A DAY UNTIL FOREVER

ERIN LANGSTON

Copyright © 2023 by Erin Langston

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Erin Dameron-Hill

Edited by Rachel Shipp

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To my very own sweetheart.

I never needed to divine the future, because you were luckily always in my present, but I know the apple peel would have been a P.

CONTENTS

31 October, 1798

One Year Later

1. Nigh on Ten o’clock in the Morning

2. Noon

3. Half past one o’clock in the afternoon

4. Three o’clock in the afternoon

5. Ten minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon

6. Half past five o’clock in the evening

7. Eventide

8. Sometime after eight o’clock in the evening

9. Nightfall

31 October, 1800

Author’s Note

About the Author

31 OCTOBER, 1798

NIGHTFALL

It all started with an apple…though the fruit, of course, was none the wiser. There was nothing at all remarkable about it; nothing to set it apart from the other pippins of the orchard’s last harvest. The apple was perfectly ordinary—golden-red, firm of flesh, waxy, and cool to the touch.

And yet, this humble fruit had been commissioned for a most noble purpose.

Rosalie Holland held the apple in her left hand and peeked surreptitiously over her shoulder. The faint ruckus of the town bonfire carried from the other side of Turner’s dilapidated barn, a cacophony of music and shouts on a curl of wood smoke.

Rosalie raised her eyebrows at Amelia and Nanette as she crouched, lifted her skirt, and slid a paring knife from where she had earlier strapped it to her half-boot.

“Are you ready?”

Nanette’s wild curls bobbed in the shadows.

“Wait!” Amelia, keeping watch around the side of the barn, stuck out her arm to give pause.

There was a burst of laughter. Amelia shrank back as two farmers wobbled past, clinking tankards of ale.

“And…they’re gone. You first, Rosie.”

Rosalie hefted the apple, grinning as her friends bubbled in anticipation. She squinted in the muted moonlight and carefully pressed the blade of the paring knife to the thin red skin of the apple.

“Wait!” Amelia whisper-shouted for the second time.

Rosalie strained her ears. There was no sound of passersby. “What now?”

Amelia bit her lip. “Are you certain you want to do this? Divine your sweetheart?”

Nanette heaved an exasperated moan.

“How else are we to learn who we’re meant to marry?” Rosalie rolled her eyes. “Just wait? For the future? Don’t be so uninspired, Amelia.”

“But—”

Nanette shushed her. “Hurry up, Rosie!”

“It’s dark,” Rosalie muttered, working the knife into the skin of the apple. “Bring that candle closer. And besides, I need to go slowly. She said it won’t work if I break the peel.”

In the temperamental flare of the candle, Rosalie turned the apple around and around, the peel lengthening in a sweet, sticky ribbon. When nothing remained in her hand but a pale, fragrant globe, Rosalie exhaled, looking at her friends.

“Right then.” She stepped forward, turning in three slow circles. Nanette and Amelia clasped arms, their wide eyes flickering in the light of their stubbed candle.

Rosalie closed her eyes and hoarsely recited.

“I pare this pippin, round and round again,

My sweetheart’s name to flourish on the plain;

I fling the unbroken paring o’er my head,

My sweetheart’s letter on the ground to read.”

She lifted her face to the swirling, shadowy clouds, then tossed the peel behind her.

The young women ran to where the apple peel had disappeared in the dark, their breath frosting in the chill air. Nanette raised the candle, and three pairs of eager eyes scanned the cold, stiff grass.

“What letter is it?” Amelia called.

Rosalie spotted the curled peel first. She stood over it, tilting her head one way, then the other, searching the scrap for the letter of her future sweetheart.

Please, please, please…

“It looks like...” Nanette squatted, staring hard. She glanced up at Rosalie. “R.”

“Renwood,” Amelia murmured, beaming at Rosalie. “It’s R for Ian Renwood.”

Rosalie covered her mouth, lest her stampeding heart escape her body. She, too, thought it resembled an R, vaguely.

“Do you think so?” she managed, her dark green eyes darting between her friends. “Is it truly an R?”

“It must be.” Nanette nodded. “It’s not a natural way for the peel to fall. The charm revealed the truth, Rosie. You’re destined for Mr. Renwood.”

Rosalie sighed with jubilant relief.

Ian Renwood.

It had been three years since Rosalie’s sixteenth summer when charming Mr. Ian Renwood had first asked her to dance a reel at the Balfour residence. Rosalie, with the bullish naivete of youth, had assumed that dance was it. Within the year, Renwood would finish at Oxford, she would make her debut, and he would court her in earnest. They would be betrothed before her eighteenth birthday, and Rosalie’s life would begin.

But to her infinite chagrin, none of those girlish fantasies had come to fruition. Rosalie, as it transpired, did not debut her seventeenth spring, nor the year after. Her maiden Aunt Celia had fallen ill and offered a healthy addition to Rosalie’s future dowry if she stayed with her in Gloucestershire during her extraordinarily long convalescence. Rosalie’s father had taken a calculated risk that it would be more advantageous for his daughter to debut later but wealthier, and no amount of foot stamping or tears would change his mind.

But now she was home, and this coming spring, nineteen-year-old Rosalie Holland would make her long overdue debut into society, bringing three years of high hopes with her to London. Rosie was tired of waiting, of watching her friends and cousins court, marry, and start families of their own. She wanted her chance to be turned upside down, inside out, head-over-heels in love.

And now, on this most mysterious of evenings, it appeared Rosalie’s luck was about to change. Superstitious folk said magic was afoot, that during Allhallowtide, anything was possible.

If Rosie were ever to find her heart’s desire, it would be tonight.

R.

Her destiny.

Even the apple peel said so.

ONE YEAR LATER

31 OCTOBER, 1799

1

NIGH ON TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Raymond, Lord Travers, needed to see a man about a ditch.

Strictly speaking, he needed to accomplish about a dozen tasks in addition to arranging the ditch, but Lord Holland was only available to meet before noon. And since Raymond’s work never ceased, he might as well start with the damned ditch.

He mulled over the day’s tasks as his stallion cantered down the leaf-strewn bridle path winding through the thick, deeply gold forest bordering the eastern quadrant of Morrow Woods—the ancestral seat of the Earl of Fordham—and Holland House, where Raymond was due to meet with the baron at ten o’clock.

So today…first the ditch and then, provided all went according to plan, he would spend the rest of the morning sequestered in his father’s study, sorting through the bloody mess left by the latest useless steward in a long line of useless stewards. When he required a respite from that particular headache, Raymond planned to nip down to the town’s harvest fair, where the autumn hiring would take place. He wanted to enlist a new plowman, and maybe a stable hand or two, if any well-referenced men were there looking for work. If he managed all of that, maybe by nightfall, he could have a blessed swallow of brandy in front of the fire while reading into the implications of the most recent tax levy.

It would be a hectic, tiresome day, filled from sunup to sundown with the business of the Earl of Fordham.

Too bad Raymond was merely the earl’s son.

A smattering of acorns rained from a towering oak up ahead, its russet leaves swaying under the stampeding feet of mercenary squirrels. Raymond peered at the creaking branches, nodding to the little beasts in solidarity. Even the smallest woodland creatures understood the importance of proper planning.

He urged his horse around a bend to see a pleasant vista over the forest. But he couldn’t muster enthusiasm for autumn in Hampshire just now.

Raymond was still smarting from yesterday, the hours he’d spent poring over the accounts, unable to believe the home farm had delivered such abominable crop yields. Morrow Woods sat on three hundred bloody acres of park and farmland; it was completely unacceptable to have a near-loss on cereals and hops. His father’s holdings were modest compared to the vast swathes of some earldoms, and most of the profit was derived from the family seat at Morrow Woods.

His father had blithely suggested hiring yet another estate manager, but Raymond convinced the earl to wait until he could form some semblance of order. It turned out that when an earl was a degenerate wastrel, good help was hard to come by. And Raymond couldn’t risk any help less than good. After all, those half-kept records held the story of his future.

His entire family’s future.

Which, of course, brought him right back to the matter at hand. Up ahead, the forest thinned, and the bridle path opened to a wide approach leading to the modest stone edifice of Holland House.

Task number one.

The ditch.

* * *

“No.”

Lord Holland was a portly man with drooping eyes and, apparently, wool-stuffed ears. It was the only conceivable explanation. Raymond had just spent half an hour outlining a mutually beneficial plan to drain the marshy lands between the Holland and Fordham estates—with diagrams!—and the baron merely said…no.

“Lord Holland, I assure you, this is a sensible method to increase crop productivity.”

“I appreciate your eagerness to improve your holdings, Lord Travers, but my steward was perfectly satisfied with our yields this year.”

“But you could be more satisfied.” Raymond stood, his lean frame silhouetted in the pale autumn sunlight streaking into Holland’s study. “Why would any man want less than full satisfaction?”

“Nobody is stopping you from digging these ditches on your own estate.” Holland shrugged. “I don’t see that I need to engage in any such risk or expense.”

Raymond took a breath, willing himself to remain patient.

“Because it’s a marsh, Holland,” he said slowly, as though explaining the concept to his small brother rather than to a grown man with a paunch the size of a Yuletide ham. “A marsh doesn’t understand property lines. If I only drain the marshland on Fordham’s property, the water will eventually rise again.”

“I was out in the western fields yesterday. The land was perfectly dry.”

Raymond held his fists stiff at his side. “The water isn’t always visible. That’s why I proposed”—he stabbed a finger at the meticulous plans he had drawn up— “we first test the soil for saturation. Then we can dig the drainage ditches accordingly and backfill with clay tiles, or even rocks. The groundwater could siphon off—”

“No.”

“I implore you to at least think this over, Holland. Fear not, I’ll see to the labor. I can arrange for it all—”

“Has the earl agreed?”

“There’s been a text published about this very stratagem. I was looking it over…the science is all quite sound—”

“Travers.”

“We could use mule-pulled drags…or have the ditches dug by hand, which will take longer, of course—”

“Travers.”

Raymond exhaled sharply.

“Yes, Holland?”

“I asked if your father has approved this plan of yours.”

Raymond evaded the baron’s calculating gaze. These sorts of conversations always put him in a tricky position. Raymond knew how the beau monde gossiped, and he didn’t care to circulate the news that he was running the earl’s affairs while his father planned foxhunts and card parties.

“He didn’t, did he?”

“My father and I have an…understanding, Holland.”

Holland regarded him for a long moment, as though he were quite literally reading between the lines.

“Be that as it may, my answer is still no.”

“But—”

“It’s just too much fuss. I can’t have any more fuss.” Holland heaved a sigh. “I have a daughter, you see.”

Raymond paused, unsure how to respond to this proclamation. “I’m afraid I don’t see.”

Holland shook his head. “If you one day have a daughter, you’ll understand.”

Raymond stared at Holland’s desk, at the piles of careful plans he had wasted his precious, overburdened time creating. The baron was aiming for levity, but Holland was the one who didn’t understand: Raymond might not have a daughter, but he had a hell of a lot of people relying on him. And acres of useless farmland didn’t help.

“I see.” His voice was tight with frustration. “Thank you for your time.”

“You’re a decent man, Travers.” The baron’s tone turned avuncular as he watched Raymond stack up his papers. “Damn decent. If I may offer some advice?”

Raymond made a noncommittal grunt.

“Focus more on your own life and less on Fordham’s messes.”

“Hmm.” Raymond barely managed to choke back an aggravated retort. The earl’s messes were his life. There was no way to separate the two. He couldn’t even imagine a world where that would be possible.

“In fact,” Holland rambled on, “you should make some time to attend the harvest fair today. Join the revelry, why don’t you? Drink some beer. Get a tavern maid on your lap. Possibly…smile.”

Raymond clenched his jaw. “I don’t have much time for tavern maids and beer, Holland.” He stuffed his papers into his valise and prepared to take his leave, already mentally reshuffling his day. He’d need an entirely new plan.

“Say…” the baron began slowly, twirling a quill. “There’s an idea.”

Raymond stopped in the doorway, bristling with irritation. “The only idea I have offered, Lord Holland, was the drainage ditch.”

“Not that.” Holland waved his hand. “The harvest fair.”

“Pardon me?”

“My daughter, Rosalie. She’s been clamoring for weeks about the autumn fair. My son Robert was supposed to escort her, but he’s caught up at Oxford and didn’t make it back for today. I wasn’t certain I’d be able to permit her attendance.”

Ray furrowed his brow. Rosalie Holland. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen the baron’s daughter, but he could only conjure the image of a wispy little sprite. It had been years, he knew that much; he wasn’t even certain how old she was now. Raymond was most often in London or traveling to his father’s few holdings. He was rarely available for social calls.

“Couldn’t her governess chaperone her? Or a maid?” Raymond immediately regretted the question. He didn’t need to be privy to the inner workings of Holland’s household.

“Ha!” Holland laughed. “Of course she has a maid, but Rosalie benefits from a firmer hand. She’s a bit…strong-willed.” The older man winced uncomfortably. “Has romantic notions, you see. And I fear she has the wherewithal to see them through.”

Raymond shrugged, sidling closer to the door.

Holland lowered his quill, assessing Raymond with new interest. “If Rosie has to miss out, I’ll never hear the end of it. And if Rosie goes without a proper escort, the whole town will never say the end of it.”

Raymond stared longingly at the door; a very bad feeling crept over him. He could sense his evening hearthside brandy slipping further and further away.

“I’ll make you a deal, Travers.”

“Holland—”

“If you take Rosie out for the day, I’ll consider the ditch.”

Well, that was unexpected. Raymond lowered his hat from his dark hair, his mind racing. “You want me to take your daughter to town? The very same daughter who requires two chaperones to curb her…romantic notions?”

“In exchange for the ditch. Besides, I should hardly think a festival would be an undue burden. You’re a young man, Travers, believe it or not. How old are you now?”

“Six-and-twenty,” Raymond said tightly.

“There now. See? You should put aside your little maps and enjoy yourself.”

“Are you suggesting that escorting your spirited daughter around a crowded, riotous autumnal festival would be enjoyable?”

“I’m suggesting that if you do me a favor, I’ll consider doing one in return.”

Raymond cracked his knuckles. “Truly? What…would I need to do?”

“Just keep her out of mischief and mayhem through nightfall. She can peruse the stalls, see her friends, partake in the food and music.” Holland waved his hand around. “Those sorts of proper activities.”

Hmm. That didn’t seem so bad.

“And that’s on your word, Holland?”

Holland nodded slowly. “Aye. You have my word, Travers. And if you manage to keep my daughter away from that dandy, Ian Renwood, I’ll break ground on the first ditch myself.”

2

NOON

Rosalie had spent her morning engaging in the odious business of lamenting. She lamented while she broke her fast, she lamented as her father read his correspondence, and she lamented—loudly—as he sequestered himself in his study to take an appointment.

It seemed she would be forced to skip the harvest fair, and all because her brother was taking another pointless lecture at Oxford. Rosalie couldn’t believe she would miss out on the fun. Without a proper chaperone, it was inconceivable her father would permit her attendance.

As much as she wished to blame this punishment on her brother’s useless predilection for classical literature, Rosalie knew she had brought it upon herself. Ever since last spring’s brandy debacle in the Penfield’s rose garden, when her maid had proven to be a middling chaperone, Rosalie’s father had insisted she have a second safeguard to prevent poor choices.

It hadn’t mattered. Chaperone or no, Rosalie’s long-awaited first Season had been an abject, crushing failure. Mr. Renwood had been off on a tour of the Continent. And while Rosalie wasn’t interested in any other man, it was hard to miss that no men seemed very interested in her either. The only fun she had in London was the fun she made with her friends…including some riotous poor choices with the Penfield’s brandy.

But her bad luck was supposed to turn today.

For the first time in years, Rosalie and Ian Renwood were in Hampshire at the same time. She couldn’t miss a single opportunity to bring him up to scratch. He’d returned from Italy in September, but thus far her progress in attracting his attention had…lagged. At the few dinners and card parties she’d attended, Renwood had been chatty about his travels but otherwise disinterested.

Suffice to say, Rosalie had been expecting to raise the stakes today at the harvest fair. She had a plan, and she wouldn’t be deterred. It had been exactly one year since she foretold her future, and she could clearly picture the lopsided curl of the apple peel. Her sweetheart’s letter was R, whether he knew it or not.

Rosalie was lying on her bed, her head hanging off the edge so her fawn-colored hair fell in a tangle to the floor, when she heard a brisk knock on the door of her bedchamber. “Enter,” she called.

“Cheer up, Miss Holland.” Ainsley, Rosalie’s maid, swept into the room. “I bear good news.”

Rosalie briefly interrupted her lamenting to halfheartedly return the smile. She was glad to see Ainsley; she’d wondered when someone would check on her. She was in sore need of a sherry and a cold compress to soothe her distress. Besides, Rosalie knew her maid would commiserate with her plight. Ainsley had been hoping to see Dr. Gibbons in town today.

“Lord Holland said you could attend the autumn fair today, miss.” Ainsley beamed.

