Relief showed in Charlotte’s eyes. He wasn’t going to jump on her and … penetrate her. “Oh, yes!” she said, a little too quickly.

Alex chuckled. “Would you believe me if I said that next week when I ask if you would like champagne you will toss your wineglass to the side and leap on top of me?”

“No,” Charlotte said, fascinated despite herself. Leap on top of him? What did he mean?

Alex uncorked a bottle of Dom Pérignon. He was having less trouble than he thought stamping down his raging emotions. It must be all the practice, he thought with a touch of self-mockery. Or, more likely, he just didn’t find the idea of a frightened bed partner arousing. He carried two slender glasses back to the bed.

“At some point tonight we have to toast my father,” Alex said, grinning at Charlotte. As soon as he had left her immediate vicinity, she had grown stiff and nervous again. “He laid down this champagne before he died, and what with Napoleon’s embargo we would probably have to toast each other in brandy.”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose. She had found out that the main ingredient in Keating’s headache remedy was brandy. And she still couldn’t quite reconcile the memory of her absolutely wanton behavior, sprawled over her mother’s Chinese divan, with her sense of self. She could only suppose that she had been totally inebriated.

“Now,” Alex said. “I don’t suppose you learned any drinking songs when you were in that prudish boarding school of yours, did you?”

Charlotte stared at him in fascination. “What do you mean?”

“Drinking rounds? No, of course not,” Alex said to himself.

But Charlotte wasn’t stupid. She heard a way out, and she seized it. “I would like to learn one,” she said. She sipped her champagne.

“Right,” Alex replied. He couldn’t stop grinning tonight. This had to be the craziest way to seduce one’s own bride that had ever occurred to a man before. “Now, this is one of Patrick’s favorite songs.” Alex began singing in a rich baritone. Charlotte listened, fascinated.

“Last night a dream came into my head,
Thou wert a fine white loaf of bread;
Then if May butter I could be,
How I would spread,
Oh! How I would spread my self on thee!”

Charlotte’s cheeks turned hotly pink at the end of the verse.

“Now you have to drink,” her husband prompted. Charlotte obediently sipped her champagne. “Not like that!” Alex protested. “A proper swallow, or I won’t sing the next verse!”

Charlotte giggled and took a huge swallow.