“I believe so.”

“Oh, thunderbolts. I missed all the fun.” The boy sighed. He looked up at Christopher. “Who are you?”

“Captain Phelan.”

The child’s gaze sharpened with interest. “Where’s your uniform?”

“I don’t wear it now that the war is over.”

“Did you come to see my father?”

“No, I . . . came to call on Miss Hathaway.”

“Are you one of her suitors?”

Christopher gave a decisive shake of his head.

“You might be one,” the boy said wisely, “and just not know it yet.”

Christopher felt a smile—his first genuine smile in a long time—pulling at his lips. “Does Miss Hathaway have many suitors?”

“Oh, yes. But none of them want to marry her.”

“Why is that, do you imagine?”

“They don’t want to get shot,” the child said, shrugging.

“Pardon?” Christopher’s brows lifted.

“Before you marry, you have to get shot by an arrow and fall in love,” the boy explained. He paused thoughtfully. “But I don’t think the rest of it hurts as much as the beginning.”

Christopher couldn’t prevent a grin. At that moment, Beatrix returned to the hallway, dragging the nanny goat on a rope lead.

Beatrix looked at Christopher with an arrested expression.

His smile faded, and he found himself staring into her blue-on-blue eyes. They were astonishingly direct and lucid . . . the eyes of a vagabond angel. One had the sense that no matter what she beheld of the sinful world, she would never be jaded. She reminded him that the things he had seen and done could not be polished away like tarnish from silver.

Gradually her gaze lowered from his. “Rye,” she said, handing the lead to the boy. “Take Pandora to the barn, will you? And the baby goat as well.” Reaching out, she took the kid from Christopher’s arms. The touch of her hands against his shirtfront elicited an unnerving response, a pleasurable heaviness in his groin.

“Yes, Auntie.” The boy left through the front door, somehow managing to retain possession of the goats and the wooden sword.

Christopher stood facing Beatrix, trying not to gape. And failing utterly. She might as well have been standing there in her undergarments. In fact, that would have been preferable, because at least it wouldn’t have seemed so singularly erotic. He could see the feminine outline of her h*ps and thighs clad in the masculine garments. And she didn’t seem at all self-conscious. Confound her, what kind of woman was she?

He struggled with his reaction to her, a mixture of annoyance, fascination, and arousal. With her hair threatening to tumble from its pins, and her cheeks flushed from exertion, she was the epitome of glowing female health.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I came to apologize,” he said. “I was . . . discourteous yesterday.”

“No, you were rude.”

“You’re right. I’m truly sorry.” At her lack of response, Christopher fumbled for words. He, who had once spoken to women so glibly. “I’ve been too long in rough company. Since I left the Crimea, I find myself reacting irritably without cause. I . . . words are too important for me to be so careless with them.”

Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought her face softened a little.

“You don’t have to be sorry for disliking me,” she said. “Only for being discourteous.”

“Rude,” Christopher corrected. “And I don’t.”

“You don’t what?” she asked with a frown.

“Dislike you. That is . . . I don’t know you well enough to either like or dislike you.”

“I’m fairly certain, Captain,” she said, “that the more you discover about me, the more you will dislike me. Therefore, let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge that we don’t like each other. Then we won’t have to bother with the in-between part.”

She was so bloody frank and practical about the whole thing that Christopher couldn’t help but be amused. “I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”

“Why not?”

“Because when you said that just now, I found myself starting to like you.”

“You’ll recover,” she said.

Her decisive tone made him want to smile. “It’s getting worse, actually,” he told her. “Now I’m absolutely convinced that I like you.”

Beatrix gave him a patently skeptical stare. “What about my hedgehog? Do you like her, too?”

Christopher considered that. “Affection for rodents can’t be rushed.”

“Medusa isn’t a rodent. She’s an erinaceid.”

“Why did you bring her to the picnic?” Christopher couldn’t resist asking.

“Because I thought her company would be preferable to that of the people I would meet there.” A faint smile played at the corners of her lips. “And I was right.” She paused. “We’re about to have tea,” she said. “Will you join us?”

Christopher began to shake his head before she had even finished. They would ask questions, and he would have to come up with careful answers, and the thought of a prolonged conversation was wearying and anxiety provoking. “Thank you, but no. I—”

“It’s a condition of my forgiveness,” Beatrix said. Those dark blue eyes, lit with a provocative glint, stared directly into his.