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He put his hands on his waistband and waggled his eyebrows. Thereby proving he did have a sense of humor.

“I wasn’t suggesting that!”

“I would never coerce a woman to marry me,” Dominic said.

“A terrible basis for marriage,” she agreed.

“In choosing Leonora, I was stupid enough to think that the kind of affinity you and I share was unimportant.”

“Affinity?” she repeated.

“Desire. Your sister looks like a toothpick,” he said, deciding that only brutal honesty would prove his case. “You”—he let his eyes caress her generous curves—“don’t. Ours won’t be the marriage I foolishly thought I wanted. It will be better.” He reached out and took her hands, drawing her slowly toward him before he turned her palms against his bare chest.

She startled, so perhaps she felt some of the visceral shock that exploded in his body at her touch.

“We’ll be true partners,” Dominic said, his voice rough with desire. “I don’t need a wife who can read in French or English. I’ve no interest in syllabic lines. I don’t care if you have no idea of the prime minister’s name.”

She had been staring at his chest, but she looked up at him, frowning. “As it happens, I have met him several times. Did you actually have requirements?”

“No,” Dominic said. He hesitated, but then decided to be honest. “Leonora impressed me with a coherent discussion of the latest farm bill, as reported in the London Times. Obviously, you can’t do the same, but it’s not your fault.”

“Do you know how condescending you sound?” Torie demanded.

“I suspect that marrying you will knock that out of me.” A sense of well-being spread through him, and his arms circled her waist. “All we have to do is show the ton precisely how we feel about each other, and no one will mock our marriage. Do you know how few married couples—in polite society, at least—have any fun in the bedchamber?”

“Queen Charlotte and King George,” she said instantly. “All those children.”

Dominic bent toward her and brushed his lips over her generous mouth. “I don’t mind having fifteen children with you. I think it would be f—”

She cut him off. “Don’t say it.”

“We could conceive one of them on a picnic,” he said, running his tongue along the line of her bottom lip. “Surrounded by ants.”

She giggled even as her flush deepened. “You can’t— We couldn’t—”

“I’d prefer a blanket to sprawling in the grass, but Torie? I’ll make love to you anywhere you’ll have me.”

“Outside the bedchamber?” she asked, apparently flabbergasted by the notion.

Of course Torie was a stranger to passion; she likely believed lustful acts could only be performed on a marital mattress. Her mother was long dead, and Leonora was hardly the sort of woman to discuss connubial matters. He shelved that problem for another day. “May I kiss you?”

“Oh, bloody hell,” she muttered. “This is going to happen, isn’t it?”

Dominic froze and let the words filter through his mind two or three times before he allowed himself to recognize that she had just accepted his proposal: not gracefully, but resignedly.

They were getting married. He’d won the argument with a strategy he’d come up with at the last moment.

He wanted to snatch her up and take her back to the couch to engage in debauchery that most ladies wouldn’t abide before marriage, and perhaps even after marriage. He had the feeling that Torie would match his inventiveness, if he didn’t scare her off before the altar.

Not that she was at all like Leonora.

“Yes, this is going to happen,” he stated. “You’re mine.” Still, one thing was making him uneasy, and he had to bring it up to ease his conscience while she still had a chance to turn him down. He frowned, considering how best to phrase it.

“Something is bothering you. My children may be unable to read,” Torie said, her voice brusque.

“I had no intention of asking that!” Dominic said, startled.

“Like me, my mother couldn’t read. My father had no idea until she signed the parish register with an X.”