It was impossible to keep her shoulder and arm from brushing against his on the narrow seat of the gig, Gwen discovered. It was impossible not to be aware at every moment of his powerful thighs alongside hers, encased in tight pantaloons, and of his large hands plying the ribbons.

He was wearing a tall hat today. It hid most of his hair and shaded his eyes. He looked less fierce, less military. He looked more attractive than ever.

Her physical response to his presence was a little unnerving since she had never really experienced it with any other man. Not even with Vernon. She had thought him gorgeously handsome and wondrously charming when they had first met, and she had tumbled very quickly and willingly into love with him. She had liked his kisses before they married, and she had often enjoyed the marriage bed after.

But she had never felt like this with Vernon or anyone else.

Breathless.

Filled with an exuberant energy.

Aware of every small detail with her senses. Aware that he was aware, though neither of them spoke during the journey. At first, she could not think of anything to talk about. Then she realized that she did not really need to talk at all and that the silence between them did not matter. It was not uncomfortable.

After a mile or two the lane sloped downward, and almost at the bottom of a long hill they turned onto an even narrower track in the direction of the sea. Soon even the track disappeared, and the gig bounced over coarse grass to the edge of the low cliff.

Lord Trentham got out to unhitch the horse and tether it to a sturdy bush nearby. He allowed it enough room to graze while they were gone.

He draped a blanket over his arm and handed her some cushions, as he had done when he took her into the garden two days ago, and he lifted her out and carried her down to the cove below along a narrow zigzagging path, across a gentle slope of pebbles, and onto flat golden sand. Long outcroppings of rock stretched out to the sea on either side of the small beach. It was indeed a private little haven.

“The coastline constantly surprises, does it not?” she said, breaking the long silence at last. “There are long, breathtakingly lovely stretches of beach. And sometimes there are little pieces of paradise, like this. And they are equally beautiful.”

He did not answer. Had she expected him to?

He carried her in the direction of a large rock planted firmly in the middle of the little beach. He took her around to the sea side of it and set her down on one foot, her back against the rock, while he spread the blanket over the sand. He took the cushions from her arms and tossed them down before helping her to sit on the blanket. He propped one cushion behind her back, plumped one beneath her right ankle, and folded the other beneath her knee. He frowned the whole while, as though his task required great concentration.

Was he regretting this? Had his invitation been impulsive?

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him. “You make an excellent nursemaid.”

He looked briefly into her eyes before standing up and gazing out to sea.

There was not a breath of wind down here, she noticed. And the rock attracted the heat of the sun. It felt more than ever like a summer day. She undid the fastenings of her cloak and pushed it back over her shoulders. She was wearing just a muslin dress beneath it, but the air felt pleasantly warm against her bare arms.

Lord Trentham hesitated for a few moments and then sat down beside her, his back against the rock, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee, his booted foot flat on the blanket, one arm draped over his knee. His shoulder was a careful few inches away from her own, but she could feel his body heat anyway.

“You play well,” he said abruptly.

For a moment she did not understand what he was talking about.

“The pianoforte?” She turned her head to look at him. His hat had tipped forward slightly on his head. It almost hid his eyes and made him look inexplicably gorgeous. “Thank you. I am competent, I believe, but I have no real talent. And I am not angling for further compliments. I have heard talented pianists and know I could practice ten hours a day for ten years and not come close to matching them.”

“I suppose,” he said, “you are competent in everything you do. Ladies generally are, are they not?”

“The implication being that we are competent in much but truly accomplished in little and talented in even less?” She laughed. “You are undoubtedly right in nine cases out of ten, Lord Trentham. But better that than be utterly helpless and useless in everything except perhaps in looking decorative.”

“Hmm,” he said.

She waited for him to be the next to speak.

“What do you do for fun?” he asked.

“For fun?” That was a strange word to use to a grown woman. “I do all the usual things. I visit family members and play with their children. I attend dinners and teas and garden parties and social evenings. I dance. I walk and ride. I—”

“You ride?” he asked. “After the accident you had?”

“Oh,” she said, “I did not for a long while after. But I had always enjoyed riding, and not doing so cut me off from much interaction with my peers and much personal pleasure. Besides, I hate not doing something simply because I do not have the courage. Eventually I forced myself back into the saddle, and more recently I have even forced myself to encourage my mount to a pace faster than a crawl. One of these days I shall actually allow it to gallop. Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beast if it is allowed the mastery.”

He was gazing with half-closed eyes at the incoming water. The sun was glinting off its surface.

“What do you do for fun?” she asked.

He thought about it for a while.

“I feed lambs and calves when their mothers cannot,” he said. “I work in the fields of my farm and particularly in the vegetable garden behind the house. I watch and somehow participate in all the miracles of life, both animal and vegetable. Have you ever smoothed bare soil over seeds and doubted you would ever see them again? And then a few days later you see thin, frail shoots pushing above the soil and wonder if they will ever have the strength and endurance to survive. And before you know it, you have a sturdy carrot or a potato the size of my fist or a cabbage that needs two hands to hold.”

