“Nothing is the matter. I am watching the opera.”
“You are watching the back of the seat in front of you. The opera is happening on the stage.”
She turned her head to deliver a retort and found his face closer than she expected. In the dim light, his amber eyes held flecks of gold, and the shadows carved the angles of his jaw into something unfairly compelling. She forgot what she had been about to say.
She turned back to the stage.
His hand moved.
It was so subtle that if she had not been attuned to every particle of his existence, she would have missed it. His fingers left the armrest and settled against her thigh, just above her knee. The touch was light, barely a pressure through the layers of her gown, and his hand moved in a slow, deliberate stroke alongthe outside of her leg. Soothing. As though he were gentling something wild.
Heat flooded her skin. Her breath caught.
“My family is right there,” she whispered.
His hand stilled. Then it withdrew, returning to the armrest with the same unhurried ease.
She did not look at him, but she could feel the smirk.
The absence of his touch was worse than the touch itself. Her leg resumed its jiggling. Her skin burned where his fingers had been, and as the music swelled into the second act, Lily sat rigid in her chair, replaying the slow stroke of his hand along her thigh until she thought she might scream.
She needed air. She needed distance. She needed to be anywhere in London that was not six inches from the Duke of Thornwaite in a dark theater.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to her mother. “I need a moment.”
Lady Brimsey glanced at her. “Are you unwell?”
“Just warm. I will return shortly.”
She slipped out of the box and through the upper gallery to a narrow balcony overlooking the street. The night air hit her flushed skin, and she gripped the iron railing and breathed.
What was wrong with her?
She pressed her forehead against the cool metal and closed her eyes. She was Lily Readthorpe. She read books. She corrected gentlemen when she could. She did not dissolve because a man touched her leg in a darkened box. She did not lose her composure because a rake with sandalwood cologne leaned too close and whispered in her ear.
She straightened and smoothed her gown.
She would compose herself. She would return to the box. She would sit beside him for the rest of the evening and feel nothing.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 9
“Three minutes,” Hugo whispered to himself.
He counted them against the rhythm of the orchestra below, each measure a precise increment of time designed to let her believe she had escaped.
Three minutes was long enough for composure to reassemble itself, and short enough that no one in the box would question a second absence.
He had not planned to touch her. The jiggling of her knee had been distracting, certainly, but he had endured far greater distractions without resorting to placing his hand on a woman’s thigh in a theater full of London’s most dedicated gossips.
The touch had been instinct. A response so immediate that by the time his rational mind caught up with his fingers, they were already stroking the warm curve of her leg through silk, and thesharp catch of her breath had sent a bolt of heat through his chest that he was still trying to extinguish.
He rose from his chair.
“If you will excuse me.” He addressed this to the back of Lord Brimsey’s head. “Lord Calverton caught my eye in the corridor earlier. I should pay my respects.”
Lord Brimsey nodded without turning. Lady Brimsey was absorbed in the performance. Lady Oldbarrow glanced at him with the penetrating assessment of a woman who trusted no one and was usually justified in that position, but she said nothing.
