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A t the sound of the carriage door opening to admit Will, Lucy turned from where she’d been staring numbly out the window at nothing. His gilded hair was mussed, and, like hers, his clothing was liberally streaked with blood from tending to the wounded women. He seemed to hesitate for a split second, and then—to her surprise and relief—rather than taking the backward-facing seat across from her, he took the one beside her and gathered her against him, offering the only comfort he could in the aftermath of such horror.

She leaned into him, accepting the assurance of his strong arms holding her. After so many years without her father, she’d come to appreciate the solace of Cousin Andrew’s presence in her life. But the support Will offered was different.

He was, for want of a better term, hers. And she was his. Their betrothal, however it might have come about, was a fact now, and unless Lucy wished to spend the rest of her life isolated from the society into which she’d been raised, there was no going back. And if she’d had any doubts about him, Will had erased them all with the way he’d gone into Christine Fleetwood’s house alone today with no thought for his own safety.

At that thought, she felt tears well in her eyes and she gripped him tighter.

She wasn’t even aware of the sob that broke from her until she heard his words.

“Oh, please Lucy, do not weep,” Will said against her hair, rubbing her back with soothing strokes. “I beg of you. I am defenseless against tears. Especially yours.”

But once she’d started, it was impossible for her to stop. And despite his pleading, Will seemed to know that.

“All right, sweetheart,” he mumured, holding her as she sobbed, “let it all out.”

So overcome was she by grief and shock and sadness that she didn’t realize the carriage had stopped before her family’s townhouse until the carriage door was opened by a footman.

“A moment, please,” she heard Will tell the man. Filled with mortification that she’d lost control of her emotions in such a manner, she pulled back and searched her reticule for a handkerchief with one hand while wiping at her eyes with the other.

“Here,” Will said, pressing his own into her hand, “you’d better wipe your eyes with this, though I fear there will be no hiding your tears from your mama.”

Once she’d dried her eyes and blown her nose, Will’s words penetrated her brain and Lucy shook her head. “Cousin Andrew will have notified her of what happened,” she said, tucking the soiled handkerchief into her reticule to have laundered before she returned it to him. “And I daresay I wouldn’t have been able to hide the matter from Mama in any event. She is always able to tell when I am upset. Even when I don’t wish her to know.”

He nodded, then opened the carriage door and hopped out so that he might hand her down. Since they were in full view of the servants now, when they said their goodbyes in the entry hall both had to be content with a clasp of their hands.

“I will call later to make sure you are well,” Will said, his blue eyes shadowed with concern. Lucy opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a staying hand. “Do not argue for once, Miss Penhallow. We have both been through an ordeal today and my tender sensibilities will need soothing later, I am quite sure.”

Despite her somber mood, his words had the intended effect and Lucy laughed in spite of herself. “Very well, my lord,” she said with a reluctant smile. Then in a hushed tone, she added, “Now go, before Mama descends upon the both of us and you find yourself the subject of an inquisition.”

Later that night, having found herself unable to sleep after she’d indulged in a rare afternoon nap, Lucy sat up in bed reading the next novel slated to be taken up by the book club. It was difficult to concentrate, however. Not least because, despite his insistence earlier, Will hadn’t shown up to check on her welfare, nor had he sent a note round.

It hadn’t been necessary, she reminded herself, though it was disappointing that he would make a promise then fail to keep it. Especially after the tenderness he’d shown her in the carriage.

But she had seen for herself that witnessing what had been done to Miss Fleetwood and her maid had affected him almost as much as it had her. She knew how gentlemen liked for everyone to believe that they were impervious to the kind of emotions that affected ladies, but she had long suspected that such claims were empty bravado. So perhaps he’d been as exhausted as her and simply gone to sleep, as she had.

Still, she would have liked to see him again so that she might ensure that he was none the worse for wear.

She was reading the same paragraph for the fourth time when she was startled by a knocking sound at her bedchamber window. There was an oak tree just outside of it, and one of the branches often brushed against the glass when the wind was up, but there had been no sign that the weather would be anything but fine tonight. Still, weather had a way of changing from one minute to the next, so she turned back to her book.

