Bed, where she ought to be.

Though not alone. For once in her sensible, lonely, pragmatic existence, Esther Himmelfarb did not want to go to bed alone. This realization had come to her as she’d sat in Lady Pott’s tiny dressing room, mending a hem at Zephora Needham’s request. Lady Pott had been snoring off her brandied tea in the next room, and the billowing ball gowns on their respective hooks had felt like so many cobwebs clinging to Esther’s life.

Percival’s fingers, strong and warm, closed over Esther’s hand. “If you think for one instant I could forget either kissing you or the prospect of kissing you again, Esther Louise, you are much mistaken.”

I want to see you naked, but for this glorious, silky hair, Esther, and a smile of welcome for me. She recalled his words, and they made her brave—or reckless.

“I want to see you naked, sir.”

He went still beside her then drew her to her feet. “Not here.”

If not here, then somewhere—anywhere. She did not care, provided he granted her this wish, because a man in want of his clothing was often a man in want of his wits—her grandmother had told her that, and with a wink and a laugh too.

“Where are we going?”

He tugged her along a path that led away from the house. “Somewhere private, safe from prying eyes and gossiping tongues. If you’re to make free with my person—and I with yours—I want there to be no hurry about it.”

And yet, he was hurrying. Hurrying Esther toward the dark expanse of the home wood, a tangled, overgrown place she’d ridden through with Lord Tony just yesterday. A nightingale started caroling, or maybe Esther was simply noticing the birdsong as they traveled into deeper shadows.

“How can you possibly see where we’re going?”

“I have excellent night vision, and I scouted the terrain last week.”

He’d been thinking of trysting places even a week ago? The notion brought a serpent into the garden of Esther’s anticipation. She shook her hand loose from his. “Have you—?”

He rounded on her and linked his arms over her shoulders. “Of course not, not with anybody else, nor will I.”

She prepared to launch into a lecture, a stern description of what she expected of him during the remaining days of the house party, but he drew her into his embrace. “Do you think I could share a kiss such as you bestowed upon me two days past and then casually dally with another? Do you think I’d wait in the garden, night after night, hoping for another quarter hour’s conversation with you, then turn easily to the likes of the Harpies and Hair Bows lurking in the alcoves?”

He sounded a touch incredulous, maybe even exasperated. Esther tried to tell herself his sentiments were superficial gallantries.

Herself wasn’t inclined to listen. She leaned into him. “I want to make love with you.”

His hand on her back went still, and Esther felt his chin resting on her crown. “My dear, there are consequences to such decisions, potentially grave consequences.”

She might conceive, though the timing made that very unlikely. “I am prepared to accept those consequences.”

“Are you?” Had his embrace become more snug?

Was he arguing with her? The darkness prevented Esther from reading his expression, so she gave in to an impulse—one that would inspire him to put his lovely mouth to ends better suited to her plans than arguing.

She slid her hand down the muscular plane of his chest, over his flat belly, down to the gratifyingly firm—dauntingly sizable—bulge behind his falls. “Enough talk, Percy. Make love with me.”

He pushed into her hand for a moment, once, twice, then led her farther into the woods, to a clearing lit with the meager moonlight. In moments, his cloak was spread on the soft grass and Esther was flat on her back, while he loomed over her, blocking out the stars.

“You must be sure, Esther. There can be no undoing what happens now, no regretting it.”

So earnest, so unlike the shallow cavalier she’d seen across the room not two weeks ago.

He would not be earnest and careful like this with other women. As he untied the bows of her dressing gown, Esther knew the relief of certainty. He would be charming and lighthearted, tender even and generous, but he would not be so… serious. For that, she loved him—loved him a little more.

She trapped his hands in hers. “You first.”

He sat back on their makeshift blanket and had his waistcoat unbuttoned in seconds. “You want to see the goods, do you? Ought I to be flattered or nervous?”

His shirt followed, drawn right over his head.

“You ought to be neither. You ought to be naked.”

“We ought to be naked. I would never have taken you for pagan, my dear. It’s a fine quality in a woman, a latent streak of paganism.” He sat back to tug off his boots. Esther hiked herself to her elbows and wished she hadn’t wasted the full moon on proprieties and insecurities.

