But he couldn’t. As much as he hated to admit it . . . her logic was sound.

“You’re . . . not entirely wrong,” he forced himself to say, nearly choking on the words. “Regardless of the law, however, it all comes down to a matter of trust.”

“But you’re saying I should trust a man with the lifelong power to make all my decisions the way I would wish them to be made, when I would rather make them for myself.” With a touch of honest bewilderment, Pandora asked, “Why would I do that?”

“Because marriage is more than a legal arrangement. It’s about companionship, security, desire, love. Are none of those things important to you?”

“They are,” Pandora said, her gaze falling to the ground before them. “Which is why I could never feel them for a man if I were his property.”

Well, hell.

Her objections to marriage went far deeper than Gabriel could have imagined. He’d assumed she was a nonconformist. She was a bloody insurrectionist.

They had almost reached his sisters, who were sitting together while Ivo and Justin had gone to fill their pails with more wet sand.

“What are you talking about?” Seraphina asked Gabriel.

“Something private,” he said curtly.

Phoebe leaned toward Seraphina and said sotto voce, “I think our brother may be having a moment of enlightenment.”

“Is he?” Seraphina regarded Gabriel as if he were a particularly thrilling form of wildlife trying to peck out of its shell.

Gabriel gave them both a sardonic glance before returning his attention to Pandora’s mutinous face. He touched her elbow lightly and drew her aside for a last word. “I’ll find out what the legal options are,” he muttered. “There may be some loophole that would allow a married woman to own a business without having it held in trust or controlled by her husband.”

To his annoyance, Pandora didn’t appear impressed in the least, nor did she seem to recognize the enormity of the concession. “There isn’t,” she said flatly. “But even if there were, I’d still be worse off than if I’d never married at all.”

For the next hour, the subject of Pandora’s board game business was discarded as the group worked on the sandcastle. They paused at intervals to drink thirstily from jugs of cold water and lemonade that had been sent down from the house. Pandora threw herself into the project with enthusiasm, consulting with Justin, who had decided the castle must have a moat, square corner towers, a front gatehouse with a drawbridge, and battlement walls from which the occupants could drop scalding water or molten tar onto the advancing enemy.

Gabriel, who’d been instructed to dig the moat, stole frequent glances at Pandora, who had enough energy for ten people. Her face glowed beneath her battered straw hat, which she had managed to pry away from Ajax. She was sweaty and covered with sand, a few escaped locks of hair trailing over her neck and back. She played with the unselfconscious ease of a child, this woman of radical thoughts and ambitions. She was beautiful. Complex. Frustrating. He’d never met a woman who was so wholly and resolutely herself.

What the devil was he going to do about her?

“I want to decorate the castle with shells and seaweed,” Seraphina said.

“You’ll make it look like a girl’s castle,” Justin protested.

“Your hermit crab might be a girl,” Seraphina pointed out.

Justin was clearly appalled by the suggestion. “He’s not! He’s not a girl!”

Seeing his little cousin’s gathering outrage, Ivo intervened quickly. “That crab is definitely male, sis.”

“How do you know?” Seraphina asked.

“Because . . . well, he . . .” Ivo paused, fumbling for an explanation.

“Because,” Pandora intervened, lowering her voice confidentially, “as we were planning the layout of the castle, the hermit crab discreetly asked me if we would include a smoking room. I was a bit shocked, as I thought he was rather young for such a vice, but it certainly leaves no doubt as to his masculinity.”

Justin stared at her raptly. “What else did he say?” he demanded. “What is his name? Does he like his castle? And the moat?”

Pandora launched into a detailed account of her conversation with the hermit crab, reporting that his name was Shelley, after the poet, whose works he admired. He was a well-traveled crustacean, having flown to distant lands while clinging to the pink leg of a herring gull who had no taste for shellfish, preferring hazelnuts and bread crumbs. One day, the herring gull, who possessed the transmigrated soul of an Elizabethan stage actor, had taken Shelley to see Hamlet at the Drury Lane theater. During the performance, they had alighted on the scenery and played the part of a castle gargoyle for the entire second act. Shelley had enjoyed the experience but had no wish to pursue a theatrical career, as the hot stage lights had nearly fricasseed him.

Gabriel stopped digging and listened, transported by the wonder and whimsy of Pandora’s imagination. Out of thin air, she created a fantasy world in which animals could talk and anything was possible. He was charmed out of all reason as he watched her, this sandy, disheveled, storytelling mermaid, who seemed already to belong to him and yet wanted nothing to do with him. His heart worked in strange rhythms, as if it were struggling to adjust to a brand new metronome.

What was happening to him?

The rules of logic by which he’d always lived had somehow been subverted so that marrying Lady Pandora Ravenel was now the only acceptable outcome. He was unprepared for this girl, this feeling, this infuriating uncertainty that he might not end up with the one person he absolutely must be with.