"I was a little girl and I wasn't quaking." Nor had she been too stunned. The choker had been her mother's, and she'd already known how much she needed it.

He eyed her. "The Scot will still be weak enough that we can throw him back like a bad catch."

"Vitale!" Unconsciously, she drew her hand over her neck. Frowning, she glanced back at the house, puzzled at her uncanny feeling that she was being watched. There was no way he could have risen. No, not with those injuries.

The sun was directly in her eyes, and she could see nothing. After a last squint, she said, "Vitale, he'll be out of our lives soon enough. One day we probably will find him—and our silver—gone." With that, she walked on.

Once in the meadow, she sank into the carpet of narcissus cladding the entire shelf of land. She'd always been able to lose herself in the scents and daydream as she gazed out over the lake and farther beyond to the twining river.

On the next plateau down, their champion horses played and jumped, their copper coats gleaming in the sun. On the lowest plateau skirting the river, rose of Canolich swathed the ground in yellow. But here, a cloud of white blooms. She plucked a flower, brought it to her nose, and inhaled, closing her eyes with pleasure….

He'd said she was a natural! Her eyes flashed open. What was it about her that made people continually come to this conclusion? She'd saved his life, and he made disparaging comments? When one is nursing a man, contact is made and…parts are seen.

Especially when they were drawing attention to themselves. She shivered.

She would simply forget the scene, banishing it from her thoughts. She might be one of those women, but she'd been trained to be a lady. Burying uncomfortable thoughts was one thing at which ladies excelled. She looked down to find the flower crushed in her hands.