He wrapped her in his arms. “Ungrateful wench. You love it when I make you read Mrs. Radcliffe and dance with me in the library and try decadent desserts with each meal.”

“Except breakfast.”

“I just served you your breakfast dessert, unless you’d like to nibble on my parts? No? Well, perhaps another time.”

“You keep suggesting this. I can’t believe you’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.” He slid a hand over her breast. “Though you won’t let me nibble on you. I’m attempting to get a child on a spinster, and it’s trying, to say the least.”

He teased like this mercilessly, making Vivian wonder if all couples were so free and affectionate with each other.

“You’re trying to shock me, sir, but I need a nap, so hush and rub my back.” She rolled over, because in this at least she was in complete earnest. Sharing a bed with Darius Lindsey was exhausting.

Darius smiled and did as she ordered. As Vivian dozed off, he made a bet with himself that she’d be giving him more explicit orders long before their month was out. She was or soon would be fertile, and her natural sense of curiosity was making quick inroads on her inherent shyness.

Day by day, and night by night, she was shedding one inhibition after another. She now insisted the candles be kept burning when he made love to her; she didn’t gasp and stammer when he accosted her in the study or her own bed or the broad light of day. He’d jammed a saddle rack against the feed room door just the day before, and hiked her skirts for a little ride at midday in the chilly confines of the barn. His thighs still ached pleasantly from the exertion of thrusting at just the right height.

When Gracie tapped softly on the door, Darius quietly bid her to enter. The maid took one look at Vivian, thoroughly tousled and cuddled even in sleep against Darius’s side, and shook her head.

“You wore the poor thing out,” Gracie said, passing Darius a cup of tea. “Best be careful, Master Dare.”

“Of?”

“She’ll take a piece of you with her.”

“And leave thirty pieces of silver,” Darius replied. “Which we can use around here.” Though a child would be a piece of him—maybe the best piece.

“You know, when he’d got his silver, Judas hung himself from a tree.” Gracie poked at the logs on the hearth. “And what good will you be to any of us, swinging in the breeze that way?”

“She’s leaving, Gracie.” Darius’s hand passed gently over Vivian’s head. “She’ll be gone in two weeks, and then it won’t matter what happened between us. We’ll be strangers again, and my obligation will be met.”

Gracie rose from the fireplace and turned a pitying expression on him. “As if the woman who breaks your heart can ever be a stranger to you. Have a care, sir, or you’ll be picking out your tree.”

Darius offered her a lopsided smile. “Be gone with you, Gracie. When I’ve tired this one out, I’m coming after you.”

“I’ve got one good hand, Master Dare.” Gracie swept toward the door. “That’s plenty enough to paddle your naughty backside into next week for such foolish talk. Mind you order that woman a soaking bath, or she’ll be too sore to walk.”

Gracie closed the door softly on that whispered reminder, and Darius made a mental note to do just that. Were it not for the need to consider Vivian’s inexperience, he’d be going at her twice as often as he did, and twice as hard.

Just once, he’d treated her to a hard, fast coupling, and she’d come like a house afire before he’d even found his rhythm.

And then come again when he had.

But he hadn’t used her so hard since, aware that their goal was conception, and frequent coupling was conducive to that end. This kept him gentle with her, considerate, mindful of the need to savor and conserve when he might have otherwise plundered.

As he lay back on the pillows, sipping his tea and petting Vivian’s hair, he considered that with a woman like Vivian, marriage might not be the trap he’d envisioned it being. With Vivian intent on a child, they were having exactly the kind of unrestrained, frequent sex newlyweds might have.

And it was… overwhelmingly sweet, a backhanded gift from fate that he, a man who never allowed women the intimacy of intercourse, never allowed them to kiss him, should have all that given to him in such unstinting abundance—from a woman to whom he’d have to become, just as he’d said, a stranger in the new year.

He set his tea aside, slipped down into the covers beside Vivian, and drew her into his embrace. She went into his arms trustingly and gave him her warmth without even waking.

The weather moderated, and Vivian found herself riding out with her… with Darius. He loved his estate fiercely, and she concluded fierceness was a part of him, part of the boy who’d grown up between battling parents, finding his purpose befriending his brother and protecting their sisters.

As they rode over his muddy acres, Darius told her his plans for this field and that pond. Trout could be raised like a crop, she learned, and it would improve Darius’s crop yields if he set up a system of irrigation and flood control for the water on his property.

“Why not raise flowers? You don’t need a hothouse for them, much of the year, but you could easily sell them in Town.”

“Townhouses all have back gardens.”

“Bachelors buying flowers for the ladies do not have gardens,” Vivian said. “No single townhouse or mansion has enough flowers on hand to decorate for balls and entertaining. There is demand, and you could specialize.”

“In?” He was bringing the same focus to this topic that he brought to every topic, including how best to bring her pleasure. The notion left a lady somewhat breathless, even as her horse merely ambled along beside his.

“Fragrant flowers?” Vivian tossed out the idea. “Exotic flowers, I don’t know. It would be easy enough to see what’s in short supply and provide it.”

“And then when fashion dictated that fragrant flowers were no longer all the rage?”

“You diversify,” Vivian said as Bernice stepped around a puddle. “Just as you have already. You excel at it, with your chickens and sachets and… other things.”

“My whoring.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking pleased to have an opportunity to shock her with bad language.

“Your enterprise. I suspect you feel sorry for those women, Darius.”

“Vivian…”

“Don’t scold.” She kept her tone mild, but this aspect of his life bothered her increasingly. “No matter what they pay you, you have to feel a little something for them, or you’d just sell more chickens.”

“Chickens produce only so much income. The ladies pay very, very well, and they cost me nothing.”

“They cost you dearly.”

“I’ll race you to that stone wall.”

He nudged Skunk with his heels, so Bernice cantered more forward as well, and Vivian knew the point he was making: sexual pleasure, or pain, mattered only like a good gallop on a crisp day, nothing more. So she let the subject drop and let the mare have her head for the next half mile, but when she woke in Darius’s bed on Christmas morning and saw a small, wrapped box on the breakfast tray, the cost of Darius’s enterprises with the ladies came to mind again.

She nodded at the box. “Why is that there?” William gave her presents, on their anniversary or her birthday. Little things—a book of old verse, a pair of ear bobs, nothing unique to her, but thoughtful gestures nonetheless.

“Happy Christmas, Vivvie.” He poured her tea and passed it over to her, the same as he had every morning for more than a week. “Open your gift.”

“I thought you told me my gift was hiding under the covers on your side of the bed?”

“You’ve already enjoyed that gift.” He sipped his tea placidly, though there was something… grave about his demeanor, or watchful, so Vivian took a fortifying gulp of tea, passed the cup back to him, and reached for her present.