Then, to her astonishment, she heard the knocking again, though this time it was accompanied by a male voice. “Lucy,” Will hissed, “let me in.”

With a gasp, she leapt from her bed and hurried to the window, and when she moved the curtain aside, she saw that, indeed, Viscount Gilford was perched precariously outside her bedchamber window. He had apparently climbed the trellis that rested against the side of the house, but from the way he gripped the ledge, it was clear he wasn’t entirely trusting of the trellis.

It took her a couple of tries, but once she managed to raise the window, Will climbed nimbly over the sill and into the room.

“What are you doing here?” Lucy demanded in a hiss, mindful that someone might come investigate if they heard her speaking in her supposedly empty bedchamber.

Turning from where he’d been closing the window behind him, Will frowned at her. “I told you I’d be back to check in on you.”

Trying not to allow the way his large frame seemed to fill up her room to affect her, and mindful that she was wearing only her thin nightrail, Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and gave a huff of disbelief at his words. “Which I assumed meant you’d make your presence known in the usual way of things: by presenting yourself at the front door of the house.”

Stepping closer, Will reached out to her and, despite her pique, Lucy stepped into his arms and rested her head against his warm chest. “Don’t be angry. I had every intention of paying a proper call, but then I fell asleep and it was too late. And I needed to see you.”

This last he said after he’d pulled back a little so he could look her in the eye. “If I hadn’t seen the light burning from your window I’d have let it wait until tomorrow, but a bit of investigation revealed the trellis and the next thing I knew I was climbing.”

She looked into his face, which had become so very dear to her in such a short span of time, and reached up to touch him on the cheek. Turning his head to kiss her palm, he said, “It also occurred to me that whoever it was that attacked Miss Fleetwood and her maid might take it into his head to come here.”

At these last words, Lucy gave a start. “Surely not,” she said with a frown, though she could tell from his expression that he meant the words.

“Though we saw no sign that Hamilton was still there,” Will told her with a calm gravity that was as alarming to her as if he’d shouted the words, “it’s entirely possible he was nearby, watching as we entered Miss Fleetwood’s house this afternoon. You could be in danger, and I have no intention of allowing anything to happen to you.”

“But my cousin—” Lucy began, but Will stopped her mouth with a brief kiss.

“Your cousin has indeed placed men outside the front door of Penhallow House,” he said patiently, “but I find I am unable to rest easy unless I am able to watch over you for myself.”

In all honesty, Lucy would feel safer with Will here, though she knew that any police officers her cousin had set to watching the house would be trustworthy men.

But aside from safety there was something else that needed to be considered. Without meaning to, she glanced behind Will toward where her bed, its covers mussed from when she’d emerged from it moments ago, sat in the glow of the lamplight.

True to form, this man, who was so easily able to read her, looked down at her now with a raised brow. The warmth in his gaze brought a flush of heat into her cheeks, and Lucy averted her eyes. “Have no fear, little bird,” he told her, kissing her on the nose, “I will make a pallet on the floor.”

But this was one promise she had no intention of taking him up on. “Do not be foolish,” she told him with what she hoped was credible severity. “We are betrothed. And my bed is quite large enough for the two of us.”

The look he turned on her was inscrutable, and for a moment she feared he would reject her edict. But after a moment, he nodded. “Far be it from me to turn down such a generous invitation.”

This had been a singularly bad idea, Will thought to himself as he lay staring at the canopy that hung over Lucy’s bed.

Once he’d removed his coats, untied his neckcloth, and, with Lucy’s help, gotten out of his boots, he accepted the pillow she offered him and tucked it beneath his head. She extinguished the lamp on her bedside table and they lay together in darkness for some minutes in silence.

He wasn’t a ravening beast without any ability to control himself. Of course he wasn’t, he assured himself. But he’d accepted Lucy’s invitation without fully considering the difficulty of sharing a bed with her while the sweet floral scent of her soap against her warm skin enveloped him.

Lying atop the counterpane, a position he’d insisted upon despite her protests, he tried to calm his body’s reaction to having her so near and had nearly resigned himself to a sleepless night when he heard her turn on her side.

