Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

G reen spaces were a refuge for Lillian, and always had been. The color steadied and calmed her. Her spirits lifted at the sight of flowers in bloom, whether they were stately cultivars lining a parterre or a hedge of spreading bellflower back home. The linden and wych elm around her family’s cottage had been, in summers, the castles she hid beneath as she drew and dreamed of the places she’d travel as a botanist of note.

She liked best when the whole Vale of Glamorgan lay in its emerald cloak before her, and a whole day with nothing but her boots and her bonnet, her notebook and pencil, a bun and a piece of fruit in her pocket and the occasional scoop of water from a laughing stream. But even an herb garden would do in a pinch, when she needed a breath of real air.

Her uncle’s garden behind Gower House was a pocket of life-giving green carved from the countryside and guarded as the city sprang up like mushrooms all around. Lillian knew the disposition of every plant—had placed a number of them herself, in the newer beds—and the orderliness was a balm to her nerves.

Less so the man walking the small brick path with her. Westrop was taller than she, like most men, and unobtrusively elegant in a blue superfine coat, gray pantaloons, and boots. The fall of his cravat said that either he couldn’t be bothered with such things, or that he had spent patient hours arranging his neckcloth to communicate careless ease with his own attractions.

These attractions were many. She looked away.

“You expect this reaction from everyone?” Lillian asked.

They’d left her aunt to gloat over a stream of callers of more quantity and greater note than she was accustomed to accommodating. Lillian worried what story Aunt Giles would spin to explain Westrop’s sudden and fantastical proposal. Lillian herself couldn’t bear to sit there nibbling pound cake while London’s most notorious gossips demanded to know what she had done to enchant Waringford’s nephew.

She couldn’t explain the circumstances herself, other than that she moved through some delirious waking dream. For here was this splendid-looking man beside her, strolling through the garden, and though London’s gray-blue sky vaulted above her, she couldn’t seem to find enough air to draw a proper breath.

“You uncle didn’t seem perturbed by news of our betrothal.” Westrop rubbed the saw-toothed lobe of a tansy leaf, then sniffed his glove. “When, by rights, he ought to have had some warning of my intentions, in your father’s stead.”

Lillian laughed as he wrinkled his nose. “My uncle, bless his heart, has little regard for gossip. He cares for no one’s opinion but his own.”

“Admirable. Why is your aunt not pleased by my offer?”

She liked his voice, a pleasant tenor. It put her in mind of her favorite dessert, roasted pears swimming in shrub, a kind of brandy wine that their housekeeper back in St. Athan made.

She paused to pull a tansy that had forayed into the wall germander. “Little I do pleases my Aunt Giles.” Now she smelled as he did: bright, medicinal. The scent would keep away pests.

“Does she want better prospects for you?” He regarded her curiously.

What could be a better prospect than him? Lillian decided she didn’t care to catalogue her defects for this man. Let him detect them on his own, as did others.

“Rather she expects I shall have no prospects. She disapproves of my eccentricities, which my uncle encourages, as you’ve seen. She was hoping, I think, that you might think twice about me and decide to offer for Hester.” Lillian glanced down the tidy garden paths, paved with brick. “Hex, are you out here?”

“Not listening.” Her cousin’s voice drifted from behind the dwarf peach in an opposite corner of the garden. “Mama sent me out here to make sure he doesn’t take liberties. That sounds like something I’d prefer not to see.”

“We won’t offend your sensibilities, dear.”

Westrop raised his brows. “Your aunt simply assumed I might transfer my affections?”

Lillian raised her brows in return. “I imagine it’s quite clear that no one’s affections are engaged in this scenario.”

He resumed walking, brushing past a tulip tree in bloom, the yellow blossoms opening like cupped hands. “You won’t entertain the possibility that I saw you in my library and fell head over spurs at the sight of you.”

Lillian snorted. She’d been admonished time and again by her aunt not to make this sound in company, but the occasion warranted. “Pray do not give that out as your reason.”

“We could. I perceived your abundant attractions, and I acted impetuously. Anyone who detects the same charms will commiserate.”

“That you acted impetuously, I can acknowledge.”

“But do not approve,” he noted.

“I cannot blame you. You were about to be affianced against your will to Miss Ponsonby, who likely doesn’t know a long barrow from a cursus.”

He stared. “If you know the difference between a long barrow and a cursus, Miss Gower, no one of my acquaintance will be surprised by my pursuit of you.”

She faltered, her shoe turning on a brick that had heaved itself up from the path. The notion of pursuit struck her as dangerous. Particularly by him.

