Free In Praise of Younger Men by Jaclyn Reding

of performing a Mozart sonata. No one noticed that they had been alone together on the garden terrace. No one saw them slip quietly inside. No one except Devorgilla.
    Harriet caught Devorgilla’s eye from across the room.
    When she saw her aunt’s responding frown, she quickly looked away.
    Tristan and Harriet stood for several minutes at the back of the assembly, watching the performance. Neither looked at the other.
    Finally, Harriet whispered, “We shouldn’t have done that.”
    Tristan drew in a slow breath. “Harriet—”
    “Do you not see, Tristan? Whenever we are together, something like this happens. Remember in the cave, how the wind started howling the last time you kissed me? And now this, a perfectly lovely evening and then suddenly, a raging downpour. Someone or something is trying to tell us we cannot be together. It is a sign.”
    “Bloody hell, Harriet, it isn’t any sign. It is the weather. Believe it or not, it does rain in Scotland.”
    “Yes, I know that. In fact, truth be told, I have spent more time here than you have.”
    Tristan mumbled. “That’s your problem.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Nothing. Applaud, Harriet, the performance has ended.”
    Any attempt at further conversation ended when the others in the room broke into applause. The crowd began to disperse. Harriet turned, only to find that Tristan had vanished.
    Insufferable man . . .
    But even as she thought this, she still felt the touch of him on her lips, the taste of him on her mouth, the feel of his hands against her skin . . .

Chapter Seven

    Where so many hours have been spent
    in convincing myself that I am right,
    is there not some reason to fear
    I may be wrong
?
    —Sense and Sensibility,
Jane Austen

    The morning sun rose on a gloriously clear sky tufted with clumps of white clouds, prompting Harriet to take Robbie out after breakfast for a walk in the gardens behind Charlotte Square. She’d slept later than was her custom, having stayed at the assembly well into the wee hours the night before. After their interlude on the garden terrace, Tristan had vanished and hadn’t returned, leaving Harriet nothing else to do but spend the rest of the evening taking stock of the other gentlemen present.
    It hadn’t proved a productive enterprise. She must have seen, and considered, and then ultimately discounted well over a dozen different gentlemen as potential husbands. No matter who she saw, from duke on down to baronet, they all of them somehow fell short of her requirements. Too old, too arrogant. This one fond of drink, another fond of gaming. Except for Sir Duncan, who was perfectly pleasant, had danced with her three times, and had fetched her numerous glasses of ratafia. After everyone else she’d seen, he remained her best prospect for matrimony.
    But he still wasn’t Tristan.
    Tristan was tall and dark and had a way of looking at , a girl that just made the rest of the world fade away in a shimmering mist like that which hovered above the Galloway hills at sunrise. He was exciting, alive. Sir Duncan was kind, politely so, and utterly proper, but he was the sort of man who would never dream of so much as holding a girl’s hand without first asking permission.
    What was she going to do? She had less than a week remaining before her birthday. Only a few days after that, she would be returning to Galloway. Her time was fast running out. There was always Leap Year Day, she supposed, if matters didn’t improve, but she really didn’t relish the idea of running around the streets of Edinburgh in her red petticoat, proposing to every man she encountered under the age of eight-and-twenty. There had to be something else she could do, some place she could go. She’d already tried the bookshop, but had ended up meeting Tristan. Then the assembly—and again, Tristan. Perhaps a walk through the park, Harriet thought with hope, would prove her salvation.
    But the park soon proved just as fruitless. Harriet circled the