“At breakfast! You will do no such thing! You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Quill. She’ll smell a rat in a moment.”

Quill paused and gave his brother a look of polite inquiry. “Why?”

“Because no one—not even Patrick Foakes—could fix an interest at the breakfast table!”

Quill had an enlivening conviction that he himself would happily brush aside the coddled eggs and make love to Gabby on the table itself, but there was no reason to elaborate the point.

“You must wait until after supper,” Peter declared. “We shall have to serve champagne, lots of champagne. Wait until she’s properly muddled, Quill. That way Gabby won’t be in a position to think rationally about what you’re saying.”

“I think Gabby should be sober when I ask her to marry me,” Quill suggested mildly.

“No. If she’s not drunk, she’ll never fall for the idea that you’re in love.” Peter said it with total conviction. “Once she’s half-seas over, you can launch your story, and perhaps she’ll believe you.”

“Hmmm,” Quill said. He opened the door to the hallway.

“Quill!” Peter’s voice was shrill with urgency.

“I shall take your suggestion into advisement,” Quill replied gravely.

He had no intention of making Gabby dizzy with drink before asking her to marry him. As he had said, Gabby was a romantic. He had the shrewd idea that she had talked herself into falling in love with Peter, and she could just as easily talk herself into falling in love with him. Anyway, telling her barefaced lies about being in love was bad enough; he didn’t want to compound his sins by drinking his future bride under the table.

It had been a long night. His leg was throbbing now, and he had a perceptible limp as he climbed the stairs.

Still, as he passed the door to the Blue Room, Quill only barely stopped himself from turning the door handle and walking in. Into Gabby’s bedchamber. The bedchamber where he would be master in just a few months. Quill shook himself like a dog emerging from a puddle. He could wait.

It wasn’t until six in the morning that Quill came to a realization: His assumption that he would be able to wait for three months before entering Gabby’s bedchamber was dangerously shaky.

Part of the problem was that moment when his coat had fallen from Gabby’s shoulders and he had swept his hands down her back. Down that beautiful, smooth, naked stretch of skin. He had brought his hands in a slow and dreamy dance around to her front. And only then had Quill allowed himself to draw back from Gabby’s lips and look at what he held.