Amazingly, she let him stay.

"A room in my gentlemen's club," he said against the silky softness of her coppery hair. "Hardly a proper setting for a wedding night."

She shook her head slowly, back and forth beneath his chin, leaning her weight against him, rocking, swaying with the beat of his heart. "I couldn't very well expect a beach in the South Seas."

Where lovers met on the warm sands? Was that part of her silent fears? That he would insist on making love to her tonight?

"You've nothing to fear on that count, Elizabeth. I've no intention of seeking my husbandly rights tonight."

She leaned away and quirked a brow at him. "I'm not afraid of your husbandly attentions, my lord."

"Well, good. You've no reason to be." Indeed, she didn't look afraid, not with the steadiness of her gaze, that sizzling flash of green. "I'm not a complete cad, you know. Despite what you might have thought about the methods I used to rescue you tonight."

More frowning, a stiffening of her shoulders. "I don't consider you a cad at all, my lord. Believe me, I've known my share of cads, and you are not among them."

"Indeed?" A good thing to know. Amazing, considering. Although he could only wonder where she'd come by knowing a brace of cads in her sheltered life.

"In fact, my lord, I believe that had you turned your husbandly attentions on me tonight, I would have welcomed them."

That was not the praise he was looking for now. Not with him standing so close to his newlywed wife, in all her magnificence. With his unfettered, husbandly attentions meeting her fiery, wifely initiative.

Not with an enormous bed waiting for them in the next room, piled high with pillows and dense with bedclothes.

And a rock-hard erection throbbing in his groin, which wanted relief, wanted to be buried inside her.

And yet he couldn't help but ask. "Excuse me, what did you just say, wife?"

"I'm sure you would have been a most gracious and attentive lover." She looked up at him, her mouth a deep shade of rose. "You are the quintessence of the very Unbridled Embraces which, ironically enough, led to my imprisonment, your kidnapping me, and forcing me to marry you."

He filled his lungs with a long, unsteadying breath of her meadowy scent. "For your own good, wife."

"We'll have to see, won't we?" She shook her head, then pulled her warmth away from him, hugging the blanket close around her shoulders as she stalked away from him.

"Well, then, I appreciate your... candor, Elizabeth." He might not survive it, but he managed to speak through a throat grown tight with a fort.i.tude he hadn't known he possessed. "As well as your confidence in me and my unorthodox remedy against your legal woes."

However ill-conceived.

"It may have been your remedy, my lord. But it's my responsibility." She slid her hand along the back of his desk chair as she walked idly behind it, her mood grown dark again. "I brought my legal troubles upon myself."

"With cause, madam."

"Nevertheless, you were right. I jumped right into each of those perilous projects with my eyes wide open, knowing full well who I was baiting. As well as the consequences. And I lost. Everything."

Everything. Now he felt like a true cad. Male and monstrous, because he'd always taken for granted that the power he wielded against her was a natural process. That it had been bestowed upon him and his fellow men by glorious, unalterable tradition.

Everything. As though he had beaten her at a game she hadn't known he was playing against her.

And the extraordinary woman had felt every blow, struck against her heart.

Christ! How could he convince her of the possible, when he wasn't certain of it himself?

"Surely you haven't lost everything."

She studied him from the end of the desk, a wariness in her voice, as though she were regrouping. "I think I understand exactly how Princess Caroline felt when she lost her kingdom. Though I know she did it for the love of her life. For Lord Wexford."

Oh, my dear, for a love much larger than the world would ever know. " I can a.s.sure you that Caro and Drew are living happily forever after."

"That was plain. A love to be admired, my lord."

My husband, he wanted her to say. But now was not the time to press the issue.

Now was for courting her. Because, for good or ill, they were married.

"And Drew and Caro nearly missed it completely. Would have, if the princess hadn't taken matters into her own capable hands. Nearly caused an international incident in the bargain."

"But she was a royal. They couldn't very well put her in prison, could they?"

"Nearly put her in the grave."

