of me?”

His features lost all thoughtfulness, all pleasure. He said nothing.

“Tell me,” she said. “What did you want of me then? It matters nothing now, of course. I will never be that girl again. In truth, I feel not five and a half but five and a half thousand years older and am entirely changed. Still, I find it curious, the ways in which—”

In a single movement he closed the space between them, scooped his arm around her, and claimed her mouth. Then they were chest to chest and he was kissing her again as he had at first, drinking from her lips, from her mouth. Twining her hands through his hair, she welcomed his weight atop her, the heat of his skin, the brush of whiskers against her cheeks and chin.

“Amarantha.” His voice was deep, his arousal taut against hers. “Marry me.”

“No.”

He rocked to her and she moaned.

“Marry me, wild one,” he murmured against her neck, “an’ my exceptional stamina will be at your service whenever you wish.”

“I suspect—” She gasped, gripped his arms, and let him pleasure her. “I suspect your stamina will be at my service whenever I wish anyway.”

“So be it.” His tongue was tracing little arcs of heaven upon her throat.

“So be it?”

He lifted his head. She could see every lash that cast shade on his dark eyes, and every tiny crease on his skin put there by the ocean sun. He was beautiful, strong and powerful and gentle and good, and she loved him.

“Dinna marry me if you canna,” he said. “Only stay with me.”

“Stay with you?”

“Aye. Run when you must.” Tenderly his fingertips stroked back a lock of hair across her brow. “But always return to me.”

Amarantha’s heart beat so furiously, she knew he must feel it against his chest pressed to hers.

“Without marriage?” she said.

“As you will. However you will. Only let it be forever.” His smiled a half smile. “Make a dishonest man o’ me, lass.”

“Gabriel,” she whispered. “I need you now.”

He obliged. He filled her again and they were, for a time, one.