what I had in mind,” he said, taking the ring out of the box. “Here, try it on.” He lifted my hand and slipped the ring on my finger, then studied the effect critically. “If you don’t like it, it can be changed, but I think it suits you.”

I turned my hand to catch the rays of the sun to make it glint. “Thank you,” I managed eventually.

“It’s your right.” He tilted my head up to him, and kissed me, long and slow, then released me with a sigh. “But now, my love, if I’m to make any kind of lady’s maid, we have to make a move.” He flung the quilt back, then turned around and came back to take me in his arms again. “How can I wait three more weeks?”

“How can I?” I smiled back at him and stretched my arms over my head, luxuriating in his loving gaze upon my body. “You don’t have to wait. One more time, to tide us over?”

Chapter Nine

We got home just in time to dress for dinner, so I hurried upstairs and rushed into my clothes. Lizzie came into my room as the maid left it, and sat on the bed. There was no trace of a limp. “How’s your foot?” I asked.

She grinned. “You know how it is.”

I scrambled into my gown and began to hook it on to my stomacher. “Richard says if you bind it, you’ll remember which one it is you’re supposed to limp on.”

“I’m obliged to him but Mr. Kerre already suggested that on the way home. I’m sure it will be perfectly all right tomorrow.”

“I’m sure it will.” I finished hooking the gown and went to the dressing table to find my hairbrush. She was still smiling, unashamed by her subterfuge. “Lizzie, how could you?”

“What?” Her innocent blue gaze met my more cynical expression. “Didn’t you want some time alone with him?”

“It’s not that, and indeed I’m grateful to you—” more than I could say, “—but it was so blatantly done!”

“Well, and how else was it to be done? I tired of coughing and rattling the handle of the door every time I went into a room. It’s obvious to everyone here you needed some time alone together. You can hardly keep your hands off each other.” She thought, tracing a pattern on the quilt with the tip of her finger. She looked up again, meeting my eyes shyly. “What’s it like?”

I didn’t pretend to misunderstand her, but my puritan heart was shocked she should think to ask. “Lizzie, how can you ask me that?”

She drew a delighted breath and a smiled broadly. “So you did it. I felt sure you wouldn’t stop at kissing. Tell me, Rose, please, it might be years before I find out for myself.”

She leaned forward, entreating me to tell her, looking alluring without even making the effort. I snorted. “I shouldn’t think so for a minute. You’ll find out soon enough. Lizzie. I have no intention of telling you anything.” I was scandalised by her request, but as well, I wanted to keep the events of the day to myself, something to keep me warm at night. There were no words to describe the joy I’d felt that afternoon, and nothing would make me share it with anyone else.

Lizzie sat up, sniffed in an unladylike way and folded her arms. “Well it’s the least you can do.”

“No. But I will tell you something else.” In truth, I felt I owed her something for the afternoon, and felt confident enough in her discretion to share my secret.

“All right.” She still wasn’t placated, but she folded her hands on her lap and prepared to listen.

“It wasn’t the first time,” I confessed, and I dropped my eyelids momentarily.

“What?” The heat rushed up to her face in a pretty rosy flush.

I smiled in triumph. “I became his mistress last October. That was the only time, before this afternoon.”

“Dear God.”

I had succeeded in shocking her, and my sister wasn’t easily shocked. She couldn’t speak for a while, and I was content to watch her in silence. Her changes of expression, from disbelief to horror ended in a gabble of words. “But you didn’t know what he was like then, his reputation was fearsome. And he was betrothed to someone else.”

“I was sure of him from the first day.” As I said it, I realised somewhere inside me it was true. God knows I shouldn’t have been so sure, but my naïveté had prevented me shunning what my heart felt, and I had won my heart’s desire. Otherwise he might have left me, gone through with the disastrous marriage to Miss Cartwright and made both of us miserable.

I watched Lizzie, who now searched for words, stunned by what I had just told her. “You were fortunate not to quicken. How could you take such a risk?”

“I never thought of the risk. He did, immediately afterwards and he asked me to tell him the minute I knew.”

“You were lucky.”

I loved the new experience of having my gossip-loving younger sister lecturing me. “I know. I’m lucky in more ways than you know. I hope you have such good fortune.”

She chuckled and stretched her pretty feet out before her. “Oh, I want someone of rank with lots of money and a pleasant personality, but if you’d involved us in that kind of scandal, what chance would there have been for me?”

“You could have survived it. And we would have made it