He shrugged. “I’m not the one with concerns. I’ve never had cause to doubt Nurse Edwards before, but if you feel uncomfortable, by all means, you should investigate. Besides, you’re better at this sort of thing than I am.”
“But”—she squirmed slightly as he pulled her against him and nuzzled her neck—“you’re their father.”
“And you’re their mother,” he said, his words coming out thick and hot against her skin. She was intoxicating, and he was aching with desire, and if he could only get her to stop talking, he could probably maneuver her to the bedroom, where they could have considerably more fun. “I trust your judgment,” he said, thinking that would placate her—and besides, it was the truth. “It’s why I married you.”
Clearly, his answer surprised her. “It’s why you ...what?”
“Well, this, too,” he murmured, trying to figure out just how much he could fondle her with so many clothes between them.
“Phillip, stop!” she cried out, wrenching herself away.
What the devil? “Eloise,” he asked—cautiously, since it was his experience, limited though it was, that one should always tread carefully with a woman in a temper—“what is wrong?”
“What iswrong?” she demanded, her eyes flashing dangerously. “How can you even ask that?”
“Well,” he said slowly, and with just a touch of sarcasm, “it might be because I don’t know what is wrong.”
“Phillip, this is not the time.”
“To ask you what is wrong?”
“No!” she nearly shrieked.
Phillip took a step back. Self-preservation, he thought wryly. Surely that had to be what the male side of marital spats was all about. Self-preservation and nothing else.
She began waving her arms in a bizarre fashion. “To do this.”
He looked around. She was waving at the workbench, at the pea plants, at the sky above, winking in through the panes of glass. “Eloise,” he said, his voice deliberately even, “I am not an unintelligent man, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her mouth fell open, and he knew he was in trouble. “You don’tknow?” she asked.
He probably should have heeded his own warnings about self-preservation, but some little devil—some annoyed male devil, he was sure—forced him to say, “I don’t read minds, Eloise.”
“It is not the time,” she finally ground out, “to be intimate.”
“Well, of course not,” he agreed. “We haven’t a bit of privacy. But”—he smiled just thinking about it—“we could always go back to the house. I know it’s the middle of the day, but—”
“That is not what I meant at all!”
“Very well,” he said, crossing his arms. “I give up. What do you mean, Eloise? Because I assure you, I haven’t a clue.”
“Men,” she muttered.
“I’ll takethatas a compliment.”
Her glare could have frozen the Thames. It quite froze off his desire, which irritated him no end, since he’d been looking forward to getting rid of it in another fashion altogether.
“It wasn’t meant as such,” she said.
He leaned back against the workbench, his casual posture meant to irritate her. “Eloise,” he said calmly, “try to afford a small measure of respect for my intelligence.”
“It is difficult,” she shot back, “when you display so little.”
That wasit.“I don’t even know why we are arguing!” he exploded. “One minute you were willing in my arms, and the next you’re shrieking like a banshee.”
She shook her head. “I was never willing in your arms.”
It was as if the bottom dropped out of his world.
