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P recisely why the woman in his arms looked so outraged, Robert could not fathom.

“The—The Duchess of Thraxley?” she repeated, a most inexplicable look of outrage on her beautiful face.

“Yes. Well, it only made sense to—”

But Amethyst was tugging herself from his grip. “I cannot believe you did not tell me!”

Robert blinked. “Not tell you?”

It had been a courtesy, really. His father’s cousin’s widow—more like an aunt to him, these last few years—had had nowhere else to go, now that her husband had died and he, Robert, was now the Duke of Thraxley.

They’d had no children, a great sadness to them, and with his own father gone, Robert had known his mother would wish for some company.

The two ladies had been friends for years, after all, and there was plenty of room on the estate.

“I cannot believe that for a moment I was actually considering—” Amethyst cut herself off from what had sounded like a most promising statement and shot him with a glare that could have frozen the lake. “How dare you?”

“How dare—How dare I?” Robert spluttered, utterly at a loss. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Teasing me, pretending you still loved me!”

“I do still love you!” Bewildered was an insufficient term; this was ridiculous. What on earth was the woman talking about?

She was not merely talking now but striding away from him, around the shores of the lake, muttering in half sentences partly to herself and partly, it appeared, to him. “—hardly know what to think. Utterly ridiculous. And to think that I was thinking of—”

“Yes?”

Amethyst’s ire could have sunk ships. “Never you mind!”

“Well, I do mind!” Robert had not shouted, not exactly, but his words had echoed over the unshifting lake.

Mind…mind…mind…

When Amethyst looked up at him, it was most unexpectedly with tears in her eyes. “How can you mind, Robert? You… You’re married.”

Married.

Married?

Perhaps laughter was not the best reaction, but Robert had not thought, merely reacted.

Him, married?

Evidently, the laughter had not gone down well. With all the bravery that he remembered, Amethyst said quietly, “Yes, you can laugh. You continued on with your life, while I felt stuck in place.”

“Amethyst, I’m not—”

“I waited for you, and then when I realized you weren’t coming—”

“I’m not married,” Robert managed to say through her words.

“But…But…” Her pretty mouth puckered, caught on words that she evidently did not know how to say. “But you said—the Duchess of Thraxley!”

Oh, he was an idiot.

Trying not to smile, for it had been an innocent and genuine mistake, Robert said quietly, “I should have said the Dowager Duchess of Thraxley—my aunt. Well, sort of. She lives with my mother and myself now. She had nowhere else to go.”

For a heartbeat, maybe three, he just stood there and watched her take in the information.

Oh, God, but he had missed her. He had been a fool to stay away, to assume that her silence in correspondence had been because she’d had no wish to hear from him again. He had been a dolt indeed to presume that her heart had been wayward.

All that time that they had lost…

Amethyst swallowed. “The dowager duchess.”

“Yes,” Robert said quietly.

That was the thing with Amethyst. She was like the lake. She looked calm and serene—and she was, but she was also deep, with hidden depths full of life that were so rarely shared with another.

She let out a long breath. “You—You dolt! You let me think you had married!”

“It was a mistake and I rectified it as soon as I realized what on earth you were going on about,” Robert shot back with a smile.

She returned it, and the sun was warmer and the birdsong longer and—

“So you are…unmarried,” she whispered.

It almost broke his heart, hearing the way that she spoke. So hesitantly, as if with such concern, such worry that not only she would receive an answer that she did not like, but that the very asking of the question would offend.

Robert took a deep breath and leaned down to pull his boots off.

“What… What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going paddling,” he said cheerfully. “In the lake.”

When he straightened up, boots and socks removed, Amethyst’s jaw tightened. “You did not answer the question.”

Ignore the flutters in your chest. Ignore the way your stomach twists. Ignore the hope that is rising, rising, because you may have to woo this woman all over again.

But you have all summer…

“Amethyst de Petras, I am not married,” Robert said, offering out his hand. “Will you join me in the lake?”

