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“You can hear that I’m here,” he continued on. “Don’t be startled when I’m beside you.”

Sebastian hunched down as Cordelia urged the lamb the last few feet to him. The burly man ran a gentle hand along the lamb’s back, whispering soothingly to her. He carefully took hold of the parchment and gave the tiniest tug. Shadow let it go without a fight.

“We did it,” Cordelia said.

“Yes, we did.”

Just as he began to stand up, Shadow bolted, knocking hard into Cordelia and catching her utterly off guard. She tumbled forward, directly into Sebastian, hitting him with enough force to knock the both of them over. He wrapped an arm around her and cushioned her fall in the moments before they both hit the ground. She cringed at the sound of Sebastian’s lungs emptying with a thud. How was it she continually made such a spectacle of herself around this man?

“Are you hurt?” he managed to ask, though with the heavy sound of one desperately trying to regain his breath.

“Am I hurt? You are the one who took the brunt of this fall.” She pushed herself to a seated position directly beside him.

The arm he’d protected her with lay extended on the grass beside him. His other hand held the drawing of Shadow, now a bit crumpled. He lay flat on his back, the air clearly knocked from him.

Cordelia gently touched his face. “Are you hurt?”

He managed a small smile. “Only my pride, lass.”

“You saved the drawing.”

“I was far more concerned about saving you,” he said.

It was her turn to smile. “You did manage that as well.”

Seeming to have recovered from the tumble, he sat up, facing her. “It seems I’m a hero.”

She knew he was joking, making a bit of a jest at his own expense. But she was grateful for his efforts on her behalf, for cushioning her against the full brunt of the fall.

Acting on an impulse she’d never felt before, Cordelia leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You are a hero,” she whispered.

Filled with an equal measure of delight and embarrassment, she scrambled to her feet and rushed away, snatching up her art supplies as she went. She didn’t stop until she was in her bedchamber at Burnwick House.

Somehow, someway, she’d lost a bit of her heart to Sebastian of the Home Farm, and she wasn’t at all certain what came next.