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He simply could not face her yet, so he left them and trudged through the chilled, sweet, predawn air out to the stables. He needed space in which to unravel his tangled heart and mind, to examine his thoughts one by one, so he could arrive at some sort of conclusion. He sent the sleepy stable boy back to the loft and saddled Horatio himself. He trotted out of the stableyard, and then kneed him into a run.

He galloped over the soft spreading green of the park deep into his uncle’s land. The dawn air was heavy with moist earth and green things, and he took great draughts of it, hoping it would clear his mind.

But Gideon’s thoughts kept pace with him, so he finally dismounted and led Horatio along the lake, surrendering to the need to think… and decide.

For the first time in his life, he had truly made love to a woman.
Made love
. Not just for the physical release, or the savage pleasure of it, or just because he could. But because he wanted to become a part of
her
, to give pleasure and comfort solely to
her
.

And this thing he felt… whatever it was… it threatened to override his good sense, his plans, his control. Like a weed—

He half smiled to himself; good God, even the prose in his
thoughts
was going purple.
Bloody poetry
. No, not a weed. For Lily
was
life, not a thing that strangled life.

And then he realized his uncle had described Therese in just the same way.

Oh God.

It very nearly killed me
. Those had been his uncle’s words, too. Gideon had known grief in his life; he’d known enough of life’s valleys to be suspicious of the peaks. Nothing so immense had ever before touched him. He should send Lily away before the rest of his life became a pale coda to these past few weeks with her.

For he, in his way, with his whim and his weakness and thirty pounds, had brought this down on all of them. Although he supposed he could allot a little of the blame to Lily. She
had
tried to steal his watch. He smiled a little.

Meanwhile, for his sake and for hers, he would keep his distance. He’d spent the last decade or so of his life keeping his distance from risk, from want—how difficult, really, could another week or so be?

Lily stayed with Alice in the nursery all day, reading stories to her, napping when she napped, eating when she ate. The servants, one by one, stopped by to say hello and to see how Miss Alice fared. Even Boone the gardener and Dawson the pig keeper made an appearance, each of them as grubby as two potatoes freshly pulled from the ground. Mrs. Plunkett looked distinctly nervous to have the two of them in the house.

Alice, it seemed, had made friends everywhere at Aster Park.
But Alice
, Lily told herself stubbornly,
will make friends everywhere she goes. She has that kind of spirit. She will be fine when we leave. We will
both
be fine when we leave
.

Coach fare to London was probably about four shillings. Perhaps over the next few days she could win as much at cards from Lord Lindsey; instead of handing it over to Gideon toward her debt, she would keep it, find some way to send word to the coaching inn…

Twilight’s mauve shadows now filled the nursery room, and Alice was snoring softly. The remnants of their dinner—soup, cold meat, bread—littered a tray on the floor. Mrs. Plunkett would no doubt be by to fetch it a little later. The housekeeper had promised to stay with Alice tonight.

“Sleep in your own room, Miss Masters. You need a good night’s sleep, or you’ll have the fever, too.”

It was so lovely to be cared for that Lily didn’t put up an argument.

Gideon had not appeared all day.

So Lily kissed her sleeping sister softly on the forehead, and took her candle down the hall to her room. She slid the bolt on the door and wrapped the blankets tightly around her as though they could keep everything out. The world. Pain.

Love.

Brandy hadn’t helped. He thought perhaps he’d move on to whiskey, and then considered how the combination of brandy and whiskey would make him feel in the morning, and rejected
that
idea. Not to mention the effect too much drinking would have on his nearly empty stomach. For he had not eaten a thing tonight. He had taken his meal in his chambers, and the cold meat had gone down like ashes. He hadn’t even attempted the peas.

And so Gideon had gone to the library and pulled books from the shelves and taken them back to his chambers with him, a desperate attempt to lull himself to sleep. But me poetry he usually found as lulling as a soft symphony had only made it all worse.

