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“I wish you would allow me to kiss you,” he said.

She jumped to her feet and stood for a few moments looking across the path. Flight? Or stand her ground? She spun back to look down at him, angry again.

“Do it, then,” she said fiercely. “Just do it.”

And suddenly flight was an impossibility without a great loss of dignity.

He stood and looked steadily at her while she glared back. A breath of a breeze moved the branches of the trees overhead and made a moving pattern of light and color and darkness over his face.

He closed the distance between them, set one arm about her waist, the other about her shoulders, and drew her hard against him. She kept her eyes upon his as her hands came to rest on either side of his waist.

Her lips trembled against his when he kissed her. He parted his own over them, angled his head slightly, and deepened the kiss. She made an incoherent sound in her throat and clutched his coat at the sides as though her life depended upon it as she pressed herself more firmly against him. This, she realized while there was still some rational thought remaining to her, was nothing like the Christmas embrace beneath the kissing bough. His body was all hard and hot as one hand moved down her back to draw her more intimately against him. She would not have been at all surprised if the heat they shared had ignited their clothes.

Bertrand. Ah, Bertrand.

For a few moments she almost lost herself and all sense of their surroundings, only semiprivate since someone else could come along the path from either direction at any moment. He pressed his tongue into her mouth, and she made another faint sound as she pressed closer and her hand came up to cup the back of his head. He gentled the kiss then and moved his head to kiss her cheek beside her ear.

“What is the perfume?” he asked softly. “I have been aware of it before, when we waltzed, when we practiced at the pianoforte, when we stood beneath the kissing bough.”

“Just rose water,” she said, pushing against his shoulders and taking a step back from him. “I do not like perfumes. They are invariably too strong.”

It was a relief to discover that her legs were just steady enough to bear her upright.

“Will you give me a chance to prove to you that I am not more than and you are not less than?” he asked her. “Will you allow me to persuade you if I can that merely settling for what is safe is not a good enough basis for a happy marriage? Will you let me try to convince you to save me from being compelled to make such a marriage myself?”

Ah, dear God, what was he saying? What was he suggesting?

“Nicholas will be worried about my long absence,” she said. “Especially if Captain Paulson has already returned.”

“But would he not inform your brother that you are with me?” he asked her. “And would your brother not know that you will be safe with me?”

“Is this safe?” she said.

“Will you give me a chance?” he asked.

She licked her lips, which had been pressed to his a mere moment ago. “How?” she asked him.

“I will think of something,” he said. “Will you allow me to try?”

“Will I ever be free of you?” she asked, taking another step back from him.

“I really have no idea,” he said. “You have my word, however, that I will never make you my prisoner, Stephanie. I want to set you free so you can freely give yourself to me.”

“What does that even mean?” she asked, frowning.

“I am dashed if I know,” he said.

And there it was again, just like that, another of those moments he had spoken of. They both laughed, and a certain tension between them was eased.

“I may use my freedom to fly away into the sunset,” she said.

“You may,” he said. “And you may invite me to go with you, though I may change our course if you do and head for the sunrise instead.”

He offered her his arm, and they made their way back out of the maze of narrow paths.

It must be almost time for the fireworks display.

Stephanie’s mind was in a daze.