The sound cleaved him; he felt savage in a way that tightened every muscle in his body.
And the game and the test were this: up to the edge and no further.
And if all went according to hopes and plans, there would never be any further.
But he still could not resist whispering perhaps the wickedest, wickedest thing of all to her. It felt at the moment the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he slid his hands away from her soft breasts. “And yet there’s so much more, Lillias.”
And while she closed her eyes, and breathed in an attempt to congregate her scattered senses, as deftly as he’d undone her laces, he did them back up again.
In silence, collecting themselves once more, they sat.
“And now... we’re going inside to dance,” he said. “Our campaign begins tonight.”
Chapter Seventeen
It felt odd to do something as ordinary—in her life, that was—as waltzing with Mr. Cassidy, given that she’d only been on the roof, on the stage, and in a sitting room at the boarding house by the docks with him.
One of his hands gently held hers; the other rested at her waist.
And on that first rotation around the ballroom they didn’t speak. He danced well. He smiled down at her. More of a speculative tilt of the corner of his mouth, really.
Something about that smile made her feel precisely the way she had when he’d touched her nipples.
She, who never stumbled, nearly stumbled.
The smile grew, and he righted her with a mere flex of his hand.
It seemed an unfair amount of power for one man to possess. To raise blushes—and nipples—with just a smile.
“I ought to have mentioned earlier...” he said offhandedly, “but you look like a Hudson River Valley sunrise in that dress.”
“Thank you. I might need a little more context.”
“Once you see one, you’ll never forget it,” he said. “They steal your breath.”
Which is exactly what that sentence did.
“Oh,” she said finally, on an exhale.
Even his compliments disarmed with their potency.
He noticed. He was smiling, now—for her sake and for the sake of anyone watching in abject fascination, no doubt—but his gaze was rather fixed and was it... puzzled?
Perhaps not precisely. But the faintest of frowns had settled between his eyes. He was looking at her somberly.
Probably similar to the way she was looking at him.
An assessment. A reassessment. They were new to each other. Revealed.
She felt unaccountably shy. A little raw.
But she also understood something: when the shock of engagement was new, when it was settling over her, she’d thought of him as a stranger. The notion seemed outlandish now.
Out of the corners of her eyes, gowns and jewels flashed by like exotic birds.
“Has he kissed you?”
She blinked. She wasn’t coy and didn’t ask, “Who?”
