“Aren’t you supposed to be dancing?” Fallen leaves crunched beneath Sterling’s boots as he approached and although he didn’t touch her, didn’t lay so much as a single finger upon her body, she tensed as if he had for his merepresence–his scent, the cadence of his breathing, the burning pressure of his stare–immediately brought her back to the library and the passionate kiss they’d shared.
A kiss that he’d called a mistake before he had all but run out of the room. Her last glimpse of him before she’d left the manor. And while she’d be lying to herself if she said that she hadn’t dreamed of seeing him again, she certainly hadn’t dreamed of it happening likethis. With her dangling helplessly off a branch while her legs kicked feebly in the breeze and Sterling quite literally laughed behind her back.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
A ridiculous command, really.
A piece of her had been falling for him ever since their first kiss.
“I don’t like to dance,” she replied tartly. Ignoring the growing ache in her arms, she struggled to maintain her grip as the only thing worse than being caught hanging in midair was tumbling onto her rump. At least if she didn’t let go she could retain a shred of her dignity. Although admittedly it, and she, was on rather precarious footing.
“No, I can see swinging about like a monkey is far more preferable than a waltz.” Sterling paused, and in the long shadow he cast in front of him she saw his head cant to the side. “Whatareyou doing up there, by the by?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not the least little bit.”
“Sir Reginald.” Her arms werereallystarting to hurt now. Was the pain worth saving herself the humiliation of falling at the Duke of Hanover’s feet?
Yes.
Yes it was.
“Who?” he said blankly.
“My pet squirrel!” she cried.
“Ah, the rat.”
Were such a thing possible, steam would have whistled from Rosemary’s ears. Her legs kicked as she tried to twist her body to see Sterling’s face, but he remained elusively removed from her line of sight. There but not there; his existence proven only by the surge of annoyance that filled her breast…and the dampness between her thighs. “We’ve been over this more than once. Sir Reginald isnota rat.”
“Hmmm. I suppose you may be right, as last I checked rats don’t climb trees.”
“Iamright. Furthermore–ahh!” Before Rosemary could jump into another lecture illuminating the various differences between the Rodentia families, her left hand–numb from the point of her elbow to the tips of her fingers–abruptly slid off the rough bark. She made a desperate attempt to save herself with her right, but as that wrist had all the strength of a dull potato, it was a failed effort to say the least. With an embarrassing screech, she fell back…straight into Sterling’s waiting arms.
They closed around her like steel. Strong, immovable bands that pressed her spine flush against his chest and left her feet suspended several inches above the ground. She felt the steady thud of his heartbeat. She felt the comforting weight of his chin on the top of her head. She felt the gradual ebb and flow of his chest as it rose with each breath that he took. But most of all…most of all she feltsafe. In a way that she hadn’t in a very long time.
It was an odd sensation, as Rosemary had never really thought of herself asunsafe. Aside from a few snaps with a wooden cane now and again, her grandmother had never beaten her. She was in no danger of suffering homelessness, or starvation, or being forced to do something that would test her morals in order to survive.
But like a bird that had been displaced during a storm and was made to grow up in a tree that wasn’t its own, she never felt…she never felt like she fullybelongedwhere the wind had planted her. Until she let go of a branch and landed on a duke.
Sterling…Sterling was her tree.
And wasn’t that a miraculously terrifying thing to discover?
“Are you all right?” he asked gruffly.
“Y-Yes,” Rosemary said, even though she wasn’t. Not at all. How could she be? How could she be all right when she’d just come to the conclusion that she was in love? Inlove. With quite possibly the worst man she could have ever fallen in lovewith. Yet here she was, wrapped in his arms like some sort of fairytale princess. Except in this story, the heroine was a book-addicted wallflower and the hero…well, he was as much a hero as she was a princess.
Which was to say, not at all.
He lowered her slowly onto the grass and the leaves. Her toes touched first, then the balls of her feet, and finally her heels. When she was standing of her own volition he didn’t release her, as she might expect he would, but instead grasped her shoulders and turned her towards him, leaving her with nowhere to look but up. A gasp wrenched itself from her lips.
“You…you shaved.” Without thinking about what she was doing, her hand rose between them and she touched the edge of his jaw. It was hard, but also somehow soft; the thick scruff of stubble he’d sported at Hawkridge Manor nowhere to be seen. The difference was startling, even though she was sure she must have witnessed him clean shaven before. At a ball they’d both attended, or a play they’d both watched. But she hadn’t paid him any mind then, and she was positive he hadn’t noticed her.
Certainly not like he was noticing her tonight.
He laid his hand upon hers, and his muscles flexed and rippled as his mouth bent in a wry smile that made her heart skip a beat. “My valet refused to let me out in public without taking a razor to my face first. What do you think?”
