“What if I loved you?” he spoke into the space between them.
The breath arrested inside her lungs, and hope swelled. Within thatwhat ifnested her chance to truly live. The next moment, her breath released, and the flight of fancy tucked itself away. “Love isn’t enough. It’s chaotic and fleeting.”
“Look at the stars, Olivia.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she took in the fathomless indigo sky.
“That isn’t chaos. It’s order. The past, present, and future suspended above our heads.Ourpast, present, and future are written there. If you squint hard enough, you can see it: a future so bright that the shadows of the past can never dim it.”
She averted her gaze. The stars now offered no comfort or respite. He’d managed to insinuate himself into the wide universe.
“But one must brave it.”
His words were perfect. Words that were years too late for her. She no longer put her faith in perfection. “Brave in love?” Even she could hear the hollow bluster that carried her words. “Madness, given all you and I have experienced.” She exhaled, and the fight left her. All that remained was a single stripped-down, implacable truth. “I can’t have you.”
His brow furrowed. “Youcan’t haveme?” He leaned in, and her eyes fluttered shut. His lips brushing the sensitive cup of her ear, he whispered, “Olivia,you’rethe prize. Has no one ever told you?”
A lone ripple of exultation fanned through her, holding her suspended in a warm, protective cocoon. She could stay here forever, waiting for him to say more words like the ones he’d just spoken. Words that would make her world,theirworld, right, possible. But the wider world lay beyond her closed eyes, pressing in, reminding her how impossibletheirworld was.
A soft rustling sounded beside her, and she kept her eyes shut tight against reality. Still, her ears would hear his feet padding softly across the grass, receding away from her. Her eyes blinked open in time to catch a glimpse of him rounding the corner and out of sight.
She released a breath and the last of him.
No one would ever mistake her for someone brave.
Chapter 28
“One-two-three, one-two-three,” Lucy counted out over Mina’s shoulder.
As Lucy led her through the simple steps of the waltz—surely a silly sight as she stood a head taller than Lucy—Mina marveled over how she’d gotten herself into this position.
“Ouch!” Lucy cried out.
“I’m so sorry.” Mina had stepped on Lucy’s toes no fewer than seven times this waltz alone. “We can stop, if you like.”
“I definitely donotlike. Now, I never thought I would say this to you of all people, but you must concentrate.” An impish grin curled about Lucy’s mouth. “Besides, ten broken toes wouldn’t be too high a price to pay for waltzing to a string quartet. Even if the musicians are a room removed, their music is heavenly.”
Mina tried to concentrate on the dance steps, really, she did, but it held little interest for her. For Lucy, this dance, every dance, even the minimal act of breathing, was an adventure, and she was ever on the lookout for the next one.
At school, some impertinent question was always erupting out of Lucy’s mouth, not from malice or to cause trouble, but out of a need toknow. No subject was taboo. This was where Mina felt a deep connection to Lucy. She, too, was a curious person.
It was from this place that she viewed their friendship, even if others couldn’t see it. Their curiosity manifested itself in different ways, but once stimulated, they stopped at nothing to satisfy it. Which was how Mina found herself in this small, forgotten room one wall removed from a ball, stepping through the waltz with Lucy. Even if Lucy’s ebullience wasn’t inspirational, it was most definitely motivational.
“Oh, my dear,” Lucy said, all stuffed up matron. “This music is divine. Simply the music of the gods. Why, I haven’t heard this song since my debutante ball.” A few beats of the waltz skipped by for dramatic effect. “One hundred and fifty years ago!”
A laugh, shocked and delighted, startled out of Mina. She liked that about spending time with Lucy. She made it easy to believe that the world was a bright, fun place.
“Now, try setting your arms like so.” Lucy demonstrated a loose, elegant turn of arm, one Mina could never come close to mirroring in an eternity of moons.
“You mustn’t be so . . .stiff. What will all your lovers think?”
“I shan’t have any lovers,” Mina replied matter-of-factly. “I shall dedicate myself to—”
“Science,” Lucy said, her tone dry as a dinosaur bone. “But Mina? Why isn’t there room for both?”
Before Mina could reply, Lucy’s gaze fixed on a point in the distance, and the next moment she flew out of Mina’s arms on a high-pitched squeal. “Huey!” her voice sang out as she shot across the room toward her cousin, Lord Hugh Bretagne, Earl of Avendon, heir to a future duke . . . and heir to the sun, Mina remembered thinking the night they’d met in the Duke of Arundel’s foyer.
“I knew I would find you in this very room,” Lord Avendon said, a mixture of supercilious reserve and genuine amusement infusing the words.
