“I do not know,” he admitted, and for the first time, she heard a jagged edge of frustration in his tone. “Every time I reach for it, there is nothing. Only a great void.”
The word hung heavy and cold between them, a ghost at the feast.
“Do you think someone wished you harm?” she asked, her voice trembling despite her best efforts.
“I think,” he said evenly, guiding her through a sweeping turn that made her skirts hiss against his legs, “that judging by the man you describe—the man who valued efficiency over everything—I likely made enough enemies in business to fill this ballroom.”
A flicker of genuine fear slid through her, sharp and cold. “You were strict,” she said quietly, the words slipping out before she could check them. “Hard. But you were not cruel.”
His gaze sharpened, a focus that made her skin prickle.
“Was I cruel to you, Diana?”
The question was low, intense, and too direct. It stripped away the pretense of the dance.
Her throat went dry, the air in the room suddenly too thick to swallow. “No.”
He watched her, unblinking. “Were you afraid of me?”
“No,” she answered immediately. It was the simplest truth she had.
He had been a glacier, yes. Distant and immovable. But he had never been frightening in the way her uncle had been; he had never used his power to belittle her. He had simply… ignored her.
“Then why,” he asked, his voice dropping to a soft, intimate rasp as he drew her flush against him, “are you so nervous now? I can feel your heart trying to beat its way out of your chest.”
The words stole the air from her lungs. The fortress she had built over a year of silence simply vanished.
She wanted to scream the truth at him.
Because you are touching me. Because I cannot breathe when you look at me as if you want to devour me.
Most of all, she was terrified because she realized she didn’t want the old Alexander back. She wanted this man—the one who held her too tight and asked questions that burned.
She tried to find a Duchess’s poise, a cold lie to throw between them, but her body had already defected to his side. Her head fell back, exposing the frantic, thrumming pulse at the hollow ofher throat. She stared at him, her silence a screaming confession of a hunger she could no longer mask.
“I am nervous because of Lady Salford,” she managed, her voice a brittle thread. She clung to his grandmother’s name like a life raft. “If she discovers the truth of your memory?—”
“She won’t,” he cut in.
He shifted his hand, sliding it higher, his fingers spanning the narrowest part of her waist. The closeness was no longer for the crowd; it was a private siege. She could feel the heavy, thundering beat of his heart through her palm, vibrating against her own.
“I know far more effective ways to bring you ease, Diana,” he murmured, his voice dipping into a low, sinful rasp, “than by discussing my grandmother.”
Her pulse exploded.
“Your Grace,” she breathed, the scandalized rebuke dying in her throat as she instinctively leaned into his heat.
“Alexander,” he corrected.
The dance turned. His thigh brushed hers, a slow, heavy friction of wool against silk that sent a jolt of pure fire up her spine.
“You must mind your manners,” she whispered urgently, the room beginning to spin. “People are watching.”
“Let them watch,” he said, and his fingers flexed at her waist, a subtle, dominant pressure that pulled her flush against the hard planes of his chest.
It was just enough to make her painfully aware of the solid length of him, of the way her curves seemed to have been carved specifically to fit his edges.
“You are overplaying your role,” she warned, her breath coming in shallow hitches.
