“No matter what she’s done or where she’s been?”
“I promised I would ensure that she is returned safely home to her father, who is a good man, a good friend, and ill with worry.”
It wasn’t an answer to her question.
Perhaps he didn’t know.
“What does she look like?”
“Exactly like Queen Elizabeth the First.”
She laughed.
He grinned down at her. “You wound me with your laughter, Lady Lillias. Perhaps it’s her stellar character I’m drawn to.”
Her smile vanished.
“Is it?” And suddenly there was a little knot in her stomach.
Hugh didn’t answer for a time. He watched her face, as if it were a spyglass aimed directly at her heart.
“Lillias... have you ever stepped outside just before a thunderstorm?”
“Yes.”
“So you know how the air is fresh and wild and charged. You can’t wait for the show. Andyou know the storm will clear the air and nurture things and be dazzlingly beautiful, even as it might destroy them, too. But even the destruction could be all to the good. You’re prepared, and eager, for what will happen.”
She stared at him.
“That’syourcharacter, Lillias.”
She was stunned.
For an instant, the air in the ballroom felt exactly as he’d just described. The next sharp breath she took felt just as charged.
So did the next.
It was neither gentle nor particularly flattering, but truthful because he was truthful. A storm was beautiful both in how it was experienced and as a consequence of its character.
For an entire rotation of the dance floor, they neither looked directly at nor spoke to each other. She studied his cravat and the buttons of his waistcoat instead. If she reached over and slowly unbuttoned them, one at a time, she’d reveal golden skin and scars.
“Have you kissed her?” she asked quietly. She’d been dying to ask it and finally succumbed.
“No.”
“Because she’s a saint?” She’d meant it to emerge lightly. It didn’t, quite. Of a certainty, it could not be said that his ability to resist temptation was weak. But in truth, she was seeking an answer to a question she wasn’t certain she knew how to formulate.
“If the perfect moment had arisen, I might have had a go, men being what they are.” He said this matter-of-factly. He paused. “We went for walks,” he said gruffly.
With an odd pang, she wondered what it would be like to merely go for a walk with Hugh. He’d probably cherished those walks.
And then suddenly her heart took up a strange, hard, swift beat when she asked the other question she’d been afraid to ask, because she realized any answer to it would unnerve her. “But it wasn’t like...”
“Nothing is like us, Lillias,” he said shortly.
Particularly that one.
The music ended.
