Six.
He said nothing, but looked at the middle distance and examined what had just happened in his chest with methodical honesty.
It must be pride that I feel.
It was not pride.
He knew what pride felt like. He had a thorough acquaintance with it. Pride was clean and upright and had a kind of dignity to it. This was not that. This was something considerably less comfortable. Something that had risen at the wordsixand had not left, that was sitting inside him now with the stubborn weight of a feeling that knew its own name even when its owner was reluctant to use it.
Six men,it said.Six men before you. Six men she looked at and considered and ultimately turned away, and you do not like that she looked at them at all, which is–
Jealousy.
He looked at her.
She was watching his face.
“What were they like?” He had no idea why he was persisting.
“Some were kind. One was very handsome and knew it. One talked about his estate the way you’d talk about a business transaction. One–” She paused. “One was actually rather lovely, if I’m being honest. Good conversation, genuine warmth. I almost said yes.”
That landed somewhere uncomfortable.
“What stopped you?”
She was quiet for a beat. “I didn’t feel it,” she said simply. “Whateveritwas supposed to feel like. I had read about it, and I had been told it was real, and I…” She heaved a sigh. “I couldn’t find it with him. And I decided that mattered.”
He was quiet.
“Do you think that was foolish?” There was vulnerability underneath the question.
“No,” he said without hesitation, without the pause of a man considering his answer.
She looked at him.
“I think that it was the only position worth holding,” he added.
He turned her again, and his hand moved slightly down her waist. Not dramatically, not in a way that would have been visible from the edges of the room. Just closer, the smallest renegotiation of distance.
“And I think the men who tried and didn’t manage it were simply unlucky.”
He felt her breath shift. Not saw, butfeltthrough the hand on her waist.
“That,” she said quietly, “is almost a compliment.”
“Almost,” he agreed.
The music moved through its final measures. Around them, the room continued its glittering self-involved business, the ton performing the ton, no one watching them particularly, everyone watching them constantly.
William was aware of it all and irrelevant to it all because she was looking at him. He should put distance between them. He knew how to create distance. He had been creating it with considerable consistency and diminishing success.
He drew her slightly closer.
Just enough. Just once.
Her eyes didn’t leave his until the music ended.
* * *
