But when she reached for the closures of his breeches fall, he stayed her hand. “Really,” he said, struggling for breath. “It’s only three more days. I can wait.”

“Well, I can’t. I’ve missed you so much. And I’m tired of playing the invalid. I want to feel alive again.”

A ragged sigh escaped him. How could he deny her that?

Arching her spine, she rubbed her body against his. She found his hand where he cupped her stockinged calf and drew his touch upward, past her knee and ribbon garter. All the way up to the silk of her bared thighs and the enticing heat between them.

He groaned. “God, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She rolled her hips, pressing into his touch. “And I need you, Bram. So very badly.”

They worked quickly then, the two of them. United in purpose and urgency, pushing aside bothersome folds of buckskin and petticoat, until nothing came between them. Nothing at all. At last he slid into her, fitting himself into that tight, sweet place where he knew he belonged, forever.

“Yes,” she sighed, pulling him close.

It was very good to be home.

Afterword

Regency-era medicine was a bloody business. While doctors surely had good intentions to help their patients, very little was understood about the origins and spread of disease. The preferred treatments of the day—bleeding and purging—had little, if any, real benefit.

Women’s reproductive health presented an especially difficult puzzle, it seems. In researching Susanna’s character, I read several Regency and early Victorian case histories of young women diagnosed with “hysteria.” Their symptoms ranged from moodiness to muscle weakness, headaches to seizures. All manner of feminine complaints were attributed to irregular menstruation or some vague dysfunction of the reproductive organs. Prescribed treatments ranged from the standard bleeding and purging, to the application of pustule-inducing salves and leeches on . . . let’s just say, delicate areas.

It all made me extremely grateful for my twenty-first-century doctors. But even with the advances in modern medicine, today’s researchers are still striving to understand and cure diseases that affect tens of thousands of women each year. For that reason, I was honored to learn A Night to Surrender would be part of Avon’s partnership with the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, an organization dedicated to raising public awareness, finding a cure, and encouraging women to be their own health advocates. Please visit www.ovariancancer.org for more information.