“Madeleine!”
She flinched.
The voice rang across the garden like a bell cracked in frost.
Chapter Thirteen
“What am Iinterrupting here?” Paisley’s voice rang out, sharp and smug, slicing through the quiet like a blade. He stood with his legs planted wide, arms crossed over his chest, and—Maddie’s eyes narrowed—was that a rifle tucked in his belt?
Sebastian took a step back, distancing himself a bit. He turned slightly, gaze shifting away from her as if he needed the cold air to still the heat that had risen between them. He didn’t look at her.
Why won’t he look at me?
Her breath still came too fast. Her skin still tingled, her chest too full. The world had changed a moment ago, had tilted on its axis when he stepped toward her like a man who might kiss her. And she’d wanted it. Oh, how she’d wanted it!
But now he wouldn’t even meet her eyes.
Because of Paisley?
Or her?
A thread pulled taut inside her chest, a strange combination of hurt and shame blooming where hope had just bloomed seconds before. Had she misunderstood everything? No—no, she couldn’t have. He had leaned in. He had looked at her like she mattered. And yet, the space between them had never felt wider. As though Paisley’s voice had shattered the spell between them and scattered the pieces too far to gather.
Was he ashamed? Embarrassed? Or just protecting her, now that there were witnesses?
Now that someone might think he cared.
Maddie’s fingers curled at her sides, trying to hold on to something. The memory. The closeness. The possibility. Her cheeks burned… not from the cold. From being caught in the act of… what, exactly?
Of wanting.
Of hoping.
And suddenly, she hated that Paisley had seen it. Hated that Sebastian had let him see her vulnerability and responded with distance instead of defiance.
She swallowed down the ache. This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be.
But for now… she stood alone in the garden, heart pounding for a kiss that hadn’t happened, and a man who no longer looked at her like it might.
Paisley was grinning like a man who thought he’d walked in on something he could control. “It looked like—”
“Have you nothing to do?” Sebastian cut him off smoothly, the question polite in phrasing but steely in tone. “Nowhere to be?”
Paisley shrugged, not bothering to hide his delight, yet there seemed to be an underlying malice, if she were not mistaken. “Nothing more important than looking after good old Maddie here.”
Maddie bristled. The moment was gone—stolen—and now Paisley was draping himself across it like a dog over a feast.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, please,” Paisley drawled, as though the matter were settled. “Our mothers have been closest friends since the cradle. It’s practically tradition.”
She held her ground, chin lifting. “I’m not your friend. There’s no tradition. You’re not my family.”
He turned to Sebastian with a sly smile. “But our mothers wish forus to be more than that, don’t they? She’d make a lovely Duchess of Paisley, wouldn’t she?”
The words landed with the subtlety of a cannon blast.
But Sebastian didn’t flinch.
