“Any blood?” He bent over and peered interestedly.

“That’s not blood.” She hastily wiped off her leg, and jumped off the bed. A second later she had her chemise over her head. He’d ripped it, so it fell open in the front, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s not pee. Didn’t anyone tell you about bedding?”

“My aunt forgot to mention this charming detail.”

“It’s just a little fluid, carrying my part of a baby.”

She looked down at her legs, now decently covered.

“I’ll show you tonight,” he said, pulling on his trousers.

“Show me what?” she asked suspiciously.

“How my body works.”

In the back of his mind, he was thinking about the way she touched his body. Even now her eyes seemed to be drawn to his body, so he slowed his fingers, pulled his trousers up the curve of his arse slower than he needed to.

“I can demonstrate without making love,” he said casually, meeting her eyes when she finally looked up again. “Since you didn’t find it entirely pleasurable.”

“Neither did you,” she said defensively.

“We’ll improve.”

“Of course,” she said. “Good.”

“Tonight,” he said, throwing his coat over his shoulder.

Chapter Thirty-four

The Dower House

March 3, 1784

Tonight? What did he mean by that? Isidore wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to repeat bedding so soon. She felt slightly tender. And she felt odd. Disappointed, which was stupid. Besides, Godfrey was returning from his stay at the vicar’s, which meant that there couldn’t be any marital intimacy. Godfrey would be sleeping in the sitting room of Dower House. She didn’t want anyone in Revels House until the Dead Watch were safely back in London.

She wandered out for a walk. It was the kind of day that pretends spring has come, even though it hasn’t. The air smelled sweet, and the sun was shining. A blackthorn tree in the garden had already bloomed and was scattering seeds everywhere, like a child feeding birds in a dizzying circle.

Simeon would be a quite good husband. He was thoughtful and caring. His rueful little smile made her feel meltingly affectionate. He was so lovable when he wasn’t in control, when he admitted that he wasn’t sure what to do next. This afternoon was a perfect example. And he had admitted himself that the whole matrimonial experience wasn’t quite all it could be. In fact, he was devastatingly attractive when he—

She stopped. It would be easy to love a man who admitted his faults, who threw off his clothes when he realized that he’d embarrassed her. When Simeon was spontaneous, he was irresistible.

Yet when she was spontaneous, it drove him to distraction. He shouted—and then he kissed. In short, he lost control.

“Godfrey will be staying in the Dower House, of course,” she told Honeydew on her return. “I am convinced the air is unclean in the main house and he is a growing boy. Besides, we emptied his room of furniture,” she added. “He can sleep in the sitting room.”

Honeydew didn’t react by so much as a twitch to the news that, apparently, the duke would be sleeping with his wife. Likely Simeon’s eyes would narrow a bit when he heard how she was rearranging his life, but the Middle Way would stop him from making too much of an outcry.

Pah! That’s what her father would have said. Take the left way, or the right way. The upper way, the lower way…

She couldn’t help grinning, thinking of his body. The lower way was likely something that no proper English gentleman would take. Yet even thinking about his body made her legs prickle and her breath feel short.

When he arched over her, his eyes grew smoky and dark. They looked almost anguished.

She started wondering again what he meant by showing her how his body worked. Worked? She knew how it worked. That part grew stiff.

His body was long and lean, like a man who could run twenty miles to save his beloved. Like a man who fought off ruffians without even dirtying his hands.

Yes, she would quite like to know how his body worked. The thought made her smile.

It was precisely the smile that irritated Simeon during supper. Isidore kept looking at him in a certain way, and before he could stop it, his blood would flare through his body and he would start shaking. Just a little, but still—shaking.

Shaking!

The thought of the Middle Way came into his head and he actually pushed it away. It seemed irrelevant when he was with Isidore, with that bubbling joy in her eyes and the way her hair curled so sweetly, and the impudent little way she would glance at him…

He liked to think that every time she smiled that way, she was thinking about him. Intimately.

It wasn’t right to contemplate control. Not when Isidore was thinking about something else.

Besides, it was taking all his control to keep a calm conversation going through dinner. Isidore wasn’t wearing anything like the provocative gown that she wore the last time the three of them dined together. And he himself had put on breeches rather than his inappropriate trousers. The stockings didn’t seem to bother him so much this time, probably a sign that he was turning into a proper Englishman. But no proper Englishman would be ravished by lust, the way he was. The only thing he wanted was Isidore, warm and sweet under him.

Honeydew poured lemonade for Godfrey. No wine, even though he threw Simeon an imploring glance.

Simeon found himself grinding his teeth.

Couldn’t Godfrey have been housed in the barn? Did Isidore have to be so kind to his little brother? He had—

He had plans for this evening.

He shifted in his seat. Surely this was just what Valamksepa talked about. Lust as a poison in the blood, a wild, insurgent storm carrying reason before it. He had no reason. He just wanted her.

It wasn’t the Middle Way. God knows what kind of way it was. A bad way. He drank his wine and brooded about her breasts. The whole Middle Way concept ignored the fact that a man’s blood went on fire around his wife.

And Isidore was his wife.

Surely…

No.

At the end of supper he rose, ready to go somewhere. He seemed to have no bed, so he would presumably be housed in the barn with Honeydew.

But then it became clear that Isidore had different ideas. The meal was over, and before he knew exactly what was happening, she was in front of him, like a little whirlwind of silk and the sweet smell of her skin, saying this, saying that. She put everyone in their place, ordered Honeydew around in the sweetest of ways, directed Godfrey into his bed and he, it seemed, was to accompany her on a stroll through the gardens.

“It’s a lovely night,” she said, smiling up at him. “The moon is out.”

She had long eyelashes that curled upward so delicately that they distracted him. “Hmmm,” he said, unable to formulate even a simple sentence.

A moment later they were strolling down a path. It was actually quite warm in an early spring sort of way.

“Where shall we go?” Isidore asked. Her voice was bubbling, like a child at a party.

“For a walk?” he suggested. His mind felt like marmalade. All he wanted to do was drag her behind a tree and cup his hands around her bottom. How could he have made love to her and not spent an hour on each breast? It felt as if those lost moments were mocking him now.

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