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S injin pushed his spectacles higher onto his nose for the hundredth time and straightened up to appease the ache in his back.

He reached around to press the heels of his hands into the base of his spine and worked at the muscles grown taut from hours of painstaking work over his new Lister microscope.

A gift on the occasion of his last birthday from his sister, Cordelia, and her husband Lord Daedalus Whitcombe, the instrument was a wonder and had allowed Sinjin to make great progress in his botanical crossbreeding endeavors and in discovering the medicinal properties of England’s plant-life.

He had been working with stinging nettles for several months now, extracting different properties and compounding them with other ingredients in the hope of creating a powder that might be mixed into a paste for the pains of arthritis, something from which his father suffered most cruelly.

As he cast his gaze around his vast conservatory, he spotted the long work table across the glass wall at the far end of this room that stretched across the entire back of his family’s London townhouse.

The glass enclosed space ran from the back of the house to the mews as well.

No elegant back gardens for the Perritons.

Sinjin had commandeered every inch of open space behind their London residence years ago.

The latest additions to his plant collection were potted in a series of large, ornate Chinese porcelain bowls on the long work table next to the glass wall.

Their location allowed them to receive as much sun as possible.

He hoped the warmth and light would help the wounded daffodils and crocuses to overcome the shock of being uprooted from their Hyde Park home yesterday.

He and Seamus had taken great care with them, but only time would tell if the plants would survive. And they had to survive.

“Sir?” Danders called from the doors that led into the townhouse. “Mister Sinjin, you have a visitor.”

“Give me a moment, Danders.” Sinjin removed his gloves and strode down the flagstone path set into the tiled floor.

“I am well aware of the length of your moments, Sinjin Perriton. I have no intention of standing about for an hour waiting for you to complete one of your experiments. Where are you?” Alice stepped around a large banana tree and met him just before he reached her and the butler.

“A-Alice,” Sinjin’s heart stuttered as he stumbled to a halt before her. “What a pleasant surprise.”

She rolled her eyes and brushed some dirt from his cheek. She turned back to the butler. “Thank you, Danders. You’re looking well in spite of trying to keep the Perriton brothers in check.”

Danders offered her a bow and a slight smile. “My cross to bear, my lady, though I do my best. Missus Beatty has prepared luncheon. Perhaps if I bring a tray, you can persuade this one to eat something?” He gave Sinjin a censoring scowl.

“As you say, I will do my best,” Alice said with a grin.

“Yes, please send a tray. I thought I smelled Missus Beatty’s mutton stew on the way to Mister Perriton’s lair.

That and some of her fresh bread and a pot of tea would be lovely.

” She removed her gloves, placed them on a mosaic table bearing pots of violets, and set about tying Sinjin’s neckcloth which he’d draped loose around his neck. Danders quickly left to do her bidding.

Sinjin suddenly realized he’d greeted her in his shirtsleeves, buckskins, and boots, not a jacket or waistcoat in sight.

She stood so close as she arranged his neckcloth in a perfect mathematical, he could smell the lemon and verbena scent she wore and a hint of the lavender soap she used on her hair.

Today she’d dressed in an elegant silver and blue striped walking dress.

The bodice was cut low enough and snuggly enough to cradle a generous portion of her rose-tinted ivory skin.

He dragged his gaze away from that view only to be trapped in the blue of her eyes.

She was dangerous no matter where he looked.

Their eyes met as she finished with his neckcloth and patted his chest. Time ticked slowly like drops of honey from a fresh honeycomb. She licked her lips and took a quick breath. His blood roared in his ears. Minutes passed, perhaps hours, he had no idea.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, my lady?” he finally managed to ask in a strong and steady voice. He tried not to swallow as her fingers brushed against his neck.

“Food first and then I will discuss the purpose of my visit. What are you working on today?’ She started down the path he’d taken from the table of Hyde Park flowers.

He caught her arm and drew her in the opposite direction towards his research area.

