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Lily’s emotions were like the conservatory—a crowded tangle of obscured paths and dim shadows shot through with sunbeams of hope and the sweet scent of temptation. She longed to be courted by Hessian Kettering, but deceiving a man she respected took vast reserves of selfishness.

Self-preservation instincts, Lily had, but selfishness? Enough selfishness and calculation to marry him and carry forward a deception already ten years in the making?

And then there was Mrs. Braithwaite adding her complications, and all Lily knew was that now—right now—she wanted whatever she could have with Hessian, because even tomorrow was not hers to promise.

“We stand three yards apart,” Lily said, “because the door is not locked, and luncheon should be delivered any moment.”

The earl held out his right hand, palm up. “My kitchen has learned not to wait a meal on me. I’d rather have my food fresh and hot, after a short wait, than warm and overdone, though promptly served. I’d like to show you something.”

Lily wanted to show him many things: the truth of her upbringing and the rotten scheme Mrs. Braithwaite had hatched foremost among them. The latter she’d certainly divulge, while the former… maybe someday?

She took Grampion’s hand. His grasp was comfortable and confident, much like his kisses. “Where are we going?”

“Daisy is not the only person in this family to have a hiding place,” he said, leading Lily down a path between the ferns. “I come here when I want solitude, or the maids are busy above stairs and I’m in need of a nap.”

He opened another door, to a small rectangular room that might once have been an antechamber, though like the conservatory, the outer wall was glass. That glass was obscured by a smoky tint such as the imagination fashioned in dream worlds. Hazy greenery lay beyond the glass wall, and a pair of clerestory windows were open, scenting the little room with scythed grass and hyacinths.  

“You read here,” she said, picking up a copy of Guy Mannering.

Hessian took the book from her, closed it, and set it on a small table. “I dream here.”

The room was barely furnished—a chair in the corner, wall sconces on either side. A table that apparently doubled as a writing desk in the opposite corner and, along the glass wall, a bed made up with worn quilts. No knickknacks or art cluttered any surface, all was orderly and spartan.

“Does something trouble you, Lily?”

Everything troubled her. Uncle Walter, Mrs. Braithwaite, Oscar… but they were not here, and this privacy with Hessian might never come again.

Lily twisted the lock above the door latch. “I’ve missed you. That has troubled me.” She stepped close and put her arms around Hessian. His reciprocal embrace was balm to her tattered nerves. “I can see why you doubt Mrs. Braithwaite’s fitness to raise a child. Her manner is presuming.”

Threatening, more like.

Hessian’s hold on Lily was careful, his thumb whispering across her nape. “Am I presuming?”

She rested her cheek against the soft wool of his jacket, wishing she could give him all of her burdens and all of her trust. Hessian was overstepping polite decorum terribly—by embracing her, by being alone with her—and yet Lily wanted even more from him.

Hessian Kettering was good. He hesitated over white lies, he treasured stolen kisses. He approached life with clear notions of right and wrong, honorable and shameful.

In terms of standing and integrity, he was well above her touch, even above the touch of Walter Leggett’s legitimate niece, but for the money that young lady had inherited. Lily’s conscience shrieked at her to step away, to use this privacy to inform Grampion that his judgment of Mrs. Braithwaite was all too accurate.

“You do not presume, my lord. I wish you would.”

His embrace became subtly more intimate, more cherishing. He kissed her, a different sort of kiss that presaged a different sort of closeness. Long, long ago, Lily had seen tavern maids and grooms when they’d thought themselves unobserved. Their passion had intrigued and troubled her, but she understood now why they’d been so bold.

Make me forget. Let me pretend. Stop time for me.

In the conservatory, water trickled in a peaceful whisper. Hessian’s kisses descended in a lazy cascade over Lily’s cheeks, her lips, her throat, to the swell of her bosom. He drew back and freed a half-dozen buttons marching down the middle of Lily’s bodice—not nearly enough.

I am my mother’s daughter after all. The realization brought Lily relief rather than shame. Loneliness could be a shroud, propriety a grave for a woman’s dreams. Mama had been grieving and alone. She’d failed to produce sons—a great disappointment to the ducal Fergusons, of course—and when she’d lost her husband, she’d faltered.

