Page 62 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

“My mother has always been critical of Katie—at least, she was critical of the way she used to be, which was something of a hoyden. I suppose it is possible she might no longer carp at her now that she is always so neat, tidy, and without a hair out of place, but…”

“But?”

“But all the evidence suggests my mother will simply find some other reason to criticize her.”

He smiled at her wording, albeit a bit sadly. Sylvester’s own mother was an unnatural bitch incapable of showing love—not even to her own children. He had been fortunate as a child not to spend much time around her as she had always avoided him and his brother as if they were carriers of the plague. Hyacinth, he knew, had not been so lucky with her own mother.

“Kathryn need not go to Bath,” he said.

She rolled away slowly and then pushed up onto her elbow to look at him, a slight furrow between her glorious eyes. “But under the law she must obey her parents for the next three or so years.”

He shrugged. “There are ways around that.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled and traced the sharp line of her jaw with one finger, awed as he often was by her stark beauty. “Being a duke doesn’t just mean that I get to wear a funny hat and moth-eaten fur robes on occasion.”

“You mean you would bring an action against her?”

“It would never come to that. There are other ways of applying pressure. The first and easiest method would be to simply talk to Needham.”

“You think he would threaten to curtail my mother’s allowance to gain her compliance?”

“I think he is no great admirer of the Countess of Addiscombe,” he said dryly.

She nodded slowly, her gaze vague. Gradually, the tension drained out of her. After a moment, she looked into his eyes. “Will you see to that—if it becomes necessary?”

Sylvester slid a hand behind her neck and brought her close enough to kiss her gently, stroking her cheek with his thumb as he held her gaze, staring into her ridiculously beautiful eyes. Sylvester could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times his wife had asked him for anything, and it was only twice. She had wanted her friend Charles to live closer and she had asked for a comfortable pasture for her broken-down old nag, Thunder.

“Of course I will do that, Hyacinth,” he said. I would do anything you asked of me, my love. Anything.

He kept that last sentiment to himself, knowing it would only embarrass her.

“Thank you, Sylvester.”

“It is my pleasure.”

Her eyelids suddenly lowered, and her hand slid beneath the sheet that was barely covering his spent cock. “How may I show my gratitude?”

Sylvester opened his mouth to confess that pleasing her was reward enough, but then her hand closed around his prick. He hissed in a breath as she stroked him with skilled, slightly roughened fingers.

“Were you about to say something?” she asked, her head lowering over him and her hot, wet tongue licking up his quickly stiffening shaft.

He groaned. “I was going to order you to thank your husband properly.”

“Why do I think that is not what you were going to say?” she teased, tormenting the head of his cock with teasing flicks of her tongue.

He cupped the back of her head and lightly, but firmly, pressed down. “Less chatter and more gratitude.”

She gave a soft, snorting laugh and then swallowed him deeply.

And those were the last words spoken for a long, long time.