“Given your penchant for uncovering all my secrets, I thought you’d appreciate a rare moment of suspense,” he replied.
She arched a brow beneath the soft silk, which surely looked more fetching than the handkerchiefs sold by the drapers in Covent Garden. “You’ll bruise my arm before we reach the murder site.”
“You are scandalously unromantic,” he said. “But only twenty yards further, I promise. Unless you’d like to guess?”
“Hm. If it’s the duck pond, I shall scream,” she threatened, half-expecting the squelch of mud beneath her slippers.
Instead, the ground turned smooth, echoing with a hush she recognized from somewhere in her memory.
“You may thank me for not tossing you into the Serpentine again,” he said, then stopped her with a decisive hand to her shoulder.
The world stilled. Rhys untied the blindfold.
The darkness faded away to reveal a stage. Not a metaphorical one, but the literal sort, framed in gold and lit with a dozen gas jets that cast fairy rings on the polished floorboards.
They were alone in the bowels of the King’s Theatre, the house empty except for the two of them and a single drowsy attendant in the gallery.
Celine gasped, blinking at the riot of painted scenery behind the footlights. It was a fantastical landscape: a glittering arctic palace edged in frosted glass, with painted wolves frozen mid-howl and a cutout moon suspended in the rafters.
The footlights made the whole thing shimmer, as if it might melt at any moment.
“Rhys,” she breathed, “this is?—”
“The item on your list. The one you wrote in the margin and never intended for anyone to see.” He smiled, wicked and proud.“Dance on a stage, preferably with the world watching. But I thought a private audience would do for the first attempt.”
She turned to him, her mouth open, every retort burned away by sheer, ridiculous delight. “You remembered.”
He looked impossibly smug. “You doubt me still? I’ve been planning this since last autumn. The chest is over there. Left wings.”
She followed his gesture to the corner of the stage, where a battered travel chest sat, absurdly out of place among the painted snowdrifts. It was the same trunk she had seen two months ago being carried down the hallway at Wylds House, the porters sweating as they steered it around corners.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I saw you ordering the footmen to pack it. I assumed you were plotting to exile me to Siberia.”
“Close,” he quipped. “Siberia has fewer amenities, but a comparable dress code.”
He moved to the trunk and opened it with a flourish.
Inside, neatly folded atop a nest of tissue, was a dress of blue so pale that it seemed spun from moonlight. Crystals—hundreds, perhaps thousands—caught the footlights and threw back pinpricks of fire. The shape was simple: a high, fitted bodice,sleeves trimmed in white, and a skirt full enough to swallow half the orchestra pit.
Celine stared at it, at the memory stitched into every seam. “You planned for me to wear this at Lady Ashford’s ball.”
He shrugged, a little sheepish. “It was meant as a reward, for when you outlasted the ton. But I was called away to the estate—missed the damned ball. By the time I returned, the only thing waiting was your note and the empty glass you left for me.”
She laughed, the sound as bright and sharp as the dress itself. “So instead, you kidnapped me and brought me to the theater at dawn.”
He stepped close, his voice softer. “I wanted to make it up to you. That night was supposed to be… different. I was meant to be there. Instead, you had to fight off Lady Harrington on your own, and I?—”
His hands flexed at his sides, like he wasn’t sure if he should reach for her.
She reached first, taking his hand. “You always dwell on the wrong part of the story. I didn’t need you to rescue me, Rhys. I needed you to believe I could survive. You’ve never failed me in that.”
He squeezed her hand, then pressed his lips to her knuckles, careful as a priest.
“You’re impossibly noble for a former scoundrel,” she said.
He grinned, some of the tension easing. “I do my best.”
She eyed the dress, then the stage, then the empty theater. “What if I fall and crack my skull?”
