The First Annual Farby Assembly — also known as the rowdiest and most successful country dance anyone in the village could recall — had wrapped up in the wee hours and Gemma couldn't bear to send her weary, expectant friend any farther in a jostling cart than the manor house.

Shepherd Gosling was bunking in Mr. Bing's room. Mr. Button and Mr. Cabot, along with Mr. Pollux Worthington, had done well enough with the room Lysander had been using, taking up the last of the featherbeds — stuffed with wool, of course, not feathers — to make shift on the floor.

It wasn't until Gemma stood in her own hallway with her lantern in her hand that she realized that she hadn't reserved a bed for herself. Scatterbrain.

It was true that waltzing in the moonlight with a handsome gentleman, and then of course, kissing the aforementioned handsome gentleman until she lost her breath and nearly her reason — well, that would scatter any woman's brains, would it not?

She was fortunate that Mr. Worthington had had the will to resist her own bad nature.

It was bloody disappointing, that's what it was. She'd stalked away in a snit instead of pressing the matter, knowing she was likely sending opportunity on its way, verily giving it the boot in the arse, actually — and to what end? She was no virgin, no cherished and protected maiden. She was a woman, a widow, and as long as she kept her wits and behaved with discretion, there was no reason in the world she couldn't have a lover just bloody once, for pity's sake!

His family had come for him. He would be leaving with them, Gemma had no doubt of it. Atalanta Worthington had not dragged her brother and her friends so far from London in order to leave empty-handed. Gemma knew a ruthlessly tenacious female mind when she encountered one. Even if Lysander wanted to stay — heavens, what a dangerous notion! — Atalanta would club her brother over the head and drag him off leaving a trail of his boot-heels in the Yorkshire Dale soil, likely as not.

That moment, dancing in the waving grass beneath the swollen moon, had been her last chance to take gorgeous, tempting Mr. Lysander Worthington into her arms and into her body the way that they both so assuredly wanted.

I'm going to have to sleep in the stillroom, I suppose.

There were some cushions in the study. She could pile them up in the stillroom. In anticipation of the chill stone floor, she grabbed the last threadbare quilt from the linen press in the upper hall.

Once she closed the cupboard door, she sighed and gave up. Her shoulders slumped wearily as she slowly descended the stairs, one hand leaning heavily on the railing. "Oh, my feet," she whispered to herself. She hadn't danced so much in years.