“I don’t care about that,” he said. He was hot now, a churning in his gut. It was something he hadn’t wanted to think about, but she was right.

“People will care,” she said. “People will say—”

He took her hand and squeezed it hard. “But I don’t care,” he repeated slowly. “We’ll go to a lawyer and see about getting papers drawn up, so you can keep what’s yours. Signed and witnessed. Let people talk then, we’ll know the truth.”

“Will that be enough to convince your sister?”

“She didn’t ask my permission when she married,” Daniel said, more calmly now. This, at least, he had thought through. “If she had, I wouldn’t have given it. And I’d have been wrong. Simon is right for her. Can you leave my sister to me?”

Martha’s gaze was steady. After a moment she nodded. “Yes, I think I can. I mean to. But there’s still the question of Callie.”

It was as if she had spoken a name completely unfamiliar to him, so confused was his expression.

“Callie? What about her?”

“She came to me—why, it was only yesterday,” Martha said. “She was very agitated, and she said some things—I wouldn’t care to repeat them. But she predicted this.” She lifted their clasped hands and let them fall.

His brow rose. “She did?”

“She said we’d be married before the summer was out. And she was so angry, Daniel. She said it was about the house, about the idea that she and I would build a house and live together there, but I wonder now if she isn’t in love with you after all.”

If he was feigning surprise he was a very good actor.

“Callie Wilde is not in love with me.”

“I don’t want her to be hurt,” Martha said.

“Nor do I,” Daniel said. “But this is between you and me and nobody else.”

There was something so focused and knowing in the way he looked at her that gooseflesh rose along Martha’s spine in one long unfurling.

“We will make our lives in this village,” Martha said. “We can’t pretend it doesn’t matter, what others think.”

“If I was a suspicious man,” he said, his voice low and sweet, “I’d wonder if you had your eye on somebody else. John Mayfair, maybe.”

She straightened. “Don’t be silly. I met him for the first time yesterday evening. It would take a great deal more than that to make me fall in love with him. Another evening, at least.”

His fingers curled into her waist and she shrieked with laughter and tried to pull away, but he had her where he wanted her. And, Martha admitted to herself as his hand moved to her breast and his mouth covered her own, she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

—

She had never swooned in her life, but a half hour later Martha thought she understood what it must be like. She was a stranger to herself, so given over to feeling that even simple language eluded her. Daniel wasn’t having that problem. Between long, deep kisses he talked to her in a low whisper, his voice muffled against the skin. The words themselves searing into flesh.

In the village he was known to be quiet, even severe, but the things he said to her were extravagant, opulent, full of images of herself, as he saw her. The color of her skin, the taste of it at the hollow of her throat. The shape of her lip and earlobe, the smell of her hair just behind her ear.

Her breasts. Somehow they had come so far. Somehow it had seemed imperative, and she had helped. In a frenzy to know the feel of his touch exactly there. And then the reality of it, his open palm moving over puckered flesh in a soft circle until she gasped and twisted, unable to get close enough. Wanting more. Wanting everything. He whispered to her, smiled against her mouth, touched her tongue with his own. His hand cupping her face while his beard scratched her throat and then the shock of his mouth closing over her nipple. Her body jerking in response to that slow suckling, as if he had taken her already. As if he had climbed inside her.

Daniel was the one to pull away. The cool air on her wet breast made her shiver; his absence was so absolute that she could hardly fathom it. He slid to the far end of the settle, breathing as though he had never tasted air before.

“What?” her voice creaked and wobbled.

“We could be married tomorrow,” he said.

“There’s the school to open tomorrow.” She shocked herself, and yet she couldn’t deny what she was feeling, and that was simple: She wanted more.

“Then by the end of the week,” he said. His eyes were wide open. Deep-set eyes the color of ivy, something in the expression: shock, or disgust? It struck her then, the truth.

“I’ve shocked you,” she said. “I’m—immoderate.”

His smile was completely unexpected, and then he laughed.

Martha turned away, sudden tears spilling over as she tried to put herself to rights.

“Martha.”

“How dare you, how dare you laugh at me.” The sob came up like a stone.

“I am not laughing at you.” He took her arm. She tried to pull away but she was already up against his chest, her tears seeping into his open shirt. The crisp dark hair against her cheek and the beat of his heart, these things robbed her of the urge to pull away.

“I am not laughing.” He said it again. “I’m happy. Martha. I’m happy. And let me make one thing clear to you, right now so there’s no mistake. There’s no such thing as immoderate, not between the two of us. You could never be too eager. I’ll prove it to you, when the time is right.”