Only Enchanting by Mary Balogh

3

For what remained of that first day, after they had all arrived, and for all of the next day as well as much of the night between and the night following, they stayed together as a group and talked almost without ceasing. It was always thus when there was a year’s worth of news to share, and it was still so this year, despite the fact that most of them had met a few times since last spring’s gathering at Penderris Hall and when three of them had married.

Flavian had been a bit afraid that those marriages would somehow affect their closeness. He had been a lot afraid, if the truth were told. It was not that he resented his friends’ happiness or the three wives they had acquired, all of whom were at Middlebury Park with them. But the seven of them had been through hell together and had come out of it together as a tightly knit group. They knew one another as no one else did or could. There was a bond that would be impossible to describe in words. It was a bond without which they would surely crumble—or explode—into a million pieces. At least, he would.

All three wives seemed to know it and respect it, though. Without being in any way overt about it, they gave space to their husbands and the others, though they did not hold themselves entirely aloof either. It was all very well-done of them. Flavian soon had a definite affection for them all, as well as the liking he had felt when he had first met each of them.

One thing he had always valued as much as anything else about the annual gatherings of the Survivors’ Club, though, was that the seven of them did not cling together as an inseparable unit for the whole of their three-week gatherings. There was always the company of friends when one wanted or needed it, but there could always be solitude too when one chose to be alone.

Penderris was perfectly suited for both company and solitude, spacious as the house and park were and situated as they were above a private beach and the sea. Middlebury Park was hardly inferior, however, even though it was inland. The park was large and had been designed in such a way that there were public areas—the formal gardens, the wide lawns, the lake—and more secluded ones such as the wilderness walk through the hills behind the house, and the cedar avenue and summerhouse and meadows behind the trees at the far side of the lake. There would even soon be a five-mile-long riding track around the inner edge of the north and east walls and part of the south; the construction of it was almost finished. The track was to allow Vincent the freedom to ride and to run despite his blindness, and had been his viscountess’s idea, as had the guide dog and other additions to the house and park.

On the second morning, they all had breakfast together after Ben—Sir Benedict Harper—and Vincent had come up from what Ralph Stockwood, Earl of Berwick, described as the dungeon but was in reality an extension of the wine cellar, which had been turned into an exercise room. It was a sunny day again.

“Gwen and Samantha are going to stroll down to the lake,” Lady Darleigh said, indicating Lady Trentham, Hugo’s wife, and Lady Harper, Sir Benedict’s, “while I spend an hour in the nursery, and then I am going to join them. Anyone else is quite welcome to come too, of course.”

“I must spend some time in the music room,” Vincent said. “I have to keep my fingers nimble. It is amazing how quickly they develop into ten thumbs when they are not exercised.”

“Lord love us,” Flavian said. “The v-violin, Vince? The p-pianoforte?”

“Both,” Vincent said with a grin, “as well as the harp.”

“You have persevered with the harp, then, despite all your frustrations with it, Vincent?” Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay, said. “You are a marvel of determination.”

“You are not planning to favor us with a recital by any chance, Vince?” Ralph asked. “It would be sporting of you to give us all fair warning if you are.”

“Consider it duly given.” Vincent was still grinning.

George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, and Hugo Emes, Lord Trentham, were going to walk over to see how the riding track was coming along. Ralph and Imogen were going to explore the wilderness walk. Ben, who was still very much in the honeymoon stage of his marriage, having been wed to Lady Harper for less than two months, chose to accompany her and Lady Trentham to the lake.

That left Flavian.

“Come with us out to the track, Flave?” Hugo suggested.

“I am going to stroll over to have a look at the cedar avenue,” he said. “I never did get there when I was here last autumn.”

No one protested his seemingly odd and antisocial decision. No one suggested coming with him. They understood his unspoken wish to be alone. Of course they did. They must have half expected it after last night.

The late evenings during their gatherings were almost always taken up with the most serious of their talks. They spoke of setbacks they had encountered with their recoveries, problems they faced, nightmares they endured. It had not been planned that way, and even now they never sat down with the express intention of pouring out their woes. But it almost always ended up that way. Not that they were unalloyed grumbling sessions. Far from it. They spoke from their hearts because they knew they would be understood, because they knew there would be support and sympathy and advice, sometimes even a real solution to a problem.

