The whole bloodyworldstopped.
It was Robin. Her heart knew it. Her body knew it. There was a roaring in her ears. Her vision grew dark around the edges. Shock kept her still, rooted to the parquet floor. Everyone and everything else fell away.
There was only the man she had wept over. The man she had believed dead.
“Robin,” she whispered, clutching him as if she feared he would disappear if she did not maintain her hold on him, familiar and improper though it was.
“Mr. Adrian Hastings, madam,” he said, his voice the same and yet different. Colder. Harsher. He bowed. “I do not believe I have made your acquaintance.”
Adrian Hastings? Who was this man? This stranger who was familiar and yet…different? The room swam around her. She was simultaneously hot and cold, perspiration trickling between her breasts.
He was staring at her, his countenance implacable, his gaze penetrating. She wanted to tear the mask from his face. To prove to herself he was someone else, that he was not the man she had loved and lost, the father of her son.
“Mr. Hastings,” she managed to say, though the name felt like a lie, strange and studded, on her tongue. “How have you come to be at my ball?”
“An invitation, of course.”
Of course.
That was a lie and they both knew it. She had overseen each invitation which had been issued, and none had been delivered to a Mr. Adrian Hastings. She found herself captivated by his mouth. She knew those lips. Tilly felt as if she had been removed from her body, as though she were watching this scene unfolding instead of participating in it. As if this were a dream.
How much champagne had she consumed?
“Come with me,” she said to him, needing to remove herself from this public space, from all the eyes surrounding them, watching.
Needing to see him without his mask.
Needing answers.
He inclined his head. “Lead the way, Duchess.”
Duchess.
The silken way he spoke her title rolled down her spine, filling her with an acute combination of longing and confusion. Robin had never called herDuchessorYour Grace. This man was different and yet painfully the same.
The sea of revelers parted for her. She swept through them, unseeing, uncaring. Her only thoughts were for the man following her. Her shoulders burned with the heat of his stare on her back, and with the memory of how Robin had liked to caress her nape as he kissed her.
Their time together had been the most glorious of her life.
Such happiness, only to have it ripped away.
She exited the ballroom, not caring who watched him follow or what scurrilous gossip would arise from her leaving her ball with a stranger. Her sole concern was answers.
Blame it on the champagne.
Robin had said those words to her once, when they’d gone swimming in the lake at Coddington Hall late one night. They’d been walking, hand in hand and dripping wet, through the great hall where the portraits of each Duke of Longleigh hung. For a moment, she swore she heard his voice saying those same words again.
Tilly cast a glance over her shoulder to find him at a greater distance than she had anticipated. His limp was more pronounced than she had initially noted. He had not spoken. She was going mad. Or she was soused.
Mayhap both.
Trying to maintain her dignity, she crossed the hall, then made her way into the morning room. The chamber had always been one she favored, because its eastern windows brought cheerful early light. And also because it had been a haven of Longleigh’s mother, and he had detested the dowager with a virulent hatred, which meant he could not abide to visit Tilly whenever she was within.
But those particular ghosts were far from her mind now as she swept inside and turned to watch Mr. Adrian Hastings haltingly join her. It was the left leg which he favored, she took note, his grip on the head of his cane so strong that his knuckles were white. Those big hands and long, elegant fingers, like all the rest of him, were painfully familiar.
The door closed, muffling the sounds of the orchestra and the ballroom full of guests. They were alone. Her heart pounded. There was something so riveting about this beautiful stranger. She moved toward him, drawn as she had been in the ballroom.
“Take off your mask,” she told him.
