“How do you know what I think?”
“The same way you know whatIthink. We are dreadfully transparent, I fear.”
“Entirely,” he admitted, stepping closer. “Which is why I must speak before your brother appears and murders me for my presumption—or before I lose the courage the port lent me.”
“He won’t murder you,” Catherine said with a hint of amusement. “Maim, perhaps. Challenge you to a duel, certainly. But murder? That would cause far too much paperwork.”
Despite the humour, his next words came weighted with sincerity.
“Catherine, I am perfectly aware that we’ve only known each other a sennight. I know it’s too soon by any reasonable measure, improperly fast by society’s standards, and probably inadvisable by every metric of sense and propriety.” He paused, and Marianne could see him running his hand through his auburn hair in that nervous gesture she’d noticed at dinner. “But I also know that I’ve spent every moment since we met thinking about you. About your laugh when you discovered we’d both attempted to calculate the load-bearing capacity of the Egyptian Hall’s ceiling. About your brilliant mind that sees poetry in mathematics and mathematics in poetry. About the way you hold your pencil when you sketch, as if it’s an extension of your very soul.”
“Timothy—” Catherine’s voice was breathless, warning.
“Please—let me finish before I lose my nerve.” He took another step forward. “I’ve always been told that love grows slowly, like a garden. But what I feel for you—it’s not a garden. It’s a lightning strike. Sudden. Brilliant. Unmistakable.”
Marianne pressed a hand to her lips. Sheshouldcough or step forward, should make her presence known—but she couldn’t move. The raw sincerity of the moment held her fast.
“I’m falling in love with you,” Timothy said, voice trembling slightly. “No—I’ve fallen. Entirely, irrevocably, and likely disastrously. I think I began the moment you corrected my calculation about the Pantheon’s dome, when you explained why my mathematics were sound but my historical assumptions were flawed.”
Catherine made a small, helpless sound—half laugh, half sob. “Timothy, you impossible man.”
“Is it impossible? Because from where I stand, it seems inevitable.”
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the fountain’s gentle murmur and the distant sound of laughter from the house. Then Catherine spoke, her voice clear and certain.
“I fell in love with you the moment we started speaking of architecture at Lady Weatherby’s ball,” she admitted. “When you understood why the proportions mattered, why the mathematics of beauty was important. When you didn’t look at me with pity or curiosity about my past, but with genuine interest in my thoughts.”
“Catherine—”
“I’ve spent five years believing I was broken,” she went on, words spilling like water from a breached dam. “That the girlwho could love, and be loved, died in that accident. But when you look at me, I do not feel broken. I feel…possible.”
“You are so much more than possible,” Timothy said fervently. “You are extraordinary.”
“I am also improper,” Catherine said abruptly, with new-found resolve. “For I find I cannot wait another moment to—”
Whatever she meant to say was lost in a soft gasp and the unmistakable reality of a kiss. Not a chaste brush that might be excused, but a true, unguarded kiss—brief, certainly, yet brimming with all they had not dared to say.
For ten heartbeats, the garden held its breath.
Then the world exploded.
“WHAT IN THE BLAZING HELL IS HAPPENING HERE?”
Adrian’s roar could have carried to Scotland. He stood framed in the garden door like judgment itself, evening coat discarded, fury carving hard planes into his face. The lanterns seemed to sway in sympathy.
Catherine and Timothy sprang apart as if struck by lightning. Catherine’s hand flew to her lips; Timothy stepped forward, as though to shield her.
“Your Grace, I can explain—” Timothy began, his voice admirably steady despite the fact that the duke facing him looked entirely capable of murder.
“Explain?” Adrian’s voice climbed yet higher. “Explain?” He descended the steps with the controlled violence of a predator, his slight limp more pronounced for his agitation. “You dare—dare—to lay hands upon my sister in a dark garden, unchaperoned, as if she were some common—”
“Adrian, stop!” Catherine moved between them, chin lifted in glorious defiance. “Before you say something unforgivable, you should know—I kissed him.”
Adrian halted, wrong-footed. “You—what?”
“I kissed him,” she repeated, steadier now. “He was being perfectly honourable—making a declaration that would make Byron weep—and I could not wait. I seized his lapels and kissed him. So if there is to be murder for impropriety, it ought to be mine.”
Adrian opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish. The sight might have been comic if danger did not still crackle in the air.
