Chapter 7
“Do you remember how to waltz, Your Grace, or shall I prepare to be trampled?” Diana did not look at him when she asked it.
She kept her chin lifted, her smile composed for the benefit of the watching ton, even as the first sweeping notes of the waltz unfurled across the ballroom like a silken snare.
The chandeliers blazed overhead, casting gold upon polished floors and eager faces, and she could feel every gaze pivoting toward them as though drawn by gravity.
Alexander’s hand tightened at her waist. “With you in my arms,” he murmured, bending his head so that his breath warmed the curve of her ear, “I suspect everything will return to me.”
Her pulse stuttered. The scent of him filled her lungs, and she hated that her body responded before her mind could marshal its defenses, hated that the mere suggestion of his arms made heat unfurl low and treacherous inside her.
“You are dangerously confident for a man with a fractured memory,” she whispered. Her voice lacked its usual bite, sounding instead like a ragged, breathless plea for him to stop.
Alexander didn’t stop. He moved into her space, a slow, seductive glide that forced her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. “I have excellent instincts,” he replied, his voice dropping to a velvet rasp that hummed against the sensitive skin of her temple. “Especially when it comes to my wife.”
My wife.
He said it with dark, heavy hunger, already tasting the victory.
The orchestra swelled, a sudden, violent surge of violins that signaled the start of the dance.
He moved, and for a terrifying second, Diana forgot the mechanics of her own lungs.
There was no hesitation. No stumble. His body took hers with a terrifying, unhurried grace. It was as if his muscles possessed a memory his mind had discarded, a primal, rhythmic knowledge of how her waist dipped beneath his palm and how her weight shifted when he led her.
Her body, a traitor to its core, answered him instantly.
He did not allow distance. He ignored the polite few inches of air dictated by decorum, pulling her flush against him until the hard planes of his chest crushed the delicate lace of her bodice.
As they spun, the world outside the circle of his arms dissolved into a meaningless smear of gold and white.
“You are dancing too close,” she gasped, the friction of his thighs against her silver skirts sending a liquid, humiliating heat through her belly.
“Am I?” He didn’t look away from her mouth. He tightened his grip, his fingers splaying across her spine, dragging her even closer until she could feel the heavy, thundering beat of his heart against her own. “Or am I simply holding you the way I should have held you from the beginning?”
The scent of him filled her head, dizzying her more than the rotation of the dance. Every turn was a provocation; every slide of his hand was a claim.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with a desperate, starving awareness.
She wanted to hate him. She wanted to scream.
But as he swept her across the floor, his body demanding her surrender, she found she could only cling to his shoulder, her fingers digging into the wool of his coat as she drowned in the fire he had reignited.
“Your friends,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that hummed against her temple, “are not fond of me.”
He guided her into a turn so tight and smooth it felt like an embrace. The statement was a cold observation from a man who had already measured his enemies.
Diana forced her gaze upward, though it was a perilous climb. She was dangerously aware of the sharp, clean line of his jaw and the rhythmic shift of his throat as he spoke.
“They are protective,” she managed, her voice sounding thinner than she liked. “And they are suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?”
“Of your return.” She swallowed hard, her throat feeling tight. “Of your… motives.”
He didn’t answer with words. Instead, he closed the distance.
He drew her so close that the delicate lace of her bodice was crushed against the heavy wool of his coat.
Every time they turned, the friction of his thighs against hers sent heat pulsing through her belly.
She could feel the hard, unyielding line of his muscle, a body built for authority, now focused entirely on her.
“And is their suspicion unfounded?” he asked softly.
Her gaze flicked treacherously to his mouth. She recalled the taste of it. The way he had kissed her in the study was as if he were trying to swallow her soul.
“It is natural,” she answered, her breath hitching as his hand moved.
He wasn’t just holding her waist anymore; his thumb had found the sensitive, soft hollow just above her hip, tracing it with a slow, agonizing pressure that made her toes curl in her silk slippers.
“You left for a year. Now you are back, behaving as though—”
She stopped herself.
Alexander’s eyes narrowed. “As though what, Diana?”
The turn tightened until she was trapped in his heat. His thumb pressed deeper, a silent demand for her to look at him.
“As though you regret it,” she whispered.
He didn’t blink. The music surged, a violent swell of violins that seemed to echo the storm in her chest.
“I do.” The words were a vow, delivered with a raw, masculine intensity that struck her like lightning.
Diana’s steps faltered, her knees turning to water. Only the iron grip of his arm kept her from collapsing. Her heart thrashed against her ribs, a wild thing seeking escape or surrender.
“You do not remember enough to regret,” she hissed, a desperate attempt to rebuild her fortress. “You are a stranger to your own life.”
“But I know enough,” he countered, his voice dropping to a dark, intimate rasp. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as they spun. “I know that when I saw you in that study, I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t care much about the past.”
He pulled her even closer, his hand splaying across her back, pinning her to his chest.
“That is not the same as regret,” she insisted, though her voice trembled faintly.
“No,” he agreed, his voice a dark anchor in the swirling room. “It is worse.”
The floor spun beneath them, a dizzying carousel of gold and silk.
