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Rayne plopped back against the bench. Why, she couldn’t imagine such interfering parents. Her mother had died too young to meddle in Rayne’s life, and Everleigh was all that was protective and considerate.

“That’s…that’s simply dreadful, Fletcher. I am truly sorry.” The latter seemed wholly inadequate. “Will they decry you and claim you broke the betrothal?”

Giving a derisive chuckle, Fletcher scrubbed a big hand over his jaw. His knuckles sported several ebony hairs.

“’Tis dangerous thwartin’ two strong-minded women, and I unwisely underestimated their deviousness. It willna happen again. They’ve desired a match between Cecelia—Lady Sheldon-Furnsby—and me for years. I’ve steadfastly refused.”

He wasn’t lying. She could see it in the resolve stamped upon his features.

“If Christ himself appeared and ordered me to wed Cecelia, I’d respectfully decline our Lord’s directive,” he said. “I shall never, under any circumstances, wed her.”

Steel underlaid Fletcher’s tone and the vehemence with which he made the harsh declaration.

“Why?” Rayne could’ve bitten off her tongue, yet genuine curiosity compelled her to ask. There wasn’t anything about this man she didn’t want to know.

Fletcher pointed his gaze overhead again and said nothing for an extended moment. So long, in fact, Rayne concluded he wouldn’t answer her prying question. The buzz of industrious bees accented the silence, and just when she was about to excuse herself to go inside, he finally replied.

“I dinna care for her in the way a man ought to for the woman he takes to wife.”

So Fletcher McQuinton was a romantic after all?

Had his parents’ marriage been a love match and he desired the same sort of union? Rayne’s father had died when she was but two years old. Nevertheless, her mother had spoken of him often—always with a faraway, dreamy gleam in her eyes.

In the muted light, Rayne searched Fletcher’s dear face. His stiffly held jaw, the tense lines framing his mouth, and the involuntary flexing of the inner corners of his eyebrows betrayed his continued disquiet.

There was something he wasn’t saying.

“What else, Fletcher?”

He took her hand in his large palm and brushed his thumb back and forth across the top. The gesture wasn’t the least sexual, but her body came to life, from her peaked nipples pushing against her chemise to her damp woman’s center.

Rayne ought to have been mortified at her immediate sensual response, but she wasn’t.

Only he had the power to do that to her.

Of its own accord, her attention drifted to his mouth. That dashed beautiful mouth.

She captured her lower lip between her teeth, praying he couldn’t read her wicked thoughts.

“Rayne?”

She glanced upward, meeting his smoldering gaze. Liquid blue-green fire blazed there.

“Yes?” she breathed, knowing before he said the words—nay hoping, praying—exactly what he would say.

“I want to kiss ye.”

“Oh, yes. Please.”

Did one say please in a moment such as this?

Did doing so make Rayne seem too desperate? A wanton?

The smile arcing his mouth made her questions and her qualms melt away like a lump of sugar in hot tea.

Tenderly cupping her cheek with one hand, Fletcher pulled her into his iron-like embrace with the other. She reveled in his steely arm surrounding her. Solid and firm and masculine perfection. So much more than she’d ever let herself imagine when she did daydream about a man holding her. Kissing her. Loving her with his body.

The last generally brought her plummeting unpleasantly back to reality.