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A balloon. She’d read about balloons, astonishing machines that lofted passengers into the heavens.

“I thought . . .” She bit her lip.

“What?” James had turned his head and was watching her intently.

“Nothing.”

“You thought you beheld a dragon.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “My dear Miss MacKinnon, you’ve always been guided by sentiment and whimsy. The reasonable answer occurs to you last, every time. If at all.”

“Reasonable?” Her back went straight as a spear. “What’s reasonable about an English lord dropping half-naked out of the sky? Given a choice between improbable options, I’ll pick the most poetical. Dragons are exciting. You, and your silly balloon, are merely ridiculous.”

He stared, then laughed, the sound warm and deep. She felt herself flush.

He used to laugh as a lad when he yanked her braid or teased her into a fury. He used to laugh when she beat him at footraces, laugh and flop over onto the grass, as though the whole thing had been a joke from the beginning, and her winning wasn’t winning at all.

“Where are your britches?” she demanded.

“Pardon the impropriety,” he said, in a careless tone that tendered no real apology. “I was compelled to strip and toss my clothing into the sea.”

That made her blink. “Compelled. By a pirate?”

She almost stepped back from the tree to survey the airy vastness above. What went on up there?

“By atmospheric pressure,” he said, wryly. “The balloon began to drop, and I ran out of sandbags. I’d hoped my coat and boots would suffice, but . . .” He cleared his throat. “They did not.”

“Good thing your drawers aren’t more substantial.” She realized she was surveying those drawers—rather, their interesting contours. When she raised her eyes, she met his. They seemed brighter than before.

“I’m glad you approve.”

She almost choked.

“I’m not complimenting your underclothing.” Her face flamed. “It’s that . . . if they were heavier, you’d have shed them all together. And that would be a bigger impropriety.”

A self-satisfied smile lazed across his face. “Much bigger.”

Oh, please. He’d say or do anything to fluster her, the eejit.

She tried to roll her eyes, but their gazes had locked.

It was suddenly very difficult to disengage.

His smile struck her as horribly knowing.

But he couldn’t know that she had—once—dreamed of wrestling him on the moss, his body covering every inch of hers, her furious efforts to dislodge him transforming into an equally furious attempt to pull him close.

That his underclothing completely disappeared.

That hers disappeared as well.

That she’d awoken sweaty and shaking and making noises that had Dierdre and Jennet sitting up in bed, asking if it were something she ate.

That perhaps this had happened more than once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Enough times that it formed a part of her impetus to move out of the farmhouse and into her lovely—private—cottage.