Rosalie sat up so quickly, her hair nearly smacked her maid in the face. “What? Is my brother here? Or…or is Father going to attend?”

Her mind raced. Her father might prove a difficult obstacle. He wasn’t at all keen on Mr. Renwood, but Rosalie couldn’t think why. So what if Renwood was a bit cavalier, a bit irresponsible? He was so handsome, it hurt to look at him.

“Lord Holland won’t be in attendance,” Ainsley said. “He’s secured another chaperone for the day.”

Rosalie frowned. “Who?”

Ainsley raised her eyebrows. “Lord Travers.”

Lord Travers? Ainsley might as well have declared Shakespeare was to be Rosalie’s chaperone. In fact, a dead playwright was more likely to attend the fair than the Earl of Fordham’s enigmatic son.

Rosalie thought fast. Lord Travers was the subject of many a wagging tongue. Rumor had it the easy-living Earl of Fordham practically had the young man running the earldom on his behalf. Though they lived on neighboring estates, Rosalie could hardly recall what he looked like, much less the last time she had seen him. She had spent most of the past two years with her aunt, and Travers was frequently away.

From what she remembered, he was reserved and serious and dreadfully, calamitously dull.

And this is who her father foisted upon her today?

Rosalie grimaced. “Well. I suppose it’s better than not going at all.”

She would sort out this Lord Travers situation when they arrived in town. He couldn’t be that hard to shirk. After all, he’d been holed up with his work for ages. She could probably waft a ledger under his nose and he wouldn’t spare her a second thought.

“There’s more, Miss Holland.” Ainsley winced sympathetically. “If you go, you’re to wear your black redingote.”

Rosalie flopped down in dismay, picturing the evergreen gown with a sweeping neckline that currently hung in her dressing room. She had planned to wear it with a fetchingly draped shawl.

But her black redingote…she’d be covered from chin to boot!

Rosalie was twenty, and the spinster’s shelf loomed ever nearer with each passing month.

She needed today to go well.

She needed, quite frankly, any day to go well.

She thought of her dearest friends—Amelia, already rounding with a babe in her belly; Nanette, the glowing new bride of Mr. Benjamin Darling. They would be at the festival today, living their lives.

And then there would be Rosalie, with her grim clothing and her grimmer chaperone.

Blast it!

* * *

When she was buttoned up and tightly coiffed to expectations no father could decry, Rosalie and Ainsley descended the exterior front steps to a pair of grooms, waiting with their horses.

In spite of the day’s disappointing start, Rosalie felt a thrum of excitement. The autumn fair was held in town, a scant twenty minutes on horseback, and it was a wonderful day for a ride. The overnight deluge of freezing rain had left the ground damp and the sky a weak, pale blue.

At least the weather was cooperating with her plans. But as she swept eagerly down the front steps, Rosalie faltered.

Standing beside her groom was a vaguely familiar man in a dark coat, resting one arm along the flank of a magnificent stallion. He was moderately tall, his physique rigid and athletically lean. The stranger had dark hair, dark eyes, and stared morosely at his pocket watch.

Lord Travers.

He wasn’t quite how she remembered him. He was stiff, to be sure; there was no need to affix so grave a glower on an innocent timepiece. But something about the way he coiled in tension recalled a powerful, caged animal. It wasn’t…unappealing. Travers’s fingers drummed against his horse’s flank, each large digit an impatient echo of his ticking watch. He looked as though he were counting down to his own funeral.

Hmm.

“There you are, Rosalie. I would have thought for someone so keen to attend the fair, it would have taken less time to prepare.”

Her father’s voice floated down the steps behind her, and Lord Travers jolted from his grim reverie. He glanced up, flicked his dark eyes over Rosalie, then resumed staring impassively at his watch.

She looked sourly at her heavy outer garment, lamenting the obvious negative effect it had on the male persuasion. Wonderful. At least her father could be satisfied his sartorial selection was serving its purpose.

Rosalie smiled innocently at her father. “Oh you know, Father, I just needed to freshen up a bit. And, apparently, age thirty years.”

Her father ignored her. “Miss Rosalie Holland, I present Lord Travers.”

“Miss Holland.” Lord Travers nodded tightly.

Her father smiled jovially, apparently pleased with this reception. “Rosie, Lord Travers has made it abundantly clear he’s a busy man, but he nevertheless kindly agreed to oversee your antics today.”

Travers’s mouth formed a severe line. He didn’t seem eager for this duty. But there was nothing for it now. Rosalie wasn’t going to miss the harvest fun on account of a somber chaperone.

Speaking of…

“Very well, Father,” Rosalie called cheerfully as a groom helped Ainsley mount her chestnut mare. “I suppose we’re off. I imagine I’ll see you in the morning—”

“You’ll see me at ten o’clock this evening, when you bid me goodnight and allow me to see you are hale and hearty and in one pristine piece.”

At that, Travers cleared his throat, the sound rumbling just behind her shoulder.

Rosalie startled; she hadn’t realized he had moved so close. From here, she could see what distance had denied her—his eyes weren’t brown, but a deep, leaden gray.

“Allow me, Miss Holland.” He stiffly offered his hand as the groom steadied her mare, Hestia.

“No need, Lord Travers.” Rosalie smiled brightly. She braced her hands on her saddle and stepped onto the mounting block. “As you’ll see, I can quite take care of myself.”

“Quite,” he murmured with unnerving stoicism.

Rosalie neatly propelled herself onto her horse, settling sideways in her saddle with her heavy skirts fanned around her. Her groom handed her the reins, looking at Travers with something akin to apology.

“Shall we then?” Without waiting for a response, she waved to her father and wheeled Hestia toward the sweeping park that led into the forest. “I know a shortcut.”

Travers’s low voice carried on the crisp autumn breeze. “I’m sure you do.”

* * *

The small party trotted through the vibrant forest, a canopy of russet and ocher above them. It really was a glorious day in Hampshire, the last gasp of autumn on full display. The River Test glinted green as it snaked along the western edge of the wood, and the damp midday breeze was studded with the scents of pine and smoke.

A fine day for an autumn fair.

Rosalie’s mare preferred to lead, but Travers’s stallion seemed to have a mind of its own, the beautiful beast turning tetchy whenever Hestia pulled ahead. After a hundred yards of stop-and-start, Rosalie mentally called an end to the nonsense and acquiesced to riding alongside Lord Travers.

If Travers noticed the horses’ tiff, he chose not to comment. Ainsley, a passable but disinterested rider, fell behind with the groom. Rosalie looked over her shoulder. While she didn’t need her maid for the fair, she was surely going to need her in the next ten minutes.

“So…” Rosalie began conversationally, unable to abide the tense silence emanating from Travers. “The elusive Lord Travers.”

“Not so elusive,” he muttered, his lips barely moving. “Just…occupied.”

She glanced at him. His hard jaw was set, a small crease burrowing between his dark eyes. One broad hand loosely held the reins, but he wasn’t using them to guide his horse. Rosalie’s gaze drifted down to where his thighs gripped his stallion. She blinked, flushing faintly at the thought of how strong his legs must be to so casually steer the animal beneath him.

Travers cleared his throat. “On that note, I hope you don’t find me rude, Miss Holland. I’m sure you are an interesting person, but you see, I hadn’t planned to spend my day at the fair.”

An interesting person? Was she a maiden aunt? Rosalie looked at the stiff row of buttons on her matronly garment. She supposed interesting wasn’t an inaccurate epithet, all things considered.

“Then why have you?” she asked archly. Know thy enemy and whatnot. If she hoped to thwart Travers today, she needed to discern his motivations.

“Because I’m currying favor with your father,” he said. “I need him to agree to a drainage system between our estates.”

He straightened his coat, a pointless exercise, seeing as nothing had been askew. It seemed Lord Travers was starched top to bottom.

“I think we should come to an accord about how this day will unfold,” he continued. “I’m a busy man, you see, and I don’t have much time for frivolity—”

“You don’t say.” Rosalie smiled saccharinely. “I wouldn’t have guessed. You seem like someone who leaves ample time for frivolity.”

He slid his gaze toward her, his jaw ticking. “Your father indicated you can be quite headstrong. I simply want to be clear, I won’t stand for any unscrupulous nonsense.”

Rosalie gaped at him. Was he lecturing her? She’d suspected Travers would be a bore; she hadn’t expected him to be overbearing.

“I believe, Lord Travers, you volunteered for my unscrupulous nonsense. I don’t see anyone holding your heels to the firebrand you apparently think me to be.”

Travers droned on. “If I’m going to be in town today, I’ll need to spend at least some time at the hiring fair. I have important business. I need a few new men for a project I’m devising. And my home farm is in need of a seed drill—”

“Stop!” Rosalie feigned shock, lifting the back of her hand to her brow. “A seed drill? You forget yourself, Lord Travers, speaking so boldly to a lady.”

He ignored her. “I imagine you want to…shop. Or whatever sort of vain follies fill your day. I think we should make a list. We can go through everything we both need and then—”

Rosalie brought her horse up short. Before Travers could finish speaking, she slid from Hestia’s saddle and circled to her saddlebag, swiftly lifting it from its hook.

“Carry on,” she said encouragingly over her shoulder. “I’m not listening, but I’m sure you’ll feel accomplished having said it. I believe you left off somewhere along the lines of calling me vain and trivial.”

By now, Ainsley and the groom had caught up, and Rosalie jerked her head to indicate her maid should likewise dismount.

“What are you doing?” Travers asked impatiently. “Miss Holland?”

Rosalie hefted her saddlebag and disappeared behind the massive trunk of an old yew.

“Watch Hestia, if you please, Lord Travers. This won’t take but a moment.”

Ainsley joined Rosalie behind the wide tree trunk, holding the saddlebag as Rosalie rapidly unbuttoned her redingote and slipped the heavy fabric from her shoulders. Underneath, she wore her beloved green gown, the muslin skimming her curves, the color specifically chosen to match her eyes.

Oh yes. She had a plan all right.

That sorted, Ainsley began unpinning the bottom tendrils of Rosalie’s tightly wound hair. Her maid had brilliantly thought to arrange her coiffure in two sets, so Rosalie could leave pretty coils under her hat while allowing a choice selection of tawny curls to float down her back.

“Do you have the shawl?” Rosalie whispered to Ainsley. “I’ll need something warmer, for later.”

She tossed her fichu aside and bent forward, wiggling her bosom into an advantageous position as Ainsley stuffed the redingote into the saddlebag.

Rosalie gave her bodice one last tug to ensure her breasts were artfully displayed and grinned at her own stroke of genius. Her gown was otherwise modest and kept Rosalie just on the right side of propriety. Granted, her father wouldn’t at all approve…but her father, of course, wasn’t here. Ha!

“One more moment, Lord Travers,” she called.

That’s when she realized the dark shadow to her left was not a tree, but the scowling eldest son of an earl.

“What, pray tell, is going on?” Travers’s face was grave, his dark eyes smoldering. He raked that glower over Rosalie with such intensity she took a half step back, her loose hair sliding over her shoulder.

“I was improving myself,” she said. “The coat was a bit restrictive.”

“You’ll freeze in that gown.” Travers’s gaze scraped across her bodice, then lifted to stare stonily over her shoulder.

“I have a shawl.” Rosalie glared. “And my freezing is not your business.”

“It’s my business for you to behave yourself today,” he argued.

“You’re one to talk,” Rosalie snapped. “Lurking about when I could have been indecent!”

Her words conjured the vaporous image of an angry, hassled Lord Travers coming upon her half-dressed in the woods. A thrill coursed through her as she recalled the tension of his thighs around his horse. Rosalie swallowed, fighting for composure.

Dear God! What was the matter with her?

Rosalie’s face was in flames. She hoped it passed as righteous anger. She was all wound up about Renwood, and it was obviously a liability.

“Well you certainly aren’t decent,” Travers said, narrowing his eyes. “And I’m not talking about the state of your dress. You’re fooling your father.”

“Yes.” Rosalie lifted her chin. “I don’t have much choice. I suppose if you’re to trail after me the whole blasted time, you should know that I, too, have business to conduct. Add this to your precious task list—I’m securing a betrothal today.”

Travers lifted his gaze to the sky, as if searching the golden treetops for an exit strategy. “Your father didn’t say—”

“My father doesn’t know,” Rosalie said defiantly. “But Mr. Renwood, for whom I’ve been waiting for years, is finally returned—”

“Renwood?” Travers groaned. “That’s who you’re after? Your father thinks he’s a rake, and I can’t disagree. You’ll hardly find one vainer than he—”

“There you go again,” Rosalie griped. “Vain this, vain that. I’m sorry not everyone is as serious and solemn as Lord Travers. Some of us have an aim to enjoy ourselves now and again. Mr. Renwood, I’ll have you know, is a—”

“A what?” Travers leaned against the tree, the corner of his mouth twitching in derision. “How do you even know him, Miss Holland?”

“I met him a few years ago.” Rosalie glared. “And we shared an…affinity.”

Travers shook his head. “An affinity he’s shared with half the barmaids in France, I’m sure.”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your concern.” Rosalie yanked on her gloves and strode back to the waiting horses.

“Unfortunately, if I want my business with your father to succeed, it is my concern. At least until ten o’clock tonight.”

“We’ll see about that,” Rosalie muttered.

Travers swung onto his horse, this time not waiting for her.

“Yes,” he ground out. “We most certainly will.”

3

HALF PAST ONE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Well, he could bid adieu to the damned ditch, that much was clear. Raymond’s grave was the only trench Lord Holland would require after the baron murdered him for losing his daughter the moment they arrived at the harvest fair.

Five minutes. That’s how long he had been pulled into conversation with two wealthy farmers. There was a concern about the gristmill, slouching, as it were, over the river, and Fetters and Howard had come to Raymond about it. They wanted his opinion, not the earl’s. Raymond, in a surge of pride, was immediately caught up in a discussion about repairs and materials and…

And that’s when he realized Miss Holland was no longer buzzing at his elbow like a troublesome little bee. Raymond had tersely ended the discussion, fuming at the alacrity with which she had absconded. If he weren’t so damn annoyed with her, he would be impressed by her efficiency. He couldn’t see her anywhere in the crush of revelry.

And she should bloody well stand out in that dark green, bare-armed gown.

He scanned the crowd, struggling to suppress an incendiary memory of the spirited menace bending forward, her breasts in her hands, wiggling her bodice from curvaceous tip to very pert bottom—

Enough.

It didn’t matter how shockingly appealing he found Rosalie Holland as she primped in the woods—the elfin point of her chin, the wide set of her dark green eyes, the cascading tendrils of her tawny hair—none of it had any bearing on the fact that Raymond had been in her acquaintance not yet an hour and she was grating on him such that his jaw ached from clenching.

He muscled his way through the crowd, nodding stiffly to energetic greetings from tenants and townsfolk surprised to see him.

“Good afternoon, Lord Travers.”

“Lord Travers! We didn’t expect you today.”

“Will the earl be hosting a card party soon?”

“My lord, were you able to review my proposal about the levy?”

He surveyed the green. The town’s topography was unrecognizable in the maze of festival stalls. Under his boots was a pulpy crush of leaves, damp from mud and manure and spilled beer.

Where in hell was she?

Raymond couldn’t concentrate in this bedlam. Farmers haggled over livestock; a trio of fiddlers played for a crowd of rambunctious spectators. Vendors from all over Hampshire, if not further, enthusiastically sold their wares, hawking baskets and bolts of fabric, books and trinkets and…toys.

Raymond’s searching gaze snagged on the nearest booth, where a woodworker displayed a row of colorful spinning tops. Despite his urgency, he halted, distracted by the swirls of red and blue and yellow.

Maybe the children would like a toy.

And just like that, Raymond’s abrupt mental pivot to Nathaniel and Tabitha temporarily silenced all other concerns.

He looked around again, wondering if his small half siblings were here. Nate and Tabby had anticipated the festival for weeks, making grand, forbidden plans for mischief and adventure. In spite of his misgivings, Raymond had arranged for their nurse to bring them. They could use a fun distraction, seeing as the countess was once more confined to her sickbed.

He swallowed, but the lump of worry in his chest wouldn’t budge. It was his constant companion, the very fuel sparking him to action, keeping him on edge. Nate, Tabby, and what the hell would happen to them when their poor mother finally succumbed to her illness.

Predictably, the earl had wasted no time starting an entire second family after the death of Raymond’s mother eight years ago. Less predictable was the speed with which Fordham’s young children became Raymond’s responsibility. It hardly mattered that at only seven and four years old, Nate and Tabby required very little aside from a hot meal and a kind word. One day, they would be grown, and their futures depended on a profitable earldom.

Worst of all, with Lady Fordham increasingly ill and the earl increasingly inept, Nate and Tabitha would need a proper upbringing. And that wasn’t something Raymond could put off until they were grown.

Raymond hastily paid a coin for the wooden top and swiftly tucked it away before resuming his breakneck march through the green. He’d had it up to here with Rosalie Holland. She thought herself clever, but she hadn’t met a man as doggedly dutiful as Raymond.

His concern for his family had only reignited his sense of purpose. He was going to secure that ditch if it was the last thing he did.

