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Not muttering words that tumbled over on each other, “perfect,” “soft,” “perfect,” “mine.”

Ridiculous drivel that didn’t feel ridiculous, but necessary, as if the words were spilling from his heart, a thought so absurd that he recoiled and briefly came back to logic. Just long enough for pleasure to wash over him again, reducing him to an animal who only spoke in single words. They finished in slow silence, eyes clinging to each other.

Silvester left the bed, legs feeling oddly shaky. Specs strolled out of his boot and jumped in his place, giving him a glowering look.

After he dressed, the words that spilled from his mouth when he stamped into his boot, discovering that the leather was warmly wet, albeit rapidly cooling?

Blasphemous.

But then he saw his wife sitting on the bed, having pulled on a wrapper. She had her legs crossed, red hair tumbling over her shoulders. Specs was in her arms, cradled like a furry baby.

He dropped onto a chair. “That bloody cat peed in my boot.”

“What did you say?”

Stella looked up at him. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, a flush still high on her cheeks. He knew that between her legs, she was wet for him, wet from him, and the feeling that overpowered him didn’t allow for irritation.

“Specs,” he said. “Peed in my boot.”

“I suppose she was angry at being left behind.” Stella looked at the cat, who batted her nose with a paw. “You mustn’t pee in people’s boots, Specs. It’s like leaving a mouse on a pillow. Just not done, especially to such a high-and-mighty personage as the Duke of Huntington.”

Specs batted her nose again. Stella rubbed her lush lips over the forehead of the kitten, whose purring could be heard across the room.

If he knew how to purr, he’d be doing it, wouldn’t he?

Instead of purring, Silvester got another erection, which made him glad that he didn’t have a valet any longer.

A man didn’t care to lose control like this under a valet’s watchful eye.

Chapter Thirty-One

Once in the carriage, Stella fended off her husband’s inappropriate caresses, which meant she was looking out the window when the carriage bowled through a set of tall iron gates and set off down a hill, giving an excellent view of the ducal estate.

If Silvester’s townhouse was impressive, this was . . .

Not.

The word that came to mind was “ridiculous.” Also: “Absurd.”

The manor was an ill-designed, shabby pile of stone, one chimney tilting at an angle that suggested imminent collapse, the turret missing stones so that it resembled a mouth that had lost a few teeth, the lawns segmented by strange black lines.

“The Grange is . . . large,” Stella observed.

Silvester glanced out the window. “Ugly, isn’t it? All the parts are grafted together, more or less, though the roof leaks where the newer parts join the original castle. It was damaged by Cromwell, but rather than tear it down, the family just built on, everything from crenellations to lancet windows.”

Stella nodded.

“If you look closely, you’ll see a few gargoyles. There was a spire, but it snapped off in a storm and wiped out the priest’s house, which dated back to the 1200s. Luckily, my father believed too much religion is bad for the brain, so the house was unoccupied at the time.”

She could just make out the medieval castle in the center of the Grange. Successive dukes had slapped on new wings, and outbuildings sprouted haphazardly to the left and right.

Just as startling, there was a locomotive parked before the front door. “Does that machine include your mother’s chimney?” she asked.

Silvester didn’t bother to look. “All the locomotives have her chimneys. In fact, that is true across England. Hers is the chimney with a bend in it, at the front.”

“What does this particular locomotive do?”

“It runs around the property on cast-iron rails.”