She kissed him back fully and helplessly, and he made a low sound against her mouth. It might have been her name, or it might have been nothing at all, as his other hand settled on her waist and drew her closer still.
Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her throat. Her breath came unsteady when his lips moved against hers, slow and certain, asking nothing and somehow asking everything, and she answered them with a desperation she had not known she was feeling until this exact moment, until his hand tightened slightly on her jaw and she felt herself sway into him.
Emotion rose unexpectedly, sharp and overwhelming. Her eyes stung, and tears gathered at her lashes. She had never imagined a kiss could hold so much longing, so much relief, so much aching tenderness all at once.
There was only this: his mouth on hers, his hand cradling her face like something he had been waiting a very long time to be permitted to hold, and her own heartbeat roaring so loudly in her ears that she could hear nothing else at all.
When he finally drew back, his forehead resting against hers, both of them panting in the cold air, she opened her eyes to find him looking at her as though she were the only fixed point in the entire darkened garden.
“Isadora…” he said roughly.
For several long seconds, she could not say anything at all.
CHAPTER 22
“The left one.”
Reeves looked up from the coat he was holding. “Your Grace?”
“The left. The darker one.” James gestured toward the wardrobe. “The other one makes me look like I’m attending a funeral.”
“You wore the other one to the Ashfields’ dinner, Your Grace. It was very well received.”
“The Ashfields’ dinner was four weeks ago. Tastes change.” He held out his arm for the sleeve. “The left one.”
Reeves produced the left one with the diplomatic silence of a man who had been valet to James Harcliffe for seven years and had learned to identify the moods that were worth arguing with. This, he had apparently determined, was not one of them.
James shrugged into the coat and looked at himself in the mirror.
Better. Considerably better.
The darker coat had always suited him. He had simply not had sufficient reason to care about this before eight o’clock on a Tuesday.
He straightened his cuffs.
He was in a very good mood. This was not, in itself, unusual. He was generally a man of reasonable temperament, capable of good humor when the occasion required. But this was different, the kind that made the morning look more promising than it had any right to.
He began to whistle, and Reeves stopped moving entirely.
James caught that in the mirror.
“What?” he prompted.
“Nothing, Your Grace.”
“You were doing the cravat, and now you are staring.”
“I was merely?—”
“You’re looking at me.”
“I am looking at the cravat, Your Grace.”
“You were looking at me.” James turned from the mirror and regarded his valet with a smirk. “You look as though you’ve witnessed something that requires a moment to process.”
Reeves blinked slowly, and James almost laughed.
“I was simply… You were whistling, Your Grace.”
