Perry insisted upon brushing out Tessa’s hair and dressing her for bed like a proper lady’s maid, and for once, Tessa did not resist.

For the night rail, Tessa wanted the right balance of special but not . . . overwhelming. The forthcoming evening felt overwhelming enough without a showy, provocative gown that promised something that Tessa, quite possibly, could not deliver. She finally agreed on a simple night rail in the softest pink and a burgundy dressing gown with matching pink trim. It was sweet but not girlish, fine without being overdone.

Be calm, be calm, be calm, Tessa chanted in her head as Perry brushed the creases from her long, unbound hair.

Calmness was the last thing Tessa felt. She was nervous and jittery and desperate to get her hands on Joseph. He’d been so helpful with the baby at dinner and Christian’s bath. She laughed at the memory of the flowers and sweets and, God forbid, original poetry that she’d once enjoyed as gifts from men. They now paled in comparison to Joseph holding the baby while Perry made up the crib and Tessa went to the other room to wash her hair.

Now the women had been on their own for more than an hour, and Tessa insisted on ten more minutes to rock the baby to sleep. When Christian’s eyes finally slid closed, Tessa bid Perry a good-night and slipped from the room.

She paused before Joseph’s door, wondering if she should knock. He’d said this was her room too. Was she meant to knock at her own door? What if Joseph was inside half-dressed? This possibility appealed to her and she reached for the door handle. In that same moment, the door whipped open. Tessa yelped and skittered back, and Joseph gave a shout.

“Bloody hell, you scared me,” he breathed. “I was just coming for you.” He looked right and left down the corridor. “Get inside,” he breathed and scooped her from the corridor into the room.

“Sorry,” she laughed, allowing herself to be scooped.

“This is why I didn’t journey with you in the coach,” he grumbled, locking the door. “I would expire with lust and jealousy if I had to watch you glide from room to room in your dressing gown for ten nights.”

“Glide? I wasn’t gliding. I don’t glide.”

“You were bloody floating. And your hair is glorious. You are . . . iridescent. You radiate in that thin silk and unbound hair and your . . . face. I’ve endured the tight bun and brown dresses for a month and now you’re dressed like a goddess.”

She laughed, looking down at herself. “You are . . . agitated.”

“I am agitated,” he agreed. “Excellent turn of phrase. And I need a drink.” He went to a drinks trolley crowded with bottles. “One for you? Can’t hurt.”

He poured two glasses of amber liquid and held one out. She took a tentative sip, the liquor was warm and fiery. She considered him. He also wore an ivory dressing gown with gold brocade. It should have been lordly and stuffy but he looked very handsome. He still wore his buckskins beneath the dressing gown, but his feet were bare.

“Tessa,” he began, downing his drink, “I’ve given a lot of thought to the way we should proceed. I want to embark on this in the most measured, cautious way. We should set out some boundaries, some intervals, so that we are careful to manage things slowly.”

“And what if slowness only heightens my anxiety?”

“It’s so very easy to leap ahead, trust me, but it can be more difficult to slow down.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, and it was true, she wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of spoiling this moment by discussing the life from it. She was afraid of having a cursory, diluted version of her wedding night because she’d panicked before.

But the panic had been before, when she’d not enjoyed the incredibly freeing experience of telling him what happened on the night with the tree. That was before he told her he loved her.

There was nothing cursory or diluted in the way she felt about Joseph.

He glanced at her, allowing his eyes to linger on the clingy silk of her gown, the loose fall of her hair over her shoulder. “There is pleasure in going slowly,” he said. “We have a lifetime of pleasure at every pace.”

“I’m not opposed to slowness,” she ventured, wishing to sound agreeable. She wasn’t fighting his technique, she was simply impatient with discussing it.

“For example,” he began, “we might—”

Tessa cut him off by launching herself at him.

She’d not planned it—well, perhaps she’d planned a small part of it. It was one way, she thought, to redirect a thoughtful, long-winded prelude. She understood his desire to “pause” for her own good; but was there a less romantic phrase than “pause”? She couldn’t bear to embark on lovemaking with the threat of pausing.

And so she had not.

She had thrown herself at him, a determined combination of the Old Tessa and the New Tessa and a Fourth or Fifth Tessa who had grown weary of talking and was so very much in love with him.

“Tessa,” Joseph breathed, fighting for words between kisses. “This is not . . . part of . . . my plan. I’m so afraid of frightening you,” he said.

“My only known fear at this moment is, ‘a plan,’ ” she said and she jumped up, catching him around the haunches with her legs and wrapping her arms around his neck. He was given no choice but to gather her up, groaning as he pressed her to him.

