with triumph and possession and it made her feel weaker still.
“Nat-” she began, but the words were lost as he kissed her again, this time with a thoroughness that had the crowd shouting approval and left Lizzie utterly shaken. She clenched her fingers in his soaking shirt and held tight as the world spun.
“This isn’t like you,” she whispered when his lips finally left hers. “I thought you would be angry with me. I have committed an offence against the law. You do understand that, don’t you?” Her brow creased as Nat simply smiled at her. “What has happened to you?” she whispered.
Nat silenced her, kissing her for a third time until she forgot the crowd, forgot that they were standing in a river, forgot everything except for Nat. It felt different, though she could not quite explain how, but there was excitement in it as well as gentleness, and an eager anticipation. His hands were warm on her through the drenched gown and the sun was hot and the crowd loud and Lizzie thought her head was going to burst with the blazing sensation of it. When Nat let her go he touched her cheek gently and his gaze moved over her face like a caress.
“Remember that we are to go out riding together this evening,” he murmured. “I promise to behave.” He looked down at his soaking pantaloons and laughed. “I suppose I had better go and change.”
He splashed off through the shallows and Alice came over to Lizzie, her blue eyes alight with amusement. “Well! If that is what happens when you deny Nat your bed I think I might even try the same thing with Miles!”
“I thought he would be angry that we had broken the law, but he said that he was proud of me,” Lizzie said, watching Nat as he hauled himself up onto the bank. His hair was sleek and dark with water and his clothes clung to his hard, masculine body and merely looking at him made her feel very hot and bothered.
“Miles once said that when you deny yourself something you really want, you only end up wanting it more,” Alice said. She gave Lizzie a speculative look. “You have taken away Nat’s certainty, Lizzie. You have changed the rules. It is making Nat think, and making him work for what he wants.” She laughed. “It’s about time. Don’t give in. Bring him to his knees!”
“I will,” Lizzie said, thinking of the evening ahead and feeling a burn of anticipation. “I won’t give up now.”
THAT EVENING THEY RODE up onto the hills and spread their picnic on a blanket beneath an ancient oak tree that sheltered the remains of an old shepherd’s hut. They talked and Nat preserved a scrupulously respectable distance from Lizzie whilst at the same time never taking his eyes from her for a moment. There was a tense thrill in the pit of Lizzie’s stomach as they talked, a prickle of eagerness along her skin, an excitement that seemed very new and achingly sweet and that made it seem inordinately difficult for her to concentrate.
“I have written to the Prince of Wales about the problem with the Fortune’s Folly medieval laws,” Lizzie said, as she sat looking at the view across the hills. “He was a friend of my papa and so I hope he will help our cause.” She rolled over onto her stomach on the rug and propped her chin on her hand. “I discovered a document in Laura’s library that relates to the Charter of the Forest. It was written soon after Magna Carta and it supports the rights and privileges of the common man against his lord and it struck me that if we can invoke it against Tom we might be able to overturn the Dames’ Tax and all the other taxes-” She stopped, for Nat was looking at her with a very whimsical smile on his lips.
“What is it?” she demanded wrathfully.
“You,” Nat said. “Now that you have a cause you are like a woman inspired-”
Lizzie slapped at him. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“I’m not,” Nat said. “I’ve thought for several years that you needed-” He stopped.
“Needed what?” Lizzie said curiously.
“Something to do, I suppose,” Nat said. He laughed. “Some focus for all that untrammeled energy and vitality you have. It is no wonder that some women have the vapors out of sheer frustration at the constrained nature of their lives.”
“Society is so foolish in what it approves of as appropriate or not in a woman,” Lizzie agreed. “I have always found it intensely annoying.”
“I had noticed,” Nat said wryly.
“I had not expected you to feel like that,” Lizzie said, plucking a blade of grass and chewing it. “I mean I did not think you would want me to be occupied other than as a conventional wife and mother. I thought you had very decided notions on the role of your wife and that I do not exactly conform to them.”
“I can change my attitude-even if I am stuffy and old-fashioned,” Nat said. He sounded rueful.
“You are not always so conventional and proper,” Lizzie said. “Sometimes you are equally as wild as I.”
Their gazes locked, Nat’s dark and heavy with sudden desire. The heat sizzled through Lizzie’s blood, scalding her.
Awareness, vivid and intense flared between them. Lizzie found she had already moved closer to Nat on pure instinct and need alone, and hastily drew back. This was no way to go on if she was to stick to her resolution.
“I suppose that when I have a home of my own I will be able to grow into the managing female I was always destined to be,” she said quickly.
“I know that you do not like Chevrons very much,” Nat said, surprising her. “I should have consulted you about where we lived, I suppose. I confess that I did not think of it. All I could think of was that I had to marry you, save your reputation, get you away from Fortune Hall and from Tom and-” He stopped abruptly.
“You wanted to rescue me,” Lizzie said softly. “It is what you do.”
Nat looked at her. There was gentleness in his eyes and something else, something that looked oddly like confusion.
“I suppose I always have done,” he said slowly, “and yet there is more to it than that, Lizzie…”
Lizzie held her breath and waited, aware of the silence, aware of the warm breeze through the summer grass and aware of the hammering of her heart. Had Nat’s feelings for her started to change, as Laura had predicted they would? Was he beginning to see her differently, to see beyond the need to protect and defend to a love that was greater than that, all encompassing, taking heart and soul? There was certainly an arrested look in his eyes as he watched her but when he did not speak she rushed in to fill the silence, too nervous to let it lie between them.
“I sometimes think that the Fortune family must be cursed,” she said with a little shudder. “Monty murdered and now Spencer as well, supposedly in mistake for Tom, and Tom himself only a hairsbreadth from madness…”
“Tom isn’t mad,” Nat said, a harder tone entering his voice. “He is no more than a dangerous scoundrel who has been given too much license to misbehave.” He caught Lizzie’s hand and turned it over to press his lips against the vulnerable skin of her wrist. “I feel I owe it to you to catch Monty’s murderer, Lizzie,” he said. “And I admire you very much for what you are doing in standing up to Tom. So do the people of Fortune’s Folly. Someone had to take your brother on and who better than you?”
“Because I am equally badly behaved?” Lizzie said.
Nat laughed. “Because you are the only one with the nerve to match him.”
Once again their gazes held. Lizzie’s pulse raced against the touch of Nat’s lips and his expression tautened as he felt her tremble. He leaned forward to kiss her and she rolled away from him.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Keep back! You promised not to try to seduce me.”
Nat laughed again, ruefully this time, and released her. “All right. You’re safe with me.”
“I doubt it,” Lizzie said, feeling delightfully unsafe, “but I trust your honor as a gentleman.”
Nat groaned. “A pity.”
“We are talking,” Lizzie said.
Nat’s expression sobered. He turned on his side so that he could look at her properly. “I know,” he said. “There is much to talk about.” A frown touched his brow. “Last night you accused me of taking your cousin’s money as a bribe to wed you.”
Some of the bright pleasure went out of Lizzie’s day. “Tom told me,” she said, haltingly, looking away from Nat and out across the vast bronze and green expanse of the moors. “He said that Cousin Gregory paid you to marry me because he thought I was a disgrace to the Scarlet name and wanted rid of me.”
Nat shifted uncomfortably. “It wasn’t really like that, Lizzie.”
“Did he give you money?” Lizzie pressed. “Did he, Nat?”
When Nat looked up and met her eyes she already knew the answer.
“He did,” she said tonelessly, “and you didn’t tell me.”
