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“Why would I want coffee poured over my hand?” He had a typically male, confused look on his face.

“It’s just an illustration.”

“Pour it,” he said decisively. “If I say such a thing, it means I’ve lost my mind and returned to my second infancy. You’ll have to teach me the way we teach children, by example.”

She sighed. “What if you command me to do something that I consider truly foolish? What if there is an obviously better way to handle the given situation?”

“Why would I do that?’”

She resisted the temptation to say, Because you’re not God Almighty! And said, “Let’s just pretend that the situation arose.”

“Sometimes I make mistakes,” he said, surprising her. “There was a time when I bought a vast number of red and green flowered beads to trade. I thought they were far more beautiful than the small sky-blue ones that the merchant in Jidda told me to buy. I thought he was trying to trick me. Once we had hauled those beads far into the deserts of Abyssinia, they were rejected by everyone.”

“Why on earth did you bring beads with you?”

“They were much easier than carrying food or water,” he explained. “I always carried a quantity of beads.”

“Why not money?”

“Money is local to a given district. But the female desire for beautiful things…universal.” He grinned at her.

“So where are my sky-blue beads?” she said, giggling.

He rolled over on top of her. “So will you listen to me if there’s a dangerous situation?”

She looked up at him. “Not if you’re choosing the wrong kind of beads. But I don’t mind obeying you if you’re right.”

“Someone has to be the capo, to put it in Italian, or our marriage will be like a failed expedition. It will fall apart.”

Isidore stopped herself from rolling her eyes. It was as if Simeon was haunted by the memory of wild beasts jumping at him. It might take a few years, but he would come to learn that the English countryside held no dangers she could think of. “In cases of danger…”

“What if we had a signal between us, and when I included the signal in something I said, then you obeyed me without a second thought?”

She nodded. “As long as you didn’t abuse your privilege.”

He was braced over her, on his elbows, his lips deliciously close to hers. Who could have thought that a large male body lying on top of hers could feel so good, against all reason?

He leaned down and brushed his lips with hers. “If I say, now, Isidore, you have to obey.”

“You say now a hundred times a day,” she said.

“You would know the difference if I really meant it.”

“Danger,” she prompted him. “Danger, remember? I might not be listening all that closely to your tone of voice.”

She gave a little wiggle to remind him about the other things he was getting with this marriage along with a bad-tempered Italian wife. Sure enough, his eyes glazed a little.

“How about something in a foreign language?” she suggested.

His face cleared. “If I say, As your Baalomaal, Isidore, then you obey me without question.”

“And what does Baalomaal mean?” she asked suspiciously.

He leaned down again, a wicked smile in his eyes. “As the Lord of your Bedchamber, Isidore, I command that you kiss me now.”

She drew his head down to hers. “As you wish,” she said, as demurely as any husband could wish.

Chapter Thirty-seven