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R obert Peterson, Duke of Thraxley, stared at the vision of beauty before him that he absolutely had to have been imagining.

It wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t. Perhaps the lake was creating a—a mirage?

Surely, that had to be the only explanation for precisely why the one woman he had always loved, always adored, always wished he could—

Well. She was here.

Miss Amethyst de Petras.

“Amethyst,” he breathed, before he could stop himself.

Damned foolish thing to say , Robert told himself sternly as color flushed into the beautiful woman’s cheeks. She knew her own name, after all.

She didn’t know his—not his new one. Not the title.

It had been, after all, two years since she had last walked out of his life. Away from this lake, away from all the promise of their future, of what they could have been…away from him forever.

Or so he had thought.

“R-Robert—I mean, Mr. Peterson.” Miss de Petras corrected herself hastily, her gaze dropping to the handle of her parasol, which had drifted to the sand.

He had not intended to do it, but what choice did he have? All his instincts drove him forward, begging him to step closer to the woman whose very presence made his mind forget himself.

Robert lunged forward, picked up the parasol, and held it out to her. “Miss de Petras.”

He really, he thought furiously, should remember how to say any word other than her name.

But how could he, when it had been her name that had been seared to his lips when he had fallen completely in love with her?

Amethyst’s cheeks were only going a darker shade of pink. “Your Grace,” she snapped, snatching back the parasol from him and immediately turning on her heels.

That was hardly going to be sufficient to deter him.

Despite the rapid pace that Amethyst had already begun, Robert swiftly surpassed it, moving to her side. “Amethyst, I cannot believe you are—”

“Go away,” came the clipped tones as the lady dipped the parasol to hide her face from him. “Leave me alone.”

Leave—leave her alone?

The very idea ricocheted through Robert’s heart and was immediately dismissed as something completely impossible.

Leave her alone? The only woman who had made him smile genuinely, rather than out of Societal obligation?

The woman who lingered in his dreams but apparently not by the lake where they had first declared their love?

The hell with that.

Robert reached out, grabbed the woman’s wrist, and forced her not only to halt in her tracks, but also to whirl around to face him. “Amethyst—”

“ Miss de Petras ,” she snarled, wrenching her arm free and glaring at him as though he had personally injured her.

He hadn’t grabbed her that hard. “After two years—”

“Yes, two years,” Amethyst shot back at him, her chest hitching. “Two years, Mr. Peterson!”

Ignoring the incorrect address—though it was painful, in a way, to see how clearly she had avoided news of him these last four and twenty months—Robert tried to see the kindness and softness in her eyes with which he had first fallen in love.

There. There it was. Deep in the pain, the shock of seeing him, something else indescribable that he could not articulate, there she was.

His Amethyst.

His shoulders relaxing, Robert blurted out, “I came back here last summer. Every day.”

“I don’t care what you—”

“You never appeared,” he said, cutting across her, trying to put into each syllable just a hint of the longing he had felt for her. “Never. But I waited.”

I waited for you.

That was what Robert wanted to say, but words were remarkably challenging to articulate when faced with a woman of such beauty.

Amethyst was not tall. She was not particularly slender, with curves that swelled far greater than what was fashionable.

She had no rosebud mouth, nor sparkling, dark eyes, which was what every young woman apparently wished for today.

Her hair did not curl naturally—he had learned that after they had gone for a clandestine swim in the lake, and all her curls had untangled, her hair streaming down her back.

She wore no jewels. Her gown was not embroidered with lace.

And she was the most beautiful woman Robert had ever seen.

She was also, currently, glaring at him. “Will you leave me walk in peace, sir?”

“It’s ‘Your Grace,’ actually.” The instant the words had left Robert’s mouth, he knew they had been poorly spoken. The last thing Amethyst, his Amethyst, needed was a reminder of just how much had changed between them.

The way her mouth fell open was enough to confirm that she had not heard the news. “‘Your-Your Grace’?”

Robert nodded, his heart hammering. If only he could wrest that parasol from her, it was better than a sword for parrying him back. If he could—

“But then—” Amethyst’s features softened, and the ire which had seared her expression as she had first beheld him melted away. “Not your father?”

Robert nodded again, this time because words would have been too painful. As the sun beat down and a gentle breeze ruffled the lake beside him, he tried not to think of the gaping hole in his life the loss of his father had created. “Eight months ago.”

“But—But he was a baronet, not a—”

“He died in an accident while visiting his elder cousin, the Duke of Thraxley. They died together. Boating accident.” Strange.

Robert had thought, when the news had first come, that he would never be able to speak of it without tears.

Now he could, though the dull ache in his chest had never quite gone away.

Until today. Until now, when it was replaced with a leap of hope at the sight of a figure whom he recognized intimately.

“So…So…So you are…” Amethyst did not appear to be able to speak.

Robert tried to smile. “The fourteenth Duke of Thraxley. With my father’s cousin having no heirs of his own, and now my father gone…yes. I am the Duke of Thraxley.”

It still felt foreign on his tongue, but nothing could be truly wrong with Amethyst before him. Robert’s gaze raked over the features he knew so well, seeking out any changes, anything that had altered in the woman he adored.

There was no change. Two years had not touched her, it seemed.

