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That tangled feeling roiled through her chest and downward, as if it meant to draw all her innards into a tight, writhing mess.

Nothing about the world was what Anne had been raised to believe it was, and should be, and was what she deserved.

And now here was this man, who’d spent years in places she couldn’t locate on a map, who carried a haunted shadow in his eyes and a bronze tint to his skin cast by a faraway sun, and he seemed the most exotic and dangerous element of all.

She swallowed hard, feeling a sweet-bitter taste on the sides of her throat. That infernal elderberry wine.

“It is still very beautiful,” Anne whispered, wondering if she oughtn’t enjoy the elegance of the place, now.

He might think that the reason she wished to marry his brother.

So she might visit Greenfield once in a while, sit in the papered parlor beneath the crystal chandelier, drink from Lady Vaughn’s prized porcelain tea service, and brush her silk slippers along the expensive carpet.

But it was Hewitt’s lady who would preside over this place, approving the menu with the cook, supervising the chambermaids, strolling these very paths with her hand on the arm of her husband.

This man. That strong arm. Anne flushed with envy for that unknown woman.

He leaned over a bed lined with small green plants, examined one, then plucked a leaf and chewed it.

Anne stared with astonishment. She oughtn’t stare. Staring made her notice the way his jaw moved as he chewed. Made her look at his mouth. And looking at his mouth pulled at that knot rolling about her innards. Perhaps she was not sun-touched, but ill.

“Feeling peckish?”

“Mint.” He smiled. “Freshens the breath. Try one.” He held out a leaf.

“Er—thank you.” She took the leaf and examined it.

Indeed, it smelled like mint, tasted like mint, that sharp, sweet tang that lifted a lid off her mind.

A memory flashed up, green hills starred with daffodils, a sky that hefted its blueness to infinity.

Gwen, whooping and running through meadows dotted with orchids and hoverflies rising from the rampion, skirts clenched in her fists.

Anne, always more careful, half-running behind her, pausing to peer at each butterfly, eating whatever Gwen pulled from a stalk and offered to her. It was always sweet.

Hewitt Vaughn called up the same sense of wildness, of freedom, that Gwen had released in Anne. So much the opposite of the strict discipline her mother demanded, the decorum she had to observe within the beautiful painted walls of Vine Court.

He plucked a handful of leaves from another plant, deep green and spiny. “Wild lettuce,” he said, crunching on one. “Good for relieving pain and inducing sleep.” As Anne reached for a leaf, he gently moved her hand away. “But also known to induce hallucinations.”

She pulled her hand back. His bare skin had touched hers. The place felt hot, as if she’d passed her hand near a flame. “Is that why you are eating it?”

She meant the hallucinations. She meant to be sharp. She oughtn’t let a stranger jest and be familiar with her. Certainly not allow him to touch her bare skin with his.

Instead, her voice came out breathless, curious. And as he turned to look at the rest of the garden, she realized: he held himself like a man in pain. Like a man carrying some inner ache, some unhealed wound.

Something it would take more than plants in an herb garden to cure.

“That is all I remember,” he said, his gaze ranging over the knots of beds. “But every plant here is useful in some fashion. Mrs. Harries knows all of them.”

So would Gwen. Anne was already weary of comparing herself to Gwen, and finding so much lacking. She didn’t want Hewitt Vaughn to see her deficiencies.

“Hellebore at the doorway will keep witches away,” Anne said, grasping for what she remembered of herbal lore.

Superstition, mostly. “And a sprig of ivy under the pillow …” She caught herself.

That was a charm to make a girl dream of her lover.

Anne had tried it several times, to no effect.

She slept as sound as a hedgehog in hibernation, always had.

He turned to face her, and every bit of Anne’s customary common sense fell away as if snipped by scissors.

Had she dreamed of him? She could almost see him in her imagination, lodged far back in the mists.

The strong shape of his face, the clean cut of his features, the noble lift to his chin.

That mouth. Those eyes, the dazzling blue of deepest summer, and the rest of him—she shifted her eyes so she could look at his body without seeming to, let the impression of him rise to the edges of her vision.

Well-knit limbs. So tall. Yes, if she’d dreamed of anyone, she’d dreamed of him, and?—

“Why are you here?” he asked.

Anne gulped. “Here? In the garden?”

“At Greenfield,” he said softly. “Why are you to marry my brother?”

Every soft wisp of dreaminess left her head too, clipped away by the cold steel, following her last bit of sense. And apparently decorum.

“Why didn’t you accept me?” she asked. “My parents offered you first.”

Immediately her face burned with shame. What could have made her so forward of a sudden? And why did her voice hold that plaintive, wistful quality? She grabbed the nearest flower, a daisy, and plucked its petals with nervous fingers.

Hewitt’s eyes narrowed, the lines about his eyes tightening, and she would swear his ears moved back on his head.

She’d shocked him. She felt a delicious rush of satisfaction.

Shocking, forward Anne: this was a novel creature.

She might come to like her. She yanked the white florets from the flower head and let them waft to the ground, settling on her slippers.

As if she were a fairy queen and only walked where flowers strewed her path.

She should not be standing here with him. She was growing fanciful. Delirious, perhaps, from the heady perfume of the enclosed garden. And the growing awareness of his presence, the solidness of him, the maleness. He was taking too long to answer.

He cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “I knew as a lad that I wanted to be a gunner,” he said finally.

“A what?” Anne knew she was not going to like his answer, but she meant to force it from him anyway.

