Soft hair, thick, springy, clean. Harry had been going thin on top, and Joseph had used pomade.

Somewhere between caressing Tremont’s chest and kissing him back, Matilda stopped comparing him to that pair of dolts and began to savor Tremont’s version of intimacies. He was thorough and relaxed. Knew what he was about, did Lord Tremont, and while Matilda sensed confidence in him, she would not have said he was controlling the encounter.

She hauled him nearer and took a taste of him. He waited, lip to lip, and she repeated the invitation. Only then did the kiss deepen. Only then did Tremont gather her close enough that the fit of their bodies revealed the effect their kisses had on him.

We could lock the door. Matilda wasn’t willing to give up the luscious kissing to say the words aloud. Tremont in the midst of his amatory investigations was a prodigiously compelling experience. He caressed her back, slow sweeps of his hand touching all the places Matilda could not touch herself. He held her with a combination of security and caring that filled a well of unacknowledged need in Matilda’s heart.

He joined his mouth to hers, at times playfully, at times boldly, but all the while somehow respectfully. Matilda could pull him down atop her on the couch, but she would not be tossed there without warning and told to hike up her skirts for a bit of frolic while the baby fussed in the next room.

Not ever again, because Harry was dead. Matilda felt a new sense of relief, as if Tremont’s proposal, his desire for her, and hers for him, somehow put Harry’s ghost to rest once and for all.

“I want more.” She whispered the words against Tremont’s mouth. “I want more from you.” And from life, apparently.

Tremont collected her in his arms and cradled her head against his chest. “I rejoice to hear it.”

He wasn’t rushing to lock the door or pull the curtains, but his heart wasn’t exactly napping either. Matilda reveled in his embrace, in the warmth and scent of him, and in the certain knowledge the Tremont had more to say.

“Shall I court you, Matilda?”

Had he not kissed her, she might have refused his request. She might have mistaken restraint and respect for a lack or absence of passion. She might have disdained his suit, attributing to him a certain laziness when it came to finding a bride. She knew better. Tremont was constitutionally incapable of laziness in any matter of import.

She grasped—now—that a man who made intimacies a mutual exploration was a better bet than one who spouted passionate declarations while fumbling beneath her skirts, or thought himself manly for rutting on his exhausted wife.

His lordship would not be content until Matilda had experienced how a man acquitted himself very well indeed in bed with his lover.