He did.
Of course he did.
“I believe I’ve had quite enough fresh air,” she said too quickly, stepping back just enough to reclaim the space his body had warmed.Her voice held a steadiness her pulse violently contradicted.
Nicholas only nodded, maddeningly composed.“Of course.Shall I see you back inside?”
“No,” she blurted, wincing internally at how shaken she sounded.“I can manage.”
He inclined his head with maddening calm, neither smug nor apologetic.“As you wish.”
She turned, but the motion felt clumsy, rushed, as though the ground beneath her had become unnervingly unreliable.
He remained where he was—silent, shadowed, far too handsome in the moonlight—as she strode back toward the house.
Don’t look back.Do not look back.
She did not look.
But she felt him.Oh, she felt him, his gaze, steady and sure, trailing her with unnerving awareness, as though he knew precisely how rattled she was.As though he knew he had unmoored her.
She slipped through the open doors into a corridor, heat rushing to her cheeks despite the cool air inside.Her breath came quicker than decorum allowed.She pressed a hand to her stomach, willing her wildly disobedient body to calm down.
She was just about to step into the ballroom once again when her mother found her just outside the doors.
“There you are,” the duchess said, frowning.“The carriage is ready.”
Bea nodded, dazed, and let herself be guided toward the foyer like a woman walking through a dream she was not entirely certain she wanted to wake from.
Because as she moved toward the exit, she could still feel Nicholas’s nearness clinging to her skin—warm, intense, knowing.
And the most alarming part of all was that he seemed to understand her—truly understand her—more than anyone ever had.More than her mother.Certainly more than her father.
And that, she thought, as she stepped into the night air once again, was far more dangerous than seduction.
Far more dangerous indeed.
The insideof the coach was quiet, too quiet, her mother humming a tuneless little melody beside her, her father riffling through papers by the faint lamplight as though nothing in the world were amiss.
Bea sat between them, rigid as a pressed leaf, her gloves clenched in her lap so tightly her fingers ached.
She should say something.She should tell them.Tell her father that Nicholas had whispered a promise no gentleman should ever speak to a lady of her standing.That he’d leaned in as though she were a secret he meant to taste.That he’d said it with confidence, dangerous, deliberate confidence.Father would call off their courtship immediately.He would have to.
But another thought quickly followed on the heels of the first.Wouldhe call it off?Or was Nicholas correct?Would Father accuse Bea of lying to escape the courtship she hadn’t wanted to begin with?
It was a sobering thought.But she couldn’t bring herself to be angry about it.
All she could think about was how Nicholas looked at her…and asked her questions…and waited for her answers.As if he truly cared.
Her throat tightened.
She should never speak to Nicholas again.She should despise him.She should have slapped him—should havewantedto slap him at least.
And yet.
The memory of his breath against her jaw still lingered, impossible to shake.The sound of his voice—dark, wicked, and scandalously certain—still echoed through her mind.
She stared out the coach’s window as the moonlit buildings marched past, jaw locked in a futile attempt at composure.