Raymond stuck out an arm as Mr. and Mrs. Yates strolled past, the shopkeeper and his wife clearly enjoying the brisk autumn day. Raymond felt a ripple of aggravation at everyone who wasn’t in temporary charge of a hellion.

“Miss Holland?” he snapped impatiently.

Mrs. Yates blinked, and Raymond made a herculean effort to soften his tone.

“That is…good afternoon, Mrs. Yates. I was wondering if you had seen Miss Rosalie Holland today?”

“I believe she was over by the archery targets, Lord Travers.” Mrs. Yates frowned. “With the Darlings and Mr. Renwood.”

Raymond suppressed a grimace.

Of course.

Miss Holland had made good on her word to sniff out foppish Ian Renwood, an imbecile who wouldn’t know responsibility if it bit him on the arse. Why every woman in Hampshire fawned over him was beyond Raymond’s comprehension.

He stormed through town in the direction Mrs. Yates had indicated. As he elbowed through a knot of imbibing tradesmen, Raymond caught sight of Miss Holland’s maid, laughing with a red-faced Dr. Gibbons.

Christ.

So Rosalie Holland wasn’t chaperoned at all. Raymond worried briefly for her reputation but then reconsidered. It was all too likely her entire hellish plan was to compromise herself straight down the aisle on Renwood’s swarthy arm.

Just try me, sweetheart. And then and there, Raymond decided his singular goddamn purpose was to ensure Rosalie Holland not be ruined today.

He reached a field where a variety of lawn games were assembled. A row of spindly targets stretched along the eastern edge, abutting the vivid orange forest. A small crowd of would-be archers waited to take their turn.

One of them had golden-brown hair and an impish streak a mile long.

It appeared Raymond had tracked his quarry.

He stalked to the cluster of observers, taking position near Benjamin Darling and his wife. Raymond glowered, intently focused on Miss Holland and Renwood, standing at the front of the line.

“Lord Travers,” Darling said genially, and Raymond grunted an approximation of a response. “Stupendous day for the festival, don’t you think?”

No, Raymond didn’t think. He had a mountain of work, and this absolute racket was keeping him from accomplishing anything of note…

And then Rosalie Holland took her turn.

Darling was still rambling, asking his wife about some person or other who Raymond couldn’t be bothered to care about. Indeed, the Darlings, the assembled crowd, even his bloody task list receded to the edges of Raymond’s awareness.

Miss Holland hefted the bow and smiled coyly at Renwood. Loose curls fell along her neck, artfully drawing attention to her neckline and the lush swell of her breasts. The evergreen of her gown was the same shade as her eyes, echoed in the deep hedgerow bordering the forest.

In the face of all that smooth skin and bright hair and green eyes, Raymond experienced an acute wave of unforeseen arousal. He had no choice but to acknowledge her gamesmanship; the vexing little minx knew what she was doing.

Renwood, to Raymond’s displeasure, seemed to agree. He was standing next to Miss Holland at a vantage that had him looking straight down the front of her bodice.

“Lord Travers, have you seen the ventriloquists?” Nanette Darling asked politely.

But Raymond wasn’t listening to Mrs. Darling, and he certainly wasn’t paying attention to ventriloquists. Renwood had stepped closer to Miss Holland, gripping the bow much too close to her gloved fingers.

“Now then, Miss Holland…let’s see. You’ll want to stand, just here…” Renwood smirked before standing back to watch Miss Holland slide into position. “Very good! Clever girl, finding the mark.”

Raymond rolled his eyes at Renwood’s patronizing tone, and again when she blushed because of it. For Christ’s sake.

Miss Holland hefted her bow, nocking the arrow with practiced surety. Raymond crossed his arms as Renwood stepped back a half pace.

“Mr. Renwood?” Miss Holland looked prettily over her shoulder. “Would you be so kind as to help me adjust my stance?”

The hell he will! Raymond envisioned his precious ditch, destined to remain filled with groundwater for all of eternity. He wasn’t going to stand idle while this little fiend cost him a five percent return on crop yields.

Raymond cleared his throat, meaning to halt Renwood’s eager tutelage, when he noticed Miss Holland’s hands.

She had previously nocked her arrow, proficiently nestling it between her slender fingers and the string. There was a fleeting moment when Miss Holland half drew, canting the bow as she set her shoulder. It was an excellent stance; even through the twin veils of attraction and annoyance, Raymond had noticed her obvious skill. The weight of the bow was in the heel of her right palm, and it was clear her aim would be true.

But as Renwood approached to assist her, Raymond realized she had changed her position. The arrow was now pointed askew, her fingers clumsily fumbling against the string.

“I can’t quite seem to get it right….” She flashed Renwood a wheedling pout. “Do you have any instruction for me?”

Mrs. Darling tittered under her breath. Renwood, all too eager to school a helpless young miss, encircled Miss Holland in his arms, resting one ungloved hand against hers on the bow—

“Why did you change your grip, Miss Holland?” Raymond kept his tone light as he stepped away from the circle of onlookers.

Miss Holland swiveled to face Raymond in white-faced shock.

“Lord Travers.” Her voice was tense.

“Miss Holland. Renwood.” Raymond nodded a perfunctory greeting. Renwood’s eyes narrowed in confusion at the unexpected interruption.

“How nice of you to join us, my lord,” Miss Holland said when it was clear nobody else was going to speak. “I had no idea you were interested in the frivolity of lawn games. It seemed you were quite engaged in a discussion of the gristmill.”

Raymond ignored her pointed tone. “Come now, I’m genuinely curious, Miss Holland. Nary a moment ago, you had the arrow nocked well. Indeed, I had been telling Darling your competence with a bow was admirable.”

Mr. Darling coughed. Two spots of red appeared high on Miss Holland’s cheeks.

“In fact…” Raymond circled Miss Holland and Renwood, who dropped his arms from her shoulders like the limpid prig he was. “My estimation is that Renwood here has made your aim far worse. See…you’ve locked your wrist now.”

Renwood squinted at Miss Holland. She bit her very plump lower lip.

“Your anchor point is going to shorten your draw length.” Raymond smirked in spite of himself. “And judging by the way you’ve automatically corrected, you know it too, Miss Holland.”

She laughed lightly, locking her wrist once more and flicking an apologetic gaze to Renwood.

“I’m sure Lord Travers has no idea what he’s talking about,” she reassured her would-be beau. “You’ve been of tremendous assistance, Mr. Renwood.”

Raymond waved his hand. “Go on, then,” he urged her. “Let’s see you shoot. Exactly as Renwood has instructed.”

Miss Holland’s eyes flashed dangerously at Raymond.

“I imagine you have very weak arms, Miss Holland,” Renwood said. “Don’t be disappointed if you can’t make the target. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

With a final mutinous glare at Raymond, Miss Holland slowly turned toward the target and drew her bow, holding herself in the ridiculous stance Renwood had indicated. Raymond could see the tension in her arm, how much she wanted to shift her anchor point.

Do it, he thought suddenly. Do it your way, Rosalie.

But she didn’t correct her hold. Instead, she set her jaw and loosed the bow, her arrow wobbling in a listless, crooked arc. It fell five paces from them.

“Ah.” Renwood smiled condescendingly. “Well. Perhaps you’ll master it another time—”

“Wait a moment!” Miss Holland shouted, her ladylike modesty rapidly disappearing. “I can try again!”

But Renwood had already turned his back, losing interest in archery as two young men loped over and drew him to the public house.

Miss Holland stared morosely at her wasted arrow. “Well, thank you for that, Lord Travers,” she snapped, her cheeks flushing with anger. “Thank you for stomping all over my good time, for chasing off my hopeful betrothed, for embarrassing me—”

Raymond tutted low in his throat. “Now, Miss Holland. I think you accomplished the latter quite efficiently without my assistance.”

He stalked past her, striding a few paces to retrieve her arrow.

“Would you care to shoot properly, now?” He twirled the arrow as his dark brow lifted in challenge. “Or are you still playing damsel-in-incompetence?”

“Don’t.” She raised a hand to silence him. “Not a word.”

“You have proven yourself quite the actress, today,” he mused, bending to pick up her discarded bow and nocking his own arrow. “For instance, you pretended to be a dutiful daughter, when in reality, you had every intention of skirting me the moment you arrived, thereby defying both your father and your chaperone in a single fell.”

With a satisfying pull, he sent the arrow soaring to the target, where it hit the innermost circumference of the second ring with a resounding thwack. He turned to face her, the corner of his mouth ticking in a fleeting moment of triumph.

“How long have you been practicing archery?” He narrowed his eyes as she snatched back the bow.

“My brother taught me when I was twelve.” She glared, raising her chin imperiously. “But I never had use for it until this moment, when I need to best a pompous, supercilious tyrant.”

Raymond cocked his head. He ought to be furious with her for skipping off, but considering he’d managed to track her down almost as expediently as she’d escaped, he found his anger dissipating. It appeared he and Rosalie Holland were well-matched.

What he couldn’t shake, however, was his consternation.

“I don’t understand why on earth you would act as though you don’t know how to do something you clearly know how to do well.”

“Because,” she gritted, anchoring the bow with one fluid motion, her arm bending in a lean, graceful line. “Mr. Renwood wasn’t very good.”

Her arrow sliced through the air, landing a quarter-inch from Raymond’s. She stared at the target, her hands on her hips. The posture drew his gaze to her breasts. He could very nearly see the contours of her nipples pressing against the thin muslin of her bodice.

She really needed a damn shawl.

But Miss Holland, for all her scheming, seemed oblivious to the effects of her unseasonal dress. She set off to fetch her arrow from the target, and Raymond fell into step beside her.

“I didn’t want to make him feel bad,” she admitted, glancing sideways at Raymond as they strode the length of the field. “Men want to be good at things.”

At her words, the muscles in Raymond’s thighs tensed, sending an inescapable, burning tug straight to his groin. As if he were no better than the greenest schoolboy, Raymond was momentarily taken by the eviscerating image of his own arms surrounding Rosalie Holland. If he didn’t divert these thoughts, he was in danger of stiffening in the middle of bloody target practice.

“And I suppose you know what a man wants?” His voice had dropped. Raymond dug his fingers into his palm, trying to dispel the tortuous fantasy of pulling her against the hard line of his body, his fingers skimming her curves, his thumb brushing the ridge of one puckered nipple—

She sniffed, tossing her hair. “I’ve thought about men for a long time.”

He would divert his thoughts in a moment.

“I expect I’ve been a man longer than you’ve thought about them,” he muttered hoarsely.

Miss Holland opened her mouth to retort, but something in his dark tone seemed to give her pause. She swallowed, a flush sweeping over her cheekbones.

“Besides…” Raymond worked his jaw, unable to stop himself. “This line of discussion is irrelevant to the matter at hand, seeing as Ian Renwood is more peacock than man.”

Her green eyes glittered with menacing intensity, as prickly as the juniper trees their color recalled. She approached the target and grasped her arrow, tugging it free. Raymond took a half step back, lest she get any ideas.

“You had no right to interfere,” she insisted. “You have no idea, Lord Travers, of the damage you might have caused—”

“You have no idea of the damage you might have caused. Traipsing around like a hellion—”

“Just leave me be! You don’t care one lick for any of this. Do you understand what your overbearing dullness is going to cost me?”

Raymond’s nostrils flared, and he ripped his own arrow from the target. They set back toward the waiting archers, wrapped in furious conversation.

“Call me what you will, but I have a plan I need to see through.”

“You aren’t the only one!” Miss Holland raised a finger in warning. “I have a meticulous plan, and I know what’s required to attract a man such as Ian Renwood—”

At this, Raymond barely concealed his scoff.

“You think me a hellion, and maybe I am, but I promise you, it’s not for the usual reasons.” She lowered her voice. “I have been polite and demure. It didn’t work. I’m possessed of only a modest fortune and passable appearance. I’m quite accomplished as a pianist, but it’s not as though I can ever interest a gentleman to listen. I needed a new strategy.”

She slowed her steps, her eyes suddenly very bright. She blinked rapidly, and Raymond was horrified to discover she was trying not to cry.

“I’m not trying to change myself for Mr. Renwood. I’m trying to change myself for now. I need to be more proactive. And sometimes, that calls for being a little more…provocative.”

She set her chin and smoothed her skirts, her face still flaming.

“My Season was a failure. There’s no way around it. And unlike you, with that hair and that…jawline, time will not be a friend to me, Lord Travers. Can’t you just let me get on with it?”

Raymond stared at her. He was torn between guilt for upsetting her and absolute befuddlement at the lengths she would go to impress a useless fool. But what did he know of courtship rituals? Perhaps Rosalie Holland was as pragmatic as he was. Completely deranged, of course, but he could see how there might be rhyme to her unreason.

Still…

Miss Holland was a headache and a half, but didn’t she deserve to be a headache on her own terms? It aggravated him beyond reason that she’d dimmed herself for a prattling rake like Renwood.

He handed the bow to the next archer, a lanky young man who eyed them nervously.

“Miss Holland, I can promise you this much,” Raymond muttered, grasping her bicep and turning her toward the festival tents. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you get on with it. I intend to impress your father, which means you’ll need to curb your own impressions of Renwood. I have work to do—”

“I might remind you, Lord Travers, my father tasked you with chaperoning me,” she argued. “That means standing by as I go about my day, not manhandling me so you can conduct business.”

Raymond glared at her.

Miss Holland glared back.

“Fine,” he relented. He could sacrifice the hiring fair for Holland’s approval. “But I’ll have you know that your ridiculous plan overlooked one essential fact.”

She frowned suspiciously. “What?”

“There’s nothing more attractive than a capable woman.”

She licked her lip, her green eyes grazing the side of his face before she tugged her arm from the tense circle of his hand.

“Wait until you see how capable I can be at the merchant stalls.”

Miss Holland stomped ahead of him, her loose curls swishing along her neck.

Raymond let his gaze drop lower, to the round flare of her backside.

Sacrifice, indeed.

4

THREE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

“At least you’re keeping the village youth in good coin,” Travers observed drily as Rosalie gave a farthing to the messenger boy who would deliver her parcels to Holland House. “It’s a good thing your saddlebags are stuffed with the evidence of your deceit, or young Foster here would have no way to earn his keep.”

Rosalie ignored Travers, moving to a stall with an array of prettily displayed hatpins. She lifted a delicate silver piece, cleverly shaped like a fan.

“You’ve purchased three hatpins already,” Travers pointed out, his gaze lingering on her loose hair.

“And I have a dozen more at home.” Rosalie lifted her shoulder in a pert shrug. “I don’t expect you to know anything about it, but I appreciate having options. A lady is entitled to change her mind.”

His brow lowered. “Mayhap you’ll change your mind into a proper late-autumn garment.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, ignoring the gooseflesh on her bare arms. “I have a shawl somewhere.” Her eyes suddenly glinted with determination. “Or perhaps—”

“If you’re going to suggest Renwood could keep you warm, I advise you to make alternative arrangements,” Travers interrupted. “I won’t permit any sort of antics. Besides, your supposed beau seems to be shirking his duties.”

Indeed.

It was true Rosalie hadn’t seen Mr. Renwood since the archery debacle, but she had decided to lift her spirits with a near-athletic perusal of the festival stalls. Rosalie was a dedicated shopper and an ambitious haggler; at the last booth, she’d managed to convince the merchant to include a delicately painted wooden fan at half cost with her linen parasol. Of course, when the man turned to package the items, Rosalie snuck an extra coin into his tin. The fun of haggling was in securing the deal, not in cheating a craftsman his due.

But her efforts to detract from her unease regarding Renwood were falling woefully short. Her once straightforward plan was becoming…complicated.

Her gaze flickered idly to the hard line of Travers’s jaw. His teeth must ache from all that gritting; it was a wonder he didn’t have a perpetually sore head.

A queer fluttering lifted from her belly as she imagined a looser version of Lord Travers—resting his dark head in her lap, allowing her fingers to soothe the tension from his brow, looking up at her, smiling…

What nonsense! She shouldn’t have to imagine Lord Travers smiling. He was at a harvest fair, for goodness’ sake! But so far, the most animated he had been was during a lengthy rumination about how pitted the village green would be after the stalls were disassembled.

Rosalie drew a deep breath, the brisk air stinging her nostrils with the meaty aroma of roasting nuts. Her mouth watered in response. Nearby, a crowded booth sold mince pies and plum cakes. At the edge of Turner’s field, preparations were underway for the massive harvest bonfire that would blaze well into the night.

Everyone was merry and high-spirited.

Well.

Not quite everyone.

“Are you certain you don’t want to purchase anything?” Rosalie asked, looking at the food stalls. “Perhaps a honeyed apple? You might not have ever tried one before, seeing as you likely skipped childhood entirely, having been born with a frown and a pocket watch—”

“I’ve had honeyed apples,” Travers murmured. “And sorry to disappoint, but I actually quite like them. Sweet. Tart.”

Rosalie startled, her gaze falling to his mouth. His firm lips had popped the words so it sounded as though he’d blended them together. I quite like them, sweetheart.

