He also knew that taking her to bed a hundred times would not make his frustration go away. No, this went deeper than the natural urge for release, and relief was hopelessly pegged to one green-eyed bluestocking.

She had not replied to his message. And he had not seen her at breakfast.

He prowled through the doors of the music room and methodically scanned the rows of plush chairs.

At last he caught the familiar glint of mahogany hair.

His palms turned hot and damp.

His heart began battering against his ribs as if he had run up a few flights of stairs.

He stood, stupefied. How could this happen to him? He was nearly thirty-and-six.

Annabelle looked up from her lap, and her clear green gaze hit him in the chest like a physical object, hurled with force.

He swallowed. Oh, it was most definitely happening to him.

He felt Caroline’s gaze on him, vaguely expectant, and he realized his abrupt stopping had caused a pileup behind him. He smoothly fell into step again and steered toward his chair in the front row near the piano.

Annabelle was seated at the very back, next to a baroness he knew loosely. Neither woman probably spoke a word of German. He should have had a translation of the songs printed for his guests. It suddenly seemed very important that she liked the songs.

Caroline took the seat beside him, wrapping him in her powdery fragrance.

He resisted the urge to turn his head to glance back.

A rare flash of anger crackled through him. He had found half of society’s social conventions and rituals void of reason from the moment he had been old enough to use his own brain. He mastered them, of course, but rarely had he felt these petty constraints chafing as much as he did now, where he could not sit next to the woman he wanted in his own music room. And all around him, people were scraping the chairs and dragging their heels over the polished wooden floor, coughing and wheezing and just plainly incapable of sitting still.

Finally, the pianist and the singers appeared, a soprano and a mezzo-soprano called the Divine Duo.

The noise died down. His irritation remained. The duo, their ridiculous name notwithstanding, was excellent, their voices rising and falling seemingly effortless, carrying the gamut of human emotions from melancholy to joy and back, and yet his mind refused to take flight with the melodies. Instead, he was starkly aware of the clock above the fireplace behind the pianist and of Annabelle some fifteen rows behind him.

He glanced at the clock a total of four times.

At a quarter to two, the last song finished.

At thirteen minutes to, the applause had ceased and everyone was making for the exit.

The progress to the door was slow, encumbered by guests wanting a word, a moment of his time, and the moments added up. Then he was stopped dead by the protruding bosom of the Marchioness of Hampshire. As he dutifully exchanged pleasantries, Annabelle was being herded right past him by the flow of people.

She did not spare him a glance.

“Did you enjoy the concert, dear?” the marchioness loudly asked Caroline, who was still by his side.

“Quite,” the countess replied, “to think that something so sweet would come from the pen of a staid and stoic German.”

Sweet?

Sebastian realized he was frowning down at her.

She raised her thin brows questioningly.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that they have feelings, too. The Germans.”

Her eyes took on a slightly bewildered expression. Then she gave a small apologetic shrug.

When he looked up again, Annabelle had disappeared.

He was running late. He was never late, and he had to force himself to maintain a dignified pace as he approached the maze. Relief crashed through him when the entrance came into view. She was waiting for him next to a limestone lion in her new coat and the same hat she always wore, a brown, nondescript thing that he’d quite like to see her replace with a dozen new ones.

“Miss Archer.” He lifted his top hat.

She curtsied. Her cheeks were flushed, but that could well be the cold.

He offered his arm. “Would you accompany me on a walk?”

“Your Grace—”

“Montgomery,” he said.

She arched a brow. “Your Grace?”

He arched a brow right back at her. “I believe we can safely suspend that formality in light of the circumstances.”

There was a hitch in her breathing.

He wondered if she was going to play coy and deny the circumstances. Not a chance. He could still feel the soft, round contours of her body imprinted on his palms, urging him to fill his hands with her again, and he would, soon.

Finally, she took his proffered arm.

For a long moment, the only sound between them was the crunch of icy gravel beneath their feet as he led her into the maze.

Absurd.

He had talked his country out of a trade war with the Ottoman Empire. Now he didn’t know where to begin.

“Did you play here as a boy?”

She was gazing up at him, a tentative playfulness in her tone that was new, and it took him a moment to reply. “No. I never did.”

She looked bemused. “How does one keep a boy away from a maze for even a day?”

By locking him up with a pile of books and duties.

His mother, cold and unflappable as she had presented herself to the world, had been quietly terrified by her husband’s antics. She had been determined that her son would be much different.

“What do you think of Mendelssohn?” he said instead.

That elicited a small smile. “I confess sweet isn’t the word I’d use to describe him.”

“Well, good,” he said, “for he really is not.”

“I didn’t understand a word, but the music was so . . . moving. It was as though someone had reached into my chest and—” She interrupted herself, suddenly aware of her glowing enthusiasm.

“And what?” he coaxed as he steered her onto a side path, moving them deeper into the maze. Whenever her passion rose to the surface, he felt an elemental jolt of response in his body. Maddening. She made him forget who he was, left him only the base needs and cravings that seemed to come with being a man. And he seemed unwilling to stop the indulgence.

“Melancholic,” she said softly, “that’s the word I’d use to describe him.”

Melancholic was precisely the word.

Holy God but he wanted to be inside this woman.

“The last song,” she said, “it sounded so wistful, it almost made me sad. What is it about?”

He nodded. “Auf Flügeln des Gesanges. It is about a man taking his sweetheart on a flight of fancy.”

Her hand flexed on his forearm, holding on more tightly. “What does it say?”

Her skirts brushed his leg with every step now. If he were to turn his head, pull her closer just an inch, he would smell the warm scent of her hair.

He shook his head, trying to unearth his German amid his swimming senses. “‘On wings of song, my love, I carry you away,’” he said, “‘away to the fields of the Ganges, where I know the most beautiful place—’” Now he stopped himself. Reciting romantic lines?

“How does it end?” she whispered.

Her eyes were a hundred miles deep. A man might never come up again once he took the plunge.

Damn it all.

“They make love under a tree,” he said.

He felt rather than heard her gasp.

He rounded a corner and pulled her against him in one movement. He saw her eyes widen when he lowered his head, and then he kissed her.

Soft.

Her lips were indescribably soft, petal soft, and for a blink he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, only savored the velvety warmth against his mouth. And at last he exhaled. And it seemed that he had been holding this breath since yesterday, when he had last held her in his arms.