Clonmere plucked a flower from the urn beside the bench. “What do you wish for? If you had a fairy godmother, and she granted you a wish-come-true, what would it be, Lady Iris?”

Just as the duke was out of waltzes, Iris was out of witty rejoinders. The plain, honest truth begged to be spoken, if only this once, if only to a man making conversation to avoid the ballroom.

“A wish? My deepest, most secret wish?”

“The wish your heart whispers as you drift into dreams, that wish.”

To not end up with Puck-hair all over my life. To not be a burden on my family. To never… but those wishes were all in the negative. What did Iris wish for affirmatively? She had the sense Clonmere would wait for her answer until Michaelmas, though by then he’d be married to some sister or other.

A lady and a gentleman on the terrace pretended to admire the moonlit garden, though in truth they were standing too close to each other, and like Iris, probably enjoying the simple warmth of a companion in close quarters.

“I wish that a worthy man would regard me, the true me, as the fulfillment of some of his dreams, Your Grace. Not all, of course, just as I wouldn’t expect him to be the sum total of my life either. I was raised to expect that I’d find a partner though, and I’m not ashamed to long for it. I wish that man would find me, and kiss me as if all the love in his heart had finally found a home, and as if all the love in my heart was his dearest treasure. Just once, I’d like to experience such a kiss.”

The admission surprised her, but also came as something of a relief. Twenty-six was not ancient, and longing for somebody to love was purely human.

“You are very brave,” Clonmere said, rising. “Very fierce.”

Now he was ready to return to the ballroom? “I am neither.”

He offered his hand—not his arm—and Iris rose. She’d confided much more than she’d intended, but the recitation had given her courage. She would not slink off to Surrey, she would not consign herself to the company of dyspeptic cats and literary spinsters.

“Where are we going?” she asked, for the duke was not taking her in the direction of the ballroom.

“Someplace private.”

This was not a strictly proper idea, though Clonmere would soon become family to Iris—an idea that struck her as increasingly improper.

“Your Grace, we were to dance the supper waltz.” In public, where Iris had a prayer of not betraying her feelings to him.

“What matters one more waltz, when I can make a lady’s wish come true?” He came to a halt toward the back of the garden. The sound of the ballroom faded to a distant roar, moonlight glinted on a trickle of water splashing from a fountain sculpted into the shape of a blooming rose.

“I must make my own dreams come true,” Iris said.

Clonmere shifted his grip on Iris’s hand, linking their fingers. “On Saturday, I will choose which of Falmouth’s daughters to court. From that day forward, I will be devoted to her and only to her, if she’ll have me. I must make my choice in a manner that offers none of your sisters insult, or the woman I choose for my duchess will forever regret that she caused her siblings to suffer. Jealousy among siblings is the very devil, and I won’t be the cause of it in my wife’s family.”

He was trying to make some point, but Iris grasped only the first part of his declaration. “You have not yet made your choice. You aren’t devoted to anybody yet.”

“Precisely.” He took off his gloves, a curious thing to do when the supper was still a set of dances away. “I am free to behave as I please, and I please to make your one, honest wish come true—if I may?”

A peculiar sensation welled from Iris’s middle, part glee, part terror. “You’d like to kiss me?”

“That was your wish.”

Her wish had involved a particular kind of kiss, which Clonmere couldn’t possibly deliver.

She nodded.

He framed her face in the warmth of his hands. “Then… as you wish, my lady.”

Iris braced her hands on his shoulders and braced her heart to be swept into a maelstrom of sensation, but the buffeting never came. Clonmere touched his mouth to hers, another request for permission.

She stepped nearer, letting him have her weight. “Again, please.”

He smiled against her mouth, and as the violins began a lilting introduction in the distance, Iris embarked on the kiss of her dreams. For a big man, Clonmere was delicate about his intimacies. He stroked Iris’s face, feature by feature, then kissed the terrain his fingers had explored. He teased, he flirted, he bit her earlobe and made her laugh.

And then he grew serious, wrapping Iris close and letting her feel every masculine, muscular, aroused inch of him.

Some inconvenient voice was trying to warn Iris that she’d regret this. The kiss wasn’t wrong—Clonmere was not spoken for, Iris wasn’t either—but it was stolen against all the years when such a kiss would be impossible. Long, lonely years, made more difficult by this intimacy.

As Iris tasted Clonmere’s mouth, explored lips and teeth and tongue with him, she found a thread of peace with her future: In the coming years, she could keep a distance from Clonmere, and being a gentleman, he’d understand and allow that.

But at least she’d have this kiss. This wonderful, perfect, cherishing, happy kiss, and for that she would never, ever be sorry.

IF A WOMAN COULD SAY, “Yes, please court me!” in a kiss, Lady Iris was saying that very thing. She had a grip on Clonmere’s hair at the nape of his neck that spoke of possession and passion. She pressed close to him, breast to chest, hips to happiness.

Had not somebody tittered, loudly, from the direction of the terrace, Clonmere might have borne the lady away to his coach, there to follow kisses with even greater intimacies.

Lady Iris broke the kiss but remained in his embrace and kept her arms about him.

“What are you thinking?” Clonmere asked, stroking her hair.

“I cannot think. I cannot even think about thinking.”

That makes two of us. “We would suit, Lady Iris.” He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to be so graceless about his intentions.

She drew back and fluffed his cravat. “I fear we would, Your Grace, but if I were to marry you, my father would be wroth with all four of his daughters. He’d say I stole you from the other three, he’d claim they didn’t exert themselves hard enough to win your notice. I am the one daughter you cannot marry.”

Merely straightening his linen, Iris addled his wits. “And if your sisters found suitable spouses?”

“That they cannot do that until you’ve chosen your duchess.”

“My prospective papa-in-law wants a stern talking to.”

Lady Iris wandered back to the fountain as the quartet began a fortissimo restatement of the waltz melody.

“To be honest,” Iris, said, “I suspect Falmouth is in want of coin. My brother has gambling debts, my father has little sense where to profitably invest the rents. I’ll be retiring to the country this summer lest Falmouth make designs on my competence.”

No you will not, not without me. “Perhaps Falmouth will allow me to assist my duchess’s sisters to find suitable situations.”

Lady Iris turned, arms crossed. “You will arrange nothing for me, Clonmere. I am provided for, thanks to my late mother’s settlements, while my sisters must marry well.”

“How can you kiss me like that, and then announce you’ll decamp to damned Lesser Sheep Byre, wishing me well as I court a lady of whom I am not enamored? Your sisters are lovely women, Iris, but they aren’t you.”

She was quiet for so long, the waltz had come to an end before she spoke. “You are a duke, you understand responsibility and the importance of family. If Papa thinks I have interfered with your choice of bride to further my own interests, he will exact a toll. He will refuse me the company of my sisters. He will forbid my brothers to contact me, and they very much need a lady’s civilizing influence. He will interfere with my funds, which would be all too easy for him to do as long as I remain unwed. I must tread very, very lightly, Your Grace, or others will pay should my course be guided by selfishness.”

Truly she was more a duchess than Clonmere was a duke. “And the urgency to decide the matter within the month of April?”

“Falmouth cannot afford the expenses of a full Season for all of us. His circumstances approach embarrassed.”

Well, good. An earl without means was an earl who could be managed. “You dreamed of a cherishing, ardent kiss, Lady Iris. I hope I’ve made that dream come true.”