“That’s surprisingly romantic of you.”

The cravat was still tied around her wrist, but he checked his collar, nonetheless, certain it was tied too tight around his throat. Henry Davies, a romantic?

“No, no, no. I wouldn’t say that.”

She spun around, backing up a few steps toward the party. “It’s past dinner, but would you like to go for a walk? Maybe a tavern? There’s one nearby.”

He preferred this small sliver of heaven in a cluster of sycamore trees. The lantern lights hanging by the paths illuminated the space around them. Here, they were free to talk. Here, they were free from the judgment of others. Once they removed themselves, London would swirl around and tear them apart.

And he had wished to leave only moments earlier—until he met her.

“Dance with me,” he said in a burst of panic. He hated to dance and had made it his life’s mission to avoid such merriment.

She barked out a surprised laugh. “You most definitely need a surgeon.”

“Why? Do you not like to dance?”

“Oh, I like dancing fine enough. But I’m almost certain you don’t like dancing.”

He grinned, clasping his hands behind him. “Normally, you would be correct.”

“What’s different then?”

You.

“There is no one here to see.”

“You prefer to dance when no one is watching? What is the fun of that? Oh, you don’t seem to be the type to enjoy fun.”

“I think you might be teasing me, but you are correct. Dancing, parties, I avoid them whenever possible.”

“I am most definitely teasing you.” She licked her full lips in a slow, sensual sweep of her tongue. “What brought you here this evening?”

“My colleague’s birthday. I agreed to stay only for an hour.”

“Remind me to never invite you to one of my birthday celebrations.”

“I am still here, am I not?”

“I knocked you over, and you bashed your head against a rock. I believe you might be here under duress.”

His cheeks hurt from the stupid grin spread across his face. It pushed the troublesome mask up against his eyelids, and he wished to remove the blasted thing. But that would do no good. Was it supposed to hurt when you smiled?

“Will you dance with me, lady mischief, or shall I stagger out of these woods alone, and a little worse for the wear?”

The stranger peered up toward the sky, revealing the long line of her neck. Henry wondered for a moment how soft her skin would be there, and if she would shiver if he trailed kisses from the hollow of her throat to her mouth. These questions were so strange for him to consider. He didn’t quite understand this madness, but he knew he would die a little if she refused his invitation to dance. And he also knew that until this very moment, he despised dancing more than taxes or mushy peas.

She narrowed her eyes behind her mask and lifted her nose, studying him before holding her hand out for him to grasp.

His heart, which had for thirty-one years worked well up until this night, tripped a beat. Enough for him to catch his breath as his hand reached out for hers, and her gloved hand slipped into his palm. And then he tugged, erasing the distance between them there in the dark circle of sycamore trees.

Their own private space as the rest of London carried on with their raucous masquerade.

“I don’t believe I have danced in the middle of a forest before.”

Henry had only danced in precisely one ballroom, only one time, as a favor to a friend whose younger sister was a sworn wallflower. Perhaps it had been his friend’s attempt at matchmaking. Either way, it didn’t stick, and he and his dance partner had parted ways amicably, both happier to be by themselves.

But this stranger?

They barely knew one another, and he was too much of a gentleman to pull her close and draw the back of his hand against her cheek as he wished. To feel the softness of her skin. And how her lips would feel against his…

He wished to know her depths. He craved to know more than this masked version of her, running through the woods at Vauxhall Gardens. He wanted more than minutes.

And that is what they possessed between them.

Minutes.

She was borrowed brilliance, and soon she would dash out of the woods to be with the rest of glittering London. Like some jewel. And he would retire home, as he had wished, except now it would no longer be a safe haven. Now it would be a reminder that once he had met something truly remarkable.

If they shared names, it would only make the pain of what was to come more real.

“I suppose if we are not sharing names, then we are not sharing other details, but I do know you are too caught up in your thoughts right now.” She laughed and pressed her thumb against the creases between his pinched brows. “I can tell you have a great mind. That is something to be proud of.”

He didn’t know what to do with a compliment. Most everyone hated him for his mind and the way it obsessed over the smallest of details. Even if he had been proud of his mind, and once he had been, now it mostly felt like a burden. As if he owed everyone an apology for working his way through the world with some unfair advantage.

“I do well, thank you,” he said awkwardly.

Henry spun her, watching her emerald dress fan out around her there in the dark. But her hair was fire, and he was a moth drawn to flame, desperate to burn himself for the pleasure of one more touch.

It didn’t make sense.

None of this did.

The stranger twirled back, bracing one hand against his chest to avoid colliding with him. He was desperate to know what that would feel like. What it would do to him to feel her weight against him, her skin to brush against his? He was never a gambling man. He left that to his brother Rafe, but he would guess her hair was soft as his favorite Savile Row silk vest. And she would taste, well, he couldn’t venture to guess that. Her perfume was altogether alluring, and if she were to taste like honey cakes and tea, he would lose what he understood of the world.

Because until tonight, he hadn’t believed in love.

He hadn’t believed he wished to find it.

“You, poor, silly man,” she cooed, bracing his face between her silk-covered palms.

His heart, that cold, icy organ rumored to be in his chest, beat, blooming into something unrecognizable with each proceeding drum. As if, after all this time, he had been sleepwalking.

“I don’t understand you or this,” he whispered. He shuttered his eyes toward her, melting into her touch. “Can you make this make sense?”

“Life may be this big, sweeping thing, but love is discovered in between the million tiny moments when you learn to live your life. I have lived my life fully, much to the disappointment of many. And I assure you that I have never found someone quite as intriguing as I have found you.”

“You mean knocked unconscious at the base of a sycamore tree?”