“You're cold,” he said.

“No,” she lied, unwilling to let anything, even the weather, break this beautiful moment.

“Yes, you are.” He rolled off of her and began to button her dress. “I'm an animal,” he muttered, “seducing you here for the first time outside. Tumbling you on the grass.”

“A very nice animal,” she tried to joke.

He lifted his face to hers, and his brown eyes burned with emotion she had never seen before. It was hot, and it was fierce, and it was wildly, wonderfully possessive. “When I make you my wife, it will be done properly—in our marriage bed. And then”—he leaned down and dropped a passionate kiss on her mouth—“I'm not going to let you out for a week. Maybe two.”

Ellie could only stare at him in amazement, still unable to believe that she could have aroused such passion in this man. He had consorted with the most beautiful women in the world, and yet she, a simple country miss, could set his heart pounding. Then he yanked on her arm, and as she felt herself being dragged back to Wycombe Abbey, she yelped, “Wait! Where are we going?”

“Home. Right now.”

“We can't.”

He turned around very slowly. “The hell we can't.”

“Charles, your language.”

He ignored her scolding. “Eleanor, every damned inch of my body is burning for you, and you couldn't possibly deny that you feel the same way. So would you like to give me one good reason why I shouldn't haul you back to the Abbey this minute and make love to you until we both pass out from it?”

She colored at his frank speech. “The tenants. We were to visit them this afternoon.”

“Hang the tenants. They can wait.”

“But I already sent word to Sally Evans that we would be by in the early afternoon to inspect the work on her chimney.”

Charles didn't pause for a moment as he pulled her toward home. “She won't miss us.”

“Yes, she will,” Ellie persisted. “She has probably cleaned her whole house and prepared tea. It would be the height of rudeness not to show up. Especially after the debacle in her cottage earlier this week.”

He thought about the scene in the fireplace, but that did little to improve his mood. The last thing he needed were memories of being trapped in a very tight space with his wife.

“Charles,” Ellie said one last time, “we have to go see her. We don't have any other choice.”

“You're not just putting me off, are you?”

“No!” she said, loudly and with great feeling.

He blasphemed out loud and then swore under his breath. “Very well,” he muttered. “We visit Sally Evans, but that is all. Fifteen minutes in her cottage and then it's back to the Abbey.”

Ellie nodded.

Charles swore again, trying not to dwell on the fact that his body had not yet resumed its normal relaxed state. It was going to be a most uncomfortable afternoon.