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But her voice died away.

His skin had turned amber brown. He wasn’t dressed with his usual impeccable finesse. He wasn’t sleek and wellgroomed and marquesslike. But there was no mistaking the man known to his intimates as Bonnington, and to the rest of the world as Marquess Bonnington. And to her as Sebastian.

Whether Sebastian’s friends would have recognized him as quickly as she did was an open question. He was wearing a rough work shirt, open at the throat, and a thick leather apron. He looked more muscular, more vital, and more alive than she’d ever seen him.

Esme recognized him effortlessly. “I’m having a hallucination,” she said in a pleasant, conversational voice, staring at the apparition.

“Please forgive me for startling you.”

The moment she heard that rational voice the blood drained from her head, and Esme’s vision blurred. She swayed and instinctively put out a hand to prevent herself from falling. Her hand brushed a warm body. He was already there, scooping her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. A second later he sat down on the wrought-iron bench with her in his arms.

Esme had never fainted in her life. It simply wasn’t in her nature to avoid conflict. Even in the most distressing moments of her bitter marriage, when it would have been marvelous to stage an elegant faint, she could never manage to do so.

But Sebastian clearly thought she had swooned. He was patting her cheek, and uttering witless commands like “Wake up, if you please.”

She decided to keep her eyes closed. What on earth was Fool for Love

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Sebastian doing in her rose arbor? She needed to think, even though every instinct told her to snuggle into the strength of his arms and pretend for a moment that the world wasn’t a cold place in which she was a widow with a child.

“Esme!” His tone was getting more urgent. The blunderhead. She opened her eyes to find his face just above hers. It was lowering to discover that he had just as much power to overset her as he used to. Something about passionate blue eyes and guinea gold hair made her heart beat quickly, shallow female that she was. Just as something about that rigid expression he always wore, and the punctilious manners he practiced, made her long to rip off his clothing and. . . . Even when he was her best friend’s fiancé. Even then. And even now.

A dismaying thought occurred to her. When Sebastian saw her last, she was a lissome woman. True, she had curves. She’d never been a wisp of a girl like her friend Gina. But those curves had curved in. Now she was just one round ball, all curves and no waist.

The thought brought her fully to her senses.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped, sitting up. He had pushed back the hood of her pelisse in an effort to wake her from her supposed faint, and she drew it back around her face. It was her opinion that white fur detracted from the fact that her face was as round as a peach. Perhaps she should get off his lap before he realized just how heavy she had become.

“I came to see you, of course. Ah, God, Esme. I missed you.” He put cold hands on her cheeks and kissed her simply. Sweetly. As if he really cared for her.

Esme blinked. “I told you that I never wanted to see you again,” she pointed out, rather lamely.

“You don’t have to see me. If you stay in the house, I’ll 114 Eloisa

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make certain you never encounter me again. I know you hate me because of Miles’s death. I have no expectation that you’ll ever change your feelings.”

A rueful smile touched the corner of his mouth. “It’s just that I found myself in the grip of a similarly unchangeable feeling.”

She stared at him. “I thought you had gone to Italy.”

“I did.”

“Well, why—”

“I had to see you.”

“Here I am,” she said pettishly, resisting the impulse to pull her pelisse even closer around her. She would make sure he never saw her again. At least not until she had this baby and returned to her normal shape. “So why don’t you return to Italy and we’ll both think no more of it.”

“I don’t wish to live in Italy, not while you live here.”

“What you desire is not important compared to the fact that if anyone discovered you were in this part of the country, it would be disastrous for my reputation.”

“No one will find out,” he said. The statement had the calm confidence of all of Sebastian’s pronouncements. He seemed to know precisely the way the world was ordered—and generally it was in favor of Sebastian, Marquess Bonnington.

“I don’t see the reason for your being here.” She frowned.