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“Aye, there’s better,” John murmured, settling her more comfortably in his arms. The side of his jaw brushed her temple, and the texture of shaven bristle sent a shot of heat to the pit of her stomach. “When morning wakes,” he continued, “all this will seem a trifle to you.”

But Reina didn’t budge. Not when they seemed to have found a moment in which they could talk to each other with full honesty. “If I weren’t me,” she began unsteadily, “and you weren’t you, would you—”

“No,” John interrupted gruffly.

She pulled back enough to look up into his shadowed face. “You don’t know what I was going to ask.”

“I do know, and the answer would give no ease to either of us.”

“But I need to know if—”

“You’re too fine for me, cariad. You, with your high notions and your kind nature . . .” He shook his head. “God help me if I ever caused you harm.”

“You could never hurt me,” she protested.

Now he sounded bitterly amused. “What do you know of it? You have no idea of the things I’ve seen and done.”

“I don’t know who you were in the past, but I know who you are now.”

No response, only grim silence.

How odd she felt, too cold without and too hot within, her body a hollow vessel on the verge of shattering from the sharp difference in temperature.

Slowly she lowered her head until it rested on his shoulder again. Her voice came out raw and strained. “I travel between different worlds, and in each one, I’m always too much or not enough of something. I go to meetings and lectures where I’m the only woman. I attend lunches with ladies who come from a world of finishing schools and country houses and seaside holidays. I’m too English for Spanish people, and too Spanish for the English—and I’m a bastard, which no one likes. I don’t fit into any social class, but my money guarantees me no end of invitations to places I don’t belong. Wherever I go, there are pieces of me I have to leave somewhere else. Even with June, who understands me better than anyone, I can’t be fully myself. But with you . . . all the pieces are there. And I’ve never known that with anyone before.” She lifted her head and swallowed hard, summoning all her courage to ask, “Please tell me . . . is the feeling one-sided?”

She couldn’t see his face. She could only hear his breath, controlled but fraying. He was slow to answer, which wasn’t a good sign.

Wishing she could collapse into a little pile of dust and blow away, she closed her eyes. “If so,” she said, trying to sound composed, “that’s quite all right. I just—”

But his arms tightened around her and the words were interrupted by hot, insistent pressure: a kiss that resembled nothing she’d ever felt or imagined. Not a social gesture, the sort of physical punctuation used for greetings and goodbyes . . . not the hasty lip-smack stolen behind a potted plant. There was nothing to measure this kiss by.

Warm masculine fingers shaped against the side of her face. Sounds drifted down from the gathering . . . soft bursts of laughter and conversation . . . clinks of glass, silver, majolica. It was impossible that the tertulia should be going on only a few steps above them, while this man was consuming her mouth as if it were a delicacy to be savored, like candied fruit.

She felt him taste her with the tip of his tongue, a peculiar silky touch that made her squirm in surprise. His thumb stroked the side of her jaw, coaxing the tense muscles to loosen, while his mouth eased over hers at a new, more intimate angle. She hadn’t known a kiss could be like this, slow and searching, the heat of it sinking into her. Her balance went off, and she gripped the lapels of his coat to steady herself. She wasn’t breathing at all well. Neither was he.

His lips left hers and wandered down to the thin, tender skin of her throat until he found a frantic pulse. She arched and twisted against him until he anchored her firmly against his body, and she gasped as she felt how hard he was, everywhere. His mouth returned to hers with a sweet hungering nuzzle.

Every time she thought the kiss would end, it opened into another one, and another, while he took deeper and deeper tastes of her. She went weak against him, heart pounding. She wanted him beyond caution or consequence, wanted things she had no words for.

A creak from the upper landing warned them of someone’s approach. John’s head lifted, and he let out a quiet curse. After swiftly disentangling Reina’s arms from around his neck, he guided her down the stairs before they were seen. She couldn’t think, could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Her nerves shrilled in protest at the loss of sensation.

She waited near the door while John fetched their coats. All her senses felt abraded and sensitive. The air was cold on the shop level, the windows frosted white. She was dimly aware of people descending after them, their lively conversation and laughter making her flinch.

They left the shop and went out into an icy shock of night air that stung her lips. Moving like an automaton, she let John guide her to the carriage, where Maddock’s shadowy form loomed from up in the box seat, and the horses moved restively in place. John helped her inside, tucked a lap blanket around her, and retreated from the vehicle without comment.

Reina started a little at the decisive click of the carriage door closing. The carriage suspension spring compressed slightly as John climbed up to the back perch. They began to head home. She rubbed her bare arms and stared out the window, a troubled Cenicienta in her solitary pumpkin.

She had spent most of the evening in John Pembroke’s company, and even though the safe distance between them had just been reestablished, it wasn’t the same.

Now the empty space beside her seemed to belong to him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Love Letter

What’s all this?” Mad asked, roaming around the kitchen to inspect plates of food, lifting silver domes here and there to look beneath.