With a bit of a grunt she yanked the sheet free so that she could wrap herself with it. She didn’t know why she felt this strange compulsion to know the time, but she certainly wasn’t going to get her answer staring at a tiny triangle of window peeping out from behind her disheveled curtains.

Tripping over the edge of the sheet, she stumbled to the window and peered out. The moon shone brightly, not quite full, but round enough to lend the air a pearly glow. It was definitely well past dusk. How long had she been asleep?

“I wasn’t even tired,” she muttered.

She wrapped the sheet more tightly around her, grimacing when she realized how difficult she’d made it to walk. But she didn’t rewrap herself—that would have been far too sensible. Instead she hopped and jumped herself over to her mantel clock. She gave it a little turn so that it better faced the moonlit window. Almost half nine. So that meant she’d been asleep . . . what . . . three hours? Four?

To know precisely would mean she knew how long she’d spent with Richard, doing . . .

That.

She shivered. She wasn’t the least bit cold, but she shivered.

She needed to get dressed. She needed to get dressed, and get some food, and—

The door opened.

Iris shrieked.

So did the housemaid in the doorway.

But only one of them was wrapped like a mummy, and Iris’s lurch of surprise landed her in a heap on the floor.

“Oh, my lady!” the housemaid cried. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She rushed over, thrust her hand out, then pulled it back, clearly unsure of the proper behavior when faced with a nearly naked baronet’s wife on floor.

Iris almost asked for help, then decided against it. Arranging herself with as much poise as she could manage, she looked up at the maid and tried to school her features into a coolly dignified expression.

In her head, at that moment, she rather thought she resembled her mother.

“Yes?” she intoned.

“Ehrm . . .” The maid—who looked supremely uncomfortable, there really was no other way to describe it—bobbed an awkward curtsy. “Sir Richard was wondering if you wished to take supper in your room.”

Iris gave a regal nod. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

“Have you any preference?” the maid asked. “Cook made fish, but if that is not to your choosing, she can make something else. She told me to tell you that.”

“Whatever Sir Richard has chosen,” Iris said. He would have eaten over an hour earlier; she did not wish to force the kitchen staff back to their ovens to cater to her whims.

“Right away, then, my lady.” The maid curtsied again and practically ran from the room.