“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t belittle yourself in that way.”

“You cannot pretend,” he said, “that you would wish to be bound to me for life.”

She had not been talking or even thinking of marriage. Or-foolishly-of being got with child again. She did not want to think of either. By this time next week she would be back in Bath with David, resuming her old life and duties at the school though it was still vacation time. Mr. Butler would remain here alone-everyone else would have left too.

He would be all alone.

And so would she-surrounded by people, by friends.

But there was today. There was now.

“I just do not want to be lonely any longer,” she said again. “I do not want you to be. I want the memory of this lovely afternoon and of this whole month to be complete.”

“Anne,” he said. “Anne.”

Only now did she realize that he was calling her by her given name. It warmed her heart to hear him say it.

And then he lifted his hand and set his palm against her cheek, his fingers pushing up into her hair. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes again.

“Forgive me,” she said. “Please forgive me. Here I stand trying to seduce you and proving that I am indeed what many people call me.”

He demonstrated then what she had observed earlier, that his left arm was as strong as both were with many other men. He circled her waist with it and drew her hard against him, making a sound very much like a growl as he did so. She stood pressed against him, her face against his left shoulder.

“There is no seduction here,” he said, his voice low against her ear. “Not on either side. Good God, Anne, you must know that I want you every bit as much as you can possibly want me. And I do not wish to be lonely any longer either. Let us take away each other’s loneliness, then, at least for this afternoon so that it may be made perfect.”

She wrapped her arms about his waist.

Perfect.

…so that it may be made perfect.

Please, God. Please, God.

The master bedchamber had green brocaded walls with gilded friezes below the high ceiling. Heavy burgundy velvet curtains hung on either side of the long window from frieze to floor. The great four-poster, canopied bed was hung with burgundy-and-green-striped draperies. A matching spread lay over the bed. A Persian carpet covered most of the floor. Paintings of horses in heavy gilded frames hung on the walls.

It was not a pretty room, but it had struck Anne earlier that it had character, that it was indeed a master bedchamber. It was where Mr. Butler would surely sleep if he purchased Ty Gwyn, she had thought.

The window looked out over the meadow to the trees on the slope opposite. Looking out through it as she stepped into the room now, Anne could see the five-bar wooden gate and the stile in the distance.

The stile-where this had all started.

She shivered slightly. But she was not allowing her thoughts to speak too loudly to her. She did know, though, that she had wanted-and dreaded-this almost from the beginning of their acquaintance. Perhaps from the moment when they had admitted their loneliness to each other.

It was a mutual loneliness that impelled them now. It was not a bad motive, surely, for what they were about to do. There was compassion in sharing and alleviating another’s loneliness. There was a certain tenderness in it.

She felt an overwhelming tenderness for Sydnam Butler, who had demonstrated almost incredible courage and suffered so much yet had pieced his life back together with determination and dignity though he had believed himself untouchable ever since.

Now she would touch him and prove that he was mistaken about himself. And he would touch her and she would feel again like a desirable woman. Perhaps.

Please, God.

She turned as she heard him close the door and looked uncertainly at him. But her resolve had not weakened in the distance from morning room to bedchamber. She did want him with a knee-weakening desire.

“Please,” he said, smiling at her and closing the distance between them, “may I be the one to take down your hair? You could do it ten times faster with your two hands, I daresay, but may I do it?”

She smiled and stood still while his fingers fumbled awkwardly with the pins that held her hair up. She looked deliberately into his face as his hand worked. She did not even know, she realized, what lay behind the black eye patch. But she was struck again by the extraordinary beauty of the left side of his face. He was twenty-eight years old-one year younger than she. He could never have been a rake, she thought, even if this had not happened to him. He was a serious, gentle, affectionate man. He would have been married by now to some woman with a beauty and social rank to match his own. He would have had children. He would have had a family to bring with him to Ty Gwyn.

But no-he would never even have come to Wales if he had not also gone to the Peninsula against the advice of everyone who knew and loved him.

