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Morwenna brought her husband upstairs to the bedroom she’d slept in for the last few months. When she’d first come to London, she’d lived with Sally, Lady Norwood, as part of their pact to play Dashing Widows, women of independent spirit who had fun and dazzled society. But Sally had recently married Sir Charles Kinglake, and was touring Italy on her wedding trip. Morwenna desperately wished Sally was here in London—she had a suspicion she might need a friend before everything was settled with Robert.

Her maid put aside the mending to greet her mistress with a curtsy and quickly hidden surprise at a man’s presence in this, until now, purely feminine territory.

Well, the girl would find out plenty once she went down to the servants’ hall. Morwenna had been in Town long enough to know that Robert’s return would be the subject of conversation from cellars to attics in every house in Mayfair.

Let them talk. She didn’t care. Her love was alive.

But right now, Robert wouldn’t want an audience, so she sent the girl away. Although heaven knew how she’d get out of this gown without help.

Once they were alone, Robert didn’t shift from the threshold. The hand on her wrist was trembling. Tiredness? Anger? Some mysterious illness?

Morwenna didn’t know. And she didn’t feel she could ask this stranger, who wasn’t entirely a stranger.

Because his touch made her burn the way she hadn’t burned in five years. And his scent teased dormant senses back to tingling life. The shabby coat reeked of salt and old fish, but beneath it, even after so long, she knew that warm, male smell. At an animal level, her body immediately recognized this man as her mate.

She tipped her head to study him. He seemed dazed, and at last she saw his bone-deep weariness. Caro was right. He looked ready to drop from exhaustion.

With a soft sound of distress, she reached to touch his face. “Oh, my dear,” she whispered, hating how he flinched away. “Tell me what you want.”

He sucked in a shuddering breath. By now, his trembling was visible. She expected another monosyllabic response, but he shot her a sharp look and said, “Now, there’s a question.”

She frowned, wishing she was clever like the Nashes, clever enough to know how to heal him. Before she could summon an answer, he pulled away, pressing his hand to the doorframe in a silent admission that he couldn’t stand unsupported. Morwenna began to reach for him again, until she recalled how he’d shied away from her.

“You know, I should leave you.” He started to turn toward the corridor. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

To her surprise, she found herself saying, “No, stay.”

She found the courage to take his arm. He went rigid as a gatepost under her hold, apart from that awful trembling. She had no idea what he’d been through, but she knew enough to understand that whatever had happened to him left him stretched to the absolute limit.

He didn’t look at her. “I’m not fit company tonight.”

She made a disgusted sound. “I’m your wife. You don’t have to be company.” She almost spat out the last word.

He leveled a flat gaze on her. “I wasn’t sure you remembered you were my wife.”

A spurt of temper briefly overcame her lingering guilt. “It’s been five years, Robert, and everyone was certain you were dead.”

He looked startled, as well he might. So far, she’d been a bit of a mouse in the face of his antipathy. “I remembered you for five years,” he said harshly.

And I remembered you, my love.

She didn’t say it. Now wasn’t the time for declarations of love. Although she was heartened to hear that he’d never stopped thinking of her. “There are things you need to know.”

Those marked black brows contracted in a scowl, and a muscle jerked in his cheek. “Let’s leave the confessions until tomorrow, Morwenna.”

This was the first time he’d spoken her name since his return. She wished those straight white teeth didn’t bite it off like something unpleasant.

It was her turn to frown as she assessed what he’d said. She’d referred to Kerenza, not to any misbehavior in his absence, although he must wonder about her engagement to Garson. “I wasn’t...” she began, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, without sounding particularly apologetic. “I have no right to carp. You’d had confirmation of my death.”

“You have the rights of a husband,” she said.

His lips twisted, but not in a smile. “A dead husband has no rights.”

“Robert...”

He stepped out of her hold and at once, she missed the contact, despite the tension rising between them. “You should have let me leave you alone tonight.”

She met his stare, again wishing she was sure of herself with him. One thing she was sure of—she’d never seen a man look so lonely. Despite the way his family had welcomed him, isolation clung to him like an icy shroud. “Do you want to go?”

He didn’t reply, but the quickly concealed hunger in his eyes was answer enough. Not the hunger of desire, but something else. She could only think it was a hunger for warmth and human contact.

Her lips tightened. His pride was familiar. When she’d first come to know him, his pride had surprised her. After all, he was accounted the most agreeable of fellows and always brightened any gathering.

But a core of steel lurked beneath the geniality. That core of steel had helped him rise through the naval ranks with unprecedented speed. She also suspected that core of steel had kept him alive through whatever torments he’d endured.

