“Because I’m not stealing my half-dressed wife down the side of a house at midnight and hustling her through a sodden alley.”
“Because you are a prude.”
“Sabine,” he warned.
She reached out and jostled the latch on the window. It separated with a small creak. She pressed her fingertips against the glass, testing the give. It swung open.
“But perhaps you can no longer manage it,” she said, kneeing onto the window seat. “Because you gave up rescuing girls when you married me.”
“I cannot be manipulated in this way,” he informed her.
“Elisabeth said you’d never come and gone from Denby House by way of the door until now.”
He watched her plant her hands on the sill and lean out, examining the side of the house. “Oh, but there is a trellis. You needn’tsteal me away,” she said. “I can climb.”
He watched her sit squarely in the window seat, whipping the tails of his coat out of her way. He waited, determined to call her bluff. When she lifted her legs to swing out her feet, he swore and strode to her.
“Don’t,” he dared her.
“We cannot hide in this room all night.” She began buttoning his jacket over her corset. “You’ve already said you will not subject Elisabeth to my depravity.”
“You are not depraved,” he said.
“Should I climb downfacingthe trellis or with my back to the trellis?” She scooted toward the sill.
Stoker made a growling noise and scooped her up. Every nerve ending in his body tingling at the feel of her in his arms again.
“Careful,” he said, the only warning, and summarily pitched her, belly down, over his shoulder.
Sabine made an amused yelp and grabbed for his middle. She grazed his scar and he grunted.
“Sorry,” she called. “Am I too heavy?”
“No,” he said. She was too much of so many things, none of which prevented him from hauling her out this widow. He looped a hand around the backs of her knees.
“Hold still,” he said, biting down against the pain in his ribs.
Sabine made an excited sound of laughter and anticipation and wiggled.
