“I never know exactly what I’m doing,” he said immediately, grinning at the way her body stiffened against his.
She tensed but still did not pull away from him. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Yes. Unequivocally, this is something I very much wanted,” he said, looking down at her lips again, a bit puffy from the strength of his own. He leaned down to steal one more kiss. He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t resist it. He let himself moan from the perfection of it, let himself delight in the fact that she still returned it, even with all that outrage in the core of her body, and then he pulled back one more time. “I still do, but perhaps not with the entire bloody world watching from the hilltop?”
Claire sighed. “They can’t see us,” she told him. “Though I’m sure that if they could, they’d start applauding again.”
“There are plenty of private corners back at the Nook,” he told her. “But it isn’t just that. It’s also … well, you know.”
She dropped her head back, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment like she couldn’t fathom why she put up with him. “Freddy …” she said in an impatient groan.
“Weddings! You know how weddings are. How they … they make us … a little different,” he attempted, knowing he sounded like an idiot. “The romance of it, you know? Do you understand?”
Her eyes popped open and she put the angle of her head back to rights. “You only want to kiss when it’s not romantic?”
“No! I only …” He trailed off, wincing. “I want to kiss when I know you are not only doing it because of a compromising atmosphere.”
“A compr…” She trailed off, blinking at him. “Oh, well, then, my apologies. I did not realize I had lost my entire sense of agency due to weddings. Tell me, is it only I who am impacted by such things? For you might be too, husband. I’d hate to think I’m taking advantage.”
He shouldn’t have done it, but he smiled at her. It did make her actually twist away from him this time, her annoyance glittering on her skin. She looked magnificent, her color high and her breath coming faster.
“I just want to earn it,” he said, “on the normal days and the wedding days. I want to know it’s real.”
She hesitated, clearly realizing that he was accusing her of an attitude of impermanence tonight. Sadly, he thought she was also realizing that perhaps he was right.
“I only want to earn it,” he repeated, which only made her huff and turn her face to the side.
She still looked beautiful, of course. She still shone.
“Oh, all right,” he teased, “I shall kiss you again if it gets you out of your snit. Come here.”
“Oh, shut up, Freddy,” she snapped. “I am going back to the dance.”
“All right,” he told her. “I think I will go back to the Nook. I don’t see my clothing looking correct again tonight.”
“It never did,” she reminded him, nodding down to his loose cuffs. “You look like Lady Macbeth.”
He twisted his lips, holding his wrists up in the air for her scrutiny.
She returned the expression, something threatening to become a smile shaping her mouth. She shook her head and turned to go, stopping only once to turn her head and say, “Good night, Freddy.”
“Good night,” he answered many moments later, when she could no longer hear him, “my love.”
CHAPTER 16
“You’ve mud on your hem,” said Ember Donnelly the very instant Claire had made it back to the dancing pavilion, tilting her head over the rim of her glass of punch and flashing a sharp little smile.
“We are outside,” Claire pointed out with a sniff. “It is bound to happen.”
“I suppose it is,” Ember answered. “In all candor, I thought you’d be a lot filthier by now.”
“I beg your pardon?” Claire had returned with a gasp, only to find the other woman had already turned away, in search of her next victim.
Truth be told, Claire wouldn’t mind being a fair sight muddier than she was just now, but Freddy, predictably, had failed to cooperate. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was feeling just now, between the annoyance and the unfulfilled desire.
It felt quite a lot like the sensation of incomplete movement that one feels after a day of ice skating, where afterwards, your mind is convinced that you are still gliding about, weightless, on avanishing platform of magic and speed. She still had a great deal of momentum within her and nowhere to put it.
She had always loved ice skating. She had always felt thrilled and seduced by the fragile marriage of ballet-like elegance to the utter folly of throwing one’s body onto a frozen lake and trusting that the glinting, temporary beauty that had settled on top would not give way to your doom.