Which didn’t stop her from wanting to slap him for the way he currently held onto his foolish masculine pride. But at least he became less a stranger with every minute.

Downstairs, this hollow-eyed wanderer had revealed little trace of the man she’d married. Now her confidence revived when she saw that despite time, distance and untold suffering, her Robert existed in there somewhere.

“Then for heaven’s sake, stop playing the martyr and come into the room,” she said with asperity. Still, she was wise enough to move fully inside and leave him space to make his decision.

After a second, he edged through the doorway. She sucked in a relieved breath. She felt like she coaxed a wild creature close enough to eat from her hand. A game of advance and retreat, requiring endless patience and calm.

Robert came to a halt in the center of the pretty, feminine room with its pink silk curtains and graceful furniture. He looked as out of place as a stevedore in Almack’s.

Warily he surveyed his surroundings, until his eyes met his reflection in a cheval mirror. He winced and looked away. “You must think me a complete vagabond.”

He spoke more easily now, she was grateful to hear. Each word no longer seemed to hurt. In the ballroom, she’d noticed that he’d relaxed a tad as the crowd left.

She shrugged, and to save herself from falling all over him in tearful gratitude for his return, she sat in front of her dressing table and began dismantling the elaborate hairstyle she’d worn for the betrothal party. Some instinct warned her that too much emotion would threaten Robert’s barely held control. And he was clinging to his control as if it was his last lifeline. More pride.

“I’m guessing you came straight from a ship.” It was an effort to speak evenly, but those same instincts told her that he’d prefer some semblance of normality to the high drama his return warranted.

He rewarded her circumspection with the longest sentences he’d yet managed. “Yes, we docked this evening. I probably should have waited to make sure I looked marginally civilized before I arrived.”

She stared into the mirror, but really she saw nothing. Her hands continued their busy work without her needing to pay attention. “No, you shouldn’t.”

He moved across to the window and pushed aside the drawn curtains. The clear night had turned to rain. The sound of raindrops splattering against the windows filled the awkward silence.

It was five years since she’d had a man in her bedroom. Had Robert’s presence always been so restless, stirring up currents of disquiet with every breath? She couldn’t help thinking of a lion pacing its cage. Was this lion going to turn and devour her?

“Do you want me to tell you where I’ve been?” he asked, without looking back at her.

Curiosity clawed at her, ferocious as the lion she’d likened him to. But audible reluctance had weighted his question. “Of course I do. But we promised to wait until tomorrow.”

He turned to her, and she was surprised to catch a glimpse of grim humor in his eyes, even if that long mouth remained unsmiling. “You’re a wife in a thousand.”

She wasn’t naive enough to take his remark as an unalloyed compliment. But at least he was talking to her now. “Why don’t you take off your coat?” she said calmly, beginning to brush her thick, black hair out before she braided it.

“I’ve been living in rough shipboard conditions for weeks. I’m not dressed like a gentleman.”

She made herself continue the steady downward stroke of the brush through hair as straight as a ruler. With a hungry expression that was becoming familiar, his attention focused on the everyday action.

“I’m sure I’ll survive the sight of you in your shirtsleeves,” she said drily. With every second, the bed behind him loomed larger and larger in her mind. Not to mention the things they needed to do before they shared it. Undressing for one. “I’m surprised a footman didn’t take your coat when you came into the house.”

He shrugged off the coat with a reluctance she could read and laid it over one of the brocade armchairs near the roaring fire. It looked as out of place there as Robert looked out of place in this room.

“There were no servants at the door. They’d all gone inside to witness your betrothal announcement.” He paused, folding his arms over the threadbare linen shirt that covered his chest. “Did you say something?”

“Just a knot,” she said sweetly, although a gasp of annoyance had escaped her. She could imagine he wasn’t best pleased to find her promising herself to another man, but her reasons had been sound. Someday she’d have to make him understand. But not tonight when they were both so on edge.

“I’m not dressed for a lady’s boudoir.”

“You’ll do,” she said, wanting to tell him she didn’t care what he wore. She only cared that he was here with her.

But while at last they were almost communicating, she trembled on the brink of the chasm still gaping between them.

She bit her lip and struggled to hold onto her spurious serenity. It was difficult now she saw him without the voluminous coat. He’d always been lean, but the man before her was thin almost to emaciation. He wore loose sailor’s trousers in faded black, held up by a thick leather belt with a tarnished buckle, and heavy boots. She couldn’t help remembering the Robert she’d first met, who had been so dashing and spruce in his immaculate naval uniform.

