It was precarious business. She moved cautiously, slowly, so as not to lose her balance. Soon, she was slicing slivers of thumb-size bark, tucking them inside her palm until she had well over a dozen pieces.

Once again, she fumbled inside her satchel, retrieving the small jar within and securing the slivers inside the vessel, screwing the lid back on tightly once she was finished.

“There,” she breathed heavily, satisfied with her efforts. It should result in a fine amount of willow bark tea . . . with quite a bit left over for her to experiment with in her various tinctures and tonics.

A flash of movement below caught her gaze and she froze, her eyes flaring wide in her face. She gasped.

There was a person. A man.

A man directly beneath her in the water.

She recoiled at the unexpected sight of him. There was a strange man in her pond! How dare he!

The motion upset her balance. There was no swallowing her cry as she wobbled upon her perch, attempting to regain her balance to no avail. Her clenched knees lost their grip.

She slipped, tilting sideways, and then went down . . . falling. Dropping with an unceremonious graceless splash in the pond.

Chapter 3

Nora emerged, sputtering and squawking before the very individual to have caught her so unawares. The wretched individual who had no right to be in the Warrington pond. Who was this interloper?

She shoved the wet, heavy skeins of her hair back from her face and gawked at him. He stared at her with equal astonishment from eyes the color of coal. His wet hair was equally dark and plastered about his head in wild disarray.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, treading water and not with much ease as her skirts had come untucked and were a dire nuisance, tangling amid her kicking legs.

He looked from her and up to the tree, deducing her origin and doubtlessly confirming she had not fallen from the sky.

“Did you not hear my question?” she demanded. Water splashed against her chin and lips as she bobbed in the water, and she coughed a bit.

“I’m availing myself of a swim in this pond,” the stranger finally and very reasonably replied.

Far too reasonably. As though trespassing were a reasonable and acceptable thing. As though availing himself of someone’s pond for a swim were a reasonable thing to do and not at all illicit act.

Certainly, she had done the same thing for years, but that was neither here nor there.

“I can clearly see that. It’s your presumption to indulge in a swim here that I find so very objectionable, sirrah.”

Sirrah?