Four minutes.

Or not.

Annabel’s ears pricked at the sound of whispering, and with a frown, she twisted in her seat and looked back toward the house. She could see two people emerging through the French doors, a man and a woman, judging by their silhouettes. She groaned to herself. They must be sneaking outside for an assignation. There could be no other explanation. If they had sought out this side of the garden, and chosen that door, then they were trying to avoid detection.

Annabel did not want to be the one to ruin things for them.

She jumped to her feet, intending to find an alternate route back into the house, but the couple was advancing quickly, and there was no way she could go anywhere but deeper into the shadows if she wished to avoid them. She moved swiftly, not quite running but definitely doing something that was more than a walk, until she was at the hedge that clearly marked the edge of the property. She didn’t particularly relish the thought of pressing herself into the bramble, so she scooted off to her left, where she could see an opening in the hedge, presumably leading out to the heath.

The heath. The huge, wonderful, glorious space that was everything that London was not.

This was definitely not where she was supposed to be. Definitely, definitely not. Louisa would be aghast. Her grandfather would be furious. And her grandmother…

Well, her grandmother would probably laugh, but Annabel had long since realized she ought not base any of her moral judgments on her grandmother’s behavior.

She wondered if she might be able to find another way back from the heath onto the Trowbridge lawn. It was a huge property; surely there were multiple openings in the hedge. But in the meantime…

She looked out over the open expanse. How amazing to find such wilderness so close to town. It was fierce and dark, and the air held a crisp clarity she hadn’t even realized she’d missed. It wasn’t just that it was clean and fresh—that she’dknown she’d missed, from the very first day she’d breathed in the slightly opaque gas that masqueraded as air in London. There was a bite to the air here, something cold, something tangy. Every breath made her lungs tingle.

It was heaven.

She looked up, wondering if the stars would be any more visible out here. They weren’t, not much anyway, but she kept her face to the sky nonetheless, walking slowly backward as she gazed up at the thin sliver of moon hanging drunkenly above the treetops.

It was the sort of night that ought to be magical. And it would have been, if she hadn’t been pawed at by a man old enough to be her grandfather. It would have been if she’d been allowed to wear red, which favored her complexion so much more than this pale peony of a pink.

It would have been magical if the wind blew in time to a waltz. If the rustle of the leaves were Spanish castanets, and there were a handsome prince waiting in the mist.

Of course there was no mist, but then again, there was no prince, either. Just a horrible old man who wanted to do horrible things to her. And eventually, she was going to have to let him.

Three times in her life she’d been kissed. The first was Johnny Metham, who now insisted upon being called John, but he’d been but eight when he’d smacked his lips on hers—definitely a Johnny.

The second had been Lawrence Fenstone, who had stolen a kiss on May Day, three years earlier. It had been dark, and someone had put rum in both bowls of punch, and the entire village had lost its sense. Annabel had been surprised, but not angry, and in fact when he’d tried to put his tongue in her mouth she’d laughed.

It had seemedjust the most ridiculous thing.

Lawrence had not been amused, and he’d stalked off, his manly pride apparently too pricked to continue. He didn’t speak to her again for an entire year, not until he’d come back from Bristol with a blushing bride—blond, petite, and brainless. Everything Annabel wasn’t, and, she was relieved to note, quite a lot that she didn’t care to be.

The third kiss had been tonight, when Lord Newbury had ground his body against hers, and then done the same with his mouth.

Suddenly that whole episode with Lawrence Fenstone’s tongue no longer seemed so amusing.

Lord Newbury had done the same thing, trying to jab his tongue between her lips, but she had clenched her teeth together so hard she’d thought her jaw might break. And then she had run. She’d always equated running with cowardice, but now, after having taken flight herself, she realized that sometimes it was the only prudent action, even if it meant that she now found herself alone on a heath, with an amorous couple blocking her way back to the ballroom. It was almost comical.

Almost.

She let her cheeks inflate with air, then blew it out, still walking slowly backward. What a night this had been. It wasn’t magical at all. It wasn’t—

“Oh!”

