Leon had checked the horse to a trot again, and they were at their destination in little more than a quarter of an hour. He slowed them to a walk as they came into the grove of trees. Even the rutted trail was sprinkled with fragrant, fresh-fallen pine needles atop the older brown ones. Bringing the buggy to a stop, Leon whipped the reins about the post at the side of the foot rest and hopped down, going quickly to the other side to help Annabel alight.

Holding his hand, she stepped out of the buggy like a princess arrived at a ball. “Ah—” She breathed the piny air. “How cool. How pretty it is. I’m so glad you came when you did. I was about ready to die from having nothing to do or think about!” She walked away from the buggy before turning and curtsying to him. “I thank you, sir, for rescuing this maiden from the Demons of Boredom!”

“What would you have done had I not come just then?”

What she had been considering before his arrival was going to her room and examining her ribbons and hats and dresses, a pastime that never failed to give her some pleasure, no matter how familiar all her things were. “Expired! Oh yes, I would surely have expired. You saved my life.”

“That gives me a claim on it, don’t you think?”

She was suddenly aware that they were alone, together and alone in a way she had never before felt with anyone. She walked from the buggy toward the small lake made by the spring, and he followed, breathing her fragrance, the scent of the gift perfume only faintly there in her own aroma and that of the pine woods.

He came up behind her as she stood at the bank, looking down at the water a foot away from her shoes. Bewitched by the spell her youth had cast upon him, he put his hands on her waist, turning her to him and embracing her, clamping his mouth on hers before she could cry out or retreat in surprise.

After one stunned moment Annabel wrenched away with more energy than she had ever perhaps done anything, almost falling into the lake as a result. He let her go, as alarmed by her total and brutal rejection as she had been by his sudden attack.

“What are you doing, Uncle Leon? You are being awful!” These were no longer the words and inflections of the flirting young woman he had recently known, but the outrage of a shocked child.

He managed to mumble only, “I meant no—but you led me to think—”

She burst into tears, and dropping herself down on a stump, howled with fury. He let her entirely alone for a little bit, and then he said, “Come, Annabel, you mustn’t carry on so.”

Stopping her weeping midbreath, she looked up at him. “What is that?” she asked in surprised interest.