Rex paraded around in the altogether because a quantity of cold air was one sure way to take the edge off his passion. Nothing would entirely defeat nascent desire when Eleanora Hatfield, now swaddled in exactly one layer of soft white cotton, had given him permission to become her lover.

But this occasion was more than a casual coupling.

He dithered at the hearth, arranging coals, trying to assemble an erotic strategy, because his objective was more than a few minutes of shared pleasure. He wanted to be with Eleanora well beyond a stolen interlude and even past the duration of a discreet liaison.

Rex’s conviction in this regard had been building since the moment she had first bickered with him over the privilege of holding her chair. To her, he was not a lofty aristocrat owed deference as a result of an accident of birth.

Her esteem was earned, her favors given or withheld based on her honest regard.

This was not, of course, how it should be. A duke did not fall in love with anybody excepting perhaps himself. He might humor an infatuation with this or that temporary partner. Affection for a lady was within permissible bounds, and he owed his duchess proper respect.

A duke did not become attached to a party far beneath his station.

Except…he did. British history was rife with examples of mésalliances between the blue-blooded and the common, and whatever Eleanora’s antecedents were, she herself was unassailably decent. She was also nestled amid the quilts like a contented cat, while Rex wasted precious moments deciding between lovemaking and proposing.

“Are you joining me under these covers or pondering the fate of the realm?” she asked, tossing a pillow to the foot of the bed.

A little of both. Rex fished in the pockets of the breeches he’d draped over the back of the reading chair and found a wrinkled handkerchief.

“Stay right where you are,” he said, putting the linen onto the bedside table and pouring a glass of water from the carafe on the windowsill. “I’m plotting my course.”

“I will plot your course, lest you catch your death. You climb into bed, we make passionate love, then we fall asleep on a cloud of contentment. You will not apply your cold feet to my person at any time, and you will discreetly take yourself off in the small hours, lest there be awkwardness in the morning for the chambermaid.”

He sauntered to the bed. “I like the part about passionate lovemaking and the clouds of contentment. I’m increasingly displeased with that nightgown.” Though if he was about to propose, she might rather be wearing at least one article of clothing when he did.

“Too bad, Elsmore, because you won’t get it off me until the candles are blown out.”