Last night it had been Flavian’s turn, though he had not intended to talk at all. Not yet. Perhaps later in the visit, when he had settled more fully into the comfort of his friends’ company. But there had been a lull in the conversation after Ben had told them how his recent decision to use a wheeled chair after he had insisted for so long upon hobbling about on his two twisted legs between sturdy canes had transformed his life and actually been a triumph rather than the defeat he had always thought it would be.

And yet they all felt his sadness too, for taking to a chair had been his admission that he would never again be as he once was. None of them would. There had been a brief silence.

“It is almost a whole year since Leonard B-Burton died,” Flavian had blurted out, his voice jerky and unnaturally loud.

They had all turned blank looks upon him.

“Hazeltine,” he had added. “After a shockingly brief illness, it s-seems. He was my age. I never did write letters of c-condolence either to his f-family or to V-Velma.”

“The Earl of Hazeltine?” Ralph said. “I remember now, though, Flave. You told me about his passing when we were in London soon after leaving Penderris last year. He was—”

“Yes.” Flavian interrupted him with a flashing smile. “He was my former best f-friend. I knew him and was almost inseparable from him from my f-first day at Eton right up until—”

Well, right up until.

“I remember your talking about him,” George said, “though I did not know of his death. He never came near London, did he? You were never reconciled, then, Flavian?”

“He may r-rot in hell,” Flavian said.

“I had not heard either,” Imogen told him. “What has happened to Lady Hazeltine?”

“Her too. M-m-may sh-she r-r-r-o-o-t-t-t—” He thumped the side of one closed fist several times against his thigh in impotent rage and gasped for air.

“Take your time, Flave,” Hugo said, getting to his feet and taking the empty glass from the table beside Flavian in order to fill it again. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder as he passed him on the way to the brandy decanter. “We have all night. None of us is going anywhere.”

“Take a deep breath,” Vincent suggested, “and keep inhaling until the air blows a bubble out of the top of your head, like a balloon. It has never worked for me, but it may for you. Even if it does not, though, waiting to feel a bubble form takes your mind off whatever it was that was getting beyond your endurance.”

“I am not really upset,” Flavian said after drinking half his brandy in one gulp. His voice was suddenly toneless. “It happened almost a year ago, after all. He was not my friend for more than six years before that, so I have not missed him. And Velma preferred him to me, as was her right, even if she was betrothed to me. I never wished them harm. I don’t wish her harm now. She means nothing to me.”

He had not stammered even once, he realized. Perhaps he really was over it. Over them.

“Are you still feeling guilty that you did not write to her, Flavian?” Imogen asked.

He shook his head and spread his hands just above his knees. They were quite steady, he was happy to see, even though they were tingling with pins and needles.

“She would not have wanted to hear from me,” he said. “She would have thought I was g-gloating.”

But he had felt guilty in all the months since he had heard—and resented the feeling.

“You have never been able to close the door on that part of your life, have you?” George asked. “And Hazeltine’s dying would seem to make it harder for you ever to do so. It really is too bad, Flavian. I am sorry.”

Flavian lifted his head and looked broodingly at him. “It was shut and bolted and locked and the key thrown away s-seven years ago.”

He knew—damn it all!—that it was not true. They all knew. But no one said so, and no one pursued the topic until he did. They never intruded beyond a certain point upon one another’s privacy. But there was a silence to allow him to say more if he wished.

“She is c-coming home,” he said. “Her year of mourning over, she is coming b-back.”

His mother and her infernal letters! As though he was interested in all the latest gossip from Candlebury Abbey, his ancestral home in Sussex, in which he had not set foot for longer than eight years. Lady Frome had called on his mother with the news, her letter had explained. Sir Winston and Lady Frome lived eight miles from Candlebury, at Farthings Hall. The two families had always been on the best of terms, Sir Winston and Flavian’s father having grown up together and attended school and university together. Velma was their only daughter, much adored by her parents.

The letter had reached Flavian in London, just before he came to Gloucestershire. He would surely wish to return home to Candlebury for Easter this year, now that he would have an incentive, his mother had written. She had underlined the four key words.

Velma was coming home and bringing her young daughter with her. Len’s daughter. She had had no son. No heir.

“It does not m-matter that she is returning to Farthings,” he added, tossing back what remained in his glass. “I never go near C-Candlebury anyway.”

Imogen had patted his knee, and after a brief silence Vincent had started to tell them about the joy the birth of his son had brought into his life—and about the panic attacks he had to fight whenever he was overwhelmed by the realization that he would never see the child or any brothers and sisters he might have.

