Down the avenue they ambled, deeper into the park. She hardly felt the chill of the night now, her arm woven through his. So still and quiet, it was. As if the rest of the world had fallen away and only they remained.
And the stray thought wandered into Tilly’s mind that she might not mind so very much inhabiting that world.
A world of just her and Rhys.
Something fluttered from above and caught in her eyelash.
She blinked it away.
When it happened again, she realized it hadn’t come from the trees, but from the sky above.
She tipped her head back and squinted up at the bare-branched canopy and she beheld it—snow.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, pure delight rippling through her. “Would you look at that?”
She released Rhys’s hand and began spinning around slowly, her arms extended, her face turned up to the sky. The snowfall wasn’t heavy and lacked the feel of permanence, fluttering and floating as if it were lighter than air and wouldn’t deign to sully itself by touching earth. Surely, it would be vanished by morning. But now, trifling and feathery, it drifted around them as if it had not a care in the world. So silent…so…
Magical.
“Lord Rhys Osborne?—”
“Rhys,” he corrected.
“Did you know this about yourself?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve got this bit of magic that follows you around.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
He shook his head. “No, Tilly, you’ve got it mixed around. It’s you who has the magic.”
The breath caught in her lungs.
And this time she knew it was the words themselves and the way he spoke them and the look in his eyes as he spoke them that fizzed the champagne bubbles to life inside her.
Those words…
He believed them.
Of her.
“Rhys?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to kiss me?” she asked.
“Would you like to be kissed?” he asked.
“Yes.”
12
Rhys had all the permission he needed.