For some reason he didn’t want her to see the daffodils and crocuses, at least not until he was certain they had recovered from yesterday’s events. She had already wept over them once.

“This way. I’m working with stinging nettles so you cannot help me, but I can show you my new microscope.” He escorted to the long table covered with detritus from his various experiments with the stinging nettles, Urtica dioica .

“What on earth are you doing with nettles?’ Alice asked as she began to study the various items on the table.

“Careful.” Sinjin took a large mortar and pestle from her hand.

“These are dried and ground up nettle leaves. If you spill them on yourself, we’ll have to dunk you in Mama’s ornamental fish pond.

” He nodded in the direction of the large round pool and fountain at the center of his conservatory.

He found the sound of the fountain soothing and good company as he spent most of his time in London alone in his beloved glass house.

“I cannot believe you have pots of nettles growing in the same place as your beautiful roses.” She clasped her hands behind her back as she walked the length of the table peering at the items on display.

When she bent over his journal, smudged with ink smears and dirt, she smiled.

“I see your penmanship has not improved. Thank goodness I have been reading your letters for years or I would never be able to decipher them.”

“I must endeavor to make my own notes as the person who used to keep my journals so neatly ran off to London and never returned.” Sinjin had been obsessed with botany since he was a boy and Alice had followed him about carefully recording all of his observations.

Those journals traveled with him everywhere.

Thank goodness they were safely tucked away on a bookcase next to his desk upstairs in his bedchamber.

She leaned against him as they reached the microscope. “You are the one person I regretted leaving behind, Sinjin. Especially these last two years as things went so terribly wrong.”

He glanced down at the top of her head, her golden hair arranged in coils of braids.

The temptation to press his lips to her silken crown nearly undid him.

He cleared his throat and indicated the glass cover onto which he’d mounted a single nettle leaf.

He placed the slide onto his microscope, adjusted the lens and invited Alice to look with a nod of his head.

“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped as she peered into the eyepiece. “Are those hairs on the leaf. Nettles have hair?”

“Not exactly. Those little hairs are like barbs or thorns on other plants, and I believe they are the reason all one must do is brush against nettles and the stinging and itching is unbearable. The leaves shed those hairs, and they stick to the flesh causing that itch that used to send us running for the lake behind Perriton Grange.”

She straightened from the microscope, the bell of her laughter echoing throughout the conservatory. “I had forgotten about that. It was terrible, wasn’t it?

“The worst. I still have nightmares about us jumping from that tree into that patch of nettles.” Sinjin’s breath caught at the sparkle in her eyes and the true joy in her face.

“You two were covered in splotches for days,” Danders said as he came around the corner bearing a small tray whilst one of the footmen followed with a larger tray.

The butler led the way into the more garden-like section of the conservatory where a round mosaic table and some wrought-iron chairs with thick embroidered cushions sat next to the fish pond and fountain.

He went about setting the table for them.

“It was a miracle neither of you suffered a broken limb from that fall.” He tsked and shook his head.

“How you two survived to reach your majority is one of life’s great mysteries. ”

Sinjin and Alice didn’t say a word and tried desperately not to look at each other as they knew they would dissolve into gales of hilarity.

Poor Danders had rescued them both more times than Sinjin could count.

Once he and the footman had arranged the luncheon to the butler’s satisfaction Danders bowed, shook his head once more and promenaded in his customary stately fashion out of sight, trailed by the grinning footman.

For the first several minutes Sinjin and Alice tucked into the delicious mutton stew and bread right from the oven slathered in sweet, fresh butter.

Neither of them spoke. She poured their tea and added sugar and milk just as they had always liked.

He was amazed at the ease and comfort conveyed by the simplicity of dining with someone who knew him so well, someone with whom he’d shared so many similar meals over the years.

“Such a pity we cannot find a way to dump that bowl of dried nettles in Lord Earden’s drawers,” Alice suddenly said once she’d polished off her bowl of stew. She immediately took a large bite of bread as if she regretted what she’d said.