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“He's very different to you,” agreed Fenella, thinking this over. “You did not share a mother though.”

“No. None of us do.”

“Perhaps that's why?”

“Perhaps,” he agreed without much conviction.

“And you are not like your father either.”

“No,” he agreed, lowering his wash-cloth.

“But perhaps Roland is a little more like the old Baron?” she ruminated.

Oswald made no answer to this, simply threw down his cloth and approached their bedroom door. He was dressed only in his chauses, which were low on his hips. He turned the key and Fen fell silent as he started drawing off his boots. She cleared her throat.

“So, I start my sittings with signor Arnotti on the morn, and-”

Oswald stopped in the act of pulling off his second boot and turned to her with a frown. “Who?”

“The painter,” Fen said helpfully. “You wanted me to arrange to have my portrait done?”

“Oh yes,” he agreed swiftly, then straightened up to start unlacing his crotch. “Remind me, where you are sitting for this painting?” he asked casually. “Somewhere public?”

“Well, Eden had rather a good idea about that,” Fen told him. “She suggested one of the window seats in the lower gallery. Perhaps sat next to some stained glass and beneath an arch?”

Her husband was sliding his braies over his hips. “And who accompanies you?” he asked, before shucking them down his legs.

Fen sat down in a chair to draw off her shoes and stockings. “Well, all my new friends have been very kind and said they will take turns to sit with me. Apparently, it is very dull work indeed to be sat trying to maintain a pose while the artist takes your likeness.” She pondered this a moment, before standing up and tugging at her laces. “I suppose the artist my father commissioned was only third-rate at best. I don’t remember sitting for very long at all, but it seems signor Arnotti requires simply hours of your time.” She looked up to find Oswald surveying her with a heavy frown. “Are you alright?” she asked uncertainly. “You seem…distracted.”

“Fenella," he said heavily. "If Thane approaches you again, I want you to tell me straight away. Knock on my door. Demand admittance. Barge into my office. I don’t care who I’m meeting with; the King, the privy council, it doesn’t matter. Am I understood?”

Fen’s jaw dropped. “Interrupt you?” she squeaked. “In an important meeting?”

“Precisely.”

“Just to tell you Sir Ambrose Thane had approached me?”

“Yes.”

“Something of so little import?” she stressed.

“He has no legitimate reason to accost my wife,” he said crossing the room to her, completely naked now, to help her out of her gown. When she stood in her shift, he tilted her chin up toward him. “If you were to choose not tell me, I would still hear of it Fenella,” he warned. “And if that happens, I will have him thrown in the stocks.”

Fen’s face flooded with color. The stocks? “People will think I bear a grudge, and am mean-spirited,” she stammered.

“I think it will soon become public knowledge that your husband is unspeakably jealous,” he answered, casting her dress onto the chair and placing his hands on either side of her waist. “If it is not already.”

“You are not,” she protested hotly.

“Never before,” he admitted, walking her backward toward the bed. “But I seem to have had a change of heart.”

His mentioning his heart had a peculiar effect on Fenella. She felt her own throb almost painfully in her chest and before she could even think to stop herself, she laid a hand on Oswald’s bare chest. His sharply indrawn breath made her start to pull away, but the next thing she knew, she was swept up and onto the bed and being kissed with an abandon that quite took her breath away. And not just her mouth, but her neck, the sensitive area between her breasts and then, her soft belly. Her thin shift was pushed or pulled out of the way as if it wasn’t even there. It was bunched up at her waist now, as he breathed heavily against her tummy button.

“Fenella,” he said huskily. “Don’t be shocked.”

“Shocked?” she asked, raising her head from the pillow. A small smile started to curve her lips. Oswald Vawdrey was a passionate and sensual man, but she fancied that she was starting to find his measure. And then his mouth was there, between her legs. Hot and probing and she was shocked. Very. So shocked, she cried out, but soon the shock turned to something else, and the cries turned into something else and before long they lay satiated, a panting tangle of limbs whereby she knew not where he started, and she ended.

“Are you crying, love?” he asked ducking his head, to try and meet her gaze, but she hid her face in his neck. And if she had not been crying then, the use of the word love meant she soon was. What was wrong with her?