“But, oh, the joy!” There had been tears swimming in his eyes when Flavian had looked up at him.

No one wondered this morning, then, why Flavian chose to be alone. Some things had to be dealt with on one’s own, as they all knew from experience. Which fact led him to wonder about marriage—in particular, the marriages of three of the Survivors—as he stepped out of the house half an hour after breakfast and turned his steps in the direction of the lake. Was there space in marriage? There would have to be, wouldn’t there? Or one would feel suffocated. Even if one was wildly in love. Happily-ever-after did not mean being welded together for all eternity—ghastly thought.

What did it mean, then?

It meant nothing, of course, because there was no such thing. Even the marriages of his three friends would crumble if they and their wives did not work like the devil to keep them whole for the rest of their natural lives. Was it worth the trouble?

He had believed in romantic love and happily-ever-after once upon a time, silly idiot that he had been. At least—he stopped walking to frown in thought for a moment—he was almost sure he must have believed in it. Sometimes it seemed to him that his mind was a bit like a checkerboard—the dark squares representing conscious memory, the white ones just blank spaces to hold the memories apart. Whether the blanks meant anything more than that, he could not remember. And when he tried too hard to work it out, he either got one of his crashing headaches or else he looked around for something into which he might ram his fist without breaking every bone in his hand.

There was definitely something in those white squares. There was violence, if nothing else.

The ladies and Ben—with his canes rather than his wheeled chair—were before him at the lake. Ben had the door of the boathouse open, and the ladies were peering inside. Was he planning to play the gallant and row them across to the island so that they could take a closer look at the temple folly there? Flavian hailed them, and there was a cheerful exchange of pleasantries during which he did not suggest helping to row. He kept on walking about the lake and past the band of trees on the other side. It was a lengthy walk.

The uninitiated would assume the park ended with the lake and the trees on its far bank. But it did not. It stretched beyond into a spacious area that was a little less cultivated, more secluded, more designed for solitude or the enjoyment of a tête-à-tête with a chosen companion.

It was solitude he wanted and needed this morning. Where the devil had that outburst come from last night? He had read the notice of Len’s death with some surprise about this time last year. It was always a nasty reminder of one’s own mortality when a contemporary died, especially when one was only thirty. And more especially when, once upon a time, one had known that particular contemporary almost as well as one knew one’s fellow Survivors now. Though he would wager his life that no one of the Survivors would steal away and marry the betrothed of any other who was incapacitated.

He had read the notice with some surprise but with no greater emotion. All that unpleasantness had happened a long time ago, after all, not long after he had been brought home from the Peninsula and just before he had been taken to Penderris Hall for treatment and convalescence. A lifetime ago, it seemed. It had all meant nothing to him last spring. Len had meant nothing. Velma had meant nothing.

A whole alarming lot of nothing.

It still meant nothing now.

Except that she was coming back from the north of England, which had always felt comfortably like the other side of the world. And it did not require any genius to imagine what excitement her return was arousing in the romantic, matchmaking bosoms of his mother and hers. The fact that his mother expected him to go running to Candlebury for Easter just because Velma would be at Farthings told its own eloquent tale. It also told him that they expected he would feel the same about Velma—and she about him—as they had felt before his injuries and Len’s betrayal.

He thought back, aghast, to that unexpected outburst last night and that equally unexpected relapse into an almost uncontrollable inability to get his words out. For two pins, if someone had said the wrong thing, he would have lashed out with his fists and done the Lord knew what damage to Vincent’s home. He had been alarmingly close to having a complete relapse into the state of animal madness he’d been left in after the war. And he had fought a throbbing headache for most of a largely sleepless night.

He thought of Vince’s bubble and chuckled ruefully.

And then he realized that he was not alone back here after all.

*   *   *

It had been unwise to come here today, especially when there was unlimited countryside, all of it teeming with new growth and the wildflowers of early spring, in every direction about the village. It was wildflowers that Agnes loved to paint. But the only daffodils she had seen were in the flower beds of people’s gardens—and in the grass of the meadow on the far side of the park at Middlebury. And daffodils did not bloom forever. She could not simply wait for three weeks to pass until Lord Darleigh’s houseguests went away.

Daisies and buttercups and clover would bloom in that near meadowland throughout the summer. There had been snowdrops there a few weeks ago, and there still were some primroses. But now was the time of the daffodils and, oh, she could not miss it.

