“Future countess,” he added calmly.
A crease appeared between her brows, and he kissed it.
“You’ve gone mad.” She seemed quite convinced of it.
“I don’t care.” He caught her mouth again and plunged into a craving, demanding, all-consuming kiss. One hand found its way to her breast, and with a little sigh, she arched toward him, sending a rush of fire to his loins.
“What if you change your mind?” she whispered, a while later. There was just the tiniest quaver in her voice.
“In my family, we never change our minds. That was my father’s problem, you know.”
“He had a problem?”
“My mother left when I was a boy,” Byron said. He rolled off her body and pulled the cape over her again. Then he ran a finger down her delicate nose. “One day I realized that she hadn’t summoned me to her room in some days. I finally concluded that she must have died, if only because my father was so obviously affected.”
Fiona came up on one elbow, her beautiful eyes fixed on his face. “You grew up without a mother.”
“As did you.” He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. “That’s why I knew the one thing you wouldn’t allow Marilla to take from you must be a portrait of your mother.”
Her eyes softened. “I’m so sorry, Byron.”
The pang was hardly more than a pinprick. “My mother was not very motherly. I thought . . . I thought if I could find a wife who showed no signs of passion that she wouldn’t think of leaving our children for another man.”
She nodded. “You must have been devastated when she left.”
“I didn’t know her well enough to be devastated. But my father was. He grew harsh and rather brittle. Even after I was grown, I didn’t question him about what happened. I had the feeling he might break.”
“What would happen if he had broken?”
He considered. “I suppose all that pent-up emotion would have rushed out . . . It would have been embarrassing for both of us.”
“So you never asked him where she was?”
“I pieced it together slowly, mostly from things I overheard. She ran away with my father’s brother. His younger brother.”
Fiona gasped. “That must have been so awful for your father!”
“Yes. He always talked of his brother as a man led astray by an evil woman. For a long time, I had no idea that my mother was the evil woman in question.”
“That’s dreadfully sad. No wonder you were taught such concern about your reputation.”
“It’s not my reputation that’s at the heart of it.” He moved a little closer, just enough that he could put an arm around her waist. “I like touching you.”
She frowned at him. “If not your reputation, then what?”
“I couldn’t bear to become like him,” Byron explained. “I thought if I didn’t fall in love, and I chose a woman who was utterly chaste, I could avoid the possibility.”
“Lady Opal . . .”
“I didn’t know her at all. But she seemed like the driven snow.”
Fiona giggled. “She obviously got to know you well enough to guess precisely what would drive you away.”
“I might kill a dancing master you kissed.” His voice came out hard, all the sheen of a civilized Englishman stripped away, leaving a blazingly possessive man. Just a man. It felt as if his heart stopped as he waited for her to answer, his breath clenched in his chest.
The sharp pain there eased only when she leaned closer to him and said, “You don’t have me, so you’d have no right to raise an eyebrow.” There was a promise in her voice, a daring, silky promise.
Byron took a deep breath, threw a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity happened to be listening, and began nimbly undoing the lacing on her velvet bodice.
“What are you doing?” she yelped.
His fingers stilled. “How drunk are you?”
Her eyes were clear. “I seem to have grown quite sober. But perhaps you should give me the bottle. I’m pretty sure that I’m hallucinating, and I don’t want it to stop.”
“It won’t,” he said. He slowly pulled her jacket wide open. Of course, she was wearing layers . . . a blouse, a corset, a chemise.
He had her out of the blouse and was unlacing the corset before she asked, “Byron, why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m marrying you.”
