She perched on the edge of the sideboard, bending over and wondering if it was possible that she might have actually done serious, irreversible damage to her innards. She took several deep breaths, and the burn started to subside, leaving behind a languid, vaguely encouraging warmth.

She righted herself.

It wasn’t so bad, after all.

She stood again, lifting the candelabrum once more and heading for the bookshelves, tilting her head to read the titles of the leather-bound books that filled them to bursting. It seemed strange that Michael might have books. She could not imagine him ever stopping long enough to read. But here they were—Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer, several German tomes on agriculture, and an entire shelf of histories of the British Kings. And Debrett’s Peerage.

She ran her fingers across the gilded lettering of the volume—the complete history of the British aristocracy—its spine worn from use. For someone who was so happily absent from society, Michael seemed to peruse the volume quite a bit.

She pulled the book from the shelf, smoothing one hand across the leather binding before opening it at random. It fell open to a page, oft-viewed.

The entry for the Marquessate of Bourne.

Penelope ran her fingers across the letters, the long line of men who held the title before Michael. Before now. And there he was. Michael Henry Stephen, 10th Marquess of Bourne, 2nd Earl Arran, born 1800. In 1816, he was created Marquess of Bourne, to him and the heirs male of his body.

He might play at not caring for his title . . . but he felt connected to it in some way, or this book would not be so well used. Pleasure ripped through her at the thought, at the idea that he might still think of his time in Surrey, of his land there, of his childhood there, of her.

Perhaps he had not forgotten her—just as she had not forgotten him.

Her index finger ran along the line of text. The heirs male of his body. She imagined a set of gangly, dark-haired boys, dimples in their cheeks and mussed clothing.

Little Michaels.

The heirs male of her body as well.

If he ever came home.

She returned the book to its home and inched closer to the bed, investigating the enormous piece of furniture more closely, taking in that dark coverlet, wondering if it was velvet—if it matched the curtains around the bed. She set her light down and reached out, wanting to touch the bed. Wanting to feel the place where he slept.

The coverlet was not velvet.

It was fur. Soft, lush fur.

Of course it was.

She ran the flat of her hand across the fabric, and imagined, for one fleeting moment, what it might be like to lie in this bed, wrapped in darkness and fur.

And in Michael.

He was a rogue and a scoundrel, and his bed was an adventure in itself.

The soft fur beckoned to her, tempting her to climb up and bask in its warmth, its decadence. As quickly as the idea occurred to her, she was moving, letting her glass fall to the floor, unheeded, as she climbed onto the bed like a child on the hunt for biscuits, scaling the larder shelves.

It was the softest, most luxurious thing she’d ever experienced.

She rolled onto her back, spreading her arms and legs wide, loving the way the feathers and fur cradled her weight, allowing her to sink into the covers in pure, utter pleasure.

No bed should be this comfortable.

But, of course, his was.

“He is depraved,” she said aloud to the room, hearing the lingering echo of the words as they faded into the darkness.

She lifted her arms, which seemed heavier than usual, and raised them straight up to the canopy above, wriggling deeper into the covers before closing her eyes, turning her cheek to one side, and rubbing against the fur.

She sighed. It seemed unfair that such a bed would go unused.

Her thoughts were slow, as though they were coming to her from underwater, and she was keenly aware of the weight of her body sinking into the mattress.

This glorious relaxation must be why people drank.

It certainly made her more open to the idea.

“It seems you have lost your way.”

She opened her eyes at the words, low and soft in the darkness, to find her husband standing beside the bed, staring down at her.

Chapter Ten

Dear M—

Having received no reply from you in English, I thought perhaps you might respond to alternate languages. Be warned, there is (likely incorrect) Latin ahead.

Écrivez, s’il vous plaît

Placet scribes

Bitte schreiben Sie

Scrivimi, per favore

Ysgrifennwch, os gwelwch yn dda

I confess, I had one of the Welsh kitchen girls help with that last one, but the sentiment remains.

Please write—P

Needham Manor, September 1816

No reply (in any language)

As part-owner in London’s most luxurious gaming hell, Bourne was no stranger to temptation. He specialized in sin. He was a personal acquaintance of vice. He knew the pull of emerald baize stretched across a billiard table, he understood the way the heart raced at the sound of hazard dice clattering in one’s hand, he knew the precipice upon which a gamer teetered when waiting for that single card that would make—or lose—a fortune.

But he had never in his life experienced temptation as acute as this—the call to sin and wickedness that rang in his head as he watched his new, virginal wife writhe upon his fur coverlet in nothing but a linen shift.

Desire shot through him, thick and intense, and he fought to keep himself from reaching down and tearing her night rail in two, baring her to his eyes and his hands and his mouth for the rest of the night.

To claim her as his.

Anger lingered, now mixed in heady combination with desire as she blinked up at him, slow and languid in the flickering candlelight. The whisper of a smile she offered him made him want to strip bare and climb onto that bed with her to rub the fur coverlet across her pristine skin and show her precisely how glorious depravity could be.

She blinked again, and he thickened, his perfectly tailored trousers suddenly too tight. “Michael,” she whispered, a hint of pleased discovery in her tone that did not help matters. “You are not supposed to be here.”

And yet he was, a fox leaping into a henhouse. “Were you expecting someone else?” The words were harsh to his ears, filled with a meaning that she would not understand. “It remains my bedchamber, does it not?”

She smiled. “You made a joke. Of course it does.”

“Then why am I not to be here?”

The question seemed to bother her. She wrinkled her nose. “You’re supposed to be with your goddess.” She closed her eyes and rocked into the fur again with a low hum of pleasure.

“My goddess?”

“Mmm. Alice told me that you do not sleep here.” She tried to sit up, the fur and the feather bed making the movement difficult, and Michael watched as the edge of her nightgown slipped, devastatingly, beautifully, down the slope of one bare breast. “You are always so silent, Michael. Do you try to intimidate me?”

He willed his voice calm. “Do I intimidate you?”

“Sometimes. But not right now.”

She crawled toward him, kneeling in front of him on the bed, one knee pulling the fabric taut, and Bourne found himself praying that her night rail would fall an inch more . . . half an inch. Just enough to bare one of her perfect pink ni**les.

He shook off the thought. He was a man of thirty, not a boy of twelve. He had seen plenty of br**sts in his day. He did not need to lust after his wife, swaying before him, testing the strength of her nightgown’s fabric and his sanity, all at once.