"You are too much," Nicola told him, stepping over a fallen branch that lay across the path.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

Her look, even in the shadows, was exceedingly caustic, but she had to soften her expression to concentrate on not stumbling over the intrusive fronds of the bracken littering the floor of the woodlands. "I know where this path leads," she said. "You know where this path leads."

"And why is that a problem, exactly?" He caught her by the waist and hefted her over the log he had vaulted.

"First, I think you are teasing me." She encroached against his body welcomingly and Jason smiled down at her before taking her hand and continued up the gentle slope. "Secondly, your family will think we are doing something we shouldn't."

"Which is what exactly? The thing we shouldn't be doing."

"You know."

"Do I?"

"Jason."

It was difficult to not haul her into his arms. "Call it what is, my love." He adored the way she blushed so prettily. "Making love," he teased her, "amorous congress," her brow lifted then as she regarded him askance, "fucking."

Her lips pursed, but he could see the humour in her eyes. Nothing would offend her so easily and he enjoyed pushing those limits, watching her strip away at the boundaries she had steadied around her heart and her personality.

"Still, they will think terribly of us."

"They already think terribly of me," he told her. "They adore you, you needn't worry. Besides, they will only think what they want, and that is simply that we are taking a stroll. Also, my dear, your insinuation that we have wandered out here to have our wicked way with each other is duly misconstrued. Again, such a wicked creature you are."

"Oh, certainly, then what are we doing out here?" she demanded pertly.

But Jason only smiled, guided her further into the small clearing, where the pool rippled peacefully before them, to the location where he had chanced upon a box of letters that had changed the course of his life. He left her for a moment to light an old oil lamp he had placed under a hidden tarp- an item he had the foresight to leave in the vicinity after countless nights utilizing the pool to ease his frustration and not being unable to locate his trousers in the dark after.

"I wanted us to come here together," he explained, returning to her side as she studied the scene before her. Her profile was turned to him and her face wasn't readable. "It was my intention to drag you into that pool, have my wicked way with you, and then propose. But we seem to be doing things out of order."

"Is it not supposed to be," she began, her lips quirking, "propose, have the wedding, then have your wicked way with me?"

"Yes, you've certainly messed up the order of events."

"Me?" She gaped at him.

Jason unbuttoned his coat. "Indeed." He completed the act and shrugged out of the garment, tossing it onto low hanging branch. Moving to his waistcoat, he said, "For the first time in my life, I had every intention to do something right. Little did I know, my sweet proper Nicola Eversley had every other intention for me."

"I did not," she grumbled, watching him steadily as he worked the buttons of his waistcoat next. "What are you doing?"

"Disrobing." Jason added the waistcoat to the coat atop the branch. "Would you like to join me?"

"You mean to swim? Now?"

He hopped about on one foot next, yanking off his hessian boot. "Yes." He paused to switch feet, tackling the next boot. "I would wish for you to join me, if you like. Your choice entirely. Alternatively, you may like to enjoy the view." He settled and smiled at her slowly. "Again."

She seemed to mull it over, giving the idea due consideration, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth most endearingly. Then she smiled and Jason knew he had won her over entirely. She tossed her shawl at his head. "I need assistance," Nicola told him, giving him her back.

He shifted closer than he needed to, dipping his head to the side of her neck and allowing his lips to settled against her warm flesh, working his fingers through the row of buttons down her back. "You will have to find better things to wear around me," he told her lasciviously. "These buttons are irksome."

She turned her head slightly, her cheek brushing against his. "Oh, really? Would you propose then that I wear no dress at all?"

"Intriguing notion. Absolutely, yes." Her gown loosened and drooped over her shoulders as he finished the last few buttons against the small of her back, then he pulled the laces of her narrow corset until they too were free. Jason turned her to face him again, assisting the gown over her form and carefully catching the material so it didn't drape along the damp ground and ruin. This he added to his own clothes over the branch. When he turned to her again, she was in the process of unhooking her garter that held up her stockings and the sight sent a possessive spear of longing through his heart.

She glanced up him, sensing his gaze, and he was awarded a view of the valley between her breasts as her body bent over her other task, tawny ribbons of her hair splaying waywardly around her face and shoulders. "What?" Nicola asked, frowning at something she saw on his face.

He dropped to his knees before her, banding his arms around her waist, and pulling her against him, his face nuzzling the fabric of her chemise. "Thank you," Jason murmured.

Her hands came down gently on his shoulders, then her fingers slid through his hair. "Whatever for?"

"For you." He rested his chin on her stomach, gazing up at her. She tilted her chin down, tendrils of hair coming loose from their confines and framing her face in thick, heavy curls. "For your letters. For loving me. For seeing something better in me than I ever did."

