“They will come!” Amarantha entered the library waving a letter.

Lifting his attention from the pages strewn before him, Gabriel smiled. She came to him, slid onto his lap, and took his face between her hands. He encircled her waist with his arms and she kissed him.

“Who will come?” he murmured when she finally released his lips.

“The Duke of Loch Irvine’s most accomplished baker and her husband, Bess and Angus Allen. We will have the most delectable cakes in all the land.”

“You invited them here? To stay?”

“There is no blacksmith for miles around, which is ridiculous, and Nathaniel declined to come since Mary Tarry invited him to live at the Solstice. Now there is a romance of which we can be proud.”

“Aye.” His hands moved lower.

“And I cannot eat one more of Mrs. Hook’s terrible biscuits. Thus, my invitation.” She swiveled on his lap to peer at the papers and felt the bulge of his desire pressing into her behind. Closing her eyes she shifted against it. “How is it that you can be doing dull correspondence, yet this.”

“I have but to see you.” His palm surrounded her breast and he drew aside her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. Amarantha leaned into it.

“What is the dull correspondence?”

“A letter to the architect we will engage for the property in Edinburgh,” he said muffled against her skin. “So it seems we are at cross purposes with Bess and Angus.”

“Absolutely not,” she said on a little sigh. His fingers were doing what she liked best on her breast. “We will be fabulously eccentric and convey our baker and blacksmith around with us like ancient kings did.”

“Practical.” His mouth was hot and deliciously good on her throat.

“Isn’t it? Mm. But—architect? We cannot afford an architect. We cannot afford a new house!”

“We’ve come into a bit o’ money.”

With a twist of her body, she forced him to meet her gaze. “From where?”

“Your father.”

“My father? How? When?”

“Last November, in fact.”

Her eyes widened. “Did he—oh, no—my mother—good heavens—did he—did my father make you an offer for me? Last year?”

“He did.”

“Yet you did not tell me?” She leaped off his lap. “I cannot believe it.”

“You are justified in your disbelief, love.” He smiled and proffered a letter. “I read it for the first time just now.”

She snatched it and read.

“It seems your sister told him that you went to Kallin before even returning to Shropshire.”

“Yes, of course.” She glanced up from the letter.

“Because you couldna stay away from me,” he said with a one-sided smile of pure masculine confidence. “Because you loved me even then.”

“It was luck that took me there,” she said, drawing both of her lips tightly between her teeth.

“’Twas strategy,” he replied.

Her eyes twinkled. She looked again at the letter. “Why did you read it only now?”

“It went missing in a pile o’ correspondence while I was traveling. I’ve only just found it.”

“It is a lot of money.”

“Still opposed to dowries?”

“The exchanging of money for women? Yes.” A mischievous smile graced her lips. “Perhaps we could call it a wedding gift.”

“Aye,” he said.

“We could lay the new fences on the southern hill,” she said.

“Aye.”

“And repair the—”

“Aye.”

“And rebuild the—”

“Aye.”

“And still have—”

“More than half left to send to Kallin.”

She climbed back onto his lap and encircled his shoulders with her arms.

“How kind of my father to give us such a substantial wedding gift.”

“You dinna mind it?”

“If it will make you happy, I am happy.”

“Woman, you are all I need to be happy.”

She let him draw her close. Eyes closed, she felt the even cadence of his breathing and the hard beating of his heart, the solid muscle and bone of him, and his arms so strong around her. Joy pressed outward beneath every inch of her skin.

“Am I glowing?” she whispered.

“Glowing?”

“I have swallowed the sun.”

His arms tightened.

“Now,” he said into her hair, “I’ve a gift for you.”

She leaned back. “For what occasion?”

“Our anniversary.”

“Married five and a half months does not an anniversary make,” she said skeptically.

“Come.” Lacing his fingers through hers, he led her from the room and down the narrow winding stairs, then out of the keep and onto the hill.

They walked hand in hand through the grass and the cool, sunny brilliance of the day was all about them, golden and red leaves drifting from the trees, the hillside emerald, the music of autumn in the wind that curled her skirts about her legs and carried the birds’ songs.

Months earlier in the summer, on the apex of the highest hill within sight of the castle, he had strung a carved wooden swing from a branch of a big old tree. Here, he said, she could pause in her travels about the estate, and from the castle he would be able to see her.

To this tree and swing they now came. On the seat was a small box of very fine wood. She opened it.

“A backgammon set! It is our anniversary,” she exclaimed, and looked up into his eyes full of shadows that she adored.

“I love you, Captain.”

“An’ I you, wild one.” Bending his head, he laid the softest of kisses on her lips. Then another kiss, somewhat more ardent. And another. Then they were in each other’s arms and entirely oblivious to the breeze and the sunshine and everything but the pleasure of each other.

Decidedly breathless, she took his hand and, intertwining their fingers, drew him down to sit on the grass.

“Now,” she said without releasing him, “concerning the question of luck versus strategy, I have come to believe that a combination of both is often the best approach . . .”