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jumped to her feet. “Mr. Wright. Please wait.”
    He stopped, but did not turn. He merely stood there, waiting, his broad-shouldered back to her.
    “You may…” She knotted her hands together and breathed deeply. “You may touch me.”
    Now he turned.
    “What was that you said?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I recall the last word being ‘me,’ but I think I heard the one before it as…”
    “Touch.” She slanted her gaze to a crooked branch in a nearby tree. “Stay here, and give my sister and Lord Brentley their privacy. And I’ll allow you to touch me. Any way you like, so long as my frock remains unsoiled and intact.” She forced herself to brave his gaze. “I know it’s what you want.”
    “To protect your frock?”
    “To put your hands on me.”
    He inhaled slowly. Then he exhaled, even more slowly. He made no attempt at denial.
    “All week long, it’s been this way. You can’t stop inventing excuses to touch me.” Eliza bit her lip. “Well, now you have an invitation.”
    “An invitation to touch you.”
    “Through my clothing. Yes.”
    He removed his hat and hung it on a nearby branch. “How very sacrificial. What a martyr you must think yourself, offering your virgin flesh to distract the wicked rake.” He tsked. “You cunning, selfish thing.”
    Cunning? Selfish? Eliza fumed. How dare he.
    “This way, you can tell yourself you don’t really want it. That you’re not being naughty at all. You can pretend an altruistic motive—concern for your sister. But I know the truth.” He came to a halt, just a pace away. “Perhaps I’ve been wanting to touch you all week, but you’ve been waiting on my kiss for over a year.”
    Her heart beat faster.
    “Did you dream of it?” His eyes teased with their merciless green. “Did you go up to your room that very night and kiss your pillow, imagining it was me? Perhaps not even just that night, but every night since?”
    He raised that nectarine to his mouth and took a prolonged, juicy, sucking bite.
    She balled her hands into fists. “Have you been practicing ways to torment me every drunken, debauched evening? What is it you want from me, Mr. Wright?”
    As he chewed, he looked her over, everywhere. Eventually, his gaze settled on her simple coiffure.
    “I want your hairpins,” he said, swallowing.
    “My hairpins?”
    He nodded.
    She crossed her arms. “Well, you mayn’t have them.”
    “But this was your idea, Eliza. You said I could touch you any way I wished, so long as your frock remained intact and unrumpled. I don’t recall anything being said about hair.”
    With his free hand, he reached just behind her earlobe—like a cheap conjurer who meant to pull a sixpence from her ear. But he came away with nothing more magical than a hairpin.
    “There’s one.”
    He circled her, pulling them free one at a time. Eliza stood still, feeling her neat coiffure—the work of an hour that morning—disintegrate into a confusion of haphazard locks and curls.
    At last, he had them all freed.
    “I don’t know how I’ll fix it again,” she said.
    “That’s easy. You won’t.” He tossed her hairpins into the bushes. Then he combed through her hair with this fingers, separating and arranging the heavy locks. “Do you plait it at night?”
    She didn’t know how to react to his question—whether to receive it as innocuous or lascivious. So she simply answered it honestly.
    “No.”
    “But you should. All proper ladies plait their hair at night.”
    “I know, but I…”
    “But you don’t. Because you like it down, and why wouldn’t you?” His voice grew low, thoughtful. Entrancing. “To think, all this glorious, golden hair, confined in pins or plaits every hour of the day? Unconscionable. It’s beautiful down. You haven’t a lover to tell you so, but you know it just the same. It’s the color of raw honey, the texture of silk. You like to brush it and twist it in the mirror, even after your maid has left you for the