“I was raised by antiquarians, Mr. Westrop.”

“And I hope to become one. What a marvelous fit I will make for your family.” He grinned at her, unabashed, the rogue.

“We are not affianced,” Lillian reminded him. She had disturbed the border of sweet William and the scent rose to her nose, cinnamon spice.

She assumed he’d come to cry off, lay out the reasons, already clear to her, why it was absurd to consider a man like Westrop would harbor any interest in unremarkable Lillian Gower. She wasn’t a woman men courted. She was a girl a boy might steal away for furtive touches, pressing himself against her through her skirts when he could lure her into a dark corner, then ignoring her when the rest of the excavating team was about.

She’d never felt a man’s touch like Westrop’s hand on her bottom. The move had been nothing more than a reflex, yet the shape of his palm, firm, long-fingered, branded her flesh, her brain. The heat girdling her hips was not embarrassment.

Westrop clasped his hands behind his back as he walked. This broadened his shoulders beneath his coat, bringing attention to the circumference of his upper arms. She knew men could pad the shoulders of their coats, but the arms? Of course, a man of the upper classes, who no doubt ate well and lifted nothing heavier than a full glass of drink to his lips at dinner, might well be rounded. Well -rounded. Lillian sniggered at her own joke.

“You accepted my hand before the company last night. I recall a distinctly resigned ‘very well.’ I admit, not the breathless excitement a man hopes to elicit from his bride, but one must work with the tools one has.”

She squinted her eyes at him. “You may very well elicit such a response from the woman you choose to make your bride, sir. But we both know our engagement is a ruse.”

His gaze moved over her face, taking in every line, as if he were memorizing her features. Or attempting to peer beneath her surface.

Lillian felt more bricks rolling beneath her feet. His hair was a deep russet, dark and thick, but his eyes were pale green. The contrast was rather striking.

“What if it were not a ruse?” he asked softly.

Her cheeks burned like a harvest bonfire. “An engagement in truth? What would that gain us?”

He couldn’t intend an actual engagement, with an actual wedding at the end of it. She knew nothing of his nature and little of his circumstances. Marriage would disrupt her plans for her life. She meant to spend the summer focusing on her publication, getting her pages in order and finding a publisher. Come winter, she would be helping her parents catalogue and publish their findings about Stonehenge, then preparing for the next excursion, and she sincerely hoped they would take her with them this time.

Lillian was not made to be a hostess, like her Aunt Giles, though that would be required from the wife of a Westrop. She knew basic housekeeping, due to the simple fact that her mother didn’t, and somebody had to supervise their small staff. She knew a great deal about the latest botanical publications, and the process of making botanical engravings.

She knew next to nothing of conjugal relations. The kind that took place between a man and a woman after the marriage vows had been sealed. Her heart rapped inside her chest, her breath halting at the notion of such intimacies. With him.

He broke the eye contact that had held for far too long and looked about him. “This is a very interesting garden.”

He was not ready to reveal his reasons, then. Or giving himself time to invent some.

“Uncle is very proud of it. We have plants from all over the world.”

She pointed out each section. “There, where we came in, with the tansy and cypress, that is the Italian garden. Next is the German garden, the Spanish garden, and the Dutch. Over here we have the English garden, the Oriental garden, and the Americas, North and South. He is considering a place for Australia, though I don’t know where we’ll put it.”

She clasped her hands together so she stopped looking like a windmill, arms twirling. “That is why you found me with Forster’s volume. My uncle only has the quarto, but your uncle purchased the folio, where the engravings are much larger, and I can get a better sense of the plants.”

“Are you a gardener, Miss Gower? A budding apothecary?”

That twitch to his lips was fascinating. She must stop looking at his mouth.

“Nothing so practical. I am merely interested in the construction of a plant, and its artistry. I leave it to others to define their properties and functions.”

“An artist.” She detected politeness. It was for men to have the challenging discussions about taxonomy and definition. It was for women to furnish lovely watercolors that could occupy a space on the wall.

She gave him a decisive nod. She was a botanical artist, and he had best know this about her. “Yes.”

“Is that a glasshouse?” In repose, his face was comely, cast in classical lines. Kindled with delight, his features were arresting.

“My uncle’s design. He took inspiration from Mary Eleanor Bowes’s orangery at Gibside. He also took many cuttings and seeds from her, including that dwarf peach sheltering Hester.”

“May I see inside?”

