The morning Dylan’s mother had come over was terrifying. Before Emily took over and gave us hope, I’d been sure I would be too mortified to leave the house, terrified that everyone who saw me was thinking that I was unfaithful to Dylan, that I was some kind of slut, that I should have a scarlet letter tattooed to my chest.

A few days later, I was terrified to leave the house for an entirely different reason. Emily’s planned had worked. Well. Too well.

The very next day a front-page story ran in the Guardian about our elopement, complete with quotes from Dylan about him surprising me in New York, about how we’d met, how we’d actually been engaged for months but had wanted it to be private, about the ring I wore and our plans for a big English wedding. He’d explained about Eric, albeit briefly, and even said, on record, that I was the love of his life. And people ate it up. The public seemed to love that we’d been hiding away our commitment—it seemed romantic and dramatic. They loved that I was an American but had been born here. They seemed to love all of it. Of course there were snide Twitter posts and comments on the articles, but all in all, Emily’s plan had gone off without a hitch, and people were going mad.

My public perception problem may have been largely fixed, but I don’t think I could have imagined the spotlight being quite so bright if I’d tried. The day after the article ran, I’d opened the front door to leave for work, and there was an enormous man dressed in black and khaki with a camera at the ready and a flash exploding, blurring my vision. He was firing off questions at me, but all I heard was my name, “duchess,” “eloped,” and things like “the other guy,” and “are you sure the baby is his?”

I was never leaving the house again.

Dylan had somehow snuck out the back door that morning before I’d woken—he’d called from the office around seven thirty to wake me up. I had gotten dressed, had coffee, and opened the door thinking I was actually going to go to work when Rambo paparazzi had attacked me.

So right, apparently I was a hermit now, because there was no way I was going to go through that again. I mean, I knew I’d have to leave the house eventually, but maybe later?

I’d called Hannah and asked if someone else could watch the store until I could figure things out. She’d agreed, but “only because you’re allowing me to make the wedding gown, and I’m sure you’re going to quit on me soon anyway,” and then she’d hung up on me in a flurry—I could hear her barking orders at her apprentice before she’d even gotten off the phone. There were so many things about that phone call that had bothered me. For one, “allowing” her to make the gown? Since when was I someone who “allowed” Hannah to do anything? I cringed thinking about how being Dylan’s wife had already started to change everything that had been familiar about my life. And second, she thought I was going to quit? Anxiety rose like poison, making me feel queasy. I knew that Dylan and I would come up with our plan, that I’d figure out what I wanted to do with my career and how it fit into being a duchess, but the idea that the whole of England would continue to think I was a horrible wife, or woman, or aristocrat or whatever just because I kept my job was exhausting. It all made me want to dive back into bed and stay there. I figured every good restaurant delivered, and there was really no reason why I’d ever have to leave the house again.

Unfortunately there was apparently no way Dylan or Emily was going to allow me to do that.

Emily had called four times that morning already, urging me out the door and already asking me if Dylan and I had set a date. And at that moment I heard a commotion on the street outside, shouts of Dylan’s name. Crap, that meant he’d come home. He was definitely going to try to coax me out the door.

I hid even deeper under the covers.

It was only a few minutes later when I felt the bed dip where he must have been sitting. Then I felt his hand intertwine with my own—my treacherous fingers must have been peeking out from the duvet.

“Baby,” he said, pulling back the covers.

I opened one eye and looked at him warily. He smiled and pulled the covers back further.

“What on earth are you wearing?”

After I’d retreated from the door, I’d shimmied out of my pencil skirt, but I was still in thigh highs, a bra, and a silk blouse.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he continued, running his warm hand over my bare backside and up the inside of my blouse, rubbing my back.

I groaned and buried my head back in the pillow. Dylan chuckled and stood. I could hear him removing his jacket and shoes, the telltale zip of his trousers. Within a minute, I felt the heat of his bare chest hovering above me.

“Baby,” he whispered, and he moved the hair from my back and over my shoulder. “Listen to me.” His tone was soothing but firm. So in control. And already his control was making me feel better, making feel like at least one of us had some ideas as to how to steer us through this chaos.

He kneeled up on the bed behind me, his legs on either side of my own. And in a flash he had effortlessly lifted me so my knees were tucked beneath me, my backside in the air. His fingers tickled my chest as they unfastened the buttons of my blouse, and he pulled it from my back and arms. My bra followed in quick succession, and the fabric was replaced with his wandering hands.

