“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice as soft as the caress she pressed to his cheek. He stopped eyeing the engine long enough to glance down at her. Her eyes were shining beacons of hope, pride, and love.

“I haven’t a widgeon’s chance in hell of getting it done on time,” he warned her.

She dimpled at him. “You’ll do it.”

“It will take me time to work out what was the flaw with the boiler and design a new one, not to mention converting the spare to reflect those changes.”

“A man of your intelligence? Pooh! I’ll wager you already know what went wrong, and how to correct it.”

His lips quirked at her words. She was right, and they both knew it.

“I’ll have to work day and night on this. I won’t have time to squire you around anywhere.”

Charlotte’s gaze dropped as she neatly undid the line of buttons on his waistcoat, helping him out of it so he was in his familiar work clothes of shirt and breeches. “That shan’t be a problem, I assure you. In fact, I will give up all events so that I might stay home and be of assistance to you.”

A refusal of her services was on his lips, but one look at her glowing eyes filled with happiness kept him from speaking. He had heard the note of pride in her voice when she informed him that she and the servants would all help him; he could no more dash that adoring look in her eyes than he could have shot himself.

That act he left to his wife.

“Your help will be appreciated,” he said gravely, unable to keep from kissing the tip of her adorable nose before turning back to the engine. He’d just have to find her something harmless to do, something that would fulfill her need to help him and yet keep her from destroying anything—or worse, being destroyed herself should something again go drastically wrong.

“Nothing will go wrong this time,” she said, apparently reading his mind. “Now that you know where the flaw in the design was, you can eliminate it.”

“Mmm…” he agreed, reaching for a tool to tighten a bolt in the piston housing that had been loosened in the explosion. His mind was already filled with what needed to be done, and he was swiftly calculating how to correct for the overflow of water in the boiler when he heard the sounds of the door opening. He glanced up and smiled.

“Charlotte?”

She paused as she stepped through the doorway.

“Thank you.”

Her head tipped to the side as she considered him. “For shooting you?”

He grinned. “For showing me just what I’d be missing if you weren’t my wife.”

“Oh, that,” she said loftily, her chin raised as she sailed through the doorway. “I would have thought by now you’d realize you couldn’t live without me!”

***

“What news do you have, Crouch?” Charlotte seated herself in Gillian’s sitting room and looked expectantly at the butler standing before her. She waved him toward a blue-and-gold chair, which he took with obvious reluctance, easing his large frame into the small chair with an expression that showed he expected to crush the elegant piece of furniture into a pulp. Charlotte knew better. Her cousin, with an eye to the Black Earl’s equally large size, had had all the chairs in the house reinforced so that even those that looked delicate would hold an ox if they were so required.