“Don’t be tedious, Lavay. If it’s so necessary for you to know,” he said ungraciously. “She won a contest.”There was a short stunned silence.“You…played a game?” Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. “And you lost to a…girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?”Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. “I challenged her to aim a dart…let’s just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,”he finished curtly. “She was lucky.”“You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?”

“He began to stand, and saw Lyon stiffen, poised to do whatever he needed to do. He, like Lyon, could throw himself on a pyre, too. Because fire cleansed. She’d won, and he’d lost.It had stopped mattering. Her happiness was indistinguishable from his own. No matter what became of him, he wanted her to know he loved her.“You’d best get out of here, Redmond. Your secret is safe with me.”Lyon’s eyes flared in wary surprise. He froze. And his smile, when it came, was slow, and crooked, and he looked very like Lavay when Lavay was being insufferably knowing.“Ah. You do love her more than life. Splendid. And that, my dear Lord Flint, is what I came here today to discover.”Whatever he felt was between him and Violet. “Go before I change my mind, Redmond.”

“She needed to know more. “But that means…”“It means I love you, Violet. I have never said that aloud to another human being.”He said it quickly and tonelessly. As if he was afraid of the words. Violet stood basking in those words the way she might a sunbeam after a long, gray day. She closed her eyes. And she knew she was lit from within.“Do not let me just stand here having said those words,” he said stiffly. “It’s undignified.”“I love you, too,” she said softly, hurriedly. Feeling abashed. Eyes still closed. Egads. So this was what it was like to be in love. Awkward and foolish, indeed.”

“I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?'She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock.'Because nothing could,' he added. Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her.Oh dear God!He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded.'No! God... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better... than you already are.”

“Tell me—what wouldn’t you do for Violet, Captain Flint?”Flint didn’t yet know the answer to this. Though he was perhaps closer to knowing.“I haven’t yet been tested.”Lyon smiled slowly at this, and shook his head. “Ah. Clearly you haven’t a soul of a poet, then, sir. You cannot be lured into hyperbole: ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do! Nothing!’ And etcetera. I can. I like hyperbole. Don’t fear it, Flint! Believe me, there’s some truth to all the purple words that surround love, you know. When you love someone more than life—and it is indeed possible to love someone more than life, or otherwise poets wouldn’t have gone on and on about it over the centuries—and you know, you know, you were born for only one person…imagine you cannot have them without tearing everything else you know asunder. Without hurting and disappointing all the other people you love. What then would you do?”

“Moreover,' he mused relentlessly, 'I think that you'll be dreaming of me perhaps until the day you die.'She clapped her book shut then and stood abruptly. 'It was only,' she ground out, 'a kiss.''Was it?' He was laughing now.'And moreover,' she all but growled, 'you, Lord Rawden, murmured my name rather feverishly into my throat, as I recall.'His smile disappeared. Good God, but a man didn't like to be reminded of the things he did or said in the heat of passion. She was a very good player. He eyed her somewhat cautiously.'And you were breathing rather like a bellows,' she continued. 'Like a mating bull.''A mating bull?' Trust a country girl to arrive at this particular analogy.”

“It’s…” She couldn’t finish.“Don’t try, Miss Redmond,” he agreed, shading his eyes. “There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm.”