“I know,” he said. “Those vultures are bloody terrifying.” Kisses were placed on my back, his warm mouth making a trail over my body in concert with his hands. “But you are my wife. And I won’t have my wife feeling like she has to hide away in our house. Understand?”

His words were loving, understanding, but he wasn’t going to let me go around this problem—we were going to have to dive in. Dylan had been this way on our first date, not letting me play coy or dumb, and he was going to be this way forever. He’d never let me hide, and I knew, even if it was terrifying, that he was right.

He kissed my ass cheek, and suddenly I was on my back looking up into my eyes. “Understand?”

I nodded, the heat spreading so fast, pulsing in my limbs, pooling at my core.

“Good girl.” He kissed my breast. “This is what is going to happen.” His words were echoed by his hands, his fingers previewing his words. At that moment, his fingers sank into me, and my back arched off the bed, my eyes closing, so happy for this escape.

“Look at me, Lydia.” Damn him and his never letting me hide. “Open those gorgeous eyes for me and look.” I did, and I saw the most loving face, those ocean-blue eyes, staring down at me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He kissed me again.

“I’m going to fuck you, darling. So hard, and so well, that you won’t even remember what had you hiding.” My chest was rising and falling off the bed, anticipation crawling all over me. His fingers pressing inside of me, summoning every cell, lining every vein of desire up like a soldier, ready to be commanded. I nodded again.

“You’re going to remember that you are my girl, my brilliant wife, my gorgeous duchess, a woman no one should reckon with. Then you’re going to get this fine ass to work.” He slapped the side of my ass for emphasis, and my breathing hitched. Shit, that felt good. The heat that remained in the wake of his hand added a sweet sting to the wave threatening to crest against his fingers, now strumming my clit in sync with their thrusts.

“Dylan,” I moaned.

“That’s right, my sweet girl. That’s right.” He lifted my ass onto his thighs and slid into me, his cock so much thicker than his fingers that I gasped and rolled as my body tried to accept him. As though he didn’t do this to me all the time, as though my body shouldn’t know exactly what was coming.

Within a moment, I was pulsing around him, crying his name as he took me with complete control. His hands held my waist, keeping me steady, and it was as though my anxiety, my fatigue, my feelings of being so small in the face of the world outside the door writhed out of me as the orgasm took me over, as I gripped his forearms with my hands and felt his strength beneath my palms.

“Dylan,” I exhaled and took him, took everything he did to me. I heard his own heavy breathing, his own shuddering chest as he came inside me, and in that moment he had succumbed as much as I had.

The broad daylight settled over our naked limbs, and I found myself sitting up, my stocking-clad thighs wrapped around his waist as he leaned against the headboard. His hand pulled one of the sheer black stockings down to my knee, and he rubbed the skin of my thigh.

“I love these,” he said, looking down appreciatively.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling. Then I looked at him, caught his attention so he understood that I needed him to look right back at me. “Thank you,” I said again, this time for shaking me loose.

He nodded, and kissed me again on the lips.

“Time to face the music. You’re stronger than they are.”

I nodded.

“And fucking gorgeous to boot.”

I laughed and collapsed against his chest.

“No, up. I have to go too, damsel. I came right from a lunch with a client and I have another meeting.”

“You squeezed rescuing your pathetic wife between important business meetings?”

“Not pathetic,” he said sternly, giving me that warning look he gave when I said things about myself he knew not to be true. “And yes. Hannah called me when you didn’t come in.”

“She did?” I asked, crawling off of him and heading to the closet. I could hear him rustling out of the bed himself.

“Mmm. I know you think she’s cold, but she cares about you.” He came up behind me, zipping his trousers, and reached over me into the closet to pull out a fitted dress with a short pleated skirt. “You look so bloody fit in this—makes every one who sees you go mental.”

He handed me the hanger, and I began pulling myself together. I couldn’t believe Hannah had called him.

“Fiona called as well. Apparently you two were supposed to have lunch.”

“Oh, fuck.” I put my hand to my mouth. “I completely forgot. I emailed her and Josh when we got back and told her we got married, but I still haven’t seen them. I was going to catch her up, and we were going to look at branding options for her jewelry line. Shiiiiit.” I hurriedly chose a pair of red suede booties to go with the dress.

His hand slid down my arms from behind soothingly, and he kissed the top of my head. “I think she understands. They were both just worried about you. I think they are also excited for you, baby. They wanted to chew my ear off about our wedding.”

“Which one?”

