“May you what?” she asked belatedly, hoping that he meant he would take that large . . . tool of his and do what God had designed it to do.

But no.

“Kiss you again,” he said, with such a sweet expression that her lips shaped a smile without conscious thought. In one smooth movement, he moved up so his elbows were on either side of her ribs. They fell into a kiss. A different kiss than she’d ever experienced, because she had never, ever, felt a shivery excitement that tightened her chest and made her entangle her legs with his like a wanton.

Her hips couldn’t stop arching toward Hugo. His response was to kiss her more deeply, hovering over her, kissing her with the same ferocious attentiveness that he gave her breasts. As if there wasn’t something better to get to.

Finally she had to ask.

She pulled back.

“Phee?” His voice rasped, and when she put her hand on his chest, it was not heaving . . . but his heart was pounding.

“Aren’t you wishful to go on to the rest?” She couldn’t think how else to phrase it.

“No.”

“Because I haven’t agreed to marry you?”

“Yes and no.” He started dotting kisses on her face. “I’m enamored. I’m metaphorically at your feet. I don’t want to muck this up. I want to know everything about you. I could happily do nothing but kiss your breasts for hours.”

She couldn’t think what to say to that.

“Except I’d probably spend in your bedsheets,” he added, in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable.

Ophelia shook her head. “I don’t think—”

“You’re not ready for this?”

“Is that terrible? I’m sorry.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m supposed to be a merry widow, and I was feeling . . . But this is just all so new.”

He brushed his lips over hers. “Absolutely fine. Deliciously fine. You allowed me to kiss your breasts. Bloody hell, the man who wasn’t grateful for that would be dead. Why do you look so worried?”

“It’s like . . . It feels as if the maid has served tea but no biscuits,” she said, trying to explain.

“I don’t want biscuits,” Hugo said. He leaned toward her again, face intent, and kissed her precisely on the nose, on each eye. “Tea, glorious tea, is every Englishman’s delight. I never touch biscuits. Wouldn’t, even if you begged me.”

A smile curved on Ophelia’s lips despite herself. “Not even if I begged you?”

“Never.” His expression took on the stoic heroism of a British officer facing a French battalion. “Tea is enough to sustain me forever.”

“Huh.” Ophelia’s mind slipped away again, into a memory of her marriage—but she pushed that away. No thinking of Peter here, in bed.