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“Nature’s settee.” She arched a brow but the trouble still lurked at the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t the foggiest notion, though, of the Latin.”

He stared, cursing himself. He’d called her empty-headed. Made it clear he didn’t think her capable of being a spy, let alone a scientist. That she was less than she’d pretended to be.

“You’d learn easily.” He tried to push with his eyes, to bring forward all his certainty. “If you put half a mind to it, you could memorize the Latin name for that tree, and that bush, those flowers. I could teach you in no time.”

She was biting her lip.

He wanted to bite her lip. But it was more important to speak. “The Latin doesn’t matter. You already know how to describe the world, and you do it more vividly than most. And you know how to imagine other worlds.”

The look on her face made his heart swell in his chest. Damn her husband. Damn everyone who had kept her so starved for recognition.

“I could label dinosaur bones all day long, sort through dusty boxes.” He took her bare feet into his hands, comparing them like two fossils so that she laughed and kicked at him, but he tightened his grip, looked at her seriously. “Anyone can say that’s the tooth of an iguanodon. I’d want you to help me picture the living beast.”

She snorted, but her eyes were bright. “I wouldn’t be surprised if an iguanodon lurched out from between the trees. These are the woods that time forgot.”

He kept fondling her feet, avoiding the blisters on her heels, rubbing his thumbs into her soles.

“That’s it,” he said, grinning. “I became a plant hunter instead of a professor because I wanted that feeling. The sense that anything could happen. I feel it in places like this.”

“I know,” she said dryly. “Or on mountaintops, or better, ledges. You’d be thrilled if a massive purple iguanodon charged right at us, crowing like that sinister rooster.”

He blinked. She did have a knack for imagery. It had never occurred to him—an iguanodon crowing.

“The rooster in Kyncastle,” she clarified. “I’d never heard such an ear-splitting sound! I’m certain dinosaurs couldn’t sound worse. So just imagine. He’s thundering toward us, the iguanodon, with a horn on his nose and making the most hideous racket. You’re happy about it, aren’t you? You don’t mind one bit that he might gobble us up.”

He laughed. She watched him, mouth curving. Holding back her own laughter. Still, she wanted an answer.

He’d never met anyone like her, of that he was certain. Should he tell her that iguanodons were herbivores? No. It was entirely beside the point.

“I’m happy about you,” he said at last. She’d deceived him, yes. But she’d told him why, and he believed her. The raw suffering in her eyes had been real. And now he had a chance, here, now, to discover more about the real Lavinia. Not just what she suffered, but what brought her joy. Pleasure.

She made him feel the very excitement he’d pledged to sacrifice for a relationship based on conversation.

But he could talk to her. They didn’t have the kinds of conversations he’d imagined—two people upholding each other’s points of view. No, they vexed and surprised each other. That was part of it.

“I prefer you to an iguanodon,” she said, primly, as though she were perched on a chintz settee in a drawing room, instead of sprawled on nature’s settee, letting him manipulate her plump little toes.

“Do tell,” he said. “I want to know all your preferences.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do, though.” He smiled at her. Freckles dusted her nose, and her cheekbones were rosy with sun. Her hair straggled from its pins. She looked wild. Skittish, but also bold.

“For example, you prefer Moët to ale, saffron buns to scones, novels to horticulture journals, late nights to early mornings, London to Cornwall—”

“I’m coming around on Cornwall,” she interrupted.

“Mmm,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

His fingertips stroked up from her ankle to her knee. She had soft pale hairs on her shinbones, like on the undersides of young sycamore leaves.

“How do you prefer to be touched?”

Her shock was almost comical. Her jaw dropped, and her chest, throat, and face turned a deep, blooming red.

Clearly, no one had ever put the question to her.

He lowered his voice as he pushed her skirt higher. “You’re so good with words. I want every detail.”