And so, punitively, he had tried Plutarch. But his mind seemed unable to get any purchase on the words; it slid over them and right back off again. He tossed Plutarch aside. He considered going for a moonlit swim in the lake, but rejected that notion as too absurdly dramatic.

His blankets itched; he threw them off irritably.

And then he spent the next half hour staring up at the shifting shadows on his ceiling, cast by the flickering light of his taper.

It was no use.

Gideon stood and slowly pulled his trousers on and stuffed his shirt into his trousers, with hands that trembled a little. He lifted the candle and cupped his hand around it, and went out the door of his bedchamber.

The tap came close to midnight; she knew because she had heard the hour struck by one of Aster Park’s many clocks. Lily’s heart leaped up like a fish breaking the surface of the sea.

Don’t open the door. You shouldn‘t open the door.

Another tap. So softly she could almost have imagined it. Three times.

It’s foolish. It’s dangerous. Nothing good can ever come of this.

A
pause. Her heart nearly stopped.

And then another soft tap.

She leaped from her bed and dashed to the door before he could change his mind, her hand fumbling impatiently at the lock to slide it open.

Gideon was dressed only in trousers and a shirt open at the neck, a lit candle illuminating his face. She stepped aside, and he entered the room, setting the candle with great care on her dressing table. She closed the door and slid the bolt, turned to face him.

Her arms went around his neck just as he was reaching for her, and then his lips were on hers, excruciatingly tender.

She stepped back from him and raised her arms, and Gideon lifted her dressing gown over her head; it drifted, ghostlike, to the floor. She stood nude before him; impatient, he pulled her into his arms and sought her mouth again. They joined in a long, drugging kiss as his hands roamed feverishly everywhere, sliding down over her breasts, cupping her buttocks and lifting her up against him, stroking the tender flesh inside her thighs, until she was nothing but sensation. His lips were on her throat and shoulders, her mouth again; he traced the whorls of her ear with his tongue. She took her mouth from his and buried her face against him, sighing with pleasure; she rippled beneath his hands, submitting to, encouraging his exploration.

Neither of them had yet said a word.

Gideon turned her to face the mirror over her dressing table and stood behind her. By candlelight, she saw her own face, flushed and heavy-lidded, her hair a riotous tangle. Gideon traced lacy figures over her nipples with fingers at first delicate, and then rough, and she arched her head back, trembling with the pleasure of it; he bent his head to nuzzle her throat. In the mirror she watched his hair fall over his brow.

“See how beautiful you are, Lily.” Lily watched in the mirror, mesmerized, as Gideon’s palms covered her breasts and circled over them, then slid in tandem down over the curve of her belly to the silky triangle between her legs. Her breathing grew rough with anticipation; but he was only teasing her; his fingers merely trailed across her damp curls before gliding back again to her breasts; she sighed a protest. His hands left her body altogether for a moment to unfasten his trousers, and then she felt his erection pressing against her. His breath came in harsh gasps in her ear.

“I need you
now
, Lily.”

“Yes.” Her own voice was a taut whisper.

He gently urged her to bend forward, and nudged her legs farther apart with his knee; she braced her hands on her dressing table. She could feel his shaft tease the cleft in her legs, and then he was sliding into her, slowly, filling her gloriously full. His hand came around to touch where she ached to be touched, and his hips pulled back, and then slowly thrust forward again. She watched their faces in the mirror, Gideon’s above his white shirt flushed, his eyes distant, intent, her own face avid and possessed.

He stroked into her again, and she moaned from it. He did it again, exquisitely, agonizingly slowly, his hand stroking in rhythm. She watched, held in thrall by her own reflection, by the beautiful man joined to her, watched his dark eyes meet her own in the mirror in a conspiracy of desire. He filled his hands with her breasts, and moved in her again.

“Gideon. Please.”

The sound of her voice spurred him on; the relentless, building rhythm of Gideon’s hips banked the want in her higher, and higher, and higher still, until she was begging, until her breath burst from her lungs in short harsh puffs, until at last,
oh God
, at last, she shattered into glittering shards of pleasure, her own sharp exultant cry ringing in her ears, mingling with Gideon’s.

