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“Yes?”

“What are you doing twenty feet in the air?”

She brazened on, pretending not to notice that he had positioned hih she would not crush hi for a book”

“Would youto the earth?”

Luckily, the book for which she had been searching revealed itself She pulled it off the shelf and made her way back down the ladder When she had both feet fir, cli to the rafters in your condition?”

“I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes”

“You do indeed—particularly your extreme ability to try my patience—I believe, however, that youwhy he was irritated “You could have fallen!”

“But I did not,” she said, si her face up to his for a kiss

He gave it to her, his hands corew “You must take better care,” he whispered, and a thrill coursed through her at the wonder in his tone

She lifted her ar in the heat and strength of hirinned “Twelve lives, remember?”

He groaned at the words “I think you’ve used them up, you know Certainly you’ve used your twelve scandals”

She wrinkled her nose at that, thinking “No I couldn’t have”

He lifted her in his ar Leopold As the dog resuing his wife on his lap “The tumble into the Serpentinethe tih Hyde Parklurking outside my club”

“That wasn’t a real scandal,” she protested, cuddling closer to him as his hand stroked across her rounded belly

“Scandal enough”

“My mother’s arrival,” Juliana said

He shook his head “Not your scandal”

She smiled “Nonsense She’s the scandal that started it all”

“So she is” He pressed a kiss to her temple “I shall have to thank her so Lady Needham’s harvest bounty”

“Well, really, who decorates a staircase in vegetables? And if we’re going to count all my scandals, how about the ones in which you were scandalous as well?” She ticked theet—”

He kissed the side of her neck “Met”

She laughed and pushed hiht”

The amber in his eyes darkened “I assure you, Siren, I would never forget Bonfire Night”

“How many is that?”

“Eight”

“There, you see? I told you! I ahter and a worried look crossed her face “Nine,” she said

“Nine?”

“I insulted your mother at the dressmaker’s” She lowered her voice “In front of people”

His brows shot up “When?”

“During our wager”

He grinned “I would have liked to see that”