Page 59 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Faintly, distantly, as if her mind had gone wandering off a thousand miles away, she said, “I think I might have died.”

Elliot swiped one hand across his mouth in a vain effort to quell the grin that wanted to spread across his face. Probably she hadn’t intended it as flattery, per se, but that was how he intended to take it, nonetheless. His lips twitched as he climbed to his feet once more. “Can you stand?” he asked as he reached for her hand.

“Must I?” The sullen question was accompanied by the slash of her finely-arched brows in her otherwise serene face. She gave a vague, lazy wave with her free hand, like she might bat away an annoying insect that had shown the poor grace to disturb her peace.

“You must, I’m afraid. We will be missed eventually.” Elliot clasped her fingers in his, though hers remained pliant and limp. “There are only so many sets left, you’ll recall. And you promised one to me.” A strong tug, and she came sailing out of her seat, wobbling precariously upon legs that didn’t want to support her. He anchored her with an arm about her waist, helping her to find her stability once more. “All right, there?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.” Still there was an overwhelmed inflection to her voice. Her fingers, perched lightly upon his shoulders, tightened. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “How long has it been?”

Probably not so long as she imagined, but then he suspected that the time—and every other thought that she had once held in her head—had gotten away from her. “There is still time to collect yourself,” he said.

Kate’s eyes widened in alarm. “Collect myself? Do I look so wretched as all that?”

“No! God, no.” She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful to him, but especially now, with her cheeks still flushed and that glow of satisfaction still clinging to her face. With her lips slightly swollen, her eyes warm and soft with that lingering glaze of pleasure. “Your skirt is a little wrinkled, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the crush.” But she did not have the cool, pristine look with which she had arrived.

“A few moments more,” he said soothingly, as he slid his hand down her spine. He relished the sigh of relief that she gave in response, the way she tucked her head against his shoulder as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. It was so easy, so satisfying to turn his head and brush his lips against her hair. A sense of peace washed over him, and he breathed out a sigh of contentment. And he thought—she had to feel it, too, at least a little. That gentle, absent rub of her cheek against his shoulder, the way she leaned into him with utter trust. “Kate,” he said softly against her ear. “We have to talk about this.”

Her fingers curled into his shoulders, nails prickling even through the wool of his coat. “Now?”

God, no. There simply wasn’t time. “Soon,” he said. Very soon. There was a conversation long overdue between them. He could not go on hiding his heart from her any longer. But now was certainly not an opportune moment for it; not when the time they had left could be measured in mere minutes, not when there was still the possibility of discovery that would remove all choice from her hands. “I’ll exit first, as no one is likely to take much note of me. You’ll give it a count of one hundred, and then come out yourself.”

“Why not me first?” she asked, her voice small, uncertain, anxious.

“Because you’re not meant to go anywhere other than the retiring room unescorted. If you were to be caught leaving library, and I happened to be discovered in here with you”—a light chuckle as he stroked the nape of her neck—“I’d have to marry you.”

And then, rapidly, everything went to hell.

Chapter Twenty Three

Somehow, Kate forced enough strength into her lax arms to shove herself away from Elliot. She staggered backward on wobbly legs, managing to dodge the hand he stretched out to steady her by an inch, perhaps less. Her head swam, dizziness assailing her as she felt the blood drain from her face.

He could not have wounded her more if he had had a sword at hand to run her through. And he didn’t even know it.

“Katie,” he said, his brow furrowed in concern as his fingers curled around empty air. “What is wrong?”

Kate breathed in wretched little catches that tore at the inside of her throat. The beginnings of a sob collected in her chest, held there only by the hard swallow that forced it back down toward her stomach. But it would come up again. She couldn’t keep it down there forever. “Don’t—don’t joke about such things,” she said, fisting her clammy palms in her skirts. Her gloves—where were her gloves? In her reticule. She’d left it atop the window sill.

Elliot let his arm drop back to his side, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I didn’t mean that…how it might have sounded.”

That he would have to marry her, he meant to say. Obligation—and nothing else. That sob was forcing its way right back up her throat. Kate gritted her teeth against it, turned her back upon him to snatch up her reticule. “Don’t,” she said, and even she could hear the devastation which had bled into her voice. She blinked furiously against the tears that pressed against the back of her eyes as she tugged open the drawstrings of her reticule and yanked her gloves back onto her hands. “Just don’t.” Her heart was breaking, and he didn’t even know it.

His warm hand fell upon her shoulder. “Katie. Please.” His voice was low, cajoling. The sort of voice he might’ve used once to sweet-talk his way out of trouble. To soothe hurt feelings, smooth ruffled feathers.

This wasn’t a hurt he could wave away with a sweet voice and a cheeky grin. With the flash of that dimple in his cheek. With that blithe laugh, that abashed shrug. With all of those things she had loved about him for so damned long. Almost the whole of her life. She simply hadn’t known it—hadn’t recognized it—until now. How strange and tragic, to find that she had a heart capable of this sort of love just in time for it to be broken.

Kate wrenched herself away, finding her footing once more as she headed for the library doors.

“Katie.” There was a queer insistence in the hiss he’d made of her name. The sound of his footsteps followed along behind her, hot upon her heels. “You can’t go out there just yet. Please just—please just stay.”

Not for even one more moment. There was only so much humiliation a woman could be expected to stomach for one evening, and already there was a seething mass of wretched sounds burning within her lungs.

As she had known they would, the sound of his footsteps faded some distance from the door. She had only had to reach it, after all, for he would not pursue her further than that.

He couldn’t. Not without the risk of being obligated to marry her.

But she would not have long thereafter. A count of one hundred, he’d said.

She let the door close silently in her wake as she stepped out into the hallway which was, blessedly, empty. A new set had begun in the ballroom, and the sound from the retiring room had noticeably diminished.