She’d spent years dreaming of Nicholas coming home. Years envisioning what it would be like to reunite with him. To hold him, love him, marry him.

“Do you feel equal to a stroll?” he asked.

Her mouth was dry. Great goodness. Had she been staring at him? “Of course.” She moistened her lips. “The exercise will do me good.”

He studied her face. It seemed as though he wanted to say something more. And no doubt he would when they were alone. Their encounter in Hyde Park hadn’t been her finest moment. She’d come very close to fainting. Again.

Was it any wonder he was disposed to think her an invalid?

She tucked her hand into his arm as they followed Jane and Lord Mattingly out into the Trumbles’ back garden. The sun was shining, a faint breeze ruffling through the branches of the fruit trees, just cold enough to merit the cashmere shawl Maggie wore draped round her shoulders.

St. Clare moderated his stride to match her own. He was solicitous. Gentlemanlike. As attentive to her frailty as Bessie often was.

Maggie stole a glance at his handsome profile, only to look away. Her happiness at seeing him again was shadowed by a nagging sense of self-consciousness.

If only she could be more like her old self for him. The Maggie Honeywell he must remember. A girl with a fiery temper and a wild, reckless heart.

Then, she’d been ready to dare anything. There had been no thought to her own human frailty. No consideration that she might do herself an injury.

Papa had been just the same. A true force of nature. His death, when it had come, had been sure and swift. His heart had given out midgallop during the autumn hunt at Beasley Park. He’d toppled from his horse, dead before he hit the ground. It was precisely how Papa would have wanted to meet his end. Snuffed out in full flame.

Meanwhile, Maggie had been reduced to seeing her own flame weaken and die—a mere cinder left to flicker in the ashes of what had once been her life.

If only Nicholas had come back sooner. If only he could have seen her in the months before the contagion of Jenny Seaton’s illness had wrapped its suffocating fingers around Maggie’s lungs. If only…

“You’re very quiet,” St. Clare said.

She looked up at him, managing a slight smile. “I have a great deal on my mind.”

“Anything you’d like to share?”

Up ahead, Jane and Lord Mattingly disappeared down a path to the right. The Trumbles’ garden wasn’t large, but what it lacked in size it made up for in ornamentation. Wherever one looked there were arbors, trellises, and artfully placed topiary providing hidden spots of intimacy among the trees and flowerbeds.