“Of course,” he said, and left it there, which was one of the things she genuinely liked about him.
They danced in silence for a moment. The music was good and the floor was not too crowded and it was all perfectly, completely pleasant.
She felt Harper’s eyes on her back. He seemed to be watching her from across the room as though she was the only thing that mattered.
Of course, it made everything a little harder to breathe for her.
“There is something I would like to speak with you about,” he said. “Before I speak with His Grace.” He said it carefully, with the gravity of a man who had prepared what he was going to sayand was now saying it. “I have given it a great deal of thought, and I believe we suit each other very well, and I would like…..”
She looked at him and thought about what her mother had said on the way home from the park. A life without love is always slightly cold.
“Mr. Talbot,” she said.
She looked at him. At his kind face and his steady eyes and the genuine warmth in them, and she thought that he deserved someone who felt the other thing when they looked at him, and that she was not that person, and that she had been telling herself she could be for long enough.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that perhaps we should finish the dance first.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“Of course,” he said, and smiled, and they finished the dance. It was the longest two minutes she could remember.
When the music stopped she curtsied “Will you excuse me for just a moment?”
Without even waiting for an answer, she walked toward the door that led to the terrace.
The terrace was empty, and it gave her a moment to collect her thoughts.
She had arranged a ball and invited a good man and she had put on the green dress that fit exactly, only to come downstairs and stand by the window. She felt nothing in particular, and it was supposed to be a moment of pure bliss for her.
Elias Talbot was inside waiting to finish a sentence she did not want to hear.
Could she live a life, always cold? Never full of love?
CHAPTER 25
“Temperance?”
At first, the name did not register to her. It was as though she was having an out-of-body experience. She leaned her elbows against the cold marble of the balcony, and let the cool air hit her face until she calmed down enough to turn around to greet the person who had followed her.
One would expect Albina, or even Elias to have followed her out.
“You left suddenly,” Harper said to her, worry flashing in her eyes. “Did he say something to upset you?”
“Were you keeping an eye on me this entire time, Your Grace?” she replied. “I would think that you would busy yourself with other, more important things. Rather than observing me.”
He took a few steps towards her, now only a few steps away from her.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“I just needed some air,” she sighed. That was the honest truth of it. “I don’t know why… or what even came over me, but he said… I suppose there was something that he wished to discuss with me, and I suddenly felt as though I was suffocating.”
“Do you wish for me to speak with him?” the concern returned in his voice, and she softened at the gesture.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” she smiled, though it was tinted with melancholy.
“That does not change the fact that I do,” he said and then quickly added, “because you are under my care and..”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear many times,” she replied, “I am a responsibility for you, and that is the root of any concern you might show me.”