It was a little-used area of the park. There was no direct route to it from the house, and it was a long walk away. One had to skirt about the lake and the band of trees that had been planted along its western bank. It was unlikely the guests would stroll there often, if at all. It was very unlikely they would walk there during a morning.

So she had taken the risk of coming back, her easel tucked beneath one arm, paper and paints and brushes and everything else she might need in her large canvas bag. She had tramped through the trees that lined the south wall, and emerged into sunlight and open spaces only when she was well out of sight of the house and the gardens and lawns fronting it.

She had painted a single daffodil two days ago but had been dissatisfied with it. She had made it too large, too bold, too yellow. It had been an object largely divorced from its surroundings. She might just as well have plucked it and carried it home and placed it in a jar and then painted it.

She had come back to paint the daffodils in their meadow. And she was rewarded by the sight of many more of them than there had been just two days ago. They were like a carpet spread out before her, their heads nodding in a breeze she had not particularly noticed. And they had the effect of making the grass in which they grew seem a richer green. Ah, they deserved to be painted just like this, she decided.

But how was she to capture what she saw with her eyes and felt with the welling emotions of her heart? How did one paint not just daffodils nodding in the grass but the eternal light and hope of spring itself? It was her first full spring here with Dora, and she had greeted it with a certain longing for something she could not even put into words. For life to resume, perhaps, as more than just a genteel existence. Or perhaps for life to begin, though that was a somewhat absurd notion when she was twenty-six years old and had already been married and widowed.

She did not usually think with her emotions.

She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon.

She set down her easel and bag and just stood and looked for a long time: breathing in the smells of nature, hearing birds singing among the branches of the cedars close by, feeling the cool March air overlaid by the fresh warmth of the sun.

After a few minutes, however, she knew that she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass. She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.

Well, there was a solution to that.

She kneeled down on the grass and then stretched out along it on her back, careful not to crush any of the flowers. The grass sprang up between her spread arms and her body and between her ungloved fingers when she spread them wide. Daffodils bloomed all about her. She could smell them and see the undersides of the petals and trumpets of those closest to her—and the sky beyond them. And now there was a vast blue to add to the yellow and the green.

And she was a part of it all, not a separate being looking upon creation, but creation looking upon itself. Oh, how she loved moments like this, rare as they were, and how she ached with the longing to capture in paint something of the inner experience as well as the outer beauty. Perhaps this was how truly great painters felt all the time.

Perhaps truly great artists felt all the time.

But suddenly there was a sense, sharply intrusive, that she was not alone. And here she was, stretched out in the meadow among the daffodils, defenseless and foolish and trespassing even if she had been told by Lord Darleigh as well as by Sophia that she might come whenever she wished.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was no one else here after all. She lifted her head cautiously from the ground and looked around.

She was not wrong.

He was standing quite still a short distance away, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat so that she could see neither the direction of his gaze nor the expression on his face. But he could not possibly have missed seeing her. A blind man could not have missed her. Even Viscount Darleigh would have sensed her presence. But he was not Viscount Darleigh.

Of all the people he might have been—and there were ten of them at the house—he was the very one she had most wanted not to see. Again. What were the chances?

She was the first to speak.

“I do have permission to be here,” she said and then wished she had not. She had immediately put herself on the defensive.

“Beauty among the d-daffodils,” he said. “How v-very charming.”

He sounded utterly bored. If one could speak and sigh at the same time, he did it. He was wearing his drab riding coat. It had six capes—she counted this time. It was long enough to half cover his highly polished boots. It was pure nonsense to feel that he was more male than any other man she had ever encountered—but she did feel it.

Instead of leaping to her feet, as she probably ought to have done, she laid her head back down on the grass and closed her eyes. Perhaps he would go away. Was it possible to feel more embarrassed, more humiliated than she did?

He did not go away. A cloud suddenly came between her closed eyes and the sun—except that there were no clouds. She opened her eyes to find him standing beside her and looking down. And now she could see his face, shadowed though it still was. His eyes were green and heavy lidded, as she remembered them from the night of the ball. His left eyebrow was partly elevated. His mouth was curled up at the corners, though whether with amusement or scorn or both, she could not tell. One lock of blond hair lay across his forehead.

“I could offer a h-helping hand,” he told her. “I c-could even play the gallant and carry you to the h-house, though I daresay I should expire at your feet of some h-heart condition after arriving there. Are you hurt or indisposed?”

“I am not,” she assured him. “I am merely viewing the world as the daffodils view it.”

