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She groaned. Pesky little thoughts. Had a blasted pisky slipped into her brain overnight with these ridiculous notions? She’d been without friends since she was ten years old. It wasn’t like she couldn’t live without them for the rest of her days.

Besides, who needed friends with real flesh and blood when she had friends fashioned from fiction? Katherina Minola. Elizabeth Bennet. Evelina Anville. Of course, these friends didn’t know she existed. In truth, none of them existed.

She clapped her book closed and sat straight up. It was time to leave. She could always tell home was calling when her thoughts began to stray too far into forbidden territory. Going back to the Mount would be just the reset her mind needed.

As she gathered her belongings, she heard it. His laughter. Excitement raced through her limbs. Swiftly, she glanced over her shoulder, facing the causeway in time to see a small group making their way to Marazion. As usual, he was surrounded by his friends.

Everyone always wanted to be around August Moon.

Livvy allowed a sigh to slip past her parted lips. Even his name elicited the ridiculous reaction. She prided herself on not being a silly female. Who would wish to be one after reading about Lydia Bennett? But truly, if the fictional Mr. Wickham boasted as gorgeous a face as the very-real, very-alluring August Moon, it was no wonder women fawned over him. He was so charming, so conversational. So…normal. Everything Livvy wasn’t. And Society made sure she knew as much.

Her attention returned to the causeway. Rather, to August. Livvy really ought to be calling the man Mr. Moon now, but with their tightknit community having always referred to him by his given name, the thought of calling him by his father’s name would feel far too strange. At least in the privacy of her own thoughts, where she would continue to give herself certain liberties.

August said something she couldn’t hear, and the group around him laughed again. As if she cared a lick about what the group was doing. Her eyes focused solely on August’s charming dimples, on the way his thick, wavy hair tossed about in the wind. His smile had always been her favorite thing about him. It brightened his whole face, caused his eyes to nearly disappear with glee, and spread joy to all who saw him.

She used to watch him like this when she was a child. Always from a distance, never brave enough to actually speak with him. He was seven years her senior, and she was…well, not the most sociable of creatures. She had been once. But that had all changed after Mother’s death.

For a moment, she allowed her mind to stray. What would her life be like, following August around like one of his friends? She’d obviously love that close connection, the opportunity to watch him unabashedly. But then, if she was friends with him and others, she’d have to start answering questions.

“Why do ye read so often?”

“Why do ye only speak when spoken to?”

“What really ’appened to your mother?”

She pulled a face. The idea of being close to August was far more appealing than reality, she supposed.

Livvy craned her neck to see the last of him as he and his party took their final steps across the causeway, then she leaned back with a sigh and continued to load her basket.

When she’d first learned that August would be returning to the Mount after a two-year apprenticeship in Bath, then four years as head gardener somewhere up in Cumbria—not somewhere, it was Coniston. She knew exactly where he’d been—she could only imagine his return was due to the fact that he’d missed his home. There was no other explanation as to why he would accept a lower position and obviously lower pay at the castle.

But that was yet another reason she admired him—because he seemed to love St. Michael’s Mount as much as she did. She could never see herself living anywhere but the island.

His contagious grin flashed in her mind’s eye once again, but she didn’t bother pushing it away. She’d told herself that her childhood feelings for August would be gone after all these years. Apparently, however, her stubborn heart was still grasping onto the hopeless fantasy she’d concocted as a ten-year-old. This was most unfortunate, seeing as how she was fairly certain the man didn’t know she existed. How could he? They had lived next door to each other for her entire life, and she had yet to speak more than a handful of sentences to him, having always run away whenever he was nearby for fear of speaking and making a fool of herself.

Of course, she was ten years older now. She was certain she could prove that she was not so afraid of him, especially now that he worked as a castle undergardener with Father as his supervisor.

But as much as she dreamt of one day being noticed by August—perhaps even speaking to him like a normal person—life was easier without having to justify her strange behavior to anyone or explain what really happened to Mother. So her childhood infatuation with August Moon would remain that and solely that.

With her belongings piled neatly in her basket, she heaved it up, tucked it in the crook of her arm, and began the walk back to the causeway, thankful that she had missed August and his party along the way.

Because the last thing she wished to do was collide with a group of individuals who knew how odd she was—and a man whom she wished, despite her best efforts, would very much not share in that same opinion.

CHAPTER TWO

“Man was born for society. However little he may be attached to the world, he never can wholly forget it.”

The Monk, Mathew Lewis

“Brother, come, ye must see the window display at Braddock’s. It be simply stunnin’.”

August Moon smiled in amusement as he followed the party consisting of his sisters and friends to the next shop. The window display at the milliners appeared quite like the last one they saw, and the last one, and the one before that, but his sisters wished to view them all, so he would gladly acquiesce.

After finishing work unexpectedly early that day, August had been asked by his younger sisters, identical twins Ophelia and Portia, to accompany them to Marazion. Obviously, he’d agreed with very little persuasion. After living off the mount for five years on account of his employment, he was going to do everything he could to make up for his absence. So he’d ignored the aches in his back and exhaustion in his limbs and traveled to the mainland with them by walking across the causeway that connected the Mount to Marazion.

“They be so beautiful,” Portia said, leaning as close to the shop’s glass as she could without touching it with the tip of her nose.

Standing back near a thick bramble of bushes tangled beside the shop, August watched his sisters and his two friends—Emma Pengelly and Nicholas Cuff—as they continued to peer through the windows.