After what must have been half an hour spent weeping on a cold garden bench, I managed to stop my tears. And it was only then that I realized there was someone else outdoors with me, someone who apparently had not felt at ease voicing his concerns while I was still sobbing into my hands.

“Miss Quinton,” said Mr. Luke Barlow, his voice filled with concern and confusion. “What has happened? Are you well?”

The worst thing in the world is to speak to an employer in a voice choked with tears. So I said nothing to Mr. Barlow, attempting to breathe through the worst of the pain and compose some sort of witty reply.

For a moment, nothing came to me, and the man only continued his interrogation.

“Did mama say something to offend you?”

I covered my face, took a deep breath, and put my handkerchief back in my pocket. Perhaps if it were impossible for me to wipe my tears, I should be forced to stop crying. “Only that she might sack me, because in trying to escape your dear old grandad I have gotten hardly a wink of sleep these two nights together.”

“I’ll speak to mama,” he said, but I interrupted him.

“If you will speak to anyone, let it be that horrid fiancee of yours. She’s already trying to run things, you know, and has apparently decided that I am not worth the expense.”

He drew in a breath. “And has thus forced you out here, sitting on a bench in the damp.”

All I could do was nod. “It’s not how I had intended to spend my birthday.”

“No, I imagine not,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was not going to say anything else.

“I’m sorry that we have not protected you,” he said. “It seems that mama wanted to keep Miss Courtenay in the dark, and for her sake we have foregone some of the precautions that we should have taken.”

“Miss Courtenay is in the dark about many things,” I told him. “She does not know the first thing about modesty, humility, or good breeding. However, I am afraid she saw your grandfather make a definite pass at my bosom, so on that point at least she must be enlightened.”

He flinched, and I wondered if I had gone too far. For a moment, I hoped that the man would be so offended that he would leave me alone with the little peace that the stone bench offered.

But first, apparently, he had to defend his fiancee.

“Miss Quinton,” he said, his voice strained. “Please do not say anything else about Miss Courtenay. She and I are to be married soon.”

“How soon?” I asked, the bitterness in my voice probably apparent to anyone within a ten-mile radius.

Mr. Barlow shifted. “I’m going now, in fact. I thought that if I just beg our vicar a bit, he might give in and do it. He’s been refusing for some days now.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Why, money doesn’t talk to him?”

“He’s still angry at the way Miss Courtenay blamed old Mrs. Hampton for her lot in life. I suppose nobody would have told you about it, but it happened weeks ago, and half the village is still up in arms. Vicar Mosley says Miss Courtenay’s manner was unchristian.”

A tiny hint of a smile crept across my face. I was not the only person in the world displeased with Miss Courtenay, then. “He says it was unchristian? You speak as if you disagree with it. What did she say, then?”

“Well, she said that Mrs. Hampton ought to find herself someone to take care of the doctor’s fees, not go bothering her landlord. Mama was angry about it, too. Mrs. Hampton used to have many sons, but they’re all dead and gone now. If we didn’t pay, there aren’t many in the village who would be able to help her.”

In surprise, I looked up at him. “You sound as if you completely agree with the vicar.”

He nodded, his tone contrite. “Well, of course I do. Miss Courtenay ought to apologize.”

“And yet you’re still going to marry her? Good lord, you sound as if you’re fairly champing at the bit.”

And perhaps he was. Miss Courtenay, in spite of her lack of conscience, was not bad looking. And, as I had rather rudely pointed out the night before, she had the sort of siren’s voice that could seduce even a monk.

And Luke Barlow was most likely not a monk. In fact, I even caught him looking rather too long and admiringly at me. Or so I thought. When I met his eyes, he looked down at the mud. Though his shoes were sinking in it, he was no longer attempting to clean them off.

“I can’t inherit unless I marry,” he said. “I wanted to go to town for a season, and I knew that I could meet someone. But mama said no.”

“No to finding a bride?”