Gideon swept her up in his arms before her legs could buckle and carried her to the bed. He stripped off his trousers and shirt and joined her there, pulling her into an embrace. Their sweat-sheened limbs twined around each other. He kissed her, softly.

“Shall we go slow this time, Lily? Do you think we can?” he whispered, teasing.

She pulled out of his arms. “Hold still,” she told him. “Don’t move at all.”

Gideon was still breathing hard; he didn’t look as though he could move even if he wanted to. He smiled faintly, his chest still rising and falling from exertion.

Lily wound her fingers in the curling hair on his chest and kissed the indentation between the bones at the base of his neck; she tested the soft leather of his nipples with her tongue. His hand rose reflexively to touch her hair.

“I thought I told you not to move,” she whispered sternly.

She felt his chest quiver with a laugh; his hand dropped obediently.

He was so
big;
so long in length and broad at the shoulder. Lily dragged her hands down over Gideon’s hard chest to his belly; it wasn’t perfectly flat, but it was more endearing for its slight softness. She liked him this way; she liked this evidence of the vulnerability he kept so well hidden. She dipped her tongue into his navel, tasting the salt and musk of him; rubbed her cheek against his belly, feeling it lift and fall beneath her lips as his breathing quickened. She found a scar across his hip, a long thin one, the skin stretched white; she traced it with her nail, as if she could undo whatever hurt had caused it.

And then she raised her head from him and dragged her fingers down over his furred, hard thighs, finding and stroking a silky bare place between them where riding horseback had rubbed the hair away. Gideon hissed air in between his teeth.

“Good?” she whispered.

Gideon gave a short strangled laugh. So she kissed him there, on the silky bare place, she touched her tongue to it. He moaned her name softly and shifted restlessly, opening his thighs; his shaft stirred and swelled before her eyes. She kissed it, dragged her tongue down it.

“
Holy God almighty
...” he groaned.

She laughed softly. And did it again. And then again. He began to move his hips, encouraging her.

“No moving.” It was an order, a whisper.

“Sadist.” A choked laugh.

She exulted in giving pleasure to him; she wanted to give and give to him, to this vulnerable, strong, beautiful man.
I love you
was in her every touch; she wished she could transfer her love to him through his skin, so he would feel how it felt to her.
I love you
.

Gideon suddenly rolled over on his side and seized her in his arms, pulling her up over him, and she shrieked softly in surprise.

“You are,” he said, enunciating each word wonderingly, “so
unbelievably
beautiful.”

She smiled down into his soft dark eyes. Her hair fell over his face; he blew his breath out and it lifted away.

She could feel him hard and insistent and very, very ready against her. She moved her hips, a primal instinct, seeking her own pleasure.

“Are you tender?” he whispered. “Can you take me?”

Yes, I am tender. Yes, I will take you
. ‘Take me.“

She thought people only said things like that in erotic French stories. She understood now why they would.

Gideon gently rolled her over, gazed down into her eyes, and she wrapped her legs and arms around him, opening for him. He stroked into her, and her head went back on a gasp; she could feel him everywhere in her body, in her throat and fingertips, the soles of her feet. He pulled back from her, and she heard a long groan escape from him; he moved again.

Slowly this time, and it was exquisite torture, it built and built in her until she thought she would die from it, and still it built. And then they moved together blindly, together and alone in their race for release, and for her it came on a burst of white light behind her eyes.

She thought she may have bitten him, on the shoulder, perhaps.

“I think you bit me,” he murmured lazily after a moment.

She smiled; too limp to do anything but feel.

“… Thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen!
Fifteen,” Gideon announced. He felt utterly replete. Almost stupid with happiness.

“Fifteen?” Lily’s delicious velvet voice was languid.

“Freckles. You’ve fifteen freckles. Seven on one side, eight on the other. The very first day I saw you, I wanted to count them. And now”—Gideon touched a finger gently to each one, one at a time—“I have. Fifteen little golden freckles, like… angel tears.”