His tone, his look, his very attention were a seductive combination. Lillian was not accustomed to men taking an interest in anything of hers beyond her bosom. She had shown the house to friends in town, female friends, but had not realized how tiny the space was until Westrop stepped into it with her.

She reminded herself she was not seducible. Not anymore.

“This must be a terrible indulgence, with the glass tax.” He surveyed the plants lining the wooden walls with their large windows on all sides.

“The roof is glazed glass as well.” Lillian pointed.

“How do you keep it so warm?”

He took off his hat and wiped a bead of sweat pearling on his forehead. He had a broad, intelligent brow, his hair sweeping back from a slight widow’s peak, and the trace of slight lines suggested that brow was often wrinkled in thought. Lillian resisted the urge to wipe away a bead he had missed. Was she taking leave of her senses?

“A hypocaust system. Braziers of charcoal beneath the floor, and basins of water to create steam for moisture.”

“That’s a good amount of work for someone.”

She was surprised he would think of it. “We have a boy who is mostly employed to fetch water for the house and garden, keep the braziers stocked on cold days, and keep the paths trimmed and swept. The one we have now seems to like the work.”

And having a place to sleep. She wouldn’t discuss the circumstances in which she had found the child, not with a gentleman of Westrop’s stature. It was Lillian’s experience that gentlemen of his stature made it a point not to acquaint themselves with the problems of the lower classes.

He fingered the sunburst of a grape leaf, one of the vines clambering along the northern exposure.

“Bacchus,” Lillian offered. “One of Uncle’s favorite wines. He says if he produces his own, he won’t have to pay a wine merchant to adulterate his drink.”

“I sympathize. Is that pineapple?”

“Uncle adores them. This is my pet.” She showed him the dwarf olive in its wheeled wooden tub.

“You enjoy olives?”

“Enjoy is a mild term. I am greedy about them. This is a Manzanilla that Uncle had brought from Seville just for me. The thing flowered madly a few weeks ago, but I have yet to see drupes. It may be it won’t fruit in a container, which would be a pity.”

“You would have to move to a sunny clime to enjoy your olives then,” he agreed.

“Perhaps I could persuade my parents to excavate at Pompeii. It would be a dream of theirs to go.”

His eyelid twitched in response to this notion, but he diverted his gaze to the worktable. “What are you working on?”

“Cuttings of Uncle’s Brunswick fig. It bears well, and the fruit is quite tasty. He gifts plants to his favorites.”

Suddenly Westrop was quite close. He was not so tall that she couldn’t fall into his gaze, intent, assessing. Moisture prickled across her skin. It was hot in the glasshouse.

“I want a cutting.”

Her heart gulped. “You shall have to become a favorite, then.”

What a fool she was. A handsome man stepped close to her, silver flame in his eyes, and every thought left her head. She couldn’t have come up with her own name if asked.

“We are betrothed. That ought to qualify me.”

“You haven’t persuaded me why we ought to proceed with our supposed engagement.” Her heart staggered inside her chest, a goat trying to find its feet on a rockfall.

His breath touched her cheek, and tiny hairs on her nape lifted. He smelled wonderful, the herbal tang of the tansy with something beneath that she couldn’t identify but found enormously heady. Bars of silver stood out against the light green of his eyes.

“Might I kiss you?”

The breath whooshed from her body. “Absolutely not. Hester could see. My aunt would learn of it.”

It would give him an unfair advantage. His lips looked delicious, the top lip with a firm and decided slant, the lower soft and full. Both sides turned up at the corners.

“We are alone, Miss Gower. Most compromising. Unless we are affianced.”

“For what purpose?”

He leaned back and she sighed, light-headed. Alarm receded that this potent man might actually kiss her, the first real kiss of her life. In its place came a twinge of disappointment, which she quickly shoved away.

“To quell the gossip, first and foremost, that we stirred up with our performance last evening.” He nodded in the direction of the house.

“It is only gossip. The judgment of others can have little impact on your prospects.”

His prospects, at least. It was a different matter for her. She wondered if that reality had touched his mind.

“You shall guard me from the advances of Ponsonbys, junior and senior. You shall be my shield maiden. My aegis.”

Any other woman could serve those purposes. He had no particular interest in her. Lillian turned toward the table and its fragmented plants.

“And what are the advantages to me in acquiring a betrothed?”

“Hmm.” He stepped closer. She had nowhere to back away from the effects of his nearness. Warmth. Heady scents. That intensifying prickle beneath her skin.

“The usual things gentlemen afford ladies when they are courting. Someone to hold your parasol while we stroll in the park.”

