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He undressed her as if it were liturgy, not mechanics: hooks and tiny buttons, layer by layer, each one a small act of worship rather than conquest. The soft slide of silk as it fell; the whisper of linen; the fumble of his own fingers when she laughed and helped him with a stubborn tie. He paused often, checking her face, letting his palms learn the new map of her—right shoulder rolling a fraction to compensate for the old injury, spine still strong, ribs rising faster now under his touch.
By the time he’d undressed and coaxed her onto the high mattress, bracing her carefully and kissing her ankle—a reverent brush of lips over the joint that had caused her so much grief—Chester felt less like a duke and more like a man at an altar.
He followed her down onto the bed, one arm supporting his weight so he would not press too heavily on her, and let the rest of the world drop away.
Whatever happened next would belong to them alone.
***
She had not expected the bed to feel so…big.
It wasn’t only the size. Pepper had slept in grand beds before. But this one was different. Those had always felt like borrowed furniture because she couldn’t fill such a large bed on her own. This one felt like a question she had the answer for and yet never seen.
She lay against the embroidered pillows, the sheets cool under her bare shoulders, and watched her husband’s face.
His hair had come loose from order; his waistcoat and shirt were somewhere on the floor; he was more muscle and warmth and earnest eyes than duke at the moment. The careful distance he’d kept through the undressing—one hand always braced, pressure always measured—made the heat in his gaze all the more potent.
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said honestly. “But I think I will be.”
His mouth quirked. “If it helps,” he offered, “I am also not all right. I have wanted this for so long I am in real danger of making a fool of myself.”
That made something in her relax. “You? The great Flour Duke?” she whispered. “Undone by a lady with a limp?”
“Completely,” he said.
His hand skimmed down her arm, fingertips tracing the inside of her wrist, the curve of her palm. The touch made her shiver in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
“Chester?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Is this…quite mad?”
“Yes,” he said promptly. “All the best things we have done together have been madness.”
She huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Very well,” she said. “Carry on, then.”
He bent and kissed her again.
He tasted of wedding wine and sugar and something that was entirely his own—warmth and patience, the faint salt of nerves. Every time his mouth moved against hers, her body answered, arching, leaning, learning. She found herself matching him, experimenting, discovering that a certain angle made him groan low in his throat, that the slightest nip at his lower lip made his fingers clutch at the sheet beside her head.
It should have embarrassed her, how much she liked it.
It didn’t.
It felt like…coming home to a house she had only ever stood outside of before.
The world narrowed to sensation: the rasp of his unshaven jaw against her cheek; the slow, careful glide of his hand over her hip, skirting the tender muscles of her thigh with a kind of reverence that made her eyes sting. When he kissed her ankle again, lingering this time, his mouth soft over the place she had always hated, she had to bite her knuckles to stay quiet.
“Nobody,” he murmured against her skin, “will ever use this word”—his hand slid up, curving around the muscle—“‘faulty’ in my house again. Do you understand?”
She swallowed.
“Yes,” she whispered.
When he moved over her at last, she felt the tremor in his arms. Not from strain. From restraint.