He could only hope that her affections were as unchanged…

“Well, I am very sorry for your loss,” Amethyst was saying softly, and she did sound truly sorrowful. “I always liked your father.”

“He liked you,” Robert said bracingly, and then with a little more optimism, he added, “and he always hoped that you and I—”

“I must return to the house,” Amethyst snapped, all sense of sympathy forgotten as she twirled her parasol on her shoulder. “Good day, Mr.—Your Grace.”

She had whirled around before Robert could think—but then he never could think properly when he was in Amethyst’s presence.

Oh, the first time he had seen her…he had thought it had been a dream.

The old Cabochon House was always empty—it had been empty for years—and so there had been no one to mind when he’d sauntered across his father’s estate and over the boundary into their neighbors’.

The lake was always cool, a blessing in summer when the unrelenting sun would give him no peace.

To dip within it, to lose oneself in its deep-blue waters, had always been—in Robert’s mind—one of the true joys of life.

That had been before that day, two years ago, when he had walked down to the lake and seen a woman standing in it, gown held above her knees, laughing as she’d kicked the spray into the sparkling sunlight.

In that moment, seeing her unadorned but unafraid, glorying in nature and relishing the freedom from Society’s rules that would surely never have permitted such behavior…

That was when Robert had first been in trouble.

And he was in trouble now. Amethyst was walking away from him and all the hopes and desperate dreams he had kept for himself the last four and twenty months were unraveling before him.

“Amethyst, wait!”

“I have nothing to say to you!” she shot over her shoulder, struggling to walk as swiftly as she clearly wished to over the shifting sand.

“Nothing?” Robert did not have to struggle to keep pace with her; his stride was longer and his boots more secure on the ground. “Nothing, after falling in love with me?”

Amethyst froze. The lake lapped the shore and a bird sang somewhere distant, but those were the only sounds in the air.

Other than their frantic breathing, of course.

Stay calm, man , Robert tried to tell himself. She avoided you for two years, and then she came down to the lake. There has to have been a purpose in her doing that. All you have to do is stay calm and measured and—

“I cannot believe you did not return last summer!” Robert burst out, his chest heaving and a small part of himself sobbing in a corner at how ridiculous he was being. “I thought what we had was something special, something—”

“So did I.” Amethyst’s eyes burned into him as she turned on him, parasol snapped shut and jabbed at him like a fencing foil. “I thought, all those walks, our conversation, the way you opened up to me—”

“Those kisses,” he reminded her with delight, choosing to ignore her anger and hoping that it would swiftly dissipate—or turn into passion. That would be his preference.

Amethyst’s glare suggested that was most unlikely. “You abandoned me.”

“ You were the one who went back to London!” Robert could not help but point out.

It had felt a distance of a million miles at the time.

There he had been, no independent income, and there she had been, dependent on her family for support.

A wonderful family, of course. He had greatly enjoyed getting to know the de Petrases…

but still. Amethyst had been a dependent, moving from house to house at the whims of her cousins, caring for their children, helping to host their dinners…

Almost like a companion, not a cousin.

They had argued about it then. Amethyst had defended her family to the hilt, told him she never wanted to see him again, and that he was a lout for inferring she was anything but a willing servant to her family’s needs.

Robert shifted his feet as the rest of the memory returned. And then she had kissed him like the devil.

“I have no wish to see you. I am not certain I can make myself any more clear,” the Amethyst of right now said curtly. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“I don’t understand.”

He had not thought that it would be those words, of all the things he had already said, that would give her pause, but pause, she did. Amethyst had turned to the path that would lead her through the Cabochon House gardens, but she halted, slowly revolving on the spot back to him.

“You don’t understand?”

Robert shook his head. That felt safest.

“You don’t understand,” said Amethyst quietly, stepping toward him with an elegant sort of menace, “why I am upset to see you? Why it pains me to encounter a man who made so many promises but then left me, ignored me for two long years?”

It did not make sense—none of this was making sense.

Though it could not have been clearer that she was truly hurt by him, Robert was not entirely sure what she had expected him to do.

What options had he had, other than the one he had taken—an option that she, as a matter of fact, had not agreed with?

“So tell me.” Robert had not intended to speak, but how could he stop himself? After so much longing, after so long… “Why did not you reply to my letters?”

Amethyst’s breath hitched in her throat. “Letters?”

“Yes, my letters. I wrote one a week every week for…well, over a year.” Trying to smile, he continued. “I halted once my father and his cousin died. I…I had obligations I could not ignore then. But I hoped, when I had been writing them, that you would deign to reply.”

“Letters?” she repeated, staring at him as though the English language were new to her.

“Yes, letters,” said Robert, his smile genuine now.

“You know, square or rectangular paper things, they come through the post? I assumed that whomever you were living with—Her Grace the Duchess of Glaenarm, was it? Or the Marchioness of Swindmore? Your cousins, they were always so kind—I assumed they advised you not to write back, that it wouldn’t have been proper, as we were neither family, nor betrothed.

It wasn’t as though I could offer you anything. ”

Not at that time , he wanted to say, but he managed to hold back. No, two years ago, I was a penniless son of a penniless baronet.

Not any longer.

But Amethyst was still fixing him with a most odd expression. As though he were saying nonsense. As though his words were utterly incomprehensible.

“Letters,” she repeated again, her exquisite brow furrowing. “I…I did not receive any letters.”