“I won’t walk through the wedding arch with you,” she said.“The arch is traditionally used by grooms with reluctant brides, for the arch is tall enough for a man with his woman on his shoulder.”As they reached the door, he bent and put his shoulder in her stomach. As if she were a sack of potatoes, he swung her up and over. Amy shrieked and gave his back a good hard thump.He dropped her down until her rear sat uppermost on his shoulder and her head dangled almost to his trousers, and kept walking. “Miss Victorine!” she shouted.“I’ll come as fast as I can, dears!” Miss Victorine called from the doorway. “Shame on you for appealing to an old lady for rescue.”

“I have never seen an unclad male form in my life, and I haven’t suffered for the lack.”“By an extraordinary coincidence, I haven’t seen an unclad male form in my life, either. I’d say it’s time to remedy the situation.” Tugging his shirt open, Amy peered down at his chest.“We can’t look at him when he’s unconscious! It’s . . . it’s immoral.” Miss Victorine fanned herself with her handkerchief.Coal watched the white cotton as if contemplating if it would shred.“Dear Miss Victorine, we abducted him from his own estate. I hardly think sneaking a peek at his chest compares.” Letting his shirt drop back, Amy added, “Besides, we looked at his face.”“That’s different.” Miss Victorine leaned closer. “What color is it?”“What color is what?” Amy teased.“You know. The hair on his body.”Amy flashed her a grin. “Red.”“Appropriate,” Miss Victorine said crisply.“Why do you say that?”“You’re gazing upon the gateway to hell.”“I don’t think I looked that far,” Amy said reflectively.”

“Let her go or I’ll shoot you.”“I’ve never met a woman who’d have the guts to shoot a man,” he sneered. All the women he knew were too kind. Too gentle.“I have the guts,” the girl said. “Better yet, I want to shoot you.”That shook him. The words, and the tone, a kind of flat, plain aversion the like of which he’d never met in all of his privileged life. What had he ever done to deserve this girl’s contempt? And why did he even care? “Which part of me will you shoot?” he mocked. “All that’s showing is my head—and you can’t be that good with a gun.”“I am,” the girl said. “On the count of three, I’ll shoot. One . . .”“You’d take the chance of hurting Miss Victorine?” he asked.“I won’t hurt her. Two . . .”“Amy, please, let him go!” Miss Victorine begged. “He was such a sweet boy.”“Three.” Amy’s eyes narrowed. Her finger began to squeeze the trigger.And he released Miss Victorine, spinning her away from him and into a cabinet.She landed with a thud and fell. The pistol roared.He dived to the floor.A shot whistled past the place where his head had been.“Damn, that was close. Good thing you surrendered, my lord!”“Don’t swear, dear, it’s not ladylike.”

“Jermyn saw Amy strolling toward him, a seductive roll to her hips, discarding her clothing as she walked. She was smiling, teasing him as she stepped out of her petticoats and stood clad in her sheer chemise. Her nipples showed through the cream silk, puckered with desire for him—”Amy’s disagreeable tone shredded his fantasy. “My lord, you have been staring at the chessboard for a full five minutes. Would you like me to make your move for you?”He jumped like a lad with his fingers caught in the jam pot. The rickety chair beneath him groaned.“Now, Amy, you must be patient with His Lordship,” Miss Victorine chided. “He’s spent the day manacled by his ankle and he’s ready to snarl like a lion.”“More like a small, ill-tempered badger,” Amy muttered.Jermyn looked across the long length of the table at her. He sat on one end, she sat on the other. She wore the most contrary expression, and her eyes sparkled with irritation. She made it most difficult to indulge in a dream about her.”

“She glanced over her shoulder at him. “So until the wedding ceremony in your chapel, we’ll be chaste?”Her smile flirted and taunted, and he marveled at how quickly Amy had learned to entice. “There is an advantage with living in a building that was once an abbey.”“What is that, Jermyn?” She pulled on her tattered gloves.Biggers moaned softly. “The place is riddled with secret passages,” Jermyn told her.“But my lord! You’re not suggesting you’ll visit my bedchamber for a tryst?” She fluttered her eyelashes and tried to look shocked.With a straight face, he replied, “Absolutely not! You’ve already proved your skill at sneaking into my bedchamber, so I thought you would come to mine.”She burst into laughter, a full-bodied peal or merriment. Taking his arm, she scolded, “Layabout!”“Only with you, my bride, only with you.”

“Amy tossed in her bed, then froze as she heard Northcliff’s voice in her head. Do you know that when you rise in the morning, I hear your footsteps over my head? I imagine you slipping out of a worn nightgown, your body gleaming pale and sweet, and donning one of your ghastly gowns. At night, the floorboards creak as you ready yourself for bed, and I imagine you undressing. And all night long, every time you turn over in your virgin bed, I hear you. You have me imprisoned, but I am watching you.A shiver ran up her spine at the memory of Northcliff’s words, but it wasn’t fear. It was desire. She wanted to rise from her bed and go to him. She wanted to see him. Not just his face or the expanse of his chest, but all of him. Because while he said he had been imagining her, she had also been imagining him. In a motion so slow and cautious her ancient straw-stuffed mattress made no noise, Amy sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees.Northcliff was awake below. She knew it; she could feel his unswerving attention, the waves of his will beckoning her to him.”

“And you’re prickly enough about being young.”She was amusing him. “More than ever, I feel as if I’ve robbed the cradle.”But she knew how to puncture his mirth. “You are very old,” she agreed demurely.He pushed her backward onto the grass.She laughed and fought him. Within minutes he had her arms trapped over her head, and he kissed her while the world whirled around them. “I win!” he said against her lips.“Only because you used brute force.”“It’s better than drugs in a glass of wine,” he retorted.“You would think so, since you hold the brute force.”He grinned down at her. “But I did win.”“Yes, yes, you won.” She dismissed his boasting as if it were of no consequence. “Are you ever going to forget that stupid manacle?”“No, I think I’ll be bringing it up at inconvenient moments for the rest of our lives.”At his ill-thought-out words, they both froze, their eyes wide with shock. The rest of their lives?Their gazes shifted away from each other.”