I didn't push. I'd learned enough about her walls to know when to stop.
She tilted her head, studying me. "You know what I love most about the Baroque period?"
"What?"
"Everyone's so dramatic." A dry note entered her voice, something approaching humor. "All those saints with their eyes rolled back, those martyrs with their theatrical wounds. It's like watching a soap opera with better lighting." She paused. "The Catholics really understood that suffering looks best in chiaroscuro."
The laugh escaped before I could stop it.
A real laugh. Genuine. The first one I'd had in weeks—maybe months—and it surprised both of us. Her eyes widened. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, uncertain but pleased.
"I didn't know you could do that," she said quietly.
"Do what?"
"Laugh. Like you mean it."
Something shifted in my chest. A wall coming down that I hadn't even known I was building.
"I expected you to be cruel," she admitted. The words came out hesitant, like she was confessing something shameful. "That's what I prepared for. A cold man. A hard man. Someone I would have to survive."
I held her gaze. Let her see whatever she was looking for.
"I expected you to be empty," I admitted back. "A society wife. A pretty face. Someone I could keep at arm's length and never have to know."
The kitchen fell silent around us. Two people looking at each other in the darkness, seeing something neither had expected to find.
"We were both wrong," she whispered.
"Yes." My voice came out rough. "We were."
She smiled—small, uncertain, but real. The first genuine smile I'd seen from her since she'd entered my house.
I wanted to kiss her.
The urge was overwhelming—to close the distance between us, cup her face in my hands, taste the honey on her lips. To tell her with my mouth what I didn't have words for.
Instead, I picked up my tea. Drank. Gave us both a moment to breathe.
"It's late," I said finally. "You should sleep."
"So should you."
"I will." A lie. But a gentle one.
I walked her back to her room because I wasn't ready for the conversation to end.
That was the truth of it. Not chivalry. Not duty. Just the selfish need to stay in her presence a few minutes longer, to keep breathing the same air as this woman who had surprised me at every turn.
The house was dark around us. Our footsteps were soft on the carpet, moving in an unconscious rhythm—hers slightly quicker, shorter, matching my longer stride without either of us trying. The silence wasn't awkward. It was charged. Full of things neither of us had said yet.
We reached her door.
She stopped. Turned to face me. Her hand rested on the handle, but she didn't open it.
The air between us shifted. Thickened. Became something else entirely.
I should say goodnight. Should retreat to my own room, my own thoughts, my own carefully maintained distance. That was what a smart man would do. A careful man. A man who remembered that she hadn't chosen this, hadn't chosen him.
