The way she said very naughty made his stomach tingle and need spread through his veins.

“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I might have been a bit embarrassed,” she admitted with a small shrug. “But I promise you that my beloved and highly protective sister would never allow a scandal to follow such a discovery. She wouldn’t have said anything to anyone.”

“It was still imprudent of me,” he muttered.

She tilted her head. “Perhaps we were both a little imprudent, but that doesn’t mean what we did was wrong. Jasper, we are to be married in a few days. Doing this…what we did…it isn’t such a terrible thing. Not scandal-worthy, at any rate. And I hope you are not truly sorry that it happened, because I’m not.”

He stared down into her upturned face, still a little flushed from her laughter and excitement and the pleasure she had experienced at his hands. She certainly didn’t look upset. A fact he was truly happy about.

“You aren’t sorry?” he repeated.

She shook her head. “Not at all. I was nervous about our wedding night, about whatever would be expected of me when it came to…wifely duties. It is often described to ladies in rather dire terms. But now I am…I’m not afraid anymore of what will happen. In truth, I…” She trailed off as her cheeks brightened with high color again. “I-I look forward to it if it will be anything like what we did today.”

He swallowed hard. “It will be better,” he promised, his voice low and rough with the desire that coursed through him whenever he was near this woman.

Her lips parted and her breath shuddered out in a choppy exhale. “I trust you,” she whispered.

He flinched at that sentence, so small and yet so powerful. So undeserved, considering he was already keeping things from her. He turned away, for he was not yet willing to share those things. “I will endeavor to make you happy that you give me such a gift. Now I should go before anyone else bursts in on us and I end up under the bed again. I don’t think my constitution can take the dust.”

“Very well,” she said, tracking him as he moved to the door to the hallway. He heard the concern in her voice. The worry that perhaps she had done something wrong. Of course, she hadn’t. He had.

But until he knew more about the circumstances of Anne’s disappearance, he couldn’t say anything to her. He wouldn’t.

“Goodnight,” he said, turning to look at her one more time at the door.

She stood beside the bed where he had stolen her pleasure, hands clasped against her thighs, watching him intently. But her voice didn’t tremble as she said, “Goodnight, Jasper.”

He left her then because he had to. He left her because if he stayed he would never leave. And that was the kind of connection that could change everything, that could take his control. He couldn’t allow for that. Not today. Perhaps not ever.