Iris’s lips parted, and he could tell she was about to say something like “Truly?” or “Do you really think so?” but then she just smiled, her cheeks flushing with pride. “Thank you,” she said softly.

He kissed her hand in reply, then gave the reins a flick.

“This is a lovely day,” she said, as they drove away from Mill Farm. “I’m having a lovely day.”

As was he. The loveliest in memory.

Chapter Fourteen

Three days later

SHE WAS FALLING in love with her husband. Iris didn’t know how it could possibly be more obvious.

Wasn’t love supposed to be confusing? Wasn’t she supposed to lie in bed, agonizing under the weight of her tortuous thoughts—Is this real? Is this love? Back in London she’d asked her cousin Sarah about it—Sarah, who was so thoroughly and obviously in love with her husband, and even she had said that she hadn’t been sure at first.

But no, Iris always had to do things her own way, and she simply woke up in the morning and thought to herself, I love him.

Or if she didn’t yet, she would soon. It was only a matter of time. Her breath caught whenever Richard walked into the room. She thought about him constantly. And he could make her laugh—oh, how he could make her laugh.

She could make him laugh, too. And when she did, her heart leapt.

The day they had visited the tenants had been magical, and she knew he’d felt it, too. He had kissed her as if she were a priceless treasure—no, she thought, not like that. That would have been cold and clinical.

Richard had kissed her as if she were light and warmth and rainbows all rolled into one. He’d kissed her as if the sun were shining down with a single beam of light, just on them, only on them.

It had been perfect.

Pure magic.

And then he hadn’t done it again.

They spent their days together, exploring Maycliffe. He gazed warmly into her eyes. He held her hand, he even kissed the tender skin of her wrist. But he never brought his lips to hers.

Did he think she would not welcome his advances? Did he think it was still too soon? How could it be too soon? They were married, for heaven’s sake. She was his wife.

And why didn’t he realize that she would be too embarrassed to ask him about it?

So she kept pretending that she thought this was normal. Lots of married couples kept to their own bedchambers. If her own parents ever slept in the same bed, she didn’t know about it.

Nor, she thought with a shudder, did she want to.