“Besides, I already made a purchase today,” Travers said.

“You did?” Rosalie hadn’t seen him do anything but scowl and hold her reticule.

“While you were absconding.” Travers’s mouth twisted.

She was suddenly alight with curiosity. What on earth did he buy? Was he having fun without her? Then she remembered their conversation in the forest, when Travers mentioned procuring a seed drill. Rosalie tempered her expectations.

“At least tell me you—”

“Rosalie! There you are.”

At the happy, familiar shout, Rosalie whirled around to find Amelia and Nanette rushing toward her. Their husbands were nowhere in sight; it seemed she was the only one who required an escort today.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Nanette huffed.

“She’s quite elusive,” Travers muttered behind her.

Rosalie resisted the temptation to stick her tongue out at him.

Amelia grabbed Rosalie’s hand and tugged her across the festival green to a row of low-slung tents. Travers grimly trailed several paces behind them.

“Tell me everything.” Amelia’s eyes were round. “Nanette said you got into a tiff with Lord Travers near the archery—”

Nanette raised her eyebrows. “It was a little more than a tiff.” She peered heavily at Rosalie. “Lord Travers looked as if he wanted to pummel Mr. Renwood.”

“Yes.” Rosalie smiled tightly. “He’s been quite…present today.”

She looked over her shoulder, where her chaperone obediently stood ten paces away. He was rigid, his hands clenched tightly behind his back, glowering at the antics of a rather vigorous juggler.

“Never mind Lord Travers now,” Amelia whispered excitedly. “How do plans progress with Mr. Renwood? Have you wooed him yet?” She scrutinized Rosalie’s hand, as though Renwood’s ring might have appeared in the last two hours.

Rosalie grimaced. “It goes poorly. And Travers’s presence certainly hasn’t helped.”

She bit her lip, the whole archery debacle still rankling. What bothered her most wasn’t Travers’s intrusion; it was his intuition. She could shoot an arrow, and she would have done it properly had she been able to discern if Renwood preferred her to be accomplished or deficient.

There was a jagged little doubt rattling around her chest. In truth, she would rather he preferred her just as she was. No discerning necessary.

“Don’t worry,” Nanette said, patting Rosalie’s arm sympathetically. “We have an idea to cheer you up.” She jerked her head toward a bender tent where a brilliantly cloaked peddler stoked a sweet-smelling fire.

“That gentleman is a fortune teller,” Amelia whispered. “He says he has a charm to reveal the intentions of…well, your intended.”

“Oh!” Rosalie sparkled with excitement. She adored fortune-telling. She’d had her cards read by a renowned cartomancer in the Foster’s drawing room last Season and had been promised a faithful servant. She’d eat her hat if Ainsley hadn’t proven herself to be a loyal and indefatigable ally. Needless to say, Rosalie put great stock in demystifying the future.

“Fortune-telling?” Travers turned his glare from the juggler to the peddler. “There’s no such thing. Anyone taking your coin to tell you otherwise is a fraud.”

“You stop it,” Rosalie hissed. “You’re being horrendously rude. Haven’t you ever heard of fun?”

Come to think of it, her last attempt to foretell her love life had caused nothing but disappointment. She uncomfortably recalled the apple peel charm from the last harvest fair. A whole year with no progress on that blasted R.

The fortune teller spoke up, his voice a lilting brogue. “Not all soothsayers are true, but if ever there were a time for lasses to divine the nature of their true loves, ’twould be today. ’Tis Allhallowtide, and only the thinnest of veils conceals this world from the next. Magic wants to be revealed, good sir, whether you will it or not.”

Rosalie put her hands on her hips, spearing Travers with a superior smirk. Forget unveiling the future; forcing Travers to partake in soothsaying superstition was the real magic on offer.

“Oh, I imagine you love this,” she cooed. “Being told supernatural forces are above your opinions.”

“Hardly.”

“Perhaps we can divine your future with your ditch,” she teased. “Or, dare I say, your destiny with your seed drill—”

“Are you finished? Can we move along?”

“You just can’t stand the thought that you might be wrong. The charm will work, and we’ll have a grand old time. And you’ll still be here like a toady old gargoyle—”

“A toady old gargoyle who doesn’t fall prey to charlatans.”

“Or you’re afraid—”

“Afraid of what? Keeping my money?”

“Afraid of what you might learn. Afraid of turning life over to fate—”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.”

Travers rolled his eyes and pulled a coin from his pocket. “Go on, then.” He crossed his arms. “Divine the future. What lies in store for the ladies?”

“We can just do me,” Rosalie said hastily, eyeing her friends. Amelia and Nanette were both married, having made successful matches last year. But if the soothsayer started spouting off about their mysterious future husbands, Travers’s point would be made, and her afternoon would become insufferable.

The peddler appraised the trio of young women. “These two are already wed,” he observed, cocking his head. “I won’t take a coin to discern what’s already done, but I can give a charm to the lass in green.”

Rosalie clapped in delight; Amelia and Nanette squealed and clutched arms.

“He’s a good one!” Amelia crowed. “He knew we were married.”

Travers rolled his eyes again. Rosalie hoped they would stick like that.

“You’re wearing a ring, Mrs. Darling,” he pointed out. “And not to be crass, but Mrs. Howard is plainly with child.”

Rosalie wrinkled her nose. Amelia was indeed showing, her stomach a small swell under her pelisse. But only if you looked extremely closely.

“We’ll take the charm,” Nanette said decisively. “Rosie needs all the help she can get.”

Rosalie tried to smile but couldn’t manage more than a twitch. She hardly needed the reminder that her dear friends, so playfully curious just last year, had managed to move on with their lives, wedded and bedded, with families on the way.

And she was still here. Still waiting.

The peddler threw a log on his fire, sending a shimmering crackle of sparks into the afternoon breeze. He held out one wrinkled hand and offered Travers a toothless smile. “That’ll be a tuppence, my lord.”

Travers scowled and started to dig in his pocket for another coin, but Rosalie held out her arm.

“Last year, we were given a charm for one copper.” She arched a brow. “And that was for all three of us.”

The peddler shrugged. “My price stands.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m certain you aren’t the only clairvoyant at this festival, sir. As you reminded us, it’s Allhallowtide.”

“’Tis a tuppence, lass. One for each headache your gent has caused me.”

“Fine.” Rosalie innocently raised her palms. “I suppose we’ll just move along.”

“Wait.” The man eyed her appraisingly, tapping out his pipe. “A penny’ll do.”

“Ha!” Rosalie rubbed her palms together victoriously. She’d saved a penny! Who was frivolous, now?

She beamed at Travers in jubilation, and his gray gaze followed the curve of her mouth, up to her mirth-crinkled eyes. For one strange moment, the two of them seemed locked together in the brackets of her dimples.

And then, implausibly, the straight line of Travers’s mouth tilted…up…up…up. Lord Travers was smiling at her. Not smirking, not teasing. This was an earnest smile, a boyish smile.

And Rosalie had no idea what to make of it.

“What did I tell you?” he murmured. “Capable.”

Rosalie spun under the sudden force of her blush, her traitorous blood rushing hot enough to sear her skin. She looked away and swallowed hard.

The peddler pocketed Travers’s coin and sucked on his pipe. “Now then. A charm to reveal your true love’s nature. Listen well, for I’ll only instruct you once.”

Nanette and Amelia tittered in excitement.

“Make your way to yonder cabbage field, walking backward and approaching from the south. Halfway down the third row, shield your eyes and turn three times in a counterrotation. Still unseeing, select a leaf from the plant at your feet, thinking only of your heart’s desire. The plant will reveal the character of the man you love. A straight leaf affirms a strong and true disposition, a crooked leaf, untrustworthiness. If the leaf tastes sweet, so will be your love, but the same is true if the vegetable tastes sour.”

For a moment, everyone stared at the fortune teller.

Then Travers guffawed. “That’s what my coin got us? She’s meant to interrogate a cabbage?”

Rosalie privately agreed.

“You may engage in the charm as well, my lord,” the peddler said gravely. “It might go some way to loosening the earthly binds weighing on your heart.”

Travers looked as though he wanted to stuff the peddler’s pipe down his throat.

“He’s right.” Rosalie grinned, reclaiming herself. “You do have many earthly binds. As you repeatedly remind me.”

Deciding the peddler had most certainly earned the second penny after all, Rosalie winked and pressed a coin to his wrinkled hand. She glanced at Travers, fully expecting his glower, but to her surprise, he lifted the corner of his mouth in a slow smirk.

“I have no choice but to repeat myself when you refuse to listen to me.”

Rosalie licked her lip, her mouth suddenly dry. A strange, restless cavern was opening inside her, and she dimly considered that if she did listen to him, he might tell her how to fill it.

Amelia coughed.

Right. Rosalie was due to be walking backward in a cabbage field, not harboring vague fantasies of Lord Travers’s unknowable tutelage.

He seemed to agree. “Let’s go, then.”

“Are you certain you want to come?” She glanced skeptically toward the muddy cabbage field beyond the bender tents and motioned to Nanette and Amelia. “I can take one of my companions…”

Amelia suddenly rubbed her stomach, apparently much more pregnant than she had been a moment ago.

“I’m tired.” She looked significantly at Nanette. “I think I should sit down.”

But her friends’ pathetic feint was for naught. Travers was already marching ahead.

“What’s a cabbage field after what else I’ve endured today?”

5

TEN MINUTES PAST FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

Together, they approached the muddy cabbage patch that stretched to the woods. A low bar of clouds was moving in, slowly leaching blue from the sky. Long shadows from the forest fell in a spindly ridge over the vegetable fields.

Darkness fell early this time of year, and the sun certainly wasn’t putting up a fight today. Soon, the bonfire would be lit and children would parade their carved turnips through town, propping eerie jack-in-the-lanthorns in windowsills and thresholds.

“I still can’t believe I agreed to this,” Travers groused. “When I woke—at dawn, mind you—I could never have guessed—”

“You know, it’s actually possible to have started that sentence without referencing how early you rise—”

“That instead of finishing a single task on my docket, I’d be performing magic tricks in a vegetable patch—”

The remainder of Travers’s lecture was drowned out by a sudden cacophony of shouts. A knot of children tore by, racing to the largest pavilion.

“Nathaniel!” Travers called, his gaze locked on the rambunctious swarm. “I see you, Nate.”

A small boy halted. He had a thin face and a shock of sandy hair flopping all over the place. Rosalie immediately recognized him as the Earl of Fordham’s younger son. She knew, of course, the earl had small children in addition to the fully grown guard dog she’d been saddled with today. Since her return to Hampshire, Rosalie had seen Nathaniel and Tabitha Travers on occasion, in town with their nurse or playing in the forest between Morrow Woods and Holland House. She’d always considered them sweet little scamps.

“Where is your sister?” Travers’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And where are you going?”

“Tabby’s with Nurse,” the little boy said evasively before smiling charmingly up at Rosalie. He had long lashes and light gray eyes. It was clear he was rapidly learning to use both to his advantage.

“I asked what you were about, streaking through here like hell broke loose.”

“Some of the lads are organizing a boxing match.” The boy rubbed the back of his neck.

“Some of the lads?” Travers cocked his head. “Or you? Because you know the countess doesn’t want you playing rough.”

“I hear you, Ray.” He nodded absently, grinning at his friends.

“That’s not the same as listening to me,” Travers pointed out.

“I’ll be careful!” The small boy was already sidling away. “I know the rules. No fires and stay within shouting distance of Nurse.”

“Tell you what.” Raymond sighed heavily. “I was going to make it a surprise for you, but I can see a bribe will be far better.” He crouched, unbuttoned his coat, and slid his hand into the previously concealed lining. “Here.”

He held up a small, brightly painted toy. Rosalie blinked. It was a spinning top, and, quite possibly, the most surprising item Lord Travers could have produced from his pocket.

“If you stay out of trouble today, you can have this. To share with Tabitha, of course.”

The boy’s eyes were wide. He glanced between the top and Raymond, his mouth sliding into an easy, lopsided smile.

Good Lord, Rosalie thought, equally charmed and alarmed. She’d be willing to bet that smile would one day be trouble in all its varied forms.

“I can?”

“Yes. If you behave. Which means I’m keeping it for now.” Travers pocketed the toy and rested one hand on his small brother’s head. “Do we have an accord?”

“We might.” The boy flashed a dimpled smirk, inching toward his friends. “If I knew what an accord was.”

“Just watch yourself, Nate,” Travers called. “Your mother doesn’t need any more worries.”

The boy raced off, leaping onto another lad’s back and sending him toppling into a barrel of chestnuts.

Rosalie stared after them. The fluttering sensation returned to her belly, lifting this time to her chest on a surprising swell of endearment. She abruptly recalled what Travers had told her as they circulated through the market stalls.

“Is that what you meant, earlier? When you said you’d made a purchase?”

Travers shrugged. “My siblings are aged seven and four, and they are in dire need of sedentary amusements. As you can plainly see.”

“Oh,” Rosalie said dumbly. But she had no idea what other response she could possibly make to the idea that gruff Lord Travers took care of his little brother.

“He’ll kill me one day,” Travers muttered.

“Come now.” Rosalie smiled, continuing to pick her way toward the row of cabbages. “He’s just a little boy.”

“They may be little, but my siblings are proving to be a…thorny situation,” Travers grumbled.

“How do you mean?”

He exhaled a soft, harsh laugh. “I’m sure you don’t care about this.”

“Well…” Rosalie smiled encouragingly. “You are escorting me to the cabbages against your will. The least I can do is listen.”

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck in the exact same manner as his little brother. “Nate and Tabby are my father’s children with his second wife, as I’m sure you know. And while they are my half siblings, it sometimes seems as though they’re my full responsibility. My father is indifferent, and the countess is often unwell. It’s becoming difficult to know what to do about them. It seems…it’s falling to me.”

Lost in thought, Rosalie slowed her steps. Everyone knew Fordham left most of his affairs to Travers, but she hadn’t realized that included his children.

She considered Travers’s constant, harried reminders of his duties in light of the little spinning top in his pocket. His tense, uncertain words rang in her ears: my full responsibility.

A slow, tender understanding broke through her.

Travers looked over his shoulder.

“Miss Holland? Are you coming? Because even though you saved me a penny, I didn’t pay good coin to stand idle in the midst of a vegetable patch.”

Rosalie hurried to catch up, setting aside these confusing new contemplations. After all, she was supposed to be discerning her future with Ian Renwood.

Up ahead, Travers halted to count the rows of cabbage.

“We need the third row,” Rosalie reminded him. “We have to do this correctly.”

“Well, obviously,” Travers said with a perfectly straight face. “Otherwise, this wouldn’t make any sense.”

“And this is the eastern edge?” She frowned, looking at the weak sun. “He said to approach from the east.”

“The instructions from that lunatic were to approach from the southern edge of the field. Glad to see you paid attention to your own bloody charm.”

“Right.” She laughed, and his scowl only increased her merriment. “As long as you were listening.”

Rosalie turned in three slow circles while Travers shook his head.

“And now, I suppose I’ll walk backward…”

She took one careful step back, trying not to ruin her hem or fall on her arse. It was immediately apparent this would prove tricky, given the upturned mire beneath her feet.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“I can’t…” Travers paused, his face unreadable. “I can’t stand here watching you march backward. You’re liable to topple over and break your ankle.”

“I’m fine.”

But he had already taken the three paces separating them and stood at her side, so close the hem of her skirt covered his boot. It was a strangely intimate portrait, and Rosalie couldn’t look away, puzzling over the way they could be touching and yet not touching at all.

And then Travers reached forward, his hand lifting, hesitating, then slowly dropping to her shoulder. For one breathless moment, he left it there, his palm resting against the buttons dissecting the back of her gown, his fingers brushing the bare skin of her upper arm.

Gently, he slid his hand down, dragging across the muslin of her gown, finding the concave of her lower back. The weight of his hand was steady. Heady.

Possessive.

Lord Travers was touching her.

A flushing fever broke over her. She could feel her pulse shuddering unevenly in her throat. So hard was her heartbeat slamming against the thin skin in the hollow of her clavicle, Rosalie was certain Travers could feel it too. It felt as if the pounding reverberated all through her, gladly meeting the force of his hand.

She closed her eyes, trying to stem her body’s riotous reaction to his proximity. She could smell his soap, the acrid dried ink on his fingertips…

“Go on.” His voice was very low. “Third row. I’ll guide you.”

Rosalie shakily accepted his other arm, the nap of his wool coat brushing her gloved fingertips. Beneath his sleeve, beneath his shirt, beneath his skin, she felt the hard rope of muscle. His arm was stronger than she had thought, which was remarkable given that she’d been thinking of his arms for the better part of the day.

He guided her silently, speaking only when he told her where to step. “Here,” he murmured, his fingertips pressing into her back, directing her progress.

Rosalie was discomfited to realize she trusted what he told her. They moved in tandem, and all the while, she couldn’t stop thinking of the blazing look on his face when he’d pointed out her nonsense on the archery field. How easily he’d accepted her abilities. How disappointed he’d been when she hid them.

