And in the doorway, he pauses one last time, silhouetted against the hallway light, and the look he gives me over his shoulder is the kind of look that rewrites everything you thought you knew about yourself.
Then he’s gone.
And I’m standing alone in the portrait gallery with my heart pounding and my lips tingling and the late Duke of Veilcourt watching me from his frame with those kind, knowing eyes.
I press my fingers to my lips.
Tonight.
Everything changes tonight.
Chapter Eight
VEIL WATCHED EVIANNEacross the ballroom and knew that he was done waiting.
She was laughing at something the fountain pen collector was saying, some silver-haired gentleman named Joules who’d been monopolizing her attention for the past twenty minutes, and the Hampton necklace Veil had fastened around her throat earlier caught the chandelier light every time she moved.
His necklace.
His family’s jewelry.
On her skin.
He’d put it on her himself, standing behind her in the hallway before the gala while she held her hair up and tried not to look at him in the mirror. His fingers had brushed the nape of her neck as he’d worked the clasp, and she’d shivered, and he’d wanted to press his mouth to the spot where her pulse was hammering and tell her she was his.
He hadn’t.
But the necklace said it for him.
Veil took a sip of champagne and tried to look like he wasn’t cataloguing her every move. The spring-green gown his mother had chosen fit her perfectly, skimming her figure without clinging, elegant without trying too hard. She looked like she belonged here. Like she’d always belonged here.
The calligraphy demonstration earlier had been a success. The media had loved it, the guests had been charmed, and Evianne had handled herself with the kind of quiet competence that made Veil’s chest ache with something he refused to name in public. She’d been nervous, her hand trembling under his, but she’d stayed. Hadn’t pulled away. Had let him guide her through each stroke while the cameras captured every moment.
And now she was across the ballroom, laughing at something else another man was saying, and he just wanted to punch the other man’s face.
A part of him wanted to deny what he was feeling, but a larger part of him already understood everything about her was inevitable. He loved her. Had told her that even. And so it was now time for her to make a choice as well.