“I visit the park with my sketchbook and a bag to carry any interesting specimens. I rarely carry a parasol.”

“Then you have need of me. What else? A partner for dancing and suppers.”

“We do not venture out to very many entertainments. Hester—” She changed tack. “I find too many events in a week overwhelming.”

“I shall protect you from all the unwanted suitors throwing themselves at you in your library.”

She snorted again, the sound erupting before she could contain herself. “Are you fit for the task? There are a great many so inclined.”

He grinned, and the effect was devastating. “I shall enjoy the exercise.”

He was delighted to have made her laugh. That disarmed her as nothing else could.

“You must be serious, sir. You made a desperate appeal, and I could not let you drown. But I imagined you would call on me today to explain why we are both best advised to continue in our separate ways, and I would agree.”

That considering glance again, too close an appraisal of her upswept hair, her face, her neck. The evaluation moved down her figure, then back up, and it was that—the return journey—that made her feel undressed.

Her nipples hardened beneath her stays. He had asked to kiss her.

“I made a public offer,” he said softly. “I cannot jilt you now. It would injure my claim to be a gentleman.”

She swallowed through a suddenly dry mouth. “I can do the jilting.”

Her reputation might not survive the blow, but then again, she was not in search of a husband. In some future, distant time, if anyone materialized into that role, they could laugh together about that time in her reckless youth when she had, as a pretense, accepted the suit of a marquess-in-waiting.

“Miss Gower. What would persuade you to accept my hand? Or, at the least, a betrothal of some duration?”

She drew a deep breath, watched as his eyes dipped to her bodice before he wrenched his gaze back to hers. “You might help me publish my florilegium ,” she blurted.

He tilted his head. “Your?—”

“A florilegium is a collection of flower illustrations?—”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I have made a study of the Cypripedioideae . You would know them as the lady’s slipper orchids. My favorite is the genus Cypripedium .”

His expression turned into a polite mask, calculation behind it. “Indeed?”

“You haven’t seen one? It’s a very elegant plant. Linnaeus himself classified it. And Richard Salisbury discussed four of the species in a talk he gave to the Linnean Society. It’s printed in the Transactions , but the text is in Latin, and the ink drawings, while very fine, are not colored. My book is in English and has colored plates. It could be enjoyed by far more people.”

He stared at her, and a tight loop pulled around her middle, like an ill-fitting gown. “There are many people researching orchids, I know. They hold an ancient fascination. Some think they are magical.” She licked her lips, her mouth dry again. “I’ve made a close study of the plants around my home. All I need to finish my collection is to confirm a few facts about the Cypripedium calceolus , and…”

And that was all. She had this one thing to contribute. This single dream.

“Why would you require my assistance to publish?”

Sweat rolled down the back of her neck. “My uncle has agreed to help sponsor my publication, but all the printers I have approached want to publish under his name.”

“And?”

Of course she would have to explain it to him. He was a man.

“I want to publish under my own.”

He cocked his head to the other side. “Why haven’t your parents made this happen already?”

“I don’t expect to see them until the winter season sets in. Besides, they publish their works in the Archaeologia, the journal of the?—”

“Society of Antiquaries. I know it.”

“My parents have no printing contacts, certainly not in London.”

“And you suppose I do?” His mouth curled, but it wasn’t derision. He looked at her as if she’d removed a mask and he was seeing her face for the first time.

She twisted her hands together to keep from waving them in the air. “You are a Westrop. You are related to Marquess of Waringford. People will at least listen to you.”

His eyelids tensed, fine lines fanning from their corners. He didn’t like the reminder of his status. Well, if it appeared she was being calculating, she was. She’d seen the way people approached him last evening. He was presumed heir to a marquessate, his family was an old and established one, and he no doubt had wealth piled in every room of the ancestral home back in—Wiltshire, she had heard. A printer who saw this man strolling into his shop would prepare a far different reception from the one that met plain Miss Lillian Gower, daughter and heir of no one.

“And if I assist you in your endeavor, you will agree to pretend we are engaged?”

She swallowed the several objections that swelled to her tongue. How long he expected this to carry on. What it would require of her. What would happen to her when it ended.

What would happen to her if she had more of these mad, fleeting wishes that his interest in her could be real .

“I will consent.”

He gave her a slight bow. “Miss Gower, this sounds a worthy enterprise. I would support your endeavor were I not your intended, but since I have that honor, I will do everything in my power.”

“Thank you.”