Lily had wondered why a woman who had so much to lose had misstepped so recklessly, but the answer was in her arms.

Pleasure bloomed everywhere Hessian touched, everywhere he kissed. His expressions of desire approached reverence, and everything neglected, judged, and uncertain in Lily reveled in his loving. Anger threaded through her too—at Walter, at years of deception, at parents who’d left her alone too young—though she knew bitterness for false courage by another name.

She had now and would make no apologies for allowing herself one impetuous hour.

“Everywhere,” Hessian murmured, pressing kisses to the swell of her breasts. “Flowers. You. Soft.”

Lily tugged his shirt from his waistband, and his kisses stopped.

The breeze teased at her in novel places. The trickling water became loud in the contrasting silence. Lily pressed her forehead against Hessian’s shoulder, praying that his scruples weren’t about to destroy her fantasies. 

“I haven’t yet spoken with your uncle,” Hessian said, tracing a finger along Lily’s eyebrows.

“That can all wait until later.” Much, much later.

Such a smile illuminated his eyes—tender, joyous, and so very naughty. “Later, then.”

Lily had thought that she and Hessian had been intimate. Their kisses had been so bold, their embraces leaving little to the imagination, but she’d known nothing. The touches themselves mattered not half so much as the passion behind them.

Hessian scooped Lily up and laid her down on the bed. His handling of her was possessive and unapologetic. The lover held her, not the titled gentleman. He sat at her hip and yanked off his boots, then hung his waistcoat on the back of the chair, took off her shoes, and unbuttoned his falls.

“Hurry,” Lily said. “Please hurry.” Before she lost her nerve, before she denied herself what might be the most glorious hour of her life.

Hessian’s version of hurrying was maddeningly deliberate. He undid more of her buttons, while Lily lay on her back, the old quilt twisted in her fingers. Then he unlaced the drawstring on her chemise and, finally, the laces on her jumps.

“You are like a holiday gift,” he said, leaning forward to press his mouth over her heart. “Layers of lace and loveliness, but the best part of all is simply you.”

No, the best part was him, caressing her bare breasts, making her ache, using his mouth in diabolically sweet, wicked ways.

“You will drive me mad, Hessian.”

“I certainly hope to,” he said, sitting up. “You deserve madness.”

Then he was above her, braced on his forearms, and Lily wished she’d taken the time to undress him. He hadn’t so much as turned back his cuffs, hadn’t undone his damned cravat. That made her wild, and she set about addressing her oversight.

“I should have—” She unfastened the gold pin holding the whole business together. “Better. Hold... don’t go anywhere.”

“As if I could.”

Lily’s gaze was distraught as she stabbed Hessian’s cravat pin into the mattress near the top corner of the bed.

He hadn’t the patience to wait for her to undo his linen, for he’d tarried too long admiring her breasts, wallowing in the taste and scent and feel of her. Soft, soft skin. Luscious, subtle fragrances. Curves and hollows and wonders beyond his imaginings.

He gathered her in his arms, thanking heaven for stolen moments, and cursing all the modistes in Mayfair for skirts, petticoats, chemises, and every other frustration made out of fabric.

Lily raised her knees, which got matters somewhat organized, then she bit Hessian’s ear.

“I’m trying not to rush,” he muttered. “Do that again, and I won’t answer for the consequences.”

She sucked the spot she’d bitten, and Hessian retaliated by sliding her skirts up, up, and up, which he might have thought to do—had he been able to think—before falling on her like a beast.

Lily lifted her hips, so male hardness met female heat, though fourteen thousand froths and billows prevented any actual touching.

Hessian’s palm connected with a smooth, muscular thigh, and he nearly shouted with rejoicing. No drawers. I am saved.

And he’d managed not to say that out loud.

Lily got him by the hair and tilted his head so she could kiss him. Her kiss tasted of determination and passion, certainly, but Hessian detected desperation as well. He wanted to believe he sensed desperate desire, though the setting was wrong, the timing was wrong, the very bed was all wrong.