Her eyes were bright and luminous in the shadows of the small clearing. "I saw everything that you showed me."

"Until I read your letters, I never knew..." He squeezed her tighter, as if unwilling to ever let her go. "I know that I can never fulfil the role that my father left me to the extent that he did, but you helped me see that maybe I could try, at least."

She slid to her own knees then, entwining her arms around his neck, tentatively tipping her lips up to his. "You don't need me to help you with that," she told him softly.

"No, perhaps, but I want you to."

"I'd like that." Her fingers trailed a path down the front of his shirt. "I'd also like to help remove this." They plucked at the fabric suggestively.

"At your service." Jason threw out his arms and endured her administrations as she slowly, enticingly, pushed the shirt up and over his shoulders, proceeding to explore his torso with her fingertips. His skin jumped and shivered at her caress, a cool breeze only serving to spread the sensation. Next, she exacted the same attention to his trousers and he forced himself to hold perfectly still as she did so. He watched her enraptured gaze as she studied that part of him that was hard and aroused between them and, as she did the night before, her slender fingers curled around the base, curiously beginning to stroke him. He caught her hand the same time his lips caught her mouth plundering her tongue with his own, yanking her against him and hauling them both to their feet. It took moments to rid her of her chemise, petticoats and undergarments, and then he was carrying her into the cold water of the pool, not pausing to stop kissing her.

Which may have been the reason why he slipped over a slime-covered rock submerged in the dark water, tilting them forward and spilling them into the pool with a graceless splash. The water wasn't deep which is why Nicola was able to sit gasping, an expression of shock on her face as the bracing cold of the water lapped her waist and breasts.

"This was how you wanted to propose?" she stuttered laughingly.

"Why? Is it not romantic?"

"It was," Nicola teased, sidling close to him. He grasped her closer, pulling her onto his lap, allowing the warmth of their bodies to ease the chill of the water around them. "Now it's better."

"Good."

"I must be incredibly lucky," she said softly, shifting her legs to either side of his hips. His body tensed in anticipation, his arms tightening around her eagerly. "To have earned your heart, my lord."

"Indeed, it is a prized possession." His voice was dark, he could hardly focus on the train of conversation with her breasts so close to his lips and her hips shifting against him, the part of her that was so hot and soft rubbing against the hard length of him. He groaned her name, pulling her down onto his lips, and she lifted slightly to better her position, a small desperate moan escaping her lips. Breathing hard, he guided her hips onto him, sliding into her with a fluidity that made him sigh with pleasure, the feel of her tight passage clasping him almost sending him over the edge right then and there.

It was too perfect making love to her in the shadowed setting of the private clearing, the stars and the moon above them and the sounds of the water lapping against their heated skin. She was wild and uninhibited, her hair damp and chaotic around her shoulders and breasts, enveloping him when she leaned forward to devour his mouth with her own, and his hands guided the way her hips moved atop him and soon she found a natural rhythm that she used to drive him over the edge, murmuring his love over and over again as his release filled her.

They spent a few stolen moments more cavorting in the pool, splashing, playing, laughing like children, until the time grew late and the water too cold for the both of them to bear any longer.

When they returned to the estate, their sodden, damp and bedraggled state attested to what they had done and, as he had known she would be, Kathleen had been waiting to escort Nicola back to her chambers with a disapproving look at her son for good measure.

"Do you have to be so encroaching, mother?" he groused, watching his fiancée being led off, away from him, and filled with the urge to follow and beg and plead his mother to let him stay with her. For her part, Nicola had her head turned over her shoulder, those large luminous amber eyes skewering him with a flare of need he saw on her face as she looked back at him. That was before she bumped into the side of a door, ogling him to the extent that she had not cared to mind her surroundings.

"Propriety may be lost on you, dear boy," Kathleen returned tartly, pausing to allow Nicola to reorientate herself, "but some of us in this household would like to at least try to avoid one scandal if we can." Nicola rubbed her shoulder where she had bumped it, casting one last look over her shoulder, and then she disappeared.

Later, true to his reputation, and who would he be if he didn't at least try, Jason made his way to the west wing, to her chambers, thinking that perhaps he would be able to enter and while away the hours before dawn with her, delightfully rumpled and slumberous, in his arms.

"Jesus!"

He almost tripped over the girl who was stationed on a chair outside Nicola's door, so silent and still she had hardly differed from the shadows that lingered outside the door. The maid started, staring up at him with wide frightened eyes.

"Did Lady Kathleen instruct you to guard this door and not let me enter?" he demanded, vexed.

The young woman nodded, terrified of his dark lurking presence in a near state of undress. Jason sighed, running his hands through his hair and, with a foul curse, he turned on his heel and returned to his chamber, grumbling profanities the entire way.

It would be a long month, indeed.