And you do not really know me at all, Lizzie thought, nor do I know you. She started to walk slowly across the lawn toward the house.

“I realize that,” she said, “but for almost all our acquaintance I was no more than Monty’s little sister to you, and you…”

You were like a hero to me.

He had been. Nine years older and with all the glamour that age and experience could bestow, he had always seemed out of her reach.

“There is a vast gap between the friendship we had before,” Lizzie said, “and being husband and wife.”

“Many people who marry are practically strangers to one another when they wed,” Nat said. “It is accepted.”

Lizzie thought of Flora Minchin. Flora and Nat had been virtual strangers who would have wed and perhaps Nat would have been more comfortable with a wife he did not need to know well. All he had wanted was someone who was rich and could one day fulfill the role of Duchess of Waterhouse with aplomb. Instead he had got her, rich, it was true, but a complete hoyden.

“I know,” she said. “Unfortunately I cannot live like that.” She looked him in the eyes. “It makes me unhappy to give myself to you with such abandonment and yet to feel so remote from you the rest of the time,” she said. “It feels wrong to me. I need to know you better, Nat. I need time.”

I need to try to make you love me…

She trembled a little at the thought. Perhaps she was mad even to imagine that she could turn his caring and his desire for her into something deeper and more profound. She did not know; all she knew was that she owed it to herself to try and that she was determined that she would give them this chance.

“I understand that you might need time to adjust to your new situation,” Nat said. “This is strange for you and new, and you are young and have experienced so much loss lately…” He stopped, frowning more deeply. “If I hurt you last night…”

Lizzie knew that he thought she was shocked at the physical demands he was making on her and so she was withdrawing because she needed time to come to terms with them. In an odd way, although he had misunderstood her reasons, she loved him all the more for trying to give her what she wanted even when he did not understand.

“You did not hurt me,” she said, “but I do need some time. I am sorry. It is true that I am in mourning and I feel very angry and resentful all the time and that is why I go a little mad and do such scandalous things…” She stopped. She knew that one day soon she would need to talk to him about all the pent-up anger and frustration and misery that was inside her or it would poison everything. This morning her hurt was too fresh and new to try, and she felt so weary, but she would explain as best she could very soon.

“Will you do it for me, Nat?” she appealed. “Will you try to know me better, do things together, talk to one another?”

She could see that he still did not understand why she needed it to be this way but that he could also see how passionately it mattered to her. He took her hand and she tried not to shiver with hope and longing.

“Very well,” he said. “I know you are angry and unhappy.” The lines about his eyes eased as he smiled a little. “Indeed I would have to be blind not to have noticed and I am sorry that I have been angry, too, and not more patient with you.”

Lizzie felt almost winded with love for him in that moment. “You would have to be a very complaisant husband indeed not to be infuriated by my behavior,” she whispered, and he smiled at her again, looking tired and sad, and she wanted to soothe that sadness away.

“Would you like to go riding with me later-take a picnic, perhaps?” Nat said. “We could make a start on getting to know one another better.”

“I should like that very much,” Lizzie agreed, smiling with dazzling pleasure. A tiny seed of hope was unfurling in her heart, so new and delicate that she was almost afraid to put too much trust in it.

Nat’s thumb moved gently over the smooth skin on the back of her hand. “But this idea of not touching,” Nat continued. “Perhaps you could reconsider?”

Lizzie looked up at him. The soothing movement of his thumb and the warm clasp of his hand on hers were very seductive. She was tempted to compromise. But that way lay danger and weakness. In no time they would kiss and then they would make love again and she would be back where she had started having lost the chance to win the thing that she so desperately desired, Nat’s love.

She removed her hand from his. “I am sorry,” she said. “No compromises.” Despite herself, her voice came out a little huskily from the effect of his proximity. Nat heard it and immediately his eyes narrowed to a predatory gleam.

“You will be the one who breaks the terms first,” he said softly.

“No, I will not,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, you will because you have no patience.”

Perhaps, Lizzie thought, he knows me better than I imagined. But I will show him.

She smiled into his eyes. “I’ll wager I do not.”

