GABBY BIT HER LIP. Was he going to consummate their marriage right now? It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Of course, Quill had kissed her on the library rug when it was only eight in the morning. She felt a prickly flush rising up the back of her neck.

Likely he was. She had heard maids talk of newly wedded husbands. Husbands who didn’t let their wives out of bed for three days after the marriage. Husbands who couldn’t keep their hands from their brides, even during the ceremony…. Gabby had always listened with fascination.

She stood still, watching as her husband sent Margaret away. Her skin woke up, all over her body, and spoke to her about Quill’s fingers and where they would linger, about his lips and slow kisses.

In fact, Quill had no such intention when he entered the room.

He had in mind a sensible conversation with his wife. He would instruct her, plainly and simply, about the parameters of their marriage. He would inform Gabby that consummation would have to wait until after the funeral. He could not risk missing the ceremony because he was reduced to a pain-ridden husk, lying in a darkened room with a wet cloth over his eyes.

It was too late for her to back out, Quill had told himself all the way down the inn corridor. She’d done it: married him. Promised to obey him. Perhaps he’d consummate the marriage in a month or so. When they were back in London. After his father was—he shied away from that thought. He had never been close to Thurlow, and they had grown quite distant in the years since the accident, given his father’s inability to hide his shame at having a crippled heir, let alone an heir who dabbled in commerce and other ungentlemanly business pursuits. But Thurlow had been his father. There was a hot feeling at the back of Quill’s eyes that stiffened his backbone.

The important thing was to begin the marriage as they meant to go on. He would tolerate a certain amount of nonsense on Gabby’s part—talk of love and such—but only a reasonable amount. And he himself wasn’t going to indulge her by telling more lies about being in love. She was his now, and there was no further reason to perjure himself. Honesty had always served him best.

And yet for all that, for all his arrogant decisions and composure, Quill felt like a drowning man when he walked into Gabby’s bedchamber. Because she was wearing nothing, his wife. Naught more than a scrap of delicate cotton.