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D aphne was too anxious to sleep or even try. So she slipped from her guest bedchamber and headed out into the night air, needing to breathe, needing to escape the awkwardness of being under the same roof as Cassian Rourke after a strained dinner with the Rourke twins and her family.

Cassian had watched her, and she couldn’t resist sneaking glimpses of him too.

But his brother had been the one to truly hold court.

He was as amiable as she recalled from those early days of the Season.

And though Griffin had initially seemed quite irked by the brothers’ deception, by dessert, it seemed as if Lord Windham had won him over again.

She’d hoped she and Cassian might have found a moment to speak after dinner, but he’d been drawn away to the billiards room with his brother and Griffin, while her sisters all gathered in the drawing room.

Once back in her chamber, she’d even entertained the foolish hope that he might come to her room. That moment in the library had been as charged as every other encounter between them, and it made her imagine he might have regretted how things ended in London.

He felt what she did. She knew it. And despite the farce he’d participated in for his brother, she’d always known—even when she was furious with him—that he was nothing like that other man who’d deceived her.

When Cassian told her all that had passed between them had been real, she hadn’t just believed him, she’d known it in her heart. She’d felt it in those moments, even when it caused her to be racked with guilt over what she thought was a betrayal of Selina.

Yet her feelings persisted, real and rooted, even if inconvenient.

None of this felt like the simple infatuation with Moreland.

Cassian Rourke stirred something much deeper.

More than mere attraction. She didn’t even truly understand it, but she didn’t want to walk away from it either.

Most of all, she didn’t want him to walk away before they’d barely begun to express their feelings.

And certainly not over a misguided notion that she was some perfect creature deserving of a paragon.

She wasn’t perfect, and she certainly couldn’t love a man who was. Good grief, it sounded terrifyingly boring.

Now, striding out into the gardens, all she wanted was to speak to Cassian—to touch him, to kiss him, to get him to tell her why he was so determined that he was not good enough for her.

What she found instead was a sad state of affairs.

For a Palladian-style county house like Hillcrest Manor, its gardens failed to match its grandeur.

Though there were signs that it once had.

An ornate conservatory that appeared to have been abandoned stood a short distance from the manor house, and the beds of the main garden were arranged in a geometric regularity that indicated some designer had taken care with their layout.

Yet many of the rows now stood fallow. Only a simple, neatly clipped hedge maze and smaller boxwood hedges that gave the garden its shape seemed to be maintained by Hillcrest’s gardener.

Though there were no lanterns lit in the garden, the moon was high and bright in a cloudless sky and she easily made her way along the garden’s rows.

A fountain with Aphrodite atop a shell at its center stood at the far edge of the garden path. It looked as if it might have once spouted water, but now it was simply a still pool with water collected in its large basin beneath the statute.

Daphne perched at the edge and looked up at the sky, wishing she’d taken time to study astronomy so she might know which constellations she gazed upon. Hyacinth would know. She was fascinated with the phases of the moon and how they affected the sea and its tides.

“I had a feeling I’d find you out here.”

At Cassian’s voice, warmth rushed into Daphne’s chest.

“Am I that predictable?” She looked over at him, and her breath tangled in her throat.

He’d shed his coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth and wore only his black evening trousers and the suit’s white shirt, now unbuttoned at the throat.

She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off that shadowed spot at the base of his throat.

“You must be disappointed,” he said as he approached, then tipped a glance over his shoulder at the all-but-barren garden.

“It is rather sad. Does your brother not favor a flourishing garden?”

He joined her on the fountain’s edge, settling within arm’s reach. “He doesn’t. I think it reminds him too much of our mother. She’s the one who made it a thing of beauty.”

“Did she choose this fountain?”

He looked up at the voluptuous marble goddess above them. “My grandmother did. She arranged for the design of all of this.”

“So you’ve been influenced by the ladies in your family.” Men so often looked to their father’s example. Daphne couldn’t help but be charmed by the fact that he’d taken up his mother’s and grandmother’s interest.

She smiled at him, but he’d grown suddenly serious.

“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he said as he looked out on the flowerless garden. “I suspect it’s not the pain of remembering my mother that’s caused Julian to let the garden go, but the influence of our father.”