She could only explain what came next by the fact that she was giddy. The relief, the excitement, the sheer hope made her lose her head. Those must be the reasons her inhibitions so thoroughly deserted her.

She rose on her toes and kissed him.

A fast, firm kiss, like the peck of a bird. She wasn’t at all certain how to go about it. The one boy who’d touched her had not paid any attention to her lips, but she had seen her father swoop a kiss to her mother’s cheek or mouth plenty of times when he thought no one was looking, and the mechanics of it weren’t difficult. A lift to her tiptoes, a quick press of her closed mouth against his.

A jolt like a knock on the noggin, the contact surprising, searing. She jammed back on her heels, certain her eyes were as wide with surprise as his.

“Thank you,” she said again. How breathless she sounded, her voice misting from her mouth.

His shoulders bunched, and he forced his hands to his sides. She wondered if that meant she was atrocious at kissing.

“It is I who must thank you,” he said softly.

Embarrassment crept up her neck. She already knew she blushed the color of the dogwood blooming in the English garden.

“We ought to emerge. Hester will be worried.”

“Worried that my attentions will stay firmly affixed to you?”

She paused outside the door to look back at him. He would be near Hester for extended periods for the foreseeable future. “Hester is not interested in men. She is—special.”

His eyebrows rose. “A sapphist?”

She didn’t know what that was. “She is young in heart and, well, mind. Her sensibility is not that of a girl her age, and we don’t know if she shall ever mature in that respect. But we— I —completely adore her, and I won’t have her hurt or made fun of.”

This was where another man would demand further explanation and exhibit scorn or ridicule. He would suggest something they could do, or hadn’t done, as if her cousin were a problem to be fixed. He would thereafter treat Hester as if she did not understand English, speaking in a loud and exaggerated manner to her, and he would take care to use bewildering vocabulary and make references she wouldn’t understand, enjoying himself at her expense.

Lillian’s heart nose-dived into her house slippers, which she hadn’t thought to change before she came outside, and now they were no doubt soiled.

“Excellent,” Westrop said. “Another way I might prove useful to you—as your cousin’s champion.” He lifted his voice to direct it over Lillian’s head. “Miss Giles, I can swear I have taken no liberties. Are you ready to rejoin the company?”

Hester stepped out of the path leading to South America. “I saw five bees on the peach blossoms,” she reported.

“Did you?” Lillian jumped at the chance to turn away from Westrop. “That one hasn’t produced fruit yet. I’ve been waiting to see if the plant is self-fertile, or if I need to breed it with the nectarine in the Spanish garden.”

Westrop caught her gloved hand in his. “Miss Gower, I beg you to desist. If you are to continue talking of fertilization and fruiting, I cannot be responsible for what I might do.”

“Of course. I’m boring you.” She sensed the dogwood blush spreading to her ears. She had been mistaken to think he shared her interests simply because he had been curious about the glasshouse. Men wanted women to be demure and dimpled, and they did not want to hear about species and genus. Aunt Giles had told her this a thousand times.

A vein of rebellion rose within her. She was tired of restraining herself to try to attract a man. He had insisted she proceed with a spurious betrothal; he might as well understand what he had bound himself to.

“Linnaeus defined the Prunus family, you know, but it was Mr. Philip Miller, who was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, who settled on the genus persica , since the plants were first cultivated in Persia and brought to Greece by Alexander the Great. For that reason Uncle placed it in the Oriental garden, but I proposed moving it to Spain because if indeed it requires a second tree to reproduce, then?—”

She stopped when Westrop tugged her close. Close enough that she could detect the dark spots of stubble along his jaw. His breath smelled of mint. She’d noticed that when she kissed him.

“Miss Gower, I warned you.”

Was he going to kiss her now? She panicked.

“You’re standing too close. Mother won’t like it,” Hester remarked. “Do you mean we’ll have peaches this year?”

“If we’re fortunate.” Lillian stood dazed as Westrop stepped away. She grasped for her thoughts, suddenly scattered. “ Prunus persica literally means Persian plum, which is amusing because the Romans, I understand, called the peach the Persian apple. The French called it péche , hence the English word. I wonder when they were first brought to England, since Miller mentions them in his Gardener’s Dictionary . I shall have to sketch the flowers while they are in bloom.”

“And hope we have peaches,” Hester said. “Cook could create her own recipes. Persian apple compote. Persian apple tart.”

“Persian apple flummery,” Westrop said, holding Lillian’s hand.

Hester countered him without missing a beat. “Persian apple cake.”

“Persian apple pastille.”