She would never have met him.

And if she had not been raped, she would be married to Henry Arnold now and living in Gloucestershire. She would not be standing here in the master bedchamber at Ty Gwyn, having her hair taken down by a one-armed man who had become strangely precious to her.

How strange were the ways of fate.

But she was mentally prattling, she thought, when her hair came cascading down over her shoulders and he reached behind him to set her hairpins down on a table without taking his eye off her.

Her thoughts came crashing to a halt then, and she felt horribly, horribly vulnerable-not because she did not believe in her own beauty but precisely because she did. Beauty could blind the beholder to all else, even the personhood of the one who possessed it. And she could see in his eye that he found her beautiful.

I am Anne, she wanted to cry out to him. Please do not forget that I am Anne.

Please, please, please do not call my hair my crowning glory.

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth with closed lips. Desire shot through her like a lightning bolt, almost causing her knees to buckle. And with it came the return of thought.

All was going to be well. Surely it was.

“Anne,” he murmured so softly that she almost missed it.

And then he turned away and shrugged out of his coat and sat down on the side of the bed to pull off his Hessian boots. It was a hard thing to do one-handed-she could see that. His valet must, of course, do it for him at home. She did not know if she should offer to help, but she did not do so, and he managed. She guessed that he managed most tasks that a two-armed person would find impossible to do one-handed.

His right shirtsleeve was pinned to his side just as his coat sleeve was.

She waited tensely.

But when he got to his feet again, he drew back the bedcovers and turned to reach out his arm to her, and she realized that he did not intend to remove any more of his clothes.

“Anne,” he said, “will you take off your dress yourself? It would take me too long.”

He watched her until she stood before him in just her shift and her stockings. She sat on the bed to take off the latter, but he kneeled before her and removed them one at a time himself.

“Ah,” he said, sitting back on his heels and gazing up at her when the task was complete, “you are incredibly beautiful, Anne. I am sorry. I am so very sorry-”

“No.” She leaned forward and set her hands on his shoulders, and her hair fell forward to frame both their faces. “Please don’t be. Please, please do not. I would never have met you if you were not like this. I would not be here with you now. And I would not be here if I were not as I am. I want to be here with you. And if you say you are sorry, then I must say it too. I do not want either of us to be sorry for anything this afternoon.”

“Anne,” he said, “I am not very experienced. And I have had no experience at all since…this.”

It was somehow reassuring to know that he felt his own insecurities and anxieties just as she felt hers. Perhaps that was why she had found the courage to come this far.

“I am not very experienced either.” She smiled at him.

He closed the gap between their mouths and kissed her. And this time he deepened the kiss, parting his lips, passing his tongue over her lips until she opened her mouth and his tongue came warm inside and she wrapped both arms about his neck and pushed her fingers up into his hair, making a sound of appreciation deep in her throat as she did so.

Or perhaps it was he who made the sound.

“Lie down,” he whispered against her mouth as he raised his head. “Will you remove your shift? But only if you feel comfortable doing so.”

She crossed her arms and pulled it off over her head before lying down and moving over so that he could lie beside her. And strangely she did not feel uncomfortable though he stood looking down at her for several moments. He had called her beautiful and he desired her. But he had also called her by name, and she knew somehow from the look in his eye, though there was desire there, that it was her he saw, not just her voluptuous beauty. Beneath his gaze she could feel simply herself.

And this at least was new. She had never been naked with a man before.

She throbbed with wanting him.

He lay on his right side facing her, and his hand moved over her, warm, sensitive-and trembling. She turned toward him, smiled at him, and caressed him through his clothing with her own hand-and on his left side.

He was all warm, hard-muscled masculinity. She could feel the muscles in his arm and shoulder and rippling along his back. She could feel the muscles in his buttock when she rested her hand there while her eyes drifted closed and she licked her lips. He was doing exquisite things with his thumb and forefinger at the nipple of one breast and then the other.