She didn’t understand why it affected her so.

“Third row,” he gently squeezed her hip once, indicating she should stop.

Heat radiated from his hand, and Rosalie realized she was indeed freezing in this stupid gown, but she couldn’t regret her choice just now. Not when she could feel Raymond Travers touching her, her bodice pulling lightly between his fingers and her hipbone.

She was possessed of the mad notion that she should push back, into his hand, into his body. She should let that broad palm slide up her stomach, to cup her—

With a shock, she realized she had very nearly done exactly that. And Travers seemed to know it. His palm fleetingly pressed harder into the small of her back; his breath trailed along her neck. His fingers flexed, almost curling around the curve of her hip.

Rosalie sagged under a heavy curtain of lust. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, fighting the tight, burning ache between her thighs.

She was…aroused.

In a cabbage field.

“You’re to bend over,” Travers whispered, his voice dipping into the shell of her ear.

Rosalie blushed, insanely, intensely, her nipples tight from the absolute opposite of cold. She had only dim ideas of what he referenced, but all of them were incendiary.

To her horror, they were also exactly what she wanted right now.

“Miss Holland?”

Rosalie realized he was motioning to the cabbages.

Of course.

God help her if this wasn’t the strangest, most mortifying occasion of her twenty years of life. She needed to retain a modicum of self-possession.

“Right…” She laughed lightly, stepping away from the lean muscle of his body. “I’ll just close my eyes and choose a cabbage.”

For Renwood, she sternly reminded herself. She was meant to focus on Renwood.

Rosalie carefully crouched, hoisting her skirts out of the way. She screwed her eyes shut and ordered her imagination to recall the face of her girlish fantasies. Awkwardly, she reached forward, trying to find a cabbage leaf.

She meant to follow the charm’s instructions, to picture Renwood and only Renwood. But all she could think about was how, when Ian Renwood had put his arms around her to hold the bow, she’d felt nothing but annoyance that he was making her do it wrong.

She was all too aware of Travers standing only two feet away, patiently waiting for her to enact this nonsensical charm. The remnant of his scent still curled in her nostrils; the memory of his hand still pressed her back.

And so it was Travers in her thoughts when her blind, reaching fingers finally made purchase, sliding across the waxy cabbage leaf. In an effort to correct, she jerked her hand back, whipping her arm to the left, grasping the first plant she found that wasn’t the one she now associated with Lord Travers.

She needed a Renwood cabbage.

She yanked a leaf from the cabbage with such force, she nearly fell. Gripping the leaf, she opened her eyes and waved her prize triumphantly at Travers.

“Well done?” He raised his eyebrows at her spoils. “It’s…a leaf, at any rate.”

At his atypical display of amusement, Rosalie looked at her leaf and immediately gagged. The vegetable in her hand was limp and torn. The leaf flopped over her fist, the stalk broken and slimy.

The cabbage she had selected was rotten.

“Remind me. What was this little adventure supposed to reveal?” Travers mused, tilting his head, his eyes glittering with mirth. “Your true love’s character, was it?”

Rosalie wrinkled her nose, no longer seized with lust but rather the desire for revenge. Travers would be an insufferable gloat now.

And she wasn’t going to have that.

“Appearance is only half of it.” She attempted to salvage the situation. “I’m supposed to taste it too. To see if it’s bitter or sweet.”

Travers exhaled skeptically. “Miss Holland, you can’t be serious…”

“I’ll just do a bit,” she hedged, biting her lip. “What’s the point of trudging all the way out here if I’m not going to see it through?”

“You cannot eat that cabbage leaf. Rosalie, I’m serious—”

She had already bitten the leaf, the sound of her name on Raymond Travers’s tongue a momentary distraction from the horror she had just unleashed on her own mouth.

She grimaced, her eyes watering.

“I can’t believe you.” Travers shook his head. “Rosalie. You really ate it. Why?”

Why, indeed.

Rosalie stared at the ground, the bitter, unpleasant taste still coating her tongue. Why had she done any of this? Why put so much stock in the harvest fair, setting her cap for a man who barely gave her the time of day? Why did she change her gown, act like a blithering idiot, fall prey to magic charms?

She knew why.

To reassure herself her youthful infatuation with Renwood wasn’t in vain. To confirm her botched societal debut was a fluke, an inconsequential blip because her true match was waiting right here.

“To prove…I hadn’t missed my chance,” she whispered.

Fat lot of good that had done her. Renwood had been happy to flirt with her, but not as happy as he’d been to leave her in the dust. For all his charm, he was a quite unserious person, wasn’t he?

Disappointing. Limp. Useless. Not unlike…the rotten cabbage.

At her morose demeanor, Travers stepped closer. “Here,” he murmured softly, taking the leaf and tossing it behind him. “It’s no matter. You shouldn’t put such emphasis on superstitions. You heard the man—it’s just a bit of mischievous fun.”

She was suddenly all too aware Renwood hadn’t even had the patience to watch her shoot a second arrow, whereas Travers had been at her side all day. Though it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter if he wanted his precious business deal. Travers had made it clear as crystal that he found her to be a nuisance.

Because that was exactly what she’d been.

Rosalie’s stomach sank in embarrassment as she saw herself through his eyes, every bit as frivolous as he’d called her in the woods. Lord Travers was busy and important—he had two children in his care, for heaven’s sake!

And blast it if she hadn’t become one more annoyance in his life.

“Right,” she said slowly. “Of course. It’s all in good fun.”

“Enough of this nonsense.” Travers’s tone was decisive. “Look at you, wandering around a darkening field when you’re obviously freezing. Let’s go find your groom. We’ll fetch your redingote from your saddlebag, and then we’ll go to the inn and fetch you a beer.”

She glanced up at him, surprised. “You’d permit it?”

Travers unexpectedly softened, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You just ate a muddy cabbage stalk. I think a beer is in order.”

Rosalie smiled ruefully. She had just eaten a rotten vegetable in the middle of a windswept, abandoned field. A warm coat and cozy inn were, in fact, exactly what she wanted right now.

“And speaking of permission…” Travers paused. “My apologies for so boldly using your name just now. My absolute disgust must have addled me. I have never witnessed a lady shove a rotten vegetable into her mouth, you see.”

Rosalie smiled.

“Well, you were quite valiant in your effort to stop me. In fact, I daresay you’ve earned the use of my given name. Even if it was merely a slip of the tongue.”

She’d only meant to tease, but Travers’s face tensed, his gaze falling to her mouth for the span of one slow blink.

Then he raised his chin and jerked his head toward the festival. “Come along.”

She started to follow Travers along the row of cabbages, but before she could stop herself, she glanced down. At her feet, next to the rotting Renwood cabbage, was the first plant she had found, the one she had nearly grabbed whilst thinking of Raymond Travers.

Rosalie stared at the vegetable, her heart skipping more than one beat as her eyes confirmed what she already knew. The leaves were verdant and waxy, the stalk straight and robust.

And if she tasted it, Rosalie knew she would find it sweet.

6

HALF PAST FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

“Christ,” Raymond swore as he elbowed a path through the crowded yard of the Gander Inn. “It seems we aren’t alone in our quest for refreshment.”

Folk of all ages, genders, and ilk were crowded at tables and stools, clearly enjoying the more relaxed strictures of a festival day. Raymond frowned and pointed to a narrow space in the corner, where he recognized Rosalie’s friend, Mrs. Howard, sitting with her husband. He felt a curious sense of disappointed relief. She really should have a female chaperone in here…but he wouldn’t have minded more time alone with Rosalie.

“I’ll see about some victuals if you—”

Rosalie was already slithering through the crowd. “Fear not,” she called, tossing him a brilliant smile. “I’ll find a seat. You just hurry along. I’ve been fantasizing about that beer since the cabbage field.”

Raymond’s hand spasmed. She wasn’t the only one fantasizing. He recalled with agonizing clarity his lust in the vegetable patch. Beneath the paltry barrier of her gown, the muscles of her back had been firm and smooth, and her flushed cheeks and bright eyes nearly drove him past the edge of respectability. Despite their crude surroundings, Raymond had been wretchedly tempted to hold her against his chest, to drop his mouth to the back of her neck, to press his thumb to the absolute taunting crest of her breast…

Raymond tore his gaze from her retreating form, willing his cock to stay out of this. But then he considered Rosalie Holland’s charming disposition and knew his rebellious arousal was only half the problem. What most drew him to her was…her.

He wound through the noisy assembly, raising two fingers to the hassled proprietor. The poor man was tapping beer from a barrel, working the engine with enough vigor to match his patrons’ thirst.

“Jus’ a moment, my lord. I’ll need to swap out this cask.”

Good. Raymond could use this respite to collect himself and get a bloody handle on the situation.

The one positive since the cabbage field was that Rosalie, now firmly ensconced in her wool redingote, seemed calmer. She was no longer racing through the festival in pursuit of love potions or prospective husbands. It was amazing what proper outerwear could achieve.

But Raymond was experiencing quite the opposite problem. He was overheated and restless. In the span of five bloody hours, his ironclad veneer had split, revealing the profound isolation he had buried beneath layers of responsibilities.

It wasn’t that Raymond was exactly celibate, but he was a measured man in all matters. He had always been rather proud of how he maintained near-total control of his desire, slaking his lust only occasionally and always with the most discrete paramours. He considered proper courting a chore, and he already had quite enough chores.

But today, Raymond was enjoying himself. It was rather nice to spend the day with someone as lively and bold as Rosalie Holland. Despite his previous grim posturing, the truth was, he couldn’t remember ever appreciating a woman’s company so much.

Because of her.

Rosalie’s obnoxious teasing should have been vexing, but her cutting impatience for his gravity made him feel lighter. This morning, he’d assumed she was nothing more than a silly, tiresome little goose. Now he could see he’d had the wrong measure of her.

Rosalie wasn’t silly; she was hopeful. She was sweet. She was spirited. She was…sitting next to damned Ian Renwood.

The crowd momentarily parted, and from where he stood near the beer cask, Raymond could see the pair in animated conversation: Renwood sitting too close for propriety, and Rosalie nodding along with whatever prattle he spewed.

Raymond cracked his neck in irritation. He should have expected this. It had been her entire plan, after all, the very reason she’d dumbed herself down and primped herself up. But in the cabbage field, it seemed Rosalie might have changed her stance on Renwood.

Apparently not.

Well, her stance was irrelevant. Raymond was tasked with keeping her away from that oaf, and that’s what he would do. That the sick feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with the drainage ditch was completely beside the point.

Raymond tossed two too many coins to the innkeeper and grabbed a tankard in each fist, effectively preventing himself from using his fists for malice. He shoved his way to the back table, where the useless Howards were sitting, completely unaware of their failure to assist Raymond. Rosalie was perched at the end of a bench, and Renwood leaned on his elbows next to her.

“Miss Holland,” Raymond barked as he slammed the tankards on the table, his gaze searing her. She blinked up at him, her evergreen eyes widening at his newly sour mood.

Raymond nodded curtly. “Renwood. Apologies. It looks like some of my beer spilled on you.”

Renwood grimaced and dabbed at his coat with a handkerchief. “Lord Travers.” He smiled humorlessly. “I didn’t think you’d still be at the autumn fair. I must say, it’s caught us all by surprise. You’re usually so…busy.”

“Well, it’s your lucky day, Renwood.” Raymond climbed over the bench opposite Rosalie. “My schedule cleared. I’m available all evening.”

He stared at Rosalie while taking a long draw from his tankard. She met his gaze, her cheeks flushing as she clutched her own beverage.

“Miss Holland was just telling us about her adventures.” Renwood squinted at Raymond. “Good on you, Lord Travers. I can’t say I’ve ever lured a miss to a cabbage field, but perhaps I should try your unconventional strategy.”

Rosalie flushed. “It was quite courteous of Lord Travers to indulge my trivial superstitions,” she interjected. “I’m quite partial to these seasonal customs, and—”

“I prefer the other way around.” Renwood snickered and pinched a passing barmaid, who squealed. “See what indulgences you ladies have on offer.”

“Watch yourself, Renwood,” Raymond muttered.

“We’re in an inn, Travers.” Renwood grinned lazily. “Not Almack’s. I promise, when I call on Miss Holland in London, I’ll be on my very best behavior.”

The thought of Rosalie having a second Season—of her twirling around ballrooms on the undeserving arms of swine like Renwood—made something vicious take root in Raymond’s stomach.

He gripped his tankard, once more holding Rosalie’s eyes. So green. He willed her to keep her gaze on him and ignore the rest of it—Renwood, the Season, the spring.

He willed her to stay here, at the edge of autumn.

There was a sudden uproar at the front of the inn. Folk pushing forward, jeering in glee. Rosalie tore her gaze from his as she swiveled to face the entrance. Raymond reluctantly followed suit.

It seemed that in the innyard, someone had arranged a game of the riskiest of autumnal pastimes: snap-apple.

Through the open door, Raymond could see the game in progress. A lit candle was affixed to one end of a horizontal stick; on the opposite end of the stick was an apple. A broad-shouldered man spun the whole contraption, the candle and apple spiraling in a quickening circle as a young lad, hands behind his back, attempted to take a bite from the apple while avoiding the burning wax.

Jesus Christ.

“Win a token for your lady,” the man called to the rowdy crowd. “If you get a bite, that is.”

Rosalie smiled, watching the young man’s valiant, stupid efforts to impress the dark-haired girl next to him.

“This game is ludicrous,” Raymond muttered. “Someone’s going to put their eye out. Or set their hair aflame.”

“I think it’s dashing,” Rosalie teased. “More men could do with that man’s heroics.”

“What do you say, Miss Holland?” Renwood leaned closer, and Raymond’s hand flexed against his thigh. “Shall I win you a token?”

Rosalie laughed nervously. “Oh…that’s…”

“Unnecessary.” Raymond heard himself speak. “Because I’ll be winning her a token.”

Rosalie exhaled in a soft, surprised rush.

“Will you, now?” Renwood cocked his head. “So suddenly interested in mischief and mayhem, are you, Lord Travers?”

“So suddenly interested in Miss Holland, are you, Renwood?”

Rosalie covered her cheeks with her hands.

Renwood pushed to stand.

And because he was now, apparently, a man who partook in asinine festival games, Raymond stood too.

“Best of three?”

“Best of three?” Rosalie squawked, scrambling to her feet. “Best of three for what? I was only teasing. This game is appalling!”

There was a raucous cheer as the young man took the burning candle to the face, and his lady fair was forced to upend a pint over his head to put out his scorching eyebrows.

“Move aside, move aside then.” Renwood pushed through the crowd. “Lord Travers and I will have a go.”

The crowd whooped, clearly invigorated at the prospect of unfriendly competition.

Rosalie’s eyes were wide as she followed them to the innyard. Renwood smirked and lay his coat over a bench.

This was absolute stupidity, in its highest form. Raymond would surely end up burned or concussed.

But at his elbow was Rosalie Holland, who had upended his entire day by trying to win a husband.

Mayhap it was time a man tried to win her hand.

Raymond cracked his knuckles and shrugged out of his coat while a barkeep reignited the candle. He tossed his hat to the side.

The crowd pressed close, shoving and jostling and spilling beer. A dark-haired barmaid shouted for a knot of men to clear out so she could deliver a tray of pies.

But Raymond paid no mind to the spectators. It was the archery field all over again. The noise, the crowd, the chaos receded as he turned to face Rosalie.

He locked on her dark green eyes as he methodically loosened his cuffs. Rosalie’s color was rising; he watched intently as her gaze pulled down, following each roll of his starched shirtsleeves, until her lowered lashes seemed to paint her cheeks.

When her teeth sank into her bottom lip, Raymond reached for his cravat and tugged, loosening the knot, pulling the linen until his collar fell open. His stomach tightened at the lick of heat her stare pressed to the exposed skin of his throat.

He suddenly wanted to win far more than a token.

Raymond, Lord Travers—austere eldest son, beleaguered heir to a wastrel’s earldom, functional guardian to two boisterous children—stood in his shirtsleeves in the middle of a rowdy innyard about to make a fool of himself for the girl next door.

And he was glad of it.

“Be careful,” Rosalie warned as the burly man began to spin the stick in a rapid, ruthless rotation.

Raymond stood back, trying to ignore the hot streak of the candle, instead fixing his attention on the red blur of the apple.

Focus, Travers.

He lunged forward. The candle nearly singed his hair, but he ducked at the last second.

“Raymond!” Rosalie cried, her hand over her mouth.

Raymond had never thought much about his name one way or the other, but hearing her say it made him grateful to Fordham for possibly the first time in his life.

“That’s one, my lord,” Renwood called. “And now me.”

But Renwood only managed to take the stick to his forehead.

“Nicely done,” Raymond said in mock deference. “You’re sure to shine everyone down with a knot on your forehead.”

The crowd roared over the insult, and Raymond flashed a swift grin at Rosalie.

Raymond took a second attempt. His neck snapped forward, timed to align with the spinning fruit. But he couldn’t manage a bite; the apple painfully thwacked him across the cheekbone. He staggered backward, cursing.