Hester pulled a face. “No pastilles. Persian apple fritters, perhaps.”

“Persian apple preserves.”

“Persian apple custard?” Lillian tried to enter the game.

“Outrage,” Westrop reproved at the same time Hester wrinkled her face.

“Disgusting. You’re eating that yourself.”

“Persian apple cream, I will consider.” He pretended to look down his nose, and Lillian couldn’t help it. She dissolved into laughter.

She stopped when Westrop pulled her close again and held her while Hester proceeded into the house, singing to herself, “Persian apple biscuit, Persian apple fluff.”

Lillian sobered completely when Westrop leaned toward her and, with the same swift pecking motion with which she had kissed him, buried his nose briefly in her hair.

In her hair. Lillian held perfectly still while something swooped and dove in her belly, wings fluttering like a bat’s.

“I consider myself a gentleman,” he muttered. “But you, Miss Gower, are going to push me to the bounds of my restraint.”

That must be a terrible thing, yet it didn’t sound terrible. It sounded exciting.

This would not do. She was Lillian the steady, Lillian the prop, Lillian the balm that helped everyone else in the family go along in their course. She could not be that for her family if she lost her head over a man and an attachment that had no basis in reality, was merely fabricated to save him from the machinations of mothers and Ponsonbys.

Whatever sounder, deeper reasons he had for fixing on her, he had not yet found it in him to reveal.

Yet here she was, not pulling away from him, rather walking unsteadily toward her own doom, singing like a martyr of old.

“I suppose you ought to call me Lillian, as we are pretending to be affianced.”

“And you must call me Leo.” He gazed into her face with a combination of gentleness and wonder, and she couldn’t bear it.

“Leo?” The name suited him perfectly. Strong, magnificent, a king among men. “I thought your name was Gideon.”

“My first name. My second given name is Leonidas, after a different progenitor. I prefer it.”

“Gideon was successful,” Lillian argued as she led him into the house. “Leonidas died.”

“Ah, but his sacrifice was heroic. Gideon killed for spite, as I see it. Leonidas protected his home, and he sacrificed himself for his men.”

“Gideon lived to old age and fathered seventy sons. Leonidas had his corpse beheaded. An outrageous insult.”

“And the death of Leonidas inspired the Athenians to fight more fiercely. Thus there was a Greece for Alexander to bring his Persian apples into, rather than it being Persia already. You must stop speaking of reproduction.”

“It isn’t ladylike, I know. But you’ll find little about me is.”

His gaze dropped to her bosom, but not in the furtive, lascivious way so many men looked at her. Nor was his gaze drawn against his will. He was making a point.

She laughed, and was gratified to see his eyes flare as her bosom moved. She only hoped he could not see how his perusal had made a steel band spring up around her chest, pressing her in. “That is the only part, I’m afraid.”

His brows rose mischievously. “Not the only part.”

This conversation was terribly indelicate. Heat rushed downward to her belly and legs, to another part of her she knew was incontrovertibly associated with the female sex.

This would not do.

“I was speaking of your lips,” he said sanguinely. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

“No.”

He nodded. “Later, then.”

The heat spread to her cheeks. “Not at all. It was highly improper of me. I won’t abuse your person again.” One swift graze had made her want to kiss him again. She would not give in again to a man’s fevered needs. She could not set her foot in that snare.

“Miss Gower. My Lillian.” He raised the hand he held and placed it against his chest, above his heart. There were several layers of fabric there, his shirt, his very well-fitting waistcoat, his beautifully cut coat. But she absorbed heat and firmness and pure masculine strength. The top of her head floated away.

“If you are going to rend my heart by jilting me when you are finished with me and your florilegium, then I have but one request. Kiss me as often as you can before you kill me. Abuse me utterly—ravish me well and thoroughly, I beg of you—before you cast me away.”

“Oh, do not be absurd.” She ducked her head and strode down the hall to the parlor where her aunt still entertained her guests, all of them wanting to know what axis of the world had tilted to make a man like Mr. Westrop offer for a girl like Lillian Gower.

She’d be dragged through the brush over this, she saw already, and be lucky to come out on the other end with her dignity intact. There would be no succumbing to the man’s temptations. She had made a bargain for her florilegium; that was all.

She could not afford for this man to change the fabric of the life she had carefully constructed. Her safe, quiet, harmonious life.

But with the touch of his lips still tingling hers, Lillian feared something had already worked its way within her, some alchemy changing her on the inside, and it might already be impossible to go back to what she had been.