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Rubbing his temples, he waved it away. “Just coffee.” Surely this would all make more sense after coffee. “Would someone care to begin this tale at the beginning?” Cecily looked to Portia. “You’re the writer.”
    Portia lifted her eyebrows. “It’s your story.”
    “I spied a white stag in the forest,” Cecily began, carefully buttering a point of toast as she spoke. “I followed him, and became separated from the group. Deep in the woods, a wild boar attacked me. A man appeared from nowhere and killed it.”
    “Butchered it, more like.” Portia shuddered. “What a gruesome scene.”
    “He saved my life.” Cecily’s chin lifted. “At great risk to his own. Then he took my stocking to bind his wound and left. Just as I lost sight of the man retreating through the woods, I saw the stag again, bounding away.” Her clear blue eyes met Luke’s. “It must have been the werestag.”
    “Absurd,” Brooke said. “You didn’t see a ‘werestag’, Miss Hale. You saw a stag, and you saw a man.
    It does not follow that they are one and the same. The man who came to your aid could have been anyone. A poacher, perhaps. Or a gamekeeper.”
    “He was unarmed,” said Cecily. “He had no hounds.”
    “Still. There must be some rational explanation. If he was a stag transformed into a man, where did he get clothes? Does he keep them stashed under a bush somewhere?” Portia asked, “Are you calling Cecily a liar?”
    “Not at all,” Brooke replied evenly. “But after a traumatic event like that, it would be perfectly understandable if she were confused, overwrought…”
    “I am not mad,” Cecily insisted, letting her butter knife clatter to her plate. “I know what I saw. I am not the sort of hysterical female who imagines things.”
    “Are you sure?” Luke sipped his coffee. “Are you certain you’re not exactly that sort of female? The type to harbor romantic illusions and cling to them for years, hoping they’ll one day become the truth?” Ah, if looks could fillet a man, Luke would have been breakfast. But he would rather have Cecily’s anger than her indifference, and for the first time in nine days, that was what he was sensing from her.
    Whatever, or whoever, she had encountered in the forest—be it man, animal, or something in-between—it had captured her imagination, and her loyalty as well. Those treasures that had so recently, if undeservedly, belonged to him.
    Not anymore. The way she defended her tale so stridently, the lively spark in her eyes, the fetching blush staining her throat… Luke felt these subtle signals like jabs to his gut.
    She was falling out of love with him. And fast.
    “I’ve known Cecily all my life,” Denny said from the head of the table. “She’s an intelligent woman, both sensible and resourceful. She’s also my guest, and I won’t have her truthfulness or sanity questioned over breakfast.” He propped one forearm on the table and leaned forward, fixing Luke with what was, for ever-affable Denny, a surprisingly stern glare.
    Luke acknowledged it with a slight nod. If he must surrender her to this man, it was some solace to see Denny was capable of protecting her. In a breakfast room, at least, if not a cursed forest.
    Denny turned to Cecily and laid a hand on her wrist. “If you say you encountered a werestag last night, I believe you. Implicitly.”
    “Thank you, Denny.” She gave him a warm smile.
    How sweet. Truly, it made Luke’s stomach churn.
    Ignoring Brooke’s grumbling objection, Luke swiped a roll from his neighbor’s plate and chewed it moodily. He ought to be rejoicing, he supposed, or at least feeling relieved. She should forget him, she should marry Denny, the two of them should be disgustingly happy.
    But Luke could not be so charitable. For four years, she’d held on to that memory of their first, innocent kiss—and he had too. And he liked believing that no matter what occurred in the future—even if she married Denny, even