Clearly, he had no instinct for casting off the dictates of convention. What manner of romance could flourish in a bare, cramped—?

Lily kissed him again, softly. “I have dreamed of you like this.” She smiled at him as if he’d laid her on a bower of rose petals, not a glorified cot in a gloomy corner of his conservatory.

“You dreamed of linen sheets, sunbeams, a long afternoon, surely.” He’d give her that, many times over. Along with champagne, French chocolate drops, and erotic poetry.

“No, Hessian. I dreamed of you, close and soon to be closer. Only you.”

He laid his cheek against hers, and bless her for all time, she tugged skirts and petticoats and all that other whatnot aside, until no barriers remained. She arched up, he settled in, and they were skin to skin where it mattered.

“Kiss me,” she whispered. “Kiss me forever.”

He positioned himself intimately, and as the kissing resumed, the joining began.

Lily was snug and ready and heavenly. “Tell me if—”

She moved, and heaven became an understatement. All the hesitation and doubts fell away, all the questions. This was right. This was perfect. This was what every man hoped to find waiting for him at the end of every journey.

“When you do that,” she whispered as Hessian found a slow, deep rhythm. “It’s exquisite. It’s good. I feel….”

“As do I.” Glorious, grateful, aroused as hell.

A bird fluttered in through the window and back out, and that was right too. Hessian found the self-restraint to love Lily gently, but another time—many other times—he’d let passion soar and show her more dramatic pleasures.

Lily’s hands moved on his back, until she pushed her palm beneath the waistband of his breeches and anchored herself with a firm grip on his backside. Her breathing changed, and Hessian dared hope he might satisfy her, even their first time. He forced himself not to speed up, not to let go, not to allow passion to overtake self-restraint.

And his virtue was rewarded.

Lily fetched up hard against him, then harder still, and Hessian didn’t breathe lest her pleasure steal his last ounce of self-discipline. She thrashed, she bucked, she likely pinched him black and blue, and then she sighed against his neck and subsided onto the pillow.

He freed his hand from her hair and found the handkerchief in his breeches pocket. Thank God for tidy habits.  

In one move, he withdrew and sat back. Completion roared through him the instant he wrapped the linen around his cock, and the pleasure nearly rendered him unconscious.

He leaned forward enough to crouch over Lily, whose breathing was still rapid. They remained like that, body heat and breath mingling, while streams of glory faded through Hessian’s soul.

Ye gods, ye thundering, happy gods. If he’d had any doubts before, he was certain now: He was meant to be Lily Ferguson’s lover, and she was meant to be his lady.

He should say something romantic, something witty, but the only words that came to him were honest. “I find myself transcendently fascinated with the prospect of our wedding night.”

After uttering that profundity, Hessian became fascinated with the prospect of a nap. He dozed off to the steady beat of his lover’s heart, his cheek pillowed on her breast, her fingers playing with his hair.

  Hessian would undertake the wedding night with a good deal more forethought than he had this tryst. Nonetheless, he conceded that yielding to passion, however untidy on a first attempt, had unforeseen and lovely charms.

Outside the window of Walter Leggett’s office, Lily stepped down from the Earl of Grampion’s phaeton, and by a trick of the afternoon sunshine, she appeared for one moment to resemble her late mother. Nadine had been blond, while her daughters had turned out red-haired, but the angle of the jaw, the figure, the way of moving had bred true.

Walter let the curtain fall and stepped away from the window, though he wasn’t likely to be detected. Lord Grampion was playing the perfect gentleman, all courtesy and consideration.

Lily was playing the role Walter had spent two years and a goodly sum training her to play. The investment had paid off handsomely, though not handsomely enough. 

By the time Lily joined Walter in his office, she’d dropped the smiling, friendly façade she’d shown the earl. She wore instead the demure expression and watchful gaze Walter had first seen on her more than a decade ago. Unlike her mother, Lily had good instincts.

Nadine, God rest her wanton soul, had been a featherbrain, albeit a pretty one.

“You wanted to see me, Uncle?”

