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“I think,” she said unsteadily, “that you had better do the rest yourself.”

He laughed, ragged. He caught her face in his wet hands and kissed her, hard, and she dropped the cloth and wound her arms around his bare back, and her nightgown dampened where she pressed against him, and he did not care.

They got as far as the bed. He did not remember crossing the room. He remembered her hands on his back and her mouth under his and the cool linen against his skin, and the candle guttering, and her nightgown somehow gone over her head. He remembered her skin against his, all of it, for the first time, warm and smooth and shocking, and the sound she made when he gathered her in.

He kissed her everywhere he had kissed her two nights ago, and in places he had not. This time he did not hurry. His mouth moved over her shoulder and paused in the hollow at her collarbone; after each kiss he listened to her breathing. Lydia’s fingers traveled across his back, first lightly, then returning to linger with greater certainty, learning the shape of him by touch.

He let her explore. Her reserve slowly eased. Her palms moved over his chest and down to the waistband of his breeches, and stopped there. When their eyes met, she still looked uncertain, and she held his gaze.

“Show me,” she whispered. “You know how. Now show me.”

He took her hand and laid it first over his heart, so she could feel how fast it beat beneath her palm. His skin was warm from the fire, and the rain still clung at his hairline. Then he guided her hand lower, slowly, and held it there until she understood. Lydia’s breath caught. He drew a careful breath, restraining himself and giving her every chance to change her mind. When his lips touched her throat, she had closed her eyes and he felt her fingers moving more boldly. After a moment he let go of her wrist, and her own curiosity led her on.

Lydia’s mouth found his throat. At first, she kissed him tentatively; then, with more confidence, she said his name against his skin. Tristan’s body tightened. A tremor passed through him, and he turned his face into the pillow beside her head. Her hand stayed on him, more sure now, starting to find her rhythm. He covered her fingers with his own to feel her there and rested his brow against her temple. Her breath warmed his cheek; his own came unevenly against her hair.

“Lydia…” It came out as a plea. She kissed his temple and did not stop. His breath caught; the hand at her waist tightened, then eased when she stroked his hair. A few seconds later his whole body shook. Lydia drew him close and held him while he buried his face in her hair. Her soft laughter sounded beside his ear, and it went all the way through him.

They did not complete their marriage. He held to that, though it cost him more than anything had in years, and though her face told him she did not entirely understand why. She did not ask. She lay against him in the dark with her head on his shoulder and her leg across his, tracing idle patterns on his chest.

“You are thinking loudly,” she said after a while.

“A family failing.”

“Tomorrow you might think from a different pillow. This one has a lump.”

He exchanged them. She thanked him with such solemnity that he knew she was teasing, and then moved nearer, and settled, and her breathing slowed until she slept.

He lay awake a while longer, watching the pale square of the window. A book lay beside each candle now, his and hers. His shirts hung in her wardrobe. Somewhere in the grounds, an old conservatory with a tree in its floor waited for its mending. When he turned carefully toward her, she shifted in her sleep to follow him, and her hand found his chest and stayed there.

He slept before he had finished wondering at it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The first delivery for the conservatory brought six panes of glass too narrow for their frames and enough shelf brackets to furnish a building twice its size. Lydia caught both errors before the driver finished unloading. She stood in the yard with Collins’s copy of the order in one hand and the carpenter’s rule in the other, while Samuel eyed a crate with open distrust.

“These are not the measurements we sent,” she said.

The driver removed his cap. “I carry what they give me, Your Grace.”

“Of course. I do not blame you for the glass.” She turned the paper so he could see the figures. “But I should be grateful if you took these back with this note. They can compare it with the order before they send another cart.”

Six days had passed since the glazier’s first visit, and she had lost count of the decisions she had been called upon to make. The doorframe went first, soft as wet bread where the rain had worked into it. Then the workmen had to secure the roof before anyone could touch the shattered glass. The sycamore departed, despite her defense of its character, leaving a hole larger than Tristan’s boot in the tiles. Samuel potted it and set it by the kitchen-garden wall with a label reading REHOUSED, and she laughed until she had to sit down on a barrow.

She wrote the note at the potting bench, around a knot in the wood that interrupted every third word. Samuel opened another crate. The pots, at least, had arrived whole.

“Keep the brackets,” he said when the cart had gone. “You will want another shelf on that wall by spring.”

“Would that leave room for the lemon trees?”

“If we choose small ones. You cannot have every specimen on your list and a full-grown tree in every corner.”

She studied the list. The room had seemed enormous while it stood empty. Now her wishes were discovering their dimensions. Samuel let her do the arithmetic herself, and she felt more grateful for that than for any polite assurance that a duchess might do as she pleased.

“Then fewer trees,” she said. “I would rather have space to work.”

They were arguing over the position of the basin when Tristan arrived from the Hales’ cottage, carrying a pair of gloves ruined by damp mortar. Lydia almost crossed to greet him with a kiss. Samuel stood between them with the ledger, so she gave Tristan a smile instead, and he forgot whatever he had meant to say.

Six nights. He had slept beside her six nights. He had learned her and let her learn him, and every morning she woke with his arm across her and his breath in her hair, and every night he drew back before they could go further, jaw set, eyes shut, and held her while the wanting in both of them slowly ebbed. She understood why. He had told her on the floor of her bedroom with his face wet against her neck, and she would not push him past what he could bear. But she lay awake afterward with her body still humming, listening to him breathe, and wanted him so much it frightened her.