“If you were trapped in France, darling, I would ask my closest friend. If Patrick were not in England, I would ask Lucien. I would never hire someone I didn’t know. Lucien lost both his brothers to the guillotine, so he has to ask me. But even so, he didn’t ask me face-to-face. He left me a way out by asking me on paper. But it wouldn’t be right, Charlotte. I couldn’t live with myself afterward. What if we heard in a month or two that the girl had been imprisoned? Until now Lucien didn’t even know she had survived at all.”

There was a little silence. Then Charlotte resignedly turned about and reached out her hand to ring for Maria. It was time for bed. Alex had to leave at five in the morning, and that was a mere three hours away.

She looked up at her husband. He was looking at her with an imploring hunger that made her heart turn over. Well, she had broken every other rule that governed a lady’s marital relations. Odd that while she blithely broke the most sacred rules regulating the conduct of a lady, Alex was risking his life to keep to the rules of being a gentleman, Charlotte thought wryly. But her flux seemed to be unusually light anyway, so there would be nothing embarrassing about it.

And she wanted to, she realized. She wanted to as much as he did.

“Will you act as my maid, my lord?” she asked, dropping her hand from the bell cord.

Alex took her delicate face in his large hands, kissing her sweet mouth. “I don’t deserve you,” he said. “I don’t deserve you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s arms slipped slowly from his shoulders, down his back and rested on his buttocks. Alex’s body went absolutely rigid. His wife was slowly learning to be bold, but she was only just learning how much her touch inflamed him. Charlotte splayed her fingers and pulled her husband’s large, powerful body against hers.

“Just in case you don’t come back,” she whispered achingly, “I am going to memorize your body tonight.”

His hands shaking with a potent combination of lust and tenderness, Alex turned Charlotte around and started unbuttoning her gown. Pearls, yanked from their moorings, skittered across the floor with the sound of scampering mouse feet. As Alex unbuttoned, he kissed, and as he kissed, he moved lower and lower until he was on his knees. He turned his wife around again and simply pulled her gown forward and down until it draped low on her creamy stomach. Then Alex wrapped his arms around Charlotte, resting his face against her soft skin.

“I thought you were pregnant,” he said. “When I get back, I am going to make love to you every night and every afternoon until your waist grows so large that I can’t get my arms all the way around you.”