Her hesitation cut him to the core, but he could understand it.

There had never been a question of it before, when they had laughed all day and lain on the lakeshore all night, spread out on a blanket and looking up at the stars.

Anything he had suggested, she had agreed to. Anything she had wanted, he had done.

Oh, Robert had known that the de Petras family had been worried.

They’d never met with a chaperone present, never had a formal arrangement.

This had been their special place, away from the prying eyes of Society, the wagging tongues.

But she’d had to tell her family eventually, and he could not blame them for their disapproval.

Amethyst was their ward, really, she had no other family—and he had no prospects to offer her.

But how could a man stay away from such a beautiful creature?

Amethyst glared, lifted her skirts to her knees, and stepped forward, pointedly ignoring the outstretched hand.

A smile crept across Robert’s lips. Oh, he had not forgotten a single part of her, but it was wonderful to once again be in the presence of the woman who always made his heart sing.

“It hasn’t changed,” she said.

Neither have you , Robert wanted to answer, but instead, he said, “You were worried it had?”

He followed her, his toes relishing the icy-cold water of the lake after the heat of the sand.

“I don’t know. After coming here every year for so long, it was strange, last summer, not to come here,” Amethyst said lightly, swishing her foot distractedly in the water. The hems of her skirts were getting wet at the back. She did not seem to notice.

“Why didn’t you come?” Robert could not help but ask. “I…I waited for you.”

Every day , he managed to stop himself from saying. Every day I came here, to the lake, and I waited for you. As the water waited, so did I, but you did not come. Even when I cried out to the heavens and made all sorts of bargains, you did not arrive.

Amethyst smiled ruefully. “My family—Aunt Opal, really—wanted to go back to Italy, where it all began for the family. We were there three months in the end. Emerald ended up giving birth there, and the baby came too soon to travel.”

Oh. That made sense. Robert found to his disquiet that he was a little unsettled by the truth.

“Did you think that I was avoiding you?” asked the far-too-perceptive woman beside him.

He could have lied. He did not bother. “Yes.”

“I probably was, in a way. Even if we had come to Cabochon House, I…” Amethyst swallowed. “I do not think I would have come down here.”

“You did today,” Robert pointed out.

“Today… Today, I wanted to be here. I felt pulled here, almost.” Her laugh was not nervous, but unsure. “Does that make any sense?”

“More sense than you can possibly know,” he confessed, resisting the instinct to reach out and touch her hand. It was so close, at her left, just hanging by her side as Amethyst ceased attempting to keep her gown dry and allowed it to float on the water.

If he just reached out…just reached out and took it…

Amethyst took his hand.

“I never stopped loving you, you know,” Robert said quietly. “Never.”

Her breathless laugh was half joyful, half sad. “Never is a long time.”

“It feels as though it has been an age since I saw you. Days upon days without you in them are days that no man should ever bear,” he continued, the words pouring out of him now, unable to be held back by the tide. “Amethyst, the way I feel about you—”

“Don’t.”

One syllable. That was all it took to utterly deplete him of all energy, all power.

Robert stared, trying to ignore the pain that rushed into his chest at the instant dismissal. She did not wish to hear of his affections. He did not wish to burden her.

“Don’t say it if…if you don’t truly mean it.”

Letting out the breath he had not known he’d been holding, Robert tried to take in what she had just said. Amethyst was looking at him with blazing eyes, the determination he knew so well of her tempered with fear.

Fear that he did not truly love her.

“I don’t—I don’t think I can bear it, hearing you say those things if you do not mean them. After wondering for so long,” Amethyst continued quietly, “after hoping for so long—I don’t think I could stand it, Robert, if you do not keep your promise this time.”

“I love you,” he said simply, affection for her swelling in his chest. “God, I have loved you almost from the first moment I saw you.”

“I don’t want poetic statements about—”

“I’ve loved you,” Robert said firmly, smiling into her pinched face, “from the first time we swam together in this lake. You remember?”