In truth, every time Walter laid eyes on his younger niece, he felt an echo of uncomfortable questions: Is there a better way to proceed than as I am doing? What does Oscar know or suspect, and would he understand my motives? Had I any choice but to do as I did?

Of course, Walter had had no choice. None at all. “How was your outing with Grampion?”

Lily no longer cowered by the door when Walter summoned her. The expensive finishing school in Switzerland, along with Ephrata Tipton’s tireless lecturing, had given Lily the poise of a well-bred heiress who knew her own worth.

“The earl is good company,” Lily said, drawing open the curtains. “He isn’t vain and silly, like most men of his station, and his manners are faultless.”

Walter yanked the curtain closed. “You’ll fade the carpets and the wallpaper with the damned sunshine.”

Lily stepped back, her expression cool. If Walter hadn’t known better, he’d have thought the true Ferguson heiress gazed at him with faint reproach.

“Have you a megrim, Uncle? I can have Cook brew you a tisane.”

He had megrims aplenty. “Tell me about Grampion. Has he mentioned any particular investments or projects?”

Lily tidied a shelf of books that Oscar had doubtless left in disarray. “He invests with his brother, Sir Worth, and speaks highly of him. I gather most of their ventures involve shipping, though some are domestic, and both brothers own sizable estates.”

Nothing Walter had not already heard in the clubs. “You are very poor at intrigue, though Grampion seems to honestly like you.”

Lily faced him, and the faint reproach had become something else. Resentment? Pique? Whatever lurked in her eyes, Walter didn’t care for it.

“I have not known the earl long, Uncle, and one can’t exactly ask him about finances in the normal course of a conversation, much less a conversation likely to be overheard. I am a mere female, in case you’d forgotten, not one of His Royal Majesty’s court spies.”

“You are an expense, Lily Ferguson, and never forget that. I could have left you in that coaching inn, fending off the stable lads and fretting over the butter stains on your apron.”

A year ago, that observation would have elicited some reaction. Tears blinked back, pursed lips, a hurt look. Now Lily fished Walter’s penknife out of the tray on his desk and tested the blade against her thumb.

“I am well aware of the circumstances in which you found me, Uncle. This blade is dull.”

Doubtless the blade was dull because Walter had been burning midnight oil calculating income and expenses and fretting over Oscar’s various follies. The lad had a good heart, but no head for business.

“Then as the lady of the household, you will have the blade sharpened, I’m sure. When next you and I find ourselves in the same company with the Earl of Grampion, you will contrive to add me to your conversation. You paid him no mind at all last night.”

Lily set the knife down and perused the office as if she’d lost something of value somewhere among Walter’s business effects.

“I was accosted last night by Mrs. Braithwaite, you’ll recall.”

He did recall. Roberta was aging well, not letting herself go to pot the way some women did. “Don’t think because your mother tolerated Mrs. Braithwaite that she’s good ton. Widows contrive as best they can, and nobody blames them for it, but neither should you waste your time with her.”

“So she wasn’t Mama’s friend?”

Now, Lily busied herself dusting the globe, rotating it slowly while holding a linen handkerchief against the countries spinning past. This restlessness was unlike her, but then, the London Season made the greatest demands on her thespian skills.

Also on Walter’s bank account. “Mrs. Braithwaite was one of myriad casual acquaintances who courted your mother’s favor because Nadine married into a ducal family.”

Lily let the globe drift to a halt and tucked her handkerchief into a skirt pocket. “She has threatened to pay a call on me.”

Women and their infernal socializing. “Then you dole out two polite cups of tea to her, ask her whatever questions about your mother you’re quivering to ask, and send her on her way. I will be out when she calls, lest the damned creature think to set her cap for me.”

“I’ve asked Tippy all the questions about Mama I want to ask.”

Lily was a bad liar, which was odd, because her life was an exercise in being somebody she was not—a successful exercise. She’d wanted for nothing while her mother had lived, then ended up in circumstances many a bastard orphan would have envied. Walter had taken her in hand when she’d turned fourteen and her older sister had gone daft for a handsome Scot.