“Which what?” he asked, buttoning his shirt and straightening the cuff links.

“Which wedding?”

“Oh, Fiona wanted to know all about the real one. Hannah was fishing for design details about the fake one.”

“Figures.”

“Speaking of, my mother called.”

I paused completely, my dress half zipped, and stared at him. Did I really want to hear this?

“How do you feel about a wedding at Humboldt?”

“Great?” I said, wondering what the catch was. “I mean, great. I assumed that’s where this shindig would be. Why? What did your mother say?”

“Well, I asked her about it, and she was rather pleased. I don’t know what to do about her, darling, honestly. And I want to throttle her for saying everything she’s said—”

“Dylan, I’m not worried about your mother. I mean I was, but I know she’s still grieving. I know I’m not what she envisioned for you. But I have faith in us. We’ll earn her blessing.” I almost believed the words I was saying. “Somehow.”

He turned me towards him and kissed me again. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, and in a flash, he’d turned me, lifted up the hem of my dress, and smacked me on the ass. I jumped three feet and laughed, put my hands on my hips, giving him a playful glare of death. “There’ll be no more of that. I need to get to work.”

Dylan said he’d drop me at work and pick me up—I agreed it was time to get back to my office at the store, but I honestly did feel safer with him. As we rode in the Mercedes, he held my hand firmly in his own and played with my rings, which was quickly becoming his new mindless habit.

“What’s your meeting this afternoon?” I asked as I caught him turning our hands to look at his watch.

He sighed, which couldn’t be a good sign. “MI6.”

We’d both been avoiding this particular subject lately. It made me nervous. I knew it was going to be dangerous, and now more than ever I didn’t want that. It gave me a pit in my stomach. I couldn’t lose him. Maybe I was being ridiculous, but it physically hurt to think about him going into danger. Just thinking about how he’d been able to pull me out of my bad mood, how he knew me so intimately to do that. How could I ever again be in the world without that person, without him?

Dylan squeezed my hand, sensing my anxiety. “It will be fine.”

Once at the shop, as long as I didn’t look outside where there was a throng of bored-looking photographers hanging around, I could mostly forget the chaos of the marriage announcement. And when Fiona and Josh came barreling in an hour before closing, I was able to forget it completely.

Josh flung open the door dramatically, held it open for Fiona, who struggled her way with some giant box, and then he turned in the doorway, and actually curtsied for the photographers. I could hear the flashbulbs eating up his show, and when he came fully inside, he had a huge smile on his face and promptly locked the shop door behind him.

I could barely speak through my laughter. “What are you doing? We don’t close for an hour!” Before I even finished the thought, I was deep in a hug with both of them. I hadn’t even seen them since I’d returned from New York.

Josh flicked his hand dismissively. “Oh, whatever, any customers can wait till tomorrow. We need our Lydia time, and we have to hear everything. An elopement? A possible pregnancy? A scandalous kiss on the side?” I had my face in my hands as he spoke, part mortified but mostly laughing. Josh had a way of deflating the situation of all of its seriousness and finding the fun in it. “I mean hello, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to office gossip anywhere.”

Fiona shoved him aside and brought me into a hug all her own. “Ignore him. I think it’s insanely romantic, and I loved what Dylan had to say in that article, and I want every detail.”

I looked at them both and my chest just filled with love. These were my friends, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I needed to bring them into this, to share this whole craziness with them.

“Also, we brought you this,” Fiona said, opening the large white box on the counter. Josh was jumping up and down with excitement, and I looked at them both warily. Fiona stepped aside to reveal a three-tier bright red wedding cake with a cardboard-cutout picture of Dylan and me on top, and around the top layer it said in very nonprofessional-looking frosting writing:

“The writing was Josh’s idea!” Fiona held up her hands in self-defense as I gripped my stomach in laughter. “Now tell us everything.”

“Thank you, guys. I will,” I said, still laughing and clearing my throat. “And said shaggable man will be here to pick me up in an hour, so you can congratulate him in person.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Josh, digging through his man bag and pulling out a knife. “We have to eat this bit before he gets here.” He immediately started to cut into the word nob on the cake.

I turned down the shop lights, we moved to my office, and for the next forty-five minutes, we ate cake and I walked them through everything. I told them about the Eric kiss, about Dylan showing up, about all of it. Josh got up to bounce or exclaim something barely intelligible at least three times, and Fiona seemed genuinely thrilled. Their impromptu celebration was the perfect antidote to the paparazzi horror show that had started the day.