The crowd cheered, shouted, pushed. Rosalie dropped her tankard. Raymond, momentarily distracted, almost missed the pleasure of Renwood falling sideways to avoid the candle, which nearly burned his chin.

“This is dangerous,” Rosalie shouted, tugging Raymond’s arm. “You don’t need to do this—”

“One more go,” he muttered, vowing to see this through.

This apple was more important than the ditch. This apple was more important than the earldom.

“Raymond, you’re mad!”

Damn straight.

He dodged forward again, but he’d forgotten to account for Rosalie’s spilled drink, now a slick of beer pooled under his feet.

He slipped. The burning wax spun straight at his left eye—

“Ouch!”

But the painful outcry hadn’t erupted from his own mouth.

Rosalie had reached forward to smack the candle away from him in a wobbly arc.

“Oh…oh. Blast it!”

Raymond turned to face her, forgetting the game entirely. She was shaking out her hand, her glove noticeably singed along her wrist. With a spike of alarm, he realized her eyes were watering.

“Rosalie!” He grabbed her wrist and lifted her hand. “You little menace. What did you do?”

“I didn’t want it to burn your eye.”

“So you burned yourself? Come here, you fiend. We need to get a look at your hand.”

He pulled her out of the innyard, away from the press of the crowd, seeking a place for her to catch her breath.

They turned onto a narrow alley alongside the inn. The setting sun hunched low in the sky, diffusing streaks of red and orange over the festival stalls. All through town, tenants and merchants had set out turnip jack-in-the-lanthorns; the crudely carved faces and flickering candles were an eerie counterpart to the early evening gloom.

“Ooh,” Rosalie muttered, shaking her hand. “If that doesn’t hurt something fierce.”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Raymond murmured, tucking a teary-eyed Rosalie against the side of the inn. “Let me have a look at you…”

He cradled her hand and slowly tugged each finger of her glove, gradually loosening the soft kid from her skin.

“Shh...it’s all right, Rosalie. I’ll be gentle.”

She was breathing fast in the deepening chill, and Raymond’s gaze roved her face. He was afraid of hurting her. This was why he didn’t engage in reckless games. He had tried to relax, to have fun for naught but a moment. And look at what happened.

Raymond was far better suited to plans and bookkeeping. He couldn’t possibly have anything to offer a vivacious woman such as Rosalie Holland.

“That was mad,” he murmured.

She shook her head. “This whole day was mad. Because of me. I’ve dragged you from one mishap to the next. And for what? I deserve this burn. It was childish of me to pursue Mr. Renwood, to let you pit yourself against him. I’ve been completely carried away. It just…felt nice. The thought of standing out. Of being noticed.”

He ran his hand down her arm, holding her wrist against his chest as he carefully, carefully rolled back her glove. He traced a fingertip over the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, checking for blisters from the burn. There was a round red welt. He lightly pressed his thumb to the mark.

“I noticed.”

Her lips parted.

Raymond leaned closer, nearly pressing her against the side of the inn, bending his head so his nose almost touched the loose curl of hair unwinding along her neck.

“In the forest, from the moment you slid that garment from your shoulders and took my pride with it…I noticed you.”

“I…what?” She faltered, her forehead creasing.

“I thought your hair was fair,” he whispered, still gently rubbing the burn on her wrist. “But it’s not. It’s a field of wheat bending under low clouds. It’s a dozen shades of gold, and they all recall the end of autumn.”

“Raymond…” She stared at him, breathless, confusion clear on her face.

He was likely frightening her, which made sense, as he was spewing insanity.

“You always look to see if anyone else is laughing. You paid every merchant more than you should have, despite your urge to haggle. You’re generous and playful and buoyant. Your eyes are the exact color of the juniper trees my mother loved, and you have a scar just below your hairline.”

Rosalie blinked slowly, touching her forehead. “My brother whacked me with a pall mall mallet,” she mumbled. “When was I was seven.”

“I noticed it. I noticed you.”

His mouth tightened. His fingers danced back and forth across her wrist.

“I’m sorry, Rosalie,” he muttered, a fierce regret pressing heavily on his chest.

He didn’t quite know what he was apologizing for. Certainly, that she had burned herself. But it was more than that. It was the way he’d disparaged her all day, the way she’d disparaged herself.

He was sorry for all of it.

But no longer did Rosalie look pained. She tilted her face to his, her eyes hooded in the shadow of the inn.

Raymond stroked her palm, watching her eyes dilate in response. A senseless rush of desire overtook him. Before he could stop himself, he lifted her hand and gently brushed his lips to the red mark on her wrist.

She sighed and pressed her wrist closer to his searching lips.

Tomorrow, Rosalie Holland would go on with her life. She would settle for Renwood or, God willing, find herself a different husband entirely. She would wed someone decent and jovial, a man wholly in thrall to his own life, a man who didn’t have to stretch his time between his failing father and his flailing siblings.

Raymond was an uninviting prospect; he knew that. He was grim, he was exhausted, he was overworked.

He was unbearably alone.

And he was alone, right now, with Rosalie.

“Raymond…”

At the unmistakable hunger on her face, Raymond bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to sting. He savored the pain, a reminder he was entirely aware of himself right now. And then he kissed her wrist again, the most paltry of offerings, teasing his lips over the exquisite softness of her skin.

“I am,” he insisted against her hand. Her fingertips stroked his jaw, and he hummed. “I’m sorry.”

Another kiss, another, his mouth tracing a path from her wrist to her palm.

“I’m sorry for ruining your day. I’m sorry for ruining your chances with Renwood. And God, Rosalie, I’m sorriest of all for how desperately I want to ruin you against the side of this inn.”

She moaned, a light and fleeting sound in her throat.

“But I won’t compromise you.” He pressed the words into each fingertip. “Not if you want someone else.”

And then he proved himself a liar by lightly licking her wrist, one swift, burning stroke that had her pressing into his arms.

Over the pounding of his blood, Raymond could hear a faraway chorus of voices, urgent shouting from the festival green. He sucked Rosalie’s wrist, drawing soft, aching gasps from her mouth, and tried to ignore the prickling awareness the cries from the village were steeped not in revelry but alarm.

“Raymond…” Her voice was breathy. She lifted a finger to his throat, her thumb gently pressing against his pulse point. “Raymond, I don’t want someone else…you misunderstand—”

His mouth hovered above hers.

“We found them!” The shouting had grown nearer. “They’re here!”

The yelling came closer still, this time bringing the most unwelcome of pronouncements.

“Has anyone alerted Lord Travers yet? Does he know what happened?”

Raymond froze, his lips dusting the smooth plane of Rosalie’s cheek. He held his breath, willing everyone to go away.

“No, we weren’t able to find him. But they’re here now, that’s all that matters—”

“The inn—I saw him there.”

“Oh lawd, I didn’t mean to—it was nary a moment—thank God, thank God!”

It was the woman’s familiar voice that finally pierced the fog of Raymond’s arousal.

He knew that panicked voice.

It belonged to Nate and Tabitha’s nurse.

In a stupor, he backed away from Rosalie, wild-eyed and frustrated beyond reason.

“I can’t. I can’t…I have to…”

He squeezed his eyes shut, shook off his sensual, irrational, unreciprocated feelings, and strode back to the street.

Back to his real life.

7

EVENTIDE

The dark seduction evaporated. Rosalie’s palm burned with the memory of Raymond’s tongue. There was a terrible ache coursing through her, settling heavy and low in her belly. She felt dizzy and sluggish, as if her breath had grown too thin to sustain her.

It had been the most exquisite pleasure of her life.

And it had lasted all but forty-five seconds.

Willing her heartbeat to steady, Rosalie tugged her singed glove back on and staggered around the side of the inn.

And the man she found there was completely different from the one who had just left her.

Raymond was shouting, properly, and Rosalie realized that all throughout his supposedly aggrieved day, he’d actually been perfectly fine.

But he wasn’t fine now. His dark hair was mussed, his gray eyes crackling in distress.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” bleated a plump woman with a pale, tear-streaked face. She had a filthy child tucked under each arm. “I was buying some gingerbread for them. I didn’t realize they’d run off—”

Raymond looked apoplectic. “Run off? Run off! Nathaniel Oliver Travers, what the hell is the matter with you? Do you not see there are hundreds of people in town today? Strangers, traveling from all over. It’s Allhallowtide, and folk are looking for trouble. Do you think it wise the Earl of Fordham’s children turn up missing? Look at me, Nate. Do I have a son? Are you next in line for the earldom? How many times—”

“As soon as I realized they were gone, I alerted the footmen, my lord,” the nurse said. “We tried to find you, too, of course, but nobody had seen you.”

Rosalie lurched with guilt. Raymond jerked his head, as if to look at her, but he stayed rigidly focused on his family as the nurse continued her frantic explanation.

“Then, they turned back up, thank heavens. Right as my leg, except for the dirt. And my poor heart…” The nurse clutched the children to her. “My word, I can’t bear to think of it. What if they…” The woman broke off, weeping against the children’s grimy heads.

At her bleak insinuation, Raymond looked as if he wanted to cancel the harvest fair, this very minute, even as a group of unwitting townsfolk lit the bonfire near Turner’s barn.

Instead, he turned to the curious, assembled crowd. “All’s well,” he called hoarsely. “There’s nothing else to be done. You can disperse.”

Rosalie looked up; in the indigo sky, the first stars were emerging. She hadn’t realized just how dark it had become in the last quarter hour.

And the children had been wandering alone in this impending gloom.

Good God.

Raymond turned his attention back to Nathaniel and Tabitha.

“Where were you two?”

“The gristmill,” the little boy said promptly.

“What? Why…the gristmill is about to fall to pieces, Nate!”

The boy nodded.

“Gerald Hawkins dared me I wouldn’t do it. On account of all the haunting and whatnot.”

“It’s not haunted.” The nurse shushed him. “Don’t speak of such things.”

“It is too!” The little girl, Tabitha, piped up. She was tiny and dark-haired and very loud. “Todd’s brother’s valet told him.”

Raymond was holding himself steady, but Rosalie could see every vein in his neck popping. His cravat was still in the innyard.

“A lady once drowned herself in the river,” Nate explained. “And now she haunts the mill. If you sit in front of the hearth on a full moon, she’ll leave you a river rock. That’s what Todd said. I wasn’t sure if today was a full moon, but it is Allhallowtide, so I thought she might give us one anyway.”

Rosalie couldn’t help herself. “Did she?”

Raymond’s eyes flashed, and she winced, a bit chastened. She hadn’t meant to make light of the situation. Rosalie held dear her own childhood memories of these sorts of thrilling, mysterious dares. Little Nate Travers had acted rashly, but he had also acted exactly like a seven-year-old boy.

Nate ruefully shook his head. “Once we got there, we poked around. I even climbed to the loft, but there was nothing but bats. I didn’t feel like waiting. I did find the bones of a shrew, but Hawkins didn’t believe they were from the mill.”

“Christ,” Raymond muttered, dropping to a crouch next to his siblings. “You should have found me if you wanted something. You can’t just run off to a dangerous, unfamiliar place, climbing the rafters of a rotten mill, trying to prove yourself. Nathaniel, you could have broken your damn neck.”

“You wouldn’t have let us,” Nate argued. “And we couldn’t find you.”

A second reminder that Raymond had been with her all day. He looked sick. Rosalie stepped closer, meaning to comfort him, but he shook his head at her.

“Belinda,” he said, turning to the nurse. “The children need to be taken back to Morrow Woods. They’re cold, they’re filthy. And they’re utterly outside of bounds.” He spoke over the children’s protesting wails. “I’ll find George and Ned to ready the coach.”

Raymond laid one hand on each small head. “We aren’t finished discussing this. But we’ll do so tomorrow when you’re clean and rested.”

“I suppose I don’t get the spinning top now.” Nate frowned.

Raymond sighed.

“No, I’m sorry, but you don’t.” His voice was gruff. “Someone has to teach you accountability, Nate.”

Rosalie pictured the toy in his pocket and felt a sudden urge to cry.

“I can find the footmen,” she offered, her heart clenching painfully at the twin aches of Raymond’s worry and the children’s earnest mistake. “That way you can—”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Raymond snapped, turning to face her. “I don’t need anyone else wandering off, Miss Holland.”

Rosalie faltered, stung. Miss Holland? Hadn’t he been a half breath from kissing her not ten minutes ago?

“What then, my lord?” She pointedly raised her chin. “I suppose you have orders for me as well?”

He rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s not as though you’d follow them anyway.”

Rosalie glared at him, ignoring an odd pressure behind her eyes. So much for noticing her. Raymond apparently thought she was no better than his rambunctious siblings.

“I was only trying to help,” she said acerbically as the nurse and children withdrew.

“By asking if he was successful in his harebrained scheme? He doesn’t need that kind of unserious encouragement.”

“I wasn’t encouraging him. I was simply talking to him. Not everything has to have a point, Raymond.”

“If you truly want to help, you can do so by staying put,” he muttered. “While I see to my family.”

Mortified, Rosalie opened and closed her mouth. Over his shoulder, she could see Nanette and Mr. Darling in the crowd gathering at the bonfire.

“Fine. I’ll stay put with the Darlings, my lord,” she snapped, fighting off the sting of his clipped words. “I’ll be at the bonfire. If that’s permissible.”

He nodded once, avoiding her fiery gaze as he turned to follow the children.

Rosalie huffed and made her furious way to Nanette. She realized that for the first time all day, she had exactly what she wanted—to be left to her own devices. But her desire for rebellion had disappeared along with her desire for Renwood.

There was only one thing she wanted. And the feelings were clearly unrequited.

He was only frightened, she tried to convince herself. And to be sure, he had good reason; it had been frightening. It was terrifying, the way the children slipped away, the way it all fell to Raymond. But Rosalie couldn’t help but wonder if his siblings would be more likely to trust him if Raymond acted more like a brother and less like a keeper.

She plopped down on a hay bale next to Nanette and begrudgingly warmed herself at the bonfire. Her unease muted the boisterous merriment surrounding her. Turnip lanterns glowed on fence posts and in windowsills, reminding Rosalie of old tales of headless ghosts, destined to wander in perpetual, futile search for what they couldn’t have. She rather commiserated with their plight.

Raymond had no right to affect her so, to grind her tenuous plans and shortsighted hopes to dust. But it was laughable, now, to imagine ever wanting anyone else.

Raymond, Lord Travers, was the very last sort of man she had ever dreamed for herself. But God help her if she didn’t want every harried, unyielding, dependable inch of him.

In the light of the bonfire, a grizzled old man told ghost stories. There were gasps and shrieks. Young couples seemed eager to use the ghoulish horrors as an excuse to sit too closely together. Next to Rosalie, Nanette clutched Mr. Darling’s hand as the graybeard spun the very same story of the gristmill ghost young Nathaniel Travers had recounted.

“She lost her love and instead found madness. And because the gristmill was where he’d betrayed her, she was doomed to remain there, stalking the site of his deception, for he wouldn’t love her on earth, and he wouldn’t love her in hell.”

Heavens. Rosalie sincerely hoped the Travers children hadn’t heard this version of the story.

“Rosalie…”

She jumped at the whisper, low, warm against her ear. She turned, more than a little spooked, to find Raymond crouching behind her. Why the devil was he back here?

“Oh, it’s Rosalie again, is it?” She barely opened her lips, lest she draw Nanette’s attention.

“Of course it’s Rosalie,” he murmured. “I’m through being a prig now. Will you speak with me?”

“What are you doing here? Didn’t you take your siblings back to Morrow Woods?”

“I sent them with their nurse and the footmen.” Raymond was still kneeling behind her like some kind of penitent specter. “Please, come with me.”

He gently caught her sleeve, the bonfire reflecting in his dark eyes.

Rosalie looked around. The flames cast everyone in an ethereal glow. Nanette was curled against her husband, paying Rosalie no mind.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice,” Rosalie muttered. “Lest you think me disreputable.”

The corners of his mouth drew down, but Raymond rose to his feet and offered his hand. She slid from the bale of hay, grasping his arm and following to the furthest edges of the bonfire, where the air was shockingly cool. She was grateful she’d returned to her sensible coat.

But before Raymond could speak, she held up a hand. “If you brought me here to further lecture me, please spare my pride. I already know what you’re going to say.”

He worked his jaw back and forth. “Is that so?”

Rosalie crossed her arms. “Children will be children, Raymond. I feel terrible they went missing, but they were unhurt. They’ll learn their lesson or they won’t, and you can’t force them to do it. You seem to think this is all a result of my distracting you today. But to be quite blunt, I’m not sorry in the least. You were in sore need of distraction.”

He laughed humorlessly, his breath fogging in the dark chill. He stepped toward her, his gaze roving her face. “A distraction?” he breathed, his nostrils flaring. “Is that what you think you are?”

She held her breath, willing him to step closer still. He obliged, following her wordless command.

“Rosalie, you turned me insane today. I became someone I hardly recognize. I’ve never been that engrossed in…anything. Including my responsibilities.”

