She raised her eyes from the script—granting his silent plea at last. When their gazes locked, the depth of her emerald eyes struck him like a physical blow to the chest.
It was more than mere looking; she saw him, piercing through every carefully constructed layer straight to the raw core of him. The air left his lungs in a near-silent rush.
The world narrowed to that verdant hue—brilliant, all-consuming. The drawing room, the guests, the very play they rehearsed all dissolved into irrelevance. There was only Kitty, and the devastating certainty that she meant every word she’d spoken.
It was not a rehearsal anymore. It was a confession. And Norman, standing before her, knew he was lost.
He answered with something raw in his voice. “Let me choose, for as I am, I live upon the rack.”
Kitty’s eyes searched his.
“Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess, what treason there is mingled with your love.” She looked at him, her gaze burning. She was no longer reading from the script. She was speaking. The words were now hers.
“None but that ugly treason of mistrust,” he said, and it was not Bassanio speaking now. “Which makes me fear the enjoying of my love…”
Her lips parted.
“There may as well be amity and life ‘tween snow and fire,” he went on, barely aware there were people in the room around him, “as treason and…” he paused, taking all of her in. Then he breathed, “…my love.”
Kitty’s voice was soft but firm now. “Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything.”
Norman closed the gap between them by half a step. “Promise me life, and I’ll confess the truth.”
“Well then,” she breathed, the edge of a smile behind the ache in her voice, “confess and live.”
Norman drew in a breath. The moment stretched, delicate and dangerous. He could feel the heat of her skin from where he stood. He could see the slight tremble in her fingers where they clutched the page.
“Confess and love,” he said slowly, reverently, “had been the very sum of my confession. O happy torment, when my torturer doth teach me answers for deliverance. But let me to my fortune and the caskets.”
Silence.
And then?—
Applause.
Not thunderous. But sure. Steady. Enough to break whatever spell had formed between them.
Kitty stepped back, blinking as if waking.
Norman’s heart beat loudly in his chest. Not with nerves. Not from performance. From something far more dangerous.
“It is decided then,” he said, voice carefully level. “Miss McGowan shall portray Portia.”
Kitty could not sleep.
No matter how many times she flipped her pillow over or pulled the sheets tighter or tried to count the dull ticks of the grandfather clock down the corridor, rest would not come. It was as though her mind had latched onto something jagged and refused to let go.
She was angry. Or upset. Or something that hovered between the two like storm clouds gathering just above the sea. Her thoughts, feverish and unruly, turned again and again to Norman.
Norman.
The name alone made her jaw tighten. Infuriating, impossible Norman—with his maddening smiles and his unbearable inconsistency.
Glimpses of the truth clawed at her chest, restless and definitely unwelcome.
She wanted him—God help her, she did—but not like this. Not when he could kiss her breathless one moment and turn to ice the next, leaving her stranded between longing and fury.
Marriage to him wouldn’t be the worst fate. It might even be… intoxicating. But not if it came with these whiplash shifts, this unbearable uncertainty.
