He did, however, wonder why he felt as if, for the first time in his life, he’d unwrapped a lovely package, chosen and decorated just for him, and had been utterly delighted with his present.

Incongruous as it was, he felt as if he’d made love to an innocent—not that he had any experience to go by there—to a woman who’d waited just for him, and saved all her passion and regard just for him.

Which, considering Sara was a mother well past the first blush of youth, made no sense at all.

The weekend flew by, with Saturday spent in an exhausting marathon of shopping and Sunday spent largely recovering. Sara saw firsthand that Beck excelled at anything associated with commercial endeavor. Whatever they purchased, he had it sent to the inn and packed on their wagon so there would be no delay Monday morning loading and rearranging the wagon’s contents.

The way he spent money was to Sara nigh virtuosic. He didn’t waste it, though, he spent it, invested it. He bought the better quality product, assuring her more durable goods were the better bargain, even if they cost a little more.

She agreed and raised her sights accordingly.

For North, Beck dropped off measurements taken from the man’s boots at a little hole-in-the-corner establishment on a side street.

He purchased bolts of cloth for dresses, drapes, and everything in between, then moved on to sheets, towels, table linens, and other household goods. Sara noticed many of the merchants knew him, though a few made mention of not having seen him in some time.

“You are good company.” He passed her a tot of cognac at the end of their busy day and joined her with his own on the balcony. “It’s rare I can go shopping with a female and not end up wanting to run howling to the nearest taproom.”

“It’s rare I can go shopping with a man and not want to shoo him howling to the nearest taproom. With you, though, it isn’t shopping so much as provisioning, and in the quantities you were buying today, you had the attention of the merchants.”

“True, and with a pretty lady on my arm helping me make my choices.”

A pretty lady the clerks kept referring to as his wife. He’d let them—and so had Sara.

They sipped their drinks in silence, standing side by side on the moonlit balcony.

“When, exactly, do your menses next befall you?”

A day ago, Sara might have taken exception to such a question, but now, it struck her as a simple measure of their intimacy.

She thought a moment, then named a date. “Why?”

“We’re taking precautions to minimize the risk of conception.” Beck set his drink down without finishing it. “Timing is important.”

She trusted him to understand the details of that timing at least as well as she did. He was canny that way, and had she not known differently, she would have thought him married for far longer than the few months he alluded to.

“Will you tell me of your marriage, Beck?”

“What do you want to know?” His voice was even, but in his posture, Sara detected the slightest bracing.

“Who was she? How did she die, and do you still miss her?” Did you love her to distraction, and is she the reason you look so sad sometimes?

He was silent for a moment, as if arranging answers from least to most painful. “Her name was Devona Brockwood, and her grandfather was the Marquess of Whitfield, her papa in line for the title. When her papa died, she fell under the guardianship of her uncle, and he had several daughters close to Devona’s age. It was decided she would be married off posthaste, because she’d already had a Season.”

“Posthaste?” Sara didn’t like the sound of that.

“I was considered an adequate match. Her stock had fallen with her father’s death—her father had not seen to her settlements prior to his demise—and my sense was she was grateful for my attentions. Had her father lived, I’ve no doubt a duke’s son or the son of a marquess, at least, would have been required.”

And Sara had to ask. “Was she pretty?”

“Very.”

Damn him for his honesty, though she thanked him for it too. “But?”

Beck’s smile was sad. “But I was not yet one and twenty. All I knew was that by the rules of any society, once I married her, I could swive her regularly, sport about Town with her on my arm, and be the envy of my friends from university. She was eager enough for the match, and I was anxious to provide my father and brother an heir. We married on less than three months’ acquaintance.”

“Many marriages start out with less,” Sara said gently, because Beck’s disgust was evident in his voice.

“They do, but her death was a blessing in a way—to her, if no one else. She loved another, and there was no means by which we could have been happy.”

Ah, God. The oldest recipe for misery on the planet, and the one seeing the greatest circulation. “And you did not know this when you married her?”

“Of course not. I knew I was to become an instant adult, by virtue of having captured my bride. I’d come into an inheritance at twenty, finished university, and was hell-bent on proving to my father I was more worthy of his respect than Nicholas. A bride with a baby in her arms was to be my capstone achievement—provided, of course, the baby was a boy.”

“You were young.”

“I was an arrogant idiot,” Beck countered, “which is precisely why I never discuss my marriage, much less think of it if I can help it.”

Even though, years later, it still fueled his flight into the opium dens of Paris?

“I’m sorry your marriage wasn’t happy.” Sara curled her arm through his and rested her cheek against his bicep. “We’re so easily hurt when we’re young. We dress and talk and carry on like adults, but inside, we’re not very adult at all.”

Beck settled his arm across her shoulders. “And yet by the time you were twenty, you had a small child, had toured much of Europe, and were the support of your family.”

“I was impersonating an adult. There was no one else on hand for the role. Take me to bed, Beckman. We’re both weary, and this talk is not cheering.”

She hurt for him but knew not how to say so without offending his male pride. Or perhaps she wanted the confidences to cease flowing between them, lest she impart a few more of her own.

Devona had been so pretty, like a perfect caricature of English beauty. Blond, willowy, soft-spoken, and gracious. She’d been every young gentleman’s dream of the ideal wife. But never, in several months of marriage, had she said those words, “Take me to bed, Beckman.”

Such a realization might have engendered rage in years past, or guilt—barges and buckets of guilt—or resentment. Tonight, Beck felt only gratitude for Sara’s company, and sadness for a young couple whose union had been doomed by immaturity.

Beck undressed his lover with simple courtesy, and after he’d brushed out Sara’s hair, he rebraided it, but only after he’d indulged his pleasure in its unbound state. When they shed their nightclothes and climbed onto the bed, Sara tucked herself against Beck’s larger frame and hiked a leg across his thighs.

“Did you enjoy today?” she asked, flipping her braid over her shoulder. She settled against him as his arms went around her, then found a comfy spot for her head against his shoulder.

She fits me, Beck thought, resting his cheek against her hair. She not only fit him, she was easily affectionate with him, at least behind closed doors. Maybe this was a maternal quality, this simple affection, or maybe it was a Sara quality. In either case, it was one of the things he enjoyed about her most, the way she gave and accepted affection.

“I enjoyed being with you today,” Beck said. “But no, haring all over town, haggling, it reminded me too much of my past, and that in truth, Three Springs should not be my concern.”