His intensity ensnared her. His eyes bore into hers, holding her open. She couldn’t look away, step back, close off. She didn’t want to.

“I forgot myself today,” he said gruffly. “I forgot myself with you—”

“And that’s a good thing,” she whispered, brazenly reaching for his hand.

He stiffened but didn’t pull away. His acceptance of her touch emboldened her, and she let go only long enough to remove her gloves, then took his hand once more.

She wanted to feel him.

He hesitated, then laced his fingers with hers. She rubbed her thumb over the blunt span of his knuckles.

“It’s a good thing, Raymond,” she whispered again. “You don’t need to conduct yourself so gravely all the time.”

“There is no room in my life for ease, Rosalie. There’s no room in my life for enjoyment.” He shook his head but still clutched her hand. “Every day, from sunup to sundown, I’m either propping up my father or providing for my siblings.”

“Raymond…”

“I never should have snapped at you. I never should have made you feel foolish. I was just so damn frustrated that my hands are tied. I can’t even take you to a festival without being pulled into my family’s dramatics. It’s ridiculous to think I could offer you what you want. No woman on the cusp of her life would desire to inherit a life already formed by someone else’s messes.”

“And you know what women want?” She stared at him, her mouth curving up at the reminder of their archery spat. “What I want?”

“I’ve…given this a lot of thought today,” Raymond murmured, tugging her closer.

“I’ve been a woman longer than you’ve thought about them.”

His hand was now sliding slowly down her back, and it was becoming rather difficult to tease.

“You’ve no idea what I’ve thought about,” he said hoarsely.

She lifted her hand to his face. She traced his jaw, so hard, so tense. She pressed her finger there and lightly stroked, willing him to soften. Willing him to open.

“Think about this, then. Is there room for me?”

“What?”

Her searching finger followed the line of his jaw to his chin, to his bottom lip. He closed his eyes, his face in shadow.

“You said you have no room in your life for ease, for enjoyment. That doesn’t bother me, Raymond. God knows I have plenty to spare. But I’m asking…do you have room for me?”

Raymond pressed his forehead to hers, their noses brushing. “I…God, Rosalie…”

Rosalie’s heart was in her throat. She wanted this so much, the longing burned from her toes to her hairline.

“We worked well together today,” she whispered. “You made me steady, and I made you smile. That’s enough, Raymond. And if you don’t have space for me…well. As you said, I’m a very capable woman. I’m sure I’ll find a way—”

His fingers tangled in the loose hair at the nape of her neck. “Sweetheart,” he murmured. “If you want a space, it’s yours.”

She tilted her face to his.

Raymond made a low, soft sound deep in his chest; it seemed to push his mouth to hers.

Rosalie sighed—a woozy delight lifted through her until she cooed against the warm, firm brush of Raymond’s lips. He tasted like apples and beer. She lifted her hands to his face, her own mouth curving in a smile.

Yes. It’s happening.

“Rosalie,” he murmured, his hands encircling her wrists and pulling them away from his face. His gaze darted over her shoulder to the unruly crowd at the bonfire. “I can’t kiss you—”

“I don’t want anyone else, Raymond,” she interjected, her eyes creasing in dismay. “I thought I made myself clear.”

“No, no.” His voice cracked. “I mean I can’t kiss you the way I want to kiss you…here.”

Her body went completely still. “How…do you want to kiss me?”

She licked her bottom lip. Raymond watched her do it, his eyes dissolving to black.

“Follow me.” Raymond once more gripped her wrist, this time pulling her away from the edge of the bonfire, away from the crowd, all the way around the back of Turner’s barn.

Rosalie wanted to laugh. Just over his shoulder was the spot her apple peel had fallen, exactly one year ago. The peel meant to reveal the letter of her future sweetheart.

R.

Not for Renwood.

Raymond eased her against the barn, the lean line of his body suddenly, obscenely, solid, the only thing between her and the watchful autumn constellations. Everything seemed closer tonight—the stars, her bravery, her desire.

All of it close enough to touch.

Her breath puffed in tight clouds of frozen mist, her longing made visible, every exhalation evidence of how fast she was breathing, how hard her heart pounded.

“You asked how I want to kiss you,” Raymond murmured against her mouth. His hand fell to her thigh, stroking a maddening circle. “How do you want to be kissed?”

“I want…” She breathed shakily. “I want…”

She had been the previous recipient of two awkward kisses, but never had Rosalie felt the unwinding begin before his mouth even claimed her. Never had she been kissed with a man’s thigh between her own, her bottom pressing the rough wooden planks of a barn.

Never had she been kissed like this—with his hands first, with the ink-stained pads of his fingers skimming her throat, tilting her chin, tracing a rivulet of desire and gooseflesh along her jaw.

Raymond gently pushed back her hair and lowered his mouth to the shell of her ear, whispering, hot and husky, “Is this what you want?”

Yes.

This is exactly what I want.

“Almost,” she whispered instead. “Raymond, this is almost what I want.”

Raymond’s mouth was as patient as his hands. His dark end-of-day stubble tickled her sensitive skin as he brushed his mouth over her cheekbone, her jaw, the underside of her chin.

A whine left her throat, and she gripped his coat, pulling him to her. She instinctively pushed her hips against him, seeking the solid wall of his muscled leg.

Rosalie wasn’t entirely ignorant of the breakneck heat unwinding within her. For years, she had chased pleasure with her own hand. She had gleaned a logistical understanding of the marital act from her maids and her friends and an illuminating afternoon when she’d stumbled upon a groom and scullery maid in the garden shed.

But there was nothing calculating or curious about what she was feeling right now. All day, her body had been guiding her, growing itchy and urgent with every moment in Raymond’s company. She could feel the lodestar of desire burning within her, along her neck, inside her wrists, at the apex of her thighs.

She wanted to stay the course, to follow the fire, to let Raymond lead her home.

“Rosalie,” he murmured, and the stars doubled above her at the way her name tore from his lips.

And then he was finally directing the teasing brush of his kiss toward where she wanted him most.

Please be good, she panic-pleaded her own mouth. Please be what he wants. It was painfully clear Raymond was everything she wanted. And it mattered—oh God, did it matter!—to have the wanting reciprocated.

They were not but fifty feet from the entire town—anyone could pass by, anyone could see—but Raymond remained unhurried. He pushed his mouth against hers, gently coaxing her lips with his…warm, rough, sweet.

Her hands found his hair, tugging as she arched against him, her breasts and thighs still bereft of the aching pressure he was finally giving her mouth.

“Yes,” she managed, the sigh low in her throat. “Yes, yes.”

And then, all at once, Raymond’s careful tension snapped. One hand flexed firmly into her hair as he groaned, sucking steadily on her bottom lip. His other hand wrapped around her back, finding her buttocks, kneading into her curves.

Rosalie was panting, and his open mouth swallowed each frantic exhale. Raymond swept his tongue against hers, turning her mindless and drugged. She held his face in both hands, urging and accepting the heat of his onslaught.

“Fuck,” he groaned softly.

Rosalie felt another violent rush of need. She hadn’t realized she could unravel such a grave man, but now it became her singular aim. The swift unspooling of Raymond Travers, as surely as he was unspooling an eager ache inside her.

He lifted her against the barn, her coat somehow open, her skirts around her knees. The delicious press of his lips left hers, and Rosalie cried out.

But then he was ravishing her neck, sucking hard at a spot under her ear, making her cry for a different reason entirely.

Raymond gripped her waist, driving her against the barn. She could feel her garment snagging on the uneven planks, but she didn’t care. She wanted her coat torn, her gown torn, the entirety of her life torn apart by Raymond.

And judging by the hard, heady press of his arousal against her stomach, he seemed more than happy to do it.

“Kiss me,” she moaned, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. “Kiss me—”

His mouth was already on hers, eager to oblige. He’d only just kissed her for the first time, but it already seemed innate. He opened her mouth with assurance, already knowing she liked this—the firm pressure of his tongue at the seam of her lips, the roof of her mouth.

Rosalie was a horse, champing at the bit; she was a sail, unfurling into the breeze. She was ready, ready, ready. Her fidgeting hands found Raymond’s jaw, his shoulders, the long, lean line of his torso.

“We have to stop,” he rasped against her collarbone. “We can’t, Rosalie. We can’t—”

“We have to,” she gasped.

It was ridiculous, it was insane, the speed with which their ardor had unraveled through this village. First the bonfire, now the barn. Nowhere was dark enough, close enough, hallowed enough for two searching, seeking, finally found souls.

“The gristmill.” They said it in unison, Raymond’s hand under her skirt, her fingers in his collar.

“It’s mad,” he groaned. “You know this, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rosalie hummed into his neck. “Unless you’re frightened?”

Raymond’s eyes were black under the dark sky. “Terrified,” he breathed. “But not of the mill.”

8

SOMETIME AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

They snuck to the mill like the worst sort of ruffians, carefully winding through the gloomy, creaking woods, with only a pair of pilfered turnip lanterns to guide them.

The gristmill squatted ominously in the dark. The moon was new—only a thin crescent curving above them—but the stars pierced holes through the ragged clouds. In the thin blackness, Rosalie couldn’t see the river, but she could hear it, a gurgling rush drowning the sound of their approaching boots.

“This is wrong,” Raymond muttered again, his hand tightening around hers. “This is dangerous. We can’t see a damn thing.”

At that moment, the door to the gristmill slowly swung toward them, as though the mill were groaning in welcome.

Or warning.

“No bloody way.” Raymond jerked her to a halt. “Did you see—No. Absolutely not, Rosalie. We’re going back to town.”

“Calm down.” Rosalie slid her fingers along the inside of his wrist, drawing his heated attention back to her. “It’s not haunted. That was just the wind. Or perhaps the bats disturbed the door. Possibly a badger…”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” But Raymond seemed to have mastered his hesitation, and he tugged her again toward the mill.

“Besides, we have our lanterns.” Rosalie lifted one turnip to Raymond, trying not to laugh as he blanched at the crudely carved countenance.

“I don’t know how I’m meant to seduce you with those ghoulish faces staring at me.”

“Just close your eyes,” she whispered as Raymond eased the splintered door open wider. “You won’t have to see the faces.”

He drew her against him, kissing her hard. His thumb slid to her chin, tugged her mouth open, and his tongue did something toe-curling and delicious that sent Rosalie’s own eyelids drifting closed.

Raymond pulled away, his breath hot on her cheek. “And miss this? I’m not closing my fucking eyes.”

Rosalie whimpered, pitching under a presage of desire.

Raymond led her inside. Her nostrils flared at the pungent scent of rotting wood and rancid smoke. She remembered the Travers children, filthy after their sojourn to the mill, but in the weak orange flare of the jack-in-the-lanthorns, Rosalie could see little aside from shadow. Probably for the best.

The abandoned mill creaked under their feet. Beneath the floorboards, Rosalie could hear the river lapping against the ancient waterwheel. The mill was otherwise completely silent.

For the first time today, she and Raymond were alone.

Her passion ignited anew. There was no reason to slow, no reason to delay.

She couldn’t even if she tried.

She turned into Raymond’s solid arms, pushing him toward what appeared to be some kind of worktable. He accepted the heat of her mouth, his own hunger pulling her with him.

“Off—off…” she murmured, tugging impatiently at his coat. “Why are you dressed so properly for a harvest fair?”

Raymond shrugged out of his coat, laying it on the table behind him.

“Well, when I prepared for the day, I didn’t plan to undress in a haunted mill.” His tongue traced a path from her collarbone to her ear as he worked at his waistcoat and braces. “I’m not usually required to expeditiously disrobe in such grim environs.”

“And here I thought you a strategist,” Rosalie murmured, feeling for the hem of his shirt, where the soft muslin gave way to the firm lines of his stomach. “Please, Raymond…I want to touch you.”

Her breath frosted against his neck. Rosalie realized how unfair it was to ask him to shed his clothes—it was already cold and would grow colder yet—but she was desperate to feel his skin.

He yanked off his shirt, and Rosalie was grateful for the darkness. Now she could learn him with her hands—the jutting ridge of his clavicle, the hard swells of his shoulders, the swirls of hair foresting his chest.

She dragged her thumb to his naval, all of him hard and hot.

“No more,” he managed, gently lowering her hand. “Not right now.”

Rosalie nearly swooned at his unspoken promise; not now meant later…later meant more.

Heaven help her. She would never have anticipated that finding herself on a man’s task list could be quite so arousing.

Raymond slid his hands beneath her unbuttoned redingote. Rosalie felt feverish as he stroked the bodice of her gown, lightly fingering the row of buttons along her spine.

“I’ll never get this off in the dark,” he murmured. “But I need my mouth on you, Rosalie.”

Dear God.

She backed away, just enough to untangle herself from her coat. It joined his shirt on the table. Raymond leaned back against the wooden slab, pulling Rosalie into the cradle of his thighs.

“Loosen the side of the gown,” she instructed, lifting her arm. “There’s a hook…the buttons are decorative, but they aren’t really—”

“I’m not a modiste,” Raymond muttered, his nimble fingers working in haste. “I don’t need to know what the buttons are for, as long as I can get to your skin.”

He found the row of hooks she indicated and there, her bodice hung loose. He tugged it down to her waist, his warm palms finding the thin fabric of her chemise.

Raymond traced one finger over the rising pucker of her nipple, and she swallowed a ragged cry building in her throat.

“All fucking day…” His voice was thick as he circled her peak. “Oh God, this, right here, is nearly enough.”

Rosalie shuddered. Raymond swore, seeking the ties of her chemise.

In the flickering glimmer of their lanterns, she could see his shadow twisting against the stained wall of the gristmill, and then she felt her chemise twisting too. There was an agonizing moment when her bared breasts were held by nothing but the frigid October air.

And then Raymond’s lips closed around her nipple, the wet heat of his mouth a divine, unspeakable pleasure.

“Raymond,” she panted, compulsively arching into him. His hand spanned the small of her back, his fingers gently tugging the ends of her loose hair, his mouth devouring her, taking as much of her breast as he could.

“We can stop here.” He pressed his face to her breasts. “I won’t rush you, Rosalie. Let me have this, one more moment, and then I’ll stop…”

Rosalie closed her eyes, threading her fingers in his hair, upended by the sensation of his tongue on her nipple.

She was shredded by indecision. She wanted to stay in this moment indefinitely, but she was burning with a previously unknown fervor his mouth alone couldn’t quench.

“No,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”

Raymond groaned and lay back on the worktable, sprawling on their discarded clothing. He guided her on top of him and fused his mouth to hers. Rosalie followed the steady press of his palms against her buttocks until she was straddling his lean, athletic form. She could feel where he had grown stiff against her splayed thighs.

Rosalie swallowed, thrilled and afraid. She had a vague understanding of what this hardness meant. She desperately wanted to know more.

“Rosalie.” He ran his palms up and down her thighs. “It’s a goddamned mill. It’s freezing. It’s filthy. We should wait. A bed. A fire—”

“I’m on fire,” she whispered, settling her weight against him. “I don’t want to wait. Take me in a bed tomorrow. Take me in a bed every night for the rest of my life. But, Raymond, take me in a mill tonight.”

“You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Her hand fell between them to skim his rigid length through the rough fabric of his breeches. Rosalie pressed harder, seeking, and found an impossible swell of heat against her palm. Raymond arched against the table, the hard lines of his shoulders dragging his cast-off shirt.

“I have…some idea,” she whispered. “What I’ve heard from my maids, from my friends. What I’ve learned from my own hand…”

“Rosalie, it could hurt you. It will hurt you.”

“It’s all right,” she soothed, tipping her hips to his.

He jerked beneath her, rolling against her in a long, searching grind. Rosalie’s moan chased her gasp.

“It’s fine, Raymond. I’ll make do.”

In the paltry light of the hellish candles, Raymond’s face fractured. His eyes were hooded, somehow both wild and tender.

“I don’t want you to make do.” He reached up to stroke her bottom lip. “I want you to be upside down. I want you to be out of your mind. I want your last rational thought to be the shattering awareness of what you’ve done to me.”

“And what’s that?” She moaned faintly. “What have I done to you?”

“Bewitched me.” He lifted her hand and again licked along her wrist. “Captivated me. I am utterly in your thrall. I like it. You’re good for me, Rosalie. And I’m going to be good for you too.”

“Raymond—”

“Lift, sweetheart,” he commanded hoarsely.

Rosalie groaned, instinctively rising to her knees. All day long, she had enjoyed thwarting his orders, but right now, she would pin her hips to the rafters if he willed it.

“Look at you behaving…” His voice reverberated in the close air of the gristmill.

Raymond’s heavy hands grasped Rosalie’s hips and urged her to fall forward on the table, positioning her on hands and knees above him. He massaged her buttocks, spreading his hands until his fingers found the seam of her thighs. They were still partly clothed—skirts and breeches and a dangling shred of propriety. Thank God, because the prospect of him touching her bare skin like this turned Rosalie’s brain to golden fog.

His fingers stroked insistently over her slit, pushing her skirts into her sex. Rosalie could feel her wetness seep into the fabric.

Raymond licked his lip; his eyes were smoke.

