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This gave Eloise pause, but then she turned to look directly at her father and said, “I will inform him also.”

Juliet pressed her lips together to keep the chuckle in, and Adam found himself wishing she would just laugh out loud because he wanted to hear the sound.

“Informing me and getting my permission are two different things,” he told his daughter, and she pouted.

“But, Papa!” She started to argue, but Juliet picked her up immediately. “Ah!”

“You can have this conversation later, after you have had a thorough bath,” Juliet was saying.

“Aw!” Eloise griped, “but I want to have the conversation now!”

He heard Juliet’s velvet chuckle. “I am sure that you do,” she said, completely oblivious to Adam’s arousal.

Hell, take it all.

He held himself back with all his might, standing with the foil in his hand and watching them go. If he took a step now, his dignity was going out the damned window, and he couldn’t say he would care very much. She was his wife, after all, was she not?

“Well,” Flynn said.

“No,” Adam interrupted him at once.

“I wasn’t⁠—”

“I know what you were going to say, and the answer is no.”

Flynn picked up his foil and cleared his throat. “I was going to say she has good hip rotation on the lunge, Your Grace.”

Adam barely managed to rein in the urge to punch the sergeant.

“Hip rotation on the lunge, you say?” There was a dangerous edge to his tone that Flynn had been smart enough to detect, and the other man lifted his hands in surrender. “Why don’t you go on to one of those gentlemen’s clubs you love to frequent before I crush your bones?”

At that, Flynn’s lips pressed together, no doubt in an attempt to suppress his laugh even as his hands went immediately to shield his crotch. Adam thought the man lucky that he could still find some humor in the circumstances.

“Forgive me, Your Grace!” He bowed his head. “I did not mean to insult Her Grace! I had only meant it in terms of the⁠—”

Adam waved the other man away. “Go,” he said, and the sergeant did not need any more prodding.

With a bow, he turned swiftly on his heel and scurried away, as if expecting Adam to change his mind.

Adam sighed, staring at the blade in his hand.

Good hip rotation on the lunge?

His lips curved upwards.

It would not be so bad to see that in person now, would it?

Chapter Nine

“The south bed first,” Juliet said, crouching at the border and pulling a tangle of deadwood up by the root. “Everything past the sundial comes out. Once it’s clear, we can see what the soil’s giving us.”

Mrs. Priscilla stood with her arms folded and her apron very white in the morning sun. Whatever she thought of a duchess kneeling in the dirt before noon, she kept to herself. “Your Grace, there is no need to⁠—”

“It is truly all right. I enjoy it.” Juliet dropped the deadwood into the barrow and straightened, looking at the length of the south wall.

The ivy had gone unchecked long enough to strangle the climbing roses beneath it, and the borders were a tangle of last year’s growth. They looked even worse than they had on the first night she’d arrived at this mansion.

But they were not going to remain so for much longer, if she could help it. And she most definitely could.