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He moved.

Slow at the start, deep, and she met him; her hips rising, her breathing even and deliberate, her hands learning the shape of his back and shoulders in new ways. He kept his forehead against hers and held the pace, reading her: the pressure of her hands when she wanted more, the small sounds she made into the hollow of his throat when he found the right angle.

She was not passive. She was entirely present, pressing back when he set the rhythm, drawing him in when he pulled back, her fingers gripping hard at his shoulder when he shifted his weight and changed the depth. A low sound left her, continuous and broken at the edges.

“Adam,” she breathed, almost urgently, her arm locking around the back of his neck.

He brought his hand between them, between their bodies, and her whole frame went rigid.

“There,” she said, breathless. “Yes. Don’t⁠—”

He did not stop. There was no possible way he could do that now, anyhow.

He felt her build; the way her breathing went ragged and concentrated, the way her hips moved with him without deliberation, all of it hurtling toward the same point. He pressed his lips to her throat and kept going, his own control holding by its edges, her voice shapeless against his ear.

She came with a low, broken sound, her legs locking around him, her whole body closing on itself and then releasing in a long shudder. He felt it from inside her, and he held on for three more strokes before the control gave way entirely. His hips stilled, his face buried in her hair, his breath going out in a long, rough exhale as he followed her over.

The quiet after was absolute.

He had not moved far. He was still half over her, his weight on one elbow, his face against her temple. Her arms were loose around him, her fingers moving slowly across his back in a way that had no destination.

She turned her face and pressed her lips to the hinge of his jaw. “I love you,” she murmured, and he shuddered.

“God. I will never tire of hearing you say that,” he said, moving a strand of hair from across her cheek, away from the mark he could still see in the low light, and left his hand at the side of her face. “In the same way I will never tire of letting you know just how much I love, love, love you, Juliet. You and Eloise are the greatest gifts Lady Fortune has bestowed upon me.”

And Juliet sighed, nestling deeper against him. “I know,” she said, and they soon drifted up into deep sleep in each other’s arms.

Epilogue

FOUR MONTHS LATER

“He changed the chandelier in the east gallery,” Adam said, low enough that the nearest couple kept walking without turning their heads.

Juliet looked up. He was right. The old fixture, with its yellowed crystals and two permanently dark arms, had given way to something new; the light it threw now scattered cleanly.

Clean. Banned.

She mentally corrected her own thinking.

Spread evenly across the plasterwork above. Her father had not done that for economy.

“He also introduced us to Lord and Lady Fennick,” Adam continued, accepting a glass from a passing footman without any hurry at all, “as ‘my daughter and son-in-law.’ No pause before ‘son-in-law.’”

Juliet took her own glass. Around them, the ballroom at Clarkston Hall filled with warm light and conversation; the orchestra had just struck up a reel at the far end of the room, and the assembled guests moved between the refreshment tables and the floor with the self-conscious ease of people very aware they were being watched.

Adam stood at her shoulder, and she was perfectly aware that his attention had not fully left her since they’d come through the entrance hall.

“You noticed that,” she said.

“I notice everything.” His eyes swept the room and came back to her face; they dropped briefly and returned, and she did not pretend it was accidental. “It is useful.”

“It is infuriating,” she said.

“You find it useful. You were about to say both.”

She said nothing. She turned back to the room, and the warmth of him at her shoulder remained.

“Darling.” Lady Worthington arrived at Juliet’s elbow in a drift of gray silk, with the briskness she deployed at every gathering as an opening move. She looked Juliet over with unhurried approval, glanced at Adam, and said, “You’ll do.”