Darius Lindsey, by comparison, was ruthless, cunning, and relentless. He’d put her through one tribulation after another.

At the modiste’s, he’d dressed her from the inside out, choosing nightgowns, chemises, stockings, everything, from laces and trims to dress fabrics and patterns. He suggested alterations, sketching creations Vivian never would have dreamed of.

“You need to accentuate your height,” he insisted on their way back to the manor, “not try to hide it. William is tall. You’re not going to embarrass him if you dress well at his side. Stop fidgeting.”

“Stop touching me. You handled me in that shop like I was some… prize hound, my conformation and coloring shown off for company.” And thank God the modiste had been French and not the least dismayed by his behavior.

“You’re not a hound, though you’re definitely a prize. A treasure, a gem of surpassing beauty. And I’ve about had it with your bun.”

“My bun? You’ve had it with my bun?” She drew herself up on the seat of the phaeton, prepared to reel with righteous exasperation, when a rut in the road pitched her against him. “Bother.”

Darius smiled over at her. “Did you even think of lingering there, leaning against my side before you pokered right up again?”

“Why would I lean against you when I can sit perfectly well unassisted?”

“Lean against me, Vivvie, just a little.”

She gave him a look intended to put him in his place—several counties distant.

“Come here, Viv-vie,” he singsonged. “Just a little lean on a deserted lane, as if you’re a touch cold or tired or in want of a cuddle.”

“You are ridiculous,” she spat, except she was cold and tired and maybe that other thing he’d said.

He slipped the reins into one hand and tucked an arm around her waist, drawing her closer to his side.

“Were you truly ambitious,” he murmured, “you’d allow me a hint of the side of your breast against my arm, just in passing.”

“Whyever would I do that?” But she stayed leaning against him, strictly because he was warm and solid.

He smiled at her, a charming, naughty smile. “To scramble my wits, sweetheart. Then you could slip in a little observation about how the green velvet walking dress might look just as fetching in a dark brown with green trim, and next thing you know, I’d be offering to order it for you in both green and brown. Given what William is paying me, I can afford to indulge you in one more frock.”

“You want me to… wheedle?”

“I want you to have what you want, however you have to exert yourself to get it,” he said, turning them up the lane to the manor. “You’re willing to disport with me to get a baby, Vivian. Why not a little wheedling to get something simpler?”

His version of reasoning would scramble her wits in short order. “I know nothing of this wheedling. It sounds tedious and demeaning.”

“What’s demeaning is having to depend on others to meet your every need, because you can’t use the strengths you have to do it yourself.”

Vivian kept her voice low by sheer self-discipline. “What strengths? I’m a married female. I have no rights, no property, no wealth. I can’t hire or fire my own staff, I can’t enter into business ventures unless I inherit them from family once I’m widowed. I can’t even name my own child, does my husband forbid it. What damned strengths?”

“That’s a start,” he said slowly, smiling over at her.

“You have me using foul language. Cursing is not an indication of strength, but just the opposite. And that reminds me, Mr. Lindsey, when am I to conceive this baby you’re always going on about? I’ve been here four days, and you’ve run me ragged to milliners and cobblers and modistes and had me reading all manner of scandalous tripe and riding the countryside in this weather, and none of that is in aid of conceiving a child.”

Let him argue that.

“Are you inviting me to your room tonight, Vivvie?”

He drew the vehicle to a halt in silence, jumped down, then came around to lift her off the seat. As the groom led the horse away, they stood in the stable yard, Darius’s hands on her waist.

His expression was no longer teasing, nor was it even flirtatious. He stood there, regarding her almost solemnly.

She bit her lip. “Maybe not tonight.”

He studied her expression for a moment then turned her under his arm and led her toward the house. “Still untidy?”

“Some.” She was blushing, drat it all to perdition. Drat him. “Not much longer.”

“I’ll come to you,” he said, holding the back door for her.

“But I thought…”

“Trust me.” He dipped his head to kiss her cheek as he untied the frogs of her cloak. “I won’t do anything you don’t agree to, and as much trouble as I’ve had convincing you to try a few fripperies on, we won’t get very far in a single night.”