Nat smiled straight back at her and Lizzie felt her head spin. This was different. This was new. Her husband was flirting with her. Nat Waterhouse, whom she had known since she was eleven years old, who had viewed her as the rather troublesome little hoyden whom he was always extracting from scrapes, was actually flirting with her.

This is the bit we missed out, Lizzie thought suddenly. We never had a courtship. We went straight from a rather strained friendship to an even more strained marriage and there was no time to adjust. But now we can change that…

Suddenly she felt light-headed with excitement.

Nat took her hand again and kissed the palm and Lizzie snatched it away from him. She could feel the imprint of his lips on her skin and curled her fingers over the place where the kiss had been. “You are cheating already!” she protested.

“I’ll wager you lose, sweetheart,” Nat said. “I will see you at breakfast.” He strolled away across the grass and Lizzie watched him go, her heart suddenly lifting. He had never called her sweetheart before that morning. He had probably never thought of her in that way. Of course Nat had no idea that she was gambling on far more than he was, on the chance of his love, but suddenly she thought this wager with her husband might prove a great deal more fun than she had imagined.

“SO,” LAURA ANSTRUTHER SAID, “you rode naked into The Granby Hotel, you quarreled passionately with Nat-”

“I’m guessing that you then made love even more passionately,” Lydia put in slyly.

“And now you are refusing to sleep with him again until he falls in love with you,” Alice finished.

“That’s about the sum of it,” Lizzie said. She looked around the circle of her friends. “Well? Do you think I am mad?”

They were sitting in Laura’s library later that morning and the summer sun was streaming in through the long windows. Alice and Lizzie had been into the village and brought back the news and gossip for their friends and now they were taking tea, all except Lydia who was eating a pickled egg.

“I can’t help it,” Lydia said defensively, catching Lizzie’s grimace as she reached for the jar, “I developed a taste for them a few months ago and now I cannot stop. It’s not my fault-being enceinte has given me a liking for all manner of strange food.”

“The vinegar smells horrid,” Lizzie said.

“It tastes wonderful,” Lydia said, beaming as she popped another egg into her mouth.

“No, you are not mad,” Laura said to Lizzie, patting her hand, “but I do think you are very brave in risking your heart like this. I’m surprised that Nat agreed,” she added.

“Well of course he thinks that I am shocked by his demands on me,” Lizzie said, coloring a little. “And he did not precisely agree. He sees it more as a wager and thinks I will lose.”

“And meanwhile he will be falling in love with you,” Alice said.

“If he does not-” Lizzie began. She had not allowed herself to think what might happen if she set out to win Nat’s love and failed. Presumably life would feel as desolate as it did now, only worse.

“He will,” Laura said. “You have had men falling at your feet for years, Lizzie.”

“And the one that I want, my own husband, is indifferent to me,” Lizzie said. “There’s some irony in that.”

“Nat is not indifferent to you,” Laura said thoughtfully. “He cares deeply. He has always been there for you, Lizzie, for as long as you have known him. What he has not done yet-” she paused thoughtfully “-is to let that regard for you grow into love. But I think he is close and now that you have changed the rules of the game, well…” She smiled. “We shall see.”

“There is a horde of people approaching up the lawn,” Lydia commented, peering out of the library window. “Whatever can they want? There is Mrs. Broad, and Mrs. Morton from the dressmakers and the haberdasher and the milliner and the florist-”

“And Mrs. Lovell the solicitor’s wife, and Mrs. James the doctor’s wife, and my mama, and the servants from Fortune Hall-” Alice said.

There was a thunderous crash at the front door as the first of the visitors applied themselves to the knocker, then there was a babble of voices and then Carrington, Laura’s aged butler, staggered into the library followed closely by about forty people.

“A number of ladies from the village wish to speak with you, Mrs. Anstruther,” Carrington shouted, over the tumult. “There is Mrs. Broad and Mrs. Morton and-”

“Pray don’t feel you must announce everyone, Carrington,” Laura said hastily as the butler looked as though he was about to expire with the effort. She raised her hand.

“Ladies, please!” The room fell obediently quiet. “What may we do for you?” Laura added.

“You’ve had the news from the village?” Mrs. Lovell asked, quivering like a greyhound. “We’ve only just heard-Spencer, Sir Montague’s valet, has been found murdered!”