She said, “Ye ken nothing about me.”

He did not back down, but held her gaze. In truth it seemed he came a little nearer. “I ken everything about you.”

Lily looked at him and could not breathe.

And then the sky tore open and the rain came, in a sudden, unrelenting downpour. Everywhere around them people scattered from the Links and sought the shelter of the town, and Matthew laughed and grabbed her hand and Lily ran with him.

There was nobody else at home at Riddell’s Close. He came with her upstairs and said, “You’ll catch your death unless you get dry clothes on.”

His own coat was soaked, but once he’d shrugged it off, the shirt and waistcoat underneath were not much more than damp, and his broad hat had better caught the water and deflected it than her poor straw one.

Matthew opened up the box beneath the window. There was some discussion over what clothes she would need, but in the end he passed her towels, and said, “Here, take these. And this. And this.” A shift was added to the pile, together with a petticoat and bodice in a print of orange flowers and green vines. “You can take these to the closet. I’ll wait here, in case the searchers come.”

Another man, she knew, might take advantage.

They were in this house alone, the two of them, with none to hear her if she raised a protest. And he surely had to know by now, from how she did not try to guard her feelings when they were in private, that she’d not protest.

Lily had never felt so nervous as she felt when she stepped back into the chamber from the closet, in the orange-flowered gown, her damp hair loose about her shoulders.

Matthew stood, his back toward her, at the little table with the oval mirror set on top of it. He’d set out a new pinner for her and was now arranging all the pins in almost military order, in a neat and perfect line.

The silence must have somehow warned him. Glancing up, he met her gaze within the mirror.

Lily’s breath caught, hard.

She told him, softly, “You’re a good man.”

Matthew turned, and came toward her. “No, I’m not.” He stopped too close. He was all she could see when she tilted her head up. “I’m not a good man at all.” Smoothing her hair back, he rested one hand at the nape of her neck and said, “You would do better to run from me, Lily. As far and as fast as you can.”

Lily shook her head, steadily holding that brown gaze that suddenly seemed her whole world. In a voice that was barely a voice, she assured him, “I’m no feart.”

She saw the quick flash of his smile, then he lowered his head and he kissed her and Lily saw nothing at all, for her eyes were closed and she was drifting on feeling.