“When I was still in the nursery, I heard my nurse talking to one of the maids who was about to be married. I wasn’t supposed to be listening, but I was. And my nurse told her that if she wanted to … to enchant her husband, she should sometimes neglect to put on her undergarments.”

Her voice dropped even lower. “So this morning, well, you probably don’t remember it, but in the middle of the night you were caressing me. You were asleep,” she added hastily. “Anyway, this morning I thought I would neglect my drawers, but then of course Simone was dressing me and I couldn’t not put them on.”

Patrick was painfully aware of Sophie’s soft lips moving over his chest, punctuating her breathless words with kisses, her breath tickling his hair.

“So I waited until she went downstairs,” Sophie continued, “and then I took my drawers off and I folded them exactly as she does, and I replaced them in the drawer. So that she wouldn’t know,” Sophie added reasonably. “But during luncheon I remembered that Simone almost always undresses me at night, and what would she think if I had somehow lost my drawers?”

Patrick felt a rush of feeling wash down his spine, a glorious relaxation of tension. This was his own silly Sophie. She was French enough to wear drawers in the first place—they were still considered fast by many Englishwomen—but she was English enough to quail at her maid’s reaction if she left them off.

“So,” Sophie’s voice was very breathless now, “so I came in to see what you were doing—”

Her voice broke off as Patrick pulled her sweet bottom up toward him, her legs instinctively going around his hips. He walked in three huge strides to the divan and put her down, going on his knees next to his startled wife. A soundless joy had grasped him, a yearning, delicious longing for possession of his wife’s body.

“Patrick!”

Patrick didn’t answer, just looked down at Sophie, his devil-black eyes laughing. Then he swooped down and pressed each eye closed with a kiss, at the same time as his hand pushed her gown up to her waist.

She was swollen, sweetly soft, softer than anything he’d ever felt before, and every touch of his was met by a gasping, pleading breath. Patrick grinned, deliberately taming the raging fire that threatened to take over his body. His lady wife waltzed in here without drawers … he’d be damned if he’d let the moment pass too quickly.

He turned the key in the door, and wrenched off his clothing. Then he eased his weight on top of Sophie, but that was all … he teased her, and teased her, enjoying the whimpering cries, and then the moment when her eyes snapped open and she said fiercely, “Patrick!”