“Don’t chastise me when you don’t mean it or I’ll boop your nose. I’m perfectly aware you wish to ravish me. You’ve been eyeing me all night.” He nudged open a nearby door and pulled her into a room lit by a dying fire. “My father’s study. He’ll be busy arguing with Henrietta about taking back on his cotton for quite some time. I thought I’d have you to myself for a second.” He whirled her around and used their moving bodies to close the door, then pressed her against it before pressing himself against her. Then he stole her breath with a kiss. She opened her heart to him every time he kissed her, seeing all of him and being seen. She tugged at his cravat.
“Ah, ah, ah, Pocket Princess. Not till we get home.”
She growled in frustration.
“You don’t want Willy Shakes to see us, now do you?”
She pulled away. “Pardon me?” He still managed to surprise her, even a year after he’d saved her from a falling wardrobe.
He threw a look over his shoulder. “Shakespeare.” A bust of the poet and playwright sat on a top shelf behind his father’s desk.
Maggie laughed. “It’s a bust. He’s not going to gossip.”
He booped her nose. “This is precisely why Sebastian doesn’t approve of you.”
She laughed again and pulled him down for another kiss.
A knock reverberated the door at her back. “We all know what you’re doing in there,” Henrietta’s voice, jolly and warm, called, “and Father grows agitated.”
Tobias nuzzled Maggie’s neck. “Tell Father to fu—”
“Henrietta!” Maggie rushed to prevent her husband’s obscenity. “Tell him we’ll be right there.” She placed both palms on Tobias’s chest and met his eyes with a determined gaze. “Correct, Tobias?”
He sighed dramatically and rolled his head back on his neck. “If we must.”
Maggie smoothed her skirts and straightened her bodice. “Is my hair a mess?”
He smoothed a tendril away from her forehead with soft smile. “It matters not if they already know, Mags.”
She tapped him on the shoulder. “It does t— Huh.” She frowned. Those cushions in the chairs across the room. The pattern on them looked familiar. She brushed past Tobias and grabbed one off the seat. She held the cushion close to the dying flames for more light.
“When we met, you were contemplating blackmail, and now you’ve turned arsonist. You are a rogue of all sorts, and I’ll never redeem you, it seems.”
“Come, look, Tobias.”
He joined her near the fire.
She extended the cushion toward him. “Look at the pattern.” She smiled wide. “Do you recognize it?”
His finger traced the pattern—a rose that was an eye. “Well, well, well,” Tobias chuckled. “I never thought I’d see the day.” He took the cushion and placed it back on the chair, then took Maggie’s hand and escorted her from the room. “When he allowed Hen, who was running a part of his own business, to stop using his cotton, I thought him mad.”
“It was smart. Her dress shop is doing better than ever.”
“And then he put you in charge of the cotton mill’s children.” Tobias shook his head as they walked down the hall toward the drawing room. “And now this?”
“He’s not terribly different from you, Tobias. He even has a humorous side.”
“Never! But he has shown himself to have sense, especially where you’re concerned.”
“Allowing the children daily time for education doesn’t entirely save them from the jaws of those machines.” If only she could do more.
“But it reduces their risk somewhat.” Tobias shook his head. “You will keep working until you solve it.”
She would try.
He patted her hand. “And in the meantime, they all have beautiful, thick blankets at home.”
She nodded. “And they are learning the fine needlework that will help them become unique artisans instead of expendable gears in a machine.”
