Late Christmas morning—very late, Felicity blushed to admit—she returned to Edmund’s bedroom to unpack the valise he’d brought home yesterday. Her husband was downstairs in his library. Because it was Christmas Day, he had no plans to work, but she knew he wanted to start settling back into civilian life after all his years in the army.

She was ridiculously dreamy, and her body felt like it had been through a war of its own. She wouldn’t have it any other way. Because beneath the weariness and muscles complaining of strenuous use, she glowed with female satisfaction. Twice more in this bed, Edmund had turned to her. Once, after draping her naked body in a maharajah’s ransom in rubies, to launch a leisurely seduction that had stretched into fiery hours of pleasure. Then, when the day was well started, they’d come together with a joy that made her feel like she basked in sunlight, despite the snow falling outside. Never again would she question whether her husband wanted her, or that she was incapable of matching him in sensual pleasure.

She hummed “The Sussex Carol” as she placed the bag on the bed and set to sorting out his clothing, putting aside what needed laundering. There was something wonderfully intimate about performing this housewifely task for the man she loved.

The man she hoped might come to love her.

At times last night, she’d wondered if she’d already won that battle. He’d kissed her with such overmastering need and touched her with such poignant tenderness, surely he must already care.

And he’d remained faithful when his need for some human warmth must have been agonizing. Knowing that he’d stayed true made her heart swell with love. This morning, although no vows had been spoken, she felt cherished. For their first full day together in so many years, that was enough.

While she thought about her handsome husband and the marvelous things he made her feel, her busy hands kept sorting and folding. Until under the clothing, she discovered bundles of papers packed at the base of the bag.

Frowning, she drew out a ragged packet, tied with tatty string. She didn’t recognize the letters straightaway as hers, because they were torn and charred and black with soot. It looked like someone had deliberately set out to destroy them.

With shaking hands, she pulled out the rest and scattered them over the bed. Most were burned. A quick check proved that some of the letters came from years ago, perhaps from their first months apart.

What on earth could this mean? Had her husband kept the letters because he treasured them? Had they been damaged in some act of war? Surely Edmund had never been angry enough with her to burn her letters. That wasn’t the man she knew.

Once, she might have hidden her rising confusion. But she’d trusted her husband with so much since he’d arrived home. She’d learned things about their life that she’d never known before. Whatever the result, good or bad, she had to find out the truth behind this mystery.

She grabbed a bundle in shaking hands, leaving the rest behind, and ran out of the room and downstairs. When she reached the landing above the great hall, Edmund was crossing the floor below, Digby at his heels. Today her husband’s limp was almost unnoticeable.

“Edmund,” she called, her voice uncharacteristically high.

“Yes?” He stopped under the extravagant kissing bough and glanced up. His swift smile faltered, and his eyes narrowed on her face. “What is it?”

“I found these.” On shaking legs, she descended the last flight of stairs and held out the tattered packet with an unsteady hand. “I was unpacking your bag.”

“Bugger it. I meant to put them away.” To her shock, he turned as red as a sunset when he took the letters. Embarrassment? Or guilt? “My fault, really. A soldier knows to have everything stowed when he makes camp.”

She curled her hand around the carved griffin on the newel post. “You’re not a soldier anymore.”

“Yes, I am. I’ll always be a soldier.” He subjected her to a searching regard. “Now I suppose you’ve guessed my deep, dark secret.”

Yesterday, she’d have let that enigmatic remark go unchallenged. Not now. She’d been reticent once, and paid for it with endless longing. However unpalatable the truth she uncovered, she’d never let reticence poison her life again.

The turmoil inside her roughened her voice as she stepped toward him. “Who burned my letters?”

“Good God, Flick.” Looking aghast, he reached for her arm, but she wrenched out of the way. “What in Hades are you thinking? Whatever it is, it’s utterly muddle-headed.”

“I can’t believe it was you.”

“Of course I didn’t bloody burn them.” He slid the packet of letters inside his coat, as if shielding them from her. “If I did, why the hell would I carry them around as my most precious possession? Stop this.”

His most precious possession? If that was true, how did her letters end up in such a sorry state? She sucked in a shaky breath. “Please…just tell me what happened. I won’t be angry.”

He lunged forward and grabbed her hard by the shoulders. Obstinacy hardened his jaw in a way that alarmed her. “God, give me strength.”

A reckless glitter lighting his eyes, he tugged her forward and kissed her hard and thoroughly under the mistletoe bough. He wasn’t hurting her, but his lips were fierce, and his touch was adamant.

Confused, unsure, she struggled to pull away. “Let me go,” she muttered under his lips.

“Never,” he said, lashing his arms around her in a bear hug.

Gradually his touch eased, until he cradled her in his arms, and he no longer demanded she kissed him back, come hell or high water. Instead his lips wooed, beseeched, coaxed. His warmth enveloped her and his evocative scent filled her senses. He kissed her as if he’d rather die than stop.

Curse him. Mere hours from his bed, she was ripe for more seduction.

