I laughed, too happy to worry about accommodation. “Oh, we have a couple of guest rooms. They may not be as grand as your usual rooms, but if you’re prepared to put up with us, we’ll try to manage with you.” He smiled and kissed me again, lightly this time. “I’ll enjoy it here,” he murmured, his lips close to mine. “We don’t have to be apart again, you know. Ever.”

I caught my breath. He drew back, but kept one arm around my shoulders. “My family will arrive a week or two before the wedding, and then I’ll move out to whatever house Gervase and I find for them, but I won’t go further away from you than that. I can’t imagine Lady Hareton will want me under her feet so close to the wedding.”

“Martha is a hospitable woman. You never saw her to advantage at the Abbey, but she loves to entertain, and her powers of organisation are formidable. She has my trousseau organised, the wedding is well under way, and she’s made James hold his alterations to the Manor back until May.”

He caressed my back, letting his hands roam over the fabric of my gown. “I saw the difference she made to the State Rooms at the Abbey in a mere few weeks. I wouldn’t like to get in the way of any of her plans. Does she approve of me?”

I moved into his loving touch. “I don’t think she entirely trusts you. She was pleased you signed the contract without demur, that went a long way to convince her, but—well, she cares for me, and she wants me to be happy.”

“As do I. And I signed that contract because I haven’t the least intention of breaking it.” His voice softened to a caress. “And I, too, want you to be happy, so I had it made so you can break it off at any point you wish.”

“Even if I didn’t want you any more?”

“Even that. If you were unhappy with me, I couldn’t bear it. I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better to see you happy with someone else.”

I lifted my head to look at him, into the depths of those startlingly blue eyes. “I’ve never met anyone like you. All this is new, the people, all the fuss. If I had married a year or two ago, only the county would have been remotely interested in me. Now fashionable society wants to beat a path to our door, and I seem to be the only one unable to cope with it all.”

He pulled me close. “My poor love.” He kissed my forehead. “All you have to remember is I love you, and I intend to take you away from this when it’s over. Let my parents and your sisters have their day, and then we can have ours.” He let me go, and dipped his hand in his coat pocket. “By the way, I thought you should have something to cheer up your mourning dress.” He pulled out a long box and gave it to me.

Inside, gleaming with their own life, lay a string of perfectly matched pearls. Their bluish glow gave them a world of their own, serene in their own importance. I touched one, with the tip of a finger. It was cold. I looked back at him. He watched me, waiting for my reaction. “Oh Richard, they’re beautiful.”

“Here. Allow me.”

He lifted the pearls out of the box. I felt the warmth of his hand when he clasped them around my neck Then he took me to the mirror over the sideboard, positioned me in front of it, and stood behind me, frowning while he judged the effect. “They look good against your skin. And you have dark hair. I’ve always thought pearls compliment brunettes best.” I studied us both in the mirror. We were an incongruous couple.

He was so fashionable, so much of his class, dressed in expensive, exquisite perfection and I was of little consequence except locally until last year. He bore himself like a prince, unconsciously graceful.

My clothes were plain, dowdy mourning clothes. If I’d been expecting him to arrive that day, I would have put on one of the newer mourning gowns. He was every inch the man of fashion, at his ease in it as I thought I never would be. I didn’t deserve him, and I might not be able to keep him. Fear and doubt filled me to overflowing. “Oh, Richard, are you sure?”

He met my gaze in the mirror. “Oh yes.” He dropped his hands and took a step away from me so I could only see my own reflection. “What do you see?”

I shrugged, but tried to be honest. “An ordinary, not young woman, tired. The sort of woman you would have passed in the street and not looked at twice, if we hadn’t found ourselves in the extraordinary situation we did last year.” I avoided any self-pity and tried to tell him the truth as I saw it.

“My turn.” He came up behind me again and put his hands on my shoulders, turning me away from the mirror to face him. “Tired I would agree with, but nothing else, so I shall have to make sure you get more sleep. Five and twenty isn’t on the shelf, my love.” He regarded me steadily, his gaze sweeping my face. “The young don’t appeal to me the way you do. You have far more about you than a seventeen-year-old, fresh from the schoolroom. You have a well-informed mind; no doubt that sickly brother of yours helped there.” I remembered the hours I had spent keeping Ian company while he read, or I read to him in one of his many childhood illnesses, and was forced to