Victoria leaned down and scooped up a pile of snow with her mittened hands. Automatically Andrew ducked, but instead of launching the snowball at him, as she would normally have done, she threw it into the creek. “What’s wrong, bright-eyes,” he teased. “Afraid you’ll miss?”

“Of course not,” Victoria said with a morose little sigh.

“Move over and let me sit down.”

Victoria did so, and he studied her sad expression with mild concern. “What has you looking so grim?”

Victoria was truly tempted to confide in him. At twenty, Andrew was five years her senior and wise beyond his age. He was the only child of the village’s wealthiest resident, a widow of seemingly delicate health who clung possessively to her only son at the same time that she relinquished to him all responsibility for the running of their huge mansion and the 1,000 acres of farmland surrounding it.

Putting his gloved finger beneath her chin, Andrew tipped her face up to his. “Tell me,” he said gently.

This second request was more than her heartsick emotions could withstand. Andrew was her friend. In the years they had known each other, he had taught her to fish, to swim, to shoot a pistol, and to cheat at cards—this last he claimed to be necessary so she would know if she was being cheated. Victoria had rewarded his efforts by learning to outswim, outshoot, and outcheat him. They were friends, and she knew she could confide almost anything to him. She could not, however, bring herself to discuss her parents’ marriage with him. Instead she brought up the other thing worrying her—her father’s warning.

“Andrew,” she said hesitantly, “how can you tell if someone loves you? Truly loves you, I mean?”

“Who are you worried about loving you?”

“The man I marry.”

Had she been a little older, a little more worldly, she would have been able to interpret the tenderness that flared in Andrew’s golden brown eyes before he swiftly looked away. “You’ll be loved by the man you marry,” he promised. “You can take my word for it.”

“But he must love me at least as much as I love him.”

“He will.”

“Perhaps, but how will I know if he does?”

Andrew cast a sharp, searching look at her exquisite features. “Has some local boy been pestering your papa for your hand?” he demanded almost angrily.

“Of course not!” she snorted. “I’m only fifteen, and Papa is very firm that I must wait until I’m eighteen, so I’ll know my own mind.”

He looked at her stubborn little chin and chuckled. “If ‘knowing your own mind’ is all Dr. Seaton is concerned about, he could let you wed tomorrow. You’ve known your own mind since you were ten years old.”

“You’re right,” she admitted with cheerful candor. After a minute of comfortable silence, she asked idly, “Andrew, do you ever wonder who you’ll marry?”

“No,” he said with an odd little smile as he stared out across the creek.

“Why not?”

“I already know who she is.”

Startled by this amazing revelation, Victoria snapped her head around. “You do? Truly? Tell me! Is it someone I know?”

When he remained silent, Victoria shot him a thoughtful, sidewise look and began deliberately packing snow into a hardball.

“Are you planning to try to dump that thing down my back?” he said, watching her with wary amusement.

“Certainly not,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “I was thinking more in the line of a wager. If I can come closer to that rock atop the farthest boulder over there, then you must tell me who she is.”

“And if I come closer than you do?” Andrew challenged.

“Then you may name your own forfeit,” she said magnanimously.

“I made a dire error when I taught you to gamble,” he chuckled, but he was not proof against her daring smile.

Andrew missed the far-off target by scant inches. Victoria stared at it in deep concentration; then she let fly, hitting it dead-on with enough force to send the rock tumbling off the boulder along with the snowball.

“I also made a dire error when I taught you to throw snowballs.”

“I always knew how to do that,” she reminded him audaciously, plunking her hands on her slim hips. “Now, who do you wish to marry?”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Andrew grinned down at her enchanting face. “Who do you think I wish to marry, blue eyes?”

“I don’t know,” she said seriously, “but I hope she is very special, because you are.”

“She’s special,” he assured her with gentle gravity. “So special that I even thought about her when I was away at school during the winters. In fact, I’m glad to be home so I can see her more often.”

“She sounds quite nice,” Victoria allowed primly, feeling suddenly and unaccountably angry at the unoffending female.

“I’d say she’s closer to ‘wonderful’ than ‘quite nice.’ She’s sweet and spirited, beautiful and unaffected, gentle and stubborn. Everyone who knows her comes to love her.”

“Well then, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you marry her and have done with it!” Victoria said grimly.

His lips twitched, and in a rare gesture of intimacy, Andrew reached out and laid his hand against her heavy, silken hair. “Because,” he whispered tenderly, “she’s still too young. You see, her father wants her to wait until she’s eighteen, so she’ll know her own mind.”

Victoria’s enormous blue eyes widened as she searched his handsome face. “Do you mean me?” she whispered.

“You,” he confirmed with smiling solemnity. “Only you.”

Victoria’s world, threatened by what she had seen and heard last night, suddenly seemed safe again, secure and warm. “Thank you, Andrew,” she said, suddenly shy. Then, in one of her lightning-quick transformations from girl to charming, gently bred young woman, she added softly, “How lovely it will be to marry my dearest friend.”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you without first speaking with your father, and I can’t do that for three more years.”

“He likes you immensely,” Victoria assured him. “He won’t object in the least when the time comes. How could he, when you are both so much alike?”

Victoria mounted her horse a little while later feeling quite gay and cheerful, but her spirits plummeted as soon as she opened the back door of the house and stepped into the cozy room that served the dual purpose of kitchen and family gathering place.