Nory jumped, her actions jerky from shock and partially frozen limbs. Unfortunately, her movements were limited by her very tight dress, and she stumbled forward. With gravity pulling her down toward the bed of hellebores, which she would undoubtedly pulverize, she began windmilling her arms wildly to propel herself backward. She tried to shuffle back, but her dress had snagged on the wire. She yanked one leg back hard, and the fabric gave way with a rip that seemed to echo off the garden walls. The force of it sent her off along the path like a spinning top. She came to rest abruptly in a wheelbarrow, the manure in it breaking her fall and preventing any major injury other than the crushing blow dealt to her dignity.

For a moment she sat dazed, but the sweet, punchy aroma of cow shit soon punctured any discombobulation. She tried to heave herself out of the wheelbarrow, but she had never been gifted with upper body strength, and her bottom half was practically a mermaid tail due to her stupid dress. She was about to resort to some incarnation of the Worm Dance to wiggle her way to freedom when a man—presumably belonging to the voice that had gotten her into this mess—in a parka zipped up to the top loomed over her, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I work here. Take my hands.”

Nory had very little choice. As she reached out her own rather grubby hands, she hoped that he was a security guard and not an armed robber come to burglarize the toffs playing house in the castle . . . She decided that the latter would probably have left her in the barrow.

With a most unladylike “Ooof!” Nory was lifted out of the wheelbarrow and was relieved to find her feet back on the ground—not that she could feel them anymore, or any other part of her anatomy for that matter. As if reading her thoughts, the man unzipped his coat and held it out to her.

“I’ll make it smell,” she half protested; even from this distance she could feel the warmth he’d left behind in the fabric, tempting her in like a warm bath.

“It’ll wash,” he said simply.

She didn’t need telling twice. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled the heavy coat tightly around her, little moans of ecstasy escaping her lips as the heat enveloped her. She looked up at him then.

“Isaac?” she said incredulously. He had changed, of course, but there was no mistaking him.

The man stared at her for a long moment, a frown causing a crease between his brows, and then recognition dawned.

“Elinor Noel,” he said in a tone that wasn’t exactly friendly.

“Oh my god!” She laughed. “You’re still here!”

She saw Isaac bristle.

“ ‘Still here’ would imply I never left. Which is not the case.”