She assisted and then took his sleeve buttons and cravat pin in a sequence that was at once familiar and strange. Harry’s worn, wrinkled attire bore no resemblance to the Bond Street finery Tremont wore, and Tremont was a very different specimen from Harry or the youthful Joseph.

Tremont’s broad shoulders were real, not the result of padding. That flat belly rippled with muscle, and his back could have been the model for one of Canova’s sculpted gods.

None of that mattered, Matilda told herself as she stepped out of her dress. Tremont could be the most humble specimen, thin on top, thick in the middle, and his honor, his kindness, and his decency would attract Matilda just as powerfully.

Not, of course, that she was complaining about thigh muscles that gave her the flutters, or… Matilda fixed her gaze on the painting hanging over the fireplace.

“I’ll warm the sheets,” Tremont said. “You get first crack behind the privacy screen. Help yourself to a dressing gown.”

He wore only his breeches, and Matilda was in her shift. She should have been chilly, but she wasn’t, and Tremont’s smile said he wasn’t either. Perhaps army life had knocked any modesty out of him, or perhaps he was allowing Matilda to look her fill.

That exercise would take the rest of her life. She scurried behind the privacy screen, made use of his lordship’s toothpowder, and began taking down her hair.

Chapter Ten

As Tremont ran the warmer over the sheets, he heard the little sounds of a woman at her toilette—a flannel cloth sopped in a basin, the rap of a toothbrush against porcelain. Fabric rustling… He wanted to peek and knew he must not.

Matilda was shy, and her previous experiences had been disappointing. What happened in the next hour could determine the fate of Tremont’s suit, and thus the matter required thought.

“I excel at thinking,” he muttered, giving the pillows a sound thwack. He’d been pondering this interlude—the advisability of it, how to suggest it to Matilda, how to proceed with it—since Matilda had granted him permission to court her.

And yet, rational processes yielded nothing in the way of inspiration. Tremont was fairly confident he could give Matilda pleasure—one had read about such matters, listened to fellow officers boasting, and tested theories with willing partners. When Tremont had come home from Spain, the ladies of St. Giles had also been mercilessly articulate about the particulars of their trade.

But what he wanted to give Matilda was more than pleasure, more than a sweet memory of an afternoon anticipating marriage vows they might never take. What did she need from him? What did she crave badly while refusing to acknowledge the longing even to herself?

What do I crave?