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She neither moved nor responded. The kiss demanded nothing. It was without either urgency or passion. Instead, it gave. Warmth. Comfort. The assurance that somewhere there was openness and love and joy for the taking. All she had to do was…

She took her arms from the tree and wrapped them loosely about his waist. And she kissed him back. Softly, without demand or passion.

Love without any agenda.

Just simply love.

She did not even try to analyze either the thought or her feelings.

“I am sorry for making such a simplistic judgment of your family,” he said after a while, his forehead resting against her own. “I ought to have known better.”

“But wounds ought not to be worn on the outside for all to see,” she said. “Everyone has enough of their own without being forced to witness or listen to everyone else’s. I am glad you saw us as a happy family. We are that again now, by hook or by crook. And I am going to be an aunt again before Christmas.”

“I will be an uncle,” he said.

“Great-uncle,” she said. “You are an old man.”

He winced and she laughed—and then stopped.

“Have you ever heard a story more loaded with self-pity?” she said.

He gathered her right into his arms then and held her. “There is no one less self-pitying than you,” he said. “You take sunshine with you wherever you go. I do not believe you even realize it. And it is quite genuine. You like people. People of all ages. Have you not noticed how the aunts and uncles all adore you? And the children. You empathize with people. You carry a great deal of pain inside, but you have turned that pain into light to shine upon the world.”

Oh, the extravagance of his words. But could there possibly be any truth to them? She pushed gently against his chest and moved away. She wove her way through the trees, touching each as she passed, gazing up through the foliage to the blue sky above.

“I have treated you abominably,” she said.

“We will get to the bottom of that,” he said, “and turn it around if we can. It seems to me, though, that we are already partway there. Thank you for trusting me with your story, Stephanie. I understand you so much better now.”

“I wish I understood me,” she said, smiling ruefully. She stopped moving and turned to look at him and saw only kindness and a sort of sadness in his face. She had to make a conscious effort to see his prohibitively perfect looks. His hat had been abandoned on the grass close to where she had stood, but there was not a hair out of place. There was not a single crease in his coat, and his neckcloth was as gleaming white as it had been when they left the house hours ago, the folds in it still crisp and pristine. There did not seem to be any dirt or even dust on his Hessian boots.

His looks were irrelevant. Yet for years she had not been able to see past them.

Now she could see the person who inhabited all that physical perfection. The person who had been broken and hurt almost beyond bearing all through his childhood and left at the end of it to sort out the baggage of his relationship with his father, whom he should hate but obviously loved. He had been left to deal with duties he had not really been raised to assume and did not wish to assume. To grapple with the lack of connection and continuity the heir to an ancient title and properties usually felt from birth. To mourn what must seem almost like the abandonment of his twin, the anchor of his life as he grew up. Perhaps to mourn for the dead mother he had never consciously known. To search endlessly for a love upon which he could rest at last.

He believed he had found that love in her, though he had suffered rejection upon rejection. What a weight he had placed upon her shoulders. And what a privilege. How could she possibly be worthy? But she was. She had suffered too and somehow love had survived, and if he was to be believed, she had learned during the years since she was nine to turn that love outward like a light, to shine upon other people.

Except one.

She had always wronged Bertrand Lamarr, Viscount Watley, seeing in him the person he was not and had never been.

Why was that? Had it been just a matter of looks—his and her own?

“I blamed everyone except my father,” she said. “I blamed Mama and Devlin. Even myself. Perhaps especially myself. There was something wrong with me. There must be. I could not hold the affection of those I loved most. I could not hold them all together. I was ugly. I was fat. They all went away because I loved them but they could not love me back. Who could possibly believe such absurdities?”

“A nine-year-old child,” he said across the distance between them.

“But Papa still loved me,” she said. “I could not blame him or really believe all the things about him I learned or suspected. It could not be his fault. Everyone else was to blame. He still loved me, and I clung to his love even though he was never the same after that night and he never did anything with me, only beamed with affection every time he saw me. He never did anything for anyone. Ever. It was his steward who ran the estate and Ben and Devlin after they grew up. He adored entertaining, but it was Mama who organized all the lavish events he so loved. Even the fete. He never helped. Not with anything. I suppose that during all those years he went to London to do his duty, he was not a particularly devoted member of the House of Lords. The session always coincided with the Season, and he loved entertainments more than anything. His days must have been filled with them and with his…fancy women. And finally he was not satisfied with just the spring months but had to bring one of those women home with him—to dishonor Mama and all his children. It is fitting that he died in a tavern. He was entirely to blame—for everything. He did not deserve any of us.”

“Stephanie,” he said.

But she held up a hand. “I thought he was perfect,” she said, “but he let me down. I was afraid of perfection after that. I was afraid to love what was perfect because I was not perfect and that person would stop loving me after he took a good look at me and realized how…unworthy I was.”

“Stephanie—” he said again. But again she held up a hand.

“I did not even know these things about myself until very recently,” she said. “But I think that must be it. It must. There is one very big difference between you and Papa, though. As far as I know, and I think I must be right, he never really suffered in his life, except perhaps a bit in his last few years. Everything came easily to him because of his looks and his great charm. Everyone adored him. I think maybe he was…hollow at his core, though I may be doing him an injustice. You have suffered, and I have never seen you use your charm or your looks for personal gain or gratification. I have never seen evidence that you crave people’s admiration or adoration. I am sorry. I am terribly sorry. I do not know why you even still talk to me.”

“I fell in love with you when I was twenty,” he said, “though I do not believe I fully realized it at the time. We were both very young. I have loved you ever since. I doubt I will ever stop, though I will have to try if you reject me so I may give my affection and loyalty to the wife I must choose within the next few years.”