Any man,” she muttered, “who wanted to marry into the Hathaway family after this should be shut away in an institution.”
“Marriage is an institution,” he said reasonably, retrieving her gown from the floor.

A footman knocked at the door, the sound echoing through the entrance hall.
The sisters looked at each other uneasily. “We can’t answer it,” Amelia said. “We’re in our nightclothes.”
A maid came into the entrance hall. Setting down a pail of coal, she wiped her hands on her apron and hastened to the door. Unlocking the massive portal, she tugged it open and bobbed a curtsy.
“Come away,” Amelia muttered, urging Poppy back to the stairs with her. But as she glanced back over her shoulder to see who had come, the sight of a man’s tall, dark form struck sparks inside her. She stopped with her foot on the first step, staring and staring, until a pair of amber eyes looked in her direction.
Cam.
He looked disheveled and disreputable, like an outlaw on the run. A smile came to his lips, while he stared at her intently. “It seems I can’t stay away from you,” he said.
She rushed to him without thinking, almost stumbling in her haste. “Cam—”
He caught her up with a low laugh.

Browsing among the stalls, the sisters feasted on hand-sized pork pies, leek pasties, apples and pears, and to the girls’ delight, “gingerbread husbands.” The gingerbread had been pressed into wooden man-shaped molds, baked and gilded. The baker at the stall assured them that every unmarried maiden must eat a gingerbread husband for luck, if she wanted to catch the real thing someday.
A laughing mock argument sprang up between Amelia and the baker as she flatly refused one for herself, saying she had no wish to marry.
“But of course you do!” the baker declared with a sly grin. “It’s what every woman hopes for.”
Amelia smiled and passed the gingerbread men to her sisters. “How much for three, sir?”
“A farthing each.” He attempted to hand her a fourth. “And this for no charge. It would be a sad waste for a lovely blue-eyed lady to go without a husband.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Amelia protested. “Thank you, but I don’t—”
A new voice came from behind her. “She’ll take it.”
Discomfiture and pleasure seethed low in her body, and Amelia saw a dark masculine hand reaching out, dropping a silver piece into the baker’s upturned palm.
Hearing her sisters’ giggling exclamations, Amelia turned and looked up into a pair of bright hazel eyes.
“You need the luck,” Cam Rohan said, pushing the gingerbread husband into her reluctant hands. “Have some.”
She obeyed, deliberately biting off the head, and he laughed.

Rohan’s head lifted. His eyes glowed as if brimstone were contained within the dark-rimmed irises. He spoke slowly, as if he were collecting words like fallen leaves. “This is probably a bad idea.”
Amelia nodded shakily. “Yes, Mr. Rohan.”
His fingertips teased a fresh surge of color to the surface of her cheeks. “My name is Cam.”
“I can’t call you that.”
“Why not?”
“You know why,” came her unsteady reproach. A long breath was neatly rifted as she felt his mouth descend to her cheek, exploring the rosy skin. “What does it mean?”
“My name? It’s the Romany word for ‘sun.’”
Amelia could scarcely think. “As in … the offspring of a father, or in the sky?”
“Sky.” He moved to the arch of her eyebrow, kissing the outward tip. “Did you know a Gypsy has three names?”
She shook her head slowly, while his mouth slid across her forehead. He pressed a warm veil of words against her skin. “The first is a secret name a mother whispers into her child’s ear at birth. The second is a tribal name used only by other Gypsies. The third is the name we use with non-Roma.”
His scent was all around her, spare and fresh and delicious. “What is your tribal name?”
He smiled slightly, the shape of his mouth a burning motif against her cheek. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know you well enough yet.”
Yet. The tantalizing promise embedded in that word shortened her breath. “Let me go,” she whispered. “Please, we mustn’t—” But the words were lost as he bent and took her mouth hungrily.

He dismounted and helped Amelia to the ground. At his direction, she sat on a fallen birch log while he set up a makeshift camp. She waited with her hands folded neatly in her lap, watching his every movement as he pulled a bundle of blankets from the packsaddle. In a few minutes he had made a fire in the stone-circled pit and laid out a pallet beside it.
Amelia hurried to the pile of blankets and burrowed beneath the layers of wool and quilted cotton. “Is it safe out here?” she asked, her voice muffled.
“You’re safe from everything but me.” Smiling, Cam lowered himself beside her.

Watching the crackling fire, relishing the trusting weight of her head on his shoulder, Cam stroked her hair as it streamed over his arm. She slept heavily, while the fire pitched shadows from her long lashes across her cheeks. Cam looked over her with a lover’s vigilance, absorbing every detail, the feathery edge of her hairline, the neat slope of her nose, the small ears. He wanted to nibble at her ears, play with her, but he would do nothing to disturb her sleep.
He pulled a quilt higher over her snowy shoulder, stroked back a curl that had looped over her ear. Everything had changed, he thought. And there was no turning back.