Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

head snapped up. Her eyes met his. “Three days ago you were determined to marry someone else.”
    “Today I'm determined to marry you.”
    “What happened in the meantime to change your mind so drastically?”
    “I received a letter from Miss von Schweppenburg. She has married into the Princely House of Lobomirski.”
    No, she has not. Gigi had plucked that name out of a book on European nobility she'd found in her mother's collection. She'd studied Miss von Schweppenburg's note, then composed her deception, carefully incorporating Miss von Schweppenburg's half apologies and powerless wistfulness. Then she'd taken everything to Briarmeadow's gamekeeper, an old man who'd been a forger in his youth and who regarded her with an indulgent, grandfatherly fondness.
    “I see,” she said weakly. “So you've decided to be practical.”
    “I suppose you could say part of my decision was motivated by pragmatism,” he said quietly, coming so close that she could smell the cold crisp scent of winter that still clung to his jacket. “Though for the life of me, I can't remember any of those reasons.”
    He tipped her chin up and kissed her.
    She'd kissed men before—several—when she got bored at balls or chafed from her mother's stricture. She considered the activity more bizarre than interesting and had sometimes studied the man she kissed with her eyes wide open, calculating the size of his debt.
    But from the moment Lord Tremaine's lips touched hers, she was consumed, like a child tasting a lump of sugar for the very first time, overcome by the sweetness of it all. His kiss was as light as meringue, as gentle as the opening notes of the Moonlight Sonata, and as nourishing as the first rain of spring after an endless winter drought.
    Light-headed and amazed, she drank in the kiss. Until simply being kissed by him wasn't enough anymore. She cupped his face and kissed him back with something far beyond enthusiasm, something closer to desperation, tremulous and wild.
    She heard the muffled groan in his larynx, felt the physical change that signaled his arousal. He broke the kiss, pushed her an arm's length away, and stared at her, his breaths heavy and labored.
    “My God, if your mother wasn't on the other side of the door . . .” He blinked, then blinked again. “Was that a yes?”
    It was not yet too late. She could still take the nobler path, confess everything, apologize, and keep her self-respect.
    And lose him. If he knew the truth, he would despise her. She couldn't face his anger. Or his scorn. Couldn't live without him. Not yet, not yet.
    She wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her cheek against his shoulder. “Yes.”
    The joy she felt at his fierce embrace was riddled with terror. But she'd made her choice. She would have him, for better or worse. She would keep him in the dark, for as long as possible.
    And when they were married, she would look upon his sleeping form, marvel at her vast good fortune, and ignore the constant encroachment of fear that tainted her very soul.
    * * *
    Camden had no idea he had it in him to be so happy. He was not the kind to derive unbridled joy from the pulse of the universe or any such nonsense. He never rolled out of bed wanting to breathe deeply of life it-self—a poor man with well-meaning but inept parents to coddle and younger siblings to support had no time for such silly luxuries.
    But with her by his side, he couldn't help being exuberant. She possessed magical properties, strong and bracing as a draft of the finest vodka and yet keeping him always at a delightful degree of tipsiness, that elusive point of equilibrium at which all the spheres of heaven came into exquisite alignment and a mere mortal sprouted wings.
    During their three-week engagement, he called on her with a frequency that was positively indecent, on most days riding over to Briarmeadow both morning and afternoon and accepting her mother's invitations to remain for tea and dinner without so much as a