THE FOREST LORD By Susan Krinard

“Even a fool can read,” he snapped. “I saw the loving missive Eden wrote in accepting Rushborough’s invitation to his house in October,” he snapped. “She made it very plain that she regards him as—” He could not complete the sentence. “She made me no promises, as I made her none. It is natural that she should—”

“Of course,” Mrs. Byrne interrupted. “An incriminating letter, which undoes everything you and the lady have shared this summer, and which you happened to run across at a very convenient moment.”

Something in her tone made him study her with greater attention. “It was in the sitting room.”

“And who was the last person you spoke to before you found it, pray tell?”

“Lady Claudia,” he said slowly. “She met me when I came to see Eden, after I searched for the trespasser. She was uncommonly civil, even—” He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair, and Mrs. Byrne winced.

“Lady Claudia is a very clever woman,” she remarked. “She knows what has gone on between you and Lady Eden. She has grand ambitions for the girl, and you are an obstacle. But she also realizes that open interference will only drive Eden into your arms. So she must find other ways of separating you.”

“But Eden did write that letter. I—” How could he admit that he had smelled Eden’s unique scent all over the paper, when his senses were beyond those of men? No one but she could have written it. She had simply not intended him to see it.

Claudia had made sure he did.

Mrs. Byrne leaned back, her lean, wrinkled face sharp with rebuke. “You’re double the fool for turning your back on your sweetheart without letting her speak for herself.”

“I have underestimated Eden’s aunt as an enemy,” he admitted.

“And you have done Eden a great injustice. She and she alone knows the truth of her heart.” Mrs. Byrne refreshed her dish of tea. “What is it that you wish, Hartley Shaw? To enjoy yourself with the lady of the manor until you tire of her? Or do you love her enough to want more for both of you?”

The housekeeper knew him only as a servant, an unsuitable match for a lady such as Eden. What was she suggesting? That he ask her to marry him?

“I have much to think about,” he said, rising. “Thank you for your hospitality… and your wisdom.”

“Do not think too long, lad.” She picked up her knitting. “You will find Lady Eden in the garden.”

He smiled wryly at her endearment, knowing himself to be many hundreds of years older than she. Yet he had, on more than one occasion, behaved like a youth of less than twenty summers.

Had he learned enough?

Eden walked in the garden, her head bent in thought. Hartley stopped before she saw him, struck to the heart by her beauty and her loneliness.

She was lonely. For so many centuries he had not really understood what loneliness was, content to be alone and free of all ties. That had changed. He had hoped to return to Tir-na-nog out of loneliness, but now he knew that he had hardly begun to recognize the meaning of the word.

Loneliness was being without Eden—for a day, an hour, a minute. Loneliness was discovering that one needed companionship after all. That one might even need love.

“Eden,” he said softly.

She looked up, and her countenance unfolded like a newly bloomed rose.

“Hartley! Where have you been?” She ran halfway to him, paused, and reassembled her dignity. “I had feared… had thought… the intruder—”

“Is gone and has not returned.” He held out his hands, and she took them. They gazed at each other at arm’s length. Hartley would gladly have found some sheltered place and loved her there and then, but that must wait. “I should have sent word, but you know that I would not allow any harm to come to you or Donal or any of the folk here.”

“I know.” She squeezed his hands. “But I worried for you. I would have come looking, if not for my son.”

Shame bowed his head like antlers in autumn. “I could come no sooner.”