No.” She tried to hide how his words had pleased her, but smiles kept breaking out. She felt so wonderful, so feminine, so…desired. “I want my breakfast.”
“Yes, you need to keep your strength up for tonight,” he agreed.
After breakfast—he’d ordered bacon and eggs and hot chocolate and crumpets and coffee and she ate almost all of it—they walked around to Lady Gosforth’s.
It was just a few moments’ walk. The rain had started again, but it was not heavy and they shared an umbrella. Their bodies bumped pleasurably as they walked. Sometimes the bumping was deliberate; Callie could not stop touching him. They were both in high spirits, jumping puddles like children and laughing at nothing.
Callie told herself it had to stop. It was one thing to acknowledge to herself she had feelings for him, it was quite another to be acting like a giddy girl in love. Even if she was.
It was a certain way to heartbreak, that she knew from experience. Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she’d be sensible.
They reached Lady Gosforth’s after five o’clock. The butler, Sprotton, unbent so far as to give them an almost fatherly smile as they entered. “You will find Prince Nikolai in the nursery, madam,” he told Callie as he took the wet umbrella and handed it to a footman.
When Gabriel inquired after his brother and aunt, Sprotton surprised them both by saying, “Your aunt is Out at present, but everyone else is in the nursery, sir. All of them, sir: Mr. Morant, Mr. Delaney, Mr. Ripton, Mr. Ramsey, also Mr. Nash Renfrew.”
“In the nursery?” Gabriel said in surprise.
Sprotton gave an enigmatic smile. “It was the continuing Inclement Weather, sir. I recalled other Inclement Days when you were a boy, sir, and it gave me a Notion, which I venture to suggest has Proven Successful.”
Gabriel led the way to the old nursery, which was on the third floor. “I haven’t been up here in years,” he told Callie. “I wonder what this notion of Sprotton’s was. He seemed pretty pleased with himself.”
As they entered the nursery the sounds of vigorous masculine debate suddenly stopped. Callie smiled, understanding immediately what had drawn them all up to the nursery. Five men and two boys lay sprawled on the floor in various poses, completely absorbed, while Tibby sat by the fire placidly sewing, an indulgent look on her face, as if she were supervising a room full of boys. As perhaps she was, Callie thought in amusement.
At their entrance all the men had scrambled to their feet, looking faintly sheepish, and bowed to Callie. Ethan hauled Jim to his feet.
Nicky carefully made his way across the floor and greeted his mother with a kiss.
“You said you would come to see us this morning, Mama. What have you been doing all day?” he asked.
Nicky’s mother glanced at her husband. A tiny smile quivered on her lips. “Playing chess,” she said serenely.
“Best chess I ever had in my life,” Gabriel murmured in her ear. She repressed a giggle.
“Who won?” Nicky asked.
“It was a draw,” Gabriel told him, squatting down to pat Juno, who was temporarily tied to a table leg lest she do any damage to the arrangements.
Callie shook her head. “No, I won.”
“Now that’s a surprise,” Gabriel said softly. “I was certain I had.”
Nicky looked at them both, then shrugged, uninterested. “Mama, I am having a splendid time here and we are at a crucial point, so if you don’t mind…”
“No, of course not, darling,” Callie said. “Tibby and I will go downstairs and have a comfortable coze, and you can all get back to your toys.”
“They’re not toys, Mama,” Nicky told her, deeply shocked. “They’resoldiers.”
Callie glanced at the nursery floor, upon which which had been laid out a huge and very elaborate battlefield made up of hundreds of model soldiers, and at the five grown men who stood politely by, concealing their impatience to get back to the battle only slightly more successfully than her son and Jim.
“Of course they’re not toys,” she agreed.
As she and Tibby left, she heard her husband saying, “The blue company on the left flank is in the wrong spot…”
The following two days were spent much as the first. Each night they made love, sometimes slow, hot, and intense, sometimes ravenous and explosive, sometimes sweet and achingly tender. He seemed insatiable, and to Callie’s surprise, so was she. A look, the merest brush of his skin against hers and their eyes would meet, and the heat and urgency returned.
They spent the nights making love until the quiet hours of the night, sleeping a few hours at a time, only to wake again and make love again. It was like a drug; she could not get enough of it, of him. And when they were not sleeping or making love, they talked.
They talked of Callie’s years with Tibby, of her life in Zindaria, and how she’d always felt out of her depth as a princess. They talked of Gabriel’s early years in Alverleigh house, and of coming to the Grange and meeting Harry. They’d fought, just as Jim and Nicky had.
