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“Men do, don’t they?”

He leaned in and dusted her lips with his. “Women like it as well.”

His tongue ran along her lips with a silent question. She opened her mouth and their tongues tangled in a caress that sent molten heat down his legs. His cock was urgently pressing hard and hot against his breeches.

“Like it or not, gentlemen generally don’t play this game with unmarried ladies,” Silvester growled a while later. “Although, in case you’re wondering, I am not a gentleman, Stella. Not a scholar either. Your vocabulary is much better than mine.”

“I don’t care about that,” Stella said huskily.

“I pose as a gentleman,” Silvester insisted. For some reason, he wanted to make sure she knew the truth.

“I know!” Her eyes were both amused and hungry. “You’re a fraud, a ducal fraud. A pirate hiding in plain sight. A Roman warrior in silk breeches.”

Silvester tried to interpret her expression. “Is that a good thing?”

She sighed. “Kiss me again.”

So he did.

“Do you hear shouting?” Silvester asked later. He was hanging on to propriety by the skin of his teeth. Stella’s hands were ranging over his shoulders, slipping up his neck, even arrowing into his hair to tug him closer. But so far, he’d kept his fingers gripped around the wooden edge of the gazebo.

Everything in him wanted to surround her with his body, snatch her to him with all the desperate possessiveness he felt.

Stella’s eyes were glazed. She shook her head, leaning in to kiss his chin.

“From the sound of it, Thomas managed to score a blow against my mother. But only one so far. Most of the shouting is Merry and Fanny.” The next sentence came out without forethought. “I want to marry you, Stella.”

She made a sound, a gasp, and pulled away. “What did you say?”

“I want to marry you.”

It was his first marriage proposal. He hadn’t imagined her eyes would respond with shock followed by horror.

“Because Yasmin is marrying, you must follow suit? Some odd kind of exchange, where Giles won the woman you want, so you will take the woman he didn’t want?” Her voice grated with hurt and anger.

“No.” He growled the word.

Behind her shoulder, the ancient bulldog snorted in his sleep.

“Are you saying this because I allowed you to kiss me?” Stella’s jaw was tight, her eyes narrowed. “You have no need to offer a proposal on such slender grounds.”

“I asked because I want you,” Silvester said, making no bones about it. “I want you in my life and my bed. Even though you know all my worst characteristics, and you don’t think highly of me.”

“You don’t think well of me,” she pointed out.

“Not true. I love talking to you. I cannot stop touching you. You are intelligent, loyal, and kind when you wish to be. I also believe you tolerate me, that is, the way I look. And I don’t mean my nose.”

Stella scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. Which made her breasts plump in a way that sent lust ripping down Silvester’s spine once again. “You know perfectly well that you are considered the most handsome man in the ton, nose or not. I can’t imagine why you think that my opinion would vary from that of all the other women in London.”

Silvester nodded. “On the surface I am, yes.”

“Well?” she demanded, her eyes fiery.

“Most of it is good tailoring. I meant the parts that no one knows. I ripped the undergarment to this toga deliberately so you could see my chest.”

“You are very odd,” Stella said.

“I wanted to know whether you would be put off by my shape. My physique is not to all women’s tastes.” He cleared his throat. “A woman once called me brutish.”