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Now, hearing him move in his bedchamber while she sat at her vanity, fretting that she would never have enough hairpins to keep her coiffure steady, she regretted that decision. She’d much rather have him with her that evening—or, even better, stay home here with him.

When he caught her watching him through the open doorway, he paused and smiled.

“You look beautiful,” he complimented, lounging in the doorway.

They’d taken to leaving the door between their bedchambers open, something that had scandalized Emily’s maid speechless when she’d first seen it. It was only practical, though, Emily reasoned, for all that it was unconventional. They slept together nightly in Benedict’s chambers, but Emily’s things were still in this room.

“Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to drop her hands despite the temptation to endlessly fuss with her curls. “Though I think you’re a bit premature. I’m only half dressed. I know it’s only been a few weeks, but somehow it feels like a lifetime since I’ve worn a proper ballgown.” She gestured down at where she wore her dressing gown over her chemise.

Benedict’s gaze turned thoughtful, assessing. “You’re nervous,” he observed.

She shrugged one shoulder. It was foolish, certainly. She was a married woman now. And, yes, there would no doubt be some measure of gossip, given what her father was apparently up to, but there had been gossip before her marriage, too, and she’d survived.

It wasn’t, she realized with a start, that she was uncommonly nervous for a Society event. It was, instead, that she’d been uncommonlyrelaxedin her new home, so the difference was just starker than usual. That made for strange thoughts, piled one atop the other, that she had been uncomfortable in her father’s house for all those years and that she no longer felt that stress here.

The idea was all the more remarkable considering that Priscilla had not warmed in the slightest to Emily over the last several days. She’d kept her comments to herself, apparently heeding Benedict’s threat of expulsion from the house. She had not contained, however, the disapproving sniffs she gave whenever she and Emily happened to cross paths. Emily had pointedly not reacted, even as the sniffs had gotten louder and louder.

And if she got a childish thrill out of knowing that her nonreaction was driving the Dowager mad…well, Emily felt she could be forgiven this lapse.

“I might beslightlynervous,” she allowed.

“You could stay home,” he suggested, sounding entirely too hopeful at the idea, coming up behind her to lay his hands on her shoulders.

Reaching backward, she swatted lightly at his fingers. “I could not,” she scolded. “I promised my sisters.”

He leaned down to speak close to her ear. “But I am so very good at distracting you from your nerves when you’re here,” he purred.

She didn’t know what made her shiver more, the sensation of his breath against her cheek or the promise in his words.

It didn’t matter, she reminded herself, because shewasgoing out.

“You are not as tempting as you believe yourself to be,” she lied.

He laughed and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You can’t blame a man for trying.”

She smiled at him through the mirror. “No, I suppose not.” Then she sighed. “I really should keep getting dressed, though. I haven’t much time left, and donning one of those dratted gowns takes an age.”

Her gaze wandered over to a nearby armchair, her corset draped across it and waiting. Benedict followed her look.

And then he got a very, very intriguing look in his eyes.

“Do you know what I think, my dear wife?” he asked, sliding his hands down from her shoulders all the way to her wrists. The movement brought his front to nestle firmly against her back, his arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace.

After so many subsequent days and nights of lovemaking, Emily’s body was primed to respond instantly to this kind of binding embrace.

“What’s what?” she asked, instantly breathless. Lord, he had better not ask her again to skip that evening’s ball. This time, she was liable to agree. Her poor sisters would be furious.

“I think,” he murmured, trailing featherlight kisses up from her ear, “that it is my duty as your husband to help you get dressed for a night out. Don’t you agree?”

Emily wasn’t sure what he meant with this offer; as far as she knew, the proper way to don a ballgown was not the standard part of an earl’s education. But she knew with even greater certainty that she would have agreed toanythingher husband suggested in that tone of voice.

“Quite,” she agreed, her voice coming out breathless. She met his gaze in the mirror and had a wild flash of certainty that he could see more than her reflection revealed. That, somehow, he could see into the depths of her, into parts of her soul that perhaps even she did not fully comprehend.

Though that was foolishness, certainly, she chided herself.

Benedict gave her wrists one firm squeeze before releasing them, leaving behind ghosts of his touch even as he crossed and grasped her waiting corset. She eyed him with bemused expectation.

“On your feet,” he guided gently as he returned to her. When she was standing steadily, he whisked away her chair, so she was standing in front of the mirror with no barrier between them.