Diana drew a slow breath.
“Well,” she said gently, glancing toward the wide steps of the house. “I should say goodnight. It has been a long evening. And a very successful one.”
Alexander inclined his head slightly. “I am glad you think so.”
“I do.”
Neither of them moved, something unsaid lingering in the air. Then Diana turned toward the house.
She had barely taken a step across the gravel when his hand closed around her wrist. “Do not say goodnight yet.”
The simple command went through her with such immediate force that she nearly stumbled.
She turned slowly and, for a heartbeat, she could not speak.
His hand was firm but not harsh, his thumb resting lightly against the inside of her wrist where her pulse had already begun to leap beneath his touch. The warmth of his skin seemed all the more shocking for the coolness of the night.
Alexander’s eyes held hers with a quiet intensity that made her breath catch.
“What for?” she asked at last, her voice softer than she intended.
Alexander’s mouth curved in that faint, private way it did when something pleased him more deeply than he wished to show the world. “I have a surprise for you.”
The answer only sharpened her awareness.A surprise.
Diana ought, perhaps, to have refused him. It was late. They had only just returned from an evening that had left her nerves strangely bright and her heart disconcertingly full. Instead, she stood there, her hand still in his, impatience growing inside her.
“What sort of surprise?” she asked.
“Will you come and see?” he smirked, and she heard the amusement in his voice.
Diana looked at Alexander and knew, with a clarity that was both thrilling and deeply alarming, that she wanted to say yes before she had even decided to.
He was watching her too closely not to know it, and that realization sent a flush through her.
“You are becoming very bold, Your Grace,” she murmured.
“Only with you.”
Something in her chest gave a soft, helpless flutter. She hated how easily he could do that now, how a few words in his low voice could reach through all the sensible layers she had built over the past year and touch something raw and unguarded beneath them.
Diana lifted her chin, aware that her pulse was still racing beneath his fingers.
“Well?” she said, because she could not bear another second of that look without either fleeing or saying something reckless. “Must I guess where you are taking me?”
He released her then, though not before his thumb gave the smallest passing stroke across the inside of her wrist, so fleeting she might have believed she imagined it if the sensation had not gone straight through her.
“No,” he said. “Though I confess I would enjoy watching you try.”
He offered her his arm, and she took it. And together, instead of mounting the front steps toward the house, they turned toward the gardens.
The path was silvered by moonlight and edged with lanterns, their soft glow guiding the way through trimmed hedges, sleeping roses, and the dark silhouettes of shrubs bowing in the light breeze. Diana’s skirts brushed against the gravel with every step, and Alexander’s pace remained carefully matched to hers.
When the curved glass outline of the greenhouse came into view, Diana slowed.
It stood luminous against the dark, every pane catching candlelight from within until the whole structure seemed to glow like something half dreamed, half enchanted, a jewel tucked into the sleeping gardens. Warmth already pressed faintly at the glass from the other side. She looked at Alexander, then back at the greenhouse.
“Is this where your surprise is?”
