Evie was trying to make sense of the first time he said the three words when he said them again—as if she didn't hear him that first time.

But she did.

The important thing is that I still love you, Evie.

The important thing was that he still loved her.

As if he'd loved her all along. Since...when?

Did it even matter? He loved her!

He smiled. "You still don't believe me?"

"There's that word again," she finally said.

He cocked his head to one side. "What word?"

"Still. You said you still love me."

"I do. But you still don't believe it."

"That's because I didn't know that you loved me at all, let alone still—as if you've always loved me. Or for quite some time."

He tossed his coat onto a nearby hawthorn bush, and gently took her hands into his. "My dearest Evie, I don't know the precise moment I started loving you. I only know that I do. Surely you, yourself, cannot pinpoint the exact moment you decided you loved me—assuming you do." It was almost but not quite a question.

Tears of elation flooded her eyes. "Sometimes I think I must have fallen in love with you that night at Madame Delphine's. Even then you weren't like the other men. You were kind to me—and so tender—even though you thought I was my mother, or at least old enough to be someone's mother."

He gifted her with a smile that was rueful but unmistakably loving. "Evie, at the time I had no idea that you might be anyone's mother. Indeed, I thought you were younger than me, and I couldn't help thinking you didn't belong there any more than I did. It was only when Lord Forrestal walked in and you fled that I was led to think otherwise."

She gaped at him. "Really?"

"Really. And then meeting your mother at your brother's wedding, wearing that same butterfly necklace—and she had the same dark hair as you—and being told she was Lady Milner, well, what was I to think? My heart and soul were in torment until you finally set me straight."

"But when Kingsley told you I'd been there that night, he was telling the truth."

"I realize that now, but I didn't want to believe it. I could never have believed such a thing unless you told me yourself." Gareth gently squeezed her hands. "That you did, Evie, took a great deal of courage on your part. Why would you take such a risk...unless you do love me?"

"I do," she whispered, a tear trickling down her cheek.

He still clutched her hands. "You don't want me to marry you to mend the tear in my heart. And you don't want me to marry you because I ruined you at Madame Delphine's, albeit unwittingly. You don't even want to marry me because you consider yourself an on-the-shelf spinster at her last prayers, and you're so desperate to marry before your mother does so again that you'll marry anyone. Well, if that were true you would've accepted Kingsley's proposal before I even came to your house that day! You want to marry for love, Evie—and only love. You want to marry me because you love me—but you want me to marry you because I love you. Do I have the right of it?"

Hope swirled through her. "Yes. Absolutely, Gareth!"

Still clutching her hands, he swiftly lowered himself to bended knee. "Then will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

"I will!" she exclaimed, and she knelt before him and brought her lips to his.

Gareth let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her before rolling the two of them off the path and onto the nearby grass, their mouths melded together all the while. Evie lay beneath him, berating herself for being such a ninnyhammer, for doubting him when she should have trusted him.

For how could she not trust the man who commiserated with her after learning his brother was betrothed to her mother? How could she not trust him when all this time, he'd refused to follow the lead of so many others in the ton, and shun her as if her mother's infamous past was all Evie's fault? How could she not trust the man who saved her from the advances and blackmail of Lord Kingsley? Who refused to think less of her after learning the truth about their first encounter?

As she wrapped her arms over his broad shoulders and pulled him down on top of her, she knew she trusted him now, heart and soul. He would never hurt her. He could never hurt her. He might frustrate her, as he did that night at Madame Delphine's, but hurt her? Never.

His manhood, now bigger and harder than what she'd glimpsed in the lake, pressed against her hip, and she involuntarily shifted beneath him in hopes of lodging it in the very spot that ached for it.

Her thoughts soared along with her heart. They would marry. He would finally finish what he started. Maybe here and now—but only a small part of her wanted that, and she knew which part. The rest of her wanted to wait for a better time and place, away from broad daylight, safe from prying eyes or anyone who might happen to come along this path and—

A loud splash in the lake, hidden from view on the other side of the shrubbery, startled them apart. "That's cold!" shouted a man's voice.

Gareth remained on top of Evie, but propped himself on his elbows as he stared at the nearest bush bordering the lake, not that he could see anything through the thick foliage. "It's Ashdown. And the water is cold," he whispered. "That's why I went for a dip myself."

Evie stared up at him, her eyes wide in bewilderment. "Whatever for?"

He turned his head to gaze back down at her, a loving smile on his face. "To subdue thoughts of you, my dearest Evie. Alas, it didn't work."

She reached up to stroke his chestnut hair, still damp from that dip. "I'm so glad it didn't."

His lowered his lips to hers for another kiss. "I'm afraid there's only one thing that will work for it."

