Her handsome husband-to-be only had eyes for her. Even when Edmund took her arm for a Scottish reel, Phineas did not dance with anyone else but stood on the side and watched her attentively.
The music. The hum of laughter, chat, greetings, and she need not speak herself. She hadn’t known how starved she was to be around people.This is why people go to dinners and balls. To be surrounded by humanity and feel a part of it.
And the dancing. All night.
She and Phineas stole out to the veranda between dances and even during the midnight supper. She didn’t want to eat. She was full on dancing.
The last time they went out onto the veranda, the sky was beginning to turn gray. The breakfast would be served soon. She thought she could see the outlines of some of Lady Huxley’s famed rose bushes in the garden. They passed a couple who were kissing against the balustrade, all caution tossed away.
She pulled on Phineas’ arm and took him behind a column. She put her back against it and ever-so slightly bent her knees and slid down a few inches.
“Can I kiss you, Caro? Do you want kissing?” His voice was quiet after the clamor of the ballroom. He took off his gloves and stroked her lips with his thumb.
“Please.”Pleathe.
He gave her a kiss. A kiss that was everything. It was a fuck and it was making love and it was tenderness and it was heat and it was longing and it was understanding.
He understood her. She had been wrong about him. He did understand her, even to the point of knowing her secret girlhood dreams.
He had created this beautiful evening for her. Just for her. He had cocked a snook at propriety. For her.
And now he was kissing her, his mouth taking hers, his tongue sweeping into her with a taste of urgency, but his lips so soft. He held her face so she could not move and she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here, her cheeks in his clasp, her mouth on his, forever.
When he broke the kiss, he kept holding her face, and he gazed at her and spoke in a hoarse voice. “I’m so happy our wedding is tomorrow.”
Yes, tomorrow was now today. And the day after that, they would be married.
“I am, t-too, Phineas.”Phineath.
“Oh, Caro. Are you really happy? Because to hear you say that makes me even happier than the prospect of the wedding.”
She realized how little reassurance she had given him.
“I’m happy to m-marry you.”
He blinked and stepped away. “I better get you back into the ballroom or I’ll be tempted to have our wedding night here against this stone pillar. You have taught me the meaning of temptation, lovely girl, and I have found it very difficult to grapple with.”
“M-m-may I tempt you t-tomorrow?”
He grinned. “Yes, darling. I’m counting on it. Although it won’t really be temptation, will it? We’ll have been legitimized in a church, and I intend to be entirely unreserved and whole-hearted when I next find myself in a bed with you.”
He offered her his arm and they went back inside the ballroom. She asked her brother if they could go home now and miss the breakfast, and Edmund nodded.
Caroline said good-bye to Phineas. The next time she would see him would be at an altar where they would pledge themselves to each other.
Forever.
As Edmund dozed in the carriage seat across from her, she felt full of wonder that she had come to London to find a wife for her brother, and instead, she had found a husband of her own.
And despite her misgivings, she thought she might have a chance at knowing happiness.
If I’m careful.
Twenty-Three
Caroline slept all morning but had an unexpected caller in the afternoon. She went downstairs and found her daily bouquet from Phineas on the table in the hall, already arranged in a vase. She went into the drawing room.
“Amanda?”