The orchestra slowed, a mournful pull of the cellos before the violins began to climb again.
Around them, the ton glided in practiced, hollow elegance, but Diana felt as though she were standing in the eye of a storm, trapped in a circle of heat that was rapidly melting her armor.
She needed to regain control. She needed the distance of logic, the safety of a cold, intellectual inquiry.
“Why do you think you lost your memory?” she asked.
She forced her gaze to remain fixed on the sharp, black wool of his shoulder, refusing to look at his eyes. If she didn’t see the hunger there, she could pretend it didn’t exist.
His grip tightened, his fingers splaying across her back, dragging her a fraction closer.
“I do not know,” he admitted, and for the first time, she heard a jagged edge of frustration in his tone. “Every time I reach for it, there is nothing. Only a great void.”
The word hung heavy and cold between them, a ghost at the feast.
“Do you think someone wished you harm?” she asked, her voice trembling despite her best efforts.
“I think,” he said evenly, guiding her through a sweeping turn that made her skirts hiss against his legs, “that judging by the man you describe—the man who valued efficiency over everything—I likely made enough enemies in business to fill this ballroom.”
A flicker of genuine fear slid through her, sharp and cold. “You were strict,” she said quietly, the words slipping out before she could check them. “Hard. But you were not cruel.”
His gaze sharpened, a focus that made her skin prickle.
“Was I cruel to you, Diana?”
The question was low, intense, and too direct. It stripped away the pretense of the dance.
Her throat went dry, the air in the room suddenly too thick to swallow. “No.”
He watched her, unblinking. “Were you afraid of me?”
“No,” she answered immediately. It was the simplest truth she had.
He had been a glacier, yes. Distant and immovable. But he had never been frightening in the way her uncle had been; he had never used his power to belittle her. He had simply… ignored her.
“Then why,” he asked, his voice dropping to a soft, intimate rasp as he drew her flush against him, “are you so nervous now? I can feel your heart trying to beat its way out of your chest.”
The words stole the air from her lungs. The fortress she had built over a year of silence simply vanished.
She wanted to scream the truth at him.
Because you are touching me. Because I cannot breathe when you look at me as if you want to devour me.
Most of all, she was terrified because she realized she didn’t want the old Alexander back. She wanted this man—the one who held her too tight and asked questions that burned.
She tried to find a Duchess’s poise, a cold lie to throw between them, but her body had already defected to his side. Her head fell back, exposing the frantic, thrumming pulse at the hollow of her throat. She stared at him, her silence a screaming confession of a hunger she could no longer mask.
“I am nervous because of Lady Salford,” she managed, her voice a brittle thread. She clung to his grandmother’s name like a life raft. “If she discovers the truth of your memory—”
“She won’t,” he cut in.
He shifted his hand, sliding it higher, his fingers spanning the narrowest part of her waist. The closeness was no longer for the crowd; it was a private siege. She could feel the heavy, thundering beat of his heart through her palm, vibrating against her own.
“I know far more effective ways to bring you ease, Diana,” he murmured, his voice dipping into a low, sinful rasp, “than by discussing my grandmother.”
Her pulse exploded.
“Your Grace,” she breathed, the scandalized rebuke dying in her throat as she instinctively leaned into his heat.
“Alexander,” he corrected.
The dance turned. His thigh brushed hers, a slow, heavy friction of wool against silk that sent a jolt of pure fire up her spine.
“You must mind your manners,” she whispered urgently, the room beginning to spin. “People are watching.”
“Let them watch,” he said, and his fingers flexed at her waist, a subtle, dominant pressure that pulled her flush against the hard planes of his chest.
It was just enough to make her painfully aware of the solid length of him, of the way her curves seemed to have been carved specifically to fit his edges.
“You are overplaying your role,” she warned, her breath coming in shallow hitches.
“Am I?” His eyes darkened, the emerald turning to forest-shadow.
“Yes,” she insisted, though her voice was a ghost of its usual strength.
He leaned in, his lips brushing the sensitive shell of her ear, his hot breath making her entire body shudder.
“If I were overplaying it, Diana,” he murmured, “I would kiss you until you forgot your own name. I would do it right here, in front of every vulture in the building.”
Her breath caught, violent and jagged. “You would not dare.”
“Would I not?” he smirked.
The music swelled toward its final, soaring measures. Diana felt suspended over a precipice, the air thick with the scent of him.
“You forget yourself,” she whispered.
“No,” he said softly, his gaze dropping to her lips again. “I am finally discovering myself.”
The admission hit her harder than any tease. The dance slowed, drawing them into the final rotation. He pulled her closer for the final turn, her silk skirts tangling between his boots, before he stepped back just a fraction.
The orchestra ended on a triumphant, crashing chord. Applause rippled through the room, but it sounded distant, like the sound of surf from a distant shore. He did not release her hand.
“You are trembling,” he said quietly.
She forced her spine to snap straight. “I am not.”
His thumb brushed once, agonizingly slow, over her knuckles. “You are,” he insisted, a flash of dark amusement in his eyes. “But do not worry. I have every intention of ensuring that you tremble for the right reasons.”