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If she closed her eyes, she could still conjure the rivulets making their way to the tips of his fingers and then dropping with little, sharp pings into the pond. He’d been red all over. Water had rained down his arms in fascinating patterns.

Warmth gathered deep inside her core. The same strange warmth she’d felt that afternoon. He was beautiful to her, with clothes and without. She was, in fact, more captivated by the without.

“I’m not sorry I stared.” Her not-sorry self undressed him with her eyes.

He hissed through his teeth. “I wouldn’t have stood if I’d known you were walking through the brush. And I don’t know why you, little fool, hadn’t the sense to look away.”

Fool, was she? “I wasn’t walking. I was hiding.”

“Pardon?” The single word had a dangerous edge. “Do you mean to tell me that you and Millie planned the encounter?”

Too late, she considered the perils of impetuous honesty. She forced herself to nod.

In her defense, she thought he’d immediately realized that she and Millie had hatched the plot. The Wainwright sisters always stood together.

Then again, he didn’t have siblings. Perhaps he didn’t understand the lengths sisters would go to help one another... although their collective reaction to Cassie’s and Eliza’s troubles last Season should have given him a clue.

“On purpose, Lenora?” Disappointment thinned his lips.

“I only hoped to speak with you alone. I figured that if Millie had your clothes, you wouldn’t be able to slip away as you so often do. I didn’t expect to see everything I saw.”

“Just what did you think I’d be wearing?!”

She shrugged. “Some sort of man-shift?”

“A man-shift?”

She lifted her skirt to reveal her undergarment. “Like this.”

He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

Well, he needn’t react as if she were thick-headed. She’d seen the maids at Willowhurst hanging breeches-shaped garments of linen to dry behind the sheets with the family’s other unmentionables.

Her undergarments were called shifts, so she assumed that her father’s had a similar name. But now that she considered, “man-shift” was an unlikely designation.

She tried another tack. “Our time at our childhood home was ending. I knew you and your mother had only come to Willowhurst to help facilitate its sale.”

Still pinching his nose, he lowered his head.

“I honestly did not anticipate that you would be entirely unclothed.” Just mostly. “Nor did I have any idea human males could, um, change in the same way bulls and horses, um...” She took a breath. “Well, I assume you noticed me and had an unintentional reaction.”

“My God.” He took a step backward. “My God.”

The deuce had been bad enough. Now, he’d broken the first commandment. Twice.

He was acting so strangely; if she didn’t come to the point soon, she wasn’t sure what he would do.

“I only waited in the brush because I wanted to get to know you better.”

He made a long, high squeaking noise. Had she broken something inside him?

“I’ve been too embarrassed to approach you again.” Her panic launched a stream of willy-nilly words. “And I have waited in vain for you to come to me, but now, time has truly run out.”

“Don’t do this.” He retreated further into the shadows. “You know a... a... connection between us is impossible.”

“I don’t!” A lump lodged in her throat. “I only know that people would frown upon a connection.”

“Frown upon?!” he raised his voice.