“Why?” Her voice stayed soft. “What are you afraid will happen if you speak plainly?”
His jaw worked, but the truth came.
“You will expect more.”
She exhaled. “Elias… I expect nothing beyond what you freely give.”
That landed. She saw it in the way his shoulders shifted, just barely.
He looked down at his hands. “I prefer structure. Rules. They keep my world in order.”
“And do they help?”
“They did,” he said quietly. “Before you.”
Something eased in her. Not triumph—connection.
She reached out and placed her hand on the back of his chair. A gesture of presence.
“I am not here to unravel you,” she said. “Only to meet you where you are.”
His breath caught—the smallest, briefest sound.
“Celine,” he murmured, the word careful, almost reverent.
She smiled—small, sad, sincere. “Let us eat. Before the innkeeper assumes we despise the stew.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—the closest she’d seen to a genuine smile.
They resumed their meal. They ate a little. They talked—lightly, cautiously—of roads and weather and horses and the tenants they’d met.
But beneath it all, the room pulsed with restrained heat.
Not rushed.
Not forced.
Simply… inevitable.
By the time they stepped back into the cold air of the yard, Celine no longer wondered whether their arrangement—those locked doors and the vow of distance—would hold. She wondered only when it would break.
The final two hours of the journey were exquisite torture. They sat side by side, precisely as propriety demanded, yet every shift of the carriage brought them near enough for her sleeve to brush his coat, her skirt to whisper against his boot. Neither spoke of it. Neither acknowledged it. But the air between them felt taut, every jolt of the wheels a threat to whatever fragile restraint they maintained.
At last, unable to bear the silence, he said quietly:
“You’re thinking very loudly.”
She turned her head, one brow lifting. “How can you tell?”
“The way you’re gripping your reticule. You’re going to strangle that poor bag.”
She loosened her grip, laughing slightly. “I’m thinking about the ball.”
“Liar.”
“Fine. I’m thinking about after the ball.”
“Twelve days after?”
