“Lucas?”

“Beloved?”

“Can we talk later?”

“We will talk later.”

He settled in then to love her. She already knew this about him after only a few months of marriage, knew when he was teasing and testing, knew when he was serious. He was very serious.

He was usually careful to insinuate himself into her body in easy, almost-pleasant stages, but this time, he seated himself at her opening, took her mouth in a voracious kiss, and drove home in one hot, sweet thrust that inspired her body into fisting around him in abrupt, clutching spasms of pleasure.

Eve gathered, as she lay panting beneath him, that her husband was making some sort of point. He waited a few minutes before resuming his diatribe, this time using slow, measured thrusts with a relentless quality to them that made Eve dig her nails into his backside and moan against his throat.

The third time he started up, she realized he was riding some sort of race of his own, an obstacle course of pleasure and persistence, in which she had no choice—in which she had no wish—except to submit and be amazed. When he finally allowed himself to cross his own finish line, she held him tightly, for long, long moments, until she understood what her next obstacle was going to be.

It was time to talk.

She smoothed her hand down the elegant length of Deene’s spine, down to the lovely contour of his buttocks. He sighed and lifted half an inch away.

“I have imposed on you,” he said, biting her earlobe. “You must scold me, Eve.”

“I am too well pleasured to scold anybody for anything. Shall I fetch a cloth?”

“Somebody ought to.”

He would have heaved himself away, except Eve clutched him a little tighter for a moment—for courage. Deene waited, then climbed out of the bed and crossed the room to the washbasin. Eve watched while he rinsed off by the glowing embers of the fire, then accepted the cool cloth from him and felt his gaze on her while she did likewise.

“Being married to you is very intimate, Lucas.”

He accepted the cloth from her and tossed it in the general direction of the hearth. “Are you complaining?”

A guarded note in his voice betrayed the sincerity of his question.

“I am rejoicing. Also a trifle chilled, so please get under these covers and stay awake for a bit longer.”

She caught one corner of his mouth tipping up slightly before he scooted under the covers and moved to spoon himself around her.

“Not like that.” Eve wrestled him about, so he was over her. “What are we to do about Anthony?”

“Anthony has taken ship for Boston, his consort and children with him. I expect he also has at least a small fortune in coin packed among his bags, which I will choose to regard as compensation for his years of service.”

“He stole from you, Lucas.”

“Not as much as you’d think. He skimmed liberally, but as best I can reason, he liked more the sense of being the one who held the power and the purse strings. He didn’t want me discovering his schemes, but more to the point, he didn’t want me to figure out that he was merely a well-paid cipher, not the linchpin of some convoluted, ailing financial empire.”

“A lying, well-paid cipher.”

Deene nuzzled her ear, which tickled. “We ought to be grateful all Anthony’s talk of rumors was mostly exaggeration of his own efforts to slander me, and that nobody has been paying the least mind to us or to my misspent youth.”

Misspent youth. The term reminded Eve of the topic she had yet to broach. “I have something difficult to say to you, Husband.”

“I do hope that white marriage business isn’t going to come up, Eve Denning.”

He snuggled his body in closer, as if to admit that the white marriage business had been lurking somewhere in his male brain, creating havoc these weeks past, and to further clarify that he’d have no part of it.

“God love you, Husband, a white marriage is the last thing I could contemplate with you. I would be devastated…”

He left off nuzzling her neck. “Go on.”

This wasn’t at all the tack she wanted to take. She wanted to be brisk, informative, and unsentimental. To pass along a few minor facts in the interests of easing her conscience and showing the same faith in him he’d shown in her.

A marriage needed to be based on mutual respect, after all.

“There are things I’ve needed to tell you, Lucas, but haven’t found quite the right moment. Things that want privacy.”

“I’m listening, and this is as much privacy as we’re likely to get anywhere.”

His reply was not at all helpful, but he stroked a hand over her hair then repeated the caress, and that… It reminded Eve of the way he’d patted her shoulder before the race. The way he’d stayed near her all day, the way he’d carried her over the threshold.

“My courses are late, Husband.”

This merited her a sigh and a kiss to her cheek.

Her cheek?

“Being the sort of intimate husband I am—and being married to the lusty sort of wife you are—one noticed this.”

She liked that he thought she was lusty… But he’d noticed?

What else had he noticed?

“Did you notice that I was scared to death on that horse today?”

“Of course. The more frightened you are, the calmer you get. Usually.” Another kiss to her other cheek. “Though you were not particularly calm on our wedding night.”

Oh, he would bring that up. Eve had wanted to ease into the topic, to whisk right over it, to drop hints and let him draw conclusions.

Subtlety was wanted for the disclosure she had in mind.

“I was not chaste.”

God help her, she’d spoken those words aloud. Deene’s chin brushed over her right eyebrow then her left; his arms cradled her a little more closely. “You were chaste.”

“No, I was not. I had given my virtue… Lucas, are you listening to me?”

“I always listen to you. You did not give your virtue to anyone. It was taken from you by a cad and a bounder who’d no more right to it than he did to wear the crown jewels.”

Eve’s husband spoke in low, fierce tones, even as the hand he smoothed over her hair was gentle.

“How did you know?” He’d known? All this time he’d known and said nothing?

“I thought at first you were simply nervous as any bride would be nervous of her first encounter with her husband, but then I realized you were not nervous, you were frightened. Of me, of what I would think of you. As if…”

He rolled with her so she was sprawled on his chest and his arms were wrapped around her. By the limited light in the room, Eve met his gaze.

“Your brother Bartholomew caught up with the fool man first, and the idiot was so stupid as to brag of the gift you’d bestowed on him. He was further lunatic enough to brag about the remittance his silence would cost your family. He bragged on his cleverness, duplicity, bad faith, and utter lack of honor to your own brother.”

“Bart never said… Devlin never breathed a word.”

“I don’t think Devlin knew. By the time Devlin arrived on the scene, Bart had beaten the man near to death and summoned a press gang. I know of this only because I happened to share a bottle—a few bottles—with Lord Bart the night before we broke the siege at Ciudad Rodrigo. He regretted the harm to you. He regretted not avenging your honor unto the death. He regretted a great deal, but not that you’d survived your ordeal and had some chance to eventually be happy.”

“You have always known, and you have never breathed a word.”

“I have always known, and I have done no differently than any other gentleman would do when a lady has been wronged. You are the one who has kept your silence, Evie, even from your own husband.”

He was not accusing her of any sin; he was expressing his sorrow for her. Eve tucked herself tightly against him, mashed her nose against his throat, and felt relief, grief, and an odd sort of joy course through her.

“All these years I thought I was alone with what had befallen me, but I had a friend in you, didn’t I?”

“I haven’t always been a friend to you, Evie. When a man finds himself damnably attracted to a woman who has suffered enough at the hands of…”

She shut him up with a kiss, a soft, helpful kiss such as a wife bestows on a husband inclined to temporize when he ought to be listening.

“I love you, Lucas. I love you for the faith you have in me, for your patience, for your honor, for so many reasons. I love you and I trust you and I love you.”

He heaved the biggest sigh ever. “And you won’t feel compelled to ride in any more races to demonstrate these lovely sentiments you hold toward me?”

“Not on horseback.”

Though she did spend much of the remaining night—as well as most of the ensuing decades—demonstrating those same sentiments in myriad other ways.