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He found her in the garden.
She was wandering along the path that wound among the rose bushes, bending to sniff a rosebud the same color as her gown. The rose garden had been planted by his great-grandfather, the third duke; his great-grandmother’s contribution had been the stone rotunda overlooking the roses, where she passed her days, curled up to read on the cushioned seats. Juno kept nothing of her ancestors; Leo encountered his at every step.
She drifted as if she hadn’t a care, just as she had at their first early morning encounter in the woods, over a decade ago. Perhaps, like that day, she was singing to herself; he was not close enough to hear.
He stepped onto the path. Gravel crunched. He froze. She stilled too, head cocked like a deer in the woods. Then she continued, neither turning nor fleeing.
He continued to trail after her, his ferocious desire softening in the pleasure of simply watching her as she soaked up the beauty of the garden. That was Juno Bell, with her scavenger’s eye for beauty and her conqueror’s determination to make it her own.
Suddenly, Thomas Macey’s taunting words filtered through his mind:For whom do you make yourself so beautiful?
Leo shoved the thought away. Absurd to think he chose his clothing to attract Juno’s attention.
The path took her to the small fountain, commissioned and installed by his grandmother, the fourth duchess, based on her own design. In it, the three Fates held hands and danced in a circle, while water rained down over them.
Juno wriggled her fingers under the spray and pressed her wet fingers to her cheeks. She patted her hair, paused, then bent to fiddle with the hem of her gown. She withdrew a pin, closed her eyes, kissed it lightly, and tossed it into the water.
She was making a wish.
He stepped out behind her. She turned her radiant smile on him; it warmed him so thoroughly he ran a lazy hand under the spray too. The sun gifted them with a tiny shimmering rainbow.
“Do you ever make wishes?” she asked. “Or are you the man with everything, who need ask for nothing more?”
“There is something I want very much right now.”
“Then make a wish and maybe it will come true.”
Leo didn’t believe in wishes or fairies or superstitions. Juno did; she saw the world with a dusting of magic.
“I haven’t a pin,” he said.
“Or a coin. I believe they work too.” She pressed a finger to the ruby stickpin nestled in his cravat. “Here’s a pin. You could throw this in the fountain to make a wish.”
“If I were to throw my beautiful hand-crafted ruby cravat pin into the fountain, my only wish would be to get it back.”
“Then maybe I’ll use it to make a wish,” she said. “A stolen ruby will grant a better quality of wish than a dressmaker’s pin. Then maybe I’ll get what I want.”
Her smile was wickedly flirtatious, her eyes suddenly sultry, and so he said, “Or maybe that is a devious plan to get me out of my clothes.”
“If you wished for that, it would be granted before you could blink.” She shook her head, serious. “Listen to us, flirting now. Everything is changing, and I don’t know what to think.”
“Have you been thinking about it, then?”
“Thinking about what?” she scoffed. “You wanting to be my lover? You denying our friendship? Or you charging about like you were chasing a greasy pig at a country fair? Though I do thank you for getting me my drawings.” She sighed. “I came into the garden to stop thinking about it. There is nothing to be gained from thinking but a headache. And there are enough parts of me aching now without adding my head to the mix.”
Leo sympathized: He had a fair few aches of his own. “What aches the most?”
“My heart, I suppose, at you denying our friendship.”
“Perhaps this was never a friendship,” he said. “Perhaps it was always a love affair that never had the chance to bloom.”
“What do you mean?”
He met her eyes steadily. “Ten years ago, something began between us, but we were too young and naive to know what to do. Ten years have passed, but the desire has not. It’s time we finished what we started.”
Silence. For once, even her expression told him nothing.
But he had decided. Time now to act.
