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“I have.”

Why was she hesitating? She had told him so much already. She trusted him. She supposed her reluctance was attached to a fear of being disappointed. As she had endeavored to articulate to him a few minutes ago, to be alone in the world was one thing. To be, for a time, not alone, and to then have that taken away, to be forced to revert to one’s elemental solitude … well, that might be unendurable.

But how could she refuse to answer this simple question from a man who had been so kind to her? “My name is Diantha,” she said quietly.

“It is lovely to meet you, Diantha. As you know, I’m Simon.” His hand found hers in the dark, and to her absolute astonishment, he bowed over it and placed his lips on the back of it, right at the base, close to her wrist. If she had ever been greeted thusly by a gentleman, a long time ago in her previous life, it had been a formality, a quick buss of the lips against the fabric of her gloves.

This was not that.

To begin with, Lord Marsden—Simon—left his lips on her skin for what felt like ages. The contact was causing fine hairs to stand on end all the way up her arm. And just before he withdrew, he opened his mouth wider, brushing the inner parts of his lips—and Oh! Was that his tongue?—against her skin.

If Diantha had been startled, before, by the feeling of his wrist against her hand when he’d returned her book the other night, it was nothing against the shocking, galvanizing sensation of the wetness of his mouth against her wrist.

When he dropped her hand, she let loose a shaky exhale, realizing she’d been unwittingly holding her breath.

They were still standing, having been distracted from their intention to sit by their discussion of names and subsequent “introduction.” Lord Marsden knelt on the blanket and reached his hand up to help her down. It reminded her of the other times their hands had touched—not only that night in the drawing room, but the day the ladies arrived at Gurglewood and he helped her down from the coach.

This time, to her utter shock, he didn’t release her hand. He lay on his back and tugged her down with him, under the twinkling stars. “Lying is better than sitting. You can see the whole sky this way—since we don’t know from which direction to expect the comet.”

Surely, he would release her hand once they were settled. But, no, he kept it.

She was lying on her back next to Lord Marsden, holding his hand, waiting for a comet.

Her heart was zinging around in her rib cage, in contrast to the quiet dark that surrounded them. She listened for the brook, wandering if she would be able to hear it over the machinations of her body. She did, but only just.

“Are you named after the flower?” he asked suddenly. “You should see the dianthus that cover the forest floor at Galecroft in the spring. It’s a carpet of pink.” He paused. “I should spend more time at Galecroft. I have been thinking lately that I miss it, but I am just realizing that it’s been years since I have seen the dianthus there in the spring. And yet the sight of such is etched into my memory.”

Diantha took a few moments to steady her breath before she answered. He waited, as she had come to understand he would do. “I suppose I’m indirectly named after the flower. My mother was fond of Greek mythology. Diantha was Zeus’s flower, or Demeter’s. Someone’s flower. Apparently it translates as ‘divine flower.’”

“It suits you.”

She wanted to ask him Which part? The divine part or the flower part? She had trouble seeing either, but to want him to elaborate was the height of foolishness. Instead, she said, “My sister was called Amalthea.”

“Zeus’s nurse.”

“I have to say, I’d rather be a flower than a nurse, but I suppose I have in effect become a nurse.”

“And now you place flowers by your sister’s grave,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” A memory surfaced. “My sister used to love flowers. She had a grand flower garden in our childhood home—the first one. And then a more modest one during her time with Mr. Hill. We used to write letters. We probably exchanged hundreds of them, and …”

She trailed off because thinking of letters made her think about how close she had come to telling Lord Marsden everything. How much she wanted to tell him everything.

She regrouped. “She used to press flowers and send them to me along with her letters. I wish I had saved them. I used to, initially, but they always grew so dry and brittle.” Suddenly, she was choking back tears. “I always thought there would be more. An endless supply of dead, flat flowers.”

“You must miss her letters. Well, of course you must miss her, too, but there is a particular joy in receiving a letter from someone close to your heart, don’t you find?”

“Yes,” she croaked, and goodness, this man was going to be the end of her. “Our letters were unremarkable.” Well, most of them were. If only Diantha had hewn to the principle of unremarkability, she wouldn’t be in the mess she was today.

But then, she wouldn’t be here, now, either, comet hunting and secret spilling with Lord Marsden. Simon. For certainly her rash visit to his home in August was a precondition to their current … relationship.

“Our letters were full of the news of the day,” she continued, aiming to cover her discomfiture. “Well, neither of us ever had much news, so it was more the minutia of the day. And my sister’s minutia were often about the dreaded Mr. Hill. I don’t miss hearing about him. But it is an odd feeling, having no one to write to, even if, on the whole, our letters didn’t amount to much.”

Except for the one that did.

“I think,” he said, “that perhaps the total of hundreds of letters full of minutia is more than the sum of their parts.”

“How do you mean?”