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She’d been told that the oaks were a metaphor for the Everseas and Redmonds, for all eternity doomed to fight each other for supremacy while needing each other to remain upright and alive.

She’d heard about the alleged curse, too: namely, that an Eversea and a Redmond were destined to fall in love once per generation, with disastrous results.

It all sounded dashing and apocryphal, as the best myths were wont to be.

She’d never witnessed an outbreak of swordplay or fisticuffs in church between Everseas and Redmonds, for instance, which seemed to be the only place those two families were ever together at the same time.

On the surface, at least, all seemed civil between them.

And yet. She’d noticed how Jacob’s face went fleetingly dark and hard and remote whenever Isaiah Redmond’s name was introduced in conversation.

It made him, for a frightening heartbeat, wholly unrecognizable to her.

And once when they were all picnicking near a pond, she’d been startled to come upon a little adder slithering in the long grasses.

“Reminds me of Redmond,” Jacob had said darkly.

Her brother George had been intriguingly cagy when she’d asked about this later. “Jacob is a planner, as we both know…. I think Redmond is more of a… calculator and…I think it’s mainly an oil and water thing with them. And Jacob’s not entirely wrong about Redmond.”

The word “entirely” had struck her as significant. It meant George wasn’t certain Jacob was entirely right, either.

She’d only seen the Redmond heir twice—at church—since the Sylvaines moved to Pennyroyal Green two years ago.

Like George and Jacob, he was usually away at university.

He impressed her as remote and haughty, just like his intimidating father.

But his sister Diana was on the town hall decorating committee, and she was pleasant for someone so grand, if a bit shy.

At least compared to the Sylvaine girls.

Isolde’s view from where she stood beneath the trees was the churchyard, which was surrounded by a wood and stone fence twice the height of a three-year-old boy.

She’d derived this unit of measurement on a Sunday after church nearly a year ago, because while the townspeople mingled and chatted, Jacob’s wily three-year-old nephew Mathias had sneaked through the thicket of churchgoer skirts and legs and clambered up the fence.

No one noticed until Jacob bolted mid-conversation through the crowd and caught his nephew just as he was about to topple from the top rail.

He’d tucked the giggling boy under one arm and ferried him back to his grateful, frantic sister, then resumed his conversation with the Sylvaines as if nothing had happened.

Since then, Isolde had revisited this memory again and again, because it seemed to capture an essential truth about Jacob: everyone he loved became as much a part of him as his own limbs. He loved the way he breathed. And in so many ways, he’d demonstrated that this included her, too.

Today, suddenly, it was painful to look at that fence. She jerked her gaze from it.

Tucked into her new novel was a pamphlet she’d purchased describing the steps for the latest dances. She retrieved it to avidly review.

Presently, something flashed at the corner of her eye.

She ignored it, assuming the leaves fluttering in the breeze had allowed in a brief sliver of light.

When it happened again, she lifted her head and swiveled it about in search of the source.

Her breath hitched.

A young man had materialized on the opposite side of the trees.

She watched as he flicked open a gold pocket watch and examined the time.

He closed it again.

A moment later, he flicked it open again.

Then closed it again.

The glint of sunlight on the gold was the source of the winking.

He was tall; one of his long legs was indolently bent.

A mantel of leafy shadows shivered across a fine set of shoulders.

He wore his dark hair in a queue; the exquisite tailoring of his long-tailed coat and the gloss on his boots suggested he could afford the exorbitant tax on hair powder that had caused the usually very genial Mr. Sylvaine to put his foot down and forbid his raven-haired daughters to continue using it.

Fortunately, powdered hair was already going out of style.

Gradually it dawned on her that she was staring at Mr. Isaiah Redmond.

She stifled a gasp and pressed herself back against the tree trunk.

Why on earth was he standing beneath the Eversea-Redmond oaks at this hour?

It amused her to imagine that he'd dropped from them like a great acorn.

Finally, unable to resist, she stealthily craned her head and studied him unabashedly.

Suddenly his head shot up and he turned it like a fox sensing something in the wind.

Their gazes collided before she could dodge out of view.

Two choices, both ridiculous, confronted them: Look away immediately, which seemed unthinkably rude, as they were the only two people currently standing beneath the trees.

Or continue staring.

