Trouble With Harry by Katie MacAlister

glare. “Although I don’t know why I should feel guilty about this. After all, it’s his fault, it’s all his fault. If he had told me before we were married who he really was, then I would have told him who I…who I…oh, pooh. I don’t know what I would have told him.”
    Plum rose from the small gilt dressing table and fidgeted with the ribbon on her night rail. It was an old night rail, patched and mended and somewhat frayed on the bottom, not at all the sort of night rail a real marchioness would wear, especially on her wedding night, but it was all she owned, and she was pathetically grateful that Edna had found a rose-colored ribbon to replace the bit of braided cloth that had previously graced the neckline. “You are a coward, Frederica Pelham. You are nothing but a base coward, and you have no right to whine about anything because this is what you wanted.”
    The scent of jasmine carried on a warm evening breeze hung heavy on the air as she gazed out the window at the blackness beyond. Because they had arrived after dark, she hadn’t had much more than a glimpse of Ashleigh Court as Harry had brought her home, but what she had seen stunned her almost as much as the carelessly tossed-out fact that he, Harry, her lord and master, was in fact a lord if not her master. True, the house and grounds were horribly ill-kept, but Harry had reassured Thom (Plum being at the time too stunned by the marquis’s revelation to do much but sputter, “But, but…”) that he had plans to renovate and rejuvenate the once-proud estate, and he looked forward to the help and advice of his new wife.
    â€œA wife who doesn’t deserve to offer any advice or help,” Plum said sadly to herself.
    â€œYou think not? I’m of another mind. I’ve always felt that a home needed a woman’s touch to keep it from being too utilitarian.” Harry strolled into the room through the connecting door, clad in a heavy gold brocade dressing gown that reached to his feet. He stopped next to her and looked out the window, sighing as he did. “There’s so much to do here, I would appreciate your help, but if you’d prefer not to take the house in hand—”
    â€œOh, no, I’d be happy to…my lord.”
    Harry smiled as he turned to face her, a smile that would seem to be made up of mundane things like lips and eyes and adorable little crinkle laugh lines, but the sum result of it was so astoundingly wondrous, it melted all of Plum’s internal organs. Or that’s what it felt like. She couldn’t believe that simply by standing beside her he had whipped her traitorous, not-in-the-least-bit-sorry-she-had-married-him-despite-the-fact-that-she-hadn’t-told-him-the-truth-about-her-past body into a frenzy of want, need, and unbridled anticipation.
    She had been far, far too long without a man in her bed.
    â€œAre you still having difficulty with the marchioness idea? I am very sorry I didn’t tell you before we married, Plum. It wasn’t well done of me at all, but you see, I thought it might scare you off, and”—he took her hand, his thumb stroking over the backs of her fingers in a way that set alight all of the previously melted internal bits—“I wanted very much to have you legally mine before I bared my breast of all my secrets.”
    A warm puddle of happiness did much to soothe her guilt. If he wanted her so much, perhaps the incident in her past would mean nothing to him? She hoped so. She prayed so. She also prayed she would survive the look of mingled desire and admiration that glowed from behind his spectacles. Plum had seen just such a look in the eyes of her first husband, and although it pleased her then, now she found herself responding to it with so great an enthusiasm, she thought her legs were going to give out. “It was a bit of a surprise, my lord—”
    â€œHarry,