Her heel connected with something—dear God, was it a leg?—and she tumbled back. And all she could think—as macabre as her outlook had become—was that she’d tripped over a dead body.

Or at least she hoped it was dead. A dead body would certainly do less damage to her reputation than a live one.

Sebastian was a patient man, and he didn’t mind waiting twenty minutes so that he and Elizabeth could make respectably separate reentrances to the ballroom. The lovely Lady Cellars had a reputation to uphold, even if he did not. Not that their liaison was anything approaching a secret. Elizabeth was young and beautiful, she’d already supplied her husband with two sons, and if Sebastian had it correctly, Lord Cellars was far more interested in his male secretary than he was in his wife.

No one expected Lady Cellars to remain faithful. No one.

But appearances had to be upheld, and so Sebastian happily remained on the blanket (smuggled in by an enterprising footman) and pondered the night sky.

It was uncommonly peaceful out here on the heath, even if he could hear the sounds of the party humming in on the wind. He’d not ventured too far past the border of the Trowbridge property; Elizabeth was not so adventurous as that. Still, he felt remarkably alone.

The strangest thing was, he liked it.

He didn’t often enjoy solitude. In fact, he almost never did. But there was something charming about being out on the heath, out in the open. It reminded him of the war, of all those nights with nothing over his head save for the canopy of a tree.

He’d hated those nights.

It didn’t make much sense that something that brought back memories of war would give him such contentment right now, but not much that went through his head made sense. There didn’t seem to be much point in questioning it.

He closed his eyes. The insides of his eyelids were a brownish black, not at all the same as the thick purple of the night. Darkness had so many colors. It was strange, that, and perhaps a little disquieting. But—

“Oh!”

A foot slammed into his left calf, and he opened his eyes just in time to see a woman tumbling backward.

Right onto his blanket.

He smiled. The gods still loved him.

“Good evening,” he said, scooching himself up onto his elbows. The woman didn’t reply—no surprise there, as she was still busy trying to figure out how she’d ended up on her arse. He watched as she attempted to maneuver herself back onto her feet. She wasn’t having an easy time of it. The ground was uneven under the blanket, and she had certainly been set off her equilibrium, if her rapid breathing was any indication.

He wondered if she, too, had an assignation. Perhaps there was another gentleman out here on the darkened heath, lurking in the background, waiting to pounce.

Sebastian tilted his head to the side, regarding the lady as she brushed off her dress, and then decided—probably not. She didn’t have that furtive look about her. Plus, she was wearing white, or light pink, or some other virginal hue. Debutantescould be seduced—not that Sebastian had ever done so; he did subscribe to a certain moral code, not that anyone ever gave him credit for it. But from what he’d observed, virgins needed wooingin situ . You certainly weren’t going to get one to walk herself across a lawn and into the heath for her own ruination. Even the stupidest of girls would come to her senses before she reached her destination.

Unless…

Now this could be interesting. Maybe his clumsy lady hadalready been deflowered. Maybe she was on her way to meet her lover. The enterprising gentleman would have had to have done avery good job of it the first time if he was getting a repeat engagement. Sebastian had it on the best authority that it was a rare girl who enjoyed her first time.

Then again, his scientific sample might be skewed. All of the women he’d slept with recently had had their first times with their husbands. Who were, almost by definition, bad in bed. Otherwise, why would their wives have sought out Sebastian’s attentions?

At any rate, as delicious as his ponderings might be, it was extremely unlikely that this young lady was on her way to meet a lover. Virginity was just about the only commodity allowed to the young and unmarried of the female persuasion, and they generally did not squander it.

So what was she doing out here? All by herself? He smiled. He loved a good mystery. Almost as much as a good melodrama.

“May I be of assistance?” he asked, since she hadn’t responded to his earlier greeting.

“No,” she said, giving her head a quick shake. “I’m sorry. I’ll be on my way. I really can’t—” She looked over at him then, and swallowed.