She nodded and straightened her shoulders, stepping around him to pace back to the door that would take her to the outside world. She faltered only a little when she felt him turn to watch her as she rounded him.
He waited until she had picked up her reticule, clutching it to her side, and her fingers landed on the brass doorknob before he spoke.
“Vix,” he said, just before she could turn the knob and flee.
She froze so delicately, in such small little motions, her head clicking ever so slightly to the side. “Yes, Ambrose?” she said softly.
“When I am toying with you,” he told her, “you will know.”
CHAPTER 8
Vix was tempted to arrive early, despite knowing better.
Anticipation had a way of making her silly that way. She had instead chosen to take a second loop around the park and observe the turnout from the window of the carriage like a sensible woman, smoothing her skirt lest it consider wrinkling or puckering in the fading light of the sunset.
She didnotthink about Ambrose Aster standing in that cluttered parlor, his pale hair disheveled, his collar open, his inky eyes grazing over her skin. She didnotthink about how warm and firm his body had felt when she realized she was clinging to it earlier.
She didn’t replay his voice, soft and dark, warning her that when he toyed with her, she would know.
She didn’t do those things because they would have been a waste of time.
She sucked in a breath so deep that it made her ribs creak against her stays, and blinked thrice, dispelling the way his fingers had clasped her chin and turned her face to his; at thememory of his wide, outraged eyes as her breath caught and stuttered with hysterical amusement in her lungs.
She hissed, flicking her fan open and waving at her face, batting away any creeping suggestion of the way his lips had curled at the corners when she’d told him about those simpering letters she’d gotten from her old classmates.
And then, mercifully, it was time to alight.
The carriage door opened to a twilight approach of St. James’s Palace, the torches along the staircase flickering in orange relief of the gray-blue light. She accepted the coachman’s hand and stepped carefully out, the satin of her gown pooling and swishing against her legs as she found the ground.
Had that been the first time he had touched her? Skin to skin? That little grip of her chin? Had that been the first time he had deliberately touched her?
She frowned, slipping her gloved hand from the coachman’s with a nod of thanks, and forced her attention up at the resplendent monument to excess ahead of her. She breathed it in, the torch oil dancing on the air, and let herself enjoy the scent of victory, smoothing her hands down over the indigo satin that clung to her body with tailored precision.
It was time.
She started up the stairs, her head tilted up toward the two royal guards stationed on either side of the main entrance. Her hair was coiled around a diamond clasp she’d borrowed from Hannah, spilling down in careful, glossy brown coils that brushed against her mostly bare shoulders.
Even her shoes were new, imported and reinforced silk in black and silver, braided over pearl buckles.
She felt armored. She felt resplendent. She had prepared in every possible way for the evening ahead.
And yet she wished she had only one more moment to think before it started. She wished she’d thought of something else to ask Ambrose before she’d left him this afternoon, standing half undone in that gauche parlor of his.
How will you toy with me?
She shook her head.
Not now.
“Fräulein Victoria!” came a soft and enthusiastic greeting from the corner of the foyer, almost the instant she crossed the threshold into the richly appointed interior of the palace.
She turned to see Mr. Zeller, combed and neat in a set of black tails, hurrying toward her with a wide smile under his curled white mustache, and could not help smiling in return. His bright blue eyes twinkled with so much enthusiasm that if someone had told her he was also being knighted tonight, she might have believed it.
“Good evening, good evening!” he cried upon reaching her. “Such a gown!”
“Oh,” she said, surprised to feel herself actually blushing in pleasure as she looked down at the thing, still glittering and fitted perfectly against her form. “It is, isn’t it? It was made especially for tonight.”
“They took Herr Ambrose away the moment we arrived,” he whispered to her, offering his elbow with such a perfect quarter angle that Vix suspected she could set a mathematical compass to it as she slid her gloved hand into the crook. “They took him from me! Shuffled away.”