“The ship that picked me up was a whaler.” As he turned his head, the candlelight caught the shiny skin of the scar marking his cheek. “No buttons and brass anywhere.”

The urge rose to find out more, but she beat it back. She’d promised to wait, to save him having to live through his ordeal twice when he spoke to the family tomorrow. Because even without hearing details, she could see he’d been through experiences harsh enough to strip all the polish from a man’s soul. “I can live without buttons and brass.”

I can’t live without you.

Even when he was so wounded and wary, that was true. She set down her brush and went on. “Would you like anything to eat or drink? I could ring for something.”

Good heavens, right now he looked like he needed a month of four square meals a day.

“No, thank you.” He sank into another of those ridiculously feminine chairs and bent to take off his boots. The intimacy of the mundane act knocked the breath from her, although of course the moment he’d said he was coming upstairs, she’d understood that they’d share a bed. After all, there was only one bed in the room.

With unsteady fingers, she started to braid her hair.

He looked up from unlacing his boots and shot her a sharp glance. “No.”

Her fingers stilled, as her eyes met his in the glass. Was the monosyllabic man who’d come into the ballroom back again? “No?”

One of his scarred hands gestured in her direction. “Your hair. Don’t...”

“Plait it?”

“Please.”

Oh, dear. That was a statement of intent, if she’d ever heard one.

Ridiculous to feel nervous, but trepidation settled like a boulder in her stomach. She’d desperately missed the Robert she’d married, wanted him back in her bed. But this man, despite occasional glimmers of familiarity, remained very much an unknown quantity.

His touch had always set her alight. She’d starved for it since he’d gone away. But so much remained unresolved. While she owed him her duty as his wife, was it too much to ask him to wait?

She gulped in a mouthful of air and made herself nod. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” He rose on bare feet and prowled up behind her.

Without turning, she watched his approach in the mirror. Her stomach seethed with nerves. The skin prickled across her shoulders as she braced for contact.

He stared down at her as he loomed up, so she couldn’t see his eyes. He paused, and her skin tightened in anticipation that she couldn’t describe as wholly fearful or wholly eager.

Did he mean to kiss her? Sweep her up into his arms and into the bed? Then prove himself her husband in the most basic way?

But he merely lifted a tress of black hair and let it drift down through his fingers.

Now she could read the expression on his face.

More hunger.

He mightn’t like her anymore. But after this, she couldn’t doubt that he wanted her.

She gave a visible shiver and placed a hand over her churning stomach.

After a charged silence, he stepped away, allowing her space to rise on shaky legs. There was a tall screen set up near the fire. She’d never imagined feeling shy with the man who had shown her that her body was made for pleasure and love. But right now, nothing short of a pistol to the head could make her undress in front of him.

Like the frightened mouse she so despised, Morwenna snatched up the nightdress spread over the bed and scuttled behind the screen. There she collapsed on a padded stool and stared blindly into space.

It took her a shaming amount of time to find the heart to remove slippers and stockings. She even managed to take off her drawers and petticoats.

Her skin itched with awareness, although the room outside was so quiet that she could almost believe she was alone. But she was vividly conscious that her husband could hear every rustle from behind the screen.

“Blast...” she muttered.

“What is it?” a deep voice inquired from much closer than where she’d left him.

She was blushing like fire. Absurd, when they’d been naked together so many times. “I can’t unlace my gown.”

He appeared around the side of the screen. “Let me help.”

She wanted to say no. But she’d look an utter fool going to bed in her finery. She lifted her slippery fall of hair out of the way and presented her back. “Thank you.”

He’d done this for her before, of course. In those heady, too brief days after their wedding. When she’d imagined a lifetime as Robert Nash’s wife.

But still she jumped when his fingers brushed her nape. A sizzle of heat rippled down her spine, and her stomach lurched.

He began to tug at the fastenings with a clumsiness she didn’t remember, and she realized that he was trembling again. She was so preternaturally aware of his closeness, she felt every faint hesitation in his fingers.

When it seemed to take him forever to finish, the breath snagged in her throat. She was seeing colored lights in front of her eyes before she remembered to take another breath.

Then she realized Robert was holding his breath, too.

That salty smell was rich in her nostrils, mingled with the underlying spice that was his alone. She’d never been so conscious of his height and power, even when she’d come to his bed as a virgin bride.

After about a hundred years, he reached her waist and briefly rested his hands on her hips. Despite her uncertainty, she had to resist the wanton urge to bump backward until her buttocks met his groin.

He’d taken her from behind several times. The memory was sharp in her mind. Since he’d been gone, she’d relived over and over everything they’d done together in their small house in Portsmouth.