She had the urge to break something—the urge had goaded her all the way from the church of St. Sefin’s—and for some reason, this man before her, this utter stranger, seemed the proper target.

He held a piece of her past and the means to her future.

It was as if, by attacking him, she could somehow tear herself free.

“The Royal Artillery,” he clarified, which was not much use, since Anne didn’t know the first thing about the military.

“I knew since I was twelve that I wanted to enter. I took the exams at fifteen. Made bombardier at eighteen, commissioned as an officer at twenty-one.” He glanced around the garden again, as if growing reacquainted, and again Anne noted his strained movements.

“My mother hoped I would come home and head the militia. She was sure the Duke of Beaufort would give me a regiment—he has the charge of the Monmouthshire militia, has for years. And with the militia I would not have to leave the country, or even the county. My parents pressed hard to have me married, invest in the family business, set up a household of my own.” He winced.

“So I went to the West Indies to fight the French, and I’ve only been back once. ”

“No wonder your mother fainted at the sight of you,” Anne murmured. “Calvin thought you were dead. He was ready to take over the estate.”

Hewitt’s eyes tightened again, as if he braced for a blow. “That is disappointing, but not at all a surprise.”

He would assume Anne had plotted with them. She twisted the stem of the flower in her hands. “I should not be here,” she said. “Your brother is the one pressing for our marriage, though he does not even like me. And my brother stands his ally.”

That must all change now that Hewitt was home. Anne could be free. No prospects, no income, her parents starving in genteel poverty in their home, no dowry but her looks to try to find a husband who could save them all.

Refuse to marry, if you do not wish to.

Anne’s heart inflated, straining at her ribs. She would refuse, if it would not mean disgrace.

But Gwen had survived disgrace. And come out, at the end of things, with a viscount who loved her.

Anne pulled the last floret from the flower as if it could foretell her future. “ Pas de tout, ” she muttered, throwing the petal to the ground. Of course the answer would be no.

Hewitt’s mouth twitched. That mouth was going to be the death of her. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. “Are you playing ‘he loves me, loves me not?’”

“It’s not.” She popped off the head of yellow florets and tossed it on the ground as well. “Hardly a surprise.”

Her chest constricted, as if a great dragonfly sat on her heart, beating its wings. Marriage for love. What an impossibility.

Hewitt Vaughn was handsome. Very. They talked of him as a war hero, though the Earl of St. Vincent’s reception of him cast that reputation in some doubt. With his father gone, he would have control of Greenfield and the money.

Hewitt Vaughn’s wife would not have a care in the world, Anne guessed.

He would treat her with attentive courtesy, perhaps even gentle affection.

He would smile fondly at her when she entered a room, stick his head in the parlor to greet her guests while she chattered with neighbors who had come to call.

He would arrange her shawl over her shoulders when they went out to walk the gardens together.

He would present her with gifts at the birth of each child, and he would never shame her by openly flaunting a mistress.

The kind of husband Anne had always supposed she’d have, one day.

But he’d already been offered her hand, and had fled the country to avoid her.

Hewitt withdrew his watch on its chain and glanced at it, then the sundial. “I would like to hear more of my brother’s doings, but I’ve a meeting with my father’s solicitor.” His mouth twisted. “My solicitor, now.”

Anne nodded, numb. This was his home again. He would turn out the Suttons, and good riddance.

At least she would not have to marry Calvin.

“What does it say?” Anne asked, her throat dry.

When his brows rose, she pointed to the sundial, heavy gray stone, weatherworn, with moss tracing the brass inlaid face with its etchings.

It wasn’t a ploy to draw out this moment.

She was not trying to drink him in, as if he were the one solid thing around her, a steady rope to anchor her in the storm. Because he was not.

“ Utere, non numera ,” Hewitt said after a moment. “Use, do not count, the hours.”

He met her gaze and held it. He did have the most commanding manner. Anne’s head grew foggy, and she felt herself sway. Good heavens , how strong was the sun here in south Wales?

“I will see you at dinner?” he asked.

She swallowed. Did he want her gone before then? “I expect to attend.” Where else could she go?

She regarded the stem in her hands, the leaves opening like a spread hand. So much was falling away from her. What could she cling to? What could she build , instead of destroy?

He knelt and gathered up handfuls of the very flower Anne had decimated. “I advise you not to eat these. It’s feverfew. Good for relieving pain, but do not take it unboiled.”

Anne dropped the stem to the ground, her face burning. How did he know these things? And why did she, at her advanced age, still know nothing?

He rose, turning to go, and, drat it, Anne did not want him to leave.

She’d thought she wanted to be left alone to brood; now she didn’t want him to leave the garden, with the sun kindling the red hearts of the flowers and pulling out the heady, hazy scent of the roses and linden trees.

He moved as if his back were stiff, as if he were the kind of man who never unbent from his posture, from correctness, from the rules that hemmed him in as a soldier and a gentleman and the owner, now, of an estate and all its burdens.

“Mr. Vaughn,” she said impulsively.

He faced her. “Captain.”

She rubbed her lips together, moistening them. “Captain Vaughn.”

His gaze fell to her mouth and his face went still, as if he couldn’t look away. “Yes?” He had to clear his throat to force the word out.

“Welcome home.”

He inclined his head. Light gleamed off the hint of gray above his ears, and a darker shadow kindled in the blue of his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Sutton.”

He left, pulling up anchor, leaving Anne adrift.