Emma barked a laugh, sharp and defensive. “No one ever is. That’s the trouble with expectations.”
“You are braver than you think. And perhaps lonelier.”
Emma looked away, uncomfortable with the accuracy of the statement. “Most people don’t find those qualities commendable.”
“Most people are fools,” Amélie said, with a small, dismissive wave of her hand. “They fear honesty, in themselves and others.” She leaned forward, her tone conspiratorial. “But you are not afraid to speak your mind, Miss Goode. Even when it costs you.”
Emma bristled, embarrassment flaring. “Last night was—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Ill-advised. Especially under our circumstances.”
Amélie’s smile softened. “It was magnificent. You have no idea how dull these dinners can be, how starved I am for true conversation.” Her eyes glinted with mischief. “You have given me much to anticipate.”
The compliment was so unexpected, so sincere, that Emma felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She ducked her head, focusing on the sand between her toes.
“Just like I anticipate stories of your travels. Where have you gone?” she asked, desperate to shift the subject.
“Yes. Paris, Florence, Vienna, St. Petersburg for a time. My late husband preferred the life of the expatriate. He collected houses the way some men collect mistresses. Though he collected those, too.”
Emma tried to imagine the duchesse as a young bride, trailing behind a much older man from city to city. It seemed both impossible and inevitable.
“Did you like it? The traveling?”
Amélie tilted her head, considering. “There is a freedom in being rootless. You can become anyone, or no one at all. But there are days when I long for stillness, for a place where I can leave my windows open and know I will be there to close them at night.” She glanced at Emma, a shadow of sadness passing over her features. “Does that make sense?”
Emma nodded. “It does.”
She meant it. More than she cared to admit.
“You sketch it very well,” Emma said, nodding toward the book.
A genuine smile, bright and breathtaking, transformed Amélie’s face. “Ah, but that is the artist’s eternal failure. One can only ever capture an echo of the real thing.” She picked up the sketchbook from a nearby rock. “Here. My humble echo.”
She ripped a page from the spine and held it out. Emma, drawn by an irresistible curiosity, stepped closer to look. The sketch was charcoal, a swirl of shadow and emerging light, and it was magnificent. It captured not just the image, but the feeling of the morning—the solitude, the power, the immense, quiet hope of the dawn.
“It’s beautiful,” Emma breathed.
For a single, catastrophic moment, the back of Amélie’s knuckles brushed against the back of Emma’s hand.
The world stopped.
It was not a touch. It was a bolt of lightning. A searing, brilliant shock that arced up Emma’s arm, slammed into her heart, and exploded behind her eyes. Her breath hitched in a strangled gasp. The salt air, the sand, the rising sun—it all vanished, replaced by the white-hot awareness of that single point of contact.
Skin against skin.
She recoiled as if she’d touched a hot stove, stumbling back a step, her hand flying to her chest as if to contain a heart that was suddenly trying to batter its way out.
The easy peace of the morning shattered into a thousand glittering shards. A blush, violent and furious, surged up her neck, burning her cheeks. Shame, potent and suffocating, choked the air from her lungs. She could not look at the duchesse. She stared at her own bare feet, at the dark, wet sand, at the grotesque evidence of her own monstrous nature.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the relentless crash of the waves. It stretched for an eternity. When Emma finally forced her eyes upward, Amélie was watching her. The sketchbook was lowered. Her expression was unreadable, her dark eyes holding depths Emma could not fathom.
And then, she smiled.
It was a small thing, a mere curving of her lips. It was not mocking. It was not pitying. It was something far worse. It was knowing. It was a quiet, devastating acknowledgment that said, I see you.
I know.
“I—I should go back,” Emma stammered, the words a clumsy, broken rush. “My brother…the wedding. There are…things. Arrangements.”
She did not wait for a reply. She turned and fled, her bare feet pounding against the wet, packed sand of the shoreline. She snatched her boots and stockings from the driftwood without breaking stride, clutching them to her chest like a shield. She did not look back, but she felt those knowing eyes on her, a physical weight against her shoulders, every step of the way.
