It was wrong of her to stay.

So wrong.

So very, very wrong.

And yet she did not move an inch.

She found a large, bald-pated rock, mostly obscured by a short, squat bush, and sat down, never once taking her eyes off of him.

He was naked. She still couldn’t quite believe it.

He was, of course, partially submerged, with the edge of the water rippling against his rib cage.

The lower—she thought giddily—edge of his rib cage.

Or perhaps if she were to be honest with herself, she’d have to rephrase her previous thought to: He was, unfortunately, partially submerged.

Sophie was as innocent as the next…as, well, the next innocent, but dash it all, she was curious, and she was more than halfway in love with this man. Was it so very wicked to wish for a huge gust of wind, powerful enough to create a small tidal wave that would whip the water away from his body and deposit it somewhere else? Anywhere else?

Very well, it was wicked. She was wicked, and she didn’t care.

She’d spent her life taking the safe road, the prudent path. Only one night in her short life had she completely thrown caution to the wind. And that night had been the most thrilling, the most magical, the most stupendously wonderful night of her life.

And so she decided to remain right where she was, stay the course, and see what she saw. It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose. She had no job, no prospects save for Benedict’s promise to find her a position in his mother’s household (and she had a feeling that would be a very bad idea, anyway.)

And so she sat back, tried not to move a muscle, and kept her eyes wide, wide open.

Benedict had never been a superstitious man, and he’d certainly never thought himself the sort with a sixth sense, but once or twice in his life, he’d experienced a strange surge of awareness, a sort of mystical tingling feeling that warned him that something important was afoot.

The first time had been the day his father had died. He’d never told anyone about this, not even his older brother Anthony, who’d been utterly devastated by their father’s death, but that afternoon, as he and Anthony had raced across the fields of Kent in some silly horse race, he’d felt an odd, numb feeling in his arms and legs, followed by the strangest pounding in his head. It hadn’t hurt, precisely, but it had sucked the air from his lungs and left him with the most intense sensation of terror he could ever imagine.

He’d lost the race, of course; it was difficult to grip reins when one’s fingers refused to work properly. And when he’d returned home, he’d discovered that his terror had not been unwarranted. His father was already dead, having collapsed after being stung by a bee. Benedict still had difficulty believing that a man as strong and vital as his father could be felled by a bee, but there had been no other explanation.

The second time it had happened, however, the feeling had been completely different. It had been the night of his mother’s masquerade, right before he’d seen the woman in the silver dress. Like the time before, the sensation had started in his arms and legs, but instead of feeling numb, this time he felt an odd tingling, as if he’d just suddenly come alive after years of sleepwalking.

Then he’d turned and seen her, and he’d known she was the reason he was there that night; the reason he lived in England; hell, the very reason he’d been born.

Of course, she had gone and proven him wrong by disappearing into thin air, but at the time he’d believed all that, and if she’d let him, he would have proven it to her as well.

Now, as he stood in the pond, the water lapping at his midriff, just above his navel, he was struck once again by that odd sense of somehow being more alive than he’d been just seconds earlier. It was a good feeling, an exciting, breathless rush of emotion.

It was like before. When he’d met her.

Something was about to happen, or maybe someone was near.

His life was about to change.

And he was, he realized with wry twist of his lips, naked as the day he was born. It didn’t exactly put a man at an advantage, at least not unless he was in between a pair of silk sheets with an attractive young woman at his side.

Or underneath.

He took a step into slightly deeper waters, the soft sludge of the pondbottom squishing between his toes. Now the water reached a couple of inches higher. He was bloody well freezing, but at least he was mostly covered up.

He scanned the shore, looking up into trees and down in the bushes. There had to be someone there. Nothing else could account for the strange, tingling feeling that had now spread throughout his body.

And if his body could tingle while submerged in a lake so cold, he was terrified to see his own privates (the poor things felt like they’d shrunk to nothing, which was not what a man liked to imagine), then it must be a very strong tingle indeed.

“Who is out there?” he called out.

No answer. He hadn’t really expected one, but it had been worth a try.

He squinted as he searched the shore again, turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees as he watched for any sign of movement. He saw nothing but the gentle ruffling of the leaves in the wind, but as he finished his sweep of the area, he somehow knew.

“Sophie!”

He heard a gasp, followed by a huge flurry of activity.

“Sophie Beckett,” he yelled, “if you run from me right now, I swear I will follow you, and I will not take the time to don my clothing.”

The noises coming from the shore slowed.

“I will catch up with you,” he continued, “because I’m stronger and faster. And I might very well feel compelled to tackle you to the ground, just to be certain you do not escape.”

The sounds of her movement ceased.