She winced—quite visibly, she feared. Was it possible to feel more mortified than mortified? What a ridiculously stupid thing to say! Oh, please let him just go away, and she would gladly agree to forget him for all eternity.

His right hand, clad in the finest, most costly kid, disappeared beneath his coat and came out with a quizzing glass. He raised it to his eye and unhurriedly surveyed the meadow and then, briefly, her. It was a horrible affectation. If there was something wrong with his sight, he ought to wear eyeglasses.

And through it all she lay where she was, just as though she were incapable of rising—or as though she believed she could hide more effectively down here.

“Ah,” he said at last. “I g-guessed there must be a perfectly sensible explanation, and now I see there is. I r-remember you as being sensible, Mrs. Keeping.”

He had remembered her name, then—or he had asked Sophia. She wished he had not.

“No,” he said, removing his hat and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her easel and bag, “that is not strictly c-correct, is it? I expected you to be s-sensible, but you were enchanting instead.”

The sun turned his blond hair to a rich gold as he sat down beside her and draped his arms over his raised knees. He was wearing tight buckskin breeches beneath his coat. They hugged powerful-looking thighs. Agnes looked away.

Enchanting.

Oh, dear, he had remembered that waltz.

“And your being here among the d-daffodils now makes full sense,” he said.

Why? Because she was not sensible but . . . enchanting? Oh, she wished he spoke as other people did, so that one might understand his meaning without having to wonder and guess.

She was still lying full-length in the grass. She ought at least to sit up, but that would bring her closer to him.

“I came here to paint,” she told him. “But I will go away. I have no wish to intrude upon your privacy. I did not expect any of the guests to come this far. Not so early in the day, at least.”

Finally she would have sat up and got to her feet. But as soon as she moved, he set a hand on her shoulder, and she stayed where she was. His hand stayed where it was too, and it scorched through her body right down to her toes—even though he was wearing gloves.

Why, oh, why had she risked coming here? And what unhappy chance had brought him here too?

“You have intruded upon my p-privacy,” he said, “as I have upon yours. Shall we both turn h-homeward disgruntled as a r-result, or shall we s-stay and be private together for a while?”

Suddenly the daffodil meadow seemed far lonelier and more remote than when she had had it to herself.

“How do the daffodils view the world?” he asked, removing his hand and grasping the handle of his quizzing glass again.

“Upward,” she said. “Always upward.”

One of his eyebrows rose, and he looked mockingly down at her.

“There is a l-life lesson here for all of us, is there, M-Mrs. Keeping?” he asked her. “We should all and always look upward, and all our t-troubles will be at an end?”

She smiled. “If only life were that simple.”

“But for daffodils it is,” he said.

“We are not daffodils.”

“For which f-fact I shall be eternally thankful,” he said. “They never see August or D-December or even June. You should s-smile more often.”

She stopped smiling.

“Why did you come out here alone,” she asked him, “when you are with a group of friends?”

He had the strangest eyes. At a cursory glance, they always looked a bit sleepy. But they were not. And now they gazed at her and into her with apparent mockery—and yet there was something intense behind the mockery. As if there were a wholly unknown person hiding inside.

The thought left her a little breathless.

“And why did you c-come here alone,” he asked, “when you have a s-sister and neighbors and f-friends in the village?”

“I asked first.”

“So you did.” She pressed her head and her hands more firmly into the grass when he smiled. It was a devastating expression. “I c-came here to commune with my soul, Mrs. Keeping, and I found enchantment among the daffodils. I shall go back to the house presently and write a p-poem about the experience. A s-sonnet, perhaps. Undoubtedly a sonnet, in fact. No other verse form would do the incident j-justice.”

She smiled slowly and then laughed. “I deserved that. I had no business asking.”

“But how are we to discover anything about each other,” he said, “if we do not ask? Who was Mr. K-Keeping?”

“My husband,” she said and smiled again when his left eyebrow mocked her. “He was our neighbor where I grew up. He offered for me when I was eighteen and he was thirty, and I was married to him for five years before he died almost three years ago.”

“He was a gentleman f-farmer, was he?” he asked. “And you were wildly in love with him, I suppose? An older, experienced man?”

“I was fond of him, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “and he of me.”

“He sounds like a d-dull dog,” he said.

She was torn between indignation and amusement.

“You know nothing about him,” she said. “He was a worthy man.”

“If I were m-married to you,” he said, “and you described me as w-worthy, I would shoot myself and thus put myself out of my m-misery.”

“What utter nonsense!” But she laughed again.

