“Consistently,” she countered. “Reliably. Every time something real happens, you–”
“I know,” he said. “I know I do.”
“Then why–”
“Because…” His jaw tightened slightly. “Because I have spent years being very certain about what I would not allow myself, and then you came, and I have been significantly less certain about most of it since approximately the second morning of our marriage.”
She looked at him, unable to breathe.
He was close enough now that she could feel the warmth of him despite the cool air, could see the slight bob of his throat, and she thought of every evening in the nursery and every moment in every room and the waltz and the garden.
“And yet you are staying,” he said softly. For her ears only.
I am.
He lifted his free hand and touched her face—the back of his fingers, just once, along her cheekbone, the most careful thing she had ever felt—and she closed her eyes for a moment at thewarmth of it. When she opened them, he was looking at her like something he had not expected to be given and did not know how to put down.
He leaned in slowly. Not urgently, but slowly. Giving her every opportunity to back away. His eyes stayed on hers until they couldn’t, until he was close enough that she could feel his breath and his forehead nearly touched hers, and his hand on her waist had drawn her in by degrees she had not tracked until she was simply pressed against him in a dark garden, with the music faint through the glass and the lantern light warm behind them.
She closed the last inch herself.
His lips met hers, and it was not what she had imagined, not the neat romantic architecture of novels, not the practiced perfection of a scene. It was warm and real. His hand cupped her jaw and tilted her head gently, and she felt a thrill rush to the base of her spine.
She felt it everywhere. In her chest, along her spine, in the way her fingers curled into his coat without her noticing. She kissed him back with everything she had not been saying for weeks.
His other hand pressed against her waist, drawing her closer, and she felt his breath shudder against her mouth.
This is what real feels like.
When they pulled apart, it was slow, neither of them rushing it, the way one moved back from something they intended to remember.
He rested his forehead against hers. Neither of them spoke.
The music played on behind the glass, the garden was dark and cool, and the lantern burned steadily. She could feel his heartbeat where her hand had found his chest without her deciding to put it there, and it was not steady. She found that more reassuring than anything he could have said.
“Cecily,” he rasped.
“Don’t,” she said gently. “Not yet.”
A pause.
“All right,” he sighed.
They stood there in the garden for a little longer, in the dark and the quiet, neither of them saying anything, and it was enough.
CHAPTER 24
Cecily gradually became aware of the fact that she woke smiling. The shine of the morning light through the curtains, the warmth of the covers, and underneath it all, immediate and complete, the memory of a garden and a lantern and his hand on her jaw made her smile.
She pressed her fingers to her lips.
They are just lips, Cecily.
They had always been just lips. There was no reason for her to be lying in her bed at—she turned to look at the clock—half past eight in the morning, with her fingers on her mouth like the heroine of one of Letitia’s novels.
She was doing it anyway.
She stared at the ceiling and let herself have it just for a moment, just the private, unaudited version of it. She let herself think ofthe warmth of him, the slow certainty of the lean, the way he had spoken in a voice that was for her and no one else, and the kiss itself, which had been nothing like she had imagined and considerably more than she had prepared for.
