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He glanced up from his doubled-over position. It was a shameful amount of time before he could speak. “Good… answer… Miss… Masters.” Gideon wanted to drop to the ground and catch his breath; he would shoot himself before he would do that in front of her. “Very… gracious.”

“And how much remains of my debt, Mr. Cole? Speak only when you can breathe again.”

He tried to laugh, but he hadn’t enough breath for it yet. Lily was red-cheeked and perspiring, her hair was a wild tangle, her smile brilliant. Enjoying her victory, but not to an intolerable degree, thankfully.

When Gideon’s lungs felt slightly less like overworked bellows, he stood upright again. “I’d better fetch our basket,” he told the girls, with some recovered dignity. He ambled, limping a little, back to where the picnic basket had been deserted. Along the way he spotted Lily’s ribbon, a little sliver of gleam in the grass. He plucked it up and ran it thoughtfully between his fingers, enjoying the slide of satin; he was tempted to pocket it as a memento. He found her slippers, too, or rather, the overlarge pair loaned to her by Mrs. Plunkett, and collected his jacket, and limped back with all of them.

“It was because I was wearing boots,” he explained when he returned.

“Oh, of course.” Lily soothed. “That must be why you…
lost.”
She grinned wickedly.

Her smile was more infectious than cholera. He grinned foolishly at her in return.

And men, as his breath and his senses returned fully, he began to
feel
foolish. It was impossible to imagine Constance red-faced and sweating from a headlong run; he imagined her expression if she could see the urbane Gideon Cole doubled-over from a
footrace
with a
girl
.

His face must have darkened, for he saw the light fade from Lily’s eyes as well.

“I found your ribbon.” He handed it to her. She took it from him and ran it through her own fingers thoughtfully, her face turned down so he could not see her expression. And then she wound it around her hair and tied it back. It didn’t make her look any more like a lady.

Or any less appealing.

He handed her slippers to her, too; she dropped them to the ground and pushed her feet into them.

“Well, Mr. Cole. What do we do now?” Lily’s tone was neutral again.

“Eat!” This came from Alice, and sounded more like a demand than a suggestion.

“Capital idea, Alice. Let’s spread our blanket out now, shall we?” Gideon flipped open the picnic hamper and pulled out a folded square of blanket. He shook it open with a great flourish, and it landed on Alice’s head, much to her delight. She made a great show of fighting her way out from underneath it, giggling, and Gideon laughed with her, because it was impossible not to, really.

Smiling again, Lily helped them straighten the blanket out on the ground, and thus cushioned by the blanket and canopied by the full greenness of beeches and oaks, Gideon unpacked the basket with great ceremony.

“And what have we here… ?” he mused, peering into the basket. “Oh! It’s… good heavens, it’s
cold chicken
!”

“Hurrah!” Alice approved, clapping.

“And next we have… could it be… it’s
lemon seedcakes
?‘

The girls were giggling now.

“And look at this… I can hardly believe our luck… it’s
cheese
?‘

Where had this come from, this…
silliness
! It fizzed up out of him, shaken loose by the run, perhaps. He’d never wanted so badly to make two females giggle, and Lily’s giggle was pure music.

He doled me food out all around, and they all fell upon it; the girls ate like locusts. He really should be admonishing Lily, he thought. Launching into a lesson: “Never, Miss Masters, eat with both hands.” Something along those lines.

Perhaps… perhaps later. He found himself rolling up his shirtsleeves; the warmth touched his bare arms and seeped into him until he felt something like languor.
This must be why I typically avoid outdoor amusements
, he thought.
They make you indolent
.

A few bees buzzed curiously about their meal and left again. And then a butterfly winged by for a visit, and was admired effusively by all of them.

“This is what Heaven looks like,”  Alice informed him, gnawing a piece of bread with cheese, waving her arm about to indicate Aster Park’s grounds. “Lily said so. And Mama lives in a house just like that—” she gestured toward the big brick house in the distance—“with Papa.”

He turned to Lily. “Ah. So this is what Heaven looks like, Miss Masters?”

Gideon watched her take a deep breath, as though gathering her courage, and gaze out over the swath of green they had just run across. She scanned the stands of trees, the delicate bobbing brilliance of early summer flowers, the white specks of fountains in the distance.

