“On your father’s direction.”

“So I told her. And that Mrs. Bainbridge was ill. But Henrietta isn’t the most reasonable female when she’s in a temper.”

A spark of anger threatened to ignite Alex’s own temper. He compressed his lips into a hard line. “You never mentioned any flaws in her temperament when we were in France.”

“I don’t consider jealousy a flaw. Not of a permanent kind. A sensible husband could easily break her of the habit.” George shot him a cautious look. “I say, you do still want all of this, don’t you? You haven’t changed your mind about our agreement?”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Good. Because I’ve been talking you up a storm. If she doesn’t think you a veritable Lancelot by the time you propose, it won’t be my fault.”

Alex looked ahead of them down the road. The edge of Talbot’s Wood was just visible in the distance. He felt the same damnable urge—the same magnetic pull—that had drawn him to Laura Hayes the previous evening. That same unfathomable longing that had prompted him to stay for dinner. To kiss her hand.

It was becoming harder and harder to resist it. To turn his back on the attraction he had for her.

At the moment, it was downright impossible.

“Go back to the vicarage,” he said. “I’ll join you there later.”

“Where are you off to?” George asked.

“A brief errand.” Alex didn’t linger to explain. He kicked his horse into a canter, leaving George far behind him.

It was only a short distance to Talbot’s Wood. He slowed his horse to a walk as he rode into them, down a narrow tree-lined dirt path, going as far as he could on horseback before he was obliged to dismount. He led his horse the rest of the way, tying him loosely to a tree not far from the pond.

The green-hued water glistened in the sunlight, the surface littered with flower petals and fallen leaves.

Laura wasn’t in the water, but it didn’t take long to find her.

She was asleep on a blanket beneath the same oak tree where he’d sat last week. Her ebony hair was unbound, half-dried from the sun, and her muslin dress was damp about the bodice and skirts. One arm was draped across her midsection, the other beside her face—a face that looked younger, and far more vulnerable, in sleep than it did during her waking hours.

Alex’s heart clenched as he looked at her.

He wasn’t a romantic. It nevertheless struck him that she rather resembled an enchanted princess from one of the fairy stories of his youth. The sort of beautiful maiden who could only be awakened by true love’s kiss.

It was sentimental rubbish.