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“In that moment, my father’s voice came out of my mouth.”

She took a step toward him, but Dom shook his head. “I need to tell you the whole of it. From the moment I left the nursery, he controlled me absolutely, and yet he loathed everything about me, from my smile to my walk. I couldn’t fight back when he said I walked like a woman. I chose to fight with the rapier, thinking that the skill would prove me manly.” His eyes were dark with pain. “He died before I realized that his opinion was worthless.”

A tear ran down Torie’s cheek.

“I was terrified that people—that you—would gain power over me the way he had.” His voice hitched. “On the drive here, I realized that it’s too late. Even if you don’t love me enough to share your art, even if you never give me a painting of my own, you have me. Every part of me.”

Torie threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “How could you think that I don’t love you? I already gave you my most recent painting, and you can have every single one that I make for the rest of my life. I will spend hours explaining them, as long as you understand that I’m incoherent on the subject.”

“I knew that you give paintings to people you love, but—”

“I love you!” she interrupted, smiling through her tears.

“I was waiting,” he finished. “I kept hoping you would take it off the wall and truly give it to me.”

“I made something even better,” she said, turning to her bed and reaching under the pillow where she kept her sketchbook. “In case you don’t think I love you . . .” She opened to a page that would have horrified polite society. There was her viscount in the naked flesh: burly, rough, masculine. The look in his eyes wasn’t gentlemanly.

Not at all.

Neither was the rest of him.

Dom looked in silence for a moment and then burst out laughing. “That’s no clothespin. It looks like me, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. “I’m good,” she said with satisfaction. She tapped the sketch. “You’re laughing.” Her eyes blurred with tears again. “I make you happy.”

Dom wiped the tears away and then cupped her face in his large hands. “I love you so much, Torie.”

A sweet buss on the lips wasn’t enough for either of them, so she tossed away the sketchbook and went up on her toes, pushing her fingers into his disheveled curls and drawing him into a stormy, fierce kiss.

When Torie finally pulled back, breathing hard, she was on the bed, sitting in Dom’s lap. “The twins won’t wake up for an hour or two.” She licked the strong column of his neck. “Mmmm. Parfum de dust.”

Dom rolled sideways, his weight settling over her. “I must bathe before I make love to you.”

“There are no baths,” Torie said, smiling at his appalled expression. “The duke only has a few servants, and Emily can’t carry more than a pitcher of water up all these steps.”

“I brought grooms with me.”

“So did I, but the tub—the only tub—rusted out last year.” She put a finger across his lips. “No, we aren’t moving to an inn, because the children are happy here, and so am I.”

He nipped her lower lip. “What about all this dust?”

Torie felt joy swirling through her. “Come look at my view.”

“What?”

At the window, she leaned against Dom’s chest and pointed to the lake, shining limpid blue in the early morning sun. “The duchess swims there in her chemise, so the children and I have been joining her.”

Dom bent his neck and nipped her ear. “I see water.”

She smiled up at him.

“And willow trees so thick that the shore can’t be glimpsed from the castle.”

Chapter 40

Torie couldn’t stop giggling as Dom ripped the top sheet from her bed, snatched her soap, and drew her down the stairs and across the back lawn, through the willows that edged the lake.

“Nightgown,” he ordered when they stopped under the shade of a huge tree, his voice as urgent and intent as his gaze.