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Torie looked at her husband. His blue-gray eyes had the perplexed look that he showed so rarely, when he wasn’t certain of the right course of action. She had a feeling that she’d better treasure those moments.

“Do join us,” she said. “It’s not far, right in the center of London. I gather that one may buy cattle and sheep only on certain days, but rabbits are available every day.”

“Yes, please,” Florence chimed in. “We are wearing our boots in the event of mud.” She stuck out one booted foot.

“Smithfield,” Dominic said with disgust. “There will be mud, all right.”

Torie saw acceptance in his eyes; there would be no cavorting in their bedchamber until evening, so he might as well accompany them to a cattle market.

“Flitwick, which carriage will take us on this excursion?” Dominic asked.

“The barouche, your lordship,” the butler said. “I warned Mulberry to make sure his blunderbuss is primed, just in case. Simons will accompany the family, as he knows the market. His father is a cattleman.”

Mulberry was Dominic’s coachman, and Simons presumably one of the grooms. “Is there really a need for a blunderbuss?” Torie asked.

“Yes, because my viscountess is the most beautiful lady in London, and she is wearing silver in her hair, and pearls in her ears, and an emerald on her finger,” Dominic told her, a smile in his eyes.

“Thank you, darling,” she said, coming up on her toes to kiss him. Her lips clung to Dom’s with a promise of nighttime delight.

He was a grumpy man, her husband, but all the same, she saw a gleam of pure delight in his eyes when she kissed him. She would never say as much, but she had the idea that he’d been lonely now and then. Occasionally.

Coming home from the House of Lords with no mistress and no family . . . just the memory of boisterous arguments to keep him company.

His mouth claimed hers again.

“I’m fairly sure kissing is on the Prohibited List,” Valentine observed.

“Not if you’re married,” his sister countered.

“Nanny Bracknell wouldn’t approve.”

“The wicked witch is gone, gone, gone,” Florence sang, dancing around the entry.

Chapter 27

“Why a rabbit?” Dominic asked.

Ahead of him Valentine jumped into the carriage, then leaned back and pulled his sister up by her wrist. Dominic winced, picturing a dislocated shoulder, but Florence disappeared into the shady depths of the barouche without screaming in agony.

“You yourself pointed out that the children are having trouble painting rabbits because they’ve never seen one alive,” Torie said, as if that was truly important.

Which it was, but only in a world where accurately painting rabbits was important. Dominic caught himself before he ventured that opinion: his wife would say that rabbits were important in her world, and she was right.

Torie stepped onto the box that Simons had placed below the carriage door and took the groom’s hand to enter the carriage. Watching her hand held by another man pushed Dominic to wrestle with a tangle of emotions, a state that he never cared for.

He wished he was bedding his wife. That was acceptable. He didn’t care for her touching another man’s hand. That was unacceptable.

It hinted at an unmanly subjugation to his wife. His father’s voice in his head informed him that there was nothing more effeminizing than feverish attachment to one’s wife.

“What will happen to the animal after it has been immortalized in paint?” he asked as he sat down beside Torie.

“Rabbit stew,” Valentine said enthusiastically. “One of my favorites.”

Torie snuggled next to him, her hand sneaking into his.

Before the morning, he might have established a manly distance and commanded the household, the way his father had taught him to do.

Now?