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fondness for female horses. “So I must permit you this liberty?”
    “You’d best. Consider it a form of doting.”
    His hands were competent and oddly soothing as he finger-combed Thea’s hair over her shoulders, then trailed it straight down her back to her hips. Despite a crushing urge to close her eyes and subside against the cushioned seat—despite equally compelling urges to bolt from the coach and to pour out her heart to her spouse—Thea kept her spine straight until the duke secured her braid with the few pins and combs she’d worn to the church.
    “Thank you, Your Grace. I will have less work to do tonight when I brush it out.”
    “Tonight, madam, I’ll brush your hair out,” he said.
    The butterflies that had been settling in Thea’s stomach took wing again. She and her husband needed to talk, but just as she turned to address him, the Anselm town residence came into view.
    The duke remained unnervingly attentive to her throughout the breakfast. To Thea’s surprise, Tim appeared looking reasonably alert and sober, and quite well put together. He’d been at the church, to escort her up the aisle, but she’d hardly seen him for having been distracted by Anselm, looking so stern and proper in his formal attire.
    The duke always looked stern and proper—unless he was smirking and looking stern, proper, and sardonic.
    The breakfast passed in a chattery blur, for all three of His Grace’s sisters and their spouses were present, and the women conversed at a great rate, managing to include Nonie and Thea in most of the topics. The men communicated apace as well, mostly with shared looks of indulgent patience, raised eyebrows, winks, and sighs. Anselm’s sisters had chosen good men, and the notion comforted.
    In all likelihood, Anselm had chosen good men for his sisters.
    All too soon, Thea had changed into a carriage dress and was again seated beside the duke, his traveling coach speeding them to one of his smaller holdings in Kent.
    Really, truly, the time had come to have that talk.
    Anselm stretched long legs out toward the opposite bench. “You’ll pardon me if I catch a nap?”
    He was tired. One didn’t brace a duke with bad news when the duke was exhausted.
    “You can sleep in a moving vehicle?” Thea asked.
    “In this one.” He shrugged out of his jacket, for he too had changed into less formal attire. The coach was luxuriously appointed, the most comfortable conveyance Thea had ever been in, and marvelously well sprung.
    “Come here, duchess.” His Grace fitted an arm around her shoulders. “You might as well rest too. We’ve at least an hour before we get to our destination, and we’ll have staff to meet and civilities to observe. Patience tells me you were up until all hours, fretting over fripperies.”
    Fretting, yes, but not over fripperies.
    With that, he settled Thea against him, and to her surprise, the duke made a comfortable pillow. In the swaying coach, he held her securely, tucking his chin against her temple.
    “Relax,” he growled into her hair. “I would not gobble you whole on the King’s Highway. There’s a time and a place for that, and it isn’t here and now.”
    He drew her hand across his waist and secured his other arm around her as well.
    By degrees, Thea did relax. Her husband-cum-pillow-cum-worst-fear had indeed fallen asleep, but slumber eluded her. She’d seldom been held like this, not since early childhood. The duke had been trying to put her at ease, perhaps, but he’d left a question circling in her brain, one that robbed her utterly of a desire to sleep:
    Was her wedding night the proper time and place to gobble her whole?
    * * *

    Had Noah sprouted horns and fangs, that his bride should regard him so warily? Noah had read Thea as a practical sort, inured to the indelicacies and inconveniences of life—she’d been a companion to a spoiled twit, for pity’s sake; how much more mundane could a lady’s circumstances be?
    And yet, his bride was