After all, she'd lived her first fourteen years in quiet rebellion against the rules, passing untold days drifting through the forbidden library. She'd gone to war when most women in Society could barely speak of it. Defiance had always been part of her. Now it stirred, awakening and stretching in the heat that suffused her blood with arousal.

For the first time in a very long time, she wanted. And what she wanted, she meant to have.

She turned to look over her shoulder at him. A snort of laughter caught her without warning.

Lysander still had a raging case of muckle-mouth. No matter. Gemma had the cure. She grabbed his hand and towed him onward.

LYSANDER, WITH GEMMA'S SMALL strong hand in his, would have walked with her to the equator and back again as long as she didn't let go.

Sadly, their excursion ran somewhat shorter. She led him behind the shed and up the slope where a dry-stone sheepfold stood empty.

It was little more than a pen. As they entered it, stepping through the high grass within, Lysander saw that it had been built to encompass the meanderings of a small spring, surely meant to sustain the sheep being held at shearing time.

At Gemma's direction, Lysander crouched beside the spring to rinse his mouth of the deliciously messy bilberry juice. He stood and reached in his pocket for his handkerchief. It wasn't there. It was wrapped and tied about the wobbly leg of the refreshment table.

He glanced at Gemma, his face dripping. Wipe it on his sleeve?

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. "Mr. Button won't like me doing this." She took Lysander's chin in her cupped palm and used a silly wisp of handkerchief to dab at Lysander's face.

Enough. He lifted his hands to capture hers and tucked the sodden little ball of ruined lace into his pocket. "Gemma Oakes, I'm going to waltz with you."

As if by a secret signal, just at that moment Jem Toms began to play a lilting, mournful waltz on his fiddle. The tune floated out over the hillside, refined and sweetened by the fragrant breeze and the otherworldly moonlight.

Lysander saw Gemma's blink of surprise. Before she could recover, he swept her into the waltz.

She let out a sigh when he pulled her in close, just a soft breath that he felt on the skin of his cheek. That, and the way she melted into him, told him something he'd never realized.

Gemma Oakes was plenty tired of always having to be in charge.

Lysander would do anything for Gemma, unconditionally. If she asked him to dance like a monkey before the assembled folk of Farby, he would assume she had good reason for the request and comply. Yet realizing that something she lacked was someone to ease her burdens firmed Lysander's resolve, sparking a burst of clarity inside him.