This pang… Another novel experience.
“I believe we managed to work around them.” She pushed off him, her skirts falling to her ankles before she returned to the opposite bench. He adjusted himself and closed the fall of his trousers.
As he stared across the distance now separating them, that pang stole through him again. He wanted her in his arms. He wasn’t sure he’d ever let her go.
But he must. He wasn’t a medieval warlord, and she wasn’t truly his to claim and possess.
Right.
Toward that end, he said, “Shall we run through what will happen tonight?”
She nodded.
“There will be a point in the evening where you and I will be seen talking by Nestor. Then I will very pointedly turn in his direction and nod at him.”
“Ah, The Nod.” She looked slightly skeptical.
“Yes.”
“And that is all?”
“When he arrives home from the musicale, a note will be waiting for him. It will inform him that he will need to be atEpsom at one of the clock tomorrow with the money in guineas.”
“You think it will meet with success?”
“Yes.” Archie hadn’t a single doubt.
“Why?”
“Because I’m offering Nestor what he truly wants.”
“Which is?”
“His family’s return to the highest level of Society.”
Valentina’s jaw tightened. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“It will be paradise regained, then paradise lost again.”
“Good.” She released a long exhale. “And I’m to be the silent contessa again tonight.”
“Your last performance.”
Her hands fidgeted with each other. “And after tomorrow, we’ll have no reason to see each other again.”
“Not unless you can think of one.”
The words hung in the space between them, true and immovable. He hadn’t spoken them with suggestion or salaciousness.
Her gaze, serious and questioning, searched his, then skittered away to stare out the window. They’d entered the City of London and would be arriving at Casa Windermere within minutes.
Archie couldn’t help feeling that an opportunity was slipping away from him, if it wasn’t entirely lost already.
But how to grab hold and seize it?
He hadn’t experience with that.
But he would need to be a quick learner if he was to have any chance.
