“They are entering society next year.”
“I plan to glare at every gentleman who so much as breathes in their direction.”
She laughed despite herself and glanced at her desk where another letter from her mother lay—more suggestion than apology, laced with stiff concern for her daughters’ reputations.
“She writes often now,” she said, picking up the letter. “Always skirts the word ‘sorry.’ But I think she means it.”
Johnathan brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “Some fences mend slowly.”
Frances nodded. “At least she asks after the girls now.”
“Progress,” he murmured, kissing her temple.
But her smile faded as she looked back at the letter from her aunt. “I need to speak with Edward. Before he ruins himself.”
Johnathan tilted his head. “Rogues do not ruin easily. Some of us—” he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a velvet murmur “—turn out quite well.”
Frances rolled her eyes, but her breath hitched just slightly when his fingers skimmed her wrist.
“You are distracting me,” she said.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“You think I am overreacting?”
“I think you are magnificent when vexed.”
She attempted to rise. “I shall send for him?—”
But Johnathan caught her waist, pulled her back into his lap, and kissed her to distraction.
“Johnathan,” she whispered, breathless against his mouth.
“I have a better idea,” he said, against her lips.
And before she could argue, he swept her up in his arms.
Frances let out a startled gasp and then burst into laughter. “You cannot possibly carry me across the house?—”
“You doubt me,” he said, already striding toward the French doors.
She clung to his shoulders, laughing, blushing, loving him with the same wild abandon she had at twenty.
They passed a footman in the hallway, who quickly turned on his heel.
Frances buried her face in Johnathan’s neck. “We are too old for this.”
“We are not,” he growled.
He kicked the door to their bedchamber shut behind them and set her gently on the bed.
The years had left their marks. A silver thread at his temple. A curve to her hips that had not been there in youth. But the love? The passion?
It had not dimmed.
It had deepened.
Johnathan’s hands were reverent, familiar, aching with a kind of devotion she felt down to her bones. And when he kissed her—slow, consuming, utterly hers—Frances forgot the letter, the gossip, everything.
