Very well, then.
Cleo took a step, finding the lip of the stone edging of the folly. She stepped up on it, grabbing a handful of her skirts, and pointed somewhere toward the lake. "Look!"
Instinct made him turn to look, the edge of his sleeve shifting beneath her hesitant glove. He hadn't even noticed she was touching him, until he realized she could not have possibly seen anything on the lake.
Cleo reached up and pressed her lips to his as he turned back, guided by the startled intake of his breath when he realized what she was doing. Too late. Their lips met, and she leaned forward, forcing him to catch her or let her fall on her face.
Her hands met the abrupt wall of his chest. His mouth was still beneath hers, his breath hot and uneven against her own lips. If not for the thundering beat of his heart beneath her palms, she would have thought him particularly unmoved.
He was not unmoved.
Not even close to it.
Good lord, he was tall. He was also quite warm, his gloved hands catching her sleeves, and holding her there. With an unsteady breath, he lowered his head until his forehead rested against hers. "Cleo," he whispered, "what are you doing?"
Tension suffused him, and he slowly drew back.
"I believe it's called kissing, though I've only come across partial fragments of such a thing in my novels, and Mrs. Pendlebury will never give me the more exciting details. She just harrumphs and clears her throat and says, 'Now that's enough of that.' I have to bribe one of the maids into reading those bits to me."
"We're not allowed to kiss," he said.
"It's all right. I didn't see any of your secrets, Bastian." She turned, stepped down off the stone, and gathered her basket. There was a slight sway to her step. After all this time, she'd finally had her first kiss, and it had been all that she'd dreamed of! Her heart was playing some kind of orchestral beat, perhaps opera. She certainly felt like she was soaring, and that had been but a chaste brush of her mouth against his... "Don't think that's going to stop me from learning them, however. I consider myself quite the archaeologist of human nature."
"No, I meant—"
She stopped and turned back toward him. A bad feeling was beginning to grow in her.
We have to keep your visions pure, her father whispered in her head.
"Do not tell me that he forbade... kissing." Her voice shook. Here was freedom, right in front of her, and yet so close to being snatched away. For a moment, she'd begun to hope for things she'd never dared dream about before: marriage, a home of her own, someone who gave a damn... children.
"It was one of the conditions of marriage," Sebastian replied. "This is a marriage of convenience, Miss Sinclair. It's an alliance between my mother and your father to prove that they can trust each other. We have nothing to do with it. That's all it can ever be."
"We shall just see about that." Cleo didn't need to be a diviner to predict that there was a very loud argument in her father's future.
"No, we won't." Sebastian took her arm. It wasn't painful, but it was very firm, and she noticed that he made sure his gloves settled over the silk of her gown. Two layers of fabric between them. "You don't want to cross my mother, and I cannot protect you from her." He let out a harsh breath. "I cannot protect you from me. I shouldn't be here. I'm sorry, Miss Sinclair. I should never have come to see what you were like."
"You can call me Cleo, you know?"
"I don't think that very wise at all." This was the voice she'd recognized earlier in the foyer. A firm, cold voice that had made its mind up and wouldn't be swayed. "Good-bye. I shall see you on the day we marry, and then rarely after that." And then he turned and walked away, his steps deliberately loud.
Cleo faced in his direction, her fists clenched. "I am going to teach you to smile, Bastian. And I am going to make you laugh and steal kisses and... and tell me your secrets. All of them! I will not let my father dictate the rest of my life. I will not let him take everything else away from me." Her hands lifted to the blindfold and swiftly untied it. Silk slithered down her face, but she shut her eyes, almost blinded by the light streaming through her thin eyelids.
That was where she paused. Her heart thundered through her veins. She couldn't hear him anymore. Only her racing heart.
Doubt flooded through her. What if this Sebastian truly didn't want her? He was a stranger, after all, and had declared his intent to maintain a marriage of minimal contact. What if she removed the blindfold and lost her Vision? Her father would not want her then: she would have no value to him, and perhaps then Sebastian's mother would not want them to marry either? His mother might desire this purely for the alliance, but she had to be greedy for the wealth of knowledge Cleo could give her.
There was no sound. She stood alone. Like always.
Cleo slowly tied her blindfold back in place.
The moment she did Vision locked hold of her, stretching her up tight onto her toes and arching her back. She had the vague sensation that she'd grabbed hold of something to stop herself from falling, but then heat seared her veins, and she was lost to the world.
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone again. Cleo found herself on her bruised knees, breathing heavily, her heart racing as fast as the horses at Epcot. Every part of her was warm and flushed, as if she could still feel the imprint of his skin on hers. She'd never been a part of a vision before, always she'd been a silent bystander, trying to interpret what she saw. But that... Cleo swallowed. That vision was very easy to interpret.
It also seemed that Mrs. Pendlebury had been right in all matters.
Well, now... Her mouth curled in a shaky smile. She still wasn't certain she could stand. "Try and run, Bastian," she whispered. "I think it quite inevitable that we meet again."
