He couldn’t, she thought.
Maybe he did. But he just couldn’t.
While Lady twittered, Lily took a step back. “You’re so like Rose. You both sing, the languages…”
Her words trailed off. Lady flew to a lower branch.
Rand seemed to consider that line of reasoning for a long moment.
When he finally spoke, his tone was laced with quiet conviction. “Maybe I am like Rose. But I don’t want someone like me. I want someone to complete me.”
His words were so earnest, his relentless gray eyes so sure, that he melted her. When he moved closer, when his hand curled around the back of her neck, when he lowered his lips to hers…all she could do was give in.
And giving in felt entirely too right.
Slowly he backed her against the tree, his mouth gentle in the beginning, like it had been the first time. But when she felt the rough bark meet her back, his lips slanted, and she found hers parting, and then, well…
Lily knew about this kind of kiss—she was, after all, the youngest of three sisters. It had sounded rather messy and not entirely pleasant, no matter that she’d been assured otherwise.
There had been no need to worry.
Her eyes drifted closed and her hands crept into his hair, feeling its silky strands damp with his sweat. That should have been unpleasant, too, but it wasn’t. He tasted of salt and somehow smelled clean and musky at the same time, and he overwhelmed every one of her senses.
“Lily?” he whispered against her lips.“I fear I’m falling in love with you.”
Her eyes fluttered open.
”You cannot be,” she said, numb with shock—and afraid it was the same for her. She tried to pull away, fought to gather her wits. This was wrong. “We…we haven’t known each other long enough for you to know that.”
“Four years.”
“No,” she argued, biting her lip. Tears threatened, but she blinked them back. This couldn’t be happening. “Not four years. Not even a month. A couple weeks four years ago, and nine or ten days now. Most of them spent apart.”
“Well, then,” he said quietly, so guilelessly she knew he believed it, “it must have been love at first sight.”
Love? The short word was far too big and real for Lily to manage. It made her heart knot and grow heavy in her chest. Blood pounded in her head, filling her ears.
If he loved her, Lily, then he’d never marry Rose, would he? What was the point of keeping her promise if Rose’s hopes were destined to be dashed either way?
For one single moment, she wanted, more than she’d wanted anything in her life, to break a promise to her sister. Then she gasped, appalled that she’d even had such a disloyal thought. Her family meant everything to her. Rand’s feelings didn’t change that.
“I have to leave,” she said, echoing her words from a week earlier. And she turned toward Snowflake and ran, Lady flying after her.
SIXTEEN
FOR THREE SOLID days, Rand did nothing but eat, sleep, work on the translation, and run. And think. And run and think some more.
At the end of that time, he still wasn’t sure how—or even if—his feelings for Lily had turned from simple infatuation to something deeper. The mechanics of falling in love seemed cryptic, as elusive as the symbols in Ford’s ancient alchemy book.
But Rand Nesbitt was a fellow who prided himself on his ability to figure things out.
Leaving Ford’s laboratory for supper, he asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“No,” Ford said flatly. “It makes no logical sense.”
“Then you didn’t feel…with Violet…”
“On first sight?” Ford’s mouth twitched as though he were holding back a laugh. “Absolutely not. I thought her rather plain and more than a little odd. Though I cannot imagine why,” he added thoughtfully.
Rand followed him down the winding staircase to Lakefield’s cozy, burgundy-toned dining room, where Violet was waiting with their children.
She didn’t look plain at all—she was practically glowing, as a matter of fact, as she handed one of the twins to a nursemaid. And as for odd, well, if that word didn’t describe Ford Chase, Rand didn’t know one that did.
When it came right down to it, who wasn’t odd, anyway?
He took a seat and waited while a footman set a plate of chicken and artichoke pie before him. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked Violet.
“Of course,” she said. “But lust at first sight is more common.”
A becoming blush touched her cheeks, making Rand suspect she’d experienced lust at first sight. He felt suddenly—absurdly—jealous, wishing her sister would feel the same lust for him.
Love. He’d uttered that frightening word, risked baring his soul, offered his heart in his hands…and had it rejected.
Lifting his fork, he shifted his gaze to Ford in an attempt to gauge his old friend as an inspiration for female lust. If he looked hard enough, he could almost understand why women might find Ford handsome, but truth be told, what he really saw was the gawky schoolboy he remembered from their first meeting at Wadham College.
This was a pointless exercise, he decided. But when he’d kissed Lily under the tree three days ago, she had kissed him back. At first, anyway. Perhaps that was reason enough to hope.
“Why are you asking?” Violet tucked a cloth under Nicky’s chin, then pulled his plate closer and put a spoon in his chubby hand. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“I’m not sure,” Rand said. He certainly hadn’t until recently. Besides, his first sight of Lily had been so long ago. After all this time, how was he supposed to remember what he’d felt way back then? In the intervening years, he’d probably built her up in his mind.
And on such a flimsy basis, he now found himself envisioning a lifetime of wedded bliss. Pathetic.
Violet speared a piece of artichoke heart. “Of course,