Daphne laughed lightly. “He opposed flowers?”

“He was a joyless, cruel man and was determined that those around him should be the same.”

Daphne couldn’t help but reach for his hand. “That’s dreadful.”

For a moment, he simply looked down at her fingers over his, then he turned his hand so that their palms met.

“I didn’t tell you that as a bid for sympathy.” He flashed a smile. “Only as an explanation for this bleak landscape you see before you.”

“Sympathy isn’t the only reason I reached for your hand.” Somehow, here alone with him in the moonlight, she felt bold.

“No?”

“I’ve wanted…”

He leaned closer. “What did you want?”

“To s-speak to you.”

He lifted their joined hands and placed a kiss against her skin. “I’ve wanted that too,” he murmured. “And to touch you.” He swept his thumb across her skin as he spoke.

That simple caress made her gasp because it caused a shiver to race down her spine. She’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted to kiss him again, to be in his arms again.

“Shall we walk?” she whispered.

He mistook her question as discomfort at his admission and immediately released her.

“Oh, I…” she began.

But he was already standing, gesturing toward the hedge maze. “It’s a simple design, and I think the moonlight will sufficiently light the paths.”

“Yes, let’s walk,” she told him.

They started off, walking side by side. He didn’t take her arm, and she was hesitant to take his.

“Why are you happy I’m here?” she asked softly.

He chuckled, then shot her a look that made her swallow hard. “You know exactly why.”

“Do I?” she said, determined to spark some reaction in him. “In London, you seemed so determined to send me off to find some more deserving man.”

As they stepped into the maze, he strode a bit faster until was several steps ahead of her.

“Cassian.” He stopped the moment she spoke his name, but he didn’t turn to face her.

Daphne approached, her boots crunching on gravel, closing the distance between them.

“Why are you not a deserving man?” she whispered.

She laid a hand on his back, feeling the muscles shift and ripple, relishing how the heat of his body warmed her palm. “Or perhaps you don’t feel for me?—”

He turned before she could finish, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her close. Daphne braced her hands on his chest. His breath came fast and his stubbled cheek brushed hers as he dipped his head.

“What I feel for you,” he whispered, his breath hot against the shell of her ear, “is dangerous. You said so yourself.”

His hand slid down her back, tucking her closer, until she could feel the proof of his desire for her through her dress.

“Daphne.” He spoke her name as if it were a plea. Then he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Yes,” she told him in reply, then slid a hand up to lightly trail her fingertips into the open V of his shirt.

He let out a sharp exhale, then bent to take her lips. His kisses were hungry, desperate, as if after just a couple of days apart, he was starving for a taste of her.

When he pulled back, she almost cried out in protest, but then he bent to kiss her neck, to lick and nip at her skin. He found that same spot at the base of her throat that she’d just touched on his, and he laid a tender, reverent kiss there.

Daphne sought the top button of his shirt and slipped it free, then the next. He lifted his head to look at her, to stroke his finger along the edge of her jaw, then over her lower lip.

“I should take you back inside,” he said roughly.

“To your room?”

A laugh burst from him. “You are the greatest temptation of my life, Daphne Bridewell.”

“And you of mine, Captain Rourke.”

He kissed her again, tenderly this time. Daphne wanted more and wrapped a hand around his neck to draw him closer. Yet she felt the tension in his body, his shoulders, even his arms as he held her, and she pulled back.

“Answer my question,” she said, her voice husky and a bit breathless.

“Which one?”

“Why aren’t you a deserving man?”

He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, but didn’t release her. She wasn’t about to let him.

Reaching up, he swept a lock of hair behind her ear, then cupped her nape. “I don’t know how to…” Stopping, he drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “I am not a good man, Daphne. You deserve tenderness, kindness.”

“You’ve never been anything but kind to me. You’ve kissed me tenderly.” She reached up to glide her finger across the fullness of his lower lip, as he’d done to her. “You’ve shown me your goodness.”

“When I was pretending to be my brother?”

“Not just then.” Daphne’s voice had turned sharp, like the little ache that had begun to pinch in her chest. Even in this moment, with their bodies seamed together, he was holding back. “You told me it was real. All of it. And that means the kindness was real. The tenderness too.”