As they turned—or rather, as he turned them, because he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop touching her even as his mind screamed warnings—a loose curl escaped its pins. It fell across her cheek, soft and dark against pale skin.
Without thinking, he reached up.
His fingers brushed the errant strand aside, tucking it gently behind her ear. But instead of withdrawing—instead of doing what propriety and honour demanded—his hand lingered. His knuckles traced the curve of her cheek with devastating tenderness. His thumb found the corner of her mouth.
She inhaled sharply, her lips parting.
Neither spoke. The moment stretched, suspended between heartbeats, trembling with everything unacknowledged. His heart thundered against his ribs. Hers—he could feel it now, could feel the wild flutter beneath his palm at her waist—matched the rhythm.
They stood so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. Could count the gold flecks in her blue eyes. Could see his own longing reflected at him with such perfect clarity that it stole what remained of his sanity.
One movement. That’s all it would take. One slight lean forward and his lips would find hers, and this terrible wanting would finally?—
Amelia drew a sharp breath and stepped back.
The loss of her was immediate and devastating. Cold air rushed into the space where warmth had been, and Tobias found himself standing alone in the centre of the drawing room with his hand still outstretched, reaching for something he could never have.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice trembling despite obvious efforts at control. “That was... helpful.”
Helpful.The word was a knife between his ribs.
“Anytime, my lady.” His own voice sounded foreign to his ears—too rough, too raw, stripped of every careful defence.
She gathered her skirts with shaking hands, the lilac silk whispering against the floor. Her composure was returning, he could see it settling over her like armour. But her hands trembled. Her breath still came too fast. And her eyes—when they met his for one final, devastating moment—held enough longing to destroy him completely.
“Good night, my lord.”
She turned quickly, almost fleeing, and disappeared through the doorway before he could formulate any response beyond her name.
“Amelia—”
But she was already gone, her footsteps fading up the stairs until only silence remained.
Tobias stood motionless in the empty drawing room, his hand still suspended in the air where hers had been. The candles guttered. The fire died to embers. And slowly—so slowly it felt like surrender—he allowed his arm to fall to his side.
His other hand rose unbidden to his face, his fingers finding the exact spot where her breath had ghosted across his skin. Where her lips had been inches from his own. Where for one perfect, impossible moment, he’d believed?—
“Fool,” he whispered to the darkness.
He’d held heaven in his arms and let honour force him to release it.
The drawing room door stood ajar, and through it he could see the staircase she’d climbed. Could imagine her now in her chamber, perhaps pressed against the door as she’d been that night in the nursery, breathing hard, fighting the same battle he was losing.
His hand closed slowly around empty air, capturing nothing. Holding silence.
And somewhere upstairs, in a room he’d never enter, Amelia Grant pressed trembling fingers to lips that still burned with the ghost of an almost-kiss, and wondered whether desire was always this devastating.
Or if it was only devastating when the person you wanted was the one person you could never have.
CHAPTER 18
“No, darling, not the roses. They have thorns.”
Amelia’s voice sounded far steadier than she felt, which was something of a miracle considering she’d spent the entire night replaying a moment that hadn’t even happened.
Stop thinking about it.
Henry, blissfully unaware of his mother’s torment, ignored her warning entirely and toddled toward the rose bushes with the single-minded determination of a general advancing on enemy territory. She caught him just before small fingers could close around a thorny stem, redirecting him toward the wooden ball she’d brought from the nursery.