The urgency to feel him invade her body became overwhelming. She wasn’t sure what she thought of this man who returned to her from his watery grave. But her body gave no heed to her mind’s havering. Her body only knew that after a long famine, pleasure beckoned at last.

After a mere second, he released her. She made herself straighten, preparatory to stepping away, when she felt a tug on the laces of her stays.

A soft whoosh of breath escaped her. This was like torture.

This time his touch was sure, and she soon felt her corset sag. She reached up to clutch her bodice, before it slipped down to disgrace modesty. Although modesty was surely out of place when she stood before her husband.

For another bristling second, he remained behind her. Close enough to touch her. But not touching her.

She felt like she hung suspended over a precipice.

Morwenna quivered as she imagined those large hands, more disturbing than before with their scars and calluses, flattening over her breasts and hauling her back into his body. Starting to sway, she bit her lip and shut her eyes.

She sagged like her unlaced corset when he moved back. “All set?”

The crack in his voice hinted that unlacing her had been as fraught for him as for her. But that knowledge was more threat than reassurance.

“Th-thank you,” she forced out.

She turned to look at him, but he’d left her alone behind the screen. Had he always moved so quietly? She shivered again. She had no idea what Robert was thinking, beyond the fact that despite his attempts to hide it, he hadn’t stopped wanting her.

Oh, dear. She was so keyed up, she was likely to snap into pieces before the night was over. In a rush, she flung off her clothes and had a quick wash, hating the way the touch of her hand made her imagine other, harder hands stroking her skin.

Tonight sensuality edged everything she did. The brush of the sponge across her breasts with their brazenly tight pink nipples. Worse, washing between her legs. It was as if she’d been asleep for five years and only now awoke.

Once she’d pulled her filmy nightdress over her head, she loitered far too long behind the screen. She felt...bashful. Silly as it was to admit, when she’d been married for six years. A woman of twenty-six with a child shouldn’t feel like an untried girl.

Still, she required a mammoth amount of will to step into the open.

“Oh,” she said, struck as inarticulate as Robert had been downstairs.

He was sitting up in the bed, bare-chested, with the blankets pulled to his waist. Was he naked? With another of those dizzying lurches in her stomach, she supposed he must be.

“Come to bed,” he said softly, and her blush rose again.

“I’ll just blow out the candles,” she said huskily.

But as she moved around the room, she couldn’t forget what she’d seen when she looked at his torso. The sharply delineated ribs and collarbones. The scars marring arms and chest. Especially the long, angry slash stretching from his shoulder across his chest.

She’d known he’d suffered. But clearly she hadn’t started to comprehend all he’d been through.

Once the room was dark, Morwenna paused in the shadows, shifting from foot to foot and mustering the nerve to go to the man she loved. She’d spent years yearning for this moment, convinced it would never come.

Yet now the time, astonishingly, miraculously, arrived. And she was an addled mixture of terror and longing.

Purely to delay joining Robert in that big bed, she stoked the fire to a roaring blaze. Then, sick of playing the sniveling coward, she swallowed, squared her shoulders under the silk nightdress, and stepped forward to slip beneath the covers.

She sat up against the pillows beside him, wondering again if he meant to seize her and place his claim on her. But he remained unmoving, staring out into the room, and keeping a good foot of space between them.

She waited for him to say something, explain his intentions. Her heart careered into a gallop, and her skin tightened as she prepared to accept his advances.

The mad fact was that she’d wanted this so long, yet now felt completely unready. Her throat was so constricted, she was convinced she couldn’t speak to save herself.

The silence extended and extended. Growing heavier with every second.

Still he didn’t touch her.

Eventually the strains of the day began to tell. Morwenna had steeled herself to face this engagement party for weeks, long before Garson had formally declared himself. She’d known that she’d say yes to him. It was past time for her to take up a new life, instead of merely existing like a wraith trapped in a prison of grief.

But it had been so hard to take that step toward a new future.

She’d known Robert was dead, had finally accepted it in her mind. But her stubborn, loving heart had fought against taking another husband. Even though Garson was a good man, and she was lucky to have won his love.

So tonight’s shocks had come hard upon weeks of tormented soul-searching and sleeplessness.

She’d have wagered everything she owned on not sleeping a wink. But her heavy lids drooped, and she found herself sliding down in the bed.

“Good night, Morwenna,” Robert said softly, after what felt like hours.

“Good night,” she mumbled back. And just on the verge of sleep, “I’m so happy you’re back , Robert.”

If he replied, she didn’t hear him.