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The only reason Sutton had even joined Tyrone on this ill-fated journey was because they would sail through Bergen. Somewhere his wife had said she'd be. Somewhere she'd said she'd wait for him.

He had that image in his mind of Temperance waiting for him on a Norwegian quay, her hair drifting in the wind. He would have come up to her, taken her into his arms, kissed her, and taken her home.

The reality had been more cruel.

She had not waited for him. She had left, this time, without so much as a note.

He could still taste the salt of that harbor. The fool he had been.

He didn't want to dredge up the past. Besides, that was the agreement, wasn't it? Getting to know each other anew without the bitterness of the past?

He cleared his throat. "We even ended up in jail for a night, and Tyrone in the hospital."

"Oh no." She covered her mouth with her hand. "How was it?"

"Terrible." He shivered just remembering the awful place. "Sharing a tiny, dirty cell with rodents was not pleasant. Luckily, we only spent one night there, and as soon as Tyrone recovered, we turned back home."

"Does he still get you into trouble?"

"Thankfully, no. I'm afraid my joints will not take well to the cold cells any longer. During his last adventure, Tyrone, drunk as a sailor, decided to pour red paint around town for no particular reason. Meanwhile, our other friend, a daring inventor everyone calls Chaos, was testing his new invention, a steam carriage, on the streets of London. Well, a lady slipped on the paint and stumbled into the path of the runaway steam carriage."

"I remember reading about that in the gossip sheet," Temperance exclaimed.

"Well, Tyrone saved the lady and ruined her in one breath by landing on top of her and scandalizing the entire ton."

"He had to marry her after that, didn't he?" she asked with a grimace. "That poor young lady."

"You needn't worry about her any longer," Sutton soothed. "You'd be delighted to know that they are madly in love. And Tyrone has not touched a drop of spirits since Emily entered his life."

Temperance's face relaxed into a wistful smile. "How lovely."

He shrugged. "It is."

"Hmm..." she purred after a brief pause. "As entertaining as that story was, it tells me a lot about your friend the Mad Duke and not a lot about you."

"That is not true; it tells you that I tag along with my friends to try, and then fail, to keep them out of danger."

She let out a snort. "It's not personal enough to meet my standards."

Sutton shook his head. She wanted to get personal, something he wished to avoid.

He took a deep breath.

"Fine. Here is something personal about me." He leaned low over the worktable. She mirrored his action, and now they were so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. "I grow a beard between Parliamentary sessions because I look like a little boy without it."

Laughter spilled out of her. "You do not."

"I certainly do. I have to shave it before the Parliamentary sessions, as decorum demands, though I'd prefer not to."

"Well," she said and scooped up a spoonful of chocolate, stuffing it into her mouth and leaving a smudge at the corner of her lips, "I think you look dashing with the beard."

Before he knew what he was doing, he had reached across the table and wiped the smear away with the pad of his thumb.

Her breath caught. They both froze, his hand still an inch from her face, her eyes wide.

He brought his thumb to his mouth, thoughtlessly, and sucked it clean.

Her laughter bubbled over. "You tried the chocolate."