Suddenly the library door opened and Patrick looked up in annoyance. The staff had strict instructions not to interrupt him during the day. But it wasn’t his secretary or an apologetic-looking footman. Instead, his wife slipped around the heavy door and closed it behind her.

Sophie walked soundlessly across the thick rug to Patrick’s desk. He looked rather startled to see her, and she almost quailed, but kept walking. She stopped next to his chair, reaching out to put her hands on his bare arm. He had taken off his cuff links and pushed up his sleeves, to avoid ink, and her fingers irresistibly curled around his muscled arm.

“Don’t you have an appointment with Braddon?” Patrick had been conscious all day that it was Thursday, and Sophie almost always spent the day with Braddon. Braddon’s day, he had taken to silently labeling it.

“I canceled it,” Sophie replied. “What work are you engaged in?” she asked.

“Just work,” Patrick answered.

Then, as she looked at him with one eyebrow delicately raised, he cast a glance at the table. “I’m looking over the loading bills from the last Russian shipment.”

“What do you do with them?” Sophie was genuinely curious. She leaned over slightly to read down the list of crabbed figures.

“What does this stand for?” A rosy-tipped finger stopped at what looked like 14.40SL.

“That’s—” Patrick squinted. “Samovars. We delivered forty—no, fourteen—samovars to a merchant in the East End who requested them.”

Sophie sighed. “How I would love to travel to Russia.”

“You would?”

Sophie’s eyes glowed. “Have you read Kotzebue’s account of his travels in Siberia?”

“No,” Patrick replied. He balanced his quill on its stand. Then he leaned back, looking speculatively at his young wife. In his experience, properly bred English ladies viewed a trip to Bath as a fearsome distance.

Sophie looked like the most proper of proper English ladies this morning. She was wearing a muslin morning gown, white, with a delicate key pattern along the hem. It was beautifully made, but neither startling nor outrageously sexual. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that Sophie seemed to have changed her style a bit since they married. Not that he was complaining. He felt a growing heat in his groin from the mere hint of pink leg visible through layers of white muslin.

Abruptly Patrick leaned forward, interrupting Sophie’s enthusiastic description of Mr. Kotzebue’s adventures. He picked up his wife and effortlessly deposited her on his lap.

Sophie giggled but showed no inclination to jump off his legs. Instead she looked up at him, her eyes darkening to a violet blue that Patrick considered a very good sign indeed. He lowered his head, ruthlessly capturing her cherry-sweet lips before she had a chance to protest.