Since then, Lily had known nothing but luxury. Still, she pined for a mother she’d barely known and a sister who’d not given two figs for an illegitimate younger sibling.

“Miss Tipton has grown increasingly forgetful,” Walter said. “She might consider it a mercy that you’ve stopped plaguing her with your curiosity.”

“You spy on her, Uncle?”

“You’re growing quite bold, Lily. Spying is a vulgar undertaking. I keep an eye on a valued family retainer who is enjoying a well-earned retirement. If Miss Tipton should grow dangerously senile, I’ll make provisions for her care.”

Surely a cottage on some Hebridean island would suit.

“She is the closest thing I have to a true friend. Perhaps I would like to be responsible for her care.”

Walter occasionally regretted not having remarried, but then he’d recall his late wife’s moods, sulks, and fits of pique. Women were a bother, plain and simple, witness Lily’s latest odd notion.

“You rely on me to take care of your every frippery and bonnet. If you think I’ve invested a fortune turning you into a lady, just so you can finish your days sharing a spinster cottage with your former governess, you are sadly mistaken.”

Lily crossed her arms, and the resemblance to her mother struck again. Nadine had had a stubborn jaw. Perhaps that feature on Lily was becoming more noticeable with age.

“Isn’t it more the case that you depend on me for your every pair of gloves and pipe of tobacco, Uncle? Also to pay for Oscar’s light-skirts and inane wagers? Besides, once I marry, my husband will decide which elderly friend I can and cannot care for.”

Walter took up the seat behind his desk, leaving Lily on her feet. The rudeness was deliberate. “Leggett women have an independent streak, witness the behaviors of your mother and sister. I had hoped that your more humble upbringing had instilled in you a firm grip of good sense and gratitude. If I am wrong, Lily, then I can arrange a repairing lease for you far to the north, or even back in Switzerland. I will find a facility that excels in curing stubborn females of their wayward tendencies.”

Ah, lovely. Now Lily was staring hard at the carpet, hands fisted at her sides. A gratifying loss of composure, to be sure, and yet, she did not retreat.

“And if Grampion is thinking of offering for me, what would your explanation to him be for my sudden disappearance?”

Walter laughed. On this dreary damned day, encountering a cause for merriment felt especially good.

“Grampion is an earl, a widower, and a man of mature years. The very last choice he’d make would be to shackle himself to a difficult, no-longer-young commoner, regardless of her rumored fortune or blue blood. He tolerates your company to deflect the mosquito-cloud of debutantes. If he proves smitten despite all sense to the contrary, I’ll convince him to look elsewhere, just as I’ve convinced the others. Be off with you and your fancies, Lily, though I thank you for amusing me in the middle of an otherwise dull afternoon.”

Lily remained standing by the mantel, when she ought to have been bolting for the door. Instead, she smoothed her skirts, offered Walter a curtsey, and marched to the windows. She opened all the curtains as wide as they’d go, then left the room at a dignified pace.

Walter rose to close the curtains—wallpaper, carpet, furnishings, nearly everything of value was eventually damaged by sunlight—but remained by the window, studying the passing scene. Lily’s mother had been imprudent in the extreme. Lily’s sister had become what was politely termed a handful and more honestly a hoyden.

Lily showed signs of growing difficult as well, though like the pontifications of most annoying people, her viewpoint held a whiff of validity.  

Heiresses married. This was for the good of the heiress, her family, and society as a whole. Quiet estates that kept unruly women secured in the countryside charged a lot of money, as much for their unreliable discretion as for their services. Should an accident befall Lily—as so sadly could occur at such facilities—then the courts would once again be sticking their noses into Walter’s business.

He stood by the window for a long time, while coaches and foot traffic, a stray cat, and two old beldams holding tiny dogs passed before the house.

The answer to Walter’s dilemma came strolling up the walk, swinging his walking stick, hat at a jaunty angle, cravat arranged in a ridiculous knot. Lud, the boy took after his mother, who’d been vain until her dying day.

Walter rang the bell-pull and instructed the footman to send Oscar up straightaway, for the time had come to talk to the boy about the benefits of marrying well.