She laughed again.

“And that is fun?” she asked.

He turned his head and their eyes met. His looked very dark beneath the brim of his hat.

“Yes,” he said. “Nurturing life instead of taking it is fun. It makes a man feel good here.” He patted a lightly closed fist against the left breast of his coat.

He was titled. He was very wealthy. Yet he worked on his own farms and toiled in his own vegetable garden. Because he enjoyed doing so. Also because it offered him some absolution for having spent his years as an officer killing men and allowing his own men to be killed.

He was not the hard, cold ex-military officer she had taken him for when they first met. He was … a man.

It was a thought that made her shiver slightly, though not from cold.

“How are you going to go about finding a wife?” she asked him.

He pursed his lips and looked away again.

“The man who manages my father’s business empire,” he said, “or mine, I ought to say, has a daughter. I met her when I went to London for my father’s funeral. She is very lovely, very well schooled in all the skills a woman would need to be the wife of a wealthy, successful businessman, very willing—as are her mother and father—and very young.”

“She sounds ideal,” Gwen said.

“And frightened to death of me,” he added.

“How old is she?” she asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Did you do anything to make her less frightened?” she asked. “Did you, for example, smile at her? Or at least not frown? Or scowl?”

He turned his eyes on her again.

“She was courting me,” he said. “Her parents were courting me. Why should I do the smiling?”

Gwen laughed softly.

“Poor girl,” she said. “Will you marry her?”

“Probably not,” he said. “Undoubtedly not, in fact. She would not be lusty enough for me. And my own lust would cool in a hurry if she were to cringe away from me in bed.”

Oh! He was deliberately trying to shock her. Gwen could see it in the hardness of his eyes. He thought she was mocking him.

“Then she will have had a happy escape,” she said, “even if she does not realize it. You need someone older, someone not easily intimidated, someone who will not cringe from your lovemaking.”

She looked deliberately back into his eyes as she spoke, even though it took a great deal of effort. She had no experience in this type of talk.

“I have relatives in London,” he told her. “Prosperous ones. Success in business seems to run in the family, though no one was quite as good at it as my father. They will be happy enough, I daresay, to introduce me to eligible women of my own sort.”

“Your own sort being middle-class women who may possibly derive fun out of getting soil beneath their fingernails,” she said.

“In my experience, Lady Muir,” he said, his eyes narrowing again, “middle-class women can be every bit as fastidious as ladies. Often more so, because for reasons I find hard to understand many of them aspire to be ladies. I have no plan to put my wife to work after I marry her—not work in the fields or barn, anyway. Not unless she chooses to involve herself. I once commanded men. I have no wish now to command women.”

Ah. This was not turning into the relaxing, perhaps slightly romantic afternoon she had anticipated.

“I have offended you,” she said. “I am sorry. There will be any number of eligible women only too eager to be introduced to you, Lord Trentham. You are titled and wealthy, and you have a hero’s reputation. You will be considered a great prize. And some women may not even be daunted if you scowl at them.”

“You are clearly not daunted,” he said.

“No,” she said, “but you are not courting me, are you?”

The words seemed to hang in the air between them. Gwen was very aware of the sound of the incoming tide, of the crying of gulls far overhead, of the intense gaze of his eyes. Of the heat of the sun.

“No,” he said, and he got abruptly to his feet and leaned back against the rock, his arms crossing over his chest. “No, I am not courting you, Lady Muir.”

He only wanted to bed her.

And she wanted to bed him. Everything in her eyes and the tense lines of her body told him that though she would surely deny it, even to herself, if he were to confront her with the fact.

Which he was not about to do.

He had some sense of self-preservation.

Bringing her here had been a ghastly mistake. He had known it from the first moment, even before he had carried her from the morning room to get ready for the outing.

For someone who had some sense of self-preservation, he appeared to have even more of a tendency toward self-destruction.

A puzzling contradiction.

She did not break the silence. He could not. He could not think of a mortal thing to say. And then he thought of one thing he could at least do. And that thought gave him something to say.

“I am going for a swim,” he said.

“What?” She turned her head sharply and looked up at him. She looked startled, and then her face lit up with laughter. “You would freeze. It is March.”

Nevertheless.

He pushed away from the rock and tossed his hat down onto the blanket.

“Besides,” she said, “you did not bring a change of clothes.”

“I will not be wearing clothes into the sea,” he told her.

That arrested the smile on her face—and brought flaming color to her cheeks. But she laughed again as he lifted his right foot to haul off his Hessian boot.

“Oh,” she said, “you would not dare. No, ignore that, if you please. You certainly would not be able to resist a dare, would you? No self-respecting man of my acquaintance ever would. Remove your boots and stockings, then, and paddle at the edge of the water. I shall sit here and gaze enviously at you.”

But after removing his boots and stockings, he shrugged out of his coat—not an easy thing to do without the help of his valet. His waistcoat came next, and she licked her lips and looked slightly alarmed.