A battered one-horse gig rolled up the drive, coming to a halt just ahead of them. The elderly driver was hunched over the box, a tweed cap pulled down over his face. Beside him on the box sat a young lady in a faded gray skirt and caraco jacket, a flat-crowned straw hat atop her head.
    Alex stopped with the others.
    And then he stared.
    Good God, it was his water nymph. The woman he’d rescued from the pond—or failed to rescue, as it were. But she didn’t look like a water nymph now. Rather the opposite. Her back was ramrod straight, her gloved hands folded primly in her lap, and her hair—that midnight veil that had been tangled with flower petals and leaves—was bound into a tight roll at her nape.
    “What are you waiting for, George,” Miss Talbot said under her breath. “Go and help Laura down.”
    Laura. 
    There was nothing extraordinary about the name. It nevertheless sent a mild shock through Alex’s frame. Not a shock of heat—certainly not the kind of heat he’d anticipated feeling for Miss Talbot. This was something else. Something new and deeply unsettling. It was awareness. Some variety of…recognition.
    “Allow me.” He didn’t wait for Miss Talbot’s permission. He reached the gig in a few long strides.
    Miss Hayes saw him coming. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
    And what eyes she had. Smoke blue, set under a pair of low, and uncompromisingly straight, ebony brows. He’d noted them when he pulled her from the water. That and…other of her attributes.
    She looked down at him, a sparkle of accusation in her glare. “You.“
    “The name is Archer,” he said. “And you, I presume, are Miss Hayes.”
    “I am.”
    He raised his arms to her. “Will you permit me to assist you down, ma’am?”
    She hesitated a fraction of a second. “If you please.”
    He felt her take an uneven breath as his hands closed around her corseted waist, lifting her from the gig and setting her gently on the ground. She was tall for a lady. A shade over five and a half feet, if he was to venture a guess. Her head came just above his chin. A rarity. He was used to towering over his women.
    But Miss Hayes was something different—in height as well as bearing.
    She wasn’t beautiful, not in the common way. Certainly not in the peaches-and-cream manner of Miss Talbot. But there was an arresting architecture to Laura Hayes’s face—an austere sort of balance between her high cheekbones, the straight bridge of her nose, and the firm line of her jaw. Only her mouth betrayed a hint of softness. It was wide and kissable.
    And it was frowning.