“Good,” he grunted. “Show yourself.”

She didn’t.

“Sophie,” he warned.

There was a beat of silence, followed by the sound of slow, hesitant footsteps, and then he saw her, standing on the shore in one of those awful dresses he’d like to see sunk to the bottom of the Thames.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I went for a walk. What are you doing here?” she countered. “You’re supposed to be ill. That”—she waved her arm toward him and, by extension, the pond—“can’t possibly be good for you.”

He ignored her question and comment. “Were you following me?”

“Of course not,” she replied, and he rather believed her. He didn’t think she possessed the acting talents to fake that level of righteousness.

“I would never follow you to a swimming hole,” she continued. “It would be indecent.”

And then her face went completely red, because they both knew she hadn’t a leg to stand on with that argument. If she had truly been concerned about decency, she’d have left the pond the second she’d seen him, accidentally or not.

He lifted one hand from the water and pointed toward her, twisting his wrist as he motioned for her to turn around. “Give me your back while you wait for me,” he ordered. “It will only take me a moment to pull on my clothing.”

“I’ll go home right now,” she offered. “You’ll enjoy greater privacy, and—”

“You’ll stay,” he said firmly.

“But—”

He crossed his arms. “Do I look like a man in the mood to be argued with?”

She stared at him mutinously.

“If you run,” he warned, “I will catch you.”

Sophie eyed the distance between them, then tried to judge the distance back to My Cottage. If he stopped to pull on his clothing she might have a chance of escaping, but if he didn’t…

“Sophie,” he said, “I can practically see the steam coming out of your ears. Stop taxing your brain with useless mathematical computations and do as I asked.”

One of her feet twitched. Whether it was itching to run home or merely turn around, she’d never know.

“Now,” he ordered.

With a loud sigh and grumble, Sophie crossed her arms and turned around to stare at a knothole in the tree trunk in front of her as if her very life depended on it. The infernal man wasn’t being particularly quiet as he went about his business, and she couldn’t seem to keep herself from listening to and trying to identify every sound that rustled and splashed behind her. Now he was emerging from the water, now he was reaching for his breeches, now he was…

It was no use. She had a dreadfully wicked imagination, and there was no getting around it.

He should have just let her return to the house. Instead she was forced to wait, utterly mortified, while he dressed. Her skin felt like it was on fire, and she was certain her cheeks must be eight different shades of red. A gentleman would have let her weasel out of her embarrassment and hole up in her room back at the house for at least three days in hopes that he’d just forget about the entire affair.

But Benedict Bridgerton was obviously determined not to be a gentleman this afternoon, because when she moved one of her feet—just to flex her toes, which were falling asleep in her shoes, honest!—barely half a second passed before he growled, “Don’t even think about it.”

“I wasn’t!” she protested. “My foot was falling asleep. And hurry up! It can’t possibly take so long to get dressed.”

“Oh?” he drawled.

“You’re doing this just to torture me,” she grumbled.

“You may feel free to face me at any time,” he said, his voice laced with quiet amusement. “I assure you that I asked you to turn your back for the sake of your sensibilities, not mine.”

“I’m just fine where I am,” she replied.

After what seemed like an hour but what was probably only three minutes, she heard him say, “You may turn around now.”

Sophie was almost afraid to do so. He had just the sort of perverse sense of humor that would compel him to order her around before he’d donned his clothing.

But she decided to trust him—not, she was forced to admit, that she had much choice in the matter—and so she turned around. Much to her relief and, if she was to be honest with herself, a fair bit of disappointment, he was quite decently dressed, save for a smattering of damp spots where the water from his skin had seeped through the fabric of his clothing.

“Why didn’t you just let me run home?” she asked.

“I wanted you here,” he said simply.

“But why?” she persisted.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Punishment, perhaps, for spying on me.”

“I wasn’t—” Sophie’s denial was automatic, but she cut herself off halfway through, because of course she’d been spying on him.

“Smart girl,” he murmured.

She scowled at him. She would have liked to have said something utterly droll and witty, but she had a feeling that anything emerging from her mouth just then would have been quite the opposite, so she held her tongue. Better to be a silent fool than a talkative one.

“It’s very bad form to spy on one’s host,” he said, planting his hands on his hips and somehow managing to look both authoritative and relaxed at the same time.

“It was an accident,” she grumbled.

“Oh, I believe you there,” he said. “But even if you didn’t intend to spy on me, the fact remains that when the opportunity arose, you took it.”

“Do you blame me?”

He grinned. “Not at all. I would have done precisely the same thing.”

Her mouth fell open.

“Oh, don’t pretend to be offended,” he said.

“I’m not pretending.”

He leaned a bit closer. “To tell the truth, I’m quite flattered.”

