She sighed and relaxed.

In the hazy recesses of his mind, he contemplated sweeping her into his arms and carrying her upstairs. No, too fast. Soon, though. Soon. He skimmed palms upward over her torso, savoring the slide of the fabric beneath his palms. He slanted his face to kiss her—

“Ha!” she exclaimed, leaping away the moment he released her.

“Ha” was right. He stood, arms empty, feeling as if he’d taken a bucket of cold water to his face.

She put a few more paces between them before pivoting around and pointing at him. “Knave!”

Her lips emitted a sound, something between a shriek and a bellow. She crushed the paper in her hand and hurled it toward him. The missile bounced off his forehead. Turning on her heel, she quit the room.

Only to return. She leveled him with a merciless glare, and while he stood like a senseless dullard, she snatched up the list and left again.

Moments later, her door slammed.

Vane dropped into the chair. He squeezed his thumb and forefinger on the ridge of his nose and let out a low, wry chuckle at the absurd turn of the past half hour. He had been trying only to satisfy Sophia’s wishes. He’d glimpsed the path to victory, but had somehow fallen short. For all his experience with women, it seemed he’d never really had a clue how to handle a wife.

With the memory of her lush body still imprinted in his mind, he tore his cravat free from his throat. Crushing the cloth in his hand, he almost threw it into the fire, but he stopped himself, throwing the linen to the settee instead, where he would spend another lonely night. Not coaxing more kisses from his wife. Not stripping each layer of clothing from her body until she stood naked and bared to his hungry gaze. Not making love to her.

How bewildering to discover that shouting and arguing with Sophia only made him want her more. Once while hunting in Austria, he’d come across a male wolf separated by a high stone wall from its mate. Drawn by the sounds of her voice, the animal had paced and snarled and panted, desperate to rejoin her, until Claxton took pity on the poor animal’s desperate condition and opened a gate. He felt much akin to that animal now, only he was separated from Sophia by a wall of his own making.

At least, as consolation, a goodly portion of Mrs. Kettle’s plum cake remained. He unbuttoned his shirt at the throat and tugged its hem free from his breeches. Taking up his fork, he sectioned off a substantial bite.

That’s when Sophia screamed.

Not a furious sort of scream, a terrified scream. He dropped the fork and sprang to his feet, nearly upending the table in the process.

When he reached her room, Sophia, garbed in only her short corset and chemise, crouched just inside the door, both hands over her mouth. Her attention appeared fixed on the bed, where her nightdress lay.

“What is it? Are you hurt?” He stepped inside.

Seeing him, she sprang into his arms. For a moment he was too dazzled by the contact of her body, the soft crush of her breasts against his chest, the intimate flex of her thighs at his waist, to process her words. Oh, God, the memories. The sudden rush of lust. They scrambled all rational thought from his brain.

Sophia shouted something about the bed. Yes. God, yes. He wanted to take her to bed.

She jumped off him and punched his arm.

“Claxton,” she exclaimed. “There is an animal in my room.”

“An animal?” he asked dazedly. Did she mean him? “Where?”

She ducked behind him and pointed to the far corner. “I told you. Under the bed, I think. It moved so fast, jumping off the walls.”

“What did it look like?” Claxton advanced in the direction she indicated, crouched low, prepared, if necessary, to kill with his hands. She followed, a few steps behind, clutching his shirttail.

“Like a large rat. White with dark spots. And teeth.” She pointed at her mouth. “Sharp teeth.”

He lifted the coverlet and peered under the wood frame into the shadows. Two mirror-bright eyes peered back at him.

“I believe it is only a stoat.”

“Bloodthirsty creatures!” she wailed.

“Indeed, if you are a rabbit or a chipmunk.”

Claxton snatched up a blanket from the end of the bed, but determining the swath of wool too cumbersome for his purposes, he shrugged off his coat. Holding the garment before him, he rounded the corner.

Sophia retreated to the door to watch in safety. Vicious snarls arose from the creature in the corner—and Claxton. He shoved a wooden chest across the floorboards. He stomped. Muttered an oath. Scrambled and crawled.

But at last, he arose with his bundled coat clasped in his hands, churning with contained movement.

“Give me that candlestick if you will,” he ordered with a jerk of his head. “The large one.”

