It was one thing to want a woman madly, but nothing compared to being madly wanted in return. Except to be wanted by her was an impossibility.

Thanks to your parents’ shame, a match between the two of you would be a disaster for her, Sir Alfred had rightly pronounced. You’ve more sense than this, Alec. And if you don’t, I will take great pains to remind you.

Now there was far too much about himself, both his past and the man he had become, that she could never know. Alec strode over to the other side of the terrace, desperate to smell something besides damned rosewater, hear something other than that soft, sultry moan, fill his hands with something other than her. He swung back around. She stood in the same spot, but all traces of the stubborn, frustrating she-devil had vanished. Her shoulders were slumped and her head was bowed while she nervously twisted her hands. The stark pain in her face hit him harder than any blow.

She might as well have been that cherubic girl again, appealing to every protective instinct he ever had, while he was the same surly eleven-year-old rejecting her affection in a desperate effort to maintain the impenetrable wall around himself. Until the day she finally managed to scale it. From then on he vowed to do her no harm, and to keep that damned look off her face, but now he was the cause. Alec moved to reach for her, to call her name, to soothe her, but the housekeeper chose that moment to arrive with their long-overdue tea.

Lottie immediately straightened at the sight of Marta stepping onto the terrace with a heavy tray. She ignored Alec as she walked toward the housekeeper; that cool marble facade had reappeared once again, destroying any trace of vulnerability.

“Here, Marta. Let me help you.”

Together they placed the tray on a table and began arranging the tea things. Marta must have included every delicacy in the house, but Alec was in no state to eat.

Marta was prattling on in rapid Italian—she had been delighted to learn he was fluent, and even knew a bit of the local dialect—but Alec barely heard a word. “Grazie. Puoi andare,” he said and waved her away.

Marta bowed eagerly. “Prego, prego. Grazie, signore.” She then scurried back into the house.

“Lord of the manor already?” Lottie quipped as she moved to pour for both of them.

Alec sat down and tried not to stare at her slender, bare hands gracefully holding the teapot. “Just trying to act the part.”

A bit of tea dribbled over the spout and Lottie caught it with her finger, then promptly brought it to her lips. Alec coughed and shifted in his seat.

“About that,” she said, adding a dash of milk to her cup without offering him any. “Why is Marta under the impression that you’re a nobleman?”

Did she remember he took it plain, or was this merely a snub?