“It was academic curiosity,” she ground out. “I assure you.”

His smile grew sly. “So you’re telling me that you would have spied upon any naked man you’d come across?”

“Of course not!”

“As I said,” he drawled, leaning back against a tree, “I’m flattered.”

“Well, now that we have that settled,” Sophie said with a sniff, “I’m going back to Your Cottage.”

She made it only two steps before his hand shot out and grabbed a small measure of the fabric of her dress. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Sophie turned back around with a weary sigh. “You have already embarrassed me beyond repair. What more could you possibly wish to do to me?”

Slowly, he reeled her in. “That’s a very interesting question,” he murmured.

Sophie tried to plant her heels into the ground, but she was no match for the inexorable tug of his hand. She stumbled slightly, then found herself mere inches away from him. The air suddenly felt hot, very hot, and Sophie had the bizarre sense that she no longer quite knew how to work her hands and feet. Her skin tingled, her heart raced, and the bloody man was just staring at her, not moving a muscle, not pulling her the final few inches against him.

Just staring at her.

“Benedict?” she whispered, forgetting that she still called him Mr. Bridgerton.

He smiled. It was a small, knowing sort of smile, one that sent chills right down her spine to another area altogether. “I like when you say my name,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to,” she admitted.

He touched a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” he admonished. “Don’t tell me that. Don’t you know that’s not what a man wishes to hear?”

“I don’t have much experience with men,” she said.

“Now that’s what a man wishes to hear.”

“Really?” she asked dubiously. She knew men wanted innocence in their wives, but Benedict wasn’t about to marry a girl like her.

He touched her cheek with one fingertip. “It’s what I want to hear from you.”

A soft rush of air crossed Sophie’s lips as she gasped. He was going to kiss her.

He was going to kiss her. It was the most wonderful and awful thing that could possibly happen.

But oh, how she wanted this.

She knew she was going to regret this tomorrow. She let out a smothered, choking sort of laugh. Who was she kidding? She’d regret it in ten minutes. But she had spent the last two years remembering what it felt like to be in his arms, and she wasn’t sure she’d make it through the rest of her days without at least one more memory to keep her going.

His finger floated across her cheek to her temple, and then from there traced her eyebrow, ruffling the soft hairs as it moved to the bridge of her nose. “So pretty,” he said softly, “like a storybook fairy. Sometimes I think you couldn’t possibly be real.”

Her only reply was a quickening of breath.

“I think I’m going to kiss you,” he whispered.

“You think?”

“I think I have to kiss you,” he said, looking as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words. “It’s rather like breathing. One doesn’t have much choice in the matter.”

Benedict’s kiss was achingly tender. His lips brushed across hers in a feather-light caress, back and forth with just the barest hint of friction. It was utterly breathtaking, but there was something more, something that made her dizzy and weak. Sophie clutched at his shoulders, wondering why she felt so off-balance and strange, and then it suddenly came to her—

It was just like before.

The way his lips brushed hers so soft and sweet, the way he began with gentle titillation, rather than forcing entry—it was just what he’d done at the masquerade. After two years of dreams, Sophie was finally reliving the single most exquisite moment of her life.

“You’re crying,” Benedict said, touching her cheek.

Sophie blinked, then reached up to wipe away the tears she hadn’t even known were falling.

“Do you want me to stop?” he whispered.

She shook her head. No, she didn’t want him to stop. She wanted him to kiss her just as he had at the masquerade, the gentle caress giving way to a more passionate joining. And then she wanted him to kiss her some more, because this time the clock wasn’t going to strike midnight, and she wouldn’t have to flee.

And she wanted him to know that she was the woman from the masquerade. And she desperately prayed that he would never recognize her. And she was just so bloody confused, and…

And he kissed her.

Really kissed her, with fierce lips and probing tongue, and all the passion and desire a woman could ever want. He made her feel beautiful, precious, priceless. He treated her like a woman, not some serving wench, and until that very moment, she hadn’t realized just how much she missed being treated like a person. Gentry and aristocrats didn’t see their servants, they tried not to hear them, and when they were forced to converse, they kept it as short and perfunctory as possible.

But when Benedict kissed her, she felt real.

And when he kissed her, he did so with his entire body. His lips, which had begun the intimacy with such gentle reverence, were now fierce and demanding on hers. His hands, so large and strong they seemed to cover half her back, held her to him with a strength that left her breathless. And his body—dear God, it ought to be illegal the way it was pressed against hers, the heat of it seeping through her clothing, searing her very soul.

He made her shiver. He made her melt.

He made her want to give herself to him, something she’d sworn she would never do outside the sacrament of marriage.

