“We are agreed. Although I feel compelled to observe that of the three rules you have laid out, you will be the first to break one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The no-touching rule.” He closed the distance she had just created, and the warmth of him reached her before his words did. “You will break it yourself.”
“That is the most absurd thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“Is it?”
He did not touch her. He did not need to. He simply stood close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his chest, could see the amber flecks in his eyes, could count the pulse beating at the base of his throat.
His voice dropped low and rough, stripped of its usual polish. “Because your breath has quickened, Lady Lily. And you have not stepped back.”
She had not. She was standing exactly where she was, rooted to the carpet, her lungs tight and her skin prickling with something that was not anger, no matter how fiercely she wanted it to be.
He leaned closer. His lips stopped a breath from her ear.
“I will honor every one of your rules.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and it moved through her like a current. “But when you break them, and you will, I want you to remember that I never asked you to.”
He straightened. The smirk settled across his features with the effortless grace of a man sliding on a well-fitted coat. He bowed, turned, and walked out of the parlor without looking back.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Lily stood alone in the center of the room. Her hands trembled at her sides. Her heart hammered against her ribs so hard she could feel it in her throat.
She pressed her palms flat against her stomach and drew a slow, controlled breath.
He was arrogant and presumptuous and entirely too sure of himself, and the heat that still clung to her skin where his breath had touched it meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 4
“You look as though you are walking to the gallows.”
Lily’s fingers tightened on her mother’s arm as they crossed the gravel path toward the Haverford garden party. The lawns stretched green and manicured beneath a clear sky, and the sound of a string quartet drifted from behind the hedgerows.
“I am walking into a garden full of people who read that pamphlet.” Lily kept her voice low. “The gallows might be preferable.”
“Chin up, darling.” Lady Brimsey’s voice carried the brittle brightness of a woman determined to maintain appearances even as the ground crumbled beneath her. “We do not cower in our family.”
They rounded the hedge and entered the party.
The conversations did not stop. That would have been too vulgar for the kind of people who prided themselves on destroying reputations without raising their voices. Instead, the talk shifted.
Eyes slid toward Lily and away. Fans rose to cover mouths that continued moving. A cluster of matrons near the refreshment table exchanged glances that communicated entire paragraphs.
Lady Haverford descended upon them within moments, her smile stretched across her face like wallpaper over a crack.
“Lord Brimsey. Lady Brimsey. How lovely that you could attend.” She clasped Lady Brimsey’s hands with warmth that did not reach her eyes. “And Lady Lily. What a pleasure.”
The pause beforepleasurewas barely perceptible. Lily caught it anyway.
Hugo spotted the Brimseys from across the lawn the moment he arrived.
Lord Brimsey stood near the fountain with the composure of a man enduring an afternoon he would rather spend finding a needle in a haystack. Lady Brimsey clutched a glass of lemonade.
And Lily stood between them in a dress of pale yellow muslin, her shoulders squared, her chin lifted, and her eyes carrying thebrightness of a woman who refused to let a single person in this garden see her flinch.
