“An understanding,” Quill echoed. He felt as if she had dealt him three or four sharp blows to the stomach. “Gabby, do you always say precisely what you are thinking?”

“No,” Gabby replied meditatively. “In fact, although I admit this only because you are my husband, I have quite a reputation for telling fibs back home.”

“You can lie to whomever you want as long as you don’t lie to me,” Quill said, tightening his arms around her rather fiercely. “And this is home.”

“Mmmm,” his wife replied, rubbing her head against his shoulder like a lazy cat. “Not yet, it isn’t.”

“What would make it home?”

She lifted her head and looked up at him.

A delirious shot of heat went down his backbone at the look in her eyes. Quill sighed. “All right,” he said, shifting her weight slightly to avoid a potential injury. “What sort of an understanding do we need? I warn you, Gabby. If you make me wait even one more day, there’s no telling what the consequences might be.”

“All I am suggesting is that we proceed with caution,” Gabby said. She started ticking off her fingers. “We know that kissing doesn’t give you a headache.”

“True,” Quill muttered, suiting action to word by kissing the top of her head.

“And we know that caressing my chest doesn’t give you a headache. Well, what does?” She looked at him expectantly. “Because if we knew precisely what the action was, we could simply avoid it.”

Quill was nonplussed. “Gabby,” he said slowly, “how much do you understand about conjugal intercourse?”

“Almost nothing,” Gabby said promptly. Then she blushed. “I know that you are going to look at me. Will that give you a headache?”

“Never.” Quill had been seized by an odd trembling sensation, almost as if a joyous laugh was trapped in his bones and couldn’t get out.

Gabby was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “What did you expect? As I’ve already explained, my mother died when I was born. And the servants in my father’s house were most punctilious in their conversation. My father is particularly fierce about female concupiscence.”

“Female concupiscence. Why not the male version, or plain old English lust?”

“Women are the devil’s handiwork,” Gabby remarked. “They exist primarily to drive men into sin.”

Quill looked at her sharply and was relieved to see a slight smile on her face. “You’re a good exemplar,” he said, his hands irresistibly slipping under her arms to the front of her gown. “You can drive me into sin any day, Gabby.”

“I thought so,” she said happily. “My father always said that I had my mother’s sinful body and, although I never told him, naturally I thought it might be a useful inheritance.”