"Good heavens!" She put her fingers to her lips. "They tried to kill Princess Caro? When? Who? I never read anything about it in the newspapers."

"And you won't ever. " His wife was far too easy to talk to, to share with. A dangerous temptation when he had so many great secrets to protect from so many enemies. "Pretend I didn't say that, wife."

She raised a brow, then went back to touching her way through his room, as though trying to steady herself. "Somehow I'm not comforted in knowing that the y - w hoever they ar e - 't reat royal princesses worse than they treat common women. That's hardly playing fair with the weaker s.e.x."

"No, it's not fair. Not in the least." He caught up with her capricious pacing as she reached the pair of upholstered chairs in front of the bay window. She stopped and looked up at him, leaving him to marvel at the brightness of her eyes. "I understand the subtleties of fairness more than you can imagine I do."

"I doubt that, sir. A wealthy man of rank and privilege. A life of carriages and foxhunts and a fat goose at Christmas. Let me guess: you're an Oxford man."

Now there was a topic they hadn't covered in their oh so brief courtship. He laughed and touched her cheek, just to convince himself that she was real.

His wife.

"Not Oxford." He threaded his f i ngers through the strands of hair at her temples, which had come loose in all their wrestling.

"Cambridge, then?" She gentled against his fingers, though reluctant, wary of meeting his strokes. "I see you as a helmsman at the Henley Regatta."

"You'd have been more likely to find me dockside on the Thames, larking for goods that I could then sell on the streets. Or scouting the railyards for an unlocked freight car."

"Oh? When was that?" She narrowed her eyes at him, silently accusing him of spinning a tale for her benefit.

"I was eleven and a bit when we started out."

"Eleven! Did you run away from home?"

"As fast as our little legs could take us, the first chance we got."

"Your parents must have been frantic."

"We hadn't any parents to worry about us." He sat down in the high-backed upholstered chair, the memory always taking the wind out of his sails for a moment. "Home was a brutal workhouse run by Squire and Mrs. Craddock. And if they missed us, my dear wife, it was only because we'd stolen the gold b.u.t.tons off the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's coat and run off with them."

She stared down at him, her eyes dark with disbelief. "A workhouse? You must be joking."

He shook his head. "Not a bit. We were halfway to Newcastle by the time they found that rat-faced squire, naked as a plucked chicken and tied to the village market cross."

"You said we." She knelt at his knee, catching up his wrist with her warm fingers. "Have you brothers or sisters?"

Brothers to the marrow, no matter that they shared not a drop of blood between them.

"Friends."

"Who?"

But his answer was cut off by a knock at the door to his private entrance, followed by Pembridge's voice. "Tea tray, sir."

"Blast it all, Pembridge! You should be in bed."

Ross flung the door open a moment later, and found the elderly man holding the tray of tea and cakes, his clothes in perfect order, as though at this hour, well after one, he hadn't been fast asleep, hadn't just scrabbled out of his nightclothes to wait on Ross's every whim.

Or to verify the staff's gossip about the beautiful woman that Ross had stolen up the back stairs and hidden away in his suite.

"I was just taking care of some last minute details, sir." Pembridge plowed his way into the room and headed for the table between the two upholstered chairs, only to come to a full stop a few feet shy of Elizabeth. "Good evening, miss."

"Not miss, Pembridge." Ross came to stand behind him. "I'd like you to meet Elizabeth Dunaway Carrington, the Countess Blakestone. My wife."

"Your what, sir?"

Ross plucked the tray out of the old man's hands. "The countess and I were married this evening."

Pembridge nodded to Elizabeth, not hiding his fond smile at all well. "It's a great pleasure, my dear countess." Then he turned that glinty old accusation on Ross. "Your lordship, if you had just informed me earlier, I would have appointed your rooms appropriate to a wedding night. A tea tray and a douse in a tub will hardly serve the lady."

