It would not be so bad an existence. His servants could cut a hole in the door to pass them food and drink, and maybe Hart would remember to eat it.

“Never stop,” Hart heard himself say. “Never. Please. Oh, dear God.”

He rose on his elbows, unable to stay flat against the pillow. He watched the hand that pleasured him, with small, feminine fingers that were proving to be very, very clever.

“Take me all the way, El. Please, or you’ll kill me.”

Eleanor knew what he meant. She did have knowledge, because Hart had taught it to her a long time ago.

Eleanor lay down at his side as she kept up the beautiful friction, and Hart wrapped his arm around her. Her head rested on his chest, and strands of red gold hair snaked across his black coat. Hart stroked her, keeping his touch gentle.

Darkness rose, but Hart fought it down. He wanted this to be simple, light, a woman pleasuring him because she wanted to pleasure him.

Basic physical need took over. His mind blanked to all but the scent of Eleanor’s hair, the glorious feeling of her fingers, her warmth at his side. Nothing but her and him, sensation, wanting.

His hips moved. “Eleanor.”

He scooped her up to him and thrust his mouth over hers just as it ended. Heat scalded his thighs, but the sensation went on and on. Hart kissed Eleanor’s mouth, and she moved her lips in greedy response.

“Lass, what you do to me.”

Eleanor’s eyes were half closed, lovely blue between black lashes. Hart’s words ran out, and he simply kissed her.

It was peaceful here. The house was quiet, he and she close, Hart kissing Eleanor on her bed on a rainy London morning.

She touched his face as they kissed, saying nothing. Sweet kisses. No hurry.

“You soothe me,” he whispered.

Her eyes softened. “I’m glad.”

Time flowed by. Hart and Eleanor were nose-to-nose, kissing, touching, enjoying the silence.

They lay together in quiet enjoyment, until Wilfred’s dry cough in the hall invaded the peace, reminding Hart of the real world waiting for him. He wanted to tell the real world to go hang.

Eleanor, sensibly, fetched a towel from her washstand and brought it back to the bed. Hart wiped her hands and himself with the linen, then kissed her as he slid from the bed, the heavy folds of his kilt once more falling to cover him.

When he married her, they would have many more days like this. No matter how busy their lives became, no matter how many people vied for their attention, Hart would make certain that the duke and duchess often retired from the public eye to lie together in joyful silence.

It was all he could do to make himself leave the room, and her, his heart full.

Eleanor blew out her breath as Hart closed the door. She went to her washbasin and bathed her hands and face in cool water, fetching yet another towel from her cupboard.

She was still shaking. What had possessed her? But it had been beautiful.

She went to the writing table, where Hart had left the book, and began gathering up the letters to return to their hiding place. Not many seconds later, she found herself sitting down to flip through the pages of the memory book, back to the photographs.

She smiled. Hart might insist he was past his first youth now, but he’d looked quite fine on her bed with his kilt bunched around his hips. Better even, than he had years ago. He’d filled out, his body reaching the potential his younger features had promised.

She sighed and began gathering the letters again. She unfolded the letter she’d found Hart reading and skimmed through it, her heart aching for him all over again.

Hart was right; she ought to have burned it. But Eleanor had reasoned the likelihood small that anyone would find the hidden letter in her out-of-the-way abode on the Scottish coast. The servants never touched her belongings, and her father went rarely to her bedchamber. She’d not thought about the letters tucked into the book as she’d packed for London; she’d simply not wanted to leave the book behind.

But Eleanor understood the danger of keeping the letter. Hart shooting his father had been an accident, she was certain—they had wrestled for the shotgun, and it had gone off. What had been in Hart’s mind the split second between the gun landing in his hands and the shot flying out of it was between Hart and God.

Whatever had happened, the duke’s death had brought Ian home to safety. But if Hart’s enemies ever got hold of the letter, it could spell disaster for Hart.

Eleanor marched to the stove and opened its door. “Let that be an end to it,” she said, using the words Hart predicted she would, and consigned the letter to the flames.

The shooting attempt made Hart rethink the travel arrangements to Berkshire. Hart would not be staying at Cameron’s the entire month anyway, as he usually did, but traveling back and forth to London as he could.

Train stations were extremely public places, full of opportunities for crazed assassins to fire at people. Hart agonized over the decision but concluded that Eleanor and her father well might be safer in public, with Mac to guard them, than they would alone in a coach on some empty stretch of country road. Hart would keep them safe by not traveling with them at all.

He climbed to the top of the house the day before they were to depart, having been told that the entire family and Eleanor were taking nursery tea in the room that had been set aside for the children.

When he entered, Eleanor looked up from sinking her teeth into a cream-slathered scone. Hart stopped. The sudden vision of him licking the cream from her lips made him dizzy for a moment.