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I t was such a warm night that the servants had been instructed to open the double doors onto the south lawn and put out chairs for the family and guests to take advantage of the pleasant evening.

It wasn’t dark yet—the sun was heading toward the horizon, but it would be another hour or more before it was full dark.

As soon as he entered the drawing room, Beroald looked for Fenella, but she wasn’t in the room—she was out on the lawn with a croquet mallet in her hands, knocking a ball through multiple hoops with gusto, to the applause of the ladies watching and an exclamation of mock annoyance from her opponent, Lady Ava.

With the appearance of the gentlemen, the game was abandoned, and the youngest female members joined the rest of the group.

Beroald did not make a conscious decision to move in her direction, yet he found himself standing beside her and asking if she cared to take a stroll around the lawn.

She smiled up at him and tucked her hand in his arm with an alacrity that made him dizzy. He had lost his wits that afternoon at the lake, and he had not recovered them.

“Tell me of the ships you have served on,” she demanded, and he obliged.

Fenella listened with rapturous attention to his stories, which stroked his male pride.

However, her questions were intelligent and to the point, and his impression of her as a mix of impish puck and a young lady mature beyond her years solidified.

He was in serious trouble here. She is too young, and yet.

.. she is perfect. His heart did an odd skip and leap in his chest.

Deciding he had monopolized the conversation enough, he turned the topic, asking about her yacht, on which subject she was only too happy to expound.

He was fascinated to listen to her describe the details of her pride and joy, and could see her climbing the rigging and turning the wheel like a regular salty.

Her passion for the sea was as strong as his.

He had met and conducted liaisons with several women in his long naval career, yet none had tempted him to marriage, but this lass—no woman, for Fenella, for all her lack of years, was a woman in every sense that mattered—she made him feel he had found his anchor at last. It made him realize in retrospect why he had felt there was something missing in all his other liaisons.

Including Elena. A stab of guilt at the thought of Elena threatened to drag down his mood, so he pushed it down, concentrating instead on the enchanting woman before him.

“I have decided I should like to try your paddleboard,” he said with a witless smile. He knew he was being ridiculous, a middle-aged fool, making an idiot of himself over a beautiful, vibrant young woman, and he couldn’t help it. She was so adorable he couldn’t think straight.

“Splendid!” She clasped his arm with both hands and leaned into him. “I shall be delighted to teach you.” She got a conspiratorial look and murmured, “Meet me at the lake at midnight and I will show you how it’s done!”

“We can’t do that!” he protested, horrified and fascinated at once.

“Yes, we can. It will be fun. It is so warm tonight we shan’t catch cold, and the moon will be full, for it was all but full last night. Plenty of light to see by. And no one will know or stop us. Oh, please?” she cajoled with a winsome smile.

Reflecting that he had well and truly taken leave of his senses, he found himself agreeing and discovered that they had passed a full hour in conversation without realizing it, for the tea tray was being produced.

After tea, he took his leave, and Fenella squeezed his hand meaningfully when he bade her good night. She murmured as he bowed over her hand, “Do not fail me.”

He nodded silently, meeting her earnest gaze. He had entirely lost his compass. He would walk off a cliff if this entrancing woman asked him to.

He wended his way home in a state bordering on catatonic euphoria.

Not since his first calf love had he felt this kind of dizzy delight.

Yet for all its similarities, he was aware of some stark differences.

Fenella was no mysterious siren or goddess.

She was delightfully open and down to earth.

He felt as if in some part of his soul, he had been waiting for her all his life.

He whiled away the couple of hours until midnight approached in aimless attempts to read.

Then—much to his servants’ surprise—he left the house again, dressed only in shirt, breeches, and boots and carrying a lantern and a satchel into which he had stuffed some towels, a blanket, a flask of whisky, and a flint.

Unlike Miss Eden, he was not so sanguine about relying on moonlight alone.

He did wonder briefly on his way to their rendezvous whether something would prevent her from keeping their assignation, but she was there before him, sitting on the bank, dressed, like him, in shirt and breeches, her arms round her knees and a bag beside her.

