With him.
The thought surfaced and refused to sink, no matter how firmly she pushed it down. She saw his gray eyes as he watched her across the picnic. They had been steady, intent, as if the world had narrowed to a single point. She heard his confession,Control is my penance,and recognized the same architecture she had built within herself. Two people constructing prisons from their worst moments. Matching monsters.
Alice sat up.
The chamber stretched around her in silver and shadow, familiar furniture rendered strange by darkness. Her wrapper lay across a chair where she had discarded it; her nightdress whispered against her skin, thin muslin that offered no armor against the night or her own impulses. Discipline had always been her refuge, the careful control that kept her safe from the consequences of wanting.
Tonight, control felt like a cage.
She rose.
The wrapper slid over her shoulders, pale blue silk catching the moonlight. She did not tie it closed. Some defiance in her urged her forward unguarded. Her hair hung loose down her back, dark wavesescaped from the braids she usually wore to bed, and she made no move to tame them.
The corridor beyond her door stretched into darkness, lit only by the occasional lamp left burning for the servants. Alice moved through it, bare feet silent on the carpet, every sense sharpened. The house breathed around her in the settling of old wood, the distant tick of a clock, the soft snore of a sleeping guest as she passed. Each sound made her pause, heart thudding hard against her ribs.
Not from fear.
From anticipation.
Portraits in the gallery seemed to disapprove as she slipped by. She took the servants’ stair because it was darker, more private; being discovered on the main staircase would be disastrous. The house felt close around her, full of sleeping people who would condemn her if they knew where she was going and why.
But Alice did not care.
The library door came into view at the end of a corridor she had walked dozens of times in daylight, now transformed into a threshold. Light gleamed beneath it from a single lamp still burning. Her fingers closed around the handle, cold brass against her palm, and for one suspended moment, she hesitated.
This was the point of no return. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
She could turn back. Return to restless sheets and spend the remaining hours of darkness pretending that daylight would bring clarity.
Instead, she opened the door.
Samuel sat in one of the leather chairs before the dying fire, posture taut with the strain of a man wrestling himself. His coat lay discarded over the back of a nearby chair. His cravat hung loose around his neck, exposing a wedge of bare throat that drew her gaze before she could stop it. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, his shirtsleeves pushed back to reveal forearms she had never seen, and his hair—once meticulously arranged—had been disordered by fingers dragged through it.
He looked wrecked.
He looked human.
He looked like everything she had not known she wanted.
Their eyes met across the room.
The fire crackled. The lamp flickered, shadows shifting over the walls. Alice stood in the doorway in her nightdress, loose wrapper, and unbound hair, while Samuel stared at her as if she were an apparition he had summoned.
Neither spoke. Words felt clumsy for a momentthat demanded something more elemental. His gaze moved over her—throat, shoulder, the wrapper slipping, her bare feet on the rug—marking her as a woman who had come to him with nothing but intention.
She crossed the room.
Each step was both endless and immediate. Samuel rose as she approached, moving with a grace that made her chest ache, gray eyes fixed on her face. She stopped close enough to feel his heat, close enough to see the pulse at his throat, close enough to breathe in his familiar scent—sandalwood, and something warmer beneath.
Her hand lifted.
She reached for his face, and the first contact jolted through her—the rasp of stubble against her palm, the heat of his skin, the small sound he made in his throat that was half surprise and half something more desperate.
“Alice.” Her name left him, prayer and a warning.
She kissed him.
The first press of her mouth against his was a question asked without words. His breath caught, and his hands found her waist, drawing her closer as his lips parted beneath hers—turning the question into a declaration. The kiss deepened. Grew urgent.Became something that demanded rather than requested.
