“You should have told me.”

“Yes. But I knew you’d be angry. And I thought she was what you wanted. Pretty and vivacious—”

“With all the wit of a toasting iron.”

“Why did you write to her in the first place?”

“I was lonely. I didn’t know her well. But I needed . . . someone. When I received that reply, about Mawdsley’s donkey and the smell of October, and the rest of it . . . I started falling in love right then. I thought it was another side of Pru I hadn’t yet seen. It never occurred to me that the letters were written by someone else entirely.” He gave her a dark glance.

Beatrix returned his gaze contritely. “I knew you wouldn’t want letters from me. I knew I wasn’t the kind of woman you wanted.”

Rolling Beatrix to her side, Christopher brought her against his aroused form. “Does this feel as if I don’t want you?”

The hard pressure of him, the rampant heat of his body, dazzled her senses . . . it was like being drunk . . . like drinking starlight. Closing her eyes, she leaned her face into his shoulder. “You thought I was peculiar,” she said in a muffled voice.

His mouth brushed the edge of her ear and settled against her neck. She felt that he was smiling. “Darling love . . . you are.”

An answering grin curled her lips. She shivered as Christopher moved over her, pushing her back, using his thigh to part hers. He took her mouth with endless kisses, deep and impatient, turning her blood to fire. He began to caress her with strong, callused hands, a soldier’s hands. Her breeches were dragged away from her pale hips.

They both gasped, breath fragmenting, as his palm cupped her intimately. He stroked the humid warmth, parting and spreading her, a fingertip stroking the entrance to her body.

She lay quiet and unresisting, a mad heartbeat resounding everywhere. He touched inside her, his finger pushing gently past the innocent constriction. Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to the tender curves of her br**sts. A moan escaped her as she felt him take a hard bud between his lips. He began to suckle, his tongue lapping between each rhythmic tug. His finger went deeper, the heel of his hand teasing an unspeakably sensitive place.

Beatrix writhed, seeing nothing. Desperate tension folded in upon itself, and again, centering low and tight. A whimper escaped her as a wave of unimaginable pleasure caught her, and he guided her farther into it. She managed to speak through dry lips, her voice stunned and shaken. “Christopher—I can’t—”

“Let it happen,” he whispered against her flushed skin. “Let it come.”

He stroked her in a wicked, sensual cadence, pushing her higher. Her muscles worked against the alarming rush of sensation, and then her body began pulling it all in, her veins dilating, heat surging. Groping for his head, Beatrix sank her hands into his hair and guided his mouth to hers. He complied at once, drinking in her moans and gasps, his beguiling hands soothing the wrenching spasms.

The delight receded in lazy ebbs, leaving her weak and trembling. Beatrix stirred and opened her eyes, discovering that she was on the floor, half undressed, cradled in the arms of the man she loved. It was a strange, delicious, vulnerable moment. Her head turned in the crook of his arm. She saw Albert, who had fallen asleep in the chair, supremely uninterested in their antics.

Christopher caressed her slowly, his knuckles trailing through the valley between her br**sts.

Beatrix tilted her head back to look at him. Perspiration had given his skin the sheen of polished metal, strong masculine features worked in bronze. His expression was engrossed, as if her body fascinated him, as if she were made of some precious substance he had never encountered before. She felt the soft, hot shock of his breath as he bent to kiss the inside of her wrist. He let the tip of his tongue rest against a tiny pulse. So new, this intimacy with him, and yet it was as necessary as the beat of her own heart.

She never wanted to be out of his arms again. She wanted to be with him always.

“When are we going to marry?” she asked, her voice languorous.

Christopher brushed his lips against her cheek. He held her a little more tightly.

And he was silent.

Beatrix blinked in surprise. His hesitation affected her like a splash of cold water. “We are going to marry, aren’t we?”

Christopher looked into her flushed face. “That’s a difficult question.”

“No it’s not. It’s a very simple yes-or-no question!”

“I can’t marry you,” he said quietly, “until I can be certain that it will be good for you.”

“Why is there any doubt of that?”

“You know why.”

“I do not!”

His mouth twisted. “Fits of rage, nightmares, strange visions, excessive drinking . . . does any of that sound like a man who’s fit for marriage?”

“You were going to marry Prudence,” Beatrix said indignantly.

“I wasn’t. I wouldn’t do this to any woman. Least of all to the woman I love more than my own life.”

Beatrix rolled away and sat up, pulling her loosened garments around her. “How long do you intend for us to wait? Obviously you’re not perfect, but—”

“ ‘Not perfect’ is having a bald spot or pockmarks. My problems are a bit more significant than that.”

Beatrix answered in an anxious tumble of words. “I come from a family of flawed people who marry other flawed people. Every one of us has taken a chance on love.”