He did not want to meet with the Duchess of Astonbury. There were things that had made a more lasting impression on him than she had. It was not her beautiful face or the way her mouth kissed his or how her slender hands had felt on him that recalled her to his memory, but the four hundred and ninety-seven tiles on her bedroom ceiling. They were the four hundred and ninety-seven reasons he’d been able to control his panic that first time, focusing on them instead of the weight of her on his body, pretending that she was gasping, moving, doing all of that to someone who was not him. Time had
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