Page 154 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You cannot.’

‘I can do whatever I like – you do not tell me what I can and cannot do.’

There was the small matter of how she would actually get in – her skirts did not exactly allow for free movement, and she could not exactly lift them, for wouldn’t that be the exact moment someone caught them and she was branded a harlot?

She whisked around the edge of the fountain, trying to get herself as close as she could, then – gathering her skirts firmly around her – placed one leg on the lip of the edge. If she held on here, she might reach out her hand …

‘You cannot,’ Ashford said, half in and half out of the fountain, reaching out his arm to try and prevent her.

She batted it away. ‘This is your doing!’

‘It is not,’ he said, struggling to place his foot back in and splashing over to her once more. ‘Get out! I shall retrieve the glove!’

But she was already placing her hand down and boosting herself upwards.

‘You lunatic – get out,’ he said, seizing her arm and trying to push her back over the edge.

‘Remove your hands from my person!’ she insisted, pushing him away, and he pulled her back and then his foot slipped and she teetered; he grabbed her arm and she his shoulder, and suddenly it was only each other preventing them from falling in.

‘Don’t … move,’ he instructed, through a mouthful of her curls. ‘We cannot fall into this fountain. Neither of our reputations could withstand it!’

She could not disagree. Last summer, gossip had reigned for two weeks about a woman who had dampened her skirts, just lightly, to more obviously outline her legs. What they would say about her, if she appeared inside utterly drenched, she did not like to think.

‘You lunatic,’ he muttered.

‘Do not be rude to me,’ she instructed. ‘I could very easily push you in.’

‘I would take you in with me,’ he vowed.

For a moment, she was tempted. ‘It might be worth it,’ she mused, looking up at him.

‘Oh, please do not!’ And suddenly they were both choking back laughter.

‘How you terrify me,’ he said, grinning.

Their faces were very close together.

‘You terrify me,’ he said again, in quite a different voice.

Carefully, she slid one arm away from where it was clutching his shoulder.

He hastily pulled her closer as she teetered. ‘What are you—’

‘Don’t move,’ she whispered, reaching up to take his face in her hands. They were both trembling, she noticed, as she drew him closer still. He met her upturned face halfway, his lips touching hers with a carefulness that lasted one gentle instant – but by the next, without quite knowing how it had happened, her hands were in his hair and both his were clutching her waist, and – goodness, it felt so very different to the kiss they had shared in Waldo’s study. There was less shock and more purpose, and without any person to interrupt them it could go on and on, and if they broke apart it was only to breathe and—

It took them almost falling a second time to break apart.

‘We must get to dry land,’ Ashford insisted, ‘before anyone finds us.’

Their exit was not elegant – a lurching, graceless process that twice almost resulted in total submersion – and they were still laughing as they made their way through the maze again.

‘We have been gone scandalously long,’ Ashford mused, peering at the sky. ‘Will your aunt suspect I have ruined you?’

‘More likely that I have murdered you.’

He threw her a laughing glance. ‘You would surely not risk such a thing, with Mr Hanworth on hand to catch you?’

Smiling, Lydia captured his hand in her own and tried to pull him towards her again. He resisted.