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S injin should have known once he and Alice finally had the opportunity to enjoy some time in private conversation the rudely typical March weather would arrive like an overbearing chaperone.

Their trip to Kew Gardens had hardly begun when the first drops of rain pelted them and forced them to sprint for Reggie’s borrowed curricle and race back to St. James Square.

Not that the rain bothered Alice. She clung to his arm with both hands as he raced his brother’s greys back towards Mayfair.

Her bedraggled bonnet did not hide her joyful, laughing face as she threw her head back to allow the icy shower to wash over her.

“This is wonderful,” she cried. “When is the last time we ran in the rain?”

“We were much younger and less likely to catch an ague as I remember. Hold on!” He leaned to one side as the curricle slid across the cobblestones.

Alice shrieked, not in fear but in utter exuberance.

She’d been so quiet when he’d taken her up at her uncle’s house.

Someone had hurt her, and whilst she’d denied it when he asked, if he waited long enough, she would tell him.

But now she was marvelously delighted and his heart threatened to leap from his chest at the sight.

“Are we ever too old to run in the rain, Sinjin?” She raised her voice to be heard over the clatter of the horses on the cobblestones and the thunder that rolled above them in ever closer waves.

Her face was alight with the spirit he’d known when they were children.

He’d seen hints of that spirit in the past few weeks in London, but only now did she seem completely Alice, completely herself.

Lightning coursed across the sky, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Alice jumped and scooted closer to him. “We shall be soaked through before we arrive,” she observed. He noticed she was shivering.

“I’m sorry, Alice. This was a very bad idea.” How could he tell her that in spite of the rain and everything else going wrong, to have her sitting next to him, laughing and holding onto him as if she’d never let him go, was quite the finest sensation he’d enjoyed in his life.

“You cannot be serious. This is brilliant! I cannot think of a single thing that might be more exciting than this.”

He slowed the horses as they turned into the mews behind St. James Square.

“You won’t think it is so brilliant when you spend the next week or so in bed with your maid and an entire household of servants hovering over you and reporting your every cough and sneeze back to the duke and duchess.

” He halted the curricle before the stable doors and Seamus and another of the stableboys rushed out to care for the carriage and horses.

Sinjin helped Alice down and took her by the hand to run to the rear entrance into his conservatory.

They were both laughing by the time they dashed into the enveloping warmth of the large glasshouse kept warm by a labyrinth of pipes beneath the floor and two large boilers that only required restoking a few times a day.

He had devised the system himself and supervised the construction both here and in his conservatory in Surrey.

“Oh, Sinjin.”

He turned to find Alice gazing at him with a tenderness that felt like a caress. “I had forgotten how much you despise being ill. All of those people gathered around you, taking up the air in the room.” She removed her ruined bonnet and dropped it onto a bench by the doors that led to the mews.

“Old memories,” he said. “Long forgotten. There are some blankets and toweling back here. Let’s get warm and then go in search of food.

” He led her past his work table and through the tangle of exotic plants and trees to an area surrounded by large urns of rose bushes.

The air was redolent with the heavy mixed perfume of the various species of roses he’d cultivated.

“Old memories, my arse,” Alice said as she spun this way and that along the mosaic path that meandered throughout his glass house. “Oh!” She stopped in the middle of the roses and took a deep breath. “Your roses.” She sighed. “You brought some of your roses with you.”

He went to the old chaise longue where he slept when he was too tired or too involved in his work to manage the climb upstairs to his bedchamber.

He grabbed a few of the many blankets folded and stacked at the end of the chaise, courtesy of Danvers and Missus Shaw and Missus Beatty, all of whom were certain he would freeze to death in a room that felt like the tropics at any hour of the day.

“Here.” He wrapped one of the blankets around Alice who had peeled off her wet pelisse and sat in one of the wrought iron chairs to remove her walking boots and stockings.

She’d hiked her skirts up to her knees and the sight of her shapely calves and ankles had him struggling to look away.

