Patrick’s shoulder bumped hers, and a kiss landed on her ear. “She was very beautiful, sweetheart, but in a different way. She had your eyebrows.”

Sophie’s eyes got a little sheen of tears. She leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder as he wound his free arm about her.

“Don’t cry, Sophie,” he whispered tenderly.

Sophie looked up, and their eyes met, both touched with sorrow for the daughter they would never stop loving. In the space of a heartbeat, it was all there between them: their grief and the healing balm of love, those small threads of life that meshed them together closer than the weave of a wedding dress.

“I am very lucky to have a husband who always knows what I’m thinking.” Sophie rubbed her head against Patrick’s shoulder like a grateful cat.

Patrick grinned a bit smugly. In the three years since they married, he had learned to judge the darkening of Sophie’s eyes to an inch. Now she even frowned at him occasionally, having found that she couldn’t hide her feelings anyway.

Patrick dropped a kiss on his wife’s eyebrow. “A good wife always knows what her husband is thinking. Do you?”

“Are you thinking about breakfast?”

“No.”

Katherine burped loudly and her body relaxed back on Sophie’s arm. Rosebud lips puckered and a tiny snore sounded in the room.

Patrick sighed. “I’d better take them both back to the nursery, I suppose.” He was gone for a few moments and returned to find Sophie still awake.

He stopped for a moment and looked at his delectable wife, propped against the pillows, looking tired but beautiful.

“Have you decided what I’m thinking about?”

“Perhaps …” she said teasingly. “I know! You’re thinking about the Sophie!” Patrick’s newest ship was named after his wife.

Patrick propped himself up on one side, facing her. “The Sophie is due to dock tomorrow after her trip to China,” he said, his eyes wicked. “I am looking forward to boarding her.”

The neckline of Sophie’s lacy white night rail was still disarranged from nursing the girls. Patrick tugged it gently, exposing one of his wife’s pink-tipped breasts. She shivered as he ran his hand around the bottom of her breast and then left it there, dark strength against creamy whiteness.

“So tell me, O my love, what am I thinking?” One eyebrow sent her a seductive message.

Sophie searched his beloved face, the strong planes of his cheeks, shadowed now from waking up every night, the fierce desire in his face, the fierce love there too.

“If you are thinking about boarding the Sophie,” she said a bit shakily, moving closer to him and curling an arm around his neck, “I think she just docked.”

The master of the Sophie rolled over and captured his wife’s mouth with hungry force.