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My throat felt dry and scratchy.

“It’s fine,” I croaked.

“No dignity in death for him,” St. Erth said, hacking viciously away at the corpse.

When Liversedge and Gilly arrived, St. Erth stood to his full height, towering over both of them, bloody splatters all up and down his formerly snowy cravat.

“My lord, why did you have to split him open like that?” Liversedge wheezed. “That’s going to make it the very devil to clean up.”

“Quit complaining,” St. Erth said. “I pay you, and very handsomely too. Don’t make me throw you both back where I found you.”

“You’d throw back your own second cousins?” Liversedge complained.

“Alleged second cousins,” St. Erth said, pointing at the ground. “And you missed an entrail.”

Grumbling, Liversedge took one end of the corpse, and Gilly took the other and they rolled the late Mr. Pemberfield into another tarp.

“What about you, m’lord?” Liversedge asked. “How are you going to go back into the ball with all that blood all over you?”

“Don’t worry,” said St. Erth. “It’s not very far and the night is warm. We’ll walk.”

I turned obediently and followed my bloody husband down the lane and across the dark fields.

“Are they really your second cousins?” I asked tremulously.

“Yes,” said the Viscount, turning to look at me. “I come from a long line of tramps, pickpockets, and washer-women who ran illegal gambling operations, Kitten.”

“Your mother sounds lovely,” I said indignantly, thinking regretfully of my own uncaring Mama. “I wish I could have met her.”

I was surprised when he turned around to look at me, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

“I love you, Kitten,” he said abruptly.

“Oh,” I said again, dropping my eyes in confusion.

“And what do you say to that?” he asked coldly, grabbing my chin to force me to look at him.

“I-I don’t know,” I said.

WhatdidI think?

Why Ihatedhim, didn’t I?

When I did not respond further, my husband’s mouth set in an angry frown.

“You are required to love me, Catherine. And that’s an order.”

Suddenly St. Erth picked me up and flipped me over onto the nearby sturdy wooden fence that kept our neighbors’ hogs from roaming the countryside.

I squawked in surprise as I landed on my stomach on the hard wood, and my husband tipped me forward like he was going to send me headfirst into the pigsty.

The pigs began to shuffle eagerly closer, and I screamed, windmilling my arms and trying to squirm back, but his strong arms held me fast.

“They look hungry, don’t they, Kitten?” he said with unconcern.

“Stop it!” I begged. “Let me up!”

But he only tipped me further forward until I was hovering only inches from their backs and horribly snuffling noses.