They both chose the latter.

Thusly there ensued a peculiar moment of profound stillness, which oddly didn’t feel as awkward as it should have.

“Miss Isolde Sylvaine!” he finally announced with relieved triumph, as if he'd been furiously working out an equation of some sort in his mind.

She nearly laughed. She supposed she must be out of context, too. Perhaps someone had pointed her out to him one day. He likely knew her only as the outline of her best Sunday bonnet, or as the fourth tallest human in the cluster of Sylvaines who filed into church.

He swept off his cocked hat and bowed, elegantly. Which was, of course, the only way a Redmond would bow.

“Good evening, Mr. Redmond.” It seemed absurd to pretend she didn't know who he was. Curtsying gracefully with a book tucked under one arm and a sore toe proved a test of her balance, however. She nearly wobbled.

A slightly nonplussed silence ensued, during which they regarded each other steadily, and with, it seemed, mutual fascination.

He cleared his throat. “It’s astonishing that two people whose names begin with “IS” should find themselves simultaneously beneath these trees at this hour.”

Delight swept through her at this unexpected whimsy.

“That... is... a remarkable coincidence,” she breathed in mock amazement.

He laughed.

And what a good laugh! Another surprise. He'd seemed so very contained , the few times she’d seen him. It had never occurred to her to wonder what his laugh sounded like. Or whether he ever laughed.

“I hope I didn't startle you, Mr. Redmond,” she added, a little more shyly

“No. But you were staring at me rather loudly,” he accused.

She smiled at that.

Whereupon she discovered his own smile was comprised of a complete set of gleaming white teeth. It dazzled in every sense of the word.

Then faded.

“What were you thinking?” He asked swiftly.

She blinked, startled. “Just…now?”

He sounded genuinely—almost urgently—curious.

Good God. She didn’t mind a frank question. But she couldn't possibly tell him the truth.

So she hedged. “I'm flattered that you presumed that I was thinking. Men so often need reminding that women actually do that sort of thing.”

His smile was faint and fleeting. “It’s just…it’s just that your eyes. They are…they're very…”

He pressed his lips together as though the words had escaped before he could run them through a filter. And before her eyes, his cheeks flushed burgundy.

Her own cheeks immediately went hot in sympathy.

He'd thoroughly disconcerted the both of them.

Based on everything intimated by Jacob and her brother, she’d never imagined Isaiah Redmond could be awkward, or silly, or flustered. Let alone say or think things about her eyes.

Redmond enters rooms the way a smuggler glides into a cove, Jacob had once muttered bitterly to her brother George, within her earshot.

Jacob entered rooms like that first blast of sunlight when you part the curtains in the morning.

But Mr. Redmond’s blush made her feel tender toward him. Heaven only knew she’d had some experience blurting things.

“Well, Mr. Redmond,” she finally said gently, “ since you asked...I was wondering....how it would feel to be so important, and to have such important things to do, that I should need to refer to my watch at intervals of every few seconds. As if in so doing I could command time to do my bidding.”

This was when she realized she was officially flirting.

It was spring, she was a Sylvaine; he was very handsome; it could not be helped. It meant nothing, surely.

Mr. Redmond’s smile began at one corner of his mouth, and by the time it completed its slow journey to the other it had committed a robbery of both her breath and her senses.

She had lit him up entirely.

He studied her speculatively as he stretched up an arm and idly caressed the leaves dangling just above him. He knew what he was doing and why; handsome young men always did. Admire my fine form, the gesture suggested.

Subdued, she did. It seemed this could not be helped, either.

He languidly dropped his arm to thumb open his watch again. “My father gave the watch to me when I completed my education. It's a family tradition. It's even engraved.”

Every one of his words struck Isolde as uniquely fascinating. “Father” pulsed with warmth and pride and a curious sort of abstracted ruefulness. It was odd to hear affection associated with the haughty Redmond patriarch she’d seen in church.

But there was something distinctly steely about the way he’d said the word “family.” As if it was synonymous with “fortress”.

“Not, of course, that I don't have tremendously important things to do, mind you,” he told her more lightly. “Fortunes don't become immense all on their own.”

He was jesting. But it seemed clear he was also making a special effort to impress her.

This sent an illicit little thrill down her spine.