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He felt unbalanced. Unsure of himself. In dire need of a diversion. Anything to take his mind off the woman standing just within reach with the uncanny resemblance to Celia. And conversation was the best diversion he could think of.

“As a boy,” he admitted, studying the lady whose hand extended to a white lily, “I dreamed of becoming a painter.”

His wife’s head angled up to him, her blue eyes glowing with surprise.

Then she smiled.

And the world seemed to stop.

Just. Like. That.

It felt as though Ambrose was staring straight into the sun. Had a woman ever smiled at him like that? Lacking any artifice? He couldn’t recall. Certainly never with such open amazement. And certainly not over something as trifling as a young boy’s dream.

“I once, briefly, wished to become a botanist.”

“You wanted to study plants?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” she murmured dryly. “Although it must seem rather dull in comparison.”

“Not at all but I still do not see the appeal of examining shrubberies.”

“It’s hardly all shrubberies. But at the time, the appeal lay in the prospect of traveling to every continent in search of various seeds and different plant life. Unfortunately, I could never tell the difference between bindweed and knotweed.”

“There is a difference?”

Her laughter reached straight into his bones. “Of course,” she said. “Alas, Sir Joseph Banks, famed botanist, beat me to it.”

Ambrose chuckled when his wife pouted, drawing the attention of the few onlookers. He told himself there was nothing wrong with enjoying his wife’s humor. Even though it felt as if he was dropping a thousand feet from the sky.

He cleared his throat. “There are more reasons than searching for seeds to travel the globe.”

“Agreed. But at the time I was obsessed with exotic plants. Did you ever paint?”

Ambrose turned back to study the artwork on the wall. After a moment, he said “Yes, but before you get enraptured, it turned out I do not possess the patience to sit hours on end with a paintbrush clutched between my fingers.”

“No,” she murmured, teasing him with an impish smile. “I don’t suppose you do.”

Ambrose trailed after her as she moved from one painting to the next, balling his hands into tight fists to avoid taking her into his arms, which he found he suddenly desperately wanted to do.

That would be a much better distraction.

Something much like alarm lit up in his chest. A revelation hovered there. Something that twisted his stomach into knots. He hadn’t realized that, by revealing a part of himself, she may do the same, and that he might see her in a new light.

Benson’s words came back to him in a flash.

Damn valet.

An image of his sister, so pale and weak, raided his mind. A reminder of why he hadn’t opened his heart to love.

This time, it didn’t stop him.

Ambrose grabbed Willow by the hand and pulled her behind a sculpture of a young faun wearing a pine wreath and a goatskin.

And kissed her.