“Then can we go sign the lease?” she asked, her face lighting with excitement. “He said he’d have it prepared, but I’ll be honest—I’m not sure he meant it. I think he’s half-expecting you to swoop in and give me a tongue-lashing for my impertinence.”

“A tongue-lashing for your impertinence?” Nicholas murmured. “Intriguing.”

“Nicholas!” Georgie exclaimed. Her eyes widened and she motioned with her head toward her maid, who was still seated on a nearby bench.

“She can’t hear us,” he whispered. “And she wouldn’t know what I meant, anyway.”

“That’s almost as bad. I don’t want her thinking you don’t approve of my actions.” She drew back, just a tiny bit. “You do approve, don’t you?”

“Of your taking care of the land agent so I don’t have to? Hell, yes. I wish I’d thought of it.” He touched her chin, tilting her face toward his. “But let me know ahead of time if you’re going to do something like this again. I do like to know what you’re up to.”

“To be completely honest,” she said, “it was a spur of the moment thing. I only decided yesterday.” Her eyes turned shy. And maybe a little embarrassed. “I don’t like to spend all week in the country without you.”

“I’m sorry.” He squeezed her hand. He didn’t like leaving her at Scotsby, but he didn’t see how there had been another option.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she replied. “I knew what I was getting into. I just didn’t know how much I wouldn’t like it.”

He leaned forward. Only about an inch; they were in public, after all. “Does it make me a bad husband that I like hearing that you’re miserable without me?”

“I didn’t say miserable,” she said, with a little coquettish tilt of her head.

“Humor me,” he said. “I’ve been miserable without you.”

It wasn’t entirely the truth. Most of the time he was too busy to be miserable, and when he wasn’t too busy he was too tired.

But he missed her. At night, when he lay in his narrow boardinghouse bed, he longed to reach out for her, pull her close. And then during the day, at the oddest moments, he’d notice something—usually something odd or funny or unusual—and he wished he could point it out to her.

He’d grown accustomed to her presence in a way that ought to have terrified him.

But it didn’t.

It only made him want more. And that started with getting the house in New Town sorted. “Where is Mr. McDiarmid’s office?” he asked Georgie. “We’ll take care of it right now.”

Georgie grinned and pulled a scrap of paper from her reticule. “Here, I have the address written down.”

He gave the words a quick look. “That’s not too far. We can walk there. Give me a moment, and I’ll make arrangements for Jameson and your maid. They’ll need to find a suitable place to wait for you.”

“It shouldn’t take very long.”

“No, but now that you’re here, we should make a day of it. I can show you the city.”

“Really? You don’t have anything else you need to do?”

He had a mountain of things he needed to do. He was still behind on his studies, and he needed to prepare for a meeting later that week with one of his professors, but he could not see beyond Georgie’s smiling face. His wife was here, and he wanted to be with her.

“Nothing that will not keep,” he told her. “Come. Let’s get that lease signed. Then we shall have some fun.”

She placed her hand in his and grinned, and he had a sudden flash of memory. It was from when they were tending to Freddie Oakes, and she’d smiled at him, and it had made him want to grab the sun from the sky and hand it to her on a platter.

It was still true. One smile from Georgiana, and he thought he could do anything.

Be anything.

Was this love? This crazy, heady feeling, this sense of endless possibility?

Could he have somehow fallen in love with his wife? It seemed too fast, too soon, and yet …

“Nicholas?”

He looked at her.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “You looked very far away.”

“No,” he said softly. “I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”

Her brow creased with confusion, and he couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t making sense. And at the same time, it felt as if the entire world was finally clicking into place.

Maybe this was love.

Maybe.

Probably.

Yes.

NINETY MINUTES LATER, Georgie was tiptoeing up the stairs in Mrs. McGreevey’s Respectable Boardinghouse for Bachelors.

“We’re not being very respectable,” she whispered.

Nicholas put his finger to his lips.

Georgie giggled. Quietly. She couldn’t help it. She felt positively giddy sneaking into Nicholas’s rooms.

The meeting with Mr. McDiarmid had gone smoothly, although Georgie could not help but be somewhat miffed at how much more accommodating he had been with Nicholas than with her.

She kept her complaints to herself, though; there was nothing to be gained by voicing them. She wanted the lease signed, and she wanted it signed quickly. It was clear that the most efficient path to her goals was to sit quietly and play the deferential spouse.

She knew it wasn’t the truth, as did Nicholas, and that was what was important.

Once they had all that taken care of, though, they still had a bit of time before she was supposed to meet Marian and Jameson for the ride back to Scotsby. Several hours, in fact. Nicholas had said that he would show her a bit of the city, but then they just happened to be walking past the boardinghouse, and Mrs. McGreevey just happened to not be anywhere in sight …

The next thing she knew she was giggling her way up the stairs.

“I feel so naughty,” she whispered as Nicholas turned his key in the lock.

“You are naughty,” he said. “Very, very naughty.”

He leered at her and before she knew what was happening, the door was closed behind them and he’d tossed her onto his bed.

“Nicholas!” she whisper-shrieked.

“Shhhhh. You’ll get me in trouble. I’m not supposed to have women here.”

“I’m your wife.”

He looked at her with a ridiculously innocent expression. “But think about how long it would take to explain that. All that time wasted when I could be doing this.”

Georgie let out a little squeak. She wasn’t sure if this referred to his hand on her thigh or his lips on her neck, but both were delicious. And she had no idea how she was supposed to keep quiet.

“What would happen if she found me?” she asked. “Would she ask you to leave?”

He shrugged. “No idea. It wouldn’t be the worst thing. We did just sign the lease for a new house.”

Georgie forced herself to be serious, if only for a moment. “It won’t be ready for occupancy for at least a week. And as much as I would love to have you with me at Scotsby, you can’t be riding back and forth every day. You’d be exhausted.”

Nicholas gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Then we’ll just have to be extra quiet so I don’t get caught.”