He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “Are your daffodils still blooming?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. And after a small hesitation, “I have pressed one of them.”
“Have you?” he said.
They lapsed into silence and he rested his cheek against her hair and stared out over the water, trying to impress the memory of the moment on his mind. He tried to draw comfort and peace from it and the strength to face life again after it,
“A flower can be pressed and kept forever,” he said. “A snow angel can’t.”
She laughed softly. “You made more of a snow devil of yours, didn’t you?” she said. “Did the head stay on my snowman?”
“It was off before you left,” he said. “You took your prize under false pretenses.”
“And you did not put it back?” she said. “How ungallant of you.”
“I had not the heart for it,” he said, and they were silent again.
“Justin,” she said, reaching up a hand and tracing lightly the line of his jaw, “if you could go back and change everything—if you could have stayed in London or not insisted on taking me up or taken me farther along the road to find Dennis that first day. If you could change anything, would you?”
He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would.” He paused. “Would you?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “What would have happened if we had met as strangers this week? Anything?”
“No, nothing,” he said. “I would have been merely your niece’s betrothed. You would have been merely her aunt. It would have been far better so, Rosamund.”
“Yes,” she said.
But it could not have been so. He surely could not have met her this week and felt nothing at all for her. Surely even if they had been total strangers, he would have recognized her.
Recognized her? As what? As someone he could find irresistibly attractive? As someone he felt drawn to as iron to a magnet? As someone he could fall in love with? As the love of his life? The missing part of his life?
And would he change the past if he could? In order to rid himself of the pain of the present and the awkwardness of the future, would he change the past? Would he be without those few days at Price’s hunting box? Without those minutes in their little piece of wilderness two days before? Without this hour?
“No, it’s not true,” she said. “I would not change even one small detail, Justin. I wouldn’t.”
She fit so comfortably against his side, he thought, almost as if she had been made to be there. There were dozens of unseen birds singing around them, one repeating the same persistent call over and over again. There was a breeze fanning his right cheek. The air was fresh—not warm but not chill, either. It was a moment to be remembered and hoarded for a lifetime.
He hunched his shoulder so that he could see into her face. And yet he could find no words to express all he wanted to say to her. So many words were forbidden to him, and the others would not even form into coherent thoughts in his mind. He could only gaze into her eyes and tell her with his own all that words and thoughts could not express.
And she gazed back and her own eyes softened and smiled.
When he kissed her, he did so lightly, warmly, without passion, stroking the smooth skin beneath her chin with one knuckle. And she kissed him back, parting her lips beneath his, touching him with her tongue, sucking gently on his, drawing it into her mouth. He kissed her cheeks, her temples, her closed eyelids, her mouth again. And he smoothed back the hair at the side of her face, smiling at her once more.
“Do other men kiss like that?” she asked him, her fingers lightly stroking through his hair. “I had no idea until I met you.”
“I don’t know,” he said, grinning at her. “I have never kissed another man.”
She grimaced and laughed softly.
He undid the buttons of her velvet riding jacket and ran his hands over the warm silk blouse beneath. He cupped one breast in his hand, felt the soft tip with his thumb. And he began to undo the buttons of her blouse.
“Don’t,” she said when the job was half done.
“I just want to touch you,” he said, his mouth against hers. “I want to touch your breasts, Rosamund.”
“No,” she said. “If you do that, Justin, we will both want a little more and a little more until we end up making love. ”
He swallowed. “And that would be so wrong?” he said.
