to my mouth, realising what I had innocently walked into. “Oh!” Lizzie’s subterfuge hit me like a brick on the back of the head, and with about as much subtlety. Relief surged through me. They’d taken the maid with them, when she should have remained behind as a rudimentary chaperone.

I wondered if Lizzie had contrived the whole scheme or if Gervase assisted her in her deceit. I stood alone, my hand against the heat of my face, waiting for us both to recover our composure.

When Richard stood away from the door, his smile changed subtly, from amusement to tenderness as he regarded me standing foolishly in the middle of the floor. I didn’t know how to think or behave. His smile made me blush even more.

“Come here.” He held out his arms. I didn’t need a second invitation. I walked straight to him, instantly dismissing Lizzie and her schemes.

His kiss was more intense than he’d allowed himself recently. I emerged from it breathless. His cool blue gaze returned my regard, freely and without guile.

“We have two, maybe three hours.” I took a quick breath, and seeing my doubt he added, “Of course, my love, if you want to survey the house and leave we can always hire a vehicle to take us home, but it is near enough to our wedding day for us to take a risk. If you wish it.”

That would let me off the hook if I didn’t want to do this, if I should wish to choose the safe way. “We ought to look at the house,” I said steadily, still not decided on the course we should take. I yearned for him with an intensity I wouldn’t have imagined possible, and his proximity to me only made matters worse. Exquisite torture. But now we had the opportunity to indulge in what we both longed to do, doubts assailed me. Could I really not wait a week or two?

We toured the house while my turbulent thoughts calmed. It was bright, well furnished, and seemed to be the kind of house where her ladyship and her family might comfortably spend a few weeks. The dust covers were removed in preparation for our viewing but unlike Hareton Abbey before Martha had taken control, everything was clean and in good condition.

He was a little surprised when I led the way to the kitchens. “Do we have to?”

“We must make sure the kitchens are clean and serviceable.”

Grinning, he preceded me down the stairs. Martha’s training in housewifery must have gone deep, if I could think of practicalities while the blood sang in my veins. Every time he touched me the hairs on my neck stood up. The tour gave me a little more time to make up my mind. I knew what we did here was my decision. I felt his tension as though it was my own, which in a way it was.

The kitchens were bright, clean and totally empty, the fire cold and comfortless. The copper pans hung clean and scrubbed in their proper places. I touched one and listened to the clang as it touched its neighbour. I had never in my life been in an empty house before. I found the experience strange, and not altogether pleasant.

We went to the first floor and examined the principal rooms where Richard declared himself satisfied. “This will do. I’m sure my mother will be content with this.”

I had taken a couple of steps up the flight of stairs to the second floor before I realised what lay there and what it might mean. I turned back to him, my heart hammering. He smiled, and put his hand on mine where it lay on the banister. “We don’t need to see any more if you don’t want to,” he assured me, his voice a soft, seductive purr. “I can wait three weeks.”

His blue eyes gleamed with the desire he didn’t have to articulate and then I knew what I wanted. I touched his cheek. “I need this as much as you do.”

Before he could make a response, I turned and led the way upstairs. I knew I would have fallen to the floor with him then if he’d wanted it, all my training, my sense of social rightness gone.

This was not like our rash encounter at the Abbey. Most members of society would wink at this. Many affianced couples, given extra time and freedom to get to know each other, anticipated the wedding ceremony by a week or two. Several “premature” babies were born seven or eight months after the wedding. It was even considered desirable, a proof of the bride’s fertility.

When we’d made love before, Richard was contracted to marry someone else with no prospect of being released from the contract. It had been a terrible risk to me and to my family. They would have been tainted, maybe ostracised by any scandal which involved me, but at the time I didn’t care. I’d wanted to give him, free and clear, the only gift I owned which I thought worthy of him, and after some persuasion, he’d taken it in that spirit.

We’d been lucky.

The bedrooms were as charming and as bare as the other rooms, and we passed through them without comment.

We went into a large bedroom at the back of the house. “This will do for me,” Richard said, no inflection, no emotion in his voice. That absence of expression told me he was apprehensive, too.

The windows were draped in some gauzy stuff, which afforded privacy. The large room was bright, as the sun had by now emerged from its cloud cover and did its best to indicate that summer was on its way. There was nothing personal about this room. The new-looking bed in the