He forced his eyes open and immediately wished he hadn’t.

She looked back at him with such trust…and more. His mind balked at what he saw there. “Lettie,” he said, his voice strained.

In the end, he was saved from having to say any more actual words.

Wind whipped along the shore.

Anthony’s papers went flying, the gust carrying away those parchments he’d worked so hard upon that week.

Cursing, Anthony sprang to his feet and dashed to rescue the pages, gathering them up as he went, reaching and plucking them from the ground, racing toward the ones tumbling over to the shore and into the water.

Bloody splendid. His chest rising and falling hard and fast, for reasons that had nothing to do with the damned notes he’d been making on his parliamentary matters and everything to do with this latest transgression.

He stared at the pages of his work now floating upon the waters.

Wonderful. If this weren’t deuced perfect. An excellent cap to the damned morning.

There came a soft rush of air, another light breeze, and he glanced over just as—

“No!” he called out, even as he knew it was too late, that his efforts were in vain.

Lettie blew by him, racing headlong for the river.

“Let them go, Lettie,” he implored. “They are just papers.”

“Nonsense,” she cried happily. “You’ve spent days working on these.” Dragging her skirts up, she waded into the Serpentine to chase his notes. The deepening waters quickly closed over her legs.

“Aha!” she cried as she grabbed a drenched sheet and then another, foisting them over her head and letting her skirts fall around her, the hems immediately lying upon the waters.

It was impossible to not smile or laugh with her. Her joy and zeal for life were infectious, and Anthony’s laughter rumbled in his chest and shook his frame as Lettie joined in. Their mirth melded so perfectly, in a harmony that was so very right. And natural.

Through her amusement, Lettie gave his notes a triumphant shake in the air and did a little pirouette, turning herself in a neat little circle, and he laughed all the harder.

“I have th—”

Her words went unfinished as her gaze locked on a point beyond his shoulder. The smile froze on her lips, and then the blood slowly leaked from her cheeks. “Uh-oh.”

He’d been wrong. It was not so very impossible to smile or laugh with her after all. The grin on his lips froze, the muscles straining.

Anthony’s eyes locked on Lettie, who was as motionless as he’d ever seen her. She might as well have been a stone statue of Aphrodite springing from those waters. And his stomach muscles twisted into knots.

Oh, hell.

He knew that look.

It was the look of discovery and disaster, and Anthony was too much a coward to turn and face that truth behind him.