With a helpless moan of acquiescence, she curved into him and kissed him with all the unspoken, irresistible love in her heart. When after a long time, he raised his head to stare down at her with dazed gray eyes, she came close to forgetting what brought her here.

“Damn it, Flick, are you ready to listen to me now?” He was panting, and he couched the question in a low growl.

The letters… Of course, the letters. She struggled to sound implacable, but her voice emerged as a husky murmur. “It had better be a good story.”

He kept hold of her shoulders, but his touch was tender. She could escape if she wanted to. She found she didn’t want to.

He sucked in an unsteady breath. “It’s a love story.”

Love? She frowned, still lost in a mist of sensuality. “I don’t understand.”

Edmund sighed and released her, to her regret. “I know you don’t. And it’s mostly my fault. But I’ve always been so terrified of my powerful feelings frightening you away, that I’ve been infernally dishonest with you, my darling.”

She liked being his darling. Almost as much as she liked his kisses. However, this didn’t sound good. She frowned. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

His laugh was hollow. “Of course I am. I’m afraid that you’ll never love me.”

Silence crashed down. Felicity stared into his face, trying to make sense of what was happening. “Edmund—”

He spoke over her. “I told you there was a story. Well, here it is. It starts with a bumptious brute of an army captain, who thinks he has the world at his feet. Then he meets a beautiful, innocent girl at a ball in London, and he realizes she’s the only world he needs. Against all odds, he wins her for his wife, but she’s so fragile and fine, he fears that he’ll hurt her. He wants her too much, needs her too much…loves her too much.”

“My dear…” she started, wondering if she was dreaming. After nearly eight years without him, and then last night’s extraordinary pleasure, this gift he offered her seemed too generous, too rich.

He raised his scarred hand. “Let me finish while I still have the nerve to speak. Anyway, back to our two lovers. Before our army captain can work out the best way to proceed, his country sends him hundreds of miles away from his bride. His only contact with her is a string of amusing letters that say nothing about love or longing or loneliness…”

“I didn’t know you loved me.” Under his intense stare, she trailed off, letting him go on.

“Luckily our hero survives the war to return to his wife, many hard years later. And he finds time has made no difference to his feelings. He loves her just as much and wants her even more. And this time, he can see that she’s ready to meet him as an equal.”

She blushed as she recalled the morning’s activities. “She certainly did that.”

“But that makes him even more terrified, because he’s as much under her spell as he ever was. And now he’s back to his real life, and they have to work out a way to go on together. He’s burning up with love for her—how can he bear it if she feels nothing for him, except duty and lukewarm liking?”

Despite the turbulent emotion vibrating in the air between them, she gave a choked laugh, weighted with unshed tears. “After last night, you can never accuse me of being lukewarm.” She drew herself up to her full height, as the last of her shyness fell away forever.

Of course she’d tell him she loved him. Very soon. But first she had a puzzle to solve. “So tell me about the letters.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s no great mystery. Above Vittoria, we got hit by a French cannonade, and everything in the camp caught fire in a flash. I ran back through the flames to save your letters. I couldn’t let them burn. They were all I had of the woman I love.”

Felicity caught his hands as her heart dipped with an overpowering mixture of distress and astounded joy. She wanted to berate him for risking his life over something as trivial as a letter. Yet how could she chastise him, when he loved her enough to face that danger? “That’s why your hands are scarred.”

“Yes.” His fingers curled hard around hers.

“I should have guessed it was something like that.” Her voice shook, as she remembered her shock when she found the charred letters. The tears she’d struggled to hold back trickled down her cheeks.

Blazing gray eyes focused on her face. “Flick, could you love me?”

“Could I? I already do. So much.” Her tears threatened to turn into a flood. With a tenderness she no longer needed to rein in, she touched his scarred cheek. “I loved you the moment I saw you.”

Elation dawned over his features, making him strikingly handsome. “You love me?”

“I always have.” This time, the admission came more easily.

“And I love you.”

Her laugh contained a crack. “Which makes me very happy.”

His laugh was just as shaky. “Oh, my love, what a Christmas.”

“Yes, what a Christmas,” she whispered, and stepped into his arms under the kissing bough.

Through the thunderous rejoicing in her heart, Felicity felt Digby pressing into her hip. As the kiss heated up, she became vaguely aware that Biddy had come in, probably to announce Christmas dinner.

“Well, Lord above, all my wishes have come true.” Biddy’s jubilant voice rang out from the other side of the room. “This is the best Christmas present an old woman could ask for. Welcome home, Master Edmund. Welcome home. You’re safe and loved, and you never need to stray from home again.”

Edmund drew away from Felicity and smiled down into her eyes with such adoration, she felt the winter day turn to midsummer. She wondered how she could ever have doubted that he loved her, even as she marveled that such a wealth of love could exist in the world and belong to her.

“Amen to that, Biddy,” Edmund said, without looking away from his wife.

“Amen indeed,” Felicity murmured, stretching up to steal another kiss under the mistletoe.