“Absolutely not. Your father would be unhappy to think that your fiancé has written you a coarse letter. Kinross didn’t allude to anything improper, did he?”

Edie grinned. “Are you saying that I shouldn’t tell Father that the duke is promising that the said dial is always set to the prick of noon?”

Layla picked up her head again. “He wrote the word prick? He wrote it down? In black and white? The prick of noon?”

“He did.” Edie opened her letter and read it again. She was starting to like it more and more. If only she hadn’t had that fever, she might have actually enjoyed meeting the duke. Now that she was perfectly well, it was vexing to think she might have charmed her future husband by being silent when that was decidedly not her normal state.

At that moment the door opened and her father walked in.

“I apologize for my tardiness,” he stated. “Lady Gilchrist,” he said, allowing a footman to place a linen cloth in his lap, “are you feeling quite well?”

“I have a headache,” Layla replied. “Jonas, that fiancé you chose for Edie has sent her a rather lewd letter. I think he might be—”

“Not at all,” Edie cut in. “The Duke of Kinross has written an entirely suitable response to a letter I sent him.”

Her father narrowed his eyes. “It was inappropriate for you to write His Grace. If you desired information, I would have communicated your request.”

“Yes, but Jonas, would he have written to you about pricks and bawdy clocks?” Layla asked.

“What?”

Really, her father was very good at thundering that sort of question. “Kinross was making a point about his nationality,” Edie explained. “He writes that in Scotland the bawdy hand of the dial is always upon the prick of noon.”

To her surprise, the indignation drained from her father’s face. “He’s quoting Shakespeare,” he said, picking up his fork. “A distasteful sentence spoken by a disreputable character, but Shakespeare, nonetheless.”

“I don’t understand the meaning,” Edie said.

“Naturally not. Such idioms are not within the purview of a gently-bred young lady.” He put down his fork. “I had in mind to mention to you, daughter, that you are likely to encounter a more boisterous atmosphere amongst the Scots than you are accustomed to.”

“So prick is a boisterous word?” That wasn’t precisely the adjective that Edie would have attached to it, but she was aware that she was lacking all sorts of important knowledge when it came to bedding.

“Don’t repeat that word!” her father barked. “It should never pass a lady’s lips.”

Layla raised her head. There was a touch of the mischievous about her eyes, the way there used to be in the early days of her marriage. “You’ll be disappointed to hear this, Jonas, but women quite regularly discuss that particular organ. Depending on the size of the organ under discussion, you might call it a dart, or a needle. Then there’s a pin: used only in truly unfortunate circumstances, of course. But one might discuss a lance.” She swept her hair out of her eyes, the better to see whether she was getting a rise out of her husband.

And she was.

“This conversation is unforgivably vulgar,” the earl said, his voice grating.

“Sword, tool, poleax,” Layla added, looking even more cheerful. “Edie is to be a married woman now, Jonas. We can’t treat her like a child.”

Edie groaned silently. They were spiraling right back to the same emotional morass. Her father should have married a Puritan.

Luckily, there were signs of life in her fiancé. If she ventured into a spate of jokes about lances, she had the idea that he would laugh. Unfortunately, she might not understand his jokes, especially if he borrowed them from Shakespeare. She didn’t know much literature. She hadn’t had time for it.

“What play is that quote from?” she asked.

“Romeo and Juliet,” her father said.

Perhaps she could take a quick look at the play before replying to Kinross. She wasn’t much of a reader, if the truth be told.

“Let’s change the subject. I feel truly ill. Do you suppose I’ve caught a wasting illness?” Layla asked. “Perhaps just a small one, something that would make me faint at the sight of a crumpet?”

“You—” The earl caught himself.

Edie nimbly took up the conversation before her father said something he should regret, even though he likely wouldn’t. “I’m quite looking forward to meeting Kinross again.” She could have sworn she saw stark longing in her father’s eyes when he looked at Layla. But how could that be? He was always criticizing his wife, picking at her for the kind of unguarded and impulsive comments Layla couldn’t help making.

“Naturally, I hope that you and the duke will be happy together,” her father said.

“And I hope you have babies!” Layla said. “Lots of babies.”

The silence that followed that sentence was so desperately tense that Edie found herself leaping to her feet and fleeing the room with little more than a mumbled apology.

Layla and her father had certainly loved each other when they married, but then he had begun to criticize the very qualities he once adored. The worst of it was the sense of disappointment that hung in the air around them.

Above all, she and Kinross had to avoid that sort of situation. A modicum—perhaps even an excess—of rational conversation was necessary.

Seven

Gowan did not spend his time waiting for the post from London to arrive. That would be petty and beneath him. Besides, he had sent his letter by one of his most trusted grooms, instructing him to wait for a response. Since he knew the precise length of the journey from London to Brighton, there was no need to consider the matter further.

Except . . .

He had easily checked that ungainly emotion, lust, for the first twenty-two years of his life. He scorned the idea of paying coin for intimacy, and a mixture of fastidiousness and honor had kept him from accepting cheerful invitations from married women. What’s more, he had been betrothed at the time, although waiting for Rosaline to reach her majority. He had certainly felt desire, but it had never got the better of him.

That was before he saw Lady Edith.

Now he’d dropped the reins, his sensual appetite was proving to be ferocious. He could hardly sleep for dreaming of plump limbs tangled with his. His mind was constantly straying into imagery that would turn a priest pale.

He couldn’t stop himself, even during occasions that demanded rational thought, such as now. He and Bardolph were working in the private parlor at the New Steine Hotel, waiting for the conference of bankers to reconvene at Pomfrey’s Bank; he was reading letters and signing them while Bardolph read aloud the report of one of his bailiffs.

He signed whatever Bardolph put in front of him, and imagined that he’d taken his wife to his castle at Craigievar, where clan chiefs had slept for generations. To the bed where his ancestors had consummated their marriages.

Edith lay beneath him, her hair flung across the bed like rumpled, ancient Chinese silk. He leaned down to caress her, his hand running down her bare shoulder, over skin like cream, and then he kissed her like a man possessed, and her eyes opened, heavy-lidded with desire. Everything in him roared: You’re mine, and she—