“I’m nervous, if you must know.”

He left off unbuttoning his falls to peer over at her. “You will enjoy this. You’ll enjoy me. That’s a vow, my lady. You may say good-bye to your maidenly vapors. They have overstayed their welcome.”

He sat back and worked his breeches over his hips, moving without a hint of self-doubt. Moving as if… he might be concerned she’d change her mind.

What a cheering thought. When he prowled over to her side, naked as the day he came into the world, Esther had cause to regret that she hadn’t scheduled this coupling for the broad light of day.

“You are a beautiful man.” She ran a finger down one muscled bicep. “Beautifully strong, beautifully smooth and warm to the touch, beautifully brave…”

He caught her hand and wrapped it around a part of him Esther hadn’t had the courage to examine yet. “Beautifully aching for you.”

And for all his swaggering and social nimbleness, Percival Windham was also a man capable of patience. He let her explore with her fingertips, with her palms, with eyes and nose. Let her consume him with her senses, until Esther was again flat on her back, this time with a naked Percy Windham crouched over her and her nightclothes frothed around her in the moonlight.

“We either turn back to our separate paths now, Esther, or we forge ahead together. The choice is exclusively yours.” He laced his fingers with hers where her hands lay amid her unbound hair on the cloak. The feel of that, of his hands linked to hers, was both a portent and a reassurance.

“Together,” she said. “Now, let us be together.”

She braced herself to feel him probing at her body, but he surprised her with lazy, sweet kisses, teasing kisses and big, manly sighs, until she was a mindless puddle of female wanting beneath him.

“Percival, please.”

“Soon.”

His idea of soon was maddening. “Now.”

He nudged about, in no hurry at all. Purely at her wit’s end, Esther lunged up with her hips and found herself… found herself a lover. The sensation was wonderful and strange, and yet when several moments of silence and immobility went by… “Percival, will you move?”

His hand came around to cradle the back her head. “You’re all right?”

Only a few words, but so tender.

“I am mad for wanting you,” she began. “You have no sense of dispatch, and I am relying on you entirely to know how to go on, as difficult as relying on anybody for anything is for such as I, but I take leave to doubt whether—”

He laughed—a low, happy chuckle signaling both affection and approval—and he moved, a lovely, sinuous undulation that soothed as it aroused as it fascinated.

“You can move too, love. Move with me.”

Esther’s body had a sense of dispatch, a sense of soaring, galloping pleasure in the man she’d chosen for her first intimate encounter. She moved as he’d suggested, and found he knew things, marvelous, subtle things about how to leave a woman breathless with wonder and panting with ecstasy.

Percival Windham knew that a woman’s ears were marvelously sensitive. He knew that patience on a man’s part was an aphrodisiac. He knew exactly when to increase the tempo and depth of his thrusts, when to cradle Esther’s head so she could cry out softly against his throat. He knew to hold her just as closely as her pleasure ebbed, and to hold her more closely still when an urge to weep tugged at her happiness.

For the rest of her life, Esther would treasure—and miss—Percival Windham and the things he knew.

And yet… Percival braced himself over her, giving her just enough of his weight that the night breezes cooled her skin without leaving a chill. She took a whiff of cedar and spices and stroked her hand through his unbound hair.

“What about you, Percival? Are you to have no pleasure for yourself?”

“If I endured any more pleasure, my love…”

She stopped his inchoate blather with her fingers over his mouth. “No flatteries, no prevarications, Percival. I have withheld nothing from you. Nothing. I only wish…”

He snuggled closer, a large, fit man, to whom Esther was sure the term “sexual athlete” might be accurately applied, and yet he’d been so careful with her.

He shifted, so his lips grazed her neck. “What do you wish?”

His hair was so marvelously soft, as soft as moonlight. “I wish I knew how to render you as witless and befuddled as I am, as…” in love. That would be trespassing against common sense, so she compromised. “As helpless.”

A beat of silence went by, while Esther feared her limited disclosures had overstepped whatever the rules of dalliance permitted, but then Percival began to move, slowly, powerfully.