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you.”
    Only with her. Magic words. “Can we try it again, just to be certain?”
    His response was to laugh, and then they did try again. Their lovemaking wasn’t as good as it had been the first time.
    It was better .

 
    Chapter Six
    T HEY MARRIED VERY early the next morning.
    William roused a priest who objected that the banns had not been read. William’s response was to cut two of the silver buttons from his uniform to offer as payment, and the priest kept his silence. The padre did not even question the bride marrying while wearing breeches.
    Pippa knew that they would have to remarry in the Church of England, but that morning, in the shadowy knave of a Catholic church, she spoke her vows and meant them with all her heart.
    Together they rode to join William’s men. Her maid, Lilly, was furious over her running away and had a few words for William when she learned they’d married. But they were happy ones.
    “She will make you dance to a merry tune,” she predicted.
    “I pray that she does,” William answered.
    The rest of the trip to Lisbon was uneventful and yet perfect. William had sent Sergeant Larson back to his superior officers with a report on the French supply train.
    Pippa and William rode beside each other for the trip, talking about everything and talking about nothing. They didn’t dawdle. William was anxious to return to his company before the fighting, but they didn’t waste this precious time together, either.
    All was good . . . until they reached Lisbon’s port—where Pippa found her father waiting anxiously for her in the British port office.
    He rushed up to her. “Pippa, my God, I have been worried to the point of illness over you.”
    “Didn’t General Wellington or someone on his staff tell you where they’d sent me?” she asked, a bit overwhelmed. She hadn’t yet thought of how she would break the news of William to her father. She wasn’t certain how he would react. He could be so possessive.
    “They said they sent you here with an escort.” Her father looked past her shoulder. “Thank you, Captain, for seeing her safe. You are done here. Carry on.”
    Pippa drew a deep breath. “Father, there is something I must tell you. This is Captain William Duroy—”
    “Duroy?” her father repeated, interrupting her. “The nabob? Up in Yorkshire?”
    “My sire, sir,” William answered. She was grateful that he was letting her handle this, although she sensed his impatience in her breaking the news. It was as if he understood her concerns.
    In such a short time, they knew each other that well.
    “Father, William is my husband.” She took William’s arm. “And he is the best, most wonderful, bravest man I know, except for you, Papa.”
    Her father took a step back as if she’d struck him. The color left his face. “ No .” He shook his head. “You cannot have married. Not without my permission.”
    William spoke. “I would have asked it, sir, if there had been time . . .” And that was when the story of her running away and blowing up French ammunition wagons was shared.
    Her father did not take it well, and even though Pippa didn’t speak of the lovemaking, he seemed to understand that more had happened than just a bit of fighting the French.
    When he did find words, his voice was dark, guttural. “I shall have this marriage annulled. Immediately. And I shall see you stripped of all command and rank, Duroy. Come, Pippa, to the ship.”
    In the past, Pippa would have hurried to obey.
    She didn’t this time. She couldn’t. She realized she was no longer the same woman who had left Wellington’s headquarters.
    “I can’t,” she said, quietly. Suddenly, Pippa saw her father not as Sir Hew, the British envoy, but as a man who’d been hurt by love.
    She’d never understood that before. She did now. Loving William had opened both her heart and her mind. Her world was no longer black and white, correct and incorrect. She now saw the nuances of life and how