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“They don’t like that I’m there,” he’d grumbled enough times that Grace began to suspect he felt offended by their coolness.

“Aren’t you the man who hates using his words?” she demanded.

“I wouldnae sayhate?—”

“Of course they’re not going to trust when you say you’re there to help,” he barreled on. He got much less disgruntled about her interruptions, she’d noticed, when they were both unclothed and in bed. “So keep showing up. They’ll learn.”

And they had. By the time the harvest had been fully taken in that autumn, Caleb had even been asked along for a celebratory drink at the tavern. He’d come back absolutely soused.

Being the lord of the land suited him, Caleb had learned. And Grace had found that she, too, liked working with the villagers, with the tenants. She’d thrown a Christmas festival for the local children that had made one small girl so happy that she’d clutched at Grace’s skirts and had needed to be pried off by her apologetic parents.

“Aye,” Caleb said now, pressing himself against Grace’s back, tightening his grip on her. Early spring was still plenty frosty this far north, so Grace shrank happily into his warmth. “Why did I let ye convince me to haveguests?”

“It was your idea!” she protested.

“Doesnae sound like me,” he grumbled.

“Well, it was,” she returned tartly, wiggling to get herself free. His warm, strong arms, she could now see, had been a trap. “And they’ll be arriving momentarily!”

Her friends had written to explain their travel plans, which would divide the trip into three days instead of two. Emily and Diana were both expecting, and though neither of them was far enough along in her pregnancy that travel was a hazard, Benedict and Andrew refused to tax them even the slightest bit.

This mean, however, that they would reach Montgomery Estate closer to mid-morning than mid-afternoon. And, judging by the sun in the sky, the duke and duchess had already lingered abed long enough.

“Aye,” Caleb said again. “That’s why it’s a mistake. If we have guests arriving, we need to get out of bed. I daenae want to do that.”

The way he snaked a thigh between her legs madehernot want to do that, either. But she wanted to scandalize her friends—not to mention herbrother—even less.

She wriggled harder. Caleb rolled his weight atop her.

“Ye do realize,” he asked, his voice now raspy for an entirely different reason, “that movin’ like that doesnae give me much incentive to let ye go, do you no’?”

She tried to sound sour, but she was giggling too hard.

“If you release me so I can prepare for our guests, I’ll be very, very sweet to you later,” she offered.

Caleb grunted. “Ye were already going to do that. Ye’re always very sweet.”

He still wasn’t perfect at expressing his feelings with words; Grace could still count the number of times he’d uttered the wordloveon one hand. But she didn’t mind, not when he showed her how he felt in a dozen different ways each day.

“Then maybe,” she said, still wriggling for freedom, “you could be sweet to me back, just this once?”

He groaned in exasperation…but he did roll off her.

“Fine. Ye win. I hope ye are pleased.”

Grace popped up, the blanket falling off from around her shoulders and letting the cool air touch her skin. She pressed a smacking kiss to her husband’s cheek before she darted out of bed to don her dressing gown and slippers—in a matching Blackmiur pattern, which she’d received for Christmas from her husband, who grumbled that she’d not be warm enough just wrapped in that blanket—which had been left to warm by the banked fire.

“I amverypleased,” she confirmed. Their room faced the front of the house; as she passed the window she realized, with a start, that the moving speck in the distance was the approach of a carriage.

“And we are very late!” she exclaimed. “They’re nearly here. Up, up! Caleb! Hurry!”

“A terrible mistake,” he muttered darkly. But he rolled out of bed and made for the bathing chamber. Grace lamented that she didn’t have time to enjoy the view of his naked form as he disappeared from view. But there would be time for that later. For now, her friends were arriving, and she was not at all ready. She had to get dressed and do her hair and make sure that breakfast would be served and a dozen other things.

But first, there was one thing she could not forget.

She crossed the room and poked her head into the bathing chamber, where Caleb was splashing water on his face with no concern for the, no doubt, freezing temperature of last night’s ewer water.

“Caleb?” she said.

“Aye,leannan?” He swiped the water from his face with a flannel, catching her eye in the looking glass.

She gave him a smile that she hoped said everything she felt for him.

“Thank you for doing this. It means a lot to me.”

The look he gave her was soft as down. “Of course,leannan. Anything for ye.”

As declarations of love went, Grace thought as she skipped off to attend to her own toilette, that would do just fine.

The End?