“I did not charge,” she began.
“You did,” he said. “And you knocked me to the floor, and you were half a second from breaking the candlestick over my head. Which,” he added, with that insufferable lightness returning to his voice. “Suggests that a burglar would have fared considerably worse.”
She wanted to argue with this, but she could not quite bring herself to.
“That is entirely beside the point—”
He stepped forward, halving the distance between them, and suddenly the corridor felt very narrow, and he felt very large, and the cold air she had been shivering in moments ago was nowhere to be found.
“And whatisthe point?” he asked quietly.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
He took another step. Her back met the wall, and his arm came up beside her head, making it abundantly clear that leaving would require a decision she was not yet ready to make.
“What were you doing in this corridor?” she tried again, her voice far less steady than she would have liked.
He said nothing. Just looked at her, his eyes moving over her face with a slow, unhurried attention that made her feel thoroughly seen and thoroughly undone in equal measure.
“Cassian.” His name left her lips before she could stop it, and she watched something shift in his expression at the sound of it.
“Go back to your room,” he said. “And lock your door.”
The silence between them was unbearable. She was acutely, helplessly aware of every point where the air between their bodies had narrowed to almost nothing. Of the thin fabric of her nightgown. Of the fact that his eyes had dropped, just once, just briefly, to her mouth.
“I… You…”
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
“Tell me something, wife,” he murmured, leaning closer, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him against her skin. “If you are so determined to think the worst of me, so certain I am dangerous, why is it that you are not afraid right now?”
She had no answer. Or rather, she had one, and giving it to him was unthinkable.
He held her gaze for one long, charged moment. Then he said, very softly, “A cad, you called me.”
“You… You are,” she managed.
“Yes,” he agreed, pushing off the wall. “And yet, I am a cad you cannot stop thinking about.”
He walked away from her, unhurried, without looking back, and the darkness swallowed him as though he had never been there at all.
Juliana stood against the wall, her pulse loud in her ears, the cold plaster at her back the only solid thing she could account for.
Then she went back to her room.
She did not lock the door.
Chapter 13
“For heaven’s sake, Juliana! Why are you spearing that silk with such menace?” Lady Hawthorne demanded. “It has done nothing to offend you.”
Juliana jolted as if in a trance, pulling her needle upward in a haphazard motion. The needle glinted like a worthy piece of weaponry, piercing the stretched fabric. She tried to avoid her grandmama’s gaze, guessing that the Dowager Baroness was perceptive enough to recognize the flush on her face.
When would she be free of thoughts of the Duke? She could still feel the solid weight of him beneath her, the warmth of his chest rising and falling against her knees, and the way his hands had stayed at her sides, as though he hadchosennot to touch her. That was the worst of it; her body had filed away every detail with meticulous, treacherous precision and showed no inclination whatsoever to forget.
“Oh, this? I am merely ensuring my stitches were tight and secure, Grandmama,” she tried for a light tone. Unfortunately, Juliana knew herself, and her voice sounded too thin to her ears.
“They will certainly be tight, dearie. Tight and crumpled. I cannot believe you had embroidery lessons since you were a child,” her grandmama commented, while she continued her own embroidery with swift and skillful fingers.