Her laugh was rueful. “I did not mean to push you in.”

“And yet you did, and I am glad you did. That white gown,” murmured Robert, his teasing clearly reciprocated in Amethyst’s convivial expression, “was delectable. But not as delectable as what was underneath it.”

Amethyst’s jaw dropped, but she was clearly fighting back a smile. “You did not tell me you could see through my dress.”

“What, and end what had suddenly become a delightful afternoon?” Robert laughed and she joined him, their merriment echoing over the lake.

“But it wasn’t that. It was the way you rescued the ladybird out of the lake, placing it so carefully on a branch.

It was how you’d remembered that I love cucumber sandwiches—”

“Cook used to wonder how I was eating so many,” Amethyst said wistfully.

“—and how you told me your dreams and never laughed at mine.” God, he had missed her. Only now that he was standing here in the lake, their lake, hand in hand, did Robert realize just what little color his life had contained over the last few years.

Her smile flickered. “Did you ever travel to America?”

Robert shook his head slowly. “There did not seem much point. Not without you beside me.”

She stared at him, as though attempting to discern something deep, something complicated. Something within him…or within herself?

“You do not have to return my affections,” said Robert wryly with a dry laugh, “though of course, I hope you do.”

“I love you.” Amethyst’s laughter was nervous. “I suppose it is not ladylike to say such a thing, but—oh, Robert, I thought—you have been the only gentleman on my mind since the day we met!”

“Now, now,” he breathed, his heart skipping a beat. “No poetic statements.”

She laughed and nudged him with her elbow, and the merest of contact was enough to shoot heat through his whole body. “You are the only man for me. I had not realized it until…until I saw you walking toward me on the shore of our lake.”

Robert breathed out slowly as they stood in companionable silence. Silence with Amethyst never felt uncomfortable. It was just the two of them being happy together. What could be awkward about that?

Well, they loved each other—they had lost time, but they loved each other. She had never received his letters, but she’d loved him. He had not been bold enough to interrupt the presumably happy life that she had been living in London, but he’d loved her.

But they had spoken much of the past, a past that had brought them happiness.

What they had not discussed…was the future.

“You know,” said Amethyst, her voice sounding as though she were just vocalizing a passing thought that had no real import, “I always thought that you would try to seduce me here. At the lake.”

It was a jolly good thing that the lake had a few solid stones on its bed and that Robert was standing upon two of them, for else he could easily have slipped into the water, which was no longer feeling that cold.

Seduce her? Amethyst?

Oh, the thought had occurred to him—surely, it had occurred to almost every gentleman who had seen her.

But to actually do such a thing: ruin her, when he could offer her no real home, no income, no support…

“I…” Robert was not quite sure what he was going to say, but he was halted in his speech by Amethyst, who squeezed his hand.

“I even considered attempting to seduce you once,” she said lightly. “But I—”

“That time you met me without wearing stays!” he blurted out.

Like a fool.

Amethyst’s cheeks burned as she demanded, “How did you know that?”

Robert considered his options. He could lie and say that he merely guessed. Or he could tell the truth.

“There was a sudden, cold breeze that afternoon,” he said simply, trying desperately not to think of the vision that he had been gifted. “And you…your breasts…your nipples, I mean, they—well. Were rather obvious.”

Much to his surprise, the woman he adored did not flush—but laughed. “I hoped you had noticed! I thought then, you were bound to.”

“Far too much of a gentleman,” Robert said regretfully, and it was with true regret. To think that he could have reached out and touched her then…

“I suppose it was not to be, all those years ago,” Amethyst said lightly, as though they were discussing an event of no real import.

The wind rustled past them, the surface of the lake shimmering, creating movement almost like waves, which added to the oceanic effect.

And Robert was filled with a reflex so powerful, he could not help but know that it was the right thing to do.

For both of them.

“Well, I could not seduce you then,” he said quietly, tugging on the hand entwined in his and pulling Amethyst closer. “But I can seduce you now.”