Conscious of the fact her heart should be fluttering more than he seemed capable of making it, she accepted his hand down from the carriage and into the house. Its lights were still blazing, which Theo thought unusual; Nathanial had begged for a night in because he was fatigued and wanted to retire early.
The carriage rattled away along the street as Nathanial himself, dressed in informal buckskins and a coat over his arm, hurried down the stairs. “Theo,” he said, in such obvious relief, she stared at him.
“Nathanial? What is the matter?”
“The carriage returned without you.” He reached her and, as though it was the most normal thing in the world, pulled her into his embrace. One arm snaked around her waist and anchored him to her. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, nose almost touching his neck, and breathed in his familiar scent. Over the course of the past two months, she had grown accustomed to it.
“My carriage returned without me?” she asked with a frown. “How odd. Was Hawkins himself?”
“He said he was given instructions from you that you no longer had need of his assistance.”
Theo glanced up into his face, Sir Montague’s words finally becoming clear. He had orchestrated the carriage ride she shared with him by sending her carriage home.
Nathanial appeared to read the truth in her face; his grey eyes shuttered and his mouth pressed into a thin line, as though he was holding back everything he wanted to say. “I see.”
“Don’t be angry,” Theo said, placing a hand on his chest and wishing, though she hardly knew why, that he would hold her again. They had passed two months without incident, and she was used to their easy friendship. Being with Nathanial, when they were not fighting, was the easiest thing in the world, and it gave her a pang that she thought she might lose it.
“I shall ask no more questions of you,” he said curtly. “I suspect I should not like the answer.”
Without thinking, she reached up and traced the harsh lines of his face until they softened. “You may put your mind at rest on that point.”
“Which point?” he asked, eyes searching hers.
“Nothing of that nature occurred.”
He nodded slowly, still watching her closely. A strange consciousness unfurled within her at the sight of his perusal. Her heart, so silent when she had been in the carriage with Sir Montague, chose now to give an almighty thud. Sir Montague had her hero’s dark beauty, but Nathanial was familiar and warm, and Theo could not recall how she had ever supposed he was the less handsome of the two.
“I thought you were retiring early,” she said in the yawning silence.
“I intended to, before I heard news that our carriage had returned. I was coming to look for you.”
“Oh!”
He took hold of her wrist, pulling her still closer, until their bodies were flush. “What’s that surprise for, wretch?”
“I had not thought you would be so worried.” She peered up at him, relieved to find his frown was gone. “You know we are not husband and wife in that way.”
“Are we not?” he said speculatively, a spark of amusement and—yes, there was something else there, igniting like a candlewick, as he placed his finger under her chin. “No, perhaps not. And yet . . .” That expression in his eyes sparked. “I am glad you did not kiss Montague tonight.” Slowly, his eyes still on hers, he bent his head. Theo could have moved away, she could have denied him the way she had denied Sir Montague, but she was frozen in place as Nathanial brushed his lips against hers. Lightly, his mouth soft. It was the merest whisper of a kiss; a promise, not a delivery. It was, perhaps, the perfect maidenly first kiss, and come at such a moment that Theo could not argue it was unromantic.
It was distinctly not enough.
She moved as he pulled back. Just a fraction, just enough that he caught the instinctual lean of her body towards his. A low chuckle escaped his throat as he slid a hand along hercheek, into her hair, and down to cup the back of her neck. His mouth returned to her with more pressure this time. Gentle, yet unyielding enough that Theo could say with authority thatthiswas a kiss. Her husband, her friend, was kissing her, and—
Theo kissed him back.
She had not, strictly, intended to. Perhaps she would not have done if heat had not flooded her body, or if his hand had not skated up her arm and across the back of her shoulder blades, holding her to him. If her thoughts had not been suspended, if she had not been aflame with the same spark that had been in his eyes, if he had not consumed her so utterly. The world narrowed to Nathanial and the way his mouth moved against hers with teasing pressure.
This was how heroes should kiss.
Only she wasn’t kissing a hero, she was kissingNathanial.
She broke away, stepping back from his embrace. Dazed, confused, flustered. A blush spread from her chest, up her neck, to her cheeks. She truly was on fire.
He had kissed her. She had kissed him back. This was not the marriage they had promised one another, and if she allowed herself to be lost in him, what would happen then? He was her husband and he was not in love with her.
The thing she had been most determined to do was to find a man whowouldlove her. To find, in short, her hero.
That man was not Nathanial, no matter how he was looking at her now, his eyes dark, his mouth pinned tightly together.
