"Then what the hell's the matter with you?"
"I'm frightened!" she cried with the same anger. She hadn't meant to tell him, but the words had spoken themselves.
Whatever he'd been expecting, it hadn't been that. "Frightened? My dear girl, of what?"
"You!" The admission was a ferocious whisper.
"Me?" Sylvester was astounded. "What have I done to warrant your fear?"
Theo picked at a piece of loose stone on the parapet and tossed it into the stream.
"It's not so much what you've done, as what I'm afraid you'll do," she said in a low voice.
Sylvester frowned. "What do you think I'm going to do to you, you silly goose?"
"I am not a silly goose," she said, recovering some of her sangfroid. "I'm afraid you'll swallow me up… take over."
"I still don't understand." He searched now for patience. This was obviously a much more complex issue than he'd thought.
"I'm afraid I'll lose myself if I marry you," she said. "You'll take control and I'll be swept up." She stared straight ahead of her across the river, aware that her cheeks were hot, knowing that she was failing lamentably to express herself, but it was so damnably embarrassing to explain.
"Let's move out of sight of the house," Sylvester said abruptly, conscious of the manor's sparkling windows like so many shining eyes looking down at them from the top of the hill. Taking her arm, he chivied her across the bridge and a few yards along the bank toward the stand of oak trees from where he'd first laid eyes on his cousin.
"Now… I'll see what I can do to calm your fears." He was smiling as he stood her against an oak tree, his eyes somewhat amused. He thought he understood. "Perhaps this will help…"
It was no good. The minute his lips touched hers, Theo was lost. There was nothing her mind could do to control her responses. Her hands slid inside his coat, on their own voyage of exploration, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath his shirt, the ripple of muscle down his back, and then the hard, muscled tautness of his buttocks.
Her teeth nipped at his lower lip as their tongues plunged and warred, and her legs twined and twisted around his, her loins pressing urgently against his. She moved a hand round his body to mold the hard shaft of flesh straining against the skintight knit of his pantaloons, and as she felt the flesh jumping against her caressing hand, she was filled with a wild exultation, knowing that he was as lost in lust as she was.
She went down to the grass beneath the urgent pressure of his hand on her shoulder and fell back, the grass beneath her damp with early-evening dew. Lifting her against him for a brief moment, he unfastened the hooks at the back of her dress, then let her fall back onto the grass. She twisted and lifted her body to help him as he pulled the dress away from her. He unbuttoned her chemise, baring her breasts to the cool air, and his tongue flickered over the rosy crowns, one finger delicately stroking the satin swell.
Theo felt herself to be a burning brand of desire. She had no modesty, no ability to restrain her movements as her thighs opened, exposing the aching cleft of her body to the hand that moved downward, slipped into the waist of her drawers, and flattened over her belly. Fretfully, she scrabbled at her undergarments, pushing them away from her body, kicking them off her feet.
Her hips arched as she reached for him to pull him down to her, her own hands trying to find a way to touch his skin, to reach the turgid flesh that her body knew in its every crevice would bring her ultimate joy.
And then suddenly, with a harsh exclamation, Sylvester pulled back from her. He looked down at the half-naked girl, lying open and expectant, her eyes wild with passion, her arms still raised as if waiting for him to return to their embrace.
"God in heaven!" he whispered, running a hand through his hair, fighting for control. He took a deep, shuddering breath and reached for her discarded drawers. "Put these back on."
It was taking Theo longer to return to sanity. "Why?" she drawled, her eyes narrowing. "Come back."
Sylvester bent, caught her inviting hands, and hauled her to her feet. Lust was well under control now, and he was torn between laughter and exasperation as he held up her undergarment. "Lift up your foot."
"But why?"
"Because, my passionate baggage, I have no intention of siring an heir before my wedding night. Now, lift up." He slapped her calf in emphatic punctuation.
Theo obeyed, but her heated blood was taking a long time to cool. She fumbled with the buttons of her chemise as he pulled up her drawers with a businesslike efficiency. Then she said in a low voice, "Now do you understand what I'm frightened of? You swallow me up… I lose myself. I don't know what I'm doing."
He stroked her disheveled hair away from her face. "Tell me the truth, now. Are you frightened or disappointed at the moment?"
Theo thought. "Disappointed," she said finally, a rueful smile hovering on her own lips.
Sylvester laughed. "So am I." Then he spoke gravely. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I feel what you feel. If you lose yourself in me, so will I lose myself in you. Lovemaking is the ultimate partnership. It's not a weakness, little gypsy. Not something to be taken advantage of. I promise you that never, never will I take advantage of your passion. Do you understand that?"
Never again, he amended silently, squashing a surge of self-disgust.
Slowly, Theo nodded. But she was still frightened by the power of those feelings, by the wild surgings of her body. It would be the most potent weapon if anyone chose to use it. She bent to pick up her dress, slipping it over her head.
Sylvester leaned back against a tree, arms folded, watching her with a half smile. "So am I going to be obliged to send another notice to the Gazette, or does our engagement still stand?"
"I suppose so," she said, accepting defeat. "You want my knowledge of the estate. I want the estate. We both get something that we want out of it."
"That's certainly one way of putting it," he said wryly, pushing himself off the tree. "Come, let's go back to the house and put everyone's mind at rest."
Elinor went to bed that night a peaceful woman for the first time since her father-in-law's death. Her daughters were now provided for; even Rosie would be assured of a respectable dowry when the time came; and her most troubled and troublesome child was consigned to the care of a man Elinor was willing to wager would make Theo the only kind of husband who would suit her. She wasn't entirely sure she could describe the kind of a man that was, but some maternal instinct told her that Theo would discover it soon enough.
Sylvester rode into Dorchester the following day on an important errand, unaware that his betrothed was also out and about on a matrimonial errand of her own.
Theo rode through Lulworth village and turned off toward Castle Corfe. Just before the castle ruins, she stopped at a small cottage, more an outhouse than a proper dwelling. Dulcie had been here before and grazed contentedly on the grass verge at the end of her tether as Theo disappeared into the gloom of the low thatched-roof cottage.
"I give you good day, Dame Merriweather." She set a cloth-wrapped parcel on the table without comment.
"Aye, good day to ye, girlie." An old woman – so old it seemed hard to imagine that life spurted beneath the wrinkled skin hanging on her like an overlarge cloak – sat on a three-legged stool by the hearth. But the old eyes were sharp as they noted the parcel that she knew contained meat and cheese from the manor kitchens, and there'd be a few coins too. Enough to eke out the livelihood she made as herbalist to the village folk in the Dorsetshire countryside.
She turned her gaze on her visitor, whom she'd known from Theo's childhood, when on one of her country rambles the ten-year-old girl had stumbled upon the cottage, weeping with fury, carrying a rabbit, its foot severed by a trap, her own knee bleeding from a deep gash where she'd knelt on a razor sharp stone as she'd struggled to free the wounded animal.