“That was rather remarkable,” Dylan said once we were seated at dinner. He’d come to pick me up at the shop only to find Fiona and Josh and me full of cake and still laughing. “I’ll never cease to find it amazing how quickly you make people fall in love with you.” I gave him a roll of my eyes. “I should know,” he responded defensively. “I fell harder and faster than anyone else.”

“I love you too,” I said, taking a sip of my water just as the waiter arrived with our steaming plates of Indian food. Dylan had wanted to take us to a fancy restaurant in Covent Garden, but I’d felt like comfort food instead. So we’d ended up at a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant Will had shown us one freezing February night.

“So what was the news from your meeting this afternoon?” I asked. After the first time I’d brought up Dylan’s association with MI6 in a public place and he had stopped everything, turned around 360 degrees to make sure no one was listening, and then proceeded to call his security people to do something in reaction, I’d learned quickly that one does not say MI6 in public, at least not if you’re actually involved with them.

Dylan paused as he was sweeping up creamy sauce with his naan and didn’t look at me when he gave his reply. “The date is set for a week from Friday.”

When I dropped my own fork he finally looked up. He knew I didn’t want this happen. He also knew that I was proud of him, that I understood why he was doing it, and that there was no way I’d say anything to get in the way of it.

“Okay,” I said. “So can you tell me more? Do you know more?”

He reached across the table and grabbed my hand, stroking the top side with his thumb. “Baby, I know this is the last thing we need, but at least it will be over with. And, damsel, I got this.”

Alpha-male idiot.

Didn’t he understand that’s what all men who fancied themselves to be Thomas Crown or James Bond or Batman or whoever all thought: I got this. The good news was that I was an optimist, and even if I thought he was being at least partially a moron, I believed in statistics, and I figured the odds of this not going well were low. MI6 wasn’t going to put one of Britain’s most beloved aristocrats in real danger, right? I mean, they wouldn’t risk it. So it would be fine. Not because Dylan thought he could karate chop his way out of anything—let’s be honest, even if a decade of private kickboxing classes in a Knightsbridge studio gave him a sculpted body, it probably didn’t offer much in the way of any real self-defense skills—but because I’d had enough crap in my life already, there was no way I could lose him. At least that’s what I was telling myself.

“I know,” I said, and squeezed his hand back. “Let’s just get it over with—one less thing on our plate.”

“Also, how would you feel about hiring Frank again? Just for a bit?”

“Frank?” I asked, remembering the burly man Dylan hired last year while I was being harassed.

“Just until the wedding is over, until things settle down. I never want you to feel afraid to leave our house.” He looked at me seriously as he said this. “The paparazzi really are just acting like piranhas over that article. And there really shouldn’t be any risk associated with the MI6 business, but it will make me feel better. The last thing I want is someone thinking they can get to me through you, and it’s not your job to be on the lookout for that.”

I fought Dylan the first time he’d hired security personnel for me. It seemed ridiculous at that time. It didn’t seem ridiculous to me now. I got it. In fact, I was relieved. One less thing to worry about.

“Okay. Sounds smart.”

Dylan lowered his gaze and scrunched his eyebrows in curiosity. “What? No protests? No assertions about how you can vote and walk and run for office without my help?”

I interlaced my fingers, put my elbows on the table, and rested my chin there, batting my eyelashes at him with exaggerated sweetness. “Nope. I’m all for it.” Dylan looked suspicious. “What can I say? I’ve missed my babycakes.” I’d loved my routine with Frank, pretend flirting to get Dylan’s goat.

Dylan growled, I laughed, and I was so relieved to see the waiter returning with fresh glasses of wine.

That night, I lay in our bed, the sheets pulled around us, Dylan’s heavy warm limbs wrapped around me so completely that I could feel his pulse against my skin. We’d forgotten to close the curtains, and light from the moon cast a column of brightness across our bodies. Dylan’s breathing was rich and rhythmic. I looked at him, felt him, and allowed my anxiety about the MI6 operation in, just for a moment. If I opened the doors to it completely, it would engulf me, and I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I understood why he had to do it—in some fundamental way, he felt it would make up for so many of the things his father had done, and it was the quickest way of distancing himself from the wreck his father had made of Hale Shipping and the estate. And the fact that a friend, Jack, was in charge of the whole thing relaxed me—there was no way his friend would put him in danger. But there was still a small part of me that was scared. I loved him, I loved my future with him, and the possibility, no matter how slim, that I might lose him crushed me.