“Will?” she asked in a soft voice, which he knew was as much from a fear she’d be overheard as it was from hesitation. “Will you… Will you hold me? Like you did this afternoon?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and to his shame he heard a quiver of tears in her voice when she spoke again. “Never mind. I thought perhaps because you’re here, but—”

Cursing himself as a brute, he interrupted before she could continue. “Of course,” he said hoarsely, and ignoring the part of his brain that wanted to believe this was a prelude to anything more than comfort, he slipped beneath the bedclothes and gathered her against him in the dark.

Lucy gave a sigh of contentment against his neck as he tried to ignore just how soft her curves were against his body. “That’s better,” she said, sliding a hand across his chest and stroking her thumb against the exposed bit of skin where he’d loosened his collar.

Reminding himself that he was here to protect her, not to do any of the myriad things his mind was now suggesting, Will swallowed. She was an innocent, after all, and had no idea what such touches would do to a man.

But he reconsidered his assessment when he felt her lift up on one elbow and bring her lips to his. The kiss was not so untutored as their first had been, but neither was it so self-assured that he thought her anything other than the innocent she was. Even so, the knowledge that this was Lucy—his Lucy—sent a frisson of desire through him the likes of which he’d never known.

She tasted of sweetness and innocence and every bit of the home he’d tried his best to forget during his time in France. It was this he’d come back for, he realized, as he accepted the tentative caress of her tongue into his mouth and then guided her into a deeper kiss while he turned their bodies so that she lay beneath him.

When he lifted his head moments later, they were both breathless and it took a moment for him to realize he’d somehow divested her of her nightdress, and his shirt had joined it on the floor beside the bed.

Far from shrinking away, however, Lucy looked up at him with a trust that he vowed silently never to give her reason to regret. “Is this what you want, sweetheart?” he asked her, reaching up to stroke her cheek. “We can stop if that’s what you want. I’m happy to simply sleep with you in my arms if that’s what you wish.”

“Don’t you dare,” Lucy said with no little censure in her voice. “I will be very cross if you bring me this close to the brink and then insist upon simply sleeping.”

He couldn’t stop the soft huff of laughter from escaping him at her words. “Yes, ma’am,” he said in a chastened voice.

Then, with as much grace as he could muster, he divested himself of his trousers and crawled back into bed with her. Despite the fact that the room was dark except for the soft glow of moonlight through the windows, he noted that his lady watched him avidly throughout.

When she welcomed him back into her arms, he marveled again at just how good she felt there, and taking her mouth in a hungry kiss he vowed to make her first experience of lovemaking as pleasurable for her as he possibly could.

This time when he kissed his way down her neck, giving special attention to that spot below her ear she’d seemed to like earlier, he stroked a hand down her body to touch her center.

“Will, please,” she said as she shifted her hips restlessly beneath him even as he stroked first one finger, then another inside her and gave her what she wanted. When he touched his thumb to the bud just above where his fingers thrust, she gave a cry that he had to stop with his mouth lest she alert someone to his presence.

“My married friends told me there was pleasure to be had, but I had no notion it would be so much,” she said a little breathlessly a moment later, once she’d recovered herself.

Almost lightheaded from the need to be inside her, Will kissed her quickly before guiding himself to her entrance. “This next bit might be a little painful,” he warned her, “because it is your first time. But only this once.”

She bent her knees and Will uttered a curse, even as he slipped inside her a little. “I do not mind a bit of pain if it means you are mine,” she said simply, and he was astonished once again at just how much he felt for this woman he had barely known only last week.

And with one swift thrust he seated himself fully within her.

Beads of sweat broke out over Will’s forehead with the concentration it took him to remain still. “All right?” he asked through clenched teeth, thinking that if she said it was not he might weep.

“Yes,” she said, her voice a little breathy. “I did wonder if it would work, but though it does feel a little odd, there is no pain.”

Even before she finished speaking, Will began to withdraw from her, and when she wrapped her legs around him there was no more conversation as they moved in the dance as old as time.

When he felt the clench of her body around him, he surrendered to his own passion, and burying his face in her neck, he gave a hoarse cry and shuddered against her.