"That was my fault, I'm afraid, Mr. Pembridge." Elizabeth took the old man's hand and smiled at him with those inviting eyes, then raised her gaze to Ross himself, as though she were laying claim to her actions in order to protect her pride. "I was in such a hurry. You can imagine that I was an anxious bride. The tea tray looks delicious, and a quick wash-up in warm water before bed sounds heavenly."

Pembridge blinked at her. "If you're sure then, your ladyship..."

"Absolutely sure."

Then he blinked at Ross. "Shall I keep the news to myself, my lord?"

"For the time being. Thank you."

"Excellent." Pembridge poured two steaming cups of tea, then muttered his way to the washroom door. He opened the panel with a nod to Elizabeth, then muttered his way back across the room, where he finally made his most elegant exit.

Leaving his bride to stare at him, a dozen questions in her eyes.

"An old family retainer?" she asked, looking thoroughly vulnerable as she reached behind her head and loosened the pins from her hair, as though she meant to stay.

"A savior, actually. Showed the three of us how to dress, how to eat, where to live."

"Your workhouse friends?"

"Jared and Drew. You met them at the Adams."

"You mean Hawkesly and Wexford?" She dropped her hand and her hair fell in a soft, auburn curtain around her shoulders. "Aren't they both earls?"

"With a few more t.i.tles amongst us."

"How?"

"Let's just say that we've all come a long way in this world."

"As I thought I had." That realization seemed to take her down, shook her from the easy banter they had been exchanging. "So what happens tomorrow, Blakestone? And the day after." She huddled her fingers around a sip of tea, casting her gaze over the top of the cup. "And the day after that. I have responsibilities."

Here it came. Sooner than he'd hoped. Like a storm off the sea. Ready to blow up onto the sh.o.r.es and flatten everything in its path.

"And so do I, Elizabeth." He would have to stand firm on the matter, make her understand from the outset. Else they would both end up in jail. "From this day forward, my dear wife, your responsibility must be to me. Because the law holds me responsible for everything you do."

She took her time lifting her cup to her lips again, savored the taste overlong. "Ah, yes, wasn't there a saying? 'He that keeps a woman is like he that keeps a monkey; he is responsible for their mischief.' "

Ross refused to take the bait. Let her vent her anger, let her storm.

"Believe me, my lord, I'm painfully aware of your legal rights and responsibilities." The cup clattered as she set it on the tray. "They are the very reasons I never wanted to be married. But when you took on this monkey, you took on my responsibilities as well."

"Yes, I know. The Adams, the bookstor e -"

"I can't afford to neglect them for a moment. But since they belong to you now, what do you plan to do about them? Along with my income of ten thousand pounds per annum, which also now belongs to you. You're going to be a very busy man, my lord. What with your duties to the Foreign Office and the Admiralty and who knows what else."

The room had became tinder dry, the air p.r.i.c.kly with her spent anger. Her blanket had long ago fallen from her shoulders, and now she was clutching her hands around her arms, trembling all over.

"Indeed, wife. But I'm exhausted. As you are. It's too late to decide such matters tonight. If you want a bath, you'd best go take it while you can still stand."

She glared at him for a very long time and finally huffed at him. "Where do I sleep?"

He nodded into the bedchamber. "In there beside me."

Inches from him. Tormenting him through the night with her heat, with her scent. It would serve him right.

"And what will I wear to sleep in, sir? I completely forgot to pack my wedding trousseau before my little trip to jail."

He turned away and tried not to smile as he pulled a nightshirt out of the bureau and tossed it to her. "Take your time, Countess."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the nightshirt out of the air, then glared at him for a moment as though digesting her new t.i.tle. Then she spun on her heel, tromped into the washroom, and closed the door with an overloud clunk.

He stood there in the silence for a long moment, feeling roundly chastised for merely being a man.

A bridegroom without a wedding ring for the bride. Let alone a blasted home.

He listened for her beyond the door until he was satisfied that she hadn't climbed out the window to escape him. He went to the table and was about to pour himself a cup of tea when he heard a sighing sound, like an autumn wind blowing through dry branches.