“I can trust you,” Matilda said slowly. “I truly can trust you.”

“If you can’t, then you are to give me my congé on the instant, madam.”

She peered up at him. “Is that an order?”

“An emphatic suggestion. Without trust, what is a marriage? What is a friendship, for that matter?”

To him, those were not philosophical abstractions, while to Matilda, this embrace was not simply a passing hug. She stepped back nonetheless, because the notion of locking the door and proceeding with a particular aspect of the courtship would not leave her imagination.

“Whom do you trust?” Matilda asked, resuming her seat on the sofa.

“Most everybody to a certain extent, until they prove my trust is misplaced.” He remained by the fire, a handsome fellow in a room suited to his consequence. He was also a good man who wanted to share his future with her.

“I will need time,” she said, “to become comfortable with your trusting nature. My own nature is not trusting. Please do sit with me. Kissing you seems to have worked up an appetite.” Several appetites. For him, for a future with him, and yes, for some of this good food too.

“Help yourself. I’ll sit in a moment.”

Whyever… oh. He needed to compose himself. What a jolly thought. Matilda retrieved her plate of sustenance from the low table and fell to, while Tremont stood before the fire and looked thoughtful.

Matilda made a graceful picture on the sofa, all tidy and self-possessed, while Tremont’s world—and his body—were in riot.

Kissing Matilda had been a shocking, delightful revelation.

One could not spend time in the army without gaining a thorough education in the mechanics of copulation. Even the officers had been prone to discussing such matters with a frankness that ricocheted between clinical and coarse. The occasional brave soul had waxed sentimental about his amours, and the even rarer, usually semi-drunken fellow had wistfully yearned for his dearest lady.

None of it had made any sense to Tremont. He’d indulged in a few careful encounters, and then a few more, and finally decided that he was not temperamentally suited to frolicking.

“What on earth are you musing on now?” Matilda asked, munching on a tea cake.

“I thought I lacked some fundamental masculine quality.”

She demolished the cake and dusted her hands. “I beg your pardon?”

Tremont longed to take her in his arms again, and he longed to close his eyes and let his thoughts wander where they would, down one splendid path after another.