Without thinking, Sebastian caught the cap mid-air and stepped forward to replace it. His hands brushed her hair, and she stilled.
When he met her gaze again, she wasn’t smiling.
She was waiting.
He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. But he leaned close enough that she would know he wanted to.
And close enough to know she wanted it, too.
*
The snow clungto every branch like silken ribbons, and Maddie, standing in the pretty rose garden with frost melting into the hem of her cloak, had never felt so aware of every inch of herself.
She wasn’t cold.
She should have been. After all, the nippy wind danced past her ears and tugged at the strands of hair escaping from beneath her cap, but inside, she burned. She could feel the heat rising through her chest, warming her limbs, her fingertips, her throat. It had everything to do with the man standing just a few feet away, looking at her as if she were the reason spring returned each year.
Sebastian.
He’d recovered. Mostly. His eyes still held a faint shadow, and the red flush on his cheeks was certainly due to the morning chill, but his mouth curved with the ease of someone no longer fighting to breathe. He looked alive again. Gloriously, handsomely alive.
She should have said something. Anything. But her voice caught in her throat.
She wanted him to move closer. Just a little. One step. Two. That was all it would take for her to reachhim. To feel his coat brush against her skirts. To know if his breath still held the scent of the tea she’d made with trembling fingers the night she had walked to the castle in the storm.
She stepped forward.
Just slightly. Barely a shift in the snow.
It was the boldest thing she’d ever done.
Her heel hadn’t even left the ground, but she’d moved. Toward him. And heaven help her, she couldn’t take it back. The air between them felt charged now, shimmering with possibility. Every inch of her skin tingled with awareness, as if her body already knew something her mind refused to admit.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who reached first. She was the quiet one. The thoughtful one. The one men noticed after they’d flirted with everyone else. But Sebastian wasn’t looking past her. He was looking at her.
And oh, how she wanted him to meet her halfway.
To close the space she couldn’t quite bridge alone. To see her, truly see her, and choose her—not because she was proper or pleasant or conveniently nearby, but because something in him couldn’t bear the distance.
Just two steps, she thought.
Two steps, and I’ll know.
The distance between them seemed to shrink, and her heart surged with wild, silly hope.Come closer.
He didn’t speak. Not right away. But his gaze flicked downward—to where her boot had moved. And then his eyes lifted again, slowly, to her mouth.
Her lips parted on instinct. She didn’t know if she was about to speak, or if she was already imagining the feel of his mouth against hers.
The silence stretched between them. And still, he didn’t look away.
The moment trembled.
Somewhere behind her, a window creaked open. Maddie stiffened.
The sound came from the castle, just behind the hedges, one of the ground-floor windows of the east wing. She didn’t need to turn to know what it was: someone opening a shutter, slowly and carefully, as if they didn’t want to be seen.
They were being watched.
