He certainly wanted to go on. Behind her he was now rock hard. She heard herself pant in a mixture of astonishment and desire. She wanted him. When she heard about his satisfied lovers, she’d always wanted to be one of them. To enjoy him for blind pleasures, without entertaining any other thoughts.

But she couldn’t. She could never be content just to sleep with him.

A sound of lust came from the back of his throat. His hand came up to her chest. Before she knew what was going on, he’d cupped her breast.

Her mute shock translated into a frantic thumping of the heart.

He nuzzled her neck. His fingers found her nipple. His thumb rubbed it through the linen of her nightgown.

She leaped out of the bed, knocking over the glass of water on the nightstand in her hurry. The glass fell on the rug. It didn’t break, but it did roll off the rug and make a clear clink upon coming into contact with the leg of the armoire.

“What the—” he said sleepily.

She made not a sound.

After a while, she thought he’d gone back to sleep. But he asked, “Why are you out of bed?”

“I…I can’t sleep when there’s someone right next to me.”

“Come back. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“The floor is wet now.”

He sighed. “I’ll sleep in the chair, then.”

His footsteps. She shrank back. He brushed past her and felt for the chair. “Go.”

“I think I should—”

She yelped—he’d picked her up. He crossed the few feet to the bed and deposited her squarely in it. “Sleep.”


A thin light crept past the curtains. She lay on her side, facing away from the chair where he sat—facing so much away that her face was almost nose first in the pillow.

It was cool in the mountains, but she’d kicked off the bedcover from her legs. And he had a good, if poorly lit, view of her ankles. In fact, he could see halfway up one delectable calf.

Delectable. An odd word to use on one’s wife. But everything in view was fresh and pretty. And everything not on display…

He turned his mind away from that unprofitable direction: Everything not on display would remain out of sight for years to come. Six years she’d proposed, but he had to extend it to eight. How stupid he’d been, to believe that he’d always feel the exact same way about her, about everything.

She stirred faintly, his woman of mystery.

He kept no particular secrets from her. But she, she was like a castle from another era, full of hidden passages and concealed alcoves, the full knowledge of which she revealed to no one and at which he could only guess.

Until her detailed recital the other night, he’d never given much thought to his modus operandi with regard to getting women in bed. It was true he preferred to achieve his objective discreetly, with the least amount of energy expended, but she was mistaken in comparing him to a spider.

Appearances to the contrary, he’d always been shy where women were concerned. Even with Isabelle, she’d been the one to take the initiative and tell him that he vast preferred her to every other girl on the planet—he’d only needed to agree.

Looking for a woman to gratify his lust was hardly the same thing as baring the contents of his heart. But the same reticence prevailed. He’d rather they came to him, and let “young, gleaming, and assured” be the only advertisement of his intentions.

She stirred again and turned onto her back. Her toes wiggled slightly. One foot slid up along her other leg. He watched with avid interest. He would not mind at all for her sleepy, unmindful motions to hike the hems of her nightgown farther north—a great deal farther north.

She stilled. Then, slowly, deliberately, she drew her legs up and pulled the blanket over them.

“Good morning,” he said.

She sat up, obviously about to pretend that he hadn’t seen her unclothed almost up to her knees. “Good morning.”

She glanced about the room. Even though he’d put on his trousers and his shirt and was presentable enough to his own wife, she seemed intent on not looking at him. He was not, as a rule, terribly excited by primness in a woman. But somehow, her primness seemed not so much stuffiness as avoidance. As if she herself did not want to know how she’d conduct herself in a more charged situation. And that made him curious: How would she conduct herself?

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Passably. Did you?”

“Let’s see. In the middle of the night, I had to get up and go sit in a chair because my wife doesn’t like to sleep with me. How do you think I slept?”

She stared at her knees, now tented up beneath the bedcover. “I would have taken the chair.”

He scoffed. “As if I’d let you sleep in a chair while I took the bed.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Did I do something?”

