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It was an unbearable thought, Bertrand’s not being loved as he deserved to be loved.

“I suppose we should go back to the house,” she said.

“I suppose we should,” he said. “Do you want to go?”

She shook her head. “I want to stay here forever. I want to build a cabin and take up residence here, on your father’s land.”

He smiled. “I’ll come and visit,” he said. “Every day.”

“Kiss me again,” she said.

He stayed where he was for a moment and then came striding toward her.

If you want to, she almost said. But she stopped herself. He had just told her he loved her, that he had loved her since she was seventeen and would do so all his life.

He stopped when he was close, and his eyes searched hers.

“As you did at Vauxhall,” she said.

“I was angry then,” he said.

“Is it not possible without the anger?” she said.

She watched him inhale and then heard him exhale.

Their arms came about each other, and she closed her eyes and he kissed her.

She immediately felt the difference from the evening at Vauxhall. He opened her mouth with his own, and his tongue pressed inside and tangled with hers and stroked sensitive surfaces, and the heat of it and the raw sensation of it spread down to her breasts and her abdomen to settle as a dull, pounding ache between her thighs and the throbbing inside. His hands moved down her back and settled below her hips to draw her more tightly against him. She could feel the hard bulge of his desire. And her hands roamed over him, sliding inside his coat and beneath his waistcoat to spread over the warm silkiness of his shirt at his back and feel the flexing of hard muscles beneath.

And she was all raw need. Desire. Passion. She wanted and wanted.

She heard a low moaning sound as his mouth moved from hers to kiss her throat and trail kisses up to her ear. He nipped her earlobe with his teeth, and her toes clenched inside her shoes. How could desire travel so far in a mere instant?

He was kissing her mouth again then, more gently now. His arms loosened slightly about her. His hands were at her waist again. She opened her eyes and found herself gazing into his.

“If there was a cabin,” he said, “I would stay there with you and we would shut the world outside and forget all about morality and consequences and plain good sense.”

“And if there was a cabin,” she said, “I would lock the door and hide the key.”

“But out here in the real world beyond cabin walls,” he said, “there are consequences and good sense and morality. Though I am not convinced that making love when there is love is immoral.”

“And there is no cabin anyway and no key to tempt us,” she said. “Alas. It is time to go back to the house.”

He took a step back and offered his arm. His face was grave, but his eyes were warm.

Oh, how she wished, wished, wished there were a cabin. And a key.

She slipped a hand through his arm.

Chapter Twenty-One

“I suppose,” Stephanie said to her brother after dinner that evening, “you now know all there is to know about men’s undergarments in medieval times.”

“They were called braies,” he said. “There were various styles. I could give details if you have an hour to spare and if you consider this a topic suitable for a lady’s ears, Steph. And if you are really interested.”

“No to all three,” she said, grinning. “I do appreciate the way you deflected Mr. Goring’s attention away from me, Owen. But why, pray, medieval undergarments?”

“It was all that occurred to me in the moment,” he said. “I certainly hit the bull’s-eye with that question, though. Did you notice how his eyes lit up, Steph? He has probably been waiting all his life for someone to ask just that. Did you get lost on the way back to the house? The driveway does wind a bit, admittedly, and the trees to either side are almost dense in places, but I would not have expected Bert to lose his way when he actually lived here for a few years.”