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been there when she was Isabelle’s age.
    It had started innocently enough. Her new art tutor was young, and handsome in a quiet fashion. His canvasses glowed with an inner light that was generating interest in society. How proud her mother had been to acquire him as a tutor. How taken Lily had been as they sat in the springtime garden sketching one another. He knew everything, and she was so hungry to learn.
    It was not long before their mutual passion for art lead to passion of another sort. Their glances had progressed to shy touches, hand-holding, then a few gentle, stolen kisses. Her body had thrilled in response to his caresses. The first time he had stroked her breast through her gown she had thought she had become a firework, a blazing flower shot into the sky.
    Lily had imagined herself desperately in love, but looking back, it seemed she had been in love with the heady feeling of discovering herself desirable. That first taste of a young woman’s power had been intoxicating.
    And so it went, spring giving way to summer, until a stolen hour in the evening garden had turned heated. He had lifted her skirts and entered her, gasping apologies as he thrust wildly. She had barely understood what was happening until he gathered her into his arms and stroked her hair. They were both crying, and yet her body yearned for him, yearned for a kind of completion she did not understand.
    He resigned his position the next morning. He would never forgive himself for robbing her of her innocence, he told her. Marriage was out of the question, their stations were too far apart, he could barely support himself, let alone a wife, and she would come to despise him for taking her away from her world of wealth and privilege. She took his words in, but they did little to shield her from the aching misery that followed. She had never again allowed herself to be so vulnerable.
    Until today.
    Lily paced to the window. Outside, the early spring drizzle had resumed. Another wagon of supplies trundled up the drive, the driver hunched under his wet cloak. Mr. Huntington must have sensed her weakness. She always lost herself when painting. He had felt her vulnerability and acted the rake. Hadn’t he checked to make sure Mrs. Hodges was asleep?
    Yet somehow she could not bring herself to believe it. Perhaps it had been the look in his brown eyes as he had drawn her to him, perhaps the way he had tipped her chin up for their kiss. There was a tenderness in his touch that could not be a lie. He was not a wicked man—just a dangerous one, and his presence here was disturbing everything.
    In five days her father’s coach would come up the drive to take her to London. There she would sit in a parlor and drink tea with her future mother-in-law. Marriage. Would Lord Buckley’s kiss inspire that flare of her senses, the feeling that she was truly alive in every corner of her being? She doubted it. He was her mother’s choice, after all.
    Lily bent and picked up her crumpled apron. What was she going to do? She had encouraged Mr. Huntington. He had kissed her first, but she had kissed him back. What would he expect as they traveled together? She had lost her innocence, but in the years since she had gathered the tatters of her virtue about her. Her future husband deserved what little she could offer. She was a fallen woman, but not a loose one.
    Or was she? She closed her eyes and she was back in the conservatory, enfolded in Mr. Huntington’s arms, his hand pressing against the small of her back, his lips drinking her in.
    She must not let it happen again. She must not give him the opportunity to tempt her. Her only hope was to press on, pretend it had never happened. Lock the memory of his caress away with her secrets. She could manage—she had to. It was simply a matter of immersing herself in her work. She would signal to Mr. Huntington that she was not available, and if he asked, tell him directly that he would be allowed no further