“Demonstrate what?” he asked, shifting slightly, reaching beneath himself until he extracted a brick from the small of his back. “Vyvyan La Who?”

She eyed him. He was so large, he didn’t look particularly comfortable crammed into the bottom of the carriage. “Blue. Sit up.”

“What?”

“Sit up.” She slid down his legs as he propped himself up, his back reclined against the wall of the carriage. She reached for the buttons on his trousers.

“Charlotte!”

“This is called The Alpine Shepherd Greeting The Dawn With A Song Upon His Lips. Vyvyan La Blue says if it is done correctly, you should emulate a Swiss youth calling down the mountain pastures to his sheep. Oh, my. I’d forgotten how very…imposing you are. But warm. Very, very warm. Now, let me see. If I recall the instructions correctly, I’m supposed to do this. I hope you don’t mind…”

His reply was muffled by the loud echo of the horses’ hooves as they entered a tunnel created by a building that sat atop a stone bridge over the street. As they cleared the end of the tunnel, the coachman cast a curious glance at the groom who sat next to him.

“Did you hear that, Jem?”

“’Ear what, then?” the groom answered.

The coachman peered around himself into the dark night. He shook his head and returned his attention to the horses. “Damned if it didn’t sound like someone yodeling.”

***

Charlotte sat in her husband’s bed and steamed.

She was alone.

She was frustrated.

She was furious.

After she had gone to all the trouble of seducing her husband with mouth and hands, after she had brought him such pleasure as to call up half the sheep in the county, after all that, all he had done was carry her up to her bedroom, give her a chaste kiss upon her forehead, and leave her there. He hadn’t even stayed to help her out of her dress, and now here she sat, husbandless. He was probably down in the basement working on that horrid dirty machine of his. Well, she wasn’t going to sit there and take such abuse! After she had suffered the trauma of having that old cat Lady Brindley tell everyone that her husband hadn’t even bedded her, it was time she took matters into her own hands.

He was going to make love to her, and that was simply that.

She marched out of the bedroom in nothing more than her night rail, her feet bare. Down the stairs to the first floor she went, her head high, mouth set in a determined line. She continued down to the dark kitchen, empty of all but the cook’s cat, then down further to the very lowest level of the house. She flung open the door to Dare’s workroom and pointed dramatically at him, prepared to utter such scathing words as had never before left her lips.

The intended scathe turned to dust on her tongue as Dare, shirtless, a thick lock of blond hair falling over his manly brow, turned at the squeak of the door. Her finger, still pointing, wavered, as she drank in the sight of his bare chest, glistening with perspiration in the candlelight.