“There was no p-passion, was there?” he asked, sounding bored again.

“You are being offensive.”

“That means there was no p-passion,” he said. “A p-pity. You look as if you were made for it.”

“Oh.”

“And most d-definitely enchanting,” he said, and he shifted his position, leaned over her, and kissed her.

She was shocked into immobility, even after he had raised his head a few inches to look down at her face. From close up, his green eyes glinted into hers, and his mouth looked slightly cruel as well as mocking. And she felt such a stabbing of lust in her breasts and between her thighs and up into her womb that she was quite incapable of either remonstrating with him or pushing him away.

She wanted him to do it again.

“You ought to have stayed safely locked away inside your v-village this morning, Mrs. K-Keeping,” he said. “I came here alone b-because I was feeling somewhat s-savage.”

“Savage?” She swallowed and raised her hand to set her fingertips lightly against his cheek. It was warm and smooth. He must have shaved shortly before coming out. And yet she knew that this time he was speaking the truth. She could almost feel leashed danger pulsing outward from the person hidden away inside him.

She had touched him. She looked at her hand rather as if it belonged to someone else, and withdrew it.

“I spent three years learning to c-control it,” he told her. “My savagery, that is. But it still l-lurks and waits to p-pounce upon some unwary victim. It would have been better if you had not been here.”

She was curiously, and perhaps foolishly, unafraid. She could feel his breath warm against her face.

“What brought it so nearly out of lurkdom this morning?” she asked him.

But he merely smiled at her and lowered his head to brush his lips over hers again, and then to taste them with his tongue before reaching inside to the soft flesh behind them and so right on into her mouth.

She lay very still, as though moving might break the spell.

If this was a kiss, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced with William. Totally unlike. It was carnal and sinful and lustful and, for the moment at least, quite beyond her power to resist. She could smell the daffodils. And him. And temptation.

And danger.

The hand that had been against his cheek went to the back of his head, her fingers threading their way into his thick, warm hair, while the other hand went to his waist, beneath his riding coat. Even through the remaining layers of his clothing she could feel the hard maleness of his muscles and the heat of the blood pulsing through him.

He was all raw masculinity—something quite outside her experience.

He was dangerous. Terribly dangerous.

But her mind simply refused to answer the call to defend her, and she became all physical sensation—shock and wonder and pleasure and pure lust. And a feeling of fright that enticed her more than it repelled.

His tongue explored her mouth. The tip of it touched the roof and drew a line along the ridge of bone there and sent such a rush of pure desire shivering through her that she reacted at last. She set both hands against his shoulders and pressed him away.

Far more reluctantly than she ought.

He did not fight her or show any other sign of savagery. He lifted his head, smiled slowly, and then sat up before pushing himself to his feet. When she sat up too, he reached out a hand to help her up. It was still gloved.

“One ought to be a perfect g-gentleman even when one encounters enchantment in the grass,” he said. “But at the same t-time, one feels the need to p-pay homage to it with a kiss. Life is full of such thorny c-contradictions and conflicts, alas. G-Good day to you, Mrs. Keeping. I have probably frightened away your artistic m-muse for today, have I? Perhaps you will find it here again tomorrow. Or perhaps I will f-find you here before it does. Will I?”

She gazed steadily into his keen, mocking green eyes, over which his eyelids remained half-lowered. What was he saying? Or asking? Was he making an assignation with her?

What type of woman did he think she was? And was he justified, considering the fact that she had not screeched with outrage or smacked his face as soon as it came within one foot of her?

She could still taste him. She could still feel him on her lips. Her mind was still almost numb. That secret, feminine place inside her still throbbed. And she knew that his kiss had been one of the most memorably glorious experiences of her life.

How much more pathetic could she be?

“The daffodils will not live forever,” he said.

“No,” she agreed.

But she would never paint them if she could not be alone with them, her mind placid and composed. Would she come back? And what would be her motive if she did? To paint? To see him again?

He did not wait for any further answer. He stooped to pick up his hat, inclined his head to her before putting it on, and strode away in the direction of the route around the lake.

He was by far the most masculine man she had ever encountered—or kissed. But then, she had only ever been kissed by William before today, and kisses from William had been more in the nature of affectionate pecks on the cheek or forehead.

Oh, dear, she felt like a novice swimmer suddenly plunged into the very deepest part of a turbulent river.

She touched the fingertips of one hand to her lips. They were trembling—both the fingers and her lips.