Clara drifted among the hedges, her fingers brushing the leaves as she passed.Beneath her slippers, the grass was spongy.Around her, shadows shifted as sunlight pierced the canopy in dappled fragments, and somewhere nearby, the soft hum of insects and the distant call of a lark reminded her how alive the garden was.
Her heart beat a nervous rhythm, each pulse a flutter against her ribs.She wasn’t sure which frightened her more.Being found, or staying lost.With each step, she caught murmurs of laughter and clinking glass drifting from the main lawn, a world that felt too loud, too certain.Here, among the hedges, she could breathe—but only just.Her thoughts spun around the words she had not said, the kiss she had not forgotten, and the man whose presence she could not ignore.
She was weary of questions, of glances, of murmured congratulations that felt like veiled warnings.
“Lady Clara,” someone drawled.
Crispin.
He stood beneath the pergola, jacket perfectly tailored, smile slightly crooked.A slant of sunlight inside the pavilion caught the gleam of his hair, his gaze shadowed but intent.
“I was not sure you would come,” he said.
“I was not sure you would be here.”
They moved without speaking, drawn by the invisible thread that had bound them since the masquerade.Around a bend in the garden, the noise of society melted into birdsong and breeze.They found a pocket of quiet, tucked behind a wall of ivy and climbing roses.
He looked at her.“You have been avoiding me.”
“I needed time.”
“To think?”He arched a brow.
“To feel,” she said quietly, the words deliberate, weighted like a lady’s glove laid upon a ballroom floor.A challenge and a confession both.
She did not move when he stepped closer.She stood her ground, breath shallow, every muscle taut with anticipation as if one step might shatter her resolve.
“Why did you do it?”she whispered.“Why announce a wedding date without asking me?”
His voice was quiet.“Because I needed something real to hold on to.”
Her heart twisted.“This started as a farce.”
“It stopped being one the night you kissed me like you meant it.”
Heat flared in her chest.She remembered the garden.The lanterns casting shadows across his cheek, the brush of his thumb along her jawline, the breath they shared just before the kiss.That moment had unraveled her, a knot pulled loose by want and fear in equal measure.She had pulled away.Not because she didn’t want him, but because she had wanted him too much.
“You should not have kissed me like that,” she said, her voice shaking as her fingers clenched involuntarily at her sides, betraying the storm gathering behind her calm.“Not if you didn’t mean it.”That kiss had stripped away every pretense.And now, with daylight and judgment closing in, she could not pretend it had meant nothing.
“I did mean it.Every breath, every touch.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“You tell me.”
She opened her mouth, but her lips parted only to press shut again.Her gaze dipped for half a second, her throat tightening with words that refused to surface.
“Do you want this to be real?”he asked, his voice a low murmur barely cutting through the birdsong and breeze.
Clara’s breath stuttered, her lips parting as if to speak, then stilling.A tremor bloomed at the base of her spine, rising like a wave she could not quite hold back.
The question lingered, thick with unspoken truths.Clara’s heart pounded, a frantic drumbeat of hope and hesitation.Why couldn’t she say yes?Or no?The words tangled with fear and longing.This was not a game anymore.Nevertheless, she hesitated.
He reached for her hand.
Her breath hitched, heart thundering beneath her ribs.She hesitated, eyes on his lips, everything unspoken surging to the surface.Then, driven by hope more than certainty, she rose onto her toes and kissed him.
Not a desperate kiss.
