“It is beautiful,” he said.

“I considered braiding it,” she told him. “But I have always worn it loose at night, sometimes to the despair of Maude if she is called upon to brush out the tangles in the morning.”

“You must continue to wear it down,” he said. “Husband’s orders. You did promise to obey me, if you recall. And if Maude complains, I shall dismiss her without a character and demonstrate that I intend to be master in my own home.”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled slowly. His eyes were, of course, laughing. “I am in fear and trembling,” she said.

“As you ought to be,” he said. “Wren, I never quite understand why married people of the upper classes have separate rooms. Just to prove that they can, perhaps? It seems especially puzzling when the two people are young and there is pleasure to be had and children to beget. Will you keep this room for your private use during the daytime and consider my bedchamber ours from tonight on?”

She was glad he was talking to her more as an equal than as a timid bride. She was equally glad of his suggestion. Aunt Megan and Uncle Reggie had always shared a room and a big old canopied bed, which sagged slightly in the middle. She had gone there screaming a few times in the early days when she was still suffering from nightmares, and they had taken her in between them and she had slept in warmth and happiness, half squashed and utterly safe.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come, then,” he said, and took up one of the candles from the table beside her and snuffed the others. He led the way through their dressing rooms and into his bedchamber. It was a twin to her room in size and shape, but this one was decorated in rich shades of wine and gold and lit by one branch of candles on the mantel and two candles in wall sconces on either side of the canopied bed. She ran her hand down one of the smooth spirals carved into the thick wooden posts at the foot of the bed.

“This is a fine room too,” she said. “But we will absolutely have to find a way to outdo it at Brambledean.” She turned a smiling face to him.

“I am in perfect agreement,” he said, setting down the candlestick beside the candelabra. “But perhaps we can wait until another occasion to discuss it. I find myself distracted tonight, I must confess.”

“Me too,” she said, and he kissed her.

She realized almost immediately that he was going to take his time about it. The bed was beside them, but for now he was ignoring it. He had kissed her before, but each time it had been all too brief for someone who was starved of intimate human contact and yearned for it. She knew very little. Almost nothing, in fact, but she knew enough to understand that there was a whole world of erotic experience that had been denied her—or that she had denied herself. Tonight would begin to set that right, and she was glad he was in no hurry.

He opened her mouth with his own, slid his tongue inside, and proceeded to do things that had her clutching the sides of his dressing gown at the waist and fighting to keep her knees under her. With the lightest of strokes against sensitive surfaces, he sent raw aches shooting through her. But it was not just his mouth. His hands roamed over her, seeming to find curves where she had not thought she had any and to appreciate the curves she had thought inadequate.

His hands spread over her buttocks at last and drew her fully against him. His hard, muscled man’s body was enough to make her want to swoon. Not that she would. She had no intention of missing a single moment. She could feel that he was aroused, though she had no experience. She inhaled slowly as she tipped back her head, and his mouth, freed from hers, trailed kisses along her neck.

Please never stop. Oh please, please never stop.

“Come and lie down,” he murmured, his mouth against hers again, his eyes gazing, heavy lidded, into hers.

“Yes.”

“Will you let me remove your nightgown first?” he asked her.

Oh. Really? Now? With so many candles burning? “Only if I may remove your dressing gown,” she said.

“Agreed.” He laughed softly. “But me first.”

He edged her nightgown up between them and lifted it off over her head when she raised her arms. He dropped it to the floor and took a step back, his hands cupping her shoulders. Wren found herself curiously unself-conscious, though she did fight the urge to apologize. She was such a shapeless beanpole. Well, not quite shapeless, perhaps, but certainly not shapely. But he had chosen to marry her. He really had. On Easter Sunday she had released him from any sense of obligation he might have been feeling. He had proposed marriage to her here in London entirely of his own volition. He had had options—that pretty and shapely young lady with whom he had been walking in the park, for example.

“You have the physique of an athlete, Wren,” he said. “If there were women athletes, they would surely aspire to look like you.”

She looked, startled, into his face, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

“That does not sound like much of a compliment, does it?” he said. “It was intended as one, though I probably ought not to have spoken aloud. You are magnificent.”

He could not possibly mean it. But he would not lie to her. And if he did, he certainly would not have paid her that particular compliment. She liked it. Oh goodness, she liked it. “And did you notice tonight?” she asked.

He raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

“Did you notice?” she asked again. And she saw understanding dawn as his eyes focused upon the left side of her face.

“In all truth I did not,” he said. “My gentleman’s honor on it, Wren. I did not notice. I do not believe I have noticed all day. Which proves a point, I believe.”

“That you are not much of an observer?” she said. But though she made a joke of it, she felt a great lifting of the spirit. Was it possible that someone could look at her and truly not notice? Her aunt and uncle had always said it was so, of course, but they had known her forever. And she had never been quite sure they had not spoken more from the heart than from a strict adherence to the truth.

She untied the sash at his waist and slid her hands beneath his dressing gown at the shoulders. It was only then she realized he was wearing nothing underneath. She pushed the garment off and watched it slither down his arms and body and bunch about his feet. He kicked it away, his slippers with it.

She looked at him as he had looked at her, the candlelight flickering over his body. And … oh goodness. There were no words. She ran her hands lightly over his chest and felt the firmness of muscles there. She slid them up to his shoulders and felt their warm, hard solidity. His legs were long and powerful, a little longer than her own. His hips and waist were slender. And—ah yes, he was aroused and ready, as was she. She was aching with longing—or with something stronger and more physical than mere longing, though she could not find a word for it. She raised her eyes to his face before turning to lie down on the bed.

“Do you want me to snuff the candles?” he asked her.

She hesitated. “No.” She wanted to see as well as feel. She had five senses. Why deliberately eliminate one of them?

When he lay down beside her and turned to her, she did not think she could be any more ready for the consummation. But she could, as she discovered over the next several minutes. And again he was in no hurry. His hands and mouth moved over her, explored her, tasted her, while her own hands, helpless and untutored at first, followed suit, discovering maleness and otherness as well as a beauty that might have brought her close once more to swooning if there had not been more powerful feelings to keep her very much aware and present.