And as her face slowly became luminous with awe, Gideon could feel her wonder flowing into his own veins like a lovely liqueur, and it was as though he was experiencing Aster Park for the first time all over again.

“So many kinds…” Lily said softly, almost to herself.

“Kinds?” Gideon was puzzled.

“Of green. I never knew…” she trailed off, giving her head a wondering little shake.

“Which is your favorite?” he found himself asking.

She didn’t even need to consider the question. “That one.” She pointed up at a leaf on the tree sheltering them, still curled in upon itself, poised to unfurl. “It’s so… delicate, you can almost see through it. You almost fear for it, this fragile new thing.”

Her words kicked strangely inside him:
You almost fear for it, this fragile new thing
.

“Do
you
have a favorite green, Mr. Cole?”

“Well… yes,” he confessed. And so help him, he’d never admitted this to anyone. “That one,” he gestured to an oak leaf through which the afternoon sun shone. “It is a mature leaf, and yet when the sun shines through it…”

“… it looks almost new again,” Lily sounded pleased at the idea, a little smile curved her lips.

“Just before the sun begins to set is when I like it best,” he continued almost gingerly, like someone stepping out over untested and possibly perilous ground.

“Oh! Yes, it’s a kind light, that time of day,” Lily agreed. “It gilds everything. It’s as though everything on earth is allowed to be beautiful in that moment. Even St. Giles,” she added, with a rueful little smile.

Gideon stared at her, and suddenly he felt strangely lightheaded, as though he’d taken his first full clean breath in years. He was seized with an impulse to show Lily the cat-shaped stone, and the ancient oak, and the secluded stream, and all those fluffy sheep, just to hear what she would say. Just to watch her eyes change.

“But this
is
what Heaven looks like, Lily, right?” Alice insisted.

“Oh, of course.” Lily frowned a little, as though there had never been any question about it.

Bored with them, Alice decided to take her stick down closer to the lake to see what might be swimming there, leaving Gideon and Lily alone on the blanket amidst the carnage of their meal. Sunlight pierced their canopy of leaves and found tiny rainbows in the strands of Lily’s hair, and Gideon found his thoughts drifting in a decidedly less innocent direction.
Firelight on fair skin, a spill of gleaming hair…

Last night, as he watched her, he’d imagined reaching forward and gently, gently, loosening the cord that closed Lily’s voluminous borrowed robe… deliberately postponing, heightening, the breathless shock of pleasure he knew would accompany the sight of her body, bare to him…

His reverie was interrupted by a tickling sensation; he glanced down. A tiny black insect was struggling through the hair on his forearm.

Lily leaned forward and gently touched her finger to him.

And it was just a whisper of a touch, but it burned through him like a cinder. Gideon’s breathing suspended; his senses ignited. What was she—

She was rescuing the insect. The tiny creature clambered aboard Lily’s nail; she deposited it on the grass with a slight smile of satisfaction. Lily looked up into his face. “It was trapped,” she explained softly.

Their eyes met and held again. Gideon couldn’t speak; a strange ache had started up in the pit of him, and he couldn’t seem to free his gaze.

It was Lily who finally looked away, her expression unsettled. And Gideon, feeling faintly ridiculous, tried to command his anarchic thoughts and senses back into formation.

“Lily! Mr. Cole! Look!”

Alice had gouged something long and dark and muddy up from the lake with her stick. Some old roots, it looked like.

“Don’t touch it, Alice.” Gideon and Lily spoke at once. Their heads swiveled to look at each other quickly; just as quickly, they turned away from each other again, blinking self-consciously.

Alice obediently hurled whatever it was back into the lake and began swishing the stick about looking for other disgusting or intriguing objects worthy of inspection.

“How long have you cared for Alice on your own, Miss Masters? What became of your parents?”

Lily turned back toward him and looked intently into his face, searching perhaps for his motive for asking, or for a reason not to answer. “I could tell you anything I like about my parents, and you would never know whether or not it is true.”

“But you will tell me the truth,” he hazarded.