“Oh, Sophie,” he murmured, his voice husky against her lips. “I’ve never felt—”

Sophie stiffened, because she was fairly certain he’d intended to say he’d never felt that way before, and she had no idea how she felt about that. On the one hand, it was thrilling to be the one woman who could bring him to his knees, make him dizzy with desire and need.

On the other hand, he’d kissed her before. Hadn’t he felt the same exquisite torture then, too?

Dear God, was she jealous of herself?

He pulled back a half inch. “What’s wrong?”

She gave her head a little shake. “Nothing.”

Benedict touched his fingers to the tip of her chin and tilted her face up. “Don’t lie to me, Sophie. What’s wrong?”

“I’m—I’m only nervous,” she stammered. “That’s all.”

His eyes narrowed with concerned suspicion. “Are you certain?”

“Absolutely certain.” She tugged herself from his grasp and took a few steps away from him, her arms hugging over her chest. “I don’t do this sort of thing, you know.”

Benedict watched her walk away, studying the bleak line of her back. “I know,” he said softly. “You’re not the sort of girl who would.”

She gave a little laugh at that, and even though he could not see her face, he could well imagine its expression. “How do you know that?” she asked.

“It’s obvious in everything you do.”

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t say anything.

And then, before he had any idea what he was saying, the most bizarre question tumbled from his mouth. “Who are you, Sophie?” he asked. “Who are you, really?”

She still didn’t turn around, and when she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “What do you mean?”

“Something isn’t quite right about you,” he said. “You speak too well to be a maid.”

Her hand was nervously fidgeting with the folds of her skirt as she said, “Is it a crime to wish to speak well? One can’t get very far in this country with a lowborn accent.”

“One could make the argument,” he said with deliberate softness, “that you haven’t gotten very far.”

Her arms straightened into sticks. Straight rigid sticks with little tight fists at the end. And then, while he waited for her to say something, she started walking away.

“Wait!” he called out, and he caught up with her in under three strides, grabbing hold of her wrist. He tugged at her until she was forced to turn around. “Don’t go,” he said.

“It is not my habit to remain in the company of people who insult me.”

Benedict nearly flinched, and he knew he would be forever haunted by the stricken look in her eyes. “I wasn’t insulting you,” he said, “and you know it. I was speaking the truth. You’re not meant to be a housemaid, Sophie. It’s clear to me, and it ought to be clear to you.”

She laughed—a hard, brittle sound he’d never thought to hear from her. “And what do you suggest I do, Mr. Bridgerton?” she asked. “Find work as a governess?”

Benedict thought that was a fine idea, and he started to tell her so, but she interrupted him, saying, “And who do you think will hire me?”

“Well…”

“No one,” she snapped. “No one will hire me. I have no references, and I look far too young.”

“And pretty,” he said grimly. He’d never given much thought to the hiring of governesses, but he knew that the duty usually fell to the mother of the house. And common sense told him that no mother wanted to bring such a pretty young thing into her household. Just look what Sophie had had to endure at the hands of Phillip Cavender.

“You could be a lady’s maid,” he suggested. “At least then you wouldn’t be cleaning chamber pots.”

“You’d be surprised,” she muttered.

“A companion to an elderly lady?”

She sighed. It was a sad, weary sound, and it nearly broke his heart. “You’re very kind to try to help me,” she said, “but I have already explored all of those avenues. Besides, I am not your responsibility.”

“You could be.”

She looked at him in surprise.

In that moment, Benedict knew that he had to have her. There was a connection between them, a strange, inexplicable bond that he’d felt only one other time in his life, with the mystery lady from the masquerade. And while she was gone, vanished into thin air, Sophie was very real. He was tired of mirages. He wanted someone he could see, someone he could touch.

And she needed him. She might not realize it yet, but she needed him. Benedict took her hand and tugged, catching her off-balance and wrapping her to him when she fell against his body.

“Mr. Bridgerton!” she yelped.

“Benedict,” he corrected, his lips at her ear.

“Let me—”

“Say my name,” he persisted. He could be very stubborn when it suited his interests, and he wasn’t going to let her go until he heard his name cross her lips.

And maybe not even then.

“Benedict,” she finally relented. “I—”

“Hush.” He silenced her with his mouth, nibbling at the corner of her lips. When she went soft and compliant in his arms, he drew back, just far enough so that he could focus on her eyes. They looked impossibly green in the late-afternoon light, deep enough to drown in.

“I want you to come back to London with me,” he whispered, the words tumbling forth before he had a chance to consider them. “Come back and live with me.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Be mine,” he said, his voice thick and urgent. “Be mine right now. Be mine forever. I’ll give you anything you want. All I want in return is you.”