Her hand had been tracing random patterns on the sheets. She stopped. “Why would you think you did something?”

“I don’t have any precise recollections. But the bed is small and a man’s impulses strong. Besides, you knocked over a glass of water while fleeing the bed. That would be a pretty good indication.”

“It was nothing particularly egregious. Probably wouldn’t have alarmed anyone but an old maid like me.”

“You were alarmed?”

“I fled, didn’t I?”

Why didn’t you give in?

And with that thought came a sudden memory, of arousal, her body pressed against his, her breast in his hand, warm and pliant, her nipple hard with excitement.

He sucked in a long breath. “You know you have nothing to fear from me.”

“Of course not,” she concurred all too readily.

He left the room for her to dress. Then he returned and banished her. “I need to sleep another hour or so.”

He locked the door and laid down on the bed. He would doze some, but not yet, not until he’d exorcised this unwanted lust that had abruptly taken hold of him.

So for now, he would allow himself not only to remember what had taken place during the night, but to imagine what would happen in slightly less than four years, when he’d have her naked and open beneath him.

Just this once.


Fitz, are you there?” Millie rapped loudly on the door. It was ten o’clock, two and a half hours since she left him. “Wake up, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not sleeping. I’m in the bath. What is it?”

“My mother—” She swallowed. “She is not well.”

“Give me one minute.”

Millie looked down again at the telegram in her hand.

Dear Lord and Lady Fitzhugh,

I regret to inform you that Mrs. Graves has taken ill. She wishes to see you most urgently. Please make your way back to London at your earliest convenience.

Yours, etc.,

G. Goring

She could not believe it. Not her mother, too—she was far too young. But Mr. Goring, Mrs. Graves’s personal solicitor, would not have taken it upon himself to cable unless the situation was critical.

Fitz opened the door. His shirt clung to his person and he was still toweling his hair, the abandoned bathtub half visible behind a screen.

He took the cable from her hand and scanned it. Giving the cable back to her, he tossed aside the towel and pulled out a book of schedules from his satchel.

“There is a train that departs Gorlago in three hours. If we leave right away, in a fast carriage, we might make it.”

They were twenty miles out of Gorlago. The road was decent, but narrow and steep at times. Three hours seemed a very optimistic assessment.

She did not argue.

“Have Bridget pack our things but we are not taking the trunks—they will slow us. Arrange with the innkeeper to send the luggage and take only what you can carry in hand. I’ll find us that fast carriage. Be ready when I get back.”

He was back in a quarter hour with a lightly sprung calèche and a child of about eleven. Millie climbed in with a picnic basket, Bridget followed her with a satchel stuffed with a change of clothes for everyone.

“Where’s the coachman?”

He flicked the reins. The horses eased into a trot. “I’ll drive.”

“What about directions? And the changing of horses?”

“That’s what this young gentleman is for—he will tell us where to go. And when we reach Gorlago he will stay with cattle and carriage until his uncle comes for them. He is six stones lighter than his uncle, so I chose him.”

The boy’s slighter weight and their lack of luggage made the difference—as did the Italian railway’s tendency to run behind schedule. They arrived at the Gorlago station ten minutes after the published departure time for the train to Milan via Bergamo, but had just enough time to purchase tickets and catch the train—Fitz, the last one up, had to run and leap onto the steps.

By the middle of the afternoon they were in Milan. Thanks to the modern marvel that was the Mont Cenis Tunnel, twenty hours later their express train pulled into Paris.

Now they only had to hurry to Calais and cross the English Channel.


Someone gently shook Millie by the shoulder. “Hot air balloons—do you want to see?”

Millie opened her eyes—she didn’t realize she’d nodded off.

There were indeed seven or eight hot air balloons in an open field, most of the envelopes still limp tangles of bright colors, in the process of being inflated. “Is this a competition of some sort?”

“Maybe. Look, there is even an airship.”

“Where?”

“It’s behind the trees now. But I saw it, it had propellers.”