“Miss Annabel, you look like a lady about to go off to a party. Are you expecting company?”

“I wish I were,” she complained wistfully. “I haven’t been to a party in I-can’t-even-remember when. This summer will never end, will it? They’ll go on picking cotton and making hay and fodder, and I shall die of very boredom!”

Leon laughed softly. “For whatever company I may provide, I offer myself to your command.” As he bowed over her, he caught her scent. “You have used the perfume. Did you guess I would come today?”

“Of course not!” She tossed her head as she had seen older girls do with men they were only pretending to check with a rebuke. But then she smiled conspiratorially. “Do you truly mean you are mine to command?”

“Entirely.”

“Take me for a drive in your rig!”

“Now?”

“Yes!”

“Just us, alone?”

“Why not?”

“No reason not, of course, but—”

“I can see your offer was only one of words, sir!”

“Not at all—but is your grandmother home? Perhaps you should just step in and tell her, so she won’t wonder where you are.”

“Everyone is in the confounded fields!”

“Then come!”

“You mean you will?”

“Certainly.”

“Oh!” She sprang up from her chair and sashayed across the porch and tripped down the steps. He followed her quickly, and at the side of the buggy held her arm to help her in, she pulling her skirt tight with her free hand so that its freshness would not be soiled by the wheels, which he’d had no opportunity to turn out of her way. Loosening the reins, he hopped up to the driver’s seat on the other side of her, and off they went.

They did not speak until they were well clear of the house.

“Oh!” she cried then; with much the same happy moan she had made when she received his gift of perfume. “I feel like I’m eloping!”

Leon grinned, looking straight ahead and urging the horse into a faster trot. He did not register the fact that she’d said “I” instead of “we.”

“Do let us go on and on! I want to ride forever! I don’t care where!” The next minute as the horse was trotted faster and faster, and then broke into a gallop, she cried in contradiction, “Please! Not so fast! Where are we going?”

“Will Boiling Springs do as a beginning?”

“Oh, yes, I dearly love it!”

Boiling Springs was a wooded picnicking grove that took its name from a particularly strong spring there that sent water gushing up to the surface of what had come to be a small lake. Sometimes gentlemen bathed in it, although it was considered dangerous for the ladies, and so they could only trail their fingers in it and marvel at its coldness.