He’d kept her from tumbling into the gravel and she’d put her finger to her lips, desperate to keep him from saying anything to give her away. She’d pulled him back into the darkened mews to hide.

“I thought everyone was gone,” she whispered.

“I’ll wait with you until it’s clear,” he whispered back, giving her a conspiratorial grin that made her insides turn to jelly.

Somehow that one brief exchange had turned into literal hours of talking. They’d ended up propped next to each other in the empty stall, picking at pieces of hay and asking and answering all sorts of questions. He’d told her about his love of horses. She’d told him about her love of painting. She’d even admitted to him she’d intended to go riding in the park after dark with no chaperone, something he could not condone, but said he understood when she explained that sometimes she felt overwhelmed and wanted to escape her life.

“I feel like that too sometimes,” Sebastian had confided.

“What do you do when you feel that way?”

“I go riding,” he said with a guilty grin. “I suppose it’s different for a young man, though as I say that I realize how terribly unfair that must seem to you.”

“Terribly,” she’d replied with a sniff. “I don’t even get to do things like play card games.”

Sebastian had frowned at that. “Why not?”

She’d rolled her eyes. “Justin would never invite his younger sister to play cards with him. Even though I’m certain I would be excellent at shuffling a deck of cards. I’ve simply never learned how.”

“I’ll show you sometime,” Sebastian had replied with a wink that Veronica had felt all the way to her toes. “I promise.”

A rooster crowing at the break of dawn had finally jolted them from their cocoon and Sebastian had quickly taken his leave saying, “Here’s to hoping my father hasn’t realized I’m gone.”

The worried look on his face made Veronica wonder just what sort of man his father was. “What would he do?” she’d asked, half afraid to hear the answer.

Sebastian had shuddered. “I hope I don’t find out.” He’d stood and bowed to her. “Nice talking with you, Lady Veronica.”

“Please don’t call me that,” she had insisted. “Please just call me Veronica.”

That night, after gliding on air back to her room, woozy and sleepy and filled with inappropriate thoughts of her brother’s best friend, she’d pried up the floorboard. Using her letter opener, she scratched her secret on the underside of the board, then replaced it and covered it with the rug. She’d been simply unable to continue without telling someone, something. Veronica smiled to herself. All those years, the floorboard had been the only one who knew her secret.

She and Sebastian spent time together occasionally after that, though never for as long as they had that first night. He made good on his promise to teach her how to shuffle a deck of cards. He’d even taught her several games during stolen moments when he visited Justin.