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“You said that what happened between us didn’t keep you away. Tell me—is it part of why you came back?”

Surprise jolted through her, and more: an echo of the giddy heat that surged when he’d lifted her against him in the vestibule.

“If it’s not,” he said. “I won’t speak of this again.”

She gripped her elbows. Fritz rustled in the leaves overhead.

Now she wished she could see his eyes. She wished she could float to the balcony, that she could touch down before him, that he’d wrap her in his arms. She wished she was the person he imagined her to be.

She knew what she should say.

Let us never speak of this again.

Her mouth had gone dry.

“It is a part of it,” she said.

In the silence that ensued, they both remained still.

What relief, to offer him this shred of truth. She felt a second’s joy. And then a new ball of dread formed inside her.

A shred of truth. That implied there was no whole, only hopeless tatters. She was shredded, by the teeth of the trap she’d sprung around her.

“I had a row with my brother.” It burst from her, as though a vent peg had been loosed from a barrel. “That’s another part of it.”

“A row,” De’Ath repeated.

“Like the one you had with your brother.” She was speaking thickly now. “With a little less broken china.”

“Any slogging?” He’d changed his tone. Dark emotion strung the question tight.

He thought that Jack . . .

“No,” she said quickly. “No, he’d never . . .” Her hand moved reflexively over her skirt, still gritted with dust from the exploded cup.

There was a distinction between bluster and a beating. Sometimes that distinction stretched gossamer thin.

“It’s complicated.” Her shoulders sagged.

“It’s very simple,” said De’Ath softly. Such gentleness in his voice. And yet each word carried down to her, clear as a bell. “As soon as one essential misconception is corrected.”

“What misconception?” she whispered, but her voice carried too.

“Harm isn’t care,” he answered. “That’s it. Simple. But the one is so often confused with the other.”

Unblinking, she gazed up at him, a tall figure haloed by light. Every feature blotted out.

“You were confused, once.” Understanding dawned. “Someone harmed you.”

Someone he loved.

He straightened.

“Do you like to swim?” he asked. “I was going just now. Perhaps you’d join me?”

“Swim?” She took a step forward. “Now?”

“I swim at all hours. I’m the captain of a swimming club.”