He stopped. Stared at her. "What?"
"Yes." She was trembling…with cold, with emotion, with the enormity of what was happening. "I feel something for you. I have always felt something for you. Since the beginning, Martin. I thought…I thought you saw me only as Edward's sister. I thought you would never…"
"Never what? Never notice you? Never want you?" He laughed…a broken sound, half sob, half joy. "Vanessa, I have noticed nothing but you since the day we met. I have wanted nothing but you. I have spent all this time trying to convince myself that I could live without you, and I have failed. Utterly. Completely. Catastrophically."
"Then why didn't you say something?"
"Because I was afraid." His hands came up to cup her face, his touch gentle despite the intensity in his eyes. "Because I convinced myself I wasn't worthy of you. Because Edward is my best friend, and I thought…"
"Edward wants me to be happy."
"Does he?"
"He told me so….” She had to stop, had to catch her breath. Martin's hands on her face, his eyes burning into hers as it was overwhelming. "He said that if you could make me happy, he would give his blessing."
Something shifted in Martin's expression. The desperation was still there, but beneath it now was hope…fragile, trembling hope.
"And could I?" he asked. "Make you happy?"
"I believe," She said slowly, "that you are the only one who could."
For a moment, neither of them moved. The cold night air wrapped around them, the stars glittered overhead, and the muffled sounds of the ball drifted through the French doors like music from another world. They stood suspended in time, in possibility, in the breathless space between question and answer.
Then Martin kissed her.
Or she kissed him. It didn't matter. His mouth was on hers, hungry and desperate and impossibly tender all at once. His hands slid from her face into her hair, scattering pins, tilting her head back to deepen the kiss. Her own hands fisted in his lapels, pulling him closer, closer, until there was no space between them at all.
He kissed her like a man dying of thirst who had finally found water. Like a man who had been starving for years and had at last been offered sustenance. There was nothing practiced about it, nothing polished…it was raw and urgent and utterly, devastatingly real.
Her back hit the cold stone of the balustrade, and she didn't care. She was aware of nothing but Martin, the heat of his body pressed against hers, the taste of champagne on his lips, the small desperate sounds he made against her mouth. His handswere in her hair, destroying the careful arrangement her maid had laboured over, and she didn't care about that either.
She had waited so long for this. She would have waited longer still.
His mouth left hers to trail along her jaw, down the column of her throat, pressing hot kisses to her skin that made her gasp and clutch at his shoulders. She felt his breath, ragged and uneven, against the hollow of her collarbone. Felt his hands tighten in her hair as though he was holding himself back from something, barely maintaining control.
"Vanessa," he breathed against her skin, her name a prayer and a plea.
She pulled his mouth back to hers, unwilling to let the kiss end, unwilling to return to a world where they were not touching. He made a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and a laugh and kissed her deeper, harder, his tongue sliding against hers in a way that made her entire body feel like it was on fire.
When they finally broke apart, they were both shaking. His forehead rested against hers, their breath mingling in the cold air. She could feel the rapid beating of his heart through the layers of clothing between them, could feel the fine tremor in his hands as they cradled her face.
"That was…" she gasped.
“It is a debt of affection significantly past its season.”
She laughed, a breathless, giddy sound that she barely recognised as her own. "I was going to say 'worth the wait.'"
"That too." He pressed his forehead to hers, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "My darling, Vanessa. I have wanted to do that for so long. Every ball, every dinner party, every time I saw you across a crowded room, I have wanted to cross the distance between us and take you in my arms and never let go."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because I'm a foolish man. We've established this." He pulled back slightly, his hands still tangled in her ruined hair, his eyes dark with desire and something softer beneath it. "There are things I need to tell you. Things that might…"
The letters.The thought cut through her happiness like a blade.He's going to tell me about the letters.
A burst of laughter from inside. Footsteps approaching the terrace doors.
They sprang apart, but the damage was done. Vanessa's hair was half down, pins scattered on the flagstones like fallen stars. Her lips felt swollen, her skin flushed everywhere his mouth had touched. Martin's cravat was utterly destroyed, his hair disheveled, his coat askew, his eyes still dark with the remnants of passion.
