And she certainly didn’t have the temperament.

With one last, dark glance at Logan’s black head, she pushed back from the table, rose, and followed Muriel into the kitchen.

She felt Logan’s dark gaze on her back, but he remained at the table, chatting with the other men while Buttons gathered the children preparatory to herding them upstairs for a full day of lessons.

Mrs. Pennyweather, Molly, and Prue were busy in the scullery. Muriel, a cup of strong tea in her hand, stood at the window looking out over the kitchen garden. Pouring herself a cup of the fragrant black brew from the pot in the middle of the big table, Linnet sipped, then went to join her aunt.

Her gaze on the garden, Muriel murmured, “I’m not going to ask, and you’re not going to tell, but… you’re fond of Logan.”

Looking out on the brown beds, Linnet sipped. Took the instant to consider her words. “Fond is as fond might be, but regardless, once he remembers the rest-the missing pieces-he’ll leave.” She hestitated, then added, “I’d rather that was sooner than later.”

So she could limit the hurt, the disappointment that she, and the children, too, would feel.

Muriel nodded. “Yes, that’s wise. Not a pleasant prospect, but inevitable.”

Linnet said nothing, simply sipped and fought to keep that looming prospect from dragging her spirits down.

“Smell.”

Linnet glanced at Muriel, saw her aunt frowning in concentration.

“I heard somewhere that smell is the most potent trigger for memory.”

Before Linnet could respond, heavy footfalls had her turning.

Logan halted in the doorway. “The others suggested we check in L’Eree to see if anyone or anything from the wreck turned up there.”

In terms of finding something to jog his memory, it was a reasonable suggestion, but of course he’d need her to introduce him to the locals, and ask the questions, too. She didn’t want to spend more time alone with him, but the sooner he remembered and left… the sooner this-her restless, chafing, disaffected mood-would end.

Setting down her cup, she nodded. “Very well-let’s go.”

Muriel stood at the window and watched Linnet and Logan, cloaks flapping, stride toward the stables. Behind her, Mrs. Pennyweather came out of the scullery, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Pennyweather,” Muriel said, her gaze still on the figures walking to the stable yard, “what spices do you have in your pantry?”

Alongside Linnet, Logan rode back into the Mon Coeur stable yard in the early afternoon. The ride had been refreshing, exhilarating in parts, but their hours in L’Eree had been disappointing. In more ways than one.

No one in the small town had even realized there’d been a wreck, so they’d made no advance of any kind on that front.

A drizzling rain had settled in during the long ride back. After leaving their mounts with Matt and Young Henry, he and Linnet strode swiftly, heads down, to the house.

In the small hallway inside the back door, he shrugged off her father’s cloak, hung it on a peg, then reached for hers. As he lifted the cloak, heavy with damp, from her shoulders, she shot him a sharp, irritated glance, then stiffly inclined her head. “Thank you.”

He swallowed a snort. Her politeness was so thick he could whittle it.

That was the way it had been between them all day, a battle of sorts in which neither would yield. As far as he could manage, he’d seized every opportunity to underscore-to make plain to her-his view of her vis-à-vis him, and she’d been just as relentless in holding firm to politeness and her “arrangement,” depressing his pretensions with haughty distance.

He followed her into the parlor as determined as she to prevail, equally irritated and, he suspected, a touch more grumpy. The rest of the household were already gathered, passing around delicate cups and mugs of tea and a plate of-he sniffed-some sort of spiced biscuit.

Eschewing the armchairs, he joined the children on the floor before the hearth. Buttons handed him a mug of tea, which he accepted with thanks, along with the plate of biscuits Muriel handed him. He set the plate down before the hungry children. “So what did you learn today?”

Accepting a cup of tea from Buttons, Linnet sat in her usual armchair and doggedly kept her gaze from the large male sprawled a few feet away. Their recent interactions reminded her forcibly of a battering ram thudding on a pair of castle doors-unrelenting force meeting unbending resistance.

From the moment they’d left the house, his attention had been constant. His gaze had rarely left her, his awareness of her had never faltered-any more than had hers of him. That hyperawareness irritated, but there seemed nothing she could do; the curse seemed an inescapable outcome of the heated engagements in which they’d indulged.

The sooner he left, the sooner her nerves, her senses-and her foolish, wanton heart-would recover.