Lily hesitated a moment more, and then shrugged. “Mama was the daughter of a curate, a widower, who died and left her very little money. Papa was… well, Papa was many things. I think he at one time may have been a soldier. But mostly he was a gambler and a drinker,” she concluded with a wry twist of her mouth.

“What became of them?”

“They… they passed on. Mama is gone three years now. Papa died a few years before her.” The old grief flickered across her face, like a dying fire given a prod.

Three years of caring for her sister on her own… three years of risk on the street. He wondered how Constance would have fared if left to her own devices in St. Giles. Constance was so accustomed to winning, so innately an aristocrat; perhaps she would simply will men to hand over their watches to her.

“My parents died when I was young, too. When I was seventeen.” His own words clanged oddly in his ears. He hadn’t said them aloud to anyone in years; partly because the grief had defied words when it was new, and later he’d had no wish to revive it by talking of it, even with Helen. But for some reason… he wanted Miss Masters to know that he understood something of loss. “They were at sea and… there was a storm. Their ship was dashed to pieces. I was at Oxford. And after that, I looked after my sister.

“And…”  He smiled a little, ruefully. “Well, my father knew a little about gambling, too.” And oddly, then, he missed his father. His father had considered life one delightful surprise after another.

Lily lifted her eyes to his, and he read understanding in them, but not the sort that made him want to shake away from it, not the cloying sort, and he was relieved and strangely comforted. They were silent together for a time, turning to watch Alice kneel and drag her fingers through the lake water.

A winged insect of unknown genus circled them determinedly; Gideon waved it away. “Have you any living relatives, Miss Masters?”

“None that I know about, and I know not where to look.”

“But it must have been difficult to care for Alice on your own for so long. Wouldn’t you like someone to take care of you, too?”

“By ‘someone, ’ do you by any chance mean a
man
, Mr. Cole?” Lily’s mouth twisted wryly.

He said nothing, for this was precisely what he’d meant.

“Men,” she scoffed, wrapping her arms around her knees. Her big dress gapped a little at the bodice; Gideon forced his eyes up into the oak leaves. It would be interesting to see Miss Masters in her new wardrobe when it arrived. “Most men can hardly care for themselves, to hear Fanny speak of the men who go upstairs to see her. And Papa was certainly no help in that regard. I will
never
allow myself to be at the mercy of any man—I would rather care for myself and for Alice on my own. There’s more freedom in it.”

“But immense responsibility.”

She frowned a little, puzzled. “I suppose I don’t see it as responsibility. It’s merely… life.”

Merely life
. The simple strength in those two words resonated in Gideon like a bell.

He turned his head back toward the handsome house sprawling at the edge of the green, the house that would one day belong to him—and to Constance, who would, if all went according to his Master Plan, be his wife. Constance would
never
run like a wild thing; her athleticism was channeled into archery or riding or dancing, things requiring grace and decorum. He wasn’t even certain Constance ever
perspired
. Constance was always patently, thoroughly a lady. Which was why he regarded her so very highly.

Wasn’t it?

“While we are asking questions, Mr. Cole…”

“Yes, Miss Masters?”

“Why do you insist upon following that little rule book when it has nothing to do with who you
really
are?”

His head snapped toward her. Lily’s smile held a hint of mischievous triumph. But, oddly, a little sympathy, too.

He could ignore the question, he supposed, or scoff at it. But his sense of fair play demanded he attempt to answer it for her. “Those rules exist for a reason, Miss Masters. And if your mother was a lady, she knew those reasons, too. There’s a… comfort in symmetry, in knowing that everyone in your social circle shares the same customs and mores. In times of joy and pain, there’s a comfort in knowing how to behave, in knowing…”

“How to marry the daughter of a marquis?” Lily completed ironically.

Gideon said nothing; he looked away again, uncomfortable; a strange pressure was building in his chest. “My father lost everything my family owned, Miss Masters, and I’ve worked very hard for my position in life. An excellent marriage is something everyone should aspire to.”

Lily nodded thoughtfully, as though ceding this point to him. “Yes… but to me, those rules feel like… wallpaper pasted up to cover over one’s true self. Everyone is your friend, and yet everyone is a stranger. And they make no allowances for the whims of fate.”