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“Not after this.”

Dominic’s feelings were in a muddle. He’d left two injured men lying in the dirt without a backward glance. He’d protected his family, so that wasn’t what was troubling him.

It was her. His wife. His buxom, beautiful wife.

Blue eyes calm again, her skin as beautiful as a summer peach, her lips red where she’d bitten them.

“I shall rest instead,” he said, deciding he was merely in the grip of a healthy bout of lust. “It’s been an exciting afternoon.” Her smile made his blood race.

“Before anything else, the entire family must take baths,” Torie said, holding up her lace handkerchief. It was ripped and smeared with mud. “I did warn you that I would be a very expensive wife, didn’t I?”

“My boots are particularly revolting,” Valentine said, sticking one out.

“Oddie needs a bath as well. His fur is clumped in—in some areas.” Florence smiled impishly. “Did you see how proper I was? The truth is that he’s all matted at the rear end. Sometimes it’s so hard to get at the truth because the Prohibited List has eaten up so many useful words.”

“We will ask Simons to wash your bunny in the stables,” Torie said. “Hopefully once Oddie has an unsoiled cage, he will clean himself.”

“What about the mama and babies?”

“I have never seen a rabbit choosing to get wet,” Torie replied. “If it begins to splatter, they disappear down their burrows, so I think we should leave the mama to clean her babies and herself.”

“We can put her and the babies in a box and ask Simons to wash both cages,” Valentine suggested.

“They can hop around the nursery!” Florence exclaimed. “The mother and babies must spend at least one night with us before they go to live in Green Park, because we need to sketch them.”

She regarded Torie and Dominic with all the drama of a woman under threat of starvation. Or an artist denied her paints. “We must!”

“We have no time to go to Green Park today,” Dominic said, tacitly agreeing to a night in the nursery.

“The mama rabbit is still trembling all over,” Valentine reported.

“I feel the same,” Torie murmured to Dominic.

He rubbed her stomach all the way home. “My poor viscountess,” he murmured in her ear. “Luckily, I am certain that I can make her feel better.”

Torie leaned her head against his shoulder and thought he was probably right.

Definitely right.

Chapter 30

The bathtub in the viscountess’s water closet was made of brass with high, curving sides. It featured the astonishing luxury of running water warmed by the kitchen fire, and even better, a drain, but it was only big enough for one.

“We could put in a larger tub.” Torie cleared her throat. “Perhaps I could help you bathe, the way women did when . . . when their husbands returned from war.”

Dom glanced at her, eyes amused. “Without belittling your feelings, Torie, I assure you that I am a master swordsman. Those men were ignorant louts, and two of them ran off at the sight of my blade.”

“Did anyone see what was happening and come help you?”

“There was no need for that,” he said with irritating nonchalance.

All sorts of things went through Torie’s mind, including the way a man with a pistol could take down a man with a rapier. Her breath turned ragged, and a sob forced its way up her throat.

“Torie.” Dom swooped down on her, and then he was finally kissing her, licking at her mouth as if she couldn’t open to him fast enough.

He tasted like himself. Like home and safety.

She pushed those thoughts away, because the idea of being in love with her husband was so new and perhaps merely the result of a fevered mind after the attack. Love had nothing to do with the fever gripping them at the moment.