“I don’t want…” She glanced around the deserted kitchen.

“What don’t you want?” He hung her cloak and his coat on pegs, then swung the kettle over the fire and began assembling a tea tray. “Tea?”

She moved to stand beside him. “I dread this.”

“You’ve yet to tell me how we’re to go about it,” he reminded her. “My brother favors Darjeeling, so I keep some around, but I’m more partial to a mild oolong. What about you?”

“What about me?” Tea and copulation in two consecutive sentences. She was going to end up in Bedlam. “I like mine with cream and sugar.”

“Vivvie.” He tucked an arm around her waist. “You are a disgrace.” He made it sound like an endearment though, and Vivian dropped her head to his shoulder.

“How we’re to go about what?” she asked, though she knew exactly what.

“Do I merely service you,” he asked, moving away to get down mugs, not teacups, “or will you let me pleasure you?” He retrieved the cream from the cold box at the window, apparently able to discuss one appetite while preparing to fulfill another.

“Is this how these things are decided?” She watched him moving around the kitchen. “Between trips to the pantry?”

“Come here.” He backed toward the dark confines of the pantry, tugging her with him. “I’ve been wanting to do this for days.”

“Do…?”

When she was sharing the small, orderly confines of the pantry with him, he settled his lips over hers and wrapped her close against the warmth of his larger body. The heat of him felt heavenly, and Vivian knew with a sudden certainty the weight of him would feel just as good.

She’d learned a little in their two previous kisses, and tasted his lips with her tongue before he got around to offering her the same gesture. She felt the pleasure and surprise go through him, felt it in the way he gathered her closer, and in the way his body seamed itself to hers.

“More.” He whispered it against her neck, and the sensation of his breath on her skin sent tendrils of pleasure curling through her vitals. His hand slid down her back and cupped her derriere, urging her more closely against him. “More, Vivvie, please…”

Vivvie… when had he started calling her that?

When had she decided she liked it?

She opened her mouth beneath his and invited him in for a taste, squirming against his chest when his tongue came calling. When she moved, her breasts pressed more snugly against him. This relieved some vague discomfort welling up from her middle, so she did it again, more slowly.

“That’s my girl…” His hand traveled around from her hip, up to her waist, then her side, and then, glancingly, along the side of her breast.

“You…” She broke the kiss to look up at him. “You’re wheedling.”

“Not yet.” He nuzzled her neck, and Vivian was abruptly aware of a different pressure, nuzzling against her abdomen. He rocked against her, ensuring she’d know what that rigid length was, setting up a slow, naughty rhythm that made her insides hum.

“Now.” He closed his eyes and kissed the side of her neck. “Now, I’m wheedling.” He kept up that slow rocking, until the teakettle whistled and Vivian stepped back, bumping into the shelves behind her.

“The tea…” She glanced out into the kitchen.

“Answer me first, Vivvie love.” He let his hand slide down her arm then trail away. “Pleasure or duty? You decide.”

She gave him a look, feeling undecided, torn, aroused, and miserable.

“Both.”

She bolted into the kitchen, having used up her entire store of courage in a single syllable, and didn’t see him grinning like an idiot while he adjusted a raging erection behind his falls.

Bless her, she’d lit on the one and only correct answer.

Five

Several hours later, Vivian was debating her fate from the soapy, fragrant confines of a steaming-hot bath.

The bath Darius Lindsey had ordered for her.

The knowledge he had of women was… disquieting. Vivian considered his insistence that she join him here in Kent as her menses began, and realized from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, he’d known something more personal about her than her sister generally knew. More personal than William ever knew, except this once.

From the moment Darius had laid eyes on her, the exact cycle of her body had been shared between them. Such knowledge was appallingly intimate, the sort of thing Vivian suspected Jared and Angela might both know but never discuss.

With Darius Lindsey, whom Vivian had known less than a week, the topic had been discussed. Everlasting God.

She rinsed her hair a final time and stood, letting the water sluice off her body as she reached for a thick, warm bath sheet.