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roses. She was, for a moment, truly content.
    Footfalls behind her in the brush startled her from her daydream, but she didn’t need to turn around to see the intruder. There was only one person who knew her fondness for this secluded spot.
    Her brother, Henry.
    Four years younger and two inches taller, he was her greatest champion and her most ardent admirer. Henry knew all her secret hideouts and wasn’t afraid to seek her out when she insisted on solitude.
    His voice had recently passed the strained awkward stage of adolescence and was taking on a hint of the man’s voice he’d one day have. “Thought you might be here, Bess.”
    It warmed her to hear his pet name for her. Bess, he called her. Her red hair reminded him of the legendary monarch, and he worshipped her like a queen.
    “You’re holding up well,” he said, his grin holding all the tease he’d managed to keep from his tone. He leaned up against the tree beside her. “I daresay, you’d make a fierce captain. Once you set your mind, you stick to it, ship sinking or no.”
    Senza shredded a nearby daisy and pelted him with the petals. “I don’t know where you ever got the impression you were funny.”
    “I’m only teasing. A little. I heard you and mother earlier. She’s really intent on getting you engaged by summer’s end.”
    A scowl was her only reply.
    “What’s the problem, anyway?” Henry shook the flower bits from his clothing and knelt down next to her. “At least if you cooperated, you’d stand a chance at a match you liked. Look at John and Edwina.”
    Their older brother had married several years earlier in an arrangement that was declared a love match. It was Edwina’s triumph over their parent’s negotiations; no one had expected them to actually love each other, especially not with the youthful exuberance they shared. Every day since was a continuation of their courtship.
    Senza smiled as she remembered them, her wistful thoughts tugging at her resolution. Yes, she had to admit—it was theoretically possible that she would actually like her mate. But there were two rather looming obstacles that kept her from cooperating with her mother’s demands.
    Firstly, it was her mother. Senza loved her, undoubtedly so—but the endless priming and lecturing and prodding did nothing but sway her in the alternate direction. The more her mother liked a particular man, the less Senza liked him. There appeared every chance of despising the man her mother would declare the winner of her daughter’s affections.
    Senza could admit this reason to her brother no more than she could the second—and that was that she had already been smitten by someone.
    That someone was a man she’d seen only a precious handful of times, shared only a scattering of stolen moments, and had not the vaguest idea of his name. That mysterious stranger she’d chased after like a reckless child chasing a rabbit.
    It had been the way he looked at her, smiled at her, called her bien-aimé . Those few stolen moments had branded themselves on the tender most places of her heart, had played themselves out night after night, in her dreams, in her wakings, in the slow moments of the day when her mind would wander. Unfailingly, her thoughts always found their way back to him.
    An obsession. She knew it, and was ashamed, although shame did nothing to dampen the obsession. If Henry knew, he’d laugh. Worse yet, he’d give her secret away, tell their mother, and oh, the trouble there would be—
    “Edwina was very lucky. John is sweet and charming, almost as much as you.” She squeezed his hand. “Your wife will be lucky, too, although I hope you haven’t found her just yet. I’d like to keep you just a while longer.”
    “You know you will always be first in my heart, Bessy. I just hope that I won’t always be first in yours. You should be happy. Just—give Mother a chance. She wants the best for you, you know that.”
    “I do. I just wish I knew what was best for