Disinclined to make conversation, she found herself listening to the children, to their interaction with Logan…

Damn! How the devil had he drawn so close to them so quickly?

Shifting, she studied the group, and a chill touched her heart. Not only because of the happy, engaged look in Will’s eyes, and the eager hero-worship on Brandon’s and Chester’s faces, or the settled content in Jen’s-but more than anything because of the outright adoration in Gilly’s innocent eyes.

She was supposed to be their protector. It was unarguably her duty to protect them as best she could from the disappointment, the distress, that would come when Logan left.

Glancing at Buttons, then at Muriel, Edgar, and John, she realized her entire household had, each in their way, fallen under Logan Monteith’s spell.

Throwing a glance at the clock, then the window, she stood. “I’m going for a walk along the cliffs.”

As she’d expected, Logan looked up. “I’ll come with you.”

“As you wish.” As she wanted. Better that only she be devastated by his leaving. Turning, she met Muriel’s surprised eyes. “We’ll check the western coves for any further wreckage-according to the experts, that seems the only place there might be more to find.”

“Be careful if you go down to the rocks,” Edgar said. “Tide’s on its way in.”

Linnet nodded and strode for the door.

Behind her, she heard Muriel ask Logan, “Did you like the biscuits?”

Linnet could feel his gaze already locked on her as he replied, “Yes, thank you, ma’am. They were delicious,” then he followed her.

Muriel watched Linnet and Logan leave, then sighed. She looked at Buttons. “I don’t know. Perhaps not the right spice.”

Rising, Muriel headed for the kitchen. “Pennyweather?”

Linnet stood at the top of the path leading down to the west cove. It was the third and last of the coves on this narrow face of the island, and like the other two, it was devoid of anything but the smallest slivers of debris.

She scanned slowly one last time, then shook her head. “If anything other than you and those two bodies was washed in this direction, the waves battered it to smithereens on the rocks before it had a chance to reach shore.”

Logan stood beside her, his hands in his pockets as he looked out to sea. “I gathered there are submerged rocks out there.” With his chin, he indicated the choppy, broken sea well out from the headlands.

“There’s reefs aplenty, and when the waves are high and the troughs between them deep, they stick out like jagged teeth. They’ve ripped the hulls of more ships than anyone will ever know.” Turning away from the surging sea, Linnet started back, electing to take the longer route through the wood southwest of the house.

Logan fell in on her heels, his eyes on her cloak’s hem, his mind retreading their conversations through the day, dissatisfying as they had been. Being subtle wasn’t working. She could too easily deflect any point he tried to make. He needed to be more forceful. More direct.

Silence descended as they walked beneath the first trees. Registering the lack of even bird calls-with the scent of a storm in the air, animals and birds had already sought shelter-Logan looked around, noting the relative stillness after the building ferocity of the wind out on the cliffs.

The trees were old, their branches entwining, with saplings pushing up wherever they could, filling in the gaps where their fellows had fallen or been harvested for firewood. The tang of the sea was countered by the scent of cypress, of fir. Shadows pooled to either side of the path, at one with the gloomy day.

Linnet strode on, her stride even and sure.

Further along, deep in the wood, a clearing opened to one side of the path. The roughly circular space hosted a pair of flat stones surrounded by splintered wood, now damp.

No one would be coming to chop wood, not today.

He caught Linnet’s arm, halted her. When she faced him, he released her, locked his eyes on hers. “We can play games, circle the subject forever, but it won’t change anything. Won’t achieve anything.”

Comprehension showed clearly in her green eyes, but she wasn’t going to help him. He searched for words, for the right tack forward. “There’s no point in pretending that what is, isn’t.”

She tensed slightly, faintly arched a brow.

Drawing breath, he held her gaze-took the plunge. “To me, you’re a drug, an addictive ambrosia-I’m not giving you up. I might have to leave, to deliver that wooden cylinder to whoever or wherever it’s supposed to go, but I will be back.” He paused, let every ounce of his determination color the statement “I’ll come back for you.”

Green flashed as her eyes narrowed. “You can’t know that-you can’t say that. You absolutely cannot promise that.”

He felt his jaw clench, felt temper stir. “I know what I want- you . I know what I’ll do to get you.”