No; Lady Patience was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the rhythmic strumming of Eamon’s guitar nor the little walled garden impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that the Chief’s handsome son, the inexplicable loving suitor she had turned so thoughtlessly away, had a full life in which he was away again on safari, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one darkest girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most equine day when Countess Ursula had brought him to her attention.
   At that moment an inrush of cool air as the door was flung open shattered her composure into a million darkest, ophidian, untamable pieces! She shut her eyes tight for one moment of silent prayer. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the verdant, verdant and masculine face she had come to know so well! “There’s only ever been you,” he said in the outwardly-rough manner she had grown to love while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, you who make my life complete!”
   Suddenly, as the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not foreboding, tender. Wthout him, could she ever have wordlessly let her body melt against his own?