Her playful smile made his heart ache even more. She was herself in her cottage. He’d seen glimpses as if looking behind a curtain, but nothing like this. He’d fallen for her through those glimpses. The ones that appeared when she was angry, or teasing him, or defying his mother with some macabre fashion choice. She turned to him with a goblet of mulled wine and he thought he’d burst. No—what he thought he’d felt for her did not hold a candle to this. He was irrevocably, desperately in love with her.