“I want you,” she said. “I’d never thought to desire a man again, but I desire you.”

“I am not a box of French chocolates, Matilda,” he murmured near her ear. “I am a fellow with many faults, a few dreams, and a vast regard for you.”

“I want to know those dreams.”

He stroked her hair, the loveliest caress imaginable. “I want to share my dreams with you, and join my dreams to yours, and hatch up new ones together. I want to lie beside you on a summer day and watch the clouds form into dragons and roses over our heads. I want to see you dream by moonlight and waken to the joy of your embrace on a chilly winter morning.”

Oh, ye flights of angels. Those were the words a very young Matilda had needed to hear from her fumbling soldier boy. The words she’d hoped to have from her husband.

Standing in the circle of Tremont’s arms, Matilda felt a tide of compassion for her younger self. That lonely, frustrated girl at the vicarage had been desperate for the attentions of any man who looked at her twice, who saw her as a person in her own right. To be seen mattered—the girl in the vicarage hadn’t been entirely wrong—but she should have been watching for the man who had a good opinion of himself, too, not the blustering poseurs and confidence tricksters.

And yet, in that small village, in her father’s household, she would have waited a lifetime for any man who could come close to Tremont’s self-possession and perspicacity. Her father would have seen to that, and Matilda would have been none the wiser.

We do the best we can, Mrs. Merridew, and one cannot control the results. Tremont had said that, and he’d been right.

“You shall court me,” Matilda said, “and be discreet about it.”

Tremont’s hand on her hair paused, then resumed its caresses. “I won’t say anything to Tommie or the men, if that’s what you mean. I will meet with my solicitors, though.”

“You can think of solicitors at a time like this?” Matilda’s awareness was focused on how well their bodies fit together, how lovely the warmth of the fire was, and how wrong she’d been about so many things.

To be wrong was sometimes the greatest relief in the world.

“Certain dreams,” Tremont said, “only come true if all the documents are in order. Your settlements will include a provision for Tommie, of course, and if there’s anybody else who needs looking after—your father’s housekeeper, your widowed auntie?—then you must let me know.”

Tremont was a peer of the realm, a man born to wealth and privilege, the very sort of person whom the satirists loved to lampoon. He was also a greater repository of decency and kindness than Matilda’s ordained father had ever been.