The English Witch by Loretta Chase

she turned into the pathway leading to the terraced garden, lush with flowers. The air was sweet, but not cloyingly so. The sea breezes stirred and freshened, making it as deliriously fragrant, she thought, as the Garden of Eden must have been. From the distance came strains of the music she'd gradually come to appreciate, though it had sounded so odd and discordant at first. A tenor voice sang in a familiar, aching minor key accompanied by the wail of what sounded like an Eastern version of a clarinet. She couldn't make out the words, but imagined what they were: a tribute to native warriors and patriots or to the rugged beauty of the country. Sometimes there was a mournful song of love—but then, they all sounded rather mournful, even the triumphant tale of Ali Pasha's conquest of Prevesa. As she stopped to listen, she realised she wasn't alone.
    Basil stepped away from the garden wall he'd been lounging against, and approached her. He was dressed now, as he'd promised, like a proper English gentleman, though he still seemed somehow a creature of her imagination. In the moonlight his sun-bleached hair was shot through with silver. Even his amber cat eyes seemed to glow as they settled on her in that watchful way.
    "I was right," he said, in a low voice. "I was thinking this was almost—but not quite heaven. Now you are come to make it complete."
    The words made her heart flutter, as they doubtless were intended to do, but she was determined not to blush. Nor would she be alarmed in the least at the way he so self-assuredly offered his arm. She'd stroll with him for a minute or two and then go back indoors.
    "It is beautiful," she answered, deciding the honeyed words were best ignored. "For the six years we’ve been here, I find myself in one place after another, each time thinking it must be the loveliest scene in the world."
    "I suppose then, you'll be sorry to leave?"
    "Yes, of course. What other sea is as blue as the Ionian?"
    "None. But I shall be deliriously happy to go home, nonetheless."
    "You'd have been gone all the sooner if it hadn't been for me," she found herself saying, though that wasn't what she'd meant to say at all.
    "Yes, but I wouldn't have been returning with you—and that, I think, more than makes up for the delay."
    Naturally he'd say something like that. He probably thought she was fishing for compliments.
    When she didn't answer, he went on. "Now, of course, all the advantage is with the later departure. Not only do I return with you, but I have managed by sheer perseverance to find you alone at last. It did take some doing, and I was wretchedly deceitful. However, I have my reward, and that's all that matters."
    She stopped and looked at him. "What are you doing here, Mr. Trevelyan? I thought you'd gone with my father and Mr. Burnham and the others."
    "Why do you never call me Basil? Is the name so disagreeable?"
    "That wasn't what I asked, Mr. Trevelyan."
    "But it was what I asked, Miss Ashmore, and I wish you would stop calling me Mr. Trevelyan. It puts such a monstrous distance between us and makes Dhimitri pity me, which is quite unbearable."
    "You keep turning the subject, and yet you were the one to start it."
    "Of course I did, and for nothing but the sheer delight of watching your green eyes flash at me. They are indeed flashing, Miss Ashmore, as they always do when I provoke you, and that should make me feel ashamed of myself if anything could. But nothing does, you know."
    That was easy enough to believe. "In which case, sir, I think it best to take my leave of you.''
    She disengaged her arm from his and started to turn back to the house, but he stepped in front of her, blocking the way. He stood only a few inches from her. He was only teasing, of course. He was trying to make her nervous. He was succeeding.
    "You stand in my path, Mr. Trevelyan, which is very inconsiderate, because now I'll be obliged to trample on that lovely flowerbed."
    "I only wanted to kiss you," was