Henrietta gave a sheepish little wave as Miles bore her triumphantly across the threshold beneath the nose of the flabbergasted butler.
"Stwyth?" she whispered to Miles.
"He's from Wales," Miles whispered back. "They haven't discovered vowels yet."
"My lady," stuttered Stwyth. "Sir. We weren't informed of your arrival. Your rooms… the house… we didn't know…"
"That's all right, Stwyth. Neither did I," Miles tossed back nonchalantly over his shoulder as he strode towards the stairs. "But we'll be staying here from now on."
The butler hastily gathered the tattered shreds of his composure, drawing himself up to his full height, which was somewhat shorter than Henrietta's, or what Henrietta's would have been, had she not been dangling several feet off the ground. Henrietta tried to remedy that fact by dint of rolling sideways, but Miles held firm.
"May I say, sir, on behalf of the entire staff," announced Stwyth, trotting along behind, "how delighted we are that you have finally decided to make your home at Loring House."
"You may," acceded Miles, starting up the stairs, Henrietta squished firmly against his chest, "but preferably some other time. You can go, Stwyth. Go…" What did butlers do when they weren't opening doors? "Go buttle."
Under the crook of Miles's arm, Henrietta saw Stwyth's rigid features curve into what, in a lesser mortal, would have been a grin.
"Indeed, sir," he intoned, and bowed himself hastily out of the hall.
Henrietta turned bright red and banged her head against Miles's cravat. "Oh dear," she moaned. "He knows."
"Hen?" Miles jiggled her to make her look up. "We're married. It's allowed."
"I still don't really feel married," admitted Henrietta.
"We can work on that," said Miles, kicking open a door at the head of the stairs. "In fact, we will definitely work on that."
The door opened onto a small room furnished with a writing desk and several delicate chairs. It was hard to tell what else the room might contain, because the drapes were drawn, and most of the furniture shrouded in Holland covers to protect against dust and the ravages of time.
Miles backed out again. "Damn. Wrong room."
"Shouldn't you put me down?" asked Henrietta plaintively, as her dangling feet narrowly escaped amputation on the door frame.
"Only" — Miles leered dramatically down at her — "once I've found a bed."
Just in case she had any ideas of escaping, Miles boosted her higher into the air. Henrietta let out a squeal of protest and clasped her arms more firmly around his neck. "Don't drop me!" she demanded, laughing.
"That's more like it," said Miles with great satisfaction, hefting her happily in his arms. His voice softened. "I like it when you laugh."
Something in his expression made Henrietta's throat tighten. "With you, or at you?" she quipped uneasily.
"Near me," Miles said, tightening his hold on her. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. "Definitely near me."
"I think that could be arranged," Henrietta managed, doing her utmost to refrain from blurting out embarrassing declarations of love that could only alarm Miles and put an end to their precarious entente.
"I think it already has been," Miles countered, striding down the hall. "Or didn't you hear that bit this morning?"
"I was a bit distracted."
Miles sobered. "I noticed. But," he said firmly, stopping in front of a door at the end of the hall, "we are not going to think about any of that tonight. Tonight, there is just us. No French spies, no angry relatives. Agreed?"
Henrietta was quite sure there was a flaw in that plan somewhere, a rather large flaw, having to do with someone chasing them while hurling bullets in their direction, but it was very hard to think logically when Miles looked at her like that, his brown eyes intent on hers. He was so close that she could see the little crinkles at the sides of his eyes, crinkled caused by a lifetime of smiles, and the darker hue of his hair near the brow where the sun hadn't touched it.
"Do I have any choice in the matter?" asked Henrietta with mock solemnity, wishing her voice didn't sound quite so breathless.
"You did promise to obey." Miles tipped her towards the doorknob. "Would you mind getting that, please? My hands are full."
"I'm not sure I would exactly call that a promise," Henrietta hedged, obediently leaning over and turning the doorknob. "It was really more of a… um…"
"Promise," reiterated Miles smugly, shouldering open the door and edging sideways into the room. It smelt of dust and disuse, but in the light from the hallway, he could see that it contained the crucial item: a bed.
"Strongly worded suggestion," Henrietta finished triumphantly, tipping her face up towards his, with an expression that dared him to try to top that.
"So what you're saying," said Miles, with a mischievous glint in his eye that Henrietta knew of old, combined with something new and infinitely more unsettling, "is that I have to find other ways of making you cooperate."
"Ye-es," said Henrietta, noticing slightly uneasily that they were rapidly approaching the bed. Beds and wedding nights did tend to go together. She tried to look as though being borne off to a very large bed were a commonplace occurrence.
Which, she thought with a slight pang of jealousy, for the marquise it probably was. Whether the marquise had been borne off by Miles was too distressing a question for Henrietta to consider.
"What did you have in mind?" she asked instead.
"This," said Miles, and kissed her before she could say anything else, kicking the door closed behind them.
As a technique for inducing cooperation, it had much to recommend it. By the time Miles lifted his mouth from hers, Henrietta was having a very hard time remembering what they had been sparring about in the first place. She wasn't even entirely sure about her own name.
"But…" she began dazedly, since Miles couldn't be allowed to have the last word — or the last kiss.
Miles grinned roguishly. "Not convinced yet?" he asked rhetorically, and kissed her again, a kiss that made its predecessor feel like a discreet peck in a drawing room. His arms were warm and tight around her, pressing her so closely that Henrietta lost all sense of where her body left off and his began. The rising heat between them burned layers of clothes into nothingness. Henrietta's senses were filled with Miles; the scent of his hair and his skin, the sensation of his tongue filling her mouth, sealing her lips to his, the press of his waistcoat buttons against her side, and the prickle of his hair beneath her fingers, all melded into a complete cosmos, a world where nothing existed but the unit formed by their joined lips, hands, bodies. The room tilted and swayed, like a planet spinning on an astronomer's model.
Henrietta made a muffled noise as her back connected forcefully with something soft and springy, followed by something large and heavy landing on top of her. It abruptly dawned on her that the falling sensation had been more than the effect of Miles's kisses.
"Mmmph!" protested Henrietta, poking at the large lump on top of her. Not being able to breathe while Miles was kissing her was one thing, having all the air forcibly squashed out of her quite another.
The large lump rolled onto his side, taking her with him. "Sorry," he whispered into her ear, his breath reawakening all the nerves that had been squashed into silence with her precipitous descent to the bed. "I tripped."
"I noticed," replied Henrietta, although she was having trouble noticing much of anything at all as Miles pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat.
"Did you?" It was clear Miles's mind was not on the conversation either, as his lips trailed down her collarbone, to the bodice of her dress, which was obligingly drooping far below where it ought to be. His teeth nipped at the edge of her bodice, which obediently slipped another crucial inch. Momentarily distracted, Henrietta realized that the shivers down her spine were caused by more than the sensation of Miles's breath against bare skin. At some point, the long row of buttons that had fastened her twill traveling dress had been deftly undone.