Gwen MacKeltar, former pre-eminent theoretical physicist, now wife and expectant mother, sighed dreamily, leaning back in the bathtub against her husband’s hard chest. She was between his muscular thighs, with his strong arms around her, soaking in warm bubbly water and deliriously content.

Poor man, she thought, smiling. In her second trimester, she’d nearly punched him if he’d tried to touch her. Now, in her third, she was inclined to punch him if he didn’t touch her. Frequently and exactly how she wanted. Her hormones were all over the place and the darned things just wouldn’t function according to any equation she’d been able to compute.

But Drustan appeared to have forgiven her for the last few months, after the marathon sessions they’d been having. And not only didn’t he seem to care that she was hopelessly fat, he’d happily devoted himself to finding new and unusual ways to make love that compensated for her physical changes. The tub was one of Gwen’s favorites.

Hence, there she was at seven o’clock in the evening, with dozens of candles scattered about the bathroom, and her husband’s strong arms around her, when the doorbell chimed downstairs.

Drustan dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck. “Are we expecting someone?” he asked, the small kiss turning into delicious nibbles.

“Mmm. Not that I know of.”

Farley would get the door. Farley, properly christened Ian Llewelyn McFarley, was their butler and every time Gwen thought of him her heart went all soft. The man had to be eighty if a day, with bristly white hair and a tall, bowed frame. He lied about his age, and everything else, and she adored him.

What made her heart go really soft was that Drustan also had a tender spot for the old geezer. He had endless patience and invited his tall tales in the evening before a fire, as butler and laird shared a wee dram.

She knew that, regardless of how well her husband had adapted to her century, part of him would always be a sixteenth-century feudal laird. When they’d first moved into their new home—instead of doing what a normal twenty-first century person would have done, and taken an ad out in the paper for staff or contacted an employment agency—Drustan had gone to Alborath and dropped word in the local grocery and barber shop.

Within two hours, Farley had appeared on their doorstep claiming to have “buttled in some of the finest homes in England” (the man had never been out of Scotland), and further claimed he could arrange the entire staffing of their castle.