Walking far behind, Annabelle refused to take Simon Hunt’s arm when he offered it and stepped over the log by herself. He smiled slightly as he glanced at her set profile. “I would have expected you to have made your way up to the front by now,” he remarked.

She made a scornful sound. “I’m not going to waste my efforts battling with that group of feather-wits. I’ll wait for a more opportune moment to make Kendall notice me.”

“He’s already noticed you. He’d have been blind not to. The question is why you think that you’ll have any luck getting a proposal out of Kendall, when you haven’t managed to bring anyone up to scratch in the two years that I’ve known you.”

“Because I have a plan,” she said crisply.

“Which is?”

She gave him a derisive glance. “As if I would tell you.”

“I hope it’s something conniving and under-handed,” Hunt said gravely. “You don’t seem to have much success with the ladylike approach.”

“Only because I have no dowry,” Annabelle retorted. “If I had money, I’d have been married years ago.”

“I have money,” he said helpfully. “How much do you want?”

Annabelle gave him a sardonic glance. “Having a fair idea of what you’d require in return, Mr. Hunt, I can safely say that I don’t want a shilling from you.”

“It’s nice to hear that you’re so discriminating about the company you keep.” Hunt reached out to hold back a branch for her. “Having heard a rumor to the contrary, I’m glad it’s not true.”

“Rumor?” Annabelle stopped in the middle of the path and whirled to face him. “About me? What could anyone possibly say about me?”

Hunt remained silent, watching her perturbed face as she worked it out for herself.

“Discriminating…” she murmured. “About the company I keep?…Is that supposed to imply that I’ve had some inappropriate…” She stopped abruptly as the nasty, florid image of Hodgeham sprang into her brain. Hunt had to notice the swift departure of color from her cheeks and the tiny indentations that dug between her brows. Giving him a cold glance, Annabelle turned away, her footsteps measured and heavy on the foliage-padded path.

Hunt kept pace with her, while Kendall’s distant voice drifted back to them, lecturing his avid listeners on the plants they passed. Rare orchids…celandines…several varieties of fungi. The speech was punctuated every few seconds with crows of wonder from his enraptured audience. “…these lower plants,” Kendall was saying, having paused briefly to indicate a haze of moss and lichen covering a hapless oak, “are classified as bryophytes, and require wet conditions to thrive. Were they to be deprived of the woodland canopy, they would surely perish out in the open…”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Annabelle said shortly, wondering why Hunt’s opinion mattered in the least. Still, it bothered her enough to wonder who had told him the rumor—and specifically, what it had been about. Was it possible that someone had seen Hodgeham visiting her home at night? That was bad. A reputation-destroying piece of gossip like that was impossible to defend oneself against. “And I have no regrets.”

“That’s a pity,” Hunt said easily. “Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.”

“What are your regrets, then?”

“Oh, I don’t have regrets, either.” A wicked glint appeared in his dark eyes. “Not for the lack of trying, of course. I keep doing unspeakable things in the hopes that I’ll be sorry for them later. But so far…nothing.”

In spite of her inner turmoil, Annabelle couldn’t help chuckling. A long branch intersected the path, and she reached out to push it aside.

“Allow me,” Hunt said, moving to hold it back for her.

“Thank you.” She pushed by him, glancing at Kendall and the others in the distance, and suddenly felt a stinging prickle at the inner side of her foot. “Ouch!” Stopping on the path, she hitched the hem of her skirt up to investigate the source of the discomfort.

“What is it?” Hunt was beside her immediately, one large hand grasping her elbow to secure her balance.

“There is something scratchy in my shoe.”

“Let me help,” he said, sinking to his haunches and taking hold of her ankle. It was the first time a man had ever touched any part of her leg, and Annabelle went scarlet.

“Don’t touch me there,” she protested in a violent whisper, nearly losing her balance as she jerked backward. Hunt didn’t loosen his grip. To keep from toppling over, Annabelle was forced to hold on to his shoulder. “Mr. Hunt—”

“I see the problem,” he murmured. She felt him pluck at the veil of cotton stocking that covered her leg. “You’ve stepped in some prickly fern.” He held something up for her inspection—a sprig of pale, chafflike scales that had worked their way into the cotton weave over her instep.

Flooding with burning color, Annabelle maintained her stabilizing grasp on his shoulder. The surface of his shoulder was astonishingly hard, the plane of bone and resilient muscle unsoftened by any layer of padding in his coat. Her stunned mind was having difficulty accepting the fact that she was standing in the middle of the woods with Simon Hunt’s hand on her ankle.

Seeing her mortification, Hunt grinned suddenly. “There are more bits of chaff in your stocking. Shall I remove them?”