She laughed softly. "You're not really afraid, are you, my lord?"

He kissed her again. "Only of losing you."

"You will never lose me."

"Never break my heart, Evie."

"You know I never will," she murmured, thinking of how Lady Ruth had torn his heart with her ruthless betrayal.

Meanwhile, Grace's voice drifted to them from the other side of the shrubbery. "If it's as cold as you say, husband beloved, then I do believe I will refrain from joining you. Besides, what if our guests should happen upon us?"

To think the guests had nearly happened upon their hosts!

"I don't see them anywhere, do you?" countered Ashdown. "The butler said Gareth was going for a long walk into the woods and maybe the village beyond. And Miss Benedict is probably still in that great big house somewhere, most likely the library. Surely she wouldn't venture this far out on her own?"

Oh, wouldn't she? Evie gifted Gareth with a mischievous smile.

He slowly, gingerly rose to his knees. "We have to think of some way to leave without them seeing us."

Shrubbery lined both sides of the path, one side obscuring the lake. Gareth and Evie would have to hunch over and remain on the grass, as their footsteps on the path would likely give them away. Still in a half crouch, Gareth reached for his coat hanging on the hawthorn bush. He barely lifted it an inch when it seemed as if the whole bush rustled.

"What was that?" Grace called out. "Who's there?"

"No one's there," Ashdown assured her.

"I heard something in the bushes," she insisted.

"Undoubtedly you did, and 'twas only a bird."

Gareth painstakingly tugged on his coat, but it refused to budge. Clearly it was caught on something. He tugged a little more, and a twig snapped, though it might have been a pistol shot.

"Are there poachers in the woods?" Grace asked.

"Not in the middle of the day, and besides, the woods are way over there."

"Then maybe that's Lord Gareth returning from his walk."

Evie was already on her feet, hunched over as she tiptoed on the grass with nary enough room to avoid the adjacent shrubbery. It didn't take long for her skirt to catch on a branch.

"He can't see us unless he passes by the clearing where you stand," said Lord Ashdown, referring to the same spot where Evie had spied Gareth in all his natural glory, "or if he happens by the one on the opposite side of the lake," where Gareth had left his clothes. "And if he went into the woods, he's not likely to come back that way. He'll go through the village, loop around, and return to the house by either the main gate or the one near the stile between my property and your father's, if he decides to make an extra long trek out of it."

Clearly, Gareth had not decided that.

"Now come, my dear. You don't have to join me if you'd rather not, since the water is devilishly cold. Besides, I think I prefer you as you are now, where I can see every bit of you unimpeded."

Evie clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. That could only mean that Grace stood at the lake's edge completely nude.

Evie might have broken into a run, except her skirt was still caught on the bush. The warmth of Gareth's body enveloped her as he stood right behind her and deftly freed her skirt. The heat of his breath seeped into her ear. "Move very slowly, and we shall have no further mishap."

Evie moved very slowly as he stayed right behind her, as if to ensure she didn't snag her skirt on any more bushes.

"Ah, but the very sight of you overpowers the cold of this water," Lord Ashdown said. "It may be cooling my body, but it does nothing to cool my ardor."

"I'm glad to hear it," Grace said in a playful tone. "Maybe we shouldn't have brought this picnic basket."

"Oh, we'll have our picnic," Ashdown said. "And then..."

The path finally veered sharply toward the house and away from the lake. Gareth twined an arm around Evie's shoulder and carefully guided her back onto the path.

"Ashdown's right about that water," he murmured. "It cools the body, but not his desire for the woman he loves."

"You thought that if you went swimming in that lake, you would cease to desire me?" she asked, nonplussed. "Why, if you love me? Or should I say, if you still love me?" She paused on the path, now that they were a safe distance from the lovers on the lake.

He stopped and turned to face her, cupping her chin in his fingers, while his other hand clutched his coat that was now slung over his shoulder. "I do still love you, and that's why I do desire you. It's just that since the other night in your servants' kitchen, I haven't been able to think of anything but how much I want to continue giving you the kind of pleasure I gave you that night—the same kind of pleasure I gave you at Madame Delphine's. I want to give you pleasure till you can't bear it anymore."

Evie's core quivered and throbbed at those words, and she said, "You've given me enough that I do believe I could bear it indefinitely."

He smiled. "That's what you think, my love."

Her pulse fluttered as a strange, tingling warmth curled deep inside her. "Shall we find out?"

"We shall. On our wedding night. Unless...?" He arched a dark brow.

Who knew when they might have their wedding night? It could be another week before Ross and Tabitha came this way en route to Tyndall Abbey. And of course Evie wanted her mother present, and she didn't know when that would happen any more than she could pinpoint the date of her wedding night.

So she replied, "Let us find out now."