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Naturally Leo hadn’t been able to resistMarks’s poetic abilities, but he had to admit privately that her ated a London season, at last And Poppy had recently e

Now only Beatrix was left Marks had assuetic nineteen-year-old As far as the rest of the Hathaere concerned, Catherine Marks was practically a member of the family

Leo, for his part, couldn’t abide the woive orders to him On the rare occasions when Leo tried to be friendly, she snapped at him or turned away in scorn When he stated a perfectly rational opinion, he could hardly finish a sentence before Marks had listed all the reasons why he rong

Faced with the immutable fact of her dislike, Leo couldn’t help but respond in kind All during the past year he had tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter if she despised him There were ing, and appealing than Catherine Marks

If only she didn’t fascinate him so

Perhaps it was the secrets she guarded so zealously Marks never talked about her childhood or her family, or why she had taken a position with the Hathaways She had taught at a girls’ school for a short time, but she refused to discuss her academic tenure or explain why she had left There were ruht have been a poor relation of the headmistress, or that she was a fallen woo into service

Marks was so self-contained and tenacious that it was often easy to forget she was still a young woman in her early twenties When Leo had first met her, she had been the perfect embodiment of a dried-up spinster, with her spectacles and forbidding scowl and her stern hyphen of aas a fireplace poker, and her hair, the dull brown of apple htly The Grim Reaper, Leo had nicknamed her, despite the objections of the family

But the past year had wrought a ree in Marks She had filled out, her body slender but no longer ained color A week and a half ago, when Leo had arrived from London, he had been absolutely astonished to see Marks with light golden locks Apparently she had been dyeing her hair for years, but after an error on the part of the apothecary, she had been forced to abandon the disguise And whereas the darker brown locks had been too severe for her delicate features and pale skin, her own natural blond was stunning

Which had left Leo to grapple with the fact that Catherine Marks, his mortal enemy, was a beauty It wasn’t really the altered hair color that made her look so different … it was more that Marks was so uncomfortable without it She felt vulnerable, and it showed As a result, Leo wanted to strip away more layers, literal and physical He wanted to know her

Leo had tried to keep his distance while he pondered the ramifications of this discovery He was confounded by his faWhy weren’t any of them even a fraction as curious about her as he was? Why had Marks deliberately ? What the devil was she hiding from?

On a sunny Hampshire afternoon when Leo had ascertained that most of the family was otherwise occupied, he went in search of Marks, reasoning that if he confronted her in private, he would get soarden filled with flowers She occupied a bench at the side of a graveled path