“Oh, this is impossible!” Madeleine cried in a passion, pounding her fists against Gracie’s back. Gracie snorted in surprise and turned her head to see what was happening. Then she backstepped a bit to get away from the annoying sensation. Braddon almost groaned as Gracie pushed his body even more firmly against Madeleine’s.

“What are you doing?”

She sounds really furious now, Braddon thought muzzily.

“Get away from me! I can feel you … you … you reprobate!”

In response, Braddon wound his arms around her. “I love you, Maddie,” he said, his voice husky. “I love you. I want you. Please, darling, do this for me so that we can be married.”

“No,” she said stubbornly, edging her hips away. Braddon was pressed against her in an utterly inappropriate fashion.

“Then I’ll marry you anyway,” he said with quiet determination. “It doesn’t matter to me, Maddie. I’ll marry you and we’ll go live in Scotland—or in America. I don’t care, as long as I’m with you.”

Madeleine gasped. “You can’t mean it. You’re an earl. You would be cast out.”

He tightened his arms around her. “I mean it,” he said. He rubbed his cheek against her sweet-smelling hair. “I won’t marry anyone but you, and if you don’t wish to pretend to be a French aristocrat, then I shall marry you as you are.”

“Your family will never speak to you again!” Madeleine was horrified.

“I never liked my family much,” he said without hesitation.

“Your mother!”

Braddon sounded happy now. “I won’t miss her.”

“No, no, no,” Madeleine cried, her French accent thickening. “I cannot allow you to make such a sacrifice.”

“No sacrifice,” he muttered. She seemed to not have noticed that he was holding her so tightly that he could feel every curve of her body. “Nothing to worry about, Maddie. Our son will still inherit the title.”

“But … but he’ll be an outcast!”

Braddon shrugged. “Perhaps by then the ton will have forgotten. Anyway, who cares? There’s aeons of time between then and now.”

Madeleine frowned. Her practical French soul was incapable of dismissing the future the way Braddon could. Go live in America? Was he crazed? Everyone knew that America was a vast wilderness, inhabited only by criminals and savage Indians. Rousseau was all very well in the pages of a book, but she doubted that American sauvages innocently longed to do nothing but good.

“No,” she said. “If there is a chance that our son could be born with the approval of society, then we must try to do that. Even if it involves lies, and learning how to be a lady.”

Braddon responded by capturing her mouth and muttering love words against her lips. But just when he was sinking mindlessly into the kiss, Madeleine erupted into speech again.

“Oh no! We forgot my papa! He will never agree to your wild scheme.”