She sprang up at sight of him. “You came!” She flung her arms round him, not giving him time to do more than drop the satchel. He still had the lantern in one hand, as his other arm encircled her waist to hold her steady, while he lowered the lantern to the earth.

“Yes, I came. I wondered if something might stop you.”

She shook her head, her arms encircling his neck. “I snuck down the servants’ stairs and out via the stables. No one knows I’m not safely tucked up in bed.”

“You’re mad you know, and you’re making me mad, too.”

“I know, but isn’t it fun?” she said with an infectious smile.

The moonlight threw her features into sharp relief, a chiaroscuro work of art that stole his breath. “Yes, my dearest madcap,” he murmured. And because he couldn’t help it, he kissed her.

Her lips were every bit as soft and delicious as they had been that afternoon.

Was it mere hours since they had met? It felt like lifetimes.

His arms tightened round her slender form, and she melted against him, giving him back kiss for wicked kiss.

Somewhere in his hindbrain the voice of reason was trying to make itself heard.

But for once, the captain’s sensible self had been tied up and shoved in a closet.

When he broke the kiss to catch his breath, she stared up at him, her eyes big, dark pools, her breathing quick as his.

A shyness came over her then, he could see it in the way her gaze dropped, and he eased his tight hold on her, embarrassment flooding his chest as he realized how close he had come to forgetting how sheltered and—despite her forthright speech and manner—how innocent she was.

She waved at the paddleboard. “Shall we?”

“Of course,” he let her go and removed his boots before helping her get the heavy board into the inky black water limned with moonlight.

They plunged into the lake, sloshing though the shallows, pushing the paddleboard out before them, the oar lying in the center.

The silty floor of the lake rapidly fell away beneath their feet as the cool water rose up their bodies, until she was standing chest deep and he with the water just past his waist.

The velvet-dark sky above, scattered with pinpricks of stars and illuminated like a beacon by the full moon’s glow, showed no signs of clouds.

A warm breeze soughed through the trees edging the lake on one side, their sturdy trunks and limbs casting dark shadows edged with silver.

The scent of summer flowers mingled with the earth-damp smell of the water, and the cry of a bat startled them as it flew over their heads, outlined momentarily against the moon’s creamy white disk.

She laughed and shivered slightly. “What an adventure this is!”

“It’s insane,” he said, but couldn’t keep the sympathetic laugh from his tone.

She came to a stop and steadied the board. “Well, get on,” she waved to him.

“Will it take my weight?” he asked dubiously.

“Of course. Do you want me to show you how to mount?”

“Yes, please.”

“Very well. You lean over it like so,” she said demonstrating with a slight jump to get her torso onto the board.

“Then you swing your legs up to straddle it like this.” She swung her legs up, bringing them either side of board as she raised her body into a sitting position, and at the same time, swung the oar cross-wise onto her thighs.

“Then,” she said, bracing the oar across the board as she leaned forward and brought her knees up onto the board, “you kneel. Like so.”

The board wobbled a bit while she did this, but she seemed unfazed by that.

He grinned at her confidence. He had never met a woman like her.

Fenella’s courage was pure, a boldness born of the expectation that all would be well.

He knew a sudden powerful urge to protect her from the slings and arrows that life would inevitably bring her way.

“And the final maneuver,” she said, lifting a leg to place her foot with bent knee before her, still balancing her weight forward on the oar, still cross-wise but now on the board.

“You shift your weight forward and get your back leg under you, and—” she rose, straightening as she did it, “you stand up.” Using the oar for balance, she steadied herself.

“Voila!” She grinned down at him. “Then you simply paddle, keeping your balance, thus.” She demonstrated with a few strokes, bringing the board around in a circle back to where he was standing.

She then dismounted by simply jumping off into the water, which of course created waves and splashed him with the force of her impact. She surfaced with a laugh, pushing the hair from her face. “All right, your turn.”