“And now what am I meant to do?” he rasped.

She pulled back from the kiss. “But you don’t know?”

He laughed, a low guttural sound, and it thrilled her. He staggered across the room, kissing her as he went. When they reached the bed, he tossed her. She landed in the center, gave a little yelp, and reached for him.

“You’ll tell me,” he warned, kneeling toward her, “if you need to pause?”

“Please don’t ask that again.”

“You will give me the time I require if I need to pause.”

She sat up. “Why would you need to pause?”

“I don’t,” he said, and he shrugged off his dressing gown, revealing his bare, tanned, muscled chest and buckskins.

Tessa sucked in a breath.

He laughed. “But this will not be rushed, I swear to you, Tessa.”

His oath was short lived. He dipped his head to capture her mouth; his body came down next, bare chest against the thin silk covering her breasts, his hip heavy against her thighs, his legs tangling with hers. The kiss grew deep and sensual very quickly, his tongue sweeping her mouth. Tessa reveled in the tingling sensation of all of his tanned muscle pressing against every soft, rounded part of her. He was so very substantial. And so very hard. Strength and beauty, sewn into a perfectly formed human male.

She was desperate to learn every part of him, and while they kissed, she set her hands to work on the planes of his back, the giant ball of his shoulders, his roped arms.

He stopped kissing her mouth and delved lower, kissing her neck, grazing her with his emerging beard, and then lower still. He used his nose to nudge open the edges of her dressing gown, laying a fiery trail of kisses as he went. He pulled back to stare down at her, and she felt the coolness of the room on her neck and shoulders.

“Alright?” he asked.

She nodded. “I want my dressing gown off.” She sat up and he smoothed the burgundy silk from her shoulders, massaging her arms as it went. She shivered in her bare pink night rail and felt the instinct to cross her arms over her chest, but she resisted. She was brave, she wanted this. She had just leapt at him, she’d just explored his body with voracious hands. She wanted this.

He leaned on one elbow and propped over her. “I want to touch your—”

She cut him off. “I don’t want to discuss each body part before it’s called into question,” she said.

“You’re certain?”

She nodded her head.

“Right,” he said, and while she watched, he dropped his gaze from her face and stared at the deep rise and fall of her chest. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his hand. She watched it hover above her breasts. And then he extended one finger to the thin silk between her breasts and traced a slow line in between.

Tessa sucked in a breath.

He drew the line back up, tickled beneath her chin, and traced it down again, lower this time. The third time, he traced the line with two fingers, grazing the sides of her breast when he passed between them. After tracing up and down with two fingers, he lifted his hand away.

Tessa gasped and looked at him. Don’t sto—?

He smiled languidly and looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “Again?” he asked.

She nodded and reached for him. He allowed her to wrap her arms around his neck but he would not be pulled down. He remained above her on his side, slowly, deliberately, pressing two fingers to the pounding pulse beat between her breasts. Again, he began to trace a line between. This time, his finger circled beneath the swell of first one breast, and the other. Just the outline. A half moon that grazed the silk that contained her breast.

Tessa heard a moan and realized it was her own fevered response. Her body burned. Her breasts strained against the pink silk. Her world shrank to his hand and she felt herself bow up in the bed, rising to meet his finger. “Please,” she whimpered.

She thought she heard him mumble thank God, and he dropped his palm over her breast and descended on her mouth.

The kiss was secondary to the sensations swirling through her, and she fought the distance between them, struggling to pull him closer. He dropped from his side, rolling on top of her and rocked slightly. Tessa broke from the kiss and made a little gasp.

“Alright?” he panted, and she answered by repeating the same motion, rocking up to meet him. He groaned and returned to her mouth. She grabbed him by the face, slid her hands into his hair, holding him to her.

By some instinct, she pushed his head to her throat, and lower still, to her neck. He knew what she wanted and closed a mouth over her breasts through the silk. Tessa cried out with pleasure. Joseph moaned and worshiped her breasts with his tongue.

His hands circled her waist, traced her hips, and massaged the muscles of her thigh. Her left leg was pinned beneath him, but she drew up her right leg so he could trail the shape of it all the way to her curled toes. Joseph obliged, tickling the skin beneath her knee with the silk of her night rail. He hesitated when he reached the hem of her gown and then he traced one finger around the bone of ankle.

When Tessa felt the bare skin of his fingertip touch the bare skin of her leg, she froze.

Dark grey nighttime filled her vision.

A cold chill descended, submerging her in icy fear.

She tore her head to the side and gasped.

“Wait,” she said in an airy, petrified voice.

Joseph froze.