Quill’s lust had been replaced by a healthy dose of rage. “Let me understand this correctly,” he said slowly. “Your father allowed you no companions except his feeble-minded nephew. He exiled people from the village on the slightest whim, not allowing them to take their possessions with them.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“I’m sorry, Gabby, but men like your father are the reason I sold my East India stock. There are too many Englishmen over in India living like little kings, answerable to no one. Bastards, all of them.”

He cupped his wife’s chin with his hand. “Gabby?”

Tears were glinting in her beautiful eyes. Quill kissed them shut. “We need to speak—rationally.” There was only a hint of a smile in his voice. “Your father sounds like a small-minded scoundrel.

“Open your eyes, Gabby. I would make love to you on the banks of the Ganges River,” he said, his voice a ragged whisper. “I would make love to you on the banks of the Humber River, out in the back gardens, for that matter. In fact, I probably will before our lives are over. I would do it in broad daylight, with an audience of Codswallop and the rest of the staff, if I had to.”

Gabby opened her mouth and he touched it with a finger. “All right, I would rather not have Codswallop in my near vicinity. He’s a dreary-looking sort and not conducive to lovemaking. But my point, Gabby, is that God would only celebrate us for making love—no matter where we were, in light or darkness, under the sheets, or on a muddy riverbank. Your father’s idea of sin was narrow-minded and loutish.”

Gabby smiled crookedly. “You sound like Sudhakar.”

“The Brahman?”

She nodded. “He played chess with my father every Thursday night. And we used to converse if my father was late, which he often was.”

“He spoke frankly,” Quill said, rather stunned.

“Sudhakar is a Brahman. To him, Father is of a lower caste…a lower race. But he liked me.” She bit her lip.

Quill let his hand run cautiously down his wife’s back. “Gabby, will you make love to me now? We are not on the banks of a river. The viscountess’s bedchamber has witnessed the conception of many Dewlands, and there is no place on earth more appropriate to consummate this marriage.” He kissed her ear in a delicate caress that sent heat to the back of her knees.

Gabby cleared her throat. “I should like to know what you are going to do to me.”

Quill chuckled and bent to kiss her again, but she pushed him away and stood up. “I’m not funning! I want to know about the pain.”

“Have you been worrying?”