Page 90 of The Marriage Method

Her fingers played in the hair at his nape. “It needn’t mean anything. Only it seems a waste to be married and to like each other tolerably well enough and to not at least—”

“More than tolerably well,” Miles said. “And I’m not opposed to the idea.” He huffed an unsteady laugh. “Though I’d prefer we didn’t practice while you’re under the influence of laudanum.”

“I’m not—” She stopped herself. Because she was. She was. Why else would this feel so wonderfully unreal? “Well.” She smiled at him dreamily. “Perhaps I am.”

“Your head is going to be aching in the morning,” he said.

“Mmm.”

“Your shoulder as well. I’ll make a sling for your arm tomorrow. You mustn’t move it for the next several days.”

“Mustn’t I?”

He gave her a severe look. “No sewing samplers,” he said portentously.

It sounded as though he was admonishing her. An odd thing given their present positions.

“Do you have something against samplers?” she asked.

“It’s rest you require, not needlework,” he said. “Remain in bed tomorrow. The next day, too.”

She stroked the back of his neck. His skin was hot to the touch. “Like this?”

Another short, husky laugh. “No. Not quite like this.” He pulled back from her slowly.

Nell’s hand slipped from his neck. She didn’t protest his withdrawal. Her lids were heavy. Her limbs, too. She turned her head into her pillow with a sigh.

Somewhere through the fog that addled her brain, she felt Miles gently removing the pins from her tightly plaited coiffure. He loosened the bound coils of her hair with caressing fingers, easing the sharp pressure on her scalp. It was deliciously soothing.

The last pin dropped to the bedside table with a soft clink. Warmth engulfed her as Miles tucked the coverlet around her. “Sleep,” he said.

And she did.

23

The next morning, for the first time in memory, Miles didn’t go into the office. Instead, after a night spent in the chair beside Nell’s bed, he rose at dawn to wash and dress. He laid a fresh fire in Nell’s room, attended to Shadow (who was gradually beginning to warm to her new surroundings), and—when the hour was passing reasonable—went down to the kitchens and personally requested his wife’s breakfast.

Mrs. Bright hurried in as Gladys and Cook assembled the tea, toast, sausage, eggs, and porridge. “Mr. Quincey! You needn’t have come yourself. You’d only to ring and I’d have sent Gladys to the mistress’s room with a tray.”

“I’ll take Mrs. Quincey’s tray to her,” Miles said. He was in his shirtsleeves, his jaw freshly shaven.

Mrs. Bright and Cook traded glances, and Gladys disguised a smile.

“Strawberry jam or marmalade, sir?” the maid asked, holding up two small pots for his perusal.

Miles frowned. He didn’t know which jam Nell favored. In truth, he knew little about her likes and dislikes. “Both,” he said. “And some of those honey cakes, too. And an orange, a plate of smoked herring, bread rolls, and a pot of cocoa.”

When the tray was heaped high with anything he thought might tempt Nell, he carried it up to her room. She was still snuggled beneath the counterpane of her four-poster bed, just as he had left her when he’d finally departed her room. Except now, Horus was curled up at her side.

Miles pushed the door shut behind him as he entered. The soft click was enough to make Nell stir.

She emerged from beneath the coverlet with a groan of protest, her uninjured arm flung over her eyes. “What time is it?” she asked.

His gaze traveled over her as he approached the bed. Warmth ignited in his veins despite his best efforts to contain it. Last night he’d removed all but the final layer of her clothes. He’d taken down her thick, silken hair. And he’d kissed her with all the restraint of a starving man who had inexplicably found a feast laid before him.

For that’s what Nell was—a feast, a banquet, a beautiful, decadent meal made up of lush curves, sultry sweetness, and unapologetic cleverness and daring. He’d wanted to devour her whole. To make her his in the truest sense of the word. And she had, for those brief heated moments, seemed to want him just as furiously. It had been evident in the way she’d touched him, the way she’d kissed him back, if not precisely in her words.

“I do like you so much,” she’d said to him.