‘No separate bedrooms any more, thank goodness. If you knew how hard it was in Brighton to get to sleep with you so close,’ he murmured with a wicked grin as he threw back the door of the bedroom.

She stopped dead in the doorway, gaping at the gigantic bed, with its drifting lace curtain suspended from a circular crown of gilded wood on the wall above. ‘It looks like Sleeping Beauty’s bedroom,’ she said without thinking, then jumped in shock as his arms came round her from behind.

‘Well, you’re certainly very beautiful, but I don’t intend us to do much sleeping tonight,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘And you’re going to have to get used to me touching you from now on, Mrs Saunders. Or are you still nervous?’

She tried to relax in his arms, but couldn’t. ‘I’m sorry. I am a bit nervous. It’s been a wearing day and there’s still the evening to get through. You’d better tell me exactly who’s coming.’

‘I don’t think you’d remember. I’d better confess now that I’ve invited more people than I had originally intended to join us in our celebrations tonight. Some business acquaintances, the rest of my relatives and a few people I knew at university.’

Dismay took her voice away for a moment, then she said faintly, ‘I thought it was just going to be your close family and one or two old friends.’

‘It was, until I realised how that would look. It’d look bad if I didn’t do something to mark the occasion, and I didn’t want to give anyone cause for gossiping about you, or our sudden marriage. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not.’ But she did mind. She was rather nervous of entering his world of affluence, had hoped to postpone it for a while.

A big yawn suddenly prevented him from speaking. ‘Look, it’s not romantic, but would you mind if I took a short nap? I’m getting too old to go without sleep.’ He looked at her shrewdly. He wasn’t too old to want to take her to bed this minute, but he knew without being told that she’d be grossly embarrassed to make love, then go down and socialise. He was, he thought, learning to understand her. As much as one person ever understood another.

‘Thirty-three isn’t old,’ she protested.

‘It feels old at the moment.’ He started to remove his trousers, yawning again.

‘I think I’ll slip out of this dress and put on a dressing gown.’ If you could call that froth of black lace Louisa had bought for her as a wedding present a dressing gown. ‘I’ll sit in the other room and have a read while you sleep.’

She changed hurriedly, made nervous by the bare muscular legs padding around the bedroom, but he made no attempt to touch her.