His voice was calm, but it carried weight, as though the question itself were a boundary being tested. Her name on his lips did something to her that she did not quite understand.
Eleanor hesitated for a moment, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain he could hear it. The room seemed smaller now, the lamplight warmer, the air heavier.
If she did not move now, she would lose the courage altogether.
She crossed the space between them.
James’s brows drew together slightly. “Eleanor – ”
She rose onto her toes and brushed her lips against his.
It was brief – shorter than she had intended, long enough that she felt the shape of his mouth before she lost her nerve. A simple, tentative peck that ended almost as soon as it began.
But when she pulled back, her cheeks were flushed, her breath uneven, and she found his gaze fixed on her with an intensity that made her stomach flutter.
His expression was not cold now.
It was startled. Searching. And something else – something she did not yet have a name for, but which made her pulse quicken all the same.
Neither of them spoke.
James moved first.
He reached out and drew her closer, his hand warm and steady at her back, and kissed her again – this time with an assurance that stole the air from her lungs. His touch framed her face, careful yet unyielding, as though he were trying to confirm that she was real, that the moment had not been imagined.
Eleanor’s fingers curled into his coat without conscious thought.
A soft sound escaped her – more breath than voice – and James stilled at once.
The room seemed to hold its breath with them.
Slowly, he eased back, his hands still resting at her waist, his gaze searching her face.
Eleanor blinked, her heart racing. “Did I –” She stopped, exhaled, then tried again. “Was that wrong?”
“No,” he said immediately. Then, after a pause, “You did nothing wrong.”
She studied his face, trying to understand the sudden restraint, the way his posture had shifted from tension to distance in the span of a breath.
“Then why did you stop?” she asked quietly.
James exhaled through his nose, a controlled breath. “Because this is not something I take lightly.”
Her brows drew together. “I am your wife.”
“I know.”
“Then I do not understand.”
He hesitated, clearly choosing his words with care. “There are… expectations tied to a wedding night.”
“Yes,” she said, voice steady despite the heat in her cheeks. “That is precisely what I wished to ask you about.”
His gaze sharpened. “You wished to ask me?”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
