She pounced on that. “The Admiralty? Why? What did we steal?” She stalked impatiently to the desk and tried to get a look at the opened scroll he’d been studying.

“Plans.”

“For what?”

He tried to ignore the heady scent of her perfume as she came closer. “Plans for a submarine,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.

Her eyes widened. “Really? Let me see.”

She placed her hands flat on the desk and leaned over to get a better look, unwittingly providing him with a magnificent view of her cleavage.

A gentleman would have politely averted his gaze, but Benedict rarely behaved like a gentleman these days. He bit back a moan and tried to forget those wonderful moments of madness in O’Meara’s library, when he’d put his mouth to those pert little mounds. He’d been so close to—

She turned the paper to study it the right way up, and her nose wrinkled in concentration. Ben leaned back in his chair and watched her.

Since the war, he’d developed a new appreciation of such simple pleasures. On the boat back from Belgium, after Waterloo, he’d made a promise to himself that he would seize as many moments of happiness as he could. He’d never take them for granted again. In a strange way, it was his memorial to all those who’d lost their lives. He owed it to them to do all the things that they could not. To enjoy life to the utmost, to taste it. To live it.

The feel of the sun on his face was all the sweeter now for having been hard-won; he’d come so close to never seeing another sunrise. He appreciated the grey drizzle, the astonishing greenness of the fields, the relentless bustling optimism of the metropolis, everyone so intent on their lives, the thrust of commerce, the urgent yells of the street vendors. He savored the first sip of his morning coffee, the yeasty taste of fresh bread.

And he savored the woman in front of him.

He’d endured months of abstinence during the war, eons without the soft touch of a female. He’d rarely accepted the dubious attentions of the camp followers; he’d feared infection more than he’d craved the momentary release, so he’d made do with his own hand and his imagination. Since his return to England, he’d spent a few evenings with women, but while they’d satisfied his physical demands, they’d left his heart and mind untouched.

But here was a beautiful, infuriating woman, in his rooms. In his life. It was springtime, a time of hope and renewal, and the world was coming alive again. He was coming alive again, as if the emotions that had been deadened during the war were being coaxed forth by her presence.