He was quiet for a moment. “Because ye are choosing, not being chosen. I have never seen a woman do that before.”
“That is not an answer. That is flattery.”
“It is both.” He looked at her. “Would ye pick me, Duchess?”
“If you promise not to touch me.”
“If that’s what ye want, Duchess.”
She could feel his breath. They were sitting close. She did not remember moving closer. Neither did he, probably. These things just happened. Gravity or stupidity or something in between.
“I don’t know what I want,” she murmured.
She had not meant to say that out loud. The words came out of somewhere deep and honest, and she could not take them back. She had spent three years knowing exactly what she wanted: to get out. Now she was out, and the wanting had not stopped. It had just changed shape. She wanted things she could not name yet, things she was not sure she was allowed to want, things that made her chest tighten when she sat too close to a man in a gazebo while the rain eased.
“That’s all right,” he assured her. “Ye’ve got time. Nobody is rushing ye, least of all me.”
She looked at his hands. They were resting on his knees. Scarred knuckles. Long fingers. Steady. She had spent three years being afraid of a man’s hands. If she were to believe the ton, these hands had killed people. But she was not afraid of them.
She did not know what that said about her.
His hand came up slowly. His fingers reached for her jaw. She felt the heat of them before they touched her, close enough that the fine hairs on her skin stood up.
Her breath caught. Her whole body went still, not from fear, but from want. She did not pull away. She did not move at all. She waited.
He stopped an inch from her skin. His thumb hovered over the corner of her mouth. She could feel the warmth of it. Her lips parted, and she hated herself for it.
He pulled his hand back. Sat away from her. His jaw was tight. His fist closed on his knee.
She saw what it cost him. It had cost her, too. The place where his fingers almost touched her face burned like a brand.
“We should go back,” he said, voice rough. “The rain’s stopped.”
“Has it?”
It had. The garden was dripping, and the pale sky was peeking through the hedges.
They stood up, but did not look at each other.
She took off his coat. It was warm from her body now and smelled like her, which she did not think about, and he hopefully would not think about. She held it out. He took it. Their fingers did not touch.
“Thank you,” she said. “For the coat. And for the riddles. And for turning around without being asked.”
He looked at her. “You don’t need to thank a man for basic decency.”
“You would be surprised how rarely I have encountered it.”
Something crossed his face at that. Not pity. She would have hated pity. It was something harder. Anger, maybe, directed at a man who was already dead and could not be punished further.
He put on his coat. She wondered if it was still warm from her body. If he could smell the lavender. He did not say anything. His face gave nothing away.
“Anytime, Duchess,” he said.
“I did not say there would be a next time.”
“You didn’t say there wouldn’t.”
“You are very confident for a man who let me win a riddle about a map.”
