he looked at Clyta. Amy certainly hoped so.
It had been there in Harry's and, she suspected, in her own. She sighed. Was she to go hungry all her life?
She turned a corner and came face to face with Harry.
"Ah, another human being," he said lightly, but his eyes were hungry.
Amy swallowed. "Just what I was thinking."
It was silent and shadowed and cool. She walked toward him and put her hands on his broad shoulders. "I'd like you to please to kiss me, just once."
His arms came to rest at her waist, and his breathing was suddenly unsteady. "Why just once?"
She rested her head against his warm shoulder and heard the pounding of his heart. She watched as her hand slid down his damp neck to play among the curls on his chest. "Well, maybe twice."
His hand came up to cover hers against his skin, holding it still for a moment. Then he grasped it, moved apart from her, and set off back the way he had come, pulling her behind him.
"Where are we going?" she demanded. "Don't you want to kiss me?"
"Yes, I want to kiss you," he said and turned a corner that led to a grotto. He sat on the bench and drew her down beside him. His eyes were dark and dangerous, and Amy knew she was in peril, delicious peril.
He drew her against him with a relentless arm, guided her head with his other hand, and kissed her. It was not the gentle, questing kiss they had shared before, but hotly demanding and not a little angry. Amy surrendered to it. She, too, was hungry and angry and hot.
She pressed herself closer and held him tighter, sliding her hands beneath his shirt to feel his heated skin. She tasted him and swirled within a mad, heated passion, a hunger that was not appeased but grew and grew.
"God," he groaned and tore his lips from hers.
Amy made a faint protest, then came to herself and stared at him, dazed. She had somehow come to be on his lap, and his shirt looked as if she had half torn it off his body. "I'm terribly hard on buttons," she wailed and burst into tears.
He held her and stroked her and murmured to her. He held her tight and close as no one had held her before. Amy wept for Stonycourt, which would never be as it once was; for Beryl who would only be an aunt, never a mother; for Jassy who would not marry well; for Jasper who wouldn't have a string of hunters and host the Belvoir; and for herself who wouldn't have any joy either because she wouldn't be happy if none of the others could be.
The sobs faded to gulps and then to numb silence. Amy clung close, filling her senses with the feel of his body and the scent of his skin, something to take with her and remember.
"You take buttons very seriously," he said shakily. His hand cradled her head, his fingers sending a message of comfort.
Amy sniffed. "You have to when you're poor."
He pushed her away. "There's no need for you to be poor, Amy. I can take care of you."
Amy shook her head. "Can you provide dowries for Jassy and Beryl?"
"Something, at least."
"Something isn't enough." She looked up at him. "I don't have a dowry, you know."
"I guessed. It doesn't matter." He looked impatient. "Isn't it a bit arrogant for you assume that your sisters can't find love without money to sweeten the pot?"
Amy pushed away sharply. "That's a horrid thing to say!"
"It's what you're saying."
"No it isn't!" She jumped off his lap entirely. "It's just that that's the way of the world. At least they need decent clothes."
"I fell in love with you in a blanket."
Amy's anger escaped her. "Oh, don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't say you love me."
"But I do."
"So do I." She clapped her hand over her mouth to call back the error.
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her closer. "Then you cannot marry anyone else."
"I love my family, too."
"Do they love you?" he asked in exasperation.
"Of course they do!"
"Then they won't want you to marry where you don't love, Amy. Why are you doing this?"
"They won't know. They mustn't know."
"Of course they'll know." He gave her a little shake. "Have some sense!"
"Stop shouting at me!"
"I feel like strangling you! If I had any sense I'd take you here and now in this damned bower and then you'd have to marry me."
They stared at one another and Amy knew it