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it.
    However, she managed to avoid looking at him as she slid on her leather gloves and put on a wide-brimmed bonnet.
    “Good morning, Elisa,” he bid her. “Have you eaten?”
    “I ate in my room, thank you,” she said softly.
    “Then there’s no reason not to start out immediately,” he said. “I’ll have the horses brought around.”
    “I’d rather go to the stables,” Elisa returned, a touch too quickly.
    Vaughn studied her anew. Did she want to be away from the house? He noticed the hint of dark circles beneath her eyes, the high color in her cheeks. Then he understood; she wanted to get this over and done with as swiftly as possible. She wasn’t about to wait idly with him for the horses to be brought to her. She wanted to go to the horses instead.
    He suppressed a smile. Did she really think she was safer walking through a garden than standing here in the foyer?
    “Very well,” he agreed and offered his arm. When she did not take it, but instead stepped around him and marched to the tall French doors at the back of the foyer, he let himself smile fully. Oh yes, indeed, she was avoiding him.
    The doors led out onto the large formal garden at the rear of the manor. It was a tamed, regimented and manicured area filled with straight paths and symmetrical borders of flowers and plants.
    Elisa walked swiftly down the path. It led directly to the stables at the foot of the garden. Vaughn quickened his pace a little and easily caught up with her.
    “Are you wearing your corset?” he asked.
    “A lady always wears a corset. That is not a question you have a right to ask me, either.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    “It is all the answer you will get from me.”
    He grinned. He would see about that. Deliberately, he stepped a little sideways, and brought his foot down upon her train. Elisa was jerked backwards. Immediately, Vaughn took his foot off the train and she was thrown forward by the sudden cessation of force from behind.
    Swiftly, Vaughn stepped around to catch her before she could measure her length on the path and she fell neatly into his arms, her own outstretched to save her.
    He gripped her by the waist and put her neatly back on her feet. He kept his hands around her incredibly small waist, feeling the warmth of her beneath the soft velvet.
    He could also feel the unyielding wall of corsetry.
    “Elisa, you disappoint me,” he murmured, although he was not at all unhappy. He may have been a little dissatisfied if she had given in so easily.
    Her chin jerked up. “Vaughn, you expect far too much of me. I am your father’s fiancée and propriety demands—”
    “Sod propriety!” He tightened his grip on her waist. “Propriety, morals…they’re just words, Elisa. You know the difference—I know you do. Just as I do.”
    She was studying him. Listening. Weighing. It was a trait he’d never seen in a woman before—to have his words considered with such care, to be so taken to heart.
    “What do you want, Vaughn?”
    Yes, what did he want? What was he doing, standing here in the middle of the rose garden, holding her by the waist for all to see? To what end? He’d already decided to go back to London. He shrugged. “To go riding.”
    “No, Vaughn. What is it you really want?”
    “What I want I cannot have,” he answered truthfully.
    “You must take your hands from my waist. People might see us from the house.” She was staring at him steadily with her intense blue eyes, made brilliant by the color of her gown. There was not an inch of retreat in them.
    Let go of this delicate, gorgeous creature? Suddenly, he found it almost impossible to lift his hands away, even though he knew she was right—there might well be servants observing them from the windows. There was no danger Rufus would see them. The old sot was most likely still snoring off last evening’s claret.
    “Vaughn, please…whatever you think of me personally, you do me an injustice by risking my public reputation in