He elected to take a thick piece of toweling to her disheveled hair, the braids and curls falling to her waist.

“I must look a fright.” She wrapped the blanket around her and relaxed into the comfort of his rubbing hands on her hair. “Take the pins out, Sinjin. It is all about to come down anyway.”

“You do realize we are a scandal in the making if we are found like this,” he said as he put the toweling aside and worked to take down her elaborate coiffure.

“Not to worry. I shan’t demand that you marry me.

Today is Sunday. Your servants are enjoying their half day either out and about or likely napping in their chambers.

We told everyone we were going for a carriage ride.

” She shook out her hair and the damp golden cascade fell over her shoulders.

Sinjin ran his fingers through the luxurious silk strands before he finally took up the toweling and sought to soak the last of the rain away.

“Then there is the obvious bit.” She spoke so softly he almost missed what she said.

“What obvious bit?”

“You and I are the last people anyone would suspect of untoward behavior. We are beneath their notice until they decide to insult us or make poor jests at our expense.”

His suspicions had been correct. Someone had hurt her.

Recently. He shrugged out of his wet jacket and pulled another of the garden chairs around to sit in front of her.

She should have looked forlorn in her bare feet and rain-stained dress with a heavy wool blanket wrapped around her like a shroud.

She was beautiful, a fresh-faced angel with a gilded veil of hair in every shade of gold framing her face.

“What happened at Gunter’s?” He sat with his hands clasped between his knees and met her eyes with an expression as open and honest as he knew how.

“Dickie?” she sighed.

“Frederick, actually. By way of Lady Camilla, who undoubtedly heard the report from Dickie Jones.”

“Millicent Rutherford and her friends were there, that is all. They were rude to Olivia and me, as usual. No harm done.” She shrugged and reached to untie his limp soggy neckcloth. He waited for her to finish unwinding the long strip of fabric and drop it to the floor.

“A little harm done, I think. You’ve always told me everything. Don’t stop now.”

“She said Uncle Percy hired you to escort me because all the other men in London were afraid of me. She spilled tea on my new blue pelisse. And then Olivia announced to all of Gunter’s that the stains from Earden’s…

evacuations had come out of Millicent’s gown, but the piss stains at the back would take longer. ”

Sinjin blinked. Alice hiccupped a few times. Then she snorted. He threw back his head and laughed long and hard, and so did she.

“No wonder you and Olivia are such good friends. And as for the other, if your uncle is paying me, he is woefully behind in my wages,” he said with a grin.

“You sir,” she said as she pushed his hair back off his forehead. “Are no gentleman.”

“I would pay any amount of money for the privilege of being your escort. Surely you know that, Alice.” He studied her expression in search of even a hint of her understanding of what he was trying to say.

“How do you do it? How do you ignore the things they say?” She stood and wandered from rose bush to rose bush, drinking in the smell of the blooms. “I try. I truly try, but they still hurt me or worse, enrage me.”

“They don’t mean anything to me. Only a handful of people truly mean anything to me. I hope for the good opinion of those handful of people alone. The rest is simply noise that those other people make to convince themselves they are important.”

“Does my good opinion matter to you?” She looked over her shoulder at him and the blanket slipped to the floor. The light of the flickering lamps throughout the conservatory bathed her in a shimmering glow. Her silhouette shone through the damp fabric of her carriage dress.

“More than anyone else’s in the world.” He rose and went to stand behind her.

“Surely you must know that after all these years.” He brushed his knuckles down the side of her face.

Slowly she turned and ran her hands up his chest. The words he wanted most to say refused to come.

Could he show her that he loved her, had always loved her?

“Sinjin?” Her voice was the softest of whispers.

She gazed up at him, her lips parted. With infinite care he lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.

He brushed her mouth softly at first. Her kiss was like velvet.

She seized his waistcoat and shirt in her fists and pulled him closer.

He wrapped his arms around her, one hand pressed to her back and one pressed to her hip.

Her arms slid around his neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and cupped the back of his head in her hands.