He sat down next to me, sitting awkwardly at the edge of the bench. We were not touching at all, but I knew that if I moved my fingers half an inch I would be able to feel the hem of his cloak, and even that was more comfort than anyone else had offered me.

He cleared his throat. “I needed to find someone immediately, and mother needed a man in the house to control my grandfather.”

With a glance at me, he seemed to acknowledge the possibility that I would find this requirement odd. But I stayed silent, eager to hear how anyone had been talked into a match with my tormentor.

“Miss Courtenay is the daughter of one of mama’s friends, some friends who used to visit every summer before grandfather fell ill. So she was one of the only young women I knew, and we thought that if she were willing she might get here in time. But even now, it may be too late.”

I looked directly at him this time. “Too late to avoid marrying a woman with whom you share very little?”

He did not meet my gaze. “I’m afraid I was thinking of more prosaic concerns, Miss Quinton. If my grandfather dies, my family will be paupers unless I marry before his passing.”

I looked away into the distance again. There were clouds forming over the hills at the edge of the estate that looked even darker than the ones currently gathered above us, and I knew the storm would soon grow worse, but I made no move to leave the little bench. “Then why didn’t you marry before now? Unless I’m much mistaken, the elder Mr. Barlow has been ‘ill’ for some time.”

He sighed. “Yes, but before now I always had to seek his blessing. At last, that is no longer the case. I turned twenty one a fortnight ago.”

This made me bitter once again. At least his celebration had probably included some special treat. I was twenty one and had nothing to show for it. For me the passage of the years was to be marked only with reminders of the many ways in which I had to be strong, clever, and willfully ignorant if I were to keep any employment.

“Happy birthday,” I said to him, my voice rather thin.

“To you as well.”

We both starting laughing. The sentiment was so ridiculous, and our present situation so ugly, that even the most stone-faced fool in the world would have seen the humor in it.

I always thought that if I ended up in a compromising situation, I would say that we might be discovered at any moment. And even if that fact were obvious, I would say something like, “We could be seen at any moment,” or “We oughtn’t to do this.”

But I said nothing of the sort. I only gazed up into Luke Barlow’s face as he stroked mine, his tall frame crouched over me with care and tension.

And so we remained, until the rain started in earnest again, and even the trees were not enough to protect us unless we moved toward the trunks.

The movement seemed to break the spell for a moment. I wondered, with a heart that had been steeled by a mother’s repeated warnings, whether Mr. Barlow did not try to play games with all of his houseguests.

But we stood together by the trunk of the great pine, and the breaks in his voice were sincere as he explained himself.

“It would all be different if I could marry someone like you, Miss Quinton,” he said, his voice breathy. “I’m afraid I ought to beg your forgiveness.”

As he said it, we moved closer together, and now that we were both standing, there was more than enough room for him to kiss me.

He took full advantage of it, pulling me to him and filling my lips with hot, hasty kisses.

There was still a little bit of the strangeness that I had felt in childhood, but added to this the sweet scent of the rain and the arching, eager body of the gorgeous man before me. It was fortunate that we were not indoors, for we might have been tempted to take our temptation and eagerness to its natural conclusion.

Instead, I pulled away from Luke’s kisses (he was, all of a sudden, “Luke” and not “Mr. Barlow”). And I followed my feelings to a different, though no less logical, end.

“I am twenty one today,” I breathed, looking up into his startled eyes. “Why should we two not be the ones to marry?”

He clutched at my arms. “You would marry me?”

I looked down, wanting to tell him that I should love nothing better, but suddenly struck dumb.

Or nearly dumb. “It would keep me from killing your grandfather.”

“Have you ever killed anyone, then?” he asked, looking distinctly silly as he said it.

I began to laugh, and he put his arms around me again.

“Of course not,” I said into his cloak, as he kissed my hair and I tried to force my face into any expression but the stupid grin that seemed unwilling to leave my lips. “I’ve gotten rough with certain fools, though.”

“Perhaps I ought to marry you just to protect myself,” he said, tilting my head towards him and kissing me again so hard that I thought I might slip and fall in the mud.