“The candlestick? Why? Oh no.” She scowled. “I will not. Don’t hurt the creature.” She rushed forward.

“Don’t hurt the creature?” His eyes widened.

“He did not intend to do wrong.” She clasped her hands together as if in prayer, just in front of her nose and mouth. “You must spare him. Please?”

“A moment ago you were terrified.” And jumping all over him. He considered “accidentally” releasing the animal again.

She rolled her eyes. “A moment ago he was snarling and baring his teeth.”

He lifted his unruly burden, one that emitted snaps and growls, careful to hold the creature far from his body. “He is not now?”

“Just put him out the window.” Sophia waved her hand toward the draperies, trying not to think of how thankful she was Claxton had been here to help her.

He let out a sound of impatience, but conceded to her request, elbowing back the weighty crimson brocade. There, he paused.

“The window is already open. Did you unfasten it earlier?”

“Why would I do that? It’s freezing outside.” Sophia followed him, near enough to feel a gust of frigidity, one that sent the hair on her arms straight. Open by nearly three inches and rimmed by a white border of thick frost, the window provided a glimpse straight into the black pitch of night.

“Are you certain the window wasn’t open last night?”

“Not that I’m aware, but I didn’t look.” It had been terribly cold in the room, but to a normal degree for a country house in winter. Certainly she would have perceived the movement of the curtain or the sound of wind unhindered by stone or glass. “I would have noticed.”

Claxton bent through the opening and hurled his coat into the darkness, yanking back the unoccupied garment by its sleeve. With the heel of his hand, he pounded the frost free from the window and pulled the narrow frame closed. In the process, his linen shirt tightened, revealing the wide breadth of his shoulders and a powerful flex of muscle. Sophia swallowed hard, wishing she hadn’t noticed, wishing the sight hadn’t awakened something hungry and needful that had laid subdued, deep inside her, for so very long. She’d touched every part of that body. Memorized every indentation and plane.

“Perhaps it was closed but not fastened,” he mused, oblivious to the lustful turn of her thoughts.

He turned toward her, cheeks ruddy, his blue eyes as cool and arresting as frost. Absent his cravat, the neck opening of his shirt revealed the firm golden skin at his throat and, tantalizingly, a glimpse of his upper chest striated with muscle.

Sophia’s mouth went dry. Claxton really was the handsomest man. She could think of no one who compared.

She stood there transfixed as he blathered on.

“A change in the direction of the wind or pressure from the frost may have pried it open, allowing the creature to—”

He met her eyes and froze. Like weighted stones, his gaze dropped.

“Good God, Sophia,” he said softly. “You always did have the loveliest breasts.”

A glance downward revealed that in the activity of the previous moments, her breasts had spilled from her corset and now crowded the upper portion of her chemise. Her nipples, aroused by the chill in the room, jutted hard and plainly visible against the thin batiste.

She gasped and covered them with her hands.

Claxton’s gaze intensified. “I can do that for you if you like.”

She should have shouted no. She should have ordered him out and blistered him with a scathing set down.

Yet a paralyzing sort of bewilderment kept her silent.

He closed his eyes, his expression tortured, and exhaled through clenched teeth. When they opened again, they were lit by a predatory gleam she recognized from the first months of the marriage as a certain prelude to lovemaking. Every inch of her skin came alive, and the room around them dissolved to nothing, leaving only a woman and a man.

Despite every rational thought insisting no, her body begged yes. She wanted him to kiss her. Heavens, she wanted him to do much more than that. If the thick ridge at the front of his breeches was any indication, he wanted more than kissing too.

Quite suddenly he advanced, every bit of the warrior, a towering fantasy of long, muscled limbs and bristling intensity. A dark fall of hair tumbled across his forehead. Blue eyes, edged by dark lashes, thrilled her with their appreciative glow.

“Don’t tell me to go.” He reached to touch her bare arm, drawing his fingertips over her skin. That faint tracery of warmth in the chill of the room sent a shiver reverberating through her body.

Her feet remained rooted to the spot. Her tongue darted out to dampen her bottom lip.

“You don’t know how badly I need to touch you.” His voice mesmerized her, spoke promises she wanted to believe. He cupped her cheek.