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Come with me. She couldn’t say the words. Neal had Varnham, his family, the Cornish flora . . . Muriel Pendrake. He had everything to lose.

He would refuse. And she would crumple.

She said simply: “Thank you.”

“What will you do in France?” His brows knitted together. He worried for her.

How decent he was.

If only he were slightly less decent. If he had knocked on her door last night, she would have opened it. And now he wouldn’t be looking worried at the prospect of abandoning her at the port. He would be looking implicated, entangled, trapped, bewitched—knowing he couldn’t let her go.

He was waiting for her answer.

“I’ll take a post at a school in Paris.” She said it calmly, a sharp pain in her chest. “A friend of a friend knows the headmistress.”

That woman with diamonds in her hair had described Le Manoir down to the stone angels flanking the entrance, the grotto built of Fontainebleau rock in the park. Surely, all that description had some basis in reality.

She’d lied to her parents about attending Le Manoir. Now, years later, she would walk between those stone angels, impoverished and humbled, begging to be taken on as a member of the staff.

Pity Justice if she were truly blind, unable to enjoy her ringside seat to all this comeuppance.

She laughed and Neal’s darkening expression told her that the laughter sounded hollow. She tightened her grip on his forearm. It befitted a pirate, so wide and so tan.

Come with me.

Her feet screamed, but she rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his. His lips were warm but unyielding.

She felt his fingers close on her wrist and he lifted her hand, pressing a kiss into her palm before pushing her arm into her chest until she stepped back.

“This goes nowhere,” he said gently, and she saw the color leaching out of the sky, the leaves, the river, the waving green flag. The heat in her core turned ashy.

But she tilted her head at a defiant angle. “So? We’re here, now.” She licked her lips. “Together.”

His fingers still encircled her wrist, his thumb tight to her leaping pulse.

“You said I planned to seduce Muriel Pendrake.” His smile was crooked. “In fact, I planned to marry her. Hell, maybe I still plan to marry her, I don’t know. But . . .”

“But you want to marry. Someone. I see.” She worked hard to swallow. “Maybe Muriel Pendrake.” Her voice was fraying. “Maybe a different woman so long as she’s unattached, scientific, and amenable to your schedule.”

“Don’t,” he said, his thumb moving up her wrist, sliding into the hollow of her palm, still burning from his kiss.

Now her laughter sounded unraveled. “Your mother’s hair won’t turn back because you marry the right woman. She’s dying and so you want to rush to her with your bride and show her you’re all grown up, exactly the man she wants you to be, when there’s nothing more childish, more—”

He yanked her wrist, dragging her into him, and she gasped as her breasts crushed against his chest. But she wouldn’t be silenced. She raised her chin higher, glaring up at him.

“Maybe there’s nothing about this that goes anywhere, that gets you to Penzance in time for the wedding you think will make your mother so happy, and maybe I don’t compare to Muriel Pendrake, with her knowledge of plants and languages and birds and dinosaur bones and who knows what else, but you can’t deny there’s something—” She broke off as the breath he heaved caused his chest to expand, increasing the pressure, the heat. Sensation gathered in her nipples.

“Something,” she whispered. The ashes within her had gone molten. She couldn’t explain. He felt it too, or he didn’t.

She wormed her free arm up between them, touched his high, angled cheekbone, skated her fingers over the concavity of his cheek, settled them on his jaw.

She directed his head downward. His chin rasped the sensitive skin of her lower lip, and then their mouths hovered a breath apart.

“Don’t go, then.” His growl warmed her lips. “Stay. Sue for divorce.”

“Impossible.” She went to lick her lower lip and the tip of her tongue stroked the curve of his. He hissed. She didn’t even realize he’d moved them both forward until her shoulder blades bumped the trunk of the willow. The fronds fountained around them, cool and green, but she felt hot flickers traveling through her, wild as runaway flame.

He felt it too. The jut of his arousal pressed her lower belly. His eyes were hooded, but the irises were clear. They bored into her.