Engrossed, Lettie licked the tip of her finger and turned the page of whatever newspaper she read.

He glanced at the papers littering the ground near her feet.

He should go. He was going to leave.

Alas, that moment’s pause to gaze on the lady reading proved costly.

His horse whinnied loudly, and Lettie’s head shot up.

Confusion and then surprise filled her eyes, and he knew the moment she registered that he was the one intruding on her privacy.

“Anthony,” she greeted, coming quickly to her feet.

He silently cursed, and Pegasus, responding to the tension, danced under him. “My lady,” he called as he brought his mount under control. “I bid you good morning.”

I bid you good morning?

A smile twitched at the corners of her lips. “I…bid you good morning as well, Your Grace.” She dropped a curtsy.

He resisted the urge to grimace. Where had that formality come from?

Of course, it was the right way for her to behave toward him, but it was also deuced awkward, as this was still…Lettie.

Lettie, with whom he’d picked right up as if no time at all had passed, when everything had passed and changed.

I should leave.

“Why? Do you have other plans?” she asked curiously, and it occurred to him he’d spoken aloud.

His neck and ears and entire face grew hot. “Yes. Parliamentary matters.”

Lettie frowned and consulted the timepiece affixed to the middle of her bodice, and God help him, his eyes went not to that miniature pin, but the deep vee between her breasts. “At this hour?”

His face went several degrees hotter, and Anthony yanked his gaze higher. “Yes.”

She cocked her head.

“No! That is…eventually.”

“I see?” The slight uptilt of a question at the end of that pronouncement indicated the exact opposite.

An awkward pall fell over them, the first of its kind…ever. Even their sudden reunion several days earlier had not caused the kind of uneasiness that compelled him to leave, that gave him a proverbial out.

So why did he not take it?

“Would you care to join me?” Lettie ventured.

Why did he find himself dismounting as easily as he did, securing his mount, and joining her at her blanket?

He did a sweep of the grounds.

“My maid is asleep in the carriage,” she explained. “It hardly seems fair to drag her here so that I might read.”

“And you prefer to read here?”

“Yes…and no,” she said, reclaiming the seat she’d vacated moments ago.

Anthony stared at her askance.

“Well, at first, I only came because my mother is entirely disapproving of my reading selections and arising early and stealing time away from her and for myself.”

Aye, he could commiserate with the desire to steer clear of the dowager marchioness at all costs.