But Josie could quite see tying Mayne to the bed. In fact—she smiled and drank another sip of wine—once he returned from his little voyage that was just what she would do.

He might be a little angry at first.

But once he got over it…

There was a noise at the door, and Josie didn’t even look up, just turned the page. Now Hellgate would discard his Amazon mistress as if she were no more important than a cast-off slipper, and turn to—

She looked up.

There in the shadows of the door was—Mayne. Drops of water were streaming from his shoulders, from his hair. His eyes were rimmed by dark circles.

“Joooosie,” he said hoarsely. “They dropped me from the rowboat…I was bound and couldn’t swim…I had to come say farewell to you…”

Josie didn’t say anything. The air went dark and thick around her, as if there was no air in a world without her husband. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe.

She fainted.

Mayne walked into the room and looked down at his wife, shaking himself like a dog after a good rain. She was out like a snuffed candle. He picked up her glass of wine and took an appreciative draught. She was drinking the Château Margaux 1775 that his father laid down. Very nice.

Then he sat down on the footstool before her chair and looked at her.

Too many novels, that was the truth.

“Josie!” he said. And then: “Josie!” She didn’t stir, so he ran a hand along her cheek. She was so beautiful that his heart turned over, and yet he schooled himself to be firm.

“Josephine, you wake up now,” he told her.

So she did. Her eyes opened and she stared at him. “Garret?” she asked.

“Ghost of,” he said promptly.

She grabbed his hand. Looked at him for one moment, at his damp hair (thanks to a quickly administered glass of water), and then lunged out of her chair and shook him. “How could you? How could you do such a thing to me? I thought you were dead!”

He would have defended himself more, but he was laughing too hard.

“You—You—I’ll make a ghost of you,” his little wife shrieked.

Finally he managed to stop her from beating him around the shoulders and caught her hands in his. “You deserved it, Josie,” he said, fighting back another great swell of laughter.

But there were tears in her eyes, and the laughter died in his throat. For a moment he saw everything in her eyes: a love that would last their entire lives, a vulnerability that would never go away, and, where he was concerned, a deep selflessness that made her the most wonderful, funny, intelligent woman he knew.

Then her eyebrows snapped together. “Bastard!” she snapped.

“You deserved it.”

“I never should have trusted Tess. Never.”

“Woke up to find Felton chortling at me,” Mayne admitted. “Mind you, he did hand over that letter you left for me.”

“Oh.”

“Damned if I’m not surrounded by terrible writers,” he said. “First Darlington—and that bounder looks to be becoming my brother-in-law—and now my own wife. ‘Love is more important than marriage.’ Purple prose! Fluff and feathers! It could have been written by Hellgate himself.”

“I’m sorry that my writing wasn’t up to your standards,” Josie said with dignity.

“Not only did you write me a fluffy letter, but you drugged me and tried to get rid of me,” he said remorselessly.

“I didn’t!” She struggled against his hands. “I never wanted to get rid of you.”

“You wanted me thrown onto a boat with a Frenchwoman whom I hardly know.”

“It was Sylvie! If you remember, you were going to marry Sylvie!”

“God yes, it was Sylvie! How could you think that I would want to spend several days trapped aboard ship with Sylvie?”

“Because—Because—”

But it was time to stop the foolishness, so he sat down and pulled her straight into his lap, looked her in the eye and said, “You’ll never get rid of me, Josephine.”

“Never?” she whispered.

“Not by drugging me, nor sending me to sea either.”

“I didn’t want to.”

But he wanted to hear it, so he waited.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you too much to keep you away from Sylvie.”

His smile came straight from his heart. “We can leave Sylvie out of this, though how you came to think I loved her—”

“Because you told me so repeatedly? Because you were going to marry her? Because you kissed her letter?”

“I never kissed any letter of hers!”

“You did, you—”

“If you loved me,” he said, cutting through the piffle, “how could you let me go?”

“That’s why. I had to give you to her, if that’s what you wanted.”

He cupped his hands in her face. “I will never let you go, Josephine, my wife. Not if you fall in love with Hellgate himself.”

She was laughing and crying at the same time. “But, Garret, I am in love with Hellgate, didn’t you know?” She pushed her fingers into his damp curls.

Then he was kissing her, fiercely, as if he could drink her in and make her his. Except she was already his.

“I never knew what love was,” he said, feeling the words piling up inside him. “I thought I was in love with Sylvie…how could you not have known what an ass I was to even imagine such a thing?”

“Well…” she said. And kissed him.

“I gather you wanted me on that boat precisely because you knew better?”

“I thought,” Josie explained, “that you might be in love with me, and you just hadn’t realized it yet.”

“Oh, I realized it.” He kissed her, hard.

“You didn’t say—”

“I would have. You are my countess, and the only woman I have ever loved. In the whole of my misbegotten, Hellraking life.”

Her laughing eyes were a little teary, so he worked his hands into that dressing gown of hers. It was a damned useful garment, the way the tie gave at the waist, and then it fell open to show him a feast of creamy flesh and beautiful breasts.

He couldn’t stop kissing her, though. He’d stray onto her breast, and have her crying with the pleasure of it, but then he had to kiss her mouth again. And again.

“I’m not the same around you,” he told her at some point. “I’m never bored, Josie. I’m not—I’m not myself.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, as bossy as ever. “Could I possibly suggest that you go back to what you were doing?” Because his hand had stilled with the need to tell her, to make her understand.

“You’re not listening,” he whispered, even as he caressed her again, watching her eyes close and an enchanting little pant come from her lips. She was all sweet plump welcome, but he still wanted to say it.

“With you, I’m not Hellgate,” he told her, knowing she wasn’t really listening. “I’m not some dissolute rake, sleeping with anything with two legs. I’m going to turn the Mayne stables into something people remember for decades. And I’m going to—”