Rosalie was ready to combust. She steadied herself, placing her hands flat against his bare chest. The springy hair of his pectorals tickled the inside of her wrists as he fisted her skirts in one hand, dragging them to her waist.

“Shh,” he whispered, sliding his other palm up her inner thigh. The heat of his skin was an impossibly delicious answer to the frigid October night. His fingers found her damp curls, and Rosalie arched toward him, a perfect wanton.

She felt hazy, apart from herself. She was half-nude in a decrepit mill, the crude light of the lantern the only source of illumination. But all she could think about was the promise of more. There were some who believed tonight marked the new year, and she could see it right now, the stitching of the old and new, the girl she was and the woman Raymond Travers was about to make her.

And then his fingers brushed where she was aching and ready. She groaned, beckoning his feather-light pressure, and Raymond steadied her, pressing her skirts to her lower back as she jerked against his teasing hand.

“Please…”

But he wouldn’t let her beg. His thick finger was already gently circling her entrance, sliding fractionally inside, allowing her to adjust.

Lost in sensation, Rosalie leaned over him, bending her head until her loose hair brushed his shoulders. She accepted Raymond’s intrusion, shifting around his finger, letting the sting roll into something welcome and relieving. She chased the pain, understanding it for the harbinger it was, portending her pleasure in steady, sticking waves.

“Good, Rosalie…” Slowly, slowly Raymond worked her, giving her time, letting her stretch. “You’re doing so well, sweetheart.”

She gasped and fell lower to the table, onto her elbows, raising her bottom to his hand. Her forehead pressed to his temple, and Raymond turned his head to kiss her.

His tongue stroked as slowly as his finger, and Rosalie moaned, spreading her legs wider, giving him further access to her mouth, to her quim.

He rocked his palm against her, his finger thrusting deeper, harder. Rosalie felt a building pressure. The heel of his hand was grinding against her center with a heady, exquisite friction.

“Do you like this?” Raymond’s voice was a low burr. “Does it feel good?”

“Yes.” She panted into his shoulder. “God, yes.”

“This isn’t how I want you,” he murmured, his tongue flicking the shell of her ear. “I don’t want you in the dark. I don’t want you in speed, in secret. I don’t want to give you only my fingers, knowing what you deserve.”

Heat bloomed low in her belly. She quickened her hips, pushing against his hand.

“More?” He breathed.

“Yes…”

A second finger, a second push.

“You’re so tight, darling,” he groaned, the hand holding her skirts gently rubbing up and down her buttocks, the back of her thighs. “Rosalie, I’m not going to take you tonight. I want to—so much—but it won’t be good for you like this.”

She breathed hard into his neck, trying to focus, unable to feel anything beyond the crest she was climbing.

“When I give you my cock, you’ll be my wife,” he vowed, kissing her deeply. “Do you understand?”

From somewhere far away, she did understand. He was giving her this tonight. He was giving her forever tomorrow.

He dug into her hip, rocking her against the steady thrusts of his hand. She moaned and let him set the pace. His fingers curled deep inside her, his thumb circling where his palm pressed before. A lick of heat spread there, drawing her tighter and tighter and—

“Sit up, Rosalie,” he grunted into her neck. “I want you on my mouth.”

He withdrew his hand from her folds and pulled her up, dragging her forward along his naked chest. His other hand grasped her bicep to steady her.

“Come here. All the way up,” he murmured. “On my mouth, Rosalie.”

Rosalie experienced a panicked moment of logistical uncertainty—on his mouth? Her skirts would suffocate him.

Raymond left no room for protest. He settled back against the table and tugged her hips higher, until she found herself kneeling above his shadowed face.

“How—” She was muddled by desire and confusion. “I don’t…”

“Don’t think about me,” he warned, his breath hot against her center.

As he spoke, she felt the burn of his night beard between her legs, and Rosalie nearly swooned at the prospect of her delicate inner thighs finally softening the hard line of his jaw.

“Lean forward, grab the window ledge…yes…and just….ah…”

His fingers reached around her thighs, holding her open, pulling her down against the insistent press of his mouth. In the pathetic light of their lanterns, the last thing she saw was his glittering eyes. And then she saw nothing at all.

Oh, oh, oh.

The pace of his mouth was punishing. He licked into her folds, relentlessly rocking her hips back and forth over the slick pressure of his flat, impatient tongue.

“That’s it, Rosalie.” He brushed the words against her as his fingers slithered beneath her skirts and once more stroked into her sex. “That’s it…”

Over her own hoarse cries came the susurrant hymn of the night wind, scattering leaves across the sagging roof of the mill. In that moment, Rosalie felt like one of those supernatural, tormented souls stretched between two worlds, Raymond both containing her and unleashing her, sending her into the void.

She was crashing around him. There was nothing but his mouth, his hands, his voice crooning to her. “That’s it, sweetheart. I promise there will be more. I promise.”

In a fog of flames, Rosalie shattered, crying out, falling forward into the warm, safe arms of her future.

9

NIGHTFALL

Rosalie sagged, curling against him on the grimy worktable. Raymond dimly recalled that Nate had said he found a dead shrew in here.

And this was where he brought buoyant, vivacious Rosalie Holland to declare his intentions? To a dank, dirty, possibly haunted, assuredly decaying, gristmill.

Well done, Travers.

He rubbed his hand over her back, tucking her against him. Slowly, Rosalie stirred from her stupor.

“Oh. I’m sorry…I didn’t…” Her gaze fell to the rigid bulge in his breeches, and he could hear the flush in her voice. “What about…you? I didn’t give you…”

Raymond laughed, kissing her. “You gave me plenty. The memory of you on your hands and knees in this hovel will fuel every fantasy I have for the next three weeks.”

Rosalie squeaked, pinching his arm. “Three weeks?”

“Until our wedding.” He frowned, suddenly worried. “We’ll have to marry, you know. After I—”

“Oh God, yes,” she agreed, laying her head on him. “Yes. But why three weeks?”

“The banns.” He grimaced. “I don’t have the clout with Canterbury for a special license, I’m afraid.”

“But…your father might.” She smiled slowly, turning in his arms. “The Earl of Fordham?”

“I suppose…” Raymond mulled it over. Fordham was generally useless, but he was also exceedingly well-liked. It was a damned nuisance.

Until, quite possibly, right now.

“I think it’s time you called in a boon to the dear old earl.” Rosalie grinned cheekily. “He owes you one…or one hundred.”

Raymond laughed. “You really did set out to find a betrothal today, didn’t you? Little minx.”

She hummed agreeably into his shoulder.

“I’ll ask you properly tomorrow,” he murmured, growing serious. He tilted her chin up to his. “I know this wasn’t the romance you wanted. Filthy, in the middle of the night, surrounded by bats and deranged turnips.”

“It was.” Her eyes were bright. “It was exactly what I wanted. I just didn’t know it.”

The candle stumps were no more than wicks, the turnips filled with melted wax. The mill was horrifically dark, and Rosalie, in the aftermath of her bliss, was growing warm and drowsy under Raymond’s arm.

“I’m so tired,” she murmured, her voice vibrating inside her chest, and Raymond felt the words before he heard them.

“I need to get you back to Holland House,” he apologized. “Your father will be looking for you.”

“No. It will be cold outside.”

“Yes, it will, but your bed will be far warmer than this mill.”

“Considering my bed won’t contain the bracketing arms of a strapping man, I sincerely doubt it.”

Rosalie reluctantly sat up and immediately shivered in the damp air. Raymond helped her stand, wrapping first her redingote then his coat around her shaking shoulders.

“Can’t have you catching chill.” He kissed her forehead and pushed open the gristmill door. “I have plans for you, you see.”

At their abrupt appearance outside the mill, there was a rustle from a low branch in the nearest oak. A shadow passed over them in the moonlight, the wide wings of a male tawny owl.

Warmth spread from Raymond’s chest to his extremities as he led Rosalie through the cold autumn night. He was wearing only his waistcoat, but he felt relaxed and assured, heated by memory and anticipation.

He had thought his life was held together by responsibilities, but one spritely would-be hellion had swept through him like a hurricane. And damn if all the upended pieces of his life suddenly made sense. He wasn’t free from obligation, not now, not ever. But no longer did he have to bear the brunt of it alone.

Raymond hefted a jack-in-the-lanthorn, frowning doubtfully at its last gasping flare. “This will hardly get us back. We’ll need to be careful, or your father will have my head.”

“I can sneak in through the kitchen garden,” Rosalie whispered reassuringly as they wound their way through the trees. “I’ve done it loads of times.”

Raymond raised his gaze to the dark branches. “God help me.”

“I rather like the idea of you praying for me, even facetiously.” She elbowed him, smiling.

“In truth…” Raymond laughed ruefully as they picked their way through what he sincerely hoped was the correct leaf-strewn path. “I did fail your father. This might very well be the first time I didn’t keep my word. I kept you out of neither mischief nor mayhem.”

“Well, you tried.” Rosalie patted his shoulder. “I didn’t make it easy for you.”

“No.” He tucked her tighter against him. “No, you did not.”

“I suppose you’ll need to meet with my father again,” Rosalie said through the chattering of her teeth. “About my dowry.”

Raymond laughed, sending a loose, merry bark through the chilled wood. “I don’t give a damn about your dowry, sweetheart, but you can bet I’m going to double down about that ditch.”

They emerged from the wood near Turner’s barn. In the distance, Raymond could see the bonfire still blazing. He longed to stop, to warm his hands, to warm his boots, but he needed to get Rosalie home.

As they skirted the barn, they nearly ran smack into a small cluster of girls, their young faces glowing in the flames of their candles.

In one girl’s hand was an apple.

Rosalie’s hand tightened on Raymond’s arm.

He drew up short, unsure if they could make it past unseen. He could only imagine the figure they must cut. In the faint moonlight, he could see Rosalie’s cheek was sooty, her hair a mad tangle spilling over two coats. Raymond’s shirt was on inside out.

But Rosalie didn’t seem at all perturbed by the interruption. She eagerly pulled Raymond to the girls.

“Are you doing the pippin charm?” she asked excitedly. “I’ve done it as well. Last year, in fact.”

The tallest girl widened her eyes, looking between Raymond and Rosalie.

“Did it work?”

Rosalie smiled secretly, winking at the girls.

Raymond frowned. “Did what work?”

She kissed his cheek. “It’s no matter, sweetheart.”

31 OCTOBER, 1800

MIDMORNING

“I’ll be doing the paring, just so we’re all clear about that.” Rosalie, Lady Travers, stood in the side garden of Morrow Woods, her feet planted widely apart.

Tabitha doubtfully handed her an apple.

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to see over your—”

“I can see an apple!” Rosalie huffed, rubbing her enormously swollen stomach. “Besides, how else would I pare it? Certainly not at knee height.”

Nate wrinkled his nose. “I don’t see why we’re doing this rot. Can’t we just go? Gerald Hawkins says there’s going to be—”

“I see you’re all plotting, again.”

Rosalie spun heavily, smiling at her husband’s dry tone.

“Rosalie, you ought to be in bed. Nate, you’re not to do anything with Gerald Hawkins. Need I remind you of the trouble his flippant dare caused last year? And while I’m at it, I’ve informed your nurse and the footmen, but you are not to step one foot toward that gristmill.”

Rosalie bit her lip. “I think the gristmill should be safe this year.” She managed to keep a straight face. “Seeing as I am not able to attend the fair.”

Raymond’s jaw ticked in warning, but she didn’t miss the swift clenching of his hand. Fortunately, Nate and Tabitha were squabbling over how to spend their festival farthings and missed the heated exchange between their brother and sister-in-law.

The baby in her belly lurched, a slow, heavy roll that settled the child deeper between her hips. Rosalie winced, rubbing the skin stretched over her navel. Just a few more days now. She hoped.

“Is something amiss?” Raymond frowned. “Really, sweetheart, you should be in bed. The midwife said—”

“That I could be up and about until the pains start.” Rosalie’s mouth twisted. “The labor pains, that is. General pain started about eight months ago.”

“I won’t be long today,” Raymond assured her. “I just need to situate the children with a cadre of supervisors. And hire a handful of new farmhands. And I never got my seed drill last year.”

“But you did get your ditch.” Rosalie smiled. “And your wife.”

“Two out of three is acceptable, I suppose.” Raymond grinned, then turned to his siblings. “Are you two ready?”

Nate and Tabitha all but skidded over to Raymond.

Rosalie swallowed the tender swell in her chest. It was a relief to see the children excited and playful. This past year had been difficult for them. First, there was the cold of February, when their mother died, followed by the confusing stretch of spring when Raymond and the earl had remained at an awkward impasse about what to do with the children.

By June, it was clear to all parties that Nathaniel and Tabitha were best off at Raymond and Rosalie’s new London residence on Hill Street. They saw their father once a week during the Season, and everyone was largely in residence at Morrow Woods come autumn.

It wasn’t a conventional arrangement. Raymond and Fordham frequently clashed over the children’s upbringing, mostly due to Fordham’s unwillingness to hold the children to any sort of accountability.

But today, none of that mattered.

An autumn fair, after all, wasn’t the sort of day for conventional arrangements.

“Before you go,” Rosalie called, “We need to finish your pippin charms.”

“Rosalie…” Raymond started.

“Let me have my fun.” Rosalie held up one hand. “I’ll be bedridden soon enough. But first, I’m going to tell your siblings who they are destined for.”

“Do Nate first,” Tabitha declared, crossing her arms. “I want to see how it works.”

“Me?” Nate looked revolted. “Don’t bother. I’m destined for nothing but—”

“I implore you not to finish that sentence,” Raymond interrupted. “The less I know the better.”

Rosalie smiled, slowly sliding the tip of her paring knife under the skin of Nate’s apple. She sliced a thin loop of apple peel, around and around in an unbroken ribbon.

“Ready, Nathaniel?”

He raised his eyebrows but begrudgingly spun in a circle as she recited the charm.

“Now throw it.”

He screwed up his face and hurled the peel into the garden. Tabitha raced off to examine the results.

“It’s…a U? No, wait. It’s a C, Nate!”

Tabitha ran back, her cheeks flushed in excitement.

“Your future sweetheart’s letter is C.”

“C?” He shook his head in disgust. “C for ‘Can’t catch me,’ maybe.”

The children tore off, shrieking.

“C.” Rosalie smiled. “How about that?”

“We’ll see.” Raymond kissed her temple.

“Yes.” Rosalie smiled again, rubbing her hand against her baby’s gentle thumps. “We most certainly will.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Thank you for reading A Day Until Forever! This novella serves as a prequel to my debut novel, Forever Your Rogue. Raymond appears as a side character in the novel, and once I finished writing it, I was inspired to go back and explore his story a little bit more. If you enjoy fake engagement, found family, and the utter reformation of a scoundrel, I hope you’ll check out Forever Your Rogue. It’s the story of a very grown-up (but still shockingly boyish) Nathaniel Travers and his own stubborn sweetheart, the widowed viscountess Cora Dane.

A Day Until Forever follows Raymond and Rosalie through a fictionalized and embellished interpretation of a turn-of-the-19th century harvest fair. While Halloween as we know it today wasn’t celebrated in the Georgian period (Guy Fawkes Day being favored), there were autumnal traditions in rural areas that celebrated the end of the harvest season, including hiring fairs and associated festivities. My story was inspired by a combination of this harvest fair tradition and the boisterous atmosphere of the traditional English wake (parish feasts that included a variety of business and entertainment: peddlers selling their wares, hiring new workers for the coming season, eating, drinking, music, dancing, and sport. Incidentally, sources indicate September–December was a popular time for wakes!)

While many of Raymond and Rosalie’s shenanigans would have been reasonable for a rural fair in the 1790s in Hampshire, I also drew from a few ancient Samhain customs that were much more prevalent in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. I intentionally included traditions that seemed most likely to transfer to rural England. Apples were important to the harvest season, and games such as bobbing for apples and snap-apple were popular across Britain, as were bonfires and fortune-telling games (yes, they really did involve pippins and cabbages!) As for Rosalie and Raymond’s ghoulish jack in-the lanthorns, I relied on William Holloway’s A General Dictionary of Provincialism (1840) which noted that carving scary faces into turnips was common boyish mischief during dark nights in Hampshire. 

References

Golden, P. “Fetes, Samhain, and More: Autumn Traditions in the 18th Century.” Paulette Golden, n.d., https://www.paullettgolden.com/post/autumn-traditions 

Kane, K. “Halloween in the Regency.” The Regency Redingote, 31 Oct 2014, https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/halloween-in-the-regency/ 

Malcolmson, R. W. (1979). Popular Recreations in English Society 1700-1850. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Morton, L. (2013). Trick Or Treat: A History of Halloween. United Kingdom: Reaktion Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erin Langston is a historical romance author who crafts Regencies with heart, heat, and humor. A librarian by trade, Erin lives in the Midwest with her husband and two children. When not working, writing, or mom-ing, she can be found outside, drinking wine, buried in a book, or attempting to home-improve. A not-insignificant portion of her first novel was plotted in the preschool pickup line.

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